Sorry, part one stopped abruptly before I got to my main topic. I couldn't fix it. So I had to find a child who could.
I was talking about the horrors that the Canadian mining industry inflicts, especially in Central American and Africa. As well, it commonly pays insignificant royalties. One firm operating a mine in northern Quebec pulled out 10 billion in sales. But paid only 226 dollars in royalties. Nor do we see much in taxes from this activity, because wealthy Canadians now have 200 billion dollars and more in offshore tax havens. And you'll notice that the Irving press never tells us how much income tax the Irvings pay.
Sure, pipelines and mines and forests will provide jobs - as long as they last. But New Brunswick pays one hell of a price for those jobs - as long as they last. And this is true all over the world. Unregulated capitalism does NOT produce wealth (except for the unregulated capitalists.). It creates poverty That's why there's a wage gap, and it's growing. - all over the world.
The world has changed a great deal since the 1960s. That was a period is which Canadians expected government to act in their interests That's how we got medicare. (except in the U.S,) War had given us the experience that the civil service knew what it was doing, and could make life better for us.
But we forgot (or never knew) the depression, the much better years that followed into the 1960s...The privately-owned news media made sure of that by using a word that sounded derogatory (bureaucracy) to describe those civil servants who knew better than private business ever did what a society requires.
The wealthy organized themselves to turn the clock back to the days of piracy as they set out to loot the world. It's the same in Canada, the U.S., China, Russia, probably India. The wars the people of those countries fight or threaten to fight get nothing out of them but death, misery, starvation. The wars we are seeing and and expect more of are not wars between nations They are wars between the various groups of the very rich - with the rest of us as cannot fodder.
And they use the news media they own to control us. In fact, the U.S. is now hiring psychologists and psychiatrists to help it make the news more effective as propaganda. You can always find a goodly number of such 'experts' in the universities who will cooperate - for a price. Millions of people have died. Many more millions are going to die to make the rich richer.
Ultimately, we're on a self-destructive path. But the greedy and power-hungry will never know that.
Is it possible to stop this? I'm not optimistic. We live in a province that has been ripped off by the rich ever since the start. And the people of this province keep voting for the Liberals and the Conservatives who, almost openly, lead the rip-offs.
Can the NDP do it? It can certainly improve things - but not, fundamentally, change them.
Real change can come only when the people demand it. But they aren't demanding much of anything; because our private news media and TV and films are very effective in turning us into zombies. And without massive public support, real change is impossible.
We have accepted what is, essentially and using the correct sense of the word, a fascist state. Indeed, we have gone farther than Mussolini did. His fascism made the wealthy unelected part of the government. Our fascism has,gone further, making the wealthy into the government. That suited our wealthy people very nicely. That's why,back in years we have never been told about, they gave support to Hitler and Mussolini.
It's a system that needs a direction in which the the anger and frustration of the public can be released. Donald Trump is doing well not because of any useful programme he has suggested but using Mexicans as Hitler used Jews. The American and Canadian governments are using Muslims in the same way.
At some point the anger and hatred will release itself in riots, and even rebellions. The U.S. is ready for that. That's why its police forces have been militarized - to fight Americans. That, I strongly suspect, is why we saw a special RCMP squad in New Brunswick wearing military camouflage and carrying combat rifles. They weren't there to protect us. They were there to attack us if the shale owners thought it necessary.
The natural reaction of angry people is not to attack those who threaten them. It's to attack those they've been conditioned to hate. That's what Hitler was all about. Nothing like patriotism and honour and love of God to make us indiscriminate killers.
People - us - have to change. And we have to think far, far more seriously than we do about what changes we want. In New Brunswick, especially, we need to read and to talk and to debate what's going on in this world.
____________________________________________________________________________
By the way, a strange thing is happening in this federal election in Canada. But none of our eagle-eyed press seem to have noticed it. Harper's Conservatives have piles of money for the election campaign.
The NDP, of course, has very little. That's because the wealthy have never been fond of the NDP.
But - the Liberals are low on funding, too. And that's very odd.
The wealthy usually give big contributions to both Liberals and Conservatives because, after all, they're both pretty much the same, and both servants of the wealthy. So why is this election such an exception?
Because they expect the Liberals to lose? No. That makes no sense. If Harper gets only a minority, he will need the Liberals with all the seats they can muster. Except -
What if, after this election, Harper intends to moveto something really outrageous, but that the wealthy really, really want? Something so outrageous that even the Liberals can't support it?
What if it's a trade treaty that makes corporations so free to do whatever they want that they, in effect, become the government of Canada? And our opinions mean nothing.
But that can't be done without a Harper majority. Canada's wealthy have found our Mussolini.
I was talking about the horrors that the Canadian mining industry inflicts, especially in Central American and Africa. As well, it commonly pays insignificant royalties. One firm operating a mine in northern Quebec pulled out 10 billion in sales. But paid only 226 dollars in royalties. Nor do we see much in taxes from this activity, because wealthy Canadians now have 200 billion dollars and more in offshore tax havens. And you'll notice that the Irving press never tells us how much income tax the Irvings pay.
Sure, pipelines and mines and forests will provide jobs - as long as they last. But New Brunswick pays one hell of a price for those jobs - as long as they last. And this is true all over the world. Unregulated capitalism does NOT produce wealth (except for the unregulated capitalists.). It creates poverty That's why there's a wage gap, and it's growing. - all over the world.
The world has changed a great deal since the 1960s. That was a period is which Canadians expected government to act in their interests That's how we got medicare. (except in the U.S,) War had given us the experience that the civil service knew what it was doing, and could make life better for us.
But we forgot (or never knew) the depression, the much better years that followed into the 1960s...The privately-owned news media made sure of that by using a word that sounded derogatory (bureaucracy) to describe those civil servants who knew better than private business ever did what a society requires.
The wealthy organized themselves to turn the clock back to the days of piracy as they set out to loot the world. It's the same in Canada, the U.S., China, Russia, probably India. The wars the people of those countries fight or threaten to fight get nothing out of them but death, misery, starvation. The wars we are seeing and and expect more of are not wars between nations They are wars between the various groups of the very rich - with the rest of us as cannot fodder.
And they use the news media they own to control us. In fact, the U.S. is now hiring psychologists and psychiatrists to help it make the news more effective as propaganda. You can always find a goodly number of such 'experts' in the universities who will cooperate - for a price. Millions of people have died. Many more millions are going to die to make the rich richer.
Ultimately, we're on a self-destructive path. But the greedy and power-hungry will never know that.
Is it possible to stop this? I'm not optimistic. We live in a province that has been ripped off by the rich ever since the start. And the people of this province keep voting for the Liberals and the Conservatives who, almost openly, lead the rip-offs.
Can the NDP do it? It can certainly improve things - but not, fundamentally, change them.
Real change can come only when the people demand it. But they aren't demanding much of anything; because our private news media and TV and films are very effective in turning us into zombies. And without massive public support, real change is impossible.
We have accepted what is, essentially and using the correct sense of the word, a fascist state. Indeed, we have gone farther than Mussolini did. His fascism made the wealthy unelected part of the government. Our fascism has,gone further, making the wealthy into the government. That suited our wealthy people very nicely. That's why,back in years we have never been told about, they gave support to Hitler and Mussolini.
It's a system that needs a direction in which the the anger and frustration of the public can be released. Donald Trump is doing well not because of any useful programme he has suggested but using Mexicans as Hitler used Jews. The American and Canadian governments are using Muslims in the same way.
At some point the anger and hatred will release itself in riots, and even rebellions. The U.S. is ready for that. That's why its police forces have been militarized - to fight Americans. That, I strongly suspect, is why we saw a special RCMP squad in New Brunswick wearing military camouflage and carrying combat rifles. They weren't there to protect us. They were there to attack us if the shale owners thought it necessary.
The natural reaction of angry people is not to attack those who threaten them. It's to attack those they've been conditioned to hate. That's what Hitler was all about. Nothing like patriotism and honour and love of God to make us indiscriminate killers.
People - us - have to change. And we have to think far, far more seriously than we do about what changes we want. In New Brunswick, especially, we need to read and to talk and to debate what's going on in this world.
____________________________________________________________________________
By the way, a strange thing is happening in this federal election in Canada. But none of our eagle-eyed press seem to have noticed it. Harper's Conservatives have piles of money for the election campaign.
The NDP, of course, has very little. That's because the wealthy have never been fond of the NDP.
But - the Liberals are low on funding, too. And that's very odd.
The wealthy usually give big contributions to both Liberals and Conservatives because, after all, they're both pretty much the same, and both servants of the wealthy. So why is this election such an exception?
Because they expect the Liberals to lose? No. That makes no sense. If Harper gets only a minority, he will need the Liberals with all the seats they can muster. Except -
What if, after this election, Harper intends to moveto something really outrageous, but that the wealthy really, really want? Something so outrageous that even the Liberals can't support it?
What if it's a trade treaty that makes corporations so free to do whatever they want that they, in effect, become the government of Canada? And our opinions mean nothing.
But that can't be done without a Harper majority. Canada's wealthy have found our Mussolini.
