The Increasingly Warped Power of TV and Other MSM

“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

― Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

Still true today, methinks. And, ohh, what shock and awe when modern weapons “do what they can.”

Made possible in a so-called democracy by a  hydra of means that keep the War Machine in power by manufacturing consent and suppressing dissent.

Here, largely as a note to self, is a very old concept diagram I built from a small book or article whose source I cannot remember. It is from the “days of yore,” designed to examine tools, and dirty tricks, used in actual verbal or written discussion:

A chart used to identify rhetorical strategies

What truth is up against today is much more sinister.

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Bayer Just Never Quits :(

A petition to sign (see below):

Europe has had the courage to place a moratorium on neonicotinic pesticides since many scientists suspect that the widespread use of these toxins seems to have the world’s bees dropping, er, like flies. Bayer is, like a good, immortal “corporate person,” suing the pants off Europe for placing insects, pollination and the long term health of the biosphere above Bayer’s somewhat narrower goals.

They’re Playing Our Charade… Again

I have not been following the tragic Ottawa shooting closely for various reasons. Mainly in an effort to preserve my equilibrium: Mansbridge and Solomon both have always impressed me as ratings/prestige/salary-driven lackeys of the new CBC TV aimed to keep us at an “elementary school” level of political awareness while, at the same time, thinking we’re clever. I focus on the terrific, enlightened stuff that CBC Radio still is permitted to produce.

The little TV news that I do catch in passing by the family room archway just confirms to the growing, hardening plaque in my attitude-arteries that our “democracy” is a Matrix-styled dream that we are kept in by very clever theatre.

The cynic in me says that Harper will seize this sad “opportunity” to paint the opposition as “lily-livered liberals” on security, build more physical and intellectual prisons, and, just possibly…, call an early election in the hope of scrounging

“four more years.”

Oh, and if you think I am tough on Stephen Harper, read this by John McMurtry, author and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph. OMG!

Privatization of Public Services ~30 Years Worth Of Skullduggery

“… the privatization of social services has transferred public monopoly power and authority to private monopolists…”

Someone asked Jeff Nguyen in his brilliant post A nation at-risk: American hustle – largely on the oppressive private prison industry – how long the privatization of public service has been going on. The answer: decades. In reflecting on the question I remembered long ago seeing a conference being advertised that was designed to teach the Warfare Companies how to get their greedy mitts on public service moneys – health care, welfare, etc. Failing to find any notes on this in my diaries, I did a little research:

Oil and Peace Pipes

A Quaker friend of mine heard from someone who sits on the residential schools Truth & Reconciliation Commission, that when this Commission is over all the documentation about the (still concealed) extent of this travesty will be destroyed by this Government. Gone will be the complete history of murders of child residents by staff and deliberate acts of placing unaffected victims to sleep next to children infected with TB, which qualifies legally to be called “genocide.” How could Harper have faced these marchers, given the intended tragic and farcical cover-up of this evidence and his willing role in it?

The resource extraction-driven Government and the churches that controlled Canada’s residential schools remain the most powerful enemies of the truth about our country’s shameful treatment of First Nations people. Ignorance and smug complacency among Canadian voters must be preserved.

Oil cannot be safely smoked in peace pipes.

Two More Things, Ms. May, SVP

Two more things:
1. I neglected to add that this coalition or merger of Greens, New Democrats and Liberals should move to enact Proportional Representation as soon as possible after election. I’m tired of holding my nose and voting for the candidate with the best chance of preventing a Harper “majority”

2. Parliament is a better place for having your quick brilliance and civil, but fearless, tongue.

Proroguing, Symptom of an Ailing Democracy

Whatever the reasoning behind Dalton M’s intention to prorogue the Ontario Legislative Assembly, what he is doing is giving credibility to Harper’s cynical and dishonest double use of this procedure.

The next time Harper uses it, he will be able to point to a Liberal who has used it.

In the long run this is a bad thing for Canada.

Proroguing used in the above ways is a symptom that democracy, as a whole, is seriously flawed. It is in danger of flipping into totalitarianism if the decline gets any worse. One important change that would make proroguing impossible would be to throw out our winner-take-all systems in Canada, Britain and the U.S. and replace them with a carefully-crafted form of…

Proportional Representation!