Happy Labour Day!!! (fuck it seems like last week I was saying Happy Canada Day!! - is there any fucking difference in the NWO?!?!?) - may I offer to you my labour of love .....

Newest piece by John Kaminski - Winking Out - a very angry man. With reason. A very good read, as are all his pieces.

He is not alone.

Another GREAT fucking letter, this time to the Globular Mind-of-Canada Controller (ok that was a bit convoluted - G&M) - far too good, obviously, for them to ever print - raised a couple of points that the controllers do NOT want people getting any funny ideas about. As do most letters originating from this quill (couple new ones added to the unpublished letters section this time, if you wanna read more - FAR more enlightening than tv!), which is, of course, why they never get printed - yea call me a paranoid conspiracy theorist - I would FAR rather wear a label like that than "simple-minded propagandised coincidence theorist". But, on the other hand, if they did print them I wouldn't have the great and lucrative (hahahaha - man starting early tonight!) pleasure of doing RM so I suppose it's a trade off. Actually though (my humour is often somewhat under-appreciated, not to mention not even recognised - that's me laughing off to the left and down a ways hahahahaha) I'd rather be spending my time studying and experiencing the natural history of the world than trying to prevent its destruction by the berserkers who have taken over my planet with the apparent approval of most people - a pretty thankless task all in all, and usually pretty hopeless-seeming. But ya just do what ya gotta do - it is my belief that they are doing these things, and if I was NOT fighting them I would be enabling them - and I just cannot get my head around doing that. "Hey old grumpy gramps what were you doing while the fascists were taking over the world?" "Well, little one, I was at the malls, you know, getting all the great sales on all that stuff we really need to keep up with the neighbours and have a really neat life that they tell us about on tv (what on earth would we do without 89 different brands of dish soap I just cannot imagine!, and I know MY life for sure would have been incomparably lessened without a pair of $300 Nikes in my closet that I never used) and there was all this other really great stuff on tv like Bay Watch girls with no brains and big tits and even less of a plot but that everybody talked about at work the next day because it was so much more interesting than all them stupid politics and stuff, and always great, pretty important stuff like the OJ Simpson trial and all those really important "America Defends Freedom and Democracy by Bombing the Fuck Out of Some Other 3rd World Country" news special that told us all we needed to know about what the government was doing - stuff like that, and then we had to stay inside a lot because of all the terrorists out there and make sure we knew when there was a RED ALERT and if we should go and buy more duct tape and plastic and bibles to save us you know, and all the newspapers never told me there was a problem, so I didn't know about it - it was a pretty busy life, y'know.....". manohmanohman...

Anyway, a few days ago the Globe ran this "opinion" piece about how we poor stupid Canadians really have to grow up and accept American style "health care" - we would all be so much better off, etc and etc. That wouldn't normally get me going on its own - such pieces are a regular feature of the Canadian subset of the propaganda matrix, and I have commented on them before for all the fucking good it does - but what burned me this time (it's probably happened before but I didn't really catch it for some reason - can't be everywhere at once I guess) was that, at the end, it was signed by a couple of people who called themselves "policy analysts" - I guess this is another one of those Canadian things that has fallen by the wayside along with any other aspects of "truth" in public policy ("Truth in public policy?!?!? What the fuck has HE been smoking?!?!" or "What planet did HE grow up on?!?!" if you prefer...) - I don't mind people having their say, but I think they should be a bit more honest about who they are - to call oneself a "policy analyst", at least to me, indicates a position of some responsibility whom I **should** be able to listen to or read with some degree of confidence that they were telling something like the truth (as opposed to pretending to tell the truth, but lying to try to con me into agreeing with them, like any cheap shyster) - it would, or should, indicate, for instance, someone who is familiar with all or at least most aspects of any particular issue, and balances those things together, and comes up with a rational sort of solution, in consideration of all of the facts, that takes into consideration the wishes of all the participants, and the means of the government to undertake this policy, whatever - a fair, balanced analysis - not maybe perfect (few of us are) - but at least trying to do an honest and decent job. It's one of the things I expect from my society (man when and where were YOU brought up?!?!?), at least from a decent, democratic sort of society, that certain public figures are expected to conform to certain standards of professional conduct - we have regulations and laws for some people, like doctors, most of whom are pretty good, or lawyers (a great many of whom blatantly contravene the most basic rules of ethics, throwing their whole profession into disrepute - just to show that some regulations mean something and some don't); other professions such as scientists or academics, who, when they write something for publication, usually have it "peer-reviewed" which means that a number of other recognised professionals have examined their work and find it to conform to certain standards (such standards as honesty), and who are proud of that reputation for honesty and of their integrity; we expect public servants to act in the public good, and not for selfish reasons, or to favor one group over another.....

MHMHMMMMM?????? Well - I guess that got to the hub of things albeit by a slightly circuitous route - I should now say, for those of us old enough to remember, we USED to expect such things of public servants and academics and scientists and such like people - nowadays, the expectations seem to be somewhat lower (understatement alert - I think it would probably be more accurate to say the bottom has fallen out as far as such expectations go), as many "scientists" and "academics" sell themselves to MNCs and promote their products (my first alert to this came quite a few years ago now when some person pretending to be a dentist (office set, white 'doctor' coat, etc) said the Canadian (maybe American) Dental Society promoted the eating of sugar, as being good for your teeth - really, it happened), and other "scientists" accept research money from the same MNCs, while signing contracts saying they will publicize nothing unfavourable about that company's products (and when some do it, how (like the lawyers) can you trust any of them?!?), and, rather obviously, we have "public servants" who blatantly favor MNCs and act against the public interest (such as??? - for instance, politicians are supposed to be public servants, but there has been no question of where their loyalty has been since the days of Mulroney, or how about a "Department of Fisheries" whose main job seems to be to get rid of small fishermen and help MNCs catch whatever living things remain in the ocean - fuck the future, fuck the planet (remember the cod?? - and now they want to shoot all the seals??)? Or a "Ministry of Forests" whose main interest seems to be helping MNCs cut down all the trees (fuck the future etc) - etc and etc? They can blabber about jobs and public interest, but, in another tragic occurrence the last few years, perhaps in many ways the greatest betrayal of all we have experienced in our time, the government, following along in the corporate steps (well, what would you expect of a corporate entity, which all governments seem to have become), prefers lies to truth, spin to honest explanation.

So I guess, in hindsight, my disappointment about people writing obvious propaganda calling themselves "policy analysts" dates me a bit - I suppose few people in modern-day Canada find anything odd about it at all - the whole fucking society operates on lies and spin, and very few of us seem to find anything unusual, let alone unacceptable, about that. It remains something serious to me, however. I suppose they'll all be happier when people like me, who remember things like honesty in science and public affairs, are all gone. Certainly our so-called "media" want nothing to do with such things being talked about in public. (I wouldn't have written this particular letter to the Pispot - they do nothing but lie and misrepresent things - that is their job. But the Globe - ahhh, the Globe! - it did used to be a good paper. Maybe this was in the nature of that last small word of defiance one makes at times before finally giving up and accepting the inevitable .... (not the struggle for freedom and democracy and all that stuff!! nono!!! - just finally giving up on the Globe - I've been fighting it...)

Anyways - the letter:

Editor -
You ought to be a bit more careful about letting people call themselves "policy analysts" in your paper - methinks they must be having a good laugh at you right about now, following the publication of Overhead, so what? Medicare needs competition [[RM archive copy]]
By JOHN GRAHAM and NADEEM ESMAIL Monday, August 25, 2003

Does not the phrase "policy analyst" have a rather specific meaning in public policy circles, and carry at least some responsibilities? That is to say, is not one entitled to assume that someone calling him/herself a "policy analyst" is taking a good, overall look at ALL of the pertinent facts of a situation, and offering the best advice he (or she) can think of, in light of ALL of those pertinent facts? And would it not, therefore, throw something of a shadow of doubt (perhaps even a sledgehammer of doubt!) on the recommendations of such "analysts" were it shown that they had ignored any number of highly relevant facts in their "analysis" - facts which, indeed, tended to put their recommendations in a very different light? And if such facts were well-known things, and it could be fairly safely assumed that the "analysts" MUST have known them, might it not thus follow that they were perhaps less "analysts" than propagandists? - who, of course, are paid to put a certain spin on a situation, twisting "facts" and words to mean what they (or the people who employ them) wish them to mean? And should they not, therefore, have so identified themselves? (actually, of course, to those familiar with Canadian affairs and the analysis thereof, they identified themselves when they said they worked for the Fraser Institute - but how would someone from another country - or one less aware of political realities in Canada - be expected to know that the Fraser is an institute which heavily promotes rightwing, neocon policies?)

Of course it is so. And thus I find it surprising that a rather venerable paper like the Globe would allow such obvious untruths to be spread on its pages. In a related way, there have been several stories the last couple of years about people who called themselves 'doctors", and wound up killing and maiming a number of people, who faced rather severe punishment (rightfully so) for portraying themselves as something they were not, to the public detriment. Surely one who presumes to identify him/herself as a "policy analyst", but who turns out to be in reality a paid propagandist, ought to be censured as well - after all, they presume to advise your readers on appropriate directions of public policy, on, in this case, a very important and controversial issue - but their opinions, as such paid propagandists, should surely be given no more weight than the "opinions" of any other citizen, is it not so? Sensationalist tabloids do this kind of thing all the time, with writings from Dr. John (of MailOrderU) on any number of wild fantasies - but surely the Globe would consider itself above such dissembling?

Let me just point out one or two things a *real* "policy analyst" might have factored into his/her considerations concerning medicare in Canada.

For instance, Graham and Esmail complain that our sad healthcare system now has waiting lines for some procedures of up to four long months, up from 9 weeks in 1993, as they promote the idea of opening the health care system up to private hospitals. And so it may be - but surely an honest evaluation would also note that 1993 was the year the current Liberal government took power, and under the direction of Finance Minister Martin began their slashing of all social programs for ordinary Canadians, including, of course, health care - until he could brag a couple of years ago that his government was spending less on such programs, figured in a per capita way, than the Canadian government had spent since 1949 (or some such year). Surely an honest "policy analysis" would have noted this great spending reduction at the same time it noted longer lineups, as any sort of common sensical analysis would be forced to consider that the two things were probably related. Odd though, this pertinent fact doesn't seem to appear in their piece. Nor, along the same lines, do they note the huge cutbacks that the Harris government imposed through the same period in Ontario, firing thousands of nurses and doctors, reducing the number of graduates from medical schools, and closing hospitals all over the province - surely, surely, surely any normal person would say that, in the absence of some great new health discovery that improved everyone's health so they no longer needed medical care, this would tend to lead to longer waiting times for almost everything to do with health care?!?! - but, oddly again, we see no such acknowledgement of this rather basic and important fact in this "analysis".

Onward - Graham and Esmail state "Despite these facts, Prof. Woolhandler and colleagues assume that arbitrarily low administrative costs are the primary indicator of a well- functioning health-care system, and ignore other costs imposed by government monopoly" - well, this is highly disappointing, to say the least, to find this kind of nonsense in a respected newspaper in Canada under the rubric of "policy analysis". It is nothing more than cheap rhetoric - I have read the reports in question, and nowhere do Prof Woolhandler and colleagues say they believe that low administrative costs are the "primary" indicator of a well-functioning health-care system - merely an important consideration, all other things being more or less equal (and imagine the delicious irony of a rightwing commentary trying to argue that reducing expenditures is *not an important public policy consideration!!) - and whatever these haters of Canada and things Canadian may say, they can hardly try to argue about the overall quality of the Canadian healthcare system for most of the last 40 or so years since it was implemented - in every aspect, it has been rated very highly by Canadians, and has been among the best in the world by any reckoning for most of that time - it is, indeed, what we are all fighting to save, in the face of rightwing government cutbacks and ongoing attacks such as this one demanding it be disassembled and turned over to the private sector and opened to private profit. In reality, such nonsense as this tells a great deal more about the ability and credibility of these "policy analysts" than it does about whatever they are criticising.

They go on to say that "Without competition, providers have little incentive to act in the interests of consumers. Hospitals do not feel the need to provide more surgeries to reduce waiting lists or provide higher quality care, because they are secure in the knowledge that patients cannot go anywhere else..."

This idea holds water to about the same extent as GW Bush's accusations of Iraq being an immediate threat to the greatest military power the world has ever known. To start with, regardless of neocon attempts to redefine the language of everything to market terms to enable the marketisation of everything, Doctors are not "providers" and Patients are most emphatically NOT "consumers" - and it is, quite frankly, outrageous to try to subsume every aspect of our lives, including such important things as our health and healthcare, into this market model, whose primary objective thus becomes the "return on investment" of HMOs or some such entity - it is, truly, one of the main reasons the whole neocon movement is becoming so disliked by most people in the world. My father was a Doctor, and I have known many of them in my life, and the great majority of them (and nurses, and other healthcare providers) are dedicated people who do NOT measure their professional success by how much money they make, but by how well they are taking care of their patients. They do NOT callously work fewer hours and create long waiting lists, somehow laughing cynically that they can do so because "there is no competition" - how insulting to them!! - there are long waiting lists, as noted above, because the healthcare system has been progressively starved of the money needed to make it function at a good level for many years now - surely even the neocon "analysts" can see that, with an increasing number of patients from an increasing population, reducing the number of doctors and nurses will inevitably creating longer waiting times?!? What kind of perversity leads them to ignore this most basic fact, and use the waiting lines to further attack the system?!? Likewise hospital administrators and the other people in the healthcare bureaucracy - how outrageous to assert that they are carelessly wasting money and creating long waiting lists only because their patients have nowhere else to go!!! - again, the huge funding cutbacks have caused this serious problem, and administrators, as well as doctors and nurses, are increasingly dealing with stress and burnout problems - because they DO care about their patients, and are very troubled that they cannot provide the care they want to - because of lack of funding!!

Well. I shall close here - I think the points have been adequately made. But I would urge you, the Editors, to be a little more careful in how you allow your writers to identify themselves, if you have any concern for your own reputation as a journal which attempts to present things accurately. Graham and Esmail are quite welcome to their opinions - but as "policy analysts", they are little more than quacks, and it both surprises and disappoints me that you would allow them to present themselves otherwise in your paper.

In my opinion - etcetc (an occasionally rude but in this case simply polite and correct RM)

--------------------------

--- Well, I guess you can see why they would never print that - when it comes to lies and/or dissembling rhetoric from Fraser Institute propagandists or the Truth from a Canadian patriot, there is little question in the neocon media about who will get printed. I may be wrong, but I do not recall anyone ever pointing out the absurdity of the neocon position on Canadian health care with this point - that they have been demanding for years that governments reduce expenses - but here, it seems, instituting a health care system such as in the great god US that costs almost half again as much as the Canadian version is not only good, but by fuck we GOTTA have it! - I guess it's ok when all of that extra money is essentially going to be going from people who don't have much of it to people who already have lots - the whole point of the neocon out-of-control trainride we've been subjected to for the last 30 years. Very interesting that the Canadian press never picks up on stuff like this - the whole neocon "philosophy" is riddled with similar contradictions that should blow it out of the water - do, really, for many of us, and would for a lot more if people would just wake up and think about it. Unfuckingfortunately, there seems little danger of that, if the last few elections are anything to go by. It completely fazzles me why people still believe anything that the newspapers or politicians tell them. But I may have commented on that before.

I wonder what would happen if I told them to sign me "RM is a Policy Analyst with RM Institute" or something - HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - pretty stupid question actually - as a Canadian court would point out, we don't even have to deal with that hypothetical shit, since we're not EVER publishing the fucking letter anyway. OUT!!! (those words might not be in the official transcript, but they are by fuck in the tone of voice and sneers on the little judgey faces - I have been to more fucking courts than I want to think about, and it's all there. But I haven't got around to that section on the site yet, so let's not get off on it right now.)

(It occurs to me to wonder - if anyone out there liked that letter, and thought that just maybe it ought to have been published - you might drop a short note to the Editor of the Glob (no misprint) saying something like "Dear Editor, It has come to my attention that a certain person wrote the following letter to the paper in response to the Fraser Institute attack on Canadian medicare and doctors. You did not publish this letter - nor have I seen any other rebuttals of the Fraser Institute piece. Can I conclude from this that the position of your paper is a) you agree with the Frasers that Canadian healthcare ought to be privatised and moved to an American type system, and b) you do not feel any need to carry any opinion pieces in your paper that disagree (rather eloquently, I might add - you're certainly denying your readers some good stuff) with the agenda you are promoting? Yours...." - well - that kind of thing. I bet they don't answer - like corporations, they are not accountable, and do not accept people questioning their actions. (The Toronto Star, best paper we've got (although not quite perfect) does have an Ombud, and he does answer letters. Although not necessarily satisfactorily.)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAa - time for another brewski, as good Canucks say between periods (or commercials, whichever comes first...)

More crap from the daily papers (never stops) - what about this - Bankers pay for Liberal soiree Caucus retreat event [[RM archive copy]] - this is fairly common shit, banks or business groups paying for politicians to have parties - so common that few of them get written up in the media. A conflict of interest? - well - not according to the fucking "Ethics Counsellor" (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - ahh sorry just couldn't hold it in....) of the Canadian government - or, wait, actually he is really the PM's "personal" sort of "ethics counsellor" (see above comments on expectations of "public" servants", whose main job seems to be to tell the Canadian "media" how any of the rather obviously corrupt shit going on the government is actually just hunky-fucking-dory - and the Canadian media, of course, dutifully pass such shit on to the Canadian people, who ingest these turds disguised as the finest delicacies up unquestioningly then go back to whatever they were doing, apparently (if their later voting habits are any indication) secure in the belief that the country is indeed in good hands. A quote, actually, from the esteemed "ethics" counsellor - "Asked about the ethics of a governing party accepting a private party from bankers, Mr. Wilson laughed and said: "I really don't have a comment on it." - I just loved the "laughed" part - what disdain these people have for the people of this country - I'm sure there's a fuck of a lot of it going on between the guys who run things in whatever dark grottos they hang out after hours about the endless amount of horseshit the Canadian public are willing to eat endlessly day after day after year after fucking year. This bankers' party caught my eye especially because there were several stories this week about banks around the same time - every single one of them once again reporting record profits for the quarter just passed. Business as usual, I guess, the elite running the government for their benefit while the media circus devotes endless column inches to that breathtakingly overwhelmingly important issue of the day of just how much the fucking state should be involved in who sleeps with who and the public don't seem to give a sweet fuck about anything at all.

As always - as long as the citizens allow themselves to be led around by the nose like this (I don't know how they can stand the smell - I guess the tv must provide some pretty good odour reducer along with all of its other great services in the name of fascism and propaganda), it ain't gonna get better (but RM - you're overlooking the question - who besides you and a few other malcontents WANTS it to get better?!?!?!? - ahhhhhhh - perhaps that is the question of the day - perhaps more later....))

More on our government's ongoing war on those few who DO want things to get better (a sign of the actual weakness of their position, and that they fucking well are aware of it, is the extent to which they feel they can tolerate dissent - none whatsofucking ever!! - they are indeed riding a fragile monster, and if too much truth started getting out, even the sheeps might get a little pissed and start asking questions - questions that really cannot be answered, which is why they won't print letters asking them.... - we do have a great advantage in numbers, if we could ever mobilised) - from the Council of Canadians - Maude Barlow on the Mexican authorities “watch list” for WTO Meeting [[RM archive copy]] - telling how Maude Barlow has been placed on the "Keep a close watch on this dangerous person" list for the upcoming world trade talks in Mexico. Now your first instinct might be defence of our great wonderful democratic government - THEY (Canadians) aren't doing this after all - it's that sort-of 3rd world place we don't know much about called Mexico, and what do you expect? - but don't forget the police pepper-spraying demonstrators in Vancouver a couple of years ago so the feelings of one of the world's most brutal dictators (Suharto of Indonesia if you've forgotten - the media appears to have) wouldn't be hurt was the supposedly world class Canadian RCMP - our great PM thought it was all rather amusing ("Me? haha - I use pepper on my steak") to be pepper-spraying Canadian protesters, or the Toronto, Quebec, Montreal stuff. But more to the point - if such surveillance of innocent citizens exercising their democratic right offended any truly democratic government the very least they would do is lodge a formal sort of protest - and if they actually meant any of it they would just decline to go - such crap should be so offensive to a democratic government it would simply not tolerate it. But really, we know from many brutal experiences that such behaviour is far from being intolerable to the Canadian government - it practices such behaviour against the same people. They don't want any crazy notions of "democracy" or citizen voices intruding while they are plotting their latest attack on the people of the world.

Also on this list of terrorists are such names as Naomi Klein, Ralph Nader, Walden Bello and Vandana Shiva - all great and eloquent writers (really - not a bomb among them all, nor have any of them ever written about anything more radical than democratic control of a country by its citizens - of course, that's a pretty terrifying idea to the NWO people, I'll give you that, which is why they take such extreme measures to beat them down violently every time they are encountered - tends to discourage such behaviour in less stalwart folks - lot fucking easier and safer to sit in front of the tv and not argue with the cops....) in the fight to oppose the takeover of the world by a small wealthy elite. Pretty telling about what these people (the 'free traders", the real terrorists, out to destroy everyone's freedom) are really up to - and equally telling that most people in our not-quite-democratic country see nothing strange in this, nothing outrageous - like the crowd around the kid who was pointing at the funny man with no clothes, all they can think of is what they have been told on the tv - and since that doesn't square with what the kid is saying, or what their eyes are actually seeing, they shut it out and open their mouths to let the lies froth out, lies learned from endless repetitions on the tv. Quite frankly, were there any truth left in official circles, most of those behind the locked doors in the fancy ballrooms negotiating this process would be charged with terrorism. But that will come about at about the same time as a lot of people in the so-called Democracy of Canada wake up and start understanding what is going on. Which doesn't look all that hopeful any more.

There are still a few good people writing in the Canadian media, of course, with their feet somewhere close to the ground - here, for instance - Slender threads tie 19 to terror [[RM archive copy]] - Thomas Walkom, one of the better columnists in the country (which is why he is on the Star - couldn't get a job writing stuff like this on any other paper!), reacts as a "real" journalist ought to have reacted to the roundup of 19 young men last week, thrown in jail because the cops declared that they were acting suspiciously and had 'terrorist" ties. This is getting pretty bad, and anyone who values whatever they understand as freedom really should be in the streets fighting for our survival - these guys were rounded up on the very flimsiest of pretences - it's quite obvious why they will be tried in secret because even a fixed Canadian court would have trouble justifying convicting them of anything more than illegal entry to the country or something like that - a bit of a problem, to be sure, but understandable - most people from "3rd-world" countries regard Canada as some kind of Oz, where everyone is rich and free and happy, and are ready to try and come here by any means possible to not only share our bounty, such as it is, but to get away from brutal conditions in their own countries. Anyway, I don't want to get into immigration policy here, another thing altogether, but this business of the police and government, since 911, undertaking all sorts of activities that would have formerly been pretty much unthinkable, and justifying them by going all serious and saying "Links to TERRORISM!!" - and, of course, after a couple of years of solid, endless propaganda about evil terrorists wanting to destroy everything we are and stand for - motherhood, apple pie, freedom, democracy, etc - well, of course, NOBODY is going to say anything if our wonderful good guy cops are undertaking that great noble activity of the era, "FIGHTING TERRORISM".

The problem is that the whole thing is just an open-ended opportunity for governmental abuse, for the elites who are running the government to start implementing the more Draconian measures they are going to need to keep us under control as they undertake the serious business of returning the country (countries) to the path of world feudalism and meet ever growing resistance as their cutbacks start to impact more heavily on the former "middle classes". As far as "terrorism" itself is concerned, it is a hugely overblown thing, used by the elite solely for the purpose stated above - we ought to recall that there has NEVER been ANY investigation of what happened on 911 - which to many of us is the most suspicious thing of all, and one tends to suspect that any "terrorism" that would be uncovered would lead to places a lot closer to Washington than the countries they are running around the world bombing. (Really, to anyone with a fairly decent grip on what has been happening in the world the last 50 years (longer - go back as far as you want, in some ways) the US government is THE premier terrorist organization in the world. Just think about that for awhile - check out some of the places where US atrocities around the world are given (here's a good place to start - American State Terrorism - Valuable Websites - lots of other links from there). Think about it. You really have to get a grip on the lies under which you are living, before we can change anything for the better - putting bandaids on little problems is not going to help - it is actually kind of hurting, because you are wasting energy on hopeless things that you ought to be spending hacking out the rotten roots.

The morass of lies gets ever thicker from Washington, and more unbelievable - Monty Python could NOT have imagined this shit - any decent fucking media would be laughing these people out of the White House and into the nearest loony bin by now, if they could get past the people marching in the streets demanding the criminal indictment of the whole bunch (fuck somebody must have snuck some mushroom into something I ate - there are apparently not enough Americans in the whole country with the requisite combination of intelligence and guts left to do anything like that - Fantasies and Lies 'R' US I guess is the new motto of the country) - anyway, it's here (in the Toronto fucking Star of all places - but I have said before they are the best we got, but a long way from what we need) Was US duped by Saddam if you want a look - the Americans are now saying that that gosh darn Saddam sent sneaky spies over to America, and these sneaky people made the American intelligence (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) believe that Saddam had these terrible weapons that he didn't really have - they were really, really good spies, obviously, since they fooled those amazingly smart people at the CIA and other government spy places (that darn Saddam, really, what an evil genius monster!! - he knew he was telling lies to the spies, but the spies didn't know, so they thought it was true so they passed the lie detector tests!!!) - so those really, really smart and just so full of integrity and "we would NEVER lie!! promise!!" 'Merican spy people then made the report to the REALLY GOOD PRES'DENT that they REALLY really believed about Saddam having all those terrible weapons and being all ready to use them, and of course the great president, full of great integrity, naturally believed all his really smart spy people, and sent his country to a war of defence, because they all believed really really in their hearts that that gosh darned evil person Saddam was right on the very verge of bombing the US with mushroom cloud bombs and doing all those evil things to god-fearing, wonderful Americans just because, like all terraists, that evil man and all them other people just HATE our freedoms.

Fuck it is to puke - but that, in essence, is the new story the US government is floating to explain all the lies it told about its invasion of Iraq that are currently becoming seriously unravelled (oh what a tangled web....) - they've got some of the Madison ave types to doctor it up with fancy words for the "adult comic book" audience (adult in body, but obviously in terms of intellectual development stuck somewhere around the age of 10, where tales of "evil empires" and strange beasts who have no purpose in life but to destroy "US" can still scare the reader - most 'real' adults leave this kind of fantasy behind sometime during their early teens - apparently most of America (and, much more sadly and unbelievably) large parts of Canada and other western countries, have yet to grow beyond this stage - explains the popularity of the American television industry and Hollywood, I guess... and bears heavily on why we "sane" types are having such a problem getting our message out - children still reading comic books have no interest in real world politics...), but in essence, that is the childish lie they are presenting to the public now. Really - go check the story - rumours have been floating around, but this is now official, in the Star, the LA Times, many places.

As above, on and on and on we go - as long as the people sit back and accept this shit - why should the governments stop feeding it to them? No consequences, no reason to stop. For those of us who see clearly what is happening, despair is never far away, and it is, I fear, our anger that leads us to so frequently refer to the majority of people who accept these fabulous fairy tales with nary a quiver of protest as the sheeps and the herd beasts and the sheeple and other less than complimentary terms.

That does cause me some consternation at times. And I want to say something about it.

Later.

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." —Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See