Bullying

Bullying in the workplace is so common and accepted that women don't stand a chance. I remember a company accountant years ago who literally screamed at me and any other young woman he thought was vulnerable every time he came to the office to do an audit. And no one, owner, manager, supervisor, did anything to stop him. He was a tyrant and he knew he could act out in this particular office. Today I would report him to the CA association but even now, I doubt they would do anything about it. Incidentally, these men would abuse any girl except management's secretaries. It was understood that they belonged to their boss and had some protection from other men--not from her boss.

There was also the common attitude that women should be grateful for the job. We were, after all, just women, of the lower order, and quite disposable. So we owed the employer, payment was due, probably in his office after he closed the door.

But, people who bully children bother me more than adults. No child should be afraid to go to school in this country and I think it's up to the adults in charge to take the responsibility to get to the source, which they are usually reluctant to do.

Thing is, all bullies are cowards. No bully would tackle anyone they thought had an atom more power than they had and they are very skilled at sniffing out the vulnerable. (Think of Ghomeshi). But something is not going well in the bully's life or he or she would not have the drive to abuse someone, perhaps thinking he can dump his problem on them and get rid of it. Of course, that will never happen.

We hear about the victim but the bully never gets exposed and goes free to do it again. If parents and principles took the initiative to track him down and try to find the source of his problem they would do more good than denying the responsibility, calling it  a right of passage, a tradition, normal, and running away themselves schools could look forward to being a safe place for kids.

It's a big problem, bigger than we are admitting, and it has been allowed to thrive and grow with each generation. One can only hope that 'this time' the earth will move and change will come.
She said.

Ghomeshi, et al.

Experts are puzzled? Go 'way! The UN declared this a pandemic a couple of years ago and it certainly wasn't news then. This is as old as our history. Almost every woman has had some kind of misogynistic experience, perhaps all if you include those who do not know what it is or, (and more likely), simply deny it out of fear of the aggressor.

It's as old as our history because experts, the 'officials,' the constabulary, the legal profession, all levels of government, are complicit by omission, by lying, denying, just doing nothing. They always have and still do--despite overwhelming evidence--turn their back probably because of the practice of men supporting other men when they are 'just having a little fun with the girls,' which is really just fear of reprisal. Or, they have a degree of this hostility themselves. How many times have you heard men speak of their wives or partners with contempt, then leerily grin? And we are all, men and women, expected to laugh heartily or frowned on, even threatened, if we don't. Someone, or several of his colleagues and bosses, must have known what Ghomeshi was doing all these years.

The likes of Ghomeshi may be an extreme case of abuse but the fundamentals are common. He uses bully tactics. He he has had a long time to find out how to sniff out the vulnerable, the women who have not had the punching experience, will be completely shocked and won't squeal on him. But, of course, we are all afraid of any violent man and the retaliation that will be even worse; we know enough about police dismissal and court-horror; and then there is the family, friends and community to deal with who might also question the validity of such accusations.
 
Ghomeshi's has a strategy to facilitate his psychosis, then he adds rock-star celebrity and every defenceless girl he meets is in danger. And, like all bullies, he is a coward. He would never approach a woman or girl who would fight back. So they don't tell and instead of trying to get his problem fixed (surely someone with his smarts must know he has one) he becomes more aggressively opportunistic until his history blows up and the first thing he does is lie and deny. 

With each gawdawful incident we hope those 'officials' will take the responsibility in their job description and make a start at cleaning up the untenable situation that all women live with every day from birth until death. Despite laws in this country and, we are told, institutions to enforce them, there is no safe place for any female: not in her home or an institution, on the street or in a store, on public transit or in a car, she is at risk..in Canada in the 21st Century.

We should not be shocked or surprised at what men do to women, but we should be adamant about change, probably best begun at the kitchen table.

THE NEOLIBERALIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION OF CANADA

THE
NEOLIBERALIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION OF CANADA

Janet
Hudgins

19
Aug 2014

Globalization
is really a code name for corporatization. It’s an attempt by the largest
corporations in the world, and the largest banks in the world, to re-engineer
the world in such a way that they won’t have to pay decent wages to their
employees, and they won’t have to pay taxes to fix potholes and to maintain
parks, and to pay pensions to the old and handicapped.

 Paul Hellyer, former deputy Prime Minister
of Canada (2002)[1]

Globalization or neoliberalism is
now so pervasive in boardrooms and cabinets that it is now the hegemony of
political-economic thought and practice in
27 countries, including Canada.

The change was never announced to
Canadians in so many words, nothing that would indicate purging the welfare
state and anointing neoliberalism. It’s been gradual and insidious over 40
years until now we have massive inequality with job loss and skewed
tax levies across the board.[2]
And, we just let it happen.

What is globalization or neoliberalism?
Briefly, it is complete freedom for capitalism, free of the state to be
self-regulating, and free of unions. It drastically reduces and completely
removes funding for social services, essential services, health and education,
and unloads public assets to the private sector to capitalize them. As well, its
mandate is to realign the concept of public and community to individuality and
individual responsibility. In other words, we are cut loose; the state will
take no responsibility for society, for taxpayers.

Privatization is well under way
all through our social services. University tuition increased by 28%
just between 2000 and 2007 and presidents have been forced to chase CEOs for funds in
exchange for curriculum influence and a name on the door. Teachers are out on
strike and parents are trying to enrol their children in private schools for
thousands of dollars. The mentally ill have been unceremoniously
dumped in the lap of the police and prison wardens as if this were a purview of
criminal law, and psychiatry were entrenched in the constabulary boot camp. In
Canadian-speak, a government not willing to take care of its youth and the ill,
is not worthy of the name.

Unfettered ownership of private
property is a hallmark of globalization so the price of real estate has
skyrocketed unchecked, the entitlement to own property a pipe dream. Overpriced
conservatively by 20%, a modest
house that cost $102,000 in 1984 would be $357,000 today. In
Vancouver, at least 20,000
housing units are
offshore-investor owned, 25
percent of condominiums are vacant or used part of the year. Ironically,
this is a source of revenue for the government.

Any
person purchasing Canadian real estate from a non-resident has an obligation to
withhold and remit to Canada Revenue Agency (“CRA”) 25% of the gross sale
proceeds with respect to the purchase. This liability increases to 50% where the
real estate was depreciable property (a building used for rental or business
purposes) or where the real estate was not held by the non-resident as capital
property (for example, held for speculative purposes). http://www.taxspecialistgroup.ca/public/taxPerspectives.asp?art=126

But, the most outstanding success of neoliberalism is massive
inequality.

Inequality
has skyrocketed … since the mid 1970s. Real wages have stagnated, while the
share of income going to the top tenth of one percent has quintupled since
1973.[3]

Of course, the promise
of growth and prosperity for everyone has not happened. Indeed,
rates have fallen and unemployment has risen for the last 30 years as taxes on
the rich and corporations were reduced, (the Harper government’s mantra is to
cut still more taxes), spending power by governments and the poor have inevitably
fallen. Low wages and job loss are forcing people to borrow, feeding the
lending institutions and credit card companies with outrageous interest. As
well, the explicit agreement between state and business: with the reduction of
taxes much more speculation will come, has never materialized. Corporations are
sitting on $626,000,000,000
in dead money, have been for years, never expanding or
starting or employing. Instead, growth is stagnant. This is not based on any economic
principle, just raw greed and power.

The Canadian standard of living
began to change radically in the 1980s when manufacturing was traded to Mexico
with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It was purposely designed
to impoverish on both ends. Canadians
lost manufacturing jobs: 464,000 between 2000 and 2011 alone, and Mexicans
were short paid. No unions, no recourse.

On
the 10-year anniversary of NAFTA, the Washington Post reported, “19 million
more Mexicans are living in poverty than 20 years ago, according to the Mexican
government and international organizations. About 24 million–nearly one in
every four Mexicans–are classified as extremely poor and unable to afford
adequate food.… Today, over half of the Mexican population, and over 60 percent
of the rural population, still fall below the poverty line, despite the
promises made by NAFTA’s proponents.[4]

Poverty
in Canada has been rising steadily since NAFTA. Current numbers state that
over 13 percent of Canadian children living in poverty resulting in health care
costing $7.6 billion a year; 30,000 people are homeless; 15 percent are the
working-poor. Between 2000 and 2009 manufacturing
jobs fell from 16 per cent of total employment to 10 per cent; of 17,800
jobs, 14,000
were in the service sector while goods production dropped to 3.8k. The
latest employment figures are not an improvement with a loss of 18,000 full
time jobs and 60,000 of those precarious placements; net 42,000.

Regressive means, devalued man-hours and the class system
take us back generations, before building a country from a colonial appendage
beholden to England to a solid liberal democracy with progressive values in the
interest of its people. But, the Welfare State only lasted for about a
generation before the shift began, the gatekeepers making changes so covertly
we hardly noticed.

The Conservative government took over a surplus of $13.8 billion in 2006, (not that the previous government was any less
capitalistic), then put us in debt to bail out the financial and automobile
industries when the former forced the international economy to bottom out in
2008: banks (all 5)--$114 billion(8), automakers $14.6 billion(29). No one recovered their
home or their job, but were fed the chronic austerity rhetoric. The federal
government debt was $602 billion (2013) plus a $25.9 billion deficit (2013-14). The collective
direct debt for the country is $1.2 trillion. As well, we paid $28.2 billion in interest in 2011, and $783.5 billion
over the last 20 years. We are paying massive interest because the administration
stopped borrowing from ourselves 40 years ago, otherwise
we would not be paying interest at all.

The upshot of the 2008 recession
came in the form of ‘disciplinary
democracy’[5] that threatens punishment to the lower classes for dissent. The
unrivalled policing and surveillance of the state restricts popular democracy
and the protest movement. “Structural
adjustment” codifies the demands of neoliberal policy to privatize, cut
funds, and install a system of “permanent
austerity” to shore up the world market for the elite. To this end work
patterns have changed from the nine-to-five forty hour week to contracts,
shifts, part-time, nights and weekends around the clock, and huge pressure to
turn out more in less time; to financialize and commodify the workers. These
changes came from dictums between governments such as the G8/G20 accompanied by
the phrase, “there is no alternative.”[6]
No Canadian Conservative politician has ever stated any of this or mentioned the
words: neoliberalism, globalization, or privatization in front of a microphone.

Consider the effect on other
countries where “restructuring” has taken place. In
Chile, with the coercion of the United States and Henry Kissenger, public
assets were privatized; natural resources were opened up to private and foreign
investors; all leftist social movements and health centres for the impoverished
were dismantled; imports took the place of home manufacturers and there was
extreme military spending. The elite and foreign investors did well, while the
middle and lower classes fared badly.[7]
The poverty rate rose to nearly 40 percent by 1990.

In Africa, restructuring cost
$612 billion in debt service more than they received in loans. The transfer of
these funds went from the South to Northern banks in exchange for the IMF to
take power, impose economic policies and end social subsidies. Maternal and
infant mortality rose with neoliberalism as well as a decline in income, an
increase in unemployment and lowered, sometimes negative, growth rates.[8]
These are the people who are living on $2 a day.

Bricker and Ibbitson, (The Big Shift), say the West has
won, it’s over for Canadian progressives, and the country is probably more
divided now than ever before. Some democracies may even want to resolve the
crises of inequality because, of course, voters are not in favour of it. But Harper
couldn’t fight the elephant in the room supposing he could be persuaded to.
Once free markets were unleashed and all oversight removed the corporate sector
took power from, and control of, the regime. The relationship between business
and governments has become incestuous. Canada now has an estimated $20 - $32
trillion in unreported
wealth in tax havens. The government is paying lip service
to mollify taxpayers but making no genuine effort to collect. And
essential services are so starved for funding that the private sector is just
waiting for the moment it can take complete control.

It’s like waiting for the final
stages of cancer to set in to address the illness. And the cost! There are 380,600
youth unemployed, nearly 14 percent of the workforce, and of those 1.4 million are
unemployed. The majority of
those who are employed are in part time, “precarious” (temporary,
badly paid) work but one of these jobs will not
pay the rent, (1/4 of Canadians are spending up to 63% of income on
housing). Defunded services are leaving the masses to find a way to cope with
increased costs of essential social services while the well to do and
corporations pay accountants and lawyers handsomely to finesse the tax system. These
things are anathema to Canadians who have raised their kids in a culture of
equality, stability and balance.

Since the 1970s, corporations
have been using desperate women for cheap labour in the Free Production Zones
(FPZs,) or “maquiladoras” to make clothes and electronics. “The FPZs lie in
areas where century-old colonial-capitalist and authoritarian-patriarchal
conditions guarantee the availability of the cheap
labor needed.” But there is a new, ominous shift,
from sneakers and computer chips, to armaments.

Globalization is devastating
the economies of all the countries where the doctrine has been instituted. The old,
imperial class system has been reintroduced and we have a huge division between
them. Secret trade deals are pulling the rug out from under the working
class without consultation or notice. Their jobs are tendered when production
is exported to countries that sanction inhumane, underpaid labour in appalling
and dangerous factories with no regulations and no unions, colonized to make
cheap items sent back to consumers who are either too poor to buy quality or people
who just relish the concept of the cheapest of the cheap provided by the
poorest of the poor. The outcome is workers on both ends of the deal deliberately
impoverished by their respective governments.

Anyone who doubts that the
financial industry is willing and able to ethically govern itself need only
remember that it sold derivatives—what Warren
Buffett refers to as Weapons of Mass Destruction—and sub-primes all over
the world and found that it was quite acceptable to make money from clients rather than for clients. As soon as the US
deregulated, bankers paid a lot of people, with no knowledge or interest in
banking principles, a lot of money to play computer games to manipulate the
market. It is still not safe to invest in the New York Stock Exchange.

If there is anything we have learned from recessions and
depressions, including the ‘Great’ ones, it’s that the financial industry
cannot be self-regulating. All the major economic crisis we have been through
that have cost millions their livelihoods and all their possessions came about
because the money making business went mad with greed and the taste of power it
gave them.

If ever we needed to be afraid for the future of the country,
it’s now. The right wing, politico-economic regime has created a deep sense of
hopelessness on the part of voters, that they will never be able to afford an
education, much less earn a decent living and raise a family. Although it may
be fodder for comics, it’s not so amusing to young people who have to grin and
bear it when they are living in their parents’ basements. The Harper government
has dramatically changed Canada and blatantly intends to do a great deal more
until everything is privatized, until there is nothing left of our assets but
tanks and ships, and the whole work force is serving French fries. We have a responsibility
to change the regime before this happens.

---

[1] [1]
Roth, William and Katharine Briar-Lawson Eds. Globalization, Social Justice and The
Helping Professions. State University and New York Press. Albany, 2011

http://books.google.ca/books?id=u0cayrOLth0C&pg=PA198&lpg=PA198&dq=Globalization+is+really+a+code+name+for+corporatization&source=bl&ots=cJi2Z8e_Bn&sig=VvTmUZ1oY2Vm7lXY3nslwqn4B74&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KrfzU-_mLcegogTS4YGgAw&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Globalization%20is%20really%20a%20code%20name%20for%20corporatization&f=false

[2] Effective corporate tax rate 2013 15% http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/crprtns/rts-eng.html and http://www.canadianlabour.ca/news-room/speeches/clc-secretary-treasurer-hassan-yussuff-speaks-corporate-tax-freedom-day-2013

[3] Evans, Peter and William H Sewell, Jr. The Neoliberal Era: Ideology, Policy and
Social Effects. Cambridge University Press. 2013 http://sociology.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/faculty/evans/Evans%20Sewell%20Neoliberalism%20DRAFT%205-17-11.pdf

[4]
NAFTA’s Legacy for
Mexico: Economic Displacement, Lower Wages for Most, Increased Immigration. Public Citizen’s Gobal Trade Watch https://www.citizen.org/documents/ImpactsonMexicoMemoOnePager.pdf

[5] Hall, Gary and Clare
Birchell, Eds. Cultural Studies in the Age of Disciplinary Democracy. Edinburgh
University Press. Edinburgh, 2007. http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/2119/2289

[6]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-consequences-of-globalization-and-neoliberal-policies-what-are-the-alternatives/7973

[7] Harvey, David. Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction.
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2007; 610;
21 http://ann.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/610/1/21

[8] Bond, Patrick and George Dor. Neoliberalism and Poverty Reduction Strategies in Africa. Discussion paper for theRegional Network for Equity in
Health in Southern Africa (EQUINET) March 2003

Netanyahu and Meshaal - again

Peace is so much more difficult than war. It requires huge courage, education, skill, and a 'burning desire' to create and maintain it. War is easy, quick and dirty. Expensive beyond imagination on every level known to mankind, it is expressly intended to cheapen life and our values.



The kind of rhetoric that goes on here (in all wars) is the high pitched sound of testosterone pleading for attention and the kind of language, "He started it," comes from the playgrounds of Grammar School.



Mssrs Meshaal and Netanyahu owe it to their people and the world to meet in an empty field, alone and far away from the press to have it out with each other. Using and throwing away little kids, old people, soldiers and their property is the stuff of cowards. Muster your courage and do the right thing.

FIFA Brazil

These world games: FIFA, the Olympics, have become a display of unconscionable behaviour wherever they are and by whomever. The competition to provide a grand stage overcomes all reason. The result is unprincipled executives taking space from the least able to afford it, the people directly impacted having nothing to say about it.



The practice is repugnant and I sincerely hope that no other country impoverishes itself for this purpose and no one is displaced ever again to please a handful of people for a few minutes.

Tell the truth so we can find a way to cope with privatization

Vancouver, BC

22 May 2014

Premier Christie Clark

BC Legislature

Victoria BC

Dear Premier:

This tired old problem began with the federal government in 1993 when the Liberals reneged on their responsibility to fund the provinces adequately for the services for which we pay taxes. It is not a problem between adults, as you say, it's a major problem between governments, one of which, if not both, fully intend to privatize all services. 

But none of you in government will tell the truth. Instead, you put the onus on teachers to take up the slack and get funding any way they can to meet their needs, even out-of-pocket. You even cover the truth by boasting of inputs of big dollars. In fact, those dollars are going down every year while every year the population increases, dramatically. Even the resulting increase in taxes doesn't accomplish what it should because the lion's share goes to the federal government and the distribution back to the provinces decreases every year.

Trying to hide this from the people paying the bills and shifting the blame to the people we need most in our society is very distasteful and the longer it goes on the more unsavoury it becomes. There isn't another name for it, it's lying.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing you tell BCers the truth, bringing us into the discussion like adults because this is not going to get resolved in any way until you do. 

Respectfully,

BCTF Strike

Hon. Peter Fassbender

Minister of Education

BC Legislature

Victoria, BC

Dear Minister:

This is nagging at everyone in the province, in the country actually, while we wait patiently for you and your government to tell us the truth: you are privatizing education. That is your intention. But you refuse to say so out loud. That's lying, by omission. 

The sham negotiations go on year after year where you have no intention of negotiating but bullying your way through another round: take it or leave it! Meanwhile, teachers are overloaded, underpaid–-can we ever pay them enough?–-supplying material out-of-pocket, working long hours, burning out early. 

The privatization of everything in the country is clearly well underway; it can't possibly be unspeakable by now because it's in plain sight. Yet, both the provincial and the federal governments refuse to speak the word that will undoubtedly cost you many votes. 

Taking constituents for fools is hardly a strategy to advance relations in the province where funds are consistently withdrawn from public services. This may be the result of the federal government short changing the province(s), but it is the responsibility of the province to fight for its peoples' needs–-unless, of course, the province concurs. We are a liberal democracy where these services are meant to be protected, not sold off nor are citizens meant to be cut loose. 

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing someone in your government saying clearly that you are privatizing all services, at least, giving us the truth to work with. 

Respectfully,

The indefensible refusal protect girls and women

There is no safe place on the face of the earth for the female sex from a large and growing element of the male population.



Men in power, and I am loathe to say, even those few women who have the clout, do nothing. They defend real estate, anything of material value, the mere molecules of currency, even each other with all their might, but cannot muster the courage to take on the warped, sub-human creatures who violently abuse helpless little girls purely for the power over them and sexual gratification.



Governors who live by such value systems that they literally stand by and watch this are of the same level as the evil-minded predators and one has to conclude that they take some kind of revolting pleasure from it.



Violence to women is an intergenerational epidemic, it multiplies with each new crop of boys and girls who grow up in this distorted atmosphere much of which comes directly from the anomalous boot camp and battlefield. Even in Canada we have appalling statistics: 173,600 reports of violence, a 15% increase in dating violence and yet more missing Aboriginal girls and women in one year (2012). Despite the history and the extraordinary numbers for a country like ours, governments on all levels but the federal Conservative legislators in particular, adamantly refuse to investigate, even claim satisfactory policing is in place when confronted.



How do these men face their wives and mothers, daughters and nieces with the knowledge that they have the power to protect women and girls but refuse to use it? Given world-class defences, state of the art weaponry and millions of soldiers proudly and threateningly displayed to all comers who might think of setting foot on a slip of land what is the deterrent to protecting females from the hordes of bullies who freely take advantage of their vulnerability. And since all bullies are cowards what can possibly be easier and cheaper?



I regard the so-called powers of the world with abhorrence for their pusillanimous behavior in doing absolutely nothing about the abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria. Of no more value to their stations than the criminals we need to ensure that their power is removed to responsible bodies governed by responsible adults, equally of the sexes, who will actually carry out their duties. And we need to take these steps immediately before they can do any more damage to any more women and children, before they can force any more violent sexual behavior by decayed men on the most defenceless people on earth.

The P-Word: Privatization. Talk about it until they admit it!

The governments, both provincial-um-Liberals and federal Conservatives, are privatizing everything in sight. It's well underway and plain to everyone, so why don't we say the p-word? The media dare not, the governments know better, but we can. We really need to talk about this out loud, and a lot, until someone in government admits it and says, "Yes, we are privatizing everything but big business and the military except for a few chosen suppliers." Jim Flaherty did, in effect, admit it in an interview with CBC when he said rather proudly that he would not quite elevate himself to the level of Margaret Thatcher but she had been his model and he had done the best thing for the country. (I'm paraphrasing). So get brave, school boards, universities, hospitals, all social services, pension funds, housing and infrastructure projects, unions, and more, call it but its name: privatization by government neoliberal policies in Canada is well underway. Tell everyone. It won't stop until you do. 

Fair wages

The age-old practice by commerce of underpaying and overworking women and youth needs to become extinct as a shameful and backward relic of history, like workhouses and, I might add, war. Radical? Read on. Historically, executives, with the help of government’s laissez-faire, have successfully gained great wealth, not because of their skill, but because workers have been forced to subsidize them. It amounts to paying for a portion of the time, labour, skill and talent of employees and freely taking the rest and turning it into a profit for the top of the hierarchy while the very essence of the organization, without which it could not exist at all, barely scrapes by. It’s all about power: those who have it all versus those who have none. Women and youth have essentially been colonized to produce more and faster by the fast food, restaurant and hospitality industry; retail; all business; banks; farms; domestic; military; manufacturing; child care; care givers and educators, and I’m sure I’ve missed some. No employee should be subsidizing business; business is very wealthy. Desperate for work and propagandized that they should be grateful to business because it has provided them with a job—an appalling job, but a job—powerless workers have no choice which commerce manipulates as a matter of course. The crock that a company will fail if employees are paid what they are worth is open evidence that this business is not viable. Yet it is proclaimed regularly, telling the public and government that employers are immorally underpaying to make commerce work. That translates to corruption. And governments, just as unprincipled as business, do virtually nothing. All levels of government, the G8/20, the European Parliament, the World Bank, etc., are equally responsible for abdicating responsibility to protect the masses by regulating business against its raw exploitation, the theft of labour from millions, just as it once did to artisans who built magnificent buildings for subsistence incomes, an exercise we now consider to be greed in the extreme, but entrepreneurs are still doing it. We need total reform, business practices must be regulated to compensate employees with a fair share of the profits. Start-ups at the table declare they can get women and young people to work for $10.00 or less an hour and the company passes muster with the bank. That needs to be changed to the real value women and youth bring to the company and what will sustain them into the future as the company grows. It cannot, after all, survive and grow without them. The utter cowardice of government, beholden to executives for their contribution to parties and provision of so-called jobs while denying the source of their funds it receives from executives is from the poorest in the land, to allow this to happen, is indefensible. Its responsibility is to all constituents, not just the few wealthy in our midst. Executives are hardly likely to ever admit to their plunder and turn this around on their own. And all governments who are party to the United Nations have a firm agreement to, “promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.” Certainly, no government in Canada, (and very few others), has taken any steps to fulfill this obligation. Executives and leaders duplicitously deplore openly exploiting the poor when it happens in third world countries. They deserve severe backlash in their own country where they are doing just as much harm to their own people. And governments need to promptly step up and pass fair compensation legislation to end this disgraceful part of our history.

Power

Power: (noun)
the possession of control or
command over others.

That’s the stuff that’s been misplaced and misused in the
extreme. Power is controlling power: big business is controlling government and
government is controlling the rest of us. What is now the ‘system,’ it has
grown to such a huge, destructive monster that it controls all life, and
clearly without any concept of right and wrong. The great pity is that a few
people with this power, and a stable set of values, could turn this around. But they
all run in fear of the other.

For years entrepreneurs have been colonizing fellow humans
by a method taught and retaught by game-changers, in this era 50 years ago, and
Canadian values began to change. A case in point is women in offices all over
the country. We are all aware of this exploitation that has been going on since
they took this work from men perhaps 100 years ago. But, nothing has changed. Women
are still second-class citizens and still colonized. That mindset came, (in our
experience), from the English and their occupation wherever they stepped and
was adapted by business. It has grown to be a massive hulk taking everything in
sight.

Outrageous profits taken from underpaid workers should be
illegal. Unfortunately, politicians are more afraid of the corporate stronghold
and being accused of socialism then taking charge and protecting their
constituents from exploitation. Obscene proceeds on the pretext of satisfying
shareholders is contemptible. Stakeholders demanding money taken from workers
should not be on any board or in charge of anything in a democracy.

It is the responsibility of elected politcos to protect their
supporters, to defend their rights to a fair income for work well done. Such is
not the case in Canada. 

Most people, especially women, bring up their children
to be decent citizens, and would seriously reprimand them for using others as
business does. Then, the kids leave home and the first encounter is with an
employer who gets all he can for as little as possible with impunity and all
the values inured in the mother’s child are completely thrown out.

The use and abuse of humans en masse by a few individuals
cannot be deemed to be right by anyone capable of thinking. So does that make
everyone in the realm of power really from the underworld? It is no secret that
the average citizen doesn’t trust anyone in power and so, sadly, young people
won’t even vote. What’s the point?

No government, including ours, has the courage to force
business to apportion proceeds fairly. Business has taken the low road
gradually and increasingly until it owns the right to exploit whomever it
chooses, all dispensable knowing no one in power will stop them. Indeed,
government will do corporate bidding, and subsidize it with our money, all to
stay in power. This is an open secret for us to see, regularly.

What this means is that the very people being exploited are
subsidizing business—twice—with the undercut income and with taxes. Why? Who or
what made this possible? What possible right can any entity have to do such a thing
comparable to the mafia? Ask anyone in business and they will tell you they are
smart to find ways to do this. And it
follows, in their view, that the people they are doing it to, are not so smart
or they, too, would be exploiting their fellow citizens, not subsidizing big
oil.

Isn’t that corruption?: (noun) impairment
of integrity, virtue, or moral principle.

If business were forced to adhere to a system of values,
that is regulated, that we are all brought up to believe in, we would have fair
treatment and fair distribution across the board. Like age-old abuse to women
and children, no politician has ever had the gumption to acknowledge the
colonization and protect us from it. We have been cut loose from our protector,
while business steals rightfully earned income. Government stands by without
interfering and certainly without conscience.

We have been marketed to death and now we are openly
referred to as Consumers: (noun) an organism that feeds on others. More aptly
attributed to the politicos.

The great hold that business has over all of us is the
promise of jobs. Providing work, albeit manipulating workers, is the
conditional ingredient that keeps all of us in our place. We are held at ransom
even when no jobs are provided, when entrepreneurs are sitting on trillions of
dollars and thousands of Canadians are without work.

So big business has come to control government and
government is now helpless or unable to make itself control big business, as it
should, as it was elected to do. And we consumers, are liable to pay taxes, our
share and theirs.

Low-Wage Workers at McDonald's Say They Don't Even Get the Minimum

McDonald's Cohen (I think) might consider sharing some of his obscene
income with the slaves that make that possible. He gets his millions, or
billions, from these servers, from the fair income he withholds from
them and takes to his bank. He has literally become one of the
wealthiest people in the world by keeping thousands of people who work
for him in poverty. He is responsible for every one of their miserable
lives and I'll bet if you faced him with that he would say that he's a
hero--he gives them a job! And if they don't like it there are thousands
more who will take it--and be grateful--to him. All of the reality
never crosses his mind.
I don't know if it is possible to ever get
through with the truth to the 1% or the governments and institutions
that promulgate the raw pursuit of wealth. I keep trying.

Minister says no need to label our food. Tell him what you think.