The (somewhat erratic) daily observations...

Aug 11 2011

Aug 4/11 - CBC watch - Ottawa Morning - as they have been regularly for awhile, they have some teenage girl on telling Ottawa Morning listeners about the great cool places to go to hear great 'new' music this weekend. Teenage stuff. On the CBC? Sure, you say the CBC is 'reaching out to new listeners' - I say crap. The CBC used to be for adults - teens have their places, adults have theirs. I say the CBC is engaged in what it has been part of for years - the transformation of people who would have grown to 'adults' a few decades ago into people with grownup bodies and adolescent minds. "minds", actually, as it were. Kids playing in the Box controlled by the adults, rather than adults actually running their own society, with the all-important national media keeping them informed of things they need to know, with a good variety of opinion on any given issue to help them decide what they want to do. The latest teenage rap singer doesn't qualify.

Update - a couple days later - just came across this - List of Nominations - nominations for 'the best political book of the last 25 years'. The 'contest' seems a bit geared towards featuring books pushing the neocon agenda (yes, books talking about how bad Harper is are part of the game, when you understand the 'real' rulers in Bay St control both the Libs and Cons, and probably everyone else - they don't care who gets elected, they control them all - so this kind of thing doesn't really do much good, but to people who think the political game is the shallow bread and circuses stuff presented on the mainstream media, of course, this kind of thing makes them believe the media really does a good job. We don't see any books talking about the money supply scam, for example. But back to the point - it would be 'adult' if Ottawa Morning or the other morning shows had a regular feature every week talking about 'serious' books, and left the 'who's playing at the clubs' stuff for the tabs and teenage radio. If they actually wanted to encourage people to read about their country than going to clubs, that is.

July 30/11 Stieg Larsson And The Scandinavian Right TO which I commented -

Speaking of revisionist voices ....

"...And yet, homegrown fundamentalist movements have been gaining power in Scandinavia since, decades ago, the citizens of those countries began to lose faith in the benevolence of their vaunted welfare states..." - theses built on false premises don't usually have much to offer. Citizens in modern western democracies did not and have not 'lost faith' in democratic governments which provide modern world class social services such as world class health care systems, subsidized education, etc, which are commonly referred to derogatorily in anti-democratic rightwing capitalist media as 'welfare states', what happened was that in the 1970s the elitist elements of society, the 'right wing' which controls large amounts of money and greatly resents supporting a modern society through taxes, began a concerted, serious attack on modern democratic governments. They have been quite successful in this attack, as they also use their money to purchase media outlets to ensure a monologue promoting this new-feudalism agenda rather than a true debate about their goals vs the goals of most people, and politicians to enact it. This does not mean citizens have begun to question their notions of what makes a good country. Au contraire, a quite substantial majority of citizens throughout the western world are very, very unhappy with the chaos resulting from several decades of capitalist ascendency, and you can be sure the revolution coming soon is going to be directed towards more rather than less of the 'welfare state' democracies that have been under attack for the last few decades, as the people reassert their voice in the world's affairs. A bit more on What Happened in the 'welfare state' of Canada, which is also suffering in the capitalist hegemony of the past 30 years, and is not a story of the people turning against it, but a coup by a very non-democratic elite.

July 29/11 Summer Camp Tea Part Style - and I said - Atlas Shrugged is really old - the idea that letting capitalists set our policies will lead to a wonderful future has, as anyone familiar with the world situation will know, utterly failed - war, poverty, societal breakdown, and economic chaos everywhere is the result of letting capitalist predators rule. For a vision of a society in which 'we the people' run our own lives democratically (capitalist 'democracy' can be seen clearly by now as a serious oxymoron - what we have is capitalist plutocracy), one might try Green Island .

July 29/11 CBC roundup from the last couple of weeks

July 17 - Enright show, summer host some obviously upper class brittle woman, talking first with someone in England about the Murdock scandal, showing the standard Canadian amazingly hypocritical attitude of 'we are SO good here, as this scummy example proves!!', followed by a talk with someone about Marshall McLuhan, with a quite evident undercurrent (from her) of disapproval, apparently because McLuhan criticized the media, and (we understand from her unspoken comments and sniff-sniff attitude) she and the Canadian media are far too perfect to be criticized by the rabble; and then a story about a woman who wrote a book about her tribulations in Cambodia during the Pol Pot years - no doubt a moving story, but in its own way a coverup of the 'real' history - she says at one point she needed to know how it all happened, and talked about the things in Cambodian society that allowed this to happen, which is no doubt useful to a point - but not a single word about America, how it destabilized the country in the first place with the bombing, and then basically supported Pol Pot because they had a mindless hatred for Sihanouk, who would have moved towards a democratic 'look after the people and not American capitalists OMG!!!!' socialist government had he been left alone - supporting brutal murderers is nothing new to the US - but for the CBC - not a bad word against our buds!!! - and continually rewriting history in their preferred image, a la Big Brother's Ministry of Truth.

July 19 - interesting 'regular talk' with Rob Rousseau from Ottawa on Island Morning - he more or less says that it is unlikely anything like the Murdock 'scandal' would have been exposed had it been ongoing in Canada - he is loyal to his fellow "journalists", but without damning anyone, says they are by and large too close to politicians, and rely on them too much for 'news', to get them upset by doing anything to *really* expose bad stuff - which, he certainly implied, is both happening and known, No surprise to me - you listen to politicians of all stripes joking with any CBC host, it's pretty obvious they all sleep in the same corrupt bed. Be interesting to get this guy under the ol Green Island scopalimine someday.

>>> got the Saskatchewan morning show - they have some 'business' commentator on, but the talk gets to the ongoing Murdock bread-and-circuses show - and they both point fingers at that nasty man, with the very blatant unspoken but present idea that 'BOy, WE sure never get up to stuff like that haha!!' - but as some of us know, the Cdn media is just as bad, in its own way. More, of course, later.

- "CBC financial reporter Scott Peterson" sounds as if he knows very little about what is happening, but is reading from some kind of talking points sheet, telling Cdns why letting the international banks kick the shit out of Greece, and put them in debt chains forever, is really good stuff. Propaganda, all the time. As Paul Roberts notes ( find episode 45), citizens seem totally dumbed down, accepting the most blatant lies with no questions. I often really wonder if I have any chance at all of waking people up, but I just have to keep trying, don't know what else to do. I suppose if I was rich enough I'd buy a boat and go looking at reefs and fuck the rest of them - if they don't care, if they're going to let the predators win, I'll just enjoy whatever few years I have left. Don't have that choice at the moment, however, so the urge to keep fighting must be fed.

July 22 - PEI "news" - again, maintaining the 'entertainment as news' philosophy, spending large amounts of time talking about people lining up for the Elton John concert. So exciting!!! - but news?????? - I guess if you are raising a society of "adults"-with-minds-studk-in-adolescence, it is.

July 23 - Lisa Mullins, the World - PRI - continuing the CBC propaganda on what is happening in Sudan - how some people drop random bombs which creates terror - hmmmm, one wonders - doesn't the US do the same on a vastly larger scale???? but we never, never, never NEVER accuse the US of 'terror' no matter how blatant it is - and they get in a reference to the current monster Gaddaffi - 'the same as Gaddaffi is doing in Libya'.... known as 'indoctrination reinforcement' ... the host of this show seems to actually believe some of these things - the well-indoctrinated citizen moving to the highest point in the propaganda machine they can be raised to - if she seems like 'one of the people', and seems 'honest', more people will buy the story with a minimum of fuss... ( and the next segment, one comment "where the lions can do their dirty deeds' - this is ridiculous, the lions are not doing 'dirty deeds' like some mentally deranged human, they are doing what comes naturally - but this is the fully dumbed down CBC in action, speaking to a childlike, dumbed down audience, trained to see nature as the enemy... same guy talking about how 'creepy' the full moon can be - these people are welcome to their neuroses, but to have them on the CBC speaking as if they are normal people is very bad ... - sadly, what we've come to expect from the CBC ....

"..put in the work to advance our shared interests.." - the House, telling Cdns the people running the place are doing their best, by golly ... - and some guy talking about how opposition to things like the pipeline and free trade are 'irrational' and 'emotional' ... balanced "reporting" from the CBC, as always ...

July 22 - again a 'report' from Washington that is nothing more than telling Canadians that the ideological position of rightwing "economics" is some kind of bible we 'must' follow - "America needs to get its books in order.." the reporter is not quoting anyone, but 'telling' Cdns the story they are supposed to believe - but of course the whole thing is a massive scam, it's not 'getting books in order' that America really needs, it's getting a lot of high level criminals in jail - "reporters" like this one are probably liable as accomplices, at the very least -

>>> and on the Current, we are TOLD what the attack in Norway means - no theory, here, just two days later we have some guy TELLING us what it means, etc, the guy was trying to arouse an entire generation, etc etc - this guy KNOWS what the killer was doing, and he is telling everyone what they must believe about it - very suspicious, really - everything the CBC, or other mainstream media, is suspicious these days ... (theorizing these things, with other points of view, would be fine - but there's no theorizing here, this guy is TELLING people what they need to be believing here ...

July 26 - again re Norway - Jim on the Current sounding like he is trying to make the case that they should not publish anything the killer said - at least he has some guests arguing the other side - but nobody talks about what Jim means 'below the surface' - he means that the mainstream media has been trying to indoctrinate and condtion people to believe what they are told without thinking, so they need to control what they are told ... I suppose not many others understand that either ...

July 29 - again, every day, the CBC joining the 'drag everybody into unreality land' by talking about the 'debt ceiling' "debate" as if it were serious, and not something completely bizarre. It's getting harder and harder to be a sane person in this world. You want to scream at people, and tell them to start waking the fuck up. But it's like being in a dream where you scream and scream and nobody listens.

July 26/11 The Utterly Wrong Beltway Myth Driving the Debt Ceiling Insanity:

People need to start thinking outside the box - the box whose sides, limits, call them what you will, are set by the mainstream media, which is the 'secretariat' for the people running the country, and world. The 'debt ceiling' is a completely false 'issue' - what people need to be thinking about - and what should be getting pushed in the 'alternative' media such as here, is the basic issue - why do we allow private banks to create our money, and then run up huge debts borrowing that money at interest? A 'sovereign' nation should, by definition, create and control its own money (the US Constitution actually enshrines this) - once you turn control of 'your' money over to private interests, you ipso facto turn control of your country over to the same people. As you see all around you. For a more detailed examination of what is going on, check out the American Monetary Institute and the American Monetary Reform Act. Become enlightened. (for Canadians, I explore the ramifications of allowing private banks to create our money here - What Happened?. They've been slashing all our social programs - most notably our once world-class health care system - for 30 years, whilst paying some two trillion dollars in "debt service" on completely fraudulent government debt. And nobody understands. (well, I exaggerate, there's a few of us out here - but the Land of Understanding is not a crowded place ...)

July 20/11 Perplexing silence over proposed Europe-Canada 'free trade' talks - Jim, Jim, Jim - the lack of talk would only be 'perplexing' if the rulers thought the opinions of Canadians had any meaning or relevance to what they were planning to do, which they obviously don't, and haven't for quite a long time now. The opinions of citizens have some meaning in a democracy, but Canada hasn't been a functioning democracy for quite awhile now, more of a 'bread and circuses, keep the masses entertained and away from politics' plutocracy, courtesy of, to a very large extent, the mainstream media. We were getting close to a 'democracy' back in the 60s and 70s, with populist leaders like Tommy Douglas et al actually feeling their job was working for the people rather than the ruling elite against the people as the current pols understand their job, but the downfall began in the 70s, and with the advent of Mulroney, the era of corporate governance of Canada ('open for business'!, you bet - for sale to the highest bidder) became official. With the blessings of the mainstream media. Can't get into it all in 500 words or whatever, but a bit more here for anyone wondering What Happened?.

July 19/11 Geez. Gotta get the day job in perspective. Anyway - Rude, unsafe drivers on the rise, CAA says - capitalism in action. Dumbing down, stress, denial, barbarism ascending.

July 13/11 Toronto Star News of the World's downfall is investigative journalism's triumph.

I beg to differ.

Gossip isn't "journalism". Uncovering scummy means the gossipers are using to get their gossip isn't really 'journalism' either, it's just tattling on your competitors, which is, in the end, just more gossip. Making mountains out of molehills, as so much of what we read in the media today including this 'shocking!! OMG!!' 'story' is doing, isn't 'journalism'. Being the secretariat of power by printing press releases from business groups or government isn't "journalism'. Real journalism is looking behind the lies of business and government, to keep the people informed. We see almost nothing of this today. Which isn't that strange, as big money controls both government and the media that is supposed to be informing the citizens. By far the most important real story in the modern world is about who controls both our money and governments - and there's not a single word in the mainstream media about this. The media's 'real' job in the modern world is to make the people trust them, and then betray them in the service of power. Et tu Toronto Star. What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html . July 11/11 An example of 'in the box' thinking, from the once somewhat esteemed Richard Gwyn: "..The only difference is that the greed that motivated media owners like Murdoch ... wasn't only about money but was as much the product of greed for power, influence and fame, accomplishments that few bankers care greatly about.." (Richard Gwyn, A case of greed and timidity) I think, from 'outside the box', it's pretty obvious that the top-level bankers have a great, VERY great, desire for wealth and power - they may be somewhat desirous of working behind the scenes and avoiding the fame bit, but the accumulation of great power and wealth is certainly pretty obvious. But, inside the box, the myth that prevails, in order to command our trust, which is necessary in the performance of any great con ('confidence game'), is that bankers are sober, serious chaps, caring nothing about money for personal wealth, only looking after YOUR money very carefully. One would think that the economic roller coaster we've been on the last 30 years, caused almost entirely by the greed and stupidity and hubris of unregulated banks creating vast amounts of money for nothing more than speculation, would be becoming apparent even to the most dim of box writers.

But that's the whole idea of the box - your world is based on fiction, and it doesn't matter what the facts get up to, your fictional view prevails. The Box abides.

July 11/11 Sometimes we wonder about the esteemed Mr Monbiot, but he mostly gets it pretty good and seems to be on the right side, as they say - this from his latest: "...Look at the remarkable admission by the rightwing columnist Janet Daley in this week's Sunday Telegraph. "British political journalism is basically a club to which politicians and journalists both belong," she wrote. "It is this familiarity, this intimacy, this set of shared assumptions ... which is the real corruptor of political life. The self-limiting spectrum of what can and cannot be said ... the self-reinforcing cowardice which takes for granted that certain vested interests are too powerful to be worth confronting. All of these things are constant dangers in the political life of any democracy." (A Hippocratic Oath for Journalists). Not much doubt about the connection between politics and 'journalism' in Canada. Get Libs, Cons, NDP, whoever, on any of the talk shows, and it's obvious they and the 'interviewer' are all great buds. Which leads some interesting places if thought about a bit.

July 11/11 Media Lens has always understood the propaganda role of the modern mainstream media, and how influential it is. BBC Bombast -- Propaganda, Complaints And Black Holes of Silence: "..The dramatic packaging allows propaganda to slip through in digestible chunks. And it is a diet that, like the soma in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, promotes mass adherence to state ideology. We are fed myths that our governments are essentially well-intentioned; that powerful investors, banks and corporations promote 'free trade' and 'open markets' while providing responsibly for society's wants and needs; that prevailing state-corporate policies and practices constitute human 'progress'; and that, in any case, no serious or credible alternatives exist... Anyone can spot the propaganda with a modicum of vigilance while watching the news."

Anyone can - it's a sign of the depth of the indoctrination how few actually do.

July 11/11 More real stuff from Global Research - Big Banks waging warfare on the people: Michael Hudson, again: "..You have to realize that what they're trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They're not trying to make the economy more equal, and they're not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards, it's the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite..." (as I've been saying for quite a long time now - starting with The Corporate Reactionary Revolution)

July 11/11 Michael Hudson - as always, gets it. Don't look for him on the CBC. (another here). Check out the Real News network people if you haven't yet - doing what real journalists are supposed to do - not believing press releases from corporate Canada constitute 'news', to be passed on enthusiastically to the people. Real journalists ask questions the rulers don't want to answer, and find other people who at least try to answer them. Don't expect such behavior from the CBC.

July 10/11 Random thoughts of an evening. Mr and mrs average citizen drinking the capitalist koolaid. And feeding it to their kids. And mocking anyone around who questions its nutritive value. But not indoctrinated, oh no. no way. not me, buddy. now if you got nothing more interesting to talk about than these stupid conspiracy theories, I got more important stuff to do - my favorite tv show is just beginning, and later there's coverage of William and Kate, so cool. Indoctrinated - ha. what a stupid idea. we're free here, doncha know nothin?

July 10/11 The Cloud Cometh - James Corbett gets it all pretty good, the kind of real questioning that real journalists would be doing. If we had any in the mainstream media.

July 9/11 - the House - again, on message propaganda - first the 'cuts' that the government is planning - we ARE going to have to make cuts, we are told - but it's all ok, we have to do it, it's really responsible fiscal behaviour, we're doing it better than other places, not bankrupt like Greece, we are being really well managed, you know - darned old people, you know, needing more money spent on them, paying less taxes - public sector employees make way too much money, their pensions are too generous - pure rightwing NWO propaganda - the New CBC 24/7 on message. How anybody can still call these people left wing just speaks to the mindlessness of the rightwing propaganda, not to mention the mindlessness of the peasant class which follows the rightwing lead ... The host is even part of it, not pretending otherwise - 'do you think the government has the capital to take on the unions?...' - amazing ...

>> - and then segueing directly into more propaganda telling us how great it was in Afghanistan, carefully scripted to address a number of recent revelations about problems with the official story - no letup for the propaganda maintenance, there's been a lot of it lately telling us how great it was in Afghanistan - they must know things are cuspy right now, and the right push from the right people could blow them out of the water with the truth - Green Island, is the message to me, don't stop now, don't give up - victory may be much closer than you think ... there ARE a lot of people out there who are starting to understand that something needs to be done here - just waiting for something to coalesce around, which the media is desperately trying to keep them from finding for themselves ...

July 9/11 - English: The cost of rogue journalism - the esteemed (self, at least) Ms English, again pointing fingers at the misdeeds of others, and letting us know how good THEY are at the Star, by golly. The News of the World hacking 'scandal' is just that, some cheap tabloid 'get a titillating story by any means' crap they and their ilk have been doing since newspapers started being printed. It's hardly an earth-shaking scandal of the type everyone is making it out to be - but it is being screamed about from the hilltops because anything serves these bread-and-circuses days to keep the public looking anywhere but where they should be looking - at the governments and banks that are stealing them blind, and the media that is supporting this usurpation and theft. The Toronto Star is as guilty of this real scandal and crime as anyone.

But of course, we wouldn't expect them to point fingers at themselves.

July 5/11 What will $100,000 get you in Toronto? A parking spot - the rich are indeed not like most of us. Something pretty obscene about this.

July 5/11 - the 'royals' left PEI yesterday - and they're still gushing on Island Morning. The peasants are thrilled. Those of us who'd like to move the entire country back onto the Democracy path are seeing the futility .... (at one of the interviews, somebody asks (gushingly) why the whole world seems so taken with the new royal couple - and there's all the kinds of answers you'd expect - they're such a lovely couple, etc etc - and not a word about how just maybe 24/7 media adulation, wall to wall, for months now, just MIGHT have something to do with it??? (a good contrast with the 24/7 wall to wall demonisation of others, such as Gadhaffi, and the consequent public opinion - there are holdouts for both opinions, but by and large the compliant, well-trained-to-follow-the-media public believe what they're told to believe.. the proof is all around, as here, with so very few able to see it .. )

July 4/11 in a short break from the peasant-adulation royal visit coverage, we need to get in the 'business report', in which dear THE MASTER'S VOICE 2 Jeannie tells us approvingly of the Greece austerity efforts, selling airports, desperately doing anything they need to do to appease the banks - the peasant mindset of the CBC, never sleeping ...

> later on the Ottawa morning show - a talk with some feminist artist - the childishness of her voice and "ideas" are striking - and of the 'interviewer' - the dumbed down peasantry, thinking they are 'adults' - the rulers will never be challenged - these people won't even be able to get near the idea they are being ruled ...

>> and then the Current - an obviously setup story telling us through an 'interview' with 'just another normal citizen' what a monster Gaddaffi is, etc. Propaganda 24/7. The Current 'host' is obviously completely under the belief that Gaddaffi is a monster, and anything 'we' do to get rid of him is just fine, etc - amazing, really, that so many people believe this shit. The sad crying lady really goes for the heart - but then it was not all that long ago we had a sad crying lady from Kuwait telling us about them fucking Iraqi monsters throwing poor wee babies out of incubators, that proved to be just a big con job, and you need to wonder just how real this lady is, coming over the radio - it's been obvious for a lot of years that the first requirement for any modern 'journalist' is good acting ability, and there is no reason to believe that a lot of these people they interview are not the same, actors rather than real people. A "real' news network would be telling us things like this, and replaying things like the Kuwaiti propaganda to remind us to be careful about believing everything a government with an agenda tells us, rather than acting as a secretariat for a government wanting to get people onside with its plans for bombing other places. But the CBC hasn't been a 'real' news place for quite a long time now ...

July 3 - Enright show - propaganda maintenance re Gaddafi - stated as fact, no discussion, that he wants to kill civilians so NATO can't retreat, etc. >>DECON- useful for deconstruction - the underlying assumption of the discussion is that the media reporting is honest, NATO are 'good guys' trying to truly nelp people, Gaddafi is truly a monster, etc - alice would have loved it ... the Box in action. A totally indoctrinated 1984-citizenry in action.

July 2/11 - geezuz not surprised, I guess - the revered Prince telling Cdns how noble the Afghanistan 'mission' was and is, bringing freedom and democracy to the world - one wonders how so many can be so gullible - but I guess the indoctrination has been pretty serious the last few decades, no ability to think left in a solid majority of the people.

- and The House, with a major propaganda piece on Afghanistan - media working as secretariat and cheerleader for government policies - not a hopeful sign for 'democracy' ...

July 1/11 - very interesting, and very distressing, to listen to the endless adulation from the media about the visit to Canada of 'the royal couple'. Not that surprising from the media, whose (real) job is, after all, maintaining the status quo, in these propaganda times, but to listen to all the people they are interviewing about how they adore the royal family, etc, gives some insights about why attempts to get people interested in fighting for democracy around here fall on such deaf ears. The indoctionation is very, very deep.

June 14/11 Markets leap as economic data brighten - following, just 3 days earlier Markets fall on US recovery worries. I wonder when people will start to understand that leaving our economy completely under the control of these people is insane?

June 13/11 CBC 'business digest' - a 'report' on the story yesterday about Canadians being in debt to the tune of 1.5 Trillion dollars (with a T). The somber sounding guy they interview is just so concerned about how irresponsible everybody is being. Not a whisper or hint about how maybe somebody should actually look at *why* Canadians are taking up more debt and have less savings - we might get into some things these propagandists don't want to be talking about.

June 13/11 Ottawa Morning: - Kathleen doing her bit for empire - nice lady (Canadian Bureau for International Education - I bet we'd find some interesting background were we to check that out ...) talking about using the 'frozen Libyan funds" (we wouldn't say the somewhat more accurate "stolen billions" on the CBC) for helping the poor downtrodden folk in Libya.... 24/7 full spectrum propaganda, every little bit to push people to believing what the empire is doing is really "humanitarian intervention", rather than the vigorous pursuit of empire, and plain theft, and just slapping around people it doesn't like who are doing things they don't like, it really is ... yea Canada. (It would be really, really interesting if the CBC had people with a somewhat different perspective sometimes - the guy who wrote this would be a good place to start - The lies between the West's War on Libya - lot of other interesting stuff on Global Research, and other places. A bit of balance is always good, when you KNOW the mainstream media lies a lot. But not a hint of any other side to the story on CBC - the underlying assumption is that we all *know* this horrible Gaddafi is a monster, no better than Hitler, and ANYthing we do to him, or to get rid of him, is justified. Baaaaaaaddddd bogeyman, children. hate hate hate. don't think - hate hate hate. good children mommy loves you. hate hate hate.

June 10/11 Media Lens gets it all pretty good: Ten Years Of Media Lens - Operation Rheinubung: "..We may like to believe we live in a free society, but mainstream journalists do not come close to telling the truth about the media system that hosts them. Over the last ten years, we have come face-to-face with Corporate Man (or 'Guardian man' as Nick Davies has it) -- people who self-censor in a thousand and one ways to protect their job, their career, their financial security..." So true - and yet so many people regard the media as extremely reliable in terms of learning what they need to know about our country. It's a central reason we are in such trouble - the media have been leading everyone - including most of those who consider themselves 'progressive' - by the nose for years. The media 'break' some story, and the alts get all huffy about why the rulers shouldn't be doing that - and then the mainstream break another story, and again the alts comment like crazy. But try to get them interested in something that the MSM is not talking about - like the blatant money supply scam - and they have no interest. But by god they're not brainwashed, not us, by god!!

June 10/11 Texting connected to rollover crash - one hardly wishes to appear too heartless, no doubt she's a sweet kid with people who love her and all that, but surely this kind of thing is connected to letting the less able take themselves out of the gene pool ... although you can dig a bit deeper and think about our entire educational system these days, which is highly, and very effectively, dedicated to turning out a majority of citizens with as few brains as this kid seems to have, and the many like her - kids like this are NOT going to be questioning the power structure with any degree of insight as to what is actually going on around here ...

June 9/11 CPC appeals to party supporters to finance fight against media, pundits - this is almost beyond bizarre - these people have no connection with reality at all. The media en masse have been demonizing the Libs for the last 5-6 years, starting with Martin, and doing long-term, highly effective hatchet jobs on both Dion and the Ignatieff, as the recent election showed so well, and at the same time building Harper up through favorable photos and coverage, and brushing over things which would have them in long-term outrage were they to be attached to the Libs. In both areas - demonizing Libs and glorifying Harper - the CPC itself has taken a very strong lead, of course, but the media have played along like the CPC secretariat, with but a tiny whisper in the background of people questioning these things. But they're not content that they control 90% of the media, it seems, they want it all. Fanatics through and through. Scary as hell. Can't be bothered with longer analysis on this 'blog' as I'm the only one reading, but I did a longer piece on how they finished off Dion for the last election - Canadian Media: Reporting or Managing the News of the 2008 Election?.

June 9/11 Trudeau killed Liberalism - Trudeau was far from perfect, but one of the strongest indicators of how well he meant for the country and average Canadians, and how good for democracy his overall ideas, not to mention how loved by Canadians for what he meant to them, is the hatred which the neocons still have for him. The article here - an adolescent hate-piece, really, like everything emanating from the rabid NP which gets anywhere near their simplistic, obviously loony ideology - is a good example, full of lies and the blind idiocies that arise when your primary motive is hatred for someone whose very life exposes you as the selfish, immature, greedy, stupid barbarians you are. It is true that the Canada envisioned by Trudeau no longer exists - but not because of Trudeau or Liberals unrealistic ideas, but because the neocons have spent the last 40 years destroying it, as I talk about in many of my writings (What Happened?, They're Building a Box - and You're In It, The Democracy Scam, The Corporate Reactionary Revolution, etc - it's central to understanding what's happening in our country, and world, today, to understand that it has all very intentionally, and surreptitiously, been done to us, in front of the unaware faces of most of us).

June 9/11 Why I did it - throne speech page explains why she did it. A bit extreme for the Star, overall, given their general support for the NWO, but good on em - maybe some weekend editor getting a chance at a bit of subversion. And REAL good on Brigitte - she's ready for the revolution. "...the ending of injustices or the winning of human rights are never gifts from rulers or from parliaments, but the fruit of struggle and of people power in the streets..." - the words of a girl who gets it.

Of some passing interest to note that the majority of comments on the story are from brainwashed rightwingnuts of various sorts who start frothing at the very thought of anything actually progressive disagreeing with the lady, often with the halfwitted insults they seem to think constitute some kind of discussion offering. The future is now here - Harper's new Canada - barbarians screaming brainlessly at people trying to make a better world. Sad, not to mention worrisome, to see so much hatred for this kid, and so little defence of her, in the 'leading' "progressive" mainstream media outlet in the country. It's this kind of apathy, of silence even when someone is trying to lead, that makes me think the one who is going to finally be proven most prescient when this is all over is ol TS - and our final epitaph will be 'not with a bang, but a whimper'. A few of us will be out there raging against the dying of the light, but I'll bet there's a lot more frozen for all eternity where they parked their brains and spent most of their hours and took their last breaths - in front of their television sets. As RIchard once said, so many years ago - you're never going to have even a chance to be free until you throw that fucking thing right through the window. And then do a Harry.

June 10/11 A guy called Tom Naylor gets it real well: "For some 200 years at least, practitioners and perpetrators of the subject [Economics] have worked diligently to refine a body of precepts and axioms the rivals medieval Catholicism in its scope and ingenuity. Like the medieval theologicans they succeeded in producing a set of theorems that does more than just provide all the correct answers - it also provides all the correct questions. For one whose principal interest lies in writing eulogistic rationalizations for the status quo distribution of power and wealth, the body of economic orthodoxy is eminently satisfactory. For someone actually hoping to help shed light on pressing social problems, it is of course less than useless."

Thing is - this is from a book written in 1975. Things haven't changed much. You can google around - Naylor has written quite a few very good books. For some odd reason, they don't call him up when they want some commentary on the CBC.

June 6/11 Moncton family to be deported to South Korea - there are times in the last years - since Mulroney, actually - I have been ashamed to be a Canadian. This is really bad.

June 6/11 The Current - and another episode of their ongoing "Project Shift" series, this week 'The young and the jobless'. But the thing is, the whole premise (unspoken, but real) is from the perspective of 'the capitalist world' - the various problems people of different ages are having, and how their subjects are trying to deal with it. The think, as he said, is, they are showing very clearly their true colors, of being the secretariat for the 'new world order', and making sure people accept the new feudalism without standing up and pushing back a bit as everything our ancestors worked for for generations is stolen from under their noses. A 'real' media, working FOR the people rather than against them, might well be reporting on this in a different way - a way asking if turning all of our wealth over to the capitalists is really what we want to be doing. Some ongoing commentary and stuff about how maybe the capitalist workplace and country is not the best we could be doing - maybe there are alternatives that would be better for these young people, not to mention the rest of us, than going backwards 150 or 500 years to some form of small wealthy 'we own the fucking country people' group, and a very large group of 'we're the peasants and we do what we tol, massa, yassa yassa happy to be so lucky too!'.

Life in capitalistland, with the mainstream media a very central part of the problem, rather than playing the role the media should be playing - keeping an eye on power, and working for the citizens rather than the power.

June 5/11 - as the mainstream media can demonize someone, and this idea is at least familiar to some 'progressives', although many seem to fall for the demonisation with little trouble (all the 'progressives' who are behind the bombing of Libya currently, for example, evidently having bought with little questioning the often outrageous lies being spread by the MSM about Gaddafi) - the other side of the coin is equally possible, and far fewer people seem to understand this - actually, as I often do, I think I am uncovering another thing here that people ought to be aware of, the other side of demonisation, call it 'glorification' for now, to coin a phrase. Try to come with something better later if I get a chance to do this in some more detail. Anyway, I have been noticing the last few days a lot of stuff about 'the new Conservative majority government' and Harper himself, painting things in a pretty positive perspective. New today, for instance, was talk about Flaherty's budget, and talking about how we was going to go back and see how Martin 'slayed the deficit dragon' in the 90s - as if, since 'progressives' were supposed to be behind the Libs back then, if Martin did it, it must be ok for Flaherty to do it - a good thing, you see. Positive spin. (of course more truthful, less positive things could have been talked about, as I have in all the things I have written about money, and other things elsewhere - it's all in what they choose to talk about, and how they choose to present it.) And there's been stories on all the media about that nice man Harper adopting the wee little kittie, and doing the sociable thing and asking for help naming it - what a nice man!!! And then on the CBC net radio page a couple of days ago, they had the pic that should be around here somewhere, again showing that nice man Harper, talking about everybody's favorite sport in Canada, just like a real guy in your living room or something. What he's doing to our country financially, and socially, and in the eyes of the good people who are still to be found in fairly significant numbers in the world, although apparently decreasing yearly in number in Canada to judge by any number of things - well, no need to get into that. There's been other stuff the last few days, but there's no need to make any detailed comments here - that is for some 'real' researcher some time. Just pointing stuff out. Observations on the last days of Canada, and all that. Not with a bang but a whimper, etc. But we're not indoctrinated, not us, by god!! Enough.

May 28/11 - 09:00 CBC national 'news' - some reporter talking to Harper in Greece - and she keeps saying 'Harper' this and 'Harper' that - I don't like the guy, but he is the Prime Minister of this country, and should be recognized as such, with a bit of respect, at least a 'Mr'. This is just offensive. Of course, most of what the CBC reports these days is done offensively one way or another, shouldn't be surprised. We're basically crossing the line from something that could be referred to as 'civilized' to something that that adjective would make a mockery of. With the full cooperation of the CBC. We were on the edge of adulthood 40 years ago - and have been regressing ever since.

May /11 Welcome to the Violent World of Mr. Hopey Changey By John Pilger - Pilger's always gotten it - which is why you never see him mentioned in the mainstream media, where 'getting it' - or at least wanting to speak about however much or dimly you start to get it - is a career destroyer. The MSM, of course, prefers pretend-journalists embedded with the NWO - I guess, actually, they 'get it' in their own way - if you want to get ahead, you just keep away from certain subjects, and faithfully parrot the 'correct' POV in things you do write about. Good future, book sales, pension, big salary, travel, the many women out there who give themselves to such people. Pens for sale. Whores of the worst kind.

I still find it a bit hard to believe that not a single writer in the Canadian MSM is even mildly challenging Harper, as he says that he and the other G8 'leaders' just decided amongst themselves that Gaddafi 'has to go', so they're going to continue bombing the fuck out of Tripoli, apparently neither 'leaders' nor 'journalists' caring not a shit how many civilians they kill, or how big the lies they tell. I guess, in the end, the saddest and scariest part of all is how many Canadians either agree with them, or don't themselves give a shit about any of this. I suppose they're all like the Rev Neimuller, in behind closed doors hoping the knock never comes on 'their' door. Bad news coming soon, guys ....

May 27/11 Insight of the day - just occurred to me, listing to one of the CBC interviews with some 'young adult' about something, and noting the way that so many of these people do not make what we older guys think of as positive, affirmative sentences - you know, the kind that end with some kind of normal tone of voice. Have you noticed the last lot of years the growing tendency of so many people to end every sentence on a rising inflection, as if they were asking a question? Maybe not - it's one of those 'medium is the message' kind of things that is pretty important, but sneaks in under the radar if you're watching for such things - but what they are actually doing, here, subconsciously, is retaining the inner attitude of the young student, always asking Mom or Teacher or whatever 'authority' they are speaking to if they are right - the continual deference to 'authority' - 'we're not challenging anything, man, just want to do whatever you approve of, you know? is that ok? are we saying the right stuff? - and etc. What more could wouldbe Big Brother/Mother ask? Kind of hand in hand with the destruction of language we are seeing - "I was like, OMG, that's awesome!' - Orwell's Newspeak being developed in front of your eyes, or ears. Fewer words, fewer and shallower thoughts. Less ability - or inclination - to resist the imposition of Brave New World. Most people reading any of these ramblings would probably have some understanding of this - but probably way over the head of the average tv watcher .... Sam Smith gets it pretty good, has been writing good stuff for a lot of years, for anyone interested in some good, insightful *real* journalism rather than the corporate crap offered in the MSM every day.

May 27/11 PM wants Libyan mission extended - as is so often the case, the medium is the message. What a job, travelling to resort areas around the world on 'important business' - not just for the politicians and their "aides" - but also for the 'reporters' "covering" the "stories" - great gig, not to mention good incentive for not rocking the boat too much. Most of this stuff could be covered as easily, and no doubt more thoroughly, through instant electronic communication of one sort or another - but that wouldn't create the great public spectacle needed in modern times. See ya later, guys - off to Greece for the weekend!

May /11 Departing Fraser warns of 'hard choices' ahead - "...Auditor General Sheila Fraser warned the government faces long-term fiscal pressures that will mean "very hard choices" between raising taxes or cutting programs..". So in-the-box. Out of the box, we see a much more logical choice - stop the 'service charges' on the entirely fraudulent 'national debt', and start going after some of the trillion that has already been stolen. For starters. Ms Fraser is a nice girl, and no doubt very honest and bright and conscientious, but she's actually doing more harm than good here, just because most people believe her, and think her various exposures of various questionable practices mean that if she hasn't found or suggested something, then there is no problem. But that's the Box - faulty input assumptions mean inadequate and misleading outputs. The assumption that our leaders are honest and wellmeaning, and just make the occasional mistake, is the problem - people need to understand that we have a gang of moral-less criminals running things, and gaming the system through lies and deception is what is and has been happening. As long as we keep this polite pretence of 'honor and honesty' in our leaders, we're going to continue to be their victims. (Yes, I'm afraid that means that Ms Fraser, nice as she is, is not currently on the Who gets it .. candidate list ....)

Analogy: talking about making 'hard choices' about how we're going to spend the High School Council Budget, which has once again been cut by the School Board, is not going to help - looking outside the little high school world, and seeing how the School Board, and the higher governments, are stealing the tax dollars in the first place, is required. But our Ms Fraser is talking to the high school kids, and they all think that their world stops and ends with the high school students' council. Maybe some day they'll grow up, get out of the high school mind set, see the bigger world outside this box. Maybe. Maybe not.

May 26/11 Peace Prize winner prods Canada to show 'leadership' - "...In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, at least 200,000 women have been raped in ongoing clashes, according United Nations reports..." - odd we don't hear much about this from "our" government so concerned with people getting abused by their governments - getting behind some serious attempt to stop this horror would be fine by me - but where are we? Canada drops 240 bombs in Libya air campaign. Wow. So we're bombing Tripoli - a big city full of civilians - to stop Gaddafi from attacking civilians. I'm not sure Orwell would even suggest trying to sell this shit. Lewis Carroll maybe - it certainly has many aspects of Wonderland involved ... but then there's always Lincoln or one of those guys - as long as you fool enough of the people enough of the time, you can do as you like. Fooling enough Canadians enough of the time to allow the full takeover of the country by the NWO doesn't seem to be presenting much of a challenge. Embarrassing for those of us with at least semi-functioning brains not marching to the tv talking experts heads ... shit am I alienating potential allies again? Probably not. I'm the only one reading, and I'm not alienating myself.

Yet....

May 25/11 Liberal election debacle was years in the making - history being written in front of your very eyes. Orwell would have understood - few today seem to. This has been years in the making indeed, but it has had a lot more to do with the mainstream media creating history rather than the Liberal party self-destructing all by their poor incompetent selves (although they have also certainly been willing participants in this destruction - one can only conclude there have been insiders working to max the conflict and prevent anything good happening) - and the so-called right-out-of-the-blue 'NDP surge' we saw? Completely unbelievable, all else being equal - but when you have the mainstream media guiding the herd here and there, wherever they like - all else is very much anything but equal. There was a lot more independent thinking going on in the middle years of the last century than we're seeing these days - or at least being talked about - and a lot of that thinking was being done here in Canada, by people like Marshall McLuhan - his insight 'The medium is the message' is, in its own way, as powerful as Einstein's E=MC2. And about as many people understand it. Big difference, though - it doesn't matter that much that not many people understand Einstein - but it's very, very important (from the rulers' perspective) that almost nobody understands McLuhan.

May 25/11 Tripoli suffers heaviest night of NATO bombing - bears repeating. The CBC, and all other Cdn media, apparently think this is just another news story of some sort - but you just cannot get away from the fact that here we are, Canada the great peacemakers, bombing the shit out of the capital city of another country, a country which has NEVER made anything even remotely construable as a 'hostile move' towards us. Clear as a bell, the supreme international crime, as set out by the Nuremburg trials a lot of years back. If this world, this country, ever wakes up sometime in the future - a dream I continue to fight for - our children and grandchildren are going to look back on this generation like Germans have been looking back at their ancestors in the 1930s, thinking and asking, What the FUCK were they thinking about, to let that stuff happen?!?!?!

The answers, then and now, are not pretty.

And to make it even more insane, you might have a listen - here - it's an interview on The Current, Friday May 20 2011, with a woman fighting for First Nations schooling (last part of the interview) if that clip link doesn't work - pretty powerful stuff, and you can only wonder why our so-called leaders, if they're so concerned about people being treated badly by their governments, aren't spending a bit more time taking care of things in Canada...

And then there is this - Canada announces sanctions against Syria - "...Canada is imposing immediate sanctions against members of the current Syrian regime in response to the brutal crackdown on protesters in that country, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Tuesday...". Well. The disconnect is enough to make you wonder if you haven't fallen asleep in wonderland. We are bombing the shit out of a civilian city because we don't like their leader (to put it politely - actually the story is even worse, we're just participating in the bombing because we are taking orders from the US..) - and then we have the complete hypocricy of 'sanctioning' another government for alleged violence against citizens. Fine for US to bomb the shit out of civilians, even in other countries - but THEY can't do that or we get huffy about hurting civilians. Actually, if the Canadian gov is really worried about human rights abuses, and the responsibility to protect, and stuff like that, they don't have to go overseas at all - May /11 It's the bankers or us.. - Alex Jones has gotten it for a long time ...

May 23/11 The province has extended the evacuation order for at least another week on Saturday.. - and also NAO hits Tripoli with heaviest bombardment ever - the pertinent joining question is, of course, what any of this has to do with 'democracy'? Followed closely, of course, by another - if nobody in Canada really gives much of a shit about stuff like this, is the fight all over?

May 16 /11 Libraries shelved as school boards look for cutbacks - well, there isn't really much to say I haven't been saying for years - they're taking it ALL away, piece by piece by piece, the death of ten thousand cuts - and they're going to keep taking it until enough people just stand up and say NO FUCKING MORE or something. Howard Beale sure got it - but it appears he's talking to a lot of people who didn't then, and still don't. And who are probaly in the midst of a collective kind of Rev Neimuller story - and when the new feudalists come knocking - there's going to be noone left to help them.

May 16 /11 Gadhafi accused of crimes against humanity - jeezus if you ever needed any more proof that the ICC was just another American puppet - then again, I suppose if you haven't realised it since at least the persecution (sic, if you missed it) of Milosevic from Yugoslavia a few years ago, then their refusal to look into the war crimes around the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and quite a number of other things the last few years, I suppose this isn't going to change your mind...

May 13/11 Jawad Nabulsi Jawad Nabulsi - "... was a key organizer in Egypt's pro-democracy revolution and he has paid a high price for his work..." - the CBC in the Box - this is the 'official history' being created, that most people believe, and we're not going to be actually free and in control of 'our' own countries around here until people start understanding this kind of thing. The indoctrination is very, very deep however - much truer interpretations of what is happening are all over the internet these days - for example with this story Noam Chomsky: "The U.S. and Its Allies Will Do Anything to Prevent Democracy in the Arab World" - but only a relative handful of people seem to be willing to stand up and tell the rulers and the MSM they have been tried and found wanting, as the saying goes. Even most 'progressives' have a limited ability to see beyond the power of the MSM, and confine most of their activity to things raised by the MSM. Another story illustrates this as well - Why the West Is Attacking Gaddafi - distressing to see how many supposed 'progressives' are all over the 'the monster must go!!!' bandwagon created by intensive MSM propaganda - the real reason the US is after Gaddafi is simple enough, as this article says: "..Gaddafi confronts their power. He confronts the status quo of the Empire. He demands greater power for Africa and the African Union. He demands greater power for smaller countries in the United Nations. Gaddafi calls for investigations of past wars. He is calling for a new way forward that reduces the powers of any one or a few countries to dominate the world..." The US is a typical bully, and the primary crime against any bully is simply telling them to go fuck themselves, which Gaddafi has been doing for a long, long time (Reagan was the first to go after Gaddafie 30 years ago, as the US was staring its serious drive for total world domination).

Just turning on lights - start figuring.

May /13 The untold story of the 2011 election - the Box in action - the assumption that what we read/see/hear in the MSM is the full story, and Canadians are all 'free agents' making the ultimate, well-informed decisions about what happens in their country, based on full information. My comment:

Some interesting points, but there's that elephant thing again. What Wells either overlooks or is hiding is the role of the media. How often did we hear about Ignatieff's supposed failure to connect with voters? Every day, every day, every day, on and on and on. And how often did we hear about Harper's contempt for parliament, or the many times he has outrightly broken the law in terms of election matters the last few years? Once or twice, in passing. As always, far too few people seem capable of seeing how thoroughly the media in this country manages the 'news', day in day out - including elections. To a highly-suggestible population watching tv an average of 4 hours per day, getting them onto any bandwagon they want is no problem. Imagine a media constantly telling everyone what a great guy Ignatieff was, and what a potential dictator Harper was - think the results might have been any different? For more analysis not to be found in the MSM - What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html

And a look at the same thing I did a couple of years ago, about how the MSM spent a year and some making sure Dion would never be elected - Canadian Media: Reporting or Managing the News of the 2008 Election?

May 13/11 Island Morning: - a bit on 'food insecurity', once again underlining how average Canadians are falling further and further behind. Notable for no attempt to get at the roots of the problem, as explained here - Economics for Democracy. For anyone interested.

May 13/11 When we speak of 'corporate apologists', this is the kind of thing we mean: Olive: Oil industry hates high prices as much as you, and of course the NP, and Kelly McParland, who never heard a corporate conspiracy he didn't push, - a bit of a saner analysis can be found here - Oil companies crying all the way to the bank.

May 10/11 Liberal brass approve rules that nix Rae, Goodale as interim leader - and many other articles recently and back over the years about 'the party brass' (of every party, including NDP) takes care to ensure the common folk rabble don't get up to anything the brass doesn't want them getting up to. It's really difficult sometimes to try to understand the mental contortions or outright denial people need to manage to even pretend this country is in any way 'democratic' these last lot of years. It was far from perfect back in the 'glory days' of the 60s, but we were on the upward path, and things were looking at least a bit hopeful. Then The Corporate Reactionary Revolution got underway, and hope started taking it in the teeth, until day some 40 years on there's not much hope to be found at all. Outside of Green Island and a handful of like places, at any rate.

"...Liberal brass have approved rules that would block most of the decimated party's remaining top MPs --- including Bob Rae, Ralph Goodale and Justin Trudeau --- from becoming interim leader..." - democracy Canada style in action. Picking from a list given to you by some 'authority' is not 'democracy'. I wonder when people will start to understand this. When they grow up, I suppose. But if you're already walking around in an 'adult' body, and you think you're 'an adult' when you exercise your god-given right to pick from that list and think that proves you are the decider - how much chance is there of that?

It's less fun than you might suppose, being the sane man in the asylum, the awake guy in cloud cuckooland. Pretty scary at times, actually, when the inmates are running things. "Wait! Wait! There's a cliff up ahead!" "Oh, stop with the crazy conspiracy theories, if there was a cliff we'd be reading about it in the newspapers, or hear about it on the CBC, which tell us all we need to know about everything ..." I want out.

May 3/11 Obama watched anxiously as raid on bin Laden's hideout unfolded - the sense of unreality deepens. How can people be so stupid, so naive, to believe this shit?

May 1 /11 - and later, Island Morning and Ottawa Morning talking to some guy called 'John Thompson' from 'the MacKenzie Institute' in Ottawa, explaining how the killing of bin Laden was a great thing, but how al Quaeda are still very, very dangerous with various 'franchises' and etc - I would bet much, from the way he sounds, this guy KNOWS he is lying and creating Orwellian fairy tales for the indoctrinated masses. Getting the SP out for him some day could be very interesting. The hostess - not KP - sounds as if she believes him, the dumbed-down indoctrinated kids are now working their way higher in the system, as she asks a number of the same questions Island Morning asked - so the CBC is pushing this, getting 'the correct story' out quick and widespread - history in the making. May 1 /11 Island Morning: Mitch and the lady telling everyone how lucky we are to live in such a great democracy because of the election we can all vote in, by telling a story about how some new arrivals may not get that right for several years due to delays in getting their citizenship. One would not argue that Canada certainly puts on a better show than many other countries, but because we are a bit better does not mean we are good. As explained at length elsewhere - but the propaganda continues, and it is not surprising most people have no idea how much Canada is NOT a 'democracy' in any meaningful sense of the term. But it's hard to convince a well-fed, lifelong-indoctrinated cow they are not actually the farmers, with the CBC constantly telling them how lucky they are etc etc.

May 1/11 bin Laden dead and etc etc etc: something very strange going on here. They have to tell us 'the story is top news all around the world' ?? They go talk to some of the 24 families who 'lost loved oned on 911' who say this is a great thing ?? "Spontaneous" demonstrations celebrating the murder of this man in Washington and New York?!?!? And "...U.S. personnel took bin Laden's remains, which were buried at sea, a U.S. official said. Finding a country willing to accept the body for burial within 24 hours, in keeping with Islamic tradition, would have been difficult, the official said.a'??? Huh? That's too stupid to even be a joke - the US cares bugshit about offending Muslims? No country could be found to accept the body? I can't believe any of this - that the rulers think everyone is so stupid they're going to buy this OBVIOUSLY pr-created shit - or that they're apparently right. Heard it on the news, Martha, must be true. 'world leaders' approve, it's truly sickening to listen to their self-righteous lies - Harper says he feels 'sober satisfaction'? the whole thing has been scripted by not-too-bright people. But then, I guess, as events show, you don't have to be that bright to fool the indoctrinated tv-head masses of the 21st century. Not that new, I guess, it was Churchill or somebody who said something like 'you never got in trouble for underestimating the intelligence of the average American'. Too bad it's become true about the average Cdn, and average anyone-else-in-the-west.

Fuck. What a place to get stranded in.

May /11 Keynes vs. Hayek: The Fight of the Century - well done. Keynes was far from the socialist guru he is made out to be, but the vid is still well done. Apr 30/11 CBC national "news" - the 'massage parlour smear' - "..Layton responded with the classic defence ...' - classy CBC, as always. It's 'classic' for known-to-be-lying politicians (or lawyers or others) - but not applicable to someone just responding to unjustified smears - unless you want to give the impression, without actually saying so out loud, the man is guilty as charged - classic crap. More chains they're going to be carrying, a la Marley ...

Apr 30/11 Gadhafi's son killed in NATO strike, leader unharmed: spokesman - can't even begin to imagine the self-righteous screaming about 'barbarians' and 'terrorists' and 'rabid dogs who deserve to be killed in their steps' and etc etc etc were Gaddafi or anyone to drop a bomb on the White House or 10 Downing St. From the media as much as government and other spokespersons - but here the media is just doing their 'neutral' "reporting" of 'facts' and what a couple of people said about it. Says a lot about the citizens of this or any other country that they passively accept this stuff also.

Apr 30/11 - the old saying occurs to me listening to Ms Petty and her 'insider' 'guests' on the House today, that 'it is the job of the press to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable' - but these days, the press *are* the comfortable, and even though some of them seem sincere enough, they are very much in the position of being not able to see the forest for the trees, as they are in the middle looking out, rather than the other way around, and thus they see Canada through a kind of rose glasses - their world is fine, good salaries, interesting jobs, travel, meeting important and interesting people every day - so the country is fine as far as they can see - but they are the elite, and do not understand how bad it is getting for most people. We need some new afflicters ... .

Apr 29/11 Everywhere - supposedly 'adult' CBC people gushing over 'the wedding'. Quite pathetic. We've gone a long way, baby, backwards.

Apr 28/11 Goar: Harper or Armageddon? Let's be serious: "..We are not a fearful people. We don't shrink from adversity or cower in the face of challenges... When the recession hit 2 1/2 years ago, we tightened our belts, reduced our debts and got on with life..." - and therein an illustration of why Canadians are so passive - their 'leaders', even so-called 'progressives' such as we find in the Star, and on the CBC, keep them that way. The media should not be encouraging people to 'tighten their belts and get on with life' - the media, were they really working for 'we the people', would be demanding some answers to some very hard questions - what the hell is going on here? Why can't our leaders manage the economy to keep Canadians safe from this kind of crap? Is a bigtime 'recession' like this some natural force beyond our control, so belt-tightening etc are appropriate - or is it something more sinister, in which passivity is exactly the wrong reaction, when we should be putting some people in jail and finding some more honest people to manage our economy? Obviously, we could and should be doing a lot better - this chaos is fine, even great, for those running our society, as they take more and more of the wealth of the millions of ordinary workers producing all of the wealth here - but it is equally obviously very bad for most of us - and it could and should be managed much, much better. But they're going to keep stealing until we stand up and stop them - and people like Ms Goar telling us to grit our teeth and get on with life, rather than getting out in the street and putting a stop to this crimewave, is not helping.

Apr 28/11 Mel Hurtig has always gotten it - if you still believe what you read in the mainstream media about how 'great' Canada is doing, reading a few of his books might provide a bit of an eye opener. Couple of years old, but a very good interview here.

Apr 27/11 John Perkins surely gets it - I continue to be puzzled, now and then thinking about this stuff - so many people around the net seem to understand what is going on, yet all of this info is apparently not getting through to Mr and Ms John Q Public, most of whom seem to believe the fantasy presented by the mainstream media. It's going to be interesting being a psycho-sociologist or whatever they will be called sometime in the future trying to understand this mass delusion. Sort of like people today look back to the 30s and wonder how so many Germans could not understand what Hitler was really up to. I feel like - well, not quite the lone, but one of a handful of lemmings who see the cliff coming and try to say 'Slow down!!' or something, and it's like talking to a wall. I guess the other thing to try to do is to try to get out of the middle of the herd somehow. Apr 26/11 Star Greenspon: Progressive Conservatives in our future? - "...Then again, it is not for pundits to instruct the electorate how or why to cast their ballots..." - really? - would that it were so. The Star is a prime example of the non-truth of this idea - anytime PR gets a bit of attention in the media, the Star and everyone else is right in everyone's faces - YOU DO NOT WANT PR!! YOU CITIZENS DO NOT WANT PR!! - and then they fill their pages with lies and obfustication about PR rather than any kind of useful information. Either Greenspon is an idiot or just lying - and he doesn't strike one as an idiot, and the rulers don't usually select idiots to oversee their major media. Go figure. But then that's the role of the MSM - lies and obfustication about things the rulers do NOT want people thinking about.

The subject of this commentary is not unrelated, as he talks about the NDP 'surge' - not a single media pundit is recalling the 1988 so-called Free Trade election, the last time the NDP had a big 'surge' and got a lot of seats - the result of which was a false 'majority' government for Mulroney, as although most Canadians did NOT want 'free' trade, they were encouraged to divide their votes between the Libs and NDP, thus allowing the Cons to get a plurality of votes in a majority of seats, which the MSM, once again obfusticating, declared the Cons the winners of a 'great majority yea!!!' - proving most Cdns supported 'free' trade - an outright lie, but as they do, the MSM has now written this lie into the history books. But the 'surge'? Looking more and more like the media creating a bandwagon, as the CBC pushes 'the surge' (the Current this morning - wow, amazing! - and this is the kind of thing that people will want to be part of. Kind of interesting to compare this with the coverage given the Green party lately - huh? Who? - haven't actually seen anything about them since the small kerfuffle over keeping the leader of a party running candidates in pretty much every riding in the country out of the leaders debates. The media 'consortium' decided she did not qualify - and if that is not pundits telling voters what they should or should not consider credible, then what exactly is it?

And what is happening with Layton in 2011? With the support of the MSM? Splitting the anti-Harper vote enough so that he will have as good of a chance as he will ever have of getting his false 'majority' - with maybe 15% of the people of Canada actually voting for his puppets.

Yay Canada.

Apr 24/11 - most people in society are pasengers, with no control over where the big ship is going, many even with no idea about a big ship. But the ones at the top control the ship, the society - the passengers have some freedom, within their own rooms and to wander around some of the halls and decks, but they choose from a list provided by the masters for pretty much everything they think or do, and the 'freedom' to choose from such lists they have come to believe is 'democracy' and 'freedom', not being able to see the next layer or layers, which they have no choice over at all. Choosing which shirt you are going to wear today or which tv show you'll watch is not of much use when the captain is steering for the iceberg, and you have no idea of either captain or iceberg. And as the Titanic was no democracy, neither is Canada.

Apr 23/11 Jack Layton - flying high for now: "...Layton brags that the NDP team of candidates is the strongest the party has seen since 1988 when then NDP, led by Ed Broadbent, captured a record 43 seats..." - and we might also remember that in 1988 a pretty solid majority of Cdns who voted rejected Mulroney and the FTA - but because of the ridiculous FPTP system being used in a multi-party country, Mulroney won a serious majority. Of course, our media like to tell everyone Mulroney got a big majority and thus Cdns voted for free trade - blatant lies, but then that's the Cdn MSM - propaganda and creating history is our job. But goshdarnit we sure are lucky to live in a great democracy like Canada. So we read anyway - but it's getting harder to believe what you read these days ...

Apr 23/11 Star Walkom: What the NDP surge means - good column by Walkom, who seems to get a good part of what's going on, even if he's declined to get into the key money supply issue although I've written him a few times - but again reading around what he writes about are some insights into what is really going around here. The rulers aren't going to be passing out signed confessions, but if Holmes were here, much would be clear. I note first, and mainly, the various comments about Ignatieff - if one has been paying attention, one will realise that the way people feel about Ignatieff is exactly what the mainstream media have been telling them the last couple of years, an endless negative press telling the citizens how to feel about something. What's scariest, of course, is that most people just get sucked in slowly to all of this stuff, and internalise it, and think it's their own. I don't trust Ignatieff any more than I do Harper, as they are both Bay St puppets else they wouldn't be allowed to lead a major political party, but he is very well spoken and intelligent, and comes across very well in any interviews I have ever heard - but people don't listen themselves anymore, they get 'their' opinions from what the media tells them, and all they have been told about Ignatieff the last couple of years is all this negative stuff that is coming out in the 'opinions' Walkom mentions. And as long as the 'critical mass' of citizens are controlled by the mainstream media, the chances for taking the country back are pretty minimal.

Apr 23/11 Crack down on illegal smokes Big Mother fascists are no less dangerous or obnoxious than Big Brother fascists. Actually more dangerous, in some ways, they don't only want people licking the ass of the masters, they want the slaves to say they like it, yes mother!! It's really pretty outrageous when you think of it - taxing tobacco this heavily is just shitting on poor people, nothing more nor less, boot in the face stuff, kick em while they're down. Rich people could care less, but it's a real stressor for the poor. And nothing more than a tax grab - if these people really cared about people's health, they'd be taking steps to improve health care, and reduce the stress everyone is subject to from the pressures of capitalistland living in general. It's bad strategy too - better educated people with higher incomes smoke less - so if you want less smoking, work to reduce poverty and increase education and living standards. Well, guess I better slow down, getting into rabbit hole territory ... reduce poverty - what a ridiculous notion in capitalistland. Key Big Mother stuff though, as they tend to be a self-righteous bunch of bastards, wallowing in self-appointed feelings of superiority. Is my anger showing?

Apr 23/11 I (nearly) kicked my Net habit (actually from Apr 19, just reading it today - funny how some of us have this compulsion to be accurate about things - certainly nothing that ever troubled your average capitalist predator.. but I digress, as they say ..) - anyway, the contents are not worth much comment, but read between the lines a bit - she relates stories about how recently she was in Mexico, and before that Whistler - and this is worth noting. What class of people talk familiarly about regularly travelling to 'desirable' places around the world? Your average Canadian as here - Canadians struggling to save and pay off debt; 38 per cent have no savings ?? I think not. Ms Wente - and pretty much everyone who gets a regular voice in any of the major media - are the upper managerial class, and that is who they speak for. When they give the general impression that, sure, there's some problems in the world, but hey! - basically Canada's a great place to be! - well, don't get me wrong, they're not lying much - for them, Canada surely is a great country. It's always great being part of the ruling class of a powerful and/or wealthy country, even if just one of the bureaucratic mandarin-managers, as most senior "journalists" (wink wink heh heh etc etc) are. Far better than being one of the peasants. Imagine, though, if people from one of the various anti-poverty groups (i.e. John Clarke from OCAP) got regular space in the mainstream media - and I'll guarantee you they would speak for a lot more people than Ms Wente do - there are a hell of a lot more people in Canada who do NOT take regular trips to Whistler or Mexico than there are who do - and for most people from the 'average' classes who do, it's kind of a once-a-decade or even once-a-life special thing, not something they do whenever they feel like it, a few times a year when live gets a bit too boring around the 'hood.

Just something to keep in mind, as the mainstream media continues their 'All is basically well citizens, no need to think much, back to your TV and do lots of shopping on that good ol plastic!!' mantra.

Apr 21/11 Ottawa Morning: - a talk with some music prof about the music the parties use at rallies, for ads, etc. Very superficial, as is all "analysis" in the MSM - very related things, of course. But somebody should be asking why something as important as choosing a government is sold like some entertainment package, with little to no discussion of anything important. Not worth talking about much, beyond letting them know we're on to them. Trying to get others to wake up too, but most people seem addicted to the MSM - if the MSM isn't talking about it, most people have completely internalised the main message of the MSM, that they control the vertical, they control the horizontal, they control everything. If the MSM isn't talking about - they aren't interested. Perfect control. Michael Hudson notes the same thing - the financial ripoffs are so blatant it is very difficult to understand why more people - even a few people - won't stand up and call their lies. But we aren't indoctrinated, Dave, no way, eh, not indoctrinated, no sir, not us!

Apr 30/11 Toronto Star For Layton, the real battle is with Ignatieff : Which might contrasted with this: Canada: NDP leader Layton concedes he has no substantive differences with big business Liberals. The thing is, if the NDP were *really* interested in fighting for change, they'd be talking about some serious improvement in the current FPTP election process, a change to PR; they'd be talking about fighting the economic problems the way they must be fought, by taking control of *our* money. Of course, if they did that, dared challenge the banker-investor ruling class and exposing the class war that is just about over anyway, they'd be getting the same press as the CAP party .... and we all know where they are in the electoral coverage ...

Apr 19/11 Lesson Plan: The Story of the Third Wave - very interesting. "More than 40 years ago, a history teacher named Ron Jones unleashed a social experiment meant to teach his students a lesson about fascism. Five days later, it had spiraled out of his control. And today, his former students are still trying to decide how to think about what happened.. - AM et al obviously have the underlying idea that this kind of thing would never happen 'now' - but actually they are part of a system doing a very similar thing, with propaganda and indoctrination. The new rulers have learned a lot since the early PR guys a 100 years ago started working on it seriously, and it's all gone into overdrive in the last 30-40 years after they started to realise the immense power of television.

This from about the same time - Ontario law means dentists who treat their spouses are guilty of sex abuse is actually related. The 'powers that be' are trying to turn us into a society of people anxious to run their lives by laws - which are part of the walls of the box. We need rules, and laws, yes, for guidance and to set some limits for those who would abuse the democratic freedoms we have won for all of us - but they should be flexible rules, with fuzzy edges - and when someone questions the application of the law because they think it is unfair, 'we the people' should be the arbiters of what is acceptable or not in *our* society. Apr 20/11 The View From Europe - Dr. Michael Hudson: GUNS AND BUTTER with Bonnie Faulkner: Interview with financial economist and historian, Dr. Michael Hudson. Financial and fiscal austerity policies; the appeal of economic austerity to bankers; economic depression and war; post-WWII vs. post-cold war economic policy; government to government grants vs. commercial lending; the euro and dollar; privatization in New Zealand and elsewhere; social unrest; speculation and prices; criminalization of the economy; impoverishment of the US. Hudson certainly gets it -

Apr 18/11 CBC "news" - slagging China again - 'the Chinese have rounded up and jailed 50 people for praying in a public place". Well, for starters, I'll believe it when I see it - the first problem is, as 'impartial journalism' this gets an F - where is the Chinese side of the story? Not a word. Maybe the people were doing a bit more than praying. Who knows? All I know is that when it comes to people our rulers don't like for some reason, the mainstream media is not all that reliable when talking about them. (of course, this goes with the 'common knowledge' stuff - we don't need to give the other side of the story of people we KNOW are 'the enemy', and everything they do is, by definition, evil - but although the CBC (and other MSM) want people to believe that - do people really? I know a lot of people do, more and more every year - reading any of the MSM comment areas is a pretty discouraging exercises most days, to see the shallowness and meanness and stupidity) Remember last year in Toronto? Did we see stories about 'Canadian government rounds up thousands for peacefully demonstrating!!' ??? Right. All perspective - here the MSM generally supports the gov and therefore anyone daring to question them must be bad guys - in China, and many other places, just the revers dynamic plays. I don't know what exactly the CBC has decided it has against China, but it's more than a bit blatant the last many months.

Apr 18/11 Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking? - Ellen Brown sure gets it. Her Web of Debt should be required reading for everyone who's wondering what the hell is going on around here.

Apr 17/11 Max Kaiser gets it. Good. Bankers in jail. Lots of them. Soon. And they don't need to worry - they won't be alone. Lots of politicians and 'journalists' to join them in Harper's new super lockups (heh heh, bet he'd be surprised to learn who the first inmates are going to be ...) - there are still pretty valid laws about enabling crimes, and being accomplices. A lot of lower level "journalists" and "economists" are probably ok - stupidity and blind asslicking behaviour in the pursuit of the most toys are not crimes. But they'll certainly be looking for new work. Looking after our country, ensuring citizens have the information they need to make intelligent, informed decisions is certainly a responsiblity far above the level of trust these halfwits have shown they deserve.

Apr 17/11 NPR One Voter Tries To Decide Whether To Pay For Bankers' Mistakes: - this is a good example of ongoing indoctrination, and how the media is a central part of it. By any normal standards, these 'bankers' of the last few years or decades who drove the world into financial chaos didn't make 'mistakes', then engaged in criminal activity - for sure, if any normal person tried to do similar things, the governments wouldn't be long in dragging their asses of to court with lots of huffy talk about how such scofflaws could not possibly be tolerated in a society where we all had to behave ourselves and pay our share of things - but if you're big enough, there's a bit of a different filter that things get looked at through. Among others, Michael Hudson gets it pretty good. As does Guns and Butter radio - click back and listen to some other stuff you'll never hear on the CBC. Much more interesting to listen to real people talking about real things, rather than most of the carefully vetted spin allowed on the CBC, and the rest of the Cdn MSM.

Apr 16/11 English: Bring on the royal spectacle - it's not a difficult thing to understand - if you get weak in the knees at the thought of the Royal Couple (sic - I sure as hell wouldn't be capitalizing this as if it was important - it's satire, but I don't suppose many people would catch it ...) - you do not care for Democracy (sic again - real Democracy deserves our respect although, again, not a lot of people really seem to 'get it'). It's not surprising that more 'career women' get all wet about the royals - it's just what they dream of themselves. When you scratch the surface of these people, you find they don't really mind any kind of heirarchical rule - what they object to is somebody else at the top of the pile - what they want is to be at the top of the pile themselves. Then 'Do as you're told, peasant!' is the name of the game. Bitter, eh? It's a thankless job sometimes, doctoring an addiction.

Apr 16/11 Salutin: Alpo Suhonen makes connections - Rick makes a lot of connections too. I think he'd like it ok on Green Island. He'd certainly be welcome.

Apr 16/11 Chris Selley, NP: "..how to put this? You lie down with dogs, you get fleas. Politics is the career she chose, and politics is a greasy, backbiting, thoroughly despicable business by the standards of almost any other..." - the Libertarians do understand some things, although they have some serious misconceptions about things in general. Politics in Capitalistland is indeed a slimy, corrupt business most normal people are repelled by - the question is, why do we put up with this shit? This is, or at least should be, *OUR* government - we should be proud of it, as we are proud of our own accomplishments in life - what Canada is should be a reflection of *our* collective vision, but I venture to say the current Canada, whining about not being able to take care of seniors, is not something most of us are all that proud of. It need not be so - the Revolution starts here. Get with it.

Apr 13/11 CBC "news" : our intrepid CBC "analyst" finishes his report on the reaction of a few young people to the election debate with the comment "..one blessing - the election has only three weeks left.." - as if it is some kind of 'fact' that everyone does not want this election, finds it boring and useless and a waste of time, something foisted on the poor citizen with MUCH better things to do by out-of-touch political parties - or something. Whatever - it is a comment that would be fine in an opinion piece - but as "news" ??!! - well, once again, the CBC doing its part with all the MSM, telling citizens what they are thinking.

Apr 13/11 Icelandic voters rejected deal on the repayment of the billions of U.S. dollars to the UK and Netherlands: (and a bit more analysis here) The people of Iceland seem to get it. The people of Canada seem completely unaware of how the banks are stealing tens of billions from them each and every year, have been for years, and will continue to do so until the entire country has returned to a kings-and-serfs New Feudalism. At which point they will probably start getting it, but too late. Kind of like the Germans and Hitler in the early 1930s. Lots of signs that trouble was coming, lots of denial. If they'd gotten it a bit sooner, a lot of shit could have been avoided.

Apr 12/11 G&M: "...The strategic leak of two early drafts of a still unpublished report of the Auditor-General on the federal government's controversial G8 infrastructure plan has left Canadians in a state of unknowing. They are about to discharge their highest duty of citizenship -- the election of a new government ....". Interesting part of the Cdn 'this is really a great democracy!!' dogma, that participating in the legitimisation of an obvious oligarchy is a sign of good citizenship - nay, not just a sign, but the 'highest duty'!

Apr 7/11 Liberals turf Que. candidate over aboriginal comments: The parties, and the system apologists who propagandize it all in the media, all tell us how the system is so 'democratic' because, by golly, in every riding citizens choose their own representatives, decide policy, etc, and so when these 'representatives' go to Ottawa they are all really 'representative' of what the people think in their ridings, proving what a 'true democracy' this is, bla-de-blabla-de-bla, as they say. In reality, as this story shows, any riding candidate for any party serves first and foremost at the pleasure of the party leader, and can be turfed at a moment's notice if they displease said leader - and to hell with what the voters in the riding think. Certainly this joker would not be a pleasant person to have wandering around the halls of government - but on the other hand, do the people in a riding have a right to send who they want or not? Do the people in a riding have a right to have a candidate whose first loyalty is to them rather than some party leader or HQ which can turf them anytime for any reason - reasons which usually involve not doing as told by party HQ? That's what this thing called 'democracy' is all about - people are free to speak as they will, and then a majority decides what policies or rules we will all live by. If we have any small group of people saying some idea is 'wrong' for some reason, and thus people who support that idea will simply be banned from 'our' meetings - then you do not have 'democracy', you have another dictatorship pretending to be something else, no matter how they try to justify it.

The difference is huge - either we have a 'party' whose 'vision' dominates the people - or we have 'the people' whose vision dominates the way the country is run. It is becoming very obvious I hope to even the most die-hard supporters of Canadian 'democracy' that the voice of 'we the people' is at best nothing more than a minor irritant to those running our country, who cut their taxes hand in hand with the social programs and institutions built in slightly more democratic times to help Canadians, whilst stealing massive amounts of the wealth produced by Canadians through things like the . We can still stop them - but we won't have the chance for much longer, as they are fast dumbing down and indoctrinating everyone to accept what is happening with no brains to ask questions or no will to take action if they do dimly sense that things are going bad and wish change, and closing the doors to retaking our country.

Apr 5/11 Island Morning: - they've had a couple of young teens doing their songs the last few days - sure it's cute, but is this "adult" radio, for engaged citizens in Canada? Sure, you can't fill every minute with 'important' stuff like politics and the economy - but if we're doing arts, which the normal *adult* well-rounded citizen will want to keep up with (and *adult* arts were certainly well-covered in the 'good ol days' of *adult* radio like Morningside) - why not tell us about some artists creating stuff for adults rather than barely pubescent teens (who have their own radio, guys, really) - artists who are aware of their society and world, artists who question the status quo? There's lots out there, and a 'real' media, fulfilling its role of continually fostering real debate and discussion about what was going on in our country for the adult citizens in that country, would be searching out such artists and talking about and to them, to see what insights they had to offer to the national discussion, rather than simply doing fluff 'reviews' (read free PR) of the newest 'tweens' manufactured distractions, or Hollywood escapist movies and TV, or cute homegrowns like these kids. More evidence, if any was needed, of the 'real' role of the CBC, and "journalism" in general, in capitalistland. Bread and circuses for the masses, whilst the 'real' business of running the country carries on out of sight of the tv-enthralled masses (and that is the tragedy of the CBC radio too - *adults* used to rely on the CBC to get away from mass-market advertising-controlled media - but now the CBC is just the media for older kids who like to think they're adults of some sort - but have been dumbed down to the level of not caring about 'real' art whilst fawning over pre-teen brainless cuties like this one. No offence to the cutie, we all like em - but where's the real stuff, CBC?

Apr 4/11 CBC "news": talking about the election campaign, with clips of Harper speaking - I find it very puzzling that anyone listens to this guy, or any of his many clones (both Con and Lib) - he sounds like a whiny teenager talking about how bad the person he doesn't like is - it's not pleasant to listen to teens doing this, but for our most senior politicians to be doing this is somewhat beyond belief, and any intelligent citizenry would relegate his type to the 'fringe' status quickly, where they belong. But bad as that is, when you think about it, it is far, far worse to step back and see that something like 5 million Cdns actually support this clown - which says a whole lot more about those 5 million Cdns than about Harper. Not to mention the rest of us - if most Canadians, for instance, support medicare and other social programs, and don't really want the NWO taking over Canada - why aren't they doing something a bit more tangible about it? As one of the smart guys said awhile back, all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. We're seeing it in action.

Apr 4/11 Ottawa Morning: Kathleen Petty joining the CBC re-focusing program, or call it what you will - telling the people that yes, we now have less jobs, and less well-paying jobs for more and more of 'us' - but that's just something we have to live with - here are some things you can do to help deal with it, etc. THe Current is the leader in this with the CBC, with their series' on 'new work realities' or whatever it was last year, and another on how to deal with retirement with much less money than you planned on, and a government telling you to go fuck yourself (not their exact words, of course, but if the CBC won't be blunt about things, somebody ought to... 'Real' journalists, were there any left in this capitalist plutocracy, would be asking some very hard questions about what the f** is going on around here? Why are we allowing more and more of the wealth of this country to be appropriated by the rulers, and accepting continually diminishing lives for most of the rest of us? Why aren't the people demanding some real democracy around here, with governments looking after the people rather than the rulers? And etc. (don't get me wrong here, that was worded in a way that could be misconstrued - Kathleen has been front and center with the CBC propaganda for years, but it is more evident with 'the House' on Sat mornings, pushing the neocon agenda constantly, sucking up to Flaherty and being aggressive with anyone daring to suggest there might be a better way, etc ...)

Apr 3/11 Sunday Edition: Michael does an hour talking about student cheating, with an apparently quite bright interviewee, but they don't get to the real reason, which is understandable when you consider the old Lewis quote about it being hard for an employee to understand something when his/her job depends on their not understanding it - and here, with the CBC devoted to supporting capitalism, and hiding the many truths in our society that are starting to quite clearly show capitalism for the cancer on our society it really is, it is clear enough that Michael and his guest are trying to deal with a fairly serious societal issue whilst carefully not looking towards the elephant in the living room that does NOT want them looking that way.

Capitalism - a political-economic system whose basic premise is simply that whoever wins gets all the cookies

Mar 11/11 Alt: Various places are slowly starting to 'get it', about the money, and where it comes from and who controls it. Let's hope it's not too little too late. The last couple of days I've seen these: The Global Economic Crisis: Central Banking at the Centre of Power (Excerpt from, "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century") - Global Research seems overall pretty good, but they have various 'libertarian' style economics stories about going back to the gold standard, which is NOT what we need to be doing - but kudos for this one - if more Canadians were reading (and understanding) Marshall, we'd be a lot better off, and a lot more senior Cdn politicians, bankers, economists, and "journalists" would be looking at some considerable time in a small locked room to consider their transgressions ....

Mar 6/11 Cdn Dimension: Challenging Conspiracy Theory Thinking, by Scott Neigh - This has to be one of the main obstacles to getting rid of the overlords and establishing some form of real democracy somewhere around here - even the people who think of themselves as 'progressive' seem unable to deal with the major questions, the major walls of the box we are constrained in, such as this 911 stuff, or where money comes from, or why 'electing' a (choose between Tweedledee and Tweedledum) 'leader' every few years who then effectively becomes king until he decides to call another election does not actually have anything to do with 'democracy'. They're a bit like precocious children, quite intelligent in some ways, able to speak and/or write quite well, certainly well-meaning (if we're calling them 'progressive'), but apparently lacking the big vision, the wide knowledge, the understanding that there really are manipulative, lying people running our world, the worldview informed by Machiavellian insights and understandings necessary to see outside of the box, and understand the 'deep' manipulation that is going on - which it seems they are prime victims of. Their connecting characteristic, their fatal flaw, I suppose, is that no matter how much they might criticize the mainstream media, and most do to some extent at least - they still take their lead from them. They react to things the rulers publicize in the mainstream media, if the mainstream media is not talking about it neither are they, and if the mainstream media people tell them something is unthinkable, then they accept that restriction. Such as with the importance of understanding where money comes from, never talked about in the mainstream media and thus also of no interest to those running the mainstream alternative media, or the acceptance as gospel of the official conspiracy theory of the 911 story and the dismissal of those who see this theory as the nonsense it is.

The 911 story is demonstrably a mixture of outright lies and nonsense to anyone who takes a bit of time to become acquainted with the information widely available, and it's pretty hard to understand how any thinking person could buy it all - but as with Scott here, those who see themselves as 'serious' progressives or something allow the rulers to set the limits of debate, and thus accept the box that the rulers have created to maintain their hold on their countries.

My reply here {{NOTE: update a month or so later - the letter was never acknowledged let alone responded to, and the comment never appeared in Canadian Dimension - another aspect of the great dishonesty of those who engage in assisting with this massive coverup, as noted in the letter ...}}

Feb 4 Cdn Dimension: A message for the NDP: Trust the people, be bold, take a risk, by Murray Dobbin - "....Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society, and people know it..." - one of the modern lefty myths, showing nothing as much as the power of modern capitalist indoctrination. Taxes are not what we pay for a civilized society, taxes are what we pay extra to cover what the capitalists steal from the wealth produced by we the people. It is the money we pay the capitalists to run 'our' government - what a game - the capitalist rulers don't even pay their own servant-managers, we pay the capitalist managers who control us! Beautiful. For them. Stupid for us. But there's never been any connection between passive animals which allow others to herd them for the benefit of the owners and intelligence - somewhat the contrary, really. Great genius, though, in some ways, to convince a herd of animals they are running their own herd, in the face of great and pretty undeniable evidence to the contrary. That intelligence thing again, I guess. With the indoctrination stuff. Of course, no 'intelligent' herd could ever get indoctrinated, they'll all be quick enough to tell you .... Sure.

(not time related) ICH: George Carlin, Who really controls America? - this is quite interesting, on a deeper level - obviously Carlin's truths are quite widely appreciated by the audience - but then you look around at our countries, and it seems that not all that many people are actually clued in to any of this stuff. That is to say - if any significant number of people understood this - why would we still have such corruption and theft and the complete lack of anything resembling a real democracy here? (I say 'we' - Canada, in 2011, is not much different in essence than the US - we still have some superficial cosmetic differences, but those are slowly, and not so slowly, being removed ... but in terms of the fundamental issue of 'democracy or not' - the answer can only be a pretty solid NO V**ING WAY!! in Canada, as in the US.

Feb 03 Toronto Star: Police board 'shocked' force will keep sound cannons - this is quite shocking indeed - the "police" have been testing mass crowd control devices for several years now, openly and blatantly, and the citizens barely register. And the media, as always, play a cental role in the way they present everything.

Feb 03 Toronto Star: Flaherty sees little hope for jobless in 2011 - and we're not going to have any hope for anything until a lot more people like Flaherty are unemployed, or at least relegated to doing some kind of real and useful work for us. Serving the masters is good for them and him, but not for us. The very idea of 'unemployment' should be as unthinkable in a modern 'we the people' society as slavery or cutting hands off for stealing bread or any of the other things any civilized person would see as 'cruel and unusual' punishment. In a 'we the people' place, we would see a certain amount of work that needed to be done, and share it up somehow fairly. There'd still be lots of room for ambitious entrepreneur types to invent new stuff and make more money than the average joe - but there would be no place for the kind of wage slavery needed to maintain a capitalist system of masters and serfs.

Jan 8/10 Toronto Star: Former Ontario premier David Peterson is more powerful than ever - this is quite interesting, if infuriating in some ways. The Toronto Star, supposedly the 'voice of the average person' (as opposed to the Globe and Mail, Voice of Money (The Rulers), or NP Voice of the Strident Ann Ran-dian (think about it, read Green Island, you might get it, it's not a typo ...) not overly bright if vaguely well-inentioned Libertarian, or the Sun of the unwashed, generally unthinking masses who vote for their own enslavement at every chance like Pythonesque peasants, - telling its readers (well-meaning progressives, also not too bright overall, apparently, to my, at least, considerable disappointment, wanting good stuff, but somewhat unbelievably naive about many things, somewhat too willing to follow PC (politically correct) initiatives by Big Mother, who is just as determined to have a master-slave society as the Big Brother fascists, they just plan to treat the obedient children a bit better), in a 'look at what a nice guy this is!!!' voice, of their masters. Mike Harris has apparently become a nice enough guy to be mentioned in the Star, wandering the corridors of power benighly (!!??) without the Star spitting at the mention of his name - but that's par for the course, of course, in the creation of the modern narrative. The Toronto Star, like the CBC, are very much Mainstream Media. And, as such, to be read with the salt shaker handy.

Jan 26/10 Toronto Star: English: To err really is human - Ms English does this a couple of times a year, prostrating herself at the wailing wall and apologizing about how readers are really disgusted with the occasional typo or incorrect date, etc etc, and telling everyone how, by gosh!!, they are determined!! to do MUCH better for YOU OUR READERS!!!

I suppose there's the odd tight-assed old English teacher or something out there who thinks a modern newspaper should never have any typos or the occasional factual error, but I don't think there's that many - accept the odd typo like anything else you can't really make perfect, correct the errors if necessary, get on with whatever's important. What really disgusts me, and I expect quite a few others who are showing their lack of confidence in the modern mainstream media, is not the occasional typo or mild error, which are more or less impossible to avoid, but the blatant gatekeeping and spin that the modern media exercise in their attempt to create the narrative of the times as the rulers would like it believed, both now and in the future.

Jan 14: Much gnashing of teeth the last few days about the shootings in Arizona. Nobody is talking about the central underlying problem - the dominant modern paradigm, capitalism. Capitalism is based on violence, theft, lies, intimidation, corruption, and any other bad human trait you want to think of that less-than-scrupulous people can use to trick or coerce other people to assume power, and it is not in the least surprising that we have seen our western societies becoming less civil, less honest, less sharing, and more violent the last 40 years since the capitalists bought out our governments completely and began making their game the only game. Even though they have tried to maintain a shiny superficial pretence of 'democracy' in our lands to maintain a mostly passive citizenry and avoid some serious uprising against them such as in the French or Russion revolutions, it has become increasingly clear to those who have managed for one reason or another to escape the indoctrination of the last 40-100 years (depending on how you want to count), and are able to think things through for themselves that 'democracy' has been vanquished in this modern era, and the new feudalists have taken charge. The political-economic system they have installed is called capitalism, and Capitalism rules, as once did The Church, and once did The Lords, and once did The Robber Barons. Our ancesors fought them back with some success until the 1970s, and then the children of those warriors for democracy grew lazy and complacent, and allowed it all to be taken away on the basis of transparent lies and fraud, and perhaps other weak human traits such as laziness, fear or avarice. And even if young people do not understand what is going on, they do understand that it is obvious that we are now ruled by violent, dishonest people and the idea of 'fairness' is no longer ascendent in our society, it is every man/woman for her/herself - and if you want to seriously succeed, well, the old saying is again more true than ever, nice guys finish last, and being violent and dishonest is one of the main tools required to get ahead in capitalistland. And they see that nobody really cares about them, or their lives, and if they want to be heard or have good lives, rather than to be a de-nutted passive worker-consumer ideal capitalist citizen - violence is the path. Many, of course, lack the basic intelligence to use the violence and lies in a controlled way to increase their power and just explode randomonly among their fellow citizens - which is not a problem for the capitalist rulers, either, it just gives them more excuses to get self-righteous about "Law and Order!" and set even more restrictions on everyone.

That is what is happening. Not many people in today's indoctrinated citizenry seem to be able to see it - but if you want some real answers to what is happening, this is a light you need to have turned on.

Jan 12: Much press about the Haiti earthquake one year later, and how so little progress has been made. The answer isn't that complicated, although it will never be seen in the MSM. When the western rulers "offer aid" to anyone - either voluntary or involuntary (as in "bringing democracy" to someone who hasn't asked for their "help") - there are strings attached, serious strings. In Haiti, of course, the western rulers want control of the country, as they have control of most things. If the popular leaders of Haiti are not anxious to become puppet masters, then the "aid" is not forthcoming. If the western rulers want to enthrone someone the people don't want, there is resistance. And when you try to explain something without talking about reality, it's often hard to do.

Could 'we' help Haiti, or other countries, achieve some kind of real democracy? Of course we could, it wouldn't be all that difficult. The difficulty is in trying to establish a government that pretends to be democratic but is actually taking orders (like all 'modern western democracies') from some powerful people behind the scenes - and those 'realpolitik' directives involve turning the citizens into wage slaves, with a continually eroding standard of living as more and more of the wealth produced by the workers of a country is funnelled upwards to the new feudal lords.

And that's not 'conspiracy theory' - just fact.

July 13: Interesting pair of stories today - U of T plans to shut down Centre for Comparative Literature - Renowned centre founded by Northrop Frye a victim of cash squeeze - and $16 billion for new fighter aircraft, ships, Ottawa set to make announcement on Friday - ah, I'm too tired and disgusted to even comment. If any number of Canadians really didn't want this they'd do something about it - that they all sit meekly in front of their tvs, or have no idea at all, is about all you need to know. They were talking about picking a Canadian animal a few weeks ago - maybe the good Rev Neimuller would do. Or the guy Albert on the front of the old Mad magazine.

Sat June 19 CBC - the House - interesting to listen to Kathleen talking to Jim Flaherty - no hostility, no interrupting constantly with 'yea but...!' stuff such as she does with anybody even remotely 'lefty' arguing against NWO stuff, many at least semi-scripted questions so he can get the message out without her constant hassling so the message is broken up and confused as she does with people whose POV she wants to attack (with Flaherty it's like stroking your pet kitty, nice tone of friendly voice - '..some people say this - how do you respond...?' - with a 'progressive' type it's more interrupting loudly and rudely, 'Yea, but what about this, eh??' and etc ...) - the idea the CBC is a 'lefty' media is such a brazen lie, it is hard to believe how many people seem to be taken in by such nonsense ...

June 19/10 Rabble: Rick Salutin: 'Left' lacking definition: Some out of the box thoughts: I wonder if the 'left' in Canada hasn't been infiltrated by the masters, and defanged and diverted into harmless pursuits? Harmless, that is, for the rulers - all of the little issues that 'progressives' get incensed about and fight incessantly about amongst themselves that have the basic effect of divide and conquer, keep 'us' quarrelling merrily and endlessly amongst ourselves, and so engaged, thus presenting no challenge at all to the rulers as they carry on with their plans for our country and world? In so many ways, it seems the 'left' has become officially 'capitalism light', and as such does not speak for 'the proles' in any meaningful way. Petitioning the masters for better conditions is not, in the view of some of us at least, the path forward to a better world. A better, new world means getting rid of the capitalist masters altogether, and confirming their authority by asking them please sir may we have a bit more porridge is NOT the way to get rid of them. A true 'left progressive' movement would, at least in the view of some of us, be fighting much more strenuously for the two things that would seriously threaten the rulers - democracy and getting control of 'our' money supply. As long as we have a 'faux-democracy' in which people have the trappings of democracy, the vote and political parties with apparently different programs to choose from, but in reality everything is controlled from Bay St so it doesn't really matter who gets elected, the Big Business agenda is the order of the day, nothing is going to improve here - and equally, as long as capitalists control our money, we have no chance of achieving democracy (and conversely, of course, so it's truly a conundrumitic situation). And then, as long as we spend most of our time quarrelling about an endless number of 'urgent' social issues, and getting angered about whatever the latest capitalist outrage is, and spending great amounts of time and energy and money organising demonstrations that really accomplish nothing (great smoke and fire signifying nothing, as a much earlier bard saw this type of behaviour), no progress whatsoever is made on the only two fronts that really might threaten the capitalist overlords, democracy and money. It often appears as if the 'mainstream left' (the people the mainstream media acknowledge now and then) is sanctioned by the rulers as a safe place to keep those unhappy with the current situation corralled without getting up to anything that actually threatens them. (I've noted my own ideas on what needs to be done to really challenge the capitalist rulers elsewhere - i.e. Green Island http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greenisland.html and What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html if anyone is interested ..)

June 19/10 Toronto Star: Ontario asset sale could raise up to $12 billion: Selling off public assets is very bad for 'we the people', and very good for 'they the would-be rulers' who want to mangle 'our' almost-democracy so bad it will be close to impossible to get it back, or at least take far more of a struggle than anybody is up to, in these days of apathy. These public assets are part of our 'social capital', built and paid by 'the people' over decades, put in place for 'our' benefit, to provide public services that should not be in private hands and thus rationed according to ability to pay. The 'we need the money' excuse is quite obvious BS, once you understand the money supply scam, as explained elsewhere - in a wealthy country such as Canada, there is no excuse at all for any government to claim 'no money', other than it is betraying the people and handing public money over to private interests - as McGuinty et al are proposing here.

June 17/10 TheMark News: solving-the-productivity-paradox A couple of thoughts for the mix: 1. "...the share of Canada's population actively working will soon start to decline. As a result, Canada's workforce will have to produce more from less .." - the question arises - why? A serious question - the people who have been working for the last 50 years and are ready to retire have produced a vast amount beyond what they have been paid over the years - if this excess production had of been put into a common national kitty of some sort - an accumulation of social capital, as it were - then the people who are retiring could draw on this accumulated wealth they have produced for their retirement, if in need. However, in capitalist society, the great amount of wealth produced by every worker is taken by the capitalist sector as theirs - parasites living on the work of honest workers.

2. The whole idea of 'we must continue to grow' is quite crazy, when you think of it - a normal system 'grows' to a certain point of relative equilbrium and then stops growing beyond the amount of production needed for maintenance - it is only cancerous growth that demands endless growth to feed a never satisfied parasitical entity that has taken over whatever production system we are talking about, and mindlessly continues to grow until the system cannot maintain itself anymore and crashes, with great destruction. The solution is not to feed the monster and hurry on the crash - but kill it.

3. Even to the point we need to grow in some 'good sustainable' way - you need to understand business - business keeps good stuff close to home. That is to say, important things like research and innovation will be done somewhere near head office - and since Canada started selling itself to the highest bidder with Mulroney's FTA, we are essentially a branch plant 'economy' - and R&D are not done in branch plants, they are done in and around head offices - which, in terms of almost all Cdn business these days, are located anywhere but in Canada. Thus all associated jobs are located out of the country as well. It's quite amazing economists do not seem to understand this - makes one wonder if this kind of talk isn't really in the interest of supporting other idiotic ideas like 'CUT TAXES!!! That will make us more productive!!' - sure, jack, cutting taxes only makes the available profits for passing around to the investors higher.

4. Considering the apparent complete inability of Cdn "ecnomists" to understand any of the preceding, listening to any of them is not going to help much.

5. For a lot more info on what has been happening in Canada the last 30 years - What Happened?.

Tuesday June 15 - 18:00 CBC PIE 'news' - A 'reporter' named Colton with a short piece from Washington on Obama talking about the oil spill - and as is so common on the CBC, not giving anything anyone would mistake as an 'impartial presentation of facts', but telling everyone in no uncertain terms what the story means. Creating the narrative, day by day. Not even pretending otherwise any longer.

Jan 8/10 CNEWS: Canadian Council on Learning funding cut
Greyhound to cut more routes in Ontario - as long as people do not protest this kind of thing, the barbarians will keep stealing and cutting, all the better to enrich their coffers. What Happened?

Jan 8/10 Toronto Star: Home inspectors not finding grow-op clues: Marketplace - Interesting to see that when somebody rips off a citizen / 'consumer', no matter for how many hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's basically 'tough luck, sucker' - but if the consumer manages to find a cheap CD or a way to download a $5 buck song free on the internet or something that Big Business decides is eating into their 'rightful' profits - the entire weight of the legal apparatus of the country is likely to be knocking on your door, and the media is likely to be penning various op-ed pieces about immorality and cheating and the Sanctity of Big Business and things. Life, as always, in capitalistland tends to be a bit irrational.

Jan 8/10 Toronto Star: Videos surface of suicidal teen inmate - there's a very fine line separating those who try to behave in a civilized way in our country (most of us) and the barbarian element who are running it and their enablers and followers, and it is not surprising that this kind of stuff goes on. That our media 'exposes' such things at times means nothing more than they know that a large part of the population finds such stories titillating.

In a somewhat more civilized place like Green Island, we would deal with such people as this girl very much differently. First, of course, we would have far fewer of them - people like this girl are not born so, they are created by the terrible disfunctionality and inequalities inherent in capitalist society, and the resulting anger (yes, indeed, parents are responsible for much of it through abuse-of-various-kinds upbringing of the children - parents who are reacting to the stresses etc placed on them by society at large and are victims themselves, really - capitalist, dog-eat-dog society). Most modern citizens who have undergone at least a high-school education are well-trained enough, and meek enough, to contain this anger, but in many people it does break out, with all of the problems we see in modern society resulting, from extremely disfunctional child-rearing to drug addiction to road rage and kind of culminating in the one-in-a-million in some kind of mass shooting incident. If we had a fair society, in which all people were treated decently, and all were given equal opportunities and a basic minimum decent standard of living and respect, this sort of stuff would be be much, much less frequent. But we will never see this in any capitalist society, which is based on great inequality.

But for those who do find themselves unable to control such feelings or anger, even in a more progressive society, the solution is not prisons, which further degrade people and whose only real purpose (at least in capitalist society) is to beat people into submission, the solution is putting them in a secluded place where they are prevented from harming innocent people around them, but still given the chance to truly rehabilitate themselves, by being given responsibility for looking after themselves, and interacting peacefully with others whilst living a full life. Show them by example they will be given the respect they earn, not based on who their parents are or how much money they have or were born with, but just because they are human beings, and as such deserve the same chance at a decent life as every other human being.

I know this was the dream of Canada for many years, even centuries - but that dream became perverted during the 1960s with the capitalist takeover, and now we are truly 'progressing' backwards at a very rapid pace. More police, more brutality. More here for those interested in getting a handle on what has happened, and what we might do about it, if we wanted to - What Happened?