Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part 1, Section Thirty Two, Constance Garnett Translation.
It doesn't happen often in Ottawa that an issue arises where every level of government rises up in an uproar, but that is exactly what happened when the 'Harper Government' announced the building of the Victims of Communism monument, at a site that was reserved for the new Supreme Court Building, located at the most prime location in downtown Ottawa. This was no doubt done to celebrate the 'Harper Government's many successes pleading before this august body.
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| proposed victims of communism monument... |
The local burg(h)ers of Ottawa would be even more alarmed if they did their research a little deeper and discovered that the said monument stands to raise a ton of cash far in excess of its initial costs. There has been no report from the 'Harper Government' where the said hoped for excesses are going to go.. As always in Ottawa if there is even the semblance of smoke you can be utterly certain that at some point there will be fire. You see Dear Reader, if you are so inclined to celebrate the memory of a long gone "loved ones" misfortune of running into communism, you can have the loved ones name inscribed on the above mentioned monster, or rather monument, for a very small fee, not un-adjacent to one thousand dollars! Why just do the math! The sky is the limit!
Now in Canada there has been very many social systems in vogue over the many years that Canada has been a Colony and later as a nation state. The first system that was found in use by Native Canadians was the tribal system. Then the French brought feudalism, that had a hell of a run from 1600 until well into the beginning of the 20th century! Along the way we also experimented with indentured labor and even slavery, just like in the United States! But the hands down winner was of course the best worst system of good old capitalism. And in the early days it was rabid tooth and claw, right out of Das Kapital as written by Karl Marx.
You had the lumber barons, the rail barrens, the press barons, and of course you had the mighty banking barons. And they have nearly all carried on into the kinder and gentler world of today, many of them such as say the Bank of Nova Scotia in there unbroken histories... But we never tried communism in Canada at all, not even once, that the Oracle of Ottawa is aware of. So The Oracle of Ottawa thought that it would be probably much more fitting to have a monument to The Victims Of Capitalism.
It as all tentative so far, but I have some basic ideas for the monuments basic design. In the center would be a huge hand cast in Pyrex Glass holding a very real steel double edge dagger! The glass hand would signify Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, but the real reality would be the 100 foot long dagger! Get it? When you play around in capitalism the invisible hand is bound to get you right in the back, even if you do every thing right...
Then, of course, we must high light the wonderful upside of capitalism in its unregulated glory, just like the 'Harper Government' pushes. How about this? We would have cast in bronze two young girls sorting medical linen waste, just like in the 19th century. Of course these children never got to be teenagers, let alone get into the ages of the double digits. Isn't the invisible hand awesome?
Then to one side we could have the tribute to the great bankers of the world. Such as that one old house in Europe that used to loan money to one country and with their underwriting fees would make a loan to the enemy of the first customer! Why, the first classic two fer! Then with the profits from the gouging interest rates of all the customers, you could sell both sides arms and create a virtuous cycle of misery and death. Yes Sir! Capitalism, how awesome is that? The 'Harper Government' should know this story very well, They are very close friends with the bankers that bought their own state in the Middle East....
