It was a chilling moment in Question Period yesterday, that should raise questions about whether Stephen Harper is still mentally fit to govern, and whether we are already living in a police state.
The moment when Tom Mulcair asked him whether his totalitarian bill C-51 could be used to spy against his enemies, and he replied by accusing the NDP of being a "black helicopter fleet."
Even though it was a very good question, and his sinister black helicopters are already threatening our democracy.
The RCMP has labelled the “anti-petroleum” movement as a growing and violent threat to Canada’s security, raising fears among environmentalists that they face increased surveillance, and possibly worse, under the Harper government’s new terrorism legislation.
For what further evidence do we need to show that the RCMP is now Harper's Police?
Or for that matter what further evidence do we need to show that the Canadian forces are now Harper's Army?
A parliamentary watchdog repeatedly stonewalled in his efforts to get information about Canada’s military mission in Iraq is calling for legislative changes to beef up his ability to pry data from government departments.
A frustrated Jean-Denis Fréchette, the parliamentary budget officer, says the department of national defence rebuffed nearly all attempts by his office to get details about the costs of the ongoing mission.
Whose generals seem to think that they can ignore our parliament, and answer only to their Great Leader.
Or this grubby religious fanatic...
And who can deny that our country is now in the grip of the most totalitarian government in Canadian history?
Conservatives are supposed to stand for small government, but our executive branch’s tentacles are everywhere. We now have arguably the biggest, most overbearing government in our country’s history.
A government out of control.
A healthily functioning system provides effective oversight on what the ruler is doing. Here, the oversight has been overtaken by the ruler himself.
With a deranged morally depraved leader who would muzzle and intimidate his opponents.
And try to brainwash us like Big Brother...
The Conservatives’ propaganda machine is omnipresent, spending unprecedented amounts – often of taxpayers’ money – to applaud themselves and denounce opponents.
Intimidation is the modus operandi. Well-documented are the smear campaigns and the undercover operations against opponents run out of the highest political office in the land.
Which only makes me wonder who are those who would delude themselves into believing that Bill C-51 will make us safer rather than oppress us further?
If you think it’s bad now, be prepared for worse, as with the anti-terror legislation. The danger with ideological leaders of any stripe is that in the name of security, they can ramp up state authority without the usual degree of public challenge. It’s why we see Mr. Harper hyping the terror threats Canada faces, as opposed to allaying the public’s fears.
When it springs from the diseased mind of a man like Stephen Harper who would use fear as a weapon...
And is now so crazy desperate he is capable of ANYTHING.
You know, when I first started warning that he was dangerous so many years ago.
In my usual way....
A lot of people, including quite a few progressives, laughed at me or called ME crazy.
So now it's awfully tempting to laugh at them, or ask them how they feel about Great Leader today.
Compared to how they felt about him back then...
Or why they didn't see it coming.
But what good would that do? When our country is at the mercy of a maniac, who is trying to scare people into voting for him. Trying to turn Canada into a sinister police state with the apparently enthusiastic support of the security services and the military.
And the black helicopters are hovering over us like vultures.
So I think I'll just say what I've always said:
He is crazy, he is dangerous, and if he is not stopped.
He will destroy this country...
Please click here to recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers.
well, that about wraps it up. We now have the royal conservative mounted police declaring that pro-environmental groups are terrorists. I'll bet you none of the big oil or gas companies saw that one coming! (snark, snark!)
ReplyDeleteIf Canada does not act in her own best interests this coming election and vote these neo-nazi bastards out of office for the next 100 years, we will lose Canada forever. Actual Canadians are really an endangered species and unless our next and newly and honestly (for a change) elected leader curbs the runaway dictatorial powers harpie has assumed, we will see this country go the way of the once-amazing and mighty u.s.a.
We just need to hope that if it's trudy, he will not turn into another o-bomb-a and take us even further into the darkness that george w harpie has initiated here. We've seen what "hope and change" has done to the amerikans. We, as a free and democratic nation, will not survive that nefarious process if it is not stopped this year.
Gawd forbid it continues to happen here also.
hi anon...we are indeed in terrible danger, and the next election is our last chance to take our country back. Neither Justin Trudeau nor Tom Mulcair are perfect, but they are both better than Stephen Harper.
DeleteFor as you point out, if the Cons are re-elected we will lose our Canada....
My brother was a proud member of the RCMP for 30 + years. He passed away in 2012 from a short bout with Cancer. Needless to say, I miss him. If he were alive today, he would be horrified because of what the RCMP now stands for........probably rolling over in his grave!
ReplyDeleteThe reason I'm bringing this up is because the other day I saw/read that the force is looking for recruits and I question why anyone these days would even consider applying to the RCMP OR the Canadian Armed Forces???????
Noli Timere.........DO NOT BE AFRAID!
No offense intended to your brother. Annon 11:01
Deletehi Kathleen...I'm sorry to hear about your brother, but yes he isn't the only RCMP officer who is disgusted by the way the high command is behaving. When the opposition takes power they are going to have to purge all of those who are playing along or actively collaborating with the Con regime...
Deletean important open letter to harper from Ralph Nader has been posted here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/02/18/whats-happening-canada-open-letter-stephen-harper
Among other things, Nader says:
"You are quoted as saying that “jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced” as a predicate for your gross over-reaction that “violent jihadism seeks to destroy” Canadian “rights.” Really? Pray tell, which rights rooted in Canadian law are “jihadis” fighting in the Middle East to obliterate? You talk like George W. Bush."
hi norberto...thanks for the link. It is good to know that people outside he country are noticing what is going on here. And needless to say I agree with everything Nader says. How low have we fallen? And how hard must we fight...
DeleteThis is man has destroyed and mutilated this our Country. I hate the Man, his Party and every single one of those slimy neo-con henchmen he calls MPs. It is a Shame that we the people have let this happen, in some ways we deserve this because let the Madman have the majority he so desperately craved. With that majority he raped our this land spit on our democracy and our value all while worshiping Alberta's Oil industry, which he worked for and always has, licking it boots and pumping out his propaganda about how great our economy is, it like the the Pravda, "Everything is great thanks to the Harper Government's Economic Action Plan". It is Our fault it and it may be to late to change it now.
ReplyDeletehi anon...I understand how you feel, I never thought something so horrible could happen here. But don't despair, we are more than they are, and if we fight harder and smarter than we ever have before, we can still defeat them...
DeleteSimon I feel than we need revolution in the is great land of ours a whole restructuring of government do away with first-past-the-post Voting and replace it with Proportional representation, Referendums and Direct Democracy. We need to mirror the Nordic Countries. Expand the Welfare net, more socialism! and free Education, Dental, vision care, 5 weeks paid vacations. -Anon 1:57 PM
DeleteSimon:
ReplyDeleteI hear you. I remember a decade ago listening to Dippers say a Harper government, even a majority government would be good in the long run because then people would turn in droves to the NDP to fix what he did. I said at the time that was insane, that with Harper what he would do would not be so easy if at all possible to undo, and of course, I was mocked roundly as a Lib operative etc, as I've mentioned to you before. I would have LOVED to be wrong, but I knew then I wasn't, the signs were clearly there to see, hell the Grewal fraud which most people brushed away was a major flare lit tip-off, which was why I made a stink about it for many months after it happened, because of what it showed Harper capable even as a LOO, so letting him have the powers of a PM in our system was utterly insane!
This point you are making also underscores why Trudeau's position is the right call for him and the Libs. We know in a Harper majority they do not take amendments, they ram legislation through committees and it doesn't matter what the Opposition parties say or do, and the committees are neutered beyond any ability to function. It is blatantly clear Harper is using this as much for electoral politics as anything remotely to do with actual security (and there are elements within this bill which have some merit, nowhere near enough to make the bad parts acceptable of course, but still cannot be brushed aside in toto either), and while Mulcair and the NDP can return to their home of being the voice of conscience that is not a place a party wanting to form the next government can easily go, especially in these times.
The problem the NDP has here is that there really is a threat, yes I know, not as bad as the government makes out, but not none either, and the wider public knows that threat exists, even if they are unsure to what extent. When they start sounding like they are claiming this bill is for Harper to create his own Staz/Secret Police (which he is starting to sound like, the fact that I happen to think he may have a point matters not at all, we are talking about the average citizen/voter who is clearly not as politically attuned to the goings on as we and people like Mulcair are and how it sounds to them) it is a major weakness to the argument that said party is ready for government, especially given the NDP record of never voting in favour of security legislation on terrorism ever.
Trudeau on the other hand is walking the careful line of looking responsible on security while pointing out major concerns, concerns that they will include in their election platform should the CPC abrogate their responsibility to amend/fix those flaw at committee (which we already know they won't) for Canadians to vote on at the election later this year. This enables the Libs to look responsible on security while voicing the real problems with the legislation and prevents Harper from painting them as weak/soft on terror, which if Trudeau had not come out the way he had was certain to be the case. When you know you have a hyper-partisan PM who plays partisan games even with issues of war and matters of national security you cannot just act like you are a member of a responsible government Parliament like we are used to having prior to the rise of the Harperium.
Harper has to go next election, and it is almost a certainty that one of four results from the next election happens. Harper majority or minority, Liberal majority or minority. So the question for every anti-Harper voter outside of long-standing NDP ridings is which choice is more palatable for you, more Harper or Trudeau. It may not be what you want, it is clearly not fair, but tell me, when has life ever proven itself to be fair? This IS the reality we face, and for all your badmouthing of Trudeau on this issue Dippers, do you really think the Libs would have brought this abomination forward if they had been government? I sure as hells don't!
Harper has scored big with this one - when people are afraid they get stupid and Harper is a master manipulator. The only way to defeat him is for the Libs and NdP to hold their respective noses and form a coalition and only run one candidate in each riding.
Deletehi Scotian...you make a lot of good points, and although I'm staying away from your partisan ones, as usual. ;) I do agree that we have to be relentlessly realistic, and do what we must to defeat the Cons. For we can have all the noble principles in the world, but if we do not defeat the Harperites all will be in vain, and all will be lost...
ReplyDeleteSimon:
DeleteI'm only truly partisan in my opposition to Harper. As I have noted many times before my support for Trudeau and the Libs is not rooted in any sense of partisanship for them, but rather rooted in how I read the demographic realities of the voting public. If Mulcair had the NDP running at the level the Libs have for the past two years and the Trudeau and the Libs where the NDP, with the same in the by-elections, I would be making the same argument to Libs. Removing Harper is an at all costs issue to me and always has been from before he became PM, and should be for not just progressives but centrists both left and right, what Harper has done to this nation is destructive to the traditions of all these groups.
It drives me wild to not see this understood by people who claim to love this country, or claim to be oh so politically principled, especially those that hold their noses up while claiming they won't support the lesser evil because it is still evil, it is that kind of thinking that allows the greater/greatest evil to succeed. There is a reason after all for the cliche that for evil to triumph only take good men to do nothing.
I won't ask you to answer most of what I posed, but I would like an honest answer to one thing I said. Do you really think, if the Libs had been the government instead of the Harper CPC, that C-51 in its present form would ever have been presented? And for that matter related to this that they would have not accepted any possible changes or amendments arising from the committee process that existed back when they still held government, even majority government? When I say I don't, I am judging them not on any particular bias for them, I am doing so based on simply looking at their actual history. Sure they probably have gone more for security in some senses than the average progressive might prefer, but does anyone really believe they would have corrupted the RCMP the way it is now, nor would have given CSIS these new powers without any kind of real checks on it? How they acted in the immediate wake of 9/11/01 shows the truth on that
Part of my personal frustration with the way politics has become federally is the unwillingness to view opponents as honourable opponents who you disagree with but are not evil incarnate and always will do the worst thing. Indeed, it really infuriates me that Harper has put me in the position of having to take that stand against him because it is acutely uncomfortable, but he is as I've always noted a special case alien to Canadian political contexts and not a traditional Canadian rooted conservative at all.
I fear that the NDP leadership has been learning all the wrong lessons from how Harper made it and instead of being opposed to such political tactics and strategy are instead trying to adapt it to their own benefit, and by doing so we all lose. That was one of my greatest fears of a Harper victory, that the way he did politics would be seen as necessary to win, and that would in itself be so incredibly damaging to traditional Canadian political discourse and the idea of substance and policy being an important part of campaigning/governing would become more and more discounted.
to be concluded...
Conclusion:
DeleteAs much as you have wept for what we have become Simon you cannot have more on me. I have lived the full Cassandra curse for a decade, and I was always someone who cared more about the importance of the process and system being maintained and used by the citizenry than necessarily who won power. As I've said before, a process geek more than any sort of partisan. What I have watched happen to a nation that my family heritage helped shape from Confederation onwards along with so many others, it is impossible for me to overstate just how much pain and misery I have felt in all of this, and it is also why I have such rage at those who cannot understand what the real threat is and instead are still caught in their own little agendas.
One of the reasons why I get so furious at the "Lib Tory same old story/Librocon" meme whenever I see it is because it is clearly utterly disconnected from reality. It is lazy politics, and it is as dishonest as anything we see coming out of the Harper CPC about either Lib or NDP. The entire record of Harper's government and the amount of unprecedented actions it has taken in itself proves that to be such a lie, so how can anyone with any real integrity still use it? Worse, if someone using it actually truly believes it what does that show about their connection to reality, to perceive it, and whether they should be trusted/listened to?
One of the biggest things I love about you Simon is that despite being a natural Dipper supporter you have come to recognize the reality of things, even though it is not what you would prefer. That is all I ever wanted, if Harper had been stopped from rising to power and the Red Tory wing of the Conservative movement had taken over the CPC I would have been fine with the NDP doing all it could to beat out the Libs for government, I said so at the time. I only ever wanted Harper stopped and his form of politics discredited, because I understood just how harmful to Canada they truly were. I had trusted the NDP to protect us against a radical right wing threat as part of their core reason for existence, my sorrow at being betrayed in that belief is also something words cannot express.
I was always the person who said it doesn't matter how you vote, what matters is that you be involved, pay attention and vote as you think best. That what makes our system work is the informed voter, not so much who they vote for but that they are there to vote and protect this great nation. Which used to be the norm, I grew up while that mindset was considered part of what being Canadian meant. I really resent being forced to be as pointed as I have become.