Guest Post: A Provocative And Fascinating Thesis

I recently published a guest post by BM entitled, The Creep Of Corporatism. In a followup, he has written something that I think many will find both fascinating and thought-provoking:

Thank you for featuring my comment as a blog post. In line with your other recent post on Canadian sovereignty, and my mention of the monetary crisis in India which everyone glosses over, I'd like to expand on the latter situation a bit, since new information has come to light, and it rather puts Bill Gates and parts of the US government in a very bad light if one values personal and own country freedom as I do. In other words, I'd like someone other than myself to have a read and a think about what's going on. Forget Trump, he hasn't even heard about this well-advanced scheme of the ultimate oligarch.

You may recall this Paypal controversy from February this year. A similar horror story occurred in the UK earlier btw. " A Canadian community newspaper wanted to enter a feel-good story about a family of Syrian refugees in an awards competition and sent a fee to the organizer of the competition. As the purpose of the payment it gave the name of the article, which included the word Syrians. This prompted PayPal to freeze the account of the media organization and to send a letter stating: “You may be buying or selling goods or services that are regulated or prohibited by the U.S. government.” It then asked some entirely impertinent questions of the paper.

What happened? Bugger all. Everyone went back to sleep. If only Freeland could concentrate on Canada instead of Ukraine!

So, anyway, India is being used as a testbed for a World ID. That's right, we''ll all have an ID unique to us if Billy Gates' scheme goes through and it's almost there. Do I sound like a mad conspiracy theorist? On the face of it, yes, but read on. The idea was hatched by Obama back in 2010 or so either as a poodle of Gates or the other way around.

The entire story can be read here. Get over a billion Indians to go cashless by the end of next year, and use only mobile phones for payment. Every transaction scrutinized by nameless dicks in the good ole USA. It's the ultimate 1984. The author is German. Read it in disbelief until you realize it's coming down the line. The U.S. is worried that the Chinese will have alternative reserve currency besides the dollar. Can't have that, now can we?

The author doesn't speculate much - he quotes publicly available source. And you know, when every transaction is monitored by the U.S. bureaucracy, just like our phone calls and emails, well freedom does not exist. Revolution not allowed - the rich must get richer. And Trump will still be firing staff not knowing a thing about his bureaucracy. This is ultimate NeoCon territory, I'm afraid tied in with the Democratic Party, ISDS provisions of free trade.

So what do you think of this coming basic attack on our individual and sovereign rights? All done that we may become poodles for our U.S. lords and masters. Completely sickening, but sold as efficient and personal. The drones of the smartphone world will suck it back like a Starbucks, and I've read articles here in Canada with Visa saying that purely cashless payments could occur in Canada by 2022, but darned if I can find them.

This Is What Real Protest Looks Like

All Canadians could learn a lot from the Brits:

London, United Kingdom - Activists and trade union leaders have called for a general strike and a mass campaign of civil disobedience to bring down the country's new right-wing government as hundreds of thousands took to the streets of London and other cities to protest against austerity and public service cuts.

Organisers said a quarter of a million people had joined Saturday's march from the Bank of England to the Houses of Parliament, with smaller protests also taking place in Glasgow, Liverpool, and Bristol, and pledged the event was only a beginning.

"We've got to get rid of this government quicker than five years. This government cannot last the full term," Sam Fairbairn, national secretary of the People's Assembly, the anti-austerity campaign group that organised the march, told a rally in Parliament Square.

"Today is just the start of a campaign of protests, of strikes, of direct action and civil disobedience up and down the country. We are going to organise the biggest mass movement this country has ever seen, and it is that mass movement that is going to kick David Cameron out of office."

There is similar anger in Canada over the Harper regime's many abuses of the country's citizens. How can we best mobilize that anger?

The Pope Just Doesn't Know His Place

At least. that's what I infer from the blather of Catholic League President Bill Donohue:



No doubt, obeisance to the corporate agenda is what Donahue and his ilk expect from any self-respecting pontiff.

... Your Young Men Will See Visions, Your Old Men Will Dream Dreams.

Although far from a biblical scholar, I find the above line, taken from the Book of Acts, to be an apt title. Even though I am taking it out of context, it encapsulates for me a capacity that the world in general, and Canada in particular, has lost: the capacity to dream of and envisage a better reality than what we have settled for.

Under the relentless barrage of neoconservative propaganda, we have succumbed to the kind of existence epitomized in the video I posted the other day, a world of mindless consumerism, relentless environmental despoliation, and spiritual barrenness. if they are good at anything, those of the reactionary right are very good at limiting, even destroying hope.

Consider the insidious narratives they spin - government as an impediment, government as a thief in your tax pocket, government as the obstruction without which all would be well. Like all effective narratives, each chapter of theirs may contain an element of truth, but only a small part of the truth.

Forgotten is the role that government plays for the collective good, without which all of us would be lost. Imagine no libraries, no public roads, no health care, no pensions, no labour laws, no public police or fire services - all the logical conclusions to the extreme right-wing dream, a dream that would be a nightmare for the vast majority of us, especially those without the means or the wherewithal to escape consignment to the trash heap - economic Darwinianism run amok.

But from those vying for our electoral support, where are the visions, where are the dreams? From Stephen Harper, of course we get the above vision. Justin Trudeau offers more money for families, and a 'new way of doing politics,' whatever that means, and a bit of tinkering around the edges. Thomas Mulcair promises a national daycare program and more money for municipalities, important bread and butter issues, to be sure, but singularly uninspiring and pedestrian, and, to be quite blunt, safe.

Bold initiatives that require more from us via taxes have become verboten, thanks to the narrative the media brings us. So neither Thomas Mulcair nor Justin Trudeau will suggest, for example, a national pharmacare system that would ultimately save everyone, including government and private health plans, huge sums of money (upwards of $12 billion annually) through pooled purchases and far less hospitalizations owing to people either not getting their prescriptions filled or not taking the required dosages in order to stretch out their costly medicationss.

I could go on, but I think you get my point. I have made no reference to the truly critical issues confronting us for an obvious reason. If our leadership is too timid to address matters that are well within reach, such as pharmacare, what likelihood beyond a bit of rhetorical toe-dipping is there of bold measures to remediate child poverty, homelessness and our greatest threat, climate change?

Zero to nil, would be my guess.

The Right Wing Instructs Us On Our Errors In Thinking

Benighted soul that I am, I did not realize the myriad errors of thinking I have fallen prey to. Happily, University of Toronto geography professor Pierre Desrochers has set me straight on a few things:

A Timely Reminder Of Tim Hudak's Magical Thinking

While we should be back from our trip tomorrow in time to catch the Ontario election news coverage, this seems an opportune time to remind readers of the kind of magical thinking so favoured by extreme right enthusiasts such as young Tim Hudak. Tim, as you may recall, has made even lower corporate taxes a major part of his plan to create one million jobs, despite the fact that Ontario's rates are among the lowest in North American, and despite the fact that no apparent empirical data supports the equation that lower business taxes create jobs.

Here is a letter from today's Star that I think makes the point rather nicely:

Leaders make one last push as campaign winds down, June 10

The Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. recorded $1.08 trillion in profits last year. That was an increase of 31.7 per cent over the year before. During that time, these same companies increased employment increases of 0.7 per cent.

A similar picture exists on Canada. In 2001 corporate tax rates were 22 per cent. Today they stand at 15 per cent. We’ve lost $6.1 billion in government revenue while corporate profits have skyrocketed to $625 billion.

Tim Hudak talks about creating one million jobs through a lower tax rate. During the Mike Harris years in Ontario this philosophy did not work out very well. The provincial debt during the Harris years went from $90.7 billion in 1994-95 to $130.6 billion is 2002-03. This, while cutting many jobs and services and giving the province the legacy of Walkerton among other atrocities.

Former Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney tried to convince Canadian corporations to spend some of the “dead money” they have been sitting on after accumulating such large profits over the years. To date, the corporations have not responded.

For years, right-wing government leaders from Margaret Thatcher to Ronald Reagan to Mike Harris have been selling the supply-side economic lie. It didn’t work for them and it won’t work for Tim Hudak. A first-year economics student could tell you the reason for this. The rich don’t tend to spend additions to their revenue. The poor do. The rich accululate this money as the corporations in Canada have been doing for years.

In the Conservative attack on Kathleen Wynne on the radio, they end by asking, “Can you afford to vote for Kathleen Wynne?” I am wondering if I can afford not to.

Carl Nelson, Huntsville

On The Madness of 'King' Stephen

Whenever I need evidence that politically aware and engaged citizens are not an endangered species, I turn to the letters section of The Toronto Star. Here are two from yesterday and one from today that amply demonstrate resistance to the kind of group-think so much beloved of the extreme right:

Method in Tories’ madness hard to fathom, May 31

I don’t think Stephen Harper’s methods over his time in the PMO are really so hard to fathom. When he was in opposition there was talk of Harper’s “secret agenda.” What has happened is that he has pulled his secret agenda out of the closet. He is systematically altering the political and social structure of the country to suit his own ideological, neo-conservative views of the world.

He has tried to eliminate all liberal and centrist politics. He is not interested in facts or data that contradict these views, hence his dismemberment of Statistics Canada and Canadian scientific research. He is actively seeking to replace all opposition to his reign, hence his fight with the Supreme Court.
His slow murder of the CBC, what Chantal Hebert called a “death of a thousand cuts,” is a way to limit Canadians’ access to open dialogue of policy.

There are any number of other examples of Harper’s destruction of the traditional Canadian values in his march to reconstruct this country along his personal values system. The damage inflicted by his policies will take a generation to overcome, if it is at all possible, but that is exactly what Harper has set out to do.

The complete overhaul of the Canadian landscape into an extreme right-wing image is precisely what Harper has had in mind all along. He has been far more successful than the American Tea Party although those seem to be the precise views of our prime minister.

Stephen L. Bloom, Toronto

The Tory madness is due to a toxic mix: decisions based on intuitive, “common sense” gut feeling instead of reason; ideological economics of a free market without government regulation or union protection; and protection of the Alberta base, because of its economic reliance on the tar sands and its evangelical supporters; plus a leader with a mindset that brooks no criticism.

Bill Unitt, Brampton

Privacy suffers from poor political will, May 31

I found Michael Geist’s column very interesting. I would, however, hazard a guess that the real reason the current regime has, apparently, stopped caring about privacy is really very simple.

Most dictatorships resort to surveillance, secret police, the suppression of truth and oppression to sustain their hold on power. It seems to me that we have seen all of these from the Harper regime since 2006.

The linchpin of dictatorship is surveillance so it should be no wonder that not only have they ceased to care about the privacy of Canadian citizens, they are actively increasing surveillance while weakening oversight.

I don’t think I am reacting too strongly nor do think I see conspiracy at every turn. It just seems to me that Stephen Harper is doing everything he can to maintain his party’s hold on power at the expense of the guarantees in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Poor Canada.

Bob MacMorran, Little Britain

Contempt Of The Electorate - Part 2

As I continue to ponder the question my friend Tom posed about why discredited economic theories are not vigorously opposed and exposed as such by political parties and media, two articles perhaps offer some helpful contextual information.

The first is by John Barber in today's Star, entitled Hudak’s discredited doctrine a lucky break for Wynne. In it, he remarks on the good fortune that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is enjoying by having an ideologue, Tim Hudak, helming the party of her chief opposition, The Progressive Conservatives of Ontario:

Hudak has presented her a chance once again to make righteous war on Mike Harris’s amply discredited Common Sense Revolution.

Barber speculates that embracing such an extreme austerity program that will see the elimination of 100,000 public service jobs in order to balance the books a year or two earlier than Wynne intends suggests one of two motives: either it is a strategy to gain a majority government by mobilizing true believers more likely to turn out in an election than others, or Hudak and his brain trust are mad, an explanation Barber favours, given that it reflects a worldwide trend of neoconservatives:

The boldness of the policy is the product of assumptions so ingrained the zealots see no need to explain them. Fixated by their own mechanistic ideology, they blandly expect voters to understand intuitively — or religiously, as they seem to do — that destroying jobs will create jobs and that cutting taxes will increase revenue. It’s all so clear to them. Don’t you see, Ontario?

Barber then provides a link to a recent column by Paul Krugman, entitled Points of No Return. In it, the economist writes about how facts, reason and informed cerebration seem to be losing out to crazed ideology and contempt for science and others sources of empirical data, bringing us to the point where the process of intellectual devolution seems to have reached a point of no return.

It, too, is a piece well-worth reading, as Krugman examines the Republican Party and its wholesale embrace of an ideology that reveres patently false economic ideas (austerity would be one such example), and offers reflexive rejection of inconvenient scientific truth (the notion of human-caused climate would be an example). The more obvious the falsity of the outlook, the more adherents become

more, not less, extreme in their dogma, which will make it even harder for them ever to admit that they, and the political movement they serve, have been wrong all along.

Strikingly like a certain domestic federal regime I could also name, no?

Admittedly, this does not offer a direct answer to Tom's question. But is it possible that those politicians who oppose such flawed doctrines are afraid of enraging those voters who do, a reaction that might strengthen their already motivated resolve to be a present en masse at the ballot box?

I would more than welcome input on this perplexing issue.

The Common Sense Revolution Redux ( A.K.A. Tiny Tim Roars)

H/t Theo Moudakis

If you have resided in Ontario for some years, and were of a certain age when Ontario's Common Sense Revolution was conducted by Mike 'The Knife' Harris, you will recall it was a time of great upheaval that, contrary to the mythologizing that the right-wing so much enjoys fabricating, left the bulk of Ontarians worse off.

It was a time of job cuts, dissension, the sowing of hatred against various groups that fell into Harris' crosshairs, monumental downloading of provincial responsibilities to municipalities for which property owners are still paying dearly in their tax bills, the selling off of Highway 407 to cover fiscal ineptitude and balance the books, etc. etc. And yet, Harris was wielding a mere hatchet in his reductionist zeal compared to the battle axe that his acolyte, young Tim Hudak, plans to use should he win the election.

With the magical thinking so favoured by the extreme right, Hudak says that to balance the budget he will slash 100,000 public sector jobs out of whose ashes, along with more corporate tax cuts, will emerge one million 'good-paying jobs.' Forget for a moment that both strategies has been amply discredited and look closer at the numbers.

In a piece in today's Star, Kaylie Tiessen and Kayle Hatt analyse what will be involved in these cuts:

Statistics Canada indicates there were 88,483 Ontario public servants in the general government category in 2012, the most recent year of data available.

This includes the core public service, agencies, boards and commissions (such as Metrolinx, the Ontario Municipal Board, the Niagara Falls Bridge authority and several hundred other organizations), provincial police and judicial employees.

Eliminating 100,000 jobs would amount to 15.3 per cent of Ontario’s provincial public servants — 1.5 per cent of the total jobs in Ontario.

And this means the broader public service, including those involved in public education and health care, and would likely range from teachers, educational assistants, community home-care providers, nurses, etc.

The writers also make a point that Hudak conveniently chooses to ignore: the multiplier effect:

The federal ministry of finance estimates the multiplier effect of government spending is approximately 1.5. That means every dollar the government spends generates an additional 50 cents in economic activity through increased consumer spending, business activity and other second order effects.

Using that multiplier, we estimate the impact of cutting 100,000 good jobs out of Ontario’s economy would result in the loss of an additional 50,000 private sector jobs — because those who used to be employed in the public sector would no longer have the money they need to participate in the local economy, go to movies, eat at local restaurants and shop in local stores.

Essentially, the boy who would be premier demands that we bow at the twin altars of austerity and corporate tax reduction. Hudak tells us that it will be good for all of us, although it is truly difficult to discern any beneficiaries in this mad gambit.

The more people who understand these facts, one hopes, the less support Hudak's demented vision will receive on June 12.

In Harperland, The Worst 'Crime' Imaginable

... apparently is hanging the flag upside down.* Crypto fascists have always been thus.



*Hanging the flag upside down is recognized as a symbol of distress.

Connecting The Dots

H/t Ruth Blair

Meanwhile, Back In The Land of Ontario Election Campaigns....

The mask of boyish innocence was slowly slipping away from young Tim Hudak.



H/t Toronto Star



H/t Ray Mirshahi

What Stephen Harper, Tim Hudak And The Rest of The Neocons Really Think

The Remaking of Canada in the Neo-Conservative Image

In the world of unfettered capitalism, everything has a price and nothing is sacred. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the neocon knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I was reminded of that this morning as I read Christopher Hume's latest column in the Star entitled The great public sell-off continues, in which he explores the consequences of trying to commercialize our public assets.

It begins, From sidewalks and schools to the CBC, the public realm is under siege at every turn.

He later offers the following observation about the consequences of the frantic effort to make money off of our public intstitutions :

But once that happens, it no longer belongs to us. Organizational needs will be served, but not those of the user. And as institutions are forced to turn themselves into businesses, our connection to them becomes a variation on the relationship between consumers and corporations. They act on their own behalf, not ours.

Federally, under the Harper regime we bear witness to the gradual and probably irreversible dismantling of the Canada that we have known for so long. In other jurisdictions, both provincial and municipal, the same process is apace.

If any of this concerns you, I hope you will spare a couple of minutes to read the rest of Hume's thoughts on the matter.