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War! What’s good for the goose….

War! that’s what the Prime Minister of his erstwhile minority Government decided; that was his choice of words, as Canadian fighter jets were sent to bomb Libyan targets. And what did the supreme power of Parliament, which of course could have reversed his decision, do about his unilateral declaration of war? …. nothing. Liberals, socialist NDP, even the Bloc all agreed with Canada’s war on Libya. Harper was supported UNANIMOUSLY.

As we go into the next election, THIS WAR WILL NOT BE AN ELECTION ISSUE since they all approved of it. Now isn’t that interesting! Ironically perhaps, it falls to a Capitalist to say “wait a minute“, has war really become so trivial a matter in this video-game era? (Have a read of Paul Robinson’s article, Globe & Mail, March 25, p. A19)

To slightly change the concept for a moment, in Quebec back in 2007 there was an incident in which the police seeded a peaceful demonstration with black-ops officers. Their apparent function was, whilst disguised as protesters, to throw rocks, thus instigating an opportunity for the riot police to move in on the (otherwise peaceful) protestors. This is all on Youtube, the trial of the police has occurred [they were let off of course], I am not making it up. Ironically, this kind of tactic was used by Hitler to justify his invasion of Poland in 1939; he dressed up some prisoners in Polish uniforms, shot them on German soil, and voilá, instant justification for German invasion of Poland. In other words, fake the cause – spin the situation to suit your needs.

The “Public Interest” of Capitalism

There have been a number of mega-issues lately in the news, carrying a common thread: first, the Australians wanted to buy Saskatchewan’s PotashCorp; second, the CRTC made a ruling about internet bandwidth; third, the London stock exchange is hoping to takeover the Toronto stock exchange; fourth, PetroChina wants to take over Encana Corp.; and fifth, wind projects in Lake Ontario have been put on hold, contracts cancelled.

What they all have in common, are politicians bouncing about squealing about “the public interest”. For starters, I can readily pick on Tony Clement, our Conservative “Industry Minister”, as he has been the Federal State’s point man on many of these items. He vetoed the PotashCorp takeover bid, he is presently reviewing China’s largest venture into “our” oil patch [Encana: Feb 12 G&M, B2], and will in due course end up with the TSX proposal on his desk. And as in all good Soviet dictatorships, he is the Mandarin of the Politburo who will decide what is in the Party’s “Best Interests” on these sort of topics.

The torch was passed… will you bear it?

There is a Federal election coming, and most citizens won’t give a darn – we know most citizens no longer can be bothered going through the charade of voting. It is not hard to understand their dismay with the system.

For many citizens, the system is broken beyond redemption: you are played for fools by repeated and demonstrable political falsehoods; the transparent “bribes” offered to you – (the luxury of which you know you will have to pay for) – to entice your vote; the attack ads which have nothing to say about the wisdom of a candidate’s views, denigrating the system to pointlessness; the bubble-heads who trivialize the important matters, and a moment later magnify the trivial, to scrape out a bit more dialogue until the next important commercial message comes along to fill the TV void in our brains.