The (somewhat erratic) daily observations...

Nov 22 - Island Morning - full spectrum propaganda in action, as we hear about Canada levying sanctions against Iran, along with the UK - a 'senior writer' for the CBC, named 'Laura Peyton' (sounding quite young - but then the entire tone of the message was the way you would explain things to a slightly advanced child, curious about world events - very simplistic, nice teacher explaining things to the children) - and a black and white, good guys - bad guys world, they don't even pretend balance or offering both sides - the underlying assumption here is that Iran is completely evil, we all know that, we don't need to get into it - anything we do is justified, we don't need to ask about 'their side' because 'evil people' don't have any such thing. And etc. George Orwell's world. With some words for those wondering why it was ok to go after Gaddaffi, but not the guy in Syria - Gaddaffi was much more important, with his plans for a pan-Africa bank and challenging the power of the interntional bankers to run the world - Syria is not that level. (that's not what she said, of course!!!)

And later, the Current - we get an interview from some guy with a new book telling us all how great our Afghanistan mission was - some mistakes made, obviously, and that's why he's here, telling us that it really was 'the work of god, yassa massa!!' - all you peasants quit asking questions, there was no evil intention or anything else here - it was ALL GOOD STUFF!!!!, at heart!! - we're the good guys!! - everybody wants to believe this, and nobody is easier to propagandize than someone who wants to believe the shit they're being fed. On the scale, he gets I suppose an 8 or so - their problem (he and AM and whoever scripted this and did the book) is that he's just a bit too serious and dispassionate - no excitement, no shouting, just a good 'impartial' analysis, covering the main points of those of us who question this whole thing for many reasons. (with, of course, no speaker at all from the 'we should NOT have done this shit' side, and here is why so much of what he says doesn't stand up to much scratching and questioning from somebody with real questions rather than softballing. But of course, you don't do that when you're doing propaganda, as the CBC seems to be mostly doing these days.)

Nov 20 - Financial literacy for students - I guess 'financial literacy' is the buzz-phrase of the day - sounds good, being 'financially literate' would be a very good idea for everyone. Unfortunately (if not unsurprisingly), when placed in the hands of a capitalist apologist, the phrase assumes a somewhat different meaning - sort of a Red Queen thing. For the capitalist 'financial literacy' for the university student does not mean understanding what is going on in the economy, and how 'he who controls the money controls everything else, and related things an educated adult citizen should know in order to make intelligent decisions about what should be happening in his or her society, nono, not at all. What the capitalist apologist wants the student to understand is that no matter how their parents might have had an affordable education, the modern student is by god expected to pay for their own education, and pay well at that. The 'state' is no longer in the business of providing 'free lunches' to anyone (well, except for the upper crust sorts who actually could goddamn well afford their own if they weren't so freaking greedy, but that's another stofy). And the 'financially literate' modern student, steering clear of potentially useful questions like 'Why actually should private banks control our nation's money, and create it out of thin air, and charge interest on it?' and such like, is expected to understand that the *only* purpose of 'higher education' in capitalist society is getting a job - and if they cannot directly connect their course of study to an available job, then what the hell do they think they are doing? I guess the old idea that a 'higher, liberal education' was meant to create a well-rounded, reasonably well educated citizen, has no currency in the modern capitalist world.

And lecturing them about credit card debts - as they watch the world reeling from too much debt, including their own government saying they cannot provide all kinds of services because they are in too much debt - is at best a bit hypocritical - do as I say, lads, not as I do!! - but even more, many of these kids are seeing that when the very leaders of their society - the banks and big investors - get too much in debt, why the govenrment comes along and bails them all out, so any kid would be thinking if they can bail out a vastly wealthy bank for tens of billions, then why the hell won't they bail me/us out for a few paltry tens of thousands? (obviously, the kids do need some education about a lot of things, not yet understanding that that is how the world works ...) Aside from the cynicism, of course, the much bigger point is that what is going on here is really just more of the 'return to the dark ages' capitalist crap. Which will continue until somebody stands up and stops them.

Anyway. Just more of the View from the Island. A scary world, not that many of us left. Came across a good quote from Chomsky yesterday - "Not only is the rabble excluded, they don't influence policy, but they don't know what's in policy, and finally they don't know that they don't know. Virtually nobody knows that they don't know what is going on.' They don't know that they don't know - that seems pretty much to cover so much of what is happening. (and don't sit there knowingly nodding thinking I mean somebody else - if you don't understand what is happening about the money here, and few do, then you don't know, and apparently you don't know you don't know ...) And it really is the end. here.

Nov 20 - Rex Murphy: Capitalism's spoiled children: The maintenance of the dominant dogma, all lies but believed by so many people through the power of systemic indoctrination over a long period of time as seen by Huxley - the slaves loving their chains ...

Capitalist apologetics of the most brazen sort, claiming credit for the accomplishments of others. Capitalism unchained is Dickensian mill towns, or company mining towns of the late 1800s - ruthless robber barons supported by corrupt government and police claiming the wealth produced by the workers and producers. During the first part of the 1900s the people fought back, very strongly, and by the 1950s and 60s had taken some serious steps towards social democracy, which is where the good stuff Murphy opines about came from - strong democracy taking care of the people, not capitalism taking care of the owners by oppressing the people. Anyone with even a vague sense of acknowledging 'truth' understands this - every social gain made during those years, from medicare to pensions to making higher education available to anyone who qualified to the development of a decently-waged middle class, was fought tooth and nail by the capitalists. As these advances are still being fought today, by completely corrupt capitalist controlled governments doing their best to return to the robber baron days of omnipotent Lords controlling great masses of powerless, obedient peasants. Democratic Revolution - now or never http://www.rudemacedon.ca/vgi/backgrounders/revolution.html .

Nov 19 - Canadians need more financial literacy - can't argue with that idea, but it's evident the rulers have other things in mind than do I - mostly just more telling Canadians that they're going to have to start getting by on less, and not expecting governments to look after them when they retire, that sort of thing. Bringing up the case of the odd idiot who overspends on their credit card is a smokescreen. And telling us, again, that Canadians cannot control their spending because they now have more debt than ever is equally disingenuous - maybe, just maybe, Canadians are going deeper in debt because of the systemic inflation caused by bank-created money? Of course, we can't talk about that in the mainstream media. But I offer a bit of somewhat more real 'education' for anyone interested. Not expecting many takers in a Twitter-reinforced population who not only have trouble with dealing with numbers, but are being trained to have an attention span for anything remotely serious a 10-year-old would be proud of.

- financial literacy surely would make a difference as to what has been going on around here the last 30 years. If you understand, for beginners, simply *where* the money comes from that is causing all the problems, the world suddenly looks a LOT different - you start to understand what a massive fraud everything is - we've had at least a couple of trillion stolen from us the last 30 years, and that's only the beginning. Start your real financial education - What Happened http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html . The only real discussion is soon going to be, are Harper's new jails going to be big enough to hold all the scamsters?

Nov 18 - Simpson - Will the north pay for the south's problems? - Simpson, again presstituting for the rulers - them damned people causing their own problems! again, the rulers creating problems, and pointing fingers at the victims. Not so, Mr Simpson, not so - they have been looted for the last 100 years, that is their problem ...

'will the north pay for the south's problems' is hubristic blindness of the very worst and most despicable sort (if not simply outright lying). What has happened over the last 30 years is that western elites have used their great wealth for the best-returning investment of all, national governments, and have instructed their new employees to turn over control of the world's money to these private interests, for their own speculation and democracy-destroying activities, which has bee accomplished quite well - and are now blaming the victims for their misery, as they use the 'problem-reaction-solution' strategy to attempt once again to put in place their 'one world currency, one world government' goal. At which point we are all toast, or boiled frogs, pick your analogy. The scam unzipped here - What Happened http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html .

Nov 17 - Michael Hlinka with his "business commentary" all over the CBC. I've written about his hardcore capitalist boosterism before, but he gets really crazy today. He talks about some European proposal to rate credit agencies, and gets a little ballistic and irrational. His underlying idea, not spoken but certainly implicit, is that such rating agencies are kind of on the right hand of God, basically infallible - he seems unaware that it was only very few years ago that these ratings agencies were giving 5* ratings to junk bonds, and other obviously blatantly fraudlent things. But the truth never got in the way of a rabid capitalist looking at any kind of restrictions on their freedom to loot. The thing could stand a lot of decontstruction, but why bother?

Nov 16 - Reynolds - the collapse of paper money - never-ending, the creation of the narrative in the mainstream media.

More very serious misdirection from those with vested interests who control banks, media and governments (the best paying investment of all..). The target here is 'central banks printing money', and the necessary assumption, carefully not directly said, is that these 'central banks' are under the control of 'government', and thus 'government' is responsible for all the problems we are facing. This is not true. In reality, most money today in countries like Canada is bank-created debt - in Canada, only about 3% of 'our' money is the bills and coins everyone thinks of as 'money', but the great bulk of 'our' money exists as money in bank accounts, transferred around electronically - and *all* of this electronic debt money is created by commercial banks when they make loans. And that is the source of our problem - not governments 'printing' money, but private banks *creating* money, with no realistic government control over how much they create. And such bank control of money around the world - and their prime objective of maxing short-term profit through speculation, and encouraging financial instability - is at the root of all of our problems. The solution is not commodity based money, which does nothing about the real problem, the solution is for more people to understand what is going on with the money situation, and retake *our* right to control *our* money democratically, in the interests of a stable economy, rather than letting banks control 'our' money, with the goal of maxing short-term profits of speculators, a goal for which any form of economic stability is very much not conducive.

It cannot be all explained in the few words allowed in discussions like this, but anyone interested in what bank control of "our" money in Canada has meant over the last 30 years can get more info here - What Happened http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html

Nov 12 - Media Democracy: a discussion. Like so many 'in the box' things, mostly rearranging deck chairs stuff, without getting to the meat. I add a comment:

"A multi-faceted problem that does not seem to get dealt with here in any realistic way, mostly 'rearranging the deck chairs' stuff. Certainly the internet is playing a role, but there are other serious things that don't seem to be addressed here. Out of the box, I see:

For the more aware segment of the population in Canada and elsewhere, 'journalism' is losing readers and credibility because more and more people are understanding it is just a big 'new world order' propaganda machine, and these 'more aware' citizens are becoming more and more convinced that this destination, the NWO which is in essence a new feudalist society dominated by bankers and populated by debt-serfs, might be good for the wealthy elite, but it's just a new Brave New Mordor for most average sorts of citizens. And thus, again with this more aware segment of the population, 'journalists' working for these people, or running the 'journalism' schools that turn them out, don't have much of a reputation because, of course, they work for the propagandists. You don't have much credibility when you tell me how much you care about 'journalism', but are drawing a paycheck from a place that feeds me propaganada every day, and refuses to publish things that disagree with whatever they are propagandizing about.

The other main part of reduced public attention on 'journalism' is something of an 'unintended consequence' I suppose - for 30 years or more now, the mainstream media has been involved with the great 'dumbing down' program that is part of the NWO implementation strategy (uninformed, passive, dependent children are much easier to control than aware, engaged adults) - but of course children are more interested in games and having fun than in getting involved with even pablum-ized 'current events' as offered in the mainstream 'child-adult' media, so go places where they can find such things without the boring distractions of 'serious' things going on in their country and world. So an aspiring 'journalist' has one very important decision to make before they even start looking for a job or writing - are they willing to be an NWO propagandist, or not? If so, fine, fight for one of the remaining jobs with the mainstream media - if you are willing to sell out your fellow citizens like this for a ride on the rulers' management bandwagon, and have the required 'intangibles' like being a good (and usually good-looking) salesperson to sell their product, there's some good perks going for the better ones. Or else, if you really feel a calling to report the 'news' the people need to hear, are willing to do good work for small pay, in the service of a greater good, because this is more important than new toys, keep away from the mainstream media who are not going to hire you anyway if you insist on going places the propagandists do not want talked about, and do your stuff on the net, where more and more people are turning to find out what's really happening in the world.

Yes, you need money to live, as do we all. Those with a 'real' calling to 'journalism', both those who wish to publish and those who wish to investigate and report, should not be complaining there's no money on the net, you should be developing a model to make money - there's lots of us out here who would be happy to pay some small amount each month to support such a thing, such as is required for a regular propaganda-MSM newspaper, but you need to be doing more than random commentaries as well. Imagine a combination of al Jazeera Canada, Huff Post Canada, with Global Research - a place I can go to see what the mainstream people want us reading, plus things they don't want us reading (what is hap

Nov 13 - Canada eyes joining talks on Asia-Pacific trade area - not even a pretence of 'democracy' in so much of what we read about what "our leaders" are getting up to. Obviously (there are no riots in the streets) most Canadians are quite content to go about their daily business whilst others make the important decisions about what is happening in the country. And I guess if you are content with that sort of thing, then 'democracy' is not something you really care much about. Which then means you don't have much justifiation later on when you see what is really going on. Even the 'occupy' stuff doesn't seem to be that clued in - in effect, they're petitioning the masters - but petitioning the masters isn't how you run a 'democracy'. But I don't suppose anyone is listening.

Nov 13 - Italy and Greece: Rule by the Bankers: "...Even though both Greek prime minister George Papandreou and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi were elected comfortably in parliamentary polls and were never defeated in any vote of confidence in parliament, they have been ousted – to be replaced by unelected ex-central bankers and former executives of hedge funds and investment banks. From now on, financial markets will rule directly over the lives of the Italian and Greek people..." - funny, don't recall reading that particular way of looking at things in the Canadian media. (don't get me wrong - one hardly expects to read anything of use in the Cdn mainstream media anymore ... just noting ... )

Nov 11 Toronto Star: "Where do Canadian's want to travel most?" Sic, as they say. The biggest newspaper in the country, supposedly 'progressive', which normally has some connections with 'educated'. I keep thinking we can't go much lower, and then they keep going lower. I remember better times .... Actually, I can't really understand what is happening here the last few years - the 'rule' about when to use or not use the apostrophe is not very complicated, so why are so many putting this little mark on simple plural words? I wonder if there isn't something deeper than the general 'dumbing down' that's been going on the last 30+ years? People more and more having the thinking centers of their brains being wiped clean, and just operating on whatever is left superficially, thus just guessing about things like this, and just guessing wrong? We'll know sometime, I suppose - let's just hope it's not a Titanic moment, when we suddenly realise that the captain really wasn't in control of the ship as we thought - nor, more importantly, was the ship 'invincible', as we also thought - that very last 'oh fuck' thought ... as we do our Wile E Coyote moment, high over the abyss. Knowing, of course, that our life is not a cartoon, and we won't be getting up and walking away from the fall that is soon to finish to go looking for the next moment of profound stupidity - in 'real life', you don't get a second chance.

And yes, correct grammar is important - the English language is one of the most advanced things humans have ever developed, and can express many, many things with a great deal of precision - and precision is a function of higher intelligence, and ability. The more they dumb us down in terms of language, the stupider we will be, overall. Which is no doubt good for those who wish to establish a new feudalism here - immature, not-too-bright people are much, much easier to control than intelligent, mature adults.

(and this minor screed is not meant to be directed at casual commenters on discussion lists and things - there's no need for careful proofreading in such situations. But adding an apostrophe to a headline in a major Cdn newspaper is not some 'typo', it is an outright indication that somebody who is writing headlines for the Toronto Star is incapable of understanding a very basic grammar rule. And when we have these people working for the media whose theoretical purpose is giving citizens the information they need to make intelligent decisions - the deeper message is not good.

Nov 11 - The rhetoric and reality of attacking Tehran: Aside from the rather blatant nonsense of most of the rhetoric, one quite obvious question is left hanging - why does anyone believe that even if Iran developed a nuclear weapon, against all evidence to the contrary, they would be suicidal or stupid enough to use it in an offensive attack? It is very obvious to anyone with a functioning brain that if Iran was to send a nuclear bomb to anywhere in the world, if they ever managed to develop the capability, they would immediately be completely annihilated by Israel and the US. Thus - if you cannot show at least some reasons you believe the leaders of Iran wish this fate for their country, then the fear-mongering is completely senseless. Of course, logic and common sense and fear-mongering rarely go together. It is clear enough why certain propagandists wish to demonize Iran, but less clear why so many others are stupid enough to believe all this sh**.

Nov 9 - Hepburn: Rae's 'road map' is a map to nowhere - I guess it's the hopeless naivete that just wants to believe there are some decent, honest people in the system who really want to do well - I know, you can have a chuckle, but I guess I'm like the old guy Diogenes or something, endlessly looking for just one, just one honest politician. Anyway, reading this story, and a couple of others at the same time, about Rae's talk at the Economic Club, just inspired a short missive to he and his comrades.

Mr Rae et al,
Reading about your speech to the Economic Club of Canada in the Star a couple of days ago, and reading some other commentary about what you are doing and saying these days, I got inspired to write a bit about what I think you and your fellow Liberals might do, if you are really interested in seeing the Liberals as once again the party of the people of Canada. It's pretty clear that 'same old same old' isn't a good approach these days, and there don't seem to be many useful ideas out there coming from 'the ranks'. Perhaps I can help, from outside the box where I tend to spend a lot of time.

What the Liberal party, like every other party these days, has forgotten, or just tossed aside, over the last 20-30 years of 'the market is king!!!' insanity that has overtaken the governments of the world, is the idea of a 'social contract' that has underlain the whole system of 'party politics' and governance in western democracies at least since the last great capitalist market disaster, the crash of 29 caused by the same kind of unregulation we have seen the last couple of decades of increasing 'market' dominance and catering to the demands of an ever more vocal and living-in-wonderland unreality "investors", and the following 'great depression', and then WWII, following which the citizens who survived these capitalist-initiated disasters became very unhappy with the rulers who allowed these things to happen, and demanded some better behavior from the people they elected - names like Douglas, Diefenbaker and Trudeau come to mind, all presently, of course, hated with a passion for their devotion to 'the people' by the current rulers, the wouldbe new feudalists, as much as they were loved by 'the people' of their times for believing in, and fighting for, the dream of a just and good society for all of us, not just the rapacious, moral-free few. (and the rest here. For those interested ....



Nov 9 - Island Morning - a 'Workplace Issues' 'feature', with friendly Pierre Bata giving advice to workers, I guess. I also guess if I write again to the Ch'town CBC boss and complain about too much business-oriented focus on the CBC in general, he will point to this as a rebuttal. But actually, this is also business-friendly stuff - the point of this story was that people are going to lose jobs, and the way to deal with it is just to accept it - this is your new world, people, insecurity and lower and falling wages, forever. It seems to me a 'real' workplace-oriented person would be talking about options - worker cooperatives, fighting for Democracy and a society which cared more about citizen security than capitalist corporate profits, and etc. Of course, if there was anything 'real' these days on the CBC at all, esp the boonie areas like Ch'town, it would be quite a surprise - and quickly dealt with, I suspect. Life in capitalistland.

Nov 8 - Jail the banksters - William Black certainly gets it - one of a handful of honest and intelligent economists still alive in the world today. You are *never* going to see guys like this near the CBC, or other mainstream media! (that's what 'freedom' means, right?) All thinking people who care about our country and world should be giving enthusiastic support to places like The Real News Network, who dare to challenge the self-serving lies of mainstream economists and politicians.

Nov 6 - Another inconvenient truth - we're getting older - part of creating the new reality, the new narrative of 'our times', the full spectrum propaganda that keeps people firmly in the box, firmly indoctrinated, talking around and around in circles, given a set of options that can only lead to the place the people doing the herding want to get to. It takes real 'outside the box' thinking to break out of this kind of arranged conclusion - part of 'my mission' is showing people the door out of the box. Not sure how many are trying it, but I keep trying. To Mr Simpson's article, I wrote:

The whole subject is amazingly mean-spirited for what once aspired to be a caring advanced democracy - now we're becoming just a nation of greedy capitalist barbarians not wanting to share our grubby toys with anyone else.

But aside from that, the whole thing is based on lies. We are not a poor country at all, we have vast wealth, more than enough to generously look after everyone without overtaxing the earnings of those who work hard for their money. What we have done, however, is allow a financial system to be imposed on us which, through most fraudlent means, directs most of this great wealth to a handful of people at the top of the food chain, thus leaving everyone else to try to get by on an increasingly small share of a great pie. For example, over the last ~30 years or so, we have paid some two trillion dollars of tax money on entirely unnecessary government 'debt' - money which could and should have been used for health care, pensions, retirement funds, infrastructure maintenance and defelopment, etc. (and after all of those "interest" payments over 30 years - the 'debt' is greater than ever, and still sucking massive amounts of money and being used as an excuse to slash even more of the support systems!)

Limited space allows for limited explanation, but for a bit of necessary info to help understand how this discussion should not be taking place at all, you could start here - What Happened http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html (and maybe think about the discussion we really should be having - how to get a lot of people who have stolen a lot of money into their new retirement homes - Harper's new prisons... )

Nov 4 - Carney gets a promotion! - to which I added a wee voice from the wilderness attempting to point out the bigger picture:

Carney and the Cdn bankers do have some extremely good accomplishments, but not quite what they are bragging about. And I think a lot of the credit has to go to the Cdn media as well, and perhaps the overall Cdn education system the last 30 years, which have resulted in an extremely trusting (AKA naive) Cdn population, who provide the basis of the population that keeps on giving, and giving, and giving, with minimal complaining. Ideal marks, really, for 'Mark' and his buds, and no doubt the "investor"-rulers in other western democracies look with some envy on the accomplishments of the Cdn elite, and wonder how they might get their own populations a little more passive as the pocket-picking continues. Think - over the last ~25 years, Cdn governments (national and provincial) have payed ~two trillion dollars in "service charges" on completely fraudulent debts; during that time the "debts" have never shifted from the ~trillion dollar mark, and after 25 years of paying interest and slashing social programs in the name of that debt, the debt has hardly changed, so the paying and slashing continue unabated. More here - What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html .

Nov 5 - Jian Ghomeshi did a bit of an extolment of the 75th anniversary of the CBC that happened last week. The CBC was once a great thing for Canada, but I fear it is somewhat less so these days, as I comment on regularly. Jian's commentary can be heard here - Happy Anniversary CBC - and the letter I wrote to him in response read here. For those interested ....

Nov 4 - Harper says no money for European bailout - as always, the medium is the message. "Harper says" - and I guess nobody even thinks about that so old and tired idea called 'democracy' anymore - as in, if Canada was actually a 'democracy', Harper wouldn't say anything until 'the people' decided what they wanted to do - but of course, in a pretend-democracy such as Canada, it's the norm to 'elect' a 'leader' every few years, who then decides himself (or with input from others besides average Cdns, at any rate - the people with the money who actually run the country, that is to say) what 'Canada' will do. The media certainly have no problem with the way the country is run - of course, the same people who 'advise' Harper own the media, so if you do have any problems with this kind of thing, or want to say something suggesting that just maybe the people ought to be consulted now and then between elections about important stuff, you're not likely to be working for the CBC, or Globe, or Star. No need to even mention the Pispot.

It was kind of amusing a couple of days ago when the Greek PM said he was going to ask the people of Greece if they approved of a bailout plan, and the entire world ruling community erupted in shock and disbelief and anger that "an elected leader" actually thought he should do such a thing as get the approval of the people for something known to be unpopular. So obvious what everyone thinks 'democracy' means - and not a peep from anyone in the mainstream media, who are obviously all onboard with pretend-democracy - it is, of course, their job to sell this, and keep the people pacified as pretend-democracy herds them all into the new feudalism nice and passively.

There is still some pretty good 'real' media out there, somewhat mislabeled as 'alternative' media - it may be 'alternative' to the mainstream media, but in terms of speaking for most of the people most of the time, it is really the 'real' media, and the CBC, Blob, Pispot et al the 'alternative' media, speaking for a small special interest group - although of course this small special interest group is by far the most powerful group in the country, or world if you consider the bigger picture, and have had things their way for so long they think, and have a lot of others thinking also, they are the 'real' media. Etc. (good interview with Michael Hudson, a 'real' economist, on Global Research TV - Global Eocnomic Research: The Iceland Economic Collapse - this is the kind of stuff a real 'for the people' media talks about, what 'we the people' need to know to make intelligent decisions about what we are going to do to get these criminals out of our governments.

Nov 4 - Goar: Business elite gets a reality check - the state of the most 'progressive' "news"paper in the country, with one of the more "progressive" columnists - 100% in the corner of 'business'. Ms Goar is all rah-rah when a big bank officer gets really, really radical and suggests that just maybe the rulers ought to treat the peasants just a wee tiny bit better. She does, of course, understand that this notion is going to be widely opposed by those born to rule, as they have no sense of obligation to the peasants in their dog-eat-dog world - if you're rich, in their world, it is because you deserve it, and likewise if you're a peasant sleeping under a bridge - well, you decided to do that too.

It's pretty false on many fronts. For example, if you are born into a rich family rather than a poor one, you have a much greater chance of 'doing well' in this world. But more importantly, it is deceptive, and actually a typical kind of predator 'do as we say not as we do' lie - we live in a country that once aspired to being a 'democracy', a political system in which everyone is given at least a basic sort of equal chance to succeed in life - but when the 'democracy' is corrupted so that the government helps some (greatly) and makes sure others are very firmly oppressed, then all people do NOT have an equal chance. So the predators who treat their country as a jungle, and there are no rules other than winning, then those who follow the rules - as do most Cdns - are fighting an unequal contest, a very unequal contest, and for the predators to say they succeeded because they are better is disengenuous to say the very least. (and the frustration about this unfairness and ever more evident inequality of opportunity is responsible for a lot of the violence we see growing every day).

That the speaker she talks about is either extremely delusional, or else just lying (I would suspect the latter), is made clear when he frames his talk with the idea that any change of policy in some small way to relieve the most severe inequities in the country would be "..rewarding less disciplined members of society..". This is just utter horseshit. The problem is the predatory few actively stealing from everyone else, and throwing those less able to look after themselves to the food banks and those luxury boxes under bridges or over subway grates in the wintertime. And he has to know this, although he's certainly not going to say it out loud - but the 'undisciplined' masses are part of the mythology being created, so it gets tossed out at times like this.



Oct 22 - Unbending health care system - the somewhat rabid capitalist supporter Ms Blatchford - I suppose it's the best job she can get, and wants to keep it or something - seriously, no intelligent person can really believe in capitalism, they *must* know it is very much like a cancer, exploiting the exploitable for personal gain. It could not survive in a 'democracy' without a lot of people willing to sell out their 'fellow citizens' to be part of the 'winners' rather than in the mass of losers.

Anyway, just a pithy response: "We live in an extremely wealthy country. If we cared for one another, as civilized people do, we would have no problems looking after older people. However, we have allowed a cancer to take over our society, a cancer which demands that more and more of our resources be devoted primarily to it, feeding its blind lust and greed and madness. The cancer is called capitalism, and it is going to continue taking more and more, and leaving less and less for the people whose lifeblood is being drawn off to support the demands of this disease, until we excise it from our system. Note the many NP commentators who have devoted their lives to mindless, fanatical support of this disease, and must sadly be part of the excision.. The doctor is coming - Doctor Democracy - Democratic Revolution - now or never .

But the point is simple enough - we do live in a vastly wealthy country, and could and should have no problem looking after everyone who cannot do so by themselves - but we have allowed the capitalists to impose this political-economic system around us which sees the great bulk of the 'excess wealth' we produce to be directed to the elite to live in opulence with, rather than to supporting and improving the social infrastructure which would look after everyone decently. It's not a single effect either, just not enough money to do what we should do - as we see here, and so many other places, the workers within the bureaucracy become capitalist-like, in their scorn for those who cannot look after themselves, and provide ever poorer care and services, very unlike a caring system - when the country says 'We will look after you well', the workers within that bureaucracy have the same attitude. When the government's attitude is basically "Look after yourself, or eat shit and die' - well, it's not surprising the workers who survive in such a system have the same attitude.

We could change it, both the lack of money and the attitude of those who are given the responsibility of looking after those who cannot do so in our society. If we wanted to. Or we can just meekly continue being herded into the capitalist cages.

I wish I saw a bit more hope out there. (no, the 'occupy' things do not give much hope - they show the masses are getting unhappy, but this is not news, and they don't indicate in any way they have any idea what they need to do to get rid of the usurpers and actually take back the country.)

Oct 16 - Economics has met the enemy, and it is us

The problem with modern "economics" is that it is essentially a big lie, and lies eventually catch up to you. Modern "economics" is not a field designed to examine and explain things, it is a propaganda undertaking designed to justify capitalism. This and no more. Thus "theories" such as 'the natural rate of unemployment", designed to justify capitalist policies vis a vis labour, rather than, for instance, 'the natural rate of profits", which a propaganda field designed to justify socialism might devise, or a theory of 'how the dominant economic class creates fictions to justify its dominance', such as an honest sociologist or anthropoligist might consider (but not, of course, if he or she wanted a job in a western university these days).

They have to do this of course - the *only* point of capitalism is creating a modern quasi-feudal society where the powerless serf masses create wealth which the feudal "owners of industry" claim as theirs, doling out the least they can get away with as 'payment' to the serfs - and of course no society with citizens wishful of 'democracy' could accept such a basis of their society, so the great lies must be substituted as the popular belief, through the media, also of course controlled by the capitalists to ensure no unpleasant truths start circulating. And of course when you are trying to justify something so obviously not justifiable, the nonsense flows fast and free.

Modern "economists" - more or less the equivalent of the couriers and brownnosers parading around the emperor with his 'new clothes aren't they so beautiful!!'.

Ira tries to make sense of things like a child trying to understand Santa Claus, still believing the lies his parents told him and trying to fit them into what he sees around him, but is obviously hampered by the same naivete of the economist drones - he cannot see that our entire economy is based on lies, and run by lying criminals. And if you're not going to talk about this, then you can not possibly have anything of real use to say, nor will you ever get a handly on things until you have that epiphanic awakening some days - the people running things are lying to us!! bigtime. omg. really. Some beginnings at dissecting 'reality' here - What Happened? .

Oct 18 - Absurd Euro non-bailout bailout:

What's absurd is the conintuing refusal of everyone to talk about the main issue here - that private banks have been controlling the money supply for the last 30 years, and by vast over-creation of money for primarily speculative purposes have brought many of the world's economies to their knees. There is a very strong case to be made that most of the government debts currently causing such distress are really definable as 'odious', and of no real effect or force, were they properly examined in a competent court. Of course, finding a competent court, in countries whose governments are basically bank investments, would be another problem. more here - A HREF="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html">What Happened?
Oct 15 - Robin Hood global march - from Adbusters, one of the instigators of the 'occupy wall street' demonstrations. I am not entirely against this, but as I have written elsewhere, I don't think these demonstrations are of much use. I mentioned this to them - as usual, nobody, left, right, center, anywhere else, wants to talk to me. Yet.

" - as long as you're looking for a Robin Hood to 'save you', you're going to keep losing. If you want a *real* Robin Hood, start with the person you see in the mirror each day. Democracy is a participatory sport, or it's no contest. And as far as 'dethroning' anyone - have you given any thought to what will replace it? We *will* have a government of some sort - the question is, who will run it, we the people for *our* own good, or some gang of criminals for theirs? If you create a vacuum by dethroning someone - someone else will be very quick to fill that vacuum. And if it isn't a fully prepared democracy movement, it will very probably be someone even worse than now - someone whose first action will be certain people like you do not 'dethrone' them next.

You've got a lot of good energy here, but I very much fear you are basically wasting it. Democratic Revolution - now or never "

Me, I can understand why the people running our society, and herding everyone around like dumb sheep, would not want 'the citizens' thinking about the things I say, looking into the rooms where I turn lights on, looking under rocks I pull up, spray-painting the elephant in the room nobody wants to acknowledge, etc etc - but it is a bit more puzzling that nobody from 'the progessive' side of things will talk about this stuff. There's all kinds of people involved, of course, the 'young followers' who trust their leaders to do the leading around, etc, or who just want to paint their face and carry some signs and have some fun without doing anything boring like organizing or stuff, but if the progressive 'leaders' are not aware of what I am talking about, or are gatekeeping just as much as the MSM people - then we got problems, one way or another. More coming soon. Think et tu, Brute.

Oct 19 - Time to cooperate: A modest proposal for a progressive alliance on electoral reform - kind of scary, a senior member of the NDP, saying she supports PR - but apparently having no idea you do NOT need any kind of 'constitutional amendment' to change electoral systems. Thinking a bit deeper, as people on GI tend to do, unlike shallowland tv-heads out there, we might also consider that this probably indicates just how seriously the NDP are in promoting PR, as they claim to do - lots of feel-good talk, but no real intention of doing anything about it, were they ever to have a chance to. It's no secret - they've been 'in power' in various provinces for many years, and never did anything about it, and even during the last election only had a couple of comments about it, rather than putting it front and center and making it 'their' issue, which might have done them a lot of good. Just another corporate BS party.

Oct 18 - After the boomers - the squeezed generation - More Fraser Institute propaganda (via UBC), indoctrination maintenance making sure everybody (or 'enough of the people enough of the time', the goal of propaganda, which the NWOers seem to have no problem reaching in an increasingly dumbed down population). I had to say something: "Not one of your more skilled propagandists, they give themselves away in the first line - "..as their baby-boomer elders head into easier-than-ever retirement..". Obvious nonsense - most people looking at retirement these days are looking at considerable hardship, and many, many others are putting off retirement, after working 40 years or more, because they have never earned enough to save for retirement in any adequate amount, and or had expected retirements curtailed after "the market" decimated their retirement accounts. Although the clever strategists at the NWO offices continue with their divide-and-conquer propaganda, old against young in this case, through their secretariat maintstream media, the reality is that almost everybody is looking at a grimmer future after 30 years of serious looting by the new feudal masters, AKA "investors" and the banking and otherwise wealthy elite. More here, for those not quite satisfied with the self-serving finger pointing of the Fraser Institute et al propagandists - What Happened?"

Oct 16 - Economics has met the enemy and it is economics - Ira Basin seems a well-meaning sort, I wrote him about a media spin thing he did a few years ago, and although I didn't convince him of anything, he actually took the time to respond, which tends to indicate his sincerity, if not his inability to actually think outside the box, as he fancies himself doing. This article in the Globe is actually quite radical, for the globe, although not really getting into anything seriously useful. I try to explain things a bit, but I doubt I reached anyone. I'm beginning to wonder if anyone out there is reachable, actually. Not seeing many signs of life these days.

"The problem with modern "economics" is that it is essentially a big lie, and lies eventually catch up to you. Modern "economics" is not a field designed to examine and explain things, it is a propaganda undertaking designed to justify capitalism. This and no more. Thus "theories" such as 'the natural rate of unemployment", designed to justify capitalist policies vis a vis labour, rather than, for instance, 'the natural rate of profits", which a propaganda field designed to justify socialism might devise, or a theory of 'how the dominant economic class creates fictions to justify its dominance', such as an honest sociologist or anthropoligist might consider (but not, of course, if he or she wanted a job in a western university these days).

They have to do this of course - the *only* point of capitalism is creating a modern quasi-feudal society where the powerless serf masses create wealth which the feudal "owners of industry" claim as theirs, doling out the least they can get away with as 'payment' to the serfs - and of course no society with citizens wishful of 'democracy' could accept such a basis of their society, so the great lies must be substituted as the popular belief, through the media, also of course controlled by the capitalists to ensure no unpleasant truths start circulating. And of course when you are trying to justify something so obviously not justifiable, the nonsense flows fast and free.

Modern "economists" - more or less the equivalent of the couriers and brownnosers parading around the emperor with his 'new clothes aren't they so beautiful!!'.

Ira tries to make sense of things like a child trying to understand Santa Claus, still believing the lies his parents told him and trying to fit them into what he sees around him, but is obviously hampered by the same naivete of the economist drones - he cannot see that our entire economy is based on lies, and run by lying criminals. And if you're not going to talk about this defining aspect of everything, then you can not possibly have anything of real use to say, nor will you ever get a handle on things until you have that epiphanic awakening some day - the people running things are lying to us!! bigtime. omg. really.

Some beginnings at dissecting 'reality' here - What Happened?."

Oct 16 - Heather Mallick, Fat or taxes, we won't face facts - Heather won't talk to me either. Busy people.

Heather, the biggest unfaced fact of all in modern times is this - all of our financial troubles (which then includes at no more than one or two steps removed pretty much everything else, as money problems lead to stress which leads to everything from family abuse and breakups to road rage and hiding behind drugs etc etc) have one source: we allow private banks to create almost all of our money, out of thin air, and charge interest on it. With no real regulations. All else follows, inflation eating into savings, booms and busts as money is created for speculation, etc etc. Private banks, owned of course by 'investors' who wish only maximum ROI, have no concern about trashing economies, or interest in creating a stable economy which has little room for making speculative killings - indeed, chaos is good for gamblers and speculators, if less so for the average people getting tossed around by economic chaos. We have inflation because we pay interest on the entire money supply every year, have been since the 70s when all of this started, after ~40 years of relative stability following the last great crash of 29, after which the governments reined in the banks. By the 70s, people had forgotten the lessons so hardly learned, and banks, using the best investment of all for those who can afford it, buying governments, got themselves unregulated again, and the governments out of the money supervision business - and the result is the financial meltdown we see today, something like the last time unregulated banks went crazy in the 20s. Fabulous for awhile, eating the candy in the candy store, then big bellyache afterwards - except, of course, the people who cleaned out the store are passing the bellyache on to the innocent bystanders. More detail here, if interested - What Happened? . Also be happy to send you a copy of a book about a vision for a better future if any of this gets your attention - Green Island.

Oct 16 - Liberal Party in declineI've noticed a few articles like this the last little while, and it hit one of the filters I always have on these days when reading anything, based on an aphorism (it's ok, we use words like that on GI, really, just like intelligent people used to - read Middlemarch sometime, or any of the classics from the 1800s, if you want to see the vast gulf between what 'educated' people used to talk like, and the drivel that dominates today - in many ways, the 'good ol days' really were a lot better ...) I first read as a kid in one of the James Bond books - something like 'once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action'. Still makes sense. And the mainstream media, when they get a bee in their bonnet about something (not a coincidental bee, by any means, when the main function of the MSM is propaganda and propaganda maintenance, and herding the citizens in one direction or another), when anything of interest suddenly starts appearing in different places at around the same time, you can figure there's a good chance that somebody is up to something. As here -

Missing the main reason the Libs are in decline, although I suppose it's hard to see the forest when you're one of the trees. The mainstream media has been actively engaged in killing the Lib party in Canada for several years now, continual negative reporting whilst building up the cons. It's a sign of how deeply the party is accepted by Canadians that it's taken so long to subdue them. I have a small essay on one part of this, the 2008 election, here - Canadian Media: Reporting on or Managing the 2008 Election? . Don't get me wrong, there's no big loss here, in terms of losing the party - but we're all losing 'our' country, as the rulers, with the full cooperation of the media, turn us into US north - the creation of a two part tweedledee-dum party system is just part of the longer term assimilation plan. We could stop it - Democratic Revolution - now or never .

Oct 15 - Alarming decline in voter turnout - again, one of the periodic faux-dirges, letting the people know our masters really, really do care about the 'health' of 'our' democracy. Of course, nobody is ever going to get to the real reasons - I give any readers who might be puzzled a boost.

"..Everyone is starting to understand that there is really only one party in Canada, the party of Big Business and NWO Corporatization - everywhere you look, every government whether they call themselves Libs or Cons or even NDPs, they're all inmplementing the NWO agenda of basically devising plans and excuses to hand over the wealth of the people of Canada to a small elite who are becoming new feudal lords overseeing a population of powerless peasants. People do not like this, they do not agree with it, but they understand that voting, as the party structure currently is rigged, makes no difference. Hence why bother voting if a vote is only a validation of a rigged system? Hence angry protests like OWS. Democracy will return to Canada when we take it back from the oligarchs - Democratic Revolution - now or never ."

Oct 15 - March of the anarcho-craziesThe twisting of reality that farrightwing idiotlogues like 'mr' corcoran can get themselves into is truly awesome to behold at times. For the last 30 years we have had unbridled capitalism destroying the world economy - and he can sit in his tower of disillusion and blame it on 'stateism' and 'keynesianism'. And he labels the demonstrators 'undemocratic' - it is the current capitalist barbaric plutocracy that is undemocratic. Coming soon to Canada - Democratic Revolution - now or never .

(new word alert (neologism) - I think I have quite a few in my past, but no record of them - but google has no hits for 'idiotlogue'. Just for the record, as they say. Curious people may want to know, if the good guys ever win here, and my contributions are finally frigging noticed. I'd rather have the frigging money now, so I can do some of the travelling I really need to do to get a better handle on things here... If 'you're' listening, eh???)

Oct 13 - OWS a symptom of something serious.. - Jonathan, as usual backasswards about what's going on here. Mr Jones. He says the OWS is hindering the government from dealing with the financial crisis - but actually, the OWS movement is happening because the government CAUSED the crisis, and the occupiers are the ones suffering, and are letting everyone know they've *finally* reached the point of, all right jack, this far and no frigging further. OF course, we don't really want to acknowledge this in the media, so all the wild finger-pointing so common with capitalist apologists, who have a lot of stuff they don't really want to talk about, but others do. One of the main capitalist propagandist courses - Misdirection 101, 201, 301, etc. Right up to the Master's level. Which also explains their disinclination to talk to anyone - all anyone in authority has been doing for the last lot of years is lie, lie, lie and lie some more - their credibility is completely shot. So what to do? Who knows - but the current situation is not tenable or acceptable. For those yet unaware of what is happening, you might be interested in this - What Happened? - Canada is heading for the same place, if a lot of people don't start waking up real soon.

Oct 13 - Paper call out for 'press freedom' conference - the Cdn Association of Journalists website seems to be sincere in some ways - I've sent them a couple of pretty blunt comments (that refers to 'truthful' talk rather than 'inappropriate language') and they've moderated them and allowed them, which the more obvious gatekeeping places (like the Star and CBC) generally don't, but they seem pretty 'boxified', in the sense of actually believing the indoctrination that 'what you see here is what you get', and there are no 'overlords' actually directing things around here, which seems pretty obvious from here on GI out of the box. Anyway, when they announced a 'call for papers' re an upcoming 'conference' talking about how 'press freedom' is a problem these days, I thought I'd try to shed a bit of enlightenment. I don't think anybody read it, but ya gotta keep trying.

"Press 'freedom' is hardly the problem - this kind of conference seems designed to do the classic 'make a lot of noise about something you can pretend is related to people's unhappiness, but is actually irrelevant, to avoid the real problem' strategy - classic stuff these days, as the capitalists point fingers everywhere except at themselves to get people distracted from looking where they ought to be looking about various very important things going on in the world today (as talked about in a bit more detail here Democratic Revolution - now or never http://www.rudemacedon.ca/vgi/backgrounders/revolution.html ) . The problem is press *responsibility* - in a 'democracy' the job of the 'free press' is to provide the citizens with the information they need to make intelligent decisions - but when the press - no question about being free to write pretty much as they want - are controlled by a certain small interest group (wealthy elite AKA new feudalists), and spins what is told the citizens to favor that interest group (continual pro-corporate screw-the-little-people framing), and lies to incite citizens to support policies favorable to that group or that they wish to pursue (i.e. justifying 'democracy-bringing' invasions around the world (AKA looting etc)), and gatekeeps as necessary to prevent the citizens hearing contradictory ideas (i.e. the money supply scam explained in What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html ) - we have a problem. And the problem is magnified when the citizens are indoctrinated through years of propaganda to trust in and believe their media, based on ancient times when media ownership was much more diversified, and thus offered a much greater range of opinion than is available today, and actually was much more reliable. So although we have a very 'free' press in Canada, when they use that 'freedom' to support, pretty much as one voice, one particular interest group, which is a quite small minority in the country, and there is no national media at all speaking for the majority beyond the odd voice-in-the-wilderness column buried under the pro-corporate monologue, the issue of 'responsibility' becomes rather important - where is the Canadian media actually responsible to the people, and telling them what they need to know to effectively fight this corporate deluge, rather than their elite wouldbe-new-feudalist owners?

Perhaps someone will ask Nick Fillmore, whose article blame it on neoliberalism, very much talking about what I am talking about here, appears elsewhere on this site concurrently, to offer some words about the difference between 'freedom' and 'responsibility' at the conference. Perhaps. I won't be holding my breath.

(I suppose 3 refs to my own writing in one post would be frowned upon, but in case it gets through, I have a longer analysis of the role of the Canadian election in the 08 election - Canadian Media: Reporting on or Managing the 2008 Election?. )

Oct 12 - The Tyee, Harper misread Canadians: "A bit disappointing for an old hand like Murray not to be seeing the bigger picture - he seems a bit obsessed with hatred of Harper's New Republican Party (aside - note to those who keep referring to them as the 'Conservative' party - that party, at one time a reasonalby honorable entity, was ended, at least federally, when Mulroney's backers bought it in 84, and officially got the knife when McKay brazenly lied to David Orchard a few years later and absorbed the remnants of it and the Cdn 'Reform' party and morphed them into the new cdn republicans - they couldn't acknowledge that officially at the time of course, but it's a pretty open 'secret' that their allegiance is much, much closer to Washington than anywhere in Canada ...)

But I digress. There's much to digress about these days, but word limits in comment sections don't encourage such things.

Insofar as Cdns *might* be getting a bit wary of the 'cons' these days, it does not signal a return to intelligence and/or 'social democracy', I fear - it's just the predictable, controlled flow from tweedledee-'libs' to tweedledum-'cons' the Bay St masters have been playing for the last 30 years at least - carry on with their agenda via one party until the voters get really pissed, then, using the media as always, herd the voters over to the other main controlled party. Dee-dum-dee-dum, on and on and on we go - and no matter which is 'in power', the tax cuts continue, the destruction of the country continues via reduced social expenditures, the transfer of the wealth of the country from the people to the elite continues, etc etc.

We will get 'democracy' back in this country not when we boot Harper (or if), but when enough people get smart enough to see what's happening, how they're being manipulated and herded by the media, and decide to take it back via some form of independent candidates not taking orders from any party HQ, including the NDP, who might talk a good show, but are showing themselves to be nothing more than capitalist-light parties anywhere they ever get elected, and capitalism light is not the answer to what is causing our world to implode these days - it's the cancer of capitalism, and it must simply be removed from our body politic as we would remove a cancer from our body if we could. I'm not, any more, holding my breath, and it certainly won't be easy if we try to do this - but we must hope. (which is about all you can take from the 'occupy' stuff, a tiny tiny ray of hope - no more, because demonstrations have more or less zero impact in terms of 'taking back' the country - demonstrations are just a form of petitioning the masters, and the masters don't give a flying f*** what the people like or don't like. As long as we leave the same people in power, then what's the point of telling them you're unhappy about something? If people really want change, then getting MPs into the government which are somehow legally bound to do as their electors tell them to do, and are instantly dismissable when they decide to is the only way to do it. Now that, I would suggest, would start to worry the Bay St masters. Demonstrations just eat up a lot of time and energy whilst accomplishing more or less nothing of use - have we learned nothing at all since Seattle? Democratic Revolution - now or never ).

Oct 10 - The Real News, Sam Gindin, Ontario Elections - Sam seems to have similar ideas to myself, so I thought I'd write him a letter - no reply. I don't entirely understand why nobody left, right or center wants to talk to me, although an old conspiracy theorist such as moi is always ready to figure there's some vast rightwing plot at action - maybe some day we will see. I do see myself as potentially quite a strong voice for getting this country back from the usurpers, so it would be understandable that anyone actually not wanting us to win would be inclined to keep me in the background as long as possible, up to and including forever - but maybe there are other things going on.

"Hi Sam, Just saw your last interview on Real News with Paul Jay, and near the end you were talking about how people need some kind of positive vision, as well as just constant protests - I very much agree, and some years ago I decided to write a book about just such a vision. Took some time, got very large as I tried to explain how we wound up in this dystopia as well as describing what a better place would be like, but I finally finished it. Couldn't find a publisher, but did it myself with the new service of POD - I think, if it were to get a chance, it would give people a positive vision of what a better world could be like, and maybe some inspiration to get out there fighting for such a place. Anyway, won't write long, I find most 'establishment' lefties don't want to talk to me, for some reason - but if you'd like a copy of Green Island, I'd be happy to send you one - no strings, other than if you like it you can recommend it to whoever you think might find it interesting (I note in your bio you have an interest in 'utopias', which Green Island is, in a way, I guess) or, if you don't find it of interest, just drop it off at some library for others to have a chance at. You can get some info about it here - Green Island. I've also done a lot of other writing about what is happening in Canada, latest here - Democratic Revolution - now or never .
Keep fighting!"

Oct 6 - Bringing Afghanistan democrats out of the shadows - the rightwing-cum-libertarian MacLean's taking a run at those who oppose the invasion and ongoing occupation, using the usual strawdog nonsense - sad to see what a fall we are taking in Canada, as these juvenile minds take over what used to be good magazines and newspapers, not to mention the CBC, which is truly in the shadow these days.

"Typical far-right shallow rhetoric. Most 'lefties' oppose the invasion of countries not threatening us, which does NOT mean we do not support those fighting for democracy in such countries. There are alternatives - remember the results of imposing a wide-ranging group of sanctions against south African apartheid in the 80s? It worked, and the policy was dropped - the results were not perfect, but surely far better than bombing the country back to the stone age. And to call the accusations that the US, GB and even Canada are becoming more and more fascistic 'make believe' is just another manifestation of either more rightwing illusions about what is going on in the world, or simply denial of the obvious in the sycophantic manner of 'journalists' who know that not angering their masters is essential to keeping a good-paying job in a world full of bad-paying jobs. Fascism means, essentially, authoritarian governments, usually pretending to be democratic, with a close connection between business and government, and a determination to use 'legal' police violence to control the protesting population. Couldn't ask for a much more realistic definition of what is happening today in these countries.

Pointing a finger at even less democratic countries is not any kind of proof of your own 'democracy', just more typical capitalist diversionary tactics.

Fascism also involves a state-controlled media feeding the people a non-stop propaganda monologue, which is also evident in western 'democracies' - in Canada, all major media support the new feudalist agenda of foreign imperialism, business dominance, cutting taxes and government services, etc.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, smells like a duck, then it doesn't really matter if the duck has a lot of money, buys the government and media, puts on a pretty dress and tells everyone it's really a lovely damsel - the smell and actions give it away. As with our modern new-fascist governments in the west. People with money control the government and the media, and tell everone what nice people they are - but some of us, at least, understand the lies. Democratic Revolution - now or never ."

Oct 5 - At war over the war on drugs - the Globe doing its bit at indoctrination maintenance - no sane person believes, any more, this nonsense - "The drug user is also the guy who keeps the drug dealers in business." - wrong. What keeps drug dealers in business is drug laws. Legalize some, decriminalize others, and you put the dealers OUT of business. Of course, in the big world picture, you also at the same time stop a very large amount of drug money bribes flowing into politician's pockets, which is why we're not seeing sanity here.

The people who own the governments who keep drugs illegal are, of course, the same people who own the media. Really, in our society, one is not much good without the other.

Oct 5 - Family breakdown is cause of economic woes - as we see so often, finger pointing by the capitalist apologists at anything at all that will (they hope) get people looking somewhere else than where they should be looking.

"More fantasy from the right, of the 'blaming the victim' kind, common with capitalists who vigourously assert their right to make all decisions, and then equally assert their right to avoid all blame for their greedy or just plain stupid decisions. The reverse of the headline is much more true than the headline - it's no secret, or controversial in any way, to recognize that economic problems lead to family breakdowns. And the modern world economic breakdown is entirely at the feet of capitalists greedily trying to loot and steal through speculation with no care who suffers when their speculative bubbles come crashing down. And much is systemic also, as when 'we' allow private banks to create our money supply as interest-bearing loans, the systemic inflation erodes incomes much faster than corporate profits. (more detail here - It's Not 'Austerity' It's Looting - and related places).

And let's cut the false and prejudicial wording right up front - none of the western capitalist 'democracies' are 'socialist welfare states', that's just a slander dreamt up by the NWO propagandists - socialists have *never* run the US-UK-Canada north Atlantic democracies, although some people-friendly governments did manage to gain some influence back in the 60s and 70s in the UK and Canada - but since the 1980s, the capitalists have been firmly in control and the current western democracies are bank-controlled plutocracies, with a financial system designed to direct as much of the wealth produced by the workers of the countries upstairs to the elite 'investors', leaving less and less for the citizens of the country to use for health care, education, infrastructure maintenance, etc.

You're not going to read that from GM columnists, but telling truthful things about their capitalist masters is not their job.

Well, one could write at length about this whole mess of nonsense, but one doesn't see much point these days. The koolaid has been mixed and passed around, and is obviously being drunk with relish.

Sept 30 - Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity: A bit of balance: You might want to think about the glib comments and fast salesman-like talk of somebody well-paid to promote the capitalist agenda - much left out, much misrepresented. For example, the west-east Germany and north-south Korea examples. He says that the success of the west and south versions validate capitalism (a rose by any other name, or whatever) - but this is disingenuous in the extreme. West Germany had the full support of the most powerful country in the world in its rebuilding - Russia after the war supported east Germany, but Russia suffered massive losses of both people and infrastructure, at huge financial cost, during the war and had little money to spare from its own massive rebuilding to assist east Germany; and both Russia and east Germany were under constant threat from the US imperialist machine, so were forced to devote much of their scarce resources to defence, rather than rebuilding industry and technological capacity for consumer goods - the US, the victors in the war, had coffers overflowing with wealth for both rebuilding west Germany, and threatening Russia/east Germany. Similar for south Korea a few years later. We might also look around the modern world, at the poverty and war and financial meltdown everywhere - all the *direct* result of capitalist (mainly American, but not exclusively) looting and other predation (i.e. via the IMF, World Bank, etc). More perspective here, for those interested - What Happened?.

Sept 28 - MacKay racks up nearly $3-million in flights on VIP jets - if anyone wonders why political parties fight each other with such apparent seriousness during elections and whatnot when they are all really working for the same master, this more or less covers it. The perks for the winners are much, much better. The top level guys do amazing amounts of travel on taxpayer money, their reward for betraying us so badly. Most of us would like to see the world, few of us can afford to. Even fewer being treated like royalty and staying at the best hotels and eating the best food, etc. Sure it's venal - one of the more common adjectives applied to the sleazeballs known otherwise as 'professional politicians'.