As you know, a large number of candidates from all parties have had to resign after their past came back to haunt them.
Which is depressing, and makes me wonder how far we have fallen in this decaying Harperland. Rotting like a corpse from the head down.
But what it also makes me wonder, is whether Stephen Harper would ever have been prime minister if his past had been dug up years ago.
Because it's not pretty.
And even eleven years ago, there was more than enough information about him out there to disqualify him from ever holding office.
Who is this guy? Cautious and crafty, the Conservative party leader has perfected the soft sell, but a look at his past pronouncements reveals he'll rip up every right and service Canadians have fought for. Dangerous? Hell, yes.
Like the fact that he used to hang out with some of the worst racists and neo-Nazis in the country:
According to the neo-Nazi National Alliance Web site, several of its "activists" attended the Canadian Alliance convention and "found convention attendees open to discussing the issues of race, immigration, Zionism and the control of the media."
The ones he tried to recruit to join his redneck Reform Party. The ones he hired as bodyguards for his beer hall rallies.
The ones he got to join his ultra-right Northern Foundation. The friends of apartheid, and the enemies of the great Nelson Mandela.
In 1989 Harper was a member of the Northern Foundation (NF) about the same time that he became policy chief of the Reform Party. The exclusive mandate of the NF was to counter the serious efforts of the Canadian government of Brian Mulroney to pressure the South African government to release Nelson Mandela from prison and to end apartheid.
But the MSM never bothered to go there. Never bothered to interview any of those neo-nazi thugs, and ask them about their good buddy Steve...
He was allowed to get away with foul racism.
Architect of all those anti-immigrant policies that attracted members of the white rights Heritage Front to Reform.
Refused to revoke the nomination of Markham Unionville Conservative candidate Joe Li for referring to immigrants as "garbage."
So he could continue to be the foul old stock bigot he is today...
He was allowed to get away with blatant misogyny and virulent homophobia.
Has called "vile" any comparison between civil rights and gay rights, and voted against including sexual orientation in hate propaganda laws. Hired a former Winnipeg radio jock fired for saying that "diesel dykes (are) running the school board" to be his media spokesperson in his 2002 Alliance leadership bid.
So he could continue to be the stealthy enemy of the gay community, discriminate against them in every possible way. Deny their humanity.
Or reduce their lives to this...
He was allowed to get away with so many things that could have warned Canadians what kind of monster he really was.
And this is what that criminal failure to expose him cost us.
A foul legacy like no other, a country in ruins...
And a monstrous leader who should have been just another Con in handcuffs, and never a Canadian prime minister.
If the MSM had dug up Harper's past that tragedy could have been avoided. But they didn't, so let's do it for them.
Let's smear Harper and his filthy Cons with the truth, before they kill this country.
Let's call them what they really are: fascists, bigots, and bullies.
Lets crush them beyond recognition.
And send them all back to the ghastly hell they came from...
Please click here to recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers.
See, if I was a reporter subjected to harper's bullying and criminal evasiveness and lying, I'd go interview his former Northern Alliance buddies out of sheer malice. I'll bet there are more than a few neo-Nazis who are displeased with his cozying up to Israel and his refusal to invoke martial law to suppress gay rights.
ReplyDeletehi thwap...who knows where they are now? Probably dead or in prison or parading around Alabama. But yes it would have been nice if they had been interviewed a long time ago, but the MSM seemed to think it wasn't important. And of course the progressive parties have done nothing to show how Stephen Harper's extreme right wing views threaten the future of this country. They need to start hitting the Cons harder because time is running out...
DeleteI don't know what it is about the corporate media that causes them to ignore Harper's racist past. Kady for instance took several of us to task for questioning media silence on this issue, saying she asked the PMO and they denied the Northern Foundation links, so no story here. This despite Harper's own admission to being a founding member.
ReplyDeletehi Kev...I don't know either. They have always seemed to me to be blind to the danger, or imagine that such nasty things couldn't happen here. Or it may be the artificial atmosphere of Ottawa that prevents them from seeing the big picture. But that still shouldn't have stopped the anti-Harper parties from using that against him, as the Cons would have used it against us if the situation was reversed. We're still playing too nice, and we've got to start playing rougher, or we are going to get mugged...
DeleteSimon, I'm new here, will admit to my partisan feelings, however, am also a strong supporter of ABC and will treat anyone with respect and dignity who treats me the same way.
DeleteI have been enjoying your site and I would like offer the following thought on this topic if I may. There is an element to Canadian Politics that very few understand unless they have been part of the inner world somehow. I think the Liberals were likely more at fault than you are letting them off with, however, as was pointed out, their credibility problems post Sponsorship-scandal were such that they couldn't have gotten the message out. However, they understood better than the NDP possibly could have, that HoC and Parliament Hill has always been the Ultimate Gentleman's Club. There was a way you did things, a way you behaved. Behaviours or beliefs that would have got you blacklisted from any of the "A" clubs, were tolerated as long as they weren't flaunted.
Then came Harper. He didn't play by any of the rules. He wasn't a Gentleman. All the westerners that had sat in the HoC before him had accepted the rules because it meant A) acceptance in the halls of Eastern power and B) they wanted the perks that came with the job. Harper didn't care about any of these things and that made him something foreign that no one was prepared for. You could do almost anything in the house but you never lied. The idea of a member lying was inconceivable. A PM, even more so. With Harper it is almost pathological, yet by the time the people in a position to do anything about it realized how bad it was, it was too late. The warnings were there however, everyone saw them, however, many insiders wouldn't believe it really possible, so they ignored the warnings.
There is something almost as important as being rid of Stephen Harper. We must learn from the experience. We can't just let leaders off with excuses or allow partisanship to blind us to warnings. Otherwise now that he has shown how it can be done, the next Centralist control freak, with issues around honesty, integrity or truthfulness could be even worse. Please don't attack me for this last paragraph. I am not saying there is a leader today who fits this description, however, if someone feels there is maybe we need to listen to him or her. We ignore the warnings at our own peril.
Thanks for highlighting so much of this disgusting thug's legacy Simon. The real steve harper, not the carefully crafted sound bite repeater we see at the helm of the country. It's a really sad statement regarding the state of our media that they were seemingly unable to report on any of this and instead fell lock-step into presenting this POS as mainstream. I remain really concerned with what lies ahead because the mask has yet to fully come off steve and the masters have once again played us for fools: a long drawn out campaign, getting the really embarassing stuff out of the way while nobody was really paying attention, framing the opposition, it goes on and on. I sure hope my gut instinct is wrong about another 4 years of this mess.
ReplyDeletehi bcwaterboy...you're welcome, I'm always glad to share what I know about Stephen Harper's disgusting past. ;) But I do share your fears. Events and Lynton Crosby's disgusting wedge issues have complicated our mission, and given Harper some momentum at exactly the wrong time. But the progressive parties just have to step up to the plate and hit the Cons harder than they have to date. Just sniping at each other isn't going to work, and if we don't start soon it could be too late....
DeleteCan anybody remember the name of that ghastly vile preacher creature at Harpman's old Calgary church?
ReplyDeleteAnd what is he now?
hi anon...I'm not sure who you are talking about unless it's Fred Henry who seems to have dropped out of sight. But he still has old Charles McVety in his corner and he's even worse...
DeleteThe MSM will not even go back 9 yrs in Harpers past Simon and expose his time as Canada's PM. His track record is not being discussed at all. They've given him a complete pass.
ReplyDeleteA) What is MSM? B) What means "in Harper's past Simon"?
DeleteMSM means MainStream Media (corporate media)
Deletehi Pamela...I'm afraid you're right, the scandals of the Cons just seem to vanish into the mist of time. I mean who can remember the Cadman affair and how Harper was caught lying? Why hasn't that scandal ever resurfaced? It's depressing, but as I said the progressive parties can't wait for the MSM to act, they must smear the Harperites as they are smearing us....
DeleteMSM? A more accurate description is "Corporate Media".
DeleteThe MSM will not investigate Stephen Harper because Stephen Harper and the Conservatives USE the media to wage a continuous propaganda war against Canadians. Stephen Harper has funneled billions of taxpayer dollars into needless ad campaigns for everything under the sun that he's done since taking office. He's put some of them in high places (although he's probably regretting that mistake with great characters like Duffy and Wallin) and he's forced his insiders with the CBC to be nice with and promote organizations like Quebecor (SUN Media), Post Media (National Post), Bell and Rogers.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, your average Canadian refuses to see these links and even savvy folks such as Montreal Simon still ask 'where is the mainstream media?'
Well, Simon, the short answer is that they're all at the f*in trough and they don't give a s*it about Canada.
hi anon...you are probably right, the newspapers need the money badly, and their editorial boards know whose side their masters are on, and they only want tax cuts for the wealthy. But you'd think that in all those years, Harper's roots would have been more closely examined by some reporter. As I keep saying our parties better not turn up at a gunfight armed only with knives, or they are going to get killed...
DeleteThis is not just on the media Simon, it is also on the two parties, the Libs and especially the NDP. If they both had constantly been pointing to these records they would have forced the media to have to deal with them, but since they let it go (more the NDP than the Libs are at fault here in my view, because at that time and place the Libs were trying but their credibility thanks to Adscam et al was near nil whereas the NDP credibility was much higher, as I believe I have pointed out in the past) the corporate media was able to let it go too. I know I was one of those online voices time and again pointing all of this out about Harper and how far out of the mainstream of even conservative thought he was for this country, how his record from the Reform years onward proved an inherent anti-democratic nature and profound contempt for our system of government, and as I've also noted I got treated as Cassandra from both right AND left for doing so.
ReplyDeleteI blame the NDP more on this simply because they didn't join the Libs in their attempts to get some/much of this stuff out there back in the day and instead essentially went the "Lib Tory same old story" route that helped normalize Harper and his CPC instead for their own electoral political purposes, as I have in the past gone into great detail with here at your blog. I was saying at the time that the NDP needed to put aside their usual disdain for the Libs and add their credibility to the Lib warnings about Harper because his record, which WAS out there for any to find, showed that he was something alien to our political culture and a more profound threat to Canadian values and especially progressive values than anything the Libs had ever said or done! I ALSO was making the point that without the joining of the NDP voices the media was much more easily able to ignore/dismiss it as empty hyperbolic rhetoric from a desperate Lib party, which I might add was often tossed out not just from media but NDPers as well.
I'm bringing this up not to beat on my usual dead horse on this, but to underscore your post's point, and to also show how the media WAS able to get away with burying what was out there to be found and exposed. This cannot be overlooked when you want to understand how Harper was able to after the 2004 loss suddenly remake his image and suddenly become Mr Centrist/Moderate despite his over 2 full decade record of extremism from his Reform years onward through to that 2004 loss. This is part of why I have such anger and bitterness for the NDP leadership and Layton, because they HAD to have known who and what Harper was and they STILL decided he was the lesser threat for them than the Libs/Martin/Dion (I'm leaving Ignatief off the list because I cannot in good faith include him, he was better than Harper in that he did not have Harper's agenda of destruction in mind, but more than that, nope, I always saw Ignatief as the Libs worst mistake in my lifetime).
Sorry to be "partisan" on this Simon, but it is a relevant part of how this happened.
hi Scotian...What you a partisan? I don't believe it. ;) Look beyond all partisanship, it doesn't really matter at this point. I just think both parties should stop attacking each other so much, and focus more of their fire on the Cons. They're both getting caught up in small issues, or boring us silly with numbers, when they should be focusing more on the Cons and portraying them in a far more sinister light, which is after all the light they deserve...
DeleteStephen Harper’s “Northern Foundation”
ReplyDeletehttp://westcoastnativenews.com/stephen-harpers-northern-foundation/
hi David...thanks for the link. Trevor Harrison's book is indeed the only book ever written about the Northern Foundation, but unfortunately it never was able to get much publicity. So we wandered into the darkness without any idea of what might befall us, and as I said in my post we have paid a heavy price...
ReplyDelete.. quite a forceful and angry essay there Simon.. pulling no punches... Awesome..! Keep it up ! Any of your commenters and followers would benefit by spending time in Emily Dee's astounding factual website. Pushed To the Left and Loving it.. plus she has links to snother of her historical and scathing sites... Harper, Kenney, Clement, Guy Giorno, Jenni Byrne, Ray Novak, Ken Boessenkool, Tom Flanagan, Baird.. are all tracked down, revealed, and the interconnections are endless. Its numbing, disgusting.. dispiriting... but bare naked fact. Recently she has turned her searchlight on Tom Mulcair.. and found him wanting.. but in no way do her revelations or criticisms reach even a shade of the Harper nightmare and sociopathy.. The current PM fully fits the term sociopath - with a shocking scale of omnipotence, grandeur.. arrogance.. built on compulsive deceit. Harper's greatest triumph is realizing he can get away with essentially anything, day after day after day, deny lie, change stories, distort facts, develop secret legislation... and by doing so on an impossible scale.. nobody can keep track of it or reflect it with less than a dossier & chronology. People's eyes glaze and they tune out just listening to or reading a condensed list ! ! How many Canadians can read all of your posts, or Emily Dee's .. or of of Michael Harris' astounding essays? Yet that's what it takes to comprehend who Harper inc is ...
ReplyDelete