Storm isn't coming our way...

...it's already here.

My personal role models at ACR show support -

and invite us to do the same.

"[Collective bargaining] has been in this state for a long time, and not having that, there are a lot of unknowns," Leonard said. "When you lose something, it's like a nice comfortable blanket. You take that away, and you think: are we just going to be left out in the cold? How will we be treated from here on out? Benefits are one thing but rights are something else. And that's what we're fighting about."

Harper has been engaging in a similar assault on the rights of unions to bargain, using the incremental approach that allows him to fool some Canadians into thinking he's centrist.

“The Conservative government bullied Parliament into passing flawed legislation that undermines workers' right to free collective bargaining and women's right to equal pay for work of equal value,” says John Gordon, PSAC's National President. “This represents a clear attack on public sector workers and it endangers the rights of all Canadian workers to free collective bargaining.”

Take note of those words:  endangers the rights of all Canadian workers to free collective bargaining.  These attacks on public service unions and the collective rights of public servants is a way of stomping on the necks of all workers, public and private.  Rather than improve the work situation, the benefits, and the rights of private sector workers, our government constantly points the finger at public servants as being pampered and over paid.

Sources of the attacks other than Harper himself make clear the motivation behind this vitriolic rhetoric.

"What a surprise!" Brown wrote. "Another mean spirited and economically illiterate attack on the public sector, one in a series from the CFIB, this time an attack on the pension plans of public sector employees."


CFIB has been relentless in attacking public services wages, benefits and pensions as pressure increases to provide decent pensions and benefits in the private sector, something Catherine Swift of CFIB would rather not address.  So instead, she seeks to take away from the public service in order to be able to point and say, see?  The gap between public and private benefits and pensions isn't that big!

That Harper is on board with Swift is clear in that she actually met with Day to discuss public servant wages and pensions despite being a rep for the private sector.

So what is going on in Wisconsin is our fight as we face the same push to undermine rights here in Canada.

This is more of the boot stomping down on the face of citizens, more of the violations of rights which occurred at the G20, more Montebello, more whistleblowers threatened and muzzled.

This is another attack on the freedom and rights of two countries which have fought so hard for the rights to protest, to bargain, to speak out without fear.

Is this the Canada we want?

The Harper government is planning a Taj Mahal complex for the Defense Department's spies, complete with a hockey rink, basketball and volleyball courts and a bank in a secure facility on Ogilvie Road, says the head of the department's largest union.

While the original Taj Mahal was build as a symbol of eternal love,  Harper’s is more of a big fuck-you to Canadians.

We are subject to the dire warnings of the ever frowning Finance Minister, Deficit Jim, day after day.  You know, the guy who gave Canada the biggest deficit in Canadian history.  As Flaherty warns us faceless Canadians that we need to tighten our belts, it being our duty and all, and as Stockwell (I-pinned-a-Loonie-on-my-lapel-to-show-my-respect-for-taxpayers) Day announces that DND’s budget must be cut by 1 billion, the very same harper government decides to build this monstrous testament to the crazy kill-em-all-let-god-sort-em-out path he wants to take Canada down.

The right calls lefties crazy conspiracy theorists, but here’s their Great Leader elevating spies to that elite level he constantly spits vitriol at and using much needed tax dollars to do it as he cuts, slashes, butchers the rest of the public service and social programs for Canadians.

Fuck human rights, fuck the poor, fuck minorities, women, aboriginals.  And in particular, fuck free speech.  It will just get in the way of the spies work.

As appalling as the utter hypocrisy of spending money on a lavish centre for spies - complete with a sports complex, a hockey rink with a zambone, volley ball courts, walking trails, and of yes, a large fireplace, what such spending indicates is far worse.

Harper cut daycare.  Bashed the hell out of it.  Tried to make it sound anti-democratic by labeling it as a government nanny.  But when it comes to spies, publicly funded daycare is just okey-dokey fine.  And those elitists who ride bikes?  Doesn’t apply to spies.  Lots of bike racks for them planned.

And that lazy, over-paid public service really shouldn’t have low rate parking.  Hell no, they should pay full price!  Unless you’re a spy in training, that is, then it’s free.

So what is harper telling us here.  He’s saying that there are two types of Canadians - the ones he decides deserve extra special treatment, and the rest of us who just need to tighten our belts, shut the fuck up, pay our taxes, and never, ever criticize his rule or question how our tax dollars are spent.

That harper decides to pamper this particular group with our tax dollars at a time when all departments are being hit with major cuts tells us what he thinks is important.  Not creating jobs, not fighting poverty, not education, not the arts which are the lifeblood of a nation, not aid, not women, not children...

No, what’s important to him is investing more money into paranoia.  Investing into information gathering, population control, and mostly, spreading fear so that we taxpayers are more easy to control and bleed for every last dollar.

Also, MacKay has noted that the government would move forward with the project through a public-private partnership but MacLennan said it is unclear what role private firms will play.  Plenary did not respond to a request for comment. MacKay's office referred questions to CSE, which did not respond...MacLennan questioned the wisdom of employees of a private corporation having access to CSE buildings.

Yeah, I question that wisdom as well, and not being able to get CSE to respond to questions makes me more than a little twitchy.  Are we going to rent out spy services to private companies now?

This obscenity of harper’s has to be stopped, and we, those faceless Canadians he has such contempt for are the only ones who can do it.

We need to become far, far more vocal in pointing out where he’s taking Canada, and we need to put a hell of a lot more pressure on all other parties to take this son-of-a-bitch down before he makes Canada a target for hatred and terrorism by his policies, before he guts our laws and rights and social programs so badly that it will take decades to recover, and before he gets such a strangle-hold on our right to protest that we who protest will be the ones filling his new prisons.

The man is insane.  His idea of reality is so out there, so cold-war 50s that it’s difficult for normal people to grasp how dangerous he is. 

If you need anything more to convince you: he’s building this huge spy centre on Ogilvie Road???!!

Toward a national security state

This excellent but alarming Hill Times article by Murray Dobbin ties in with several posts we have seen lately conncerning free trade, the undermining of democracy and free speech, Canada's shifting image and role militarily, and the use of fear to control citizens.

Dobbin explains how the harper government in particular has been effectivley moving our country toward a security state - Its most familiar elements are privatization, deregulation, so called "free trade," tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and massive cuts to social spending.

But in order for our budding security state to protect itself - as conditions worsen, as wages and living standards fall, as personal insecurity increases, and as the social safety net frays, (all which result from a security state) the threat of a radical response becomes real.

Any one not clouded by absolute love for the Master Strategist knows what that means: protesters are re-branded by the ruling government as criminals, more prisons are built to house them, access to information is reduced to near nothing, freedom of speech and the press is severely curtailed by whatever means available - imprisonment, false charges, threats, smear campaigns.

The national security state is intended to protect the gains made through free market policies, and at the same time, gradually redefine what government means to the citizenry. We have in Harper a prime minister who virtually never refers to medicare, education, social protection, the environment, poverty reduction or indeed any of the issues that the vast majority of Canadians say they care about.

How does he get away with this when polls consistently show most of us are at odds with the priorities of the current government?

Massive campaings meant to distract us.

Fear campaigns: fear of criminals, fear of socialists, fear of terrorists, fear of environmentalist who threaten good, old fashioned entrepreneurship, fear of whatever other country they can paint as a threat.  This allows the government not only to keep us distracted, but to boost military spending, to give greater powers to the military, policing forces, security forces.  It allows the government to invade our privacy and curtail our freedoms, all in the name of security, a security that in reality is nowhere near as threatened as they lead us to believe.

Divide the population: citizens will fight more between each other than with the government; division provides more fodder for distractive campaigns; division allows the government justification for cutting programs; division encourages fear; division allows the government to portay certain groups they seek to undermine as unsavoury, as threats to democracy.

Dumb down and simplify messages:  repeatedly portraying issues as good or evil allows the government to toss issues into one camp or another and to offer simplistic, false solutions.  It also alters the way citizens perceive issues or disseminate information , if done long enough.  Show us only black and white long enough, we begin to lose the ability to even look for shades of grey.

Cut social spending:  not only is the population less educated, then, it is so focused on simple survival that it has little time to devote to figuring out how to fight their own government, how to get information, or even to simply attend protests.  It has little interest in much more than meeting basic needs for them and their families, and when there is a little time and energy at the end of the day, they turn to non-productive activities so that they don't have to think about how rough things are.

Eventually, though, the pressure becomes to much and there is rebellion.  Bloody rebellion because it isn't well planned, and by then the security state is well entrenched to subdue its very citizens through force.

Dobbing lists several recent examples of how our civil rights are being altered: G20 arrests and violations of rights, the Montebello fiasco with undercover cops trying to create trouble so they can justify a crack-down, the harassment of anti-Olympic protesters...

Each time these outrages go unchallenged by federal opposition politicians, the national security state clicks one notch further forward and normal gets a bit worse. When tough on crime bills sail through almost without comment even when crime is declining, and when we are spending billions and billions on defence when we have no enemies, there is something terribly wrong with the body politic.  The country is changing before our eyes, and federal opposition parties are letting it happen.

And so are we, when we see the opposition fail at controlling a vicious, undemocratic minority government that has been systematically leading us toward a security state.  We are letting it happen when we continue to support these parties, offering little more than e-mails voicing our discontent.  We need to make those parties realize they will lose our vote, our financial support, and our public voices.

We will never convince harper to protect our rights and freedoms, so wee need to put pressure on opposition parties to do what they were elected to do.  Represent us and oppose what  the harper government does that undermines our collective welfare.

We need to be as critical of the parties we tend to support as we are of harper & co because they are failing us, and we need to get it through our heads that we can't compromise on fundamental issues related to rights and freedom.   When we refuse to accept the trading off of our right for temporary political gain and quit supporting the opposition parties when they do these things, they may start listening to us and act accordingly.

No backbone = no vote, no donation, no support.
No backbone = stark criticism

More from the Flawed and Disordered party of Harper

There they go again…standing behind our brave men in uniform:

The federal government has lost its third attempt to delay a court ruling from taking effect next month that would allow RCMP officers to form a union. ..The ruling leaves the federal government with little more than a month to pass legislation that would allow Mounties to form a union, or it could go back to court to try to extend the already lengthy legal battle.

Those fiscally responsible, cop longing CONs!  Spending tax dollars to thumb their noses at the RCMP and the federal court.


In an April 2009, decision Judge MacDonnell cleared the way for a union. He ruled that a section of RCMP regulations that did not allow an independent group to engage in collective bargaining on behalf of officers violated the Charter of Rights.

Oh, that damn, troublesome Charter of Rights!  And really, what an affront that our brave men in serge should actually think it enshrines their rights! 

Yo!  Elliot!  Earn your partisan appointment!