A little more Harper harping

This was posted by a Canadian internet friend today. While last week, this:

was posted by an American internet friend. Does that say, "Socialist" beside Canada? Do Americans think we are a socialist country? Do Canadians?

I sure wish we were! I'd still be there. On another internet post about how if you're broke, tired, overworked and unhappy you may be suffering from capitalism I got a response from someone that is the old stand-by argument: "So are you telling me socialism worked in Asia?" Probably referring to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge disaster or the ongoing disaster called the Chinese Communist Party, (which, strangely, calls itself socialist.) Who knows, maybe Indonesia or East Timor or some other lesser known socialism was what the commentor referred to.

The fact is Socialism, even Communism can work if it is handled properly by the right people. All over Europe there are good examples. Here's one:

I DO think America should follow their lead. And Canada and pretty much every country. You know, sometimes I wish I knew a little less about this sort of stuff. It would allow me to enjoy TV more. I was recently, (like yesterday), watching Ice Cold Gold because I love that kind of show. Reminds me of the summer I spent drilling. Only I don't have to be out there suffering with them. Although I gladly WOULD for the money they're making. Okay, let me explain:

From the beginning I was wondering how a group of American prospectors were just allowed to waltz into Greenland, dig around looking for gold and gems, find them and sneak outta there with them. I wondered how much these miners were paying the Greenlandian government for extracting the minerals from this land they don't live on or pay taxes on. Because of all I know about politics everywhere I guessed that it wasn't very much and if ANY of it at all went to benefit the people of Greenland, it would be a miracle. This, to me, was unfair.

It reminded me of a dead horse I'd like to flog once again here in my blog. $2.25 ring a bell? That's how much Nestle paid to the government of Canada to extract every million litres of fresh water out of the ground in B.C. and then sell it back to Canadians at about a million times what they paid for it. It was even cheaper in Ontario. This too is grossly unfair. And if we had any kind of government it would be stopped. In fact it would never have been allowed in the first place.

But back to Greenland. These miners found a huge deposit of rubies in Greenland at a site they prospected and staked a claim on. It turned out to be about 13 million dollars worth, maybe more. The show was really interesting though. The whole time the men were finding these rubies one after another and finding them in the core they were taking, which meant there were many more, they all KNEW they had struck it rich. They were all millionaires. But none of them were satisfied. They all talked like if they didn't find a rich deposit of gold or blue sapphire, their season would be a bust. They all got greedy. Then they started bickering and fighting. I was disgusted with these guys I had watched for two seasons of the show! They reminded me of that awesome, old movie, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madres."

But then it got even better! They knew the locals knew about their find. They had found a strange chisel on the ruby site. And then there was a strange boat cruising around their base camp. They all got paranoid that somebody would jump their claim and run away with some of their rubies. THEIR rubies. Like that old saying, they were worried that someone would take what they had rightfully stolen.

They gathered up as much of the rubies as they could and skulked out of Greenland. The comment was made by the leader of the group and head geologist, "I'm glad we got back to town with the rubies at night so no one could see us."

At the beginning of season three two things happened. Two shocking things. The group voted out Chad, a sluice miner who they felt had not shown as much worth to the crew as the others. They also mentioned that he did not have the right, go-get-it attitude. Basically, I thought as I watched, he wasn't greedy enough.

And then the real bombshell came. During the winter after the partial ruby extraction, the government of Greenland, who were probably the ones scouting the claim, did some re-zoning and made some new rules and basically said that these guys couldn't mine their claim any more. I'm pretty sure I was about the only person in the viewing audience who said, "YES!" at home while watching.

Greenland has its own flag but I think it is Danish territory. An autonomous Danish dependant territory. So... socialist. And that's how socialists work.

Another dead horse a flogging: Look at the guys at the top of that list. Norway is rich because they don't allow foreign interests to just waltz in and extract their oil. Every Norwegian has a million dollar pension fund because their government is socialist. That is, they care about their society. You can bet the Greenlandians will get their fair share of the remaining rubies that the Ice Cold Gold crew were nice enough to find for them. And well they should!

Meanwhile back in fake socialist Canada foreign interests like Chinese-owned Nexen are extracting oil from Canadian ground, leaving behind the largest land oil spill ever for us to clean up, messing up our beautiful country and what do average Canadians get out of it? An official appology from Nexen. And that's just one of many examples.

Folks, Canada, under the beligerently capitalist governance of PM Harper is nothing like the socialist state we once were and should be proud of. It is now a capitalist paradise we should all be ashamed of. Remember this in October and buy a wristband that has the letters W.W.H.D. on it. Every time there is a political decision to be made, look at that wristband, ask yourself What Would Harper Do and then do all you can to make sure the government of Canada does the opposite. If the new government of Canada is inexplicably Harper again, prepare for the apocolypse.