Canada going, going, gone............

The global economy is one of getting items dirt cheap in china and selling them here to people with use for, or need of the item. This is the global economy.

Canadian elites, ever hungry for more and more profit, will sell this country out, just to get a little higher dividend on their corporate shares.

higher and higher the game goes round until there is a big fall and then you know who will get hurt; me, thee, but not th Canadian nor corporate elites, who will try again with a new ponsie scheme.

God help us all!

Treason yes!

[EDITED FOR OFFENSIVE CONTENT. -TYEE EDITOR.]

Treason, thy name is free unfettered capitalism

rjm, Grumpy, realist, Fiat lux, alive, all of you have it right on. I see the problem as the public never getting any of the information which would allow them to connect the dots and understand that treason is not just something that applies in wartime. The definition is clear that it is disloyalty of the subject to the the country. Try to get one media to express anything like that when a politician sells out the future of the country just so a few multinational corporations can increase the value of their shares. They may not give you a rehash of trickle-down economics word for word but it is always there in some form.

When we are all poor consumers of cheap goods sold by the WalMarts and made in China by people even poorer than us then maybe somebody will wake up to the disaster that the right has perpetrated and the treason that has occurred?

There is only one word for

There is only one word for these and they are traitors in "Our Canada" Treason in the highest degree, not to be hung, as that would be lowering ourselves to their level. They all should be rounded up and put on display for all the world to witness 24/7 at what happens to the Greedy 1%-2% of the blood sucking parasites who cause all of OUR worlds poverty, wars, starvation, etc.
NAFTA, TILMA, IMF, SPP, are all "Evil" groups of vermin whose only god is money and the slavery of mankind.
The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice: Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi
I may not be a the most literate person but I have great hope in for OUR FUTURE if We start bringing these people to ground now! This is Our World and we are all Brothers and Sisters, together we will be really free!

more grist for the mill...

Zeitgeist
The greatest "unspin" movie of all time

Long, but worth the watch.

Fiat lux, you may find your 'reasons' here.
Skywalker, after watching this you may start to question how deep and long this shell-game has been going on.

you'rr right about one thing wm

Most average people are so cowed and afraid, so overstressed and hyped by falsehoods and outright lies, that they are incapable any longer of even knowing when they're being gulled.

The only sader thing is the cynic who, so long as he has some bread and butter for his tea, couldn't care less.

I disagree

In my experience, most of the people I know live happy, fulfilling lives. In fact, Canadians live better than the huge majority of the world.

But perhaps you don't G West.

continental integration is

continental integration is good, just look at Europe! Everytime we pool our resources and put our heads together, society benefits. Imagine being free to roam and work throughout all of North America! To be sure, there would be dislocation. But those less fortunate would learn that they need to acquire skills in order to contribute value to society. Everyone wins! I can't wait to buy some beachfront property in Cabo!

Ted Tweak.

Then why the alcohol?

EDITED

...the divorce rates, family breakdowns and number of single parent families here in your version of the best of all possible worlds doesn't look all that wonderful to a whole lot of people.

Fact is, 80% of Canadian families have made no real progress in the last 30 years. If you're lucky enough to be in the favoured 20% then enjoy it...because it may not last. ...

EDITED BY MODERATOR.

For Hyeena

This isn't some form of European integration that allows easy border crossing's or ownership of whats about to be flooded florida property, here. If you haven't noticed yet, GWBush has done the opposite with such "freedoms". What it is about, is the economical takeover of Canada by the U.S.

If I was you, I'd start reading on what's truly at stake, before making such foolish comments.

Zietgeist...

...definitely a movie I recomend watching.
It certainly sheds some light on the innner workings of the world...

As the closing line says...'the revolution is now'...and it MUST be now.

The private market place is

The private market place is a fraud an racket controlled by oligopolies.

Since the this criminal neoclassical theory came into power about 35 years, ago, costs and prices have inflated 1000% and incomes for most hardly moved.

Insurance is the biggest racket. If we didn't have ICBC, the costs would be many times of what we're paying now and this have been established and proven many times over.

I pay about $600./year with a perfect driving record, healthy, no tickets, or claims. In other provinces I would have to pay $5-6,000. This, again can be easily proven.

Way back some stooge by the name of Bobby Scherrell was given $ 1. million by the insurance racket to kill ICBC. I was writing a column at the time and went to see the head of the insurance agents association, to find out what was going on ?
he said: "Don't worry Ed, we went to Victoria and told the Zalm govt. we don't want privatization. We have it made, just have to write out the papers and get paid. In the private insurance days pissed off customers used to break up our offices and beat us up!'

Anybody who'd want this racket again is either paid off, or nuts.

Ed Deak.

Hello IAMC

You have to be kidding! There is a world of difference between a marketing board that regulates production so that every producer can make a reasonable profit to survive and a corporation that has a monopoly on the market of certain goods. A big difference between preserving the existence of many producers and protecting the existence of a single supplier.

You reference to CUPE is just a red herring and has no relevance. Workers do have certain rights, you know, and one is to withhold their services. Now if you believe in a level playing field where the employer can not expect the police and the courts to take a side in the dispute then the system works. If however you believe that it is the duty of the police and the courts to take the side of the employer then sure you would come to your conclusions. In a democratic society the rights of the many are more important than the rights of a few greedy "right-wingers" who like to exploit the workers.

Monopoly, of the money supply

IAMC

Do you understand that the Federal Reserve is a PRIVATE BANK that issues US currency (AT INTEREST) that has no real value?

The entire world financial markets are rigged right now in the largest sort of 'hidden in plain sight' monopoly you could possibly imagine.

If you really believe that statement then you need to join the revolution to get at least the BC government to start issuing GOLD BACKED legal tender.

Treason...

First, I hear ya, rjm, even over Murray Dobbin who has written a very good article here. There is a fair amount of that censorship as goes on around here and elsewhere, from time to time. It's called "the timid left-light", which is a rather prevalent editorial and political policy as plagues many a so-called "alternative media" in search of respectability. It seems to me.

Even though I clearly think it, and the empirical evidence of a long history of both (so-called) "Liberal" and Conservative policy points directly to it, and the sorry state of this country's objective relationship with the US Empire clearly underscores it, I dare not even now declare what is treason treasonous, or the tremulous "left light" in search of "non-radical respectability" will simply delete me here, and/or banish me again to the margins. :-) It is a form of dissent suppression, of course.

So I will not say the obvious, and merely silently nod in your direction, brother or sister rjm.

Though the truth stares us in the face, and challenges our Anglo and French "national confederacy", we are still not allowed by timid "left-light" sensibilities to speak its name. For shame. For shame. Especially when one considers that it is much Yankee expats, or "a" Yankee expat in this particular case, who is even doing the censoring.

It is going to take, in fact, an aroused revolutionary-nationalistic concern for our joined nations (Anglo and French), to put steel in the backbones of these timid hearts, in my view, home and US grown, to undo this... Dare I say it? ..."servility" to the influence of this foreign "imperial" power.

(See, one on "the serious left" is always having to search for the "acceptable language" that will get us by these "Gatekeepers of Acceptable Ideas".

We, as a country, are the victims of a, I would say, treasonous mind-think (intended or not) and history, and as yet a timid progressive-nationalist response as faced say, the early US revolutionaries who were first motivated to take on and secure their true nationhood against the British Empire.

There are all the same complexities of individuals, groups and politics in place here now, as existed then. What is not clear is, whether or not we as a country and people are capable of measuring to the task as they in the end did.

That they, the US, have come, over the expanse of history from then to now, to their own current, sorry "imperialist" state, is quite another matter altogether.

Be ye of courage in the now. And lets deal with our own Benedict Arnold traitors, who are manifold, especially in the Upper Class and their politically beholden, but also lower down amongst us, however much we have to bend the knee and genuflect to this rather pathetic "left-light", in order to do what has to be done.

We have a country to win and secure before the bastards, at home and abroad, pull it right out from under us.

reductio ad absurdum

"How do we raise standards when a company can sue the country for doing so?"

-What country? bringing this bandwagon on a roll towards the pits of Hel will obliterate any country there was to be sued, in which case those who were hired to run it no longer have anything to run, so that then it will be up for grabs, whereupon the real Canadians have a chance to stand up and be counted, inasmuch as they can start all over again and hopefully do a better job. The rats will leave a sinking ship. Learn to breathe under water!

I am convinced this is one of those things that will have to get a lot worse, before it gets better. But it will get better, just not anytime soon...

monopoly death

Kill ICBC, kill all marketing boards, privatize licences for birth, marriage and death.
Privatize bridges, roads, liquor distribution, medicare, CBC, CRTC, Wheat Board.
If it moves, privatize it.
Govt. shouldn't be in any of these businesses. We can't afford it. Let private money pay for all these expenses and pensions.
Do we all have the right to eat?
Do we want Govt. running one grocery store, we all have to shop at?
Everyone deal with one auto dealership?
Deal with one restaurant chain?
One place to get fuel? ( although that probably wouldn't make gas any cheaper.
One place to get cable from and telephone service? ( we already face these monopolies )
One shoe shop, one barber?
What is with you liberals?
Do you not think you don't have any opposition to your world?
You do. And it's growing.
One Church? One furniture store? .....

Treason?

So who's overthrowing the elected government, such as it is?

The fruits of Privatization

You got it IAMC[OFFENSIVE SUFFIX REMOVED] - privatize it all!

You don't seem to realize that some things don't lend themselves to the PROFIT motive, like disease controlPrivatization leads to things like Walkerton, the Crandall Mine Cave In, the stunning response to Hurricane Katrina and poor people in Latin America living next to new water systems that they can't afford to hook up to, while they gather water from mud puddles mixed with sewage.

You would enjoy being turfed out of an American Hospital when you needed emercency care, I'm sure, or being told that your insurance won't cover the needed bone marrow transplant for your leukemia, because your (PRIVATE) insurer considers that to be "experimental." Maybe that will never happen to you Clueless, because no intelligent person ever claimed there was truly justice in this world.

Hell - I am Clueless, why just privatize, out source it all, somebody will do whatever it is for next to nothing - hopefully you at least will still have the 10 dollars per month needed to pay them, eh?

The little hate you have on for ICBC is ridiculous, Ed Deak is right, why don't you go buy your insurance somewhere else and see how great a price you get? There are savings to be had in no fault insurance just like single payer health care. Of course if you are an attorney you would rather take a third to a half of the insurance and health care budget for legal fees deciding who pays in the end and hopefully everybody wins if it is shifted to the taxpayer in the end.....NOT!

I can't get it anywhere else

kootkoot;
Please describe the mechanism to get auto insurance from anyone other than ICBC.
They have a monopoly on the mandatory portion of our auto insurance.
Sure, we have a choice of the optional insurance portion.
Did you know that ICBC has adjusted their rates on the mandatory monopoly, that makes it almost impossible for private insurers to compete with them on the optional portion, because they have raised the basic rate, so high, that there is no room for a private insurer, to make enough margin, to justify competing with ICBC.
I am also pointing out the folly of the Govt. owning bridges and highways.
In Europe, in spite of their socialised social programs, that they allow private ownership of everything from bridges and highways, to water towers.
I'm talking about Europe, who also have allowed private medical care to get involved with health care.
We must resist the power of Public Sector Unions, who want to monopolize many services that don't need to be run by the Govt.
Smaller Govt. and reduced influence of Public Sector Unions, is paramount to our success as a society.

book not banned but panned

"america deceived" was likely dropped after someone read someone read the opening paragraph. what a waste of wood pulp.

I-AM-C

And strangely enough, Vancouver is almost consistently voted one of the cleanest cities in the world. Go figure (for a change)!

I'm alright, Murray

Murray:

British Columbia and Canada are enjoying the longest and broadest economic expansion in our history. Right now, there is opportunity abounding, and anyone who wants work can find it.

The econonomic benefits of an open and vibrant economy are obvious to anyone who cares to look.

How come you want to retreat to the protectionist days of fear, xenophobia and ignorance?

yeah right!

which planet do you live on?

Apology...

A quick apology to many a radical and progressive "Yankee" expat, now Canadians and livng in this country. There are Canadians and there are Canadians, say IAMC and, ohhh, Tommy Douglas, for polar opposite examples, just as there are Yankees and there are Yankees, such as Fuhrer Bush and say, Noam Chomsky.

While there are Yankee expats in this country progressive-nationalists in this country should be wary of holding too close, I myself embrace many a US expat become Canadians, living in this country and contributing to the anti-imperialist cause and the national confederacy of Canada, both "predominantly" Anglo and French speaking.

To this latter group of US expats in this country, I apologize for any offence you may have taken, my brush was a tad too broad, and I embrace you as comrades in common cause against the US Empire.

ICBC?

"The little hate you have on for ICBC is ridiculous, Ed Deak is right, why don't you go buy your insurance somewhere else and see how great a price you get?"

I beg to differ. My personal insurance on my car would be half what it is in Calgary vs here in Vancouver.

When I had my business based in Alberta, my commercial vehicle insurance was less than half what ICBC was charging.

While it has made some adjustments, ICBC still does not adequately assess for relative risk, like all other insurance companies do, because it cannot "discriminate" based on age and gender.

"which planet do you live on?"

Alive, I don't know where you live but where I live, the vast majority of people have good housing, clothing, a car, food and weekends at the beach. They have schools, roads, libraries, recreation centres and more than adequate medical care. People here live better that (at least) 90% of ALL the other other people on the earth.

Perhaps you are one of the 2,000 or so hard cores on the DTES. There are 2.5 million people on the Lower Mainland who are not.

You know, I spent the day at the park with my kids yesterday and the sky did not fall even once.

Sorry working man you need to do more research

The operative word here is "when" and, there's no assurance from a simple anecdote that your recollection is correct - or even fully discloses all the facts. You may well be comparing apples and oranges.

In any case, if you really want to pursue this argument I think you'll find ED knows exactly what he's talking about working man..

BUT, don't listen to me, read this study:

http://www.consumer.ca/pdfs/cac_2005_study_ontario_july_18_2005_.pdf

Really?

Well, G West, I don't know wher you get your figures, but with my basic ICBC coverage and Canadian Direct for $1,000,000 third party and $200 comprehensive deductible, I pay $1286 a year in BC for pleasure use only on a 2006 Chevy Aveo.

In Calgary, I would pay:

Third Party Liability $1,000,000: $319.06
Collision $1,000 Deductible $166.85
Comprehensive $200 Deductible $118.55
Family protection endosement $21.00
Loss of use coverage: $900 per occurance

That is $625.46 a year, which is just under half of what I pay in BC. Why is that? Because of my relative risk of having 27 years of accident free driving and no tickets in the last 15 years. I also drive a car with a 5 star crash rating that will not win any races.

In other words, good, safe drivers come up much better off than poor, inexperienced drivers.

You can run the numbers here:

http://www.canadiandirect.com/

Like I said - apples and oranges

You may well be comparing two different risk zones as well - if you actually took the time to read the information I referenced it is more than obvious that, whatever your experience is, that what may (according to you) be true for whatever vehicle you drive, it is not true in either the average or the the aggregate case.

As I wrote in my original post.

Ed's observation, in complete accord with the information I referenced is accurate and true. The fact that you could insure a particular vehicle in Calgary more cheaply than you claim it could be done in Vancouver notwithstanding.

Risk and premium has as much to do with where you drive as it does with what one drives and whatever your safe driver discount is - as you no doubt knew before you dragged in your little red herring.

Besides, I would never choose a comparison which combined ICBC with any other insurer - such as Canadian Direct - because it is a matter of choice and once again a comparison of apples and oranges.

Now, if you can show me that the basic insurance (sans any additional coverage which is optional) is cheaper in ALberta than it is in BC, well, then I might admit that you at least had a point in your own circumstances.

It depends

As you say, it depends on relative risk. I am a very low risk so my premiums in any other place other than BC would be much lower where age and experience are not used as a factor.

In fact, the base $200,000 liability in BC is about $900, more than the total cost of insurance for a person such as myself.

Besides, you and I will never agree. You are a socialist; you believe in state ownership of all things. I believe in a mix of state and private enterpise, so each can keep the other more honest.

And as I have always said, if ICBC is so sure of being such a good deal, why doesn't in compete? What are they afraid of?

Nonsense

I'm a great supporter of small independent business and effective laws and regulations - as you well know – just as Ed Deak is. I know precisely where most of the actual employment in this society comes from and it should be husbanded and assisted - as long as it is productive and legal.

As for ICBC, it should be doing nothing but insurance; the current government's fascination with nonsense like Olympic sponsorships, idiotic license plates and tying the insurance business into traffic enforcement and driver education is ridiculous, costly and counter productive…

Relative to the idea that private firms can compete in the insurance business here in BC, you well know they are able to do that except for basic PLPD coverage. I'd wager that, wiped from the table altogether, as they should be, that even in your exceptional case (which I still think is apocryphal in some sense as an indicator of comparative costs) insurance would be still more affordable in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba than it is elsewhere in Canada – all other things being equal.

There should be no room for profit in areas of such public interest as safety (among other things) - which is, after all, the stock in trade of accident insurance.

Building in profit in areas of basic human need (and that's what I call automobile insurance) is an appallingly bad idea. In effect, insurance of this type should as nearly as possible approximate a cooperative exercise run by and for driving citizens - much like the credit union you support.

What a day!

Working Man,

Perhaps you are one of the 2,000 or so hard cores on the DTES. There are 2.5 million people on the Lower Mainland who are not.

You know, I spent the day at the park with my kids yesterday and the sky did not fall even once.

Didn't come down over us either. Yesterday I hosted a couple of women from Ontario and New York State and they couldn't seem to praise 'the coast' enough. Well traveled professionals, they had been touring the Lower Mainland and the Island. They commented that everyone is pleasant, cheerful and, with all the outdoor activities they suppose, seems healthy.

Guess they saw you coming, W/Man!

I pay under $1000, same coverage ........except it's business insurance.

IAMC

Wow! Sound just like patent law, especially pertaining to big pharma!

Private Insurance

Over my life in various jurisdictions I've had both private and public auto insurance (in Manitoba and BC). One easy to forget aspect of private insurance is the tendency of private companies to completely refuse to insure anyone they consider a bad risk.

An example of this was a family of my relatives who had been insured for over 25 years with State Farm. Their daughter had a minor accident, where she wasn't even at fault (she passed out at the wheel from a previously undiagnosed ailment)on a deserted road taking out a bit of chain link fence and denting a fender on her car. State Farm refused to renew the whole families insurance after settling the very small (less than $500) claim minus the deductable.

The same thing happens with private health insurance - as an adult the same girl cousin had an emergency operation while working for Southwest Airlines - later she received a bill from the hospital for approximately $60,000. The insurance plan through her employer denied her claim saying that it was the result of a pre-existing condition, even if no one knew of it until the emergency surgery was required. Fortunately for her, her husband worked for the State of California and his much better health plan wound up paying the bill for her treatment. As I've said before, in a just world these things can happen to you also, and perhaps they should.

No question koot

And state farm is abosolutely one of the worst - private companies have all kinds of ways to manage risk...and increase profits. Which is exactly why public auto insurance is needed and is also cheapest and, mutatis mutandis, the fairest and most equitable system.

If it hadn't been Bill Bennett would have dumped the program when he won the 1975 election. One thing about the neocons, as the Campbell kleptocracy proves time and time again, promises don't mean a thing.

State Farm

This reminds me of an instance that my father related to me when I was just getting to that stage where autos (and insurance) were becoming paramount. A friend of his was cut off the auto insurance policy (back in the days before public auto insurance) he had with SF, based on the fact that he hadn't had an accident for 25 years, and so must be "due".

Security is...

Great writing above Lynn, darlin'.

I'm feeling really guilty about not yet having answered your last email. I've got a couple broken ribs and stitches I'm nursing, from that Thoroughbred "horsey project" of mine :-), and the training busyness required to fix the holes in her background, but I am aware of you, good woman. Don't think for a second I am not. I will yet, in a grabbed moment, reply to your last. :-)

And they are yet, here amongst us.

Your political insights, writing and style are still spot on, woman.

My regards to you and yours-, mother, hubby and all other kith and kin.

No singing allowed (ever) !

Down with the SPP!

An antidote to the deathly "secure and watched over" SPP New World Order and its wasteland of "NAFTA with spy planes":

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and
cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was
air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the
nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking
warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan Thomas

May you always be "forever

May you always be "forever young and easy under the apple boughs," Canis Latrans.

Take your time and heal well so you can enjoy your thoroughbred "horsey project." :-)

Cheers,

lynn

Expose the Quislings

Does anyone have a website that names the treacherous sons of bitches alongside their crimes with a photo? This unregulated corporatism is Fascism by stealth. Out the perpetrators before it is too late.

Horsey project

Was in on a horse project once.
His name was "Sabre"...a big black Vancouver Police horse with a nasty disposition.
They sold him off. The local vicars daughter bought him and boarded him at our place...we had an empty barn and a few acres. I was about ten years old. I remember "Sabre" getting loose and being summoned by me ole ma..handing me a 3 foot piece of old manila rope she said quite hysterically "Its Sabre..he`s loose and trodding through the neighbours garden..here bring him back"!
Wow instant depression. Fortunately several adults showed up and helped to rein in the diabolical creature.
Used to sleepover at a buds barn..they had a dude ranch affair..trail rides horse rentals...the joke was the new kid would have to sleep next to " Ole Bill Craggs" the professional cowpoke hired hand who would sleep in the barn with the kids.
Turns out ole Bill was gay and the morning was spent with the boys howling with laughter as the new kid explained how he spent the night dealing with Bills advances. Very subtle you weren`t quite sure..didn`t want to blow any whistles ( :-0 )..Bill was ok ..the kids all knew but still liked him.
Poor Bill got caught one time.. a "Project" horse hit him a kick as he approached it from behind..Bill became known as "One Ball Bill"..though whether it slowed him down or not I never found out ..never slept next to him again at the sleepovers. Maybe he`s the NLN guy that pops up once in awhile.
I like horses..lookin` at `em but I`m not really comfortable getting too close.

Union Leader Dave Coles at Montebello

Dave Coles

Coles is President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers of Canada.

Quite right Dave. We want those jobs here in BC. We must contact both the Liberals and the NDP and get them onside to build a pipeline to BC and a new refinery.

Thanks for the link Dude.

So, Rick W

Rick W, is it the same vechicle in the same geographical area, ie downtown Vancouver with same coverage, 500 collision and 200 comprehensive deductible, loss of use, replacement cost, etc?

I doubt it.

Why aren't there any Bob Herberts in Canada

September 1, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Anxious About Tomorrow
By BOB HERBERT

You know you’ve stepped into a different universe when you hear a major American labor leader saying matter-of-factly that employer-based health insurance and employer-based pensions are relics of a bygone industrial economy.

Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has 1.9 million members and is the fastest-growing union in the country, is not your ordinary union leader. With Labor Day approaching, he was reflecting on some of the challenges facing workers in a post-20th-century globalized economy.

“I just don’t think that as a country we’ve conceptualized that this is not our father’s or our grandfather’s economy,” Mr. Stern said in an interview. “We’re going through profound change and we have no plan.”

The feeling that seems to override all others for workers is anxiety. American families, already saddled with enormous debt, are trying to make it in an environment in which employment is becoming increasingly contingent and subject to worldwide competition. Health insurance, unaffordable for millions, is a huge problem. And guaranteed pensions are going the way of typewriter ribbons and carbon paper.

“We’re ending defined benefit pensions in front of our eyes,” said Mr. Stern. “I’d say today’s retirement plan for young workers is: ‘I’m going to work until I die.’ ”

The result of all of this — along with such problems as the mortgage and housing crisis, and a domestic economy that is doing nothing to improve living standards for ordinary Americans — is fear.

“Workers are incredibly, legitimately scared that the American dream, particularly the belief that their kids will do better, is ending,” said Mr. Stern. He is trying to get across the idea that in a period of such profound change, the old templates, the traditional ideas and policies of even the most progressive thinkers and officeholders, will not be sufficient to meet the new challenges.

continued from above

“We can’t be the only country on earth that asks our employers to put the price of health care on its products when a lot of our competitors don’t,” he said. “And job security? Even if you want to stay with your employer, as in the old economic model, we’re seeing in many industries that your employer is not going to be around to stay with you.”

A comprehensive new approach is needed, but what should that approach be? Franklin Roosevelt always hoped to inject a measure of economic security into the lives of ordinary Americans. But the New Deal was seven decades ago. Workers are insecure now for a host of different reasons and Mr. Stern wants the labor movement to be part of a vast cooperative effort to develop the solutions appropriate to today’s environment.

He told me, “I’d like to say to the Democrats that we are as far today from the New Deal as the New Deal was from the Civil War.”

He wants more people to pay attention to the big issues that affect not just union workers but all working families: How do you bring health care to all? What do you do about retirement security? How will the jobs of the 21st century be created?

And what about schools, energy, global warming, the environment?

Mr. Stern tends to see the nation as a team and wants the team to pull together to develop a creative vision of what the U.S. should be about in the 21st century. A cornerstone of that vision, he said, should be adherence to the “primary value” of rewarding work.

“We’re a team in the 21st-century period of rapid change and competition,” he said. “And right now, we don’t have leadership, and we don’t have a plan. At the same time, a group of people are enriching themselves far beyond anything that’s reasonable.”

What he would like to see, he said, is a large group of thoughtful people from various walks of American life — business, labor, government, academia and so forth — convened to begin the serious work of cooperatively developing a real-world vision of a society that is fairer, healthier, better educated, better prepared to compete globally, and more economically secure.

“I think you’re already seeing the beginnings of odd formations of people who appreciate, issue by issue, that we have to do something different here,” he said.

The kind of effort Mr. Stern would like to see would logically be initiated at the highest levels of government, preferably the White House. But if that’s not in the cards, someone else should take up the challenge. And there should be a sense of urgency about it.

The fears of America’s workers are well founded. “There’s something wrong with the system right now,” said Mr. Stern, “and we can’t just say, ‘Well, it’s all going to work out.’ It’s not.”

Dion's failure, as you say,

to recognize the decent thing that Stephen Harper has done re; Income Trusts.

Did you see that quote from Peter Munk agreeing with you on this?

Yep!

Munk is obviously cramming for the final exam - which is the same reason so many old folks like him are the only ones you find in church these days.

Scrambling at the end of time - for them - in the vain hope of making up for the mayhem they've wreaked on their fellow human beings and the environment in order to get up onto the pinnacle of false power and influence that people like Munk and Gates and well you know, the ones who've managed to slide through without coming a cropper like dear Conrad has.

Doesn't mean much really - I'll wait till some of them recognize and speak out about that the real reform we need in this country. Fundamental and radical tax reform so no more crooks will shinny up the slippery pole without paying their fair share of the freight along the way.

wishfull thinking

yeah, the day the white house will initiate anything like that will be the day hellfreezes over too!

R/Man

Yes, and the one which kicked it off was the Conservative government under Lyin' Brian Mulroney, who campaigned AGAINST any free trade deal with the US - then promptly signed us onto one. So where is the "voluntary" here?

Donj't matter much...

Really, who did what... contributed what to the betrayal of the nations of Canada, while relevant, is really quite secondary to the issue. The fancy stepping of the "apologists" for capitalism above are merely playing the old spin game. The fact and act of the betrayal remains the central reality, whilst yhey argue inanely over who did and does what, when clearly all the "legitimate" parties to capitalism have through their errors and crimes of omission and commission, including the "left light" NDP, played their part and made their contributions to the betrayal of the country, my view. Though clearly the misnomer Liberals, and the Cons, have led the charge in kissing Yankee butt and baring the nations' arse to US Empire imperial violation. (Giving them, at least, the benefit of the doubt, the never federally in power NDP are at most guilty of wuzziness, classis politically opportunist low key silence-, or cowardice if you are more inclined to calling a spade a spade.)

We are, in fact, one of the Senator Larry Craig of toilet room fame in the US nations. Grubbily signalling our closet "finger" solicitations for a little anonymous "where the sun doesn't shine" bathroom sex with Amerika. Our State, it's economic and political elites has and is signalling to the next bathroom stall that it too wants to be "had".

And the apologists for our elites, and yes, what has been our chicken poop citizenry here too, whilst they dare not openly acknowledge their "love that dares not speak its name" , do like Senator Craig,obviously feel the need here, to try and explain their perversion away. The betrayal of one's country to another, whilst one may be excited/agree with it, is not an easy perversity to explain away-, hence the need for it to be done in the secrecy of men's toilets.

C'est ici Diane

Here it is Diane. En Anglais. More than you probably need. (you can click on specifics too)

http://www.euro-know.org/dictionary/m.html#MaastrichtTreaty

foisted upon the unwilling citizens (West)

No I don't agree. It was perfectly obvious that the NDP, the Reform Party and others were not going to win in those elections.

Strategic voting is sometimes necessary when one party, which one might not ordinarily vote for, has an issue that is important enough to support.

The Rhinos may be fun but only when I'm completely ambivalent would I vote for them.

Canis Latrans

redux, I presume. Such charming prose.

Sorry to hear that you are injured from a feisty thoroughbred. Such an illustrious and rarefied world, that of thoroughbred horses. Are you breeding them for the Sport of Kings, racing, show jumping or polo?

baloney

what possible right do you have to decide why people vote for whom they vote for.

Are you God? We need a change in the way our governments are elected - that much is obvious and free trade - while it has been very good for a few Canadians - has been a disaster for the majority, playing, as it were, a game which - as Monbiot points out - is neither fair nor democratic.

Thanks for the slate link Diane.

Diane

This spin of the R/Man's is already available in long version on this thread:
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/08/17/PrivateClinics/

Might as well read the full sermon there and note for yourself that his sanguinary version of events and history is actually pretty selective...[COMMENT OFFENSIVE TO ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. -TYEE EDITOR.]

He's a neo liberal Panglossian and I suspect a Maggie Thatcher former Brit..If you know what I mean. Pick up a copy of Candide if you don't have one on your bookshelf and you'll soon understand the R/Man. [COMMENT OFFENSIVE TO ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. -TYEE EDITOR.]

I'm glad he posts here though, it's pleasant to have such a ready target..

Working man is more of a 'work in progress' he's married to someone from the far east and he'd like to think the Chinese miracle is real and bringing actual benefits for the billion or so people who are actually just a different kind of victim than they were in Chairman Mao's time...but he's at least partly right about the US tax policy, which, sadly, pee wee rambo’s bunch in Ottawa (that's my name for Harper) is trying desperately to emulate.

Have a good day...I'm off to work. If you’re interested in pursuing any of this further, send me an email at

.
Cheers.

Scotiabank

I missed that reference. Of all the Canadian banks that one is the worst and the biggest enabler for this globalizing elite nonsense. They should be wound up and shut down and their assets sent to Darfur

R/Man

Uh, the FTA went into effect AFTER the 1988 election -- 01 January'89. During the election, Lyin' Brian was adamant that there would be no FTA.

RickW

Critics noted that Mulroney had originally professed opposition to free trade during the 1983 leadership campaign.[18] This agreement was controversial, and the Senate demanded an election before proceeding on voting, although Mulroney planned on calling an election before the treaty had been signed. The free trade was the central issue of the 1988 election, with the Liberals and NDP opposing it. With the Liberals gaining the initial momentum, a successful counterattack by Allan Gregg resulted in the PCs being re-elected with a solid but reduced majority and 43% of the popular vote

RickW

You are right Rick. I was confusing the original with the later.

Rm what with TILMA?

Rm what with TILMA?

So, moving along

There is general consensus then...including even by the so called realisticman, that NAFTA and other globalizing trade agreements and corporate fixes have, by definition, been foisted upon the people of Canada undemocratically and unconstitutionally.

And of course the TILMA, which deal never having been submitted to the undemocratic BC legislature, also ought to be torn up and thrown away.

The next question of course is how to mount a campaign against these undemocratic and corporatist neo liberal disasters so that the masters of the universe - who have decided such things on their own (and for their own selfish purposes having absolutely nothing to do with the phony reasons often advanced in their favour) can be removed from their positions of illegitimate power; thereafter shifting them into some open pit mine to scrabble for blood diamonds for the rest of their natural lives.

Perhaps they can eat the diamonds ... I’m minded, every time I think of these people in government and running these lawless corporations, of Tolstoy’s little story: How Much Land Does A Man Need?

So, r/man, in the absence of any cogent case for continuing this nonsense (and you've presented absolutely none apart from a rather childish 'faith') - lets get active and stop this before another generation is lost to honesty, truth and a chance for relative equity and moderate happiness.

That'd be a worthy project for your globe trotting avatar - in my view it might even be worthy of a couple of airplane flights…over a period of at least two years.

NO

In Canada we have representative democracy. Representative Democracy involves the selection of government officials by the people being represented. The most common mechanisms involve election of the candidate with a majority or a plurality of the votes. That's the distinction. When you, GWest, say "undemocratically and unconstitutionally" you are jumping to a conclusion and avoiding recognition of 'plurality', it does not mean majority.

When there are only two candidates or two parties to vote for can there be guarantees that a majority is a certainty.

In our system whereby we accept a plurality as being all that is required for the winning individual or party, it is up to the voter to assess where to place their vote based on the anticipated overall outcome or result. In any plebiscite a voter may have an affinity or sympathy for a particular party or candidate but a long-sighted perspective is sometimes necessary when an important issue is perceived to be on the ballot. This may well call for one's vote to go to a candidate other than one's first choice when the ultimate objective is the success of a policy initiative that is at stake.

By the way, West, is it really necessary to continually bolster your comments with silly asides like this, "understand the R/Man. He’s desperate to feel good about his larceny (oops: Philosophy), in my view,"? Are you proud of writing that? Are you just trying to make me angry? [COMMENT OFFENSIVE TO ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. -TYEE EDITOR.]

Absolutely and comprehensively proud

That is what I believe and I further believe that your long series of personal attacks on me, including calling me a wide range of names over the time that we've been 'corresponding' more than justifies such a reference on my part. It is, simply the truth – as I see it.

If you wish to get angry then turn your mind back to the time you accused me of 'cruising' round Indian Reservations or referred to my politics (about which you know nothing) as socialist or communist or worst; suggested that a book I was working on was somehow 'stealing' from public sources where people have openly and willingly left their words and made repeated references to your opinions about my own financial circumstances.

My character is just fine and I'm not the one whose patented outbursts like your recent one in response to someone called canis latrans.

[COMMENT OFFENSIVE TO ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. -TYEE EDITOR.] You apparently believe in a Pollyannaish view of life where you can ignore the facts, dismiss the trends, rewrite the history and still go tripping through the tulips pretending that:
a) This form of democracy is WORKING when it clearly isn't;
b) Things are getting better in anything but relative terms for the vast majority of the world's citizens who are now competing among themselves for less and less;
c) As a result of a selfish and self-interested clique of individuals whose presence at the top of the pyramid ought to be an object of revulsion for thinking individuals everywhere;
d) All the while the natural world and the ability of the Earth to sustain its growing population is less and less capable of doing that task;
e) Even as the masters of the universe and those, like you who worship and emulate them, behave like there is no such thing as pollution, global warming and a crisis in terms of the availability of arable land and potable water.

So no, I'm not embarrassed [COMMENT OFFENSIVE TO ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. -TYEE EDITOR.].

[COMMENT OFFENSIVE TO ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. -TYEE EDITOR.] Furthermore, as I’ve observed over the weekend – when I had very little to say at this site because I’ve been too busy working (you’re not the ONLY one who does that on weekends, by the way – another thinly veiled slight you’ve addressed toward me in the past) – I am far from the only commenter here to observe this kind of behavior from you R/man.

If you can't take the heat - and actually come up with something to counter any of the obvious critiques, I and others have presented to your sanguine view of events and the direction we're headed, that's not my fault. [COMMENT OFFENSIVE TO ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. -TYEE EDITOR.]

Happy Labour Day, Realisticman – have a nice one as you think about all those union members keeping you out of the operating room….

errata

That should be

patented outbursts...I don't want to get into a 'sic' battle with you too.

SPP Montebello Jelly Beans

Integration is happening and it is an elite owners, globalist agenda to rob representational governance from the people. Our already compromised sovereignty, itself a High Treason conspiracy, combines with health fear-mongering in a classic terror tactic used by mafia-style protection rackets to push the globalist agenda. We are now under UN Regulatory Control during any medical emergency with Avian Flu being the scam to initiate the procedure. Note: Avian Flu has killed up to 150 people world-wide over the last 4 years! E.g. Swine Flu & President Ford – one man died from swine flu, 220 million peoples were inoculated, thousands died from (highly-profitable) vaccine and swine flu never materialised. SPP Montebello meeting’s “jelly beans” – N. American (signed in secret) Plan for Avian/Pandemic Influenza -- See SPP.gov website http://www.spp.gov/ SPP plan includes USNORTHCOM, a continental (martial law control-over) military command in domestic emergency situations, which already controls Canada’s military (2002), will now function under UN command. The SPP Montebello plan dove-tails with Robert Pastor (CFR) last year saying that – out of terrorism, out of crisis, out of economic collapse – we will have our NAU (one continent country under one (unelected) rule-over by our elite owners). David Nabarro’s speeches (investigated by Jerome Corsi, author The Late Great USA (with 30 pages of footnotes to government websites), investigative journalist World Net Daily) state that “5 to 150 million will die in an inevitable worldwide pandemic”, based on the 150 deaths world-wide over 4 years. E.g. “Race specific bio-weapons are useful” Cheney. So would you put it past UN/globalists to use health emergency terrorism to obtain total globalist control-over?

Another Great Opportunity

As usual West you avoid the issue being discussed and present the opportunity for me to employ a wonderful word that is seldom used.

Your present rant qualifies in spades; the word is 'bluster'!

What an excellent word, one that incorporates feeling and release of emotion as one says it, particularly as I like to, with gusto!

So sorry that you are upset because I am so optimistic and cheerful.

ME avoid the issues

Hardly! All you ever present - re the 'Issues' - is a wonderfully rose version of what your globalizing 'friend' is doing for the welfare of mankind by jetting round the world 50 times and spending $7 G on 'diagnostic services'.

Puhleeze - the most cheeful guy in the room is usually the one beside the punch bowl...I'm not the slightest upset. You provide me with exactly the counterpoint a critic really needs. Emotion is the last thing I'm into. I want people to think and your sanguinary vision of 'reality' is perfect for my purposes.

Keep it up!

Gald you're happy too

You, West, say, "a) This form of democracy is WORKING when it clearly isn't;"

Under our system of Plurality how is it not working? Explain. Would you prefer a dictatorship? Would you prefer a French system that has 'rounds' where a plurality of candidates is reduced to two, ensuring a majority vote?

No further response necessary

Please refer back to previous posts.

A tiny majority of wealthy individuals - of whom our former Prime Minister Paul Martin is as good a model of any, with the connivance of the press and the financing of undemocratic institutions like corporations, have manipulated THIS system to the point where it is NOT working.

The down hill slide of the majority of Canadians under this system - while people you love to admire play games with the idea that they give a damn make more and more money and take more and more from the public interest into the bargain is the evidence that we have, for all intents and purposes a functional dicatarship now.

I want that changed so that the people themselves can begin to share in the wealth and bounty of this world and not the 1% who currently 'pay' people like you to be their spokespeople.

If you actually read some of what I've written, instead of going off half cocked in a rage because I question the motives of phony philanthropists you'd know what I prefer.

As I said earlier, I have to work today and you've wasted five minutes of my break, so it's goodbye from me. And it's good bye to you.

Representative Democracy isn't Democracy

......except once every (approx) 4 years. Only continuous voter input can be called democracy. But that would scare the bejeebers out The Golden Horde..........

Perpetual voting would be

Perpetual voting would be what I'd call real Democracy!
Right now we have a 4 year dictatorship and no way to get rid of this dui-disgusting piece of garbage known as Gordo.
I'm sure that if a group wanted to they could bring charges of treason against these lowly elected traitors Federally with war crimes against humanity and the give away of OUR Sovereign Nation Canada and Provincially for giving Our Provincially owned Public Corporations away to foreign corporations.

It's Impossible

to read all you wrote, West, because you are being censured, more than once recently. [COMMENT OFFENSIVE TO ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. -TYEE EDITOR.] Clearly, you're not here to discuss, you're here to slur commentators that call you on your ridiculous call to chant the 'correct' verses that smother your repetitive sermons.

[COMMENT OFFENSIVE TO ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. -TYEE EDITOR.] A cogent question is asked and you refuse to answer just a reprimand with a directive that towing the is the only acceptable behavior. Too bad for you. You have no monopoly on right and wrong. This is a discussion forum. Learn the rules or be ignored.

Oh that's just baloney

You really have reached the bottom of the barrel. Please show me an example of your willingness to discuss anything - to really deal with the problems that the system you support entails.

By the way, since you think I'm such a rabid communist, maybe you will read this from today's Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2161762,00.html

As for the other comment - I keep copies of everything I write and, I don't 'break' the rules.

If you're so convinced you're right, why can't you find anything other than your own 'feelings' to support it?

Are you enjoying this?

Because it's boring as hell to me (and I suspect others). I'm not sure which part of "Please don't engage in personal attacks" you guys don't understand. Please get back to each other's arguments.

Thanks,

Geoff.

All Right Geoff

My argument, to start, is that:
a) since the neo-liberal 'experiment' has been a complete and utter disaster in every country where it has been tried - from Chile to Russia to Iraq - that it should be dumped immediately since it is the basis for the continentalizing effort of a few indidividuals in Canada, the USA and Mexico, and that;
b) since we have, as a citizenry, never 'really' submitted any of these efforts to a nation wide debate and a vote that there is consequently no moral or ethical basis upon which these matters can and should proceed.

I have brought forward evidence from various sources for believing these things - and found myself personally attacked rather than having the substance of what I've said discussed.

To the point enough?

G West I'm behind you 98%

G West I'm behind you 98% keep up the great investigative blogs as the truth shall win!
Don't let the naysayers and shills lead you into their nowhere bs.

Sometimes people won't listen...

...even when you try and warn them.

This thread has so much white-out it's starting to look like a censured secret police file.

a) Trading agreements work. Chile now exports around $20 billion more product than it imports. Chile has maintained its reputation for strong financial institutions and sound policy that have given it the strongest sovereign bond rating in South America. Between 2000 and 2006 growth ranged between 2%-6%. Throughout these years Chile maintained a low rate of inflation with GDP growth coming from high copper prices, solid export earnings (particularly forestry, fishing, and mining), and growing domestic consumption. Chile continues to attract foreign direct investment, but most foreign investment goes into gas, water, electricity and mining. Unemployment has exhibited a downward trend over the past year, dropping to 7.8% at the end of 2006. Chile deepened its longstanding commitment to trade liberalization with the signing of a free trade agreement with the US, which took effect on 1 January 2004. Chile signed or ratified a number of trade agreements in 2006, including with China and India. Chile claims to have more bilateral or regional trade agreements than any other country. It has 57 such agreements, including with the European Union, Mercosur, South Korea, and Mexico.

b) As Bob White, head of the CAW Union said in 1990, "White: If the NDP had run a different campaign, I think we would have had a shot at defeating the Tories. If you had had the Liberals and the NDP in some sort of coalition, the Free Trade Agreement would not have passed.".

As I was saying a couple of days ago, "Strategic voting is sometimes necessary when one party, which one might not ordinarily vote for, has an issue that is important enough to support.".

So. Trade Deals are working well for Chile and ours have been discussed ad nauseum. If Canadians really wanted to collapse NAFTA you'd have seen high polling numbers for the NDP but you haven't.

A new guest from the US suggested that EU member countries had voted before signing their trading agreements and I directed her to information showing that this was not true. Someone jumped down my throat suggesting I had initiated this "red herring" as they called it.

Rather than a predictable party rag and in the interest of objective alternative journalism these commentaries should be more like a good jamming session where anyone can pick up an instrument and join in, not a marching band that has to stick to one tune.

Pensions

You might want to look at what's happened to the 'privatized' pensions - which were another part of the Freidman-inspired program of the Chicago Boys who were waiting in the wings while Pinochet was murdering people in the National Stadium.

I'd say, given the fact the courts are still sorting out Pinochet's crimes and the crimes of the economists the US trained and parachuted into positions of power in 1973 puts the violent lie to any subsequent success that Chile has had Realisticman. In fact, Chile is little better than a successor to a Nazi state.

Anyway, as I said, I'm not interested in faith, I'm only interested in facts and here are a few more about Chile. You might want to pick up Palast's book (referenced below), or, even better, Naomi Klein's new volume:The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2006/12/11/greg-palast-tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile/

I don't think you'll find the trade deals are such a good deal for Chile's people - they are pretty much a good deal for the same masters of the universe who've pocketed the gold from our own neo-con corporations. Furthermore, as seems to be the case in many circumstances, the only way one can get a nation to accept neocon pure market principles is by shooting a bunch of their citizens first...a la Iraq.

I never questioned that some EU countries had ratified the constitution without a vote - I did say they had had the option of taking one...that's all. Here in Canada we haven't had that option - therefore your comment was, in my view, a red herring.

As to the rest of it, my comments stand.

I don't think you support your arguments with anything but emotion and faith. I'm sorry, in the light of what's actually going on in the world around us and what you and the other neo-liberals are asking us to accept, but that's just not good enough.

As to playing to a particular tune, I think that charge could be as easily levelled against you as me. Especially in light of your lame effort posting a sound clip of the Internationale. Given your hatred and bitterness about unions and your hatred of communism conflating the two can hardly be seen as a joke. As bob the cat wrote somewhere else earlier today, a Pole, after his country had come out from behind the IRON CURTAIN said: 'Everything they told us about communism was a lie; sadly, everything the communists told us about capitalism was true.'

The size of the proletariat is about the only difference. In right-wing capitalist corporate kleptocracies like ours the number of people who qualify as top party members only number about 1%.

Moreover, your last paragraph is almost as offensive as the one that got deleted earlier today. Furthermore, you still haven’t dealt with the questions I raised.

Oh, and by the way

If you think that I'm overplaying the propinquity between neo-liberal politics and dictatorship you might want to pick up a copy of the Sunday New York Times on the 9th (next Sunday).

There will be an article by Jeffrey Rosen in the Magazine that you, and every other person who accepts what's happening as appropriate and even proper, ought to read. And read it very carefully.

Here's the money quote:

Anyone who can make that kind of statement about a domestic threat and the horror and pain which would be associated with it - simply because it would make their political agenda more successful - is capable of anything. And equally capable of lying and cheating to get it - and the corporate record on these things is already clear - they care not a bit for you and me, for our health or our well being - and they would as soon see us starve as they do the Africans if only we'd do it quietly and out of sight. These people and their noxious program of globalization and market economics bear very close watching. In the Canadian context they are, as someone wrote at the beginning of this thread, traitors.

Glad you like facts

Fact. Chile ended military rule in 1990, seventeen years ago (at the start of that year Mandela was still in jail).

Fact. GINI index for Chile shows a decline, which shows less disparity of income between rich and poor, of 3.6% over three years (2000 - 2003).

Fact. I pointed out to Diane that her comment re. EU countries voting on membership was not entirely correct by a long shot. You told her, "don't let the fact that some nations didn't bother with a constitutional referendum worry you too much." I said if they did not bother why should we?

You'll be very interested in the current Foreign Policy Magazine essay, How Capitalism Is Killing Democracy By Robert B. Reich. There's an inevitability to increased international trade and it's a challenge to maintain cohesive societies affected (government funding for re-training displaced workers is essential, for example) but, much as some would like, it's not going to stop.

Glad you like the facts

About poverty in Chile too.

And that government funding...is that the same funding that the Campbell government plays smoke and mirrors with when it talks about affordable housing? If you actually read the articles about SRO conversions here on TYEE, you'd have realized that the provincial government has not even kept up with the growth in demand for SRO accommodation - let alone begun to reduce the backlog of need - the hotels they bought were already part of the existing stock.

Things will only change when people of goodwill wake up to the lies they've been told and, as the wheels fall off more and more of these trains, it is going to stop.
As for the EU situation, when Canada has as fair and egalitarian a result for its people as most nations in Europe do (the UK obviously excepted) then I'll stop complaining. When Canada stops going backwards and rewarding lay-abouts because they control a lot of phony capital and everyone starts paying their fair share of the costs and we all reap the benefits - then I'll agree with you.

Until then, under no possible rubric can this insanity called free-market global capitalism be anything but a disaster.

The facts are all there on the table; wealth is being concentrated in fewer and fewer compromised hands than at any time since the gilded age and that is the system YOU love.

We should bother because:
1) people are more important than power;
2) real democracy means all citizens must have an effective and meaningful say in their own futures that is not just a pro forma exercise; and
3) what is going on amounts to actual theft of the sweat and resources and future of this country and every other country that buys into these corporate lies.
4) political parties must not be phony sinecures for business and commercial interests and must never be financed by such…in this country today the big parties are simply stalking horses for business, big media and the banks. In no sense is any of this democratic.

There is nothing wrong with international trade - there is everything wrong with international larceny.

Just once, I'd like you to actually deal with the FACTS of what a system you worship is actually DOING to ordinary people. It is killing them with pollution; driving them mad with stress to the point where they kill their families as their lives disintegrate; it is ruining families and despoiling small business; corrupting education and under-funding imperatives like universal health care; it is rewarding its friends and fellow travellers in the name of idleness and phony competition…and giving away public resources - I could go on.

If it doesn't stop, you and the people whom you apologize for are going to have more and more blood on your hands - because guns and swords are the only way you're going to be able to keep the lid on.
1% cannot forever dictate to the 99%. I’m so pleased you’ve decided to deal in FACTS: because that’s a battle you can’t win.

And CHILE

You need to read those figures a little more carefully realisticman, Chile is a lot like BC - it gets more than 50 % of its income from copper - like any commodity driven economy - it will do better when commodity prices are high - just like BC does.

Viewed over the period from 1973 forward - and especially under the neoliberal whip - it was a total disaster. Try to find some facts to refute that my friend. Like all neo-liberals, you never want to look at the whole picture - just as critics of the NDP government here in BC never acknowledge the role of the Asian meltdown on the BC economy in the 90s. But then, how can you blame them - they have to deal with a press that has learned to lie with a straight face.

But then, like health care, I guess you believe it's all the unions' fault.

And by the way

I'd have thought you'd be more likely to enjoy the MICHAEL MANDELBAUM article...seems to me it was to your tastes...focusing as it does on the principle of private property - rather than giving people some actual 'control' over the civic circumstances of their lives rather than just an expression of their purchasing power.

In fact, I think he even holds that Russia and China are now "potential" democracies. I wonder how the journalists working 'there' feel about that.

Anyway, I have work to do.

The Madelbaum Essay

Is in the current edition of Foreign Affairs - which is the journal I read - sorry for any confusion.

Looking at the Reich piece

It is certainly hard to disagree with this:

Of course, democracy means much more than the process of free and fair elections. It is a system for accomplishing what can only be achieved by citizens joining together to further the common good. But though free markets have brought unprecedented prosperity to many, they have been accompanied by widening inequalities of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and environmental hazards such as global warming. Democracy is designed to allow citizens to address these very issues in constructive ways. And yet a sense of political powerlessness is on the rise among citizens in Europe, Japan, and the United States, even as consumers and investors feel more empowered. In short, no democratic nation is effectively coping with capitalism’s negative side effects.

I think I'd probably add that, especially in the areas of food, water and the environment - and particularly as reflected in the larceny of the tax system and the corporate irresponsibility of international global actors and individuals - that things are getting a lot worse as the death grip of the deathless corporation tightens on the throat of humanity.

It's long past time the lot of them were shown the door. They've had their chance and failed to create anything but death, greed, jealousy and starvation - the only question remaining is whether or not it is too late to salvage humanity as a decent force for good in the world.

On that count, it's hard to be sanguine because enlightenment has turned to enslavement.

But actually, I do wonder

"And yet a sense of political powerlessness is on the rise among citizens in Europe, Japan, and the United States, even as consumers and investors feel more empowered."

I don't disagree with this as much as puzzle over it. Citizens and consumers are to a very great extent the same people. And consumers do right in feeling powerful, if only they could figure out to use their power. We have instigated a buy-nothing day, which is kind of cute, but how about we have every day a buy-nothing-you-don't-need day? Can you imagine???

Every dollar we are now being whipped with has at some point been handed over willingly. Let us stop doing it. Let us add the quality we are capable of producing ourselves to our lives instead of the quantity that's up for sale, let's sit on our dollars, bury them under the floorboards, throw them down the toilet even, just let's not give any more to 'them' beyond bare survival needs (ours). And then let's get started growing our own food, lest they think they can get us that way...

I am thinking this is what it would take, but of course we won't do it. Because you were thinking just now, that maybe I'd gone round the bend, and so will everybody, if we seriously propose this, and so it won't happen. We are scared of looking weird. And that is where they have us, for they're not. Try to read, really READ most ads (or look at the offerings on TV), and if you hadn't already accepted the format, the content, the aim, the product as 'normal', you'd often think you were looking at a production done by, and certainly directed at, mentally challenged people. Our whole world has become nonsensical, yet we lay on ourselves a demand to remain 'rational'. We forge our own chains, people, and slap them on, too.

What about it?

Couldn't agree more dorothy

The first step in change is waking up to what's actually going on...most people, as you suggest, are willingly - if unwitting - participants in this scam.

It's too bad that so many ostensibly intelligent people don't see how retardedly they actually behave.

back to work for me - contract to finish - cheers my friend. [you'll see the irony in that I'm sure].

Buy Import - Save the Planet

Dorothy

While the sentiment is good it doesn't always help the planet. Which is more important, if either, being food independent or global carbon emmiting?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/opinion/06mcwilliams.html?ex=1189224000&en=8856ecd31676afe6&ei=5070

much ado about nothing

The fact that there are 'exceptions' to any rule tends mostly to emphasize the general applicability of the rule realisticman.

I'd also be interested to investigate the funding behind the research at a University in New Zealand, a country which prides itself on its foodstuffs 'export' economy and the fact there are many more sheep living there than men and women.

In short, what may be true for a commodity that can be processed and shipped frozen won't be true for everything, even though, if the investigation were worth it, I expect there is something suspect about their conclusions - if not their figures.

pee wee and his entourage, flying heavy to Australia for the APEC chinwag, will have doubtless harmed the environment far more than any small savings throwing lamb producers out of business in jolly old will have done.

Personally, I've always found frozen New Zealand lamb a touch cry and lacking in flavour when compared with the Salt Spring Island product anyway.

Much ado, as usual, about very little.

That should be 'dry'

I was also thinking that altering the 'production and husbandry' practices in the British lamb farming industry might, after all, address the anomolies between the footprint of New Zealand vs British lamb.

One can hardly forget that Mrs Thatcher's policies (or lack of them) and her fascination with free market nonsense had at least something to do with the BSE crisis in British meat production.

I think rolling back the covers on this particular story may be kind of interesting and I'll have a look at it later. I actually don't think industrial farming practices have really helped much at all.

I suspect there's a lot more to this than meets the realisticman's eye.

I suspect there's a lot more to this

Probably is. Just reporting from the New York Times.

Talking about heavy over Oz, what did think of Baby Dion last week, going over to stroke Danny Williams' knee after he put the squeeze on the oil industry? Tough for him that Danny jilted him at the photo-op. Did Stephane buy carbon points for the trip?

Dion?

As I said once or twice before, you clearly haven't read my posts. I'm no DION fan, but, given the fact that pee wee's the one in power just now and busy trying to lie and obfuscate his way into the coitizens' hearts before the next election, you'll forgive me if I use the bird shot on the main turkey.

OK?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06N

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY