Campaign season is here in America, Canada and Britain. All three countries’ governments have held
their citizens hostage slashing social programs, privatizing essential
government functions, selling off publicly owned resources, and opening
pristine protected lands to polluters endangering the health, safety and
welfare of their citizenry. All this has
been done in the name of “free market capitalism.”
An outsider might look at these three countries and wonder “how
do those horrific leaders and their minions continue to be reelected?” Well, the two-party electoral system in these
countries have jury rigged the nominating process to such a degree that the
only choices the voters have are the ones that two-parties have agreed upon
before the first vote is cast.
The two party system was created through a media monopoly enabled
by deregulation of the banking and media industry by the two parties. These three countries that are supposed to be
the bastions of democracy have morphed into a fascist trifecta of authoritarian
and nationalistic right-wing rule promoting terrorism across the globe.
The complete control over the electoral systems by the two
parties and their corporate masters in banking and media have ensured a never
ending duopoly. That is, until now. The winds of change are in the air, the
darkness has lifted and here comes the sun.
In America the two parties are flummoxed by their loss of
control over the electoral process even though the Murdoch owned media has
complete control of the airwaves. Donald
Trump poses a great threat to the status quo.
By announcing he was running for president as a Republican, Trump has
entered the belly of the beast and is reinventing the carefully crafted
rightwing party.
The media, in spite of launching attacks that have been
effective against previous candidates that dared to stray from the rabid right
wing plantation, have been unable to put even the slightest chink in the
Donald’s armor. From New York Times:
Excerpt:
Donald Trump Gets Rock Star Greeting in Iowa
AMES, Iowa — It probably made sense
on paper: invite presidential candidates to visit the Iowa Republican Party’s
tent in the parking lot before the big Iowa vs. Iowa State football game on
Saturday.
What planners did not anticipate
was the portable mob scene that characterizes the candidacy of Donald J. Trump.
Arriving more than an hour late,
Mr. Trump offered a speech of less than a minute on the state party’s stage.
But that was beside the point, as star-struck supporters greeted him like a
stadium rocker during a sprawling tailgate party before kickoff….
Three other Republican candidates
not named Trump also glad-handed and posed for selfies among the tailgating
football fans before the game. But their receptions were of a different order.
Rarely has the contrast between a conventional politician and the celebrity
candidacy of Mr. Trump seemed clearer.
Many Iowa Republicans expected Mr.
Trump’s lead in the primary race to be fleeting. On Friday night, a seasoned
party activist compared him to “the bad boy you date over the summer before
returning to college.”
Instead, Mr. Trump continues to
dominate Iowa polls as summer turns to fall. A Quinnipiac University poll of
Iowa last week showed he is the first
choice of all age groups of Republicans, including young people, who
predominated outside Jack Trice Stadium, where the Iowa State Cyclones hosted
the Iowa Hawkeyes.
“We’re killing everybody in the
polls,” Mr. Trump said in brief remarks from the stage. He wore a new “Make America Great Again” hat, this one in camouflage.
He wished people luck with
whichever team they supported, stepped down and began the walk back to his
S.U.V., a knot of students and others pressing close.
Though he said nothing about the issues of the day, the audience seemed
satisfied. “It was pretty cool; we got to see him,” said Braiden Loreno, a
sophomore. “I’m definitely voting for him.”
Yep the Republican Party is flummoxed, they thought the
voters would return to the plantation after a “summer fling” with the “bad boy,
the Donald.” The parties have made it
impossible for anyone to run as a third party candidate by refusing to allow
them into debates, changing the qualification rules every time someone meets
their current threshold and denying them a place on the ballot in places like
South Carolina. Now the Donald has taken
their oppressive rules and shoved them down their throats by running as a
Republican. The other candidates have
absolutely no chance, the Donald has already won.
On the Democrats side the media has dutifully launched every
attack against Hillary Clinton in their slanderous, libelous playbook. Rupert Murdoch’s empire has labeled Hillary
as a liar, a treasonous murderer, and an unlikeable, unelectable, shrew. The media includes non-candidate Joe Biden in
the polls to draw Hillary’s numbers down then blares the news that her
popularity is tanking due to nonstop attacks in the media.
At the same time Senator Bernie Sanders’ socialist message
of increasing Social Security benefits, breaking up too big to fail banks, prosecuting
criminal bankers and ending the endless empire of war. While the Democratic Party feigns support for
Sanders, they are floating various Democrats like John Kerry or Joe Biden to
run against Sanders should the party’s attempts to knock Hillary out of the
running are successful. From TheGuardian:
Excerpt:
“Press 1 for revolution,” urge the
hosts of a teleconference call for 17,000 union activists as they seek to sign
up more volunteers for a leftwing insurgency.
Pundits scoff at their naivety, but opinion polls show the leader
of this revolution – a grouchy socialist
with unkempt white hair and a disdain for media niceties – pulling ahead of
more-polished establishment rivals in the race to lead his party.
This grizzled veteran is proving a surprise hit on university campuses
and social media, blending old-fashioned rallies with an online buzz that compensates for his lack of support from the party machinery.
Such a scenario might seem little
more than a fantasy in an era of focus groups and political triangulation, but the remarkable fact is that this is
the situation currently faced by parties on both sides of the Atlantic, in two countries with the most avowedly
capitalist economies on the planet.
Indeed, “the situation currently faced by parties on both sides
of the Atlantic” the two countries that have “the most avowedly capitalist
economies on the planet” have lost control over the electoral process.
In Britain, after the dubious reelection of David Cameron in
what appears to be a sham election, the people took to the streets. From ABC News:
Excerpt:
A protest has erupted in central
London against the re-election of Britain's Conservative prime minister David
Cameron, with demonstrators throwing bottles, cans and smoke bombs at riot
police.
Scuffles broke out when the anti-austerity demonstrators, blaring
hooters, banging pots and chanting obscenities, confronted lines of police
outside the gate leading to the prime minister's Downing Street residence. At
one point a bicycle was hurled at police….
"We are here because we've seen
bankers get off scot-free while the working people are the only people who've
been punished under the rabid schemes of austerity," he said.
Mr Cameron, whose government has enacted tough spending cuts to bring
down the budget deficit and promised more to come, won a second five-year
term in Thursday's election with an outright majority in parliament.
You know the vote was rigged when Cameron is reelected on a
platform to destroy the lives of working people. So since Cameron’s reelection has he reached
out to the working class? Has Cameron
heard the pained cries of the people? From
The Independent:
Excerpt:
David Cameron's first
100 days: 10 of the worst measures introduced by the Government so far
Today marks 100 days since David Cameron recorded a
shock victory at the general election to deliver the first
majority Conservative government in 18 years…
…unshackled from the chains of coalition government, Mr
Cameron and his Tory colleagues have spared little time in delivering on their
radical agenda.
With the turmoil and chaos of the Labour party conveniently
providing cover, the Government has
quietly pressed ahead with deeply unpopular measures and further cuts to public services. Here are 10 of
the worst measures the Tories have delivered so far.
1.
Child poverty target scrapped
2.
Cut in working tax credits
At the same time as scrapping child poverty
targets the Government announced that families
with more than two children will not receive tax credits or housing benefit
for their third or subsequent children.
3.
Scrapped the Green Deal
The Government has scrapped its flagship
Green Deal that was hailed just two years ago by ministers as signalling a
“revolution” in transforming Britain’s typically energy inefficient housing
stock.
4.
Cut benefits for asylum seekers
Benefits for thousands of asylum
seekers have been cut after a shake-up by the Home Office, including a £16
weekly cut in the cash allocated for looking after a child
5.
Scrapped maintenance grants for students
George Osborne announced he was
scrapping maintenance grants for students from low income families and replacing them with loans that will
drag poorer students into even more debt.
6.
Higher tuition fees
The Chancellor has also given universities
the power to raise tuition fees even
further, having already increased them
three-fold to their record level of £9,000 under the Coalition
7.
Trade union clampdown
Plans for strict new laws on strike action were announced by the Government in July. They
include proposals to ban strikes by key
public sector workers unless they are supported by at least 40 per cent of
all of those eligible to vote.
8.
Halting railway improvements
The
Government has postponed a number of railway infrastructure modernisation
schemes that were crucial for George Osborne’s bid to boost
northern cities as part of his Northern Powerhouse plan.
9.
Clampdown on transparency
The Government
has launched a review of the Freedom of Information Act and fears that it will lead to a curb on government
transparency deepened after Jack Straw, an outspoken critic of the FOI Act, was
appointed to head the review.
10. Lowering
the benefit cap
The Tories have delivered on their
manifesto pledge to lower the benefit cap further, down to £20,000 for
claimants outside London and £23,000 in the capital.
If anyone believes that smarmy, privileged little asshole
Cameron was reelected by the people they are breathtakingly stupid. Oh, and by the way those e-mails of Hillary
Clinton that supposedly contained classified information had this to say about
Cameron. From The Telegraph:
Excerpt:
Among the more than 7,000 pages released
this week were messages in which Mrs Clinton received a stream of warnings
about senior Conservative party figures in the days after they took power in
the 2010 election.
Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime
friend of Mrs Clinton's and a Labour ally, told the then-US secretary of state
to be wary of David Cameron's new government.
"On economic policy, the UK is
no partner and no bridge to Europe," Mr Blumenthal wrote six weeks after
the British election.
Mr Blumenthal also cautioned Mrs
Clinton not to trust William Hague, then foreign secretary, saying he was
"deeply anti-European and will be disingenuous with you".
Ha, ha ha. No wonder
Rupert Murdoch’s media is waging an all-out libelous war against Hillary
Clinton, she’s picking on Rupert’s lapdog Cameron. But hang on Britain, help is on the way. You did it, you actually managed to defy the
corrupt elect electoral system and elect a real warrior in Jeremy Corbyn. From The Guardian
Excerpt:
Blairism is dead and buried. Jeremy Corbyn is the future
Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour
leader with a mandate which dwarfs that given to Tony Blair 21 years ago is the
most extraordinary event in the 45 years I have been a party member. To say it
is a victory for hope may sound trite and cliched, but it is really the only
explanation for what has occurred. This sweeping victory in all parts of the
Labour electorate – including the full party members – is, I believe, three
parts optimism and one part repudiation of the “New Labour” past….
Mainstream politics has for a
generation been conducted in terms of a managerial minimalism within tightly
drawn parameters. It has become almost
democratically impermissible to advance ideas that buck the free-market,
deregulation, privatisation and austerity consensus…
The Tories are out to remake politics for good by dismantling the Labour movement. Their
trade union bill, to be debated tomorrow, aims to make strikes impossible, reduce
trade unions through a byzantine system of regulations to some sort of
industrial advisory bodies and marginalise
our involvement in politics, starving the official opposition of funds as
they do so.
They are so intent on this agenda that the most basic rights,
including free speech and freedom of association, are imperilled.
Everything the Tories can do to rig the political system – more appointed peers, fewer
elected MPs, constituencies redrawn on the basis of an electoral register
missing millions of the young and the poorest – will be attempted.
You betch yer ass they are going to try everything to
destroy any gains for working people and to keep them from voting, that’s what
they do.
And that brings me to Canada our neighbors to the North that
have been held hostage since the 1970’s by a repressive rightwing government
willing to destroy their own country to serve their corporate benefactors. Stephen Harper's reelection campaign saw the
warning shot across the bow in May when the socialist party had a big win in
Alberta, Canada. From New York Times:
Excerpt:
Leftist Party’s Win in Alberta May Affect Future of Oil Sands
OTTAWA — With an economy dominated by the oil industry and a conservative,
free-market political tradition, Alberta has long been cast as the Texas of
Canada. But on Tuesday, not only did the province’s
voters put the Progressive Conservative Party out of power after 43 years,
they elected a government from the far left of Canada’s mainstream political
spectrum.
The unexpected rise of the New Democratic Party, which was partly
founded by labor unions, may have implications for Alberta’s oil sands, which, many critics say, enjoyed a light
regulatory touch under Conservative governments. And with a federal
election coming this year, the result will not be welcomed by Prime Minister
Stephen Harper, a Conservative whose party’s power base is in Alberta, along
with his own parliamentary constituency….
The collapse of Alberta’s Conservatives, who in
December marked the longest time in
power for a single party in any Canadian province, may partly reflect
changing demographics within a province whose settlers, in the early 20th
century, included large numbers of Americans.
Yes, a seismic shift took place in Alberta this year and now
Stephen Harper has set in motion an early election season hoping to stem the
movement. Harper’s tenure as Prime
Minister has been disastrous for Canada.
From IPolitics:
Excerpt:
How Harper killed medicare — and got away with it
The Harper government’s anti-democratic
actions have been so numerous, it’s easy to lose track of them….
The essence of the Harper makeover of Canada has been the deep
slashing of taxes, putting serious constraints on what government is able to
provide in public programs and services.
Previous Liberal governments had
started down this path already, but Harper has taken the aversion to taxes to
new heights, turning it into something like a cult…
Under Harper, taxes as a percentage of the economy are at their lowest
level in 70 years. But 70 years ago, governments weren’t providing the
extensive public benefits and services — in
areas like health care, education, pensions, public transit — that we want
and expect today.
Harper has accomplished his deeper
agenda: to destroy our sense that we can do things collectively as a nation …
besides fight wars, patrol the Arctic, punish criminals and watch hockey.
As a result of Harper’s cuts to the
GST, personal and corporate taxes, Ottawa now collects about $45 billion less
revenue per year. No wonder we’re told
we can’t afford anything but austerity….
Take public health care, typically at the top of the list of public programs that Canadians deeply
value. All seems pretty quiet on the health care front, currently presided
over by Rona Ambrose, who previously held other portfolios of little interest to the Harper Conservatives, like the
environment, labour and women.
Harper has quietly put in place the mechanism for deep cuts to federal
support for public health care. There was, of course, no proclamation
pointing that out. His government simply announced, just before Christmas in
2011, that there would be no negotiations to renew the expiring health accord
with the provinces.
Instead, it unilaterally imposed a new formula — which will cut federal support for health care by an
estimated $36 billion over the next decade, leaving the cash-strapped
provinces scrambling to cover costs, with
private, profit-seeking health entrepreneurs buzzing at their doorsteps.
Yet the media treated this hugely
significant change as a dull story about federal-provincial spending formulas,
and largely buried it in the rush of year-end media trivia. It has received
little attention since.
As a result, few Canadians seem to
realize that, as things stand, our
medicare system — an institution cherished by millions — faces serious spending
cuts starting in 2017.
At that point, we’ll be told we can
no longer afford a public health care system. What we won’t be told is that the
revenue to pay for a public health care system has been spent already — in tax
cuts.
Yes, Stephen Harper’s rightwing slashing of public
healthcare system and his austerity programs effects won’t fully take place
until 2017 when it will be replaced with a for-profit system like that in
America. So Harper is facing a dilemma
in his reelection bid. So what does he
do? Why, he brings in the same election
fixers that returned Cameron to power in a sham election in Britain.
From MacCleans:
Excerpt:
For campaign magic, Harper turns to a wizard from Oz
Australian campaign whiz Lynton Crosby is coming to Canada to help the
Conservatives.
Oh, this should be good.
Go on…
Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are
reaching overseas for expert election help in a bid to regain their footing and
halt a slide in the polls, bringing in globetrotting Australian campaign doctor
Lynton Crosby.
Crosby is known as the Wizard from
Oz, and is considered one of the world’s top political strategists. He helped David Cameron retain the prime
minister’s office in Britain, and just last
month engineered victory in Sri Lanka’s election…
The Conservatives have looked
abroad for ideas in the past, but this is the first time they’ve brought in a
fixer from overseas in mid-campaign…
The 2015 campaign is, to put it mildly, not going the way the
Conservatives would like. Some polls have them in third place and on most
days reporters question Harper not about whatever policy he has announced, but
about Syrian refugees, a faltering economy or whether he still trusts his staff
or candidates.
That’s right, the 2015 Canadian campaign of Stephen Harper
isn’t going the way Conservatives would like.
Translated that means, it will be damned difficult to throw the election
if it’s not close.
And so my friends, the ABC’s of Armageddon are in denial,
their austerity programs have left their citizens sick, starving, unemployed and
devoid of hope for their future. Their
carefully crafted lies spewed out across the airwaves like sirens calling ships
to wreck on their reefs are no longer effective.
Their divide and conquer strategy is no longer working and
the people now want a more fair, more equitable government that answers to the
needs of the people rather than sacrificing their future for today’s excessive
profits for the few.
It is a new day for the ABC’s of Armageddon, the Socialists are
striking back against the bloody regime of empire and the people are welcoming
them with open arms. The dark clouds of
Conservative oppression are lifting and here comes the sun.
By Patricia Baeten
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