Canada: Election 2015

[Ernie Nemeth]

Not once has the party that actually got the majority vote won the election.

With between 60 - 70 percent voter turnout the majority is always the non-voter.

We speak every time, loud and clear, but we are ignored.

Want things to change? Allow for the vote of the non-voter. See what happens then.

Those that do not want any government are the majority.

But since that will never happen, think of this. With no other party for the conservatives to choose from and three parties to counter them (liberal, ndp, green) - vote-splitting will be a very big problem. The Liberals are dead, the Green party ineffectual and the NDP ready to tear down the structures of government and plunge us into disarray.

But since we've arrived at Pluto, finally, it seems the NDP might get a chance to govern after all. Or an entirely new party might make a break-through. Or it could be the Liberals rising out of the ashes of their formal glory...

[Gaia]

Ernie thank you for your comment

I'm not predisposed to speak well about Thomas Mulcair. This man is a lawless! And what about the referendum canceled votes in his district, where he demonstrated an extraordinary intellectual dishonesty.

But, it is often the case, the worst brawlers in opposition can be effective in power. Thomas Mulcair was at the Environment ministry the Che Guevara of Québec.

[Ernie Nemeth]

Don't think much of Mulclair or the NDP. Once voted for them in a municipal vote because the other two were such complete morons.

In the end, my prediction is: Conservative minority coalition government. Unfortunately that may be the best of a terrible situation.

I can't imagine what Trudeau would do as leader. He's too young and brash and too much of a chip off the old block - if you know what I mean.

At least with the NDP we know what they would do. Make enemies of the corporations, dissuade corporate investment in Canada, and then flap around like a fish out of water - wondering what happened to our prosperous nation. Just like they did in Ontario a few decades ago under Bob Rae.

[Carmody]

One also has to understand that the corporations and secret societies, including that of banks WILL cut their own limbs off, in some fashion or another, in order to advertise to the people, that 'socialism of any kind, does not work'.

They will damage themselves and the economy and the people, in order to deliver that message.

In effect, it had precious little to do with Bob Rae, and everything to do with banks, corporations, secret societies, and so on.

We're talking about a group who make the money and control the economy and that Ontario was a small part of it. Thus, making sure that Bob Rae would fail and the people would pay... was a nonexistent cost. It was a forgone conclusion before he won the election. No price is too high when the situation is totally controlled in all parameters and the direction must be different -- for the sake of a far, far larger and longer game.

[Hervé]

Morgan Wheeldon, NDP Candidate, Resigns After Israel Remarks Surface

The Huffington Post Canada By Althia Raj

Posted: 08/09/2015 5:06 pm EDT
Updated: 08/10/2015 11:59 am EDT


An NDP candidate whose controversial comments about Israel and Canada were featured on a Conservative attack website has resigned.

On Monday, NDP senior campaign adviser Brad Lavigne confirmed Morgan Wheeldon had been given the boot:

"Our position on the conflict in the Middle East is clear, as Tom Mulcair expressed clearly in the debate. Mr. Wheeldon's comments are not in line with that policy and he is no longer our candidate. We were made aware of some information that had not previously been disclosed. When we approached Mr. Wheeldon with this information he submitted his resignation."

© Morgan Wheeldon

The Huffington Post Canada has learned that Morgan Wheeldon, who was set to run for the NDP in the Nova Scotia riding of Kings–Hants, handed his resignation on Sunday after the party asked him to resign or be fired. His name has vanished from the national party’s website and his own website has been stripped of its content.

Judy Swift, the riding president, told HuffPost: "We don’t have any comment on that right now."

Wheeldon’s campaign manager, Ramona Jennex, said he had offered his resignation, but she declined to elaborate.

"What I do know so far is that there has been an issue that has been brought forward, and Morgan is in the process now of making a decision on which way the campaign will go," she said.

Wheeldon is featured on a Conservative Party of Canada website calling Israel’s action against Palestinians a war crime — comments he made on a Facebook post in August 2014.

"One could argue that Israel’s intention was always to ethnically cleanse the region — there are direct quotations proving this to be the case. Guess we just sweep that under the rug. A minority of Palestinians are bombing buses in response to what appears to be a calculated effort to commit a war crime," Wheeldon wrote.

The comment, since deleted, was made in the context of a discussion about controversial British MP George Galloway being physically attacked in London, allegedly for his anti-Israeli views.

“I don't agree with everything Galloway says, but the muted reaction to his beating demonstrates a double-standard in the West. If a Palestinian beat up a conservative politician with the opposite stance, the reaction would be immense,” he wrote.

Wheeldon is also quoted on the Conservative site calling Canada "a country of self-interest and cheap outs" in a September 2011 Facebook post. In his post, Wheeldon wrote that Canada used to be known as a compassionate country.

“They tried to kick out an autistic Korean kid/family not long ago because treatment was too expensive,” he said, before making the controversial comment.

Wheeldon told HuffPost he had "no comment at this time."

The NDP headquarters in Ottawa did not return requests for comment.

Another NDP candidate from Quebec, Hans Marotte, a former well-known separatist, has also come under fire for comments he made supporting the first Palestinian intifada (uprising). The NDP declined to say whether leader Thomas Mulcair agreed with the comment but said Marotte believes in a two-state solution that includes a secure state for Israelis along a viable state for Palestinians.

[Hervé]

They Thought They Were Free...


From Milton Mayer's book: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people.

....

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security.

....

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

....

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

....

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

... in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked.... But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late.... and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. 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 system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. ...

Milton Mayer