A story out of Kingston this week has gained some media coverage. An albatross, not indigenous to the Northern Hemisphere, was washed up on the shores of Wolfe Island and there is a campaign to have him sent to a more natural habitat.
Sandy Pines Wildlife Centre in Napanee, Ontario, have always been involved in amazing animal rescue and they are once again coming through for this little guy.
The yellow-nosed albatross found washed up on the shore of Wolfe Island just over a week ago and currently convalescing at Sandy Pines Wildlife Centre in Napanee needs the public's help. A 15-foot, above-ground pool, to be filled with saltwater, has been donated to the centre to help the albatross in its recovery. Now the centre is looking for someone to install the pool for them, and someone who can transport the saltwater to the centre. The bird needs the saltwater to maintain its wings' waterproofing, said Leah Birmingham, assistant director at the centre.
After consulting with experts, however, it was decided that the bird's only chance of survival was to be released in its native southern hemisphere. "It's come to our attention that he would not be able to navigate the winds they face in the northern hemisphere to get back to the southern hemisphere," Birmingham said. As a result, the centre is currently trying to arrange for the bird to be flown to a reserve in South Africa, where it will be released back into its natural habitat.
We need to save this albatross because it helps to define who we are as Canadians, with a long tradition of helping strangers who wash up on our shores.
I posted the other day on a young woman who had faced an horrific ordeal at the G-20, but instead of hiding under the covers in fear, she faced her fears and spoke at the rallies protesting the abuses.
She is not a thug or an anarchist, but a bright and articulate young woman.
The video of her speech was posted on CAPP and I found it very inspiring. I'm so glad that I can now put a name to this young heroine.
At the end of June, I went to Toronto to exercise my civil rights and march in active opposition to the G8 and G20 meetings being held there. On Sunday June 27th, I attended a jail solidarity protest that was peaceful. Without warning a line of riot police started moving towards us, and while running away, I was shot twice with rubber bullets, then arrested and incarcerated for 30 hours. I have been charged with obstruction of a peace officer. I have never been more terrified, more dehumanized or more in pain than I was that day. I wish my story were unique.
I wish her story was unique too, but sadly it is all too common.
And after much denial, the police now admit that they did indeed use rubber bullets on peaceful protesters. It was tough to deny with so much video evidence.
Rubber bullets were fired at the crowd outside the Eastern Ave. set up during the G20 Summit, a Toronto Police spokesman said Tuesday — one day after releasing erroneous information. Mark Pugash corrected a statement he made Monday to the Toronto Sun saying no rubber bullets were fired outside the temporary prisoner processing centre, saying he had received the wrong information.
And Joe Warmington, who first broke the story that the police were told to "stand down", when they were in a position to stop the vandalism, is again raising the question about the untendered 453 million dollar contract that Stephen Harper gave to an American firm.
Just how much of the $453-million RCMP budget from the federal government did Contemporary Security Canada receive for its contract for last month’s G8 and G20 summits? Could this work — given to a previously unlicensed company with roots in British Columbia and Utah — have been accomplished for less by licensed Ontario security companies? Was the tendering process fair and were appropriate conflict of interest guidelines followed to see who got to work the Hunstville and Toronto events? And how many out of town people were flown in?
Auditor General Sheila Fraser will be investigating the matter. Harper may wish he had jumped into "fake lake" when he had the chance.
So two of Harper's choices to head up important agencies have turned out to be duds. And true to form, Stephen Harper is not talking.
The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to the Star’s request for comment Monday. The RCMP told the CBC that a workplace assessment is being commissioned. The protest against Elliott, who became the first civilian to head the Mounties in July 2007, comes a month after controversial comments made by Canada’s top spy, CSIS director Richard Fadden.
Fadden said the Canadian Security intelligence Service had two provincial cabinet ministers and a number of municipal politicians under surveillance for their relationships with foreign governments. Both Elliott and Fadden were appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Boy when he falls he falls hard. The headline suggests that voters are turning away from the Liberals, but I don't see it that way.
Harper is now below his threshold.
He has spent 10 million dollars running Ignatieff "Just Visiting" ads and spent almost 100 million dollars, approved by Guy Giorno, on tax payer funded self-promotion.
What is he going to campaign on?
31%?
Maybe he shouldn't have had Canadians beat up while he lounged at "fake lake". And Maybe he shouldn't be giving corporate tax cuts when we need all the money we can get.
Or maybe, just maybe, Canadians are finally waking up. Dare I dream?
When Ontario's Harris government wanted to find out how account holders felt about the idea of privatizing the Province of Ontario Savings Office, it simply gave the holders' names, phone numbers and account balances to a private polling firm to conduct a survey.
In 1997, the Ontario Privatization Secretariat, under Privatization Minister Rob Sampson, obtained all the names, addresses, phone numbers, and account balances of depositors at the provincially owned Province of Ontario Savings Office, and turned them over to Angus Reid Group Inc. This information was hidden until January 2000.
Kenneth Kagen, a lawyer with the Ministry of Finance, specializing in freedom of information and privacy issues: "It is arguable that the Province of Ontario Savings Office's transfer of the personal information may be properly characterized as an authorized use of such personal information."Said Anne Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner:
"Under what stretch of the imagination would this be characterized in such a way that an individual would have reasonably expected this use of their account information? It's just too big a stretch."
Rob Sampson was the man who helped Tony Clement sell one of our highways. (they sold everything that wasn't nailed down, or at least tried to)
It was the minister, Tony Clement, who went first, steadfastly defending a decision at least ten of his Twitter followers support. He lamented the intrusiveness, he bemoaned the coercion. He managed to conclude his opening statement with the following shell game of a sentence: ”I encourage Canadians to fill out the national household survey should they choose to do so.” He seemed for the most part to be working on commission, paid per uses of the phrases “fair balance” and “jail” ... Not once, at least to these ears, did the minister concede that not a single Canadian has ever been so punished.
Parliamentary hearings on the census changes started with a bang on Tuesday morning, with opposition MPs grilling Industry Minister Tony Clement and accusing his government of creating a "manufactured crisis" over Canada's mandatory census. Liberal MP and Industry, Science and Technology critic Marc Garneau opened the questions to Clement, who oversees Statistics Canada,asking whether it's true the Privy Council Office and Finance Department recommended against these changes to the census — a situation related in some news reports.
Clement said he had "no knowledge" of what the Privy Council Office or Finance would have recommended in this case. He said his government altered the census to strike a "reasonable balance" between the need for the data and the desire to respect Canadians' privacy and not compel them to answer under threat of fines or jail time. His party's research showed that more complaints came in from citizens with each successive census and complaints "bubbled up" each time a new round began. Opposition MPs disputed the industry minister's claim that concerns about the census were widespread, with NDP MP Charlie Angus accusing Clement of "deliberately" mis-characterizing facts and making this decision based on ideology rather than fact.
... the census controversy was typical of the “rampage” against Canadian institutions the Conservatives have been on since taking power. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Environment Canada, The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Rights & Democracy, and now Statistics Canada… Which institution is the Harper government going to attack next?” he asked. Mr. Pratte went on to contend that the Harper government’s behaviour towards Statistics Canada has been guided by “simplistic ideology” and is further proof of the government’s “incompetence.” He argued that “a competent government would have asked Statistics Canada to do an in depth comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of mandatory versus voluntary census questionnaires […] Instead, the government decided on these changes, despite the reluctance of Statistics Canada, on the sole basis of some calls received by MPs at their riding offices. There are school boards governed more seriously than this.”
Here's the thing that does bother people though. The long form threatens 20% of all Canadians (that is how many are 'selected') with jail or other penalties if they don't cough up the info. Remember, these aren't people who are applying for permits or benefits. These are citizens just minding their own business. If you are among the groups of people who are demanding this free info I have a question for you based on past 'quizzes'. Do you think it is right that you can threaten your neighbour with jail time if she doesn't tell you if she has mental issues or not? Or who does what chores in the house? Or whether she is a Jew or not? Don't you find that one even a little bit chilling?
What I find chilling is that Stockwell Day is still in our government.
With Harper's tight controlling of the message when it comes to the War in Afghanistan, these leaked documents could spell trouble.
"We have certainly not misled the Canadian public in any way, shape or form," Cannon said, calling the government's handling of information on Afghanistan "extremely transparent". "This is about leaked US documents, and yes, our government is concerned that operational leaks could endanger the lives of our men and women in Afghanistan," he added.
"Extremely transparent... Not misled the Canadian public in any way"? That's all they've done since taking over in 2006. Harper intentionally put our troops into the most dangerous situations to impress George Bush, but misled us into believing they were building schools.
I don't think we can simply walk away next year, after the mess we've made of things, but this invasion was doomed from the beginning. And what's different about these leaked documents is that none will be redacted, and apparently there are more to come.
There is one thing that really angered me though and it has nothing to do with the Conservatives mishandling of this mission. It was the fact that the US claims to be still "looking" for Bin Laden. The man has been dead since December 2001.
Last week, Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, visited Islamabad to announce US$500-million in aid to Pakistan. During her trip, she repeated she believes Osama bin Laden is hiding somewhere in the country.
Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader. "The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Usama alive or dead," the source said.
Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.
A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada
Although many Canadians don't yet realize it, we are at war; a worldwide class war of capital versus everyone else, a war which the bubble of the Keynesian welfare state temporarily obscured. In this war, the Right has daunting weapons. Over the past 20 years, capital has forged a unified coalition of business, politics, and fundamentalist religion. It owns most of the national and local media ... And through speculative manipulations, they have the power to disrupt the entire Canadian economy. As a result, they wield enormous influence over all levels of government and public opinion. The Right speaks with almost one voice and its vision is insinuating itself into the popular consensus. (1)
We are indeed at war, but our enemy is not the police, who are only following orders. And our enemy is not the corporate media, who write what they are told to write. And our enemy is not even Stephen Harper, who in this phenomenon of image politics, is only the current face of a formidable movement. He has no more power than we do.
Our enemy is Neoconservatism.
And now that we've been able to define that, we need to mobilize our allies, if we have any hope at all of restoring our democracy: "Because the success of the Right comes through carefully managing public opinion, the starting point for defeating the Right is through creating a well-informed public." (1)
Breaking Down the Conservative Myth
In 2004 Philip Agre wrote a paper: What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?
Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to conservatives for a quarter century. In order to start winning again, liberals must answer two simple questions: what is conservatism, and what is wrong with it? As it happens, the answers to these questions are also simple:
Q: What is conservatism? A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism? A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world. (2)
What Agre is describing is not Conservatism but Neoconservatism, and therein lies the problem. The party now headed by Stephen Harper is not our historical Conservative "Tory" party, and we need to constantly remind Canadians of that. Neoconservatism is the antithesis of Conservatism and relates more to fascism than democracy.
But rather than force a demagogue on a democratic society, they wrap him up in a cloak of moderation and sell him as a man (or woman) of the people.
One time girlfriend of Leo Strauss (who is deemed to be the father of the neoconservative movement), Hannah Arendt, herself a respected political philosopher, once questioned whether Nazi Germany was in fact a full totalitarian dictatorship, since it depended so heavily on a "certain societal consensus". (3) Their success depended on directing and exploiting public opinion, and they did it masterfully.
That consensus was engineered by the masterful propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Today it is engineered by people like Karl Rove and Guy Giorno, who not only help to get their "leader" elected, but stick around to make sure they do as they're told. And when the government gets into trouble they send their "leader" on a photo-op, so they never have to wear the controversy, leaving others to clean up the mess.
Defining Our Allies - We're Stronger Than we Think
The conventional wisdom in electoral politics has been that getting the support of great numbers of people was more important than courting the wealthy who had money to spend. Rather than pleasing the well-off, good politics decreed that a party design policies to appeal to the great mass of middle-income voters, not the top 20 percent, but the 60 percent in the middle-income brackets. The bottom 20 percent could be safely ignored, as they could be assumed not to vote. However, their basic needs would be covered, not forgotten or left to charity. The favoured electoral strategy was to unite the middle, build support around programmes with wide appeal, and show how each benefits from programmes available to all. (4)
But neoconservatism takes a different approach. They unite upper-income voters around a programme that appeals to the interests of the wealthy, and then convince many middle- and low-income people of the advantages of more business and less government.
But more importantly they create common enemies of the 20% of society that are a nation's most vulnerable. Those who are invisible.
What about the economic insecurity of our poorest fellow citizens? Why can't our politics address this? It can't be because everyone has shared the fruits of our recent economic boom. It can't be because the poor don't exist. It must be because they have become invisible. (5)
We need to include that 20% and convince them that they must vote, and once we have voted out this neoconservative government, we need to make sure that our most vulnerable never become invisible again. Neocons want us to believe that our "too generous and unaffordable" social programs must be cut or eliminated and wages must be held down (6) to feed this monster named "economy". Meanwhile, the wealthiest citizens just keep getting wealthier, while they are going through with massive corporate tax cuts, and preaching austerity to everyone else.
And of that 60% in the middle, those who support social programs and demand rights are marginalized. And intellectuals who try to cloud issues with facts are dismissed as "university types" and demonized.
So while we advocate for specific groups, march and demonstrate, we have to remember that we are all in this together. We have a common enemy and as such are allies. Neoconservative governments do not allow dissent, but they cannot ignore 80% of the population.
We keep hearing about Harper's "base", that he is pandering to, but who is this "base"? I suspect that many believe they are voting for the party of Sir John A. and John Diefenbaker, without realizing that if the full agenda of this party is implemented, they too will be thrown into the fire, if we lose our public health care and access to education.
In 1994, speaking on behalf of the National Citizens Coalition, Stephen Harper was discussing the accomplishments of the NCC.
"Universality has been severely reduced: It is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy. The family allowance program has been eliminated and unemployment insurance has been seriously cut back." (6)
He believes that if you are successful, it's because you worked for it, forgetting that things like access to public education and medicare, helped toward that success. And if we allow this to continue, we will end up with a Third World type of societal structure, something that has long been a goal of neoconservatism. It's why they fought so hard to maintain apartheid in South Africa and keep Nelson Mandela in jail.
The Politics of Fear
Harper's former VP when he was president of the National Citizens, Gerry Nicholls, wrote recently that:
"Hate and fear make the world go around. Those are the two emotions you must arouse to mobilize citizens. Why is that? I would venture to say that it’s because they are powerful primal emotions that trigger the fight or flight response. What’s important, though, is that you recognize and harness their power." (7)
Another element to the success of the neoconservative movement is fear. It was no accident that at the G-20, journalists and advocacy groups were targeted by riot police. There was a message there. Cross us and you will pay. He is sending the same message to NGOs who risk losing their funding if they challenge any government decision.
But it is also fear of other forces. Rick Salutin explains:
Since the Second World War, the U.S. economy has been built around what you might call the fear sector: its military-industrial complex, its crime-prison complex and its homeland-terror complex. We're now seeing the first attempt by a Canadian government to follow this model.
... The Harper government is clearly impressed. They don't seem to mind big government, if they can tax and spend in the fear sector. So they've expanded our military budget and just announced a $9-billion (or maybe $16-billion) purchase of 65 U.S. jets we'll have to find some use for. They're increasing the prison population through U.S.-style sentencing laws and planning "major construction initiatives" that will boost (sorry) corrections costs by 43 per cent. On homeland security, there's that amazing $1.2-billion spent at the G20.
But it's a hard sell. Canadians will have to be persuaded to shift more money from a stretched health-care system to the fear sector. The benefits here aren't as obvious. For buying those jets, all our firms get is the right to bid on U.S contracts. Lotsa luck. Mostly, though, there's the fear culture that you need for a fear sector. (8)
So we need to cut through all this. Some suggest that we should study the tactics of Karl Rove and emulate them, but I don't agree. I hate divisive politics and I don't think those tactics help anyone. They just turn people off.
We need to mobilize the 2/3 of Canadians who don't support the Harper regime, and educate those of the 1/3, who believe they are supporting the Canadian Conservative tradition.
There are several grassroots attempting to do that, including:
Canadians for a Liberal-NDP-Green partnership NOW!! (If you like the idea of a coalition. I prefer a Liberal government with the NDP as official opposition, but would definitely be on board with a coalition if that's what it takes)
I'm going to end with one of my favourite John Lennon songs to get us in the mood. I share it often, but am sharing it again, because .. well, this is my blog and I love John Lennon.
Sources
1. Open for Business, Closed to People: Introduction, By Diana Ralph, Fernwood, 1997, ISBN: 1895686733, Pg. 15
2. What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It? By Philip E. Agre, Polaris, August 2004
3. The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda, By: David Welch, Routledge, 1993, ISBN 0-203-93014-2
4. The Rights Revolution: CBC Massey Lectures, By Michael Ignatieff, Anansi Books, 2000, ISBN: 978-0-88784-762-2, Pg. 20
5. Comes the Revolution: Waiting for the Pendulum to Swing Back, By E. Finn, Canadian Forum, August 1995
7. The Trudeau Empire Has Fallen and It Can’t Get Up! Why now is the time for the Canadian conservative movement to win the War of Ideas, By Gerry Nicholls, December 3, 2008
A story out of Kingston this week has gained some media coverage. An albatross, not indigenous to the Northern Hemisphere, was washed up on the shores of Wolfe Island and there is a campaign to have him sent to a more natural habitat.
