Shame On Us

How sad that Canada has come to this. Stephen Harper is an habitual liar with no regard for ordinary people, he has shut down Parliament to save his own skin in the middle of the worst economic crisis in almost 80 years, setting a very dangerous precedent by doing so, and people are mad at the opposition parties. I really don't understand.

People are more concerned about public image than honesty and the ability to govern with the citizens in mind. It seems to me that many Canadians would rather Harper stay on as Prime Minister and ruin the country by pursuing his laissez-faire capitalist programme, than have the coalition safeguard our social institutions and work to fix a fast ailing economy that is inextricably tied to the disastrous mess happening in the United States.

Stephen Harper has used propaganda and scare tactics to confuse, divide and mislead people in order to retain power. He has succeeded in alienating Quebecers right before a provincial election, by accusing the opposition of forming an unholy alliance with Separatists (and Socialists), when his Party has done the same not once, but twice, in order to try and bring down previous Liberal governments. Not to mention the can of worms he opened by standing up in the House of Commons and declaring Quebec a nation not too long ago. Furthermore, he has repeatedly misled the Canadian people by insisting that there was no economic crisis and that he would not run a budget deficit, most recently during the last federal election campaign. As we saw in last week's Economic Update, he tried to use this crisis to further his ideological agenda which is anathema to the vast majority of Canadians. His actions and words are dishonest and hypocritical in the extreme.

Despite all of this and according to the latest polls, support for the Conservatives is stronger than ever, and the amount of outrage at the opposition parties even among traditional Liberal and NDP supporters is high.

This just confirms that people are brainwashed enough to vote and speak out against their own best interests. However, I believe in the end, the Governor General made the right decision.

The Conservatives will force another election when the House of Commons reconvenes, after ten months of inaction on economic matters, and they will win a majority. They will use the worsening economic crisis to scrap all the social programmes we've built up since the 1950s, sell off valuable government assets to their rich friends at rock bottom prices, and continue to shift the tax burden from those who have the most to those who have the least, in effect continuing the laissez-faire capitalist policies that are responsible for the current financial and social crisis in the first place.

The economy is going to disintegrate with the Conservatives at the helm. Wages will be cut, jobs will be lost, companies will shut down, there will be massive inflation, food will become prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people, and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.

Like junkies who have to hit rock bottom before they can save themselves, we will all have to suffer for what this government is doing, and when people finally wake up, it's going to get very ugly, very fast.

Only then will we be able imagine building a new society, and believe me it won't include the Conservative Party of Canada.

Scammed!

Banks and multinationals are robbing the vast majority of ordinary people by means of a financial and economic system whereby money can be made from nothing, producing nothing of real value, with full backing of the taxpayer through government bailouts should the shady economic practices be exposed for the illusion they are.

Simultaneously, this same system dominates the vast majority of working people of every social class on two fronts; by holding power over people's livelihoods by the ever decreasing purchasing power of salaried labour through inflation, wage caps, or the threat of unemployment on the one hand and by brainwashing people into leading a shamelessly consumerist lifestyle, often going into chronic debt while doing so, on the other.

The system inherently leads to a widening gap between rich and poor, concentrating ever greater amounts of wealth and power into the hands of the very few, while alienating and marginalizing everyone else. We can plainly see that nations with the greatest amount of income disparity and the weakest social fabric are the ones that are hit hardest by the consequences of these economic charades.

These same banks and companies are managed by strict adherents to a fanatical economic ideology that does not believe in rules, regulations, or social safety nets except when it suits their agenda. Governments are held hostage by the dictatorship of the economy, and have no choice but to either collaborate by meeting their demands, or risk having too many angry unemployed people with a lot of time on their hands. Either way, the rich get what they want, with no guarantees that the economy will recover. Everyone else simply has to tighten their belts, while trying to keep the system afloat, thus continuing the cycle.

People are starting to realize the extent of this scam and are beginning to speak out against the collusion of government with business interests, but they also feel powerless to change the status quo.

Ask yourself why so many people don't bother to vote? Ask yourself why these economic practices are allowed in the first place? Ask yourself where all of that money went?