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Saturday April 12,
2008
Let them eat potatoes
Can you imagine working hard all your life and then not being able to
buy the basics of the diet that sustains you?
Here's
an article that contains everything you need to know to
understand what's wrong with our world. It's one of those
rarities from the Associated Press that isn't entirely a
whitewash or disinformation of some sort.
A
confluence of problems are driving up prices. They include soaring
petroleum prices, which increase the cost of fertilizers, transport and
food processing; rising demand for meat and dairy in China and India,
resulting in increased costs for grain, used for cattle feed; and the
ever-rising demand for raw materials to make biofuels.
Yes, it talks
about
growing population, and yes it beats the "enemy" drum by blaming only
China and India for the demand for meat and dairy when the United
States is, and has been for a long time, the biggest carnivor on
earth. But the western countries are also the biggest oil users,
and
the main culprit of the food crisis is our absolute dependence on this
finite commodity.
(And if CO2 really is a problem, then look no further than your local
burger outlet and those "Got Milk?" ads on TV. Cattle not only
require
large amounts of grain, they require space that was once a forest, not
to mention that their feces pollute the local water supply.)
At the same time that a lot of people have prospered from the
manufacture
and sale of products - most of them non-essential - created by
oil-driven industrialization, a far greater number of other people have
become poorer and poorer, and now as agriculture for food takes second
place to agriculture for biofuels, even their simple, meagre diet is
being taken from them.
Much concern will be shown by the "authorities" and many stop-gap
measures will be seen to be taken, but even though there is plenty of
money for war, money for food aid will always be in short supply:
As
of
December, 37 countries faced food crises, and 20 had imposed some sort
of food-price controls. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it's facing
a $500 million shortfall in funding this year to feed 89 million needy
people.
That's because
the
overall goal is population reduction, and this will be accomplished not
only by our oil wars but by a combination of other unnatural disasters.
And this is why fascism is coming to a government near you.
Because
food prices are not just going to rise in what we euphemize as
"developing" countries, they are already showing in the cost to run
your vehicles, and they are coming to your local supermarket. Our
governments are already preparing to deal with the public outcry in the
only way their limited imaginations will allow - through repression and
violence - as we witnessed at
Montebello.
Both the US and Canada, though publicly critical of dictatorship, are
operating under a one-party system, a coalition of the major
parties.
If you don't like what the Harper government is doing, voting for Dion
will not correct the situation.
What will correct it is massive non-compliance with the system, but how
does one wake up the people to their plight?
As Marjorie Robertson of Ottawa writes in part*:
Why
does
our collective heart not convulse, our belly knot at the bellicose new
quisling Canada—fiercely proud lackey, dupe extraordinaire?
Time to consult Orwell, Kafka, and Cicero Marcus Tullius to recall what
enables the soul of a nation to rot and the pillars of the city to be
undermined. Time to re-read the essay by Milton Mayer “They
Thought
They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45”.
*From a letter to the Globe and Mail
which may or may not be published.
For your
convenience, here is a critical excerpt from a
larger excerpt of Mayer's essay describing how the Nazi regime
was able to gain its foothold:
The
world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were
born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring,
the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the
concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never
noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with
the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and
the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when
everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a
system which rules without responsibility even to God.
The current
US/Canada system, led by men
who end their speeches with "God bless" and who claim to be pro-life,
does not hesitate to act on the premise that population reduction is
the answer to all of our problems. No ovens are needed when
earthquakes, floods, famines, and acts of terrorism can be manufactured.
Our Prime Minister's image is deliberately softened by his public
sympathy for homeless kittens at the same time that he wants to put
homeless humans in privatized prisons.
His racism is masked by his making Wajid Khan
special advisor for the Middle East and Afghanistan and eventually
luring him across the floor from Liberal to Conservative, not that
there's much difference between them.
Khan is notable to some of us for his having reported
fellow Muslim Qayyum Jamal to the police for his negative views on
the war in Afghanistan, after which Jamal was arrested in a "terrorism"
raid.
Does that sound like Nazi Germany to you? It sure does to me.
The Bush administration's racism has been masked by the prominent
presence of Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, the "house
negroes" that Malcom X referred to (Google Video) . But look
at how so many poor Afro-Americans were weeded out of New Orleans:
A
20-Point Plan To Destroy Black New Orleans (NAM) ... it
is clear that the lethargic and inept emergency response after
Hurricane Katrina was a disaster that overshadowed the deadly storm
itself. Yet, there is a "second disaster" in the making - driven by
racism, classism, elitism, paternalism and old-fashioned greed.
It's a lovely
place now, and to prove it the SPP summit is being
held there this month.
Time once
again to review the 14 points of US
fascism and think about how Canada is fast becoming not a country
but a US satellite at best, and the 51st state at worst.
We are going to see increasing risks for the poor, the elderly,
non-citizens, homosexuals, the pettiest of criminals, and of course
dissidents of all kinds. Do we have gypsies? If so, they are
included. Do we have mentally challenged persons? Yes we
do, and they
are at great risk, especially those who are already institutionalized.
Also to be suspected are disease scares and their "prevention".
The burden of responsibiity for everything that ails Earth is being
placed not on the corporations whose greed has created havoc but on the
middle wage earner who is at once expected to consume and yet to cut
back on consumption - how? By buying more expensive lightbulbs,
paying
more for everything, and especially by going into debt to feed the
banking systems.
As the man in Bangladesh said in reply to a senior official's comment
that the people who can't find rice should eat potatoes:
"It's
better his family starts first, then we can think if we will change our
habit of eating rice"
That's the
spirit! But
do Canadians have to hit rock bottom before they realize how they have
complied with and been duped by our increasingly non-democratic system
of government?
Related: Am I a person of interest? (RustyNode)
================
Join the
Caravan to End Canadian Involvement in
Torture, Toronto-Ottawa, May 1-9. More
info
yayacanada
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