[I wrote this piece several months ago; since its first
appearance a lot has happened: Harper's environmental nakedness is
showing, the nation's reputation is tattered by torture scandals coming
out of Afghanistan, and the Continentalist agenda is moving along. For original with active links,
please see here.]
Three Strikes and
Stephen Harper is Out
C. L. Cook
October 19, 2006
Outside Alberta’s Calgary School, scholars of Canadian
history are well aware of Washington’s repeated attempts to consolidate
control of the North American continent, fulfilling the original intent
of the (in)famous Monroe Doctrine. Canadian prairie farmer, two-time
contender for the leadership of the pre-Harper Conservatives, and
author of a book chronicling those expansionist efforts, David Orchard
records four military invasions of the country, and the constant
machinations against all spheres of Canadian life emanating from south
of the 49th.
This is not the stuff of fantasy, but historical fact.
Orchard
was painfully aware of Harper’s Yankee tendencies in matters of economy
and social engineering, and made as a condition of ceding his Tory
leadership challenge Peter MacKay’s promise he would not allow
political congress between Canada’s founding Conservatives and Harper’s
hard right Alliance party. Orchard warned all who would listen, but
ultimately, his was a voice left largely in the wilderness by an
over-concentrated, disinterested Canadian media.
Of course, MacKay
broke his promise immediately, enjoining Harper’s Alliance in exchange
for a cabinet post and the nebulous illusion Britain’s Mr. Brown knows
well; a tacit promise of eventually proving heir apparent to the
party’s leadership.
What worried David Orchard’s sleep was soon
made real by Harper following his January minority assumption to Sussex
Drive; in the scant months since, Stephen Harper has managed to make
Canada wholly unrecognizable to many of its citizens; eviscerating
vital societal determinants that distinguish the country’s
independence, Harper has accepted whole cloth the Republican philosophy
ruling, and ruining the United States these half-dozen horrible years
past.In foreign policy, law and order, and on the environment, Ottawa
now mirrors Washington perfectly.
Like an echo, Harper has, on the
strength of an immensely unpopular minority administration, taken it
upon himself to “harmonize†the country’s judiciary, military and
environmental ethos with the U.S., ostensibly determining an end to
Canada’s social democratic experiment.
Striking at the very
pillars of the nation, Harper has accelerated efforts begun by his
Liberal predecessors to redefine Canada’s foreign policy, not only
making it a more conspicuous actor within George W. Bush’s so-named
Global War on Terror, but also maintaining a muscular approach in
Haitian affairs.
Worse, Harper shamelessly sallied forth, pre-empting
our good neighbour south, to the front of the line of those nations
that would support Israel’s siege and destroy campaign against the
civilian inmates of Prison Camp Palestine.
He followed that disgrace
with equal disdain for justice and human rights, chiming his support
for the rogue Jewish State’s obliteration of its neighbour Lebanon this
summer. In that instance, Ottawa disregarded entirely the criminality of
Israel and its masters in Washington, even if it means, as witnessed in Lebanon, leaving the wanton murder of Canadian citizens
unchallenged.
With Afghanistan coming daily to look more and
more like Canada’s “Iraq,†combined with Canadians' long wariness of
American imperial aims on this continent and abroad, Stephen Harper is
set to inherit the collective backlash of more than a half-decade of
wars and occupations just gone by and still going nowhere.
Should there
be another election, an early winter election, (a second winter election
in a row) Stephen Harper will find he and his band of diminutive
Bushist Republicans vying for re-election on a war and security
platform, hoping to sell Canadians on the American prescription that to
any but the most determinedly uninformed is clearly a recipe for
disaster.
And this for Harper, already a little short of originality in
his public pronouncements, means standing in front of the Canadian
public, as the flagged-coffin ceremonies carry on in the background,
repeating word for word George W. Bush’s worn scripts, carefully
including all the right “stay the course†platitudes and other
too-familiar banalities.
Despite this, Harper seems intent on
forcing an early December election, perhaps hoping to shelter the
campaign in the shadows of the looming U.S. mid-term elections.
The
tool to bring this about is a little piece of legislation, introduced
in the house, that is so odious the opposition can’t allow it to pass
into law. Should Harper take his Clean Air Act to the floor for a vote
the opposition must call for a vote of non-confidence, and he and his
neophyte colleagues will be finished.
Admitting the political
course charted from the Potomac is a proven disaster is something
yet beyond imagining in Harper’s Ottawa circles, (that obvious and
inevitable acceptance pending at some future time) Stephen “Steveâ€
Harper’s enthusiasm for Canada’s engagement in more wars and
occupations as directed remains unabated; as does his ardour for other
made in America policies.
Perhaps reflecting his political
initiation in Alberta, Harper’s Conservatives are proving as
environmentally regressive as their Texan brethren. Under Harper, the
new government of Canada has dithered on the old government’s Kyoto
commitments, and now seems ready to ditch it entirely. This week,
Harper’s presentation of the Clean Air Act confirms: As with its
namesake legislation in the United States, it does nothing to address
Canada’s contribution to global climate heating, or diminish our
massive, and growing levels of CO2 gas emissions.
Environmental
critics, most notable the prestigious David Suzuki Foundation, blast
the act as being, at best, little more than a stalling tactic meant to
keep meaningful environmental action on the backburner for another five
years.
It is in fact legislation so blatantly hypocritical, and
ineffectual, parties hoping to bolster their green credentials cannot
afford to hold their collective nose and allow it passage.
This
is Harper’s gamble: Ram through an energy sector-friendly,
anti-environmental package now, while the rival Liberal’s are consumed
in a leadership contest that’s becoming nastier by the day, daring them
to force an environmental election. But, there’s more smelling about
Stephen Harper’s project than just a bad air act.
While
Canadians face the prospect of being treated to a scientific side-show of
an election, the third strike against the nation’s integrity is
unfolding in the background.
The transformation of Canada’s judiciary
has carried on, with little comment from either the press, or the
opposition. Most worryingly is the Conservative’s proposed adoption of
a “three strike†provision, as in America, that allows endless
incarceration for crimes that would otherwise not merit a life
sentence. The enactment of three strike laws in the United States has
proven a large contributor to that incarceration-crazy country’s
burgeoning prison/slave population.
Stephen Harper will argue from the
stump that Canada needs to import the more draconian American penal
measures, precepts and practice to keep us safe. This despite crime
trends turning in the opposite direction. It’s an approach guaranteed
to balloon the prison system, filling the jails with B.C. potheads, and
indigent panhandlers. (The subsequently overburdened system will
doubtless require privatization).
Just this week past, George W.
Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act, (HR 6616) putting
the finishing touch on the disintegration of the rule of law that led
the West out of the dark age, birthing first the Enlightenment, then
the modern democratic state. The Act legalizes everything done contrary
to both U.S. and international law by this administration going back to
September 11, 2001 and O.K.’s all it may yet do. It is, in effect the
final flourish, a stroking into law the lawlessness practiced by this
administration from its beginnings.
Stephen Harper will this
winter be made to defend his decisions to repeat America’s crime and
punishment failures; ally with the torturers of Maher Arar (and
uncounted others); and further enjoin the slaughter of innocents in
Afghanistan, while turning a blind eye to the atrocities practiced by
his friends in Israel, Britain, Australia, and of course, America.
And, should Canada’s supine pressmen find more nerve than so far
demonstrated, Stephen, the enthusiastic defender of the abandonment of
the ancient right of Habeas Corpus, and all else undone by Washington,
must too answer for his determination to abandon the environment in
favour of corporate oligarchs.
Should Harper's fatally flawed
"Clean Air Act" bill be presented for a vote in the house, Mr. Harper
will certainly follow the short-lived administration of Joe Clark,
while gaining a degree of contempt it took Brian Mulroney a decade to
nurture.
Chris Cook is a contributing editor to Pacific Free Press.com and host of the weekly public affairs program, Gorilla Radio. You can check out the
GR
Blog here.
additional source materials:
Globe re: negroponte in Canada:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
LAC.20061018.NEGROPONTE18/TPStory/National
Globe re: bad air
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/
TPStory/LAC/20061011/IBBITSON11/Columnists/
Columnist?author=John+Ibbitson
Torstar Chantal 3
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?
pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&col=
968350116795&c=Article&cid=
1161079748179&call_pageid=968256290204
Torstar
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?
pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=
1161253812411&call_pageid=968332188492
