Well we were going to take a few labour days off ourselves after the last effort, but I just gotta say something about this while it's fresh (fresh horseshit always smells - well - fresher...) - Let's celebrate the high living standards resulting from the fruits of our labour, not union marketing and propaganda [[RM archive copy]] - in one short editorial it lays bare the whole neocon philosophy - which is, as we've noted before, MEMEMEMEME FUCK EVERYONE ELSE!! It's really a kick in the face from those who are taking the country apart and stealing everything they can to those whose parents and themselves put it together, a completely shameless ode to greed - from the heights of Bay St and the darkest holes of the Fraser Institute, the Labour Day message from the rich to the struggling is - YOU HAVE FAR TOO MUCH AND WE WANT IT ALLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Basically, the piece says that Canadians should celebrate what "we" have accomplished - and let's get rid of them damn unions in the process!! This burns on various levels - for the Frasers to include themselves as part of the "we" in terms of Canadian accomplishments is perverse in the extreme - these people have been central in the neocon movement to DESTROY everything that 'we" have accomplished, at least of the variety that is celebrated on holidays like labour day - decent living standards and wages and security for workers, and related things - neocon "accomplishments" are things like managing to take over the government of Canada and turn it to their program which most Canadians do not want, the so-called "Free Trade" and Globalisation things like the WTO which are again destroying the good things Canadians all across the country fought for (Metalclad, anyone?), and as we pointed out the last time, they are working like hell to destroy Medicare as well. How in the name of FUCK these people would DARE to associate themselves with the accomplishments of this country is really beyond the pale. Which part II of their Labour Day "message" is equally reprehensible - destroy the Unions - the unions which were at the center of the fight for all of those things that WE have indeed accomplished - such as medicare, the unemployment insurance system (already mostly taken apart by the Fraser-neocon puppets in parliament), and everything else the Fraser hates from the CBC to a progressive tax system.

And those small-minded, spiteful sons of bitches have the gall to write about the great things in Canada that "WE" accomplished - and how much better off we would be without the unions who were central to accomplishing it.

It is not too far of a stretch to say that this compares with the idea of Hitler throwing himself on the mercy of the court at Nuremburg, trying to tell everyone how much he had helped the Jews!!! Seriously - the lie wouldn't be any bolder or more completely contrary to the truth than the Frasers claiming some credit in the greatness of this country for its people.

Hard to imagine something more sickening - and published in the Star of all places, on Labour Day (they do have some good columnists there, but their Editorial is not above suspicion as to which side they would choose should push come to shove, as the saying goes - they seem more like the "left" that would be permitted by the neocon nazis - something to point at and say "Sure! We allow all opinions!" - but it ain't quite, as they say, kosher....) - which is, in case anyone forgets, basically a holiday to have a small celebration about the small gains that the workers of the western world have made against the elite over the last century and more.

(( I looked it up just out of curiosity - Labour Day, honouring organised labour, is a legal holiday observed throughout Canada on the first Monday in September. The contribution of organised labour to Canadian society has been recognised since 1872, when parades and rallies were held in Ottawa and Toronto. The earliest American labour parades were not held until 1882 and in Europe Labour Day has been celebrated since 1889 on May 1, thereby merging traditional May Day festivities with labour celebrations. This spring date was briefly observed in Canada, but the North American need for a long weekend at the end of summer was recognised by Parliament in 1894. (from The Canadian Encyclopedia))

It's hard to imagine an article more filled with Fraser spite and Fraser shite - the usual lies, of course - the Frasers and Pispoters don't even have breakfast until they've told a few lies, I'm sure -

- and the usual glowing tributes to that Capitalist wonderland to the south of us - again, tributes that owe more to creative thinking and lies than to any connection with the truth - just for instance, they tell us that such things as productivity and investment are better down south - now this is something I've been riled about for awhile - everybody pretends this "productivity" is some great thing, but what does it mean exactly???? - well, nothing more nor less than that the owners of the business or factory (that, indeed, would be yer capitalists) are getting more and more money for the products the workers are producing, whether it's software or shoes, and the workers are doing more work for less money. Think about it - true or false? and good for who? Right. Likewise investment - that means mainly that for every buck LESS the worker gets, the person who produces the actual good or product that gets sold, the non-working "investor" gets a buck MORE. Good for who? You got it. Now just why in the fuck we as a country should be celebrating the further advancement of the owners and the further falling behind of the workers escapes me. But it's quite understandable that the Frasers think it's great. And it's very, very, very telling that they think ALL of us should be happy to celebrate that sort of thing, and cheer on our own heavier chains and decreasing services. Fraser shite.

Believe it, the Elite has not forgotten the gains made over the last 150 years (against GREAT opposition by the Fraser people of the various times) - and is more anxious than ever to reverse all of those gains, and take workers in general back to the glory days (for the capitalist elite) of the Industrial Revolution in England, of 16-hour days, child labour, factory indenture, poorhouses, getting the children into the factory as soon as they could walk, crippled and tossed aside by the time they were ten - all that really great stuff (for capitalists and investors) - part of their strategy in the "modern" world, of course, is to simply get rid of workers in the west, and open factories in poor, developing countries (after opening them to exploitation by "loaning" them "development" money (i.e. 5,000 pairs of shoes for Ferdinand's wife was a pretty good development for her, I guess) - and then revealing the iron boot beneath the velvet sock (did I get a metaphor mixed up there? doesn't matter! - message the same) of DEBT SERVICE!!! _ YOU ARE IN THRALL TO US FOR_FUCKING-EVER! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! - and then in come the western factories, the buck-a-day jobs, the maquiladoras - and the closed factories in the west, with desperate workers, opening the way for WalMart-style McJobs and the highly vaunted the last few years (was it that great capitalist servant Frank McKenna so beloved of the capitalist (read Irving) press in that province) who opened the door to these in NB?) call centres - more minimum wage "jobs" in the name of capitalist advertising.

The other thing on the waiting list relates quite directly to this - I've lost most of the stories I had waiting thanks to a sudden MS decision that some program I was running was doing something REALLY BAD (illegal was their word, although I don't recall anybody renaming the RCMP the Royal Canadian Microsoft Police, although I do miss anything that comes out on Microsoft-NBC news - fuck what a sad world) - anyway - the stories all involved how the Ontario PCs are spending wads and wads of money on themselves and election promises - these the same people who have spent years running around telling sick people that hospitals had to be closed and nurses fired because the province was short of money, or that schools had to be closed and university tuition jacked up (same reason), them goddam welfare bums had to be cut back to the barest of bones (and cut right the fuck off if they might have "cheated" to try and be able to afford to go to school or something - and ALL the "savings" and then a few more million, rather than even be put into the provincial coffers, then passed on to some "consultant" who couldn't even keep their fucking computers sorted out), and on and on and on - but when it comes to a hundred thousand for expensive meals and hotels (the minister in question lived more than 50k from Toronto, obviously too far for an important person to be expected to drive, although hundreds of thousands of workers are expected to do that sort of trip daily) over a year or so, no problem (fuck somebody they DARE to fucking call an "integrity commissioner" (and I am NOT going to dignify that with capitals - see comments last time about what we USED to expect from "public officials" - how Orwellian to call somebody who is there to approve the most outrageous expense claims and what not an "integrity commissioner" - as a writer, this complete perversion of the language offends me to no end - but it is one of the main enablers of the current neocon puppeteers, and the whole dumbing down movement, and it will persist until people wake the fuck up and stop buying it) said - "HEY!! No prob!!" - and then Mike Harris the former (40%) Premier was found expensing the government for 45,000 for some trips back home on some committee - and they're running around handing out something like 2.5 Billion in pre-election goodies (fuck if this government gets elected in Ontario again, I will probably quit doing this shit - if the people are bound and determined to welcome feudalism with open arms, after all these neocrooks have done the last 10 years, I won't be returning, and I'll spend my time looking for a more progressive country - there are a few left in the world, I think...)

Anyways - it's all part of the same program - the Frasers saying that ANYTHING above the merest subsistence is all that the workers who produce all the wealth should have, while the Ontario PCs demonstrating that the Elite, on the other hand, or those who do the dirty work of enabling them, can pretty much wander around with an open chequebook.

And that's what we're heading for, if y'all don't do something to stop it.

(Just in passing - as part of the money stories this week, it was mentioned in passing that Mike Harris (not the pretty good columnist, the puppet premier) has some kind of position with the Frasers - name on the board, pick up a check every month - one of many, as his reward for turning Ontario over to the neocons - never enough for these people though, never enough, as the story pointed out...)

Oh well - what the hell, as they say - another letter - just can't help myself. This time to the Pispot, about ANOTHER fucking article on how we just HAVE to get rid of that damned "socialised" medicine and become more like them wonderful Americans and their wonderful health care - I haven't got time to get into a long intro - the original article is here - Health care's hidden costs [[RM archive copy]] and following is the letter:

Editor,
I wonder if you might allow me just a few lines to reply to "Health care's hidden costs", by one Pierre Lemieux Financial Post Thursday, August 28, 2003.

I think your writer is making a rather one-sided and misleading case, when suggesting that "...the only efficient solution to the problems of the Canadian system would be to legalise private health insurance and let private institutions compete with the state system..." There are, indeed, other solutions to the problems the health care system currently faces (has this man not seen the Romanov Report? If so, how can he make this claim? And if not, how can he claim to know enough about the problem to comment on it???? - My my, another conundrum from the pages of the Post!!)

Right from the first, he seems intent on misleading, when he says that "...Socialist systems are especially efficient at hiding costs..." - he goes on to talk about how "socialist" systems encourage people to work hard for mere subsistence wages, and how people spend much time in queues, sacrificing valued leisure time or income... What is not clear is how (or why, for that matter) he relates this unreferenced or explained "observation" about "socialism" to the Canadian health care system - the last time I looked, Canada was a democracy, and a pretty capitalistic-oriented one at that - I rather doubt that any actual "socialist" would be running around the world bragging about the great "socialist" republic of Canada, although I could be wrong there, as I don't know many socialists. I do understand that the right-wingers of the National Post and their compatriots (sorry - is that a socialist word and thus an insult to a Post writer? - I don't mean to be unintentionally insulting here) refer to Canada as some kind of "socialist" haven, or backwater, compared to the great capitalist MIC utopia to the south of us, but I have always assumed that to be more or less rhetorical in nature, and not to be taken that seriously. Perhaps I was wrong - never, as they say, underestimate the shallowness and stupidity of greed and those who promote it as a "philosophy".

In any event, might we dare to point out a couple of things that would seem to contradict pretty much everything your Mr. Lemieux says - such as that, all comparisons to totalitarian Russia of the last century aside, Canadians by and large do not work for "subsistence" wages (although as a Labour Day report by the Fraser Institute indicates, that is something we should be working to overcome - the less wages paid to workers, obviously, the more profit for the investors - the people who really count), and whatever time they do spend in lineups waiting for health care, first, it is not the problem of sacrificing leisure time that most of them are concerned about, but about getting treated before they or the child they have brought to the emergency room dies; and secondly, those lengthy lineups are not an integral part of the system, as your writer implies, but are the result of over a decade of heavy cutbacks on healthcare spending at both the federal and provincial level - and the people of the country are somewhat unhappy about it, as the very positive response to the Romanov report last year indicated.

"Socialist systems are oblivious to anguish..." your writer carries on - well, I cannot say for sure one way or the other about 'socialist" systems, but I do know that nobody involved in the Canadian health care system shares this "oblivion to anguish", and it is, really, quite insulting to say so - pretty well everyone connected with the healthcare system that I (or any "normal" sort of person I have talked to) know is very, very concerned about providing good health care to their patients, and all are most unhappy at the funding cutbacks of the last few years that have contributed to the great stress on the system that causes some patients to receive delayed treatment (a small challenge, if I might, to your writer - go down to your nearest hospital, and make a joking comment to one of the Doctors or nurses in the ER about mistreating all the patients because they are "oblivious" to how they feel - no??? didn't think so). If you want to talk about anguish, however, it would be quite appropriate to examine the great 'free-market" healthcare "system' to the south of us - where they do indeed have excellent health care - for those who can afford it - BUT - why doesn't your writer examine the true (and systemic) anguish of some of the 40 million or so Americans who have no health insurance at all (because private premiums are astronomical in cost, FAR above the ability of minimum-wage workers to afford - and minimum-wage workers (and lately out-of-work ones) are what that country specialises in, and is trying to give to the rest of the world - as many of your writers well know and support) - what about the anguish of the poor parents who are forced to watch their children suffer or die from curable diseases or problems, but have no money for treatment? What about the hundreds of thousands of other Americans each year who are forced into bankruptcy and poverty because of unexpected health costs which their insurance did not cover, if they had any in the first place? Do you suppose there was any "anguish" on their part???? Really, even now in the degraded state to which it has come over the last ten years of cutbacks, at least all Canadians know they will at least get health care, and pretty good quality health care from caring professionals even if the system is stressed a bit, and even if they have to wait a bit for it - which is a great deal more than can be said for a whole lot of people in the "look-out-for-yourself" US "system".

Your writer tries to explain the added administrative costs in the US by saying that Americans are paying for good service - I wonder how it is he managed to forget that a great part of the added cost in the American system is that profits for the private health-care companies have to be accounted for - and, as we know in this era, modern "investors" are not content with any kind of modest profits as businessmen and investors used to be, but demand a minimum ROI in the 20% range these days - and the stories are legion, as your writer must well know, of doctors not being allowed to prescribe necessary treatments, of people being rejected for coverage, of inadequate treatment and so on, because the HMOs have dictated that doctors are not allowed to do anything more than the most basic treatments in many cases, to ensure the "investors" receive an 'adequate" ROI.

Well, your writer carries on with a number of other statements equally open to challenge as the ones above - but let us look quickly at just one more, which more or less encapsulates the never-never land of neocon capitalist theory completely divorced from the reality under which we all live, both here and to the south (and let us be reminded that most Americans, as poll after poll shows, want to move to a Canadian style healthcare system, but the politics of Big Business and profit has so far prevented it; and also that the US is the ONLY western "democracy" that does not yet have a public health care system covering all of its citizens - surely these people should be advocating that the US joins the civilised world in looking after all of its people, rather than advocating Canada regress to a less civil one!) - at the end, your writer avers "Even in the Brave New World of the public health advocates, Americans still get more (and better) health care after paying their administrative costs. The consumers get more of what they want, which is the ultimate criterion for any economic system..." - well, as pointed out before, although those Americans who are wealthy enough to afford it do indeed get good health care, not "all" Americans are getting what they want at all, and it is most dissembling (to be polite) of your writer to pretend this is somehow the case - at least 40 million of them have no health care insurance at all, and a great deal more (you can get different figures, from another 40 million and up) are substantially underinsured, to the point where any major health care crisis is going to cause them major financial hardship.

One might venture to say (many of us do, actually) that a system that provides good health care of ALL of its citizens, at a cost substantially below the privatised system in the US that leaves 20-40% of its citizens either with no healthcare coverage at all, or substantially underinsured, is very much better for ALL of the people, overall - and demonstrably so, to anyone who cares to examine ALL of the facts, not just a few selected statistics or opinions.

(((a slightly rude person this time - I mean, why the fuck bother being ever-so polite when you KNOW they aren't going to publish it???? - leading of course, to why bother to write at all - and I don't really have a really good answer for that - I just try to get people to wake up.....)

Check out - September 11th And The Bush Administration - Compelling Evidence for Complicity [[RM archive copy]] - a very well put together summary of why the "official version" of what happened that day is basically about as believable as "the dog ate my homework" or "Who put the presents under the tree - tell me Mommy!" - "Why, Santa did, of course, dear!". Just unbelievable to me (and a growing number of others) how these people can keep getting away with such blatant lies, in the pursuit of such an obvious criminal agenda. And another turned up this week - this is what a REAL reporter would do, if any of the major media had any - a very detailed and sourced list of questions that need to be answered - but aren't being, for the obvious reason that the answers will lead right to the highest levels of the US government. Unavoidable. Unless the questions can continue to be avoided. And, with the complicity of the media, they are managing to do that - if an honest government was ever instituted in America, they'd have to let all of the drug-offense-related prisoners go to accommodate the great influx of crooked politicians and businesspeople (same in Canada, of course). And maybe even Tricky Dick's - "I am not a crook!" bones - you were the fuck so, you bastard, and we're comin after ya! It's here - The Truth About September 11 by Gerard Holmgren, 2003-08-30 [[RM archive copy]]

Ohyea - there should be a new icon on the top left there somewhere - a new site I just found called Canada's Best Blogs - looks like a lot of good links - and we need more stuff by and about and for Canada - I will fight til the end to stop us joining that psychotic monster to the south of us, and I think a lot of other people feel the same - and we have to fight here, on the net, because we have been totally betrayed by almost everyone who is supposed to be leading us.

And another really good Canadian writer I just came across recently named Robin Mathews - check out his latest at Paul Kellogg's Cornflakes; or "After Left Nationalism:The Future of Canadian Political Economy" [[RM archive copy]]- the rest of the Vive Canada site is always worth a look around too - I've mentioned them before, working, as we are here, to get people to wake the FUCK UP and do something to save this country - they are a little more genteel about it all, but they're doing some good stuff and we're in the same boat (I think - as usual I am either way out back or way out front with a beer and some other blacksheep types - I get in with some odd people at times, but it's interesting at times too. Even if occasionally a little headachy in the morning. Ya do what ya gotta....

Ok - back to the day job fer a couple of days. But remember - watch out for them Fraser people - like the banks and the Pispot, they ain't yer friend.


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