The first part of this blog may not seem to have a place in my usual topic. Actually, it does.
For an opener to stimulate thought, let's try to forget our image of China as a dictatorship and a threat. The reality is that we created a China that was a hell for those who lived in it. We murdered, enslaved, starved, drugged a whole nation to satisfy our greed. When the Chinese broke free of us in the late 1940s and began the task of modernizing their country, we sent an army to block their way. This was the Korean War.
(Curiously, we disguised this war as one on North Korea - and in defence of South Korea. Not surprisingly, the nation we pretended to be defending was a really vile one. It was South Korea, a nation governed by brutal dictators who had been supporters of the Japanese occupation in World War Two. And it would reign over a savaged people of South Korea until well after the Korean War. Yep. And our news media told us we were the good guys.)
In short, we killed (and died) to set up a China for destruction. China kicked us out. Ever since that, China has amazingly developed and has helped most of its people in ways the western powers never did.
Yes. I know China has been wrong, very wrong, in it's treatment of some groups. But in defiance of more than 200 years of abuse and hatred by us, China has made amazing progress. For example, China has just completed a massive improvement of housing the the poor. No country in the world can match it. (The God-fearing U.S., at the same time, has been destroying it's own poor by throwing millions into the streets to sicken, starve and die. And Canada is moving that same way.)
A reader sent me a reply to this in my last blog. (It's somewhere here or in the previous blog - but I can't find it.) She criticized me for criticizing our churches and our Canadian Legion for our behaviour toward China. She says neither churches nor Legion can force China to drop some of it's backward ways.
Well, no, they can't. I never said they could. But churches surely have a responsibility to have a public position on this. (Alas! Throughout history our churches have almost always supported wars In fact, they have almost always supported wars even against other Christians - and the churches on the other side have supported their wars. Alas! Jesus never said we should always support the Christians soldiers on our side. In fact, through the 1950s and 60s. the U.S. hired mercenaries to murder over 200.000 Christians - priests, nuns, missionaries - in Guatemala. And the leader of this murderous job? It was the ardently Christian George Bush Sr. Our newspapera practiced restraint, and never reported on this.)
And the Canadian Legion? It always does what government tells it to do. That's why Canadians died for no good reason in Korea. Others died in Afghanistan, a war that was a bad idea at the start, and had nothing to do with Canada. (A gathering of Canada's leading military historians announced our troops were sent to die in Afghanistan in order to bring democracy to that country. And that is pure bullshit. Nor was the U.S. there to bring democracy. It was there to get control over Afghanistan resources.)
But in the whole history of the Legion, I don't think it has ever questoned our wars. The Legion could and should be a place where veterans could ensure that we do not waste the lives of it's members. Instead, it's a cheerleading squad for billionaires who make money out of wars.
Forgive me for spending so much time on this. But one needs to give this some thought in face of the changes that are coming in the near future.
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In the recent year, American billionaires have made their biggest profits in their history. But how is that possible? In the past year Americans have seen their people - in their millions - kicked out of work, out of their homes, and onto the streets with the lucky ones living with whole families in tents on sidewalks.
American billionaires have not had that problem. How is it possible the wealthy could make such huge profits at a time when millions have had their lives ruined, possibly forever. (Almost certainly forever.)
It was easy. For a start, American billionaires for some time had been moving much if their business to poor parts of the world - as in Latin America and the middle east. There,, labour was cheap - a very attractive situation for American capitalists. So let the dudes at home suffer with their loss of millions of jobs.
Canadian capitalists played the same game. And they still do.
American capitalists also insisted (ordered) that the U.S. government must pour its tax money into the pentagon which is the most expensive (and profitable) weapons maker in the world. The U.S. does not need such a hugely expensive "defence" industry.
But wealthy capitalists insisted on it because it is a hugely expensive defence industry with monster profits for the wealthy. So what the hell....let poor kids and the elderly die in the streets. It also supplies American capitalists with lots of products not only to profit the rich but to be used to attack the 75 or so nations the U.S. has attacked and plundered since 1945.
All of these factors are why American (and Canadian) super rich happily support the 'defence' industry. It makes a hell of a lot of money for the super rich, money that immediately pays for their wars - as in Afghanistan, the middle east, Latin America.
In addition, the super rich make extra money for themselves without risking their own money. Instead, the wealthy use their political influence to protect the wealthy from paying taxes. So the money that floats these wars comes from the taxes of us common slobs. Meanwhile, our governments permit the super rich not to pay taxes at all. (Nobody knows how much we lose in letting the super rich off with unknown trillions of dollars. Certainly, though, we lose the huge sums that could get our poor off the streets, establishing them in decent housing, feed them well, and hugely improve our educaton systems.
Instead, we face a future in which prosperity will NOT come back. We are seeing a development that is very likely to mean extreme poverty - and even worse. We know that because we have seen it happen for thousands of years.
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Humans have been the victims of a relatively small group of other humans since humans appeared in our world. We humans are the only creatures whose greatest purpose in life is to manpulate others of their species This goes back thousands of years. In that time, small groups of humans manipulated, abused, murdered their own kind.
(I know I've said before it's important to understand this). The kings of Europe for centuries used their subjects to fight wars that benefited only the aristocracy. The English people were treated by their rulers as scum while using them to make the aristocracy rich. Until recently (and sometimes still today) we were privileged with the best education, with the highest commands in the military, with wealth ---while the rest lived in filth and hunger. The children of the poor rarely had a chance to go to school since most of them had to work 15 hour days from the age of five or six.
It's still true. British Prime Minister Johnson is an example of the worship of the rich. In Canada, I went to school with kids who started to drop out in grade 3. Most had dropped out by grade 9. When I was kicked out in grade 11, my parents were not at all upset. But when I went back to finish high school. my parents were very concerned. As they told friends, I was trying to rise above my station. And when I got a PhD, they simply avoided discussion of anything with me.
Meanwhile, rich kids of low intelligence rose in the world without getting smart. They went to private schools. I had a cousin in that category who got ahead in the world not for having any brains (because he didn't) but because he went to a private school.
All around the world, the rich abuse the poor - and the poor get no chance, (American troops commonly murder children, even babies. They do it, probably, by the millions - by starvation, by bombing... They plunder and impoverish whole nations - as in Latin America and the middle east.
Onward Christian soldiers. (Hell, our billionaires have long since accepted religion - just so long as our "Christians" cooperate with them in killing people. And it works. Canada sent troops to Haiti to destroy Haitian democracy. And we sent missionaires to bless it all.)
Most wild animals kill because they have to eat. TheYdon't normally organize themselves simply to abuse other animals of their kind. Only we humans do that. But so far as we know, humans kill to exploit other people. There is the origin of rich kings and lords and, in this present day, of capitalists.
Our GOP and Democrats and Liberals and Conservatives don't give a damn about the Canadian people. And in the western world, we serve the GOP, Democrats, Libeals and Conservatives by being good little girls and boys - and voting for them. We are now on the edge of a hell that we have worshipped from the beginning of human life.
The super wealthy are very close to the final capturing our societies - and us. Indeed, the super rich have long since taken over the governments of countries like Canada, the U.S., Britain. And the dumping of millions into the filth and hunger of the streets is one hell of a form of where we are heading.
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