Quebec’s elections

I must apologize to the readers of this blog for the quietness imposed in the past months. It is certainly not because we had nothing to say, but rather the opposite. Camarada Justin is probably going to be away for a while and I was myself running in provincial elections under the banner of Quebec solidaire, the left-wing party of Quebec.

The experience was amazing. Even though I had no team to work with, solidarity and help could be found everywhere I looked. Newspaper interviews and invitations were flooding in. Considering the young age of our party, we weren’t invited to the chief debate but we imposed ourselves on the net, which was a incredible success.

The results of the elections ended as follow:

Liberals (right wing): 42%

PQ (right wing): 35%

ADQ (right-right wing): 16%

QS: (left wing party): 4%

PV (right wing pro-environment): 2%

The Election night was also filled with emotion as Quebec solidaire elected its first depute, Amir Khadir in Mercier’s County. The ADQ lost a bit more than half of their seats which couldn’t be handled by their chief, who stepped down immediately. The results weren’t even completely out. When we look at national assembly’s website, it appears that he would have also stepped down of his position of depute, to which he had just been re-elected. Immature decision which was covered up as something he had been thinking about for a long time.

This experience has thought me a lot about how to deal with medias and gave me my first experience with a lot of situations that we don’t come accross every days. I have realized that it is impossible to read an article in the newspaper and think that it is exactly what someone said, even if it is between quotes. Of all the interviews I have given, all of the articles that came out had quotes I had never said, implying things I had never said or let anyone conclude either.

Regarding Amir Khadir, he was sworn in yesterday and it was an historical event, no less. He is the first left-wing party depute to enter the assembly and even if he had to swore to the Queen, and THEN to Quebec’s citizens, he made himself clear that Quebec needed to get rid of that archaic monarchy that didn’t mean anything to us other than the conquest. I have wandered the net a bit for comments and it was hilarious to see a right-wing blog, jump on the fact that he took the defense of a refuge, who has been hiding in a church for over 1000 days, because the government isn’t helping.

He requested that Quebec’s government looks into this situation within its legislative powers, while the right-wing blog reports that Mr Khadir has done a mistake during his ceremony, asking for something only Canada could intervene in…may I remind them that he said -within Quebec’s legislative powers-?!

If there’s only one thing to conclude of this whole experience, it is to always, always seek deeper understanding than what is presented to you. The truth can’t be found anywhere, within a single document and in a simple form.

- Sabbi

The ANC party of South Africa, broken and freed

South Africa like most countries of the continent has a story tarnished with apartheid and racial exploitation. Since the forced resignation of the ex-minister and leader of the ANC, Thabo Mbeki, the alliance party saw division take place among their ranks in an imposing manner. Furthermore, the Minister of Defense, Mosiuoa Lekota, left the party with many supporters and soon declared officially the creation of a new party.

Discouraged by the left-turn of the ANC, which includes Unions and the Communist Party of South Africa, the dissidents are preparing a meeting on November 2^nd to establish the basis of the new party which should be inaugurated in December. Therefore, they are making more and more public meetings throughout the country in order to gain support within the population.

The environment wasn’t at its best while they were proceeding on October 25^th to a militant meeting where 300 supporters of the ANC attempted to stop it. Police force had to get involved but nobody was arrested or hurt during the event. During the same meeting, Lekota declared that his supporters wouldn’t get intimidated by the loyalist threats of the party in power in South Africa. “We will not be intimidated”, he said in front of 2000 people in the Northern Cape Province. “I will not give up my principles.”. Another meeting in Limpopo province was cancelled due to the disruption of the Youth League of the ANC, that the police force didn’t manage to control, or so said the public tv station SAFM.

The dissidents have good hope of getting at least 20% of the poll during the 2009 election while specialists affirm it’s an objective of total unrealism, especially without the explicit support of Mbeki. Many are even waiting on the words of Nelson Mandela before taking their decision, him who was the president of the ANC and South Africa until 1999.

The ANC, ruling ever since the first multiracial elections in 1994, participated actively to the end of apartheid in 1991. Born in 1912, the alliance always fought for equality between sexes and races principles, removal of poverty, betterment of the healing system, access to healthcare for all without discrimination, etc…

During the last 14 years, the government sadly didn’t manage to better in a significant manner the situation within the ghettos and even throughout the country. Mbeki felicitated himself for the accomplishment of his government while the development of a row of 60 kilometres between the cities of Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria, will only end in a huge concentration of 8 millions citizens within the next few years which will join the two cities into one, without solving any problems. Furthermore, the M1 highway neighbouring the row is called the “line” by the residents: the separation between the overpopulated ghetto of Alexandra and the luxurious houses of Sandton, the richest neighbourhood of Johannesburg. The promises of Mbeki haven’t created the equality sought but opened the door to projects such as the mega-mall of Soweto of 196 850.39 square feet, the Maponya Mall, which opening was celebrated recently.

Adding to this, Mbeki was reproached repeatedly his decisions since 1999. He adopted a denial policy regarding HIV which has been destroying his country for decades. He even retarded purposively the approbation of Nevirapine, a well-known medication which reduces the virus transmission’s chances from mother-to-child of 50%. His inaction made his government responsible of genocide while (as per Achmat) since 1999, 1,5 millions people between 0-49 years old died from the HIV and 2 millions people were newly affected. Njongunkulu Ndungane, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, described the government policies of « serious crime against humanity, as bad as the apartheid. ».

The unemployment rate is still a major concern in the country. Within the population of colour, it goes up to 40% while it stands at only 4% within the white population.

The forced resignation of Mbeki was perceived as undemocratic while in fact, on September 23^rd, a motion was presented to the congress, asking for the resignation of Mbeki which passed 299 to 10. The resignation of Mbeki was then followed by the resignations of 11 members of the congress along with the vice-president. At the same time, Mbeki was taking back again his legal offensive on Zuma.

Mbeki tried to get rid of his opponent, Jacob Zuma, by accusing him of corruption and frauds which the inquiry proved completely false. If Mbeki wanted Zuma out of sight, it’s indeed because he was a menace to his position. However, it is important to note that Mbeki hasn’t brought his support to the dissident group yet, even though they are claiming him as their main reason to leave the ANC.

While reading the various articles on the Internet, it’s easy to think that the new president of the ANC is against the creation of a new party while in fact, many are more than happy about the break up which will allow the majority party to push further projects that were held back by the right-wing dissidents of the party. The majority aspect of the ANC will however be hit, for the first time in South Africa’s history.

Psychology for the Politically Concerned

As far as I have been taught until now, politics and psychology were barely related. Politics went the way they did because it was politics, and the human psyche was never introduce as a factor. Psychology only dealt with the person and close relations, with acquaintances mentioned and the relation to the world politics necessitates was never mentioned.  That is until while wandering through the library hoping to find a novel with action, romance, and a great evil to be overcome, I instead found a collection of articles in the interdisciplinary field of political psychology.

The concept seemed so obvious to me that I did not realize at first that the field was less refined and much newer than I expected.  For a scientific field it is very new, its official beginnings being slated to 1940. This means much of the information is not refined yet, but the field itself represents something I think anyone who is concerned with the nature of man and government, and could possibly lead to identifying the true causes of war, oppression, authoritarianism, prejudice of all kinds, which opens the door to eliminating them once and for all.

I am by no means an expert in the field after a week of study, but I write this in hopes it might convince someone to take a glance at it. We all have our ideas concerning politics and how people reason and think. Most of these ideas are based off personal experience that is limited in scope and warped by our own beliefs, no true monitoring of data, and subject to emotion. However, even with currently limited methodology and experimentation, political psychology could remedy the emotional side of politics that distorts even the explanations we give to ourselves out of fear or desire. Whether you are republican, democrat, independent, green, socialist, communist, or even an anarchist, you can agree understanding how and why people make the decisions they do politically is important for our world to take the next step in understanding the path to peace.

In short, google Political Psychology, check your library, and give it a look. Hopefully you’ll find it as intriguing as I do. But as always, think for yourself.

-Justin

Montreal Riot

Finally something is taking over the news and replaces the over-advertised Pekin, a riot took place in Montreal during the night of August 11th 2008. However, the population isn’t quite opposed to what happened, surprisingly.

August 10th 2008, young adults are playing dice in a park and a policeman decided to arrest one of them for no apparent reason. The young man of 22 years old asked why he was being arrested and the policeman didn’t reply and threw him to the ground and proceeded to arrest him. Seeing this, his younger brother went toward them and asked why he was arresting his brother. The policeman apparently turned around and shot him.

In reacting to this, the youth of North Montreal gathered in an unstructured manner and started to protest yet young people from other areas of Montreal jumped in and started what soon became a riot. Many cars got set on fire, they broked into stores and stole items, etc…

The population of the area seems to understand what happened and while some are scared, most are requesting that the police and the leaders of the riot sit and discuss ways to calm things down and make it so the police stops beating down the young immigrants and people who have no reason to be arrested.

Of course, we also have the extremist right-wing party (ADQ) that goes and claims like idiots that it’s street gangs and that it’s nothing unusual. -Everyone- even the media, said that it wasn’t related to street gangs.

On tv, all we hear about is how the police didn’t react quick enough to the riot. There were policemen screaming to rush in and they were being held back. There’s also an urge to solve the issue regarding -why- was the young Freddy killed.

It’s not the first time we hear about the police beating down people, arresting them for nothing or adopting behaviors that aren’t to protect the population. However, this time, they managed to kill someone and even worse for them, the young person wasn’t known to be a trouble-maker, was rather calm and shy, he had a project for his life and it was far from criminality. This is not something the population of Montreal, even more on a national level, will see forgotten.

Sadly, I personally don’t expect any apologize from the police corps, to the family of the young man they killed. They will probably pull the solidarity card and throw all the blame on something the teenager did, instead of assuming they did a mistake that took away the life of an innocent and promising citizen.

- Sabbi

Oh dear media

Worshipped in every home, heard and listened to…reaching far more people than any others…precious tool of the elite, supporter of Capitalism, lies and fear. Why oh why can’t you provide us with neutral information? Why is a protest against the mondialisation where the police beat people down and throw at them gas bombs is a good thing while a protest against Chavez who has been repeatedly democratically elected where the police use the same lethal forces against the protesters is not?

You wish to control our mind and I must admit that it works well on most but…but you will not have me. I will never be drinking your words as if they were the truth. Every word you say, I dare wonder if it is a fact, a formulation to corrupt my thoughts, or pure lies.

You went so far to disrupt, that I came to the point of taking everything you say during your “news”, as something wrong. The U.S. wants to get involved in Zimbabwe? It’s not because of inhuman treatment. I look up for independent newspaper from Zimbabwe to try to figure things out but oh so subtle…their website ends with .uk. Am I supposed to be that dumb? Am I not supposed to know that Zimbabwe was a colony of the United Kingdom and fought harshly for their freedom, led by Mugabe?

Why do you throw a fist when China provides Sudan with weapons against Darfur yet you don’t say anything when the U.S. finances the Israeli against the Palestinian? Why can’t you just say things as they are?

Oh dear media, you are doing a wonderful job in your disinformation. I can’t blame you…so much money in the game that it is hard to stick to principles. Don’t you feel dirty to do what you do? Oh, certainly not because I forgot that corporations don’t think about anything else than their pocket.

You have disgusted me, my friend…long time ago.

A brief look at HAARP

The HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), started in 1990, has been under scrutiny and criticism several times in its existence. While some claims are far fetched given current knowledge and come off as nothing more than paranoia (claims such as weather domination or mind control), the most plausible military utilization of the technology is just as frightening. The HAARP facility is designed to research the ionosphere, a turbulent region of the atmosphere that is difficult to study due to the density being too light for weather balloons, but too thick for satellites. The ionosphere is important to communications due to its effect on radio signals and its role in buildup of electricity within the atmosphere.

The HAARP facility was designed to project radio waves into the ionosphere to induce change and study the results. In its current form it certainly has little effect on the environment or electronic systems; however, the research could lead to the capability of world-wide electronics disruption capability in the plausible scheme of things, and possibly weather control (most likely in the form of lightning). The most immediate concern of this is the HAARP research could lead to a SDI replacement that could be slipped in through treaties, as it is not specifically a missile defense device.

The government seems to be fairly open about the facility, with an open house once a year and all documents being unclassified. Still, people should be aware of what their government is doing, even if it is not immediately a concern. By maintaining awareness for things like HAARP when possible, we can monitor our government and keep them to their word about the positive applications of research funded largely in part by two military branches.

Stay aware, and keep thinking for yourself.

-Justin.

And if education was for everyone?

In Quebec, the youth of the liberal party had a congress during the weekend where they discussed how Quebec’s universities had low tuition fees and how that should be raised from $2000 to $6000 through post-school taxes in order to not burden the students with debts on the spot, and one of their main argument for that was to claim that it was the national average fees. Our universities do need more budgets but I cannot accept to see more picked within the pockets of the students. If it doesn’t work elsewhere, why would it work here?

In fact, a study was done in Ontario in the early 90’s where 17.3% of the Medicine school population came from low income families. During the four years of the study, the tuition fees went from $4000 to $10 000. Once they hit the $10 000, it was noted that only 7,7% of the remaining students came from low income families. It went down of more than 50%!

Of course, you keep hearing how the price of tuition fees has no impact on the student population and they claim that the numbers, no matter from which study if it does point in the same direction as those against the raise, are inaccurate and rely on urban legends! Where is the logic, I do wonder.

One of the other things I’ve read was about how education is a right, but free education isn’t. The difference is that low income students must be able to have financial help (loans) to keep on studying. While this is…a good thing in itself considering the current situation, how is it of any help to get out of school, crippled by debts and stressing out because the job you studied for doesn’t allow you to earn that much money, or you can’t find a job in what you’ve studied so you have to work in a Wal-Mart to live? The incomes are too low, you can’t pay back and from there, only stress and worries haunt your life. There is no power of purchase in these cases and they aren’t isolated. It’s just sad and inadmissible to accept that our youth destroy their life for something that should be free. Knowledge.

The system is well-done, I admit. You can’t have the job because you don’t have the diploma. You can’t have the job because you have too many diplomas. You can’t have the diploma because you don’t have the money. You don’t have the money because you don’t have diplomas. That’s how poor remain poor, in knowledge like in wealth. Many study on their own, and are doing quite well at self-education but why can’t they just pass a test and obtain the diploma, without spending thousands of dollars in university?

Why do we need huge universities with the last technology? Knowledge in itself can be found in books, remains in brains, in people. Not everything can be taught in school and most start with the experience of life. I would be really happy to attend a town class, where they would teach me about something I’m interested in… It could be held in a crappy local too, with just a board or a piece of paper to give a visual aspect to those who are more visual than the other.

Knowledge is a gift, discoveries: a blessing. All that should be shared freely to educate others and everyone. Share what we know so we discover even more. We should all be allowed to choose the tools of our future, without having a sign of dollar attached to it. Free market I can deal with to some extend…very little extend, but you can’t put prices on everything. Not on lives, not on knowledge.

Their reasoning is simple, less people understand what we are doing, and less people are going to react to it. That way, we, in the end, get more and more freedom to execute our plans.

So when are we starting those underground faculties? Let’s educate ourselves since the Elite refuses to allow us to learn without making tons of money off our backs! While at it…let’s start our own companies: where we will offer good jobs to people from underground faculties…WE will recognize the knowledge no matter who teaches it; be it you, me or them.

- Sabbi

Transparency

Since the beginning of ‘leadership’, those in charge have omitted or warped information. The reasonings are many, but one consistent is that they do it to preserve their own power. Especially in this day and age, knowledge and information are power. So when this power is stripped, we are left defenseless and at the mercy of those who wield it.

Just recently, a TSA leak revealed that only a very small percent of airline flights actually have U.S. Air Marshals on board. In response to this fact, the TSA launched an internal investigation to find the source of the leak. They might say the reasoning is that letting terrorists know that air flights are not as secure as we would like them to think.

In truth, there are likely a few more non-philanthropic reasonings behind the cover-up. Lying about the number of Air Marshals in the air allows them to not spend the money to actually hire them, saving the company (as even government is a company these days) money, and profiting the people at the top who manage the books. As long as the people believe they are safe, they are less prone to probe into the workings of the agency as well.

That is not to say there are certain instances were privacy and with-holding information are completely invalid. The exact identities of those marshals should not be revealed. Having detailed reports on spies and undercover officers would put them into harm’s way. However, the government has no right to suppress that they are paying for a thousand air marshals, when only a hundred are being employed, or that they are giving millions of taxpayer money to support a new bill, and hiding how it is spent and where it goes. It is bad enough to manipulate the power of money, but they compound their offense to the people they are meant to serve by manipulating information as well.

Government should be mandated to reveal all internal workings to the public, with very specific cases being allowed to be masked when safety for specific individuals is at risk. It is heinous that they hide from us, and then chide the idea of true democracy as foolish since people will make incorrect decisions, which is a certainty if the agencies serving the public hide information. They continue to take money and information, take the power of the people, increasing their own and lie to our faces and say it is for our own good. Of course government could always get worse, and it is a popular idea to not fix something that isn’t ‘broke’, but not searching for a way to make things better is complacency and foolish.

- Justin

1…2…3…democracy!

I’ve heard plenty of times that a one-party state isn’t a democracy, yet I wonder how a two or three party state is more democratic. How can one believe that the idea of millions of people can be summed up to two or three programs? It seems ridiculous to me.

Best example is the United States. You have the democrats and the republicans. Both are right-winged parties, yet democrats group an extensive board of beliefs and people. We can just look at the ideas of Mr. Obama, opposed to those of Mrs Clinton. At least the primaries gave a bit of a choice regarding the candidate, hence the beliefs and hopes the population wish to see carried to the White House.

Regardless, true Socialists, green, communists of the United States can’t really agree with the whole ideas of those candidates. While other parties exist, they just don’t matter enough to be elected, unable to reach a large portion of the population. In fact, it’s important to note that until this year, California had a law allowing employers to fire their employees for taking part or being part in the communist party.

In my opinion, the only way to reach a true democracy is to either have tons of political parties, or none. The reason is simple: you either have enough choices to join a party that truly represents you fully, or you get involved yourself. In Cuba for example, there are political parties but they are of no importance. The people elect those they believe in the most, who get involved in the community, who helps them. They choose the person who will truly mean to help them, not only an ideal that won’t lead anywhere in the end. I hear that in Venezuela, it’s a dominant-party system yet either way, it resumes in the population choosing and that’s what matters most. Their democratic system is way more advance than ours in North America.

Another thing that causes problem within the current way of doing things is the financing of political parties. In the U.S., there is no limit to the amount of money a party can get, and in fact, the state will even give money to the candidates if they didn’t raise enough (there’s a limit of 245 millions, if I’m not mistaken) That’s…a lot of money! It’s also hard to believe that a company that makes a donation of let’s say…3 millions to a candidate during the campaign, won’t expect a little something later on. The financing of the elections should be kept as low as possible, for both the tax-payers’, and democracy’s well-being. Also, there should be more regulations regarding how much can be given to a political party. In Quebec, I know that the limit as donation to a political party is of $3000 per person.

On a final note, I’d say that no matter the number of party involved, if the population doesn’t get involved fully in the process and this, from the start: there is no chance that democracy will truly be reached. It will remain nothing more than an illusion cherished by those who still believe in it…

Canada and GMO… a love match

On May 7^th 2008, the Harper government denied once again a bill (C-517) that would support mandatory labelling of genetically engineered food. Defeated 156 against 101 in the House of Commons, the conservatives are once again blamed for protecting Monsanto (leader in the GMO industry) instead of the well-being of Canadians.

For those of you who don’t know, Monsanto used to give in the pesticides and other chemicals before moving onto GMOs. That multi-national is now the leader of the industry with 90% of all the GMOs being produced there. Obviously, the company is protected by  the conservatives and liberals, to no surprise.

As defined in the bill: “ “genetically modified”, with respect to a food or one of its components, means that the genetic make-up of the food or component has been modified by a technique that combines DNA fragments of the food or component with DNA fragments from another source in a way that could not occur without the use of modern technology. “

It is to be noted that ONLY between 80% and 90% of Canadians in recent studies, have voiced concerns about GE food and wanted to see clear identification of the GMO products. Proof once again that representative democracy doesn’t work well in order to defend even the interests of the population’s majority.

Most people don’t trust GE food, and if they knew how many products are being manipulated partly or in their totality, it’s obvious that it would hurt the GMO industries along with the farmer who decided to go for those seeds. Yet they prefer to let the population unaware of what they are eating, rather than let us choose.

What I find funny here is that we still follow the United States in their process. While there’s about 40 countries that have forced the labelling of GMO products, Canada and the U.S. remain the only ones in the Western culture to still sit behind on that. Also interesting to note that in other countries such as France, Hungary, Germany, etc… the debate is either done or going, about the use of GMO in crop within the countries and importation of products GE banned.

The debate is now lying in the hands of provincial governments. They are the only ones able to respect the will of the citizens and force the labelling. The government of Quebec under Prim Minister Charest has been promising that since 2003 and obviously, nothing has been done still. We are the retarded children of the industrial world when it comes to this, when will we wake up?

- Sabbi