Conservative Vision

As Tory bloggers and writers are themselves saying this budget does not fortell a viable conservative vision, and that's because puppets like Harper are incapable of articulating the only viable conservative vision there is: conservation: a green, sustainable, non-corporate, community-celebrating economy for non-statist anarchists.

Harpermania

Stephen will be Stephen, there are stones inside his snowballs, I see him and I see George W. Bush, I their strings, I see their puppeteers, I see the same dozy grins, hear the same self-delusions, hear the same public deceptions. From Lack of Common Sense Flaherty I see a man giddy with hysteria after projecting 85 billion dollar deficits and tax cuts to ensure there won't be money to pay down the debt without misery, I see them together in the glib banalities of a thumbs up for the upcoming feeding frenzy that always follows Bush League economics, I see good deals for wise stock shoppers. I see the poor out in the cold while the middle class fix their cottages. I see artists bought off, their silence paid for, I listen to journalists and hear spin. I see the Beast slouching towards Bethlehem.

Ignatieff: right wing liberalism, again.

Since Ignatieff believes the Alberta tar sands are the trump card up Canada's sleeve, it is quite evident that he is willing to undo everything Green that Dion attempted to achieve. The CD Howe side of the party has taken over: we're back to Paul Martin liberalism. There is no Just Society in the cards and certainly no green society. He is also so intent on selling out the Liberal Party to buy the favours of the oiligarchy that Canada will have no role to play in the green future that isn't dictated by corporatist ideology. And now the middle class has a second do nothing option. Political opportunism is depressing.

Our non leaders in our non-democracy

Nothing makes Stephen Harper's lack of leadership more evident than real leadership. Obama makes our Tar Sands eco-economist,anti-liberal, anti-labour, anti-civil service, anti-arts PM look like the last of the Bush League cheerleaders he is, and the more Obama acts, the more Harper's malice will become evident. Harper was in Bush's league, a narrow-minded hard-hearted demagogue, he is utterly out of Obama's league. Harper has betrayed every aspect of the reformist democrat he inherited from the old Social Credit, for the same reasons that Social Credit was betrayed way back in 1947, the extreme right wing learned how to turn Mussolini's corporatism into modern international neo-corporatism.
However much good Obama may or may not do in various spheres, there is no democracy in a corporate state, there is only the illusion of it, the pretense, made evident by the Dilbert manageriat that serves corporate power, the bumbling middle men have no real power, but are shackled instead by the banality of evil.
Obama's revolution may be a social revolution but politically it is going to fail because liberalism can only offer a kinder gentler version of Mussolini's state, it lacks the moral courage, and the vision, to dismantle the corporate economy and to free enterprise from the shackles of legal entities that have no conscience to bind their actions. Gangster capitalism and globalism capitalism are the same thing now. Obama will not change that, liberalism, if it returned to his political philosophical roots remains the only defense of individual freedom we have but corporations have more rights than citizens, because they have the right to profit without conscience: conservatives have abandoned the larger community good for the corporate good, because the manageriate dutifully votes corporate, they are a class devoted to their own self-satisfaction and security, they will do nothing for the common good because their work place teaches them there is only personal good, narrowly defined as keeping your job and your benefits, that is the biggest problem with corporate unions, they have the same Dilbert mentality. That is not freedom, but license. Our only hope is that biologically intelligent economic environmentalism will natural realign our society. The planet is a giant incubator for mutually beneficial lifeforms. That, and grace given and received, are our only hopes. Obama's leadership may take us part of the way, Harper's will take us nowhere near those goals.

Pro-Semitism

Only a sophist can rationalize the murders of nearly a thousand innocent Palestinians and blame Hamas while absolving Israel. In Canada, it's called partisan politics; there are more Jews than Muslims here, so it's alright to kill Muslims and not alright to blame Israel because there are more votes to be gained, that's why both Libs and Cons are falling over themselves to support Israel. Israel is NOT a liberal democracy, it is a reactionary democracy. Both Jews and Arabs are Semites, so it is NOT anti-Semitic to oppose the murder of Palestinians by Jews, it's pro-Semitism. I am a pro-Semite. I am not opposed to the existence of Israel. And yet I KNOW that Israel has committed 60 years of atrocities against Palestinians. This MUST STOP. This is NOT an eye for eye. This is a hundred eyes for one eye.

Military Police Make Arrest in Afghanistan

It is clear from this and from the comments that follow it in the online article that some people believe that the Taliban "hates our freedom" and other people believe that the majority of Arabs hate the West because of the licence we take with their economies and their politics and thus with their lives and the lives of their generations. I'm one of the latter believers, so I happen to agree in principle when the Military Police act against a soldier: of course, the MP's may have been ordered to find and make an example of a soldier as part of our new Afghan PR campaign, so that the arrested man may himself be no more or less than yet another casualty of war lost to a split-second response to dangers/paranoia while embattled in the ethical shades that haunt the killing of anyone on behalf of a nation.

Politiking

Stephen Geoffrey Harper-style.

Cap and Trade Fantasies

One of the foremost global warming scientists in the world is warning Obama that cap and trade won't help solve the problems he thinks it will. As for Canada's government and people, we're so deep in denial about the consequences of our lifestyle that we pretend to care about the environment and yet continue to support a prime minister who takes his orders from Big Oil. According to Gwynne Dyers new book, while people like Bush and the Harpercons 'fiddle' every powerhouse military in the world is planning its strategies for the future around the crisis that is going to inevitably destroy our delusions and the lives of our children and grand children.

The real problem with the economy

Canada's CEO's have allegedly already earned more this year than me or most people I know will earn all year. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class sells out the poor in the hopes of becoming rich. Corporate capitalism is a disease.