Marcarc
Forum Elite
Posts: 1870
Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 7:14 am
You’ve GOT to be kidding? Without our federal government we’d be americans? I remember reading the Wall Street Journal after NAFTA was signed, the business press was ecstatic down there, negotiators for the american government couldn’t believe we’d sign it, and even the canadian negotiators were against its final version. Virtually every american commentator said that this effectively meant that the US ‘took over’ Canada. And remember, any federal government can get out of it with six months notice. Of course our military is about 1/100th the size of theirs, so the idea that militarily our federal government could protect us is, well, disputable at best! <br />
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Again we see the ‘smokescreens’ at work. While there are differences between our government’s they are essentially corporate run entities. Paul Martin is even more a CEO than Bush. Corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy keep decreasing, costs are downloaded to the provinces and then municipalities, our health care system, educational system are severely gutted. Toxic waste is freely traded and our resources are all commodified and our energy is pretty much all shipped to them. Environmental polluters who have been thrown out of the US have set up shop in Canada, the only thing that saved Canada from becoming a cesspool was getting other countries into the free trade zone to ship stuff there. Many industries, such as the film industry, are pretty much completely run by americans. We’ve been ‘warned’ that more money will be going to our military even though it’s pretty much acknowledged that they will be an appendage of the americans in NATO and other imperialist manouvers, possibly even in Iraq, and while municipalities and even provinces are reduced to beggars at Ottawa’s door. Internationally, in economic matters canadian corporations are a mirror image of american ones, in fact many are far worse. The largest growth industry in Canada is weapons manufacture whose exports are guaranteed by CIDA. Public-private partnerships are actively encouraged in virtually all government departments now, even though their benefits are spurious. Virtually every federal initiative for canadians has been implemented first at the provincial level which made the federal government implement it in order that Canada would be recognized as a single entity. Notice that now we are reverting, if I ‘lose’ my ontario health care card and go to New Brunswick then I have to pay for services there, when in the past I would just show my birth certificate. There have been many commentators who make a strong case that in fact most federal initiatives have been detrimental to the cause they were intended to serve.<br />
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The ‘state’ is not the scientists who warned us of bgh and then were fired, nor is it the police officers, teachers, or nurses, they WORK for the state. The state itself is the decision making body, and go do some research on their decisions. There isn’t ONE that I can think of in the last ten years that favoured canadians. Do a quick web search on the anti terrorist bill and the speed with which it was passed, then do one on the endangered species bill which is the first of it’s kind in Canada (unlike the US which has long had a federal endangered species act). It’s pretty illuminating. And this website is pretty much a testament to the WRONG decisions they are making virtually every day. That the US is an empire is not in dispute, but it is canadians who allow this to happen, not americans. They haven’t threatened us militarily or said ‘do this or we’ll invade’. No doubt they’ve threatened us with more economic penalties, but that’s where the cowardice really comes in when a country is too afraid of losing it’s standard of living to stand up for itself. Currently, we’ve been losing that standard of living for over a decade. <br />
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Finally, my comments about the military have nothing to do with ‘cowardice’ and I don’t even know what that has to do with anything. If you are implying that people avoid service based on cowardice I think that’s unfair. You say that there will be people ready to make a difference, this is true, and we see them nightly on american news where killing people who are defending their country is ‘making a difference’. I think the american military, and the canadian ones with them could use a little more ‘cowardice’ since it is generally fear for one’s own safety that keeps one from attempting harm on another. <br />
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For more on the swiss military just type “switzerland military” into Wikipedia.org, that’s a pretty good overview. For those not wanting to bother, an interesting note is that the swiss have had two referenda on whether to disband their military. <br />
