Will Canadians Finally Rise Up Against the Evils of Neoconservatism?

I mentioned the musician Tom Morello, who had appeared on Bill Maher recently, discussing social issues.  I was so impressed with his genuine concern for societal imbalance and dedication to several causes.

Morello spoke of the "occupation of Wall Street" by folks who had just had enough.  One member of the panel belittled the protesters, claiming there were only a handful, but clearly there are more than he would have liked us to believe.

In fact, at least 800 were arrested, and the numbers are rising, not only of arrests but of demonstrators.

The group, called Occupy Wall Street, has been protesting against the finance industry and other issues by camping out in Zuccotti park in New York.  During the afternoon a long line of protesters numbering several thousand snaked through the streets towards the landmark bridge across the East River with the aim of ending at a Brooklyn park.

However, during the march across the bridge groups of protesters sat down or strayed into the road from the pedestrian pathway. They were then arrested in large numbers, and held for several hours, by officers who were part of a heavy police presence shepherding the march along its path.  At one stage 500 protesters were blocked off by police on the bridge. At least one journalist, freelancer Natasha Lennard for the New York Times, was among those arrested.

The protesters then took their march to police headquarters.

Erin Larkins, a Columbia University graduate student who says she and her boyfriend have significant student loan debt, was among the thousands of protesters on the bridge. She said a friend persuaded her to join the march and she's glad she did.  "I don't think we're asking for much, just to wake up every morning not worrying whether we can pay the rent, or whether our next meal will be rice and beans again".

400 of America's wealthiest citizens, have more money than the bottom 155 million combined.  Yet when Wall Street gambled and lost, they were bailed out, while thousands at the bottom were thrown out.

Thrown out of their jobs, out their homes and out of the government's concern.

I'm pleased to learn that a similar protest is planned for Canada.

Inspired by protesters along Wall Street and in other U.S. cities, hundreds are expected to occupy Toronto's Bay Street in two weeks to air their various grievances against the financial system and its wealthiest companies.  The protest near Wall Street in New York is entering its third week, and doesn't appear to be slowing down. In fact, a police crackdown has only emboldened protesters and some are now expecting the "occupation" to continue into the winter.

The organizers of Occupy Toronto plan to descend on King and Bay Streets on the morning of Saturday, Oct. 15 to set a base of operation to prepare for a march on that Monday. Organizers hope the occupation will last into the following week.

It's all we have now. 

Michael Moore was also a guest on the program and his discussion with Morello turned toward citizen activism.  They agreed that it would just take one person.  One "last" person.

The last person to be thrown out of their home.  The last person to lose their job to outsourcing or downsizing.  The last person to be refused medical treatment because their insurance didn't cover it.

Rosa Parks was the last person, symbolically speaking, to move to the back of the bus, simply because she was black, and she sparked the Civil Rights movement.

In Canada, wonderful little Brigette Depape, stood alone against Stephen Harper and the Senate.  She took a beating from the media and a dressing down from Senator David Tkachuk, one of the sorriest excuses for a human being who ever lived.
 
Yet Tkachuk prevailed.  We chose corrupt not courageous.
 
In July Kai Nagata quit his job as CTV's Quebec City Bureau Chief, over the state of the Canadian media, and their refusal to sound the alarm over the Harper Doctrine, a rehash of the Bush Doctrine.

But the media is still spinning themselves silly, afraid to stop, fearing they might land on a real political news story.  There are exceptions, but sadly, too few.

So if you're tired of corporate tax breaks, deregulation that threatens our environment, and the constant pandering to the rich, join the protest on October 15.

For heaven sake, a former Goldman-Sachs employee is now running the Bank of Canada.  Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper have signed us on to new accounting rules that allow corporations to lie and cheat, without penalty, while toughening laws against far weaker, and less damaging, criminal acts.

When are we going to say enough is enough?  Who will be our "last"?

Shock Doctrined Through Think Tanks

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

I've been reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, and what I find interesting, is that American Imperialism over the past half century or so, has followed a pattern.

One laid out by the Chicago school and Milton Friedman. And it was done under the guise of fighting Socialism/Communism, but was really about taking over the economics of other nations, for corporate interests.

Chile provides an excellent example of how the system works.

In an attempt to combat the socialist principles of leading Latin American economist Raul Prebisch, the Chicago School offered free market courses at a Chilean university.

This was the brainchild of Albion Patterson, director of the U.S. International Cooperation Administration in Chile, and Theodore W. Schultz, chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago, who called on Friedman to work his magic.

The two men came up with a plan that would eventually turn Santiago, a hotbed of state-centred economics, into its opposite—a laboratory for cutting-edge free-market experiments, giving Milton Friedman what he had longed for: a country in which to test his cherished theories. The original plan was simple: the U.S. government would pay to send Chilean students to study economics at what pretty much everyone recognized was the most rabidly anti-"pink" school in the world—the University of Chicago. Schultz and his colleagues at the university would also be paid to travel to Santiago to conduct research into the Chilean economy and to train students and professors in Chicago School fundamentals. (1)

Friedman and his gang would also bring the media on board, and not surprisingly, the president of their largest newspaper, El Mercurio, would become Augustus Pinochet's economic minister after the U.S. led coup.

However, another important step in trying to turn the Southern Cone , and indeed the rest of the free world, to the right, came from another faculty member at the Chicago School, Friedrich von Hayek.

Hayek had come up with the notion of the corporate funded free market think tank, that he suggested should "present themselves as civil society". They churn out report after report, poll after poll, all to promote corporate interests.

And Chile was no exception. The most prominent are Libertad y Desarrollo (now the Latin American institute) and Centro de Estudios Públicos , both heralded as the saviour of Chile (next to Milton Friedman, bombs, guns and assassins).

Alejandro Chafuen wrote a piece in April of 2010: Think Tanks and the Transformation of the Chilean Economy

In it he not only praises Libertad y Desarrollo and Centro de Estudios Públicos , but also Canada's own Fraser Institute.

... the Fraser Institute in Canada, ranked today as the best market oriented institute outside the United States. Fraser has a huge influence in a Canada which is overcoming the US in economic freedoms, transparency, and several other areas.

But who is this Alejandro Chafuen?

He is the past President of the Atlas Foundation and a Senior Fellow at the Acton Institute. In fact the Acton Institute was started with funds provided by the Atlas Foundation, and is an extension of the Religious Right.

Atlas was, and is, a major sponsor of the Acton Institute run by former faith healer, evangelical, gay community organizer, and now Catholic priest, Bob Sirico. Sirico ran fundamentalist faith healing meetings until he came out as gay. Then he moved on to the Metropolitan Community Churches and started running the Gay Community Center in Hollywood ... Acton officials got heavily involved in the debate on gay marriage. With Sirico back in the closet (though some conservatives don’t think so) the position they have been taking has been to pander to bigots on the Religious Right.

The Atlas Foundation also helps to finance the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which was started in 2002, by Conservative MP John Weston. The CCF has ties to the Harper government and Canada's Neoconservative movement.

They were also behind attack ads run in the U.S. to oppose Obama's healthcare plan.

Donald Gutstein wrote an excellent book: Not a Conspiracy Theory, in which he exposes the myriad of think tanks and foundations propping up the Harper government. Gutstein tells us to follow the money, and the few connections I provided above, are only a tip of the iceberg.

If we are going to engage in non-violent civil disobedience, it's important to know what we're up against. The media is constantly quoting polls and reports from these groups, to defend or explain this government's policies.

We have to do what Gutstein suggests and follow the money. Google the name of the group or the person quoted. It won't take long to find they belong to some corporate funded think tank or "advocacy" group, many with planted MPs.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (Jason Kenney)
The Fraser Institute (Jason Kenney, Rob Anders)
The Montreal Institute (Maxime Bernier)
The Civitas Society (Jason Kenney)
The National Citizens Coalition (Stephen Harper and Rob Anders)

The list is endless.

Once you trace the origin, email the columnist or own the comments section. Our best weapon is education, including the education of the media. Maybe if we become enough of a pain, they may start providing some balance.

Brigette DePape started something here, putting her job on the line to make a statement. But it's not enough to simply "stop" Stephen Harper. We must fight against the entire movement, before it destroys us.

Sources:

1. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, By Naomi Klein, Vintage Canada, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-676-97801-8

The New Conservative Party was Not a Marriage But an Abduction

As the Conservative Convention attempts to change the rules in determining leadership, many in the media are calling the "new" party a marriage between Red Tories and the Reform/Alliance.

This was not a marriage, it was an abduction. The majority of Red Tories had no interest in joining the neoconservative movement. We knew what it was and knew that it was all wrong for Canada.

Back in the day when we were allowed to call Stephen Harper a neoconservative, one of those Red Tories wrote a book on the subject. Beyond Greed: A Traditional Conservative Confronts Neoconservative Excess.

The author of that book was Hugh Segal, a man who has now joined the Harper cheer leading squad as a senator, embracing all of the undemocratic maneuvers he once sounded the alarm over.

Reform's power in the federal election of 1993, achieved during a clear Progressive Conservative vacuum both in leadership and policy, emerged from the capacity to divide. Increasing anti-Quebec animosities in the west, encouraging intransigence on native land claims, feeding an anti-politician and anti-government cynicism, arguing for tougher law and order treatment of the most juvenile of criminals, doubting the appropriateness of liberal refugee policies, attacking equalization between rich and poor regions in the name of fiscal restraint — all these speak to the Reform party's attempt to maximize their gains from the power to divide. (1)

When Brigette DePape stood in silent protest as this neoconservative agenda was being realized, she shared the concerns that Segal once had.

Anne Lagacé Dowson writes for The Hour:

Parliament has never witnessed such excitement during what is usually a sombre event – the Speech from the Throne, which outlines the government’s plans for the next session of Parliament, such as the Conservative scheme to cancel taxes for the richest and most powerful corporations. Reading between the lines, the speech also means that more Canadians will be imprisoned for what were once minor infractions in the relentless war on drugs, never mind that last week a blue ribbon panel, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, pronounced the war on drugs a lost war. More Canadians going to jail is just dandy since Harper intends to build spanking new prisons.

Picture the scene. Harper is a control freak and on that day he had total control. Control over the Commons because he won the election by splitting the opposition vote using the basest of Republican scare tactics. Control over the Senate because he appointed three Tory hacks who had just lost their elections, which gave him a majority of Senate seats. Control over the Governor-General. Former governors-general Michaëlle Jean and Adrienne Clarkson both maintained a certain regal aloofness from the governments that appointed them. Not Harper’s appointee, David Johnston. At his swearing-in ceremony we were witness to the extraordinary moment of the Governor-General giving a fist-pumping cheer to the new Conservative cabinet.

Johnston was an old Brian Mulroney crony who tried to suppress the inquiry into the Airbus scandal.

The Reform party has maximized its gains from what Segal called the "power to divide". But the senator also warned that Canada's neoconservatives risked becoming "captives of their own propaganda".

Anyone following Stephen Harper's career for more than a week and a half, know that he is not in any way imaginable a moderate. However, in his path to power he has had to tap into the worst of people, and now that "worst" wants action. And for the next four years, that worst will get it, while the Canadian identity is systematically destroyed.

But what's worse than Harper's tapping into the "worst", with all of his Quebec, women, progressives, gay bashing; is that he has used the power of the American neconservative movement to get where he is today. And they too have come calling.

He has sold the Canadian soul to the devil, and the devil has a signed contract.

Now About This Marriage Nonsense

The new Conservative Party of Canada is not the offspring of a marriage between Red Tories and the Reform/Alliance. It is an illegitimate child of a backroom affair. The bastard of Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper. Or if I can continue to be crude, the result of a gang rape.


The bait was a signed contract between Peter Mackay and another PC leadership contender, David Orchard. Mackay promised that if Orchard threw his votes to him, he would not try to unite with the Reformers.

Orchard, perhaps not willing to take Mackay at his word, demanded that he sign a contract. MacKay did, but before the ink was dry, met his political lover Harper, and a new generation of conservatives was born. (You can read more about that here and here)

Oh, but the Progressive Conservatives voted on the merger, you say.

Yeah, about that. Enter Craig Chandler, a card carrying member of Canada's Religious Right.

The controversial Chandler had worked behind the scenes to not only "unite the right", but also to have Stephen Harper head up the new party. He had held a 'Roots of Change' conference, to draw in the fringe elements. And during the vote on the merger, created The 2Cards Campaign.

Chandler, the founder of the Progressive Group for Independent Business (nothing at all like its name implies), ran for the PC leadership to get to the convention, where he helped to defeat Resolution 9, which sought to ban dual memberships in the PC and Alliance. He then launched the 2Cards initiative.

As you are well aware both the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and the Canadian Alliance are sending the Merger Package for full ratification. The Tories and the Canadian Alliance are sending the proposal to their memberships and each party is different and this the real issue. Our polling numbers from The Strategy Group Inc show that 80 - 83.5% of Canadian Alliance members would support any effort for a united conservative movement. Also, since the Canadian Alliance only requires a simple majority to accept the Merger Package our efforts will not be focused on persuading Canadian Alliance members.

However, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada is where the battleground is. The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada's Constitution requires a 2/3 majority vote from participating members to ratify this Merger package and this is where the problem lies. ... How can we insure that the Tory membership will embrace the Merger Package? Quite simply, by following the initial plan of the www.2cards.ca campaign.

This meant that Alliance members would get to vote twice. The one within their own party was a lock, but the majority of PCs were opposed to the merger.

It worked and the hostile takeover began.

Canadians Not Blameless

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." Plato

Canadian artist Joe Mendleson, a former PC insider, does blame Mackay, but also blames the Canadian people for being asleep at the wheel.

“I view us as a people in decline,” he says. “We are a society that is very lost and completely uninvolved with democracy.” He himself has been involved in the past, becoming a card-carrying Progressive Conservative working for Prairie populist David Orchard in the 2003 leadership race won by Peter MacKay.

“I was betrayed by Peter MacKay,” he says, referring to the deal between MacKay and Orchard in which MacKay promised, if he became leader with Orchard’s backing, not to seek a union with the Canadian Alliance. The deal was eventually broken when the PCs joined the new Conservative Party with Harper as its leader.

His disenchantment since has only deepened. Canadians, he says, have become “anesthetized – they’re asleep about their country ..."

He calls on us to protest. We have, but I believe there will be larger protests in the near future. People are just not mad enough yet.

Another Canadian artist also wrote of the "new" Conservative Party. Robert Bateman in the Wildlife Art Journal says: Why I Am A 21st Century Conservative

I am a conservative. This is why I deeply resent the neo-conservatives who are not conservatives at all. They are the opposite: radicals who are destroying cherished institutions and wreaking havoc on our human heritage as well as our natural heritage.

I do not consider destroyers to be conservative.

So many cherished institutions have been built with great care and dedication through the decades by well-trained people with good hearts. These are being smashed and weakened in great haste by politicians and ideologues who do not even understand what they destroy. Creation is long and difficult; destruction is quick.

Hugh Segal once espoused the same values as Mendleson and Bateman.

Power in a democracy comes not from the ability to divide or even the ability to direct. Power in a democracy ultimately comes from the capacity to persuade, and be persuaded by, the essential moderation of the population as a whole.
The ability to persuade is based on trust, and trust is based on a clear and established practice of not abusing that trust. Using government to divide, using government to impose narrow fundamentalist biases, using government to encourage unfairness by sins of omission or commission is precisely such an abuse.

Leaders or putative leaders who encourage a retreat from moderation seek to bolster the legitimacy of their narrow views and purposes by seeing the population become as disengaged as they are from a balanced view. These are the leaders who work not to prevent crisis but to create it and expand upon it. They seek to leverage it for their own purposes rather than prevent it by true and fair-minded actions.

The moderate imperative explicitly provides that a democracy's only real power is power shared and used sparingly, and where possible not at all. The legitimacy of a public office holder or aspirant seeking to lead by building a shared consensus about common responsibilities to each other is more enduring than the opponent who seeks power by turning one demographically distinct voter group against another. (1)

Boy did he fall hard.

So to my friends in the media. Never, ever suggest that Red Tories were privy to the building of this dictatorship. Aside from those like Segal who have sold out for power, most of us detest Stephen Harper as much as the Liberals do.

Instead of doing background checks on pages, maybe we should be doing them on these "new" Conservative senators. I'd like to know the exact date that Segal contracted out his soul.

Sources:

1. Beyond Greed: A Traditional Conservative Confronts Neoconservative Excess, By Hugh Segal, Stoddart Publishing, 1997, ISBN: 0-7737-3053-2, Pg. 153-155

David Tkachuk Has No Moral Authority to Criticize Brigette DePape

In the Toronto Star this morning Senator David Tkachuk lights into Brigette DePape, and those who call her actions heroic.

How dare he?

Mr. Tkachuk represents everything that is wrong with our current Senate. A crony appointment of Brian Mulroney's, who was brought on board to help the fortunes of his government, eventually toppled by corruption.

Not the first time for Tkachuk. He was a personal advisor to Grant Devine, former Premier of Saskatchewan, whose government was so corrupt, several MLAs ended up in prison.

Two senators with ties to both Mulroney and Devine, were eventually led out of the Senate in handcuffs.

Let's take a little stroll down memory lane with this high and mighty senator, shall we? Like the CBC piece: From politics to prison in Saskatchewan, broadcast February 8, 1999.

It discusses the "bad actors" of Devine's neoconservative government, including David Tkachuk, first appearing at the 4:40 mark of the tape. He is described as a "mean drunk" and many MLAs claimed to "hate his guts". It is also said that he once accosted the daughter of a Tory MLA, and ripped the blouse off another young female politician.

You can also check out some of the Hansard records of the Saskatchewan Legislature where they question what he does to earn $350 per day (in 1984), and also raise the alarm over his travel expenses.

But he had been instrumental in getting this gang of thugs elected, so when Mulroney called him to join the Senate, it was because he needed advice on how to get a corrupt government re-elected. Tkachuk failed because they were reduced to two seats.

This man is nothing but a hyperpartisan bully and like the idealistic Jack Wolfe, who got a glimpse of the ugly side of politics, Brigette DePape, no doubt went into her job believing that she would be at the hub of Canadian democracy.

What she saw instead was an unelected senate, overturn bills passed by elected parliamentarians, without so much as a backward glance. And she met two senators who may land in jail because of their involvement with the Conservative election financing scheme.

And she saw Stephen Harper treat both Parliament and the Senate as his own posse, doing the exact opposite of what Canadians wanted or needed, to fill the pockets of the Corporate execs.

So no Mr. Tkachuk, Ms DePape did not dishonour our institutions. You and your cronies are doing that everyday. And she does not have to go to Afghanistan to learn about democracy, because she could teach you more on the subject than you could ever know.

I will forgive his comment about the Senate that "men with all their frailties do all they can to preserve."

It is not his misogyny that this young woman exposed, and it has nothing to do with her defying an oath.

She forced him, and others like him, to look in the mirror.

And they will never forgive her for that.

A bit of background on Grant Devine and the Saskatchewan Government and the Mulroney Connection.

Brian Mulroney Continued: Marjory LeBreton and Entitlement to Taxpayers Purse

Tom Lukiwski and the Real Saskatchewan Scandal

Tom Lukiwski, Grant Devine and the Religious Right

Tom Lukiwski: From Mouseland to Dirty Rats

RCMP: The Illegitimacy of Democracy and the Erosion of Public Trust

What are You Doing June 10? Come to the Conservative Convention

There is a rally planned to Beat Back The Tory Attack - June 10th in Ottawa

I believe Brigette DePape is attending as she appears on the video. What a remarkable young woman.

Inspired by the Arab Springs, she is generating a desire for change.

Remember that another young woman, Asmaa Mahfouz, who posted a video on Facebook, sparked the protests in Egypt, when she encouraged others to meet her in Tahir Square. The power of one.

And another young woman in the video below speaks passionately about her country and what that protest meant for her.

She wears a navy blue shirt that says, "I love my country. It's the government I'm afraid of." She speaks passionately about what she wants and why she's protesting.

More power of one.

The senate, in response to DePape's protest, is now pondering tighter controls and more intensive background checks for pages. How ridiculous. She did not have a bomb and her background is a Canadian who loves her country.

Maybe some of these senators who are under Harper's control could learn something about democracy.

Ned Franks is Dead Wrong About Brigette DePape

I was busy yesterday and didn't get to say as much as I would have liked about Brigette DePape. Then I read Ned Franks column in the Star this morning, and couldn't possibly find enough words to tell him why he is dead wrong about this young woman.

Professor Franks is a constitutional expert but apparently not much of an expert on democracy.

Because if he believes that what took place on May 2, was democracy in action, then he clearly needs to read a few books on the subject.

This was the most undemocratic election in our history. Fifty-seven Conservative MPs were no shows, and almost as many NDP, the same.

Our prime minister limited questions to five, and even then only answered the ones he wanted to answer. Fences were put up and one person arrested simply for throwing a teddy bear over the barricades. Another because she had a picture of herself with Michael Ignatieff on Facebook.

If you weren't on a list you didn't get in. Period. In Kingston, the police drew an imaginary line for us not to cross, and when one one man fell over it, tripping on the curb, he was thrown against a police car and hauled away.

It was defined by dirty tricks, bogus phone calls, and Gestapo like control.

And with less than 40% of the popular vote (25% of eligible voters), Stephen Harper has almost 100% control of our country. This is democracy?

This young woman, and others like her, are smart enough to see that our system is badly broken.

And if we expect her to treat our institutions with respect, our current government is not leading by example. A 200 page manual instructing their MPs on how to disrupt Parliamentary committees.

Dean Del Mastro conducts himself like an animal, Pierre Polievre has had to have his mike shut off he was so obnoxious, and Peter Braid has attacked witnesses so voraciously, they have trembled with fear.

This government was found in contempt of Parliament, and yet they were able to run for re-election.

Bev Oda doctored a contract after it was signed and yet she was able to run for re-election.

Young people are not going to sit by for the next four to five years, as Canada continues its race to the bottom.

Miss DePape may not have taken her rightful place on the bus, but hopefully, she has earned her place in history.

We need to encourage our youth to get involved, not vilify them when they do, in the only way they can. Through civil disobedience.

I applaud her and look forward to more of the same, from Canadians of all ages.

Brigette DePape is my Heroine

This wonderful young woman has put us all to shame. Brigette DePape, the young page who put her job on the line to make an important political statement.

All we will have for the next four years is civil disobedience.

She was chastised for disrespecting the institution, but who disrespects it more than Stephen Harper and his minions?

She said that her parents are proud of her and so am I.