The Mounties who got their man

Cracks are appearing in the conspiracy of silence surrounding the identities of the four Horsemen involved in the death of Robert Dziekanski.

The first RCMP officer to be outed was Cpl. Benjamin Monty Robinson, the supervisor of the other three Mounties during the killing of Dziekanski, who is presently facing new problems of his own, also involving the death of a civilian.

The goon who wielded the Taser no less than five times, for a total of 31 seconds of high-voltage electric shock--administered twice while Dziekanski was on the ground convulsing--is Constable Kwesi Millington, who has since been transferred to the Toronto West detachment of the RCMP in Milton, Ontario.

The two other Mounties involved are at present known only by their last names. Constable Rundel is believed to have been reassigned to the RCMP's Nanimo detachment (303 Prideaux St., Nanaimo, V9R 2N3 [250] 754-2345), and has been taken off front-line duties. Constable Bentley has been transferred east, but his current detachment is not presently known.

Meanwhile the RCMP and their friends in the Crown's office claim that the Tasering had nothing to do with Dziekanski's death, why, nothing at all, no siree. They continue to spin their fantastic fables about the contributing factors:

• Dziekanski was suffering, they say, from alcohol withdrawal. With him on his carry-on luggage was an unopened bottle of vodka that he was bringing for a friend of the family. His lawyer quite reasonably points out that, were this allegation true, the bottle would not have remained unopened. Dziekanski's mother says that he had a problem with alcohol twenty years ago. The Polish Embassy says that the Crown's allegation is "factually baseless."
  
  
• Dziekanski was hysterically afraid of flying, we are told. No doubt this unproven allegation arose from the Mounties' oh-so-objective "fact-finding" tour of Dziekanski's home town this past April. Recall that Dziekanski had been on terra firma for half a day before he was killed: is this a case, as I noted earlier, of "retroactive aviophobia?"
  
  
• Dziekanski threatened the officers with a stapler, says the BC Criminal Justice Branch mouthpiece Stan Lowe. I have reviewed the video a number of times, and can find no frame in which a stapler can be seen. I am reproducing the video below: if anyone spots a stapler in the man's hand, please leave a comment. Given the other lies we have been told, I see no reason to take the RCMP at their word on this. But even if there had been such an object in his hand at the time, I agree with commenter Mike Steenhuus over at the CBC thread on this:
  
  "My conclusion is: If it takes 4 RCMP with tasers to take down one tired, thirsty, delirious man with a stapler, perhaps the RCMP should look into replacing their tasers with staplers." [H/t Alison at Creekside]
  
  
• The physical restraint used by the four officers, piling onto a man who has received five Taser shocks, was held to be a contributing factor in Dziekanski's death--one officer even knelt on Dziekanski's neck. Incredibly, some unnamed police"expert" found that "the officers' actions were consistent with RCMP policy and training."(Think about that one for a moment, and be very afraid.)
  
  
• The official apologists have even managed to slip in a reference to "delirium," that dubious medical alibi for deaths after Tasering. One "forensic pathologist" managed to make the obvious sound like a scientific finding: he referred to the event as "sudden death following restraint." We knew that.
  

In any case, here they are, folks: Canada's finest, on the job.

WHITEWASH!

The four RCMP officers who killed Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver Airport are going to walk.

A Crown "investigation" that has taken more than a year has concluded that Tasering an unarmed man twice*--a man who was backing away with his hands in the air--then kneeling on his neck, and then failing to take resuscitation measures once the man's heart stopped, is perfectly acceptable behaviour by RCMP officers, as is lying about what happened before it was known that a video of the incident existed.

This is what passes for justice in Canada today. Our national police force, an institution that is rotten from top to bottom, has once again been allowed to kill with impunity. And we even got to watch the killing on national television.

It's time to disband this "horribly broken" outfit. And it's time to break up the cosy little cliques that have developed between police and Crown attorneys. Lives may well depend upon it.

Until this happens, no one is safe from the bully boys in red serge. No one. There are no checks and balances, there is no accountability. The RCMP is literally out of control. Its officers are, unlike the rest of us, above--or outside--the law.

What does this mean for ordinary citizens? Just ask the family of young Ian Bush. And the mother of Robert Dziekanski.

________________
*UPDATE: It has now been revealed that Dziekanski was Tasered five times, not twice--the RCMP lied about that, too. "Three pathologists," unnamed, have put his death down to, amongst other factors, a "hysterical fear of flying"--this after being in Vancouver for half a day! So now we have retroactive aviophobia, right up there with "excited delirium" as a new medical alibi for police brutality.

Counter-dissent: the case of Tarek Fatah

I thought this article was satire, at first, that had duped the perennially unwary.

I was wrong. Tarek Fatah is dead serious. Any satire is utterly unintentional.

Little Mosque on the Prairie, a tiresomely twee CBC sit-com effort, is nothing less, he says, than a vehicle for terrorism. But then, the indefatigable Fatah turns out to have had this bee in his bonnet for a while:

In early 2007, as the CBC was promoting Little Mosque on the Prairie with great fanfare, I expressed my misgivings about the project. Writing in a Toronto newspaper, I suggested the CBC sitcom reflected "an Islamist agenda" that was using comedy to lull mainstream Canadians into believing all-is-well in Canada's Muslim communities, despite evidence of a rise in extremism among Muslim youth. For example, Little Mosque made no reference to "the hijacking of...Islam by politicized clerics affiliated with Saudi Arabia or Iran."

The latter, I think, would have required one heck of a laugh track to keep the program's sit-com status intact. The suggestion reminds me of the scene in Natural Born Killers when Mallory's abuse by her father is presented in just this fashion. But we weren't meant to be amused by it. In Fatah's hands, I suspect, Little Mosque on the Prairie would include stonings and amputations, bomb-making and AK-47s, genital mutilation and burqas, and it wouldn't be funny either.

But of course Fatah doesn't want us to laugh. He has no patience with the comedic possibilities of cultural encounter. For him it's all documentary, all the time, and if we're laughing it's because we aren't paying attention. Worse, we're being lulled and duped. Because we all should know that Canadian Muslims--with the exception, of course, of Tarek Fatah himself (his involvement with the tiny Muslim Canadian Congress ended in 2006 after the latter split into two even smaller groupuscules) and Alia Hogben's Canadian Council of Muslim Women--are all terrorists or terrorist sympathizers or terrorist enablers or just plain folks terrorized into silence.

Now let me note up front, because one has to these days, that I have far more in common with Fatah than I do with the religious nutbars who ran weekly fun-for-the-whole-family Execution Nights down at the soccer stadium in Kabul, banned kite-flying, made it a crime to educate girls, and sent men to jail for trimming their beards. The Muslim Canadian Congress, and I presume Fatah as well, support a "progressive, liberal, pluralistic, democratic, and secular society where everyone has the freedom of religion." Leave out the word "liberal" and I'm there.

But Fatah insists on pretending that he's a brave voice crying in the wilderness. He paints much the same picture of Canadian Islamic communities that screechy xenophobes like Kathy Shaidle and the hérouxvillistes do. This gets him excellent media coverage and a lot of political face-time. Yet to hold everyone's attention, he needs to make wilder and wilder assertions. Ramping up paranoia from the perceived vantage-point of an apostate, or, at least, a maverick, Fatah now claims that the cast of Little Mosque on the Prairie, by virtue of collecting donations for a food-bank in concert with two more somewhat more official Muslim organizations than the one he left, is engaged in subversion.

One of these organizations is the Canadian chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Fatah doesn't talk about the Canadian chapter, though: instead, he goes on and on about wealthy donors from Arab countries who have provided money to CAIR in the US, and notes that some of the parent organization's associations have been less than savoury.

The other group is the Muslim Association of Canada, which, as he notes in his pearl-clutching manner, is made up of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which admittedly has had a chequered past--to put it mildly. But the MAC's own stated goal is "[t]o establish an Islamic presence in Canada, that is balanced, constructive and integrated though distinct, within the social fabric and culture of Canada." It's hard to argue with that. And anyway, in the case at hand, MAC just wants to collect for a foodbank.

Fatah's conclusion is a keeper:

MAC and other Islamists can fly under the radar and even manage to appropriate the CBC name and logo in their plans.

The question all Canadians should be asking is this: What good is it to send our troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan when our own public broadcaster is tricked into according respectability to Islamist organizations that share the same doctrine of Jihad?

I hope Hubert Lacroix, the new head of the CBC will recognize that the good name of the public broadcaster is tarnished as a result of partnering with CAIR and MAC. Lacroix should ensure such a hijacking of the CBC is prevented in the future. The world is witnessing a world-wide struggle that is pitting ordinary Muslims against well-funded Islamists. The least the CBC can do is not side with those who wish to implement the Muslim Brotherhood agenda on Canada.

"[H]ijacking of the CBC?" This is simply neo-McCarthyist raving. We're talking about a food drive, not flying planes into the Peace Tower. Even members of fundamentalist groups like MAC lift their dripping fangs from the corpses of innocents from time to time to share meals, give to charity and engage in the routines of family life and citizenship. And when pressed, they tend to sound like boring old run-of-the-mill social conservatives: they're opposed to abortion and feminism and same-sex marriages. Under other circumstances, there is a vast potential here for political alliances of quite a different sort than the one that allegedly exists.

But Fatah's hyperbole goes with the role that he has thrust upon himself. And the media lap it up. Why?

We might in fact ask the same question about other counter-dissidents--that is, members of groups where political dissent has arisen, who reject the dissidents and embrace the Establishment. Anti-feminist women are media darlings, for example. There was Phyllis Schlafly, who traveled up and down the USA to argue that women should stay at home, and who eventually helped to kill the Equal Rights Amendment. There's the light and lively Camille Paglia, always good for a sound bite, and of course Ann Coulter.

Once we see this sort of thing for what it is, of course, the question really answers itself. There is nothing quite so rare and valuable to the corporate media than a counter-dissident, who carries the authority of his or her background in the very act of breaking with dissidents, and can be counted upon to say things about the dissidents in question that others cannot.

It is not my intention, of course, to portray Canadian Muslims as a single community, with a dissensus group at its core. But they are too often portrayed as such, a threatening collective Other in our midst whose ways are not "ours," posing an actual threat to what we take to be the Canadian way of life. That portrait, that series of stereotypes that the good burghers of Hérouxville so bravely confronted, is always with us these days. 9/11. Our troops in Afghanistan. The appalling Khadr family. And Fatah is making good use of it all.

Islamism, in fact, is the new Communism, not in the ideological sense--only a political illiterate could make such a claim--but in the sense of a Peril, an evil loosed upon us that good citizens must root out. Hijab-wearing soccer players! Eeek! Tented women wanting to vote! Democracy is at stake! May as well search the mosques for pods while we're at it. And be sure to look under our beds.

The far-right ignorantsia is historically prone to this kind of xenophobic feeding frenzy. But to see self-professed liberals pouring oil on the flames by adding their own wild talk to the chorus is alarming. The allure of fame appears to trump civil sobriety and good judgement. In the current maelstrom of uninformed confrontation, one can be sought after by the media simply by trumpeting one's own apostasy, and rather too easily become transformed from a spokesperson to a performer.

The problem is, however, that there is inevitably a shelf-life for this particular performance. Being opposed to fundamentalist Islam, after all, is hardly new or even interesting in itself. The latter is not a moving target like progressive feminism, but an ossified, cruel, narrow, intolerant and profoundly conservative ideology. The whole point about it is that it doesn't change. So anti-Islamist rhetoric quickly gets boring and repetitive.

We know that beheading prisoners is uncivilized. We know that lashing rape victims is cruelly wrong, and hanging gay teeenagers is barbaric. It's not hard for a Canadian, Muslim or non-Muslim, to make these and similar points with dignity and sincerity, and establish common cause with the majority, but for some the media limelight can prove intoxicating.

I believe that it has become just that for Tarek Fatah. The media haven't turned on him yet, but they will have to at some point to preserve their own credibility. Calling Little Mosque on the Prairie an Islamist plot is in exactly the same league as Phyllis Chesler's taxi-driver fifth column. What can we expect next--fluoridated water alerts?

Don't laugh.

Democracy in Canada? Maybe someday

A few days ago, the unelected representative of a foreign monarch thwarted the coming to power of a coalition that had the support of a majority of members of the House of Commons.

This majority was actually elected by a majority of voters. That would have been unusual, had the coalition succeeded in forming a government with the support of the Bloc Québécois. Under our "first past the post" electoral system, most majority governments in Canada are elected by minorities.

But in any case it didn't happen. Parliament was simply dismissed, and will be permitted to reconvene in late January.

The leader of the Liberals, not even elected by his own party, will shortly be meeting with the Prime Minister, who was not elected by popular vote, because we don't do that sort of thing here. Stephen Harper was elected in one of Canada's 310 ridings, and he leads the government after 37% of the voters supported Conservatives in the last election.

The PM is busy at the moment appointing 18 new members to sit in the unelected Senate. If his government falls in a non-confidence vote, he'll at least have managed to jam Canada's upper house with Conservatives, all by himself--although unelected Liberal senators will still be in the majority.

Waiting in the wings, in case questions of Constitutional interpretation are at stake, is the unelected Supreme Court of Canada, whose members are appointed by the Prime Minister as vacancies occur.

On January 27, there will be a vote in the House of Commons on a new budget. It will be a confidence vote, and should the government lose it, that unelected representative of a foreign monarch I mentioned will once again decide where we all go from there.

"This is what democracy looks like," chant the street protesters. But they're talking about something else.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front...[update with pics]

..I'm awaiting word from the Ottawa Civic Hospital. My stepdaughter Aurora is to be induced today, and I stand to be a step-grandfather twice over!

Pics to follow, I promise.

UPDATE: (December 10) After a few hours of labour my stepdaughter has just given birth to beautiful Dilara Marianne and Selin Amaru, each two kilograms. If the City of Ottawa will only plough my street, I'll be heading over there shortly. Pics later today.

Best birthday present I can imagine! Thank you, everyone, for all of your good wishes.

UPDATE: (later that same day)

At last! Made it through traffic and snow, picked up son-in-law Emre's sister, got to the hospital.

Aurora is amazing. This morning, just after giving birth, she sounded wide awake and alert, as though she'd been out for a jog or something. Emre, on the other hand...let's just say that women do this sort of thing better!

The babies will be in the incubator for a day or two, but they're doing well. The nursery permits only two visitors at a time per baby, including one parent, so said the sign: I pointed out that there were twins in this case, so my stepson and I should be able to go in together, but one of the nurses said, "Two peas, one pod."

When I did get in, I saw Dilara first, and asked, in a completely dazed way, where the other one was. Another nurse laughed and said, "We had to separate them. They were fighting."

Here they are, and now I'm going to have a celebratory drink or three.

Scrumptious Dilara Marianne:

















Gorgeous Selin Amaru, winking at me:

















The tired but blissful parents:

















Best birthday evah!

Thank you all again for your many good wishes, which I've passed on. I wish you could see the foolish smile on my face.

Criminal blogging?

I learned only this morning of far-right blowhard Richard Evans' pattern of attacks on a female blogger, Polly Jones. These culminated recently in a suggestion that Jones kill herself, left as a comment on a post in which she, perhaps unwisely, had disclosed a lot of her personal pain.

Driven by desperation, Jones telephoned Evans to try to make him stop. Being what he is, Evans taped the call and posted it posted her recorded message on his blog, with more insulting commentary. This was then relayed in a post by Holocaust jokester Kate McMillan and is currently being discussed by some of her flying monkeys. Read the comments thread if you need a morning emetic.

It appears that Dick, and I use the nickname advisedly, has been following Jones around in cyberspace since she began blogging, calling her various names consistent with his misogyny, posting photoshopped pictures of her on his blog, and also--rather creepily--inviting her to BBQs and other events in the Calgary area.

There appear to be three separate issues of law that are relevant to this on-going behaviour.

First is the matter of the posted photoshop jobs. Readers will recall that no less an individual than Stephen Harper recently sued the Liberals for "misappropriation of personality." One instance of such misappropriation is the unauthorized use of an image of a person--it's a tort, as established by Les Editions Vice Versa v Aubry in 1998.

The second, actually brought up in detail by a dissident over at SDA, is that it is a criminal offence to counsel suicide. Jones' inner turmoil is a matter of public record at the moment. Decent people would feel considerable sympathy and empathy for her, but we are not here dealing with decent people. The suggestion that Jones shoot herself was made in the full knowledge of Jones' anguished mental state. Here is the relevant section of the Criminal Code:

241. Every one who
(a) counsels a person to commit suicide, or
(b) aids or abets a person to commit suicide,
whether suicide ensues or not, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

The third issue of law is the Criminal Code's criminal harassment provisions, Section 264. Of particular interest in the present connection is this:

264. (1) No person shall, without lawful authority and knowing that another person is harassed or recklessly as to whether the other person is harassed, engage in conduct referred to in subsection (2) that causes that other person reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.

Prohibited conduct

(2) The conduct mentioned in subsection (1) consists of
...
(b) repeatedly communicating with, either directly or indirectly, the other person or anyone known to them;

Cyber-stalking may also fall under other provisions of the Criminal Code (scroll to end).

I believe that matters have gone well past the line at this point. Not only should the police and a lawyer be consulted, but there should also be a chorus of condemnation in the blogosphere, right, left and centre. Dick's conduct is flagrantly wretched and immoral, and it should be named as such by anyone with an ounce of human compassion or decency. We shouldn't expect to find much of the latter at Small Dead Animals, but perhaps saner and more civil voices will be heard as this story develops.

Conservative coup d'état?

The Alberta lawyer who drafted a power-sharing proposal between Stockwell Day, Gilles Duceppe and Joe Clark in 2000 is now suggesting that the Conservatives should defy the Governor-General if she were to ask the Liberal-NDP coalition to form a new government if the Conservative administration falls on January 27.

The lawyer, Gerry Chipeur, claims that Lord Byng "was just flat out dead wrong" in asking Arthur Meighen to form a government when Mackenzie King lost a confidence vote in 1926. By the same token, Chipeur would likely dismiss the decision of Ontario Lt.-Gov. John Black Aird in 1985 to permit David Peterson's Liberals, with NDP support, to replace the Conservative government of Frank Miller.

What is being irresponsibly proposed here, at least to this observer, is not merely the precipitation of a genuine constitutional crisis, but nothing less than the illegal seizure of power by Harper's Conservatives in the event of a successful non-confidence vote. Constitutional experts, in whose ranks Chipeur is not to be found, have already pronounced on the legality of the proposed coalition. What will Harper do if his government falls and the coalition is asked to form a new government--call out the army?

Stand up for Canada, forsooth. Against the rule of law?

A tale of two leaders.

Gilles Duceppe and Stephen Harper.

One cannot imagine two men who are more different in the choices they have made with regards to their career paths, their personal and ideological beliefs, and their leadership styles.

Gilles Duceppe has serious, long-term political credentials. He has often sacrificed his own interests, he has devoted himself to advancing the rights of workers, and he has spent long, badly or not remunerated, unsung hours on picket lines and at union meetings. He has taken on lowly tasks because the work needed to be done, he has rolled up his sleeves and pitched in when necessary, and he has listened to criticism from the rank and file. Duceppe takes his responsibilities as an elected official to heart and he dedicates considerable intellectual energy and vigour to being as well-informed, as attentive to the issues, and as knowledgeable about his riding and his caucus members as possible.

Stephen Harper bluffs his way when necessary, brown-noses when opportune and bullies when he feels like it. He has held three, perhaps four jobs so far. He has the personality of a sociopath and the gut instincts of a mafia capo. He was jonesing for an alliance with the Bloc québecois under circumstances less compelling than the asinine stunt that his henchman Flaherty pulled. He is a chameleon, providing in any given circumstance the words and the deportment that are instrumental to his getting what he wants. He needs sycophants, followers and cheer-leaders. He needs to see terror in the eyes of his workers. He constantly needs an audience.

So here's my idea. Duceppe should be the Prime Minister.

And Harper should be an actor. He would get the adulation and applause he craves. He is thoroughly incompetent as an economist; he merely got that degree to catch the attention of the Reform Party. His Famous Blue Sweater performance during the last federal election, except for a few moments when he dropped out of character, was worthy of an Academy Award™.

A week in politics

The week that wasn't. We rub our eyes. A week of promised transformation, new ways of thinking and acting, new forms of governing.

Political parties, cooperating to make Parliament work. Canadians, fed up with the bickering, divisive partisanship that has marred the House of Commons for years, have been calling for just that. But when the prospect actually loomed, it was made to look threatening.

Nervous Liberals are pulling back: the future of the coalition is in serious doubt. At this point we must hope that his Conservative handlers let Harper be Harper. Only The Stephen can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He came this close one week ago; perhaps next time he will be successful. And there will, inevitably, be a next time.

I have been struck by the similarities between this past few days and periods of genuinely revolutionary transformation. At first I thought these were mere analogies: now I am not so sure. Obviously we were not observing some kind of fundamental overthrow or historical rupture, but merely a possible change of government. Yet we were also watching, and participating in, the possibility of a genuine paradigm shift, however fleeting and tantalizing it was.

Coalition thinking is foreign to our political culture. Our antique "first past the post" electoral system doesn't lend itself, for many reasons, to collegial parliamentarism. It exacerbates regional differences; even modest shifts in public opinion can result in major changes in the composition of the House of Commons; and the fight for pluralities becomes an end in itself, rather than consensus-seeking and cooperation.

But when coalition talk began, the traditional ways of thinking began to slide away. Readers of my blog will know that I have never had much time for the Liberal Party, for whom power has too often been preferred over principle, and perks and privileges over service to the public. But there I was, with countless others, beginning to imagine a new way of doing politics, strategies of cooperation, a willingness to break new ground. The obstacles were many, but the possibilities were endless. When things suddenly seem doable, we tend to make them so if given half a chance.

So this situation had its own Girondists and its Jacobins, ranged against the counter-revolutionaries, whose fight-back was fierce: we were treated to days of barefaced lies funded by a huge Conservative Party war chest, powered by bad faith, anger and desperation. It all culminated, as we know, in the padlocking of Parliament by a Prime Minister afraid to face the House, facilitated by a representative of the British head of state, perfidious Albion by proxy.

The polls, snapshots of popular opinion at one point in time rather than eternal truths, indicated precisely what one might expect: in a time of turbulence, people reach for the known:

The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.

Suddenly this became just another exercise in national unity, a war against Quebec separatism, a fight against a "coup d'état", democracy's last stand. It was Harper cast briefly in the unlikely mould of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, with prorogation replacing the War Emergency Measures Act. A new way of thinking gave way to the old, partisan ways of working.

Canadian public opinion, volatile in this situation as it was during the election campaign just a few weeks ago, would have shifted just as quickly in the opposite direction had the coalition triumphed and been seen subsequently to be working effectively, in a disciplined fashion, on our economic crisis. But this was not to be.

Momentum, always essential in a paradigm shift of this nature, has been lost, and I suspect fatally. Louis XVI closed the doors of the Salle des États in 1789 to prevent the runaway National Assembly from meeting. He simply put off the inevitable for a short period of time. But here in Canada the new Tennis Court Oath is not so likely to hold.

Canadians feel this, and it's natural that so many have reacted as they have. If Harper were to call an election tomorrow, and the G-G allowed it, he might even win a majority.

At the beginning of all this I voiced some serious misgivings about the choice of Stéphane Dion to lead the coalition. Instead of Georges Danton, we got Inspector Clouseau. Yes, a Clouseau who got in touch with his core towards the end, but that hardly mattered. He was discredited during and after the election, fairly or unfairly, and to many Canadians his return seemed like something out of The Night of the Living Dead. And that video--good grief. The full story of this monumental bungle has yet to be told. There are studios in Ottawa for hire, after all: there was no need for an amateurish mini-cam effort delivered to the media unpardonably late. Was it sabotage or incompetence?

In any case the Liberal Party is in disarray. Michael Ignatieff is not keen on the coalition; the loudmouth Jim Karygiannis has publicly denounced it, as have Frank Valeriote and Keith Martin in more circumspect fashion. At a time when party discipline is never more called for, such people are permitted to spout off publicly with no apparent sanction. That's a signal, if ever there was, that the Liberals are in full retreat. Bob Rae's plucky defence of the coalition will all too soon be a voice in the wilderness of Liberal business as usual.

Because Liberals, being Liberals, will look for an easy out. It's in their nature. They have already sacrificed an underling to the gods. More burnt offerings will surely follow, including Dion himself. And Harper will make it easy for them on January 27. Indeed, I would be surprised if the two parties weren't in back-channel mode already, negotiating a compromise on the budget that both can spin as victories. Talk about deals with the devil.

I'm an optimist by nature, but I think I can read the writing on this particular wall. The Maple Syrup Revolution has likely proven to be 1905, not 1917, but there will be other opportunities and other possibilities, and other moments to be seized.

For example, in all the smoke and confusion, Harper's plan to gut pay equity has never been taken off the table. Previous Liberal and Conservative governments did their best to stop pay equity in its tracks. We still won. Could this be the next galvanizing issue? A Women's March on Ottawa? Why not?

Count me in. Let's make history, dammit.

Stephen Harper is not a leader

He can run, but he can't hide.

This was the scene on Parliament Hill today: thousands of people, with many different political views, but united to support a coalition government. Thousands of people, furious that the will of the majority has been thwarted by the cheap political trick of suspending Parliament.

Stéphane Dion has fire in his belly these days, and spoke from the heart in both official languages, as did Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton. All were upbeat, despite the rapidly-circulating news that the Governor-General had caved. The crowd was joyful and energized and ready for the fight to come.

The cowardly Harper, cut down to size, flailing blindly in all directions, has bought himself a little time. He has lashed out against unions, against the opposition parties, and most recently--and fatally, in my view--against Quebec. (Good luck with any attempt to form a majority after that foul little effort.) He's made ten enemies for every friend over the past few days. Even if his party survives, he will not.

Thanks to Harper's fear of facing Parliament, the struggle for the hearts and minds of the people has been well and truly launched. Wavering Liberals need to be brought firmly into line. We'll see just how effectivc Liberal party discipline can be in the crunch, one way or the other. The choice should be clear--let nervous nellies like Frank Valeriote try their luck running as independents in the next election if they don't want to show caucus solidarity.

If the Liberals fall into disarray, or turn tail--and there is some talk of that at the moment--it will be toxic for them, no matter how much positive spin they try to put on their support for the crumbs Harper is certain to toss them to get the budget passed on January 27. Canadian voters are sick to death of dithering and spin. Things have progressed much too far for their expectations to be dimmed or dashed at this point.

In any case, now we have the full measure of Stephen Harper, the nervous little man behind the curtain revealed for all to see, unable to connect with Canadians, blindly reciting his own talking-points during his mercifully short address last night. Perhaps he's simply incapable of making an empathetic link with ordinary people. Perhaps he's simply showing the strain. He is a man in full flight, who is prepared to cower at 24 Sussex for a month and a half while the economy tanks. He is a bully faced down and humiliated, running out of the schoolyard with a red face. An incompetent hack, who has brought his party and his personal fortunes to the brink of disaster.

Today is Day Six of the Maple Syrup Revolution. Interesting times, indeed.

Stale, canned and indigestible.

Stephen Harper's canned homily earlier this evening was an insult to any Canadian with more than two brain cells to rub together. As my co-blogger pointed out, the pre-recorded statement was riddled with lies and disinformation.

Nobody in the PMO's communications office has yet answered the question why Harper has been using the term separatist when speaking of the Bloc Québecois for his anglophone audience and souverainiste when he speaks French.

He really has made a dog's breakfast* of it, hasn't he?

*no offense intended to Le Dawg. The caricature was published by Le Cornichon when Paul Martin was still the Liberal Leader.

7:00 p.m. statement: Harper keeps on lying to Canadians

Scant weeks ago, at the Winnipeg Conservative convention, the Conservative rank and file were heavily into personality cult politics: at the front of the hall, all the pictures were of Harper, Harper, Harper, except one of some schoolgirls wearing "I've got a crush on Harper" T-shirts. He was Da Man, he was the King, he was the Boss, he was the Dear Leader all rolled into one, and he was at the giddy top of his game.

Tonight we saw a man in full flight, a man cut down to size, nervously smirking at the beginning of a wisely short statement that contained nothing new--and quite a few falsehoods.

The CBC commentators were kind. They used the phrase "not true" now and then--but perhaps Harper himself should sign up for Peter Russell's civics class, because he is either ignorant or consciously lying to the Canadian people.

Let's be specific:

• In Canada, he said, the government "has always been chosen by the people." FALSE. To begin with, under our electoral system, we do not vote for governments. We vote for MPs. The Governor-General asks MPs to form governments. The Prime Minister isn't even mentioned in the Constitution.
  
  Secondly, Harper seems to have forgotten the King/Byng affair. After a confidence vote in 1926, which King lost, Arthur Meighen was asked by Governor-General Lord Byng to form a government, which he did, losing a confidence vote himself a few days later. Oddly, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon made the same mistake yesterday.
  
  
• "The Opposition," said Harper, "wants to overturn the results of [the] election." FALSE. The results stay exactly the same: the MPs who were elected remain MPs. As noted, Canadian electors do not elect governments.
  
  
• The proposed coalition is entering into an alliance with separatists, Harper claimed. FALSE. The Bloc Québécois is not a formal part of the coalition. It has pledged to support the coalition on confidence motions, but not on the routine business of the House.
  
  
• The "Opposition (parties have) no democratic right" to proceed with their plans, Harper said. FALSE. On the contrary, under our Constitution, they have every democratic right to vote non-confidence in the Conservative government and to make their case to the Governor-General that they could form a government themselves.
  

The statement, offering nothing new whatsoever, was nothing but a farrago of falsehoods, a tissue of lies, a disgraceful attempt by the Prime Minister to buttress his desperate attempt to hold onto power.

Harper had the gall to conclude by pledging "to protect our democracy...to protect Canada."

Did you really mean that, Prime Minister? Then do the right thing. Face the music on Monday, and resign.

Odetta: December 31, 1930--December 3, 2008

Damn, I hate mortality. A voice that haunted the soul. And for some reason, having not thought of her for some years, I found myself singing bits of her version of "I'm a stranger here" over the past few days. One of those coincidences that make me wonder....

More details of her remarkably full life here. For now, some of her music. Alas, I can find no Odetta version of "Stranger here" on the web. Anyone?










Still going strong in 2005!

Stéphane Dion answers an ad

Who'd a thunk it?



[H/t 1337haxOr]

Civics 101

A constitutional expert weighs in on the "usurpation of power" meme and other Tory prevarications.

[H/t CC. Update: and with apologies to Impolitical who got there first]

Fear and loathing in Canada

Now Harper's fightback strategy is clear: bash the Bloc and rally round the flag. He's portraying himself as standing up for Canada against the separatist hordes, the latter poised, not only to secede, but to take over the Canadian government as well. Leur Québec comprend le Canada.

Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon fired one of the first shots yesterday, feeding lines to Conservative TV's Mike Duffy: according to "sources on the Hill," said Cannon, part of the coalition deal was to give six Senate seats to the BQ. This gained no traction in the media, and small wonder: as a smart commenter pointed out, at present only four Senate vacancies for Quebec even exist.

Yet another deliberately planted rumour by Tories on the ropes. But this has proved to be part of an orchestrated strategy: playing the national unity card. There was Harper's flailing assertion that the coalition deal was inked in the absence of Canadian flags, when three were clearly visible. There are the rallies going on, under the theme "Stand Up for Canada"--as though there were anything but Harper's own neck at stake here.

National unity. Hey, if it worked for the Liberals....Just ignore the rank smell of Harper's hypocrisy--he made his own deal with the devil in 2004--and off we go, full tilt boogie, on a patriotism jag.

By now, Harper should have learned the lesson: just as coalition talk had a life of its own, so too does anti-Quebec talk. And there is no doubt--no doubt at all--that the Bloc-bashing campaign on which he is presently embarked will quickly morph into precisely that. It will open the door to every Quebec-hating loony in CPC ranks and the electorate to dust off the "Bilingual today, French tomorrow" nonsense and invoke the spectre of unleashed "Frenchmen" riding roughshod over English Canada.

And the souverainistes, for their own reasons, or perhaps for no reason at all, are busy fanning the flames. "Every gain we're making here is good for Quebec ... for a sovereign Quebec," crowed Gilles Duceppe. Meanwhile, back on the ranch, that disgraced old blowhard Jacques "money and the ethnic vote" Parizeau has excitedly blessed the coalition. Thanks for the kiss, buddy.

National unity? The way the Tory campaign is heading (abetted by bloquistes who can't keep their mouths shut), increased national disunity can be the only result. As Antonia Maioni, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, puts it, Quebeckers believe that the Bloc "is representing their interests in Ottawa." "To kick the Bloc in the guts is in a way to kick Quebec as well," she said.

Wait and see. Harper has already disgraced himself to the point of no return. Now he has opened a Pandora's box. He hasn't done this innocently: he's willing to risk support in Quebec by inflaming anti-Quebec sentiment elsewhere if it will save his government and himself. And he can count on his rank and file to help him out. Let's call it the Brockville Strategy.

UPDATE: James Laxer has more. And one respected elder statesman has had enough of Stephen Harper's lies.

[H/t The Canadianist]

BQ to the Senate?

Fox News North's Mike Duffy interviews a bitter Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lawrence Cannon, who claims that the coalition would be the first unelected government ever, showing a weak grasp of history; and that what is happening now is a coup d'état, showing an even weaker grasp of Canadian constitutional matters. But then the hot rumour:

The Bloc Québécois have allegedly been promised six seats in the Senate.

Seriously?

Not that anything would surprise me at the moment, but this seems beyond credible. If it's true, though, Duffy may for once have hit the nail on the head when he blurted incredulously, "What is this, this sounds like a retirement plan."

Yup. Potentially troublesome allies? Put them in a safe place where they can do no harm to themselves or others. A place that their own party believes shouldn't even exist. A Senate sinecure instead of a Cabinet post? Why not?

It will be interesting to run this particular rumour to ground, in any case.

UPDATE: Cannon's grasp of history and the constitution is matched only by his awareness of current Senate vacancies. Thanks to astute commenter Janine for pointing out that Quebec at present has only four Senate spots available. Sorry, readers, for not checking yesterday. Mea culpa.

More on this in my next post.

Oh, the sweet balm...

...of conservative bitterness, bile, foot-stamping frustration, chest-beating anger, tantrums and melt-downs.

Honey in my mouth, music to my ears.

From the conservopundits, a collective wail of delicious anguish. And boy, are they mad at Harper. So are the Tory rank and file. There's a search on as I write for a suitable bus to throw him under. He was Da Man, the toast of the Winnipeg Conservative convention. Toast. Yes, quite.

Canada's new experiment in majority rule is a go. Get used to it. But if not, do keep hissing, spitting and sputtering. Sounds like a cheery Yule log to me.

UPDATE: Commenter Brian Mc refers me to today's Ottawa Sun. "NO! NO! NO!" Reminds me for some reason of a scene from Analyze This:

--You don't hear the word 'no' very often, do you?"
--I hear it all the time. Only it's 'no, please, no, no!'"

I don't want to break ranks...

...but I think this is a serious blunder. Discuss.

Thursday: rally for democracy!

Mass rallies are planned across the country on Thursday, December 4, to support a progressive coalition government.

The initiative is called Make Parliament Work/ Un Parlement Qui March.

The Ottawa event will take place on Parliament Hill. We are expecting to hear from the coalition leaders at the event.

Come out and bring your friends. Hell, bring your enemies. Be a part of history in the making!