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this is not to say there aren't any Communists in Canada of course, Canada is lousy with them because at the core of it all is the Hegelian myth of human progress that society is on a path to an utopia, where all the problems will be solved by authoritarian central planning the vast majority of Canadians are quite clearly gripped by the dogma of this fallacy, and associated dialectic

This is another example of your ideology being tied into a mobius strip. The governments who put strong limits on foreign money coming in are interventionist, like N. Korea, which you claim to dislike. Actually I remember Trudeau Sr.'s foreign ownership controls were quite strong as he was 'concerned' about American money coming in. This is the guy who put in wage and price controls. So, yeah, it's pretty much impossible to figure out where you stand as your compass doesn't run North/South/East/West. I think you're just a guy who doesn't like Trudeau, and doesn't understand things. That's my best guess, anyway. And there's nothing wrong with that - but there are people on this thread you can learn from.

He is not here to discuss anything, he is here to troll, nothing more.

The rich aren’t the masters of our free markets; science is. Research based data is limiting your freedom of movement, socialization, and level and nature of material acquisition. Totalitarian capitalism (surplus production and wealth accumulation) is in battle with Green Marxism (minimization of environmental impacts and class distinction). These forces have taken over from liberal vs. conservative. The new models are more restrictive and fascistic. Individual freedom is sacrificed to the wellbeing of the hive. That is exactly our world right now under pandemic restrictions. Welcome to technofascism, rule by the public health authorities and social science. Populism was the last gasp of the old order. What is the status of human freedom in this brave new world? I’m not sure we’ll ever be as free again as we were pre-pandemic.

Texas celebrates zero covid deaths today.

Well much as I love Socrates, Plato’s Republic is a bit of a dictatorship. Our democratic system is better, though it’s sliding perilously close to collectivization and redistribution of wealth based on race (e. g. “reparations” to people of colour and Indigenous people, mostly from people who have no relationship to slave owners or “colonizers”) as well as the poll tax on existence misleadingly referred to as carbon tax. Green Marxists have infiltrated the governments of liberal democracies and are implementing fascism in the name of science and human progress. It’s actually theft and the trampling of human freedom. The naive are rushing to implement the program to “save the planet” and be equitable. It’s anti-equality and anti-human.

And that's why Conservatives here/and Republicans to our south, can't seem to take a clear stand on any actual domestic policy issues! They are just against whatever the Liberals or Democrats are doing, and tack their sailboats to the right of whatever the stated liberal position is. And that is why accusations of socialism and communism are so ridiculous today! We either get pure, 100 proof sink-or-swim capitalism, or the same thing with a few benefits thrown on for those at rock bottom! That's likely most of the reason why so many working people in the overtaxed middle aim their guns at liberals and leftists, rather than the people who have been their biggest burdens and causes of misery - the billionaires and their upper class professional helpers! And what we don't get is anything trying to put the money back into public programs that have been gutted or slowly starved for funding over the years!

Nice argumentation from a fictional character from a fictional story by a hardly known author and entirely missing the point. Anger is an emotion, not an act, certainly not a violent act in itself. It can be discouraged or otherwise but very clearly it's not the same, and cannot be equated with a deliberate lie.

The pandemic is effectively over in the United States.

Communism as originally envisioned was supposed to mean equality for all. Therefore, communism has never been practiced as a national endeavor. Every supposed communist state was ( or is ), a totalitarian state with wealth, power and privileges for the leaders and mostly poverty and suffering for the masses. The closest thing to actual communism was practiced by agricultural communes, such as the Israeli kibbutz movement many years ago.

A couple of points from the American perspective: 1) Biden has nothing to gain by opposing Gov. Whitmer's directive, and he knows from decades of experience that the courts move very slowly, assuring that any Line 5 stoppage is only virtue signaling...not going to happen anytime soon. This political posturing is also very common for Canada's current government. 2) Michigan and Ohio have the most skin in this game, while this story is much lower level noise in the rest of the USA. The computer hacking of the Colonial Pipeline and resulting stoppage gets a lot more media attention than does Line 5 politics on this side of the border. 3) Enbridge is very vulnerable on this issue because of the Line 6B disaster in 2010 (Kalamazoo River). The Enbridge Line 3 replacement project in Minnesota and Wisconsin has been fraught with problems and clashes with many different groups over ground water, easements, permits, etc. Accordingly, Enbridge has made a bundle plying pipeline projects more easily approved in the United States than through a much more resistant Canada (e.g. Energy East). Some measure of karma satisfaction is to be had because of this. 4) Canada puts more stock in the notion of "ally" and requisite obligations than does the United States, regardless of the administration in Washington D.C. The U.S. may be Canada's "closest" ally, but the USA's closest ally is the United Kingdom. Canadian media does not often reflect this reality, for obvious reasons. 5) Secy Jennifer M. Granholm was born a Canadian but moved to the U.S. at a young age, was educated in the U.S., became a U.S. citizen in 1980, and rose through the Democratic ranks to become the 51st Governor of....Michigan. In total, this is a delicious political dilemma for the Democratic Party with unrealized potential for economic damage to Canada and several states. It is yet another example of U.S. domestic politics impacting a Canada that refused to assure energy independence for critical pipeline infrastructure. I don't think Line 5 will be shut down, but a political price will be paid by those on both sides of the issue...and border.

Sometimes Americans have to go outside America to find out what's really happening in their country. Sky News Australia offers an update on what's been happening under Biden, so far.

The Palestinian Arab's first leader and Arafat's Uncle, the Grand Mufti, enjoying a cherry with his friend Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Photo taken at Auschwitz-Birkenau: 1942

When did multimillionaire trust fund baby - Doug Ford become a socialist? Actual socialist nations have done better (even sanctioned, embargoed states like Cuba) at managing this crisis than the richer capitalist nations, which have more resources have been able to muster!

Really? I see lot's of beautifull women everyday. You know what doesn't happen though? Sexual assault.

You’re right. We are shifting from a policy focused on protecting the vulnerable from death and keeping the hospitalization and death rates to a level in keeping with other major illnesses to an absolutist policy of no freedom without eradicating Covid and Covid illness, which of course is impossible. Destroying businesses, mental health, socialization, education, and freedom of movement to meet an extreme standard of safety is unjustifiable. The lockdown in Ontario will reach the two month mark by early June. We will see 70% of the population vaccinated before the end of June. Case counts are diminishing. We must remove mandatory restrictions and shift to a policy of individual responsibility by summer. People aren’t sheep and should be trusted to make decisions about their own safety or we are no longer a free society. The vaccines will be universally available to all aged 12 and up who want them soon and they’re already available to them in the hotspots. If you haven’t had a vaccine yet or you don’t want a vaccine and are worried about getting Covid, stay home and mask up when you must go out. No one is making you socialize or travel. The vaccines have been available to vulnerable populations for some time. End the mass hysteria and the tyranny of the public health technocrats.

Good point! First capitalism developed...or was invented as feudalism withered and decayed, and then government institutions had to regulate it or capitalism would have devolved into monopoly capitalism, and then everybody would have been working for Amazon or some other blood-sucking corporate vampire! The legend according to a later biography is that during the Depression, FDR read the riot act to his eastern elite brethren when he wanted to start the New Deal programs to build new public infrastructure and more controversial - fund make work projects for unemployed farmers, blue collar workers and even artists, on public works projects that the right spends so much time deriding and holding in contempt today. If legend is at all accurate, FDR said: I'm the only one in between you and the mobs out there who want to string you up and hang you.....or words to that effect! I recall that back in my younger days, the liberal reforms by FDR and the smaller scale versions by Mackenzie King up here were viewed through the prism of progress, and believed that they were permanent reforms and improvements made possible by a mixed economy of controlled capitalism. It was not suspected that the purveyors of pure, unadulterated capitalism had not given up and were just waiting for a time of turmoil (like the 1970's) when enough people would back an extreme rightwing economic prescription that the rich elite ruling classes who always felt entitled to rule through control of money, would rise again and gut the systems created to smooth off the rough edges of capitalism. And, here we are!