Yeah, the Second World was the Communist nations. The 3rd World was the underdeveloped non-Communist nations.

DG - You are quite right that Canada and the USA are fairly much a single entity, but they are psychologically QUITE different...and that means that they are socially quite different. You can feel it as soon as you cross the border. I like Canada a lot better. It's the end product of a far more peaceful and orderly social history than the USA, and it's a society far less prone to using violence in working out issues.

Be that as it may, Canadian industry and big money is complicit in advancing the same strategies as American industry and big money. Those guys belong to a club that is loyal to no nation or moral credo, and they control the political parties because they fund them.

Bad situation. The voters here can do NOTHING about it. I kid you not.

Destroy the artifacts and truck in the TV's? Yes. That is the standard tactic of the great heartless marketing machine everywhere. TV IS the opiate of the masses, the Great Lobotomizer of the people.

But occasionally something real slips through the cracks. I just watched a superb documentary on the CIA coup that nearly ousted Chavez in Venezuela. ALL the privately owned TV stations in Venezuela (owned by rich people) censored and presented the News during that coup in such a way as to make it look like Chavez's people were killing peaceful protestors. They did it by carefully editing a few clips of Chavez supporters who were firing back at the paramilitary snipers who STARTED the shooting and who were shooting unarmed civilians who supported Chavez!!! Virtually every person shot was a Chavez supporter. ("Oppressors" do not plot to shoot their own supporters.) All the privately owned TV stations were in on the scheme, as were a bunch of Venezuela's top generals.

You know how that is achieved? Money. The rich work with the rich. One hand washes the other. This resulted in a supposed revolt, launched by the rich and powerful against the ordinary public (who massively supported Chavez...but how could they find out what was happening when all the TV stations were feeding them a steady stream of lies?

That's what big money does. It works of the rich, by the rich, for the rich...and controls the broadcasting media. It ensures that the public only sees and hears what will advance the corporate agenda. This is fairly simple to do when you're rich, and when the people running the media are also rich...unless in some rare cases they actually have strong moral principles and will put themselves at GRAVE RISK for what they believe is right.

Enough people put themselves at such grave risk in Venezuela that the soldiers (the ordinary soldiers and minor officers) switched sides and defeated that coup, with the support of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Caracas.

That was an amazing victory for a constitutional democracy of the people, by the people, for the people...and it was a defeat for America and the CIA.

I doubt that they consider it the last round, though.

- LH