I'm feeling like neverneverland again - a common feeling, actually, although occasionally life seems to have some real elements to it - but what in the fuck is all this talk about "legalising" "gay" marriages? that has been so prominent in the "news" (??cartoons?? "infotainment"?? "news from behind the looking glass?") the last while?? - I can't get a grip on anything about this - I cannot figure in the first place why any two adult human beings who want to live together, with or without kids, should have to go and ask permission from ANYbody to do so - and leading from that, I cannot figure of course then why two adult men or women who want to live together would DEMAND the chains that begging for that permission implies!! - and then even more - why there is such an outcry about it - it's like a big maze of idiocy - one MP, as I recall, said that he or she got more mail about this in the last few weeks than about any other "issue" the last couple of years!!! - sweet fucking jesus as the saying goes, what kind of people have nothing better to do with their lives than run around gossiping about who other people are sleeping with!?!?!?!? - and then self-righteously trying to make rules about who they are fucking "allowed" to be sleeping with?!?!?! I guess they're writing books and articles about morality and ethics and the Great Sky Being and procreation and evil and all kinds of things to try to justify themselves - but it can't be done. Really. There is no justification for trying to tell other people how to conduct their private lives. None. (I won't bother with the 'consenting adult" stuff - too obvious for words - people who assault others, sexually or otherwise, ought to receive the harshest punishment, and doubly or triply so for adults, or at least large-bodied people (I think I've written about that before - that words have to have meanings that are consistent, and "adult" has to mean something more than having reached the age of 18 or 21 years or whatever - it should imply at least strongly that the person has achieved some level of intelligence as well, some understanding of personal and societal and historical and philosophical processes - we get in a lot of trouble in society because we have allowed so many people who are nowhere near the intellectual level of true adults not only making decisions, but running things), attacking children - but that has nothing to do with what is being talked about here, and people who comment should not be allowed to change the subject along these lines of misdirection))

I just don't belong here with these people. Whatever I did O Great Master of the Universe I am TRULY FUCKING sorry and won't do it again - JUST GET ME OFF HERE!!!! (no they won't be offended at my language - that's another idiocy of this place. They probably don't laugh like everybody in front of the tv laughs when somebody says "shit" or "toilet" (teehee gigglegiggle) either. manomanoman)

Right. I'm sure they're listening. Any sensible citizen of the universe would have closed down the phone lines to THIS planet a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonng time ago - remember how long it took ET to get through, and he knew the fucking number? Gandhi and Einstein notwithstanding. Good as they were, it was probably illusionary - that is to say, they would probably not have been regarded as that exceptional on a REAL planet with REAL civilisations, but more the norm. Like we could do here if anybody cared about something beyond seeing how many people their new bombs could kill, or tried.

But I really am sorry man - can we talk about it?!?!?!?!

Fuck - I guess we're all just playing in the sandbox somewhere - kiddies day at the zoo or something. Rude through the fucking mirror again. Kid's games - but with realworld consequences like people dying - lots of them, and their kids - and living lives of misery and desperation needlessly so the few can live lives of luxury - the self-centred adolescent mind, endless potential for intelligent behaviour - but equally endless potential for stupidity at the same time - and when all of our institutions and "leaders" promote the stupidity aspect and stifle almost every attempt at intelligence, the result is - well, look around.

Remember (just a couple of other recent examples) "terrorist alert" number what? - 8,765 or something?? - BUY DUCT TAPE AND PLASTIC TO PROTECT YOUR HOUSE!! - fuck me gently - or what about the deck of cards of bad guys in Iraq - real sign of maturity there, boy - or what about Ashcroft - one of the leading figures in the most powerful country now or ever on this planet - draping a sculpture in the US Capital building so people couldn't see her marble tits holy fuck I don't believe this person and me got onto the same planet MAAAA!!!!! GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE NOW!!! -

Actually, I suppose there is one political purpose behind this "gay marriage" stuff, besides demonstrating to every thinking being within range (not necessarily a high number) how childishly stupid Canadian politics is (that they are worse in the US is no excuse - most things are, and we are SUPPOSED to be more civilised, all efforts of the Pispot and other traitors to make us "Merican clones with "Merican brains (huhnhn??? what brains???) notwithstanding) - it's pretty good misdirection for the sheeps, who have been educated in many ways, especially their voodoo childish religions, to smear and control sex as much as possible because it is one of the great ways to control people if you get them totally, perversely fucked up in the head about the great beauty called sex that is one of the most fundamental human drives at an early enough age, anyway - it is much easier for the politicians to run around screaming about sexual things that are none of their fucking business (isn't that the sort of things politicians love most?? sticking their noses where they don't belong? (not to mention sticking other things where they don't belong, while piously, hypocritically making laws to punish others for doing just that!!) just like religious people!! imagine!!) - than anything that really should be of concern to Canadians, such as our participation in American military activity around the world, as in cleaning up after them in Afghanistan (especially galling considering how they have repaid us, by 'friendly-fire" killing of some of our soldiers, and punishing those responsible by letting them off without even a slap on the wrist (makes you kind of feel that, as far as Americans are concerned, we have about the same value as the towelheads or wogs or someone - but that's just good American corporate values - lies and hypocrisy rule!!!) - anyway, much better to get the sheep all riled about who other sheep are sleeping with than how they are all being fleeced day in and day out. And the fleecing will continue as long as the sheep let themselves be misdirected into, among other things, spending their time on things that are none of their business or of any importance whatsoever rather than getting down and dirty with the real issues. Just imagine if, instead of worrying about who others are sleeping with or having sex with, all the MPs were getting calls demanding that they quit the sellout of our country through traitorous, corporate-centred "trade" deals like the upcoming FTAA or the WTO, and start working FOR Canadians and other "real" people in the world through FAIR trade deals of various sorts - or demanding that somebody real fucking soon get to the bottom of this National Debt scam that has been bilking us out of tens of billions PER YEAR that should have been spent on programs for citizens rather than "investor profits" and a few people ought be explaining such stuff to a real judge (if we could find one) - or how come, when 60-70% or MORE of Canadians want pot legalised, and have for years, the government just passed a new law saying if you have just a wee bit too much you're off to the slammer for 15 fucking years (YEAAA DEMOCRACY AND OUR "REPRESENTATIVES"????!!!!) - or how come Canada is about the last supposedly civilised country in the world to be operating under the FPTP voting system, which not only allows but encourages corporate-political corruption, or why there is no outcry about the BLATANT FUCKING corruption of our PM-to-be accepting MILLIONS in bribes, in public yet and BRAGGING about it!!, before even taking office - etc and etc. They'd freak. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - but there's about as much chance of any of that happening as of ET returning after what they did to him last time (in Roswell, not the movie!!).

Imagine - just fucking imagine!!! - a democratic sort of country - a country where the sheeps cared about things of consequence rather than who their fellow herdbeasts were fucking!!! - a country where, for instance, there were no people sleeping (and dying) on the streets of Calgary or Toronto or Halifax, because the government, according to the wishes of the people, was spending enough money to provide these people with decent shelter and food - a country where the government had that money because when the banks and wealthy corporate "investors" along with some high-level, very respectable looking politicians-turned-traitors had proposed a great plot to steal hundreds of billions of dollars from Canadian taxpayers - they had been caught and jailed for life!!! - and so the government had more than enough money, through very reasonable levels of taxation, to provide for these and many other programs - programs like truly free, quality education for EVERY Canadian citizen who wanted such education (and qualified, of course!) - and there were no Walkertons because ALL Canadian agencies charged with protecting the public health by providing world-class services were adequately funded so they could do so!!! - SARS didn't cause an immediate panic because the Canadian health care system was also well-funded!!! - when big corps demanded huge tax cuts - the Canadian government asked the Canadian people what they thought of such things - and the Canadian people spake - and said PAY FUCKING TAXES LIKE THE REST OF US, YOU ASSHOLES!!! IF YOU DON'T LIKE US LEAVE YOUR FUCKING PASSPORTS AT THE BORDER ON YOUR WAY OUT!!! - where "To Serve and Protect" meant to serve and protect the PEOPLE!!! not the corps!!! (oh man that's going too far) - imagine a democracy where people went to community meetings at least once a week to talk about issues that were coming up or ongoing in their community and country and world, rather than watching 4.5 hours of tv as the big corps wanted them to, so they could maintain their "brains" in a state of fuzziness that allowed them to be easily lied to and manipulated!!! all that kind of stuff that would happen in a real democracy - geezus it's not even noon yet and I'm still on coffee! - who in the fuck put what in THAT this morning?!?!?! ALICE!!!!!

Anyway - Thus spake fucking Zarathustra. Bank it.

From the "fair and balanced reporting" (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH) in the Pispot a couple days ago one's eye was caught by - Canada's free ride on prescription drugs [[RM archive copy]] on how the poor beleaguered 'Merican pharmaceutical industry is being ripped off by damn near everyone, but especially we damned poor (that would financially speaking, as in having less money on a per capita basis than the Americans, an ongoing Pispot theme - they are just SO concerned with our wellbeing and want us to have that extra money to be able to pay for our own heart operations and bulletproof vests and nucular things like REAL countries like Greatgod'Merica have... have we talked about that beach property on Baffin Island yet...???), and being one of the main reasons, they think, we should shuck medicare and stuff like that - god it must be awful to have so few brains and even fewer morals like these people - but then, I guess - how would you know???!!! fucking idiots as usual) socialist Canadians, and by god we will pay for it soon! - - anyway, their general drift seems to be that those just fucking amazingly wonderful humanitarian pharmaceutical companies, especially the American ones, who devote their whole lives to making wonderful drugs to make us all so healthy and happy, are just being shamelessly ripped off by fucking goddamned (alrightalright - but it is there between the lines) socialist bastard governments like here in our despicable little backwoods Canada, and it had better by god stop, or those poor companies will probably go out of business, and stop selling us all these wonderful life-saving and life-enhancing drugs. yada yada yada, as the modern saying has it. pewk pewk pewk might be a more appropriate response to this kind of crap. As usual, the Pispot promoting the corps and fucking the people.

Do we really need to get into a discussion about the obscene profits these companies are making, or how they are so concerned with humanitarian issues that they REFUSE to let developing countries with no money to pay for their drugs manufacture generics for their sickest patients suffering from AIDS and things like that - these great humanitarian companies whose motto is something like "market price or die asshole..HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!! (i.e. laughing all the way to the bank - I need to work on sound and graphic files some day...)" - these great humanitarian companies who test their drugs so poorly that every year any number of their great wonderful new products have to be recalled after killing a bunch of people - and then they pay lawyers and politicians to cover their "little mistakes" up - do we have to talk about how they spend huge amounts of their profits on buying up politicians, so they will pass laws directing great amounts of public money into research, but then the companies take any of that research that has commercial use and patent it for profit-making purposes?? What about the huge campaigns with the cooperation of the government and, to their disgrace, the medical associations (their (most or many of them, at any rate) well-cultivated shiny-white image is somewhat less perfect than they would have everyone believe, and their professed concern for people's health seen in the light of their income expectations and their fear of natural, holistic medicine, as well as this promotion of largely useless drugs....), to convince EVERYBODY they have several "conditions" that can ONLY be treated by expensive drugs? Nahh - everybody knows that stuff, right? The Pispot, as usual getting somewhat incoherent when trying to defend the indefensible (man the neoidjit brain must be something to behold - some combination of an Escher drawing superimposed on a Rube Goldberg contrivance comes to mind, full of little green gremlins and red horned devils and lawyer-politician-scumbag businessmen-bankers in 3-piece suits with cash overflowing from the pockets and evil little pointy-toothed smirks and mazes with no doors and bottomless wells labelled TRUTH and stuff like that) goes into Lies'R'US mode, as usual.

A couple of choice quotes from whoever wrote this (unsigned, probably to keep a 'real' doctor if one could be found from demanding a psychiatric evaluation from a court) - They say: "First, why should U.S. patients pay exorbitant prices for their medicines while heath-care systems in other developed countries -- Canada most notably -- get their medications at cut-rate prices, and thereby avoid paying their fair share of drug R&D costs..." - note, it slips out that Americans are paying "exorbitant prices" - but the solution isn't to corral the fucking drug companies - HAHHAHAHAHAHAH what a laugh!!! - no, the solution is, of course, to make Canadians, who currently are paying (I won't say fair!! on no not me!!!) - somewhat less exorbitant prices, HIGHER prices!! Oh yes, let there never be no doubt whose side the Pispot is on in the current war between the elites and the lesser classes, no doubt indeed!!

And just to show that there seems to be some sort of move on, and the Pispot is not alone in its dementia, we have Canada's drug policies 'parasitic,' U.S. says - a story in the Globe (RM copy at the end of the Pispot one, see above), who really should know better, but it's a sign of the times, I guess - in which "....Mark McClellan agreed with suggestions by a television interviewer that Canada has not developed a new drug since 1940, does no research and development on new drugs, and is simply benefiting from drug research paid for by U.S. taxpayers..." (McClellan is the Head of the US Food and Drug Administration - I seriously wonder if anybody in the upper echelons of the US government has any touch with reality at all - I mean, really, these people should know better, shouldn't they? Americans are not that bright, we know - but something like this? From someone like that?!?!? jeesus.)

It shows where we're at, with the media printing an endless string of lies from Washington the last couple of years, I guess they just print anything now, no questions asked. It is pretty disappointing, though, that the Globe would do this, no comment, no questions asked. It's gotta be pretty bad for people who still take the newspapers seriously, or try to - some poor guy is gonna be the laughing stock in the office this week, when he says "Guess what I read in the paper!!" or something. (If you're thinking that Rude must be crazy - it sounds odd but we do trust the Globe!! - do any kind of quick net search for drug research in Canada - there's a lot of stuff out there, and something like 60,000 people working in the industry - whom I am sure would be surprised to know they've done sweet fuck all the last 60-odd years (here's one - MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS OVERVIEW, Merck Frosst Canada). But enough of that - I wouldn't call myself a major friend of the drug industry at all - but I just get red behind the eyeballs when that fucking Benedict Arnold rag starts knocking everything Canadian. Somebody ought to be fighting back, and it's pretty sad that so few are. (my secret plan! - people will get so pissed off that the only defender of this great country they can find on the Internet is called a Rude Macedon and says FUCK FUCK FUCK way too fucking much!! - and will get embarrassed and start fighting back themselves!!)

More craziness, using the word in its clinical sense, from the rightwing neoidjits (hahahaha - guess who was reading westerns this week?!?! - hey!! - I LIKE fiction!! - I just don't like it in the newspapers!) -

Leading news outlets show left-wing bias from an old fart named George Jonas (some of us wear the sobriquet honourably, some just get old and ossified - I'll leave you to choose who is what....)[[RM archive copy]] in the Vancouver Province - although not the Pispot, Jonas is a Pispot writer, and the Province an Asper rag, so it's pretty much the same difference - but here we have a perfect example of not only following the American lead, as in the drugs story (not to mention the pot-drug story) and the American war stories, and everything else American) but of how these people occupy an almost complete fantasy world, so lost in their own ravings that they actually seem to believe it sometimes - only someone completely out of touch with reality could even put forward the notion that "the media ANYWHERE in 'the west' has some kind of "leftist" bias - I mean, that is to say, it is so far from the actual situation as to be ludicrous - but, come to think of it, that is pretty standard for these people - when Lies'R'US is your main motto, then all contact with reality is lost, and dreams and fantasies become your reality, I guess. Anyway, this has been one of the main arguments of the rightwing neoidiots for years, that the whole media has a left-wing bias - it's so obviously nowhere near reality that one wonders how to even respond, since anyone so out of touch with reality to be able to say this is equally unlikely to be able to absorb the truth of things.

This probably goes back to the 70s, when there was what one might call a sort of "balanced" press in many parts of the world, with some fairly "real" journalists working for them - people with some conscience and sense of duty, who thought that, as a journalist, it was their job to find out things the people needed to know about what was going on in the world and their country, and report it to them (not a major paper in North America would hire any reporter with those kind of crazy views nowadays!!). This attitude, of course, caused quite a lot of problems for the elite, who are now and were then up to all kinds of things to attempt to corrupt the political system in their favor and (never changes) fuck the poor - so, as part of the corporate revolution of the 1970s (no sorry still haven't got the book done - but it's coming!!) they started to do something about that (to them) unacceptable state of affairs, and have succeeded to the point where there is hardly a balanced paper left in the countries (Toronto Star being sort of an exception, although it is one of those 'tame" lefties sort of things, that (at least editorially, and they do allow a couple of columnists to apparently speak freely) pretty much plays in the corner where the Big Boys let them, and only throw little bits of sand sometimes in protest).

Anyway, this sort of balance in the media is absolutely necessary to a functioning democracy, because information is power, of course, and the citizens absolutely require reasonably good information about what is happening in order to make reasonably good choices about who they want as a leader, what sort of policies they think the government should be following, etc and etc. And without that kind of media, we have things like the National Debt Scam, the "free trade" deal, and WTO, and soon to be FTAA, all of which are selling the country and its government right out from under us and into the hands of the corps, lowering taxes for the rich, so that the government can no longer fund healthcare or education or anything else adequately, and so on. These things would have been very much harder to accomplish, if they could have been accomplished at all, with a balanced media in the country - I'm not saying that the Pispot and Conrad and the Aspers and the rest shouldn't have their papers and be allowed to say what they want, and promote what they want - of course they should - BUT BUT BUT - since their viewpoint is rather obviously a minority viewpoint, then something HAS to be done to carry the other side of the story to the people in the country - and, with the sort-of exception of the Toronto Star, and partly the CBC which does still try to have some balance in it (you will notice, of course, we have talked about it before, the neoidiots fucking HATE the CBC because of this balance, and it is on their permanent hate list - GET RID OF THE CBC GET RID OF THE CBC - shows up regularly in their pages, one way or another. Understandable - the one thing even the Big Well Promoted LIE is vulnerable to is the truth, and the CBC has always had a lot of good people devoted to that very thing. A lot fewer now, the last few years, of course, after the great defunding of the CBC (as one of the most important Canadian institutions, all of which got defunded bigtime by the neoidiots et al).

Couple of the more idiotic quotes of Jonas (just to show I really did have a reason for these small comments) -

"...Unlike the CBC, which still makes the odd gesture, however feeble, to appear even-handed on topics such as the United States or the Middle East, the BBC has given up all pretense. The public broadcaster of Britain is openly hostile to America and Israel...."

- actually a study was done a few weeks ago (you can access more on this at Media Lens, who put out an excellent newsletter keeping tabs on the media in Britain - much calmer and more well-reasoned (very British) than the excitable folk at RM...), after the American-Brit invasion of Iraq, and it showed that of all the British media, the BBC was the most "pro" invasion in its coverage, featuring much more coverage of pro-invasion voices than anti - but this is the neocon definition of "biased" - anyone who fucking DARES to say ANYTHING not 100% supportive of the neocon NWO is "biased" in their little minds. George put it in words, in one of his pithy little statements (one of the few grammatically correct ones at that!!) when he said "You're either for us or against us" - and, of course, any media who is not 100% on board (or embedded!!) is, therefore, against them. Any attempt at fairness and balance - well, not "for" them, therefore against. They've been doing it for a long time - and screeds like the Jonas thing are the result, where they can no longer distinguish real balance or fairness, just FOR and AGAINST. And obviously something like the BBC, long recognised around the world as one of the best, most fair news organisations in the world, is NOT an American embedded asslicker - therefore - Ceasar speaks - thumbs down AGAINST!!!

"Truth" in the Totalitarian state. Like so many things American these days. and it gets repetitive, but Orwell saw it coming - the ministry of Truth, to rewrite history.

- is it, for instance, the "liberal" media that has over half of Americans believing that Saddam was responsible for 911? sure.

- was it the "liberal" media in Canada that bombarded Canadians from coast to coast for over a month during the 1988 election campaign telling us all the "free trade" would be FUCKING WONDERFUL!!!!! for everyone, outspending the much more numerous but much poorer majority who opposed it? - or a few years later that Brian's desperate little Meech Lake Accord was ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NECESSARY to "keep Canada together"??

- has it been the "liberal media" blasting Canadians about wasteful government spending and the need for lower taxes the last few years? Was it the "liberal" media DEMANDING that Canada join George's little war in Iraq?? Was it the "liberal" media single-handedly taking an obscure bunch of western right-wing whackos and elevating them to the status of a national political party? Was/is it the "liberal" media demanding the dismantling of Canadian social programs and the institution of such things as user-pay health care and schools, privatisation and deregulation, and joining the United States?

These people must take stupid pills for breakfast or something (or else they think everyone else does - which might have some merit, actually) - all across Canada, the only even semi-major media that could reasonably be said to have a "liberal" slant the last 15-20 years is the Toronto Star - but pick another? It ain't to be found!! - Linda McQuaig gets the odd column in the Pispot (or used to - not sure if she still does or not - she is not listed on their writers page anyway - I wrote them about that last year and asked why not, and they said she wasn't a 'regular', although others who appeared only once a month were listed) - but name another that could even remotely be labelled "liberal"!! - not to be had!! Likewise Rick Salutin at the Globe - a lonely voice of sanity in that wasteland. I can't think of any in the Sun chain, although I expect you could come up with one or two who had said something remotely sane at some point in time over the last few months, which probably would earn them the endless ire of the neoidiots - but would certainly not justify calling the Sun a "liberal" media - it is to fucking laugh!! (actually the Sun has, with one or two exceptions such as David Suzuki and Michael Harris, a pretty nondescript bunch of columnists altogether - truly "news" and "opinion" for the "my-brain-is-white-noise-controlled-outer-limits" tv generation - you can get a gander of what (little) they have to offer in the way of opinion here if you've got a fast connection and time to waste - but most of it isn't even worth getting excited about - gotta give that to the Pispot, they can get the blood moving on a slow day...) - or Izzy's chain of Citizens across the country, in which this piece of nonsense of Jonas's appears - one would have to look long to find a single piece remotely liberal, and to label the chain or Izzy "liberal" would be akin to labelling Adolf Hitler a member of the JDL - only the most idiotic, out of touch lunatic could even conceive of such a notion. Of course, most people at the neocon media would fit that description - this idiocy of running around screaming about a "liberal media" is just more proof of their complete lack of touch with reality.

It's instructive, of course, to try to figure why they do this, if we're into low-stress brainwork on a weekend (figuring out the neoidiots has never been rocket science, although it does seem to be too much of a challenge for the tv generation, which says a lot about - about - FUCK - about a lot of stuff!!) - it is, of course, because, like anyone involved with a Big Lie of some sort, they must control the information supply very thoroughly, because Big Lies, by their nature, are like big zeppelins, you might say - high and mighty, but also very vulnerable, zeppelins to fire, Big Lies to truth - and if there really were any sort of liberal media in the country that was accessed by more than 5% or so of the population, they and their Big Lies about everything from how privatisation is good for everyone to how "free trade" is good for everyone to how Canadian corporations are overtaxed would quickly be revealed for the nonsensical lies they all are - that a lot of Canadians believe a lot of this bullshit is more than adequate proof of the solid control the neoidiots and their lies have of the media - that they can even publish crap complaining about a "liberal" media without immediately being laughed out of business is itself more evidence of the solid control they have, not to mention the DEEEEEEEPPPPP shit we are in today.

It is also, one supposes, because like most people of low intelligence they are so insecure they cannot tolerate any differences of opinion - their world is pretty black and white, and they don't much care for the great complexities of life, the great mysteries - these are the people to whom evolution is anathema - THEIR world, by GOD (pun!!) began EXACTLY 4,812 years ago, or whatever nonsense they have figured out, and GOD tells them what to do (like, I guess, people HAVE to get married - but GAY PEOPLE CAN'T DO IT!! and other halfwitted nonsense) - and like their great leader said (I guess it is of comfort to many of them to have a leader as obviously lacking in anything that would remotely be described as intelligence as they are) - You are either for us or against us! - no middle ground here, boy. Black and fucking white. I wonder what would become of these people if somebody gave them a wake up pill and they found that they had been supporting the bad guys all their lives?

And, unfortunately, it is more evidence of how out of touch with reality most Canadians themselves are, that they continue to listen to such nonsense and support the media that publishes it. Thinking people would not listen to such crap without protest, or accept them as major, national media, when their rightful place is in supermarket lineups alongside the National Enquirers and their "Elvis is alive talking to space aliens who kidnapped me and made me pregnant with their loathsome spawn and now Elvis won't talk to me anymore what will I do...??" offerings, where they rightfully belong.

Man that's all getting too depressing - let's leave the one about a guy getting 18 months in jail for writing a few letters to MPs for next time.

Last thing this time - I just can't help myself - another letter that isn't going to see the light of day in the Canadian media (and to demonstrate once again the Polite Rude person, and that the reason we have not seen the light of day in Canadian media is NOT because we can't get through two sentences without that horrible f*** word - and if we take away that reason, of course, what remains except some damned sort of conspiracy theory oh gasp horrors!!!):

Dear Richard, Re: Too much theatre, too little debate - [RM archive copy]

I think your criticism of the "anti-globalists" is way off, in a number of ways.

1. First, these people who protest the so-called 'trade" talks are not "against" any and all types of globalisation as the "pro-globalisers" like to pretend - we (I am one who supports the street actions, although cannot be there in person) are against the ongoing drive to create new so-called "trade" treaties which are actually designed to benefit the wealthy corporations of the world by continually expropriating and exploiting the resources and labour of less-developed countries (not to mention the less-affluent in our own countries, but that is something for another day), by many means fair and foul, which these "treaties" basically try to legitimise and give the force of international law, such as it is. It is rather nonsensical to call us/them "anti-globalist" - we are and have been in the forefront of using modern communication techniques such as the internet, for instance, to work together all around the world, in almost every country in the world, against all odds, I might add, to put together a **global** movement to fight for justice and freedom for all people everywhere - not to mention related things such as stopping war and killing - which are, again, as much as not tools of giant MNCs to increase their profits in many ways (I'm sure you're aware of the corporate killing going on in Iraq right now for Bush's friends, or perhaps masters would be a more accurate word, and the related international arms trade which, if the "pro-globalists" were serious about helping people in developing countries, they would be doing a great deal more to curtail). As with trade - we are not in any way "anti-" trade - we are **pro** FAIR trade, in which the people who do the work and whose resources are consumed in producing goods or services get the lion's share of the benefit from those goods and services, and the labour and resources that went into their production, rather than having their labour and resources essentially stolen by completely rigged "trade" deals for the benefit of those MNCs.

2. You say "..If their purpose was to get a public debate started about Globalisation, they failed miserably.." - I would like to point out to you that the "failure" to have a public debate about this is rather obviously not the fault of the protesters, but the rather apparently very deliberate refusal of both government and media to dare to engage in such a debate!! - the protesters desperately want and have been wanting for years such a public discussion of these very important issues, but the complete stonewalling of such a debate by both government and media is precisely what makes street protests such as this one, and the many before, a necessity! Witness Pettigrew, supposedly representing the people of Canada as a "trade" minister, wandering around saying such nonsense as 'the anti-globalisation movement is dead!", and very falsely and even stupidly accusing us of "promoting" poverty in developing countries - as you yourself mockingly do in the first of this piece. I would suggest to you that the refusal to hold such a debate or debates is because both the government and the media-supporters of such "trade" deals (few protesters own newspapers!) know very well that, although FAIR trade and increased prosperity for ALL of the peoples of the world are indeed very laudable objectives, the current "trade" talks will not achieve such a thing - for the very simple reason they are not designed to achieve such a thing, and the true motives of these trade talks as outlined above - increasing the power and wealth of MNCs and their "investors" at the expense of the poor people and countries of the world - would be impossible to conceal in any kind of open, ongoing debate about them, and the rather disgusting dissembling and even lies of the government and the supporters of these talks would become evident.

3. Finally (I could go on at length, but I do not hold out much hope of having any impact here or even receiving a reply, so am not going to spend a lot of time on this) I would point out your greatest fallacy - I expect you are well aware of this, which would (by your omission of it) put your entire article into the realm of establishment propaganda, but in case you have forgotten, I will point it out to you - you say that there are a number of reasons developing countries remain poor, including corrupt government, diseases such as AIDS, and perhaps things like agricultural subsidies in the west - the big talking point of the current round - but I would submit to you that although these things are certainly important, there is one major, overriding reason so-called developing countries are finding it next to impossible to get on their feet - and that is the odious debts that have been levied upon them over decades of so-called IMF, World Bank, etc loans - debts which now eat up anywhere from 20-50% of their entire budgets simply in paying the usurious "service charges" on these debts, many or most of which have been repaid several times over already, yet rather magically, and to the obvious benefit of the loaning countries and the MNCs, simply get bigger and bigger, year after year, and it is that iron boot of debt on their necks which keeps them in financial bondage. Given the circumstances under which most of these "debts" were incurred - in which anywhere up to 90% or more of the billions in so-called aid was simply transferred into private bank accounts of completely corrupt dictators like Marcos or Suharto or Amin or many others (through complicit (they could not have not known what was becoming of their "aid"), and therefore equally corrupt, loaning agencies), it is absolutely criminal to hold the people of these countries to ransom year after year and demand they repay these debts on penalty of exclusion from the western markets - yet that is what most western governments continue to demand. And as long as they do, any talk at all of "lifting" these countries out of their poverty by "trade" will continue to be farcical at best - and a lot of people believe it is criminal, in reality.

Anyways, Richard, I will leave it at that - but I will also issue a challenge - although I am far from the most knowledgeable person to be talking about these things, I am at least aware of the issues - the REAL issues! - and I would be more than happy to engage you in an honest debate in the pages of your paper about these issues - I too agree that they need very badly to be debated, and am most disappointed in both the Canadian government and the Canadian media that they basically refuse to do so.

What about you? Walk the walk? Or just bury this letter like your newspapers bury every other effort we make to talk about the real issues at stake in the current "trade" talks? (And then continue to berate us for "not talking" about them!!)

[[haha.... a polite, albeit occasionally rude, reader]


Write if ya want.