Time For Straight Talk, Steve!

Steve Martin, sorry, he’s that other comedian, – Steve Harper has been running an empty campaign. No issues, no platform. Vote for me because I’m better than the others. Don’t worry about what I’ll do with your vote, that’ll be none of your concern after the election.

Harper has told us that there’s a Bad Moon Risin‘ south of the border and therefore we should put our trust in him to do – well he doesn’t want to say what he’s got in mind.

That’s just not good enough now that America’s boiling pot of red ink and bad paper is threatening to spill over. C’mon Steve, what gives? Just what do you see coming? What is it likely going to mean for Canada and Canadians? What can we do about it? What are our options? What do you plan to do about it if you get another minority? What do you have in mind if you get a majority?

Steve, if you don’t seek a mandate by giving us a clear platform, a plan of action to deal with what’s coming, don’t claim afterward that you’ve got a mandate. That’d be a goddamned lie and that’s a serious sin for a pious man like yourself, Steve.

Listen Steve, what’s that sound? It’s something flying off the blades of the fan down America way. We’ll need a lot more than sweater vests to get through this winter, Steve.

Time for some straight talk, Steve Harper. You called this scam election. You owe us that.

 

Travers Nails Harper the Bully

If you haven’t already read it, take a couple of minutes to scan James Travers’ insightful take on Stephen Harper in today’s Toronto Star.

http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/447680

 

Comrade Harper Doesn’t Want to Run the Government, He Wants to Own It!

Docile, complacent, timid. Those words pretty much describe the Canadian media and how they’ve let down the people of this country as Comrade Stephen has forcefully insinuated himself between the Canadian government and the Canadian people.

You no longer have access to your government. You have access to Comrade Stephen and his minions, the political commissars of the PMO, the Prime Minister’s Office. Our Furious Leader and his faceless cadre will decide what you need to know about the federal government’s workings and that’ll be exactly what they want you to know and nothing more. Does that sound a little bit Stalinist to you? Well, yeah, it is. Does it seem undemocratic, un-Canadian even? It is and it’s a stain that taints everyone who supports the Harper government.

The Toronto Star is publishing a series this week called “Secret Capital”:

“In the 6th-floor office of a nondescript building sit the gatekeepers, the bureaucrats who decide what Canadians learn about the workings of their government.

Questions on the hot issues of the day all get funnelled through this office, the “communications and consultations” unit of the Privy Council Office, housed in the Blackburn building that fronts the Sparks St. pedestrian mall.

Throughout the government, it’s known simply as “downtown,” the place where decisions are made on who speaks on issues and what they say. In the Conservative government’s clampdown on communications, this is Ground Zero.

Public appearances by cabinet ministers – whether it’s a speech or an interview – are carefully staged, starting with a “message event proposal” vetted by the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic wing of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

And in a marked change from previous governments, now even basic demands for information from reporters, once easily fielded by department spokespersons, are sent to this office for review – and often heavy editing – before they are okayed for public release, government insiders say.

David Taras, a professor in the department of communications and culture at the University of Calgary said, ‘You can control events for so long, you can only manipulate for so long and ultimately I think this has harmed the Harper government to the extent that Harper’s image has become `Mr. Partisan, Mr. Mean, Mr. Control Freak,’

“It’s just got to a point where control is the image of what his government is. That’s damaging. … You wonder what they’re running from and what they’re afraid of,” he said.

The clampdown could get worse. Auditor-General Sheila Fraser recently revealed that the government is proposing a new policy that would require all communications “products” to be vetted by the Privy Council Office.

One government official said the new rules would formally enshrine in policy the unwritten rule that now exists.

“The screws are being tightened bit by bit. It’s gotten very extreme in the last six months. Just more and more delays, more and more control over things, less and less things getting approved,” the official said.”

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/429906

It’s time those who support Harper’s assault on Canadian democracy face up to their choice – defend Canada and our democracy or empower Harper.

 

Why I Don’t Hate Stephen Harper

I received some angry rebukes from Harper supporters in response to the item I posted, “What I can’t stand about Stephen Harper.” I was accused to hating Harper. Coming from that part of the political spectrum that embraces hatred, along with fear and suspicion, as philosophical staples, my critics probably just can’t help themselves.

For the record, I don’t hate Stephen Harper. I don’t hate people as a rule, it takes far too much effort and tends to cloud the mind. I’ll save my hatred for someone of much greater consequence than this fellow.

I can’t stand some of Mr. Harper’s policies and I can’t stand some of his actions and skullduggery. I routinely comment on his hypocrisy and duplicity and yet I don’t hate him. To me, at least, hatred is the most extreme variety of disapproval or dislike, an irrational emotion that carries a desire to see the person harmed or destroyed. I’d be enormously pleased to see Harper and his policies powerfully rejected by the electorate but that’s about it.

Another point that my rightwing scolds bring up is the notion that Harper deserves our respect. I see nothing at all in him warranting my respect. Withholding my respect, however, is based on his actions and ideas and is not tantamount to hatred.

Harper loves America and he loves the American way although he’s clever enough to know not to make that too obvious while he still heads a minority government. The irony is, if he was an American his political career would be dead. Look at the demeaning remarks he made about Canada and the Canadian people, how he mocked us to an audience of influential Americans in Montreal a decade ago. Any American leader who had shown such disrespect to his nation and people would be shown the door and handed a sandwich wrapped in a road map. He wouldn’t be able to stand for dog catcher much less president. For Canadian conservatives, however, that same behaviour in their leader is just fine. Not only fine, they can’t wait to proclaim their respect for the man who so plainly doesn’t respect our country or our people.

I don’t respect Stephen Harper but that’s because I am proud of my country and my people. I don’t respect Stephen Harper’s policies or his chicanery or his hypocrisy or his duplicity. There are many things about Stephen Harper I can’t stand. But I don’t hate Stephen Harper. He’s not worth that.

 

What I Can’t Stand About Harper

A few BC Libs have gotten together to exchange ideas about the LPC, the CPC and, of course, Stephen Harper. In search of consensus, each of us set out just what it is we most dislike about Stephen Harper. It’s a neat exercise that does wonders to focus the mind.

Here are some of my thoughts on why I don’t like Stephen Harper:

“My partner put it best. She doesn’t like Harper because he doesn’t like us. Harper’s comments going back a decade reveal his contempt for the Canadian people and our social values. Harper is outside our values in a place more likely to be inhabited by right-wing ideologues, would-be Republicans. At a purely personal level I believe he has set himself up against me and against my country. Harper doesn’t want to serve and build Canada. He wants to transform it by shifting it far to the right following the same method that has worked in the United States.

I don’t like Harper because I find him parochial. His preference is for wholesale devolution, a rejigging of our confederation and a Balkanization of the nation.

I dislike Harper because he flies false flags and employs ruse to effect fundamental change. Take the GST cuts. Harper didn’t cut the GST for economic stimulus. In fact economists were nearly universal in holding economic stimulus would better be achieved by direct cuts in income taxes. What Harper was really doing, without being honest about it, was defunding the government. Doing that, covertly, is, in my view utterly subversive.

The world is now entering an era that promises great upheaval – socially, politically, economically – and Canada, while relatively blessed, won’t be immune. Yet our central government has been rendered impotent to act quickly and powerfully should that need arise. It has been deprived of its fiscal strength and that has been a deliberate but unspoken policy of the Harper cons.

I see in Stephen Harper a man guided by a narrow, mechanical ideology who pursues objectives but without any clear or compelling vision. He’s a glorified clerk. His lack of vision is reflected in a common failing of our time among the political classes – an utter indifference to posterity.

The times that are upon us mandate that we incorporate posterity into all our decision-making. What’s good for us in five years is important but not if it requires neglecting or impairing the welfare of the country for generations to follow. That surely must be the nub of the entire climate change dilemma. Looked at in the span of an election cycle, it’s vastly different than when taken on a generational scale.

Harper’s goals are immediate and that makes his focus small and devoid of the inconvenience of vision. It gives rise to that “bull in the china shop” decision making where immediate results eclipse long-term consequences. The Tar Sands development to lever Canada into an “energy superpower” reflects that way of thinking.

Our society, our nation, our world are facing long-term challenges that can’t be met by short-term thinking. It needs vision with an eye to posterity to begin developing long-term, effective responses – both remedial and adaptive.

The coming three decades will usher in enormous problems of a global dimension. Taken collectively they’re unprecedented in scale and impact. Global warming, desertification, overpopulation, resource depletion, freshwater exhaustion, species extinction, the arrival of peak oil. Society is going to undergo change, the nation is going to undergo change, the global community is going to undergo change, often unpleasant and threatening and ultimately unavoidable. It’s going to take strong social cohesion and clear vision-based consensus to find and implement the very best responses, short and long-term, to these challenges. Put another way, this will require leadership totally at odds with the corporate management style of movement conservatives.”

And that, in brief, is what I can’t stand about Stephen Harper. He’s stuck in a rigid and atrophied ideology that does not serve this country well, even in the short run, and will certainly harm it in the long run.

So, do you dislike Stephen Harper? Is there something about him you can’t stand? If so, why not take a few minutes, go to your blog and put your thoughts down in writing for the rest of us to share?

 

Is Harper Cracking Up?

Stephen Harper is going to sue Stephane Dion, Ignatieff and Goodale for defamation arising out of two articles published on the Liberal party website.

Well, if the Liberals needed something to keep the Cadman scandal front and centre in the public eye, our Furious Leader just served it up on a platter.

Apparently the articles, which I haven’t read but will now, offend Stevie because they claim he knew about a plan to attempt to bribe Cadman to vote to bring down the Liberal government of Paul Martin.

“These malicious and reckless statements impugn the reputation of the Prime Minister and meant, and were understood to mean inter alia, that the Prime Minister knew of a bribe of a Member of Parliament and was an accomplice to that bribe.”

Oh Steve, say it isn’t so. Harper’s lawyers apparently claim that the Liberal articles suggest Harpo is, “dishonest, unethical, immoral and lack integrity.” Suggest? C’mon, we all know he’s dishonest, unethical, immoral and lacks integrity. That’s like whining that Dion alleges the sun will rise at dawn.

Well, there you have it. If Dion is smart, he’ll play Harper’s game because it’s one that Harper won’t win in the public’s mind, no matter the outcome should it reach trial.

Within a couple of months the lawyers should be able to begin the Examinations for Discovery. Imagine Harpo, under oath, being put to discovery. Oh wait, wasn’t there another Tory prime minister who sued for libel and had a difficult moment or two under discovery? Too bad Harper isn’t taking Mulroney’s calls any more.

 

Can Harper Feel MacKay’s Hot Breath on His Neck?

There’s a curious piece in the Canadian Press, “MacKay says he has no knowledge of alleged financial offer to Cadman.” My first reaction was “okay, so what?”

“I don’t know anything about how this has come about. Certainly it was something that I was not involved with,” said MacKay, who was in St. John’s, N.L., to make a funding announcement.

“I think it’s sad, quite frankly, that this seems to have come up. It’s very unfortunate.”

All MacKay seems to be saying is that he’s lily-clean in this “unfortunate” business. No denial that Cadman was bribed. No indignant vouching for the integrity of his boss, Harpo. No accusation that the Libs are exploiting the issue to smear the prime minister. Just that “it’s sad” and “frankly …unfortunate.”

I wonder if Peter sees the writing on the wall for Stevie? Just curious.

 

Uncle Joe Harper’s Political Commisars

“In all dictatorships, targeting the free press begins with political pressure – loud, angry campaigns for the news to be represented in a way that supports the group that seeks dominance.” – Naomi Wolf, “The End of America.”

Now, relax, I’m not claiming that Harper intends to seize dictatorial power in Canada. I think it’s only a matter of time before that chump runs his course and the stain of his administration fades. That said, we do need to be mindful of this guy’s autocratic bent. Part of that lies in Harper’s manipulation of the Canadian media.

It came out late last year that Harpo had imposed a political filter on the Department of National Defence where requests for interviews or the release of information to the media had to be pre-cleared with senior bureaucrats in the PMO, the Prime Minister’s Office. These political commisars were obviously intended to control the message on the Afghanistan controversy. It’s a form of media manipulation and it’s a technique that Harper has shown he’ll use with other controversial issues.

The Vancouver Sun, a full-fledged KanWest paper, says the same tactics are being used by Harpo against Environment Canada.

“Environment Canada’s muzzling of its scientists might be shocking, but it’s hardly surprising.

The new policy, which apparently went into force in recent weeks, is designed to control the media message and ensure that Environment Minister John Baird faces no “surprises” when he reads or listens to the news.

The policy dictates that researchers refer all media queries to Ottawa. The media office then directs reporters to submit their questions in writing, and then researchers are to send written responses to senior management for approval. If the researcher is cleared to do an interview, he or she is asked to stick to “approved lines,” though it’s not clear what that enigmatic phrase means.

Needless to say, the new policy has infuriated scientists and sent a chill through Environment Canada. After all, while Gregory Jack, acting director of Environment Canada’s ministerial and executive services, insisted “there is no change in the access in terms of scientists being able to talk,” it’s clear that scientists are being severely hobbled in their ability to speak freely.

This is in stark contrast to Environment Canada’s treatment under previous governments, when it was one of the most open and accessible federal departments. That openness and accessibility, however, is seen by Environment Canada’s executive committee as a problem that needs to be remedied.

It appears that the Conservatives refuse to recognize any distinction between policy based on science and science itself. Rather than using scientific evidence to inform policy, the Conservatives seem more interested in ensuring that the science conforms to their policy.”

Once again we see the true face of Stephen Harper and it’s pretty ugly.

 

Harper Screws the Messenger

It’s up to the Canadian Forces to decide what they will and won’t tell us about their actions in Afghanistan. That came from Blockhead himself, our Furious Leader, Stephen Harper, as he lovingly greased himself up to slip to safety from the detainee controversy. From the Globe & Mail:

“The military is free to release information about Afghan detainees if it chooses, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday, as he was criticized for excessive secrecy on how Canadian troops handle their prisoners.

“These are operational matters of the Canadian military. If the Canadian military chooses to reveal that information, that’s their decision. But the government certainly isn’t going to release it on their behalf,” Mr. Harper said in the House of Commons.”

There you have it, hands off from the Cons. Canadian Forces will say what they like, when they like and to whom they like, so don’t blame the Harpies if they’re not up front, blame the military. Wait a second, that doesn’t sound quite right, does it?

It’s not, that is unless Lardo has repealed the gag order he slapped on the Canadian Forces that came to light just two weeks before Christmas. That’s when word got out that the Forces had been told that requests for information and interviews had to be pre-cleared with their political commisars, senior officials from the prime minister’s office.

“The Privy Council directive applies to all matters of “national importance” but is primarily focused on shaping information relating to the war in Afghanistan.”

Oh my goodness, Harper appears to be – lying. Worse, he seems to be hanging the Armed Forces out to dry to give himself political cover. Not Harper, he wouldn’t do that, would he?

(the original story was posted on 10 December, 2007)

 

What Harper and Rex Murphy Can’t Grasp

I watched the clip of Rex Murphy endorsing Stephen Harper’s policy on cutting carbon emissions. The policy, as I’ve heard Harper explain it, is that all nations must commit to binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

On its face it has the same appeal as the flat tax proposals that get bandied about. From our perspective in the advantaged, industrialized world, Harper’s carbon policy makes plain sense.

What we don’t want to consider is how this policy is seen by the emerging economies and the Third World and we certainly don’t want to consider how it makes them see us. Only once we look at it from their perspective does the manifest inequity of the Harper proposal become apparent. From their perspective the policy looks patently racist.

The Harper policy embraced so warmly by Rex Murphy is a policy considered in a void. Completely left out are some unfortunate realities these people would rather not have mentioned. For example, North Americans create so much greenhouse gas because we use a disproportionate amount of fossil fuels.

It’s easiest to look at the American example. Our numbers are pretty close so we can fall under the US example. Americans represent about 5% of the world’s population. Americans consume more than 25% of the world’s fossil fuels. That means Americans use five times the world average in fossil fuels and produce five times the world average in greenhouse gases.

Now, let’s take India. Indians use considerably less than the world average in fossil fuels and produce commensurately less greenhouse gas emissions. Ballpark it at about one-tenth of the American numbers.

The big difference is that there are 1,130,000,000 Indians, give or take a few million. The same source (the CIA) estimates America’s population as of July, 2007 at 301,000,000. So, India is nearly four times as populous as the United States. China comes in at 1,322,000,000.

India and China are considered emerging economies and that means industrialization and that means fossil fuels and that means greenhouse gas emissions. Still, on a per capita basis, their fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are a small fraction of our own.

Now, let’s say we decide that everyone should agree to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 50%. Let’s say an Indian, on a per capita basis, produces about 10% of the per capita American emissions figure. So, by cutting 50% across the board, we’re in effect preserving our ratio discrepancies in perpetuity. We’re locking in our right to continue consuming the lion’s share of the world’s energy and to continue pumping out the lion’s share of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. What’s more, we expect them to agree to that. If you were the little guy on the receiving end of that ultimatum, would you agree to it? You’re lying if you said you would.

There has to be accommodation on this problem. We emit vastly more so we should have to cut at least somewhat more. Measures do need to be taken by India and China but we in the advantaged, industrialized world have to do more than we expect of them, a lot more.

Overall, what we need to do is determine, on the best scientific evidence available, a global emissions target. That’ll be the pie. And then we have to work out how much of that pie each nation should be allocated based on a variety of factors including population. It’s a form of global carbon rationing but there’s no other way to make this work through international co-operation.

This is not some “off the wall” concept. It’s actually the very basis of the Bali Communique of 150-major British and European corporations.

Harper can’t hide behind his simplistic reasoning any longer, and there’s no excuse for Rex Murphy following suit either.