- the full comment I tried to post earlier -
Maybe this can turn into a somewhat wider 'wake up moment' for a lot of you people. The writer describes this as 'a conversation you should have had in 2008' - but if you have a wider perspective, you might understand that this is a conversation SOME of us have been saying we needed since the early 1980s (and a few even brighter ones earlier than that). The fault lines are deep - of course you have the criminal conmen who have been convincing everyone to let them get away with these cons, but then you have 'adults' of the boomer generation going back to the 70s who should have been a bit more alert, and then the generations following the boomers who should have at least tried to resist their 'permanent childhood' that the NWO new feudalist rulers were pushing them into. I'm not that interested in setting blame here, there's lots for everyone - what we need to do, what YOU need to do, is get an understanding of the bigger picture, without which you have no hope of getting to a useful, effective solution.
For example, demonstrations are not going to do any good. The masters could care less about what you don't like, but it's great (for them) that you spend so much time and energy spinning your wheels. What would *really* scare them is if you actually tried to take back *your* democracy directly - start local movements to elect, or choose, your own non-party representatives to go to your house of government, and speak for You the People, rather than They the Corporation - if you start electing, and controlling, a lot of people like this, that would threaten their claim to 'legitimacy' greatly, and that would get them really worried - start to understand that 'democracy' is good, but 'parties' are bad. And then, if you do some of that, they're going to get pissed off, of course, so be ready for that - the cops arresting a few people are nothing compared to what would happen if they were really worried. Check out some labour history, some big strikes, and the reaction of the coroprate controlled gov.
Anyway, getting long - but for some history of what is going on, from a Cdn perspective, you could start here - What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html . You got good ideas, and good enthusiasm - but get it controlled into useful channels - remember, you are fighting people here who have basically taken over the world - and they didn't get where they are by luck, or by being stupid, or by being afraid to use violence when it served their purposes. Get prepared, do NOT follow leaders of any sort (if you want Democracy, then changing from one "I AM YOUR LEADER DO AS YOU ARE TOLD!!!" to another the same, is not going to do much good (understanding history will tell you that this is the common pattern, if you act out of ignorance and uncontrolled anger rather than understanding and strength and controlled anger), and get at it.

- if anyone is looking after this, you need to check something - I am getting error messages saying some part of your automatic process cannot read perfectly vaild URLs - this, for example, if it gets through - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greenisland.html - same system is randomly cutting off big chunks of submission -

Maybe this can turn into a somewhat wider 'wake up moment' for a lot of you people. The writer describes this as 'a conversation you should have had in 2008' - but if you have a wider perspective, you might understand that this is a conversation SOME of us have been saying we needed since the early 1980s (and a few even brighter ones earlier than that). The fault lines are deep - of course you have the criminal conmen who have been convincing everyone to let them get away with these cons, but then you have 'adults' of the boomer generation going back to the 70s who should have been a bit more alert, and then the generations following the boomers who should have at least tried to resist their 'permanent childhood' that the NWO new feudalist rulers were pushing them into. I'm not that interested in setting blame here, there's lots for everyone - what we need to do, what YOU need to do, is get an understanding of the bigger picture, without which you have no hope of getting to a useful, effective solution.

Mr McNally teaches at a major university in Canada. If you are going to do 'radical' analysis, as he says is needed and I agree, it is unlikely you are going to be working from a major university, where any kind of radical analysis, esp about capitalism, is NOT going to be tolerated. 30 years ago, yes - today, no way, if you want to keep your job in capitalist Canada. The capitalists are very demanding masters. As we see here - this is 'in the box' analysis, not really saying anything you can't read in the mainstream media.
Here is radical - follow the money *to its source*. That is what the mainstream media, and economists, either cannot or will not do, and *will* not talk about, as it blows the lid off of everything.
And this is the source - all of this debt that is causing all of these problems is based on money created by private banks out of thin air. They create money out of thin air, and demand interest on it.
A "soveriegn" government would create the nation's money debt-free. (assuming a democratic government working for the citizens rather than owned by the bankers, this would not be inflationary)
And after a few years of inflation, and money-creation for asset-inflating speculation, and paying interest on all of that money created for no other reason than speculation and covering the increasing costs of inflation - you have a society based on debt, falling into the abyss.
And you have truly oxymoronic phrases like 'sovereign debt' - if you are sovereign, you create your own money, and the idea of 'debt' is off the table. Saying 'soverign debt' is kind of like saying 'the breathing corpse' or something.
More 'out of the box' analysis here - Not austerity looting - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/vgi/backgrounders/not_a... .

I'm with John - Democratic Revolution - now or never - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/vgi/backgrounders/revol...

Much misinfo here, as usual. "Canadians" did not 'choose' roads and hospitals etc over peacekeeping - the politicians who run the country did. The two are most certainly not the same thing (i.e. for decades 'Canadians' have been saying they preferred a well-funded health care system over corporate tax cuts, and for decades both major parties have given them just the opposite). But more importantly, in terms of misrepresenting facts, the politicians during the 70s and 80s chose to create and then feed a national debt of a half trillion dollars, through which they could funnel (to date) a couple of trillion dollars of tax dollars to those who actually run the country (banks and wealthy 'investors') rather than spending tax money on things most Canadians might actually want, such as a well-funded health or education systems. And until more Canadians actually understand this massive scam, they're going to keep doing it. More detail at Global Financial Meltdown: Forces beyond our control, or the greatest scam ever?
http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greatest-sting-ever.htm... .

Sorry, writing too fast - if you gathered from my earlier writings that I thought we needed to remedy too many left-of-center parties, either I misspoke or you misunderstood. Aside from the fact the Libs are not particularly 'left' anymore, since at least Chretien signed NAFTA and Martin gutted the social programs, I hope I never implied that we need to somehow 'join' them all into a big-circus coalition, so we wind up with a two-party system, that is NOT what I think - I think people should be able to join whatever political movement they want - and have their voices heard in the national forum to the extent of their membership - which is what PR would do. What we really need to talk about is how to bring Democracy to this country - and getting a decent media is a central part of that discussion.

Me, I don't think we're going to arrive at any useful conclusions, poltiical or otherwise, if we don't acknowledge the central role of the media here, in everything from turning people away from PR to their refusal to talk about 'class analysis', as I made the case for in the essay noted earlier (Canadian Media: Reporting or Managing the News of the 2008 Election? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.htm...) , At least one reason the NDP is hitting a glass ceiling is because most Canadians equate the NDP with 'socialism', and, quite falsely, then equate both with the worst sorts of totalitarian communism such as under Stalin or Mao - and that is the direct result of 50 years of media propaganda. Most people seem to have no idea that most Canadians ('they'!) are actually 'social democrats' in their political and social beliefs, which is a pretty good accomplishment of the capitalist press - they say they want democracy, but vote for their feudal masters - and most if not all of this wrong idea of what is going on here can be laid at the feet of the indocrinating press. Which is why I continue to say that if 'we' the progressive sorts here are ever to have any success, one of our first priorities must be to figure how to counter this mainstream media propaganda, as a top-level priority, as a central part of any useful post-election analysis. And if people aren't talking about this, then I just don't see such discussions going anywhere useful. I try to keep an open mind, and listen to other things, but if people are talking about rearranging the deck chairs, whilst I am looking at the iceberg - well. There it is.

samthemacman, I think we're mostly on the same page, but I can't understand why you think analysing what happened during the election is not important - if 'we' don't understand what happened this time (and the time before and before and before etc) - how can we possibly hope to do something better? That's (as you have no doubt heard ofte n) one of the definitions of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a better result. It ain't gonna happen - actually, 'they' love us for doing it, of course. Such analysis would, to me, involve things not many people seem to be looking at - aside from PR, as I have talked about, and making it one of the top 2-3 issues (along with other democratic reforms), we need to talk about the way the media controls things, and what we can do to counteract that MUCH more effectively than we have been doing (I expect this is poorly done because not a lot of people seem to understand how important this is). And we need to do some thinking about why 'we' apparently followed along like meek rabbits as 'they' set up a system of 3 major English parties splitting the anti-Harper vote, giving him the best chance of a majority he will probably ever have - we were just lucky he didn't get it, really. I don't know exactly what 'we' could have d one, but what we did (follow meekly along) was about the worst of the options, and if we had of had some serious discussion about it, we should have been able to figure something better out. That the leadership of the various parties tried to do nothing except go meekly along should raise some pretty hard questions there as well - who exactly are they working for? And finally, we need to start campaigning NOW for the next election, not after it is called - that is one reason the Cons do as well as they do, they understand that getting support takes time. One PEI riding went Con for the first time in twenty years - the lady has been campaigning since January, and still barely got in - but they are on message, all the time, and that has an impact. What do 'progressives' do? Bitch about what the Cons are up to, and not a bit of organising to try and improve their odds the next time around, except to abuse people who suggest it (been there done that). Well, that should be enough out-of-the-box ideas for one day - I won't even start on how we need to be working towards getting rid of parites altogether, if we ever want to have a real democracy around here.

If anyone is interested in a longer commentary, I have one here - Canadian Media: Reporting or Managing the News of the 2008 Election? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.htm.... Written as the election was called, turned out to be pretty accurate. Although I claim no great ability as a prognosticator, as it all was and is pretty obvious to one outside the box.