|
From Here to There ... some ideas on a better future (easy), and how to get there (not so easy) Can we awaken the sleeping giant called We the People of Canada and retake our country from the corporate trolls and usurpers...? Be the future you want to see ... M. Gandhi |
Before We the People can talk about corporate power or anything else, We the People needs to exist... Richard Moore, Cyberjournal |
|
DC Sept 15 2004 - Adbusters seeks court order to shows its TV ads - "...Adbusters' 15- and 30-second so-called social marketing spots address such issues as obesity, consumerism and environmental degradation. One, for instance, displays a burping pig superimposed on a map of North America... The group said television operators have refused to air its ads on the grounds that they are too controversial, advocate ideas instead of products, and don't fit the broadcasters' business model. ... Adbusters said officials of CHUM, BCE Inc.-owned CTV and CanWest told the group that they are in the business of selling advertisers' products and will decide what they show on their networks." - puts a pretty good light on the idea of a "free press" in Canada, and how much we've been misled or misdirected about the whole thing. "Free" is normally a great word, great feelings, we all like freedom, and it's certainly appropriate that Our Great Free Democracy (haha) has a Great Free Press - isn't that Great!!! - but here, it doesn't quite stand up to examination. "Free" as it is used here means nothing more than that if you have enough money, you can open a newspaper or tv station (if you have enough money you're not likely to run into the same kind of licensing hassles people withOUT enough money usually do) - and then when you have that paper or tv, you do and say what you want on it. Which is fair enough as far as it goes - I think people should be allowed to print and say more or less what they want to, with very few if any restrictions (problem with "restrictions" is - who decides what they are, and how can we be SURE they are not operating under some agenda?) - but they don't really get into that kind of detail in your high school civics classes, much, for some reason hahaha - just FREE MEDIA - with the implication that we get all the news we need, all the time - and can go to bed happily knowing that everything we need to know, they are telling us (sorry if that small gag brought up a small barf moment hahahaha). But the problem, of course, is what about the 99+++% of people who just do not have enough money to be starting any newspaper or tv station? What about THEIR right to "free speech" and "equality"?? And what about the right of some sort We the People should have to unbiased news coverage and opinion? Is there such a thing? I can't think of anything written down from that perspective - nobody wants to talk about this, they all just TELL us that that is what we get - but it is pretty apparent to anyone who gets news and commentary from other sources than the corporate media and tv that they do NOT give We the People any sort of "fair and balanced" coverage of things - they give us propaganda and carefully selected news to SHAPE the thinking and opinions of We the People - and one of the things we most desperately need if this country is ever to become a true democracy is some sort of widespread alternative to these people. (and let's not forget the fact that at least SOME (and I would suspect most if not all, but that's a story for another time) of the people who DO have enough money to be starting their own media outlets came by it dishonestly, one way or another - it is pretty hard to "earn" a hundred million bucks these days with a day job - our late great Conrad for example, for years held up (and holding himself up) as the very paragon of a great successful businessman - turns out to have been stealing his company (and the shareholders, thus) blind, for years - all during those years he was held up as such a great exemplar for Canada! Ya gotta get into this, grok it, understand it - and apply it to what is going on now. How many of the wealthy people running around out there, operating out of Bay St towers, doing their best to force their neocon policies on us using all kinds of noble-sounding phrases like productivity and competetiveness and "free markets" and fiscal responsibility etc and etc - are doing the same things as Black, and just haven't been caught yet? My guess would be all or most - as I said above, you just don't come by that kind of money honestly - and why would we suppose that such people are either capable of or desirous of giving us "fair and balanced" reporting - Black's National Prevaricator is STILL known for spreading far-rightwing neocon crap as much as possible - again, that's their business and I wouldn't want to stop them - but where is the same sort of national paper giving people stories and commentary from the other side, so We the People can make informed decisions about things, having heard a fair representation of ALL of the arguments and opinions about something? There USED to be a fair range of media available back in the 70s and prior, a lot of small independent sort of papers, and most of the rest sort of center-left or center-right - but now the big corps have bought everything and concentrated ownership, and most of them (think Asper and Sun) are pretty far-right in outlook (when they're not being faaaaar-right wacko). And we are NOT getting the info we need about many, many things. And put that side by side with what is and has been happening in the gov, all the tax breaks for the rich, all the slashing of social support systems for the rest, the hundreds of billions (yea, that's not a misprint - Billions) of tax dollars stolen by these people through the great National Debt Scam and other lesser evils (not only the so-called "sponsorship scandal" currently in the news - but the lawyers getting paid $2,000 bucks a day - that's all scam and theft too!) DC Sept 15 2004 - Dental program changing - interesting choice of words - they might have been honest and just said "cut back". It's not a big deal, per se - but it's just so exemplarific of everything that's been going on the last couple of decades since the neocons took over. Isn't the goal of all of us working hard and making a better society to make things better for everyone? The dental program for kids was a great idea - and progress would have seen that expanded, not reduced. Dental health is important - very few people would choose toothlessness over good teeth if given a choice, yet dental care is so expensive these days that if you don't have a good job with dental insurance or a "very" good job, you can't afford a lot of the treatments. Maybe dentists get paid a bit too much, but it's not that much out of line and I'm not going to worry about it - but I think the government should be expanding dental care to be the same as health care, and EVERYONE gets covered, one way or another. If there's going to be a means test, make it a realistic one, set the bar high not low - I have no objections to making someone who takes home a few million a year pay for their own dental treatment, but you shouldn't put the cutoff line somewhere in the lower middle income bracket, where the kid's (or Mom's) root canal is going to mean the brake job on the car gets put off for another few months. But we have to ask - WHY are we going backwards with this kind of stuff, instead of forwards? Why cutting back the availability of such programs, instead of expanding them? Are we working less and getting poorer, as the people of this country? Hardly! So if we're working more, and producing more - why aren't the things we work for - the collective services that we pay our taxes for like health care and education and infrastructure - improving, rather than getting worse? And the answer isn't that pretty, if you think about it independently rather than listen to the crap coming out of the corporate media - "we're" doing it (in the sense that "we" are the gov hahahaha) so the small percentage of people in this country who are already very wealthy - can be even wealthier. So that Conrad can pay for his thousand-buck-an-hour lawyers to keep out of jail, where he belongs. So that his wife can pay a hundred thou for a "small" birthday party in some expensive restaurant. On the Riviera. Flying the guests there on the corporate jet. That they do not, excuse the french, give a shit about the rest of us is part of the package. That you (as in We the People) have the freedom - and power - to do something about it, is too. If you have the courage to stand up to the Berserker class in this country, this world, today. The Taker Class, as Daniel Quinn calls them - I think he is much too kind. Just face up to it. Don't buy the lies about "productivity" or "competetivness" etc and etc - it's about nothing more than greed, about letting the rich keep their money, and increasing their wealth by taking more of the wealth that YOU generate from your work that SHOULD be enriching "We the People", the country, your children's futures. Meaning that AFTER they take their huge skim, we have to pay for the things we need out of the pittance they leave us, or do without. While they get more. If you don't like it - do something about it. If you don't wanna think about hard stuff like this - well! - that's what the tv's for. Go for it. DC Sept 16 2004 - Both sides budging on health dollars: premiers - some combination of "the kids at play" and "the scam continues" - this is just pathetic. The picture in this story, if it stays, is great - a thousand words and all that - the looks on the faces of McGuinty and Martin are like some shysters playing some game, pretending to be doing one thing while doing something quite different - NOT people working together to make the BEST arrangement for WE THE PEOPLE!!! - which is what they are SUPPOSED to be doing, right? hahahaha - yea right. Now me - it seems to me that the FIRST thing these people - in their capacity as OUR EMPLOYEES!!!! - OUR REPRESENTATIVES!!!! (yea hahahahaha - but isn't that the theory??!!) ought to be doing, is figuring out WHAT we all need, what we all want - and how much we can afford (that is to say, I expect that until we get things working a bit better, we can't afford for all of us to have the gov provide us with yearly trips to a spa in Europe for a "muscle toner upper" or "fat reduction program" or some such thing - but on the other hand, I think it is crazy (not to mention criminal, in some senses - a fiduciary responsibilty NOT being met while money is being purloined by various parties) that some VERY large number of people spend a very large number of hours every day in some ER somewhere in the country waiting for some very necessary, urgent treatment, and others spend months on a waiting list for some necessary but not quite "urgent" treatment). Romanov did all this a couple of years ago - and the political reaction showed exactly how much they REALLY want to provide a good health care system for Canada. There are many other reports out there that give some very good ideas about what needs to be done and how to do it - all very doable - IF IF IF IF the political will was there to do it - which it quite obviously is not. So there they sit, playing the big con on various levels, having to pretend they are trying to do something for We the People while they are really working for other masters, but can't let on that their real aim is the end of the system. And here we all sit like Joe Turnipseed putting down his quarters for the con artist at the carnival, hoping that just maybe we'll win THIS time. hahahahahahaha - got news for ya - it ain't gonna happen. As long as y'all keep electing con artists as the people you want to "represent" you in the nation's governments, they'll keep connin ya. Why would they stop a beautiful con like this when it's working so well, and the great majority of the turnipseeds apparently have no idea at all what's being done to them? hahahaha DC Sept 14 2004 - Journalism in West isn't perfect - mmm-hmmm. tell me about it. I wrote the man a letter. Dear Paul Berton, Re your recent column, Journalism isn't perfect, 2004-09-11. I'll say. I've noticed a couple of other columns like yours in the last few days - one by Richard Gwyn in the Star comes to mind - proposing the idea that much of the recent murder of children at the Beslan school and the situation around that crime might not have happened if Russia had of had a free press - and by golly we sure are lucky here that WE have a free press, where stuff like that just couldn't happen - our press may not be perfect, but they sure are better than them guys! Well maybe yes and maybe no - but "better" does not mean "good", and the current version of the Canadian media would not get a high grade from any impartial observer, I fear. I can't quite figure if you aren't really aware that you are missing a lot of information here and thus only sort of "innocently" misleading your readers through various errors of interpretation or omissions (this is a polite letter - I could use much stronger words), or if you are being deliberately dissembling - but as a good Canadian, the way I was raised, I am always inclined to give someone the benefit of the doubt, so I will go with the assumption that you actually believe what you are writing, and provide you with some information that puts your assertions in some doubt, at least, and may open your eyes a bit. .... and just a few more words on the subject here DC Sept 13 2004 - U.S. Oil Over $44 as Ivan Threatens - "... World oil prices shot higher on Monday as companies operating in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico braced for output disruptions from powerful Hurricane Ivan..." - isn't it just such a great system where our entire economies are dependent on the whims of a small gang of very wealthy and influential speculators, whose ONLY purpose in life is to maximize their short-term profit, and could care less how many lives or entire countries they trash during the process. But I guess it must be ok, since the laws that allow these people to operate as they do have been passed by real Democratic governments, and as we all know Democratic Governments only do stuff that We the People tell them to do. hahahaha DC Sept 13 2004 - As we explore what is wrong with this country, we run into this - Scandal inquiry to cost millions - "...A phalanx of $200-an-hour lawyers, government bureaucrats and specially hired staff are gathering each morning in the sedate confines of Ottawa's old city hall to hash out the unsavoury details of the worst scandal to hit the federal government in modern times ... Set to run 18 months under Justice John Gomery, the judicial inquiry into the waste of millions of taxpayers' dollars during the Liberals' sponsorship program is itself likely to cost many millions more before its final report is delivered... The federal government is on the hook for the bulk of the expenses for the massive investigation ordered.. Although "The Law" should be a cornerstone of a progressive society, like all powerful tools, in the hands of the wrong people it can do some really bad stuff. And in the hands of the Bay St Corporadoes, it has been up to a LOT of bad stuff the last few years (a few honorable exceptions, of course), and more and more showing its true colors these days - that it is NOT a vehicle for justice for We the People - but a penultimate final line of legitimisation of the elitists who have taken over our society. We are brainwashed from birth to KNOW that our legal system is one of the greatest on the planet, and even if we may disagree with this decision or that it is conducted with the utmost impartiality and honor, and once it renders a verdict we can be sure that Justice has been done. A great ideal - and as Gandhi so famously said about its great co-ideal Democracy - it would be great to try it some day. It's an odd kind of "justice" - but one very much in line with modern corporate "values" - that "justice" these days is primarily for those who can afford it - and it ain't cheap. This is a joke though - and a bad one. And We the People are, once again, paying the price while getting ripped off bigtime. We the People are paying lawyers $2000 bucks a day at this hearing - which is going to go on a LOT of days - to do their best to make sure we never find anything out about how and why so much money was wasted in this "sponsorships scandal" as they "defend" their clients' interests. A LOT of lawyers. For a LOT of days. Ah my, the laughter must be long and loud in the luxury board rooms at the end of day. Talk about a bunch of suckers, eh? hahahahahahaha - first we MAKE a problem, and steal a lot of money in the process - and then they pay us HUGE amounts of money to participate in the "investigation" of the problem. Man they must think they woke up in heaven. DC Sept 12 2004 - CMA offers plan to reduce patient wait times - "... "[Canadians] want leaders to sit down, have a real and honest discussion and devise a national, long-term strategy to forge a new era for our health care system," Schumacher told delegates to the Alberta Medical Association's annual meeting Saturday..." - personally, I think he's got that about right, and I think most of the pols understand that. However, I also think that most of the pols are thinking something like "Heck! - our primary commitment is to the wealthy donors who funded us, and THEY want lower taxes, which means we just canNOT do much about making health care better here, which basically needs a decent amount of funding, but we SURE as hell can't tell the voters-taxpayers that - so all we can do is huff and puff and make lots of noise while doing as little as possible about what They Who Elected Us actually want done. Because we REALLY want to get elected again - the perks of this job are REAL good." Something like that. There are a LOT of smart people in this country, and a decent health care system could be put together - hell no, not a "decent" one, a GREAT one - IF that was the political will. Unfortunately, at least for We the People, that is NOT the political will. Ya get what ya vote for - and We the People keep voting for corporate puppets, and corporate government is what we get. We shouldn't act surprised. DC Sept 12 2004 - Speaking of evil - Richard Gwyn has a go, here - Not acts of war, these are plainly acts of evil - "...In one fundamental respect, though, what the Chechens did and what Islamic terrorists did three years ago in the 9/11 attacks— also before then and, of course, many times since — are one and the same... These are acts of unabashed, unapologetic evil..." - well, no argument with the last, murdering a bunch of kids, and destroying the WTC with the people inside were definitely evil acts - but I think we better slow down with the idea that "Islamic terrorists" were responsible for the latter - there has YET to be any kind of believable proof offered for this theory, and there is a GREAT deal of evidence that the US gov was at LEAST complicit, if not directly responsible. (Check here if you need a place to start.) But more with this "evil" thread, since it is kind of important these days - Gwyn goes on - "...Our prevailing ideological creed is moral relativism. ... Declaring that evil exists threatens this creed at its very core. No wonder so many were so shocked and outraged at President George W. Bush's use of the term..." - no, Richard, I can't say that I was outraged because Bush threatened my values of "moral relativism" - for I too believe that Evil exists in the world, unfortunately - but what outraged and outrages me is that Bush, who is the spokesperson-puppet for as evil a regime as has ever existed on this planet, is calling others "evil" - and people like you are believing him, and spreading his gospel of evil as much as you can - and I think a lot of others in this country are thinking the same sorts of thoughts, although they might be reluctant to put them into words. I don't think you are evil in your heart, Richard, but your acceptance of the Bush lies, your propagation of those lies, your marginalising the Truth - makes you a servant of evil, and that is very nearly as bad. If it is "evil" for some people to kill some school children in Russia, Richard (which it surely is) - then it is even more evil for a government to mess around in the affairs of other countries, and with bombs and supporting movements to overthrow governments, intentionally kill hundreds of thousands of civilians, a large percentage of them children, in countries around the world, in pursuit of nothing more than power and wealth, as the Americans have been doing for 50 years. And it is surely evil for a man like Bush to lie brazenly in pursuit of those goals, and his lies have been exposed over and over again, and there can be no doubt that he is fully aware of his lies. It seems very suspicious that a journalist such as yourself would not be aware of this, I would say also. But you are not important, so it is not worth pursuing. But if we are going to fight evil with any hope of success - we have to confront it head on. And right now, that means the US government, the Head of Evil in the world today. And any effort to divert attention to other places - even places that might be lesser evils in their own right - is simply helping the evil to survive. DC Sept 12 2004 - Zero-tolerance on seatbelts - ".. Police forces on the Island are fed up with people not wearing seatbelts... In one rural driver survey conducted over the summer, close to half of the drivers were not using seatbelts. The official numbers put the rate at 77 per cent in rural communities... - I'm just trying to figure where the mythical idea of Canadian "democracy" gets into all of this - the cops have been doing their nazi-like best to scare people into DOING VHAT YOU ARE TOLD!!!! for about 20 years now, and it seems that most people still don't much care to wear these seat belts, even in the face of all this coercion - so I wish someone would explain to me how some "zero-tolerance" policy on the part of "We the Government" has anything at all to do with democracy. There's an election coming up in PEI in a year or two - why doesn't one of the parties make this an issue and see how they do? "Hi all you wonderful voters of PEI! If you elect We Wonderful XXX Party as your new government, we will really start to hammer them darn anti-social (or whatever) people in this fair province (except for February) who STILL don't understand what wonderful things seatbelts are for everybody!" - whaddya say?? Think they'd win the election??? Maybe this could be a break through issue for the NDP (hahaha). Yea - me too. So what the hell are they doing passing seatbelt laws that a majority of people do NOT want??? Again I say - I wish to hell someone would tell me what this has to do with "democracy". Or else just get honest and spit it out - this is about as much a "democracy" as your average Animal Farm. Boxer! To work! And don't argue about it! DC Sept 12 2004 - Oh wait now - enlightenment comes (yea I can be slow at times)! It's not ME that don't belong here - it's the killers and bombers and thieves and neo"CON" men! - these are the same people who ravage the planet, not just other people - the amazing beauty to be found all around us, from the crystal clear winter night where you can see your breath in the black sky with silver trees to the incredible variety and beauty of microscopic life forms - I grok these things, I feel I am part of them, I only want to wonder in them and study them, protect them not destroy them, be a loving, happy part of it all - I DO belong here - which explains the anger I feel at others who are trying to take it all, not just from me but from everyone, for I know that many others, outspoken about it and otherwise, feel as I do, and are unhappy with the berserkers who have stolen our governments and are undertaking these terrible things in our name. It is those who would destroy it all, who have no appreciation for any of it, who think the only purpose of being here is to brutalize others for their own short-term selfish gain (cf the Conrad Black story last week, and ongoing, and all the US gov stories, etc and etc) with no thought whatsoever to the destruction they cause, and the tragedy of stealing the beauty from untold generations that will follow if there is anything left to follow to - it is THEY who do not belong here. And those who enable the berserkers - they can lay no claim to the place either - to paraphrase an old joke (about Thatcher, I believe) a troll in a tie and suit is still a troll. And a gang of trolls writing nice things about one another in the troll newspapers - well - you see. Sauron and the trolls. The CCCE and the bankers and accountants in their Bay St towers. The modern face of evil. Well, that was a good thought. Maybe I ought to have another walk and see if I can find another. haha DC Sept 11 2004 - Cancer surgery backlog increase feared - "..Waiting times for cancer surgery in Toronto will jump as the Ontario government ends special funding that eased an operating room backlog after the SARS crisis, a top official at Princess Margaret Hospital predicts..." and "...The money helped shave waiting times an average 32 per cent by opening two additional operating rooms that had been closed for lack of funding..." and ER backlogs a national crisis - "...This is a crisis. Patients are coming to the ER with real symptoms and diseases. They aren't abusing ER departments but depending on the time of week and time of day they could have an eight to 10-hour wait..." and then - More tax cuts possible, Goodale says - "...Business groups applauded Mr. Goodale's comments, saying they had feared tax reductions might have been dropped from the agenda after an election dominated by health and social spending commitments. ... "It's the first time we've heard that from Mr. Martin's government since the election, and it fills my heart with joy," said Nancy Hughes Anthony, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. She attended Mr. Goodale's speech... .Jayson Myers, chief economist at the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, said he was "pleasantly surprised" by talk of tax cuts..." - ya don't suppose them three items are related, do you? Or would that just be some silly conspiracy stuff? - now, I gotta agree that we as a country cannot have everything we want, any more than we can as individuals - there has to be a consideration of the situation, income and expenses, and what not, and decisions made about spending priorities. But while we maybe can't have everything we want, there is surely enough money generated by the people of this country to have everything we need - such as decent health care for EVERYone- it's just a matter of setting priorities - and lately the priorities have been a bit skewed, one might say - the priorities of this coulda-been-great country have followed the priorities of that great craziness south of us, which says every man for himself, let the poor eat cake hahaha. One looks around and has little choice but to believe most Canadians approve of this - we do still have a fairly honest, if unfair, electoral system, and Canadians are voting for the people who give them this- yea, they do lie a lot about a lot of things - and Canadians "punish" them for lying by electing them again. What are the pols to think but that Canadians approve of closing hospitals and giving the rich tax breaks? Heck, to follow the current pattern, if any party ever dared to tax the rich and use the money for a decent health care system, there'd probably be a revolution, and the crazy pols would never see a gov expense account again, and they sure don't want to risk that. I also think that we as Canadian citizens ought to be making those decisions, not the Canadian Chamber of Commerce or the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters people, or anybody else in business for the sole purpose of making lots of money, and who thus have lovely private health insurance plans (that you can be sure we the people are paying for, in the sense that these luxury health plans will be part of the "benefits package" of the people involved, and thus "expensed" from the corporate balance sheets before they calculate their minimal taxes), and in the name of increasing those profits are actively promoting lower taxes, which lead to the closing of cancer treatment places and ERs and selling the universities to the banks and corps. Odd we just had an election, and there wasn't a word about this - imagine the Libs or Cons (hahahaha yea right just imagine it) standing up and saying something like - "If you elect us, we are going to continue lowering corporate taxes, and taxes on the wealthy, because they are really nice people and are nice to us politicians so we like to do them favors. Unfortunately, that means that hospitals will continue to be underfunded and closed and scaled back and stuff like that. If you approve of this program, all you lovely Canadians, please vote for us." Yea right - I seem to be getting hallucinations here or something. hahahahaha Wouldn't a real democracy be a blast to try sometime though? With a real media?? holy shit alice he's really losing it today - why would we want a real democracy when it would require so much work and learning on our part to take responsibility for our own lives - and those nice Bay St Boys already look after us all real fine - it says so on the tv every day - which brings up the other thing - what the heck does he mean by a "real media" anyway, when we already got the best darn media in the world here in Canada - don't we learn that in school, and they tell us so all the time every day too .... geez some people just complain and complain - where the heck's the remote anyway .... DC Sept 11 2004 - Russia needs a free press - ah, the glory of propaganda. Maybe Canada needs a free press too (I'm not even going to get into the US - anybody who thinks that having Fox and CNN and the NY and Washington Times makes a "free press" is much too far out of it to be worth talking to...) - but a couple of quotes from this "story", of which the theme is that just maybe the murder of all those children would not have happened "if Russia had a free press" - the idea being that Russians had no idea of the horrors the Russian army was inflicting on Chechnya, and thus the possibility of reprisal - with a wee bit of commentary on a couple of OTHER stories that maybe wouldn't have happened if CANADA had a "free press". I suppose I ought to take just a second and indicate what I mean by "free press", since I think there is some confusion over this term - it's a typical propaganda trick - use loaded words to stop people from asking questions - I mean, who's gonna criticize "free", right???? hahahaha not me, for sure!!! - but what do we mean by "free" in terms of the Canadian media? I suppose that there are no government regulations telling the owners of the press what they can print (excepting some obscenity laws, I suppose, which isn't the objective here). And in that sense, it is fairly free. But what if we think of "free" in another sense - the sense that people ought to be free to receive an honest and relatively complete accounting of what is going on in their country and world? That seems to get to the heart of what the Blob is criticizing there, anyway - and if we use an idea like that, then it is pretty clear that the Canadian press ought to be a little more circumspect with its criticisms of others, at least until it gets its own house in order a bit. So back to the sanctimonious Globe and its criticizing of the Russian press (which may well deserve criticism - most of them do! - it just irks me to see people doing the criticizing who ought to be cleaning up their own act a bit more first) - the Globe has a lot to answer for, as a leading light of the Canadian media, for keeping Canadians in the dark about some things, and thus allowing situations to happen that are detrimental to us that might not have happened had your mythical "average Canadian" bit a bit better informed. One thinks, for instance, of the National Debt Scam - if Canadians knew that instead of having this horrendous debt that even this year is eating something like 25% of the National Income, we COULD have, in the past, used the Bank of Canada to issue some cash or interest-free debt, and thus have never accumulated this debt - well, there might be a few questions to ask a few people. If Canadians knew, which they don't appear to. And the Globe, a business paper for business people at root, has owners who have undoubtedly benefitted greatly from this scam, and plan to benefit for quite some time to come, so have no interest in exposing it. Or what about a similar matter - even as Canadians are encouraged - nay told! - that the killing of some school children in Russia was a brutal, horrible affair and we should all be horrified (which is true enough) - the Globe, along with the other Canadian "media" continually ignore equally brutal atrocities happening in other parts of the world, merely occasionally reporting some "facts" and carrying on to the next item. One would suppose that the mothers and families of the thousands of children bombed to pieces in Iraq over the year and some cried many tears and felt much pain, not to mention the hundreds of thousands who died with even more suffering from the ten years of sanctions - yet nary a word of sympathy in the Globe for these people, just a line on page A14 or wherever - "American jets bomb house - women and children killed" - big deal, so what? seems to be the attitude towards these children. And so Canadians do as they're told - big outrage and sympathy for the Russian families, nary a thought for others. Sometimes I wish there really was this mythical Christian god everyone pretends to believe in - I would surely love to see these people at the ol Pearly Gates explaining to St Peter why little Ivan got some tears, and little Ali (and little Ming Tho in Vietnam and little Cecep in Timor and little Raul in Columbia and millions of other victims of American bombs and bullets the last 50 years) didn't. I surely would like to see that. The appearance of the Editor of the Globe would be a lesser spectacle as he explained why he thought it appropriate to engage in the coverup of the greatest financial scam in Canadian history while Canadian citizens died in ERs waiting for treatment - but yea I'd be interested in hearing that too. Although that would probably be much more banal - sort of like "Well, hell, if the mark is going to let you steal him blind, it's just good business to do so - every binissman unnerstands like that you know." Like that. Oh well enough for now. I gotta get back to my walking and thinking - the big mystery for ME is how the hell I wound up here, where I very obviously do not belong, me with my ideas of honesty and decency and being able to trust people, and that little Ali and Fatimah deserve tears and sympathy the same as little Ivan and little Mina. DC Sept 10 2004 - Speaking of DC Sept 9 2004 - U.S. offensive kills dozens in Iraq - dozens. Including "...a woman and a child...". Ho hum - another few kids killed - big deal, eh? That's only a problem when people we don't LIKE kill kids - then it's REALLY BAD!!!! But them great brave Americans and their planes and bombs can't do no wrong! so we shouldn't point out stuff like this, or comment on it in the papers - after all, they've really done some great stuff for all of us and MADE THE WORLD FREE FOR DEMOCRACY so we just CAN'T even THINK they might be doing bad stuff now - they won the second world war all by themselves, destroyed the evil communism, now fighting the evil terrorists and the really evil REEFER MADNESS freaks - whatever would we do without them? We all sure want to be more like them, eh? HEIL GEORGE!!!! hahaha - well, at least the columnists and editorials at Canada's Really Free Great Democratic Media places like the Prevaricator and Suns and Aspers do, and their Thoughtless Tanks like the Frasers ..... DC Sept 8 2004 - Students need Rae of hope - "...(in Ontario universities) per capita spending in Ontario ranks last in Canada...." and "...Seventy per cent of young people listing barriers to post-secondary studies cite finances as the primary impediment...." and "...Over the past 10 years, food banks have become a regular feature at college and university campuses and recent reports show food bank usage soaring.... Fully half of all full-time students also hold part-time jobs. And last year, a local strip club offered to pay the tuition fees for female students at the University of Windsor, if they undressed before their club's clientele." - and this is the great country of Canada???? and its richest province???? Pretty sad. Pretty f***ing sad altogether. I wonder if that story would have anything to do with some of the other stories we're seeing these days - stuff like, oh, Judge appoints inspector for Black's firm - Conrad Black, who bribed and cajoled the Canadian government and people into huge tax breaks for he and all the other wealthy people in the country; or Canadian 2nd-Qtr Business Profits Climb to a Record "...Canadian business profits climbed 4.1 percent to a record C$50.7 billion ($38.7 billion) in the second quarter from the first three months of the year..." - hmmm now, $50 bil a quarter, something like $200 bil a year - pretty good money - now let's have a boo here - Canadian Budget Summary 2003 - and we see that last year the corps paid taxes of $26 billion - say, overall, something like a rate of 12%. Hmmmmmmmm - how does that tally with YOUR rate?? Or to use similar stats (gotta do some original thinking here, can't find any good info quickly - but see if you figure I'm off anywhere seriously) - there are something like 16 million people in the Canadian work force, and the average single wage-earner makes around $30,000 - altogether about $480 billion dollars, of which the Canadian wage-earner tax bill is something like $90 billion bucks (the flash stats again) - a rate of just under 20% on Canadian individual earnings. All ball park figures, of course - but IN the ballpark, nonetheless. And NOT yet factoring such things as the "employment" insurance income paid by workers (no bank execs here haha) of another 17 Bil, and the payBACK from the gov to "investors" of around 40 Bil on "debt service" charges - wow, get that, the gov gives BACK to the wealthy half again as much as it collects in "taxes" - great gig, guys!!!!! hahaha. But there's no money for hospitals or universities. Sick bunch we are, all around, to put up with this shit. The banks and the corps steal and steal and steal - and how do we punish them? We keep electing the politicians they tell us to, who will keep on giving them the farm. Cool baby cool. Story of my life - the old roulette ball went round and round and round when I was born - and came up CRAZY SOCIALIST DOOMED TO LIFE OF CARING AND TRYING TO DO GOOD SHIT AND POVERTY rather than the much nicer MORAL-LESS CAPITALIST STEAL AND LIE AND BE RICH. hahahahahahahaha AH well maybe next time the karma will improve. DC Sept 8 2004 - GREAT stuff again by Robin Mathews, one of the great Canadian writers - U.S. Cultural Imperialism and The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name - " ... We should be building Canadian vehicles to world preference. We should have industrial power second to none. We should, just for instance, produce pharmaceuticals for ourselves and the world at humane prices. We should produce most of the food Canadians eat. We should be genuinely helping the needy of the world. Those are only a few examples of what a self-respecting, dynamic Canada should be doing....." - now THIS is how a real Canadian speaks - and why he is NEVER going to be found in the Canadian corporate media, which promotes Americanism day in and day out. Way to go, Robin. DC Sept 7 2004 - A fatality-free Hwy 400 weekend - "...Improper use of child seats continues to pose a problem for OPP traffic officers..." - a "problem" eh? Me too. Me, I got a problem with Big Mother society. I do NOT think it a good way to spend tax dollars paying cops to harrass people who don't use "child safety seats" or seatbelts or motorcycle helmets, or the court time involved afterwards, etc. As I have oft noted before - it just does not ring true to say the gov is concerned with my health - if they really were - why do we have the next story in the same paper >>>> DC Sept 7 2004 - Diagnosis: Not enough doctors - "...Ontario now ranks tenth among the provinces with 85 family physicians per 100,000 population, far below the Canadian average of 97. That number rises to 99 in Alberta and 111 in British Columbia, according to a recent report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information...." - hahahaha - c'mon all you people who loved ol Mikey so much - let's hear it again for "The Common Sense Revolution"!!! - boy, we all sure are a lot better off now after ten years of Harris! hahahahaha - and don't forget Walkerton!!!! way to go Mikey!!! (a story just a couple of days ago as well that Ontario is last per capita in education spending! - outpacing the rest of the provinces in the race to become the 51st state!!! (but we shouldn't lose sight of reality - it wasn't really "mikey" and the cons - it was "the bad guy" act of the Bay St Party - now we have "the good guy" act with McGuinty - and, like the Chretien-Martin good guy act federally following the BIG bad of Mulroney et al - things will continue to progress as they have, or maybe even get worse - a lot of talk about what to do to deal with that horrible budget problem, and 3Ps etc. Once started on the slippery slope, it is bigtime hard to get back on track. It can be done - but it would require a lot of waking up, a lot of taking responsibility by We the People - having more local meetings to talk about things, electing people from whom we would DEMAND that they work for US as OUR representatives (which is, after all, what they are SUPPOSED to be doing!) and NOT taking orders from Bay St - etc and etc. No point in getting into a long harangue about it - if you're with me on this you know already what I'm talking about - if you're not, you're heading back to the tv regardless. hahaha DC Sept 7 2004 - Petitioning PM on open border - ".. Two Alberta advocates for reopening the U.S. border to live Canadian cattle are hoping to present a 70,000-signature petition to the prime minister himself. "Our ranchers are desperately struggling, and our hope is that by flying to Ottawa, we'll move this matter up on the political agenda," said Alex Baum..." - hahaha - got news for ya Alec - the PM's just gonna say something like "Hey, boys! You got 70,000 sigs, eh?? Well - that means that there are still something like 30,000,000 Canadians who support the gov in this matter! See ya later!" - sad to say, that is the political mind in action - I speak from experience - a bunch of years ago, I and a bunch of others (CCAMUSB!!!) got together something like 20,000 sigs on a petition in PEI - which was easily 25% of the adult (over 15) population at the time concerning the proposed seatbelt legislation, and we actually got in to see Joe Ghiz, the Premier at the time - and that was what he told us - that our 20,000 sigs meant the remaining 100,000 or so citizens of PEI SUPPORTED his legislation! Democracy in action - gotta love it! (sure as hell like to SEE it someday!) DC Sept 7 2004 - Grits hunt for cure to crisis - "...KELOWNA, B.C. -- Prime Minister Paul Martin's 40-member cabinet will roll up its sleeves at a retreat here today and try to hammer out a plan to fix the nation's health-care system that will satisfy provincial premiers..." - and look where THIS one is happening - a resort in Kelowna!!! These guys have been having "meetings" all summer long, all over the country! Nice life - when THEY get to go to fancy resorts in vacation country, and WE pick up the tab!!! - really, though, this stuff is really nothing more than smoke and mirrors, to LOOK like they're doing something (I forget Shakespeare's great line about "all sound and fury, accomplishing nothing" - something like that) - while really just have a good time on the ol expense account. I don't much care for it myself - I'd rather be spending my money on useful stuff - that is to say, I'd rather see my tax dollars (such as they are - as one who is very much NOT a high roller, my tax bill is not excessive haha - but it's the principle of the thing...) - spent on useful stuff - like reducing child poverty, or having investigations into who exactly got this national debt scam underway and how we can get the money back, or how we can create decent, pollution-minimal public transportation systems that are modern, world class that everybody will use - stuff like that. Really - top level administrators who are doing a decent job do NOT meet with other such people often - most of the "dog work" (SORRY!!! - I'm NOT insulting dogs!!!) is done by lower level people through expedient communication channels - primarily email these days, for a written record - and the details hammered out - it's very doable, when the people involved are actually desirous of coming to an agreement - if, of course, the whole thing is a sham, and no agreement is desired by anyone, then all kinds of huffy-puffy can be arranged to make it LOOK like they're "trying" to do stuff, while actually there is no intent at all to come to an agreement at the end of the day. Anyway, once the lower level people get the stuff worked out, the top people usually have a brief meeting to confirm things, smile for the cameras, and sign something. The rest is just mushroom food for We the Good scam though, as long as noone catches on. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of danger of that hahaha. What's on tv tonight, dear? hahahahahahaha DC Sept 6 2004 - The Chechnya situation still gets lots of air time, from a certain VERY non-analytical, emotional perspective - CNN has made a point on regularly featuring the comments from some shrink about how the poor children from the school are going to be feeling the effects of this for years to come. Undoubtedly they are. Undoubtedly the half million killed and maimed in Iraq have been feeling pretty bad for years - I never heard a word about this on CNN or any other media. Undoubtedly the several million kids in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos who were ripped apart by American bombs or burned alive (or just partly so) were pretty screwed up for years, if not forever as well - seems odd to me that nobody ever seemed to care much about them. Likewise East Timor, Nicaragua, Columbia, dozens of countries all around the world. Seems more than a bit odd to me that there are all these tears for the kids at the school last week - but none for the millions of others, who were assuredly as human. Lots of stories still hitting the press - `There could be 600 dead', Islamic hand-wringing over Russia school carnage - "...a prominent Arab journalist wrote that Muslims must acknowledge the painful fact that Muslims are the main perpetrators of terrorism...." (one might raise some objections to that, ask for some clarification - for "terrorism" of the sort that involved a few hundred people at best, with some very courageous (if probably at least slightly crazy) people willing to shoot and be shot at in on-the-ground situations, perhaps so - but when it comes to terrorism from great heights, with a few people whose actual "bravery" is never put to the test, dropping huge bombs and chemical weapons from great heights for weeks or months or years on end, killing countless women and children and others, often in horrible ways - there is no competition - the Americans have the prize - millions killed and maimed over the last half of this century. And not a word in the "mainstream" corporate press.) - and Putin pledges to smash rebels "...Putin blamed "international terrorism" for a series of attacks during the past 10 days..." - well, in regards to this last, we can sure not bother looking to the corporate press evidently for any serious analysis, any attempt to try to explain what happened in the light of past events (haven't we seen this before, a couple of years ago - 3 now I guess - somebody drove some planes into the World Trade Center, and the Americans pretended that that was the very beginning of history - and confirmed that viewpoint in the recently released 911 whitewash report - "Golly gee, Billy Boy, why do you suppose them A-rabs don' lak we so goshdarn good folks and our great freedoms?" etc - no connection at all with anything in the mid-east or the past. It boggles the mind how people can continue to believe this stuff. But if you actually think that JUST MAYBE there is a bit more to the story than we're getting on CNN or even the Canadian corporate press (which is not THAT Much better than the US Fox people - and more on that in a minute) - try here, for instance - Chechnya Gripped by Stalinist Terror, or Where Do Suicide Bombers Come From - "...Why are women traveling from a remote southern Russian region all the way to Moscow to put on explosive belts and kill themselves, taking innocent bystanders’ lives with them? Oleg Orlov of the International Society Memorial, Russia’s top human rights organization, sheds light on the reasons that push Chechen suicide bombers to their drastic actions. The number of quiet, undocumented kidnappings of people from their homes by federal forces in Chechnya is comparable to statistics for the peak of Stalinist repressions in 1937-1938...." - or here - THE APARTMENT BOMBING MYSTERY by Eric S. Margolis - a couple of years old, but quite pertinent - "...Human rights organizations accuse Russian forces in Chechnya of ubiquitous brutality: mass murders and reprisals, arson, looting, torture, running concentration camps. .." Hmmmmmm - now THAT starts to shed a bit of light on things. One still wouldn't want to excuse anybody for doing bad stuff to kids - but just MAYBE one could have a bit of understanding of why they were driven to such things - they are probably something more than slobbering mindless bogeymen with guns and bombs wandering in the night looking for humans to kill and freedom to destroy - the tv caricature we are supposed to be so afraid of - and in the name of that fear, we are supposed to meekly give our governments the power to issue national ID cards, and set up checkpoints at airports and anywhere else they like, and hold secret trials - all that stuff we USED to be told only evil Nazis did - but now OUR "Great Democratic Government" must do IN THE NAME of democracy - whoo, my head gets woozy here - is it the bad guys or the good guys who are destroying my freedom???? And like I said previously, when it comes to getting all upset about doing bad stuff to kids, we here in Canada don't want to get too loud in the protests, or maybe somebody is going to make us answer some pretty hard questions about how we treat the kids in THIS country. Believe me, if you get your heads out of the corporate press which would rather talk about LOWER TAXES LOWER TAXES and thus has a pretty clear incentive to NOT make the connection between THAT idea and governments with no money to do something about child poverty, or away from the tv which again is NOT going to get into things like this for similar reasons (advertisers want HAPPY viewers, not viewers asking hard questions and getting pissed at the government - such people are likely to be painting signs and phoning their neighbors rather than getting out to the malls and SHOP SHOP SHOP which is what the nice men and pretty girls on the tv WANT them to be doing.) If anybody is looking for sources for that amazing Albright quote - "...When asked on US television if she [Madeline Albright, US Secretary of State] thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children [from sanctions in Iraq] was a price worth paying, Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.”..." - you can find it here, with also a link to the original article: The Iraq Crisis. And think about THAT when you listen to the hand-wringing over a couple of hundred kids, and try to get a grip on the difference between 200 and 500,000. DC Sept 6 2004 - I pointed out a few months ago that the Star had been taken over by the corps - and here's what we have from the "lib-lefty" flagship in Canada (according to the neocon idiots) on this Labour Day Monday in Canada - Health Proposal Deserves Hearing - the report I mentioned a couple of days ago - talking about how we ought to be looking at "different" ways of doing things (that is direct neocon code for privatisation), because after all "throwing money at a problem can't fix it" - although, as I also pointed out that time, if the problem is actually caused by a shortage of money, then the ONLY way to fix it is to give it money (you need new brake shoes or you're asking for an accident; the brake shoes cost $200 bucks but you only have $150; you drive somewhere, hit a bad situation, the brakes fail, you wind up in hospital - problem caused by lack of money or not? (yea yea you were stupid to drive in that situation too - but if you had had the money, you would NOT have been driving in that situation....)) (this is a Star Editorial - and they say - "...Their system would work something like this: Say a patient needs a hip replacement. The government would pay a hospital its predetermined fee for this particular operation, say $10,000. If the hospital can perform the surgery for less, it could keep the surplus. Such a system would give hospitals incentive to be as efficient as possible, the senators argue...." - well, the thing is, this is neocon spin in action, and the Star should NOT be promoting this stuff as if it was too stupid to see what they are doing - for what will happen here? As in the US - the "insurance" people say - well well, if you were doing that procedure before for $10,000 - then since we "know" there was "waste" before and you can ALWAYS save a bit - we'll pay you, oh let's say $8,000 for the procedure - you cut what corners you want, and try not to let too many people die, ok? (by the way, your contract says if you DARE to talk about this to the press you will NEVER work in the health care field in THIS country again!) - etc and etc. As I said - have we forgotten Walkerton so soon???) - and then we see - Republicans clear winners in convention stakes - once again the ineffable Hugh Segal is given space in the Star to promote George Bush and his Republican Party - and then to top it off Worker choice laws pro-worker, not anti-union - the Fraser Institute is given space - ON LABOUR DAY!!!!!!!!!! - to diss unions in Canada, and promote their "right to work" US idea - the spin is that workers have "more choice" with such stuff - but the real skinny here, if you're laying bets on something and haven't heard this neocon crap before, is that it gives OWNERS more power to hire and fire at will, and thus put serious downward pressure on wages (you're "free to work" for whatever they want to pay you or starve - great man!!!!!! - sort of like American style "health care" - you're free to pay $5,000 bucks a month in premiums or do without - that's REAL freedom man!!!!) - Wal-mart is the richest corp in the world because it has no unions and very low wages. Most recent ravings Notes: *that doesn't mean boy and girl trolls, we all know a rat in a dress is still a rat hahaha - it means big trolls, like Asper and d'Aquino and Mulroney, and little trolls, like the neocon "journalists" and "judges" and "cops", those traitors to We the People without whom the big trolls could not survive... |