Harper gags Canadians with their own money

From the Real News Network:

There is a North-America wide strategy to take away the right to mass protest.

Canada to Egypt - "Don't beat up your protesters!"

From David Climenhaga's Alberta Diary:

Laugh-out-loud ironies dot Cannon’s sanctimonious sermon to Mubarak

In the mean time, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon’s office issued a statement advising the world that Canadians “urge all parties to refrain from using violence and the Egyptian authorities to respond to these protests peacefully."

After all, he presumably meant, Cairo’s no Toronto, where the protesters are really dangerous!

Massive casualties

The commander of Canadian forces in Afghanistan has said that a "flurry" of activities will occur in the fall and into next year.

When I read this, my heart sank - just when I thought it couldn't sink any further.

'Massive activities' from Canadian troops coming in Afghanistan: Lieutenant-General

"There’ll be a flurry of military operations starting with the major ones this fall, (and) there’ll be other ones certainly in the winter and spring," said Lt.-Gen. Lessard, head of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command. "We’re ready to launch."

Massive activites will lead to massive casualties but they don't seem to care.

Then comes the usual crippled logic for the whole thing.

If Canadian troops do not improve conditions in the districts before leaving next year, their sacrifices since 2006 will have been wasted, he suggested.

I can't believe that anybody with more than two functioning neurons is still using that stupid justification for mass death - of civilians and of soldiers.

Sydney Peace Prize

John Pilger was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize recently. His acceptance speech was amazing.

Breaking the Australian Silence.

"Tonight, I would like to talk about this silence: about how it affects our national life, the way we see the world, and the way we are manipulated by great power which speaks through an invisible government of propaganda that subdues and limits our political imagination and ensures we are always at war – against our own first people and those seeking refuge, or in someone else’s country."

This has echoes for Canada. We had our little "sorry" episode, just like Australia. As far as I can tell, nothing has changed. Harper's government still refuses to sign the UN treaty on aboriginal rights. I think he's worried that the next big mineral or oil find will be on aboriginal land and he won't want to share the wealth.

There's so many echoes in it to Canada's situation that it almost hurts.

The aboriginal population continues to die disproportionately from swine flu and seasonal flu. They have higher rates of diabetes and heart disease. Their life expectancy is shorter. When the reserve in northern Ontario called Kashechewan was flooded during a rapid spring thaw and the inhabitants were evacuated to other parts of Ontario, they found that many children suffered from scabies. The intake for the water plant was downstream from the sewage outfall. Another wonderful government project.

We pour money and young lives into Afghanistan, supposedly building schools and dams, yet our own citizens are living in horrible situations.

Makes no sense.

Don't worry. It's all under control.

Michael Klare says what all Canadians kind of thought anyway.

Thanks, Stevie, for further selling out the country.

From Thursday, Nov. 28th Democracy Now podcast:

Michael Klare, Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College. He is author of several books including “Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum.” Klare’s latest article for the Nation is called Beyond the Age of Petroleum.

"Well, there’s a lot going on all at once that ensures that this oil crisis is qualitatively different from those of the past. And this is much more long-lasting. And one of the qualitative differences is that we have used up, over the past thirty years, most of the remaining oil in the global north—in the United States, in Canada, in Europe and other places that are near at hand and relatively under our control."

Well, Professor Klare, you might have Stevie and the boys (and a few of the girls) under your control, but you don't have the majority of the Canadian population under the imperialist thumb...yet.

Mercenaries in Afghanistan

It seems that the thuggish mercenary problem isn't just in Iraq. Afghanistan has problems of its own.

Barnett Rubin on Afghanistan

(bold typeface is mine)

"...[I] explained that, while corruption occurred in Afghanistan as in every society, Afghans believed that the unprecedented level of corruption today was largely due to the foreign presence, not their culture. First of all, Afghans do not believe that the international drug problem is caused by greedy Afghan farmers. They think it is due to the global demand for illicit drugs and a policy regime that disproportionately punishes the weakest and poorest parts of the supply chain. Second, they see, if we do not not, the links among US security contractors, Afghan militias, and corrupt officials. They see the armed groups that destroyed their country remobilized and paid by a politically connected "private sector" subsidized by the U.S. government."

Hitching Canada's wagon to a falling star

Philip S. Golub is a journalist and lecturer at the University of Paris VIII.

He likens the U.S. to a setting sun...

"The disastrous outcome of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused a crisis in the power elite of the United States deeper than that resulting from defeat in Vietnam 30 years ago. Ironically, it is the very coalition of ultranationalists and neo-conservatives that coalesced in the 1970s, seeking to reverse the Vietnam syndrome, restore U.S. power and revive "the will to victory" that has caused the present crisis."

...[N]or can the cause of their dissent be attributed to conflicting convictions over ethics, norms and values (though this may be a motivating factor for some). It lies rather in the rational realization that the war in Iraq has nearly "broken the U.S. Army," weakened the national security state, and severely, if not irreparably, undermined "America's global legitimacy" – its ability to shape world preferences and set the global agenda. The most sophisticated expressions of dissent, such as Brzezinski's, reflect the understanding that power is not reducible to the ability to coerce, and that, once lost, hegemonic legitimacy is hard to restore.

...[T]ransnational opinion surveys show a consistent and nearly global pattern of defiance of U.S. foreign policy as well as a more fundamental erosion in the attractiveness of the United States: The narrative of the American dream has been submerged by images of a military leviathan disregarding world opinion and breaking the rules. World public opinion may not stop wars but it does count in subtler ways.

...[H]istory is moving on and the world is slipping, slowly but inexorably, out of U.S. hands.

...[B]ut Vietnam and the Nixon era were a turning point in another more paradoxical way: Domestically they ushered in the conservative revolution and the concerted effort of the mid-1980s to restore and renew the national security state and U.S. world power. When the Soviet Union collapsed a few years later, misguided visions of omnipotence resurfaced. Conservative triumphalists dreamed of primacy and sought to lock in long-term unipolarity. Iraq was a strategic experiment designed to begin the Second American Century. That experiment and U.S. foreign policy now lie in ruins.

...[F]or the U.S. power elite, being on top of the world has been a habit for 60 years. Hegemony has been a way of life; empire, a state of being and of mind. The institutional realist critics of the Bush administration have no alternative conceptual framework for international relations, based on something other than force, the balance of power or strategic predominance.

...[T]he present crisis and the deepening impact of global concerns will perhaps generate new impulses for co-operation and interdependence in future. Yet it is just as likely that U.S. policy will be unpredictable: As all post-colonial experiences show, de-imperialization is likely to be a long and possibly traumatic process.

So, why is Canada looking to the U.S. for its safety and prosperity and not elsewhere...perhaps even to itself?

Blackwater - good choice for training Canadian soldiers

N.Y times article about investigation into the Blackwater mercenary company:

The report by the Democratic majority staff of a House committee adds weight to complaints from Iraqi officials, American military officers and Blackwater’s competitors that company guards have taken an aggressive, trigger-happy approach to their work and have repeatedly acted with reckless disregard for Iraqi life.

Blackwater justified its actions by saying that it had never allowed one American diplomat's life to be lost.

That's nice. Shame about all those Iraqis, though.

Good thing Canada chose that wonderful outfit to train some of its military. I feel a lot better now.

Harper reigns over a united Canada - and he did it all by himself!

Stephen Harper is dreaming in technicolour, isn't he? The chutzpah of the guy is beyond belief.

PM takes credit for unified Canada

Let's see - we have the killing war in Afghanistan, which most Canadians do not support, cozying up to the U.S. so that everything that we have is theirs and none of it is ours, very strange middle eastern policies i.e. supporting Israel's cluster bombing of Lebanon and its stealing land that does not belong to it, stirring up the whole sovereignty pot in Quebec, systematic stripping of privacy rights and habeas corpus, opaque and secretive government, increasing militarism and frankly stupid environmental policies.

In an effort to get more votes and become the next emperor, Harper is trying to fracture Canada into multiple opposing sides, race against race, religion against non-religion, urban against rural, east against west.

One thing for sure - those who wish to see Canada as a coherent, tolerant, welcoming, lawful, environmentally conscious country may be firmly united, but it's against Harper and his neo-con buddies, both here and around the world.