Reflections on the future and elections

One election won't fix the looming crisis. What we need to do is see how the worship of power has got us to this point where people are actually willing to vote for governments that erode our hard earned human rights and democratic sensibilities.

We are organized by centralized power (herein referred to as CP) who have the means to buy media and government and then spin or omit the facts as they please, to their advantage. The strategy used is divide and conquer - set up false enemies or sensationalize distant threats.  Because we feel powerless we love to look for those who have less power - minorities, women, Asians, Africans, gay, lesbian, transgender, those with obvious disabilities and the poor.  These are the pool of punishables, so that whenever the government or big business is pulled up on bad choices and destructive outcomes - they can pull out, quick as a gun, an issue that blames one or two women who want to wear a niqab at a citizenship ceremony.

The CP keep giving us scape goats but not for our own good - to deflect their abuse of power. We do not need scape goats. We have evolved beyond that time when our sins were laid upon the rear of a sheep and sent off into the wilderness carrying all our fears.

According to scholars and scientists we have the capacity to turn our economy on renewable clean energy, the knowledge to create a just society, to house the homeless, to feed the hungry - but the reason we haven't is not because we can't.

Imagine that it goes deeper, right to the core of what we call our civilization and that no one outside of ourselves can effect real change, that our civilization, our governments are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead and that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness…. Charles Bowden 1945-2014.

Imagine that the majority of voters know better than to vote for the handmaidens of unregulated industry and they know their future depends on a minority who vote for a manipulative system, because they are afraid to look too close to the way it works.

Imagine that the resistance to CP causes that majority to re-create their own communities based on action, justice and peace, and that they are imprisoned, tortured and murdered, yet the guilty are not brought to trial.

Imagine that business goes on as usual and the masses become more afraid and more desperate to avoid seeing the world as it is, and that more of the innocent are harmed, starved and murdered, and that we lose our capacity to discuss ideas, to challenge injustice. Imagine that we forget what equality, freedom and democracy was, and we forget our culture.

Imagine that the world is so unsafe we lock ourselves up in our living rooms and watch the world from a 27 inch screen for that is the only way we dare participate in our society.

Imagine that this is not just a future possibility but what is happening and has happened all over the world. That the CP has manufactured false societies with false issues and false threats.  Then you get a picture of what is to blame for the conditions of war, poverty, domestic violence, climate change.

Imagine that you have learned there is no point to beheading the aristocracy, the ruling elite - as in the French Revolution - because you know that whoever takes over from them will institute the same system. Imagine that you and I finally get it!  The work and struggle of creating social justice is not just a matter of fairness it is a matter of mental health which is basic to the survival of our species.

Then we'll understand what the price of freedom really means, and what it is for us to do.

The Leap Manifesto

This post is uploaded from The Leap Manifesto - put together by a group of Canadians including David Suzuki and Naomi Klein, to address the looming crisis of environmental and social breakdown.


Sign the Leap Manifesto:

"The leap must begin by respecting the inherent rights and title of the original caretakers of this land, starting by fully implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The latest research shows we could get 100% of our electricity from renewable resources within two decades; by 2050 we could have a 100% clean economy. We demand that this shift begin now.

No new infrastructure projects that lock us into increased extraction decades into the future. The new iron law of energy development must be: if you wouldn’t want it in your backyard, then it doesn’t belong in anyone’s backyard.The time for energy democracy has come: wherever possible, communities should collectively control new clean energy systems.

Indigenous Peoples and others on the frontlines of polluting industrial activity should be first to receive public support for their own clean energy projects.We want a universal program to build and retrofit energy efficient housing, ensuring that the lowest income communities will benefit first.

We want high-speed rail powered by just renewables and affordable public transit to unite every community in this country – in place of more cars, pipelines and exploding trains that endanger and divide us.

We want training and resources for workers in carbon-intensive jobs, ensuring they are fully able to participate in the clean energy economy.

We need to invest in our decaying public infrastructure so that it can withstand increasingly frequent extreme weather events.We must develop a more localized and ecologically-based agricultural system to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, absorb shocks in the global supply – and produce healthier and more affordable food for everyone.

We call for an end to all trade deals that interfere with our attempts to rebuild local economies, regulate corporations and stop damaging extractive projects.

We demand immigration status and full protection for all workers. Canadians can begin to rebalance the scales of climate justice by welcoming refugees and migrants seeking safety and a better life.

We must expand those sectors that are already low-carbon: caregiving, teaching, social work, the arts and public-interest media.

A national childcare program is long past due.Since so much of the labour of caretaking – whether of people or the planet – is currently unpaid and often performed by women, we call for a vigorous debate about the introduction of a universal basic annual income.

We declare that “austerity” is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a threat to life on earth. The money we need to pay for this great transformation is available — we just need the right policies to release it. An end to fossil fuel subsidies. Financial transaction taxes. Increased resource royalties.
Higher income taxes on corporations and wealthy people. A progressive carbon tax. Cuts to military spending.

We must work swiftly towards a system in which every vote counts and corporate money is removed from political campaigns.


This transformation is our sacred duty to those this country harmed in the past, to those suffering needlessly in the present, and to all who have a right to a bright and safe future.
Now is the time for boldness.
Now is the time to leap."

It is incumbent upon us to care about the world because we can

Sheila Haniszewska - on UN resolution condemning "glorification of Nazism"

Memorial to the Jews who perished at the end of WWII*

In November 2014, the Harper Conservative government, along with the USA and Ukraine, voted against a United Nations resolution that condemned the “glorification of Nazism”. This resolution also called for the condemnation of “other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” It also asked member nations to take legislative measures in order to stop Holocaust denial.

115 countries supported the resolution, 55 abstained. We were one of the three countries who did not support this.

Why isn't this more widely known? This is scandalous. What does this unwillingness to condemn Nazism say about the Harper government? What does it say about Canada? Does this represent our values? Do people need to be reminded what Nazism is? Why did Canada vote this way? 

I think this issue needs to be raised as soon as possible with our current government.

We have the Anti- Terrorism Act, just passed this spring, and yet we are willing to turn a blind eye to Nazis? This is especially significant with the rise of ultra -right forces in many European countries and particularly Ukraine, where the United States and Canada are providing military and other support.

It needs to be an election issue.

(After the Nazi's left Budapest the Arrow Cross party rounded up the remaining Jews, marched them to the river, ordered them to take off their shoes and jump in the river.)

The Leap Manifesto

"We could live in a country powered entirely by truly just renewable energy, woven together by accessible public transit, in which the jobs and opportunities of this transition are designed to systematically eliminate racial and gender inequality. Caring for one another and caring for the planet could be the economy’s fastest growing sectors. Many more people could have higher wage jobs with fewer work hours, leaving us ample time to enjoy our loved ones and flourish in our communities.

We know that the time for this great transition is short. Climate scientists have told us that this is the decade to take decisive action to prevent catastrophic global warming. That means small steps will no longer get us where we need to go." The Leap Manifesto

Sign The Leap Manifesto

Requiem for a Nation (reposted)

This post was first published in May 2011 just after the Federal Election. I re-blog to revisit my thoughts during that time, as the 2015 elections approach and the stakes seem much higher. The world has become even more barbaric and suffering globally and nationally more evident. 

In spite of all the efforts of good people to inform the public, 40 % of voters chose the party that promised to deplete  the programs that make us rich with a quality of life such as good education, health care, social services to help those at risk, programs that promote civic engagement.  

Over the last thirty years we have seen how the natural wealth and beauty of this country have been eroded in the name of the "economy", and we have watched our leaders become vague on policy in exchange for populist slogans. The air waves are filled with entertainments where discourse used to be. And we have seen how nations have scuttled out of environmental stewardship.

Politics has become another new product. It can't be complicated with real issues that will make voters seem uninformed. It musn't make them feel stressed or pressured. It must be easy, make them feel superior, that their prejudices are right and their intuitions on track. The campaign must be shiny and slippery. 

Sure there have been other voices alerting us to the danger ahead, giving us statistics, calling out errors made by the government, and even though they didn't get much in mainstream coverage they got the majority of votes. But not enough for our first past the post system.

Canadians did not win, the military industrial complex did. That vast and resounding voice that comes through hundreds of TV's and most corporate sponsored newspapers, that huge global propaganda machine, that ideology that we must worship profit instead of people, was the great winner tonight. And that isn't hard because sub-consciously we all sense where power is invested and it's much safer to get behind the bully rather than confront him.

Hidden behind the pre-packaged images and formatted perceptions, the real world will continue to unravel. There will be more unemployment, more homelessness, more domestic violence. Beyond the facade of morality, abortions will be illegal, purportedly to save the unborn who will be left to starve once they are born. Our youth will be sent to war in countries they have never heard of for reasons they'll never know. Prisons will be filled with conscientious objectors tortured by the criminals in charge. And the earth with its inhabitants will die a slow death through poisoning.

This may sound too far fetched, but consider the difference thirty years has made in our expectations of what a functioning democracy means. A good standard of living where we thought hard work and education would pay off, where we expected our government and corporations, guided by reason and knowledge, worked for the people. Remember when we thought we lived in a fair and progressive country full of people who had risen above prejudice and racism?

What was it that changed? People or the theatre of  information we are bombarded with?  What instruments and strategies have been at play to make us believe people (and when we say people we mean other) have become stupid? 

Absolute power corrupts absolutely and we are no longer in a friendly beautiful place, but a place that has been co-opted, extracted, re-interpreted by power interests that feed us what they want us to feel.

What has happened is that power has been centralized and life is merely its meat. What has happened is we do not see the ways we are manipulated because we can't see the strategies used against us.

Before we can win back democracy we must examine and interrogate this power that we have enabled, that has become the monster. To believe in our own power to change the world for the better is a good start.

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING | Int'l Trailer