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From Here to There ... some ideas on a better future (easy), and how to get there (not so easy) Can we awaken the sleeping giant called We the People of Canada and retake our country from the corporate trolls and usurpers...? Be the future you want to see ... M. Gandhi |
Before We the People can talk about corporate power or anything else, We the People needs to exist... Richard Moore, Cyberjournal |
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DC Sept 27 2004 - Missile treaty up to cabinet, Graham says - "...The federal cabinet, not the House of Commons, decides whether Canada will join the U.S. ballistic missile defense project, Defence Minister Bill Graham says...." - man, DEMOCRACY sure is great. And they'll keep getting away with it as long as we let them. Or as long as we keep behaving like the clodhoppers they treat us like - this isn't quite up (or down) to Bush's lies about Iraq last year, but this is pretty indicative - says Graham "...“The House isn't always sitting. The government has to be able to enter into international affairs, and to be able to conduct the affairs of Canada without always having to go to the House for permission.” - sure - in EMERGENCIES!!!! - but she is, my lads, a pretty RARE treaty that springs up overnight fully written and ready to sign, and NEEDING to be signed immediately - and the House of Commons meets something like 8 months a year, and is subject to recall anytime at the PMs pleasure - so if they actually WANT to talk about something with the reps of We the People (farcical though that is these days) they really can do so. Their dissembling is getting shallower and shallower - a sign of the contempt in which they hold us all - no need to even bother putting together "justifications" for their behaviour thicker than toilet paper. Considering that something like 70% of Canadians oppose this thing (i.e. here) - and Martin was "elected" with the support of something like 20% of voting age Canadians, their determination to sign this thing is about as UN-democratic as you can get. Almost as undemocratic as the fact that once he does sign it, it will be like it is written in stone (they probably have some clever little "penalty" clauses stuck in the fine print just in case some REAL democratic gov ever got elected and tried to do something about it - hahahaha! - man, hallucinating already!) - unlike the few things that govs have done over the years FOR We the People, which are under constant attack by the Bay St Boys, and every time a Harris type gets "elected", they cancel as many We the People programs as they can manage without getting lynched. And then slash taxes - which it seems cannot EVER be raised again, for some reason that escapes me - to make sure We the People, the odd time we manage to wake up enough to elect a half-decent gov (yea yea it's been awhile) are going to face a LOT of resistance if we want to reinstate any of those programs. Ah well that's life in the Great Free Democratic People's Republic of Canada. hahahaha DC Sept 27 2004 - NATO will fight terrorism in Afghanistan for a generation, says ambassador - yea I guess it gets sort of tedious to hear me rag on like this - but once again, I do not recall ANYONE asking ME if I support this idea of NATO, insofar as Canada is a member of that body, being in Afghanistan for ten years. Or at all, for that matter. This whole idea of "democracy" again - I KNOW we don't have a "democracy" in the country any more than a 5-year old kid in your house has "democracy" in family decisions - what irks me is the way everyone keeps lying about it, and trying to make us all say "SURE!!! We have a GREAT Democracy in Canada!" - when it so very obviously is NOT the case. This guy lies a lot as well - or else is not very bright, either is possible - he says, for instance, "..."If the Taliban were ever to come back to power, then that would be a country where groups like al-Qaida, other terrorist groups could be there to get protection, to get training.' ..." - one would really like to see some proof of these assertions - the Taliban was not one of the world's great govs by any means - but they WERE a gov of a sovereign nation, and although they did some things most of us in the west do not approve of, that does NOT give us any kind of "right" to go invading and bombing and "regime-changing" at will (it sets up some VERY bad precedents of the sort that will almost inevitably come back to bite the perp in the ass sooner or later, and EVERYTHING that came out of the Nuremburg trials was designed to discourage countries from doing this - unprovoked invasion of another country being labeled the SUPREME crime against humanity - which would make the US a serial criminal in many, many ways). The Taliban was also approachable - for instance, I remember very clearly the Taliban government offering to hand bin Laden over to the US, once they received ANY sort of "proof" that the individual so named was guilty of some crime - the US stuck its big chest out, huffing and puffing that they did not need to offer any proof at all, just give him to us (schoolyard bully shit, as usual - what we've come to expect from them, but it does NOT confer them with some sort of legitimacy) - and when the Taliban declined, the invasion was on. Now really - ANY sort of international agreement between countries requires SOME sort of proof of crime before extradition proceedings are commenced - ya just DON'T go swaggering around saying GIVE US THIS DUDE or whatever - although I guess the US does, and Canada doesn't object much - the mounties basically gave Arar to the US nazis just cause they asked - and now the "inquiry" (man I wish I could have had an "inquiry" like this one ANY of the times I got into a wee spot of trouble! hahahaha) has said, well, it may not have been all just right and proper, but heck, let's let bygones be bygones or whatever. With Afghanistan and bin Laden and the rest, it's all just more and more rewriting of history stuff going on - there has NEVER been ANY sort of believable proof that bin Laden or this al Quaeda group (both of which are, of course, US products in the first place, got all their training and money from the US when they were battling the Soviets in the 80s) were involved with 911 - but after 3 years of constant repetition in the corporate press, no-one even thinks to question it anymore. Sad world. "...The complicated task of stabilizing the country will take years, Juneau added, noting that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been stationed in Bosnia for 13 years...". Well - I got news for ya. The task of beating people into submission does take a long time, and is never very secure - and if I ever had any say about this, I'd sure let them know. This is not creating "democracy" (except maybe in the pretend sense that we have it here - we'll all run around saying what a great "democracy" we have, but never ask to be involved in serious decision making - geezus how can people live like that? The wonders of tv, I guess...) - all they're doing is replacing one bad fanatical Muslim government with an equally bad laissez-faire capitalist government - which is, in its own way, equally brutal to the people under its control. No, if you were REALLY interested in creating a free people and country in Afghanistan (or anywhere else) you would use sort of the opposite approach - none of this "We're gonna beat on yer heads and bomb weddings and anyone else we like until all the bad guys are killed and the rest of ya don't argue any more!!!" bully-bombs-and-guns approach - you would do something like setting up some small model communities (your military would be used here to protect - PROTECT!!! - the community from sabotage (as there might be a few warlords (American-armed and trained and used to doing things the 'Mericun way, which is anything BUT democratic) kicking around who would resent the possible loss of power that what we were trying to do would represent - sort of like the corps fight like hell in Canada to shut people out who want to create a better society here, and stifle real "democracy" any time it rears its ugly head) - and then you open some small factories creating things that the local natural resources lend themselves to, open shops selling necessities and services, some small administration buildings and jobs (yes, they are seeded at the beginning, to get things going - spending money this way is a HELL of a lot more productive and useful than spending that money on bombs and bullets - but all with the idea that ASAP the locals take over - REALLY take over!) - and in a very open way invite anyone who wants to come to come and start working and living in the community. Let them set up their own government, when they want to - if they really want us to leave, we do so - but then they have to carry on with the community without our help (you're damn right there's strings attached to operations like this, at the first! - that's why we DO it!!! - the Americans seed little and big dictators all the time, and protect them with money and violence as necessary - that is NOT the point of what I propose here!) - and on you go. It's doable - if the political will (from OUR side, not theirs!) is there. Unfortunately, right now the only poltiical will is for puppet governments and repression and bombs and bullets. Which is what NATO is essentially up to in Afghanistan. Democracy sure is great, though. hahahahahahaha - a wee drop of cynicism there - you will notice in this story that the speaker doesn't even make an effort to justify not asking the Canadian parliament about this - these decisions are NOT talked about by the "representatives" of We the People - like the 5-year old in the house, there are some decisions that Mom and Dad just make that the kids are not even considered. Like I said - democracy. Rule of the many by the few. While making the few believe they actually have some say in it all. Great scam. For the few. Not so great for those few of us who actually like the idea of democracy, and WANT to participate - and face shut doors any time we try. DC Sept 25 2004 - Standing up to what is wrong - South African's life an example for Canada's governing class by JAMES TRAVERS, in the Star - THIS is what we need a whole hell of a lot more of in the papers of this country. DC Sept 25 2004 - Why do they do this stuff? Can't they THINK????- Tragic finish to romp in car - in which a couple ALLEGEDLY having sex in their car are involved in an accident, in which one is killed and one is injured. The thing is - although the headline implies it, the accident was NOT their fault - but by golly, the cops are going to get on their case regardless - "..."The two people at this moment were in the midst of having sexual intercourse at the wheel of the vehicle, which makes driving that much more dangerous," said provincial police spokesman Richard Gagne... Although the couple's car never veered out of its lane, police said their manoeuvre was dangerous and potentially illegal... "They endangered their safety and that of others," said Gagne." - and the guy who CAUSED the accident? Surely we should have some VERY harsh words about HIS dangerous behaviour, right?? Causing death, serious injury, etc? - "...Provincial police said the 37-year-old driver whose car left its lane was either distracted or fell asleep at the wheel.." - so there ya go - falling asleep or otherwise being distracted (in a non-sexual way, evidently) is just something you report, no need to make a big deal out of, even if it kills others tragically. BUT - having s** in a car!! Oh Horrors!!! - well - goldarn it mabel, we gotta diss those guys bigtime! a major nono. This is pretty sick shit - not the sex - the way that the Powers That Be feel they have to say bad things about it, even if those so involved had their lives taken needlessly by some OTHER careless jerk who deserves no comment from anyone. Me - I'd write something like - "Two young lovers engaged in joyful sharing of their sexuality tragically murdered by careless driver" - something like that. That's another way of looking at this. Much more honest, to my way of thinking. This is one of the biggest problems of this society, the repression around sexual behaviour, which should be glorified as one of the BEST things available to us all - and it's free!!! - oh yea, I suppose that's bad for Capitalists, who do their best to figure a way to make MONEYMONEYMONEY from everything. Making sex "dirty" and criminalising it as much as possible opens some big doors for money in many ways, since it's not only joyous but a pretty strong instinctive drive, like eating and sleeping, from the prostitution of organized crime to sex slavery to cops doing undercover ops to catch them darn hookers and the court time it requires to abortion clinics to child porn - all perversions, very unnecessary perversions, perversions CREATED by our society - and of course POWER - which is pretty directly equated with money - for a thought experiment, ask yourself where the Catholic Church would be, or the more serious Baptist-Protestant sects - without their attempted (quite successful, which is a MAJOR crime against children, to do this to them) control over the sexual behaviour of their followers???? (yea yea the Muslims are in the same boat here, no argument - hiding the beauty of their women behind those shapeless black robes and veils is a crime against humanity for sure) Sex is like sunshine and clean water and oranges and trees and flowers and eyes and swimming and sharing (there really is joy in giving) - it's just free and joyful - and if we all partook of all these free things more, and let go the sicknesses of control of others and stupidity - we could actually have a pretty good world here. When are we going to grow up around here???? hahahahahahahahahahahahaha don't hold your breath. me, I have a beer at times like this hahahahaha DC Sept 25 2004 - hahaha - catch John Kaminski's latest here The real enemy lies within - always liked John, one of the truth speakers out there - and we seem to have other things in common - "... I have some siblings, and their extended families, with whom I have cordial relations. Except they think I’m crazy. They don’t listen to a thing I say. I gave them copies of my first book and other things I write. They refuse to read them. And when they glance at them, they think what I assert is preposterous...." - hahaha c'est moi c'est moi! DC Sept 25 2004 - Petro-Canada shares rise after Ottawa sells its stake - great deal! - and that price is going to keep going up. If YOU did this great deal, I expect you wouldn't want to have to tell your wife about it much...."Hey Honey! Them stocks just went up again - we coulda been a few grand richer if we hadn't sold them! Great deal! hahaha!!!" - Sure great for some people though - "...Shares of Petro-Canada rose yesterday after the federal government sold its remaining stake in the oil producer Thursday night for $3.18 billion... The offering will bring net proceeds of $2.6 billion (Canadian) after all fees and costs..." - yea, read those two figures. Once again the Canadian gov is passing off huge amounts of money to some middleman for a pretty minimal amount of work - half a BILLION bucks in this case. geezus. how do they get away with this shit? This kind of "reporting" I guess - they're all in the same bed or boat or whatever, lying for each other to keep the Boxers in the fields and not getting any ideas about guillotines. This whole thing is a Fraser-neocon scam, as usual - pretty undeniable evidence right here - "..."It is an end of an era. Trudeau's energy policy is now officially gone and that's a good thing," said John Kinsey, a portfolio manager with Caldwell Securities Ltd... "I think people didn't like the government having ownership in it. At that stage it came out of Trudeau's energy policy and people were very sour on government intervention in the oil patch."..." - quite amazing how the greed of a handful of Albertans has transmogrified into " the people" - you could read this a couple of ways, but it is pretty evident his "people" means "We the People" of Canada - and he is very, very much mistaken - Trudeau's energy policy FOR CANADA was liked by a whole hell of a lot more people than the new Mulroney - New Libs "energy policy" of, by and for the great US of A, as guaranteed in NAFTA - they may well get their wish one day soon, that "those eastern bastards freeze in the dark" (forget the source of that, but probably Klein a few years ago) - the problem is, that they don't seem to realize (people who "think" with their bank accounts don't usually do it all that well - they "win" against "We the People" because they start with a stacked deck in the first place, and after that they are not encumbered by the normal morality and decency that the rest of us have to live with), with NAFTA, THEY will be freezing in the dark with everyone else. And the Edmonton winters are a whole hell of a lot colder than Toronto winters. hahahaha. But I don't think anyone will be laughing all that much when the US National Guard is deployed around the oil fields to make sure no one gets any funny ideas about who that oil REALLY belongs to. yea yea. wait and see. There's some good in this world, Mr Frodo, and its worth fightin for..... DC Sept 24 2004 - Air worse in bars than on roads: Study - "..Workers in the establishments breathed 90 per cent cleaner air after the ban was imposed to guarantee smoke-free workplaces, Repace said....." - I mean geezus. Give me a hundred grand or three, and next year I'll provide you with a well documented study proving that there's more light in the daytime than the nighttime - why would anyone ever figure that a closed room with smoking people in it has higher quality air or something than a room withOUT smokers? We KNOW that ain't the case - nobody that I ever heard claimed smoking was "good" for you - anymore than one would say being stuck in a traffic jam in the city on a hot afternoon and breathing THAT air is good for you - but for one reason or another, some people CHOOSE to put themselves in those positions, and accept the consequences (actually the bar people are probably a lot more voluntary than people in traffic jams). But anyone who thinks will also know that that ain't the point - this is just more of the "we don't like smoking so we're going to dredge up all kinds of "studies" and stuff that will give SOME kind of legitimacy to our demands to be allowed to dictate to others that they live the way WE think they ought to live. snifsnif". This "researcher" is leaving out a lot of relevant info here - which, of course, will not be of interest to the PC BAN SMOKING EVERYWHERE gang, but ought to be of concern for anyone who is as dismayed as am I at the very partisan uses "science" is being put to the last couple of decades, by both right-wing Big Brothers (anything from the Frasers, for instance, perhaps topped by the completely idiotic "trickle-down theory") and "left"-wing Big Mommas (the "second-hand killer smoke" nonsense leaps to mind for some reason). For instance - when the "researcher" compares the bar air with street air, exactly what streets was this "researcher" measuring the air quality of for comparison with the bars etc, at what time, for what period of time? This is relevant - if he was measuring things at, shall we say, the middle of the night with no traffic, in the midst of a rain storm with high winds blowing clean (relatively haha) air in off the Atlantic Ocean - well, that would be one set of data - or was he measuring at shall we say five pm on a Friday afternoon on a hot still day in the summer, when everyone in the city was heading out of town, maxing the vehicle exhaust stuff???? Ya gotta know these things, before you can assess the reliability of his info. And that he chooses not to give this info (or at least the people writing the story don't) - well, ya gotta wonder. In these days when we KNOW that the "media" operates more as a propaganda outfit than a "news" outfit, and a lot of "science" the same - ya gotta wonder, always. Question everything - especially when someone is shouting about doing things for YOUR own good brother!!!! But there's more than that - the guy misses a WHOLE lot of relevant questions here, it seems to me - for instance - - are the effects of breathing these horrible tobacco fumes for a few hours permanent?? - or do your lungs clean themselves out after a few hours, thus negating the negative effects (not to mention this "study")? - serious question - your body has all kinds of mechanisms for cleaning up messes, including getting rid of bad things in your lungs. It makes as much sense to start a movement to, say, ban the sun, or if that is impractical going outdoors on sunny days - you get bad sunburns!!!!! - but of course that would be crazy as well as unnecessary, as your body will grow new skin if you do that. Or if you go swimming in the ocean for too long, your eyes get sore from the salt water - BAN SALT WATER!!!!!!! or swimming in the ocean!!! - well, we can't really do that - and of course your eyes get better in a few hours. But all the same sort of stuff - these people are making a big issue out of a temporary situation. Lung cancer only develops in heavy smokers after years of smoking, if at all. And in the same way anyone has a right to turn their brains into mush sitting in front of a tv several hours a day all their lives, those people have the right to smoke, knowing the damage that MAY accrue. Or not (another thing these "researchers" seem to NEVER mention is the rather high number of smokers who NEVER develop lung problems. hmmmmmmmmmmm) Or - how does this compare with many workplace conditions - shall we say for instance a steel foundry, or a MacDonald's kitchen (man there's gotta be a LOT of bad stuff floating around the air there, all the crap they put into the meat being vaporized in the grease and getting into the air for them people to breathe in - how about some tests in a MacDonalds kitchen hahaha!)? Or how about a comparison of the air quality around places like the Scott Paper Mill near Pictou NB???? - when the wind is blowing right, the entire province of Prince Edward Island is covered in foul-smelling fumes, and I would suspect that an afternoon of that does more potential damage to a person's lungs than a lifetime of "second hand" smoke in a bar the odd night - now THAT might be a useful thing to investigate.... Or - perhaps most relevant of all - exactly WHO is dragging patrons into these establishments where they are "forced" to breathe this "unhealthy" air ? And if the patrons of these places go there willingly - exactly what business is it of anyone else what they are breathing???? Big Momma - at least as dangerous as Big Brotha, in terms of taking away our freedom. Worse, in some ways. What I'd like to see a bit of research and/or discussion on is some parameters about who has what "right" and when to go interfering in the lives of other people - we all have a right, in my opinion, to protect ourselves from things that lesson our enjoyment of life, in a sphere over which we have control - it's fine for you to ask me not to smoke in your house, I have no objections whatsoever, that is entirely your right - it is quite another thing, however, for you to come to MY house and tell me my smoking bothers you - if that's the case, what are you doing here? And if I happen to own a restaurant or bar - it is up to ME, not you, whether or not I want to make it a smoking or non-smoking establishment. What I could never figure is why these people don't want to let "the market" take its course here - if there is such a demand for no-smoking places, the simple laws of supply and demand ought to be operable, and you or anyone can open up such a place, and make a killing as all the patrons leave them darn ol smoking places and come to yours. hmmmmmmm - I wonder why it is that doesn't happen? Is this a "knock-knock" time? Anybody home? hahahahahahahaha thought so. DC Sept 23 2004 - Ontario hospitals accused of wastefulness - ...I'm telling them, 'Before you declare a crisis and inflame fear, you have an obligation to show the government and the taxpayers of Ontario that you have eliminated every expenditure which is not essential [for] good-quality patient care,'" Mr. Smitherman said..." - ya gotta think about this for a second or two. The bean counters in action. This is exactly why the heatlh care system is in trouble in Canada - the people running the place (hahahaha - this is NOT "we the people") are fighting like hell to get rid of once and for all the idea that our taxes should be used to provide health care for Canadians rather than extra profits for "shareholders" and "investors", and they are determined to trim whatever is provided to the bone, the bare necessities - and this kind of stuff is the result. Imagine, you Mom and Dad there, telling your children something like - "Ok - you can have some toys, but you have to tell us EXACTLY what you want in advance, and you have to have done a lot of comparison shopping to make sure that whatever it is, it is not available cheaper from somewhere else! - and you canNOT change your mind! - and there are NO EXTRAS allowed!!! (Daddy and Mommy are planning a nice vacation this summer, and there just isn't any money for extra for crap for you kids!)" - etc and etc. What is so totally offensive here is that for no other reason than boosting the profits and/or income of already wealthy people, these people want to pare the health service (and everything else our taxes pay for, for We the People) to the bone, with absolutely no margin of error - "Ok, Alice, the ER is set for 8 people tonight, since that is the historical average for this time of day and year - so if there's a big accident, you have to turn them all away since we are just not prepared..." - shit like that. Remember Walkerton? Normal maintenance can go the way of the dinosaur in the new neocon "efficient" way of government - we'll put in place a much cheaper system that sort of kicks in AFTER the emergency, rather than a system that costs more, but is designed to PREVENT emergencies by constant, decent monitoring. It just isn't a very smart way to do things, at least for We the People - but when the Bay St Boys are running everything, and their primary motivation and goal is skimming the max from the wealth produced by Canadians, and their puppets are running the gov and media - that's what happens. We always hear a lot of talk about "modern progress" and so on - I can't figure how this constant cutting back is "progress", at least for "We the People" - seems to be going backwards, actually. Sure it's progress for your Bay St Investors - they keep getting more and more of the pie - but that ain't the story they sell us with "progress". But of course, they do lie a lot. Real progress should mean that there are MORE doctors with SMALLER patient lists, not FEWER doctors with LONG patient lists and millions of Canadians without a family doctor; REAL progress should mean MORE health services are covered for everyone, not less; REAL progress would mean that there are MORE cancer treatment centers, MORE MRI machines, MORE diagnostic labs, etc and etc - not Less and less and less, as we see now! Yes, and REAL progress would also mean that we DO make "efficiency" and "productivity" improvements - but REAL improvements, not artificial ones, the appearance of improvement because we have cut costs by firing decent paid workers and hauled in part-timers who know little and care less, and are going to kill people through their lack of both. And REAL progress would mean that the system has LOTS of room to absorb unexpected situations - if we pay staff to sit around every now and then because there is no work - SO WHAT!!!?????? - as long as they are there, and able, when needed! - what kind of miserable Dickensian world are we trying to create, when we insist that EVERY worker be "productively" employed every minute of every shift???? This is crazy, not to mention inhuman - as workers are NOT machines or draft animals whose productivity must be maximised to max the ROI for investors! We are talking about living, breathing, thinking, feeling human beings here - and let's cut EVERYBODY some slack, and lay off the stupid pressure cooker lives that these investors expect everyone to live so that they can spend their winter months in warm vacation lands, and have a hew Rolls or whatever every year! - and let's not forget before leaving this bit the REAL bottom line here - as the Ontario gov whines about a few hundred million to provide decent health care for its citizens - it is paying out something like 8 BILLION $$$$$ to the all-powerful "investors" on the provincial "debt" (as in scam) - with nary a whisper of complaint, nary an idea of going to those people and saying something like - "Geez - we're sorry guys, but the skim this year is just going to have to go down a bit - we've got people dying in waiting rooms and ambulances, and old people and children living in poverty, and kids coming out of university with 20,000++ dollar debts - and considering it is the tax dollars of these people we are spending, we really feel we ought to try do take care of these problems before handing over the graft money...." Nor do the "journalists" covering these stories seem to care much about this. hahahahahahahaha - hallucinating again. sorry. DC Sept 21 2004 - Bank to hold to rate hikes - you must be familiar with at least some of the many movies or tv shows that have shown the con man in action, fleecing the sucker for all he's worth, while the sucker laps it all up thinking HE'S ahead of the con, nodding his head knowingly while the con sinks deeper and deeper - this bank stuff is the same sort of stuff, except on a MUCH bigger, much more serious scale - this is part of the con of all cons - our entire economy is, of course, based on money - and a SOVEREIGN people would, through THEIR government, create and regulate their money supply - and there would be no need to pay themselves some kind of "service charge" for doing so - do you charge yourself five or ten bucks when you wash your car or the dishes? Crazy, of course - why should money be any different, on a national scale? It is a pretty solid indication of the degree of our "sovereignty" that we allow PRIVATE banks to create the great bulk of our money, and when We the People, through our government, want some - rather than creating it ourselves, in a non-inflationary way, through OUR Bank of Canada - instead we borrow it from these private banks, and pay them interest for the privilege thereof. It's also a pretty good indication of the degree of brainwashing that goes on around here that practically nobody in the country understands that. Which is the con. Which David Dodge (man how can anybody have a real name like that, in the job he is in? Same as John Crow before him - part of the whole comic book aspect of this...) carries on faithfully - just read this slowly, and see if you can make any real sense of it - "..."Looking forward, we will need to continue to reduce monetary stimulus to avoid a buildup of inflationary pressures and to contribute to sustainable, solid economic growth," Dodge said in a speech to the annual meeting of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Calgary.... "However, the pace of our actions will be depend on our continuing assessment of the evolving prospects for pressures on capacity and inflation." - sweet jeesus, as they say in some places. If this was a tv show with the con hooking the mark, the laugh track would be turned up way loud at this sort of bafflegabshit. Me, I think they're laughing pretty loud too, way up in the top floors of the Bay St Towers, after hours, lights low, scotch in hand. And the Con continues another day. And another. And another. Until We the People stand up together and say STOP!!!! Which will probably be about the same day the readership of these ravings hits double digits hahahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha - that Tiger beer's ok hahahahahah DC Sept 21 2004 - Here's more really good stuff for the turnip-wagoners - this may be more crazy conspiracy shit, but it seems that a plan was in place that may have been disturbed by Martin turning into a bit of a wuss in various ways between Jan and June this year and thus not getting his majority - but the plan that would have been no problem with the majority gov is going ahead anyway - the plan being, that started with Mulroney, to take away our government, the gov of We the People (it IS still there, theoretically, although we aren't using it much these days, having turned on the tvs and off the brains and given control to the corporate puppets who claim to be our "representatives" hahaha) and reduce as much as possible, or make it as difficult as possible, for us to ever regain control over the Berserker element of our society through our government (it's interesting if you look at some history to think that our current "democracies" in places like Canada or the US were all formed by people running from very totalitarian governments (like the British monarchy of a few hundred years ago, or similar things in other European countries) - and yet now the ancestors of the people who formed our "democracies" have become the very type of plutocracy they were formed to get away from - and We the People here in Canada are in a position of having to do the same sort of thing today, if we ever want to run our own country - which, evidently, some of us care about but most don't. hahahaha - I'll betcha dollars to donuts, as the saying goes, that if ol King George had of had TV and Madison Ave trained propagandists, there would have been no American Revolution hahaha). Anyway, getting sidetracked again - this is a blog not a friggin book (yet) - here today we have Ottawa considers building selloff - and a few days ago - Ottawa to sell its Petro-Canada stake (Petro-Can Company Snapshot - profit last year 1.7 billion) - now things have definitely changed since I was growing up, but it wasn't all that long ago that any financial analyst would tell you that selling good assets you already actually own to pay for short-term debts was a very, very bad idea - especially good productive assets like Petro Can (you noticed your gas prices going down lately????? hahahahaha right) - and I find it extremely difficult to believe even today that any surviving (as in a business sense) investment counselor type person would say something like "Oh! You own your own home do you? That's great! Sell it, and rent it back from whoever you sell it to! Think how much money you'll have in the short term!!!!!" Geezus Martha - they really do think we just got off the turnip wagon. hahahahahahaha - got news for ya George - not a Hunhhh??? What alternatives are there, you ask??? Well, speaking of "bank" things - We the People are paying "investors" of various stripes something like $40 Billion this year (and every year) for "debt service" that we should NOT be paying on this Canadian thing called the National Debt - if David Dodge and his predecessors at the Bank of "Canada" (I use the quotes because it sure as hell doesn't SEEM to be acting like a Bank of We the People of Canada) had been doing their jobs FOR we the people, this whole thing would not have happened - but actually they have been instrumental in the acquiring of this completely unnecessary "debt" which is costing us that forty bil - but that's part of the whole con, you see. It's a whole new way of looking at things - sort of like the new world you see when you realize there is no Santa Claus, or find out that that thing between your legs is for something besides peeing. Or that that really, really nice man who sold you the beachfront property on Baffin Island for such a bargain price that you mortgaged your home for - can't be found anymore - and the guy in the igloo is just laughing his darn head off at you, you have no property at all on Baffin Island, it seems - and now you don't have your own home anymore either!!!! hahahahaha - me, I think I'll invest in turnip wagons - seems to be a growth industry these days. hahahahahahaha - but David Dodge gets serious press space in the National Media to talk about ... our continuing assessment of the evolving prospects for pressures on capacity and inflation...., and I get 5 readers a day (yea yea sometimes 6 or 7) on the other place you can find info - so who ya gonna believe?????? DC Sept 20 2004 - Publication ban imposed on assisting suicide case We don't have secret trials in Canada, do we? Only them damn commies and nazis - and I suppose damn terrorists now, everything they do is badbadbad we KNOW that, and secret trials are sure bad - do stuff like "secret trials" .... wha'?? Zundel? Who dat? ooooo - that's REAL secret - get that word off your lips honey, you'll have them CSIS people after you next.... hahaha - ignorance is bliss indeed. Where's that tv remote honey?? Gotta get the news .... hahahaha MOM!!!!! CAN I HAVE MY DEMOCRACY BACK NOW????? I PROMISE TO BE GOOD!!!!! hahahahahahahahahahahahaha you idiot what made you think you ever had a "democracy" in the first place hahahahahahaha put that remote down and grab a beer - I got stuff to tell ya ..... DC Sept 19 2004 - Hahahaha - ya ALWAYS gotta take what ya read in the Great Free Canadian Copra-ate media with a big grain of salt, or something stronger, even when you think what you're reading is ok. Witness this one - Russia's new czar? - Is Russia sliding back into czar-like autocracy, after a brief liberation from Soviet dictatorship? - asks the Star (although it doesn't seem to have any problem with the US turning into the new fascist center of the world - but that's for another time. and time. and time...) - well, given our "history lessons" that we absorb basically unquestioningly as we are growing up from everywhere (not just school, but the tv, the "elders" and "peers" who have already been brainwashed, etc and etc - good propaganda is all around us, like the very air we breathe) of that great EVIL Commy-nism, it's easy enough to just accept this without thinking about it - BUT BUT BUT!!!! - I don't want to get into the big analysis myself, when others do it so much better - for a perspective on what is happening with Putin that is basically the opposite of what the Star says - but considerably more believable, it seems to me, given what we CAN see about the REAL great Satan residing to the south of Canada - have a boo here - Putin the Patriot - by Justin Raimondo. And make up your own mind who's telling the truth (hahahaha believe me, this is the very LAST thing the Great Free Canadian Corporate Media want you doing!!!!! hahahahahaha DO AS VE TELL YOU TO DO!!! BELIEF VHAT VE TELL YOU TO BELIEF!!!!! EVERYVON ELSE IS A CRAZY CONSPIRACY THEORIST!!! GET AWAY FROM ZAT INTERNET AND TURN ON ZE TV!!!!) DC Sept 19 2004 - Disturbing pattern of racial profiling - this is good, as far as it goes - but it doesn't go anywhere near far enough (this is another old and proven propaganda technique - when faced with some unpleasant truth, admit JUST A BIT of that truth - and then get that door shut quick before people go any further along that path, which might lead to some REAL bad stuff). That police target certain groups for "special attention" shall we say is nothing new - way back in the 60s and on when I was driving around in Ontario, I got regularly stopped by these guys - the crime du jour of the time was not being "colored" but having long hair - man they hated that - BAWLH (being alive with long hair) (for a man) was BAD news. I thought they were just being a**holes at the time, but now I realize there was quite a lot more to it than that (there were then, as now, of course, a lot of a**holes wearing the Enforcer Badges of the Regime - but there were then, as now, also, a few good ones, one must admit - it's part of the confusion - also part of the natural order, nothing is black and white, but confusing shades of grey) - I was right in their face, challenging their authority - not just the cops, but going higher, the people who set the rules of society, one of which "our working males shall have short hair" - for whatever reason, but mostly to do with slavery - you CAN have short hair and be free, or long hair and be a willing slave - but generally speaking, long hair is going to be on the heads of people who are willing to stand right up and shout out loud I AM GOING TO BE FREE!! - and yea again, a lot of THEM are definitely a**holes too - but check out the guys in the darthvader suits with the pepper spray and clubs at the demonstrations where people are trying to be free - they ALL have little short hairs on their heads to go with their little short brains. But back to where we were - any kind of abuse like we see in the police forces then or now - or the gov, as in the current adscam stuff - originates from above. It is institutional. Like the abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. This, or the Toronto police abuse, is not "a few bad apples" - it is the people at the bottom acting as they perceive the people at the top act, and doing as their superiors do (if they don't someone who WILL behave in such a fashion will soon have their job). The people at the top get there because they are good enough at hiding their behavior from the public, while letting it be known to those under them what the story is. The ones at the bottom who get caught get into the violence and racism (ME GOOD OTHERS NOT!!! is about the level of their mentality) without having the smarts to cover it up (I watched Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ a while back to see what all the excitement was about - and this was the main thing it did well, showing the mindless, even joyous, violence of a certain segment of our society - same then as now - the enforcers of the rulers, who ask no questions but love their freedom to cause pain and humiliation on others - it is, I think, at a very deep level, their own way of screaming a protest at what their society has forced them to become - as is fairly well known, it is often the most peaceful and beautiful people who cannot face the violence and ugliness of society who perform the most violent acts such as suicide - which are usually a form of protest). So if the judges or anyone else REALLY wanted to stop this "racial profiling" and other forms of profiling (when was the last time you saw a cop or a court doing something nice for a poor person? hahahaha) - they have to go much higher in the chain of command - like to the very foundations of our society, which says that rather than getting along together, and helping one another, we have to compete compete compete - and when you think of that - you realize that in ANY competition, there are going to be winners and losers - and it's very much animal nature that the winners do as they please to the losers. Watch a dog pack sometime - the lead dog regularly asserts his dominance over the others, who immediately fall to the ground with their throats and bellies exposed, letting the top dogs know they will not fight back. And this is exactly what the cops want from the rest of us - YES SIR!!! when they give a command, no matter how unreasonable - and like the top dog in the dog pack, if they don't get that immediate acquiescence, their first instinct is to turn to violence. And if we EVER want a decent society, we have to get rid of these people and this attitude. Freedom means for ALL, not just those at the top. And yes it's a thorny problem because the bad guys have the same attitude of dominance, and we do need to control them if the rest of us are to be free. Ok I skipped about 300 pages there of the book I gotta write some day - but you either grok or not. The point being - once again the media in this country take a story and spin it a certain way, and the rest of us are supposed to accept that spin without looking a bit further. Looking a bit further usually leads to some interesting places - places they do not especially want us going, for obvious reasons. The problems in this society come from the top down - and if we wanna fix things - we gotta get GOOD people up at the top - and get rid of the corporate asslickers (politicians) and their lawyers (courts) and enforcers (cops) and propagandists and apologists (media). And that's about as cogent a summary as you'd wanna see. hahahaha don't look for it in the Star. And about six other stories call - as does the day job. Guess who wins today? hahahaha DC Sept 17 2004 - Huge jump in `poor' under new guidelines - "... The number of people living below the poverty line will rise by around three million under revised criteria used by the National Economic and Social Development Board... The revised poverty line defines the needy as people with a monthly income of 1,163 baht or less, about 26% above the current poverty line of 922 baht per month... It lifts the number of people officially designated as ``poor'' from six million to about nine million, and the percentage of the total population of 64 million from 9.8% to 15%..." - hmm - I've checked around and haven't seen anything about this in the Canadian media - yea yea it's only Thailand, and all we hear about Thailand is TERRORISTS IN THE SOUTH!!!! - more terrorist stories. But this is much closer to the reality - the new Thai government has spent the last few years working hard to get rid of the debts imposed by the IMF a few years ago, after the WTO rules allowed the "investors" to trash the economy - and has been making things BETTER for people, even during these times, not taking stuff away - they recently instituted a "30-baht" health care plan for everyone - 30 baht is about a buck Canadian - the cost of a regular meal, plate of rice or bowl of noodles (and there are provisions for the poorest to not even have to pay this) for ANY medical treatment needed, up to and including things like heart or brain surgery. For a buck. While here in great Canada, we have been going the other way for years, as noted a couple of days ago in the PEI story, looking for things to take away, and cut back - like the "catastrophic drug plan" idea they're floating around - you have to go into poverty before it kicks in - great idea!!!! Like the poverty line - imagine anyone in the Fraser Thoughtless Tank or working for the Sun papers or Asses to even let the government CONSIDER raising the poverty line to be more reflective of reality!!! - no no no no NO - we REDUCE the poverty line - we get rid of the poor in Canada by defining them out of existence! (this great game goes back to Mulroney - like so many of the things we have in this country to NOT be proud of) Those people living in cardboard boxes under bridges CHOOSE to do that here in Canada - has NOTHING to do with poverty! Imagine Canadians being given stories like this one about Thailand, about how other countries are actually tackling poverty rates through meaningful programs - while here in Canada it's all LOWER TAXES LOWER TAXES - LET THE POOR LOOK OUT FOR THEMSELVES!!! ((hahaha - we who are demanding lower taxes on our wealth sure are hahahahaha) (I'm not saying Thailand is perfect, it's not in many ways - but at least they are acknowledging the problems and trying to do something about them, in a positive direction, rather than going backwards, as we have been doing in Canada for the last 20 years.) hahaha - better stop before I get worked up. Funny how you never read about this kind of stuff in the Great Free Democratic Canadian media though. Like a lot of stuff. Read on. DC Sept 17 2004 - Newspapers accused of misusing word 'terrorist' - there goes that damn lefty media again, promoting terrorism. I agree with King George and his buds - just nuke the bunch of em and let god sort it out hahahahahahahaha - no I wasn't referring to the Muslims I was referring to the Great Western Free Democratic Media (including Canadian of course) hahahahahahah just joking of course, although they could all use a good swat upside the head, as they say in some parts of the country, and is what my dear ol ma used to apply to me when she caught me fibbing or embellishing the truth inappropriately, which these people are constantly up to (it's quite interesting that it is now a legal principle upheld by law that the media in the Great US have no requirement to tell the truth if it doesn't suit them hahaha - check it out - Fl Appellate Court Rules Media Can Legally Lie - hahaha - again odd that such an important legal principle concerning the media would not be covered by the Great Free Canadian Democratic Media - I suppose they don't want to get people thinking along those lines hahahaha. Yea yea I know that US court decisions don't affect us directly - but let's not forget also that to the Ruling Class in Canada, and their media outlets and thoughtless tanks like the Frasers - EVERYTHING American is better than Canadian, and you can just wait for them to start calling us backwards and protective and stuff if we even try to get our media to tell the truth some time. hahaha holy cow who slipped the hallucinogenie in the beer tonight?!?!?!?! hahahahaha Anyway, as I have been pointing out for a long time now, the Canadian media, at least most of it (the CBC still tries to be good sometimes - let's hope they get back on track!!!!!) has been absolutely determined to get all Canadians ready to jump under their beds because of bogeyman terrorists, with no evidence at all except Chicken-Little-like screams of "THE SKY IS FALLING AND TERRORISTS ARE GOING TO GET US ALL DUCK DUCK AHHHHH!!!!!" - etc and etc - nice that someone is calling them on it, even if only a wee tiny bit. DC Sept 16 2004 - Sir Isaac Newton and the Coming Invasion of Iran - "...What a bunch of sincere, easy-going, peaceful people..." - odd we NEVER see this kind of stuff in the Canadian media, which, as Mr. Berton assured us all recently, tries to provide everyone with a "balanced" perspective so we can make informed decisions about what is happening in the world and what we should do. We get stories about Canadian journalists being killed after brutal interrogation - damned fanatic Muslims anyway! - which, of course, put us in a certain frame of mind when we hear the US talking about how they're also looking to get WMDs to attack freedom around the world. Just wouldn't do to mess up that mindset with stories about peaceful, intelligent people from there as well, I guess, or other stuff... DC Sept 16 2004 - hahahaha - this is funny - then you see a much bigger message - while scouting around for a quick story on how the Frasers think anybody who can still breathe should be declared as doing just fine and not poor at all, sort of like they do in the Great Free and Wonderful Society south of us, which appear every now and then in the Great Fee Canadian Corporate Media (watch that typo come back to bite ya hahaha) I happened across a Globe reference, and thought I'd have a boo - and got directed to a page informing me that for the mere price of $4.95, I could have a look at this 2-year old story. Five bucks for one short article!!! - they discount if you buy ten stories pre-paid, price goes down to $4.50 per!!!! (which the page for some reason says is "only" $4.00 per - but when I learned math a lot of years ago, dividing $45.95 by 10 came out somewhat higher than $4.00 - maybe that's just more conspiracy stuff, though, or the effect of credit card payment or something which I wouldn't know anything about hahahaha - ah to be an innocent in Neoconland!!!) I guess this isn't quite what they're referring to when they talk about "free press" in Canada hahahaha. No, of course not. But then the irony sets in - I am too poor to do research on poverty and report on it!! hahahaha - isn't that a blast - and, in a more holistic or meta-ironic sense, isn't that just so much what corporate government is about? If you have money, things are fine, you're our bud! - if not - get outta here!!!! That may be the brave new world that many people want - it's not the one I want. Which is why I will keep fighting these people as long as I can move these old fingers. Or until they get some financial controls on the Freedom Info Highway here, which I'm certain they want and expect will be coming soon enough. But for now ..... DC Sept 16 2004 - Let's send a message - another story touching on Thailand - Jose writes about the problem of sex-tourism, men (mostly!) from western countries with enough money to go to poor developing countries and take advantage of women who are so poor they are forced to sell their bodies - and a highly despicable group of people who take children and make them available for this. Jose thinks the way to stop this is to send the RCMP gallivanting around the world to follow Canadians who might be doing bad stuff, and catch em and punish em. Now aside from the fact that I personally would just not want to trust anybody as incompetent as the RCMP to do stuff like this (and also you think your average mountie is going to get near some sin city on the gov tab without doing some extra-curricular research? yea right), this is sort of like - oh, if you have a problem in your house with wasps stinging you sometimes, you get lots of cans of Raid or whatever and arm the whole family, and go hunting wasps - which is going to do diddly squat about the problem as long as the wasps still have their nest under the eaves or wherever, and are breeding new ones faster than you can kill em. If you REALLY want to stop exploitative sex-tourism (prostitution is fine, it's always been part of the world and always will be - as long as it is NOT performed under any kind of coercion - but anybody who forces kids into this, or uses such children, ought to be literally thrown to some lions somewhere, as a public spectacle and serious indication of our desire to stop this behaviour) you have to go to the nest - which is poverty - and which, as I explained above, the Thai government at least is trying to tackle. If Jose wanted to get serious about stopping the exploitation of children, it would be a LOT more useful to have the Canadian government engaged in fighting poverty, and the causes of poverty, around the world - through such means, for instance, as cancelling all of the IMF-World Bank "odious debt" loans that make it very difficult if not impossible for many countries to undertake poverty-reduction programs on their own (the first step in such poverty reduction is getting the foot of the money-lenders such as the IMF OFF of the necks of the debt-slaves), when all available money is siphoned off as "service charges" on loans that should never have been made in the first place. Jose also ought to have a look around his own back yard - there's a pretty fair - and highly disgraceful - problem right here in Canada, with poor young women and underage children being forced into selling their bodies because of poverty. Like most of the neocons in Canada though, they don't want to talk about the disgrace of Canadian poverty, or the disgrace of child poverty in this country, or the resulting, inevitable things such as child prostitution - once you start acknowledging that sort of thing, it makes the endless cries for LOWER TAXES LOWER TAXES a bit harder to justify. Getting people to look elsewhere is so much easier - especially when you own the media. DC Sept 16 2004 - Time to Recognize State Terror by John Pilger - hmmmmmmm stories about MUSLIM TERRORISTS all the time - the AssPress in Canada slipping in the "T"-word all over the place (I'm sure the Sun people do too) - stories of TERRORISM from Thailand - but NEVER any stories that try to get a grip on what is going on here, in the Great Free Canadian Democratic Press - stories like this one, by John Pilger, one of the REAL journalists in the world (which is, of course, why you will NEVER see his stuff in the Great Free etc etc) - "...The world is dividing into two hostile camps: Islam and "us." That is the unerring message from Western governments, press, radio and television. For Islam, read terrorists...." - and it's all BS. One of the truths from Pilger: ".... The occupation of Iraq is presented as "a mess": a blundering, incompetent American military up against Islamic fanatics. In truth, the occupation is a systematic, murderous assault on a civilian population by a corrupt American officer class, given license by its superiors in Washington. ..." - now THAT is something you're not going to get anytime soon in the Canadian corporate media - and their "balanced presentation of the "news". hahahahahahaha DC Sept 15 2004 - Adbusters seeks court order to shows its TV ads - "...Adbusters' 15- and 30-second so-called social marketing spots address such issues as obesity, consumerism and environmental degradation. One, for instance, displays a burping pig superimposed on a map of North America... The group said television operators have refused to air its ads on the grounds that they are too controversial, advocate ideas instead of products, and don't fit the broadcasters' business model. ... Adbusters said officials of CHUM, BCE Inc.-owned CTV and CanWest told the group that they are in the business of selling advertisers' products and will decide what they show on their networks." - puts a pretty good light on the idea of a "free press" in Canada, and how much we've been misled or misdirected about the whole thing. "Free" is normally a great word, great feelings, we all like freedom, and it's certainly appropriate that Our Great Free Democracy (haha) has a Great Free Press - isn't that Great!!! - but here, it doesn't quite stand up to examination. "Free" as it is used here means nothing more than that if you have enough money, you can open a newspaper or tv station (if you have enough money you're not likely to run into the same kind of licensing hassles people withOUT enough money usually do) - and then when you have that paper or tv, you do and say what you want on it. Which is fair enough as far as it goes - I think people should be allowed to print and say more or less what they want to, with very few if any restrictions (problem with "restrictions" is - who decides what they are, and how can we be SURE they are not operating under some agenda?) - but they don't really get into that kind of detail in your high school civics classes, much, for some reason hahaha - just FREE MEDIA - with the implication that we get all the news we need, all the time - and can go to bed happily knowing that everything we need to know, they are telling us (sorry if that small gag brought up a small barf moment hahahaha). But the problem, of course, is what about the 99+++% of people who just do not have enough money to be starting any newspaper or tv station? What about THEIR right to "free speech" and "equality"?? And what about the right of some sort We the People should have to unbiased news coverage and opinion? Is there such a thing? I can't think of anything written down from that perspective - nobody wants to talk about this, they all just TELL us that that is what we get - but it is pretty apparent to anyone who gets news and commentary from other sources than the corporate media and tv that they do NOT give We the People any sort of "fair and balanced" coverage of things - they give us propaganda and carefully selected news to SHAPE the thinking and opinions of We the People - and one of the things we most desperately need if this country is ever to become a true democracy is some sort of widespread alternative to these people. (and let's not forget the fact that at least SOME (and I would suspect most if not all, but that's a story for another time) of the people who DO have enough money to be starting their own media outlets came by it dishonestly, one way or another - it is pretty hard to "earn" a hundred million bucks these days with a day job - our late great Conrad for example, for years held up (and holding himself up) as the very paragon of a great successful businessman - turns out to have been stealing his company (and the shareholders, thus) blind, for years - all during those years he was held up as such a great exemplar for Canada! Ya gotta get into this, grok it, understand it - and apply it to what is going on now. How many of the wealthy people running around out there, operating out of Bay St towers, doing their best to force their neocon policies on us using all kinds of noble-sounding phrases like productivity and competetiveness and "free markets" and fiscal responsibility etc and etc - are doing the same things as Black, and just haven't been caught yet? My guess would be all or most - as I said above, you just don't come by that kind of money honestly - and why would we suppose that such people are either capable of or desirous of giving us "fair and balanced" reporting - Black's National Prevaricator is STILL known for spreading far-rightwing neocon crap as much as possible - again, that's their business and I wouldn't want to stop them - but where is the same sort of national paper giving people stories and commentary from the other side, so We the People can make informed decisions about things, having heard a fair representation of ALL of the arguments and opinions about something? There USED to be a fair range of media available back in the 70s and prior, a lot of small independent sort of papers, and most of the rest sort of center-left or center-right - but now the big corps have bought everything and concentrated ownership, and most of them (think Asper and Sun) are pretty far-right in outlook (when they're not being faaaaar-right wacko). And we are NOT getting the info we need about many, many things. And put that side by side with what is and has been happening in the gov, all the tax breaks for the rich, all the slashing of social support systems for the rest, the hundreds of billions (yea, that's not a misprint - Billions) of tax dollars stolen by these people through the great National Debt Scam and other lesser evils (not only the so-called "sponsorship scandal" currently in the news - but the lawyers getting paid $2,000 bucks a day - that's all scam and theft too!) DC Sept 15 2004 - Dental program changing - interesting choice of words - they might have been honest and just said "cut back". It's not a big deal, per se - but it's just so exemplarific of everything that's been going on the last couple of decades since the neocons took over. Isn't the goal of all of us working hard and making a better society to make things better for everyone? The dental program for kids was a great idea - and progress would have seen that expanded, not reduced. Dental health is important - very few people would choose toothlessness over good teeth if given a choice, yet dental care is so expensive these days that if you don't have a good job with dental insurance or a "very" good job, you can't afford a lot of the treatments. Maybe dentists get paid a bit too much, but it's not that much out of line and I'm not going to worry about it - but I think the government should be expanding dental care to be the same as health care, and EVERYONE gets covered, one way or another. If there's going to be a means test, make it a realistic one, set the bar high not low - I have no objections to making someone who takes home a few million a year pay for their own dental treatment, but you shouldn't put the cutoff line somewhere in the lower middle income bracket, where the kid's (or Mom's) root canal is going to mean the brake job on the car gets put off for another few months. But we have to ask - WHY are we going backwards with this kind of stuff, instead of forwards? Why cutting back the availability of such programs, instead of expanding them? Are we working less and getting poorer, as the people of this country? Hardly! So if we're working more, and producing more - why aren't the things we work for - the collective services that we pay our taxes for like health care and education and infrastructure - improving, rather than getting worse? And the answer isn't that pretty, if you think about it independently rather than listen to the crap coming out of the corporate media - "we're" doing it (in the sense that "we" are the gov hahahaha) so the small percentage of people in this country who are already very wealthy - can be even wealthier. So that Conrad can pay for his thousand-buck-an-hour lawyers to keep out of jail, where he belongs. So that his wife can pay a hundred thou for a "small" birthday party in some expensive restaurant. On the Riviera. Flying the guests there on the corporate jet. That they do not, excuse the french, give a shit about the rest of us is part of the package. That you (as in We the People) have the freedom - and power - to do something about it, is too. If you have the courage to stand up to the Berserker class in this country, this world, today. The Taker Class, as Daniel Quinn calls them - I think he is much too kind. Just face up to it. Don't buy the lies about "productivity" or "competetivness" etc and etc - it's about nothing more than greed, about letting the rich keep their money, and increasing their wealth by taking more of the wealth that YOU generate from your work that SHOULD be enriching "We the People", the country, your children's futures. Meaning that AFTER they take their huge skim, we have to pay for the things we need out of the pittance they leave us, or do without. While they get more. If you don't like it - do something about it. If you don't wanna think about hard stuff like this - well! - that's what the tv's for. Go for it. DC Sept 16 2004 - Both sides budging on health dollars: premiers - some combination of "the kids at play" and "the scam continues" - this is just pathetic. The picture in this story, if it stays, is great - a thousand words and all that - the looks on the faces of McGuinty and Martin are like some shysters playing some game, pretending to be doing one thing while doing something quite different - NOT people working together to make the BEST arrangement for WE THE PEOPLE!!! - which is what they are SUPPOSED to be doing, right? hahahaha - yea right. Now me - it seems to me that the FIRST thing these people - in their capacity as OUR EMPLOYEES!!!! - OUR REPRESENTATIVES!!!! (yea hahahahaha - but isn't that the theory??!!) ought to be doing, is figuring out WHAT we all need, what we all want - and how much we can afford (that is to say, I expect that until we get things working a bit better, we can't afford for all of us to have the gov provide us with yearly trips to a spa in Europe for a "muscle toner upper" or "fat reduction program" or some such thing - but on the other hand, I think it is crazy (not to mention criminal, in some senses - a fiduciary responsibility NOT being met while money is being purloined by various parties) that some VERY large number of people spend a very large number of hours every day in some ER somewhere in the country waiting for some very necessary, urgent treatment, and others spend months on a waiting list for some necessary but not quite "urgent" treatment). Romanov did all this a couple of years ago - and the political reaction showed exactly how much they REALLY want to provide a good health care system for Canada. There are many other reports out there that give some very good ideas about what needs to be done and how to do it - all very doable - IF IF IF IF the political will was there to do it - which it quite obviously is not. So there they sit, playing the big con on various levels, having to pretend they are trying to do something for We the People while they are really working for other masters, but can't let on that their real aim is the end of the system. And here we all sit like Joe Turnipseed putting down his quarters for the con artist at the carnival, hoping that just maybe we'll win THIS time. hahahahahahaha - got news for ya - it ain't gonna happen. As long as y'all keep electing con artists as the people you want to "represent" you in the nation's governments, they'll keep connin ya. Why would they stop a beautiful con like this when it's working so well, and the great majority of the turnipseeds apparently have no idea at all what's being done to them? hahahaha Most recent ravings Notes: *that doesn't mean boy and girl trolls, we all know a rat in a dress is still a rat hahaha - it means big trolls, like Asper and d'Aquino and Mulroney, and little trolls, like the neocon "journalists" and "judges" and "cops", those traitors to We the People without whom the big trolls could not survive... |