Losing much of the

Losing much of the environmental vote has been the result of the party's wishy washy positioning. Trying to reassure big business they won't have to worry too much if the NDP forms government, does not win us any support from the Green voter, and does nothing to stop business leaders trashing us every way they can.

Suzuki has done a lot to raise awareness but long since developed a messiah complex which distorts his judgment. Berman has always been an ego driven publicity hound who primarily promotes her own career. They would have served the world much better by participating in the NDP rather than peeing into the tent from outside and thereby helping the worst government in our history gain two terms when they were eminently beatable. They and other self righteous Greens are as responsible as the NDP leadership for allowing Campbell to win in '05 and'09.

If the new leader can establish some credibility on environment issues it would be a big help in the next election, especially as the Green party has pretty much stalled at the 10% -12% level.

We need a leader who will be consistent and not roll over every time there is money or some votes in the balance as with the 10 lane Port Mann Bridge and the rest of the Gateway boondoggles. You cannot promise to protect the environment and also promote massive and unnecessary development, and maintain any credibility with the Green voter - of which there are more and more out there, as awareness rises and the global weather crisis makes things ever more clear!

Alienating the Green vote has cost two elections, and I wonder when the party will figure out its way to government is to show some guts and integrity on these issues rather than soft pedaling and kissing up to big money.

"stop accepting new members"?

Wow - it's hard to get past that statement in the first paragraph, and read the rest of the article. Will members be allowed to renew, or like WW1 vets, when the last one dies that's the end of the NDP?

I suspect what will actually

I suspect what will actually happen is new members will still be able to join, but not to vote on the leadership. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

Groucho, not Karl

As Groucho said: "I would not want to join a club that wants me as a member".

Maybe being a bit exclusive is not such a bad idea?

Re: Membership signups

Six days after CJ's resignation I posted this on the Internet, still true.

So one must sign up or renew membership in the BC NDP on or before Jan 17, 2011. The stark reality is that there will be very few new sign ups or renewals during the holiday season ending January 4, 2011- the first work day of the New Year. So that essentially there is very little time for potential candidates to generate greater public interest in the party and provide citizens an incentive to rejoin or sign on as new members eligible to participate in a one-member-one vote Leadership Convention. IMO, The Party, in the extraordinary circumstance, could have left the door open to joining and participating in the election 60 clear days before the election - namely Feb 16, 2011. It appears, the rule leads to a preference by and large to let the existing membership exercise their vote - whilst marginalizing the window of opportunity for new members to do so. Whilst others are free to disagree, IMO, the 90 day cut-off is not the smartest strategy to facilitate the desired outcome of renewal of BC NDP membership and finances>
Does not the BC NDP constitution provide some means for extraordinary special resolutions by their Provincal Council?

shepsil

The environmental movement in BC knows the BCNDP would be better than the Soclibs, many of us just don't trust you.

The silly party, in fact, would be better for BC than the present government.

The Green party voters used to vote NDP, what stopped that was Clayoquot.

I can remember complaining to a fellow that writes for The Tyee about all the good-hearted people the government was throwing in jail.
So he tells me why not go to a meeting with Andrew Petter (the minister of forests, at the time),and straiten
him out.

So I put on my best t shirt and appear at the appointed hour and here's Petter at the front of the room and me at the back and a rowdy bunch of loggers in between.

It was a set up,I left.
What took away from that was in the NDP, loggers trump the environment.

If you want to get elected the NDP has some work to do to get the Greens back in the fold.

The NDPs view on that the greens are not ex left wing voters, but just a bunch of flakes.That attitude has to change.

Suzuki and Berman are not flakes they are just trying to get a benign government in BC, as am I.

The environment is going to be huge issue in the next election and the NDP is going to have to lead the way,and get the Green voter back on side.

If and when the NDP gets elected they are just going to have to tell the loggers to sit there and keep quiet, and hopefully they will be taken care of, but no more Clayoquots.

The rules were put in place

The rules were put in place so as to discourage mass sign ups of people with no intention of participating in the party beyond the leadership vote. Considering it takes about five minutes and only ten bucks to sign up online, there has been plenty of time for those with a genuine interest to be part of the voting. People have to take some responsibility for their own motivations and actions rather than relying on lame excuses like "I only had five weeks to sign up"!

The MSM and their online clones are despairing of the lost opportunity for renewal, but so far no figures have been released on recent membership increases. However, Dana Larsen claims to have 1000 new membership forms ready to turn in and has no idea how many of his supporters have signed up online. It has also been reported that Adrian Dix and others have been signing up members as fast as possible and Horgan's website encourages us to sign up all our friends and relations.

I have done just that and am now the designated researcher for eight to ten "new" members (most of whom have been members and campaign volunteers in the past)and am actively pursuing more informed opinions about the candidates, none of whom have returned my calls so far.

Shepsil

I come from a logging background and never had a problem communicating with even the most loud and aggressive bush boys, even when telling them they were full of BS. With Mike Harcourt as leader and later premier it was possible for some of the most polarized people to debate and resolve differences as in the unanimously supported Forest Policy introduced at the 1992 convention after years of work behind the scenes.

Under Glen Clark, the grassroots were largely ignored in favour of the "Big Players" be they from Big Labour, Big Green, or Big Money.

The NDP's Green Caucus mostly lost out at this game and ended up feeling so bullied by Sihota, Clark, Miller, Georgetti, Munro, and others who repeatedly dissed them publicly, that they left for the Green Party.
We lost quite a few experienced and intelligent organizers who unfortunately were not pragmatic enough to stay the course and gradually gain more influence in the NDP.

As a result we saw the Green vote make the difference between NDP and Liberal election wins in '05 and '09.

The industrialists in the party were quite smug about getting rid of those environmentalist "flakes", and are still not ready to acknowledge how much damage has been done to the province as a result. Nor are the Green party activists ready to admit that practically speaking they are in the way of any really responsible government being elected. I would be more than happy if they all came back and fought for more influence within the NDP as many of the dinosaurs who drove them away are now retired or working for big business.

NDP navel-gazing

This sign-ups "controversy" is another of those internal issues the party is famous for getting tangled up in while the real issues pass right on by unnoticed. The campaign just begins to gain flight and already we are hearing mumblings about lost opportunities and a flawed party sign-up policy. Enough already. The opportunity is not lost, it is now and the candidate who seizes it wins!

If candidate fails to stack enough memberships in his/her favour, then he/she will have to actually campaign to win members in distant ridings. Is that really such a bad thing? If Dix's or Farnworth's people sign me up, that doesn't mean I have to vote for them at the convention. I may like that fighting Irish boy, Horgan, over on the Island, and may cast my vote accordingly.

As for the green vote, that's another red herring at this point in time, an ideological issue to be tackled after a new leader takes the helm. It's an important issue, but the exercise now is to revitalize the NDP and get a friggin viable candidate in place who can beat the Liberals. We can iron out the ideological and party policy details later.

Read, set, go....

NDP membership

Any new members wishing to sign up simply to tout their candidate should clearly understand that although 50%+1 will elect a new leader, 84% won't be sufficient to keep him/her as leader.
I hope all candidates are intelligent enough to ensure that "bull's eyes" are clearly visible on their t-shirt backs.

Whether the NDP renews itself will depend ...

...largely on the new leader. I too remember the Greens during the Van Island logging wars. The loudest of the Greens were in the urban centers who had no stake in the job losses that would result if a balance was not found. These were the "no compromise enviros" and it is extremely difficult foir them to find any party they will agree with all the time. Trying to cater to them is pointless.

If the current membership is not willing to renew itself and maybe start by getting rid of the idiotic gender quota then they will be back in opposition. Nobody joins a movement with artificial ceilings in place. They also need to come up with policies that resonate with the voter. A leadership race is a start but if the current membership votes for the same old clique as before then we are back where we were. The field lacks a certain depth and it remains to be seen if someone will rise to the challenge in the current flawed system of out democracy.

The NDP choices may all be infinitely better than any offered from the residual Campbell stew but they will still need to give the population a better vision than what has been inflicted upon the citizen in the past 9 years.

In this debate Berman and Suzuki have made themselves irrelevant. These are folks that live in a different world than the rest of us. They have the luxury of pontificating from a high altitude while the rtest of us struggle with day to day living.

The Cut-Off Date

So who is complaining about the early cut-off date? From the above, leadership hopefuls Horgan, Lali, and Larsen.

Interesting to note that right after Lali's announcement in Merritt, he headed to a Sikh temple in Surrey in search of new members. Now Lali is complaining about potential mass sign-ups by others in the South Asian community and might call for an audit.

OTOH, MLA Harry Bains seems to be happy about the cut-off date. Bains has already endorsed Dix (Georgia Straight) and Dix has been at several Indo-Canadian events in Surrey. Sikh temple leaders were also present and they took party membership forms.

Dix seems to have the South Asian community vote sown up as well as the Filipino community. With the massive new sign-ups and support of existing members that's a good chunk of the NDP membership.

That's one of the reasons why my money is on Dix winning this thing.

you won

I can remember flying up the center of Vancouver Island, must have been 72 or 73 and the thing that struck me was the whole center of the island was logged; they had left trees around the highways so people couldn't see all the stumps as they drove up island.

All the environmentalists (and they wern't Greens yet) wanted was to leave a few valley bottoms intact so people could see how things were before the loggers ripped down the old growth and destroyed the salmon streams.

But hey, the loggers won,they got their temporary jobs, good for them.

And as for Berman and Suzuki being irrelevant, they are trying to save what little of this planet they can, and you guys are trying to save some some difficult, dangerous,stupid, destructive temporary jobs.

So I guess that makes them relevent to me, and you, irrelevant

should have been longer at

should have been longer at least into feb. holidays plus post-holiday slow start were easily foreseeable but have at it as it is, no time for complaining.

Zip, Zero, Nada.

"While some people inside and outside the party say the NDP is missing an opportunity to renew itself and build its membership, others say it's the most committed members who have stuck with the party that should choose the next leader." from lead article

I don't think it all matters very much, but what is clear is, the Carol James "Business Friendly" crew at the top of the NDP is still very much in charge... overall. And they intend to keep it that way.

It would take an NDP rank and file revolt of, I think, near impossible proportions to turn this reality and its consequences around. The NDP, in this scenario, if true, is going to remain positioned just about where it is. And the Moe Sihota gang will likely prefer to see the NDP go to the bottom, rather than be allowed to radicalize, or more firmly "left" position itself.

These guys are "in on the system" and want to serve it... not surrender up the Party to a bunch of "relatively" more radicalized usurpers.

Besides, we all really know that this is going to be an election of the "minority population" in any case. Most of whom ARE business friendly to one degree or another, or certainly not prepared to challenge the status quo ruling order.

No, in my view, the future is more fragmented politics in fact, for at least the short run. And the reason for that is firstly, the widespread popular contempt for the process and its governance outcomes in any case. Second, the cynicism is sufficiently deep and bitter that most, or near most of the eligible electorate will not cast ballots in any case.

The NDP is already irrelevant. What remains is for the entire rigged process to deteriorate enough in popular support, that alternate movements begin to emerge and feel emboldened to challenge it... the entire prevailing power schmeer.

Despite the indicators from out of the wheelers and dealers in the "paper" casino economy, and all the money changing hands there, nothing substantial or of any consequence is there yet, to change the deterioration direction of that real economy as sustains the masses.

Everybody's' heads just have to catch up with it all, is all. This is what is really not happening yet... as could open up a whole new ballgame.

As for the NDP, even if it gets the next government, which I don't see happening, it means zip, zero, nada.

comedy central is less entertaining than BC politics

While some people inside and outside the party say the NDP is missing an opportunity to renew itself and build its membership, others say it's the most committed members who have stuck with the party that should choose the next leader.

Naw, party politics has nothing to do with advancing special interests or powerful cliques, it's all about democracy /sarcasm

Go vote for one of the real contenders folks, and screw the people of BC in the process.

Exactly, Jerry:

Quote:

"I don't think it all matters very much, but what is clear is, the Carol James "Business Friendly" crew at the top of the NDP is still very much in charge... overall. And they intend to keep it that way.

It would take an NDP rank and file revolt of, I think, near impossible proportions to turn this reality and its consequences around. The NDP, in this scenario, if true, is going to remain positioned just about where it is. And the Moe Sihota gang will likely prefer to see the NDP go to the bottom, rather than be allowed to radicalize, or more firmly "left" position itself."

These are definitely the prevailing winds. I can feel it in all the discussions of late. It doesn't really surprise me....I'm still waiting for someone to speak to the deteriorating state of human rights and democracy in this province. Out loud. So far nothing.

I would like to see Robin Mathews run. I'm afraid that wouldn't go over well with the NDP. No bravery.

don't hold you breath, lynn

"I'm still waiting for someone to speak to the deteriorating state of human rights and democracy in this province. Out loud. So far nothing."

At best you will get empty words, but if it soothes the soul it should suffice the masses.

Once in power, the party machine cannot be allowed to function long-term for the people, so it won't.

That is the truth despite it being offensive to the propagandized ear.

Who's going to build the EVERGREEN Line? Lawrence?

This is a bit rich taking lessons from those who tell working people to go to hell.

"The industrialists in the party were quite smug about getting rid of those environmentalist "flakes", and are still not ready to acknowledge how much damage has been done to the province as a result. Nor are the Green party activists ready to admit that practically speaking they are in the way of any really responsible government being elected. I would be more than happy if they all came back and fought for more influence within the NDP as many of the dinosaurs who drove them away are now retired or working for big business."

Or what about:: "If and when the NDP gets elected they are just going to have to tell the loggers to sit there and keep quiet, and hopefully they will be taken care of, but no more Clayoquots."

I'm sorry, but working people are not about to abandon our party to folks who do not understand that the world moves on and BC will be a province of compromise.

If hardcore evniro's such as those that harbour the quoted beliefs think they are going to take over this party be advised we haven't all died, we have children and grandchildren who need decent jobs. We are proud of our legacy in building this province and all of the things that you enjoy because of its most progressive policies in the country, built on the determination of trade unionists.

If you don't like that, if you can't share, then vote Green. Vote Liberal, you are already more inclined to do so anyway.

lynn and coyote

I don't get it. How exactly are all of these "loyal NDP party members" getting screwed by the leadership because of a short sign-up period?

After all, if they're loyal party members they are already members and already get to vote.

What loyal party members is it that would be hurt by a short sign-up period?

Seems to me the people most affected by this, if anyone, are people who aren't members of the NDP and aren't willing to join yet but would be willing to join in February or March.

Does anyone truly believe that Carole James and her loyal minions have somehow contrived this scenario in order to further their domination?

Am I the only one that sees big gaping holes in that logic?

what really matters

1% of the population joins political parties.

While it is clear the NDP jammed this leadership round for a myriad of purposes, mostly to ensure there is no significant change from days past, "renewal" will now only come from one of the candidates in the race, the one that wins.

What will be new is the face.

People need to press for policy. Clarity of what the hell these leaders are going to do in both parties.

We often find ourselves caught up in the horse race of personalities while what really matters gets managed away behind the scenes.

Dont get fooled again. Vote for the one who talks about the policies and values you believe in.

It's about time you got it straight

There isn't the time for renewal. Renewal is a conversation that needs to happen with everyone, and it isn't going to happen in five weeks, or even five months.

Gawd, you can see some people are still raw over losing the last leader. I don't see many signs of charity on either side - just smugness or anger. That's no way to elect a new leader for "renewal".

Every week after February 17th that the NDP remains leaderless (or crippled by a temporary leader, which is the same thing) is another week of opportunity for the Fiberals to do nearly anything they want unfettered by opposition, from selling more assets to slashing more taxes on corporations; from promoting destructive economic wingnut theories, to polishing their image in the fawning MSM.

And each of those weeks will be spikes in the coffins of those who have nobody to speak for them.

The best that the 'party of progressives' can do is to hurry up and get the NDP back in the business of providing a modestly-credible alternative to the Fiberals. If it happens to be fully renewed and fully inclusive of all points of view, so much the better, but that's Job 2, not Job 1.

Anybody who thinks that conversation's going to happen (and successfully at that) in a four month period while a leadership campaign full of bullshit promises is going on, is simply kidding themselves.

Lower your expectations guys. You're going to be dissatisfied with the result no matter what. So start planning for 2011 and make sure the mechanism includes a "leadership confirmation" or "leadership review", as well as general confirmation of all new and existing party policies.

That's when the rubber will hit the road.

That should be

[i]"So start planning for 2012"

What can I say? The new year looks a lot like the old year. Same fencepost, same hair.

Well said

Frank:
"After all, if they're loyal party members they are already members and already get to vote."

Exactly.

And Nimno:
Any new members wishing to sign up simply to tout their candidate should clearly understand that although 50%+1 will elect a new leader, 84% won't be sufficient to keep him/her as leader."

The pessimist fears you will be right.

Here's a wonderful primer on our real enemies...

Bankers. Simple, clear, inescapable. Made by young people but they get into the details of why bankers make beggars of us all. Highly recommended, some laughs.

And the really interesting part ...

Is how little our elected leaders know. Watch Paul Martin wiggle and bully his way out of answering questions. See Jim Flaherty talking so fast he can hardly find time to draw breath.

Winning elections in order

Winning elections in order to form government is obviously a big priority but in order to convince the public to vote for the NDP we must stand for something more than "We aren't the other guys"

If one of the "factions" in the NDP becomes too dominant and pushes the others aside then there is little chance for an election win. Labour is a huge part of the party but cannot be the only part - we won in 1991 and 1996 because the coalition of activists was still functioning together, but the arrogant Clark government could not keep it working.

I have never had a problem working with different interests in order to find and help focus on the common interests among us - as we did with the forest policy of 1992, which drew from IWA, BCGEU, and BC Environmental network documents and resulted in a unanimous vote at convention on an issue which had badly divided the party to the delight of the MSM.

If the situation had been reversed in the late 90s and unions had been driven out of the NDP by powerful Green interests I would have been equally dismayed. My background encompasses both "sides" of the question, and I have always known there was little hope for the future if they cannot work together.

If the environment collapses then well paid jobs will be the least of our worries (food, water, and air will be the priorities); if the economy collapses the environment will inevitably suffer as people do whatever they must to survive.

Too many "greens" are unwilling to acknowledge their own livelihoods often depend on industrial wages being taxed; too many forest workers found it easier to support the corporations rather than work to create a better arrangement for everyone. How well did that work out?

I watched the industry in our area shaft and abandon their "allies" in labour as soon as it suited their purposes - especially after 2001, when they no longer needed to pretend they respected their workers once they had a corporate owned government in place!

In other countries the unions and environmentalists realized their common interest and did much more to work together and against corporate domination - here we may have missed that opportunity, but it is never too late to try!

Finding a formula...

"No bravery." Lynn.

Underlying it all, even beneath, in my view as well Lynn, the prerequisite clear lack of understanding and analysis of what is occurring within current capitalist society is yes, the even more essential foundation element of "bravery" you point to.

Up against the ruling class bullying of the working class and ALL society that has been going on since the late 70s, whether we are talking the average citizen, the trade unions, the NDP or whatever, what has allowed the bullies to be so successful for so long, first and foremost, is this absence of bravery. It is this, amongst a critical mass of the broad working class citizenry, which more than anything else, needs to be found... before anything can be seriously changed in the ongoing fascist direction of development of current ruling class dominated society.

Once the bravery is found, the development of relevant ideas and a workable analysis that leads to ACTION will follow.

The pain and discomfort is there, and the squirming has begun. Just a little more time and continued deterioration within the socio-economic order yet, is almost certain to raise it to intolerable levels forcing our citizens to begin dealing with it. And it is just about entirely clear, I think, that the NDP is NOT even a part of the remedy... certainly not in its current formulation.

Not taking credit

I have to say it isn't my own hypothesis although I certainly believe it. Many of the peak oil theorists and environmental researchers are saying similar things.

When we moved as a society away from working more directly with the earth and nature we lost far more than was gained. In my youth the term "old fashioned" was nearly always a term of scorn, yet much of the best and most useful knowledge mankind possesses has been around for millenia.

My family like most others of the era largely bought into the "new fangled way" and moved off the farms into cities and suburbs, where their lives as far as I can see were no happier nor less stressful than in the old days. They traded lives with much physical labour for mostly sedentary existences, then had to worry about getting overweight and out of shape and living with all the "benefits" of the rat race.

Most of what will happen in the next 50 to 100 years will be about people reacting to circumstances beyond their control which disrupt the routines of their lives in ways they are mostly afraid to even contemplate.

I understand that impulse - for a few days now I have wrestled with denial and the false hope that the latest foot of snow didn't really fall overnight, or will somehow disappear before I am forced to deal with it. At 59 I'm losing a bit of my drive to just fly at 'er, and have to take some time before I can accept reality - with the snow falling all the time.

If I close my curtains I may be able to convince myself it is actually May outside, but that won't stop the snow falling.

Nor will all the corporate propaganda in the world change the fact we are heading for some drastic changes - all it can do is help anesthetize the complacent and comfortable and allow them to live in their fantasy world a bit longer.

The best we can hope for is to enter the critical times ahead with our eyes open and be prepared to deal with whatever reality we face. It would be nice if we could elect an NDP leader who had the courage to be honest about what is ahead rather than offering comfort to those who can't even handle thinking about it, and continuing with the myth that we need only do minor adjustments to perfect our nearly ideal civilization.

The technology trap has left us unable to cope

Stewart MacKenzie ~ It would be nice if we could elect an NDP leader who had the courage to be honest about what is ahead rather than offering comfort to those who can't even handle thinking about it, and continuing with the myth that we need only do minor adjustments to perfect our nearly ideal civilization.

Democracy and party politics simply do not intertwine. Even if you had a party leader talking the truth, actions would invariably and inevitably fall short. The party machine has a narrow interest to advance which is not the peoples interests.

Ask yourself this Q: Why has the NDP been in power three times and not once brought forth a law entrenching free votes by MLAs in the Legislature? Has it been afraid of offering the people real representation?

Here is a good article on topic with what you say in general which I think you will like:

http://www.alternet.org/story/149493/vision%3A_why_the_fall_of_american_empire_can_be_a_good_%28and_peaceful%29_thing?page=entire

Telling the Truth

While it would be nice if we had a political leader (or any politician for that matter) who really spoke the truth about such things as we get worked up, worried, and palvering about around here at the Tyee, I suspect that the majority of the population would just do the old Lalala I can't hear you dance and run for cover.

Ooops

Should be palavering.

John Greg

Though I, too, wish like Stewart Mackenzie (great post by the way, Stewart) that someone would say something actually meaningful these days....and suggest something more bold than mere tweaking of a broke down world...your comment opens up the other half of this challenging equation, John Greg.

We have a world population trained by advertising to keep their eyes wide shut, their desires programmed for the quick fix and an affinity for cute slogans like 'Believe'. Nothing too complex or complicated.

That's where the 'messaging' of the right-wing excels, and often triumphs: Money-Good, Greed-Good, Taxes-Sharing-Bad, Universal Health Care-Bad.

Small, capsule-sized, easy for most people to swallow.

Hopefully, we'll realize before it's too late, that the simplistic Cole Notes version of life ain't at all what it's cracked up to be.

What Really Occurs In Party Democracy I...

"Democracy and party politics simply do not intertwine. Even if you had a party leader talking the truth, actions would invariably and inevitably fall short. The party machine has a narrow interest to advance which is not the peoples interests." samuidave.

I think it is really at one and the same time more complex and simple than what samuidave advances here, around the reason for the failure of parties and politicians. The more complete reason they don't ever live up the "the people's expectations, the actual facts of experience indicates (the empirical evidence), that what occurs within the actual "party democracy" system is a colder and harder reality. (Ignoring that "parties" themselves are essentially undemocratic, or only more "formally" than real democratic, top-down hierarchies.)

And again, it is rooted in the class system of so-called "modern" capitalist democracies. Where what actually occurs over the "formal" process is the selection of representatives and governments that are in fact NOT "the real ruling power". They only ever are "front men", acting for other interests and "the real power behind the throne."

You could be the most well intending party possibly imaginable and/or leader, but if you accept the entrenched class arrangement of capitalism and are not prepared to challenge it "to the death", you arrive in so-called power and the government benches existing in an illusion... a world that does not exist.

In the final analysis, if you want to get anything done, if you don't know it before you will quickly discover that there is another "unelected" Higher Power over you and your decision making ambitions.

You are going to need the co-operation and collaboration of those with the "real" money to make things move and shake... the ruling class of the major economic institutions and enterprises of society. To get to your ambitions, you are going to have to go through them. Which is where all your grand plans to serve the people and change the world start to come unravelled... and you begin to behave and make the same compromises and sell-out of your's and the people's ideals as all other parties to capitalism... and be "business friendly" with the REAL ruling class and ruling power over society and its economy.

continued next post...

What Really Occurs In Party Democracy ii

from previous post...

It is really of this which Carole spoke when she spoke of the importance of being "business friendly". She and the NDP leadership "know", the same as all the other parties to capitalism "know". And we should know it. And we should all admit it.

You are really just there for show. You are part of the bamboozling of the masses process. Though you may actually be allowed to toss an emaciated, well gnawed bone or two to the masses, just to keep them hopeful.

And if you don't string along and do as your told, the media which they also own and control will be turned loose on you like a pack of baying Dobermen. And if that doesn't do it, they will try all the same shit that Chavez has had to go through in Venezuela with the old ruling class... coups etc.

(Except, in Chavez case, he understands the "to the death" part, and is actually brave.)

John Greg ~ Telling the

John Greg ~ Telling the Truth

While it would be nice if we had a political leader (or any politician for that matter) who really spoke the truth about such things as we get worked up, worried, and palvering about around here at the Tyee, I suspect that the majority of the population would just do the old Lalala I can't hear you dance and run for cover.

I do not believe for a second the vast majority of the people in politics have a clue about the job; they parrot the establishment line. The PMs of Canada on down either have proven themselves enormously ignorant about monetary policy, for the prime example, or are unquestionably sociopathic.

Anyone who could crawl into office and took steps to extricate the nation from the control of the unseen money masters above would find him or herself in a grave before too long.

Things are quite simple, lynn, and it is the BS we are fed incessantly that blurs matters, always offering up excuses for unconscionable behaviour.

As Jerry Munro said, and I paraphrase, until the people get the courage to see how they have been railroaded and become willing to take the country back, things will carry on with different talking heads waving different party banners, but nothing will change.

Turning to the criminal Party structure and begging for clemency is something I am unwilling to grovel for. How many broken promises and how much disregard for the people who are this country are we willing to bear before we see the sense of using the single legal opportunity we have to throw them out on their heads?

"until the people get the

"until the people get the courage to see how they have been railroaded and become willing to take the country back, things will carry on with different talking heads waving different party banners, but nothing will change"

Things will change, all right, that is the one sure thing! Resisting change is like stopping the snow falling - whether or not we or the powers that be admit it, the big party is coming to an end and the only question is how we deal with it. Those who believe humans have the ability to dictate reality are too anthropocentric to admit we are no more in control of nature than were the dinosaurs, however big a splash we are making at present - just ask the folks in Bella Coola or Brisbane!

Stewart and Coyote

I'm not arguing that we can coast along merrily as we're doing. You coyote know I've said many times in the past that's impossible as we live on a finite land mass with finite resources and a finite ability to absorb waste.

All I'm arguing is that until change is forced on people they won't willingly give anything up. (Look at the current lightbulb fiasco) And forcing that change politically is political suicide as the population will just vote for someone else.

As for always looking for votes, guilty as charged. I think having power is the only way to get in front of the public the issues some of us want them to think about.

Unlike some of you, I think the majority of people do want to fix issues like child poverty and make our eco-footprints smaller. But they need help in doing so because otherwise our economic system will not allow the kinds of choices we need to even be offered.

Lots of people are willing to pay more for tomatoes and other products if grown locally and grown organically. But price is hard to ignore and if governments continue to allow local producers to be drastically undercut by cheap foreign competition while at the same time developers are chafing at the bit to get a hold of their land then inevitably the producer will go under and their land will be paved.

Without political power people will practically be forced to make choices that are bad for us over the long-term. So we either hope for peak oil or for better government.