Attack Toews and all his Friends . . .

I think the Vikileaks attack on Vic Toews is the best news-story to emerge over the last year. I say we as Canadians should expose every single detail of the lives of the disgusting tyrants of the CPC. They are profound hypocrites who have no interest in liberty or public safety, they are just another 'big-brother,' rightwing government who wants to destroy democracy, and freedom in order to turn the population into an obedient, corporate workforce. As far as I am concerned we should use any means necessary to expose them for what they are and if that means exposing the hypocrisies of their private lives, then so be it!

And, in case anyone still needs a demonstration of the Harpercon's hypocrisy just listen to the deplorable, soulless, pontificating, windbag that is John Baird. He has the gall to condemn what he calls "dirty tricks" of others!!! These guys brought the poisonous negativity of politics to new levels, they are the party personification of dirty tricks and nastiness, and those who live by the sword will, in this case, surely die by the sword.

The Death Penalty Redux . . . . .

It is quite interesting that the very week that I decided to write a blogpost about, in part, the dangers of the  death penalty, the Harper regime decides to push its new legislative efforts at having near total control of surveillance of our citizenry. And that appalling demi-god, draconian, Machiavelli-like Vic Toews tells us that if we are not fully in favor of the police having access to everything we do, then we must be child-pornographers. Far and Wide had a good blog today on the subject.`

So they tell us that making people register their guns is hitler-like, that filling in a long-form census is a dangerous invasion of privacy, but letting the police spy on every citizen in the country with no checks on that power is no problem at all.

Now, anyone who still thinks a government could administer the death penalty without significant abuse, put your hand up. Now everyone with their hands up, go get a brain-scan, you may not have one.

On the "Reawakening" of Debates. . . . .

Well, as anyone with a pulse and 10% of political common sense knew, now that the conservatives have a majority we, as a nation have begun to talk about abortion and the death penalty again. As they have always done, the Harpercons have essentially generated this discourse by stealth, attempted to instigate a discussion in such a way that it seems as though it is not them that wants this discussion but like it has been organic or self-generating. This rhetorical technique is familiar to anyone that has looked after kids or is a parent, you gently guide the conversation with the child so that it appears to them that it was his or her idea to go to Subway instead of Macdonald's. If employed effectively it is remarkable how you can convince almost anyone that it was not you that wanted to have a certain kind of conversation or go to a particular event but it was someone else's idea.

However, I have no delusions about the Harpercons - I know that they want to outlaw abortion and bring back the death penalty and they are going to work very hard over the next few years to pursue that agenda while trying to make it look as though it was not them that tried to make it happen.

So, before we go too far down that road, I want to make my position clear on these issues - if only for the sake of self-discourse. I oppose the death penalty under all circumstances and I oppose all laws limiting abortion.

First the death penalty - Liberal discourse on the death penalty has been well summed up by Warren Kinsella in recent days - he, like most liberals, opposes the death penalty because they know that the legal system is imperfect and that, even though in many cases one might want revenge on a killer or a rapist, one should strive for reason over passion. (I hope this very short summation does not mis-characterize Mr. Kinsella's position) Now, this is a decent, rational position because, indeed all legal systems are deeply flawed and in places like the US the death penalty is demonstrably racist and classist. Blacks, and working-class people who dont' have significant funds to protect themselves from courts will always fall victim to the law more than others and they will always be victims of the death penalty more than people with greater resources. If you don't understand that this is always the case in legal systems then you simply have your head in the sand. However, what Liberals like Mr. Kinsella are not doing is taking this argument to its logical conclusion. Many of the flaws in the legal system are simply illustrations of flaws in the state itself. Though great strides have been made by activists over the last 200 years or so since the creation of the modern state to make sure that it represents and protects the people in general, at some basic level I believe the state continues to be an institution that most represents the interests of the wealthy-class. The legal system favours the wealthy because the structure of the entire state is generally built that way. Furthermore, no matter how truly representative a state is, it will always be an institution of power, and power is self-defending and self-replicating. I therefore not only oppose the death penalty because it is demonstrably racist and classist, not simply because it is demonstrably ineffective, not only because it is immoral and 'unchristian,' but because the state apparatus will always have an advantage over people and to use the state in such a brutal and negative way will always represent an imbalance of power to me, and an imbalance that is not intended to protect people but one that is intended to harm them.

Second comes abortion - I will always opposes limiting abortion for the same kinds of reasons that I oppose the death penalty. You can argue at what point "life" begins till you are blue in the face and it doesn't really matter to me. What matters is the fact that even if I were to see abortion as a terrible and tragic act, the right for a woman to control the basic functions of her body will always outweigh for me the other issues of abortion. I don't have a problems with the state outlawing, say, certain kinds of drugs or promoting certain kinds of healthy living, but at a basic level, to me, forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term is a kind of control that is just too draconian. Thus, beside the fact that there is a deep-seated sexism involved in men in suits trying to enact laws limited what women can do with their bodies, I just don't believe that we should ever give the state the right to have such control, there are just too many pitfalls to such a system of laws.

I suppose, I am a product of a long history of Anglo-radicalism which found its first voice in activists like Thomas Paine and the members of the London Correspondence Society. I believe that we must continually work toward democracy and work toward the state playing an important role in protecting people, creating a fair distribution of wealth, and creating as much equality of opportunity as possible, but at the same time I also know that the wealthy-class and those who seek power will always have an advantage over those with fewer resources and those who live in a more vulnerable situation, I thus always maintain a healthy skepticism about the state over-reaching it powers in areas where certain kinds of basic rights are concerned.

A Changing Mood. . . .

I was communicating lately with another blogger whose work I greatly appreciate about the way the mood has changed in the country in recent weeks. I have found in my own experience, as well as in my historical reading, that even significant political changes occur in a kind of mysterious moment during which the mood changes and with the change of mood significant changes follow as though unstoppable. It happened, I believe, at the moment of the Kent State massacre. It happened during the famous tennis court oath in the opening days of the French Revolution. In recent years it happened to the government of John Major in England when, less than a year into their mandate, chancellor Norman Lamont was forced to go back on a longstanding promise and take England out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, which was not only a policy reversal, but it was one that cost the government many millions of wasted Pounds  in what was a total failure. Something tips the scale of people's feelings and Fortuna's wheel suddenly shifts directions.

I am not the only one who noticed the change in mood in Canada that has taken place over the past couple of weeks. I said for a long time that what allowed Stephen Harper to appear to be a kind of Teflon-man for so long was largely the fact that he was a minority PM. This status not only kept his very worst instincts in check, but it also created the illusion that he was not really in complete control so that he could effectively deflect blame for many things that might otherwise have hurt him. The minority status also allowed the government to function in a continual campaign mode with a certain degree of justification. I am absolutely certain that if Harper had had a majority from the beginning he would have been universally despised by the end of his first four years because he would have gone in with his ego full and nothing would have stopped him. But years of minority government taught him the value of more subtlety and caution. However, having said that, Harper's ego has also prevented him from understanding that, as sometimes happens with politicians, it is generally historical chance that has put him in power rather than significant support for his political ideology. And this fact is going to make it difficult for Harper to continue his strange brand of stealthy ideological change. The game has changed and I am not sure that Harper can change sufficiently with it to avoid a seismic political change.

As any careful observer has surely noted, the change is already underway. The way in which Harper is being talked about in the media and on blogs has shifted significantly in only a few weeks. Suddenly people are focusing on Harper as a kind ideological bull in a china-shop who now has absolute power to do anything his wants. As the economic difficulties begin to be drawn out and become more structural, people are already talking about Harper's failure to respond to people's needs. For years now Harper has been selling a narrative of giving more money to corporations which will supposedly trickle down to average people. But with the sudden departure of Caterpillar from Ontario people's attention is suddenly on the 'trickle-down" model that Harper has been selling people for the past few years. Just today the Ottawa Citizen's Saturday headline reads "The World According to Stephen Harper." Newspapers that only a short time ago demonstrated almost unqualified support for Harper are changing their language. Journalists are talking about the "risks" that Harper is willing to take with an attack on Pensions and there are mainstream sources actually talking about the idea of a "manufactured crisis." Meanwhile more than one Conservative MP is talking about the caucus being too controlling and the need to have more freedom to speak. Political parties that have spent years in the wilderness often go through a period of extreme control. But politics, like all other fields, suffers from the effects of entropy and eventually the center doesn't hold.

I don't know to what degree the general mood has shifted and to what degree it is his status as a majority PM that has apparently changed Harper's fortunes. But there is no question in my mind that things are different. The central pillar of Harper's ability to stay in power has been stealth and diversion. His status as a minority leader allowed him to exercise this technique quite effectively, particularly at a time when the opposition was in disarray. But this pillar is gone now. Remember the episode of Seinfeld in which George is dating a girl who has a male roommate and because of his insecurity he manages to convince her to kick the roommate out? Jerry says to George "he was shouldering half the burden, now you are the man and that is not a very good role for you." This, in a sense, is what has happened to Harper and the Conservative Party. The disarray of the opposition and the status of a minority were shouldering half the burden for Harper and his party. But the attention will now be focused much more on Harper and the strategy of diversion and stealth will be significantly more difficult to undertake effectively.

These events also explain, I think, the fall of the NDP in Quebec. I suspect that many people in Quebec are starting to feel the need to get rid of Harper is more important than which particular party they vote for and they are now looking around at their options.

There is a new game in town and though a week might be a lifetime in politics, parties in Western democracies seldom stay in power long without being very flexible, and flexibility is not something that Harper has ever been accused of.

Something is wrong. . . .

I don’t think one needs to be particularly intelligent or insightful to know that something is desperately wrong with capitalist democracy. The system is ailing, there is no doubt about it. Not only is the international capitalist system suffering from problems but the democratic system (the one that capitalists have tried for so long to convince us in inseparable from capitalism) is genuinely in crisis – fewer people vote each year, the faith that the system is meaningful is dying all around us. There are surely many reasons that capitalist-democracy is suffering but I believe that the primary reason is fairly simple. One needn’t be a Marxist to understand that socio-economic systems all eventually become self-destructive. The very drive toward greater profit is the cancer that infests the system of capitalism. The fundamental goal of any capitalist enterprise is the achievement of greater and greater profits, and one of the primary ways to gain these profits is to get a greater and greater share of the market. In other words capitalism drives toward a monopoly – the opposite of itself. The pressure toward greater concentration of corporate power was recognized as a problem at the end of the 19^th century and movements in many countries began to attempt to address the dangers involved in such a movement. In the US this effort was referred to as the “Progressive Movement.” The result of these efforts were laws in most countries against the operations of monopolies, or so-called anti-trust laws.

Throughout much of the 20^th century capitalism functioned under increasing pressure from electors to maintain more workers’ rights, but there were also pressures to increase the general distribution of wealth, greater protections for the poor and vulnerable, etc. However, toward the close of the 20^th century, capitalism began to fight back against this pressure. Through globalization, currency movements, and most of all corporate media control, the agenda of corporatism began to undermine the gains that people had made for the past decades. Corporations began to get larger and more powerful and they used this power to operate as de facto monopolies. They not only compelled governments to serve their interests they used their ideological power to convince populations that despite ever increasing wealth overall, the system just couldn’t afford to let people have decent pensions, environmental controls, workers rights, unions, etc. In other words, despite the existence of more social wealth than ever before existed, the corporate ideology effectively convinced people that they had to be satisfied with less and less and that they had to begin to work harder and harder for a smaller piece of the pie. The result, of course, has been a growing gap between the rich and poor, as well as ever greater social, political, and economic control in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Education subsequently declines and people become ever easier to convince to act against their own interest, or to simply not take part in the political system at all.

The result of all of this political and economic upheaval is that people are beginning to realize that they are getting poorer at the very same time that the rich are getting unbelievably richer. But they are also loosing faith in their political institutions because they know something is wrong but they aren’t hearing many answers. And when they do hear real answers, real economic limits to corporate power, they are told by those very corporations that such answers are nothing short of communist plots. And those with enough knowledge to reject the corporate propaganda know that any one country attempting to make changes to the corporate agenda on its own is going to face some pretty stiff attacks from all over the globe. And so the dilemma deepens. We have government leaders that are little more than corporate servants who are willing to sell out the safety of the very planet just to increase corporate profits. As a matter of routine such governments are willing to ignore or break the very laws that they were elected to uphold just to ensure that their corporate sponsors can make a few more percentage points.

We in Canada saw a prime example of this ideology in action yesterday as our so-called Prime Minister gave a major speech to an international audience once again touting the lie that the problem with international capital is essentially that working people expect too much – they expect real pensions and some form of protection from real poverty. It is, of course, an absolute and utter lie, but he pushes the agenda nonetheless. If a society has more wealth than ever before and yet states are going bankrupt, then the problem is not the worker’s relatively modest demands.

Of course, power, particularly economic power, has a terrible tendency to be shortsighted. Corporations, like the aristocracy in the lead up to the Revolution in France, are desperately trying to maintain their money and power even as they creates the conditions for their own demise. The greater the inequality of wealth, the more you impoverish the people while the corporations are increasing their wealth, the harder it will become to hide the contradictions in the system and the more likely it will become that people will eventually seek to not only change the system but to seek revenge on those who have benefited from the deception and the inequality. Avoiding the 1917 revolution in Russia would have been pretty easy – a concerted effort at democratization and industrialization would have easily undermined the revolutionary cause. But the Russian aristocracy had become convinced that their power was part of a natural order, the only way things could be. I dare say that the corporate class of today as adopted a similar belief structure. How many times have you heard a rich man in a suit or a rightwing politician tell you that there is no alternative to our present system? They tell us that we cannot mess with the capitalist order or that it is a ‘natural’ system. Well I imagine that as the Russian aristocrats faced the barrel of a gun and the French aristocrats were led up the steps of the guillotine, they were deeply confused – “How can this be?” they must have thought to themselves.

Well it happened then, and it can happen again. If there is anything like a “natural” order in the world – it is continual change.  

Harper's Message to Gay People - We Dont' Want You Here!

Anyone who thinks that Harper and his bullies were unaware of the efforts by the Department of Justice lawyers to try to delegitimize same sex marriage is a fool. Obviously the Prime Minster knew. It is extremely unusual for the Federal Government to get involved in a divorce case and this case had to have been prepared a while ago at the highest level of policy makers. There is absolutely NO WAY that the PM wouldn't have known about this. On the contrary, the order to pursue this surely came directly from his office.

And this is the Harpercon's basic political strategy, poke around the edges of a major issue before jumping in. This is how it has been with the death penalty. The Conservative caucus overwhelmingly favours the return to the death penalty because all they really understand is the politics of hate, and revenge is an intimate associate of hate. However, knowing that they can't simply attempt to reinstate the death penalty without huge political consequences, they have instead begun the gradual chip-away. They stopped trying to save people who might be extradited to other countries and face capital punishment, and they are not attempting to save Canadians abroad who might be facing this most tyrannical act. Obviously in the long term their hope is to bring the death penalty to canada for any crime except those regularly committed by rich white men (that is to say corruption and money crimes). They don't care that the death penalty has no effect on crime, as their recent crime bill demonstrates, prevention of crime or rehabilitation are not on their radar - only punishment - swift, hard, preferably violent, punishment. Again, this is the CPC agenda of hate.

Here we once again have another attempt by the Harpercons to chip away at something they hate - equality for gay people. They know that they cannot attack gay marriage directly so they instructed their lawyers to pick away at the basic legitimacy of gay marriage in an area where they didn't think people would take much notice. Test the waters for potential dangers, attempt to gradually shift people's minds toward a world in which gay marriage is not legitimate. So in an unprecedented effort they chose to attack marriages which the state would not normally question - marriages of people who reside elsewhere. It is a test for blow-back. The Canadian government has never brought into question the issue of how foreign governments have viewed a marriage. If your marriage is recognized here that has all that  has historically mattered. As one commentator pointed out, marriages between Jews and Muslims are illegal in Saudi Arabia (one of Canada's great allies). But imagine the uproar if Justice Department lawyers had argued that a Jewish-Muslim couple that had been married in Canada could not be divorced because they were never actually married!! We don't, of course, have to imagine because the government would never allow this to happen. This point demonstrates very clearly that this has been a very clear and conscious effort by the government to delegitimize gay marriage.

Make no mistake, the Harpercons are engaged in a concerted effort to rightwing, born-again Christian, intolerance of the US deep-south right here to Canada. And keep in mind they are doing it with the support of about one quarter of the adult population. Now that's democracy!

I am a Billionaire Socialist . . . . Oh no, I mean just a Socialist.

So it is official then. The Conservatives have now seamlessly entered into the crazy realm of politics which we have usually, up until now, reserved for the more nutty elements of the Republicans in the US and among which Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin are two of the primary stars. Those of us who have paid attention and watched closely have known for some time that many members of the Conservative Caucus suffer from delusions and narcissistic complexes. Many of them are religious extremism and hold racist views. Though the media has largely ignored their worst excesses (for reasons that I will surely never understand), we in the real world know that our Prime Minister is a dispensationalist with suspicious ties to Western separatists and racists. We know that there is at least one Cabinet Minster who has hidden his or her homosexuality in a remarkable act of hypocrisy. We know that with the cooperation of a very sympathetic media the Harpercons have done a fairly good job of keeping their extremist and wacky views out of the public consciousness. They have done this because these people know that the Canada that they want to create is overwhelmingly opposed by the vast majority of Canadians and the Harpercons therefore have to make every effort possible to act through stealth and avoid accountability. When a friendly media (even the CBC has been remarkably easy on Harper and his thugs) is not enough, the Harpercons obfuscate, divert, attack and smear others, shut down government, and destroy every possible democratic avenue that they can while the LPC has either supported them or simply looked on in confused bemusement.

Every once in a while the nuttiness comes shining through despite the unprecedented controls on MP's public appearances and speeches. Yesterday we saw one such example of Conservative Party wackiness in the words of Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver who is boiling mad over the fact that Canada has a system of public accountability when it comes to major, environmentally risky projects. If there is one thing that the Harpercons can't stand, it is public accountability. This bias is part of their overt hatred of democracy in any form and their aversion to facts and the opinions of experts. The Conservatives even suggest that they will use their parliamentary majority to undermine the whole business of having experts and the public be able to voice official concern over the Conservative's neanderthal environmental approach. I would expect no less from mindless, backward brutes.

The best part of Mr. Oliver's rant against democracy, and the reason I bothered to post against this tyrannical cabal, was his claim that "without exaggeration" those concerned over the introduction of a potentially dangerous pipeline in BC were being financed by "billionaire socialists" in the US. This talk is right out of the Tea Party playbook - avoid the facts of environmental dangers by fabricating the existence of socialist opponents, drawing on the red-baiting of the cold-war era. Once again, it is facts that the Conservative caucus is afraid of. There are, of course, no billionaire socialists in the US, or anywhere else for that matter. One simply could not be a billionaire and a socialist at the same time. Next we will hear the Harpercons talk of Christian-Atheists! When pressed, the illustrious and powerfully ignorant Mr. Oliver named names, as rightwing extremists are wont to do, and mentioned the existence of George Soros as evidence of these shadowy billionaire socialists who are financing Canadian environmentalists. Rightwingers in Canada have a long history of attacking Mr. Soros because he is a man with money who has the gall to be an advocate of actual democracy. And as any good Conservative knows, a democrat and a socialist are essentially the same thing. Now, if I were Mr. Oliver I would be very careful what I said about George Soros because few men have the resources to legally ensure that you are accountable for the things you say about him. But I am sure than in this case, the words of a rightwing Canadian just gave Mr. Soros a moment of amusement. I mean, imagine accusing one of the world's richest men who made much of his wealth in currency speculation (one of the most overtly capitalist enterprises there is) of being a socialist! If the accusation wasn't coming from a minister in a sitting government it would be hilarious rather than terribly frightening.

However, even in the US, Tea Party opinions are more and more often being recognized for what they are - diversions from any sense of reality. As I have said before, the longer the Harpercons are in office the more their real instinct of ignorance and hate will emerge and eventually even their friends in the media will no longer be able to hide their real MO from the public eye. Just as Kevin O'leary is the best possible spokesperson for the left because his extremist form of capitalist hate, the Harpercons, with their hatred for democracy and facts, will become their own worst enemies. I await that day patiently.