babble home
rabble.ca - news for the rest of us
today's active topics


Post New Topic  Post A Reply
FAQ | Forum Home
  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» babble   » rabble content   » news by the rest of us   » Why is the tail wagging the dog?

Email this thread to someone!    
Author Topic: Why is the tail wagging the dog?
Jeaness
recent-rabble-rouser
Babbler # 15237

posted 25 May 2008 08:47 AM      Profile for Jeaness     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Canada is no longer a crown colony – we do not belong to Britain. Governments do not own Canada – politicians come and go, elected by citizens. Apart from the many foreign owners of businesses and land in Canada*, the rest of it belongs to the citizens of this country, and governments are elected to run the business of the country. We are the bosses of this company; politicians are paid employees. They are entrusted temporarily with the management of resources and tax money for the benefit of the country. Crown lands belong to the governments; we own the governments.

Why then do our employees act as if they own the country, with the power to spend as they wish, to engage in foreign wars, to sell resources, to cut back on social services, to pass laws without regard to the wishes of the majority of the shareholders?

Why is our money being spent by our employees on foreign wars, police prosecutions, harmful exploitation of tar sands, subsidies to big businesses and grants to foreign corporations? Why are those same employees negotiating treaties with other governments with no consultation with the shareholders? Why are meetings held behind closed doors, and access to information denied or made difficult by our employees? Who is running this store? The clerks?

The majority of us want to see our soldiers involved in peace keeping, not killing people who are no threat to us. We do not want people sent to jail for minor offences; we do not need a three-strike law; we do not want drug users punished for using drugs – we want them rehabilitated. We do not like the fact that thousands of our people live in the streets, in poverty, because they cannot afford decent housing. We do not like being unable to find a personal physician; we do not want to wait months for necessary treatment for our ills; we do not want the private profits to be added to the cost of health care. We are concerned about the effects of climate change – we want those concerns taken seriously, not ignored or blocked by politicians, our employees.


From: New Westminster, BC | Registered: May 2008  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7791

posted 25 May 2008 08:56 AM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Why does the country elect neocons to high office? I think that's the question that needs answering.
From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fleabitn
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 14927

posted 25 May 2008 09:51 AM      Profile for Fleabitn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The power parasites have no allegiance to flag or country, to community or citizenry. Their allegiance is to power and money, how to accumulate as much as possible of both, and how to preserve it once in their filthy little grip.
These are people that spit on the homeless, and blame the poor for their own misery. These are people who believe they deserve everything given to them and everything that they can take; these are people who believe the advantages they are born under should give them the right to use and exploit others.
Look at the story in the G&M today, re lil Eddy Rogers and his ascendancy to the gilded monopoly throne, as example.

The belief that Canada is an independent, self-directing and sovereign country is largely illusory, anyway. Modern democracy is a smoke and mirrors circus show conducted by the MSM and the few true beneficiaries of the shitstem. We've been bought and paid for a long time ago.


From: between thought and action | Registered: Feb 2008  |  IP: Logged
clandestiny
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6865

posted 25 May 2008 03:48 PM      Profile for clandestiny     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
in Toronto subway the other day- someone with a 'cultured' accent telling the people to 'stand back from the doors, or this train will not move...get back from the doors right now' etc etc, in a contemptuous, restrained tone of exasperation, as if the people were little children....and it was startling to see the crowded car with every type of humanity trying to 'obey' this weird, disembodied voice and i wanted to yell 'shut the fuck up, or you're fired, you ignorant jackass' but i didn't (where is the person who is speaking? would he be near enough to hear rebellion- would the car be met by a swat takedown team?) ....everyone who has ever used mass transit systems must have noted how cowed we are, as people, and the man, aka the pig, surely sees this too, and encourages the sense of alonesness, of isolated weakness. And maybe this explains the brainless tail wagging everything else?
From: the canada's | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
Brian White
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8013

posted 28 May 2008 08:43 AM      Profile for Brian White   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I have no problem with your post, except the cultured accent thing.
I try to give accents the benifit of the doubt, cultured or not. Mine is not concidered cultured anywhere including the country of my birth.
People do flock like sheep sometimes and regardless of accent, need direction. I worked in a factory in Germany years ago. When a young man caught his hand in a big rubber machinery belt, people stood paralized watching. I was the first to shout MESSER and a french guy was the one to understand and who raced to get it. (We cut the belt not the kids arm).
quote:
Originally posted by clandestiny:
in Toronto subway the other day- someone with a 'cultured' accent telling the people to 'stand back from the doors, or this train will not move...get back from the doors right now' etc etc, in a contemptuous, restrained tone of exasperation, as if the people were little children....and it was startling to see the crowded car with every type of humanity trying to 'obey' this weird, disembodied voice and i wanted to yell 'shut the fuck up, or you're fired, you ignorant jackass' but i didn't (where is the person who is speaking? would he be near enough to hear rebellion- would the car be met by a swat takedown team?) ....everyone who has ever used mass transit systems must have noted how cowed we are, as people, and the man, aka the pig, surely sees this too, and encourages the sense of alonesness, of isolated weakness. And maybe this explains the brainless tail wagging everything else?

From: Victoria Bc | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 28 May 2008 09:23 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Jeaness:

Why then do our employees act as if they own the country, with the power to spend as they wish, to engage in foreign wars, to sell resources, to cut back on social services, to pass laws without regard to the wishes of the majority of the shareholders

This is a good question. As far as I know, our employees in Ottawa propped up with somewhere less than 24 percent of the eligible vote are actually feigning impotence not power. Power to create most of the money in Canada was handed to private banks in 1991. It was a bill rammned through parliament by Mulroney without allowing very much political debate. In Venezuela recently, there was a national referendum with this same issue among too many other issues put to a national vote. And it almost succeeded in spite of a CIA-funded campaign to interfere in Venezuela's constitutional democracy.

Canada's private banks have power. They create money out of thin air and loan it with interest. Our democratically-elected governments had power to fund the building of new infrastructure and social programs for over three decades after 1938. But they've handed sovereign powers of money creation to private banks as well as an ability to load up with Canadian government debt which used to be financed at near zero interest rates. After sacking Canada's economy in the decade of the 90's, our federal Liberals claimed victory over rising national debt with paying down some $50 billion dollars of it. What they didn't tell us was that it only cost us over $600 billion dollars, and according to Industry Canada, the worst overall economic performance among all rich countries to achieve that token debt reduction. The country as a whole is over $2 trillion dollars in debt to the big six banks still. Non-elected bankers and non-elected money speculators here and abroad have the power to create money as interest-owing debt. And they've been building a debt pyramid for themselves. Things will get crazy when the pyramid scheme collapses. Some say it's happening now. They have the power but not democratically-elected leaders who handed it to them and refuse to take it back on our behalf.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
PB66
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 14465

posted 29 May 2008 10:36 AM      Profile for PB66     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Canada is not a corporation. It is not a "store". It has no "shareholders". The vast majority of the nation's inhabitants are not "bosses".

We should not allow ourselves to fall into using the language of the market to describe the arena of democratic politics.

We should also promote respect and power for employees, including clerks. I'm an employee. I imagine most people on rabble are.

(but yes, I'd like to see a change in government and different policies on war, trade, and the environment.)


From: the far left | Registered: Aug 2007  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 29 May 2008 02:14 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by PB66:
Canada is not a corporation. It is not a "store". It has no "shareholders". The vast majority of the nation's inhabitants are not "bosses".

That's true. If fiscal Frankensteins Mulroney, Chretien, or Martin had been CEO's running corporations like they did the country, they'd have been fired before their contracts were up.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
scooter
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5548

posted 04 June 2008 12:38 PM      Profile for scooter     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Martin was indeed a CEO, ran it with the same philosophy he used as Canadas finance minister. He wasn't fired. In fact, he did rather well.
From: High River | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 04 June 2008 04:00 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by scooter:
Martin was indeed a CEO, ran it with the same philosophy he used as Canadas finance minister. He wasn't fired. In fact, he did rather well.

Are you talking about the scabby shipping outfit he handed off to family members before becoming PM?

Leader of the same Liberal government that cooked federal accounting books for years and left us with a $130 billion dollar infrastructure deficit?

That guy and his government that stole $48 billion from the workers' eI-uI-Oh! fund?

Is that former PM PM who Industry Canada and Pierre Fortin said led our country through "about the worst" aggregate economic performance of 35 or 40 industrialised nations in the decade of the '90's?

The same former PM PM who let the country's economic competitive growth index ranking drop from 11th to 16th place today?

The same PM and his party who paid private banks over $600 billion in order to pay-down $50-some billion of national debt while the economy gasped for air and child poverty stalled at record high levels in the last half of the 90's?

That Paul Martin?

I never voted for him or his party, and neither did the larger majority of Canadians at the time. So in effect we did fire him. He just never cleaned out his office for the longest time while he insisted on collecting a paycheque. Some of us were just hoping that he and his Libranos would run off to Liberia in the middle of the night, or something ...

[ 04 June 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged

All times are Pacific Time  

Post New Topic  Post A Reply Close Topic    Move Topic    Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
Hop To:

Contact Us | rabble.ca | Policy Statement

Copyright 2001-2008 rabble.ca