Incoherence

Former BC Liberal Party leader Gordon Gibson's column in the Mop and Pail today is an excellent example of the essential policy incoherence and inherent cognitive dissonance that are the core features of neo-liberalism's Canadian strain.

He correctly identifies the essential problems of the Canadian Liberal Party; the impression that they stand for nothing and the generation of squabbling internecine battles and jockeying for power and influence that have hollowed the party out. He suggests they need to stand for something again, for policies that will make them stand out from the other parties.

Where to find unique policies? The obvious places are the “third rails” of politics, the ones others fear to touch. These are things like our drug policy (insane), our prison policy (likewise), our immigration policy (revolutionizing Canada on an ongoing basis without debate), democratic reform, the importance of supporting Canadian culture, a leadership of ideas (not cash) in things that matter to ordinary people like health and education, a focus on the young (who are the future) instead of the old (who are the past, but have the votes), aboriginal policy (an ignored disgrace) and so on.

So these are the supposed policy areas where the Liberals can endeavour to stand out from the NDP who Gibson identifies as the target the Liberals should be focusing on, (Remember all the whining from Liberals over the years that the NDP was being mean to them instead of going after the Conservatives? - We're about to see how purely a projection that was based on how they play the game now that they're the third party.) they are without exception, areas where the NDP has consistently been out in front of the Liberals and seeking progressive change while the Liberals have dragged their feet at best and been openly obstructive at worst.

What distinction do they plan to draw? Making promises and critiques in direct variance from their own governing record is hardly a new and innovative Liberal approach.

"...a leadership of ideas (not cash) in things that matter to ordinary people like health and education"

Classic. The usual neoliberal implication that all it will take is 'new ideas' to fix these services and proposing new spending doesn't qualify. Of course the reality is that ideas about fixing programs like healthcare are all about funding decisions, the false economies of cutting or scrimping on costs now VS the long term fixes and savings that often involve large initial investments.

Healthcare waiting times for instance; we know that the silver bullet fix for wait times and ballooning acute care costs is to massively expand long term care space. We know that spending the money now to get elderly Canadians with long term medical needs out of hospital beds, and too often hospital hallways and into extended care spaces is how you solve waiting times and reduce acute care health costs in the long term because we have an excellent example of such a policy providing these benefits in the UK.

The Tony Blair Labour government did a lot of things wrong, from slavish support of the Bush administration's quagmires in the Middle East to a pandering and reactionary approach to criminal justice that demonized youth and turned the British people into one of the most surveiled populations on Earth to name just two examples. On healthcare however, they instituted long term fixes with long term benefits, and they did so by 'throwing money at the problem' and opening thousands of extended care spaces.

But neoliberals are still trapped in a stale 'Keep starving the state and scrambling for so-called innovative new ideas to compensate for it' paradigm. A failed model that has long since reached its limit for even minimal effectiveness. The real third rail, the real 'dangerous idea' that a political party can use to distinguish themselves from the others is to take the lumps for speaking an unwelcome truth about the unsustainable and irresponsible trickle down revenue collection policies inherent in years of tax giveaways to corporations and the ultrawealthy by both Conservatives and the Liberals.

That's the third rail Gibson and the Liberal Party show no interest in touching, dooming them to the roadkill in the middle of the road fate he warns of.

Whose Blackberries were they?

Interesting. The Toronto Sun is still reporting it's Rookie PC candidate George Lepp's junk that was posted to his Twitter stream while every other media source is uncritically repeating Lepp's claim that the package in question must belong to whoever stole his Blackberry.

Is it just that the original version makes for a better story?  Nobody's in the office to update the story?

Or is this another sign of the breach between the Sun chain and the Conservative movement that opened during the campaign when they accused the Conservatives of trying to plant a phony Ignatieff story with them?

UPDATE: Lepp's PR guy denies aver admitting they were Lepp's meat and two veg:

The Sun story says Alan Sakach, communications director for the Ontario Conservatives, told the paper the device was operating on camera mode in Lepp's front pant pocket when it went missing.

But Sakach quickly denied the report, telling the Toronto Star the image was not of Lepp and that he has no idea how it was taken. “This is crap journalism,” Sakach told the Star, accusing The Sun of misquoting him.

Clearly some kind of identity line up is called for here.  Presumably there are ... distinguishing features.

Rolling in the Deep

Canada's proud role sabotaging Mideast peace

As part of Harper's longstanding policy of defining pro-Israel to mean pro-Likud he jumped to serve Netanyahu when the Israeli PM asked him to throw Obama under a bus.

At the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper thwarted an announcement Friday by the G-8 countries that would have supported U.S. President Barack Obama's statement that talks between the Palestinians and Israel should be based on the 1967 borders with exchanges of territory.

The grateful thanks of Israel's far right government were delivered by vicious racist and ethnic cleansing proponent Avigdor Lieberman:

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman spoke over the weekend with Canada's foreign minister, John Baird, and thanked him for Canada's position during the G-8 deliberations. "Canada is a true friend of Israel and with a realistic and proper view of things, it understands that the 1967 borders do not conform to Israel's security needs and with the current demographic reality," Lieberman said.

'current demographic reality' being a polite euphemism for 'years of illegal settlement building on stolen land.'

Remember when Canada's role on the world stage was something to be proud of?

In case there was ever really any doubt...

...That the BC Liberal Party is actually a far right party:

Former Treasury Board president and retired Conservative MP Stockwell Day says he's backing the provincial Liberals in British Columbia because any other choice would result in an NDP-led government.

In an interview airing Saturday on CBC Radio's The House, Day said he will campaign for Premier Christy Clark's party, but also believes the party's name should be changed to reflect the reality of its support base.

"I know for people living outside of B.C., it sounds strange," Day said.

"'BC Liberals' really is, if I dare I use the word, a coalition of the non-socialist vote that took place a number of years ago … That particular coalition by-and-large worked."

It doesn't really sound that strange if you know that the BC Liberals are just the latest camouflage suit that the right wing chamber of commerce tendency has worn in BC like the Social Credit Party before them.  They ride one of them until they are so tainted with extremism, dirty deeds and contempt for the public they become unelectable and then they change their names or abandon the husk for a new party shell like digger wasps animating a corpse.  The BC Conservatives are probably next.

If things go well for the federal NDP opposition, if progressives break for them and they actually look like they may form a government in four years, watch the federal Liberal Party that's left merge with the Conservatives rather than let progressives form government.

There are blogs that get more viewers than Sun TV

Not, you know, mine, but not by that much.

The so-called "Fox News North" specialty service initially struck estimated ratings of about 31,000 viewers on its evening launch of April 18, but has now dropped to as little as 4,000 and 5,000 viewers in the evening slots with hosts Brian Lilley and Charles Adler, CP reported.

CP said sources had provided it with overnight estimates from BBM Canada.

Ezra Levant’s program “The Source” received an estimated 31,000 viewers on launch day, but those numbers fell to 12,000 on Wednesday that week, and by the following Monday had reached an estimated 19,000.

CP reported that at 7 p.m. last Friday, Sun News Network journalist Theo Caldwell was drawing an estimated 11,000 viewers nationally while CBC News Network rated 263,000 and CNN 38,000 viewers in Canada.

We now rejoin the view from the couch in Ezra's mom's basement...

"Ezra's World! Party on! Excellent! The free market is bodacious and Muslims are bogus!"  etc...etc...

I encourage Quebecor and the Sun Chain to double down.  Pour money into this pit boys! Hold on by your fingernails until you've drained Quebecor dry the way the National Pest helped suck CanWest dry.  Ideology demands it.

Pile-on Backlash

Appended to an unrelated piece about Harper's clear intention to administer a deathblow to the Liberals by finally getting his way on killing the vote subsidy, Jane Taber notes that the media pile on Ruth Ellen Brosseau has resulted in backlash sympathy and support for the embattled fledgling NDP MP.  Canadian women in particular watched the gleeful attacks on a working single mother who idealistically signed up as a candidate in a race she had no expectation of winning, and got angry.

What Ruth Ellen Brosseau brings to the House

After much negative publicity, skepticism and raised eyebrows over Vegas-vacationing New Democrat Ruth Ellen Brosseau, public opinion may be changing.

The pile-on over the young woman’s ability to serve in the Commons has turned off some Canadians – especially women – and there are many now who are rooting for her to succeed in a big way in the Commons.

Anecdotally, there are many women who believe that the 27-year-old former pub server and single mother’s presence in the Commons is refreshing. Finally there will be more than middle-aged blue-suited professionally-trained men in the House. With the addition of Ms. Brosseau, the Commons will take a small step toward reflecting real life.

Trouble in Mind

Clearly

You don't even have to live here to figure it out.  Talking Points Memo's insights on our election:

Starting back in the 1960s, the traditionally centrist Liberals shifted leftward and co-opted many of the NDP's issues, first under Prime Minister Lester Pearson, and then especially so under the long-serving Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (who had previously been an activist with the NDP's radical socialist predecessor, the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation, and had only been a member of the Liberals for three years when he was elevated to the top job). After a big defeat in 1984, the Liberals shifted back to the middle in the 1990s, with fiscal austerity and pro-business policies under Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
But then in the last few years, when it was again clearly necessary to shift leftward and impress progressive voters, the party instead picked the decidedly centrist Ignatieff as leader, sealing their fate to be squeezed out between the right and left.

There it is in a nutshell.

The scent of Debacle

The new Fox News North, I mean SCTV, I mean the very professional and not at all amateurish looking Sun News TV operation has had a rough start.  A massive drop off in viewers after its initial half hour, mockery for its cardboard sets and pretty but vacant personalities and of course, Ranty McHatey Ezra Levant's fevered ego and ongoing car crash of a show.  Now they appear to have been evicted from their corner of the satellite TV bandwidth over a fee dispute.

Canada’s newest 24-hour news channel, Sun News Network, has been yanked off the air by Bell TV in a dispute about fees.

Quebecor Inc. (QBR-B), which owns the channel, sent a letter to BCE Inc. (BCE-T35.690.090.25%) on April 18, demanding the channel be removed from Bell’s satellite TV service if an agreement was not reached by May 3. Bell did just that at 10 a.m. on Tuesday. Now, Quebecor plans to file a complaint with the federal broadcast regulator, charging that BCE is discriminating against channels that it does not own.

After Canadians rejected their last minute desperate smear against Jack Layton and their falling out with Harper's campaign team before that its hard to miss an aura of frantic impending catastrophe emanating from Quebecor 's headquarters.  This should be the best of times for them - instead they seem to be circling the drain.

The coming Prison Industrial Complex

For those still baffled by the Harper government's insistence on spending untold billions on new prisons with no big increase in crime to justify them, there are specific policy and political goals this pledge satisfies.

In the US the Prison Industrial Complex serves the very specific constituencies and interests of the Republican Party and its regional supporters. The phantom crime wave explanation by the Harperites is purely a cover for a massive subsidy to rural and exurban constituencies.  One could almost applaud the Conservative embrace of a massive Kensyian public works program if it was only butter instead of bars.

Three decades after the war on crime began, the United States has developed a prison-industrial complex -- a set of bureaucratic, political, and economic interests that encourage increased spending on imprisonment, regardless of the actual need. The prison-industrial complex is not a conspiracy, guiding the nation's criminal-justice policy behind closed doors. It is a confluence of special interests that has given prison construction in the United States a seemingly unstoppable momentum. It is composed of politicians, both liberal and conservative, who have used the fear of crime to gain votes; impoverished rural areas where prisons have become a cornerstone of economic development; private companies that regard the roughly $35 billion spent each year on corrections not as a burden on American taxpayers but as a lucrative market; and government officials whose fiefdoms have expanded along with the inmate population. Since 1991 the rate of violent crime in the United States has fallen by about 20 percent, while the number of people in prison or jail has risen by 50 percent. The prison boom has its own inexorable logic. Steven R. Donziger, a young attorney who headed the National Criminal Justice Commission in 1996, explains the thinking: "If crime is going up, then we need to build more prisons; and if crime is going down, it's because we built more prisons -- and building even more prisons will therefore drive crime down even lower."

Of course justifying such a massive spending increase in cells requires an equally massive increase in incarceration - a 'tough on crime' agenda and large scale contraction of the social safety net to help pay for dungeon construction should start ramping up those numbers nicely.

What Erin Said

Go.  Read.  Give yourself permission to celebrate.

Don't Blame the NDP

It's not the NDP's fault that the Liberals finally alienated progressives completely by repeatedly campaigning from the left and governing from the right. It's not the NDP's fault that the Liberal Party finally alienated Quebecors completely by treating being in power as one big open milk bar where their friends, family and friendly advertising agencies could skim off all the cream. It's not the NDP's fault that the Liberals managed to alienate everybody else by picking an arrogant, George W Bush supporting neoconservative leader who openly sneered at anyone who disagreed with him about staying in Afghanistan and was responsible for pulling the Liberals out of a coalition arrangement we could still have been in today

It's not the NDP's fault that the Liberal Party has always opposed any move away from First Past the Post and towards Proportional Representation. I predict now that they've been on the receiving end of the downside of First Past the Post they are about to become born again Proportional Representation supporters.

It's not the NDP's fault that so many of the Liberal Party's supporters had no ideology greater than power and when the chips were down voted Conservative in huge numbers rather than support the NDP.

As someone else put it much more succinctly: It's not the NDP's fault that the Liberal Party sucks so much.

Many Liberals are approaching these results with class and dignity, others with frothing, hateful meltdowns.  In the coming months and years the Liberal and New Democratic Parties are going to have a lot to talk about.

It will not be on the basis that the NDP should apologize for winning the support it did this election.

The Real Split

The real story tonight is all the center right Liberals who voted Conservative. Blame the NDP all you want Libs. This likely Conservative majority is on your own heads.

CBC declares the NDP the Official Opposition

It's a new dawn. Its a new day.

The Stitch Up

From the brilliant British TV drama A Very British Coup.

"You show alarming signs of becoming a major statesman."
"And you can't allow that, can you?"

New Facebook group: Sanction the Toronto Sun for Electoral Dirty Tricks

It was clearly a late election hail mary attempt to undercut Jack Layton and the NDP.

An anonymous police officer with an axe to grind against a troublesome anti-poverty activist now trending to become the leader of the official opposition comes forward 15 years later and the Sun laps it up.  Jack Layton is a well known exercise enthusiast who went to a city licensed therapist for a massage and was surprised when it was raided by the police.  No charges were filed,  Now fifteen years later the Toronto Sun tries to use this innocuous incident to smear a popular leader of a party experiencing surging support with days to go in a tight election.

This kind of irresponsible scummy political manipulation and sleaze shouldn't be consequence free.  Join the new facebook group Sanction the Toronto Sun for Electoral Dirty Tricks to show how you feel about this kind of partisan manipulation.  And here's the link to the Ontario Press Council's complaint process.

But..but...Ontario!

'Sure the NDP may be gaining some seats in Quebec and BC but it's Ontario that matters (Isn't it always?) and there those nasty NDP partisans are just getting in good Liberal candidates way!' - Or umpteen different variations of the same theme from the more reflexive and tribal of Liberal posters.

Not so fast.

Nationally, the EKOS poll has Stephen Harper’s Conservatives leading with 33.9-per-cent support. But the NDP are now clearly in second place – 27.9 per cent compared to 24 per cent for the Liberals. The Greens are 6.8 per cent, according to the poll of 2,532 people conducted between April 23 and April 25. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Mr. Graves, however, has detected something afoot in Ontario, which has been locked in a “seesaw battle between the Conservatives and the Liberals,” Mr. Graves said.

Now, he said, the two parties are hearing the “footsteps of the big orange wave (not to mix metaphors).”

The New Democrats are ahead, he said, of where they were in 2008, and “Ontario voters are flirting with the idea of jumping on the big orange bandwagon.”

al-Qaida bomber was working for CSIS

An al-Qaida operative accused of bombing two Christian churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan in 2002 was at the same time working for British intelligence, according to secret files on detainees who were shipped to the US military's Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili, an Algerian citizen described as a "facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al-Qaida", was detained in Pakistan in 2003 and later sent to Guantánamo Bay.

But according to Hamlili's Guantánamo "assessment" file, one of 759 individual dossiers obtained by the Guardian, US interrogators were convinced that he was simultaneously acting as an informer for British and Canadian intelligence.

After his capture in June 2003 Hamlili was transferred to Bagram detention centre, north of Kabul, where he underwent numerous "custodial interviews" with CIA personnel.

They found him "to have withheld important information from the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service and British Secret Intelligence Service … and to be a threat to US and allied personnel in Afghanistan and Pakistan".

Liberal, Tory, same old...?

This is emphatically not directed at progressives who have greeted the sudden, self-reinforcing rise of the NDP with shocked but welcoming surprise,  This isn't aimed at the people who've been pushing the strategic vote to save us from scary Stephen Harper and have publicly accepted that now means supporting the NDP in more places then they ever imagined.

This is directed to those who are Liberals because that's where the power is in their community.  The people who'd be open Harpercon style right-wingers if they had grown up in Alberta instead of Ontario.  There's been some grand mal hissy fit frothing tantrums over the NDP's meteoric rise, but few as over the top impossible to parody as this one.

Do I think most Liberals think like this?  No, just some of the loudest ones.

UPDATE: Grasping at straws edition.  It's all about the cane.

I will show you fear, in a shiny graphic.

The problem I have with this minimum/average/maximum seat calculator that's become so popular is that the way the graphic lines up it seems to imply that the min/avg/max numbers all match up with every other parties min/avg/max - encouraging people to jump to the conclusion that a maximum seat count for one party coincides with the maximum of the other. 

This interpretation has been used to bash the NDP for committing the horrific crime of appealing to Canadian voters.  Of course the Cons and Libs have been throwing everything they can think of at the NDP all weekend in the desperate hopes that something will stick.

Of course they don't mean that, just the opposite in fact.  One of these parties getting it's average polling result or its best case scenario means the other two don't.  The drilled down regional numbers still strongly indicate Harper isn't getting his majority.

Don't fall for the hype.  Vote for the candidate and party you believe in rather than fall for the same stale strategic voting prisoner's dilemma again.

60 Seats

Jack Layton and his surging New Democrats are poised to see their representation in the Commons increased from 36 to 60 seats, denying the Harper Conservatives their coveted majority, according to a new EKOS Research poll.

The survey, released Thursday, has the NDP tied with the Liberals – 24.7 per cent – while the Tories are at 34.4 per cent nationally. The Bloc is at 6.5 per cent and the Green Party is at 7.8 per cent.

I await with bated breath for all the Liberal bloggers to continue piously arguing the important thing is to stop Harper getting a majority, so Canadians should avoid splitting the vote by voting for the party currently poised to keep him from getting it:  the NDP.

Any time now.

The Other Shoe Drops

Iggy comes clean and concedes that the path to him becoming Prime Minister lies with an 'arrangement' with the NDP.

Michael Ignatieff is saying clearly for the first time that he could defeat a minority Conservative government and make a case to the Governor-General that his party could govern with the support of others – and without another trip to the polls.

Until now, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has only said the party that wins the most seats on May 2 can “try” to win the confidence of the House of Commons. While the comment carried an obvious implication, he spelled it out for the first time Tuesday.

“Let’s run it right out so we’re all clear,” Mr. Ignatieff said in a live interview with the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge.

“If [Conservative Leader Stephen] Harper wins the most seats and forms a government but does not secure the confidence of the House, and I’m assuming Parliament comes back, then it goes to the Governor-General. That’s what happens. That’s how the rules work.

“And then, if the Governor-General wants to call on other parties – or myself, for example – to try and form a government, then we try and form a government. That’s exactly how the rules work and what I’m trying to say to Canadians is I understand the rules, I respect the rules, I’ll follow them to the letter and I’m not going to form a coalition,” he said.

This comparatively simple declaration that the Liberals plan to follow the rules of parliamentary democracy tells us what to expect and makes it clearer than ever that progressives should be fighting for the most NDP seats possible to get the best possible terms for any such arrangement.

The New World

"I think you know that there's no such thing as an American anymore. No Hispanics, no Japanese, no blacks, no whites, no nothing. It's just rich people and poor people. The three of us are all rich, so we're on the same side"  - Deep Cover, 1992

No, YOU knock it off

Now that several realistic drilled down looks at the polling numbers by regions makes it clear that all the majority talk was smoke and mirrors and Harper is headed for another minority and probably a smaller one at that, can we call a moratorium on the frankly hysterical fulminating by those who once again profess to be shocked and dismayed that the NDP is actually being so gauche as to fight to win?

Some bloggers whose posts I usually respect and enjoy have been posting some truly ridiculous and condescending nonsense displaying the perennial and familiar displeasure that the NDP doesn't do what they think we should... and put the best interests of the Liberal Party first.

Once again for those who haven't been paying attention:  We aren't just liberals in a hurry, we don't actually believe that a Liberal minority would be a real and marked improvement over a Conservative one,  yeah, we're going to try to win everywhere and no, we aren't going to apologize.

To the casual observer, or the observer deliberately avoiding the details - liberals and social democrats may seem to have more in common than liberals and conservatives - but have you noticed that in provinces where the NDP is a legitimate, even default governing option that the provincial 'liberals' and 'conservatives' have long since merged into default chamber of commerce conservative parties?  Have you noticed that in the UK the two parties that felt their policies were most aligned to form a coalition were the 'liberals' and the 'conservatives'?  You don't think the same thing would happen in Canada in a heartbeat if it ever looked like the NDP was becoming a viable governing option?

When we say 'Liberal/Tory, same old story' that isn't just a slogan, we New Democrats really do believe that on the really important issues particularly on economics and social spending there is no real daylight between Liberal and Tory policy books.

So pardon us if we look for an alternative to either the 'liberal' or 'conservative' wings of the single corporatist Bay Street Party presented to us as our only options.  Pardon us if we fight for every seat where we have a chance - usually because the local progressives are tired of being wooed in an election and then pimped out as soon as the vaguely more progressive sounding corporatists who call themselves 'liberals' beat the vaguely 'conservative' sounding corporatists they agree more than disagree with.  Or don't.   fiercely resent every seat the NDP win with a repellent aura of thwarted entitlement and self righteous spleen if you prefer. 

We aren't going to apologize for fighting to win.

You don't like that quote? There are plenty of others.

Stephen Harper is very offended that the Liberals are attributing a quote to him that he claims he never said.

The Tories are demanding the Liberals pull their new health-care ad, arguing that the party misquoted Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.  The television ad asks if voters can trust Harper to be in charge of health care and says he once argued the federal government should scrap the Canada Health Act.

But it wasn't Harper who spoke the words cited in the ad — it was his then-boss, National Citizens Coalition president David Somerville, a Conservative spokesman said Monday.

The ad cites an Aug. 26, 2010 Globe and Mail piece for the first statement, and runs it with a headline that says "It's Past Time the Feds Scrapped the Canada Health Act.

But while that line did indeed appear in the Globe and Mail last year, it was in a column by writer André Picard. Picard was citing Harper from a 1997 statement he made as vice-president of the NCC.

A Google search makes it clear the line is oft-cited but never with a link to a recording or speech text. It's usually sourced to a famous speech Harper made in Montreal to a conservative American group called the Council for National Policy (where he calls Canada a northern European welfare state).

Now it appears Harper didn't use the line at all.

Now of course, quotes should be attributed carefully - if Stephen Harper did not say those exact words the record should be corrected.  But it should also include the context that this was and is the clear and unambiguous position of the National Citizens Coalition - an organization started by an insurance executive specifically to battle public healthcare - and was the ideological raison d'etre of the organization while Harper was Vice President of the organization. 

There are more than enough easily verified quotes from Harper, specifically on the subject of how awful publicly administered and delivered healthcare is, to make his beliefs clear:

“Monopolies in the public sector are just as objectionable as monopolies in the private sector. It should not matter who delivers health care, whether it is private, for profit, not for profit or public institutions, as long as Canadians have access to it regardless of their financial means.” (Stephen Harper, Hansard, October 1, 2002)

“We also support the exploration of alternative ways to deliver health care. Moving toward alternatives, including those provided by the private sector, is a natural development of our health care system.” (Stephen Harper, Toronto Star, October 2002)

“Each province should raise its own revenue for health care – i.e., replace Canada Health and Social Transfer cash with tax points.” (Stephen Harper, ‘Firewall’ letter, January 24, 2001)

“What we clearly need is experimentation with market reforms and private delivery options [in health care].” (Stephen Harper, then President of the National Citizens Coalition, 2001)

The Conservatives may have miscalculated here, by screaming and yelling about the one quote that cannot be 100% verified as coming from him rather than specifically his boss at the time at the organization where it was clearly the institutional policy position.  At the same speech:

"Then there is the Progressive Conservative party, the PC party, which won only 20 seats. Now, the term Progressive Conservative will immediately raise suspicions in all of your minds. It should... They were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. Officially -- what else can I say about them? Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized, health-care system (emphasis added.)  and multicultural policies in the constitution of the country."

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

Stephen Harper's own words have always been his greatest enemy.  Now he has opened the door for all those words to become center stage again.

Voter Supression: Another page from the Republican playbook

The ties between Stephen Harper's CRAP (Conservative, Reform, Alliance Party) and the American Republican Party are deep and intricate.  A shared network of 'think tanks', action funds, pressure groups, 'student exchange' programs and a deeply shared set of ideological tropes, attitudes, assumptions and tactics.  The days when the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party was still to the left of the American Democratic Party much less the Republicans are long since over.  The current incarnation of Canadian Conservatives has more in common with the American Tea Partys than the PCs of Joe Clark and Brian Mulrooney.

Now they appear to be taking a very noxious page from the Republican voter suppression handbook and attacking the voting rights of students.

The Guelph students say the poll was organized correctly, with a Conservative scrutineer on hand. But Hamilton's letter suggests there was no scrutineer and that campaign material was present at the polling station, which is prohibited.

According to a published report, an attempt was actually made to end the vote as it was happening.

Citing several students who were there at the time, the Guelph Mercury reports that the communications director for the Guelph Conservative Party candidate turned up at the balloting site, claiming the process violated the Elections Canada Act. He reportedly tried to snatch the ballot box away, but left empty-handed.

These kind of tactics and the underlying hostility to the voting rights of students has a long ignoble history in the US, from both the Republicans AND the Democrats (The Clintons did enormous damage to their credibility during the bitter primary battle with Barack Obama when they attacked the rights of college students in Iowa to vote where they went to school.) but it's been an overwhelmingly Republican tactic, particularly in older white communities with young racially diverse or majority black schools in their borders.

How much of a backlash the Conservatives face from this thuggish attack on student voters will affect how much of this tactic we see in the future.

UPDATE: Elections Canada: The poll was valid and the votes WILL be counted.

'Kettling' Declared Illegal in UK

Yes, the same controversial police tactic infamously used in Toronto during the G20.  This precedent should be swiftly argued in Canadian courts.

Police are to appeal against today's High Court decision declaring unlawful controversial "kettling" tactics used against demonstrators during G20 protests in central London two years ago.

The judgment led to a call from human rights lawyers for an "immediate change to police attitudes and tactics".

But the Metropolitan Police expressed concern over the impact of the ruling on its ability "to prevent disorder within protests".

The judgment was a victory for Hannah McClure, a student, and Josh Moos, a campaigner for Plane Stupid, who had challenged the legality of the "violent" restraint methods used against them at the Camp for Climate Action in Bishopsgate on April 1 2009.

It was the day newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson died after being struck by a police officer at a separate G20 protest at the nearby Royal Exchange.

UPDATE: Didn't take long for lawyers for victims of Toronto's kettling incidents to jump on this:

“This case is very important and will be used by us in the court,” said Murray Klippenstein, who has filed a $45 million class action lawsuit against the Toronto Police Services Board over the G20 in Toronto last June.

UPDATE 2:  As a result of the High Court ruling, 'thousands' of people illegally detained may sue for false imprisonment.  Maybe the only way to get the police to not do this kind of thing is to make it incredibally expensive when they do.

Multiculturalism's success

PARIS — Canadians are the most tolerant people in the developed world, are terrific readers, enjoy more "positive experiences" than everyone but Icelanders, and don't produce many babies, according to a new report released Tuesday.
The conclusions were contained in the latest edition of Society at a Glance, a broad-brush analysis of social and economic indicators among the 34 member states of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
"At 84 per cent on average, Canadians report the highest community tolerance of minority groups — ethnic minorities, migrants, and gays and lesbians — in the OECD, where the average is 61 per cent," said a summary of Canada-specific findings.

Such widespread acceptance didn't happen automatically just because we are so much nicer - not completely anyway. It took deliberate and intentional public programs and initiatives.  Social engineering in other words.

It's an unpopular contention, bringing up connotations of bloated bureaucracy and the discredited legislation of political correctness.  But remember a lot of those connotations have been deliberately spawned and nourished by the same people trying to brand every progressive policy or program as 'Failed Big Government Run Amuck!'   There, I just boiled down every Financial Post editorial headline ever.

But while Canada was welcoming and integrating newcomers into our society and crucially, our economy with an inclusive respect for cultural differences, Germany was openly renouncing multiculturalism and France was standing on the principal of 'secularism'  another great, enlightened idea but used too often as a cudgel.  At least that's how they've used it.  They just outlawed veils that cover a woman's face and have started rounding up and arresting women who refuse to take them off.  Short sighted, mean-spirited and counter-productive, but portrayed as high minded defense of feminism and liberty.  This while the large French Muslim community remains disenfranchised, excluded, disproportionately underemployed and ghettoized.

We've had our own flare-ups, largely but by no means solely, in Quebec where a entrenched majority manages to transform isolated friction points into an argument that multiculturalism as a whole is a failed model and a sign that they are under siege from a small minority.

But in general I would argue that the huge success Canada has had integrating every Canadian into our society is the proof that multiculturalism is an unheralded success story.

'...not intended to be a factual statement'

So a Republican Senator responds to being caught outright lying about Planned Parenthood spending 90% of their budget on abortions (the real number is about 3% the other 97% that Republicans want to strip away going to pap smears, cancer screenings and other basic healthcare for under served American women.) by saying that the claim 'wasn't intended to be a factual statement' and was supposed to merely illustrate that Planned Parenthood subsidizes abortions.

Does that mean I can call Senator John Kyl a habitual pig$#%^er, and my defense can be that it wasn't meant to be a factual statement that he literally has relations with farm animals, it was just intended to illustrate what a remarkable douchewaffle he is?

Literally Never

The model of responding to economic downturn with austerity measures has a perfect record... of utter failure. It has literally NEVER worked. Freidmanites sneer at 'spending your way out of recession' but the countries that do it thrive and the countries that start slashing at spending end up like Ireland with their economies in tatters.

Even more spectacular than the failure of Ireland’s “efficient business regulations” and “competitive tax rates” is the failure of its austerity measures in what seems like record time. Not only did Ireland become the first Eurozone country to enter recession, it also became the first to test its status as a petri dish for conservative policy by becoming the first country to respond to the economic critics by enacting severe austerity measures.
The government’s 2008 emergency budget was the kind of economic medicine that even now conservatives are clamoring for here in the U.S. — a package of cuts in social programs from education to medical care, combined with a bailout of the country’s banks. The idea was that making such severe cuts would increase confidence and produce growth by assuring investors that Ireland was serious about it’s economic problems.
Ireland’s austerity measures were an “epic fail” on two fronts. The country was rewarded with shrinking economy, and a sharper downturn than if the government had spent more to keep people working. The suffering that austerity measures brought the Irish people sparked a series of public demonstrations in 2008, 2009, and 2010.
But austerity did not inspire confidence nor deliver the growth its proponents promised. Fiscal austerity failed to reassure the markets, and Ireland’s credit rating was lowered. Most recently, the country found itself in need of a bailout from the E.U. to make up for the economic grown not delivered by earlier austerity measures. The size of the bailout keeps growing, but recent reports said that it may amount to €85 billion ($145 billion).
The Irish people were left alone and unled, in a way that laid bare the cost of austerity in Ireland, exacted from the working and middle class taxpayers made to finance the bank bailout.

You'd think the media would report that when the wise 'serious' thinkers confidently state that the only option is to cut and cut and cut some more, that such a program HAS NEVER WORKED.  That wherever it is tried it leads to short term misery for the poor (to pay for the wild unregulated parties of the rich) and long term stagnation for the economy as a whole.

But the mainstream media is marked by an almost unbroken consensus of pro-business neo-liberalism that believes deficits are morally wrong and making people suffer in the name of fiscal probity is morally right.  From the elite point of view, making the public pay for your excesses resulting in a nice big recession that lets them bring the fear of unemployment to the negotiating table and slash away at wages and benefits is the only highlight of an economic downturn.

A challenge:  Find one unalloyed, incontrovertible example of austerity measures doing anything but making the economy worse.  Expect to be looking for a long time.

Exporting Terror

We've all watched fascinated and repelled as America's political right shambled off a cliff in unison.  A political movement captured and overwhelmed by its own lunatic fringe as the 'Foxification' of America's politics bears its bitter fruit.

Hitherto the ignorance, thinly veiled racism, drooling hatred, religious intolerance and quasi-fascist authority worship in service to economic elites has been traits we can only shake our heads at and be glad it doesn't affect us.  But even without a Republican in the White House this is a malevolent influence on the whole world.  Here in Canada, we know there are strong links between America's network of right wing politicians, 'think-tanks', lobbying groups and foundations and our own.  This network of connections is duplicated to a greater or lesser extent in countries all over the world.

And that's just places where they're satisfied with only undermining working within democratic structures.

Exhibit One:  When the legally elected President of Honduras was overthrown by an elite led military coup the whole world condemned it as an illegal abrogation of democracy.  Republican Senator Jim DeMint, extremely influential on the far right wing of the American Republican Party on the other hand, supported the coup.

"The people of Honduras have struggled too long to have their hard-won democracy stolen from them by a Chavez-style dictator. The Honduran Congress, the Honduran Supreme Court, and the Honduran military have acted in accordance to the Honduran constitution and the rule of law."

Now another Republican senator shows his contempt for democracy by throwing his support to a President refusing to leave power after losing an election.

The west African nation of Ivory Coast has been in turmoil ever since incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down after losing an internationally certified election in late November. As forces loyal to Gbagbo have killed civilians and been accused of crimes against humanity, and as the number of refugees from the country has ballooned to as many as 1 million, observers have described the situation as worse than the Libyan conflict.
While the crisis has gotten substantial press attention, one aspect of Gbagbo's past -- and present -- has flown under the radar: his longtime ties to the Christian right in the United States, a movement in which he still finds at least some support.
That includes a U.S. senator and acquaintance of Gbagbo who declined to intervene in the crisis when asked by the State Department earlier this year, a former congressman who was hired by Gbagbo as a lobbyist, and a Christian right TV network that ran a fawning profile of Gbagbo, even as violence engulfed Ivory Coast. The senator, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, today released a letter to Hillary Clinton calling for new elections in Ivory Coast, putting him in direct opposition to the view of the Obama administration, the United Nations and the African Union that Gbagbo lost a fair election.

In the case of Gbagbo, apparently long a pet project of the American Christian Right, the fact that his opponent is a Muslim appears to trump the fact that Gbagbo actually lost an election.  Religion and ideology trump democracy.

If Stephen Harper somehow loses this election, will his network of American right wing supporters be calling for the military to step in to keep him in power?    They seem to react badly when their preferred candidates lose power.

Warning to Other Bloggers

If you get a Netflix free trial at the same time your girlfriend finally convinces you to join her in World of Warcraft you nuke your bandwidth caps and eventually discover you haven't blogged in three weeks.

Normal service will resume shortly.  Just have to finish a Mad Men episode and grind out this next quest level....

Libya and Bahrain

A vicious authoritarian regime responding to protestors with murderous repression, deadly snipers and bringing in foreign troops to crush dissent.

An equally apt description of both Libya and Bahrain, except one is a country that has been a thorn in the west's side and the other an important ally, sea port and military outpost.  Hence explaining why one is being hit with UN sanctions, no-fly zones and a probable invasion while the other gets mild criticism and calls for restraint.  Ah realpolitik...

The helpful thing, if you're overwhelmed by so much news going on at once, is that Bahrain is roughly the same story as Libya—only instead of pro-democracy protesters being murdered by a terrorist-sponsoring monster of a dictator who has been on America's enemies list for ages, the pro-democracy protesters are being murdered by a government that is America's very own dear ally. And where Qaddafi brought in foreign mercenaries for support, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain brought in troops from our even more vital ally, Saudi Arabia.
...

So basically, take all those proud feelings about the United States standing up for freedom and human rights in Libya and turn them inside out, and vomit into them. That's Bahrain.

Nicholas Kristof, in a column deploring the violence, wrote:

Today the United States is in a vise — caught between our allies and our values.

Are we? Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are the same rotten royalist dictatorships they've always been. And they've been on our side. The helicopters over the square were reportedly American-made Cobras, because the Royal Bahraini Air Force flies what we sell them; the rifles on the ground are American M16s. Freedom and democracy are what we talk about. Values are what we do.

UPDATE: And the Yanks come marching in, certainly the rebels can expect them to march right out again once Gaddafi is overthrown right?  Right?

Doctor threatened for speaking out against leaving mentally ill children in basement

And Premier Stelmach's claim that intimidation against doctors for speaking out on patient care has 'not been substantiated' suffers another blow.

The smoking gun proves to be a nasty letter threatening to demote a doctor. It might finally force the Tories to call the public health care inquiry they're so determined to duck.

As recently as Thursday afternoon, Premier Ed Stelmach said this specific case was not substantiated.
Now it is; and another of the premier's fallback positions collapses behind him.

Calgary psychiatrist Dr. Lloyd Maybaum spoke up vigorously in 2008 after he learned that the planned mental health unit at the new South Campus would be postponed.

He wrote an e-mail to other doctors that found its way into the Herald. This became a big story at the time. What we didn't know then, though, was that Maybaum subsequently received a letter from a senior health official.

It said, among many other things: "I am forced to make a clear statement that further communications of this nature without discussion and review with members of the Executive of Mental Health and Addictions will require . . . (asking) the Executive to formally review your role as physician leader for psychiatry to the South Campus project."

There's the threat. And it came because Maybaum wrote an impassioned e-mail about treatment for the mentally ill.

An earlier plan for mental health in the new Alberta Children's Hospital, Maybaum wrote, "was scuttled late in the design process, leaving no spot for mental health services except for the basement.

"Yes, in the basement. The new Children's Hospital, replete with fantastic vistas of the mountains, bright sunshine, striking colours -and children with mental health problems left in the dark -a forgotten afterthought -wedged into leftovers in the bowels of the site."

Maybaum said he wanted to be named to the South Campus project "to ensure mental health is not once again marginalized."

But then it happened all over. Maybaum learned the South Campus mental health pavilion would be cut from the first phase of the new hospital.

"Suddenly, all of the planning, all of the excellent designs, are on hold and very likely scuttled. Mental health (is) served another blow, marginalized -yet again."

Shower of Schmucks

A tiny group of pathetic inadequates who can't find anything about their lives to be proud of but the melanin level in their skin cells plan a march in my town tomorrow.  So far all they've accomplished is some cowardly attacks on the streets and internecine attempts to kill each other and now the probable end of one of their idiot's military career.

WINNIPEG—Military police are investigating a Canadian Forces reservist from Winnipeg who is alleged to have been planning to attend a white-pride demonstration this weekend in Calgary.

Capt. Karina Holder says the military can take action even if the reservist doesn’t attend the event, providing investigators find evidence.

“Having that attitude alone is completely incompatible with the military culture,” Holder said Thursday from Ottawa.

“It runs contrary to effective military service. You have to have that basic respect for your fellow human beings, otherwise you cannot function in this organization.”

She said they received a complaint from a member of the public but can’t confirm it was the same complaint that prompted the investigation.

Although she wouldn’t provide details, it has been reported that the 17-year-old reservist was planning to attend a white-pride demonstration planned for Saturday in Calgary and that he had expressed racist views in online postings.

Climate of Intimidation against Doctors speaking out for the public

One doctor after another steps forward and makes the same allegations that Raj Sherman has, about doctors who complain about the decay of Alberta's healthcare system facing retaliation and whisper campaigns.

The Nunes rulings from the FOI commissioner and the Court of Queen's Bench were tabled in the Alberta legislature Wednesday by Independent MLA Raj Sherman, in support of his allegations that doctors who complain about patient care have forced out and legally barred from publicly criticizing the government.
Nunes said he had heard about the case of Dr. Ciaran McNamee, first reported on CBC last week. McNamee, Capital Health's former head of thoracic surgery, filed a lawsuit in which he alleged he had been forced out of the job and accused of incompetence and mental instability after he complained about lung-surgery waiting lists.
The lawsuit was settled out of court and the allegations were never proven. McNamee now teaches at Harvard and is a surgeon at one of Boston's top hospitals.
Another doctor told CBC this week that, like McNamee, she also had been demoted, fired and was the subject of a whisper campaign that questioned her sanity after she complained about health-care cuts putting patient safety at risk. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she is still bound by a non-disclosure agreement.
Nunes said he decided to go public after seeing the McNamee story and hearing Sherman's allegations.
"The reason I am speaking is out because I don't have a gag order, and secondly, I knew from the beginning what Dr. Raj Sherman was getting at because it happened to me as well and I know of other colleagues that this sort of intimidation has happened to as well. So I thought if I don't speak out, if I don't say something, then I am part of the problem."
Nunes, a physician for 31 years, said he has worked in South Africa, Britain and in several cities across Canada.
"I have never felt the sense of intimidation that I felt here," he said.
" What Dr. Raj Sherman and the opposition are pushing for in terms of having a public inquiry, I think that's the right thing. I think it's the only way of getting to the bottom of whether the government had a hand in this or if it was just poor administration."
On Wednesday, Premier Ed Stelmach again rejected calls for a public inquiry, saying he has seen no evidence to support Sherman's allegations.

Questioning the sanity of government critics is literally an old Stalinist favorite, while some of the loathsome tactics on display are uniquely Albertan.

Abuser with a badge charged with sexual assault

Ottawa police officer Sgt. Steven Desjourdy was arrogantly confident that the terrified sobbing woman he helped hold down and assault had no recourse, no way to resist.

Stacy Bonds was arrested for daring to ask the police officers questioning her why she was stopped as she walked home one night in September of 2006.  For having the temerity to in any way question the police's powers to stop and interrogate any dark skinned person in the street they wanted to she was thrown in the back of a police car, taken to an Ottawa police station and in an extended assault captured in sickening detail by jailhouse video cameras was swarmed by officers, kneed, beaten, slammed to the ground under a shield and her clothing cut off by Sgt Desjourdy.

Today Desjourdy found out that the law he has a history of using as a cover for his assaults on women applies to the police as well when he was charged with sexual assault, appropriately on the International Day Against Police Brutality.

The Ottawa Police Service said in a statement Tuesday that it had been informed by the SIU that its investigation, which began Nov. 19, 2010, had concluded there was reasonable grounds to believe Desjourdy had committed a criminal offence.
Desjourdy will remain assigned to administrative duties, the release said. He has been on desk duty since the investigation began.

Police said they referred this file to the Ontario Provincial Police for investigation and will not be making any further public comments because the matter is before the court. The SIU — an arm's-length agency that investigates reports involving police where there has been death, serious injury or allegations of sexual assault — said it would make no further comments in consideration of a fair trial.
Desjourdy will appear before the Ontario Court of Justice in Ottawa on April 12.

Counterfit receipts aren't just a 'difference of interpretation of the rules'

Spotted at A Creative Revolution:

In total, 65 Conservative candidates had submitted nearly identical invoices; only the dollar amounts were different.

The invoices were on the letterhead of the Conservative Party's advertising purchasing agency, Retail Media.

But an Elections Canada investigator later reported that Retail Media didn't seem to know anything about the documents, with a company spokesperson saying they didn’t even look remotely like the firm's standard invoices.

One executive of the ad company "speculated that this invoice must have been altered or created by someone."

So were the other 64 invoices, in total showing $1.3 million of local advertising expenses worth a federal rebate of more than $800,000.

Elections Canada discovered most Conservative candidates didn't seem to have a clue what they were claiming.

One is quoted in court documents as saying: "I think we contributed to TV national advertising. There was no way we could spend our limit so we were asked if we can help contribute."

The appeals court was blunt, saying the ads weren't local at all.

The level of criminality and contempt for the law displayed by the Harper Conservatives has long since reached Nixonian proportions.  If they don't approve of a law they ignore it.  If they are constrained by any independent oversight they co-opt it, corrupt it or crush it.  If they see an opportunity to use their governing power to attack partisan enemies or counteract democratic opposition they take it.

At this point, bringing down this government is necessary to save this country from a criminal regime.

Ignatieff and his handlers were behind the last coalition crumbling, it is to be hoped that his poll numbers like the prospect of a hanging in the morning have focused their attention on reality.

Allergy to Science

Nothing demonstrates better, how right wing ideology is based primarily on dogma and cant than the conservative distaste for science.

Oh they'll co-opt it if they can.  If an oil company can get a bought and paid for hired geek in a lab coat to say global warming isn't happening they'll rush to embrace the idea that there is in fact some kind of scientific controversy on the subject so we shouldn't stop killing the Earth just yet.  If a millionaire owner of a private medical clinic chain with a direct financial stake in the subject who also happens to be a doctor solemnly claims that public health care is unsustainable they rush to embrace the one 'doctor' out of hundreds saying just the opposite.

But in general they hate and fear the field for refusing to bend facts to right-wing prejudice.  For being full of wooly headed irresponsible egg-heads who keep putting hippy-dippy concerns like the fate of life on this planet before corporate profits.  And for insulting Jesus by insisting the Earth is much, much older than the bible says it is and the world and the life on it came together by explicable natural laws and processes rather than spurting out of sky daddy's magic wand.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) accused Republicans on Tuesday of having an "allergy to science and scientists" during a House hearing on a Republican-led proposal to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
The New York Times reports that the meeting, which focused largely on the effect of the gases on climate change, was contentious and ultimately unproductive, as representatives on both sides of the aisle appeared to stubbornly reject claims that countered their own views.
Despite the impasse, however, the hearing didn't go over without its fair share of sparks.
"If Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Einstein were testifying today," Inslee, an environmentalist with a knack for confrontation over green initiatives, posited, "the Republicans would not accept their views until all the Arctic ice has melted and hell has frozen over, whichever comes first."

Regime 'Alteration'

America to Arab protestors: 'Your freedom would be incovenient to us and our allies.  We'll push our client despots to throw you a few more crumbs, you just need to learn to expect less than full democracy.'

WASHINGTON—After weeks of internal debate on how to respond to uprisings in the Arab world, the Obama administration is settling on a Middle East strategy: help keep longtime allies who are willing to reform in power, even if that means the full democratic demands of their newly emboldened citizens might have to wait.

Instead of pushing for immediate regime change—as it did to varying degrees in Egypt and now Libya—the U.S. is urging protesters from Bahrain to Morocco to work with existing rulers toward what some officials and diplomats are now calling "regime alteration."

Welcome to Wellington

So a big welcome to The Wellington Street Post, the new Canadian politics blog aggregator on the block.  Only in action for a few days and already prominently featured in my statcounter.  Welcome to the scene folks.

Saved from Faux News

Robert F. Kennedy congratulates Canada for avoiding the same mistake the US made when Reagan was allowed to gut the Fairness Doctrine:

As America's middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades -- against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News -- fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canada regulators today announced they would reject efforts by Canada's right wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.

Canada's Radio Act requires that "a licenser may not broadcast....any false or misleading news." The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1988. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper's proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right wing network, "Sun TV News" which Canadians call "Fox News North."

Harper, often referred to as "George W. Bush's Mini Me," is known for having mounted a Bush like war on government scientists, data collectors, transparency, and enlightenment in general. He is a wizard of all the familiar tools of demagoguery; false patriotism, bigotry, fear, selfishness and belligerent religiosity.

Harper's attempts to make lying legal on Canadian television is a stark admission that right wing political ideology can only dominate national debate through dishonest propaganda. Since corporate profit-taking is not an attractive vessel for populism, a political party or broadcast network that makes itself the tool of corporate and financial elites must lie to make its agenda popular with the public. In the Unites States, Fox News and talk radio, the sock puppets of billionaires and corporate robber barons have become the masters of propaganda and distortion on the public airwaves. Fox News's notoriously biased and dishonest coverage of the Wisconsin's protests is a prime example of the brand of news coverage Canada has smartly avoided.

Well perhaps a bit of an idealistic take on our home and native land.  "Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves."  is a slightly rosy view.  I'd recommend Kennedy check out the writings and rantings of Ezra Levant or Lorne Gunter's disappointed snarl at the CRTC decision  and he'd find we have our own homegrown ideologues, raving bigots, demagogues and fools with major media soap boxes.

The difference is that they don't have anywhere near the profile someone like Glenn Beck can get, with no restriction at all on blatant partisan dishonesty on the airwaves.  Canada's false news law never stopped Mike Duffy from performing the kind of yeoman service to the Conservative Party that earned him his Senate seat, but it has resulted in the closest thing to a Glenn Beck in Canada being a loud mouthed Hockey announcer with horrible taste in suits almost universally considered to be little more than a rodeo clown.

Of course a law is useless unless it's enforced, so Canadians need to remember to hold our broadcasters to their legal obligations.  Sun TV will be pushing against that boundary every day its on the air, lets make sure their legal department earns their money responding to CRTC complaints every time they do.

Pro-Life means Pro-Murder now?

Pro-Lifers have always been a little caviler about any life that is more than a few inches long and not attached to a placental wall, dismissing the very real medical necessity of conditions like depression, toxemia and even ectopic pregnancy which can never result in anything but the death of mother and child and has to be terminated.  Don't tell Bill O'Reilly though.

But now that casual dismissal of the health of real living women - so much harder to get broody and weird about, than a scrap of flesh that could potentially become a BAAAAABBBBYYYYY - has been revealed as a truly murderous attitude towards doctors, nurses and anybody who helps a woman exercise her right to get a legal medical procedure done.

First, it was South Dakota. Then Nebraska and Iowa. The similarly worded bills, which have quietly cropped up recently in state legislatures, share a common purpose: To expand justifiable homicide statutes to cover killings committed in the defense of an unborn child. Critics of the bills, including law enforcement officials, warn that these measures could invite violence against abortion providers and possibly provide legal cover to the perpetrators of such crimes.

That these measures have emerged simultaneously in a handful of states is no coincidence. It's part of a campaign orchestrated by a Washington-based anti-abortion group, which has lobbied state lawmakers to introduce legislation that it calls the "Pregnant Woman's Protection Act" [PDF]. Over the past two years, the group, Americans United for Life, has succeeded in passing versions of this bill in Missouri and Oklahoma. But there's a big difference between those bills and the measures floated recently in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa.

While the Oklahoma and Missouri laws specifically cover pregnant women, the latest measures are far more sweeping and would apply to third parties. The bills are so loosely worded, abortion-rights advocates say, that a pregnant woman could seek out an abortion and a boyfriend, husband—or, in some cases, just about anyone—could be justified in using deadly force to stop it.

A Planned Parenthood official testified last week at a hearing on Nebraska's LB 232 that such legislation "authorizes and protects vigilantes." And it isn't just abortion-rights advocates who fear the implications of the AUL-inspired legislation. "This could be used to incite violence against abortion providers," said Omaha's deputy chief of police, David Baker. The office of South Dakota's Republican governor—no defender of abortion-rights—has called the version of the bill introduced in the state's legislature a "very bad idea." (Following a national outcry, the South Dakota bill was shelved.)

Of course expect the pro forma denials.  Shocked! Shocked they are, that anyone could interpret this legislation to imply legal protection for the murderous assassins these 'mainstream' totally not all extremist organizations keep producing.  Just because they use language about 'murdering babies', 'genocide', 'death factories' and the like, or publish the names and addresses of the clinic staff they use such rhetoric about should in no way be considered the proximate cause for the murderous rampages their followers keep engaging in.

You know the Science Fiction novel I would have preferred stay fictional?  The Handmaid's Tale.  Too bad groups like these seem intent on some kind of large scale re-enactment.

Quote of the Day

What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.

They never miss a chance to bring it up...

Its hard to spin away that the government and police were monitoring and spying on an elected politician because of the positions he supported.  The Sun is left with the old reliable refuge of the conservative Canadian media whenever the subject comes up, of shrieking 'eugenics!'

During his long public career Douglas held many views that would seem shocking today.
In his 1933 master’s thesis, titled The Problems of the Subnormal Family, Douglas advocated the “unfit” be placed on state work-farms and be sterilized to prevent them from having children.

Douglas also advocated anyone who wanted to marry be subject to government testing to obtain certificates of mental and physical fitness. He saw this as a way to keep “subnormal” humans from marrying.

"Because this class tend to intermarry... the second and third generations are nearly always worse than the first. The result is an ever increasing number of morons and imbeciles who continue to be a charge upon society,” Douglas wrote in defence of eugenics.

Don't look for the context, The Sun of course does not advise their readers that such views were common at the time, nor do they print the many available quotes from Tory and Liberal elected figures from the same era saying the same things.

They don't mention that after a visit to pre-war Germany Douglas abandoned his previous support for eugenics - all it took was seeing it in action.

But in Alberta, the right wing Social Credit government kept forcible sterilization laws on the books until 1972 after they were voted out of power in 1971.

One World. One People. One Struggle.

He could just as easily be talking about Ezra Levant

The Calgary Herald: In praise of the right to lie to the public

The Herald's editorial board robustly defends the right of broadcasters, like the new 'Fox News North' Sun TV  for example, to lie to the public.

A committee of Parliament is asking the CRTC to change an existing regulation that bans the broadcast of "any false or misleading news." The committee wants the wording changed to apply to broadcasters who "knowingly" broadcast news that is "false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health, or safety of the public."

The committee misses the point. This ridiculous regulation should not even exist.

Good rule of thumb:

Anybody who refers to popularly elected union leaders as 'Bosses' is trying to con you.

"Sarah Palin also weighed in on the matter in a Facebook post on Friday, telling union members that they should break away from leaders.

"You don't have to kowtow to the union bosses who are not looking out for you, but instead are using you," wrote Palin.

"Wisconsin union bosses want union members out in the streets demanding that tax payers foot the bill for unsustainable benefits packages."

It's a transparent attempt to obfuscate that the real union bosses are the union members.

Union executives, Presidents, Council members, Business Agents right down to the level of Shop Stewards are elected by their fellow members, enact the policies their members tell them to and can be overthrown in these things called elections  if those members feel they aren't following the will of the membership.  I was a member of one where that happened.

Yes, like any democratic government including that of the United States itself, criminals or incompetents occasionally rise to positions of power.  The strength of the whole system is reflected in how quickly such figures are identified and removed.  I'd put union governance in general against the governance displayed by someone like Governor Walker coming to power.  Any day.

I agree with Robert Creamer, that the radical right over-reached themselves in Wisconsin last week.  They counted on a lightning fast blitzkrieg attack on their political enemies.  Such a fundamental existential attack on the right of collective bargaining becomes far less likely to succeed thanks to Democratic Senators being willing to take the vital step of denying Walker a quorum to ram through his changes.  With public pressure building and both sides exploring recalls against the opposition's state senators the pressure on Walker's caucus will start to have an effect.  A lot of Republicans in the Wisconsin House are getting calls right now from former supporters telling them in no uncertain terms they weren't elected to gut worker's rights.

Best case scenario: This ends in Wisconsin with a fig leaf of some benefit cuts but the most contentious proposals limiting bargaining rights and other union busting poison pills like dues check off withdrawn.  Governors all over the country look at the angry crowds filling the legislature in Madison and decide there's other fights they'd rather spend their time and energy on.

If Walker and the radical right in Wisconsin succeed though, the ongoing class war against workers in North America enters a new and very dangerous stage.  Unions weren't granted the rights they have out of the goodness of the hearts of government and industry, they fought for them in the streets until government and industry decided organized labour was the safer route than an increasingly radicalized population in a world sliding into revolution on every horizon.

The grand compromise of the modern social contract was a peace treaty.  Generally speaking, tearing up a peace treaty means war.

"If you're going to take away bargaining rights, you leave them with what?  You leave them with what they had in the '20s and '30s, you leave them with the streets."

Quote of the Day

Rising tensions in Madison and could presage the kind of labor unrest that hasn’t been seen in the US since the Great Depression, says Professor Bruno.
"If you're going to take away bargaining rights, you leave them with what?" he says. "You leave them with what they had in the '20s and '30s, you leave them with the streets."

Attention must be paid. Don't kid yourself that Conservative politicians in Canada aren't looking at Wisconsin with a mixture of calculation and longing. This is like the partisan attack our own loathsome right wingers tried with political financing; a deliberate act of war and an unambiguous existential threat to their political enemies and to civil society itself.

Alpha Flight 2011

The 80's Marvel Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight reported to Pierre Trudeau and the worst their government ever asked them to do was to try to kidnap Wolverine for defecting from Canada (?) but in the new 21st century reboot, they learn what it means to live in Stephen Harper's Canada:

...there is a change in the government not unlike when you see a government go from democracy to a facist state." Alpha Flight will be seen by the new Canadian government as the country's greatest traitors. 

Where's Captain Canuck when we need him?

Republican Governer Declares war on Workers

Taking away public workers bargaining rights with the stroke of a pen. How long before Harper tries to import this idea?

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said Friday that he was willing to mobilize the state's National Guard force in order to address the potential repercussions of his stated proposal to eliminate collective bargaining rights for state employees.

The Associated Press reports:
Gov. Scott Walker says the Wisconsin National Guard is prepared to respond wherever is necessary in the wake of his announcement that he wants to take away nearly all collective bargaining rights from state employees.

Walker said Friday that he hasn't called the Guard into action, but he has briefed them and other state agencies in preparation of any problems that could result in a disruption of state services, like staffing at prisons.

On Thursday, Walker told the Associated Press that he will propose removing nearly all public employee collective bargaining rights to help plug a $3.6 billion budget hole.

Walker, a Republican who took office in January, said no one should be surprised by the move he will ask the GOP-controlled Legislature to approve next week given that he's talked about doing it for two months.

"This is not a shock," he said. "The shock would be if we didn't go forward with this."

But union leaders, and even some Republicans, were taken aback at the scope of his proposal.

Precious Bodily Fluids

Public Health policy in Calgary now being run by General Jack D. Ripper.

My Mommies help me with my homework

Arbitrary school rankings designed by the Fraser Institute to promote an anti public school privatization agenda?  Absolutely worthless.

Having a school for cultist polygamist kids get a perfect score?  Absolutely priceless.

A school for children in the polygamous commune of Bountiful, B.C. is among the highest ranking on the 2011 Fraser Institute Report Card. 

Bountiful Elementary-Secondary scored a perfect 10 mark. 

It tied with 12 other schools, mostly private schools in the Vancouver area, that also achieved perfect 10s. 

The Fraser Institute rates 875 public and private elementary schools throughout B.C. based on 10 key indicators using data from province-wide testing, known as the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) test. FSA tests are mandated by the B.C. Ministry of Education.
Fraser Institute spokesperson, Peter Cowley, said not much is known about what made Bountiful so successful on FSAs. 

“With regard to what techniques they may have used or how they taught in math, for instance, between kindergarten and grade 4, all those things may be interesting but we don’t have any long term record of success yet,” Cowley said. 

Jane Friesen, the director of Simon Fraser University's Centre for Education Research and Policy, said people should look at these rankings carefully. 

“It’s simply telling you how is a particular cohort of students in a school doing in a particular year. I think we have to be careful to not interpret those results as a measure of the effectiveness of the school and I think that’s where the real issue comes in,” she said

Shameful Opposition to Democracy

It's been fascinating watching various right wing and establishment 'liberal' commentators twist themselves into knots justifying their hostility to people fighting for democracy and their support for a vicious dictator.

As well as plentiful examples in the American media and political establishment, and the despicable fawning from Tony Blair for the malevolent Mubarak, here in Canada we have had the spectacle of the Globe and Mail scolding the courageous Egyptian protesters for trying to 'humiliate' Mubarak and then scrambling to reposition as events conspire to make them look ever more discreditable.  We've watched various political figures fear-mongering about the Muslim Brotherhood (with its membership of perhaps a couple hundred thousand in a country with a population of over 80 million.) to justify their defense of a military strong man who has held power for decades using torture, savage repression and a police force only one step away from death squads.

The argument is explicit:  That the problem with democracy is that it might mean some Muslims will vote.

This needs to be remembered.  This shameful display needs to follow them for the rest of their lives.