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Aggressive capitalism is kicking the crap out of us, so we should see if we can start a public conversation about the need for an alternative political and social system.

It's shocking that capitalist businesses have become so dominant. They literally rule the world. In Canada, the low-profile Canadian Council of Chief Executives is all powerful when it comes to influencing government.

We can see the corporate greed all around us. Four out of 10 Canadians many of them earning around $11 an hour can't pay their bills but Canadian corporations are sitting on at least $630-billion in cash they're refusing to invest in the economy.

Unfortunately, even when many people know about the damage caused by capitalism, they're either not knowledgeable enough or too afraid to discuss alternative political ideas such as socialism.

Powerful people fearful of the threat of social upheaval have demonised the words socialism and communism, and this scares the hell out of many people.

Mainstream media are owned by corporations that seldom, if ever, report on alternative political systems.

People are fed up

Despite the lies and badgering that comes from corporations and the wealthy, people in several countries are fed up with traditional politics. They're fighting back against corporations and governments that are joined at the hip.

Those who supported the Brexit vote for Britain to leave the European Union and the millions who voted for Donald Trump are, among other things, anti-establishment. They feel they have been ignored and left behind.

It seems that many Canadians share the same views. Seventy-one per cent of people taking part in a large poll in June said they believed the same populism evident in the U.S. is on the rise in this country. Many of those interviewed were working class or poor.

Ekos pollster Frank Graves found that 70 per cent of those polled believe that almost all the economic growth over the past 20 years has ended up in the hands of the top one per cent.

Our political system works mainly for the handful of people who control the parties. Only 11 per cent of Canadians have been members of a political party in recent years. When it comes time to elect new leaders, the candidate who sells the most cheap memberships often wins.

Potential socialist vote

I believe there is such dissatisfaction with mainstream political parties that, if we adopted proportional representation and people felt their vote counted for something, thousands of Canadians would vote for a well-led socialist party.

I am not an authority on alternative political systems, but if a party wanted to give power back to Canadians it might:

So, is there a strong socialist party that is capable of advancing the cause?

Sadly, the answer is "No."

I've compiled a list of the socialist and communist groups I'm aware of in English-speaking Canada. (I'm not discussing socialism in Quebec as it is a big topic on its own. The province has had a number of fairly successful socialist parties over the years.)

NDP is not socialist

First, just to clarify, the NDP is not a socialist party. The NDP says it's a social democratic party, but it moved so far to the middle in the 2015 election that the Liberals were able to win the election with a few progressive promises.

There are three small groups trying to push the NDP to the left: The NDP Socialist Caucus, and Momentum, which says it is the NDP's left alternative to austerity, and Courage: A coalition of the independent left that says it wants to "put democracy back into the NDP".

Other groups include the Socialist Party of Canada, Socialist.ca (International Socialists), Socialist Alternative.ca, New Socialist and the Communist Party of Canada .

Once a bastion of socialism and communism, there still are many strong socialist adherents in labour, and a few small but effective groups across the country, such as Solidarity Halifax.

It's disappointing that not one of the few English-language groups has been successful in attracting more than a few dozen followers. They seem incapable of attracting new members.

It's particularly upsetting groups are doing poorly when there are opportunities out there that haven't existed for years.

Do weak groups damage socialism?

Some critics say the groups are more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to representing socialism to the community.

I'd like to see a couple of groups prove the critics wrong. If they really care about what they're doing, they should buy a new organizing manual and develop a new strategy.

Most important, they need to get out and speak to people in the language of everyday people not the jargon of socialism.

It would be great to see independent socialists now on the sidelines move into one or two of the groups and give them new life or if necessary take them over. Or, of course people can also start a new group.

Some folks could get together and create a place for discussion perhaps a closed Facebook page where ideas could be shared. The Bullet, an excellent Internet blog, is there to unite socialists.

While socialists don't have a chance in hell of getting their ideas into mainstream media, they should make a stronger effort to get onto alternative media sites.

In closing, I hope that my criticisms and pressure from other people reading this will put a fire under the butts of the socialist groups and encourage those hanging back to get involved.

Also on HuffPost:

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We Need A Better Political System To Curb Aggressive Capitalism - Huffington Post Canada

Winston Churchill made the telling observation that socialism can provide equality, but it is the equality of misery; while capitalism offers the inequality of prosperity and plenty. History has reinforced this belief many times. Now we are living through this nightmare yet again in a place that the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called a socialist paradise.

Venezuela is the opposite of a paradise today. It is going through a dark and dangerous period, with an unprecedented level of desperation. The socialists have taken an economy that was among the most successful in South America and reduced it to an unrecognizable facsimile of itself. Admittedly, class distinctions are gone, just as food and medicine have disappeared from store shelves.

Severe food shortages have caused 75 percent of Venezuelans to lose an average of 19 pounds in weight and 82 percent of households are living in poverty, according to a study by three of the nations universities. Scarcity has led to violence and violence on the streets has been accompanied by a government crackdown.

Millions of Venezuelans have signaled their disapproval of President Nicolas Maduro, Chavezs successor, and thousands have taken to the streets in anti-Maduro demonstrations over more than three months. The opposition to Maduro announced Saturday it will hold a two-day national strike this week, following a 24-hour general strike last week that was joined by millions.

However, despite overwhelming disapproval, Maduro is intent on consolidating his power by holding a special election scheduled for July 30 to elect a new constituent assembly that would rewrite the nations constitution presumably to give Maduro dictatorial authority.

Opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, recently released from prison and under house arrest, has been engaged in mobilizing voter opposition to Maduros power grab. Whether a protest movement can gain momentum remains to be seen. But tensions have soared with runaway inflation that doubles the price of food each week.

Most Venezuelans are persuaded that Maduros plan to convene a constituent assembly is undemocratic, notwithstanding the governments position that it is the basis for freedom.

Recognizing the obvious, President Trump said in a statement last week that the strong and courageous actions (of the Venezuelan people) continue to be ignored by a bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator. President Trump added: The United States will not stand by as Venezuela crumbles. If the Maduro regime imposes its Constituent Assembly on July 30, the United States will take strong and swift economic actions. However, economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Venezuela in 2015 have had little practical effect.

Imposing new sanctions against Venezuela will play into Maduros hands, since he will claim a U.S. economic war against his people and blow the whistle against the specter of interventionism. Responding to the threat of U.S. sanctions, Maduros government said in a statement: The government of the United States is used to humiliating other nations in its international relations and called on the world to understand the magnitude of the brutal threat contained in this (President Trumps) imperial statement.

Alas, that is precisely the anti-American language often used in Latin America and for which there is a rich history. The caudillo (dictator) idea has not died; it has been transmogrified into leaders who campaign on democratic reform and govern as authoritarians.

When Venezuela operated on a partially free market arrangement, its oil reserves generated great wealth, admittedly distributed inequitably. In the 1970s Venezuela was going through an economic take-off stage. A friend, who managed the National Oil Company, would wax lyrical about the economic opportunities then emerging. In some ways, this was like Argentina before the ruling Peron family, when wealth made that nation the sixth-richest in the world.

Venezuela was on the same path prior to Chavez. But the leaders dedication to socialism and his masters in Havana and Moscow led him to nationalize key industries, reward his friends, drive wealthy citizens from the country and engage in coercive measures against the opposition. Secret police jailed dissidents without trial, a practice that continues to this very day. In fact, it is estimated that more than 90 people have been killed and more than 3,000 arrested since the recent street demonstrations against Maduro began.

It is ironic that as the ugly face of Venezuelan socialism is evident, Americans in increasing numbers believe socialism can address what ails our own economy. Sen. Bernie Sanders rose to prominence in the last presidential election by arguing that socialism can provide free health care and free education.

What Sanders didnt point out is how expensive free services are. Nor did he suggest that if you want to see socialism at work you should visit Venezuela. Yes, here is an undeviating case of imposed equality and the horror of human misery.

As Winston Churchill so aptly put it in 1948: Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.

Dr. Herb London is president of the London Center for Policy Research and is co-author with Jed Babbin of "The BDS War Against Israel."

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In Venezuela today the nightmare of imposed equality and the horror of human misery is on full display - Fox News

Excitement was high at the annual Seniors Prom at the Sulphur Springs Senior Citizens Center, themed A Mad Hatters Tea Party. Many who attended dressed in outrageous costumes and had a lot of memorable fun. Al Bass was named Prom King and Odell Tarpley was named Prom Queen. It also happened to be Odells 93rd birthday! Terry Cunningham clowned around the provide the entertainment. Karon Weatherman, director of the Srs Center, organized the event.

Prom King Al Bass and Prom Queen Odell Tarpley

Terry Cunningham, professional clown entertainer

Author: Enola Gay

Has enjoyed working for KSST since 1989. Hosts the Good Morning Show with Enola Gay on weekday mornings from 6-9am, so 'start your day with Enola Gay'! Guest interviews during the Morning Show can also be seen in playback on Cable Channel 18 TV. Along with local country music fan Benny Potter, co-produces 1230 West, a Country and Western Swing radio show which airs weekly on Saturdays from 7-8am and repeats on Thursdays from 7-8pm. Also writes "At the Corral Gate", a column appearing weekly in The Millennium Shopper and in the Lifestyles section of ksstradio.com.

Continued here:
Senior's Prom was a Mad Hatter's Tea Party - KSST (press release) (registration) (blog)

As the bloody standoff in Ukraine reaches its annual apex month for violence, Kiev claims Russia is sending more troops near its borders, while the Kremlin has snapped back that it has every right to do so.

Relations between both countries have deteriorated significantly since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014; ithas since backed separatist militants in Ukraines border regions. However, Moscow has not officially declared war on Kiev and continues to deny official involvement in the fighting on the ground.

Related: Russian ally scrapped U.S. base after threat of missile strike

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Speaking during a military conference, captured in a Facebook video andposted on the militarys official account on Sunday, UkrainianChief of General Staff Viktor Muzhenko said his forces had observed new moves on the Russian side of the border.

The organizational and staff structure, the arms and the military equipment that is approaching for reinforcement, indicates that these Russian divisions are striking forces in their essence and are intended for carrying out rapid offensive actions,he said.

The units in question, Muzhenko specified, were three motorized rifle divisions, two of which are usually headquartered at the borders of Ukraines war-torn Donbass regionand one that is usually deployed further north, near Smolensk.

Russian troops have previously dug in near the Ukrainian border, including near separatist-held lands, at times of impending fighting. Observers regularly record peaks in cease-fire violations during August.

A Ukrainian serviceman fires a machine-gun at the industrial zone of the government-held town of Avdiyivka, Ukraine, on May 22. Oleksandr Klymenko/Reuters

Asked to confirm or deny any deployments closing in on the Ukrainian border, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did neither.

The Russian Federation is free to change the configuration of armed forces on its territory in accordance with what it views as most purposeful, he told state news agency Itar-Tass on Monday. When it comes to specifics, in any given case it is better to address this question to our colleagues at the Ministry of Defense.

Russia denies officially supporting the insurgents in Donbassbut has not provided a detailed explanation as to where the fighters acquired the troops and equipment to hold one of Europes most numerous armies at bayfor three years.

During a phone call with the leaders of Russia, France and Germany, Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko warned on Monday that the past few days have been some of the bloodiest this year.

Speaking to RFE, Kurt Volker, the newly appointed U.S. representative in Ukraine negotiations, said the conflict resembles a hot war, pointing out that a recent increase in clashes across the Donbass has killed at least nine Ukrainian soldiers within 72 hours.

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Russian Army Arrives at Ukraine Border as US Fears Over 'Hot War' Simmer - Newsweek

The career of Sergei Yeliseyev helps to explain why Ukraine's armed forces gave up Crimea almost without a fightand why NATO now says it is alert to Russian attempts to undermine military loyalty in its eastern European members.

His rise to become number two in the Ukrainian navy long before Russia seized Crimea illustrates the divided loyalties that some personnel in countries that once belonged to the Soviet Union might still face.

Yeliseyev's roots were in Russia but he ended up serving Ukraine, a different ex-Soviet republic, only to defect when put to the test. NATO military planners now believe Moscow regards people with similarly ambiguous personal links as potentially valuable, should a new confrontation break out with the West.

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In 2014, Yeliseyev was first deputy commander of the Ukrainian fleet, then largely based in Crimea, when Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms took control of Kiev's ships and military bases on the peninsula.

Instead of resisting, Yeliseyev quit and subsequently got a new job: deputy chief of Russia's Baltic Fleet.

Yeliseyev, now aged 55, did not respond to Reuters questions sent to him via the Russian defense ministry.

In Kiev, however, there is no doubt where his loyalties lay. "When he took an oath to Ukraine, these were empty words for him. He has always been pro-Russian," said Ihor Voronchenko, now commander of the Ukrainian navy, who once served with Yeliseyev.

In fact, the Russian soldiers were pushing at an open door in late February 2014Yeliseyev was just one of many to defect and almost all Ukrainian forces in Crimea failed to resist.

Russia annexed Crimea the following month, prompting a major row with the West which deepened over Moscow's role in a rebellion in eastern Ukraine that lasts to this day.

At the time, Moscow and its allies in Crimea exploited weaknesses within Kiev's military to undermine its ability to put up a fight, according to interviews conducted by Reuters with about a dozen people on both sides of the conflict.

The Russian defense ministry did not respond to questions on their accounts of the events in 2014 submitted by Reuters.

One NATO commander told Reuters that, in a re-run of the tactics it deployed in Crimea, Russian intelligence was trying to recruit ethnic Russians serving in the militaries of countries on its borders.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the commander said the alliance was particularly sensitive to the risk in countries with high concentrations of ethnic Russians, notably the Baltic states.

NATO had to guard against this, said the commander, though the risk should not be overstated because having Russian roots did not necessarily mean that a person's loyalty is to Moscow.

Officials in the Baltic states, former Soviet republics which unlike Ukraine are NATO members, play down the danger.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg likewise said he trusted the armies of the Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Still, he told Reuters: "We always have to be vigilant. We always have to develop our intelligence tools and to be able to see any attempts to try to undermine the loyalty of our forces."

Years before the Crimean annexation, a Ukrainian appointment panel appeared to drop its guard when it interviewed Yeliseyev for the deputy naval commander's post.

Yeliseyev was born near Moscow, graduated from a Soviet naval school in the Russian city of Kaliningrad in 1983 and served with the Russian Pacific fleet.

So the panel asked Yeliseyev what he would do if Russia and Ukraine went to war. He replied that he would file for early retirement, according to Myroslav Mamchak, a former Ukrainian naval captain who served with Yeliseyev. Despite this response, Yeliseyev got the job in 2006.

Mamchak did not disclose to Reuters how he knew what was said in the interview room but subsequent events bear out his account.

Relations between Russia and Ukraine dived as Kiev moved closer to NATO and eight years after his appointment, with the countries on the brink of conflict over Crimea, Yeliseyev stayed true to his word by quitting.

Russia's actions were not the only factor in the Crimean events. Ukraine's military had suffered years of neglect, there was a power vacuum in Kiev after the government was overthrown, and many Crimean residents felt more affinity with Moscow.

Still, Ukrainian service personnel with Russian ties switched sides when the annexation began and some officers pretended to put up resistance only to avoid court-martial. Moscow also intercepted orders from Kiev so they never reached the Crimean garrison.

"There was nothing spontaneous. Everything was organized and each fiddler played his role," said Mykhailo Koval, who at the time was deputy head of the Ukrainian border guard and is now deputy head of the Security Council in Kiev.

Voronchenko, who was another deputy commander of the navy at the time of the annexation, said he had received invitations to defect to Moscow's side soon after the Russian operation began.

These, he told Reuters, came from Sergei Aksyonov, who was then head of Crimea's self-proclaimed pro-Russian government, as well as from the commander of Russia's southern military district and a deputy Russian defense minister.

Asked what they offered in exchange, Voronchenko said: "Posts, an apartment ... Aksyonov offered to make me defense minister of Crimea." Neither Aksyonov nor the Russian defense ministry responded to Reuters questions about the contacts.

Voronchenko, in common with many other senior Ukrainian officers, had been in the Soviet military alongside people now serving in the Russian armed forces. He had spent years in Crimea, where Russia leased bases from Ukraine for its Black Sea fleet after the 1991 break up of the Soviet Union.

"Those generals who came to persuade me ... said that we belong to the same circle, we came from the Soviet army," he said. "But I told them I am different ... I am not yours."

Naval chief Denis Berezovsky did defect, along with several of his commanders, and was later made deputy chief of the Russian Black Sea fleet.

Many in the ranks followed suit. At one Ukrainian signals unit, service personnel were watching Russian television when President Vladimir Putin appeared on the screen.

"To my surprise, they all stood up," said Svyatoslav Veltynsky, an engineer at the unit. "They had been waiting for this." The majority of the unit defected to the Russian side.

Even those willing to resist found themselves in a hopeless position. One member of the Ukrainian border guards told Reuters how his commander had despatched their unit's ships to stop them falling into Russian hands, and ordered his men to train their rifles on anyone trying to enter their base.

However, the base's military communications were not working, having been either jammed or cut by the Russians. Isolated from his own side, and outnumbered and outgunned by Russian troops outside, the commander struck a deal with the head of a Russian special forces unit.

Pro-Russian civilians were allowed to force the base's gate without reprisals. The Ukrainians "supposedly could not do anything; you cannot shoot civilians", the member of the unit said on condition of anonymity because he is still living in Crimea and feared repercussions.

Russian troops then followed the civilians in, taking over the base and offering the unit a chance to switch allegiance to Russia. About half agreed, although the base's chief refused and was allowed to leave Crimea.

"The commander did not resist," said the unit member. "On the other hand, he did what he could under the circumstances."

Two other people involved in the annexationa former Ukrainian serviceman now on a Russian base in Crimea, and a source close to the Russian military who was there at the timealso described witnessing similar faked confrontations.

"You have to understand that the seizure of Ukrainian military units in Crimea was just a show," said the source close to the Russian military.

NATO's Baltic members differ significantly from Ukraine. Soviet-era commanders, for instance, largely left their armed forces after the countries joined the Western alliance in 2004.

Officials also point out that Russian speakers were among the seven members of Latvia's forces to die during international deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nevertheless, lessons have been learned from Crimea. "We learned, of course, that there was not only the issue of loyalty, but also false orders were submitted and there was a blockage ofcommunication during the Crimea operation," said Janis Garisons, State Secretary in the Latvian defense ministry.

Latvia has changed the law so that unit commanders are obliged to resist by default. But Garisons said the simplest step was taken long before the annexation, with the introduction in 2008 of vetting by the security services for "everybody who joins the armed forces, from private to general".

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How Russia Took Crimea Without a Fight From Ukraine - Newsweek