The posts I write in the next few years aren't going to be very popular. I'm ok with that. I didn't create this blog to be popular in fact quite the opposite: I made it to make you think and self-contemplate. I often compare politics to a team sport where the team you play for is more important than the issues being dealt with. The internet is a sea of meaningless terminology that passes for political discourse.
"Oh those libtards, they something something blanket statement"
"Oh those dippers, they something something blanket statement"
"oh those RWNJs, they something something blanket statement"
"Leftists do this", "Righties do that". Everyone points at each other and nothing serious really gets done. The changes that do occur are superficial and are more meant to drive immediate public perception rather than effect real lasting beneficial change for the population as a whole.
Perhaps a tweet to demonstrate:
Engineered. What an excellent choice of description, it's what I'd call it myself. But not to make "Stephen Harper's balls ache", but to portray the perception of "change" when little has actually changed at all. Here is an example:What I love most about Justin Trudeau is that everything he does seems engineered to make Stephen Harper's balls ache.— Iva Cheung (@IvaCheung) June 2, 2016
Public being misled about Canadian special forces in Iraq, says Ambrose
“Is the Prime Minister finally prepared to admit that Canada’s mission in Iraq is combat?” Ambrose added.
But Trudeau maintained that the “mission in Iraq is support and assist. It is focused on training. It is not a direct combat mission. It is not a combat mission, it is focused on empowering local troops to counter ISIL.”
The interesting part is that when this issue came up in the fall of 2014 and early 2015 when the Conservatives were in power, they insisted the same mission was also training….not combat.Even the article couldn't help but note how interesting it is that the tables seem to have turned. Or maybe it's that the party in power isn't really different at all. That there is an agenda at play that extends beyond party ideology. The government and opposition pretend to be at odds with each other, pretend to be opponents, but in reality the differences are minor, and superficial. Those good old "people issues" while the issues of importance to the state and banking sectors continue unabated.
I found this tweet of the "fancyness" of the parliamentary gallery having both Coke (red) and Pepsi (blue) in the same ice bucket an apt metaphor for the sham we call a democracy. Out here in the consumer world it's Coke or Pepsi, The difference between the two? minimal. There is a difference, and people have their preference and each establishment (district) has their preference, but ultimately what is it? Cola. Coke Cola, or Pepsi Cola, but it's always gunna be Cola. The mental construct of the brand is so much bigger and more prevalent than the product.Much like the false duality of left/right (red vs blue), on the inside it's all the same. https://t.co/ntGfe1S2sA— Richard Fantin (@RichardFantin) June 1, 2016
Stephen Harper is doing just fine. I can assure you he isn't losing any sleep over the reign of the Liberals. His time as a lackey of the banks' agenda simply provided a springboard for the real power he will now have as a member of whatever international corporations he decided to join. You know, the type of global businesses that collude with governments to create trade bills we sign on to like the T.P.P. A TPP Trudeau fully supports, of course.
And how about C51?
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said in November that finding the right balance between national security and individual rights is critical.
"We recognize that it's an urgent matter," he told reporters then. "Canadians are expecting to see those proposals quickly but the principle is clear… that balance between making sure Canadians are safe and making sure their civil rights and the values of Canadians are properly protected."
Since then, the government has appointed Liberal MP David McGuinty to study how other countries, such as the United States and Britain, oversee the activities of their intelligence agencies and to make recommendations for a Canadian system.Oh good, the U.S. and Britain! Excellent models don't you think?
Hidden Microphones Exposed As Part of Government Surveillance Program In The Bay Area
MI5 'used sexual abuse of children at Kincora to blackmail the politician paedophiles' (this type of blackmail is VERY common)
Governments Turn to Commercial Spyware to Intimidate Dissidents
Like, do people not remember that it was the U.S. and U.K. and the Snowden revelations that have created the heightened concern about intelligence agencies going way beyond what they should be able to in the first place? But creating an oppressive surveillance state is again another one of those agendas that transcends the party line.
When it comes to the Saudi arms deal even the CBC can't help but note how similar the current and previous governments are:
Well. If further proof was needed that the sunny new regime in Ottawa is perfectly capable of behaving just like the un-sunny previous regime, we now have it, in a memo that was stamped "Secret," then rather inconveniently laid bare in the Federal Court of Canada.
The document, signed by Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion, is a gem of hair-splitting, parsing, wilful blindness and justification for selling billions worth of fighting vehicles and weaponry to Saudi Arabia, one of the most oppressive regimes on Earth.Again, another important state and banking issue that continues right along with the old agenda.
Even Jodie Emery is realizing the Trudeau government isn't going to be the legalization utopia she had dreamed of.
Yet prior to the election Mark Emery just didn't want to hear it (and as you can see Press for Truth totally nailed the scam that is marijuana legalization):Licensed Producers told Gov't to raid cannabis dispensaries due to "the threat it poses to the industry" https://t.co/LGyddK0tjp #cdnpoli— Jodie Emery (@JodieEmery) June 2, 2016
Coke, or Pepsi. Red, or Blue. The same, or the same.
If Harper was our Bush, Trudeau is our Obama. We think "change" is finally here, but it's Harper that implemented the "change". It's how the system manipulates the public: a politician comes in, makes many unpopular changes then a popular one comes in and doesn't change much at all and simply utilizes the changes passed by the previous government. The anger about those changes leaves with the previous political party but the changes themselves? Those remain.
In the meantime, CSIS director Michel Coulombe told a Senate committee two months ago that the spy agency has used the new powers granted under C-51 about two dozen times. And he told senators he expected they would use those powers again.
But for what, and how many times, he wouldn't say. Protecting national security remains, for now, beyond the scope of parliamentary oversight.
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Richard Fantin is a self-taught software developer who has mostly throughout his career focused on financial applications and high frequency trading. He currently works for CenturyLink
Nazayh Zanidean is a Project Coordinator for a mid-sized construction contractor in Calgary, Alberta. He enjoys writing as a hobby on topics that include foreign policy, international human rights, security and systemic media bias.
Hi, Richard. Some Liberals cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that their team is effectively as neoliberal as the last bunch. The public is finally catching on to the free market fundamentalism/perpetual GDP growth scam. They know they've been had by a succession of corporatist governments, Conservative and Liberal, going back to Mulroney. Even the IMF now volunteers how neoliberalism fuels destructive inequality and wreaks havoc on economies. Trudeau, despite his youth and his young family, is too hidebound to change the country's direction, to pull us back from the cliff.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet the Liberal rank and file still proudly proclaim themselves to be "progressive" which is decidedly cringeworthy.