Monbiot on the "Inveterate Bastards" Who Have Hijacked Our Democracy

 He writes of the plight of Britons but he could as easily be speaking to you.

Most of the world's people are decent, honest and kind. Most of those who dominate us are inveterate bastards...

"With a most inhuman cruelty, they who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness." This government, whose mismanagement of the economy has forced so many into the arms of the state, blames the sick, the unemployed, the underpaid for a crisis caused by the feral elite – and punishes them accordingly. Most of those affected by the bedroom tax, introduced today, are disabled. Thousands will be driven from their homes, and many more pushed towards destitution. Relief for the poor from council tax will be clipped; legal aid for civil cases cut off. Yet at the end of this week those making more than £150,000 a year will have their income tax cut.

Two days later, benefit payments for the poorest will be cut in real terms. A week after that, thousands of families who live in towns and boroughs where property prices are high will be forced out of their homes by the total benefits cap. What we are witnessing is raw economic warfare by the rich against the poor.

So the age-old question comes knocking: why does the decent majority allow itself to be governed by a brutal, antisocial minority? Part of the reason is that the minority controls the story...

Despite everything that has happened over the last two years, Rupert Murdoch, Lord Rothermere and the other media barons still seem to be running the country. Their relentless propaganda, using exceptional and shocking cases to characterise an entire social class, remains highly effective. Divide and rule is as potent as it has ever been.

Those who govern on behalf of billionaires are threatened only when confronted by the power of a transformative idea.

I won't go into the ideas Monbiot is proposing to right Britain's keel.  The universal point he makes, breaking the grip of the rightwing media cartel, loosening their stranglehold on the public narrative by which the populace is mislead, frightened and manipulated, is as fundamental to Canadian democracy as to Britain's or America's.

Dismembering Canada's corporatist media cartel has to be the first step toward reclaiming our democracy.   The Canadian people, like those in any democracy, need access to the widest range of information and opinion and they'll never get it while that information and opinion must first pass through a narrow, manipulative corporate filter.

If you're a New Democrat or a Liberal, ask yourself where your party stands on restoration of a free press in Canada, dismantling our corporate media cartel?   As far as I can tell, there's only one party that expressly has this sort of corporate media divestiture in its policy platform - the Green Party of Canada.