and you're in it pull back the wizard's curtain and throw the chains from your brain |
![]() Green Island Onward Rocinante They're Building a Box and you're in it by Dave Patterson Cartoons Notice
Ch 1: As good as it gets, or ...???
Ch 2: The Money Supply Scam Ch 3: The Work Scam Ch 4: The Democracy Scam Ch 5: How do they do this? Indoctrination Ch 6: Indoctrination II: Get them early.. Ch 7: Lifelong Maintenance - Full Spectrum Propaganda Ch 8: They're Building a Box - Ch 9: Why should I care? Ch 10: What can I do? Appendix 1: The National Debt Scam Appendix 2: The Corporate Reactionary Revolution of the 70s Appendix 3: Behind the Mask - What Capitalism Really Is Appendix 4: Some places to start reading Appendix 5: Perverse capitalist lies From Hastings to Green Island a word on the Writer ... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. - Alex Carey The English nation thinks it is free, but is greatly mistaken, for it is so only during the election of members of Parliament; as soon as they are elected, it is enslaved and counts for nothing. The use which it makes of the brief moments of freedom renders the loss of liberty well-deserved. - J.-J. Rousseau, The Social Contract ![]() "You enable an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees..." The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it. - Edward Dowling In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
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Chapter 4: The Democracy Scam Perhaps you have thought by now of something very important in this whole story - if creating our own money and sharing in our own work would be so much better than the way we have been doing things for 'We the People of Canada', then why are we doing things the other way, which makes things so difficult for so many people and could so easily be so much better for most of us? Where is the government? Why is 'OUR' government not helping us make things better? Surely it is obvious, that if 'your' government wanted to do these things, it would be doing them. According to our 'constitution', such as it is, the government has complete authority over the money supply (as it should, of course, in any rational democracy where 'we the people' are the sovereign power of the country, to do as we think best through 'our' government), and therefore could, if it wished, do as the people of People Town have decided to do, and create their/our own money, rather than letting private banks create it and then borrow it from them, creating wonderful profits for the banks but not-so-wonderful but very huge debts for us. (Actually, of course, until the mid-1970s, the Canadian government, through the Bank of Canada, did create much of the Canadian money supply, in order to deal with revenue shortfalls as needed or to supply money for the growth of the country through infrastructure building and implementing 'social programs' the people wanted such as Old Age Pensions and Medicare, which was one of the reasons for the great growth and progress in Canada for 'we the people' following WWII - the banks still had their golden goose and created a great deal of money as well, but it was a smaller goose, and they were much more controlled in how much they could create. You can read a bit of a longer explanation of this, as part of a short history of how all of this pseudo-democracy stuff came about, in an essay called The Corporate Reactionary Revolution of the 70s in Appendix 2). The government is very capable of doing the things I have talked about - any government certainly shows no lack of ability to get things done it wants to do, such as the 'free' trade agreements etc of the last couple of decades, or sending troops to Afghanistan, or cutting corporate taxes, or slashing social programs or passing seatbelt laws and laws to put people in jail for smoking pot and many things - what the government really wants to do, it does. Whether most Canadians approve or not (most Canadians did not approve of any of that short list of things the Canadian gov did, nor of many, many others (when was the last time you had a say about whether or not you approved of their latest gold-plated pension plan or salary increase?)). So we can only conclude that the government is not making the better life for Canadians as far as money and work are concerned because it does not want to follow the policies suggested in the first couple of chapters (they will protest, of course, if questioned, that the ideas presented in this book are nonsense, and they are already doing the Very Best Possible Things for all Canadians that All Experts Agree On!!, such as allowing private banks to create our money and then borrowing it from them, and they will say that such policies are just oh so complicated that poor simple average Canadians simply can't understand them but they really, really are doing the best things possible so we should just trust them and go back to our televisions and quit complaining and etc and etc - it is up to you, of course, to judge on whether you believe their claims or the things I am saying herein - if you believe you have a right to a voice in the way things are done here whether you are an 'expert' or not, or should accept their idea that you aren't smart enough to have an opinion in our modern 'democracy' so should just accept their decisions without protest....). It would seem, however, to be quite evident that 'our' government wants the country the way it is, with private banks creating most of the money supply for their great personal profit, and large businesses controlled by a handful of wealthy 'investors' controlling the labor of Canadians for, again, huge private profit. You may be sure that our leading politicians share in this profit, which is motive enough for betraying us all the way they have (check the incomes and corporate connections of any of the Prime Ministers or leading cabinet ministers of the last 30 years, and ask yourself just who such connections would indicate they are working for, really). Actually, if you look around a bit, you will find that many of our leading politicians over the years have actually been drawn from the capitalist class, doing their few years of duty for their class, pretending to be 'servants' of we the people, whilst actually managing their little country-farm called Canada to max their profits. But, you may be thinking, we are a 'democracy' in Canada, which means that 'we the people' elect our government, and that government is responsible to all of us through our MPs, so everything that happens is really under our control, somehow - that's what 'democracy' is, after all. Right? Well - Like the first two things in this book, the Canadian money supply and the work conditions that our society forces on its citizens, you need to take a big step here, a step away from things you have 'known' all of your life that you now know were not actually true, such as the integrity of the Canadian government about such extremely important things as the Canadian money supply. You need to start thinking this - - although I have been told all of my life that Canada is a great democracy - maybe that too is not true. Maybe - Maybe - Canada is only a kind of 'pretend' democracy. A system that they tell us is a democracy, and looks like a democracy - but - like who controls our money supply - is like a big illusion by a magician on the tv and is not really what it seems to be. Maybe the people who are stealing so much of your work from you and controlling and stealing even more from you through their control of the money supply in Canada - the banks and private investors - are actually running the government of Canada as well as the banks and large businesses. And if they were, you can bet it wouldn't be for your benefit but for theirs - which would pretty much explain a lot of things. It makes sense that the major economic policies of a government would be made to provide maximum benefit to the people who control that government - intelligent, rational people do not act against their own best interests. And the government tells us, of course, that everything they want to do is always for 'our' good, and yet for us they close hospitals and cut back services, while 'our' economy seems to provide ever greater benefit to banks and investors at the equally great expense of the average Canadian citizen, such as the money supply stuff - and you at least have to ask why these things are happening, who is the government really working for? Who is really benefitting from the policies of the Canadian government - and if it isn't really 'we the people', then who is it, and why aren't the people of Canada at the top of the list, considering it is 'our' government? Go off to the side for a minute. Think of a farm. The farmer might look after all of his animals pretty well, give them a good barn and lots of food, and they're all pretty happy animals doing the farmer's work. But being happy does not make the farm a democracy, and while the cows get a nice bale of hay at the end of the day, the farmer gets the much larger benefit from all the milk the cow provides. Multiplied, of course, by a legion of cows and chickens and pigs and the rest of it. A few bales of hay and slops at one end, big cheques at the other. Maybe the cows would be less happy if they knew the whole story. If they cared about more than a bale of hay at the end of the day. And maybe Canada is the same - the people who run the country these days treat Canadians pretty well - but just because you are treated pretty well (compared to the way governments treat people in Africa, say, or China) does not mean you are really a 'democracy'. Democracy means a lot more. Let's think about 'democracy' things a bit from a different perspective than you are given in your schools and our Canadian media, and maybe you will see, as with money and work, that the Canadian 'democracy' is not really quite what they are telling you it is. Quite a bit not, actually. Canadians are taught in school, and reminded constantly in their media, and seem to generally believe, that they live in a 'democracy', that is to say, (1) they elect their government through regular and fair elections, (2) that government is 'responsible' to the Canadian people and to them alone for the way the country is run, and (3) therefore the Canadian people, as a whole, control their country, and the things the government does are therefore under our control, more or less. Things may not be perfect, and there may be different opinions between various groups of Canadians concerning any particular policy, but in the end, the majority rules, as in any modern democracy, and what more could you possibly ask for, as this is the best of all possible systems, as we all know. And if there are problems, or things are not as well as some people think they should be - well, it's 'our' responsibility, since 'we' are in control through 'our' 'representatives', and all we can do is maybe try to collectively elect a new government with better ideas the next time. Actually, although the above statement does indeed reflect the theory of government in Canada as taught in school and promoted through the media and government advertising/propaganda as a central pillar of Canadian society, the reality is somewhat different - as two of the three points are completely false in practice, and the third leaves out considerable important information so that, while not actually false on the surface, it conveys a meaning that is again completely false in practice. In brief: 1) although Canadians do have regular and more or less fairly administrated elections, the pool of people they choose from is compromised and restricted in various ways and the different candidates not presented equally in the media, rendering the actual decision of the voters something considerably less than either well-informed or 'fair and free'; 2) The selection of the 'representatives' is pretty much irrelevant, however, being mostly little more than a big 'look here not there!!!' magical trick, as following the election, the people the voters elect are not under their control, but under the control of 'the party', which in turn is, in all important ways, subject to the wishes of the wealthy elite in Canada who fund the party leaders than to the people who 'elect' the low-level 'representatives', and who in return set the policies of the Canadian government for the benefit of that elite, policies which are in all important matters contrary to the best interests or wishes of most Canadians; and 3) thus Canada is not actually a 'real' democracy, run by the people, but more correctly something more like a 'managed' democracy, with the managers presenting the illusion (or lie, actually) of 'we the people' democracy whilst actually controlling the country from behind the scenes for their own best interests, rather than the interests of the people of Canada. I won't even go into election details - but add this to your information, that the last 'majority' government Canadians 'elected' in 2,000, Chretien's Liberals, had the support of a little over 5 million Canadians. Canada had, in 2,000, a population of over 30 million people. Experts and Media Analysts and anyone else who wants you to believe in the Canadian 'democracy' scam will be happy to tell you how that election gave the Chretien Libs a 'great majority and mandate!!!' from the people of Canada. I would just ask you if you would want to face the job of explaining to your kids how 5 million voters represent a solid majority of a country with 30 million people (it doesn't get much better if you start protesting that only 20 million are 'eligible' voters...). Let's look at these things a bit deeper. Nobody of course in the government or media or boardrooms of the bankers or public school civics books admits any of this, or ever would, but people guilty of serious crimes rarely walk around shouting their guilt from the hilltops, and it still becomes pretty obvious sometimes that what certain people are saying is something less, often considerably less, than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and so it is with the government and media and the education system etc telling you that you live in a 'democracy'. The 'prima facie' case ( that is, the 'on the face of it' case, what you can just see with your own eyes without needing three legal degrees to figure something out or getting into advanced arguments or evidence) for the idea that Canada is not really a 'democracy' is pretty much unassailable, if one agrees that the single central defining idea of 'democracy' is that 'the majority rules'. Consider a simple example: 60-70% of Canadians have consistently indicated in polls for decades that marijuana should not be illegal, yet government after government (for whom, as noted above, only a small percent of Canadians, closer to 20% than 50%, have actually voted for, 'majority' or otherwise) refuses to remove the often serious criminal punishments for growing or smoking it (punishments which were never implemented through any sort of 'democratic' demand in the first place, one might note - do you recall having any sort of election ever where one party said they wanted to hammer those damned dope smokers and another party wanted to leave them alone, and the hammerers won? Of course not - there never was such an election, and never will be, as the people who run the country know very well how Canadians feel about pot smoking, and keeping pot growing and smoking illegal is an important part of the rulers' game - justifies lots of cops and courts and related laws, as well as criminalizing an activity which fosters peace and togetherness in ordinary people. The worldwide drug trade is worth hundreds of billions of dollars each year to organized crime - if drug use was treated either as an acceptable social activity or a medical condition (like alcohol or tobacco, for instance, or Twinkies or soda pop for that matter, which cause serious health problems when used in excess, as they are by large numbers of people), the Canadian share of those hundreds of billions of dollars would no longer be available for organized crime - and equally the billions of dollars government uses to 'fight' organized crime and/or the 'drug' trade would not be necessary either. Think about such things, and some lights should start coming on....). Quite obviously, the 'representatives' being elected by Canadians in their 'representative' democracy, election after election after election, are not representing the wishes of a solid majority of Canadians concerning the legal status of this widely used and/or accepted drug. This is a serious matter, not something trivial, as it involves the jailing of and/or saddling with criminal records tens of thousands of people yearly, with high or very high financial costs to them as well, and also provides a basis for much of the organized crime in Canada, which makes us all less safe and causes many related problems and also absorbs huge amounts of taxpayer money as law enforcement people spend huge amounts of time and personnel and money fighting this 'crime' that most Canadians do not believe should be a crime, and the courts spend huge amounts of time fining and jailing and otherwise punishing people most Canadians do not believe should be chased around or hassled or punished for the non-crime of using pot. (Not to mention, on the other side of the equation, foregoing substantial amounts of good stuff, from the taxes collected to the jobs provided in growing and providing the stuff legally).This matter not being addressed by one government or even a couple might be explainable by various excuses, but continually over many years and many governments, with the wishes of Canadians not changing and being well known to the 'representatives' in various ways, with such serious consequences, is clearly systematic and must make it evident beyond reasonable argument that some other force is directing the Canadian parliament to over-ride and/or ignore the wishes of a majority of Canadians. Indeed, the Harper government has indicated that it intends to go after the majority of Canadians who do not believe pot should be criminalized with even more enthusiasm and harsher penalties in the future, and you might call that intention many things, but 'democratic' surely could not be one of them. Just think about that for a minute, don't race on and try to bury this somewhere, it's important, very important, to making a better life and country. There's no rational or legitimate place to go here, except to say "Ok - the majority of Canadians do NOT set policy on important matters in Canada - and the only thing to conclude from that is that this country is not a democracy, all claims to the contrary you learn in school or read in the media etc aside. We the people do NOT control the parliament or laws of Canada, no matter what they tell us. Just like we don't control the money or the work conditions." And that means the country is not a democracy. Not. It pretends to be, with elections and people who claim to represent us and the media and education systems telling us and telling us that it is - but they do not act as a majority wishes them to, so their claim they are a 'democratic' government is just another lie, like so many things they tell us. There really is no other place to go, aside from the television to take your mind away from such disturbing thoughts, but I hope you will stick with me here. This is way more important than the television, if you really want to create a better life and country. It is quite obvious that those 60-70% of Canadians who disagree with the drug laws in regard to marijuana, a consistent and solid majority over decades, have no input into what happens in Canada, and the governments they 'elect' are very obviously, and 'in your face with prejudice', NOT doing what their electors want them to do, as they would have to if this were a real 'democracy' and they really represented the views of the people they claim to represent. And what then does that really mean? If a majority of Canadians do not want pot to be illegal, then why is it illegal? It's not just some random chance event nobody is controlling - there are many groups in Canada trying to have these undemocratic laws removed, so noone can plead ignorance. And noone can say that it is irrelevant, considering the many very large consequences of these laws I noted above. And the government, considering its stated determination to make anti-marijuana laws even harsher than they are, cannot claim it is some old archaic law that they just haven't thought about. No, the only conclusion that we can come to is that marijuana remains illegal because someone behind the scenes, not in the public light or debate, acting for some kind of minority interest, is managing the 'democracy' for their own personal interests and priorities, whatever they might be, overriding the will of the majority - the 'rule by majority' being normally the benchmark of a democratic system. You just cannot acknowledge that that is true, as it obviously is, and still call Canada a democracy. And when one major lie is exposed like this, then anything else the same people are saying is, at best, questionable. That is to say, for instance, the same people who want you to believe that Canada is a democracy also tell you that the Canadian money supply is being well-managed in the best interests of all the people, or 'free trade' is great for everyone, or the police are there to serve you, the courts are there to protect you, the schools are there to educate you, and the government is there to help you. All of these things, although maybe at one time having some truth, are no more true in 2007 than the idea that Canada is a democracy, although those who tell you these things try to make them look true on the surface to fool you, the same as they try to make you believe you live in a 'democracy' by giving you elections every few years. The marijuana situation is, of course, far from some sort of 'exception that proves the rule' or some other rationalisation of this obvious, longterm, systematic and very undemocratic situation, and one might note many similar things over the past few years. A small sample only might include such major things as the fact that considerably more Canadians voted against both the FTA and NAFTA than supported them - yet both were signed into law very quickly following the elections that rejected them; the fact that for the last 25 years a solid majority of Canadians (upwards of 80%) have expressed their desire for the health care system to be properly funded and maintained, whilst not really being concerned about reducing corporate taxes, yet government after government since the Mulroney years has done just the opposite, slashing spending on health care and other social programs most Canadians value while also slashing corporate taxes, budget after budget; or military excursions following the lead of the US, such as the current 'occupation force' in Afghanistan, which was and is opposed by a solid majority of Canadians, yet the government pays no attention to the wishes of the majority of citizens and follows the US along on this and other illegal international aggressions (some might protest that most of these are actually NATO missions, which they technically may be, but it's a separate discussion as to who is actually calling the shots - I myself feel it would be dishonest to pretend to believe the NATO fiction). One might note two other things also. First, this 'non-representativeness' is not related to 'party', as the two major parties switch sides with winning or losing elections - that is, the Mulroney Conservatives tried to implement NAFTA, but were voted out very decisively in favor of the Libs of the day, who said they opposed NAFTA as did most Canadians and promised very firmly to at least change it to something better - but as soon as the Libs were elected, they decided NAFTA was fine as it was and signed it into law and have been ever since its great champions; or in terms of, for instance, tax cutting or supporting the Afghanistan operation, most members of both major parties supported the invasion at the time - leaving the majority of Canadians who oppose the whole thing where? - who was speaking for them, if not their elected 'representatives'? - and secondly, that the government undertakes various initiatives with no consultation with the people whatsoever, no mention in election campaigns, no national debate, no pretense of 'democratically driven initiatives' at all, from relatively minor but quite distasteful and cynicism-breeding things such as continually raising their own 'benefit packages' immediately after elections whilst cutting back all services for the people they supposedly work for (have you EVER heard in an election campaign "If elected, we plan to raise our salaries as we feel your MPs are terribly underpaid - if you agree, please vote for us!!!"?? - of course not - and yet, since such raises are very often done very shortly after an election, they HAD to have been thinking of them before the election), to things of considerably more substance, such as incurring the huge 'national debt', a scam of monstrous proportions as explained elsewhere (Appendix 1), done with no consultation whatsoever with the Canadian people, actually in considerable secrecy overall, the details of which have never been revealed to Canadians before this little essay. And we might note also in a related sense - the other side of the coin, as it were - that when the behind-the-scenes managers wish something, such as 'free trade' treaties and related things, or the ongoing corporate tax cuts, the government, no matter which party is in power, manages to act quite expeditiously with minimal 'consultation' and delay, even though a majority of Canadians oppose such things, while with things the behind-the-scenes managers evidently do not want, such as strong environmental protection laws in Canada or proper maintenance of the health care system and other social programs, which a solid majority of Canadians say they do want, the government manages to find excuses to avoid acting more or less forever (they talk a great show, of course, in response to the obvious wishes of Canadians, which is part of the 'democratic scam', but always manage to find excuses to actually avoid doing anything useful). Such behavior, ongoing over many years, through various types of governments, can be seen as little else than systematic, in that someone behind the scenes is managing the 'democracy' in the interests and wishes of someone other than the citizens of Canada. So the question remains - if the government, that is to say the 'democratically elected representatives' of Canadian voters - are not following the wishes of a majority of Canadians, as they quite obviously are not in the above-mentioned and many other things - then how can you call the country a 'democracy', whose one essential premise in every definition you care to look up is involved with 'majority' rule? So it is difficult to deny that the political situation in Canada looks, and behaves, very much like some kind of 'managed democracy', wherein 'you the people' are given the trappings of democracy (mainly regular elections and a more-or-less universal 'franchise' or right to vote) - but when decisions are ultimately made on the important issues of the day, they are made not according to the wishes of a majority of citizens, but according to the wishes of some other group of people. And that may be called various things, but true 'democracy' is surely not one of them. And if you ever wish to have a better life, then being able to control these very important policies of the government, such as who creates the Canadian money supply, is quite obviously one of the fundamental requirements of the path to getting there - only children or slaves or domestic animals depend on others for their happiness or wellbeing or to tell them how they must live and organize their affairs. And it will only happen when you start to demand democracy in your life and country. More later, but first we have to take another short side trip. Ch 5 - How Do They Do This?: Indoctrination |
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