(For Ray) Anton Kuerti is one of Canada's best-known "public" musicians... M -----Original Message----- From: Joy Kogawa [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2011 12:35 PM To: Fernande Faulkner Faulkner; Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. Gurstein Subject: Fwd: Election rant
this is from anton kuerti Begin forwarded message: From: Concertmasters Inc. <[email protected]> Date: April 22, 2011 11:38:31 AM GMT-04:00 To: "Concertmasters Inc." <[email protected]> Subject: Election rant Not having sent out any political comments for a long time, I thought some of you might be interested in this article I have written about the upcoming election. Feel free to discard without reading, but if you find yourself in agreement, feel free to pass it on. I paste it below and attach it, so if you read it below there is no need to open the attachmenet. Warm regards, Anton The majority of Canadians do not like the ideological trappings of Steven Harper, his snide, evasive demeanour, his dictatorial domination of every policy matter, his disdain for environmental concerns, his hatred of the CBC, his disinterest in the arts (except when they can get him a useful photo-op or sound bite), his servile, thoughtless support of anything the U.S. does, his merciless and distorted attacks on his opponents, nor his self-serving anger at the idea of a coalition forming Canada's next government. Indeed, the majority of Canadians are appalled by his policies, his tactics and his character. So why can we not call the tune, when we are in fact paying the piper? It is a tragedy that those of us who have so much in common, philosophically, are unable to unite to defeat this embarrassment to Canada. If only the NDP, left-leaning Liberals, the Green Party, those who support the Council of Canadians or Mel Hurtig, and even the good old-fashioned Red Tories would join together, we could put together a whopping majority, perhaps even approaching the scale of the 1993 election, in which the Tories were left with only two seats in the House! If this is unrealistic due to petty ambitions, jealousies and fanatical party attachments, then why should a coalition of these groups and individuals be anathema? That would be legitimate majority rule, not a fraudulent majority based on perhaps 35% of the votes cast, the result of our utterly undemocratic voting system. How can we tolerate the continuation of a system in which, for example, the NDP got 17.5% of the vote but only 12% of the seats, and the Green Party got 7% of the votes and 0% of the seats? On the other hand, the Bloc Québecois, concentrated in one area, got 10.5% of the vote but won 17% of the seats. And those figures ignore the fact that considerably more voters would have chosen these parties if they did not assume they would be wasting their votes on candidates who had no chance of being elected, and thereby helping elect the Conservatives. Among the multitude of embarrassments Prime Minister Harper has imposed on Canada, perhaps the one that best exposes his perverted ideology and tactics is the appointment of a creationist and chiropractor as our Minister for Science and Technology. This would be amusing in a comedy act, but it is a sad testament to his contempt - not only for Parliament - but also for science and rational thought. Or perhaps that embarrassment is in a tie with his support for the Afghan war, or his insistence on buying hugely over-priced F-35 fighters from the U.S. - without engines, even! - or lowering corporate taxes (which by the way does not create any jobs worth mentioning), or making a laughing stock of Canada at the climate change conferences. We desperately need to put an end to this constellation, which borders far too closely on the ignorant mania of the Tea Party phenomenon south of our border. I strongly support Project Democracy http://www.projectdemocracy.ca/ which is helping voters make an informed choice as to which candidate in each riding is most likely to defeat Harper's candidate. Good luck Canada, we need it! -- Anton Kuerti 20 Linden St. Toronto ON M4Y 1V6 Canada 416 962-6288 FAX: 960-6166 visit Anton Kuerti's website at: http://www.jwentworth.com/kuerti/
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