Top Of The List!
Canadians for Canada Coalition (CCC) - United Left, if you will - but bottom of the line - Get Rid of Corporate Government in Canada - 2004 Federal Election may be your last chance - act NOW PLEASE!!
The Debt Conspiracy Theory Fact - do you believe people who email you from Africa wanting to give you 10 million bucks? No? Well WHY DO YOU BELIEVE THE NATIONAL DEBT IS LEGITIMATE?!?!? (Sorry - I get excited about this...)
911 - as important as the debt scam - ask yourself why you are so afraid to admit the truth here, even when it's been kicking you in the face almost since it happened? When the world you live in is operating under a lie this big and obvious and monstrous, you have no security whatsoever.
![[Blue Ribbon Campaign icon]](http://br.eff.org/br.gif)
(just a reminder - we know you're busy. And lazy. And overworked.
random quotes
The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage. -- Thucydides, funeral speech for Pericles
I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. -- Charles Dickens, 'Bleak House'
Lead
I'm getting more than a bit sick of reading George Bush's moronic (c'mon Paulie baby, demand a retraction, I dare ya!! - a spade a spade and all that (Paulie is Paul Celluci, American ambassador to Canada, who seems to think his job is to tell the Canadian government what to do, and when they have done things the Americans don't like to make them straighten up, or demand apologies from Canadian politicians who dare to say things he doesn't like (yeah, we have a few left who still think a little bit for themselves, at least in private...)) statement that "They hate our freedom and democracy and want only to destroy us..." in reference to basically anyone he doesn't like (which seems to be most of the world, and growing, since he seems to have some mouth-and-brain control problems, among others) - aside from being an absolutely pathetic comment in terms of, what shall we say, the rhetoric of world-level (I changed that from world-class - the only thing Bush would qualify for at that level is world-class asshole, if you'll forgive the French (HAHAHAH)) statesmen or insightful commentary in the forum of the world dialogue, from the leader of a modern country, not to mention childish and shallow and petulantic excuse-making more deserving of an ill-educated, poorly raised and supervised adolescent schoolyard bully attempting to justify some brutal, thoughtless deed, it is a perfect example of the Orwellian big lie in action - the Big Lie that tries to justify some very bad undertaking(s) by the instigators of the lie, by accusing those they would attack of the very things they wish to do themselves, or have done themselves. Hitler and his propaganda master Goebbels knew the technique (although did not invent it) - as they plotted the takeover of Germany, they accused the Jews of - plotting the takeover of Germany! As they prepared to attack Poland they accused the Poles of - preparing to attack Germany! And as the Bush cabal prepares vast armies and stores of Weapons of Mass Destruction to terrify and subdue the world, and even as they are mobilising their forces all over they world - they accuse others of plotting to acquire WMD to attack America, as a justification for their own preparations.
Many big lies - maybe all, I haven't got time to spend dividing them into categories right now - maybe you could start your own list and help out here - are based on this premise - that we will take the worst things WE are doing (or plan to do) - and accuse those we want to destroy of doing those things. It's a well-known trait of psychotics, but for some reason our overpaid shrinks haven't made the connection with certain governments. A necessary condition of the BAWBL (or any other Big Lie) is that those on the receiving end must be predisposed to believe such a lie, through some kind of culturally existing precondition - this could be many things - the Germans in the 1930s, for instance, were facing very serious economic problems, and Hitler was pretty convincing as he promised to restore Germany to economic health and even greater things - and for awhile was doing just that, give the guy credit, until something overloaded his brain (quite possibly American capitalists - George W's grandpappy was a great supporter of our Adolf, and guys like Henry Ford and Rockefeller, and the Dulles family - and from there you get to the CIA (or whatever its predecessor was) and their trademark brain-altering chemicals) - and a common enemy is always a good unifier; in today's Amerika, we have a population whose brains are to a large extent mushified through a few decades of increasing exposure to Brain Mushifying Medicine Supremo in the form of several hours of television a day, and Amerikan Kommercial Radio (fuck can you imagine willingly listening to the ravings of someone like Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage for several hours a day?!?!? - millions of Americans lap it up like a cocaine addict snorts lines - with about the same effect on the brain - man, you need no more evidence than that that we are in BIIIIG fucking trouble here...).
Anyway, point being that the Big Lie does not exist in a vacuum - it also requires that a majority of the lie-ees, if you will, are willing for some reason to accept the lie fully into their little brains as if it was, well, true. That is really important. Most people know the old joke about swamp land in Florida at a great price, and have a little chuckle when somebody brings it up - but apparently most of those same people, at least in America, go all grim faced and nod their empty little heads (well you sure as fuck can't get the word "thoughtful" in there anywhere) approvingly when some Moron like Bush says "They hate us because we are free..." - I sit here shaking my head in puzzlement even as I write these words - it's like they just did a reputable survey and found that 68% of American adults believed in Santa Claus - how do you deal with this kind of thing? Is it some kind of "Big Brother/Our Wonderful Leader Does Not Lie" syndrome? Something like - "Hey, if he's lying about important stuff like this, then we might have to do something about it - and we don't want to deal with THAT issue right now, so let's just BELIEVE he is telling the truth, eh?" - I don't know - but aside from being very strange, it is very scary - imagine being in Germany in 1933 and having some idea of where Hitler was heading, and what was going to happen - but all the people around you were in that big crowd cheering him on. There are many, many, many, many parallels between the Bush cabal in the American government in the first years of the 21st century and the Hitler people in the German government 60 years earlier. As the old saying goes, those who are too fucking stupid to learn from history are bound to repeat it (or have it repeated on them) - again, and again, and again, until they wake the fuck up. (yes, I embellished it a bit)
Well, where does that lead us, anyway? The assumption (a motherhood-applepie thing - something that ought to have a good going over someday itself - "THINGS THAT MUST NOT BE QUESTIONED!!!" - but who decides what these things are - did you ever get asked for a vote on the Things That Must Not Be Questioned in your society? And why, in any kind of society that pretends to honour freedom and freedom of thought and education and democracy and so on should ANYTHING be above question? - and, again, if some things - what things? and who decides? - ANY law or custom that says, demands, DO NOT THINK OR QUESTION THIS!! is a gravy train ticket for abuse - and that is what we are seeing a lot of right now. ANYthing that is truly good will have no problem withstanding the most rigorous examination - or even the worst slanders - so there should be no concern along those lines - and if there is some concern about having things we value mocked or questioned - well, if it hurts your feelings, grow up, but more importantly, if those things are truly good, those who mock or slander them will only damage themselves - lies of any sort will never, in the long run, prevail over true things - if there is any immutable law in the universe it will be that... - lies may confer benefit upon some in the short term - we do see that all the time, as in our current governments and business leaders and their truly childish and stupid lies to "fool" the people (aren't they just so fucking clever!) and let them accumulate more money - but again, in the long term, they will NOT prevail, as in the long term the people, the citizens, will become wise to these lies, and become less liable to be influenced by such lies, and such growth is a good thing (evolution in action - eventually the terminally stupid will do something that ends their genetic influence on the species, although the current governments are certainly doing their best to encourage such people to breed, as they are much more easy to control than those who try to think a bit, who the government is trying to remove from the brood lines, as it were) - it is unfortunate that such lessons always involve hardship, but until the people grow up enough to see through the lies of individuals who would manipulate them, then they must accept that hardship as one of the prices of their 'true' education and their emergence into mature adulthood (but I wish the fuck they'd hurry up about it - it gets very frustrating and painful for those of us who come to such realizations somewhat ahead of the pack..)) that WE are ALWAYS good - and our leaders therefore pretty much beyond question, at least as far as the serious stuff goes - none of OUR leaders, that we "voted" for (those quotation marks should be REALLY big!) would EVER do something REALLY bad - that would reflect on us!! of course, and WE aren't bad!! - etc and etc - see the pattern? (there's more to it than that of course, I'm not trying to be overly simplistic, but as with everything in human affairs, and that huge, huge human brain and the interactions between millions of those amazing thinking machines, there are endless permutations - we can't overlook the influence of childhood training to do as we're told, and equally childhood training for most of us that teaches us to not fight the bully, to give in, and other things - we're taught to look up to and admire people like Atticus Finch or Audie Murphy - but also to accept that 'the hero' is always someone else - WE are to sit in front of the fucking television and get our hero fix vicariously, and NOT participate....)
Do you think the Germans in the 1930s saw Hitler as - well - Hitler?? Do you think the Germans were running around thinking something like - "Wow! - soon (historically speaking) we will be seen as supporting the Leader who will be known as the greatest villain on the planet since Genghis Khan or something! What a great legacy for our children to live with!!" - ????? I dunno - maybe they were, but I suspect not. I think, actually, it was more along the lines of "their eyes were filled with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads..." or something. But what about ol' Adolf, and Himmler and Speers and Goering and the rest? What were THEY thinking? - I doubt there were many sugarplums in their little brains at the time - and I doubt there are many in the brains of people like Bush and Rumsfield or Blair (well, I dunno, sometimes you get the suspicion there are nothing much more THAN sugarplums in whatever passes for a brain in the Leader of the Freeworld...) - or even, closer to home, people like Chretien, Harris-Eves, Klein, Martin, Manley etc - when they wander around talking about the great benefits of "Free Trade" or the FTAA or the WTO or privatising healthcare etc, for instance - they know good and fucking well that the so-called "benefits" accrue only to the small elite class, and everyone else gets royally fucked through such deals - but they lie and lie and lie and lie in the service of their gods and masters, assigning to the rest of us the roles of sheep and idiots. And they will keep doing it as long as we let them. That's what sheeps and idiots do, let the masters lead them to the slaughter with nary a word of complaint. And sheeps and idiots also are the first to grab the one from within their midst who dares to separate him or herself from the crowd and say "Wait a second here - do you suppose we might have a word or two with the Masters and ask them what all them knives in there are for, and stuff like that??" - and tell them to be quiet and not make waves - the masters always know what's right for us little sheepies - they would never lie to us!
Well - that went on a few words longer than planned - what the hell did people do before they got computers, even bad, unreliable MS ones (c'mon - are you going to take that Bill?!?! SUE ME!!!)? - I suppose I could enter some of this stuff in the Guinness competition for long sentences or something - but then again I'd probably lose to some James Joyce wannabe or Tolstoy or something - did you know that Tolstoy used to get his wife to rewrite all his stuff, with all the small changes, over and over and over? I read once that she wrote by hand most of War and Peace 20 or 30 times! Just imagine what the guy could have done with a Mac!! boggleboggle. Okay. Everybody got your breath?
Back to BAWBL#1 - this Bush statement about "they hate our freedom" is a perfect example of such backasswardness in action. It is pretty well accepted by the thinking world (which does not intrude far into America, we should be clear on that, although there are pockets) that this is simplistic nonsense, bordering on the outright stupid - no 'people' hate freedom, all desire it for themselves. (a small exploration of this whole concept of "freedom" would be interesting at some point - we are supposed to have quite a lot of it - let's say we have 10 units of freedom each - when the bully knocks me down in the schoolyard and takes my money, we can see that right away he has more freedom than me - but in our modern society - what do we do? I guess we sort of voluntarily say - ok, I will willingly give one unit of my freedom to the collective government, and in return for that small voluntary constraint I will receive protection from schoolyard bullies - but what if the schoolyard bullies grow up to be bankers, and knock you down financially instead of physically, and also take over the government and demand several units of your freedom, not just one? - heck, that would be fun to speculate around with for awhile! - maybe another day!) But a large number of individuals do (and have throughout history) hate freedom, or at least the freedom of others as they try to maximize their own freedom - wannabe dictators, for instance, or capitalist business owners, or "modern" school principals (a lot of the Big Lies start in the school system - imagine taking children who want nothing more than to be free and enjoy their few fleeting years of childhood and cruelly chaining them to a desk (figuratively!! - but none the less really) for several hours a day - and telling them how free they are!!!! in this great country (yea that's Canada not the US! - the US is worse - don't get me started just now I'm in the middle of something else)!!! - no wonder 90% of "adults" are dysfunctional!). Are the Muslim leaders making all of their followers incensed at America by running around saying things like "Hate them because they are free?" - what utter nonsense, idiocy - no one who had been properly educated even a bit could believe such crap. To the degree that the American government is hated (and one should try to be clear about that - what hatred there is in the Arab world (or many other parts of the world, not to be forgotten!) for America is mostly directed at the government, not the people in general - although the people will always bear both some responsibility, through electing and condoning the actions of their government, and through collateral damage in a military action, as the Americans well know and apparently have no problem accepting and dealing with as long as it is their bombs dealing out that collateral damage to others) - to the degree the American government is hated, it is because it is destroying the freedom of other people all around the world, and has been for decades - demonstrating, that is, through their own actions, that they - the American government themselves, or the people running it (something else to get into someday - PEOPLE, as in individuals, do things, not "corporations' or 'governments') - DO hate the freedom of others.
It is, really, that simple, and quite beyond argument, at least for anyone who calls Earth home rather than gagaland or anyplace even remotely associated with the American Enterprise Institute. The American government - military-industrial complex, actually, that great monster first publicly recognized by none other than their President Eisenhower - will simply not tolerate the "freedom" of any other of the smaller nations on earth to even think of charting their own course, if their country is small and weak enough to be infiltrated and militarily taken over by the Americans and/or their representatives, and if that country has any resources of value to American corporations (or, somewhat less frequently, occupies some militarily strategic area).
There are dozens, scores, of demonstration case studies from around the entire world over the last half century, and even long before, if we consider such things as the American military occupation of the Philippines during the late 1800s, or the acquisition of most of what is now the western USA from the Mexicans before that (the Alamo might be a symbol of glory to the Americans - ask the Mexicans, who originally owned the land, what it might mean to them), or going back to the original acquisition of the American continent from the original inhabitants of several thousand years - as free and happy a people as ever inhabited the planet, according to almost all accounts, until the Spanish and French and English "puritans" showed up - Columbus figured they'd make good slaves in Spain (pretty much the antithesis of Freedom), and I don't suppose I need to get into how the rather infamous reservations they were eventually herded into, those few who survived the smallpox blankets and "Here Comes the Cavalry!!", might stack up if examined against some comparisons of the freedom those people had prior to 1500 or so. Canada doesn't measure up much better, nor Australia, nor India or Africa - hell, it wouldn't take much imagination to make the case that the white-skinned race has been the most freedom-hating race in the entire history of this planet, and their crowning glory in terms of freedom-hating activities now the Imperial American Empire (and we haven't even gone outside of humans, to talk about the freedom of other species on the planet, or even their simple right to survive - something else most people seem to hate with a passion). Most military actions the Americans have taken over the last half century, from Vietnam to Nicaragua to Argentina to Haiti has involved their deposing, more often than not very brutally, of a freely, democratically elected government (we're not saying those governments were perfect (name me one such perfect government, c'mon, I dare ya!), but only referring to the freedom of the people in choosing them, as they followed their own paths to their own futures) and the imposition of a brutal military dictatorship which would repress the freedom of the people of that country in order to let American corporations plunder the resources of that country; the few instances where they have gone after a country that already had a brutal dictator of some sort it was because that dictator was not an American client dictator, and had to be replaced with someone more willing to take orders from Washington than dare to think independently.
Who hated whose freedom in all of these actions? And who has cause to hate the American government because of American actions? The list is long, long, long, long. So for anyone to say, as Mr. George Bush has done, that "they" hate "our" freedom, is the most blatant and hypocritical and even shallow of lies - truly, truly, truly a BAWBL.
((Watch for further expositions on BLs - BAWBL #2 - Trickle Down!! (hold yer nose fer this one! - and bring your earplugs - the neocons are still laughing over how so many could be so stupid as to buy this - and from Ronald "my scientists have proven to me there is no such thing as acid rain - it is the trees causing the pollution" Reagan of all people - HAHAHAHAHAHAHA - !!) - or BAWBL #3 - I don't have a catchy name for this one yet - but it happens when a neocon (no honest leftie would EVER do this! (SATIRE ALERT!)) decides what they want the "truth" to be (i.e. lower taxes are good, Iraq must be invaded, private health care is better than government, etc and etc - PC (politically correct) people, unfortunately, do this kind of thing also - one might refer one to the "statistical evidence" that second-hand smoke is a monstrous killer, for instance), then tells their think-tanks and academic flunkies to go and find stuff to "prove" it - making stuff up is ok, de rigeur actually, since when you want something the normal world can't provide you have to get - ummmm - creative - the normal course of events, of course, in rational societies, is that scientists of one type or another make certain observations, propose theories, and test them, eventually arriving at some approximation of the truth - this is totally unsuitable for neocons, who want the world to be all sorts of things it just isn't, and any real science would so prove - can you figure a 2-3 word BAWBL line to capture this succinctly? BAWBL #4 - Representative Government!!! (ooooooooo - don't get me started today!!! - just think about it! - who are your "representatives" supposed to be representing to whom - and who are they REALLY representing to whom?!?!? BAW BIG TIME!! One more!! - BAWBL #5 - EDUCATION!! - they say you go to school to "get educated" - DON'T BELIEVE IT!!! - they make you go to school for 12 years to make sure your brain is so fucked up you will probably NEVER learn ANYTHING!!)
SERENDIPITY UPDATER (SEE!!!?? I tolyaso! and other stuff)
Dollar slips amid talk of Bank of Canada rate cut CBC - 19 June 2003 RM archive copy- again, again, again - is this an absolutely insane way to run an economy or what? tens of millions of innocent citizens in Canada, billions around the world, at the mercy of a VERY small group of speculators, who don't give a rat's ass about the millions or billions, but only about "making a killing" of some sort with their speculating - trashing the economies of entire countries is nothing more than a joke to them. Where has our sanity gone, that we allow this situation to continue? There are any number of measures that could be taken to constrain such activity, whilst still allowing reasonably free markets - that these measures are not taken is one of the most obvious signs that the "people" are indeed most fucking certainly NOT running the governments here or elsewhere. And that the "people" continue to accept this nonsense without protest is one of the surest signs that the media is part of the conspiracy. The single key, of course, to opening the door to a better society and world, is that MAMMON and its servants MUST be removed as the single raison d'etre for our society, and MONEY as a means of exchange ONLY returned to its proper role as a SERVANT of ALL the people in society - and the key to opening the little box wherein the first key will be found is TRUTH - we must quit lying to ourselves, or accepting the lies of others, that serving MAMMON or any god for that matter is a necessary component of our society - these are the lies of the rulers, the masters, the elite, call them what you will. But as long as we accept them, and their self-serving lies, our society will continue to be a pale shadow of what it could and should be for all of us. And those of us at the wall of Plato's cave, seeing and craving the sunlight from the very depths of our souls, find the fear and refusal to smash down these lies and walls of mammon both incomprehensible and a terrible pain and frustration to bear.
Most Canadians think well of U.S.: poll RM archive copy - just a quick note on this one - a CBC poll (i.e. much more reliable than anything associated with the Pispot) here finds that more Canadians (40% vs 30%) figure American economic policies are detrimental for Canada, and 47vs44% figure Canada was right in not tagging along with Americans to invade Iraq - somewhat different than Jonas's "overwhelming support" he quoted, and we disagreed with, last week - just more stats in the Lies'R'US file - no need for further comment - except another warning to believe NOTHING you read in the Pispot - verify everything. They lie. A lot.
And something new - you know we prefer to do our own commentary here (!) - but sometimes one runs across things so good they should be passed on - this is such a thing.
Freedom — to abuse and manipulate by Underground Panther in the Sky, June 12, 2003 RM archive copy is such a piece - I'll just give one of the better quotes -
Authoritarians, bullies, liars, users, abusers, con men, and control freaks are incompatible with notions of freedom and democracy in any civil society.
Yet there is another half of this sick equation: the enabling, passive cowardice of a population who accepts being exploited, who are willing to throw away their consciences mental health and civil society for a pittance and cling to absolutist principles because they don't want to risk doing anything others might disapprove of. They don't want to risk more corrupting influences, to remove to corruption that is already there. This sad dynamic in people makes "the natural domination of sociopaths" in society possible.
Get honest and right with yourselves, people. Freedom for the World begins within YOU.
Fuck what others might think of you and those absolutist principals, and do what is right. Authoritarians, con men and bullies are by their nature incompatible with freedom and democracy in a civil society. Get off yer butt and confront those who would warp and destroy freedom in the name of freedom. . fearlessly. To not listen to your own conscience and to choose to not have self control, to avoid confrontation of a bully at all costs is what it takes to truly lose your freedom.
- well, you might be able to surmise, if you've been following things here, that we agree with that completely - and laud the writer for saying it so well, and for daring to say it at all - the thing about the bullies is, and always has been, that there are not very many of them - and a few people refusing to lie down passively and let the bullies trample them can stop them dead in their tracks - unfortunately (for us, anyway - it works quite well for them) we are trained from an early age to submit to authority, so have a difficult time dealing with such bullies - and we must also deal with peer pressure - your neighbours don't want you making them look bad, so discourage your challenge as well! - it's a vicious downward spiral, with the deck almost completely stacked in favor of the bullies. But if we are ever going to have a decent society here, they MUST be tackled - and tackled soon.
Ongoing with the Senate Committee on the Media - Publishers call for drug ads, end to GST RM archive copy - the Canadian Newspaper Association telling the committee not to worry about media concentration or convergence - they're doing an abso-fucking-lutely fantastic job (emphasis added - RM) of offering Canadians a wide variety of opinions and news - but hey!! - how 'bout that GST eh?? (I don't disagree about the GST - but it is rather apparent their concern has less to do with freedom to read and somewhat more with their concern about selling more papers and making more money) - and really, we need to let the pharmaceutical companies advertise in our papers so we can get more money - (this is an actual quote) -
"That's why we're calling for a made-in-Canada solution that would allow for better access to accurate, reliable medical information." She argued that Canadians want what she called "balanced, regulated, clear information on prescription medicines" so that they could better participate in decisions on their health.... -
- now this is the kind of touch with reality that the Canadian Newspaper Association has - they apparently believe (or want us to) that advertising tells people the truth, and Canadians really need pharmaceutical advertising to get important new information to help them make realistic health decisions - this is so made-in-wonderland one hardly knows where to begin. So we'll just leave it for another day - either you're as amazed as I am by the idea that advertising presents us with good, true, unbiased information or you're not - and if not, you're not likely to pay much attention to anything I would say that would contradict your core beliefs about the way the universe works - and what the hell are you doing here anyway - isn't it past your bedtime?!? geez - boggleboggleboggle. (One should note that the Senate was not just lapping this shit up - some members of the committee at least expressed some small amount of disbelief in the assertions of the CNA presentation - it must be admitted that, as far as the Canadian government goes, the Senate has managed to do quite a bit of good work in its committees over the years - although almost without fail this good work has not been translated into any type of good legislation by the not-so Commons. Surprise surprise. Probably one of the reasons the Corporate Government types want to get rid of it, and replace it with something they can control better, like the House of Not-so Commons.
(If you're interested in some more reading on the senate committee media hearings, go here)
Naomi beats RM to the punch!! Man she's quick! - but good too, so guess it's ok. And I been too busy the last few days (my excuse!) (what the hell is he on about now!?!?) - this one - Bush to NGOs:
Watch your mouths By NAOMI KLEIN, June 20, 2003 RM archive copy (G&M - being near the GM office must be a bit schizophrenic feeling at times - they generally promote the neocon agenda, but someone there keeps sneaking in some pretty good Canadian writers with their feet a little closer to the ground than the gagaland occupied by the usual editorialists - must be holdovers from years gone by, when it really was a good paper, very centrist and balanced in outlook) - anyway, here Naomi has picked up on a story I was watching about how the US government is targeting NGOs for persecution - ANYBODY who dares to say that the neocon agenda is not akin to the second coming of Christ and the new Heaven on Earth is - well - as George said, if you're not for us you're against us - and few NGOs (real ones, not right-wing fronts) are for anything as whacked out as the far-right neocons pulling Georgie's strings. Actually, I was waiting for the Pispot to pick up on it and go after Greenpeace Canada or Maude or someone, or relate the idea to demanding the government outlaw OCAP or something - I still expect them to do that soon - watch this space for further developments, as real news people say. Read Naomi too - she's always good.
Write if ya want.
So much left to say, so little time to say it in - probably only a year or so to the next federal election - do you want to try to save Canada in that frantic four weeks when big Paul drops the writ and EVERY friggin advantage is his - or would you like to start now, when we have some sort of outside chance? Canada for Canadians Coalition - get involved.