en-us http://www.intensedebate.com/users/165713 Comments by siamdave http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29207.htm#IDComment199184712 - the full comment I tried to post earlier - Maybe this can turn into a somewhat wider &#039;wake up moment&#039; for a lot of you people. The writer describes this as &#039;a conversation you should have had in 2008&#039; - 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 &#039;adults&#039; 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 &#039;permanent childhood&#039; that the NWO new feudalist rulers were pushing them into. I&#039;m not that interested in setting blame here, there&#039;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&#039;t like, but it&#039;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 &#039;legitimacy&#039; greatly, and that would get them really worried - start to understand that &#039;democracy&#039; is good, but &#039;parties&#039; are bad. And then, if you do some of that, they&#039;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? <a href="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html" target="_blank">http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html</a> . 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&#039;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 &quot;I AM YOUR LEADER DO AS YOU ARE TOLD!!!&quot; 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. Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:24:39 +0000 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29207.htm#IDComment199184712 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29207.htm#IDComment199184418 - 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 - <a href="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greenisland.html" target="_blank">http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greenisland.html</a> - same system is randomly cutting off big chunks of submission - Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:23:57 +0000 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29207.htm#IDComment199184418 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29207.htm#IDComment199149632 Maybe this can turn into a somewhat wider &#039;wake up moment&#039; for a lot of you people. The writer describes this as &#039;a conversation you should have had in 2008&#039; - 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 &#039;adults&#039; 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 &#039;permanent childhood&#039; that the NWO new feudalist rulers were pushing them into. I&#039;m not that interested in setting blame here, there&#039;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. Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:59:47 +0000 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29207.htm#IDComment199149632 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29200.htm#IDComment197826297 Mr McNally teaches at a major university in Canada. If you are going to do &#039;radical&#039; 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 &#039;in the box&#039; analysis, not really saying anything you can&#039;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 &quot;soveriegn&quot; government would create the nation&#039;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 &#039;sovereign debt&#039; - if you are sovereign, you create your own money, and the idea of &#039;debt&#039; is off the table. Saying &#039;soverign debt&#039; is kind of like saying &#039;the breathing corpse&#039; or something. More &#039;out of the box&#039; analysis here - Not austerity looting - <a href="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/vgi/backgrounders/not_austerity_looting.html" target="_blank">http://www.rudemacedon.ca/vgi/backgrounders/not_a...</a> . Sat, 24 Sep 2011 04:04:28 +0000 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29200.htm#IDComment197826297 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28824.htm#IDComment182832250 I&#039;m with John - Democratic Revolution - now or never - <a href="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/vgi/backgrounders/revolution.html" target="_blank">http://www.rudemacedon.ca/vgi/backgrounders/revol...</a> Sat, 13 Aug 2011 19:33:20 +0000 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28824.htm#IDComment182832250 http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/07/17/‘bogus’-peacekeeping/#IDComment27639452 Much misinfo here, as usual. &quot;Canadians&quot; did not &#039;choose&#039; 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 &#039;Canadians&#039; 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 &#039;investors&#039;) 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&#039;re going to keep doing it. More detail at Global Financial Meltdown: Forces beyond our control, or the greatest scam ever? <a href="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greatest-sting-ever.html" target="_blank">http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greatest-sting-ever.htm...</a> . Sun, 19 Jul 2009 01:36:50 +0000 http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/07/17/‘bogus’-peacekeeping/#IDComment27639452 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8830823 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 &#039;left&#039; anymore, since at least Chretien signed NAFTA and Martin gutted the social programs, I hope I never implied that we need to somehow &#039;join&#039; 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. Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:53:11 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8830823 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8830473 Me, I don&#039;t think we&#039;re going to arrive at any useful conclusions, poltiical or otherwise, if we don&#039;t acknowledge the central role of the media here, in everything from turning people away from PR to their refusal to talk about &#039;class analysis&#039;, as I made the case for in the essay noted earlier (Canadian Media: Reporting or Managing the News of the 2008 Election? <a href="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.html " target="_blank">http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.htm...</a>) , At least one reason the NDP is hitting a glass ceiling is because most Canadians equate the NDP with &#039;socialism&#039;, 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 (&#039;they&#039;!) are actually &#039;social democrats&#039; 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 &#039;we&#039; 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&#039;t talking about this, then I just don&#039;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. Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:38:32 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8830473 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8796223 samthemacman, I think we&#039;re mostly on the same page, but I can&#039;t understand why you think analysing what happened during the election is not important - if &#039;we&#039; don&#039;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&#039;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&#039;t gonna happen - actually, &#039;they&#039; 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 &#039;we&#039; apparently followed along like meek rabbits as &#039;they&#039; 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&#039;t get it, really. I don&#039;t know exactly what &#039;we&#039; 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 &#039;progressives&#039; 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&#039;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. Sat, 18 Oct 2008 22:03:43 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8796223 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8794633 If anyone is interested in a longer commentary, I have one here - Canadian Media: Reporting or Managing the News of the 2008 Election? <a href="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.html " target="_blank">http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.htm...</a>. 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. Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:59:41 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8794633 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8794443 You&#039;re being a bit semantical there - the &#039;reasons&#039; we need PR might not &#039;explain&#039; what happened, but the lack of PR explains quite a lot - the low voter turnout is certainly related to so many people feeling their votes do not count, and the Harper plurality is certainly related, as with PR they would have gotten about 40 seats less than they did, and the NDP-Libs-Greens could easily have formed a &#039;progressive&#039; coalition of some sort, a minorty-in-name government that represented a majority of voters, which would undoubtedly be undertaking a considerably different legislative agenda than Harper and Flaherty and BaySt-Calgary will be getting up to. So at least acknowledging this, and thus understanding why fighting for PR has to be pretty much at the top of any actually progressive agenda as we start to fight NOW for the next election, seems to me to be pretty key, and saying to &#039;forget PR&#039; as we &#039;analyse&#039; the election is kind of like saying let&#039;s analyse global warming but pretend humans don&#039;t burn fossil fuel or something because we need our cars after all, and our airplanes - guaranteed to reach poor if not entirely useless conclusions. Aside from that we could use some much deeper probing than I have seen suggested here or anywhere else for that matter - why was nobody talking about the SPP, or the current Eurpean FTA, or Afghanistan, including the NDP (little squeaks do not count as making such things the issues they should have been, should still be)? Why does nobody seem to understand the major role of the media (directed by the corporate-banking elite who actually run the place) in setting the agenda of debate, and refuse to allow them to do this? We are being completely led around by the noses here, and few people seem to understand this - simply reacting to their actions is not setting OUR agenda, but dancing to their tune, letting them drive the train. We have a LONG way to go. And not much time to get there. Questions indeed - but OUR questions, not theirs. Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:44:17 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8794443 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8707543 I agree with your first sentiment - good questions are necessary - but we diverge sharply after that. Saying &#039;forget PR&#039; is about the same as telling workers a hundred years ago to &#039;forget unions - the bosses won&#039;t allow them!!&#039; - you don&#039;t &#039;forget&#039; something that is essential, you ask questions about WHY more people don&#039;t understand this is such an essential requirement in our multi-party system, and how we can make sure it gets to the very top of the agenda before the next election. To &#039;forget&#039; PR is simply to say we will accept what happened this time as the inevitable outcome for the future. Which is not acceptable. A related question would be &#039;What are we going to do about the Canadian mainstream media - they have been central in keeping the necessity of PR marginalized, which indicates, if anyone needed any proof, that they are corporate propagandists, as should be obvious anyways, all of them. A PR government would be bad for corporate interests. so they oppose it - and the media do as the corporate masters wish. We need to understand this clearly, and do more and more in terms of alternative media here. Truly representative democracy, and truly representative media - these are the absolutely fundamental requirements, and we have neither now. Until we do, nothing else good is going to happen, so these have to be at the top of the agenday. Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:47:55 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/54751888#IDComment8707543 http://election.rabble.ca/post/53391440#IDComment7806563 A longer analysis of them all here - Canadian Media: Reporting or Managing the News of the 2008 Election? <a href="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.html " target="_blank">http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.htm...</a>. One is of course especially disappointed with the CBC, as they are supposed to be the class of Canada - but not any longer. Just another big business propagandist. Tue, 7 Oct 2008 06:39:04 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/53391440#IDComment7806563 http://election.rabble.ca/post/52899780#IDComment7524463 There&#039;s quite a lot not getting commented on during the election - Canadian Media: Reporting or Managing the News of the 2008 Election? <a href="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.html " target="_blank">http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.htm...</a> Fri, 3 Oct 2008 08:46:37 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/52899780#IDComment7524463 http://election.rabble.ca/post/51768800#IDComment7011533 The media are doing exactly what they want to do - Canadian Media: Reporting or Managing the News of the 2008 Election? <a href="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.html " target="_blank">http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.htm...</a>. Good post - but don&#039;t rely too much on &#039;yourturn&#039; etc - the CBC has a way of not allowing posts which ask questions like this. Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:47:20 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/51768800#IDComment7011533 http://election.rabble.ca/post/51453606#IDComment6870633 There&#039;s a shortage of debate on a lot of issues - a longer discussion here - The Canadian Media and the 2008 Election: Reporting or Managing? Do the Canadian media provide their faithful followers with the information they require to make properly informed decisions on election candidates and issues, as a reliable media, responsible to the citizens of their country, are expected to do? Or are they more in the business of herding their readers like trusting sheep in a certain direction by en masse spinning of some things, and putting other important issues behind a &#039;we&#039;re not talking about this, nothing interesting here!!&#039; curtain, thus creating a false picture of Canadian society, a false picture that most people, trusting their media, use in making decisions, decisions which would almost certainly be very different if they had a more accurate understanding of what was actually happening; in short, creating a false narrative which will soon become a false history, a narrative which has only a loose connection with &#039;realpolitik&#039; reality but one which justifies certain actions or policies (or lack thereof) by the go! vernment? Full article at <a href="http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.html " target="_blank">http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.htm...</a> Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:35:17 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/51453606#IDComment6870633 http://election.rabble.ca/post/50740558#IDComment6550183 The Current today (Friday Sept 19) was, we were told, &#039;all you need to know about Afghanistan&#039;. Actually, almost the entire hour was spent explaining, first, why Canadians should not expect this to be an issue in the election, and then why Canadians needed to get with the program and support the mission. They had one short segment of a military wife explaining (in a clip, god forbid she should be allowed &#039;live&#039; with such anti-CBC views) why she would probably not vote to continue &#039;the mission&#039; if she ever had such a chance (quite unlikely) - and then the Current spent the final few minutes of the show with a few &#039;impartial analysts&#039; explaining why the poor woman was just wrong, and it really, really, really is a good mission. You damned peasants, is that clear?!?!?!?!?! Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:48:58 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/50740558#IDComment6550183 http://election.rabble.ca/post/50737432#IDComment6540223 A perfect opening to get into at least one real issue - the complete lack of &#039;democracy&#039; in the country - most people do not feel people should be charged or jailed for pot smoking, yet every government completely ignores the wishes of a majority of Canadians. And as long as we meekly accept this, they&#039;ll be the bosses and we&#039;ll be the workers, and democracy will remain, as Gandhi said, a good idea - we should try it sometime. Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:44:27 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/50737432#IDComment6540223 http://election.rabble.ca/post/50295781#IDComment6334873 THe media has been promoting the Greens for the last couple of years, and slagging Dion relentlessly since he became Lib leader - the strategy is quite obvious, get the anti-harper vote divided as much as possible, hoping to give him a &#039;plurality majority&#039;. True progressives are not only fighting harper in this election, they are also fighting the media, more than ever. Read your Sun Tzu - know thine enemy, or you&#039;ll never win anything. Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:27:23 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/50295781#IDComment6334873 http://election.rabble.ca/post/50125038#IDComment6295713 I don&#039;t agree with much of what the neocons have said since Mulroney et al appeared on the scene, but Campbell was pretty much right with that observation - important things cannot be summed up or debated in soundbites, or organised and explained in a few days. We&#039;re seeing the result of a complete lack of preparation between elections by the &#039;progressive&#039; people in Canada right now, as they all run around seeing how best to divide up their vote to ensure Harper gets his majority. The neocons understand that the time to prepare for the next election is the day this one ends, and they&#039;ve been preparing for this one since the last one ended. And the results of their preparation - and the complete lack of preparation of &#039;progressives&#039; - is very evident. Progressives are going to get about the government they deserve this time, based on their preparation for this very important election - a harper majority. Do you suppose that will be a lesson to anyone? or at the end of this disastrous &#039;campaign&#039;, will everyone crawl under their own rocks and not think about organising for the next one until it is called? Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:02:27 +0000 http://election.rabble.ca/post/50125038#IDComment6295713