KNB is exactly correct and some other musings

KNB at Liberal Arts and Minds has a post up from Monday Feb 9 09 regarding the disproportionate voice the political far right has in this country currently and the way they abuse it and their fellow citizens who disagree with them and their positions, most recently the poor principal in New Brunswick over the Anthem being played (see these posts at Dr Dawg's and The Galloping Beaver for more). Not to mention how poor a job the corporate media has been doing in holding the Harper CPC government to account for factual honesty in what it claims and does. As she correctly notes we have a very small media ownership circle and far from being the so called liberal media Conservatives claim it to be it has shown itself to be far more sympathetic to the right side of the spectrum, which given the economic interests of the owners and advertisers of the national media makes perfect sense. This notion of the liberal media is a fiction where Canada is concerned and always has been. Indeed, it hasn't been true within America either despite the claims of the GOP over the past few decades. The media is largely owned by very wealthy families and/or corporations, neither of which tend to be known for having much liberal/left leanings, something which the why of should be blatantly obvious to anyone that actually uses their brains to think for a minute about it.

This is something that has drifted across the US border and been jumped on by the Canadian far right to explain why they have been shut out of national power for so long (as the last majority Conservative government was Mulroney's and that was mainly made up of Progressive Conservatives with a bit more of a pro-American lean than typical for PCPCs historically, but hardly representative of the far right as exemplified by first Reform, CA, and now the CPC). It is after all easier to blame others acting in a conspiracy to keep you down than it is to accept the fact that the supermajority (2/3rds) of the population clearly disagrees with you and your core political positions and policies, and that the vast majority of the public is at the minimum center-progressive to strongly leftwards progressive, especially where social policy is concerned. It allows you to not have to take a hard look at your positions and beliefs and wonder why if they are so superior why that supermajority doesn't share them, indeed rejects them as strongly as we see in Canadian society where the far right's beliefs are concerned.

Indeed, one of the other disturbing aspects of this Americanization of our political dialogue within the far right is how much more aggressive it is inherently as compared to traditional Canadian political context/discourse (including traditional Canadian Conservativism too, aka Progressive Conservatives who clearly are still a large segment of the CPC support despite the clear contempt those that actually run the Harper CPC have for them and their beliefs) since in this country the concept of a loyal opposition is inherent within its structure. The problem with Harper's kind of Conservativism is that it believes that anyone not with them is the enemy which is to be destroyed at any/all costs and never compromised with because they are traitors/evil/etc, an attitude not typical to Canadian culture/society/politics historically.

For years I have harped on about the dangerous of the Calgary School and Straussian political philosophy, which is what PM Harper and his inner circle believe and practice. I have done so in no small part because of two core beliefs within it, that the elite are the only ones whose opinions on governing philosophy and policy should count (indeed have a right to any opinion at all for that matter), and that the "noble lie" is acceptable political practice. It is one thing to expect politicians to exaggerate/lie about how good they and their ideas/policies are (especially in an election cycle) , that is alas inherent in human nature itself let alone politics, but at least politicians have to appear like they value being honest and truth telling. The Straussian though is proud of his noble lie to gain and hold power with, he believes it to be necessary and entirely justifiable/appropriate, and given that the core of a democratic governing system is the informed citizenry making decisions based on the facts this is a profoundly anti-democratic philosophy, and when combined with the elitism attitude shows a fundamental contempt for facts, democracy, and the citizenry of a democratic nation. Cheney showed us where this goes within the American system, and the only reason Harper has not managed to go as far yet is because he has failed to get that majority, although even with the minority he has already done a lot of long term damage.

So when we have a corporate media unwilling to challenge the CPC government on its many Many MANY lies, when it acts like it has no recollection of the contradictions Harper and his government have repeatedly committed, when it sits back and feeds such insane political hatred as happened to the poor NB principal, when the media does not take the attitude that the government is always someone to be viewed skeptically no matter who it is in power then we have a serious problem. This business with the anthem though underscores just how bad the followers of Harper can get over the smallest things (it is not like abortion or gay marriage, two hot button topics for the far right that also breeds this kind of hyper emotionalism), both in terms of getting the fundamental facts wrong as well as going to any lengths to use fear and smear against anyone in their sights. Apparently one of the complainers whined about how the pledge of allegiance had been dropped as well from schools (see this post from Allison at The Galloping Beaver), except this is an American tradition and not something we ever practiced in this country that I am aware of, at least not in any sort of organized/national manner. I freely concede some schools (especially private ones) might have had some sort of pledge especially in the past, but to the best of my knowledge this was never a broadly accepted tradition in this country.

Many of these Conservative voices also have shown that they believe this country works more like the USA in both structure and rights than it actually does. Take the free speech absolutism of some of these folks (as selective as it tends to be of course in terms of application), the underlying premise within our Constitution is not that there are absolute rights but a balance between individual rights and the collective rights of a society, a significantly different approach than that of the American Constitution and Bill of Rights. Also these so called Conservatives have shown themselves to be willing to either display gross ignorance or outright deception when it comes to how this country is governed as recently demonstrated by the claims that a coalition as suggested last year would be a coup d'etat, treason, usurpation of a duly elected government (since as I noted in my prior post we do not elect PMs and governments we elect Parliaments, and whoever is able to show by a majority of the votes in the HoC they have the confidence of the House forms the government), and yet this was not vigourously challenged by the media, no it mostly appeared to go along with letting the government spew this nonsense.

So we have a convergence here of a media owned/controlled by a small wealthy elite whose political preferences are generally going to align with the right/conservative side of the political spectrum, a small percent of the populace following a far right/American conservative belief structure that demonstrates fanatical traits in a very vocal (and other, someone cut those Liberal supporters brake lines and that was never typical prior to the rise of the Harper CPC) manner claiming to represent the silent majority when they clearly by all election results do not (when the best you can get is high 30% of just over 50% of eligible voters you clearly are not representing a majority of the public no matter how loud you scream it), and a party birthed in treachery and betrayal led by a man whose entire political career and adult life has been arguing for the adoption of a radical far right American variant of conservativism (while trash talking Canada's progressiveness both domestically and internationally especially to American right wing think tanks as well as regions of the country like the Atlantic region with its so called culture of defeatism) that embraces profoundly anti-democratic means and beliefs who has demonstrated his complete contempt for all that do not agree with him AND his utter contempt for the rule of law that we all are supposed to be bound by. With this combination I would argue that we have a greater threat to the long term viability/survival of a distinct Canadian identity, indeed a Canadian nation itself than even the Quebecois separatists have presented. At least the Separatists have abided by the outcomes of referendums that went against them and stayed within the legal framework of our nation, which is more than can be said for Harper and company.

So KNB is correct in saying we need to find better ways to counter these voices and to take down the Harper CPC and the underlying core beliefs of the Calgary School it represents AND the anything goes no holds barred total war scorched earth approach to politics as well. Already we are seeing an increasing corruption of this approach within our discourse from other than the CPC when it comes to rhetoric and dealing with opposing/competing parties. Take the recent refrain by the NDP and its supporters claiming the Liberals are in a coalition with the Harper CPC. This is going well beyond acceptable rhetoric in my view because it profoundly misrepresents the facts and the basic requirements/definition of what a coalition is. It is one thing to claim the Liberals are sellouts and such for supporting this budget, but to claim they are in a coalition with a party that clearly has shown its primary goal in power is to destroy the Liberal party is just nonsensical. Worse, the meaning of being in a coalition means that the various members of a coalition have the ability/power to shape policy and to share the powers of office between those members, something which clearly does not exist with the Liberals and the CPC. So calling it a coalition is a gross misrepresentation at the very minimum and well beyond playing fast and lose with the facts/reality in my judgment.

If the Liberals and CPC were truly a coalition then the Liberals would have some of the cabinet positions and would be able to significantly mold the policies coming out of the government before they were introduced at first reading. To misrepresent it this profoundly, ESPECIALLY after so recently defending the concept and legitimacy of a potential coalition government against the lies of the Harper CPC so recently all because it makes it easier to smear the Liberals instead of the more technical and truthful/accurate approach is the same sort of attack Harper has been using all along and for me personally underscores why I find Layton no more trustworthy than Harper (I do think Layton would be a less damaging PM than Harper, but only because Harper has far greater plans where remolding Canada at the most basic and profound levels is concerned, it is not because I consider him at all more trustworthy where placing power before principle is concerned on that front I see little difference between the two men).

I know this post has meandered a fair bit from the starting point, sorry about that, but generally this post is to agree with KNB's basic points and to underscore some of my own issues/concerns. One of the main things I have held against the Layton NDP since the days of Martin is that it deliberately chose to place trying to replace the Liberals as a greater priority than to protect the principles it always stood for that a Harper government directly threatened and threatened in a manner far greater than can be honestly argued ever came from the Liberals, even when the Liberals were dominated by their conservative wing. Layton and the NDP are very lucky Harper failed to get to a majority, because if he had the chances are that not only would he have emptied the coffers worse than he already has but also that powers needed to create new national social programs would have been devolved to the Provinces to prevent anything like medicare from ever being created again (given how the far right in this country sees medicare this should be obvious, especially for something like national day care as an example, or even say the Wheat Board given their repeated attempts to dismantle it to date).

As bad as the Liberals might be for advancing many NDP ideals, they are at least not fundamentally and totally hostile to them for the most part, and they can be moved in the direction the NDP wants at least some of the time. The same can not be said for the Harper CPC, indeed how much progress has the NDP made in advancing ANY of their agenda since Harper came to power as compared to when they had the Liberals to deal with and worse how many of their policies in place already have been rolled back (like womens rights, aboriginal issues, that sort of thing) under the Harper government? It is because of these points that I say the Layton NDP is placing power before principle, and has sold out those they claim to represent, and worse many within the NDP base either don't see it or see it as the price to pay to replace the Liberals, even though the two best chances in a row to do just that went by and they have yet to break their record for most seats within a Parliament (as I believe Broadbent still has that record, although if I am wrong it was broken by less than a handful, I am sure of that).

What is needed and what I have argued all along is to place traditional conflicts aside between the progressives, centrists, and socialists within this country and get rid of Harper first and foremost. Then, once he is gone, his policies undone and his way of playing politics discredited then go back to fighting each other, because whatever else the base of both the Liberals and the NDP care about Canada as a progressive nation and want it to continue to be one, there is disagreement on how far and fast this evolution should go between the two camps but at least they are in the same league whereas Harper's CPC wants to destroy all that both groups hold dear. Given the volume of the CPC base and the way they manage to get media attention the need to truly work together to defeat Harper by discrediting him at every turn the idea of playing destroy the competition between the NDP and Liberals is absolutely moronic and potentially suicidal politically speaking for progressives generally.

I have said that it is the Liberals that should be supported not only because of my issues with Layton but also because the polls (as in the cast votes in elections) have repeatedly shown there is not enough support to make even a NDP minority let alone a majority out there and will not be anytime soon, certainly not while Layton is still the leader. If it were going to happen it would have shown itself by now after the last two elections where the Liberals were as weakened and discredited as they could be. That it did not cannot be ignored/brushed aside no matter how many NDP partisans might like to, and the more they refuse to accept that dealing with Ignatief fairly and honestly is their best choice as opposed to standing apart and continuing the approach they have to date the more they will give Harper time and ability to further his anti-progressive, indeed anti-Canadian agenda.

Remember folks, I am a swing voter, in my quarter century or so of voting I have voted for every party except Reform/CA/CPC/BQ federally, it always depended on who was leading each party and the policies they advocated, the context of the national environment at the time, and how much I trusted (or distrusted least really) each to follow through at least in part on what they promised. I have been forced to the side of the Liberals the last few elections not because I see them as all that much better overall (especially now that Ignatief is the leader) but because despite everything I see them as the best chance to remove Harper and his anti-Canadian policies and restore some sanity and humane (not to mention competent) government to this country. I do so not just on my preferences but what I see the voters being willing to do. It has always been my primary priority to remove Harper, and I have always argued based from that perspective first.

BTW, before some Dipper comes at me about the coalition and Ignatief's sinking of it, I should remind folks that there was no guarantee that there would have been that choice from the GG instead of an election. That there could (and should) have been under our system given how soon after the last election should have been that offer made I have no disagreement about. However I wouldn't have thought she'd give Harper a proroguement to avoid a confidence vote he clearly would have lost, and I suspect that if there had been an election instead the CPC could have increased its seat count to a narrow majority thanks to voter fatigue by the less partisan minded (since of all the voting blocks Harper's is clearly the most motivated and likely to get out, especially if they think the evil lefties are trying to usurp his power, Harper's defeat was far from a sure thing) and further apathy in terms of turnout. Granted this is not a given, but even if he was held to another minority what would that have done except strengthen him yet again and weaken the opposition parties? I think some Dippers got so caught up in the thrill of the idea of being a part of a government that they blinded themselves to anything other than the coalition as the only way things could have gone, and when it failed to happen reacted as harshly as they did because of that disappointment as much as anything because some of the reaction I've seen from some Dippers has been way over the top even for partisans IMHO.

Well, in closing I just wish to underscore my agreement with KNB about the need to counter the loud voice of the far right in this country, they have a disproportionate voice to their actual size of the population. That we have a media that is clearly unwilling to hold the CPC government to the same standards of criticism and scrutiny prior governments were held to is also a problem needing to be focused on, although it is more because of economic reasons/positions than ideological I'd say, at least for most of the national media owners. I also think it is long past time the partisans of the NDP stop taking on the Liberals primarily because it helps Harper, and helping Harper should be the last thing we all want, and that while I dislike him myself Ignatief may have made the right decision in supporting the budget (at least in not bringing down the government at this time especially without any assurance the GG would actually consider a coalition replacement) even if I think he should have pushed for far more alterations to it before doing so (yes, I don't like the budget one little bit and am much less than pleased that Ignatief let it go through as he has and think he seriously failed Canadians on this one).

People are free to agree or disagree with me as they wish about all this, but it is what I think and see in all this, and I give fair warning now I will not be answering combative/hostile comments to this post. Indeed, my comment policy is that people are free to leave them about my work but that I feel no requirement/obligation to answer any comment unless I feel like it. I realize this offends some people's idea of how a comments section should work, but the bottom line is for me that I have only so much stamina and reserves to work with these days and I will decide who and what I respond to accordingly. I do believe in allowing my critics to have their say, I just don't feel I must automatically respond to them. I also would add that to date I have banned no one and censored no one ( the only comments I have deleted to date were ad spam) I reserve the right to do so if someone becomes too offensive, abusive, or goes beyond what I feel is legally defensible. My tolerances are fairly broad on these points, and so far no one has crossed these lines but there is always a first time for everything and if it happens I don't want people saying I never warned them.

One last thing, I am going to be away from my computer for the next several days, so I may not be able to respond to any comments left until Sunday at the earliest. It is possible I may be able to use the computer where I am going when it is not in use, but I know that will not be often during this absence. This post is mainly a stream of consciousness one, which is partly why it skips around as it does. It was also to vent a bit of stream on a couple of issues that have been annoying me. Take care and be well everyone.

We elect Parliaments in this country. not governments when we vote.

Kady O'Malley at the MacLeans blog has a very good article from Friday Jan 23 09 up with an interview with the representatives of a group of Constitutional experts regarding how our system of government ACTUALLY works as opposed to the fictions we have been hearing from the Harper government and its allies/defenders in the media and in the online world. The core basis of how we are governed by the House of Commons is that each riding in this country elects an MP (that belongs to a political party or is independent, granted the former is more common than the latter but the latter still occurs as Bill Casey exemplified in the last election showing it is always the people's choice to support and not the parties that defined who runs all by themselves) to sit in the House of Commons. Then in turn the MPs decide who is going to be the government by voting for that government once in the House. The fact that we generally have one party with either a minority or the largest minority automatically being assumed to be the government does not change the process by which it is officially granted the authority under our rules of government.

That phrase I just used, the rules of government, are what is key here. Too often I have seen defenders of Harper claim that the "technical details" (as one of KO's commentators called it) aren't what is important to understand when discussing how governments are elected and operate in our system, an attitude which is terrifying when one actually thinks about it. Those "technical details" are how any government is granted the legitimacy and the authority to govern in a democratic system of government, and therefore are ESSENTIAL to the operating of a smooth transition to and from power for ALL governments. This is axiomatic in a society that is run by the rule of law, which ours most certainly is supposed to be.

That anyone can cavalierly dismiss these "technical details" off so lightly shows not only an ignorance for how our system of government is supposed to operate but naked contempt for it as well, and given we have been seeing that attitude not just from supporters of the Harper government but from that government itself (the way it called the proposed coalition government a coup is but one example of that contempt, there are so many more out there) this shows we are currently governed by those that not only would misinform/lie to the Canadian public about differences of political policy but on the very foundations of the rules by which we govern ourselves all for political partisan benefit. That is something corrosive to any democracy let alone ours and underscores yet again why I maintain Harper is not a traditional Conservative but a dangerous radical or worse revolutionary who cares only for power and how he can use it to remold this nation into his own idea of it regardless of the actual rules of governance as set forth in our laws and Constitutional framework.

though has shown time and time again that for it the only concern is its own grasp on power at any costs, regardless of what the rules say, and this goes back to when they were In this we find the reason why I have come to see Harper as a greater threat to the nation than the Quebecois Separatists. At least the Separatists are open and aboveboard in what they want and how they would go about getting there, and they have shown a willingness to play by the rules (the two referendums being examples) and accepting when they lose. The Harper CPCfirst elected to power. Impolitical has a post up regarding the 2006 in and out election advertising scandal the CPC has managed to keep covered for the most part now entering its latest phase where the Elections Commissioner is forced to go to court to have 5 million CPC documents unsealed to be examined for the evidence that this fraud occurred at the order of the highest levels of the CPC. One of those people just happens to be one of the 18 new Senators the Harper government is appointing making it impossible to compel his testimony before a committee (and when they tried to serve him last summer he ducked it), a man by the name of Irving Gerstein who headed their fundraising arm as well as being the party's official agent in that election.

When a party/government shows such disrespect and contempt for the basic laws that govern how we elect our governments and how they are required to operate we have a very dangerous situation on our hands. The Harper government has shown Canadians to believe itself to be above the same rules/laws that bind all parties and Parliamentarians, indeed to the same rule of law principle that binds all Canadians period. If you act as if the rule of law no longer applies to you while it must apply to all else (especially your opposition/opponents) then you have shown naked contempt for the most fundamental aspect of our democracy, which when a government does so is about the most dangerous situation imaginable in a democracy given the central critical role the rule of law plays in keeping a democracy viable.

Worse, this government shows this disrespect not just on minor matters but in the most serious and fundamental aspects, in how we elect governments by way of our Parliamentary system and the laws which govern how we run our election process itself. When a leader and party refuses to play by the same rules/laws that govern all then they are placing themselves above those laws and showing their contempt for our system, our way of life, and every single Canadian citizen. THAT is what makes the Harper CPC so inherently toxic to our nation, to our way of life, and why I have always been as hardcore and dedicated an opponent to Harper from the outset, for this was apparent in his thinking long before he became a sitting PM.

This latest example of his contempt with misrepresenting how we elect Parliaments and not governments is but the latest in along line of deceits and acts of contempt for the nature of Canadian democracy and governance, and no PM has the unilateral authority to change how our system of government is designed to operate. At the minimum that requires a majority of a Parliament and in many cases (like the Senate) requires Constitutional change requiring either 7/10 Provinces with 50+% of the population or unanimity (which is why Harper blaming Senators and the Liberals for blocking his Senate reform is yet another such a lie to Canadians).

The GG has every right to ask the LOO to form a coalition in the event of a loss of confidence in the Harper government this soon after the last election, it is after all how our system of government with its "technical details" is actually set up to function. The GG is not an elected person and a non-partisan so that they stand apart from such considerations and only follow the rule of law and the requirements of the Constitution where her Office is concerned in the role that she is required to play. To start claiming that it is undemocratic for her to do so is to further use the old FUD method of propaganda by the Harper CPC, and to further misrepresent the fundamental operating structures of our system of government.

Her office is defined by the Constitution and that Constitution was passed democratically by the House of Commons and Parliament which makes the calling of her position and her authority undemocratic yet another attempt to misuse the term and to so misinformation for partisan purposes, the hallmark of the Harper CPC. What I find truly sad though is how easily Harper has managed to get away with it in the media and with many in the wider public, because it speaks to an ignorance of how our system of government actually works, which I find a sad thing indeed. Mind you those in the media should know better since it is a part of their job to understand what they are reporting on (how else can the be sure they are reporting facts and not fiction otherwise) which is one of the reasons I am so glad to see this article from Kady O'Malley that this post is inspired by.

I missed a lot of commenting abut this sort of thing with my hiatus through last year. I am sorry to have had that happen, but I was not totally unaware of what was going on either. Believe you me I will be doing my best to stay on top of things this year, especially as they pertain to the Harper CPC abusing power, misrepresenting our laws and system of governance and in general why they must be removed from power as soon as can be done. I do not trust them to manage this country through such uncertain times, and while I understand the political calculus of some to let Harper stay in power for a while longer to wear this recession and economic mess I consider that too high a price myself. I am more concerned for the health of this nation than I am for partisan considerations for any political party.

The end of the G. W. Bush era, if it was only that simple...

I have seen many people celebrating the inauguration of Obama and the departure of GWB from office as if this day marks the end of the damage Bushco does to America and the rest of the world. As much as I would love to share that sentiment, reality compels me to recognize that the damage the Bush/Cheney Administration have done to the global security, economic, and political environments will continue to carry on through the inertia already built up for months to years to in some respects decades to come, no matter what Obama says and does (with the limited exception of rooting out the criminality of the Bush years and having trials to expose all the rot that can be at this point, and even that will only go so far) now that he is President.

Considering the massive amount of fiscal corruption within the Bush executive branch there is much to be exposed, but it is the abuse of power corruption and the rewriting the Constitution to create a separate executive unaccountable to the other once seen as coequal branches of government that really requires such exposure and consequences IMHO. Otherwise not only do the people that did this get away with taking the US Constitution and legal structure and using it as vomit and excrement cleaner, it sets even worse precedents for further abuse down the road the next time the GOP comes back to power, just as it did post Nixon and the pardon, and again post Reagan and Bush the first with Iran Contra given that so many of the same players kept returning, with the future to worry about their understudies (aka the next generation of insane Straussians and other equally dangerous far right wing ideologues/"idealists" and religious zealots that got their training under this Administration) from this tenure under GWB.

Then there is the economic disaster that the Bushies created with not just their war spending and rampant allowing of profiteering by their cronies in the private sector but also with their moronic tax cut policies drying up revenues, finance free home ownership and talking up how many new homes were bought by people that could never afford them outside of the bubble in that market and the near nonexistent interest rates of the day, and causing massive borrowing (both domestic with the keep shopping admonitions and internationally to fuel their budgets) and their tendency to keep little minor things like war spending off book as much as possible which still has to be truly tallied up.

I mean Bushco doubled American debt in eight years and that from a surplus position when they came to power. That money had to come from somewhere, and when you are talking about the ballpark of 5 TRILLION DOLLARS of new debt (not including what dealing with this crisis is going to require Obama to spend through borrowing on top of that staggering amount) being absorbed by the global community that is money not available for spending elsewhere. The ripple effects here are just beginning to be felt, and while I am not convinced it is on a par with the Great Depression, it is most certainly the first economic crisis to come close enough to it for fair comparison and still has the possibility of getting to that level or worse depending on how the next year or two goes.

Politically, Bushco has done massive damage to the international reputation of America as a beacon of civil liberties (which granted was somewhat inflated prior to the Bush years but was still seen by many in the poorer parts of the world as a shining beacon of hope, not a small thing I would argue for helping people from reaching absolute desperation and the ills that come from such mindsets) , especially with its open endorsement of torture and extraordinary renditions to governments to torture for them a la Mahar Arar (which of course they took one last stab at via another travesty, Omar Khadr yesterday, as Dr Dawg and others took note of here). The damage done to the process of international relations and diplomacy is not inconsequential and I suspect that will also be a long time healing, both directly for America vis a vis the rest of the world and the impact on the global balance of power that inevitably brings along with it.

Then there is the damage to international security thanks to the Bush policies of torture, renditioning, preemptive war, and essentially blanket suspicion of Islamic peoples (despite all the mealymouthed comments about how it was only those that abused Islam). The impression the bulk of the planet was left with was a white Christian crusade against the dark infidel Muslim, especially after the rationale for invading Iraq collapsed beyond any resuscitation (except by ideological allies around the world of course, but then their capacity for self delusion is already well known) and ended up looking like nothing more than a crusade.

Then there is Afghanistan which WAS a legitimate target after 9/11/01 because of AQ being based there and the Taliban's reluctance to act swiftly enough against them and bin Laden. Yet that was never given anywhere near the American military resources to do the job, and much of what started there ended up being more prepositioning for Iraq in the end. Not to mention the total lack of serious infrastructure building there despite promises not to forget them again as happened after the USSR pulled out during the tail end of the Cold War. Nor for that matter America being the one attacked yet America then left her foreign allies to carry the bulk of that conflict and reconstruction costs to pursue the idiocy that was Iraq when it should have full well known they lacked the capacity in both military and civilian resources to manage that theater.

That not only strained the resources of the countries involved (including Canada's) but also did more than a little damage to the relationships between America and her traditional allies as a direct result on top of the damage done by the deceptions in claiming Iraq was a necessary war. The long term implications on security arrangements between traditional allies and alliances involved cannot be ignored nor understated as well. Not to mention also damaging the international reputation of many of those allies because of how Afghanistan was mismanaged and what the Americans made many of these other democracies a party to directly and indirectly while claiming to be the ones in charge, especially in the first few years.

I mean these are just a few major elements from the Bush years that will continue to have long lasting effects long after today has passed, and not even near a total list of such, just enough to make my point. GWB may now be no longer in a position to continue furthering the multiple disasters he and his minions have spawned both domestically and beyond, but their impacts will continue to ripple for a long time to come. Facing that I find it difficult to feel any real sense of hope and optimism with today's change, the most I can muster is a sense of relief that at least no further damage can be done by Bushco's abuses of American Presidential power.

While I would like to hope Obama is up to the task, he never impressed me all that much from the outset, and watching the way he won the primary really put me off on him overall. Too much symbolism and not enough substance. I would love to end up being proven wrong, but I can't shake the feeling he is the wrong person for this job at this time, all the symbolism of hope having an African American President symbolizes notwithstanding, and while he will clearly be a major step up from what we are losing today that does not mean he is truly up to the myriad of massive challenges facing America (and in all to many cases the rest of the world by extension) today left by the worst President in American history, let alone modern history.

Well, at least we all can have some basis for relief and hope that things will finally start to improve with the departure of Bush and the office of President not being retained by those with an active interest in covering things up and furthering many of these disastrous policies that would have occurred under a GOP victory by McCain. That in itself is worth no small thing, even if when compared to the overall situation it is still a small to almost minuscule value thanks to the unprecedented damages done by Bushco.

P.S.

I know this sounds rather bleak and cynical of me, but it is what I see, and the one thing I try to do in everything I write about, be it here or commenting elsewhere is to call things as I see them, even when others disagree. I also would like to add that I hope this is not my last post for a while again, I am trying to be back on a regular basis, but I do have some medical issues still overhanging, and I have a procedure coming up at the beginning of the next month (nothing major, but given I have limited stamina and resources it may take a lot out of me nonetheless) so I can't promise anything.

My thanks to those that have wished me and my health well, and my gratitude to those that have let me know I was missed, to this day I find it hard to believe that my well known predilection for a long winded writing style is read and welcomed by as many people as I have seen it to be. In this day and age of short attention spans I sort of take it for granted that my style doesn't work well for the times I live in, but it is the only style I have. I write the way I think and speak for better or worse, and I will not change it to suit those that prefer short bites instead of the density that is my style. At least I am trying to limit my paragraph size to make reading me easier...:)

Returning from Exile

This is just a short note for now, but I have decided to start following political evens and commenting on them again. However, I stopped following all Canadian politics for the past six months, and stopped the American about three months ago because I was finding the stress of it combined with the uncertainty of my cardiac issues too much to cope with. Instead I indulged a hobby of mine and spent much of that period watching anime online instead. Man, I haven't seen that much anime in years, but I think it helped detoxify me enough to start handling politics again, and from what I read at Liberal Arts and Minds today regarding a possible election it may not be a moment too soon. I will be starting with commenting at some blogs as I spend the next little while catching up on what I've missed before I start blogging here at Saundrie on it, hopefully that won't take me too long to do.

As to the results of my cardiac testing, I appear to have a heart that adds beats periodically but aside from that they could not find anything else, so for now I am being discontinued from cardiac care/treatment by specialists until and unless something happens to change that picture. Needless to say I have not been enjoying this not knowing what was going on and why it was happening, but I went through that uncertainty for a decade with my blood condition before that question was answered so I guess I can cope with it again. I will add that my stamina/endurance has taken another hit but aside from that I am mostly the same as I was when I first started Saundrie.


Thank you to all my readers/friends online that were worried about me, I'm sorry you haven't sen/heard anything for the last half year, but I thought the only way I could enforce a rest from things political was to go complete cold turkey and stop paying any attention from any source. I was very touched by the comments wishing me well in the comments of my last post and I deeply appreciate them deeply. Hopefully I will not have to give any reason for a repeat of this for a long time to come. Well, see you all around over the next few weeks...

On a pause here at Saundrie and Canadian politics

I thought those who might be interested should be informed that I may not be around much in the Canadian blogosphere over the next several days to a fortnight, As I mentioned in an earlier post I had a mild cardiac event, well it repeated itself at the beginning of the week and I am currently undergoing tests to find out what is going on here. My doctor does not want me getting overly emotional/worked up, so I am staying focused on the US Dem primaries since unlike Canadian politics I do not have much of an emotional investment. I will be lurking from time to time through this period, but I doubt I will be saying much, at least not until I have a better idea of why I am having arrythemia (I'm sure I'm misspelling this word) attacks pushing my pulse significantly beyond the 200 beats per minute. If something more serious happens I will make sure this blog posts it as I will get either my wife or father to do so. Until then take care all and be well, and I will thank those who offer their prayers in advance, since I do not know when I will be back here. It might only be for a few days, but since I do not know I cannot assume such. My doctor did describe this as something she found had urgency but not emergency level concern/worry for what it is worth, so with luck I will be back in the trenches against Harper's CPC soon enough.

**UPDATE** (Friday Feb 8 4:19pm AST)

It appears my EKG shows an anomaly within the electrical control mechanism of my heart and so I need further testing which I will be getting next week. The good news is that I apparently am not at significant risk for a heart attack (and haven't had one yet apparently), the problem here is the lack of oxygen delivery to the brain during the rapid pulse rate, in fact the cardiologist was startled that I didn't pass out during the first incident (I was greying out though) from that oxygen deficit. So long as I call for an ambulance if it happens again I should be fine, because a defibrillator will reset the electrical misfiring. I am still going to keep it calm and easy though and avoid the politics which causes me to get too worked up, because apparently that will increase the odds of such misfiring starting up. So that is where things stand as of now. Thanks btw Tomm for your well wishes, as well as to the anonymous in the comments section, it is appreciated.

What was Harper thinking turning a question about conflict of interest into an ethnic slur/insult?!?

I was watching QP this afternoon as I always do when I am home when it is on. Now, as others have noted there appears to be another scandal blooming for the Harper CPC involving improper political interference, this time in contracting issues. as Impolitical has written about here, here, and here, with the third post being on the same point I am raising here. So PM Harper takes questions on this and then without any reason or need to do so he makes mention of the fact that the two men involved here are of Greek ethnicity. Exactly how is their ethnicity relevant to the issue as to whether improper use of influence occurred on behalf of one of the men involved with the aid of the other who works for PMO? The finishing touch of claiming the opposition was calling it a conspiracy theory right after raising the ethnicity in the same statement just makes that raising of the ethnicity that much worse, as if there is somehow this perception out there that Greek people get together and have conspiracies because they are Greek, and not because they may have common interests say politically (which is of course true as they are both strong CPC supporters/members) or economically but because of their ethnicity. This is extremely offensive, uncalled for, and quite honestly utterly baffling to me as to why Harper would go there.

I don't like Harper, never have never will and have made no secret of it. I acknowledge his skills (indeed, if I didn't think he had strengths why would I oppose him so strongly, I wouldn't because I wouldn't perceive him as capable of much threat and therefore not needing the expenditure in effort/energy, so dislike does not equate contempt for his political skills) as well as being critical as to how he uses them and to what ends/purposes. This though I find utterly inexplicable on his behalf and one of the single clumsiest verbal stupidities I have ever heard him make (which is no small list in my books) and slimes an ethnic group for no apparent reason except maybe to try and imply that the Opposition parties in asking about this are somehow racist against Greek Canadians because the two men are Greek and that their Greekness is why the Opposition is asking these questions. If that was what he was trying to do (and it is the only explanation I can think of and it is a weak one IMHO) to deflect questions on this issue it was a total failure. If anything he has drawn increased attention to this question of conflict of interest and political influence meddling by the Harper PMO it also makes the PM look so afraid of this that he went to the ethnic slur in a desperate attempt to distract because he has no better response.

I really think Harper now owes an apology to Greek Canadians for dragging ethnicity into something where ethnicity played no role whatsoever aside from the two men involved sharing it. This was a really offensive thing for Harper to have done, and it appears entirely gratuitous at that.

**UPDATE** 01:42 am Jan 31 08

Well, it looks like I am not the only one to come to such a conclusion, KNB of Liberal Arts and Minds did as well and she does a good job in her post here of getting to the heart of what mindset is being protected let alone what possible/potential wrongdoing that caused such a outrageous tactic to be used. As I said in my comment responding to her post at her site this is a sad day in Canadian poltiics when a PM used ethnic-baiting (which is race-baiting by another more polite and less emotionally charged name after all) where no trace of ethniticy was involved in the matter or could even be reasonably believed to be perceived in in any way in the matter. It takes a lot these days for Harper to really surprise and underwhelm me with how low he can and will go to advance his narrow partisan aims and to protect himself from any whiff of impropriety (let alone scandal).

You see the Grewal fraud and subsequent cover-up (here is a link to a one year anniversary retrospective post I did on the Grewal fraud) of whoever in the CPC made the edits let alone what Harper knew about them and when he knew them showed a level of dishonesty I had not thought him capable of and this slur shows a level of willingness to exploit the absolute worst in human nature (especially in a nation as widely multicultural/diverse as ours). Prior to that I had him pegged as an ideologue and one I strongly disagreed but an honest one and a person living to the standards he set for himself as much as I disagreed with those standards/principles, Grewal proved to me otherwise. This is on a par with that for me in terms of just how offensive to the intelligence of Canadians it is as well as just how offensive it is in general to civil human beings whatever their nationality/ancestry and political affiliations. Not exactly what most Canadians think of when they think of what being Canadian is all about, as we are a nation that takes pride in and even makes fun of our reputation abroad as well as our own self-image for civility and courtesy as a nation and people. Whatever else, Harper betrayed that core Canadian concept with this slur, and I hope that does not go unnoticed by Canadians.

The Keen Testimony, first blush reactions

Well, I think I now understand what the CPC government is trying to do, and I think it will fail. They are trying to get Keen to read into the controlling Act additional responsibilities that over the Act's seven year history and reviews throughout that period were never once considered to be a part of the Act. They are focusing on the "health of individuals" wording being not explicitly stating it is only regarding those in and around operating nuclear reactors and saying that because it did not explicitly limit (as opposed to implicitly limit which any fair/objective reading of the language makes quite clear otherwise this ambiguity would have been raised prior to when a government needed the regulator to see it this way to protect them in a highly sensitive and politically charged issue) the term health of individuals to mean the health of those directly affected by proximity to an operating reactor or storage facility of nuclear materials that she had the ability to read into the Act these additional powers. Now, some might argue that she should have done exactly that because the health of Canadians is important, and that has been the CPC argument to date, the problem with it is that it is nothing but garbage.

It is not appropriate for any regulator to read new powers into their purview except by the most limited and direct outgrowth of the Act controlling that regulator. In regards to the CNSC there was never any aspect of it that considered placing responsibility for medical health needs of Canadians beyond that of those in proximity to nuclear materials, so to read into the Act the way the CPC government wanted to have Keen do was entirely beyond the scope of her original responsibilities and indeed given the quasi-judicial nature of the regulator for her to do so would be an egregious example of gross judicial activism, something I am used to hearing the CPC decry, not insist upon (but then in this case the insistence was because they needed the CNSC to do so to give the government political protection which shows just how little they are truly concerned about judicial activism despite all of the rhetoric we have ever heard from them about it) . Indeed, as Keen noted in here testimony and I noted in this post the fact that the government felt it had to add specifically this additional power/responsibility after the HoC override of Dec 10 2007 can and should be read as an implicit agreement by the government that the CNSC did NOT have those powers when the government claimed it did during the period prior to the Dec 10 Parliamentary override.

Indeed, one of the first complaints about Keen I heard from the government was about how "rigid" she was being in interpreting her responsibilities and powers. Well, in someone that is charged with nuclear safety that kind of rigidity is a good thing, not a bad thing despite the CPC attempt to spin it so, and I noted that also in another earlier post noted in the link in this sentence (editing troubles, hence the awkward phrasing here). Keen also made a point that people need to keep this "rigidity" in mind being a good thing when she pointed out quite accurately that with nuclear reactors and safety the appropriate comparison is to the level of safety concerns involved in a space shuttle, as both are incredibly complex and extremely dangerous systems with great destructive potential if a misstep/mistake in enforcing the strictest safety regulatory framework. Yet this government appears to find the idea of a regulator with such serious responsibilities to be too rigid in interpreting/reading additional meaning into the controlling Act is a bad thing.

However, to make matters worse on this the government was doing this while it (CNSC) was "seized" with the specific issue, and for the Minister to intervene in the manner he did was on a par with a justice minister calling a judge hearing a specific case to offer suggestions/give orders on how that judge should rule. That is something in our system of law and government that is considered a major no-no, and normally a firing offence. Keep in mind the prior examples of ministers being fired if they hadn't resigned first for inappropriate contact between a minister and a judge, I believe that was something that tripped up Jean Charest back in his early days in the Mulroney government. The actions of the government and Lunn in particular goes well beyond the pale and to be honest I cannot think of another case of such blatant inappropriate interference by a minister to such a body. Indeed, according to the Accountability Act (another point Keen made explicitly in her testimony including citing the specific element of that Act involved here) Harper brought in Lunn's conduct was inappropriate and should have been sacked for doing so, not praised by the PM as going above and beyond the call of duty, as I noted at the time here.

Bottom line, it is very obvious why the government did not want Linda Keen to testify, her facts were on point, her presentation crisp, clear and highly professional, and her logic/reasoning impossible to refute unless one is a CPC partisan more concerned with protecting this government than in actually dealing with the facts/reality. It was never the responsibility of the CNSC to worry about supply issues, it was inappropriate for Lunn to even involve himself in the manner he did in terms of trying to instruct the CNSC on what to do next let alone to grasp the powers they wanted her to read into the Act despite their being no reasonable groundwork for her to do so, and when she quite properly refused to do so was scapegoated in the HoC as a Liberal appointee with the clear implication that she was acting out of partisan reasons first instead of following the requirements of her job. So once she testified it would have been clear to any Canadian watching that she did nothing wrong and it was the government that acted inappropriately throughout this matter especially in terms of her firing, which I must say given what we now know is almost certainly going to cost the taxpayers a fair bit in a wrongful termination suit and possibly given the actions of this government also sued for slander/defamation of character (I may not have the precise legal term right here but I am certain it gets the point I am making across).

I think this government has stuck its hand in a buzz saw for the way they treated Linda Keen, and that this is going to haunt this government for a long time to come, especially since Keen's interpretation of her powers is agreed with by independent experts from all I have seen and the government's interpretation is unique and indefensible when it claims Keen had the power/authority to consider isotope supply based on the the wording of health of individuals in a nuclear regulatory safety act when nothing in that Act gives any indication that the concerns regarding health go beyond the health of those in and around nuclear reactors/materials. Basically at every turn this government failed to act in a competent manner, and when it started to catch up with them with the isotope shortage they panicked and looked for someone to fix it for them even if it was not legal for that person to do that for them and when that person refused made that person the scapegoat for everything. The problem for the CPC is that the scapegoat Linda Keen is not taking it lying down and has the credentials and background to effectively rebut the government's actions to scapegoat her and indeed makes it that much more obvious to the average Canadian of just how badly and incompetently the CPC government has handled nuclear safety and specifically the Chalk River situation from beginning to end. This government chose to place its partisan political interests ahead of nuclear safety and the independence of the regulator, and even by my standards of just how extensively how partisan I believe this government to be even I would not have thought they would go this far if I had had this situation described to me say three months ago, and I am not exactly a fan of this government to begin with.

Depending on what else shows up I may update this post later or write an additional one, but for right now this is what I took away from watching her testimony before the Commons committee.

Did the military override civilian authority and if so why and what does it say about CPC detainee policy?

Updated twice since original post, first mid Friday afternoon (Jan 25 08), second Saturday afternoon (Jan 26 08).

Man, I hate it when my computer crashes just when I finish a long detailed post and am about to publish it, I had a nicely written commentary about the latest developments in the ongoing Afghan detainee scandal all proofed and linked when it died, so this time I am going to keep it fairly short so as to hope this one will publish before such happens again.

It appears that the Harper government has managed to exceed the level of corruption (remember, my corruption concerns with the Harper CPC have always been in terms of abuse of power/position than in terms of theft of taxpayer dollars, which of the two types I find the former to be far more dangerous than the latter to a democratic society/system of government) and incompetence I had thought them capable of with this. I went first to the Galloping Beaver where I read this excellent post by Dave dealing with what Sandra Buckler, PM Harper's media controller/coordinator had to say on this. I then went to Impolitical where I found this article with this link telling us that this government did not know about the stoppage of transfers, indeed that it appeared the government was not happy about that change. So I went to the Globe and Mail to find this there.

In the end of my readings so far (I took a couple of days off of Canadian news because I had a mild cardiac event Monday night and thought I should stay away from things that overly enraged/excited me, which these days the government has a depressingly frequent tendency of doing to me) there are several aspects to the detainee issue that I find of great concern. However, I am focusing only on one aspect in this post, that being the stoppage of prisoner transfers, who ordered it and what this means when considering what the government has been saying about this since last November. For it is here that I see something truly worrisome (to put it mildly).

We have essentially two scenarios/situations here. One, the government has been knowingly lying to the Canadian people both in and out of Parliament since last November regarding the continued transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities despite the concerns about potential Geneva violations, which is bad enough. This would indicate a willingness to lie to the public on an issue as serious as this, and an issue which to discuss does *NOT* compromise operational security as Dave at the Galloping Beaver makes quite clear in his writings on this topic. Traditionally we follow the Geneva Conventions when it comes to the taking and keeping of prisoners, and one of the first things that includes is notification of the other side through a third party who we have in our custody, so the argument the CPC likes to use about what it tells the enemy about our operations is patent nonsense. As to how they are treated being kept secret, the only way that makes sense is if you have reason to think that the treatment will enrage/inflame the situation, which if the Geneva Conventions are being followed properly is ludicrous. This would be bad enough if this is what has been going on, especially given that one of the favourite responses to this issue from this government to questioners (especially in the HoC) is to brand them as being more concerned for the well being of Taliban terrorists than of our soldiers, a fancy way of saying either you are with us completely or you are automatically/inherently with the terrorists, which is truly disgusting as an attack line as well as preventing any meaningful examination of the topic at hand, which is no doubt part of the reasoning why the Harper CPC uses this inflammatory rhetoric/approach.

However, it is the second of the two possibilities that really bothers me. Under that scenario we have the military acting unilaterally to override government policy on detainee transfers without telling the government that they have done so. Now, the only reason that would make sense is if the commanders on the ground felt that government policy on this issue was exposing their troops to significant/serious risks of violating the Geneva Conventions and down the road being charged for it, essentially that the current orders were de facto illegal orders *AND* that the commanders did not trust the sitting government to not override that change if they became aware of it. Stop and think for a moment about what that scenario would be showing. It would show a government more concerned with political coverage than policy. It would show really bad oversight ability by this government. It would show that this government is indifferent to being in violation of the Geneva Conventions, and is indifferent about putting our troops in a position where they could face such charges down the road, all so as to look like they are being "tough on terrorism and terrorists unlike the Opposition parties". Most troubling of all though it would show that the military does not trust this government to make legal policy that protects the soldiers in the field and that they felt it necessary to override the usual protocol of civilian authority calling the shots in military policy, something I cannot recall seeing happen in our society before (I could be wrong about that, is anyone thinks they know of another example of the military reversing and hiding the reversal of policy in a combat theatre I will add it as an update to this post).

So either way this government is showing itself to be unfit for office, either it knew and lied despite the inevitability that the lie would be exposed about the halting of the detainees (which makes little sense since that would have defused the negative reaction in the public and denied the Opposition parties a significant political hammer) or they did not know despite their oversight responsibilities (which on an issue which has been as hot as this one over the past year one would have thought any sane government would have kept a close watch over if only out of self preservation instincts) that the military changed the policy (likely because they feared that the government's policy would result in potential Geneva and even war crimes trials for Canadian soldiers down the road if they did not stop these transfers). That the military would feel the need to have to hide this from the government indicates they didn't trust the government to go along with this decision, which in turn indicates an appalling lack of judgment by the government in placing its political needs ahead of the honour, reputation, and expertise of those in uniform when it comes to such basics as the treatment of prisoners according to the law of this country. When the military overrides civilian authority you have a very serious problem indeed in a democracy, and that is why I hope the government has been knowingly lying all along rather than this second possibility, yet going by what is in the public domain to date the second appears to be more probable.

This is also not the first time this government has tried to blame the military for actions it was responsible for, just remember the flap over media coverage of the repatriation ceremonies of our dead soldiers from Afghanistan a few months after they came to power. I documented this in two post at Saundrie here and here. You would think this government would have learned better by now, but that is one of the hallmarks of this government, it doesn't learn because it already believes it knows all the right answers regardless of what anyone else may think no matter what their qualifications/expertises. This is a very bad situation indeed, even by the standard of failure and hyperpoliticization of the CPC government. More and more it looks like in foreign policy and especially where our troops are concerned this government is exactly like GWB's. They use the military as a political prop/tool for partisan purposes, provide minimal to no support resourcewise, and try to hide the costs of the war/conflict from the domestic audience/public while calling anyone with any questions let alone criticisms of government military policy as anti-patriotic/terrorist sympathizers, etc. That kind of jingoism is not a hallmark of Canadian society, although it is of American, and that this government and especially this PM clearly practices such speaks volumes as to where he comes from in this, and it is not rooted in anything remotely resembling Canadian rooted/based thinking.

I have been avoiding blogging about the detainee issue because it is something that truly offends me beyond the ability to keep my anger/rage under control when I write about it. It was in no small part why I stopped here last year. However, I cannot continue to not document this issue here anymore, especially not now when such serious an issue as the military overriding civilian authority to protect the troops from legal repercussions appears to have happened. That is something I would never have expected to see in this country, and the anger and shame I feel at the government that has placed us in apparent violation of Geneva Convention protocols cannot be easily put into words. For a party and government that shouts about how it and only it respects and values our military their behaviour since coming to power has been putting the lie to that assertion and then some. If anything this Harper CPC government disrespects and holds in contempt the military more than any prior government than I have seen in my lifetime except of course for the political partisan ways they can use them as props and as a weapon to try to hurt their political opposition, that appears to be the only value the Harper CPC sees in our military. Shameful doesn't even begin to cover it IMHO.

**UPDATE**

As of 2:05pm EST The Globe and Mail is reporting that Sandra Buckler is backing off her original comment about the government not being informed, however when asked to clarify if that meant then the government did have knowledge of the halt of transfer she refused to say. Here is the link to the article for all to read and evaluate for themselves. I would be giving credit to Jimbobby because he raised it in comments except that I had returned to Saundrie to add this update when I found his comment. Still though I didn't want him thinking I was slighting him so I thought I should mention that too. Thank you for the consideration JB even though I had already found the article, it is still much appreciated.

**UPDATE II**

This article in the G&M (h/t to Impolitical) now makes it impossible to believe that this government had no idea about the stop of transfer of detainees from right after the military changed its policy. Impolitical in this post underscores exactly why that is, and I agree with Impolitical's reasoning here completely. Both are well worth the read IMHO. This explains how the appearance of the military keeping a government as well known for micromanagement as this one out of the loop on this policy change was able to go unchallenged for several hours in the national media as well as making it difficult to impossible to believe the government was not lying about this back when it was sliming the Opposition for being more concerned with the well being of Taliban/terrorists than they were about our soldiers in and out of the House of Commons last November. I think this government has pushed the military and civil service just about as far as it is going to be willing to take it, as Impolitical notes this means we should start seeing more and more leaks of what this government has been doing all it can to bury, and it will be its own fault (not that they will see it that way of course, no they will blame it all on the liberal media conspiracy against Conservatives and the Liberal civil service out to get them it won't be because the CPC did anything wrong, nosiree not at all) that this is happening to them.

Minister Lunn just proved Keen's point regarding her authority to consider isotope availability over safe reactor operations

Via Impolitical we find this article from the Globe and Mail in which Lunn says he is going specify in writing for the next CNSC head that they must ensure the production of sufficient medical isotopes and that it will explicitly state that the regulator is responsible for ensuring the supply of isotopes. The fact that Lunn must do this instead of simply showing where in the current regulations and controlling legislation this authority/requirement already exists (where he could strengthen that authority or make it more explicit) as he and his government have repeatedly claimed was the case and why Keen was not doing her job and deserved to be fired from heading the CNSC underscores the point I have been making all along, that the controlling legislation as it currently stands does not provide the regulator with the authority nor the responsibility to take isotope production/availability into consideration when making decisions about nuclear safety, despite all this government has tried to claim.

In other words Keen was right about her responsibilities and the authorities she had to consider and Lunn and his government were wrong, pure and simple, otherwise why need to write it in now? Of course the Harper/CPC defenders will say this government is just making sure/spelling it out for the next head because the current authority is too nebulous or some such (while of course not citing the specific part of the current legislation/regulations to back that assertion up with) but anyone with any capacity for logic/reason and a preference for facts over political rhetoric and spin will see that for the sham that it is.

As to the idea itself, this is very bad policy. You do not make a safety regulator also responsible for production quotas, it inherently places the regulator in conflict between safety concerns which are supposed to be their paramount responsibility (hence being called a safety regulator...duh) and making sure there is enough supply. Take as an example the regulator being forced to choose between operating a reactor she knows is leaking a slight amount of radiation exposing those that work closely where the isotopes are being made, not enough to be lethal but enough to cause sterility at the same time that reactor is the only one able to make enough of isotope "x" that is needed and cannot be stockpiled because of a short half-life that is essential to a cancer treatment that keeps people alive. Do you shut the reactor down to deal with the radiation leak even though it will severely limit if not shut down altogether the isotope supply or do you allow the radiation to keep hitting the workers because it is not fatal just sterility inducing? That is the kind of idiotic balancing concerns this notion carries inherently within it, and why it is bad policy let alone bad law. Mind you, I am not sure Lunn can actually do this without changing the legislation via an Act of Parliament (aka getting a majority vote from the HoC to do so), it will be interesting to see whether this government tries to claim such inherent authority yet again, I suspect they will as it has been a repeating pattern with them to date.

This is to continue keeping the focus on Keen and the regulator as opposed to AECL and the failure of Minister Lunn to properly oversee AECL in the first place, and it is to be seen to be "doing something", even though the something it is doing is incredibly moronic. Yet again we see that this government does everything with a political consideration topping the concerns/considerations, which is inherently unhealthy for a democracy, just look at GWB's America and what he has reduced that once shining nation of the rule of law to, that is where this kind of government will take us. Worse, not only does this government emulate the GOP/Bush43 way of operating, they care more about the opinions of the American conservatives than they do those of the vast majority of this nation. Just look at how they reacted to the civil service (foreign affairs branch) considering America as a torture nation in those documents Amnesty International got out of the government in a lawsuit. This is only acknowledging the simple reality of the post 9/11/01 America and yet this government freaks out when that becomes public knowledge because this government cares more for the opinion of the Americans than it does any voice in this country (aside from the voters whom they will nobly lie to as the last election and the subsequent actions of this government make painfully clear to all but the most blinded by partisanship minds) not already in agreement with them.

A Keen Lament: How Harper is putting his ideological and/or partisan needs ahead of nuclear safety, the CPC "hidden agenda" warned about in action.

A little over two years ago we were just about to enter an election campaign. At the time I was arguing that it would be less dangerous/destructive for Canada to re-elect the clearly tired, stale, and arguably corrupt Liberals to government than to provide Harper's CPC with a government, even a minority government, because of his "hidden agenda" to make over the Canadian government into something more in line with his vision of what it should be, and I based those fears on the consistent views he had publicly held from the late 80s until 2005 when he finally realized that those views were keeping him from attaining power. For this I was ridiculed and mocked by both the left and right, the right because I attacked their leader, the left because they argued only someone benefiting from corruption as a Liberal could possibly think that the Libs were safer/better than the CPC (or NDP, as for some reason a few of these critics actually thought the NDP could become the next government or at least the Official Opposition and would be able to keep Harper in check, well I would argue that the NDP has not been able to do much of anything to keep Harper in check and arguably have helped him more than harmed him by their incessant desire to replace the Libs and therefore continually equate the Libs and CPC as equally bad choice despite the clear differences between them) . My responses were rooted in my belief that as bad as theft of taxpayer dollars to the tune of a few tens of millions of dollars are that I would much prefer that to rampant abuse of power and manipulation of the judicial and civil service elements of our government to place them in the service of an ideological driven party (let alone one driven by the same ideological underpinnings as the GOP/movement conservatives in the USA), in this case the Harper CPC. Well, here we are two years later and what have we seen in that time I would argue shows the hidden agenda fear was grounded in substance and that it is being implemented as much as possible in the circumstances Harper's minority government allows him to manage.

As KNB noted in this post of hers here we have seen this pattern appear several times in two years where this government wants to do something that is opposed by independent arms-length bodies answerable not to a government but to Parliament as a whole (which in a minority situation is a very important distinction, in a majority government one can simply pass whatever legislation through Parliament one wants without having to worry about what anyone else might say/think/do (so long as it remains compliant with the Charter of course, at least while our Supreme Court is kept free of this hyperpartisanizing of the government by Harper that is), but in a minority government situation the government must be able to count on enough opposition MPs agreeing so as to have the needed majority to pass legislation to override the independent body's decision or more broadly their mandate) they simply do what they want by firing without good cause and/or ignoring what the independent regulator says while claiming that their own unique legal interpretation is all that matters/counts since obviously any government functionary daring to disagree with them is doing so only out of some partisan basis instead of on any real/valid grounds. We have seen this done to the Canadian Wheat Board, the Elections Commissioner, the Information Commissioner, TWO Chief Electoral Officers, the Environmental Commissioner (within the AG's department overall if I recall correctly) and now the nuclear safety regulator Linda Keen. This in two years come next week as a minority government with one of the weakest minority governments in history. I would suggest that this underscores exactly why this government can never be trusted with majority power and indeed is far too dangerous to have even in a minority situation. Keep in mind it was Harper in the closing week of the last election campaign that said people shouldn't worry about a Harper CPC government since the Liberal judiciary, bureaucracy, and Senate would be there to keep him in check. Well, given the way he is clearly abusing the bureaucracy and ignoring the role of independent bodies when they get in his way I would say that check is being systematically removed by Harper precisely because what he wants to do is not consistent with our prior legal practices, our laws as they currently are written (How can one claim to be all for law and order when you run a government that tosses it by the wayside whenever it gets in your way from how much you can advertise in an election to overriding the nuclear safety regulator for doing her job as the law required of her?) and certainly would not gain enough support in the HoC let alone the electorate if he did so openly (in other words since he hasn't the votes to change the legislation he will simply redefine/ignore it altogether).

Keep in mind this government has also redesigned the way judicial appointments are vetted. Prior to Harper the commissions doing so were made up of seven people, four of whom were NOT selected by government but by other bodies with appropriate expertise. Then Harper decides to add a police representative (which btw I find incredibly insane, judges should not have to worry about what a cop thinks of their qualifications, the cops enforce the laws, not interpret or create them, indeed often it is the judges that tell the police when they have crossed the line creating a certain amount of antipathy from police towards judges) to make it an 8 member body AND made the judicial council's representative the permanent chair thereby negating that body's vote unless a tie happens, which when there are seven people voting normally tends not to happen as a rule. So in the end the government appointees went from having a minority position in the screening process to having a majority control and that one of the three remaining non-governmental member bodies had its vote de facto stripped from them in the vetting process. This went under the radar screen of many people because it didn't seem like a big deal to them, but when you start rebalancing such powers towards the government instead of towards the citizenry then you have to wonder why they think they need that much power in the first place and what it is they wish to do with it.

This is where Harper's history as a member of the Calgary School of political thought has to be taken into consideration, as well as the heavy influence Leo Strauss has within that school, especially the part about how only the elite are qualified to have any say in how a nation is governed which is why it is acceptable to commit the "noble lie" to the great unwashed masses about what you will do to gain the power so you can exercise it on behalf of the elite, exactly what we saw with the accountable transparent, honest, and ethical government Harper's CPC was trumpeting they would be in the last election, indeed since the CPC was birthed in that act of dishonesty, treachery and betrayal. As the past two years have shown we have had anything but. Indeed, Harper showed his true colours on this in the very first day he was sworn to power by making the head of Public Works his unelected Quebec bagman first a Senator (something he swore only to do to represent Provinces that do not elect any CPC members, something clearly not the case for Quebec) and then makes him the Minister of Public Works, which is historically also known as the department of pork and patronage. Public Works was where the Sponsorship scandal was run out of, so that this should have been a department receiving increased transparency and accountability if that truly was a goal of the Harper CPC government. However, that was not what we got.

Now we come to the case regarding Linda Keen, a civil servant who until Harper branded her a Liberal partisan by insinuation/implication in the House of Commons had no record of acting in a partisan manner let alone was considered so by anyone, even those like Mr. Burns former Chairman of the AECL Board with whom she was in conflict with. Indeed, she appeared to be someone that took her responsibilities very seriously and if anything was a bit rigid in terms of interpreting her mandate, which I would argue in someone charged with nuclear safety protocols is a very good thing indeed. You don't want someone that is slapdash in their methods or casual about their responsibilities in such a serious position as overseeing nuclear safety, that should be blatantly obvious to anyone with two functioning neurons firing. Her job was, as previously covered here and elsewhere was to follow the nuclear safety regulations as defined by controlling legislation. Nowhere in that legislation does it make placing any other concerns/considerations than safe operations of nuclear reactors a part of her job, despite the claims of some that the section talking about the health of Canadians means exactly that. I would argue that the context makes it clear that the health being referred to is the health of those working in and living around the reactor and nothing more. To claim that goes to talking about the health concerns of Canadians needing radioactive isotopes unsupported by any clarification/precedent showing such seems more than a little dubious to me, which is why I find the government's argument here to be incredibly flimsy to nonexistent. Also, why hasn't the Harper government been able to cite the specific elements within the controlling legislation(s) to show she had such power to consider isotope needs versus reactor safety and that Lunn had the power/authority to do as he did unless they are not there? After all, if the government could cite the relevent authorities within the legislation it would cut off at the knees any Opposition criticism on this issue, so one would think they would have looked hard to find them to use and their absence indicating they do not exist (or that this government is so incapable/incompetent it couldn't find them after weeks of looking, not exactly a useful defence) despite the claims that they do by this government.

However, one cannot deny that this government went out of its way to claim that the lives and health of thousands of Canadians were in direct jeopardy if this reactor was not turned on immediately and that Keen was not doing her job when she refused to place that concern ahead of the "no risk" (in actuality small but not nonexistent risk) to restarting the reactor immediately while it was still not in compliance with safety regulations. What they failed to do though was provide the specific evidence that this was true, that there was a real shortage, that there were no other suppliers that could be tapped while the repairs were going on (Indeed, this is feeling just like the tax leakage defence for the broken promise on taxing Income Trusts made Oct 31 2006 and the blacked out documents which are to date the only evidence the CPC has released to support this position that matters were so serious and in danger that they had no choice but to act). I find that a very serious concern indeed, because if this government was only mildly overstating this then they were being incredibly irresponsible, and if they were making it up altogether then I would argue this would make them entirely unfit to be a government period. For all the wailing I heard from the CPC about how lives were at risk the hard evidence to support it was never provided, and therefore one is forced to ask whether this was a fiction to begin with? Others have raised serious questions as to the reality of this claim, and I must say I find their arguments far more compelling and actually backed up than I do the claim by the government regarding the imminent risk to Canadian lives.

Even if it were not a fiction though it would still not be enough cause to claim Keen was incompetent in the performance of her duties (and claiming she wasn't showing sufficient leadership skills is in my books a backhanded way of claiming incompetence without using the word IMHO) and therefore needed to be fired from her position. Why? Because it was never her job/place to consider/place the risks to Canadians health due to isotope shortage ahead of any safety concerns/issues regarding the operation of a nuclear reactor, no that belongs to the government and Parliament as a whole, which they exercised last December which was not contrary to CPC claims a vote of non-confidence in the regulator. Personally, I was opposed to the idea of the regulator being overrode in this manner because of the dangerous precedent it set (especially when I had not seen evidence to support that the danger to Canadian lives was so grave via the isotope shortage despite all the verbiage coming from the government about it) because those charged with nuclear safety should never have any other considerations to worry about. This should be a no-brainer concept for people to get, that you never want to place anything ahead of safety where nuclear reactors are concerned because of how serious any mistake with a nuclear reactor can be and how long the impacts from such a mistake can haunt both the physical region and the people exposed, which can be literally generations to eons depending on what happens and which radioactive material contaminants end up being involved.

What truly shows that this government is acting in a political manner instead of sound policy manner on this was the firing of Keen just before she was due to testify to a Commons committee on her actions and that of the government. What is really strange about this (aside of course from the late night nature of it the night before that hearing) though is that she was fired from the Presidency because of her lack of fitness for the job yet she is kept on the Commission itself as a board member, which looks like trying to eat your cake and have it by the government (she wasn't fired for cause, she was merely demoted, or so the spin goes). It also makes it look like they were hoping she would not testify after the firing on advice of legal counsel because she would be looking into filing a wrongful termination/firing lawsuit (which the government knew since she stated she would if fired in her letter responding to Lunn's Dec 27 2007 letter) and most lawyers tend to tell clients to go silent once such a process is initiated, which is hardly a secret or something this government would not have known. So to protect Lunn's clear incompetence on the nuclear file Harper is willing to expose the taxpayers to what could be a hundreds of thousand to millions of dollars wrongful termination lawsuit, is that what most Canadians would consider responsible good government being open, accountable and transparent? I hardly think so. Indeed I suspect if I were to go back two years in time and argue that Harper would fire the head of the CNSC because she refused to violate her job requirements because the government told her to do so without amending the appropriate legislation I would have been told this was nothing more than a fantasy and empty fear mongering, that no government would act in such a manner over something as serious as nuclear safety. Well here we are two years later and now we know better don't we.

I warned two years ago that the Harper government would place its own needs ahead of the needs of Canadians, that they would ignore the rule of law (which for those of you too ignorant to understand means more than just criminal law, it means all laws created by legislation and judicial rulings, something many do not seem to grasp) whenever it got in the way of their partisan desires and lust of power, and that they would cover up any scandal which threatened to negatively harm them no matter how obvious their fault/culpability/responsibility was as they did with the Grewal recordings fraud. I wonder how many of those on the left and in the center that thought I was "off my meds" about how dangerous this government would be from two years ago now wish they had given my arguments a bit more consideration instead of just brushing them off as being merely partisan nonsense and empty rhetoric. I don't wonder that of my critics from the right because they too often have shown themselves to be just like their leader, placing partisan interests ahead of reality/fact/truth. What the actions of the Harper government show about themselves and what they would be like if ever given majority power should scare the hell out of every sane Canadian voter and particularly those progressive voters that want to preserve the system of government that we have (and this means much more than the elected officials, I am talking about the across the board governmental structures including things like independent regulators to protect society ahead of partisan/profit motivations and other agencies set up to help those that need it) and make it clear that whatever else the Harper government must be defeated, even if that means supporting those you would otherwise not. Personally, I am hoping for a large national ABC movement within the electorate, because if we do not show that as a collective society that we refuse to accept this kind of revolutionary revision of our way of life (because Harper is no less dangerous to the future of this nation being one based in reality, facts, and science as the GWB Presidency was for the American institutions) we will lose it altogether. Just look at how badly damaged those structures are from FEMA to health to energy to environment to the basic rule of law where even torture and habeus corpus have become subordinate to political considerations, even to the point that they dominate over scientific realities. Is that what we want for this country? It is clearly what Harper wants, at least so long as it is his side in control, somehow I suspect that were they the opposition to a government acting in this way they would be howling about the dictatorial tyranny going down the road towards banana republic/fascist state, they certainly did so with the Liberals for far less than what we have seen from this CPC government.

We are living in very serious times right now, and the future shape/direction of our nation is at stake, indeed I would argue our future in terms of continuing to be a nation may well be at stake. If a weak minority government will act as arrogantly and outside of the normal operating procedures, precedents, and traditions of our country's Parliament as this one has it is only reasonable to expect they would be just that much more so if they held majority power. Given that we have seen this CPC place its own unique interpretations to elections law, Wheat Board Act, Access to Information Act, and now nuclear safety legislation it is far from unreasonable to worry about what else they may decide to place their interpretations above what the legislation/law and precedents regarding it have to say, and I find the idea of any political party placing itself above the law inherently a threat to any democracy's long term future. I opposed Harper and his CPC creation so extensively and with such intensity precisely because I feared this kind of abuse of power and willingness to place themselves above the law and the will of the people. It is why I am a Harper foe while not being a partisan of any other political party (despite the repeated claims by my critics to the contrary), it is because I place things like the rule of law, democratic process, and proper oversight of what any government does with it's power ahead of any mere partisan interests/concerns I might have, but then I happen to believe that the fundamental principles upon which this country is founded on and has been governed by matter far more than whether "my" side (whenever I have one, most of the time I am not aligned to any one party) wins or loses in any given election. What we have here is something horrible and dangerous and must be stopped.

You could say this post is a Keen lament for where this CPC government is trying to take us against our will via deception and misrepresentation since when they were open about these goals they were never able to get even close to a minority government position. There is a reason why I believe that paying attention to politics is only slightly less important than paying attention to whether you are breathing, whether we want to accept it or not everything politicos do will eventually ripple down towards our lives and if we do not pay attention from the outset then we deserve ever nasty thing that ends up happening to us. Democracy, especially representative democracy requires an electorate willing to make the effort to be politically aware and informed, this government goes out of its way to prevent the electorate from being informed by facts, no what they want the electorate to be informed by is their spin unchallenged by facts since the facts generally undercut their political ideologically rooted spin. Not a healthy thing for any democracy, and certainly not the tradition of how we have governed ourselves in this country historically.

Mulitple sources/bloggers were involved in the creation of this post, these bloggers are:

Impolitical
In The House and Senate
Liberal Arts and minds
The Galloping Beaver
Kady O'Malley's blog at Macleans
Politics 'n' Poetry
Jimbobby Sez
More Notes from Underground

So if you wish to read up more on these issues please browse through their respective blogs, they are well worth the time. I am doing it this way since this post was written without me thinking to source which points were to each link while writing, and since I am having some trouble with blogger at the moment I decided to go this route this time. Sorry about any problems that causes for anyone, this will not be becoming a standard thing from me. Again, my apologies to all readers and especially the bloggers whose fine work I was using in this post.

Why did Kenny deserve more time than both opposition MPs on QP today regarding Chalk River?

I tend to tape QP because I am watching Meet The Press on NBC during the first half and At Issue on CBC. So after I finish watching the shows I watch live Sunday Morning (usually I watch both live and taped on Sunday Chris Matthews, ABC This Week, Fox News Sunday, Reliable Sources, Face the Nation, Meet The Press, and QP, I do so more to see how things are being covered and portrayed for those whose primary info source is TV and not online/paper than to find out new things from the shows although that does happen from time to time) I watch my recordings of the rest, which makes QP the last on the list. I just got finished watching the tape, and I was infuriated to watch the segment with Craig Oliver on Chalk River. He had on Paul Dewar, Jason Kenny, and Omar Alghabra to discuss the ongoing Chalk River scandal/controversy. He opened with Kenny getting the first word in, and he closed with Kenny getting the final word. Indeed, the last word he gave Kenny allowed Kenny to argue that if Harper had not been so bold/decisive/masterful in his action that if it had been up to Dion there still wouldn't be isotopes being made as of this day. Why do I make note of this seeing as that is typical CPC spin? Simple, because when the Liberal MP argued in his first comment that the actions taken by Harper and the CPC placed safety of Canadians at risk/in danger he went back to Kenny saying he had to give Kenny a chance to respond to that argument. So why does he allow Kenny to slime Dion and the Libs here without also providing rebuttal? Of course it will be claimed that because this was at the end there wasn't the time left, but that comes to my main complaint, the fact that Kenny got more time to speak than both Opposition MPs COMBINED!

I did this in a very simple manner. What I did was reset the counter (which on my VCR shows time running and not an arbitrary counter) when each person was starting to speak and clear it after each was done for the next speaker and I wrote it down. I only started the count when the MP started to speak and finished speaking, I left out the time of the questioner and questions. When I was finished I was left with the following tally:

Liberal MP: 73 sec, 45 sec for a total of 118 seconds, or 1 minute 58 seconds.
NDP MP: 70sec, 54sec for a total of 124 seconds, or 2 minutes 4 seconds.
CPC MP: 82 sec, 98sec, 30sec, 68sec for a total of 278 sec, or 4 minutes 38 seconds.

Total time for Opposition MPs equals 242 seconds, or 4 minutes and 2 seconds to the CPC MP's 278 seconds or 4 minutes 38 seconds. By this count Kenny got 36 seconds speaking time more than the combined Opposition MPs. Now, I was careful in how I did this, and since there was next to no talking over each other or interruptions it was fairly easy to get clear/clean numbers for each person. So, can anyone explain to me why the member of the government, who by definition has the loudest megaphone and ability to be heard by the citizenry via the platform of being the government deserves the majority of the time on QP? Especially given that this is dealing with a serious issue like Chalk River. Why this really irked me was because all Kenny did with his time was smear Linda Keen repeatedly with the *LIE* that she was acting irresponsibly by placing the lives of Canadians at risk because of an isotope shortage AND claiming that the Parliamentary vote to override her decision means she has lost the confidence of Parliament, which is grossly misleading at best. She was required to follow the regulations and legislation that Parliament passed in regards to her position to oversee nuclear safety regulation of nuclear reactors, and that is ALL her job is supposed to consider. She is *NOT* supposed to allow any other considerations than safety of the operation of the nuclear reactors to enter her determinations, PERIOD. This is all easy to confirm for oneself is one bothers to do the homework and read the controlling legislation and have a basic working understanding of how our government structure actually works (as opposed to the repeated delusions of the Harper CPC in taking unique interpretations as they have so far with the elections act, the Act which controls the Canadian Wheat Board, etc), which one would have hoped a member of the cabinet like Kenny would have an understanding of already, especially after being the government for just under two full years now.

So all Kenny does is lie about Keen's responsibilities, claims the Parliamentary session which overrode her decision was a vote of no confidence in her (instead of recognizing that only Parliament could make such a decision to override the governing safety rules, for the head of the CNSC to do so would have been improper and arguably illegal for her to do) , and then closes with a hosanna to the greatness of Harper and that if it had been the Dion Libs in charge this isotope shortage (which btw there are conflicting accounts as to how serious it actually was, as well as the reality that it was the place/responsibility of AECL, MDS-Nordion, and the Ministers of Natural Resources and Health to to ensure that there was no shortage and not Linda Keen's or the CNSC) would still be ongoing to this day without any of these blatantly false arguments and smears being challenged by the supposedly non-partisan more interested in facts than spin political journalist Craig Oliver(sorry, a general we have to deal with the reality we have now kind of comment from Oliver is not enough in my books). How exactly does this sort of propaganda being fed uncritically via CTV's QP help inform the average voter/citizen watching who may not have the time to spend to look in depth into all of this? What does it say about the willingness to give the government MP more time than both his Opposition critics on this issue? What does it say about the unwillingness to make sure politicians, especially those in government are not deceiving the journalist and by extension the audience by Craig Oliver (a senior CTV political journalist, not exactly a small fish in this pond) on such an important issue, especially when the lies coming from the government were as blatant as this case had?

Look, I am not saying that this one example shows/proves CTV and or Oliver specifically are playing favourites, or a part of some media conspiracy to aid the CPC. To take one data point and try to make that argument is inherently dishonest. What I am saying though is that there are some serious problems with a political journalist that allows a government representative over half the total speaking time for all the MPs to repeatedly lie unchallenged on the basic facts, to make partisan smears against the opposition, and to give both the opening and closing spot to that government MP. This may be a one time thing, I don't know, as I normally don't time how long each person speaks for. I only did so in this case because of how egregious the lying by Kenny was and how Oliver allowed it to go unchallenged (which btw speaks either to his own ignorance of the basic facts or it speaks to his unwillingness to raise them against the CPC MP I do not know which or whether it was a little of both) and that it seemed like he got a lot more time than his opponents to do so with on what is quite probably the most serious scandal to hit this CPC government since it came to power. Which when one considers/factors in just how much of the original CPC claims last December by Lunn (the minister responsible for the file) regarding what he knew and when he knew it have been shown to be totally false, that he knew weeks to months prior to the shutdown let alone shortage beginning that this was coming and did nothing, when one factors in that PM Harper slandered the regulator in the HoC when this broke as a partisan operative out to embarrass his government instead of acting in good faith (and then in year end interviews says she was not acting partisanly effectively contradicting himself from earlier), and finally one factors in the Dec 27 07 letter Lunn sends to Keen telling her she has ten days to convince him why she shouldn't be fired for her actions regarding Chalk River which was entirely inappropriate and arguably illegal for a minister to do with the head of an independent regulator AND that this somehow was leaked to the press which is what triggered Keen's public response seems quite questionable judgment by Oliver and CTV's QP staff at best in my view, and may be indicative of something worse than bad judgment, that being a bias for the CPC by the reporter and possibly the network which some have already claimed is the case.

Me, I don't know, but when I see things like this it does make it appear to me like those that have taken to calling CTV Conservative TV may have a point, especially when one factors in just how much the other politics show on CTV also appears to have a bias for the CPC and against the Liberals, the Mike Duffy Show. Indeed, that show became so blatant in its coverage I had to stop watching it some months back because I couldn't take watching the supposedly non-partisan political "journalist" Duffy applying two standards, one for the CPC and another for everyone else especially the Liberals. When I watch political journalists I do not want to be able to tell how they are inclined to vote, which is one of the main reasons I love Don Newman so much. I can't tell how he would vote, whereas listening to the gushing man crush over Harper's decisiveness I have gotten from Duffy (reminds me very much of Chris Matthews and his man-crushs for GOPers at times) makes it hard for me to believe he votes anything other than Con. I expect political opinionists to have opinions and partisanship, that is one thing. Political reporters though should not be showing such regardless of how they feel personally, because when it becomes acceptable for the reporters to show their biases openly it is impossible to believe that the work product is not going to be significantly tainted by it and end up being not fact based first but politically correct (as in correct for whichever political partisanship one holds) instead, which is not healthy for a democratic society. After all, if one cannot get the facts how does one make an informed decision, and many voters have to rely on political journalists to find out and report the facts because they do not have the time and/or resources to do so in their own lives.

I do not normally go after media for bad coverage or perceived partisanship as a rule, I leave that to others who are more inclined and better suited to that sort of critique. I only did this one because of the nature of the issue involved, the blatant deceptions being treated uncritically by the journalist coming from the government representative, as well as the disproportionate time given to the government representative to do so with. This issue with Chalk River is very important, not just on its own but also in what it shows about how this government operates behind the scenes from suppressing AG reports that would not be favourable for them in the public view, ignoring the rules regarding independent agencies not being interfered with by government on specific issues/cases (Wheat Board was another major example of this) and how they are willing to use the suffering of Canadians as a political partisan tool to attack their main opposition the Liberals at any turn, even when it has no basis in fact (which I should point out includes the generally overlooked fact that Keen was last reconfirmed in her position in 2006 by the Harper government which one could argue turned her into a Conservative appointee at that point, something most CPCers appear not to realize when they slime her as a Liberal partisan/operative of some kind) and the suffering is actually a direct cause of the incompetence of the minister in charge and therefore of the elected government itself. You cannot be a sitting government and claim all the credit for anything which goes right but is never to blame whenever anything goes wrong on your watch. This includes things which started prior to your time in power btw, especially once you have been in power long enough to have taken action to correct matters if you actually felt it needed doing, which is certainly the case regarding the Chalk River isotopes issue.

I am a big believer in the old expression about being entitled to one's own opinion but not one's own facts, yet this CPC government operates by routinely claiming their own facts and that anyone claiming otherwise are the ones lying to everyone. Which only underscores why it is so important to have a political media in this country willing to call out *ALL* politicians and governments when they mislead, distort the facts, let alone just outright blatant lying. They are also supposed to be skeptical of what those in power claim are the facts whoever that government may be since it is a long established fact that all governments regardless of political persuasion will minimize that which makes them look bad and maximize that which will make them look good. Remember, the original definition of "spin" is presenting the *facts* in as best a light as possible to your advantage and the worst possible light where your opponents are concerned. These days though spin has become to mean saying whatever you think you can get away with regardless of factual accuracy to place you and yours in the best possible light and those you oppose in the worst possible light. This is inherently unhealthy and needs to be opposed wherever one finds it in media, especially in political media.

More and more it becomes obvious that we are seeing a deliberate and systemic incorporation of the lessons the GOP taught the Harper CPC in how to lie and bafflegab the media to their advantage. I had hoped that our media would be more resistant to these methods being used, and to be fair to an extent they are doing so, but even with that qualifier things are clearly becoming worse in this respect, as I would argue the example of the Chalk River debate on today's QP illustrates. Remember though, I am not accusing CTV of a conspiracy or of this being their intent, I do not have anywhere near the data I would need to make that argument. I am simply using this example from today to show what I fear and what we all need to be wary of regardless of our political affiliations, at least those of us that place our civic motto ahead of partisan preference/bias. Good government is not something one can expect from those that routinely mislead, obfuscate, and outright brazenly lie, something Harper's CPC has shown is its normal operating practice, and the more journalists allow them to get away with it without challenging factual accuracy the greater the disservice done to the public/citizenry. Remember people, the media play an important civic role in open societies/democracies, and that duty is to examine the actions and claims of those elected to govern and to do so in a manner which places factual accuracy above all other concerns/considerations. When that is lost then the media go from being an asset in helping keep a society open and free into a negative which can help a society fall from being an open/democratic one. This is the path we must not follow our American brethren down, so when we see things as egregious as I saw on QP today we have to note it for what it was, exceptionally bad journalism and arguably providing advantage to those that are playing fast and loose with the facts on an issue as serious as nuclear safety. There are not too many issues I can think of that are more serious than nuclear safety, so when a government will lie so blatantly on that what won't it lie about to the public? Not to mention needing a media that will call out a government that plays so fast and loose with the basic facts on an issue as serious as this one is, which was not CTV's Question Period, at least not today it wasn't.

Harper's right, Lunn went Above and beyond, not of the call of duty but of the law however.

Ever since that day last December when I was sitting at home watching Question Period and saw Harper get up and claim that the head of the CNSC was a Liberal partisan operative out to embarrass his government in a coordinated plot with the Official Opposition leader I have been watching the Chalk River situation quite carefully. Indeed, I remember shouting back at the TV at Harper saying you had better have hard evidence to back that up with otherwise you are asking for a world of hurt. You see, as a child of the Cold War things like nuclear issues tend to attract my attention, they always have. This was why for example I knew Bush was lying at Camp David on Sept 7 2002 when he and Blair cited a report from the IAEA about Sadddam being possibly as close as six months to a working weapon when no such report existed (which took three weeks for the American media to even notice) and it was the fact he was lying about nuclear weapons that sent me into such hard opposition to the Iraq war from the outset. I make no claims of expertise in nuclear science, just what a lay person can pick up if they have any basic interest in hard sciences which I do, although my primary areas of interest is in quantum physics, astrophysics, and a bit of particle physics. So that provides for allowing at least the basic understanding of how nuclear reactors and weapons work and the risks they have attached to them.

So I know it is important with reactors to have a multiple redundancy system in place, that one cannot simply rely on a single back-up process but that multiple redundancies are the order of the day, because the destructive impact of a mistake is so extreme in both the damage it can do AND the length of time it can leave the contamination in its wake. Which is why the guarantee about how safe the reactor at Chalk River provided by Harper last month was obviously political spin and not sound science. Indeed, for Harper to guarantee no earthquake would hit that reactor while it was non-compliant was something I found breathtaking it its arrogance and hubris, even by Harper's standard set by his prior examples. That the risk might be low, low enough to take the chance for a limited period of time is one thing, to claim no risk whatsoever though is something else entirely. Yet Harper did not do this, did he?

There are several blogs that have done excellent work at covering this issue, Impolitical and The House and The Senate and Politics 'n 'Poetry in particular deserve special commendations for the various aspects they have dealt with in the last five weeks. I would recommend them for anyone wishing to examine in greater detail exactly what has been going on here. As for me, the aspect that I currently wish to address is from yesterday's Harper defence of Minister Lunn's actions and his claim that the regulator is the one acting inappropriately here. This is not only a bogus claim, it is a very dangerous one as well. As Dave at the Galloping Beaver notes in this post and 900ft Jesus notes in her post at The House and The Senate Dangerous precedents - Dangerous Patterns the CNSC is by the legislation controlling it passed by Parliament a quasi-judicial body at arms length from the government of the day. Which means that unlike say the head of a crown corporation the minister that has jurisdiction over the area that body operates in does not have the authority to arbitrarily fire the head of without any further cause than political embarrassment. No, in these cases one can only be fired for specific cause as laid out in the legislation and her employment contract. What Lunn tried to do in his Dec 27 2007 letter to Keen was entirely inappropriate, out of line, and quite likely illegal as well.

I have been reading the G&M comments sections on the various nuclear stories the past couple of days (which took awhile given the numbers they were generating) and there are a couple of themes showing from the defenders of Harper/Lunn in this. The first one is that she/Keen is Lunn's subordinate, and any subordinate that does not do as her boss requires should be fired. The problem with that is as I just noted in the prior paragraph is that she is not a direct subordinate of his, she heads an independent body answerable only to Parliament as a whole and not the Minister. The Minister can give general direction/guidelines, but is specifically not supposed to involve themselves on specific issues and rulings by the regulator, and what Lunn was doing with trying to make her break the law she is duty bound to uphold was exactly that kind of specific interference the independent nature of this body was set up to prevent/avoid. One does not want certain regulators, such as those charged with nuclear safety in a position where they have to place pleasing political masters ahead of enforcing regulations that may make things difficult for a government, especially if they are noted by the public. It is to prevent political interference that Keen is not answerable to the Minister, and the Minister and especially the Prime Minister after being the government for almost exactly 2 full years now have no excuse for not knowing and understanding this It is to prevent political partisan concerns from overriding safety that we set up such independent regulators, and for a government to interfere like this is bad enough, that we are seeing this behaviour from a minority government is truly appalling in what it reveals about the arrogance, the misconceptions, and the dictatorial nature of that government. Either they did not understand this (which is not credible) or they didn't care believing that their interests and concerns supersedes all other considerations, including the rule of law. It is not the first time we have seen the CPC take a unique interpretation of the law to suit themselves, just look at their Convention fundraising scandal, their ad scandal from the last election pumping cash in inappropriately and then to add salt to the wound tried to get taxpayers to pay them back for it. That they would do this with nuclear safety issues takes that kind of arrogant I am above the law mentality to a much darker place.

The other excuse is one I am surprised to be seeing, even from this government and its defenders, given how easily it is shown to be utter nonsense. They are using the pain and suffering of real Canadians to deflect from the harsh reality that this shortage was entirely the responsibility of the Minister of Natural Resources not doing his job. This other meme I am seeing these defenders using though is one that is so idiotic I am surprised they are trying it. They are arguing that Keen deserves to be fired for placing Canadian lives at risk for lack of isotopes;. The thing is though it is not a part of her mandate and her legally binding duties to be concerned with such things, no that belongs to AECL, MDS-Nordion, the Ministers of health and Natural Resources. Her job is to enforce the safety protocols for nuclear reactors as mandated by the controlling legislation passed by Parliament, and the only way to override that is via another Act of Parliament, period. Not by the Minister asking/telling her to do so, not by an Order in Council, but by Parliament changing the legislation and/or passing overriding legislation, as was eventually done. To try and claim that she was the one placing the lives of Canadians at risk because she refused to break the law is a particularly offensive and odious attack approach, even by the standards of this Harper CPC which I might add includes reading and acting on the AG report instead of sitting on it as Lunn (and possibly Harper) did, which includes immediate notification of his cabinet colleague the Minister of Health once he is aware of shortages about to happen which he did not do, instead he waited at least several days (using the most generous reading of the timeline known to date) in doing anything regarding AECL (which IS something he has direct authority over unlike the NCSC) and for setting up (in this case reactivating the means for alternate supply as was already in place and used in the past) alternate supplies for the needed isotopes. They are trying to argue that Keen placed partisan interests to make the CPC government look bad by placing all these Canadian lives at risk because she refused to make it easy for the government to keep this quiet by simply restarting the reactor despite the fact it was not in legal compliance with legally required safety measures. She is being made the scapegoat, which is really sick given how obvious it is to any objective person looking at this issue that she did exactly as her job required of her, that it was the government that failed to act in a timely (or for that matter legal) manner to prevent this situation from happening, and that the only people that have acted inappropriately here are Lunn and Harper.

If anyone wants to argue about whether Lunn should be able to fire such a regulator, ask yourself this: Would you have thought it a good idea if the government could hide any AG report it didn't like and fire the AG if she did not do exactly what the government wanted even if it was contradicted by her mandate as defined by law/legislation? If your answer is anything other than a loud shouted NO you are either a liar, or worse, an idiot. There is a reason we have such positions within our governing structures, it is to prevent abuse of power and abuse of the citizenry (which includes their safety) by any sitting government, in other words a check and/or balance to protect us from those that would abuse their power in their own narrow interests, say to prevent a government from looking bad and/or incompetent to increase its electoral viability by simply hiding it and covering it up. It was good enough for the CPC when it was the Liberals being held to account by the independent AG, so why isn't it good enough when it comes to nuclear safety issues, hmmm?

I suspect I will be adding to this post and/or making new ones on this issue, this is hardly a complete overview of all the nuances in this issue, but to do that properly is going to take a bit more time than I have at the moment. The bottom line is though yet again we see the Harper CPC placing itself and its interests above the law, and for anyone that cares about principled government (whatever one's political preferences that should be something that is even more important than what party/leader currently is the government) that should be intolerable. I have said many times that one of my core reasons for opposing Harper and his CPC is because I fear they are corrupt when it comes to the use and abuse of power, and this issue with the nuclear regulator provides an excellent example of this in action. I would much rather have competent government that skims of tax dollars but does not otherwise place itself above the law than this sort of insanity we have been seeing from Harper from the Elections Commission, the Ethics Commissioner, the Canadian Wheat Board stupidity/deception to now this with the authority charged with enforcing Canada's nuclear safety regime. This is a government that refuses to accept the limitations the law places on their power, especially when in a minority government situation, and that should be of grave concern to anyone that claims they value democracy over any one political party/preference. That we see so many of the same voices defending Harper on this that also agree with Harper whenever Harper goes on his unelected Senate being oh so undemocratic and bad for Canada kick speaks volumes to their commitment to the principle of democracy being subordinate to their commitment to their party/leader first. This is a very serious issue and this government must be held accountable, and Lunn must be forced out of his job, he has clearly shown himself incompetent and willing to lie and hide things not just from the public but even from his colleagues in Cabinet and possibly even the PM himself. Not exactly something one should want in a Cabinet Minister, especially one responsible for such a serious file as Canada's nuclear industry and safety.

A new year and hopefully a return to blogging here and why I stopped

I've been debating about writing this post for some time now to explain why I stopped blogging here last year. This has been a hard decision for me, since it means I have to be a bit more personal than I tend to prefer, but I feel I owe it to the people that still check by here from time to time to see whether I have started back up or not. As I have stated before here and elsewhere I am not the most comfortable blogging at my own site to begin with, I tend to prefer to join in already active conversations at other blogs, but while that is a contributing factor it is not what actually is the primary driver for this decision. No, that was how the Harper government dealt with the mistreatment and possible Geneva Convention violations by the Canadian Armed Forces in the transferal of prisoners to local authority.

To understand why this is something that triggered such a strong reaction from me it necessitates pointing to family and personal history, something I try to avoid because it makes working out identity that much easier (mind you, if I were still single I would still be blogging under my own name as I once did, but given my wife's concern about possible political zealots making it personal she asked me to stop, and because she has been someone with a seriously traumatic history from early childhood including but not limited to multiple rapes by multiple parties I can appreciate why, not to mention what I might do to someone that tried to hurt me through her, I am normally a very easygoing peaceful sort but underneath it I have a truly nasty temper, indeed it was all I could do to keep from committing some serious violence towards her last sexual assaulter since that happened while she and I were engaged) but to understand why my feelings were so strong makes it necessary this time. You see, my father wore the uniform as a reservist, both my grandfathers were military doctors in WWII, my great grandfathers fought in WWI as did many great uncles, several of whom ended up career military. So there is a strong military tradition /history within my family.

When I was in my teens I was in sea cadets and was planning on going into the reserves at the very minimum (it was questionable whether I could get into the reg forces, at the time they were having sharp cutbacks, Mulroney's doing/era in recruiting). I remember standing in cold rain more than once for Remembrance Day in parade and formation to show my appreciation for those that died in uniform to fight one of the greatest evils of modern human history, the Nazis. I recall being very proud of our history of honouring international conventions and not losing sight of the humanity of those we fought against and in how well we treated our prisoners even/especially when that was not being extended both ways. It spokes volumes about what kind of a society we were and are and it was something I took great pride in. I also had another relative who worked at the top levels of the intelligence community from the mid 30s through mid 60s, indeed that relative was the most important and formative one in my life, so I understood that the world is not black or white despite our preference for such absolutes (good/evil anyone?) while appreciating our moral authority/credibility in these areas.

When I came of age though I tore apart the ligaments in one of my legs, making any further chance of military service reserve or reg force something I had to give up on, but that did not cause me to lose any of my feelings about such service. No, anything but in fact, which I might add is one of the reasons why I occasionally get a bit snarky with those that claim anyone not a Conservative disrespects/loathes/hates all things military by claiming it specifically of me or even by claiming that liberals/lefties are anti-military by nature. I looked at that though as the usual partisan rhetoric of the zealot follower, something not unheard of in politics, especially in political parties with a strong ideological foundation/nature and treated it accordingly. To see it though from the top levels of a party/government though is something else again.

I was furious when it became impossible to accept that there was not at least the clear appearance (let alone reality) of violation of Geneva Convention protocols by our soldiers as a direct result of government policy and this government instead of dealing with it squarely did all it could to not only run away from it but slimed any and all those raising this issue as somehow Taliban supporting anti-Canadian military traitors (yes this is being blunt about it, but boiled down that is what was being said no matter how one might want to dress it up as) wanting to hurt the war effort and the soldiers. This infuriated me beyond my ability to articulate (no small feat) because it is wanting to protect our soldiers that motivated so many of these questions and concerns, because if policy places the average soldier in a position where they have to either obey orders with the risk of potential/possible Geneva charges down the road or refuse orders in a combat zone with the inevitable courts martial process (which btw for those that do not understand this does NOT have the innocent until proven guilty standard underlying it, far from it) and the fear of being seen by fellow soldiers as a barracks lawyer more concerned with covering his own tail than his brothers in arms the odds are good the soldier will stay quiet and obey orders unless they when they refuse the order can be highly confident they can prove it was an unlawful order at a courts martial, not a minor consideration and a very difficult threshold to reach.

This was a tipping point for me in terms of my anger and shame regarding the current government. Never in my life have I felt ashamed to be a Canadian nor ashamed of a Canadian government regardless of party until this Harper CPC government came to power. The level of anger it has created in me as well as the level of absolute disgust and fear because of the underhanded way they are perverting how our government actually is designed/intended to work became more than I could restrain. Now, I could have allowed this blog to become filled with anger filled rants (which despite the opinion of some of my critics I would argue is not the hallmark of my writings here), but that is not my style. I also get tired of repeating myself after a while and lets face it this government's main problems almost require such because they keep pulling the same kind of crap over and over again. So I decided to take a break for a while and just stick to commenting at other blogs, especially since I had Red Tory's blog to enjoy really good and substantive conversations at. That blog though is gone, driven out in no small amount by the angry hateful bile produced by the Harper defenders/supporters that started to swarm his comment threads to derail any possible serious conversation. They treated RT with incredible disrespect and contempt and spewed nonstop insults at him. In the end it became more than he could deal with to the point it was negatively affecting his health so he stopped, and one of the best voices in the Canadian political blogosphere was silenced.

It is because of that silencing that I am going to try and resume blogging here again, even though I have my own health issues to be concerned with. That also impacts my ability to blog, as did my father breaking his leg early November and the need for my aid for the first six weeks or so. I am going to try to post at least every other day, even if it is a short comment, but since I have tried to promise that in the past I do not expect anyone to take that too seriously given my history here. I will say this much though, if/when an election is called I will be much more prolific then, but that is a relatively short period of time as opposed to maintaining month after month year after year. My views on Harper and his style of politics and the dangers they represent to this country have not changed/weakened, but even the most stalwart fighter gets tired from time to time and last yer just got to be too much for me, especially after the detainee issue.

Well, with any luck this will work out better this year than last, and I apologize to all those that were saddened that I went dark for so long. I wish I could given you more than I have, but I really have limits in how much I can manage, otherwise I wouldn't be on long term disability. *sigh* Well, we all do what we can as best we can with the resources available to us, hopefully this year is better for me in that regard than last year was. Keep in mind dealing with propaganda and right wingnut nonsense is a draining experience to begin with, so only having limited reserves/resources energywise really impacts on ability to sustain an effort no matter how smart/clever a person is.

Well, we shall see how this year goes here at Saundrie, hopefully much better than last year.

I thought this was Canada we lived in, not Kanada, someone should tell PM Harper and the CPC that!

Thanks to the excellent work already done here by Dave at The Galloping Beaver, Dr. Dawg at Dawg's Blog here and the many others to which they both are linked I became aware of this issue. I have to say this is something that surprised me, even given my well known history of suspicion and distrust where the Harper CPC is concerned. This is also typical of a pattern with the HarperCPC/ government to ignore the way in which our government is actually set up and the respective laws which govern how it is to operate and how we elect said governments. We have seen recently for example that the CPC may well have spent over a million dollars above the limit in the last national election by funneling that money through dozens of candidates that had not reached their own spending limits as reported here and here, we have seen how they viewed the convention contributions in a manner no other party did which also appeared to provide them with additional monies for the last election that no other party had as I wrote about back here. We have seen how this government imposes absurd and unheard of levels of secrecy and hiding from the media as the making of when Cabinet meets a secret makes clear.

We have seen (as covered by bloggers listed at this post at Dr Dawg's place) in this past week reason to be worried that our government is using police infiltrators to try and provoke violence at protests which they do not want the protestors message taken seriously (and the Harper CPC clearly does not want people taking those concerns seriously given their on the record comments about paranoid conspiracy theories regarding the concerns of deeper integration in NA being done behind the veils of secrecy from the electorate), especially when the Public Safety Minister comes out to tell us that according to the video he has seen the only reason the undercover cops (who were initially denied as being such or that even such were even used in such a manner by the SQ and RCMP initially over the first 24 hrs) were outed by the protestors was because they would not commit violent acts unlike the other protestors who Day claims were so inclined when the original video which brought all this to light shows clearly the only ones carrying weapons were the undercovers (that rock), refused to disarm themselves (drop the rock) when demanded to by the other and real/actual protestors. So we are suppose to believe Day without his presenting to the public the video he claims supports his interpretations and we are not to believe our apparently lying eyes regarding the first video making clear the only ones with any appearance of looking to cause violence were the undercover cops themselves.

Taken with this latest development of appointing someone as supposedly the liaison to the federal government who is not the riding's elected MP because that MP is of another party and appointing the candidate for your party in that riding as somehow being the riding's official liaison to the government and this makes for a very disturbing pattern of disrespect and contempt for the fundamental principles and laws that define how we govern ourselves. Like Dr. Dawg I suspect this is unconstitutional, and even if it is not it still runs completely counter to how our federal government is set up to be run, as it is the elected MP for each riding regardless of political affiliation that has the legal and moral responsibility of representing that riding to the federal government. This shows at the very minimum a deep and profound contempt for the way in which this country has been governed since its creation, and quite possibly also shows an equally profound ignorance of the basics of how this country is designed to function by the current governing party's leadership. Neither of which is a recommendation of competence/quality of the Leader and party that takes such positions, as the last thing one should want from a Leader/party is that degree of profound ignorance of the basic civic knowledge of how the government is designed to operate let alone such a level of contempt for it and any MP not of their own party that they will set up independent "liaisons" for a riding like this whatever the political affiliations involved.

This strikes me yet again as further evidence that the Harper led CPC is not rooted in Canadian political principles nor has any interest in them, only in its own power and any and all ways they can think of to increase that power regardless of propriety, morality/ethics, or even legality. That they would transform this nation beyond all recognition if given the majority power to do so, as it is we have seen profoundly undemocratic behavior from this government from the outset (Fortier, Emerson) and even before (Grewal fraud and subsequent cover-up by Harper) . I find this tendency of Harper to prove my worst fears about him to be justified most upsetting/disturbing, there are some things in which it feels far better to be proven to be a wrongheaded fool about instead of Cassandra, and this is one of them IMHO.

It is good to see that Garth Turner's Blog has also picked up on this story here, and the questions that he raises in it are on par with what The Galloping Beaver and Dr Dawg among others have already raised. Anyone that is incapable of understanding why such an action is profoundly wrong, profoundly undemocratic, and profoundly anti-Canadian is in my view someone unfit to be taken seriously as a political commentator of any sort, because this strikes at one of the very foundations of how our elected system is designed to operate and placing the infrastructure and partisan interests of a party ahead of the infrastructure designed by our Constitution. Of course contempt for that Constitution is not a new thing where Harper and his coterie/inner circle at the leadership of the CPC are concerned as I and many others have noted in the past, usually to the derision of Harper/CPC defenders who appear to share Harper's contempt for the Constitution and all voters that do not vote/support the CPC.

Since when are Canadian War Memorials partisan political tools? Answer: Now that Harper is PM

This is going to be a short post because I am trembling with fury. I was raised by those that had lived through WWI, and the battle of Vimy Ridge is considered one of if not the most significant events in Canadian history that defined us as a Nation and was seen as something *ALL* Canadians shared equal pride and respect for. Not under Prime Minister Harper though. No, unlike the courtesy shown Harper by Prime Minister Martin when he was to attend the 60th anniversary marking of VE day when Martin invited all the opposition leaders to come along with him as is usually the norm/traditional for such ceremonies, Harper has not invited any Opposition leaders to the 90th Vimy Ridge ceremonies where a new monument is being unveiled. It (having reps from all political parties, usually the leaders) is done in part to show the respect that all Canadians hold and have for the event in question as well as to prevent politicization of something that actually transcends any partisan politics and did, until PM Harper that is. That Harper is choosing to use one of the most significant heritage elements in the establishment of the Canadian nation like this underscores his total lack of honour, his total commitment to all politics all the time, and his complete inability to not turn anything he can into a political tool/advantage over his opposition/opponents regardless of whether it was previously considered off limits for such political partisanship such as these ceremonies honouring all Canadian war dead of all political affiliations which therefore deserves honouring by all political affiliations via their respective leaders!!!

This is wrong on so many levels. I mean, I am no fan of Harper, as I have freely admitted to many times. I want him gone from power because I consider his policies and his style of politics to be inherently destructive to the way politics in this nation traditionally works (as in not total war all the time politics and especially not culture war politics like Harper has embraced). I also do not think he understands Canadian culture, and worse he holds it in contempt as his own past commentaries of the past 2 decades show in abundance.

This though, is a level of contempt and disrespect even worse than usual from him, and should underscore why anything he says about anyone cannot be trusted. Any PM willing to use the Vimy Ridge honouring ceremonies for partisan political purposes instead of for the good of the whole nation has shown exactly how unfit they are for the office of PM regardless of their political persuasion IMHO. At least if one actually has any sense of pride/respect/honour/love where this country is concerned that is, which might go a long way to explaining not only Harper and those that agree with him in the CPC but the wider base he has in the populace.

There are several other bloggers also very offended by this, Dave here at The Galloping Beaver, Ted here at Cerberus, Jeff here at A BCer in TO, Paladiea here at The Stormy Days of March, The Canadian Cynic has it here, and Scott Tribe has it here at Scott's DiaTribes. I suspect that if this decision is not reversed very soon you will see many more joining the hue and cry of disgust at our PM for his urinating and voiding his bowels all over the honour of the Canadian military, veterans, their families and indeed all Canadians with this disgusting act of placing politics above all else, including the honour of this nation itself.

*Update*

(Story link here)

After the leaders of the Liberals and NDP complained about their lack of invitation it appears to have occurred to our hyperpartisan Prime Minister and his fellow partisans that maybe, just maybe, this might end up hurting them, because now they have sent out invites to the various party whips to put together lists of who should go from each party. While this is a faster reversal/flipflop from Harper than is usually the case when he flipflops his positions because of potential/actual political damage being done to him and his party, it does not negate one whit the fact that he and his fellows saw nothing wrong with using Vimy Ridge for partisan political uses instead of respecting it as a non-partisan matter which is after all exactly what it is. That any PM would even consider, let alone actually demonstrate a willingness to use any war memorial so, let alone this one, only shows what I have been saying all alone. Nothing is sacred or above politics for this Prime Minister and CPC, nothing. They will lie about criminal allegations against sitting PMs to score political points and then lie in covering up the wrongdoing as Harper personally did repeatedly throughout the summer of 2005. Harper and the CPC will proudly claim to love and support the military, but they are the ones that stopped the lowering of flags whenever a Canadian soldier dies in Afghanistan, he tried to close repatriation ceremonies of Canadian military dead from Afghanistan to the media/public (claiming the families wanted it that way, yet it turned out not only was that not the case but that the families were not even asked in the first place) and did so for about a months and a half before reversing himself and claiming it was all the fault of his Minister of Defence, and now he has shown himself willing to use one of the most important of all war memorials in Canadian history for his partisan purposes until there started to be some backlash against the idea when he yet again flipflops and suddenly invites opposition leaders.

While I will grant him the credit for quickly changing this policy, that is still minimal compared to his willingness to do this in the first place. He did start off making it a partisan event and the fact he changed it does not change the fact that Harper showed that he placed his partisan needs above even respecting Canadian war dead, and worse that he is willing to use that war dead for his partisan political purposes. Somehow I rather doubt those that died at Vimy Ridge would find that acceptable, I suspect they were fighting for much more than the success of any particular political party but rather for freedom, democracy, and liberty for all. Too bad that concept of placing country/nation before party affiliation/needs is not something Harper understands, and it underscores why he is unfit to hold the office he currently does.

One year of Harper government: What he and the CPC don't want Canadians remembering.

This is a post to mark the one year anniversary of the swearing in of the first ever CPC government under the leadership of Stephen Harper. In it will be a general summation of his actions which I found questionable and links back to prior posts from Saundrie and other blogs I linked to in those posts that covered these issues contemporaneously. It will be done in a seasonal breakdown instead of months to months, starting with winter 2006 (Feb, Mar) spring 2006 (Apr-Jun), summer 2006 (Jul-Sept), fall of 2006 (Oct-Dec) and winter 2007 Jan-Feb 6). I would add this is by no means a complete list of what I think Harper got wrong in the first year, but these are the ones that really bugged me contemporaneously and that I still think carry significance within them.

Winter 2006

Feb 6 2006: The first day the CPC government is sworn into office and Harper becomes the first CPC Prime Minister in Canadian history with a weak minority of 125 (124 elected, one bought and announced this day) and swears in his first cabinet. In that cabinet are two very unexpected and disturbing choices. The first was David Emerson, a man that ran as a Liberal in the last election and had sat in the Martin cabinet prior to that election. He had shown no disagreement publicly with his leader nor the direction of the party right up to election day itself. Then, over the next 2 weeks it turns out Harper is conducting secret negotiations with the man to have him cross the floor into Harper's cabinet. Now let us take a moment and remember May 2005 when Stronach crossed into the Martin cabinet all the outrage and screaming about the unethical nature of this from Harper and the CPC. Yet in this case the crossing is unknown even to the Liberals until the day of the swearing in of the new government when Emerson showed up and was sworn in. He stated then that the sole reason he crossed was to have a cabinet seat where he felt he could do more for his constituents (which is incredibly obvious, this is an inherent byproduct of our way of governance) and that it did not matter to him whose government/party that cabinet was in. This triggered massive outrage throughout the country as well as within Emerson's riding. It also needs noting that I know of no other case where someone ran and was elected under the banner of one party and then changed sides for the first day of the new government, let alone someone that served in the cabinet of the outgoing government crossing and swearing into the cabinet of the new incoming government when they were of different parties. This is apparently a truly unprecedented act.

Then we come to the second major scandal of that day, and to my mind the bigger scandal as I said at the time. This was the dual appointment of Michel Fortier to the Senate and then into Cabinet to run Public Works. Now, during the election Harper said in French that he would not appoint unelected people to his cabinet except if a Province elected no CPC MPS. Yet the CPC elected 10 in Quebec yet felt it was necessary to appoint Fortier to watch over Quebec's (officially limited really to Montreal, but still) interests in cabinet. Yet PEI, which elected no CPC MPs got a NS MP, Peter MacKay to watch out for their interests in cabinet. So in the circumstance which did meet Harper's pledge he failed to use an unelected person but in the one that did not meet his criteria he chose to appoint an unelected cabinet minister on top of appointing him to the Senate. It also needs knowing that Fortier was Harper's top Quebec bagman for his leadership run and was his 2iC (2nd in command) for Quebec in the last election. So essentially Harper appointed his bagman to run the department historically known as the pork and patronage department as well as the department that Adscam/Sponsorship Scandal was centered in. It is also noteworthy to note the similarities here between Chretien and Harper. Chretien appointed his Quebec bagman to run PW (although at least his was actually elected as an MP unlike Harper's choice), one A Gagliano. This enabled Chretien to run a separate off the normal protocols operation which turned out to be Adscam. Indeed, once the scandal was exposed many political figures including Harper said that what else would one expect when the leader appoints a friend and bagman to such a post but to receive such corrupt governance? Yet what does Harper do at the first opportunity? He goes one better than Chretien did by using an unelected bagman that he also gives a Senate appointment too on top of PW. One more thing, because Fortier is a Senator no elected official can question Fortier on his actions as a Minister. Indeed, he rarely even takes questions about his post in the Senate preferring instead to leave it to the government leader in the Senate to take them thereby showing even less accountability. Arguably this is the least accountable Minister of Public Works in Canadian history. Posts continuing to deal with Emerson and Fortier in this month are here, here, here, and here.

Oh yes, let us not forget his deciding to appoint a Defence Lobbyist to run the Defence Ministry, which given some of his decisions on contracting over the last year may end up also proving out to be one of his biggest mistakes in this cabinet construction. Not to mention the problems the Canadian Navy is having because of how O'Connor is running his department as Dave at The Galloping Beaver has been chronicling in various posts here, here, and here recently.

In the end though Harper did something I could never understand, he tainted the first ever CPC government in the history of Canada with some very ethically dubious decisions (and that is putting the best light on it) with Emerson, Fortier, and O'Connor. Given the subsequent performances of these Ministers (or the lack of apparent performance by one since we can't tell what he is doing in PW) this showed incredibly bad judgment IMHO. Not to mention the use of Liberal precedents to defend the Fortier and Emerson appointments, this from a a party leader and government that had just finished campaigning in an election about how they would govern with a higher standard than that of the Liberals, that theirs would be a clean cut government more accountable, transparent and honest than anything Canadians had ever seen before.

March 2006: This month saw PM Harper deciding that he did not like having to answer to the same ethics code that other MPs and PMs had to when then Ethics Commissioner Shapiro launched an investigation into the Emerson crossing as covered in posts here, here, and here. Then came what was a really ugly, unfounded, and nasty smear against Shapiro by one of Harper's MPs, a man by the name of Obhrai. What he did was accuse the Ethics Commissioner of driving his brother in law to suicide. As I explained in this post that was unfounded and most clearly intended to discredit the person investigating the ethics of Harper's first acts as PM regarding Emerson. The fact that it was never apologized for nor that Harper and the CPC generally saw anything wrong with such a smear does not speak well at all for them in my view and I would expect most Canadian minds.

Then mid month we discover that the Harper PMO has instituted orders that no Minister or Parliamentary Secretary may publish anything without vetting it through to PMO first, this including op-eds to local papers on local issues and constituency issues and not just major issues dealing with their respective ministerial responsibilities. Indeed, all they were allowed to talk about were the five priorities that Harper campaigned on, everything else was to be left alone. In effect what Harper was telling Canadians was that he had little to no trust in his cabinet to do their jobs without him and his office watching carefully over them, not exactly something most PMs feel a need to do. This showed the beginnings of a fairly radical tightening of message control from this government above and beyond the norm for a new government IMHO.

By the end of March it became clear that the message control and media control policies of this new government were significantly harsher than anything from prior governments going back decades. First they stopped allowing reporters to have scrums on the third floor where it was impossible for cabinet ministers to walk out of cabinet meetings without facing the cameras and either answering questions or to be shown not answering questions. This had been standard practice for decades. The government moves them to the 1st floor claiming it was for the safety and protection of the media, something clearly and totally nonsensical since there was no history of media injuries from these scrums, the only thing that ever got injured in those was the image of the government of the day. Then they stopped using the National Press Gallery despite its ability to provide translations services between English and French for journalists because it was also under the control of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. The Harper government also decided it would control who asked the questions of the PM instead of the PPG, again a shift from prior practice although to be fair not as drastic as many of the others. The absolute capper though on just how radical and secretive Canada's new government was going to be was when they designated the fact that cabinet was meeting a secret. While cabinet meetings contents were secret the fact that cabinet was meeting has not been secret for many decades if ever in our history, and the only apparent reason for this was to make it that much more difficult for reporters to find ministers to ask questions of them, which was the normal routine for governments after cabinet meetings. While they would not answer questions on what went on in the meetings they could/would about other issues that related to their portfolios. This was also taken away by this government that promised greater transparency before and during the last election. The actions showed instead what looked to me greater media control and exclusion than anything I had seen in my 30+ years of watching federal politics and was why I titled this post "This is *NOT* the standard media message control efforts of new governments, this is something far more disturbing and damaging to our democracy" and nothing I have seen since then makes me think that was anything less than the full truth.

spring 2006

April 2006: Harper starts of April with the idea that the Canadian flag should not be lowered in respect to the death of Canadian soldiers as I noted here. It did not sit well with the public, and when one considers just how much rhetoric Harper and the CPC had used in portraying the Liberals as anti-military and that his CPC was the only party that respected the military and would show it the respect it deserved this really looked bad to many.

This was followed up with Harper stripping out the Access to Information elements of his much vaunted Accountability Act, and these components were significant and a part of what Harper campaigned on would be in the Act during the last election. Yet another broken promise.

However, the real insult to injury against the military by the Harper government came at the end of April when they tried to duplicate the Bush policy of preventing coverage of the repatriation ceremonies of dead soldiers returning from Afghanistan. This was initially claimed to be at the request of family members, which was quickly proven untrue, then it was the Defence Ministers fault and flunkies with Defence and ultimately in May the policy was reversed. (slight linking error, the preceding deals with the reversal and the following link deals with the original policy being implemented, sorry about that) I went into great detail on this in this post here.

May 2006: This month started with seeing a Parliamentary chair (MP Vellacott) claiming that Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin made specific comments which she never did. When confronted to back these comments up Vellacott handed out a transcript which did not show what he claimed she had said. This was also not the first questionable comment by this MP, and the fact that Harper took no real action against him other than to say he did not speak for the government just himself despite all of this speaks volumes for his contempt of the judiciary and aboriginal issues (since Harper cancelled Kelowna that was fairly clear to all but CPC true believers) by appointing this man to run the aboriginal affairs committee. A few days later Vellacott resigns his chairmanship of the aboriginal affairs committee but does so blaming political enemies and claiming he had done nothing wrong and never apologized for his horrible comments about frozen aboriginals and his false attributions of comments to the Chief Justice of the Canadian Supreme Court as I noted here. During this same period of time it turned out Harper and the CPC were talking to one of the most well known GOP media/message people, Frank Luntz. Harper even gave Luntz a private meeting of about an hour on top of Luntz speaking to the Civitas society the next day. That was covered in this post.

Then there was the sudden reversal of what the votes of the BQ were worth according to Harper. When it was to pass SSM in 2005 it was illegitimate because it affected more than just Quebec but all of Canada. Yet when it came to his budget suddenly Harper found that the votes of the BQ affecting issues that affect more than just Quebec (which a federal budget does by definition) was suddenly acceptable. A small example of his hypocrisy in action but a noteworthy one I thought at the time and still do which is why it is in this list.

Then in mid May we had the infamous Afghanistan mission debate. I covered it in great detail in this post, but the highlights are this: Harper flip-flopped from saying it was too important to allow a debate to allowing a short debate of 6 hours (ended up around 8) with less than 48 hours notice and stating that if the extension of 2 years was not approved by Parliament he would arbitrarily extend by one and trigger an election over the issue. What was truly dishonest though was that the decision was never in Parliaments hands to begin with, the power to deploy rests solely within the cabinet and PMO, not the Parliament as a whole, not even in a minority government. This was some of the crassest politics using the military I had seen in some time, and worse it was clearly done to try and create divisions within the Liberals who were at the time in the middle of a leadership contest/race.

Then at the end of May he reversed his decision regarding the coverage of repatriation ceremonies and laid all the blame as far away from his feet as possible, as I covered in this post here.

Then for May 31 2006 I did a one year retrospective on the Grewal fraud and Harper's clear record of lying to cover it up after the fact. The fact that to date he has not been held responsible for this atrocity does not diminish in the slightest the truly disgusting and dangerous deceptions the CPC and Harper perpetrated on the Canadian public and Parliament itself. That post is here.

Summer 2006

July 2006: Now we come to some of the most illuminating actions of Harper and his government on foreign policy affairs. This is when Harper claimed that the Israeli response to the Hezbollah raid that captured two of its soldiers was a "measured response", said measured response being the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, which sharply differed from Canadian foreign policy for the region going back many decades and from both Lib and Conservative governments. Then, to add insult to injury he decides to take his plane to help evacuate Canadian citizens trapped in the war zone. He throws off almost everyone to maximize seat capacity to lift out Canadians, yet he keeps his staff photographer making clear his intent to make maximum political hay from this so called errand of mercy. I did a post specifically on this and several on the issue of the CPC support for Israel in this war and how dubious I was about its basis and how poor the judgment I thought was being shown because of Israel's actions.

During the middle of July there was also another court ruling in Canada's favour on the Softwood lumber dispute showing Canada was totally in the right and was just about the last appealable verdict before the Americans would have run out of appeals. Well, we all know how much that changed Harper's mind on selling out the softwood lumber sector of a billion dollars. That post is here.

At the end of July it also came to my attention that the mission in Afghanistan that Harper loved to claim was justified by how women were being freed to finally be equal participants in their society was supporting a government rebuilding the infamous ministry of vice and virtues. This was the ministry that oppressed the women under the Taliban, and it was even the same name for it at that. I never saw any sign that Harper even noticed, let alone cared about the very disturbing implications of this decision by the government we Canadians helped create and are supporting with out actions in that country.

September 2006: We see Harper telling Canadian soldiers and their families that the deaths of Canadian soldiers improves the caliber/quality of the Canadian military. This was a shocking statement and underscored how little Harper understood the military let alone having real/true respect for it despite his many protestations to the contrary.

Then we find out that the Harper PMO is violating the Privacy Act to find out who is asking of Freedom of Information requests as well as for what and providing it to the same person that controlled the list of reporters that could ask Harper questions. Further evidence of media controls beyond the traditional by this government as I discussed here in this post.

Then to cap off September it comes out that the Harper CPC were under investigation for raising political contributions illegally in their last convention. That they adopted a unique interpretation of the governing laws and regulations. Indeed, their interpretation not only was not shared by the Liberals, NDP, and BQ, but even the predecessor parties of the CPC, the CA and PCPC. As subsequent investigations have shown there was some serious election laws violating going on by the CPC up to Harper himself contributing more money than is legally allowed. This story btw I don't believe is fully over as the numbers the government provided recently in response to the ruling of the Elections Commissioner (which I will be getting to) appear quite convenient in how they appear to deal with the matter, but that will have to play itself out.

It also needs noting that the Arar report was released showing some real problems with the leadership of the RCMP, yet instead of requiring accountability by the RCMP Commissioner for the problems on his watch he instead did nothing except defend Zaccardelli. This obviously came back to bite the Harper CPC in the behind a few months later. It does deserve reminding though that Harper along with Day and Ablonski were some of those that took the RCMP leaks about Arar's guilt as a terrorist and used them to political effect in Nov 2002 (noted at the bottom of this post) in the HoC during QP to argue the Liberals were soft on terrorism for trying to help Arar get out of Syrian custody. This of course made their defending the RCMP Commissioner that much more suspect and questionable for many including myself.

fall 2006

October 21 2006: The expulsion of Garth Turner. What was truly disturbing about this was the way Harper was blatantly insulting the intelligence of Canadians about how this happened and how willing his top people were to join him in that insulting. Harper tried to claim he and his office had no involvement whatsoever in this matter, that it was all done by the Ontario caucus and that he didn't know a thing until after it was already decided within that caucus. This is patently absurd as I detail in this post, especially in as weak a minority as he has. If Harper wasn't lying it meant he was totally clueless about what happens in his party and had little to no control of his party members and that he was such a weak PM that his party felt it could circumvent the authority of the leader by expelling an MP from caucus without any leader involvement. As details slowly came out about who was involved this was shown to be false and once the detail that Harper's CoS was attending these meetings it truly put the lie to this claim by Harper and the senior members of his government at the time.

October 31 2006: The Income Trust tax reversal. I don't think any more needs saying given the fallout still occurring from that one.


December 2006: The RCMP Commissioner finally resigns under a cloud, and Minister Day is hauled up for hearings in a Parliamentary committee that wants to know whether there was political interference from the CPC with Zaccardelli during the period between the O'Conner report being released and his appearance almost 2 weeks later to the Parliamentary committee holding the hearings This is covered in this post here, but it raises further questions as to the connections between Zaccardelli, the CPC, and whether he was playing political games while in that position which aided the CPC.

Then we finally get to do the SSM vote yet again, this despite there being no appetite for it outside of a segment of the CPC base. This is based on one promise on the first day of the election to have a full free vote since the Liberals whipped their cabinet in 2005 it was not a full free vote. What was truly pathetic about this line of reasoning was so did the NDP then, as they would almost certainly being doing if this was raised again by the CPC making it still not a totally free vote by the definitions Harper and the CPC were using. Worse though this was a sham vote, a vote to decide whether to actually bring in legislation to undo SSM, something noticed by many SSM opponents with frustration and disgust. However it when put against the Income Trust promise breech showed how important this promise was to Harper despite it being at heart using a minority as a political tool with his own base regardless of any insult/harm done to that minority group, something no responsible PM of any political stripe should have found acceptable. It is funny thought that he felt he had to hold to this promise despite the Income Trust one yet the promise was to actually have a vote on SSM, not whether to reopen the debate, or at least that was my understanding, if I am wrong I will of course note it and apologize.

Then there was the refusal to participate in the European Mars robotics contract which stunned the Europeans and our robotics sector and could have very serious implications for our future involvement in space exploitation as I covered here. Not to mention the risk of severely weakening/gutting one of our cutting edge technology sectors in much the same was the cancellation of the Avro Arrow did to the Canadian aerospace sector as I noted here.

Then to cap off December Harper pulls a real fast one, he makes over a hundred appointments just before his much weakened and still to this day not actually in full (only part of the passed Act is apparently actually in operation/force) force Accountability Act was to come into effect. Not to mention also acknowledging that the CPC actually had done wrong according to the Elections Commissioner and that they had received contributions illegally under elections law.

Winter 2007

January 2007: Then to start the 2007 year there was the crossing of Liberal Wajid Khan, claiming it was because Dion made him choose between working as a special advisor on the ME and Afghanistan to PM Harper while sitting as a Liberal MP. However, as Stockwell Day ended up writing on his own blog (noted by BCer here) later on Khan had already decided to cross before even the cabinet shuffle that occurred days before the ultimatum, showing that all Dion did was force the timing of a decision Khan had already made. A BCer in TO had several posts (here, here, here, and here) on this matter, including the questions that came out regarding the appointment of Khan's former CPC opponent in his riding suddenly becoming a citizenship judge apparently in a manner outside the usual vetting protocols.

Then there was the case of Alan Riddell, the CPC candidate that stepped aside for a star (Cutler, the man that broke the Sponsorship Scandal) candidate Harper and the CPC wanted to run in his riding in exchange for certain considerations, including costs already incurred covered. This was a secret deal which during the election Harper specifically stated several times did not exist. Well it turns out a court said otherwise and given that one of the principals involved in negotiating that deal was Harper's Chief of Staff it is beyond belief that Harper did not know this deal existed and likely exactly what it said. This showed yet again what kind of liar Harper is willing to be since the act itself was not illegal, but would have dinged a little the image of the pure as the fallen snow white CPC that Harper was selling in that election to the Canadian public. It is also not the first time Harper has been shown to lie to the Canadian public as I noted many times with the Grewal cover-up at the minimum. Bcer has links on this story as well here.

Finally there was the apparent attempt by minister Fortier to extort extra from Boeing to his home Province of Quebec, this despite also being the man who actually has the responsibility of signing this contract. It is hard to know how much of this is true though thanks to the veil of secrecy which surrounds Senator Fortier thanks to the decisions of PM Harper. From what little did get out it does look like abuse of power and position to try and enrich the area he is going to run in the next federal election for a seat in (assuming he keeps his word on this, he could just as easily decide to stay in the Senate despite promising not to and there is nothing anyone can do to prevent him or remove him if he does so decide, which is one of the reasons this is such an egregious action by Harper to have done especially given his oft repeated disgust in the past of the use of the Senate for party bagmen and friends of the leader/PM). In other words trying to buy votes, something a minister of Public Works doing is usually seen by most people as a corrupt action, but apparently not Harper and the CPC given he is still in that position to this day.

This is finally capped off with the sudden conversion of Harper, the lead man on fighting against Kyoto and denier of manmade climate change has suddenly become a convert to the idea and the belief that manmade global warming exists and is a problem which must be dealt with immediately. He launches negative attack ads against Dion on this issue to point out the Liberal poor record of action, yet he wants Canadians to ignore his 2002 fundraising letter where he calls Kyoto a "socialist scheme", a refrain he often used well after that letter and likely into the last year (I am not sure I heard him say so since he became PM, I think so but I am not certain but I am it was used by him in 2005) showing this is a view he held until very recently. The only possible explanation for this massive change of position is polling showing how important this issue has become, important enough that it could well play a major role in the next election and even possibly be the election question, something Harper never saw coming. For a man that has repeatedly said he does not govern by polls this is clear evidence that he does exactly that. Otherwise he would explain why he was so sure he was right beforehand, what caused him to recognize that he was way wrong on this issue, and what he sees as being necessary to make up for all the years of opposition he and his party provided against the Liberal government whenever they tried to act on Kyoto and global warming issues.

Well, I know this is a long post, and I know it is far from a complete list of Harper's scandals and questionable decisions, but it is more than enough to underscore just how dubious his first year as PM truly was instead of the glowing claims he and his supporters have been putting forward. One last point, we have often heard about how Harper has gotten more done in his "x" months than the Libs did in 13 years. Well this shows that is patent nonsense, for if Martin passed more legislation in his minority and even had a higher rate of passage to bills presented than Harper it then follows that Harper got less done than Martin's minority in terms of passing legislation let alone when compared to the 13 years of Liberal government overall. From the throne speech in 2006 to the end of Jan 2007 Harper introduced 47 bills and passed only 13, while Martin in his minority with only 2 more months introduced 93 bills and passed 54 according to this CBC reality check article.

P.S. Sorry I have not been posting much over the past few months. A combination of things, including my own preference to read other blogs and joining ongoing discussions there and issues in my offline life regarding the health of my wife as well as myself was behind it. I promise I will try to post more frequently this year than I did last year, but I also prefer to post when I feel I have something substantial to say or to discuss instead of short posts that are essentially notifications of news stories more than analysis of the contents of them which is my preference. Well I hope everyone is having a good new year and we shall see you around.

Is Harper channeling Diefenbaker? Given the Arrowlike shafting of the Mars robotics contract it sure looks like it!

I first became aware of this matter last night while watching Don Newman's Politics. I didn't blog about it last night because quite honestly I was too angry to do so coherently. This is incredibly bad judgment, indeed even worse judgment than I credited the Harper government with, which when one considers the very low opinion I have of them generally is really saying something. I mean really, I thought even Harper wouldn't be so stupid and ignorant as to screw around in one of the most important high tech sectors of the Canadian economy, that being robotics and especially space robotics engineering. This was a sector we built up over decades in no small part to recover from the fiasco and massive skilled brain drain from our aerospace industrial sector as a result of the Diefenbaker cancellation of the Avro Arrow fighter contract. When that contract was cancelled the engineering expertise that had been assembled by the creation of the Arrow was promptly snatched up by NASA and the American aerospace companies and the European agency that would use Canadian expertise to create the Concorde project and subsequent plane with. This set Canada's high tech sector back decades and left us at a strategic disadvantage in the new high tech/information age economy that was starting to develop then and certainly surrounds us these days.

Canada has played a significant role in space exploration by supplying robotics expertise to NASA via things like the Shuttle's CanadArm and the sequel Arm used to construct and operate the space station currently under construction. This is also something Canadians have taken a great deal of national pride in for the last couple of decades, so why Why WHY is Harper's government making a bad decision which negatively affects national identity/pride, high tech economic development, and Canada's access to space?!? This is one of those decisions by this government for which I have no explanation, especially since it would not have cost any new money simply redirecting already existing budgeted funds in the Canadian Space Agency's planned budget. This whole program was to cost 100 million spread evenly over ten years, hardly a great expense, indeed less than the service contract for ONE of the planes this government is buying from Boeing under a no-bid contract. Yet this 100 million would increase our access to the European space market to go along with our American access, would have continued to develop and grow our high tech engineering industry especially our robotics and space robotics sector, and just to add insult to injury this government was apparently told by the American government that if they built the Mars Lander for the Europeans that the Americans would be interested in using the base unit for it's planned Moon colony construction starting in 2020.

Now, this contract was originally to be signed off on last September. However, since the Europeans were caught totally flatfooted by this decision (which given Canada's history of solid commitment to this area of space exploration technology is quite understandable) they had no alternative source in mind. This will change of course, but according to the report I heard on Politics last night the Europeans are still willing to give Canada this contract is we change our minds on it within the very near future, which I would read to mean within the next several weeks to maybe a month or two. Now, why do I compare this to the Diefenbaker cancellation of the Arrow? I do so because the industry has sent clear signals that if Canada is not going to support this kind of Research and Develoment work anymore then it is in their interests to relocate to the USA where there will be such work to be done, which is essentially a repetition of the Arrow fiasco...Canada assembles the engineering talent and ability to create a strong high tech sector and then ends up not supporting that sector just when they are poised for significant expansion with a strong product causing the industry to be broken up and the skilled engineers snatched up by American aerospace engineering firms, NASA, and for the European Concorde development project.

If we do not get this government to reverse this decision and take this contract while we still can grab it I truly believe Canadian history books decades from now will equate this decision with the Arrow decision in terms of its shortsightedness and gutting of a developing high tech sector and further crippling our ability to compete in the most economically valuable kind of economy, the knowledge based one. I mean I know this government tends to be hostile to funding Research and Development but this really is a no-brainer in terms of its obvious advantages and rewards. The levels of contempt and disinterest for these vital if less visible aspects of good government this decision illustrates is truly worrisome and something that has the potential to significantly cripple Canada's long term economic development. Not exactly the mark of good government nor of a government that deserves to be left in power a moment longer than necessary, not that I had not already come to that conclusion but still, this is really disgusting what Harper and company are doing in this matter.

This is something I hope to see the entire Canadian blogging community takes up and hopefully forces the media to start going after this government about. This is something that in my mind needs to be made a political hot potatoe as soon as possible and this government held to sharp criticism and questioning until they reverse this decision. I am glad to see several blogs already have written posts on this very important issue which should by rights have been a no-brainer and is not exactly a partisan issue either. Dave at The Galloping Beaver has one here, Red Tory has one here, A BCer in TO has one here, POGGE has one here, Accidental Deliberations has one here, and Lemon chicken and Lawn Signs has one here. As I find new blogs posting on this issue I will be adding them to this list. Like this one from The Progressive Right here and from Robert at My Blahg here.

SSM vote: What exactly was the point in it? What political advantages does Harper/CPC see coming from it?

First off, this is a post dealing with my perception of the political thinking going on here, nothing more than that. I make no claim that I am certain about any motivations I do not explicitly state such about in each specific instance. I have never claimed to be a telepath nor any mystical ability to see into the human soul any more easily than the rest of my species, I use past behaviour and behavioural analysis accumulated through a lifetime of observation of such and having been raised inside a major political party's inner workings by birth providing invaluable access for high quality information. This is one of the main reasons I discuss politics at this blog, it is something I have known and loved from childhood yet was the despair in the end of many of my tutors because I refused to give blind commitment to a party over all. Ironically enough I had thanks to that upbringing been exposed to enough to know that all parties are inherently cyclical in how power will eventually corrupt and must be removed by loss of power, the only question is how quickly it happens and this current government has really been creeping me out with how rapidly they are demonstrating their own corruption of power, if not as yet that we know about for any financial gain but for political positioning and posturing. By controlling information as tightly as they have been they are making it that much harder for anyone to do to them what Marlene Jennings did today in regards to the Arar issue, show their falsehoods in real time or even anywhere near such where it could be effective in preventing a successful spin operation to give it the appearance of something already settled except for some malcontents and political opportunists (aka people that finally saw enough of the details to see the problems being hidden by the swift/"decisive" style of this PM). If they can keep it from being countered fast enough most times the speed of the information/news cycle will drop it from prominence and leave the original impression with most people even if the record shows later that it was wrong information. So I think it is important to write this now while the issue is still fresh enough for it to be relevant.

What did we see today? At first glance we saw the CPC showing off it's anti SSM (and for many people that means anti-gay as well) roots. We saw the other parties decisively vote it down with the margin for majority victory being significantly wider than the number of government members that voted for it. That is the interesting thing though that should not be lost sight of. We saw six Cabinet Ministers as several other CPC MPs also vote against this motion. Why is that so significant one asks? Simple, it not only shows off the increasing tolerance for homosexuals and their issues within the CPC (keep in mind this is not my actual reading of what I see in that party but what I do believe they want people to see just like every other political party does) it shows something this government has needed to have to point to for some time now. It showed senior members of his party "opposing" his wishes in an "important" vote without consequence and without rancor. Harper has picked up (rightly in my books) a reputation for not forgetting those that have crossed him in the past, especially those that win over him and/or his position. This gives him and the spin doctors of the CPC something to work from to try and if not counter at least blunt the intensity of that image being perceived by the voting public. That is what I think he gains the most from this vote.

While yes I do think there was a certain amount of satisfying a powerful segment of his base involved in this measure, the fact that Harper brought forward a motion to ask the permission of the House to discuss ways and means to repeal SSM was clearly intended to be for appearances sake and not anything substantive. This was so he can say he kept an "important" promise (like the income trusts one wasn't, the no party bagmen appointed to the Senate, no unelected Cabinet Ministers except from a Province that elected no CPC MPs, to name a few broken election promises off the top of my head) on a major issue with one of his core constituencies, one that helped him reach the office he holds today. That is always something any politician, especially a leader, must not forget to do...dance with the one that brung you, and Harper hasn't had much to give that segment of his political base as of late. Harper also has to recognize that politically opposing SSM at this point after it's acceptance for the last year and a half without consequence and roughly 2/3rds saying it is settled as far as they are concerned and growing as time passes if slowing down a little is a long term loser for the CPC. The way he handled this also makes it clear to me that this is not an issue of principle for him, or at least it is not anymore if it once truly was. He needed this off his plate, especially with defender of the Faith(Charter) Dion positioning himself against this image which still has powerful resonance within the electorate as the election proved to have any hope of crafting his majority and he knew it. So he will try to make what use he can of it, and I expect to see it used as an example of how the CPC really isn't as tightly micromanaged as has been reported by multiple sources multiple times since this government came to power as well as increased tolerance from the perception of intolerance that has clung to the CPC despite all their attempts to pretend otherwise.

This has one thing in common though with Mahar Arar's treatment by the CPC when he was in Syria. At that time the then Canadian Alliance was chiding the government for daring to try to engage in "...high level consultations to defend a suspected terrorist," (Harper's exact words according to Hansard, see previous post for link), thereby condemning Arar to further time in Syria and even possibly opening him up to further torture because of Canadian politicians calling him a terrorist in the HoC. In other words Harper and his crowd were far more concerned about what kind of political hay they could generate from this than they were in having any interest at all in finding out whether this man actually had anything to do with terrorism or was an innocent man caught up in the aftermath of 9/11/01 and the paranoia that understandably existed for several months afterwards. They declared him guilty despite Arar never being charged by any government for anything whatsoever from beginning to end and used the Liberal government's concern for his welfare and a possible miscarriage of justice to paint them as soft on terrorism. With this debate on SSM Harper does pretty much the same thing to gay people, especially those in or planning on entering marriage themselves. He has condemned them to yet another round of questioning their basic human rights, freedoms, and most importantly VALUE/SELF WORTH. He has been indifferent to that pain because he knows this is a voting block smaller and less likely to support him than those that find the idea of SSM somehow intolerable. He is indifferent and unwilling to actually try and see things from the side of those supporting SSM and he has at every turn been willing to use this issue to try and make political hay, most recently over this so called need for a free vote or it doesn't really count (which since the BQ and NDP whipped theirs this was not, leaving room for those advocates on this issue to start pressuring the CPC to try again with down the road no matter what Harper said today to the contrary) nonsense. He is instead of defending the inherent rights of Canadian citizenship is instead trampling on them for the sake of advancing his own partisan political agenda and personal ambitions. It is that these two matters have in common between them with the way the CPC operates, they trample on those interests/aspects/elements of Canadian citizenship that they find politically useless/harmful to them and use them for partisan political gains if at all possible at the same time against their opposition and to hell with any innocent bystander caught in the way.

This was a waste of time and money for the sole purpose of giving PM Harper a limited political tool for the next election. That is all this exercise was about, and anyone that tries to claim this was about some grand principle then they are lying including perhaps to themselves, delusional, or incredibly brainwashed/conditioned. This was also a further example of how Harper and his party are willing to exploit the suffering of others to their own political gains even when it places the very life of a Canadian citizen in question as in the Arar matter, and in this case gay people were made to feel yet again they are seen by many within Canadian society including the current PM as second class citizens at best and do not have the same basic inherent human feelings/nature/needs as everyone outside of their minority do. The reason SSM is so important is not simply the legal recognition but the overall recognition that gay people have the same emotional needs for love and companionship as straight people do including being able to be with the one they want for the rest of their lives. This is also why I believe there is such a fight against it from certain quarters, especially in the religious right. If SSM is acceptable and what it validates is true then it becomes far harder to try and portray being gay as anything wrong and any more relevant to Biblical teachings/life as Leviticus' prohibition on eating shellfish and the various stoning offences are to today's devout Christian. This is what makes what we have seen done today so disgusting and so particularly vile since it was a for show vote and not a vote on a substantial motion which would have actually had any impact other than to continue debate on actually voting to roll back SSM. It is this sort of politics that I find especially disturbing and grounds for opposition where the Harper configured/led CPC is concerned. Possibly with he and his core followers out of power that party can become a more typical Canadian conservative party in both belief and manner of operating, but this willingness to trample on Canadian citizens' rights like this especially in the name of partisan political expediency is truly vile. It cannot be trusted with the power of a majority government, in my views it should not even have had the power of a minority as I have said in the past.

While I do not believe this issue is going away permanently I hope at least for another year or two's peace on it before any real momentum starts up, but alas one never knows in politics. After all given the accelerated rate of time (a week in politics being an eternity sort of thing) we could see it again before next year is out depending on what happens and how desperate the CPC starts getting if/when their base appears unmotivated to come out for them. We shall see, that segment of the party was told to restrain itself in the last election to gain power, then with the minority result they were gagged to try and keep them from letting too much out of the bag of their real preferences to use power for, and has managed to keep out of the public eye for most of the last year. If Harper can keep that up until after the next election he could actually form that majority, probably by vote splitting between the Liberals, NDP and in some cases the Green party also factoring in. We have seen unintended/accidental majority governments before in this country, just look at Ontario in 1990. We saw how much vote splitting can do when it ws on the right, this time out it is going to be on the left (although with twice as many voters to start out from) this happens in, especially if Harper and Layton get their respective ways since each is after weakening Liberal votes and seat count for their own reasons, indeed I believe Harper is doing what he thinks he can to aid in that since it works so well for him also.

One last thing...do not underestimate this man nor his ability to beat the odds. While we may see some strong similarities between Harper and his CPC and the GWB Administration and the GOP, remember Harper is far smarter and more politically skilled than GWB ever has been or ever will be. One of the main reasons I fight against him so intently is because I recognize exactly what kind of threat he represents in terms of capability to advance his agenda in our political realm, just look at how far he has gotten with a clearly disliked political ideology by a clear to supermajority of the Canadian public. If anything the fact that I focus on him so much should be taken by supporters of his of just how politically able and intellectually capable I believe Harper to be unlike the dunce down South they call a President. It is the agenda he wishes to pursue that puts me in opposition and not a question of the man's technical competence (ability to relate to and understand the majority in this country and respect their POV I'm not of the opinion he is competent in though) as a political leader. Those that fail to recognize the skills and abilities of their enemies/opponents tend to get very nasty surprises as a result. I try not to make that kind of mistake.

The "Day"light between Zacardelli and the "new" government of Canada

As I write this post I am listening to Stockwell Day testify regarding Zaccardelli and listening to him lecture the first Liberal questioner given Day's own track record of being one of the first opposition members to label Arar a terrorist back in 2002-03 is more than a little offensive to me. I well remember Day and other members of the Canadian Alliance branding the then unknown Canadian citizen the Americans deported to Syria as a terrorist and wondering why it took the Americans to deal with our terrorist problems like that citizen. I also find it interesting to note that Day refused to answer a question which is reasonable for Holland to ask, namely was there any political interference from the PM during the period between the release of the O'Connor report and the first testimony of Sept 28 06. I wonder why? I also wonder why Zaccardelli held the full confidence of the Harper government until last Tuesday when by the end of the questioning of Sept 28 06 there were grounds to have serious reservations, and then once it became public that Zaccardelli was contradicting his Sept 28 06 testimony and the Harper government *STILL* had full confidence in the man. What was it about this man, aside from his releasing during the last election the info about the income trust investigation of the Liberals (An investigation I have heard nothing since about, no charges or anything, I wonder why about that as well but I suppose it could still be being investigated but still, a year later with no further develoments? Sounds a little worrisome to me.) that Harper liked so much? Could Zaccardelli have been the conduit or authorizing force behind the leaked RCMP info the then Opposition Harper and Day MPs used to smear Arar as a terrorist in the House of Commons? Inquiring minds want to know, and I feel that Canadians have a right to know.

I have a real hard time listening to Day and Harper these days talk about the wrong done to Arar and his wife since they were among the loudest back then claiming they were terrorists and Arar deserved to be deported and that the Liberals weren't being hard enough on such folks. I find listening to Day testify painful, as well as his inability to understand that he testifies to the committee and not the committee testifies to him as he tried to pull with Holland. I also find it interesting how Day's speed of speech varies in proportion to how much he likes the question/questioner, a more than slightly obvious way of running out the clock on the hard questions while using the time for those he prefers to be answering. Now Day is talking about how he doesn't understand why the then Liberal government did not call in their officials when they knew something was wrong, well I recall when they started to that was one of the things that triggered Day and Harper calling Arar a terrorist since how dare the Liberal government question the inegrity, honesty and competence of our loyal police force.

Something about the way the CPC government stood four square behind Zaccardelli until the public political pressure and blatant contradictory testimony on such a serious matter as the Arar case forced the resignation of Zaccardelli this week really bothers me. I can't pin down exactly why this is raising the hairs on the back of my neck but it does and has been doing so since the end of September. I remember how carefully they kept him quiet until his testimony on Sept 28 06 nearly two weeks after the release of the O'Connor inquiry into the Arar case. Something about that relationship has a very disturbing feel to it for me and I think we have yet to hear and see the full story behind the unquestioning support of Harper's government on Zaccardelli until Harper questioned it earlier this week after the contradictory testimony was making too many political and media waves to be ignored. I mean Harper and Day still had full confidence in Zaccardelli as of last Monday after all, why? Why should anyone have had confidence in the man after the O'Connor report and his own testimony last Sept 28 06? Why did it take the opposition parties continuing to ask hard questions in the committee to get Canada and the "new" governnment of Canada to require Zaccardelli's resignation? Now Day is claiming that he never called Arar a terrorist while he was in opposition, I wonder how long it will be before the first quotes of Hansard and elsewhere start showing up to contradict him.

Update 3:27 PM Atlantic

I just watched Mark Holland twice put the simple yes or no question to Minister Day in Question Period and twice Day refused to answer it. The question being was there any attempt by Day to advise Harper to remove Zaccardelli prior to last Monday, yes or no? The fact this question is not being answered indicates to me the answering of it in the positive is politically damaging for obvious reasons, and saying no must be too risky because of some evidence to show that would be knowingly false he fears could catch up with him. Incidentally, Day made a big deal in his QP response about how Holland's "secret source" (to use Day's exact words) was a media report as if Holland ws hiding this, yet when I was watching the committee when the question was first raised Holland made clear that he was using a CP article as the basis of the question from the outset. The fact that Day felt the need to lie about this and to use it to try and deflect adds to my sense that there is something more going on here and that this really is a quesiton that needs to be followed up on.

Update 4:20 PM Atlantic

liberal catnip has an excellent post up here calling for Day's dismissal from his Minister's post regarding the Zaccardellie matter. She also goes into Zaccardelli's media scrum earlier today and raises some very good points regarding the questions surrounding the timeline dealing with Zaccardelli's shifting testimony on the Arar case.

Update 4:45 PM Atlantic

Thanks to my continuing to watch CPAC I was thanks to Marlene Jennings raising a point of order able to track down some of Day's and Harper's and other senior members of the CPC government judging Arar a terrorist, related to terrorists, etc according to the public record of Hansard.

Here are some links to Nov 18 2002 with Mr. Harper here and read down through the following two followups, Diane Ablonzky here and her followup. On Nov 19 2002 we have Stockwell Day here with his follow-ups. This shows that the idea that Day, Harper and other senior members of the CPC (Then still the Canadian Alliance) did not judge Arar guilty of terrorism instead of standing up for a Canadian citizen until actual evidence was provided to prove Arar is a terrorist is false as well as underscores their lack of committment to the principle of innocent until proven guilty among other things. Not to mention how little regard they have for the role of the federal government to defend the rights of its citizens instead of simply taking what their American buddies tell them as gospel, especially when it is used to try and attack a political opponent on the tortured back of a Canadian citizen betrayed by those that now constitute our government when it counted.

American 2006 Midterm Results: What does this mean?

Last night we have seen something significant happen in the USA. We have seen the House of Representatives clearly flip despite all the gerrymandering, despite all the barriers the GOP had spent 12 years putting into place to make their seats as secure as possible, and flip with what looks to end up with at least the same amount or maybe even a couple seats more than the GOP went into this midterm with. We have seen the Senate appear to at the minimum end up with the Dems holding a tie of 50-50 (including Lieberman caucusing with the Dems as he repeatedly promised he would along with the elected independent from Vermont the sole self described socialist being the other vote bringing things to 50 seats) and what could well be a Dem 51-49 Senate if Allen loses the recount he is almost certainly going to be calling for. As I write this Webb is up roughly 7000 votes, and I doubt Allen in the end will be able to make up that much of a difference. If it was under 2000 I would be far less comfortable with such a belief, but unless Allen can get that close or closer in the canvassing that is currently going on any recount is likely to end up with his defeat. We have seen the majority of Governorships shift from GOP to Dem hands with a gain of six giving the Dems 28 governors to 22, including places like Ohio (One of my personal joys of last night was watching Blackwell go down in crashing/flaming defeat, I really held him in contempt after the way he tilted the elections of 2004 in Ohio for the Bush-Cheney team as their re-elect chair while simultaneously being responsible for the fairness and integrity of the election, the very definition of conflict of interest only superseded by his being that sec of State while running for the Governorship). This was a real tsunami in American politics, do not let anyone try to tell you otherwise, and it was not because the Dems only put up conservative candidates as several of those candidates failed and more populist and centrist candidates one from the assessments I have seen to date.

There is one last piece of data that shows this was not an anti-incumbent mood but an anti-GOP mood, and that being I have not seen any reports of a Dem incumbent losing any race at the federal level nor at the Governor's level, something so highly unusual and possibly unprecedented that it cannot be read any other way. This was a clear repudiation of Bushco's policies and the GOP Congress that was content to give the Bush WH a free hand with limited to no oversight. Indeed, we still have never seen the several year promised Senate report of the Administration use of intelligence in the runup to the 2003 Iraq invasion, we have not seen the full picture of what really went on at Abu Ghraib, we have not seen whether for all the claims of good intelligence gained from "coercive" interrogations actually is proven out by the facts since the GOP Congress at every turn helped the Bush WH hide this information from the public and from the Dems, which is one reason why the Dems will almost certainly have to do intensive oversight operations during the next two years to see the real state of affairs as opposed to the fanciful fairy tales the Bush WH and GOP Congress have been selling the last several years.

This was an election driven by a desire for significant change, so the idea that the Dems must act in a conservative manner and be the ones compromising more to Bush than the other way around is GOP spin IMHO, not an accurate assessment/reading of the vote. This was clearly a "throw the bums out" election for the GOP, which means what they stood for, how they acted, and what they claimed Americans found to be the most important issues of the day were *rejected*. The Dems agenda was accepted, and while this was like the Canadian election last time out where the CPC were given a limited ability to prove themselves to a skeptical public the Dems are better positioned to make significant gains over the next election cycle, unlike the CPC in my view. They hold more power with the House and probably the Senate than the CPC does with their minority, and the Dems are clearly a broad based coalition party unlike the Harper CPC which more resembles the GOP in terms of how narrow the thinking/ideological framework they all agree to work with is. There is also a lot more anger at the GOP shown in this election than was shown at the federal Liberals last time out, and there is likely far less tolerance/patience for any more "my way or the highway" approach to governing.

We see now that Bush has dumped Rumsfeld and is ready to appoint former CIA Chief Gates (edited to replace Casey with Gates, my mistake since I knew better, I don't know why I made this mistake 4:42 PM Atlantic) to the SecDef position, this after going out of his way very recently prior to the election that Rumsfeld would stay for the last two years regardless of the results of the midterm elections, yet another Bush flip-flop say one thing before an election do the exact opposite after the election. If anyone needed a clearer sign that Bush has been severely weakened it is this decision. Whatever else Rumsfeld was doing he was providing a powerful lightening rod for Bush on the conduct of the Iraq war and to lose that rod places Bush's own legacy and Iraq's failures being tied to him and that legacy that much closer, not something Bush can have wanted.

This also shows the Rovian strategy of playing first to the base and that there was no longer a centrist vote in America proven wrong. Both sides turned out their votes, it was the independents that decided this election splitting nearly 2-1 for the Dems instead of splitting evenly as Rove had come to believe was the new norm. I suspect there are many GOP strategists that are livid with Rove and company over this loss and in particular the decision to nationalize the race with Bush campaigning on Iraq in the last weeks after the GOP had spent so much effort trying to localize the election as their only hope of holding onto Congressional power. It will be very interesting to watch the blame game in the GOP go on over the next several weeks to months.

Bottom line, I think this election signifies the beginnings of a generational shift back to the Dems from the GOP. I think with the loss of so many GOP moderates leaving mostly the more extremist element elected while the Dems have a very broad based party will help the Dems be seen as the true representatives of the average American and the middle ground. Indeed, the Rove strategy may end up having as it's legacy the empowerment of the Dem majority long term and not the GOP one he was trying so hard to create over the past six years. I think Bush and the GOP are beginning the long dark nightmare of their souls with this result, this was not a blip, this was a trend. The only way I see this not happening is if the Dems in Congress are too cocky and significantly overreach from where the American public is at the time, and I think Pelosi and Reid are smart enough to avoid that given they appear to have taken control of both chambers of Congress this time out. We shall see.

This was a major wave election in America, and a wave I do not think has fully run it's course, and the undertow in the 2008 elections could make the ones we saw this time out look weak by comparison depending on what the oversight investigations turns up. If they turn up the degree of criminal and extra-Constitutional actions taken by the Bush WH that I believe are there the GOP is going to come out of the last two years of Bush with a very tarnished and blackened reputation at least as poorly positioned as the Dems were after the 60s-70s for the last three decades until now.

This is my read on the meaning of what we saw in the 2006 midterm elections, so what is your read?

Additional at 5:33 Atlantic:

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post here regarding the reason why I say oversight and confrontation over how the Bush Administration has usurped the balance of power between the Executive and Legislative branches is needed. There has been an ongoing Constitutional crisis going on ever since the Bush Presidency started making powergrabs and dismissing Congress as irrelevant as it has done in its pursuit of the Imperial Presidency. I recommend the link to all.

Why is Harper insulting the intelligence of Canadians this extensively?!?

I will have many things to say regarding the expulsion of Garth Turner from the ranks of the CPC in the days ahead, but before I start down that long path there is something I feel is in some ways even more important to focus on in this matter even than his expulsion, why and how it was handled internally, and how Turner was told. It is a piece of spin I have heard and seen from every CPC spokesperson on this matter. It is this claim that Harper and his Office had absolutely no involvement in this process whatsoever. This is patently a lie. The only way it cannot be a lie is to believe that the leader/PM has so little control of his party and MPs that they would on their own authority and initiative expel a fellow MP during a minority Parliament, especially when your party is the government. Now, how many examples in our Parliamentary history in all parties at all levels of government can we find another example of the leader being so totally out of the loop that a caucus member was expelled before the leader and his Office were involved in any manner in a minority government situation, even if only to approve the decision beforehand? To the best of my knowledge it has not happened before, and if it has happened it would have to have happened where the party leader had a track record of having little to no control over his caucus/members/MPs/MLAs/etc. Harper has a track record of exceptionally tight management style to the point of being criticized for it being too tight and micromanagement. Harper has the reputation of being exceptionally controlling, so the idea that he would have been left totally in the dark about so important a decision to any minority government is simply not credible, and anyone that is willing to put forward this argument needs to be laughed at with derision for insulting the intelligences of those being told this male bovine excrement.

Now, one may wonder why do I think this point is so important that I address it before any of the other issues involved in the Turner expulsion. Simple. This is something that all the people speaking for this CPC government have said. It is something that is so patently nonsensical that it is clearly untrue. Yet these folks are saying it with straight faces with great protestations that this is the truth despite its clear absurdity. What does it say about these people and the leader and leadership that has them saying such patently untrue things to Canadians in what is a clear insult to the intelligence and awareness of the average Canadian as to why something like this is simply not credible. If a leader and leadership of a party is willing to lie to the public about something as serious as this with such a totally unbelievable claim once, what else will they do so with, especially in things where the dishonesty/impossibility of the claim is not so readily apparent?

This is a man, Harper that is, that is a follower of the same political philosopher that formed the basis of the American neoconservative movement, a man by the name of Leo Strauss. I covered this in another post here. There are two core beliefs of Straussians though that are shown in this matter. The willing to employ the noble lie in the pursuit of holding power and the belief that only the opinions of the elites matter where government and governing is concerned. It is ok to lie to the general public to further gain and hold power, because it is in the service of the noble ends to which you plan on using that power for. As for the elites, we all know Harper sees himself as a very intellectual person, with good cause I would agree. We know from watching his history over the past two decades that he is very dedicated to his beliefs and principles and that he believes them to be noble and vital to the survival of this country. We know that he sees himself as other than the common man/woman although he professes great admiration for that common man/woman. He sees himself as a member of the elite, the same elite which after helping him get work as VP and then President of the National Citizen's Coalition then helped his rise to power in the CA and then to create the CPC and then to lead it to this point so far. We know he doesn't care about our opinions and views on this affair, otherwise he would not be trying to peddle something as nonsensical as having no involvement in the process to remove MP Turner.

This is dangerous behaviour from anyone holding the Office of Prime Minister, but especially someone on a crusade/mission of some kind, especially if there is a religious/moralistic element/nature. Those that will lie in the pursuit of power to achieve what is in their minds a noble end are almost always those that wreak the worst damage to a society and bring out it's worst instincts. It has never been Harper's good intentions that I have questioned but the tools he is willing to use/embrace in the pursuit of accomplishing the agenda those good intentions are in service to. We are seeing it here again today, and this needs to be remembered for what it was, a blatant example of contempt for the intelligence of Canadians and the willingness to make a totally absurd and incomprehensible claim as truth and defend it vigourously. We have seen this behaviour elsewhere in the past several years, and that is south with a President that is never wrong, sold a war under false pretenses (a way our PM wanted us involved in and was very passionate about saying so) and has been shown time and time again to tell his populace one thing when the facts clearly show the opposite. We have seen where that kind of government has taken our neighbours, I do not want to see it replicated here. Harper does not take orders from the GOP/Bush government, the problem is that his fundamental political outlook/philosophy is shaped by the same political theorist that shaped those that run the Bush Administration and much of the GOP Congress. That is why we see his foreign policy so similar to theirs, why he is so sympathetic to their needs even to the apparent neglect of our own as the Softwood Sellout demonstrated, and that the tools of deception, smear, and fear that the Bush/GOP have used to gain and hold electoral power in the USA are the same tools Harper and the CPC are using/embracing to gain and hold power in Canada. When I and others say that the Harper led CPC is not Canadian Conservative in nature we mean it. This man and his inner circle are members of the Calgary School of political thought which is heavily shaped by Leo Strauss the American political theorist who ended up being the foundation of the neoconservative intellectual basis. That is not Canadian Conservatism, nor is it rooted at all in Canadian Conservatism, which is why it is fair and right to call it American conservative thought/thinking because that is precisely what it is.

This business with Garth Turner is only the latest example of that. Turner was after all from the PCPC wing of the party with political views in keeping with that wing, which was rooted in Canadian Conservative thinking, but that is for another post.

P.S. Sorry about the long disappearance, a combination of computer troubles, internet connectivity troubles and a massive hyperfocus in it's first week on the Foley scandal in the USA kept me from blogging here. I am still more used to and comfortable in commenting at other blogs in an ongoing conversation than I tend to be in writing here, although I am trying to get over it. I expect I will also be doing a post comparing the level of blatant dishonest and abdication of responsibility in this matter by the PMO to the same behaviour in the Grewal fraud. I see a distinct and disturbing similarity in the level of blatant dishonesty involved despite the clear facts to the contrary in the public domain. Granted one was a cover-up of a fraud/scam after the fact and this appears to be an ongoing cover-up of whatever involvement Harper had in this matter for some reason but we will see how it goes over the next days to weeks.

Yet another CPC/Harper scandal, this time using illegally gained money to fight the last election with and then hiding it despite claiming otherwise

Back in July I noticed a story that the media had yet to discover thanks to Somena Media regarding the CPC refusing to declare 1.7 million dollars of donations. That it appeared the CPC chose to ignore the legal requirements and declare that unless a convention makes a profit no moneys donated/paid to it by attendees was a political contribution. Well the Chief Election Officer appeared to disagree then and wanted to examine all the CPC books regarding this matter. The CPC claimed it had already turned over these books and all pertinent documentation. Well it appears yet again what the CPC says they are doing and what they actually have done are disconnected from each other, in this case we have the CEO declaring that the requested information has still to be turned over to him and that the claims of following the law and having done nothing wrong in this matter by the CPC has zero basis in law and truth. Cerberus has a good post up on this and Meaghan Walker Williams also has some good material in researching it during the summer over here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Now, why is this a big deal one might wonder? Simple, the CPC had 1.7 million dollars of illegal funds with which they fought the last election with, thereby tainting the electoral process. After all when one party has more money than the other parties generated by illegal/improper means and then after the fact tries to pretend it did nothing wrong it brings into question the integrity and trustworthiness of that party, it's leader and their real commitment to democracy and the rule of law. I do not know where this is going to end up but so far the CPC actions here make it look like they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and know it, and are now trying to do all they can to make this scandal disappear. Ironically it was the Treasury Board Baird who first broke this story in a Senate hearing on the matter of the Accountability Act a few months ago that first got this ball rolling. The responses I have seen so far from the Conservative side of the spectrum seems to be this is a Liberal scandal because they want taxpayers to pay for their convention while the CPC does not, a nice sound-bite that has absolutely nothing to do with the apparent illegal actions of the CPC in this matter and their inability to understand how to follow the same laws all the other parties managed to in this matter. This approach feels much the same as the one used to cover up the Grewal scandal/fraud by the CPC last year, change the subject and claim that the only wrongdoing is from the evil Liberals instead of the noble Conservatives despite clear evidence that the CPC has done something wrong and then tries to cover up said wrongdoing.

Yet people wonder why I consider this government to be so dangerous to the nation and our way of life. If it will not follow the rule of law even/especially regarding how we wage elections in this country why should anyone trust them to follow it anywhere else they feel they can get away with it? Why should anyone trust a party/leader like that with the powers of government whatever their party/ideology? The CPC cannot keep claiming they are the honest and ethical party when they keep trying to hide such serious matters of concern as raising, hiding, and using illegally obtained financing to fight an election with, in this case an election they won a minority government with. This has all the appearances of yet another classic example of the Harper/CPC contempt for the rule of law when it interferes with their ideology/beliefs on something and their habit of pretending they did nothing wrong and then finding some way to blame the Liberals and paint them as the bad guys. This approach works better though when the Liberals are the government, but the CPC has been the government for the last nine months now and they have got to recognize that they are entirely accountable for their own actions, inactions, and illegal acts regardless of the Liberals own actions, especially when they have no bearing on the issue, which in this case they most certainly do not.

Yet further evidence of the CPC trying to manipulate the media and prevent hard questioning of uncomfortable government issues/actions.

liberal catnip has a very good post on this matter here. I would simply add that this is of a piece with the other tools this CPC/Harper government has chosen to employ to limit the ability of the press to even ask hard questions, let alone find out information through the access to information act from which to base these questions on. I previously blogged about the various media controls this government has put into place, including their decision to make the very fact that Cabinet is meeting secret unlike prior governments of both Liberal and Conservative persuasions. What should be particularly troubling to people here is that the same person in Harper's office receiving the name of the reporter is also the same person that picks who gets to ask the PM questions according to the CPC policy of not allowing the Press Gallery to determine who gets to ask questions but the PMO's press Secretary. When this particular policy was put in place many journalists and bloggers raised concerns that this was to make it easier to reward those reporters who ask questions the government likes and to punish by blocking access to those that ask questions the government does not like. When one adds this business of finding out who is asking FOIA requests so as to know not just that a topic may be asked about but by whom it will be asked by this provides the PM's Press Secretary a means of obstructing the asking of such questions by knowing which reporter to not call upon.

This is yet one more example of the so called transparency of this government and it's clear unwillingness to be held to any prior standards of accountability our governments have had to face from the press. This is a government that at every turn has done all it can to restrict public scrutiny of its actions and to prevent the media from being able to ask awkward/embarrassing questions, because after spending two years in Opposition using the media to hit the Libs with imagined scandal after scandal along with the few real ones in the mix they know just how powerful a tool for the opposition a media asking hard questions and being able to show when government officials refuse to answer their questions is in portraying a government as corrupt, inept, and unaccountable needing to be replaced. Got to love this commitment to transparency and open government we were all promised in the last election campaign and have yet to see. This bunch makes the Liberal look like the very souls of openness by comparison, which given their history is no small accomplishment by Harper's CPC.

Harper to troops in Afghanistan: Your deaths improves the caliber/competence of the Canadian Forces!

Well, I first came across this Tuesday at The Galloping Beaver in this post of Dave's. When I read it, the linked post from Steve V at Far and Wide and the CBC article linked I could not believe it, Harper was actually claiming that our soldiers getting killed in Afghanistan may actually be making the Canadian military a better military force. Really? I wonder just how many soldiers and families of soldiers in theater would agree with that assessment? I somehow doubt that all that many would. I also wonder just how many of the families of the dead soldiers in Afghanistan would agree with this notion and that it was for a better military that their loved ones were killed and that they should be somehow take comfort in the idea that their loved ones dying improves the overall ability of the Canadian military. If I were them I would find that insulting and disrespectful to the memory of my loved one and even an implication that my dead loved one was somehow not that good a soldier because otherwise why would their death be able to improve the ability of the military?

This was a very offensive and sick thing to say PM Harper, and it shows that you have a fundamental inability to understand the military culture/mindset as well as a willingness to prostitute the military in the service of your party for partisan political points,. A pattern you started with your very first trip to Afghanistan where you used the soldiers as props and claimed that Canada would not "cut and run" ( A direct quote and a phrase Bush and the GOP have been using to tar their opponents with for years now, yet when you said this Harper there was no one in the Parliament of Canada calling for such an act).

Then there is this idea of yours that we have not pulled our weight over the last 30-40 years in military matters. Yet you provide nothing to back this assertion up and as well you by making this claim diminish/disrespect the many peacekeeping missions that Canada was front and center for in the Cold War and our work in the first Gulf War and in the Balkins in the 90s. Somehow that doesn't count in Harper's books as pulling our weight despite the reality we are not a first world nation but a second world (developing) nation. Yes, we are at the top of that category but the blunt truth is we are not a nation that has the resources and the industrial infrastructure to be considered a true first world nation. We have never colonized other nations, we have never been an imperial/great power and the main reason our economy is as developed as it is is a direct result of being the closest neighbour to the largest economic/military power on the planet for the past 60 years now. So this idea that we have not been pulling our weight is an unsupported assertion that does nothing but throw disrespect on every soldier that took pride in the peacekeeping missions they were a part of over the last few decades. Way to show respect for the military Mr. Harper!

Then there is this notion that suddenly we are raising our international leadership profile with this mission and the dying our soldiers are doing in its service. Seeing as we are not a military power the idea that we can only show leadership through the use of military force is idiotic from the outset. It also denigrates the idea that diplomacy and other methods of leadership have equal merit to them as the use of military force, or in other words Harper places military force deployment leadership above all other forms that Canada has participated in. This just goes to show how little Harper understand the real world from his nice safe and clean ideological perspective of the world and his willingness to have Canadians suffer and die in the advancement of his beliefs regardless of how well or poorly they correlate to reality, to the history of this nation, and to the values of the citizenry of this nation. It also underscores that while he sees military deployment as the most important form of leadership that he does not understand the military culture nor the proper/best ways of applying military force.

Then we come to the "clarification" by Harper's chief media strategist/communications adviser, Carolyn Stewart-Olsen. On this one I will leave this post from Dave at The Galloping Beaver to speak for me as he does so eloquently in this post he put up today. All I will add is this is the sort of stupidity and insensitivity/ignorance of the world outside the delusions of the inner circle of the Harper camp I have come to expect. As well as the disrespect these folks have for any and all that do not share their vision of what is right/wrong and noble/evil. This is yet one more piece of evidence as to why this party under this leadership is unfit to hold office/power in this country IMHO (incidentally when I use this it stands for In My Humble Opinion, for some reason people think I mean honest instead, but all my opinions are my honest ones so that doesn't work for me) and needs to be removed from the minority they have and sent back to opposition and hopefully saner Conservatives will come to power in the CPC instead of the Straussians (for those that do not know this Leo Strauss is the political philosopher that shaped the core of the neoconservative movement and Harper and his coterie are members of the Calgary School of political thought which was also heavily influence by Strauss, which explains the similarity of world view/foreign policy between Harper and the Cheney/Bush regime) that currently controls the party.

Now this article demonstrates a *REAL* understanding of terrorism and how to fight it!

I found this article (an alternate link to this article and the comments it recieved is at the author's blog here, thanks to POGGE for this link in POGGE's post here)via Red Tory this morning and I read it and found it so well written and clearly understanding of the real aim of terrorism that I simply had to blog about it myself. The problem with the current means of waging the so called war on terror is that instead of reducing the fear of terrorism and thereby preventing the terrorists from achieving their primary goal (which is to instill fear in the targeted group/population) instead we see the danger played up and hyped by politicians using this for domestic partisan political purposes instead. While this problem currently is far worse in America we have seen this being attempted by our current governing party, likely due to a combination of genuine belief that there is a threat (even if they do not recognize the actual odds against being a victim of terrorism as shown by the CATO Institute among others) and the recognition of how powerful this fear can be in allowing politicians to gain, hold and increase their power. The actions of the Cheney Presidency (Which on issues of foreign policy is clearly the case, while I can accept that GWB plays a real role in shaping domestic policy such as it is whereas it is clearly Cheney that has called the shots from day one in foreign affairs) have shown the world just how easily a open/free society with careful checks and balances between branches of government can be distorted/destroyed by the use of fear and partisan polarization through the use of "with us or against us" thinking. To think the CPC have not noticed this and is the main reason for the wholesale importation of GOP political tactics and strategies for use in this country as I have blogged about in the past is to be a fool IMHO.

Terrorism is about striking fear in the targeted population by the use of violence, usually random in nature leaving the population feeling less safe. This is done to get the targeted population to change their behaviour in some way and to force the government to alter certain policies. This is incidentally nothing new, terrorism in one form or another has existed for millennia, the idea that only since 9/11/01 terrorism is something new and must be fought in an entirely different manner than anything prior to it and that it is acceptable to override laws and legal protections we have kept while fighting real wars is actually the grasping arm for power by those politicians that advance this idea pure and simple. I would recommend this article to any and all that read this blog and I would ask people to consider carefully what it says. The way to fight the so called war on terror is to first off not call it a war as doing so elevates terrorism and terrorists to the same level as legitimate State combatants and gives them a legitimacy they do not deserve. Next we need to recognize the simple truth that we are far more likely to die in a car accident, slipping in the bathtub, falling down the stairs, and other far more common everyday occurrences than from a terrorist attack. This is something the well known conservative think tank the CATO Institute has shown recently. The most important way to fight terrorism though is to not hype the threat and whip up fear in the population, no it is to do the opposite. Recognize the real threat, put it into proper context, and do all one can within the law to fight it wherever possible.

We can never live in a world with perfect security, to think this is possible is to be delusional IMHO. Therefore the argument that we must sacrifice freedoms for security against terrorism is inherently flawed and indeed if the terrorists really do hate us for our freedoms (among other things like American/UK/Imperial colonial powers policies in their countries over the past several decades) then the thing we should be most reluctant to do is to limit/lose those freedoms, yet that somehow seems to elude the thinking of many that claim to believe in the "hate us for our freedoms" motivation of terrorism. The true target of terrorist attacks are not those killed/maimed but those left behind, to terrify them and to trigger them into making bad decisions that they would otherwise not have made. For example, if one had known who OBL was prior to 9/11/01 one would have known that a core principle of his beliefs was that the West and especially America wanted to take over the oil rich countries of the ME and therefore was hoping with the attacks he was engaging in to trigger a war of occupation of an oil rich Arab country just like Iraq (not Afghanistan, although he could and probably would have expected that if it was invaded that the terrain and people would be very helpful in bleeding American military power just as they did to the Soviets in the 1980s) to confirm his propaganda about America/the West and GWB and the neoconservatives in Cheney's circle fell for it with the ugly results we have seen.

In the last five years we have seen international terrorism become stronger, more frequent and increasingly deadly. We have seen the power of America, both hard and soft shown losses, limitations, and weaknesses. We have seen the American financial resources wasted in fighting a war on the cheap by giving tax cuts to the rich, which incidentally is the first time America has cut taxes in a time of war, normally they raise taxes in wartime because fighting wars is never a cheap thing. We have seen America become increasingly isolated from its allies, especially the other western democracies thanks to the unpopularity of American actions from Gitmo to renditioning to Abu Ghraib and other torture examples demonstrating a systemic policy of sanctioning torture despite all the claims by Bushco to the contrary. This has turned people away not just from American policy (which is nothing new) to against the American people themselves (which is something new) for sanctioning it by giving Bush a second term in the 2004 elections once much of this had become public knowledge. In every way possible this method of fighting terrorism has weakened American and for that matter global security and sacrificed important long term interests on the alter of short term political expediency and lust for increased power which we have seen in the creation of the Imperial Presidency under GWB.

This is the pattern the CPC wants to follow in fighting terrorism, and if followed will only work against our security interests as it has for America, not increase our security. I do not oppose the CPC on this topic out of partisan differences, I do so because I believe from the core of my being that the method they wish to follow is fundamentally flawed and actually works to the advantage of terrorists/terrorism and not to the interests of my country and its security. I felt the same way whenever I saw the Liberals following blindly the American lead, the case of Maher Arar being one example I was most displeased with from the moment his renditioning became publicly known (even if then his identity had not) because the Libs had sold out the rights of a fellow citizen and did not appear willing to make sure he was what the Americans claimed and definitely should not have been sent to Syria by America but to Canada instead. It is one example off the top of my head where I fundamentally disagreed with the Liberals on the security/terrorism issue but not the only one, I only mention it to underscore that on this issue my primary motivation is not partisan politics (whereas on some other domestic issues I will readily acknowledge that it is) but what I truly believe to be in the best interests of my country and the security of my fellow Canadians.

The reason why I advocate religious toleration even while being without religion myself

Cerberus has a very detailed and well linked post here which I would commend to any and all that read this blog that have not already read this post of the three headed dog's. Personally I would have thought the basis behind religious tolerance within our secular society was fairly obvious, but then I actually enjoyed learning about history something I fear many these days can't seem to be bothered with. The reason for religious tolerance is very simple, throughout human history wars fought over religious differences have almost always been the most ugly, most intractable, and longest running. The reason for this should be fairly clear, religious faith is for those that believe a core element of their worldview and their lives, therefore if it is felt to be under threat will generate an equivalent level of response in defence. One of the main reasons for the success of the USA historically was because it allowed religious diversity as a core value and that the State had no business placing the interests of any one religion or even sect within that religion ahead of any other. Why was this so obvious to the American Founding Fathers? Simple, most of them had emigrated from a Europe that had spent the last century or so waging sectarian warfare and had seen just how dangerous it was to have an official State religion and wanted to set up a State where this evil could be prevented within it, and they managed to succeed brilliantly for a couple of centuries for the most part, although the last couple of decades or so have significantly undermined this alas.

We in this country have done the same. I have in my life been friends with Christians of varying sects, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Shinto, and Wiccans, just to name a few Faiths within the great Canadian mosaic. While each had their own beliefs they were all equally Canadians and accepted that in this country the rights of all religions were to be equally respected/tolerated within our society in order to preserve the freedom of worship for all. They accepted that the way to increase their own Faith's acceptance in this society was through example and persuasion, not by forced conversion. This was fine by me, indeed I would argue this is how it should be done and not by using the tools of the State to advance the agenda of any one Faith or sect within that Faith.

Which is why when I see any religious bigotry/intolerance it raises my hackles. Which was the case with some of the bilge I saw at the Western Standard thread that triggered this post at Cerberus. Like Cerberus I recognize that it is unlikely the majority of Conservatives in this country would accept the POV demonstrated in that WS thread any more than I and those at the link at Cerberus would. What does bother me about seeing this at the Shotgun blog though is that the Western Standard is the most openly Conservative and CPC supporting national publication in this country. The publisher has strong ties to the top level of the CPC and this CPC government. Therefore seeing the degree of intolerance not only being written there but for the most part being agreed with I find more than a little disturbing. It would be one thing if this was some no namer's blog (like my own for example, I have no illusions about myself in this regard) this was from, this though is a blog with national prominence under the title of what is supposedly the voice of Canadian Conservatism. That I have a big problem with.

I also find the degree of open hatred for those that do not share their POV more than a little worrisome as well. While I oppose the CPC and even consider it real threat to the long term viability/stability of this nation I do not hate them, I do not hate Harper. What I do feel is strong concern, and a need to oppose them because I do not trust the ideology from which the CPC leadership has been clearly influenced by, the writings of a man by the name of Leo Strauss (article link thanks to POGGE). This man's beliefs among others is that only an elite is qualified to shape national policy and the acceptance of the "noble lie" in the pursuit and maintaining of power. I consider both of these principles to be inherently dangerous to the idea of democracy, and Canada operates under a representational democracy in the form of a Constitutional Parliamentary structure. The tendency towards increased polarization of seeing everything in two camps us (the "good" guys) and everyone else (the "bad" guys) worries me, as I am someone that believes in reality rarely ever being so simplistic in nature, especially where human interactions/behaviours are concerned. When I see this I worry regardless of the political/social affiliations involved.

We have seen in our American neighbour a tendency to try to turn everything into us vs them binary configurations. We have seen the rise of religious bigotry into public policy de facto if not yet de jure. We have seen those that push for religious supremacy of their sectarian beliefs align themselves with those that follow the teachings of Leo Strauss, also referred to as the neoconservative movement aka neocons. Now while I will be the first to admit that the term neocon has been abused by those that oppose the Conservative movement in this country there is still an element of accuracy in the charge where our current PM is concerned. We also have seen our own Conservative party combine religious politics and the Canadian equivalent of the neoconservative philosophy (The Calgary School) (see also this post at The Galloping Beaver on this group) in the current configuration of the CPC. So we see the potential of the ugly religious bigotry that has consumed the GOP doing the same in this party, which is one of the reasons there are those that fear a "hidden agenda" to the CPC, the "noble lie" of Straussian teachings being the other main reason for this fear.

However, what is most disturbing about what has been going on at the Shotgun and within many of the online Canadian Conservative movement is the increased willingness to portray their opposition as unpatriotic, terrorist sympathizers, and in general not just to be opposed but to be at best incarcerated ant worst taken out and shot. I see an increasing acceptance of dehumanization of their political foes, which quite honestly scares the hell out of me. Hatred of their enemies is seen as natural, whereas I see hatred of the enemy as becoming the enemy. I wish I knew how to fight this better than just trying to draw attention to it but I do not. I do know though that the last time I saw this kind of insanity prior to the current movements was back in the left political movement in the USA back during the late 60s into the 70s, and I no more found that acceptable then than I do now in the Conservative movement.

Any party regardless of affiliation that embraces the politics of division and hatred is an inherent danger to the multicultural nation that is Canada. While there has always been a certain amount of the politics of division it has been rooted in the difference regions of this rather large country. What I have been seeing develop though that really troubles me is that politics of division being employed not on the traditional region differences but within the differences of political affiliations and of social sub-groupings, and that worries me greatly. What was seen at the Shotgun may be the fringe of the Conservative movement currently. However, it's apparent acceptance by that publication worries me that this is becoming more and more acceptable within that political movement. I also find the willingness to equate opposition to Conservative policy and ideas with support for terrorism and radical/extremism more than a little worrisome. I find the acceptance of several in the online community of hate-mongers like Anne Coulter and to a lesser extent Michelle Malkin downright scary.

Hatred is one of if not the most destructive and dangerous of all human emotions. It allows for the dehumanization of those it is focused upon which in turn allows for atrocity to be done to that target focus. It destroys not only the focus of the hatred but the souls of those doing the hating. It is quite possibly the single most important underpinning to the various atrocities of human history which should be enough to have all humans of good will/nature regardless of political beliefs opposing it wherever the find it, even when it is in their own ranks/social/political affiliations. Indeed, I would argue especially when found in such.

In any event, while I do not believe that most Canadian Conservatives are like this I do fear than many within that movement are and are pushing that party in that direction. There is alas this belief in many Canadians that this sort of thing cannot happen here. Well that belief tends to be one of the best aids those that would spread hatred and intolerance rely upon when trying to move things in their direction, and too often it is too late when the majority recognize the threat. That is what I fear, and why I oppose those I find promulgating such hatred of the other. Xenophobia is one of humanity's most ugly and horrific traits and one that is alas all too easily manipulated, just ask the 1930's Germans about that as one example among many in human history, even modern history.

Which side of the border was that first attack again? Seems to be some question about that.

I have seen this said at some international news sites like the Asia Times and so on and now I see it from Harper's. The main justification I have seen to defend the excesses of the Israeli response to two of their soldiers being captured was that Hezbollah crossed the border to do it with. Well exactly what proof of this is there? We have all seen in times of war/conflict the truth be the first casualty of that war and revisionist behaviour from participating parties after the fact. I do not know whether this is true in this case, but I do know there is enough reason to question this and require hard evidence (and preferably from third party souce verification) before believing either side's version given the disparity. Which is important to determine seeing as it is a lynchpin behind the official stated reason Israel gave for the rather massive response of attacking throughout Lebanon starting with bombing the Beirut airport. Well, it is late and I need some sleep, I will probably add to this later on when I have the time.

If this is the Afghanistan we are building then why bother deposing the Taliban?

Whenever anyone in Canada questions the continuation of the military mission in Afghanistan there is the defence that the Afghan women are far better off now and that if for no other reason shows this to be a good and noble act for this country. While I happen to have been and remain a supporter of the Afghan mission things like this make it harder and harder to maintain that support. One of the worst things the Taliban did was to effectively dehumanize women and deny them anything other then the right to have their lives controlled by men and to have as punishment for anyone that broke the rules torture and death with a male only morals police doing the enforcing and acting as enforcer, judge, jury and executioner in all too many cases. Well now the Karzai government is preparing to bring back the worst element of that control, ostensibly for combat things like alcohol abuse but the reality is this sort of morals police invariably becomes abused, and given the history of Afghanistan it would be all but a certainty.

What really gets me is that they are not even changing the name of this morals police department from that which the Taliban used. Read the article, this is something that cannot be allowed to slip under the radar.

(Thanks to Jesus's General for the link)

Small World Syndrome and Lebanon

I was reading this article and got a very nasty shock, I know one of the people mentioned in it who is still waiting to be evacuated from Lebanon who is in Beirut. While not a close friend she is an aquaintance and a good person, kindhearted and of good character. For her to be as upset and condemning of the situation speaks volumes to me about just how bad things are there for our citizens, and she is as Canadian as I am. One of the things that has most disturbed me in all of this is the amount of reading of comments from fellow Canadians claiming that only a certain type of Canadian should be evacuated from this war zone. As far as I have been concerned if someone holds a Canadian passport as a Canadian citizen then they deserve and are entitled to being treated as a Canadian, whether they are born elsewhere or are like myself decended from those that immigrated to this country before Canada was birthed in 1867.

I hope that Lena Diab (Amazing isn't it how the G&M managed to mispell both her first and last name, especially since neither are terribly difficult names to begin with.) and all like her are able to get safely home. I hope that she is not subjected to the racist undertones I have heard and seen from far too many of my fellow Canadians. I hope that her family are able to be reunited with her soon, and that the next time the Embassy calls her to come to be taken out she is not left out in the sun again. She is not kidding about being allergic to the sun, and given the conditions in Lebanon in that regard this is no small matter. Next time some of you that say there should be categorization of Canadian citizens based on some arbitrary idea of what is a "real" Canadian may you find out that one of those so called less than "real" Canadians turns out to be someone either you know or someone close to you knows. Perhaps then it might start sinking in just how ugly, mean spirited and arguably racist you are being. Incidentally, on that note I would commend people to this post by Meaghan Walker Williams at Somena Media, I happen to be in full agreement with her on it.

Oh yes, one other thing, this in regards to the letter MacKay sent to the Globe and Mail regarding one of it's articles, the one that showed who was really responsible for the intitial clusterfuck that was the first week of this mess. This comment in the comments section of the aforementioned article raises a very good point, given the media control the PMO has placed upon the Cabinet and the MPs of this government this letter was either written by Harper's people, desired by Harper and his people, or at the very minimum was endorsed by Harper and company. Otherwise it would never have been permitted to be released. So here we have our PM yet again trying to have it both ways where the media is concerned. When they have a message they want out they bring the media in for a carefully structured presser or spread it through media venues they consider they will get a favourable coverage from. When they are offended by a media article calling into question their words/deeds then they insist that it is unfair, that they are being unfairly attacked/hit unlike prior governments (despite the clear nonsense of this when one actually looks into it instead of simply accepting the idea of the Liberal media conspiracy against the CPC/Harper) and now even insisting upon release of sources used by the media. Now, does anyone remember Harper et al demanding anonymous governmental sources being revealed to the government when the Liberals were in power when it was a story critical of their words/deeds? I sure don't. Also, this comment says there should be no problem with the Globe and Mail releasing their sources names, after all their lives would not be in risk. True, but their livelihoods and careers most certainly would be, especially with this vindictive a grudgeholder Harper and the CPC have proven themselves to be with those that have shown them in a less than favourable light. Given the ham handed media control above and beyond the norm for our governments this government has followed to date as I ( and many others) have blogged in the past about this is a real and serious threat that these sources have every reasonable basis to be concerned with.

When the whistleblowers of government ineptitude hurt the Liberal government the CPC saw them as heros and noble people. Funny how that changed once the CPC became the government. Yet one more example of the so called moral principles and code the CPC proclaimed it believed in and followed unlike the hated Liberals proving out to be so much hypocritical male bovine excrement. Not that I find this at all a surprise since this was exactly what I said it would prove out to be well before this government came to power

**UPDATE**

Lena Diab, her husband and the four of their six children that were with them visiting the children's paternal grandmother arrived back in Canada on Saturday in Montreal and back in Halifax on Saturday night safe and sound. May all our citizens trying to get out be as fortunate. For that matter may all the civilians left behind in Lebanon also be safe and sound, although that is clearly not the most probable likelihood alas. As I noted before I have a real problem with the idea of collective punishment against civilians. This is also extended to the civilians in Israel before anyone tries to claim I don't care about them, but they are not the ones dying in large numbers in this conflict the Lebanese ones are.

Canada wins yet again, but will Harper even care? I really doubt it.

Well well well, what do we have here? Why it looks like yet another legal victory for Canada in the American courts on the softwood lumber dispute. Yet what has been our government's response to this latest proof of our being in the right? Why to dismiss this as nothing of concern, at least according to Emerson's spokesperson. It would seem that the rule of law is of no interest to this government when it does not work to the game plan of this government, which in this deal is to gut the dispute resolution mechanism which all of NAFTA is governed by. It is because of that gutting and not the money being held back that this deal is a sell out of Canada's interests. I know this is hard for some Conservatives to understand but legal precedents actually do carry weight to them, and this one is one that will work against Canada's interests by showing all American sectors how to get their government to get around the minimal protection Canada has against the far more powerful trading partner America. This mechanism was the thing that finally convinced Canadians that Free Trade was a good deal for Canada.

Why is it on every significant foreign policy issue since Harper became PM he has chosen to side with the foreign government over his nation? It is his job to protect Canada's interests before all else, not America's not Israel's, Canada's. It was this sort of selling this country out that was a part of why I so strongly opposed his election, it is one of the reasons why I when I find what I believe to be a legitimate example of why this is such a bad government I blog about it. My interests are to protect and serve Canada's, something Harper, the CPC, and unfortunately far too many of the online CPC supporters don't seem willing to do. Stand up for Canada has yet again been shown to be an empty slogan, if anything this is more Canada being stood up by those charged with protecting her and worse, being bent over for others to take Canada from behind. I am reminded of something Mulroney said once he came to power, that being Canada was open for business, and we all saw where that left the country by the time he was driven from office, and yes he was driven, he knew he would be defeated if he fought a third election.

I want a PM that considers Canada's interests first, and to date this government has clearly shown itself incapable and for that matter unwilling to do exactly that.

Thanks to Accidental Deliberations for the Globe link on this story.

Moral Savagery indeed

James Wolcott has what I consider a very good article to read up here, and it is based in part on two other worth reading pieces by Robert Fisk here and at Counterpunch here. I never had a problem with the idea that Israel had to respond to the capture of it's soldiers by Hezbollah, my problem is that the response they mounted was way out of proportion to the initial offence and has ended up in the slaughter of many innocent civilians and the dispossession of what is said at this point to be another 500,000 civilians. This massive reaction serves the interests not of Israel in gaining peace but those like Hezbollah in further radicalizing their populations, increasing sympathy for their POV and increasing their recruiting. Creulty and collective punishment has a very ugly history and rarely ever accomplishes the goal it is supposedly trying to achive by those doing the punishing.

I am trying to find things to point out to from the Lebanese side not because that is where my sympathies lie but because that is the side which is not getting much air time. The Israeli government has shown just how effective it's ability is to control the message and dominate our public airwaves, me I am just trying to see that some slight attempt at balance is provided. Innocent civilians are innocent civilians and none of them deserve to be slaughtered needlessly, be they Israeli, Lebanese, Iraqi or Canadian. That is my POV.

I would also point to this post by Dr. Dawg regarding the lack of real attempts to minimize civilian casualties by Israel. I understand that collateral damage is inevitable in military actions, the question is whether all feasible attempts to minimize them have been taken, and that unfortunately I do not think has been happening. Dawg's post speaks to that.

*additional*

While perusing other blogs I ran across this article from the Austrailian Broadcasting Corporation that speaks to the point of civilian indescriminate targeting by the Israelis. Thanks to BigCityLib Strikes Back for the link in his post on it here.

Harper's Ferry is really Harper's photo folly

When I first ran across this article at Cathie from Canada's it left me enraged enough that I had to take a good eight hours to calm down enough to write this post. You see, yesterday lunchtime I heard about Harper flying to pick up evacuees and bring them from Cyprus back to Canada. He was leaving the media and his staff to maximize seating availability for those evacuees yet he kept three communications staffers and his staff photographer. At the time I posted a comment at the top of this thread at Cathie's where I admittedly was being quite cynical in believing this was more motivated by political needs than actual humanitarian concern for the evacuees. This was based on the combination of Harper's endorsement of the Israeli response to their two soldiers being taken last week along with eight others killed in the process by Hezbollah as a "measured" response and his unwillingness to back away from it after the seven Canadians were killed, including four children under the age of nine. Harper had altered the decades old policy of not taking sides in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute nor that or the disputes between Israel and her neighbours. Canada's policy was to follow whatever the international law said was appropriate for each circumstance, thereby leaving Canada as a neutral party and able to be an intermediary when possible during these conflicts. This change did not sit well with many, especially many in the Canadian Lebanese community in this country as well as Arab/Muslim groups as well. So there was a clear need for damage control.

If Harper had not taken his staff photographer and communications staff I would have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that humanitarian motives were foremost and political considerations second. Still, I was willing to admit that maybe I was being overly cynical. That ended when I found this article at Cathie from Canada's from the Globe and Mail. After reading it several things became brutally clear. First off, there was no real consideration last week that a major evacuation plan would be needed this despite the actions of Israel in the first 24 hours taking out the airport, bridges, ports, and roadways throughout the country by our PM. That it does not appear there was serious action started until right before or right after the deaths of those Canadians. That this was run out of Ottawa under a very tight command and control operation from the PMO. That instead of immediately going to a 24/7 operations pattern they stayed in standard working hours, which given the time zone difference of six hours complicated things enormously. That Sandra Buckler, Harper's press manager ordered information about the crisis and the evac need to be kept under wraps which is why there was the appearance of nothing happening for several days. That even once they finally started moving on this matter they were days behind other nations, indeed not until Saturday was even a working group put together at Foreign Affairs to start planning and executing the evacuation.

Indeed, it was not until Monday that there was any contact made to get the ships needed to bring our citizens out while other nations had been contracting ships since Saturday. By Tuesday night it became clear that the publicly stated promise of seven ships doing two trips daily was not going to be met, not even close. Then it suddenly is realized that Cypress cannot manage the influx due to vacationers tying up lodgings and airplane seats already so it is decided to shift to Turkey leaving things that much more confused. Now, up to this point I am merely disappointed with how slowly Harper and company recognized the need to get the ball rolling and resources deployed to deal with the coming evacuation madhouse. Still, it is their first major incident of this type and the largest one this country has faced in many decades now, so a certain amount of this is understandable and forgivable. This is after all a logistical nightmare to have to deal with even with everything moving/operating smoothly. Aside from being slow to recognize the need and micromanaging things adding more sand in the gears and not delegating the needed authority to those onsite as should have been done this wasn't something that I could really castigate and hold against Harper. Fair is fair after all, especially since there was no warning that this was going to blow up like it did in Lebanon let alone with such speed.

Now we come to the matter which infuriated me, even though I had already assumed the Harper plane trip/pickup was as much a photo-op and damage control what I have found in this article truly surprised me even given my cynicism. Harper decides to pick up Canadians stuck in Cyprus and give them a ride home, he bails out everyone except his wife and the aforementioned staffers to maximize the seats for the evacuees. The Canadian mission in Cyprus realizes they need to get Canadians there for that pickup and end up asking the Brits for help in getting some to them for the PM to be able to greet and take back with him. Then it turns out the Brits don't have anywhere near enough to fill up the plane with which causes Harper to sit waiting for close to three quarters of a full day for his passengers. His involvement, while certainly nice for the privileged few that ended up on his plane ended up complicating the logistics of this evac at a time when his micromanagement of this matter had already seriously complicated the logistics of this operations. So for the sake of a photo-op and looking like he was "doing something" Harper ended up throwing that much more sand into the logistics machinery of the evacuation.

Imagine, the PM asking for British help to get enough Canadians to fly home. If Harper really was thinking first and foremost of the need to get the maximum amount of evacuees out of the region he would have emptied his plane, sent it without anyone but the pilot, called for a Challenger to take him home instead and then greeted those returnees when they got back to Canada. Instead he puts himself and his inevitable security complications in the middle of an already messed up situation and for what exactly? To look like he is doing something to help the poor Lebanese Canadians that Israel's "measured" response was forcing out of the country in this manner. To look like he was on top of things, to look like he was "in charge". To make up for his less than well received actions to date in this matter. That this was clearly about political calculation and partisan purposes and not simply to "help". Nor was it "brave" of him to do so, after all Cyprus is not exactly being attacked by military assets unlike Lebanon and terrorist/militant rockets and missiles like Israel. This was about his image and to be more concerned with that in the face of a crisis as serious as this one is something NO PM should do and is something that seriously disrespects the office that he holds and indeed in the nation itself IMHO.

I have deliberately toned down my anger over this because otherwise I would be inclined to call him some fairly harsh and personally negative characterizations. It is enough that he has shown yet again he is more concerned with looking like he is doing something than actually doing that something well. This is a very dangerous trait in a head of government, and it showed yet again that Harper does nothing without considering the political advantages to himself and towards gaining his much desired majority by its appearance. Worse, he has shown himself yet again to be more concerned with the interests of other nations and nationalities than he is with his own country and countrymen as witnessed by his refusal to require apology from Israel's killing of those civilians. That he places his own political ambitions before considering the ramifications of making fundamental changes to long standing foreign policy. That once he realized he was in a bad spot because of that he rides into the rescue to look dashing and decisive despite the reality being a total lack of decisiveness when it would have actually done some good last week. This is a really disgusting thing Harper has done here, and something I would not have necessarily believed if someone had told me he would act like before having seen it for myself. I say may have, my expectations from him combined with my cynicism about him might have allowed me to buy into it, but I doubt I would have thought it probable before witnessing the last nine days.

Sorry about the disappearing act

This is just a short post to apologize for my unexplained absence from this blog over the last 6 weeks. At first the problem was that I could not access it because Blogger was acting up a lot, then I couldn't even see it, which was around the time the "test post" was created, I was hoping I might be able to see it. Unfortunately I was not able to for several more days. Then some matters related to my wife came up along with a few other examples of Murphy's Law running amok in our lives. Finally this was topped off with one of my wife's grandmothers becoming seriously ill and finally dying at the beginning of this week. With the funeral finally past and hopefully everything else is finally settling down I should be able to resume my periodic missives/tomes for those of you that actually enjoy wading through my writings for more than just ways to try and misrepresent what I am saying. While I am spending the weekend out at my parents while they are away I may not have much time to post much but I will be trying.

While I have not been doing much commenting I have been doing my best to stay on top of current events both nationally and internationally. At the current moment the thing that has caught my attention the most is the excellent work being done by Meaghan Walker Williams at Somena Media regarding the serious questions of undeclared political contributions of 1.7 million dollars as a result of their last convention. Why do I see this as so important? If it is true among proving their hypocrisy on political donations and their holier than thou routine of the last few years being what many of us always believed it was nothing more than faux outrage for the purposes of scoring political damage against their opposition what it proves is that the last election campaign was fought by the CPC with undeclared resources. That is something very fundamental to our protocols/regulations/laws regarding how political parties fight election campaigns and is easily as scandalous as using sponsorships to try and influence the voters of a Province. Indeed, if true this is something that shows a serious corruption at the core of the CPC and a clear belief that the rules for them and the rules for their opponents are not the same and that they deserve/require special privileges. Which is the very definition of elitist IMHO, something I believe the CPC denounced as a bad attitude the Liberals were the representatives of, or did they forget that along with their other promises of standing up for Canada against those that would take advantage of it like in not getting all the money back in the Softwood lumber dispute and not selling out the NAFTA dispute resolution mechanism to do a deal. After all the next ruling would actually have been the last one, there is no appealing after that so either America would have complied or Canada would have been able to point to it as evidence that America does not honour her trade deals even when it is considered the law of the land and has been properly adjudicated in the courts when the ruling is against America.

In any event I intend to be discussing this in greater detail soon enough, along with a reference or two to things like the insanity currently unfolding in the Middle East (via liberal catnip), the civil suit the Wilsons have launched against the Bush White House for loss of earnings and other various things like placing them and their kids in harm's way, etc. I also intend to continue following the current dustup between Robert McClelland and Steve Janke, especially if as it appears to be doing widens to include other prominent Blogging Tories. Until then I hope my readership will be kind enough to accept my apologies for not just being gone for so long but also for not providing an explanation as to why until now. It was just too difficult to do much serious detailed analysis and writing due to events in my real life.

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