Harper Climate Report Withers
by Chris Cook
 Credit where it's due; I'm occasionally pleasantly shocked to find sensible analysis printed in Victoria's sole daily, The Times-Colonist. The T-C is an organ of the CanWest Global media empire of the Asper family, until recently based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The late patriarch, Israel "Izzy" Asper once boasted, his chain would NEVER publish criticism of Israeli government policies. Were the Asper's media interests confined, it would be of little matter, but true to Izzy's word, the largest news corporation in Canada is today more propagandist than credible news source, and not only in its "coverage" of the cultural and literal genocide being conducted against Palestine.
The horrendous situation for journalists at CanWest
"Goebbels" is pitiable; rather than deride the house scribes as
pathological maniacs, or money grubbing sell-outs as many do, I believe
these creatures deserve our understanding: You see, it's not only in
all matters Israel that the top-down management obsessed mega-corporate
image-machine's drones patrol: The HQ agenda is sent direct to the
outpost television, radio, and print operations, and editors wanting to
continue working toe it. That goes for the salaried reporters too. The
message this media pushes is familiar enough: Call it "Neo-Con," or
"Corporate," or "Right-Wing," or anything but "mainstream;" the message
is unified with FOX, and PBS, the network Big Three, and state-owned
Canadian and British Broadcast Corporations: Unquestioning support for
unfettered global corporate hegemony, and the military actions
necessary to propel that project.
This philosophy brooks no
challenge, no matter its size, and counts for those provincial
scribblers, reporting local issues that may, in their specifics, lead
to greater reflection of the systemic danger presented the hoi polloi
and the impending disaster awaiting it should the status quo (SQ)
persist. That is, of course, because the SQ profits the propriator
class CanWest represents. But ever so rarely a morsel, an iota of
verity does yet glimmer through CanWests' editorial screen, (most
likely to occur on a Friday), and the April 20th edition contains just
such a gem, authored by CanWest staffer, Susan Riley. Riley's OpEd
takes Asper patron Prime Minister Stephen Harper to task for "taking
refuge in paleo-politics" on Climate Change (CC). [More on Stephen's
largesse later.]
Coming following the release Thursday, April
19th of the "New Government of Canada's," (a mysterious rebranding of
the nation Harper insisted the Canadian press adopt) Two-Step Climate
Change study titled, "The Cost pf Bill C-288 to Canadian Families and Businesses."
The Tory strategy is two-fold; firstly, an apologia for the Harper
government's 180 degree turnaround on Kyoto, and secondly, a refutation
of Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez's bill that calls on Canada to sign back
on to the Kyoto Protocols, and making mandatory an official government statement of policy on Climate Change.
Riley
excoriates Baird's Environment ministry's report as "amateurish,"
"slight," saying it "doesn't deserve to survive," and chides its authors,
asking if it would not be a more profitable use of their time, and the
tax-payer's resources, if they were to actually study Climate Change
rather than dragging their feet, and using scare tactics, saying the negative economic effects of addressing the issue legislatively would throw the country into recession.
According to Minister
Baird, adhering to Kyoto targets would: Cost 275,000 jobs; double
electricity costs by 2020; send petrol prices over the $1.60 cdn a
litre; and, double home heating costs. It is, as Susan Riley rightly
points out, nothing more than the "deny and delay" tactics similarly
practiced by George W. Bush's Republicans.
Since assuming
office, Harper's reconstituted Conservative party has adopted, in a
philosophical if not entirely practical way, the core values of the
radical wing of the Republican party of the United States whole. From
its faith in Reagan era voodoo economics, to the Hallelujah, "God Bless
Canada" public imprecations to The Deity, Stephen has laboured without
you, 'Canadians' to make of Canada an easily digestible piece of the
conspired 'North America Union' recipe. No surprise then, if Canadians
want to discern the direction the Tories will take the country they
need only look south. Harper could have foregone the report,
and simply issued a single sentence press release reading: on all other
matters relating to Canadian government environmental and energy
policy, please see: George W. Bush).
And Harper's plagiaristic proclivities don't end with his [sic] environmental policies.
To
become indistinguishable from the land south of the 49th, "Harmony" is
the watch word. Stockwell Day, our Public Safety "Czar," is not busily
beavering away at his primary job, but is rather readying Canada for
Armageddon, aiding and abetting the second coming of the Christ by
devoting the country's resources to measures promising to expedite that
"happy day." As with his bible-loving counterparts in power in the
United States, Day believes the preconditions writ clear in the Book of
Revelations are best helped along.
Thus
his party's incredible ignorance on climate and foreign policy are made
understandable; why else would the Tories make of Canada pre-eminent
among the world's nations in leaping to a determination to starve the
Palestinian Authority of millions of Canadian dollars in aid in the
wake of Hamas gaining the government in an election internationally
hailed as legitimate?
How
else to fathom the deafening silence during a campaign of unprecedented
Israeli Defense Forces atrocity within the Occupied Territories?
And what better explains why, during Israel's massive destruction of
the Lebanese last summer, including the killing of Canadian citizens,
the Prime Minister refused to intervene on behalf of those citizens?
Understandable
in this context is the proactive move by those speaking for Canada to
make fundamental contributions to the conditions prophesied to preceed
the Return of the King of Kings.
"Screw the Palestinian children
killed! Screw the environment, Jesus is coming home!" It's God's will
that the seas be poisoned, the people plagued, and war and rumours of
war be rife.
For their own reasons, CanWest, publishers at the
apocalypse ground zero Jerusalem Post, (itself the epitome of the sad
demise of Truth in corporate journalism), drives the line home with a
vengeance, dismissing human rights, environment, peace, and poverty
issues as not worthy of public debate. Until recently (SQ) strategy in
the press characterized environmentalists as extreme, akin to
terrorists, unreasonable maniacs, bent on destroying "our way of life."
Interesting then that Riley should be allowed to nay say management,
and attack their friends in high places.
Bearing the brunt of
Riley's withering assessment is the newly ensconced Environment
Minister, Jim Baird. Looking for all the world a hapless, lumbering,
jug-head, Baird is quick to fire acerbic jibes at critics, but as was
his hopeless predecessor, Rona Ambrose, he is stuck with a party policy
that risks, Riley says, seeing the Tories being; "[C]aught on the wrong
side of history, science and, most damaging for them, the wrong side of
business." It's a criticism certain to sting Baird, the unapologetic
business-firster, but Riley doesn't spare his boss, saying;
"The Tory strategy - to frighten and blame
- will only work if people are stupid. That seems to be the approach
underlying many Harper strategies."
Not exactly the kind of pre-election endorsement that rang
from the pages of CanWest News before the last poll, and perhaps an
indication the reliably right-wing Asper family may be turning the
corner on the Climate Change challenge to Canada. Bad news for Stephen
Harper, but there's more. Rebuking the economic scare-mongering, Riley
shoots across the Tory bow, saying;
"You want scary? Try drought. Floods. Ice storms. You want economic impact? Try forest fires. Pine Beetle infestations."
Scarifying for Stephen and friends indeed, if CanWest cannot be counted on with a Spring election looming, and everyone but the Tories on-side with the need to get serious about the state of the planet.
[In the same Friday issue, Stephen Harper announced, the
federal government will take on the expense of operations of Izzy
Asper's long-sought Canadian Museum for Human Rights, a proposed $257 million Holocaust memorial to be located in the centre of Winnipeg, occupying the land held sacred by the First Nations at the confluence of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers.]
|
