ReeferMadness

Terrorism is a political term forced into legal language. The intent is clearly to demonize enemies. Killings done by Muslims, left wing groups and guerilla organizations are almost always branded terrorism. Killings done by right wing groups are rarely characterized as such. And people talk about killing for political reasons vs killing because the perpetrator is mentally unstable. As if the two are mutually exclusive. The latest case in point is the Lafayette shootings. the LA times described the shooter as such: In other words, he had the same basic dislikes as many of the people on this forum. He's also a poster child for everything that is wrong with US gun laws (which the Harperites would like to have here). But he's not Muslim or a leftist so he won't be branded a terrorist.

Huh. You're not a fan of their closed system of information or tight leash on their members. Of what aspects of Conservative practise are you a fan? Their complete disregard for election laws? Their use of public funds for blatantly partisan advertising and promotion? Their muzzling of independent scientific thought? Their politicization of non-partisan institutions including the Governor General, Elections Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Office and the military? Their focus on wedge issue and dog whistle politics? Their obsession with natural resource industries which has set back economic development in this country by decades?

What a religious, fundamentalist point of view. And like most religious points of view, it's complete and utter horsesh*t. Most of the basic research that has been done over the ages has been funded by organizations or people who never expected to turn a profit, universities, governments, philanthropists. And if you think of the great minds to whom we owe the new ideas that grew into technology, most of them were not billionaire industrialists in their times. In fact, I know Einstein was a dedicated socialist and world federalist. Utter hogwash. Do you even think about the nonsense your write? A stilted and obviously biased viewpoint. Every technology has good and bad applications. There's a word for people who want more caution exercised to ensure the good outweighs the bad: it's called wisdom. Try it.

Well, you make it sound so easy but you weren't there.

With all due respect to McLuhan, or at least your interpretation of McLuhan.... we built it, we can control it. It just takes will.

So that's what it's down to. This bunch that rode into town on a promise to clean up Ottawa are now just team A as opposed to team B? It's worse than that and you know it. Harper and his cronies have dragged politics to a whole new low in this country. Maybe you should check the video clip of del Mastro in leg irons for a glimpse of what your "A team" looks like.

Shhh!!! The faithful need to believe that Harper is the chosen one who will deliver them from government malfeasance.

I've deleted the part of your post that is blithering nonsense and am focusing on the part that is just too simple to be real. I suppose, to be fair, evaluating your specious statement has to depend on the definition of "rich". If you mean billionaires, then perhaps TFSA's don't mean much. I'm sure their accountants still maximize the hell out of them, though. However, deliberately or not, the Harperites have created a ticking political time bomb with TFSA's. People who can afford to maximize their contributions and sit on them for an extended period of time will one day be living completely outside of the income tax system. When this happens, it will not sit well with people with low incomes who are paying taxes on them and there will be demands to do something. I can remember a similar situation in years gone past and the result was the alternative minimum tax.

Hope you're not in sales, buddy. You seem to have no idea about human nature.

You're missing the point. First of all, what you say isn't true. There is a lot of value in copying and disseminating existing information. That's why we have schools. Second, unlike land (which is immutable) and traditional factories (which can be copied but only at capital cost), information is easy to copy and hard to contain.

True dat. Technology won't save us from ourselves. We need to be in control of it. And in control of the people who would be careless with it.

Your link would be very impressive if it in any way addressed the point I was making. Stop wasting my time with this nonsense. And on a side note, RBC's contention that the housing market is OK is a combination of wishful thinking and self-serving propaganda. Like other institutions, RBC would like to avoid a housing collapse and one way to do that is to tell people there won't be one. Whether there will be or not nobody can predict. But Canada's housing prices (in most cities, not just TO and Vancouver) can be sustained only by protracted historically low interest rates. The housing market is precarious, like a house of cards. The best case (for current owners and anyone with a significant stake in today's economy) is a prolonged period of real price declines (the so-called soft landing). The worst case is a panic as or both of the two over-inflated cities suffers a collapse and the accompanying landslide takes out much of the rest of Canada. The combined populations of metropolitan Toronto and Vancouver is right around 8 million people - a pretty significant portion of Canada. I don't agree with everything he said but I think he raises some interesting ideas. However, I don't think you understand what he's saying. Like all religious fanatics, capitalist fundamentalists resist hearing anything that will challenge their deeply held rigid views. First to address your ludicrous contention about market efficiency. I laugh out loud whenever the apostles of capitalism tell me how omniscient and wise markets are when I turn and watch actual prices weave and sway around like a drunk in a hurricane. The "democratization" of the markets has simply made things worse as millions of uninformed investors pour money into the biggest casinos in history - the stock markets. And the profits are largely scooped off the top by people possessing inside information. So it is. So it's always been. But I don't think that's what he meant. As time goes on, more and more of the value of a company is determined by its information. But information as an asset is ridiculously hard to contain. You can patent products and processes but you can't patent data or ideas. Once they leak out, someone else can reverse engineer what you've done and build something better.

Obviously, the answer is that the policies are decided by the few that are benefiting from the growth.

I'm sure it's so much easier to construct an argument when you make up a straw dog rather than debating what I actually said.

Nice press typical press clipping from neoliberal apologists. If only it were true. Large segments of society are worse off today than they were in the 70's, when it only took a single middle class income to afford a house. Again with the familiar neoliberal claptrap. You didn't even look at the link did you? Admit it.

I stumbled upon this insightful analytic book review discussing the changing foundations of economics. Although the conclusion (The end of Capitalism) is premature and optimistic, many of the ideas are thought provoking and intriguing. Over the centuries, the primary foundations of wealth have gradually morphed from land to factories to information. Land is immutable (at least within a human lifetime), traditional factories are hugely capital intensive but information, once produced, has a marginal cost approaching zero. Yesterday's promise of technology was that everyone would be better off, would work less and machines would take over the drudgery of unrewarding tasks. What has happened instead is that technology has been used to lower real wages and create even less rewarding work. The new, transnational elite have no national allegiance while nationalism is used as a distraction so that the new poor won't notice they are worse off than their parents. There is a gradual convergence of the middle class in wealthy countries and the emerging middle class in poor countries. The traditional left is still caught up in old fight over the spoils of the capitalist system based on factories; a fight that it lost long ago. Witness the NDP in Canada steadily abandoning old positions as it becomes more "business friendly" and more electable. Like the pigs in Animal Farm, where the NDP has gained control, its policies have been scarcely distinguishable from the other two parties. In fact, political parties suffer from exactly the same failing as corporations. The long term visions may exist and idealistic ideas might flourish beneath the surface but they come a poor second to the here and now. Like Corporations focus on the next quarter, political parties focus on the next election. We need institutions that will help guide us through the coming revolution. Universities have been defunded, corporatized and ignored to the point where they are largely irrelevant. Think tanks are extensions of yesterday's political movements and today's political parties. And the parties themselves are caricatures of themselves.

Back to the OP, Chomsky is the conscience of the USA. Everyone with a smidgeon of curiosity, intelligence and knowledge can see he is absolutely right in his analysis of how the country is abused its gargantuan military to impose terms on less powerful countries, all the while, mouthing platitudes of democracy, freedom and human rights. The USA is certainly by no means alone in this behavior; but it is by far the worst culprit in the post WWII world. The American contribution to the world of moral outlook is a lack of regard for social justice. It's both a result and a cause of their lack of investment in the two great social equalizers, public health care and public education. So, American society regards public conscience as a quaint notion and dismiss it, much as they mostly dismiss Chomsky. Canada is conflicted, being influenced by America, Europe and its own traditions. In the post-Regan era, American influence has won out, birthing Harperism and the accompanying destructive forces that will take decades to unwind.

True dat.

Just like health care in the US.

yeah, I spent my time unsupervised too. But that was a loonnnnggg time ago. Times have changes.

That's your story. Time will tell.

I wouldn't surprised to learn that she has as many stories to tell about the CPC as they have about her. Might be some mutually assured destruction that keeps all of the dirty stories from coming out.

Another rat runs from the nest. The more I see of Trudeau in action, the more disillusioned I become. The only thing that buoys my spirits is we have nowhere to go but up. Even if Trudeau turns out to be a backroom-dealing, low-integrity, flip-flopping airhead, he would still be so far above Harper that I would be relieved to see him as PM.

Of course they can't express concerns in a rational, meaningful way. Know why? Because nobody knows what the hell CSIS is doing. Why? Because there is no meaningful oversight!!! All we do see is every time we turn around, the law and order freaks, most of whom normally espouse smaller and less intrusive government, are ratcheting up the invasive and intrusive powers of CSIS and the police. Are these powers being used responsibly? Are they even effective? Who knows - there's no meaningful oversight!!! So, in answer to the question posed in the original post, I've lost my basic right to privacy to our very own version of the secret police. And it's all been over a handful of deranged or mentally ill people that the government won't care for. Because we need smaller and less intrusive government. Except when it comes to espionage.

the rats are abandoning the ship. emphasis on rats.