It couldn't be a more horrible sight. For me it is the ultimate nightmare. The grubby Stephen Harper, the political porn peddler, in my own province of Quebec. The province that adopted me, and that I love so much. Preparing for tonight's French-language TV debate, and a last desperate effort to claw his way to another bloody majority. By playing the bigot card. For this latest French-only Con video leaves no doubt about that...
He's still lurking in the shadows. Still afraid to meet the media. Still hoping that Canadians will forget his Enemy List. But it's just not working. And today thousands of them demanded to know who is on that sinister list.
But I'm sure it's just a nightmare and I'll wake up soon eh?
I've never been prouder to be a Quebecer. I LOVE that orange wave.
And I'm not going to play the hysterical blame game like so many others are tonight.
Because trust me...out of this catastrophe will eventually emerge something GREAT. Like a united left that can properly represent the views of most of the citizens of this country.
I'll be back with another hopefully rational comment. As soon as I pack my suitcase.
You know...it's funny.
I was planning to wear my favourite t-shirt tonight.
I usually love this time of the year. When the ice starts to break up. A warm wind roars in from the west, and drives the pieces towards the island.
And into the ferry channel.
So the old tug has to ride to the rescue.
And you know that soon it will be Spring. At last.
But this year Spring will bring with it an election, or another surrender. Stephen Harper could win a majority. And who or what will save Canada?
When after everything this deeply disturbed political thug has done to degrade our democracy, and our beautiful country, so many Canadians would still vote for him and his brutish Cons.(PDF)
The Conservatives have strengthened their lead with boomers who are much more likely to actually vote. The Conservatives now have comfortable lead in seat rich Ontario and even enjoy a very significant lead in the census metropolitan area of Toronto. The Conservatives also now lead the Liberals in Quebec and among those born outside Canada, which is a major turnaround.
The easily bought, the greedy ones. The ones who sold out a national daycare program for a $100 a month. The ones who thought the Cons were good money managers. When they are just quacks and crooked hustlers.
Vaughan, the so-called battleground riding that recently switched from Liberal red to Tory blue, received funding for a whopping 136 projects. That’s 136 billboards for the government. It’s at the top of the list for all of Canada, but that doesn’t even begin to tell the story.
Who would do ANYTHING for a majority.
The ones who didn't care when Harper lied about torture in Afghanistan, or when he gutted the census and made ignorance a virtue. Or when he let a Canadian kid rot in Guantanamo, or attacked women's rights like a rabid dog, or discriminated openly against gay Canadians, or torched the planet to please Big Oil.
The ones who let him pose as a patriot. When no man hates OUR Canada more than Steve does.
Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it.
The ones who shrugged their shoulders when he raped our Parliament, and turned it into a stinking sewer. The collaborators in the corporate media who knelt before him with starry eyes, inhaled his farts, and called him a political genius.
The rabble who didn't care as he turned a Canadian government into a criminal conspiracy.
Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of forcing Oda to make the change.
“His [Harper's] DNA is all over this crime scene,” Cuzner said.
And then there are all his other little helpers. The boomers who only care about their stocks, and keeping the young in line... or in jail. The young who don't vote because they don't care who is in power, as long as they don't tax their i-pods.
The progressives still stuck in the 20th Century who couldn't put Canada before their parties. And would rather fight each other than fight the real enemy. Even as our country BURNS.
And now it may be too late. The election is coming.
The day of reckoning is here.
And so is the undertaker...
You know, I think that's the best dramatization I've ever seen of what a Harper majority might look like. Since the 1956 version of "1984."
And Stephen Harper makes a great undertaker. Or is he the mad minister?
But a lot of other people helped bring down this country.
A few years ago, during my Indiana Jones phase, I was exploring some Mayan ruins in the Yucatan, when I came across a building with the sign of the owl carved into the rock...a witchdoctor's place.
And as I sat there a strange feeling came over me. Like something bad was about to happen. It was getting dark, the snakes were starting to come out. I couldn't wait for my brother to return so we could get out of there.
Later someone told me it was a place where it's believed young children were sacrificed. As their society collapsed, and their city was swallowed up by the jungle.
Which is sort of like the sickening feeling I had today when read this poll.(PDF)
Maybe it's a rogue poll. Maybe it just signals that voters don't want an election. Maybe the attack ads are working. Maybe Canadians believe the Cons when they tell them that Michael Ignatieff wants to tax their i-pods.
But if the trend is confirmed no amount of denial can conceal the writing on the wall. Stephen Harper is closer to a majority that he has been for a long time. And the progressive side is going nowhere. Two months from an election.
Since 2006 the Government of Canada has systematically undermined democratic institutions and practices, and has eroded the protection of free speech, and other fundamental human rights.
Canadian democratic institutions, civil society organizations, and human rights defenders have been weakened, marginalized and silenced. Their capacity to monitor and safeguard the respect for democracy, free speech, and other rights is in jeopardy. The quality and health of democratic life in Canada is under serious threat
And that bad feeling swept over me again.
Are we inching toward two Canadas, each with its own foundational principles? And if we are, can we find common ground? Across our history, Canadians have endeavoured to resolve problems by negotiating compromises. We’ve become known for these efforts, even when they have fallen short.
Because let there be no doubt whatsoever, if Stephen Harper gets a majority, with the help of this other Canada, he will not only rip the guts out of this country, he will blow it apart.
And what worries me is that so few seem to see the danger. We've come to believe our own propaganda. Canada is strong. When really we are fragile. Born of compromise not U.S. style confrontation. And nowhere is it written that a country will last FOREVER.
And what depresses me is that four years into a Harper majority, progressives will probably still be arguing over whether they should unite. Just like they are now. Except that by then they'll be screaming at each other like howler monkeys. In the ruins of what was once Canada.
And the saddest thing is that one day it will be so obvious that we should have banded together, recognized we were in an ideological war for the soul of Canada, and hit the Cons where it HURTS.
Oh well. I don't know, maybe English Canada was always condemned to become Amerika North. Maybe it's just our destiny.
And if it is, we can run as fast we can, but there is no escape.
And it will consume us...
Or freeze us in our tracks, doing the same old, same old, as our country BURNS.
What I do know is that we have about two months to get our act together, attack the Cons harder than ever, and try to save what we can.
Or we might wake up soon in a country we don't recognize.
I thought this Maclean's story about Stephen Harper was a real good read. But it didn't tell really tell me what I didn't already know.
Because I've studied Harper like a bug for years. I can never forget how he was willing to risk the unity of this country to save his own skin. And how well it worked for him.
The attempted coalition was gone. But not forgotten. Conservatives marvelled at the spike in support for their party at the height of the crisis, with well over 40 per cent saying they would vote for the besieged party. Thousands backed that sentiment with cash. “We’d never raised so much money,” the senior campaign official said. “It was a banner month for fundraising.”
I can never forget how a wave of anti-Quebec feeling swept across English Canada. How the comment columns and the airwaves were full of the most disgusting garbage I have ever seen. A frenzy of hatred aimed not just at the Bloc, but at ALL Quebecers.
And how if an election had been held then, it would have given Harper a crushing majority. Which is of course, why he is planning to do the same thing again.
That's why he goes on and on about a coalition. Why he launched those attack ads where, if you look at them closely, Gilles Duceppe is made to look like a terrorist.
Or Dracula...
It's just an attempt to recreate that toxic atmosphere, so he can campaign against Quebec again, and get his precious majority.
Stephen Harper is risking a great Canadian success by soothing one of the country’s rawest irritants. Ending public subsidies for political parties – Conservative code for, among other things, getting separatist Bloc Quebecois fingers out of the federal purse – is a feel-good exercise rippling with bad omens for national unity.
Successful in saving his government, Harper’s tactics were odd and dangerous. Odd because they conveniently forgot his earlier attempt to form a similar coalition to bring down Liberals and dangerous because it effectively disenfranchised the roughly 40 per cent of Quebec voters who support the Bloc.
I don't doubt that if Harper is able to harness that anti-Quebec feeling again, he will win his precious majority. Because those demons that inhabit English Canada are far too easily aroused.
When the Globe recently ran a story on the Bloc's conditions for supporting the budget. They got more than 1,500 comments and many of them were like this one:
This frog really has REAL CANADIANS shaking in their boots. The sooner we cut these asssssholessss off the dole the better. Only the Conservatives are prepared to stand up for Canada. Canadians have had enough of these bloodsuckers.
You know, I realize many Canadians would rather live in denial. But here is the inconvenient truth eh.
Which wouldn't bother Harper of course, because if Quebec leaves, Canada will be a right-wing country FOREVER. Just like the rest of Britain would be if Scotland ever seceded.
All of this doesn't completely explain why Harper was allowed to get away with it the first time. Why there was no moral reprimand for fucking with the fabric of Canada. Or why so many progressives went along with him. Or why our leaders have been so cowed.
The opposition parties deny they are plotting to form a coalition to replace him. And you know what? They are not plotting to form a coalition. But neither are they performing the day-to-day consultation and collaboration opposition parties always do to clip a government’s wings, because they are too afraid of looking like the coalition he warns against. They have had him outnumbered for five years. For a week in 2008 they acted like it. Now he will not stop using that week as a stick to beat them with.
But it does explain some of it. And it does explain why a person like me, who loves Canada AND Quebec, tries to end as many posts as possible this way:
Organize, unite, defeat this criminally irresponsible maniac.
Just when you think Stephen Harper can't go any lower. He does.
Not much threatens Conservatives more than essentially one-on-one battles with Liberals in the Ontario political heartland. No solution is more immediately appealing than giving the NDP a timely boost.
While no strategy ever fully survives contact with the enemy — the Bloc will use the extended mission to its advantage in war-weary Quebec and a stronger NDP could hurt Conservatives in battleground BC — Harper has scored two tactical victories. He neutralized any Liberal advantage in outflanking Conservatives on a post-combat Afghanistan policy and then widened the all-important fissure to his party’s ideological left.
I thought he had just folded after being pressured by our so-called allies. But this is worse. He's broken his promise, he's castrated Parliament.
But what kind of Prime Minister plays politics with the lives of our troops? The scumbag.
What kind of Opposition Leader provides him with the political cover to destroy his own party?
Fortunately for Harper, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff made that easy earlier this summer. By endorsing an Afghanistan transition from combat to training Ignatieff handed Harper the opportunity he seized this week.
The idiot.
Why can't we understand that united we are strong and divided we can't win?
All garbage cans and newspaper boxes anywhere near the G20 security zone have been removed. Shopkeepers are debating whether to board up their windows. All the roads in the area will be closed. Buses and streetcars won't be running.
My friend says his building manager has warned tenants not to even think about shopping for groceries during the summit because every bag will have to be examined...as many as THREE times.
Cellphones will be jammed. And everyone knows kite flying is verboten.
Just like it is in the Taliban held areas of Afghanistan. So naturally the main topic of conversation in the hood is not the inconvenience or the fake lake.
“Might there be a terrorist strike? Might there be a lone-wolf attack of some kind? Might this event be the focus for some concerted violent action on part of an extremist group of some kind or another?”
As a result, police and military forces are getting ready for everything from wayward black bears in the Muskokas to a radioactive dirty bomb in downtown Toronto.
And needless to say we're not too happy eh?
I mean who in their right mind would hold a summit in an area full of highrise buildings, where thousands and thousands of people live?
And what was Stephen Harper thinking?
His decision to spend a billion dollars on security and a fake lake is obscene. His decision to risk the safety of so many Canadians is practically CRIMINAL.
The good news?
One way or another Harper and his incompetent fascist Cons are going to wear this one FOREVER. This klown summit is the beginning of the end of that ugly regime.
The horrible irony?
I've been confidently awaiting that blessed day for so long.
