The cost of apathy, the rewards of giving a damn

“We are ready to defend and die for our land”.

And they won that battle...against a Canadian mining company.

Meanwhile, Canadians whine about having to go vote and can’t be bothered to become informed of what their government is up to.

Condolences to family and friends

Master Cpl. Francis Roy

Liberty gin all around

We'll need it.

Many of us warned of this time, shook our heads as journalists went on about how a harper with a majority would be a kinder, more moderate harper once he has what he wants - his precious majority.

We knew this was nonsense because the majority is a means to an end for him, and the end his his mean, colourless, suppressive vision of what he wants Canada to be: a nation of workers/taxpayers/consumers who are incapable of offering any type of resistance to what he wants to do micro-managing how we live, think, and even what we believe.

He wants to create a country where the term human resources is exactly that - just another resource used by him and the real elite he considers as more than mere shadow people, mere props, to be used for the economic gain and power of him and his elite.

A new species of domesticated beast.  Feed us just enough to keep us going, kill off those in the herd who are disruptive or don't produce profits, keep us bovine-like, unimaginative, ignorant, constantly supervised, and restrained.  Then he and the other real people sit back, reap great profits, gaze over the herds, and in the unlikely event that any of the bastards has a twinge on conscience now and then, tell each other that the bovine people would wilt and die without the wise management of the elite.

harper set out years ago to situate himself so that there would be little in place to oppose him.  With a minority, he managed to silence and gut several oversight agencies, make the Senate an extension of his will, cut programs which support creativity and free thought, push us further into poverty and financial insecurity than was necessary due to the recession, and even change what Canada stands for.  He did a lot of this by thumbing his nose at legislation while opposition parties, more interested in their own survival allowed him to commit abuse after abuse on our democracy.

Now that he has a majority, he acts as though he has a clear, undisputed mandate to act without any explanation or need for accountability whatsoever.

Senate reform?  Sure, he'll go through the motions, pretending to be sincere in respecting procedure and democratic will, but only as long as he can bully things in the direction he wants it to go.  If that doesn't work, down comes the boot. 

Jason Kenney is suggesting his boss Stephen Harper could do away with the Senate if his Conservative caucus in the Red Chamber doesn’t play ball and accept his reforms. 

harper doesn't believe the Senate works for us.  That's why he appointed those he did, counting on them to simply rubber stamp whatever he demands. 

At least one senator understands the law of steve (emphasis mine):

“Every senator in this caucus needs to decide where their loyalty should be and must be,” Bert Brown wrote his Senate colleagues Wednesday.  “The answer is simple; our loyalty is to the man who brought us here, the man who has wanted Senate reform since he entered politics, the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper.”

From the Parliament site, "What is the Senate?":

Examining and revising legislation, investigating national issues and representing regional, provincial and minority interests — these are important functions in a modern democracy. They are also the duties of Canada's Senate. Senators represent, investigate, deliberate and legislate...The founders knew that Canada's Parliament would need two houses to make sure that legislation received careful consideration. They gave the Senate legislative powers similar to those of the House of Commons, but anticipated a very different role for it. The Senate was to be, in the words of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, a place of “sober second thought.”

steve  has largely changed that role simply by stacking the senate with his self-serving brown-nosers.  Bert Brown certainly is confused about the role of a senator.  And should any other harper appointee dare oppose the megalomaniac steve, well, he'll simply crush them all without amending the constitution.  The constitution is meaningless to him.  Just another bump in the road.  If he can't drive over it, he'll level it and people will forget it was ever there.

Labour rights?  Unions?  He is already well on his way to maligning both, re-educating the public that they are vile things that serve a handful of socialists and lazy people at the expense of hard workin' taxpayers.  So what if workers have the right to strike, the right to negotiate in good faith?  Changing a country is a lot of work, and he has no time for that, so he simply steps in, stomps all over those rights, sends out a bunch of propaganda on how he stopped those damn socialists from harming the economy and those hard workin' taxpayers, and soon people forget it wasn't always that way.  And for the few who remember and want to rebel, all avenues are closed.

Victory gin?  Yeah, steve would love it if we all just got numb and moved according to the cattle prod.  The opposition parties are useless, right now, and not just because steve has a majority.  They are still far more interested in their own welfare than protecting our democracy, our rights.  They should be rousing us, not lulling us with feeble excuses for not opposing such abominations as allowing 270 odd billion in unscrutinized funds, for example.

We have to fight for ourselves, for the things those who came before us fought for.  We have to be more than the opinion elite.  We need to find more effective ways to be heard before all venues are closed tight.

Asbestos and the old pusher arguments

If I don’t sell deadly drugs to naive kids, someone else will.

I’m just giving them what they want.  They can say no. 

It’s legal in Amsterdam, so what’s the problem?

(emphasis mine)

“But for years, Canada has been scraping asbestos out of buildings, including those on Parliament Hill and at 24 Sussex Dr., the prime minister's residence.  Asked during the recent election campaign how Canada can justify the contrast, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said as long as countries are willing to buy it, he won’t stand in the way.

"This government will not put Canadian industry in a position where it is discriminated against in a market where sale is permitted," Harper said.

By that logic, we should be able to sell drugs to several countries and nuclear bombs to any country that wants them, including Iran.  Arms dealers should be able to expand their exports to include chemicals and diseases.  We could sell children for arranged marriages.  We just can’t sell those things here in Canada.

Canada:  the pusher who sells death but won’t touch it himself because...damn!  That shit kills!

Pretty appalling, right?  Most Canadians would be very upset with a government that not only sells a deadly product to other countries as though lives outside of Canada have less value, but a government that actively attempts to block information on the very deadly nature of the product.

So what do our elected pushers do?  Don’t tell Canadians.  It’s not like they have a right to know.

On the eve of a conference to decide whether to label the substance as a hazardous material under the United Nations' Rotterdam Convention, a spokeswoman for Industry Minister Christian Paradis said this isn't the time to tell Canadians what Canada's position actually is.

"There are times when it's time to disclose it and there are times when it's not the time, and now it's not the time," Pascale Boulay said Friday. "Canada knows what its position is."

As Dr. Dawg points out, try to fathom that mindset.  

Makes you ask what harper considers makes up the national entity, Canada.  Not Canadians, apparently.  Canada is harper.  It’s not Canadians.  We’re just there to provide workers, taxpayers, and consumers.  Not the elected Parliament.  The members of the opposition don’t know the position harper will take on asbestos.  They can make a very educated guess, but they are not privy to what Canada knows.

That’s some very scary shit.

This is no longer a democracy.

Harper begs for money for his War on Truth, Free Speech and Free Thought

I can barely keep up with the ever growing harper lexicon of what is baaaaad.

Latest addition to the baaaad elitists are people with opinions.  

I’m wondering how people like Ezra Levant, KKKKate McMillan, Stephen Taylor, and Charles McVety feel about harper declaring war on them.

In a letter sent out in the past few days, Conservative Party President John Walsh is urging supporters to help the party counter a “hailstorm” of negative attacks from the media, pundits and the “opinion elite.”

Where does that leave the wisdom of the Tim Horton’s crowd?  Maybe Timmy’s should put up signs: “no opining.”

Harper knows the power of Sleight of Mouth  and has been linking perfectly good characteristics, professions, and groups of people to negative terms, probably since he realized that the world didn’t automatically buy into his conviction that he’s wonderful and anyone who disagrees is the enemy.  Lacking any actual proof that he is the embodiment of perfection, he probably decided to change words and their definitions to suit his deluded beliefs and convince others of them.  But I digress.

Neuro-linguistic programming  used among other things to change patterns of mental and emotional behaviour in others is a key weapon in the CPC arsenal even if most of the CONs are too stump-dumb ignorant to understand how it works.  You don’t need to understand how a sexually transmitted disease functions on a cellular level in order to spread it, for instance.

What harper and the neanders are doing is attempting to define what a good Canadian is and what a bad Canadian is, what a good group of people is and what a bad group of people is.  By linking these people and groups to favourable/unfavourable terms over and over, he can eventually get the stupider segment of the public to support or attack at his prompting.

Steve had defined so very many people and groups as baaaaad during his four year election campaign claiming that if only he had a majority, he could get things done despite the opposition of these baaaad elements.  Now that he has a majority, he can’t raise funds by going on about the long gun registry, the opposition stalling Bills, the unelected liberal Senate, senate reform...

He no longer has any effective opposition in Parliament so naturally looks to who else he feels he needs to silence.  No big surprise he wants to shut up the media and social networks.  But how will donations to CPC help him do that?  Massive negative ad campaigns  against the media and people with opinions?  Silencing those few independent thinking journalist with the integrity not to kiss his ass by getting them fired?

The letter does not say how the party plans to counter the groups it identifies as a threat.

Perhaps Stevie intends to use the funds to establish re-education camps.  

Facts published by the media or through social media would be threatening to the survival of a party and leader who have been found in contempt of Parliament, who have mislead the public on spending, who have violates spending rules, who have violated election rules, who continuously refuse to tell the public how their tax dollars are being spent, who falsify documents by altering them…

Even dumb ass, thick as concrete, atavistic neandercon fanatics with no opinions or original thoughts must realize that the electorate needs to be told these facts if they are to vote in an informed fashion.  Maybe even those dullards realize that harper can't possibly represent every single preference and ideal they embrace and that they may want the chance to express their own opinion in a democratic, effective fashion, just once in their life.

Maybe not.  To recognize those things requires at least a modicum of original thought.

Our real master

There’s an obscure movie called The Mutant Chronicles.  It isn’t very good (even though it does star Ron Perlman).  I mention it because it presents, in a very simple story, a futuristic view of how our planet could be divided among corporate interests rather than along political lines.

I have long believed we are headed that way (minus the mutants).  Corporations gain greater power over political systems since the economy takes precedence over everything – health care, education, the environment, equality, quality of life, and human rights.  This isn’t likely to change unless the world is at the brink of complete destruction.  The very small percentage of people who have the bulk of the money and power will do everything they can to keep and strengthen their advantages.

Well, guess what?  What many of us have suspected for some time is actually backed with evidence.

A newly-released diplomatic cable exposes some of the very deliberate planning and manipulation the Unites States began in earnest in 2006 when they saw a weak party and leader they could shape into “more useful partners” to forward their own agenda.

Some of the US interests the cable points out that the US wanted to advance:

 - law enforcement and continental security,

 - developing Canada as a more useful partner in the Hemisphere and around the globe,

 - cross-border law enforcement initiatives of interest to the US,

 - enhanced information-sharing,

 - joint maritime operations

 - keep Canada “in the game in Afghanistan as the mission turns more difficult and possibly more bloody”

 - work together to keep the pressure on Iran

 - increase support to the new government in Haiti

 - getting Canada to begin “engaging more actively in other hemispheric trouble spots such as Venezuela, Colombia, and Cuba.”

In 2007, the Harper government made the Americas one of its first international priorities, a major and surprising shift in Canadian foreign policy after decades of work in Africa. Among the positions adopted included cooler relations with the Venezuela and even Cuba, and stalwart economic, development and political support for Colombia—all of which reflect US policies.

Why is the US so interested in these things?  (emphasis mine)

At the SPP meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in March 2006, leaders agreed to a number of initiatives, such as the creation of a powerful advisory group composed of the continent’s largest businesses, a cross-border emergency and disaster management agreement, and a commitment to improving security at the border without making trade more difficult.

How can a powerful group made up of private corporations hold such power?

“I suggest quietly working such cooperation with the new government through official, non-public channels, and that we focus on a handful of priority areas...”

This is why we end up with excellent Bills being killed in Parliament, such as Bill C-300, The Corporate Accountability of Mining, Oil and Gas Corporations in Developing Countries Act.  Can’t have little things like human rights and Canadian values getting in the way of making a profit.

So our troops didn’t step up the fight in Afghanistan and stay on despite heavy losses because they were fighting for democracy.  No, they stayed because of an American agenda.  Our military is like the reserve for the US.

This highly unbalanced partnership is almost impossible to remove ourselves from once it has begun.  Too much money backing it, and far too many control systems set in place.  Here are a few:

Joint security:  sounds like a good idea on the surface – pooling resources to protect our countries from attacks.  But when those joint security systems consider peaceful protests as an attack against the corporate interests, then we see incidents like those at the Toronto G-20 where peaceful citizens who wish only to express concern are told they have no rights. 

Those charged with security are encouraged to view citizens as potential threats, and encouraged to protect whatever vague, secretive interest they are told to.  The interests of the powerful corporate backed groups trump everything and everyone, including fundamental rights of individuals.

This show of force is practiced and publicized over and over so that security forces come to believe that the public is the enemy, and citizen are taught that they will be severely punished for any expression of disapproval.

Kill the arts: can’t have people being creative, developing and expressing original ideas, analyzing actions, or questioning government.  Can’t have talented, creative people expressing those ideas in ways which capture the interest and imagination of other Canadians.

Promote sports:  gives people the illusion that they are passionate about something, that they belong to something important.  Great non-productive outlet for emotion.

Military engagement:  wars are great not only to line the pockets of corporations, but to mindlessly rally the public behind a government, and to stop people from complaining about their problems.  How dare you complain about anything when our brave troops are dying for you in some awful foreign country?

Kill education:  reduce it to something that makes a population of workers/consumers, but cut out anything that causes people to develop independent or critical thought.  Get people to believe that higher education is unpatriotic, elitist.  Turn words like academic into insults.

Keep the bulk of the population poor, or just above poverty:  hard to care about anything else when you are just struggling to survive.  Not much time to get involved in protests or with political opposition.  This has the added advantage of shifting even more money over to the small percentage who hold the bulk of power and wealth.

Look at what the cuts to public service jobs will accomplish:  lay off 100,000 public servants, then hire a bunch back because someone needs to do the work, but hire them through private agencies.  You don’t have to give them benefits, and the agencies get a big percentage of the worker’s hourly pay.  The workers will accept this, because they need the work, and agencies generally have no set wage for particular jobs.  They get pretty much what a public servant would get for the job, then pay the worker as little as they thing the worker will accept.  The extra benefit of such a system is that the worker will put up with just about anything since they have no union, and even going to the Labour Board will end up blacklisting them with the agencies.

Push religion:  people will put up with a lot of suffering and deprivation if you tell them it’s a god’s will.  You can also get them to commit horrible acts against other people, all in the name of a god.

Push happy pills:  double reward there, as pharmaceutical companies make a killing and the population is numb.

Have enemies within and without:  keep people afraid of crime (unreported crime, if necessary), keep them afraid of terrorists, immigrants, invaders.  Make sure the fear factors are linked to crime and/or war.  Corporations can make big bucks off tax dollars spent to protect citizens from fantasy threats.  Don’t encourage reality-based fears such as infectious diseases or contaminated food sources.  Too expensive to fight, corporations don’t like that, no money benefits.

Control the message...always.

So how many of these systems are already in place or in progress in Canada?

More here with Alison at Creekside
 

Name harper's newest photo prop

So stevie wanker wants to pretend he's soft and fuzzy and asks you to help name his latest prop.

I'm thinking...Squealer.

Brigette DePape and much needed civil disobedience

How can I think for a moment that the other matters that have been keeping me too busy to blog lately matter moore than this?

Brigette DePape believes it's more important than her job and we owe her a great deal for her courage and passion for a country that lately is more likely to attempt to crush such passion than reward it.

We praise people like Gandhi who fought bloodlessly for rights and freedom through civil disobedience.  Such actions occur when the controlling government denies the rights of citizens through control of the very institutions that were established to protect us.

What recourse is then left, when your own government, found in contempt, suffers no repercussions but is in fact rewarded by a majority won through poor voter representation, manipulation of information, and the backing of private, corporate interests (including the media)?

Senator Kinsella had the gall to attack DePape, criticizing her for what he calls contempt of Parliament when his own master, harper, was found in contempt by Parliament itself but thumbed his nose at the finding and now sits with a majority in which he seeks to change the system of governing so that he will be virtually untouchable while putting forms of free speech and peaceful protest at greater risk.

Senator Munsen had a good approach, expressing concern for DePape, validating her concerns, but still mentioning that what she did is against protocol.  It is.  That's the civil disobedience part, and Munsen had a responsibility to point that out.

However, unlike other politicians who have failed so miserably to hold our prime minister to account, Munsen did not condemn her with the word "contempt."

That's good.  If you took the time to see her protest or read her words, or listen to her interviews, what we see is not contempt for the system, but a passionate, level headed concern for our country and the dysfunctional parliament that cannot hold it's own prime minister to account.

So all of you - Trudeau, May, Kinsella - who say she should not have brought this into such a respected venue as Parliament, consider this:  that an institution has to earn and maintain respect of those it serves, and if it fails to do so thus failing to protect our rights, citizens have every right to  fight for themselves and the country they love.  Peacefully, of course, as in acts of civil disobedience.

A young lady kicked all your asses on the Hill yesterday.  Have to good grace to acknowledge that, and to pay attention to the message she sent at cost to herself: you are not there to serve yourself or your party.  Canadians want the abuses that happen with the governing body to stop.