Top Of The List!
NEW: Change - we know the problem - what the fuck are we going to DO about it is the question...??
(still) NEW!! Ammo - selection of very good commentary from other writers on important stuff; - FAAAAARRRRR BETTER THAN TV!!!
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.
Unbrand Your Life
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Pogo knew....
stop this....
and this....
Thomas D'Aquino
Hand of Mordor
in Canada
stop this...
save this...
random quotes
George Orwell 1984
mama mama who dat scary man mama??!!
Democracy - one of my favorite quotes has always been the famous Gandhi one of course - "Nice idea - somebody should try it sometime?" (paraphrasing, of course) - I've kind of been thinking about this the last little while (like maybe 40 years actually, although in the early days I was more like the infant protesting by crying, not having any clear idea of what the problem was, but knowing something was a little smelly in the state of Canada, regardless of everyone around me telling me how good it was and to get with the program - early signs.... - and also during some of those years I was a bit more occupied with other pursuits than saving the world, but it has finally worked its way to the top of the list, for which I'm sure everyone is appropriately grateful....) - anyway, it sort of rose to the top of things the last few days, sparked by a great Honourable (man what damage these people do to the language!) Canadian Minister of Trade and Globalisation Pierre Pettigrew, or Petty for short (hahahahaha - you'd have to see the man in person to get that one!) - anyway -
- listening to Pettigrew in Montreal (or at least about Montreal - as a Canadian Minister of the Government he doesn't spend long in any one place - gotta get them frequent flier miles to exotic locales while the opportunity is there, and most of them spend more time in the air during their tenure than any small village's worth of us will in our lives - remember the one a few weeks ago where a handful of them went to Europe checking out national ID cards, and it turned out they went to a bunch of countries that didn't even have them, claiming they had received faulty information from someone else in the government? - fuck, if these people had been working in any small business, they would have all been fired for that kind of BS and HS - but it did point out pretty clearly where their real priorities lay (and it wasn't working for the people of Canada! - working them, maybe, in modern business parlance...) - anyway, Pettigrew is, of course, the Minister of Globalisation, and listening to him talk the last little while has been rather more like listening to a blustering bully than a Minister of the Country, representing all of the people - the media of course generally support him - a few months ago he was running around telling everyone how the "anti-globalists" were finished, since everyone now realised the great and wonderful benefits of globalisation (one can hardly resist referring to the old Mark Twain story - "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated"); this week, as demonstrators gathered in Montreal, the stupidness (sorry - but the word just seemed appropriate, as people who bluster and tell lies that make them sound good at a given moment but are patently false and will soon be shown to be, can be called little else - not that there aren't a lot of them, of course, and that they get away with as much as they do indicates that those who listen to them are perhaps even more deserving of the sobriquet - and if you could get your head around all of that, you know I am not referring to you!) of that statement became apparent, and it was on to trick two (as we know, lies, inconsistency and, yes, stupidity never slowed these people down before - and won't as long as Canadians keep "punishing" their lies and stupidity by reelecting them (hintfuckinghintfuckinghint!!) - "OK! - they maybe aren't all completely finished, but they are all just a bunch of anarchists and crazy people of one kind or another who do not speak for most Canadians etc etc and fucking etc." (It is not surprising the Pispot was onboard with their own rendition ( Return to riots RM archive copy) - more idiocy from the prime movers of neocon idiocy in Canada since they first opened up a few years back - in their little black-and-white with-us-or-against-us dystopic world, ALL of the protestors were/are "trade haters", and all of them "...Clad in black tunics and masks, the rabble picked up their truncheons and shields, ignited their Molotov cocktails and smashed up storefronts..." - that a media outlet that pretends to be a national paper can indulge in this kind of lies constantly says a lot about the state of our country, whether people want to acknowledge it or not. )
Anyway - Pettigrew's actions underline once again the rather large gap between theoretical democracy as we are taught in the schools (they get around to telling us Santa Claus isn't real, but for some reason they never get around to telling us that theoretical democracy is as much of a fairy tale - we have to figure that out by ourselves, if we can, although by the time we leave school we are so indoctrinated into the idea that anything important will be told to us by some expert that most of us never even think to (or I suppose would dare to, even if we did actually have such thoughts enter our mind sometimes..) question the **biggest lies if someone on the tv news doesn't bring it up first, and give us permission to have such opinions - that "others" control the limits and subjects of allowed debate is a very, very important part of our training, almost as important as getting used to the idea that a normal human life involves going somewhere early in the morning every day and having someone tell you what to do all day long, and accept their judgement unquestioningly as to whether you are a good "student" (read worker and citizen) (i.e. obeyer of orders) or not....) - anyway, that could go on for awhile - but isn't it the job of the government, theoretically, to listen to the opinions of all citizens, and mediate between them, and choose a course of action in any given situation that a strong majority of the people support and approve of, and will be of benefit to all? (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - sorry just got completely carried away there!!!!! - it seems to be part of my adult psychosis that I've had for many years, expecting people in government and Big Business and other positions of trust and influence to say what they mean and mean what they say - and I find the habit hard as hell to shake - the power of early, deep indoctrination, always lurking, always trying to influence your better judgement when things are questionable - but very effective - witness the mass of lies around things like 911, or the Iraq invasion, or the long-standing debt scam - but most people just will not even look at the idea that their government HAD to have been involved - I watched a movie about addiction a few nights ago (alrightalright - called "28 days" with that cutie Sandra Bullock starring - is her name a play on the word buttock to garner subconscious attention from lustful males? just asking...) - one of the side characters had just opened her leg with a razor - when asked why, she said "It felt better..." - "Better than what?" - "Better than everything else..." - and I think an awful lot of our citizens are in that predicament - bad things, often VERY bad things, are happening around us, but accepting what is happening is better than the alternative, which would be facing up to the fact that our government and other "leaders" are arranging things this way intentionally and don't really give a rat's ass about "we the people" - are, indeed in fact, betraying the country and the people who elected them in pretty serious ways - which, of course, if it was faced up to, would demand action, and action would be so difficult that it's easier, much easier, to mutilate your own mind, self-lobotomize, LOVE the chains, get appropriate meds if some small part of the mind refuses to behave and insists in causing distressing thoughts from time to time, be part of the indoctrination program of the children and maintenance program of any of the fellow citizens who dare to ask questions the leaders don't want asked....) - but what Pettigrew is doing, as is so often done, is choose a course that the government is going to carry out, for whatever reason (in this case, of course, at the behest of those who really tell the government what to do, which is unfortunately NOT the Canadian citizens, but the Canadian Elite) - and then proceed to formulate various programs to undertake that course, and go around the country telling everyone why they must accept it, whether they like it or not, but it's ok to accept it because it really is good for everyone - with most of the media, of course, engaged in a similar selling program. I can think of various things to call this form of government, but "democracy" is not really among them, at least as that word is defined in school and dictionaries.
There was a bit of property damage (funny how I used the word 'violence' at first - not watching closely enough!! - 'violence' used to be reserved for actions against people - but now it includes actions against property - or at least property owned by MNCs... - but in the same papers, when the government military police hammer and teargas and pepper spray peaceful demonstrators, you never hear that referred to as "police violence", which seems to be reserved for police in countries we don't like... is that crazy or what?!?!?!? hahahaha) in Montreal this week around these demonstrations - I wonder who is responsible? - the demonstrators made no secret of the fact that they planned the demonstration - they also made no secret of the fact that they planned a **peaceful demonstration, as is, of course, supposedly their right as Canadian citizens. And then for weeks if not months the police and government planned what amounted to a military campaign against Canadian citizens, from fortifying their meeting place to engaging at least hundreds and probably thousands of cops, armed with everything from lethal weapons to the simply excruciatingly painful, such as pepper spray and teargas and rubber bullets in response to the fully upfront, declared intentions of a group of people to stage a peaceful protest about something that has been and is, whether Pettigrew cares to admit it or not, a still very controversial, widely opposed government initiative - is it only me? - or is the pattern apparent to others that this confrontation, to the extent it became even mildly violent, was quite intentionally caused by the police, and not the protesters - once again, the Canadian government is behaving like some teenage gang, and declaring war on anyone who opposes it rather than engaging in any kind of democratic debate about the issues (to the extent that a FEW, it must be noted, ONLY of these protesters broke a few windows - well, it would have been cheaper by probably tens of millions of dollars for the government to just replace them!! - and let us not ever forget that it has been proven in other cases that other governments have been known to seed such demonstrations with "agents provocateurs" (?? French wasn't my strongest subject in high school, and even that was more than a few years ago...) to do this very kind of thing, for no other reason than to give the police an "excuse" to start with the state-terrorism of violence against its citizens - there is no reason to suppose the Canadian government is doing such things, of course (hahaha) - on the other hand, there is no reason to suppose it is not - and one also has to seriously wonder to just what extent the minor violence of the protesters was incited by the aggressive readiness of the police to rumble - young males in the crowd, with adrenaline and other hormones circulating, challenged by opposing uniformed males - do you need a fucking medical degree to predict some kind of release from some of them??? - how many of those windows would have been broken with a much more subdued and reasonable police presence? (sure a few cops would be ok, just to keep an eye on things and help little old ladies who faint, stop the traffic so intersections are safe for the marchers, that sort of thing, but not armed for war and acting like fucking darthvader storm troopers, escalating things as much as possible). There is reason to ask some pretty serious questions about the whole point of this military action against Canadian citizens, and why such a huge response was taken for what promised to be such a small and peaceful demonstration (and wouldn't it just knock the fucking socks off you if ANY fucking paper in this country would ask these questions, and ask them again and again and again until some answers were forthcoming from people in the government and police?!?!?HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! - I'LL WIN THE FUCKING LOTTERY BEFORE THAT DAY COMES!!!!!!) - are we still familiar with the concept of intimidation? Do we associate that with 'democracy"? (maybe we didn't use to - but the times, as Bobby said back in the great days when all of this stuff started, they are a changin'). Who was looking for violence here, really? Who came all armed and prepared for violence here, really? What exactly, aside from the obvious difference in degree that in that other situation the police were slightly less inhibited in their violence and the attacked citizens went to morgues instead of jails and hospitals, is the difference between what happened in Montreal, and Quebec and Vancouver and Toronto a couple of years ago, and similar government action in such places as Tiananmen Square? Citizens trying to peacefully protest some action of their government, and being forcefully attacked and broken up by government troops? So is China a "free democracy" like we are supposed to be, using similar tactics to protect the "free country" and government from crazy protesters, just like their counterparts in Canada? Or is Canada something more like they are said to be, using military police to protect an undemocratic government that refuses to respond democratically to the wishes of its citizens? Why won't anybody in the Canadian media ask this question? Why don't the kids talk about this kind of thing in civics class? whoops - I seem to have slipped through the looking glass again!!! - how's it goin there Alice hahahah? Which one of us do you suppose lives in a more fantastical place?!?!? Why, the Mad Hatter is the very soul of rationality compared to your governments, dearest Rude one!! The Red Queen now - she does seem like she has come here from your world....
It should hardly need to be said - if the "free trade" and globalisation efforts of the government(s) had widespread approval - there would be no demonstrations - think of it - Petty and those like him and the propagandist papers like the Pispot would have us believe that these few hundred people represent basically the sum total of opposition to their initiatives - but that is the utmost nonsense - it is but the vocal minority of the much larger group speaking - that is to say, in any group at all, most people are content to be more or less led, and only a few will speak out - so just be the application of some simple group dynamics and arithmetic (figuring out fascism doesn't usually take rocket science, just a willingness to confront lies and liars) it can fairly reliably be estimated that a huge group of people are opposed to what the government is doing (not forgetting, of course, the full total of 30% of voting Canadians, something under 5 million Canadians out of 30 million, who supported Mulroney's FTA in 1988, and the even smaller number the last election voting for Chretien) - and conversely, the lack of demonstrators in support of this stuff can be used to fairly reliably conclude that not many people at all favor this stuff - but in the true herd process, which has been beaten into them since the day they were born, are too timid to say anything about it. Where are the meetings and demonstrations of "ordinary on the street" Canadians in support of this stuff? None at all, ever, in the 15 years since Mulroney's big FTA started the whole thing, through NAFTA, the MAI (our one lone victory, a small setback for them, that has resurfaced in spades in various other guises, and also in their new militarism in support of their initiatives) that I can recall. We get a lot of stuff from Big Business and their media about how wonderful it all is, of course - because it is, for them! - but nothing at all from the rest of the people in the country, for some reason (yes, I'm sure there are some who support these things - but obviously not many of them who feel strongly enough to risk the wrath or derision of their friends and neighbours by gathering in a crowd somewhere and chanting "MORE FREE TRADE" or something. (I wonder if the government would plan a huge military-style operation in response to this kind of demonstration, and beat some heads and pepper spray some "free trade" supporters? HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!! - getting carried away - must need a relaxant..... yes, dear???)
Also rather disappointed to see the Star jump on the "anti-demonstrators" bandwagon Editorial: Protests out of step (July 30 2003) - goes to show that, when push comes to shove, where their editorial capitalist hearts really are, aside from the number of good columnists they have. Sometimes it seems that some people really are fairly well-meaning, but their basis of belief is "the box" in which we are all put in at birth and raised in and schooled in - that would be the Box of Civics Theory, if you will, which is the same box that Santa Claus comes from for kids, and stories like 'democracy" and "our leaders are really doing things for the good of ALL of us". For the Star to argue, as they do here, that protesters are really "hurting" the people of the developing countries by preventing the WTO to "negotiate" (another word of many colours - in WTO deals, it usually means the more powerful members browbeating and coercing the weaker countries into accepting rules designed to benefit corps from the wealthy countries and screw some more the poor people in the poorer countries, while throwing a few million bucks in tips at the betrayer-negotiators from those poor countries) wonderful new trade deals which will help them prosper is the worst kind of nonsense, at least in the real world, where the problem is corrupt governments - not in developing countries, but in western countries!!!! - whose primary, although of course unspoken, goal is to PREVENT these countries from becoming free and independent players on the world market - the very last thing the huge MNCs which, at the end of the day control the governments, want is any kind of competition from anyone!! - the whole "trade" thing, at least in this case, is a smokescreen, and people at the Star ought to know this - if they were really interested in helping these countries become freer and more prosperous, the first and most necessary move is simply to get the iron foot off their neck - to cancel the odious debts under which they now are forced to give anywhere from 20-50% of their (already small) entire national income over to international "lenders" (including the Canadian government and Canadian banks!) in so-called "debt service" charges - it is absolutely impossible for them to prosper under such conditions - most Canadians will understand this on a personal level, as mortgages eat up substantial parts of their income - and the interest on the mortgage (and other debts) is a major expense. And fucking furthermore!!!! - if Canada itself was really interested in helping developing countries, it does not need to go pretending it has to persuade every country in the world (or most of them who belong to something like the WTO) to play by the same rules - take unilateral action to help them!! Money where the mouth is! Walk the fucking walk!! Lead don't follow! - this would do some good, as other people in other countries could then look to Canada, and say - "Hey! That's what we need to do!" - but no, the government chooses the way of greatest hypocrisy, as usual, mouthing fine words of deception at best, bordering often on outright lies, while seeing how it can best further enrich the elite and fuck everyone else, both here and abroad. And by god, if you don't like it - go to Montreal and get beat on by the cops - that's democracy!!!
(when one dares say anything like this, the elite spokespersons like Petty or whoever from the banks all throw their hands up in horror protesting such unilateral measures are absolutely impossible!!! - which is absolute horseshit - there isn't an argument they can make that can't be reasonably countered - in fact, they can do pretty much what they want, depending on what goals they really want to achieve - if their goal is helping the elite, then the current course is appropriate - if their goal was truly helping the average peoples of the world, including Canadians, many alternative courses would be much, much better - but as long as the elite take a serious interest in politics and thus make every effort to control the politicians, and the average Canadians sit passively back and accept what is being done to them, and to others in their name, things will not change. Just one quick example - we still have, for example, some 14 years after the government guaran-fucking-teed to eradicate child poverty in Canada, something like 20% of the children being raised in poverty, and the government making things even worse for the poor families raising these poor children, and claiming "we have no money!!" - while they have just engineered a $100 fucking BILLION dollar tax cut for the richest families in the country. One fucking hundred billion dollars for the rich - and not a penny for improving the lives of poor children. And if that is how the Canadian government chooses to treat our own children, why in the fuck would anyone believe they had any fucking interest in improving the lives of anyone in poor countries? Did you say you were looking for some beachfront property on Baffin Island?!?!?! - heeeeyyyyyyy!!!! - maybe we can talk........
Democracy, above all other things, means citizen involvement - and until we have that, we will not have Democracy in this country. (note - voting once every 5 years does most emphatically NOT count as involvement!!! - although, of course, the elite who control things would like you to think that, and so behave, and are even more than willing to make their message somewhat more emphatically about what they consider appropriate involvement, as we have seen across the country from Vancouver, Toronto and Quebec recently to Montreal this week....)
Oh well - where the hell was I going with all that anyway? Seems that I planned to talk a bit about democracy, and we finally seem to have got there in a typically rather haphazard way - but hey!! - that's democratic discussion - bound only by the rules of freedom..... (fuck I suppose some people will take that the wrong way! - freedom, to me, does not mean "no rules!" - it means freedom with intelligent, self-imposed responsibility in consideration of your fellow citizens, to ensure maximum freedom for all of us, which is a long way from government imposed rules which amounts to chains for the many and unlimited freedom for the few...)
- the Great Democratic People Farm has always been an arrangement between the Masters and the Herd - as an intra rather than inter relationship - that is, Masters and Herd-members are interchangeable, in real terms (that is to say, genetically we are not divided into masters and others, or superior and inferior "races" as so many halfwits seem to believe (amusingly enough, to the small extent it is true, those with such beliefs would find themselves on a rather unexpected side of the equation, if the administers of universal fairness and justice ever got around to dividing us up here - considering our overall behaviour the last few millennia, however, it is not surprising they want nothing to do with such a barbaric race) - it is an entirely social construct unlike, for instance, our (human) relationship with, shall we say, potatoes or fish - there is little chance of a potato or fish demanding their rights, or ascending to the throne if their lottery number is drawn or something - but even the poorest human being could so aspire, in certain not particularly unimaginable circumstances - Ceasars fall sooner or later, and Bushes or Blairs or Mulroneys strut their few brief minutes on a stage - although for those people living through those few minutes it can seem much longer) - anyway, it is a tricky situation for the small group of Masters of the moment to retain control over the much more numerous Herd-members and, of course, since the entire race took this new path, the path away from more-or-less equality of most members of the group or earlier nurturing and sharing matriarchal societies to the Master-Herd dichotomy favored by winner-take-all patriarchal societies, many ways have been tried through the millennia by those who were aware of the scheme and keeping it going to maintain and strengthen it, since at any given time, any number of Herd-members were aware of the relationship, and aware that it was an artificial one and they (the few unwilling Herd-members) were being forced to live a life very much less than it might have been, and attempted to change their status - which, of course, the Masters could not allow, if they wished to maintain their privileged, or elite, status (and not forgetting, of course, that there is an ongoing small cross between the herd and the elite, as some elite lose their status and some herd members break through the ceiling - but always in small numbers). Brute force, of course, has been historically the most common method of maintaining Herd docility, as early practitioners of the elitist system lacked more sophisticated technology - it was the requisite evolutionary first step, in any event. "I am bigger and stronger than you (or sneakier and burdened with fewer scruples about killing you and/or others to achieve my goals), and you will do what I tell you to or I will beat and/or kill you.." - killing too many of the Herd, of course, rather defeats the purpose of forcing the many to work for the benefit of the few, unless the Herd numbers are large enough that the killings can be exemplary in that they demonstrate to the other herd members that they, too, may lose their lives if they do not obey, and since most living things strive to maintain life, it is a useful tool, the fear of death. (an interesting thing about it all - in biology we learn that "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" (something like that - it's late and I don't have time to check it) - meaning simply that the growth of a foetus, from conception to birth, parallels in interesting ways the evolution of the human species as the human foetus itself goes through stages resembling earlier steps on the evolutionary chain) - and we see the same phenomenon socially, as the bully in the schoolyard dominates individually by brute force, and then grows up to be a gang leader or politician (same difference - as George and his buds in the Pentagon) dominating groups of people by the same brute force - in some ways, we haven't fucking "evolved" at all!)
- the most important thing of all is a large herd of well-trained sheep-citizens (more prosperous elites have bigger, better trained herds - man that's insulting!!! - but, unfortunately, true.... - and they have also managed to commandeer a substantial portion of the labour and resources of less powerful elites), who do not question the fundamental authority of the masters - sheep who will, for instance, stand up and loudly declare what a wonderful democracy they live in, basically upon command (i.e. Canada Day) or who will accept any new laws of the rulers with no more than a murmur of protest, who will never think to demand any more than the most minor kind of "tinkering" input into those laws, but who will faithfully again parrot something like "It's all for our own good, so we must obey..." (remember the chanting sheep in Animal Farm?); and who again, when one in their midst does dare to stand and protest some new edict of the rulers, will take it upon themselves to quiet the protestor, repeating once again "It's all for our own good and we must obey - what is wrong with you that you do not understand this?" and even pound the fuck out of such people if they won't shut up - once you have those things, you may have a system you could call any number of things - but "democracy" would hardly be one of them. People Farm maybe? - for the actions of the citizens in such a country are little different than the actions of herd animals, cows and sheep - following quietly along behind the masters who have, through whatever method, assumed leadership of the herd, whether to the milking shed or the slaughter house, bringing up their offspring to the same way of 'life". Moooooo.....
It has been a great work of art, of propaganda, to take the citizens from control by brute force to much more sophisticated methods of propaganda from the very earliest days of a person's life, to make the citizens of such a country as Canada believe fully that none of the above is the case - that they are, indeed, a 'free" people in a 'great" democracy, that anyone who dares put forward any kind of notion such as above is verily some kind of nutcase. The lies and propaganda are lovingly embraced, the truth rejected like the vilest lies; the liars and propagandists and masters are equally embraced with love and adoration, and the messengers who would bring the truth greeted with bared fangs and scorn, if not, in a truly perverse sense, violence or worse.
(a lot of this is very childlike behaviour - perhaps some words on this would be in order one day - how the mass of citizens has become more and more submissive over the last century - kind of hand in hand with the evolution of the kid-adolescent society - 100 years ago, children were not treated as a separate species, but as small adults, who would join the adult world ASAP - and at that time, adults were a great deal better educated, in terms of brain functionality, on the whole (for instance, writers like Dickens and Conan Doyle were what the ordinary people read in England - or like Mark Twain in America - today, few people can get through such books - brainless television is more their speed!) - but dependent children are a great deal easier to propagandise than real adults, before their cognitive faculties are fully developed and honed through experience - so perhaps our system has been re-engineered to extend the years of childhood - the years of dependency and then the years of shallow self-centeredness - as far along into life as possible - and of course, by the time people are in their 20s and working at some mindless job for a living, if they have not learned to think, well, they aren't likely to start then - and will be much easier to control and keep uninterested in the way things really are .....)
The current definition of "democracy" seems to center around the idea that the citizens get to elect some representatives every few years, who are "accountable" to the people who elected them because they can be thrown from office (i.e. voted out) at the next election time. Theoretically, again, these representatives will enact laws and things in the best interests of the people they are representing, supposedly based on some "election platform" presented by the competitors in the election to lure the votes of the electors. Again, the huuuugggeeee!!!! fucking gulf between theory and reality is rarely if ever commented upon in the media, or talked about in civics classes (for instance, Mulroney's fervent condemnation of "free trade" prior to the 1984 election, which helped get him elected - which became, within months, fervent **support of "free trade" - seems to me that the people who voted for him on the basis of his opposition to that had some kind of right to expect he would follow that idea when elected - but apparently not, as noone that I ever heard (outside of a few other marginalized leftie-commie-pinko-scum types) ever said anything about it.
- this is taught from the earliest ages, and is something that does not bear any questioning at all - other systems are taught for comparison - monarchies, or socialism/communism, or (quite ironically, really) Hitlerian fascism, as if that isn't exactly what they are up to today - and such systems are said to be very un-democratic because the people have no say in how they are governed at all, and thus OUR "democracy" is far superior - of, by and for the people, as it were, theoretically.
But what if, in the nature of asking questions, we just say something like "Really?" and poke around this idea of "democracy" a bit - we all know the famous Gandhi quote (when asked while visiting England one time about Democracy, he replied "Nice idea - someone should try it some time..." or something to that effect) - and, I must say, I have the same response, although probably a little less politely in places and with a few more words - what I see happening, rather than the theory, is a system that does a very good job of letting a few people pretty thoroughly control a lot of people, through a lot of disinformation (or even outright lies) and propaganda, a few carrots and sticks, about how all of this is a really wonderful, progressive democracy of, by and for the people - while in reality giving the people virtually no control at all over the way THEIR country is governed - again, this could be termed a lot of things, but calling it "democracy" would be something like calling GW a scholar (ooo barf)
- man that's heretical! - if you see a big flash, it may be the Zeusian thunder bolt - not yet? well - perhaps it's coming - or perhaps it's not that blasphemical an idea at all...
One thing I eventually realised (they sure as fuck don't talk about it anywhere that I've ever seen) is that young people just coming into maturity, new adults, that is to say new citizens, new members of the community, are not given any say whatso-fucking-ever in the way they are governed - they are basically presented with a fait accompli (which, of course, they are told how fucking wonderful it is, and little else except that their "participation" in their society, their input into shaping how it operates, for the rest of their foreseeable lives, will be gloriously achieved through the great fucking wonderful institution of voting for Tweedledum-Tweedledee once every 4-5 years!! How fucking lucky you are to live in such a glorious democracy!! All through their formative years they are required to attend a training institution for several hours a day (and think of it for many more while doing the required homework), from which they learn relatively little of use, but do get indoctrinated into the idea that, in their great democratic world, they must go somewhere early in the morning and have someone else tell them what to do all day, and give them gold stars if they please the masters, and that will be their reward for work well done. As inmates in these training institutes, they will have absolutely no say over what they are doing, which will be their training ground for participating in the Great Democracy when they finally pass through the various levels of training and are told to "go forth and think for yourselves!" - like some cartoon characters debating the merits of Tweedledum and Tweedledee at election time, and then be completely oblivious to how TT forget all their promises but carry on with completely unrelated agendas throughout their tenure, until it is time to do the farce all over again. Nary a fucking question about it all - although it would seem that more than a few people are a bit cynical about it all, given the dropping voter turnout the last few years.
Pretty well all of us alive today were brought up the same way - the framework of the system is there, and at most we can vote for people who promise to tinker with it in small ways - even that is iffy, since the only chance we get to even do that is when we vote for a politician who says they will do something - but often after they are voted in, they do NOT do what they promised and we gave permission for, but something completely different - but we're not given any opportunity to complain about that, or make them accountable, until they decide themselves that they will call an election - and yes, about once a decade they get so bad that the people boot them and bring in the opposition (whose bad deeds of the previous generation have finally been forgotten, or the current ruling party has become so obviously corrupt and unsuitable that they GOTTA go, regardless of who replaces them) - who behave the same, and a decade later get booted in turn through a similar process. Exactly how this "revolving selection of the least objectionable" can get defined as good government has never been very well explained, at least that I have ever come across - but that's what they call it. And, as above, people who are aware enough and care enough to get really democratic and DEMAND decent and responsive government, like in Montreal this week, get greeted by the real government with rubber bullets and pepper spray and jail. And THAT is what this "democracy" really stands for. Do what you're fucking told, or what we give you explicit permission to do - or else. People like Stalin and Hitler at least were more honest about what they were doing.
And the people who might have felt the same but were a bit too timid to go confronting bullies sit in front of their tvs and absorb it all - protest=bashed heads, pepper spray, jail - and think "well, my life isn't really what I thought it would be, all those dreams not turning out quite the way they promised when I was younger - but it's not THAT bad yet .... honey! let's go shopping ok? - I think we need some more Ritalin...." hahahahaha
What about the many poor people in this great democracy called Canada? - for the many children born in poverty in this country, and most of the so-called (shrinking) middle class, their futures are, on the whole, somewhere between "ok if you are lucky and work like hell" and bleak - whereas for children born into relative wealth, their futures are assured. One group is on the fast track to a life of ease where "work" involves things like sitting in a fancy office and seeing how much you can cut your workers' wages and flying around the world to "business meetings", the other to a life of soul-numbing, joyless labour, 40/50/50, give or take. I'd like to hear someone explain how that qualifies as democratic, having your birth determine your class status (equal opportunity? anyone who automatically responds with words like this ought to check their medical records if they can get access in this great democracy, and see when the lobotomy was performed, or how many secret stars they have been awarded for "Obedience" or something) - for that matter, I'd like to hear once again, given the pretty undeniable truth of what I've just put down there in black and white (or ones and zeroes I suppose), how anyone can deny that this "great equal democracy" is actually, in reality, a class society, no different in makeup than in Dickens' times - I'd also like to hear why everyone prefers to lie so much about it all the time. Tell any Indian in any reservation in Canada, just for instance, about his or her great opportunities in the great Canadian democracy, and how they feel they have the same chance as the children of the wealthy, and how they figure that is so wonderfully democratic. Tell the mother of the kids living in a Toronto slum and depending on the local food bank for enough food to survive on how she is going to buy books for her kids and give them swimming lessons and take them to Europe in the summer so she can give them a good start in life by meeting the right people. Sure. Democracy. Tell the man or woman who just spent 40 years working for the same company, selling his or her labour loyally believing the things he or she was taught in school about the rewards of work and the good life, and has now been told that due to some financial mismanagement the pension they were going to have a semi-decent retirement on - well - it is no more, sorry bud! - the "managers" who arranged this problem have, of course, left the country to their Bermuda getaway and won't be prosecuted for anything by your democratic government - bad luck old chap! Bye now!
Paycheck to insecure paycheck for the majority, security and a life of ease for the few. And endless propaganda about how this is really the best it could be for all of us!!!
Democracy. Why am I starting to equate that word with something less noble, like "LIES!!!
Even our so-called constitutional reforms, either successful or not (Turdeau (man I should have corrected that one!!! - but I'll leave it in, and see if the pispot Trudeau-haters catch on!) and Mulroney) were hammered out in back rooms late into the night between, as the saying goes, 12 men in suits - no input at all from the Canadian people, except, in the case of Mulroney who gambled big time and lost, allowing what he fully thought was a fixed "referendum", given the massive participation of the elite hammering at Canadians in their papers (another reason for the demise of the NDP federally, being so stupid (and perhaps honestly betraying their real orientation!!!!) as to support the Great Traitor in this one, the rejection of his attempt to get his name into the history books for something besides sleaze and the FTA, which will eventually be understood for the betrayal it was. But what has the hammering out of documents that are fundamental to the very make up of the nation in backrooms at night between 12 men - men who are all members of the elite at that - have to do with "Democracy", the rule OF, BY and FOR THE PEOPLE?!?!?! (For those who have forgotten, the whole Meech thing was nothing more than a dividing up of the turf between the elitist leaders in the country at the time - i.e. the Premiers of Ontario and the other provinces shall have these powers, and the Big Premier these other powers - for the people of Canada??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA SUCKERS!!!!! - somehow or other a majority of the citizens sort of understood this, and told them all to go fuck themselves, or words to that effect. One small step - but remember, about the only thing that accomplished was that the guys in the back rooms realised that the Herd was not yet completely docile - so fuck that referendum shit in the future! - we'll do the deals between elections, bidness as usual. Fuck, in other words, Democracy. And they have. They have. And like good victims in the modern world, our complaints have been very very subdued.
How can we call something democracy - or rule of the majority (isn't that sort of what Democracy is supposed to mean?!?!?) - when most governments these days are getting in with 25% support of registered voters - and ruling unopposed for 5 years with this "democratic majority" of the seats? An increasingly large number of people (almost 40% last federal election) are not voting at all because they see the system is so corrupt, and the politicians lie so much, that their votes are essentially meaningless anyway - tweedledum or tweedledee, both are, at the end of the day, taking orders from Bay St. and the BCNI/CCCE, and who cares about average Canadians? Democracy. Right.
- what about the pervasive influence of money in these times, as noted recently - Paul Martin getting over $6 million from Bay St - and he doesn't plan to say THANKS over the coming years to those generous benefactors!?!?!?!? and they're not expecting him to say THANKS?!?!?! - right. and not forgetting of course that that money started because of favors already done. I wonder what would happen if any of the National anti-Poverty organisations could raise $6 million bucks to donate? hahaha - small joke. It's more than money, really - it's family connections from the private schools, friendships from Board Meetings and what not of major corporations, and the like that determine this kind of thing - and I somehow suspect you'd have to look a looooooooooong ways to find a school where a kid from a NAPO mom was rubbing shoulders with a kid from a BCNI-family's mom. man that's too true to even have a laugh about... - but would you care to take a wild guess? do you suppose there are more poor moms or more BCNI moms???? but do the policies of the Canadian government favor the poor moms or the BCNI moms?!?!?! - you know..............
Democracy - the media who are owned by and speak for the rich - who speaks for the poor? - are the poor full citizens or second-class citizens - if the former, why are their voices not given equal billing with the rich in the media of the nation - why do their far more numerous voices not get even a fraction of the space the rich voices get? And if the voices of this great democracy are truly interested in making a better life for all citizens, why are those voices we hear in the media so concerned with increasing investor profits, and we NEVER hear a word about increasing the income of the many more poor people? - indeed, as we have seen the last ten years, we have heard far more words about how the poor people are getting too much fucking help from the government, and ought to be made even poorer. In our so-fucking great democracy.
In a true democracy, the government would not be the 'elected dictators" for 5 years, but simply the arbiters of the decision making process in the country, and providing the administration for carrying out those decisions.
Why are major policy decisions, year after year, government after government, allowed to be forced on a majority of citizens who do NOT approve of them? How does that relate to "democracy"?!?!?? - the pot laws show this well enough (many others too of course) - although poll after poll indicates that a solid majority of Canadians do not believe pot should be illegal in any way, the government has just passed a new improved drug law saying that, ok, you can have a wee little bit for yourself - but if you are caught selling some to your friends, you're going to go to jail for 15 years!!!- for something most Canadians do not think is a problem, and do NOT support!!! Again - someone needs to explain to me how that fits in with the theory of democracy we are supposed to be living under - if a solid majority of people do not believe something should be regarded as a crime, how is it that it is not only a crime, but a very serious one - are the citizens of the country calling the shots here or not? And if not - how would we presume to call it a democracy?
Democratic Representatives - or "We'll-do-as-we-fucking-please" Rulers? - there is some difference of opinion about the use of the word 'representative" as applied these last few years in the great Canadian "democracy" - there are many (the Pispot-Fraser crowd leading the way) who say that such elected people are not necessarily bound by the will of those who elected them, or even need to consult them - they are, they say, elected to "lead", and, given their access to non-public information and their specialised knowledge of governing and government, it is up to them to do as they see fit and proper, whether their constituents or anyone else agrees with them or not (they don't seem to care to address the question of how it was, a few years ago when the MAI-v1 came to light during the runup to the 1997 election so many of we "normal but uneducated" people knew about this proposed agreement, but so many elected "representatives" said they had never heard of it - it's fucking true!). Such people as these, I would submit, should not then call themselves 'representatives", but should be honest during any election campaign, and tell the people who will be electing them (or not) that this is their belief in their role should they be elected - that is to say, if we elect them they will not feel any particular need to consult the people who elected them on any particular issue that may arise during the next few years, but will do as they fucking well please, even if many or most of those who elected them oppose that position - and I at least would be MOST fucking interested in hearing them explain in plain English how they figure that is "Democracy" - and I would also be most fucking interested in hearing about why NO papers in our great free democratic media EVER ask such questions. The other type of elected representative follows a closer definition of the word - that is, they feel their role is to represent the wishes of the people who elected them - or, if they are really godlike, all of the people in their riding or district - and will follow the platform upon which they ran faithfully, and, when new issues arise as they occasionally do, will consult their constituents concerning those issues before casting any votes in parliament. Frankly, I don't think we have many, if any, of those around. I could be wrong. But they certainly do not represent a majority of people in the House of Commons, who seem to pretty much forget about the people who elected them between elections. And I really have trouble justifying the use of the word "democracy" when the people we elect behave like this. (oddly enough, elected representatives in that great communist dictatorship (sarcasm alert) called Cuba actually DO follow the GOOD form of representation as outlined above - representatives are required to hold regular meetings with the people who elect them, and are equally required to fucking do what their electors tell them to do!!!!! - what a radical fucking idea!!! - never fly in a "real" democracy like Canada, boy!!)
The role of the media must not be overlooked in a true democracy - a media which facilitates debate of the national issues by presenting ALL the various points of view fairly and objectively, so the people have sufficient information on which to make reasonable decisions. When the media has been taken over by a small sector of society, with a definite agenda, and flogs that agenda endlessly with little more than lip service paid to other points of view, even though those points of view might represent a majority of the people, then there is something deeply wrong with the enabling institutions of the democracy, and the very idea is in danger. We have been in that situation for quite some time now, and the democracy is undoubtedly suffering seriously for it.
- that brings forward a related point - when we have grown to depend so much on money as a medium of exchange, and raised "the market" to a position of dominance in the society - how do we prevent people with a lot of money from having an undue influence on the decisions of the government? We are currently seeing leading candidates for the job of Prime Minister being wined and dined with millions of dollars in donations - the leading candidate of whom has received the most such donations just happens to be a person who has enthusiastically forwarded the agenda of the people who are giving him the money over the last ten years as Finance Minister - yet no one in the national media is even suggesting there might be something wrong with this.
- a party system isn't in itself a bad idea - we have to organize all these people somehow - but we should be in control of the organization, not "them" - a TRUE democratic party system would not only be setup to reflect the true interests of the people, rather than being more like some kind of hockey team and you pick your favorite and sit back on the wings and cheer, but the people would actually, and really, be running the thing, as a true "representative" system. It would be a system that gave the broad movements of people in society a place to park, that REALLY represented them, rather than the TT system we have today, that pretends to represent the people but in reality marginalizes them while representing the corps - the real "people's parties" which support the views of most Canadians (i.e. support and decently fund the health care and education systems which look after ALL Canadians, back off on continually lowering corporate taxes to ridiculous levels which is only starving the government of necessary funding, back off on closer integration with the Great Satan to the south there, more protection for the environment so there are no more Walkertons and when more SARS situations develop the health care system is not almost immediately in a crisis, more help for poor people, more peace and less war and bombing in the world, FAIR trade for the fucking PEOPLE of our country and others and NOT "free" trade for the corps, stuff like that) are marginalized by both the lack of attention or space to promote their programs given to them by the corporate-owned media, and the lack of money given them by the same corps to organize effectively and make their message known.
A "real" party system (oh it's late and I'm getting delirious!! - Alice!!) might be organised something like this -
- Conservative - dedicated to preserving things more or less as they are, with small, slow changes or adjustments that, after careful consideration, were deemed to be progressive (generally for older people) (we might call this "Center Right" to place it on the currently recognised right-left spectrum of politics)
- Progressive - dedicated to change, more or less for the sake of change and trying new stuff, believing that all that has gone before is, by definition, out of date, and by golly let's try something new!! (generally the young people's party - center left perhaps)
- The "Right" - generally dedicated to the interests of the wealthy in society - things like lower taxes, getting rid of social programs that benefit the poor, that kind of thing - the US Republican Party North, you might call it, honestly - they would also be fervently in favor of just dropping this crazy, failed idea called "Canada" and joining the Big Dog to the south - good for the rich, and really, who gives a fuck about the poor anyway??
- The "Left" - dedicated, I guess, to the kind of "socialism-communism" type bogeyman stuff that the Pispot and the current far right wackos say is the purpose of everyone on "the left" - a notion that doesn't seem to hold up to any kind of rational examination (not that anyone would ever accuse the Pispot of such a thing) and that I find ludicrous, personally, and as far as I know most everyone else on "the left" does as well, but in the interests of full representation we should leave room for people who do support this point of view - I suspect it would die rather quickly for lack of membership or support, as would a, for instance, Santa Claus party - bogeymen and tooth fairies are usually left behind by adults, as the Pispot would quickly discover....
- Anyone Else???
- I realise that is kind of asymmetrical, in that there is no party specifically for 'the poor', as there is for 'the rich' - but the poor, it seems to me, share interests with the middle-class, much more than either do with 'the rich', and would find a home very comfortably in one of the two major centrist parties which space most polls show most Canadians to be occupying - I have known poor people who were as conservative as they come, and poor people who were as desirous of change as any radical would be - I have known very few, if any, poor, however, who identified with the dreams of "the right" to cancelling all social programs and taxes, however, for some odd reason.
What such a system would allow, it seems to me, is a decent trade off in the government between the major forces in our society, that would be reasonably fair to all - dependant, of course, on a PR system of elections, so that the votes of the people actually got used to elect representatives who represented them. But all would have a true, representative voice - those young people who wanted free computers and free beer and no work would have to meet the older people who knew that basically you have to a bit of work for this stuff, and they would work out the appropriate compromise for the times, wherein the security of the older people who had spent many years working for what they had would not be jeopardised by the irresponsibility of young and reckless dreams - but on the other hand those new and bold ideas would have a chance to test themselves in a true forum with more experienced voices, and those that were progressive and not destructive would be done, and in a timely way, while those that were reckless of the security of many would be either forgotten or put back on the drawing board for refinement. It would, in any event, be a government of, by and for the people, all together, rather than, as we have now, a government of, by and for the corporations, with the people as little more than spectators, as they are today, being tossed hither and yon by the whims and selfish decisions of the elite rulers, and allowing an ever growing and changing and, inevitably, improving TRUE Democracy, reflecting the wishes of the people of the country, and looking after all of the people of the country - protecting them through THEIR government from the ravages of society-sized bullies like the big corps - who are, in reality, little more than street gangs in suits, terrorising the people on the street (in the country) through whatever means are most effective - baseball bats on the street, banks and debt in the country. Either group is basically the antithesis of true Democracy, and we will have no true right to call ourselves a democratic country until this "rule by the elite" is removed, and the actual wishes of the citizens, through their governing body, becomes fact rather than theory.
In reality, of course, a country of mature, intelligent, concerned and involved people would pretty much run on consensus, as most such people would be pretty much in agreement about most important things without any kind of coercion, and would be secure enough to allow a wide variety of people and beliefs to coexist side by side in peace and acceptance and maturity and a true desire to work together for the greater good, understanding that such a goal is the best for all - the current "democratic" system is really a competition between the rich and everyone else, and since the rich currently run everything, it is in their interests to promote as much divisiveness among everyone else as they can, and they are, so far, doing a very good job of it - and will continue to do so until a whole fuck of a lot more people wake up to their game, and realise that what they and we are now calling 'democracy" is no such thing at all, but in reality an oligarchy, I guess you could say - an oligarchy in which some democratic influences were allowed as a kind of experiment for a few years, but got somewhat out of control (the "crisis in democracy" of the Trilateral Commission - check it out!) and is currently being redefined to minimise such actual democratic influences, as they became too much of a drain on the coffers and control of the rich oligarchs - fucking uppity peasants, got to be put in their place, something like that.
Anyway - that got a bit out of control (lengthwise, not ideawise!), but let's leave it for now, as kind of a prelude to more specific things coming up. It's important to talk about what democracy is and isn't, and how we have it or don't - the forces of fascism are becoming strongly ascendant at the moment, and will surely prevail if somebody doesn't start doing something to stop them - there are a lot of us out there speaking out against these forces, but it will be numbers that count - and in a democracy, my friend, that means you. and you. and you. and you...... - you do all remember the very good and true saying, I am sure - "For the forces of evil to triumph, it is only required that good men do nothing..." ??? - well, the time has come to decide, for all of us. Canada the great Democracy leading the way into a free and prosperous 21st century for ALL of us - or Canada the People Farm, another non-entity in the Blue Pill Confederation of the dying dream called Earth that once - just once - dared to dream of something better.
Write if ya want.
What direct action did you take today to do something to get rid of corporate government in Canada? Do you feel that it was enough, given the situation? Will you feel content telling that to your grandchildren, should they survive, and the country, and the planet?
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.