Mark Your Ballot with an "X"

It's not as ironic as one might think. Just as the illiterate sign off with an "X", Canadians, a politically illiterate lot, do the same on election day. Entering a contract of further governance by a system grounded on sociopathic economics (all viable parties willingly operate within the same economically driven political paradigm), the voter dutifully marks the ballot with an "X". Seen this way, voting cannot bring us change; it can only provide more of the same. And isn't that exactly what we have been witnessing the last century or more?

Democracy is not a Right

Why are we still squabbling about electoral reform when a majority of Canadians already want it? ~ from Politics Respun


To answer such a question, let us first consider the controlling elite and the Canadian version of democracy. Specifically, the rulers have always made their subjects beg, grovel or revolt before offering a loosening of the democratic strings. And this increased shift toward democracy always comes with a price.

For example, women wanted a vote? OK, fine. But it meant women were now going to have to enter the workforce, become overtaxed, and allow the family unit to suffer in her absence. The two-income family, now doubly taxed to bankroll government, was the price paid for women to be granted their fundamental ‘right’ to vote. This is the magnanimous treatment of the Canadian government toward its free subjects. Yet this factual perspective of Canadian women's suffrage is interestingly absent from our public school texts.

So each time I read about new ways to tally the votes or those voting for, let alone championing, a political Party — a top-down organization that forces its employees, your 'elected' representatives, to comply; an organization that serves the capitalist paradigm and its superstars long before the people — I know nothing is going to change without a price.

Unfortunately, the social collective seems unable to reach, let alone accept, some simple truths about state power. Power begets power. As state power progressively builds up its authority and coercive might, it cuts off legitimate discourse with the people. Eventually the encroachments of the state over the people becomes intolerable. At this time the people discover they have drifted well beyond the threshold of a peaceful solution. They must now fight for their basic inalienable rights. The revolutionary march begins. History is littered with this social pattern and Canadians are not immune from it if we refuse to learn from the past.

We are headed politically in the wrong direction. Varying our course a few degrees or changing our speed is not going to solve the systemic problems we face. We need to fundamentally change our understanding of government and politics. But first we must come to know our role within these bodies: our role as the legitimating force to all acts of state, both good and evil. Blind reliance on the state's propagandized message of our liberal democracy (in words alone) is not just insufficient but extremely detrimental to a better life for all.

As Emma Goldman said a century or so ago, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”. Cynical, yes, but all too true. We either set up a legitimate peoples democratic government, based on the rule of law and decided by the people, or we endure what has been imposed on us.

So far we are enduring and, admittedly, it is far less than what most others endure. Nonetheless, this situation is shameful and an embarrassment to Canadians, particularly when one comes to understand that we suffer less simply because others unseen suffer more.

The Paper Scam

Look, we are screwed. I know that. I think you know that, too. Us regular folks understand when we are getting the gears. We feel the Warden's force, supported by those comfortable with authority or who know their place (a hard habit to kick considering the violent opposition), proving once more that might is right. It has been this way forever.

I am not without blame, mind you. I suspect that this neanderthal philosophy of might has had a pretty easy go at imposing itself upon the likes of pacifists or compassionate progressives uncomfortable with the coerced imposition of any man over another. You know, those guilty of succumbing to their various threats, like me.

This deep disdain for the use of might turns me toward reason instead. Along the way I’ve learned that reasoning with a single person is tough at times, but it is the disarmed fool who thinks he can reason with society. Although we may be rational animals, above all, we are emotional ones. With emotion comes conviction of purpose. And only those in control of the message can instill the necessary fear and hate and patriotic fervor into our minds which compel us to ignorantly obey their orders.

One such order, for example, followed the recent global, financial meltdown. While real people are losing their jobs, homes, pensions, and savings; while entire nations are going bankrupt and grovelling for the mercy of the IMF; and while there is no end to this pain in sight, we are commanded to throw obscene amounts of money into saving the sacred Banking Institutions. For an economy, so it is claimed, cannot exist without them.

Now a sane person might just wonder how Banks became the heart of the economy? Just what are Banks producing that breaths life itself into the economy? The answer: Super-Paper.

It began when the Quants created a sublime piece of Paper that represented hundreds of other pieces of ordinary paper. As the Financial Advisors sold this Super-Paper, word got out that the Quants had other colours of Super-Paper, too. Super-Paper sales skyrocketed! Before long all the savvy weekend investors like Jane D-cup or Joe Sixpack, looking for a deal, bought Super-Paper. Beautifully packaged and embossed with the golden Triple A seal, Super-Paper's investment value was too good to be true.

Meanwhile, as each financial quarter passed, the Banks continued to maximize profits and chase market share. 'Thank you Super-Paper!' echoed down Wall Street, up Bay Street, and beyond. And with these record incomes, Banks rewarded their CEOs more perversely than ever. Orchestrating over the entire Super-Paper economy was tough work, they said, so the millions and billions in bonuses were most deserved.

But things that cannot go on forever, don't. And this financial hoax was no different. That's right, Super-Paper was only ever just p-a-p-e-r. It was the illusion that became reality. In the end, we are told no one saw it coming and, even worse, no one is responsible. Do you believe it?

So here is what I make of it all. We are the new civil defence force, that public army which President Obama promised to deliver to the world. And like all good soldiers, we obey our orders. Not so long ago in Nuremberg the Nazi defence was ‘I was just following orders’. Today, filled with propaganda and sold a world view, the Capitalist defence is ‘I was just doing my job’. This time a trial making us accountable is unlikely. And we have certainly shown no desire to account for ourselves. Instead, we have shamefully avoided that burden, leaving it for posterity.

In the interim, as democratic capitalism flounders, as the ecological pressures force us to retreat despite our adamant denials, and as the totalitarian forces strengthen, what will the economic evolution design? How long now until the dog catches its tail as capitalism and communism unite? Will our Economic Descent Into Barbarism brings us Fascism?

(This may be continued)

Gordon Retires His Mittens

"After considerable soul searching and discussion with my family I've decided to ask the BC Liberal Party executive to hold a leadership convention at the earliest possible date to select a new leader," Gordon Campbell said at a press conference recently in Vancouver.

"It's time for a new person to lead the province. Debates on policy issues have become overshadowed by the public's dislike for me personally," he said. "When that happens it's time for a change."

Do not for a moment forget the entire BC Liberal party was in cahoots with Gordon Campbell. They all joined in, kept their heads down and faithfully, like Pavlov's dog, nodded in agreement to every crime committed against the people of British Columbia.

Things will not, and simply cannot, change by rebranding the party leadership. At best a new twist to the methodology will be introduced to continue the exploitation of BC resources and her people. Good riddance Gordon, but unfortunately the rest of the Liberal gang has been left behind.

Let's just listen to the spin: soul searching; new leadership; blessed for the opportunity; and my all-time favourite, the timeless thanks for the public service offered by all the politicians prostrating themselves before their retiring King. Inside, hidden from the light, party-backed politicians are all brothers-in-arms, corrupted by their corporate paymasters. This is precisely why things are not going to change in BC even with Carol James and the New Democratic Party.

Campbell's farewell is all spectacle. The rhetoric is thick. The propagandized message is clear. Be thankful we have these Gordon Campbells, these Carol Jameses, these humble public servants who forfeit their life efforts for our cause. It reverberates throughout the media and it rings down the halls of the Legislative building. These sacrificial lambs, near and far, offer praise and thanks for the years of public service. It reminds me of the Emmy Awards and that pathetic, self-congratulatory lot.

If we read between the lines of what Gordon Campbell said in his good-bye, it sounds like this:

"After considerable souls searching" and innumerable consultations with my accountant and business alliances about what lays ahead for me in the various corporate institutions I will now be formally employed ... It's time for a new person to lead this province, for I have done all I can to open the legislative avenues for my corporate brethren, allowing them unfettered control of most the resources and infrastructure of the province, thus availing them to maximum profits ... They have all paid a price for my 26 years of public service by keeping my Party coffers flush and the media messages stoked; and for their investment in this not so clandestine enterprise, I have obeyed their directions and repaid them ten-fold and more ... I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to serve in this position, for there are few jobs offered a man with scant more than an ethical void in his heart, greed pumping through his veins, deception on his lips and with the social consciousness of a child the opportunity to screw over 4 million residents and help plunder one of the planet's richest areas for personal gain -- and then walk away unjustly enriched by his peers with their many thanks for his public service. BC Is The Best Place On Earth!

Oh, and did I mention, New Democratic Party leader Carole James thanked Gordon Campbell for his years of public service. Seriously. Can this possibly be sincere?

Keeping true to form, Ms James then goes one better and tries to sell us, "there's still some work to do over the next little while to show people there's a positive alternative". I hear an echo. Ahh, it's the age-old party promise, the political bribe they all offer: We won't stick it to you nearly as badly as the last guys. Trust us. We work for you.

But we know better. Vote Independent.

Cut Your Chain With Party Politics

If we remain defiant enough to keep voting for candidates associated with any political party, then we have no one but ourselves to blame.

As long as we do not want to be represented in government, we will continue to buy into the conventional wisdom of supporting one of the strong parties. This means you vote for a candidate representing the party rather than you or your area. Your representation is dead in the water the moment you mark the ballot.

A party demands adherence to the party line. Your chosen party member, fraudulently claiming to represent you, now just nods his or her head in agreement with the party leader. The party leader takes direction from party backers with pull, the corporate community. We are left with corporate-democracy, or corporatism.

In effect, every four years the electorate willingly votes away being represented in government. Though we have democracy, at least in form, we just refuse to understand how we can effectively participate in it:

Vote for an honest independent candidate from your district, or consider your vote in full support of corporatism.

It is that simple.

Change must come from below. We are that below. Change how we vote and democracy will be returned. We, the people, are a force to be reckoned with but only if unleashed. As soon as we cut the chain with party politics, we all walk free.

In the Land of the Wilfully Blind

“There is a third possibility … an immediate Second World War-type mobilization to deal with the systemic [ecological] crises.” ~ Stephen Elliott-Buckley


I foresee a war too, but more along the lines of the revolutionary ilk. A quiet revolution is certainly not going to rise up from the dead understanding of our brain-numbed populace. That slow burning pipedream of mine is pretty much extinguished. With the inflationary population boom and our collective wisdom approaching zero, the only war erupting will be after all hell breaks loose. And, I dare say, not a moment sooner.

As products of our environment, namely our arrogant western culture which reaps most of the planetary rewards on the coattails of criminal governance, we have lost our ability to foresee even imminent peril. Without vision, there is no need to act. And that is exactly what we do: nothing. Maybe we never have had such ability. I have hope, but zero faith, we ever will.

My point is a simple one: Our style of governance and institutions of power reward, in the truest sense, the pathological type of person; in accepting this truth, the only way we can bring about the necessary, radical change to stop this pathological madness must be through a radical act. As the late Howard Zinn famously stated, “our problems are not with civil disobedience; our problems are with civil obedience”.

With no disrespect intended to those who have suffered from the senseless 9/11 tragedy, consider how a plane load of innocent folks, all in imminent danger, were brought to their graves. Far outnumbering their captors, they were overpowered by a few religious zealots with box-cutters. The hostages, with heads full of cultural propaganda, were rendered impotent. Right until the horrible end they hoped there would be a way out of their predicament -- even if they did absolutely nothing. The worst could not possibly happen.

We westerners do not have the mental fortitude to rise up against our captors, be they hijackers or our government. We stupefyingly hope we will be offered a way out not matter how dire the situation. We deceive ourselves into thinking the solution lay in government; and if not there, then in our technological prowess. In most any other realm, this is known as wishful thinking. Unfortunately, our Christian theological background has laid a strong foundation for such fantasies.

Long understood, those with enough power always act independently. They don't need to seek consent from others. The Empire does not ask if it can proceed. It doesn't consult the people before murdering millions for corporate gain. Yet simple arithmetic suggests the people have the power, if numbers mean anything at all in a democracy. How is it we have been so well-trained that this reality is impossible for us to see?

As Ayn Rand astutely noted, “the hardest thing to do is to convince people of what is glaringly obvious which they do not want to see”. What is obvious is that we have learned to enjoy being governed by others. There is no other plausible explanation.

Mirror, Mirror

Violence solves nothing. It masks or postpones the social ills which violence itself, more often than not, creates.

My sympathies lay with the deluded young soldiers who have been lied to, mis-informed and filled with propaganda by the state, our schools, the media and often their equally mind-numbed parents.

My contempt lays with the ill-informed, immoral and unethical robber-baron hoods in government who bend over on command for the money-men.

The Empire has over 700 international military bases in over 130 nations. Canada is up to its neck as an accomplice to innumerable, barbaric crimes against humanity being perpetrated relentlessly since 1914. Of note, the U.S. Federal Reserve was created just in the nick-of-time to finance the Great War -- the first of many, massive foreign adventures forced on the world through incessant debt, enslaving its public in the process. If you think this is a coincidence, I can only imagine you are on the state payroll.

The Canadian government, full of sociopathic misfits and 3rd rate thinkers, lickspittle to Empire, star of the good government tragedy and daily thief of the people's wealth and ingenuity, is a disgrace to any clear-thinking individual with merely a hint of human compassion.

Was there not $1.1 billion dollars stolen from the people to finance security for a two-day, G-20 political bender? And still some 75 rabble-rousers shut the state’s mouth for 24 hours by breaking a few corporate windows and burning a prop-car. Then the state bared its teeth and began busting heads, essentially for nothing more than a hangnail in terms of misadventure and social unrest.

Meanwhile, speaking with its other face, our jackass government claims it is fighting terrorism. But it never asks itself why these defenseless people -- having their infrastructure, schools, hospitals, homes, families, friends and communities all destroyed so their resources can be claimed by our corporate piranhas for fiscal gain -- dare fight back against our liberating army of good will? Confused, our big moral dilemma stops at whether we bring in the Band-Aids before or after the DU-tipped bunker-busters explode.

Rather than extending a hand to lift these people out of the medieval age which their adherence to an old book has them trapped under, we rob them and F-up their world. This is just sick, demented, selfish, terroristic behaviour. This is the government. This is your government, the beast you think needs a little tweaking, a little discipline, a little polish, and its high morality will come to shine (if for no other reason than 'we mean well'). Unfortunately, this is the massive, political delusion we generally accept as true.

I am so tired of our barbaric thugs parading behind the shield of government, operating like mafia gangsters, extorting the efforts of not only our citizens and our communal property but also having the sanctimonious gall, without shame or remorse, to audaciously commit war crimes elsewhere in our name.

This is our fault, Canadians. We let them behave this way. Only with understanding can we terminate this national deception. We MUST demand more from ourselves.