Province of Quebec, Canada: The two solitudes.

In our beautiful province of Quebec exists two major cultures: the Anglos and the French. A lot of French would like the independence of the province from the rest of Canada, creating a French speaking country. Of course, the Anglos want to remain with the rest of Canada at all cost. In the meantime, the major politic parties are exchanging language laws to keep all those people busy. An example is bill 101 which states: " French is the only language allowed on commercial signs in the province. With few exceptions, the use of English is banned. As for education English is restricted mostly to those already in the system, their siblings, those temporarily posted in Quebec, or children whose parents had received an English elementary education in the province. (Eventually that regulation was relaxed to allow children of people educated in English in Canada access to English schools.) Here we go! The ideas war is on between the French and the Anglos. Let's say you're a minister who wants to pass an unpopular bill. How to do it without making too many waves? Nothing is easier. Spread rumors that you will pass a law that will upset both parties and restart the language war, and while everybody's fighting, pass the original bill you wanted to pass. At the base, French and Anglos want the exact same thing: the best education for their children, an efficient health care system, a strong economy and live peacefully with a minimum of luxury. Do we have that? Surely not. The education system is pretty screwed up, the health care system which is public and free is slowly sliding to private, the economy follows the woes of the USA and our infrastructures are crumbling. Why is that if everybody wants the same things? Easy, they don't speak the same language and by making those two groups feel their culture is threatened by the other group, they fight one against the other instead of fighting together towards obtaining better fundamentals services from the government. DIVIDE AND CONQUER! The government understood it. People are overtaxed and get second class service when everybody is greasing their paws from the big public pot. Who cares if the Hospital sign is in French or English if you can't get decent care in a timely manner? Put your priority in the right place!!! Get educated in French or English; who cares? It's a free country! Is it? I guess not if you can't choose! Freedom, health care, education, economy are the base of a society. Culture is also important but doesn't mean much if you're oppressed, sick, dumb and poor. If you think it's more important to speak a certain language over freedom, health and being poor, than I guess you're pretty dumb. If you don't believe me, go to Montreal and look around you. A lot of immigrants were ready to leave their country behind and learn a new language to beneficiate from the freedom we have, the free health care, the free education inside one of the richest country in the world. Maybe we should wake up, put our differences of culture aside and fight to keep these principles that are making Quebec such a great province to live in. Otherwise, in a few decades, we might be the ones emigrating to another country in order to beneficiate from some principles and services we presently take for granted!

Debt + consumerism = slavery!!!

Do you have debts? Most of the people do. Some are more justified than others like a mortgage (who could buy a house cash?). The problem starts when your bank starts taking example on your friendly neighborhood pusher! Your credit company starts sending you promotions like blank checks, no interests for a short period, low interests rates from the central banking systems just get you accustomed to credit. You get sucked in the machine slowly, getting addicted to credit. Add this to the main consumerism philosophy: " I want something therefore I need it!". There is a difference between necessities and desires and that's where slavery starts. Your friends have that nice big screen TV but you don't. You want it but you don't have the money. You go get the mail and find nice blank checks from Mastercard! What do you do? Run to the first "Best buy" and buy the biggest TV you will find. Here it is, plastic happiness! Is it so? The problem is that you will have to repay it someday with some serious interests. The deeper you get, the harder the sharks will bite! The worst your credit gets, the higher the interests. You're screwed! You will have to pay twice this TV if you include the interests over a period of about five years when 2 1/2 years of saving would have brought you the same TV without giving a penny to a banker . Another good example is the subprime crisis in the USA. People who couldn't afford a house still got accepted for mortgage. Whenever you borrow money, you owe it to somebody who's profit hungry and will not stop at anything to recover it's due. At some point the bankers own you and you don't even know it. Your only option is to work yourself to death or go bankrupt. Whatever you choose, they got you. But if enough people get to this point and can't longer pay, all the bankers which were counting their eggs before they were hatched, are going under. That's what we are experiencing right now with the subprime crisis. The credit crisis is starting to affect the whole economy and the interest rate hasn't even gone up yet. Wait and see when the inflation will start to rise! The fed is not helping by keeping the interest rate low. Even more people think they can contract more debts. At this point, at the dawn of a major recession, if you have debts, try to eliminate them now because it will only get harder to do so later. I know what some people are thinking: "There won't be a recession!" I hope so but do you want to take the risk? I think you're better safe than sorry. If you think about contracting some debts, think carefully if what you want to buy is a necessity or a desire. Remember, desires can become nightmares. In the last past years, with a strong economy and low interest rate, people got use to get into debts and get away with minimum damage but times are changing. Don't let the publicities or TV convince you that you need something. You are the only judge of what you need. Before buying a big screen TV, you should think about repaying your mortgage, your car loan, your credit cards, get food and save some money for darker days. If you watch TV, you will see all kind of shows which will encourage you to buy, upgrade, trade, flip habitations. The big question is what's the idea behind the show. Who are the sponsors. Considering that a real estate agent takes a commission of about 6% on the sale of your property, I think they have a great interest in "helping you". Banks also want to "help you" by collecting more (or on a longer period) interests. Let's start with buying, it's great to be a owner if you can afford it. Don't go over you capacity to pay and make sure you can still afford it with 15% interest rate. Never believe the banker's calculations without rechecking them yourself. Usually, their calculations on your capacity to pay are based on your salary before deductions and at the present interest rate. As for upgrading, once again, is it a need or a desire? If it is a desire, maybe it can wait. Instead of paying the real estate agent commission and the bank interests, you might be better paying off your mortgage and your other debts or, even better, start saving money for the future; you will need it. If it's a necessity, make sure you can afford it. As for flipping, think twice before you try it! On TV everything always go so well. In real life, you can end up getting stuck with the house or losing money in the process and getting serious headaches. No matter what you do, you're better off expecting the worst and hoping for the best, but no matter what, if you take risks, be ready to assume the consequences of your decisions because sometimes, bad moves can be very costly. Not only in terms of money but affecting your quality of life. If you have to work 7 days a week to repay your debts, you might feel like your banker got you enslaved and you won't get much time to enjoy that great big TV before it's outdated... The point being that you're better to have less and enjoy it than have more and not have the time to enjoy your life, wasting it to make the bankers richer than they actually are!

Democracy in America

Do you still believe in democracy? I think it used to exist at some point but I presently feel like we are voting for puppets which are controlled by the same hand: whoever controls money. Like the saying goes: money talks, bullshit walks. If we adapt this saying to elections, it would go like this: money talks, democracy walks. Presently in the States, Obama, Clinton, Bush, McCain.... and all the other front puppets, what do you think they will be able to do with a country which is starting a serious recession (depression?) with a deficit of 41 trillion USD ??? Say "yes" to whichever banker is passing by who offers to bail them out. Ooops, I forgot, they don't have to say anything since the banker is already telling them what to say!!! Let's see all this from the point of view of Mr and Ms everybody who works for a living and tries to earn it's daily bread. Those people will vote for whoever has the most visibility and promise them a decent life. Most people want the same thing: good education, good health care, a bit of luxury and enough food to put on the table. It's quite easy to have a puppet elected: make sure you promise the little people a good life and make sure you program them to adopt the candidate through different visibility tricks. Pick some of the characteristics of the candidate and put the emphasis on those through different shows and publicities. Example, if the candidate is Black, show Blacks as leader every time you can. Haven't we seen the first Black Superbowl referee in history? Wasn't the hockey Allstar game in Atlanta with a show featuring Black people. The emphasis right now is on showing that Blacks are leaders everywhere so that people will accept Obama as their next president. What do the big whigs behind the puppets want? To milk the small people in order to have even more money. Do you still think you elect a government that will serve your best interests or does the government that you elect will have you to serve their own interests?
That's the big question! If the government doesn't serve the interests of it's electors, than who's interests does it serves? In Bush's case, it looks quite obvious that a lot of people seems to fill their pocket on the back of the American proletariat. We can only think of the bird flu panic, the war on terror used to strip people of their freedom rights in the name of security, the war overseas that will not end for quite a while but will provide contracts for a lot of "friends of the party", the subprime crisis, ... Are those people serving your interests? If they don't, can we still claim we are living under the umbrella of democracy or tyranny?