Rafe Mair is an ex-politician, former lawyer from the right, conservative, make-a-buck side of the political fence.  But, more than that, he is a natural-born resistance-type.  A Contrarian.  He’s a call-it-as-he-sees-it type and he has the skill and the presence to make you listen. 

He is now 80 and as fiesty as ever but his politics have changed over the past ten years or so.  He is no longer right-ist.  He is reluctantly slightly-left on only a few things, he is mostly libertarian-cum-anarchist and he has become our province’s most ardent environmentalist.

Rafe Mair is the one providing the environmental movement energy these days and he is doing a helluva job. He is primarily a ‘river-keeper’ and fish-protector but he includes almost anything in his campaign that attacks the government-think, corporate-think and media corruption that he sees as the root of most environmental and social problems. 

And he has urged us to read the message from Occupy’s Jack Etkin.

The Corporate Media is the propaganda arm of Corporate Canada.  Right now the media is trying to ‘define’ the Occupy movement in a negative way.  And all of the rest of us 99% must remember that The Media is the mouthpiece of the 1%; it is not our friend, it cannot be trusted, and we must always watch the corporate media with an eagle’s eye because it never stops trying to lie to us and mislead us about everything of importance.

Since the big ‘Occupy Protests’ of a few weeks ago, the media has focused all of its attention on ‘the camps’ that have been set up across Canada.  Here in Victoria, the focus is on the camps around Victoria City Hall and in Vancouver.  It is relatively easy for the media to make the camps ‘look bad’, and now someone has died in Vancouver and the officials are saying that the camps have togo.  There may be trouble and it will all end with anger  which is what Corporate Canada wants.

But the camps are not the Occupy Movement, only a small part of it.  The media is focusing on the camps because that is where they want the focus to be.  They DON’T want the focus to be on what the movement is really all about, and that’s because they want us to forget about that.  

Occupy is about the lack of democracy in Canada, but there is little mention of that in the corporate media.  Occupy is about the corruption of our governments by the billionaires and the elites, and how those people are bankrupting entire nations and destroying our planet.  Occupy is about the ‘free trade deals’ the 1% have imposed on us; deals that have cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs and led to record corporate profits and record homelessness and record food bank use.  Occupy is about the nuclear disaster in Japan that is going to kill millions of us, and about how all the Big Media is corporate and how it lies to us and misleads us every day of the year.  All of that is what Occupy is about, and The Media’s job is to make us forget it – if they can. 

The media could be leading us in a discussion about how to improve our democracy and make it work better for us, but they aren’t.

The media could be giving us information about how we can fix up our tax system, but they aren’t.

The media could be telling us about climate change and fracking and how we can move towards a sane environmental policy, but they aren’t.

Instead the media are focusing on a few dozen people living in tents.  Why are they doing this?  Because that is where they want the focus to be.  And until the rest of us come to grips with how corrupt and manipulative the Canadian media is, we are going to keep losing.   We’ve got to keep our eyes focused on our real enemies; and the real enemies are the corporations, their politicians, and their media.  And we have to keep some real solutions in mind, and in my opinion two of the best solutions are more democracy and a free press.  Let’s Occupy That!

As you know, I tend to think that way myself.  But they say it better.  And more people listen.  I do, however, want to add yet another comment on the whole thing.  It’s a small pont.  It’s about ‘labels’. 

Your average Canadian is a fiscally conservative open-minded liberal person with a very minor socialist tendency on the larger social issues like health care and education.  The problem is that the fascist-like, undemocratic, corporate-oriented exploiters have managed to comandeer the labels.  Those who waste billions and destroy the environment are the ‘Conservatives’.  Those who have rewritten the laws to prohibit democracy and who have supported the destruction of the environment while bankrupting our social services call themselves the ‘Liberals’.  

If you are stupid, you tend to think that, because you have conservative values, you are a Conservative.  If you have liberal tendencies, you must be a Liberal.  Not so.  The labels are not the party. 

Do you honestly think BEST Foods is the best food?  Do you think Western Family is run by or for western families?  Safeway is the safe way?  Of course not.  We know that is all just marketing and branding.  

Right?  Well, political parties are all about labels and branding and image and marketing, too.  Calling yourself the Corporate Toadies or the New Fascists just doesn’t sell well.

Just for the record, there is no more conservative party on the planet than the Green Party.  Think about it!  Their mission statement is to protect the planet.  What could possibly be more conservative than that?

The reason I bring all this up one more time is that today the ‘them’ is going to oust the ‘Occupiers’ around the nation (or so says the media). 

Our so-called democracies are going to silence the peaceful protestors. 

Why?