I Heart Rob Ford

Well, well, well, it’s been quite a week or two. Rob Ford supposedly smoking crack on video. Doug Ford’s past as a supposed hash dealer exposed – along with the drug related charges and violence connected with his other siblings. This follows and endless string of scandals, foibles and general foolishness on the part of the mayor of Toronto. What fun!

 There has been lots of handwringing about Ford embarrassing our great city on the world stage. We need a better mayor, they say. Nonsense, I say. Of course, we could use better political leadership. But that wasn’t what was on offer in the last election. We had the choice between Ford and Smitherman. And Smitherman is a right wing liberal who just happens to be a) gay and b) a very smooth operator. If Smitherman had been elected he would have been just as much of an austerity mongering hatchet man as Rob Ford. The difference would have been that he would have been effective. The incompetence of Rob Ford has ensured that his wacky agenda has been derailed at every turn – even by this largely spineless council (remember the unanimous vote to commend the police for their handling of the G8 fiasco?). Fools give confidence to the weak. Sad but true.

The other element that is heartening is that, ignoring Rosie DiManno’s jibes about Ford’s supporters being mindless dupes, working class people have not been that impressed by the scandal-mongering of the media. Doug Ford, scumbag that he is, is partly right that the media are going after the Ford brothers because they can’t touch their politics. The media by and large don’t disagree with their austerity agenda. They hate them because they have the kinds of personal “flaws” that plague many working class families. We all have relatives who struggle with substance abuse, mental health issues, etc. etc. So, when the media attack Ford for these things people feel like the elite are snobbishly attacking them – and they are. Remember all the brouhaha about Bill Clinton screwing around with Monica Lewinsky? Nobody cared. It had no impact on his popularity. The left shouldn’t fall into the trap of this kind of moralistic snobbery, which does little to build the left or opposition to the right. Stick to principles.

And, most deliciously perhaps, is that Rob Ford’s incompetence has helped deepen that growing crisis of the right. The expenses scandal that is engulfing the Harper Tories and the meltdown of the Ford mayoralty could be the tipping point that devastates the right wing in Canada in the way that the sponsorship scandal unwound the Liberals. The only real obstacle is the tepid opposition of the NDP, which has waged their usual race to the middle in order to appear respectable enough to govern. That worked really well in the BC election where a double-digit lead was thrown away. But the NDP are like the embodiment of that old definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result. If the left actually stood up and fought the right they would galvanize people to join them. By refusing to be any different the NDP merely ensures that they will fail endlessly. Let’s hope that someone talented steps into the breach, at least in Toronto, and wipes out Ford Nation. My biggest fear is that the left will all fall in behind Karen Stintz and her centre-right agenda. Stintz might win but we’ll hardly be better off (transit aside) and we’ll have far less entertainment.

Rob Ford Shouldn't Be Removed On A Technicality

I've been thinking about this a lot since the decision came down to oust Rob Ford over a "conflict of interest" technicality a couple of weeks ago. I have a feeling that this might be controversial or get me into trouble so let me just start by saying that I'd love to see Rob Ford ousted. In fact, when I first heard the news, as I was working in a local coffeeshop, it improved my mood immeasurably. But, like a night on the town, eventually the hangover sets in and sobriety replaces the joy of intoxication. Of course Ford's terrible in pretty much every sense - he's a bigot, he's a neo-liberal service slashing bastard, a corrupt influence-peddler and he's incompetent. I could go on.

But the problem with Rob Ford being ousted for what is, really, a stupid technicality that doesn't begin to touch on his real crimes, is that he can portray himself as a victim. He could use that, horror of horror, to be re-elected. I mean, look at what they got him for - voting in a council meeting to reverse a fine of a few thousand dollars.

Now, he probably should have paid the fine. He has gone totally unpunished for his cavalier attitude to using his office for personal projects and for personal convenience - whether for his high school football team or getting landscaping done around the family business. But the vote of council was clearly and unequivocally in his favour, with or without Ford's vote. And nailing him for raising money - even on City Hall letterhead - for his football team is such small potatoes, with potentially politically damaging blowback, that it's a no-brainer to let it slide.

No, Rob Ford should be ousted by the people of Toronto - in an election or through mass mobilizations that force him to resign. And he should be exposed for the corrupt, dishonest, hypocritical and incompetent git that he is. Sadly, part of the problem has been a weak-kneed left on council - who only started to stand up to Ford when a right-wing liberal like Karen Stintz made a stand against Ford's hare-brained transit schemes (following him and brother Doug's hare-brained waterfront ferris wheel scheme). Prior to that they were cowed by bluster about Ford Nation.

Nor have most of the unions taken the opportunity to stand up to fight Ford. Garbage collection in the west end of the city was privatized without a peep by CUPE.

A stronger political opposition would easily expose Ford for what he is. A decision by a judge on a silly and petty side-issue won't. It will strengthen him. There, now I've said it: Support Rob Ford. With a better rope.

Canadians Don't Trust Canada

Sao Paolo, Brazil - 140 people have died in the last two weeks in battles between
police and inner-city gangs. Be hard to be held in lower esteem.

This was an interesting poll in The Globe and Mail this morning. It seems that out of 26 countries in both hemispheres of the Americas, our very own Stephen Harper ranked as the national leader who was least trusted by the population. On top of that Parliament, political parties and the mass media were also not trusted by massive majorities.

The survey found only 16 per cent of Canadians place “a lot of trust” in their Prime Minister, putting Stephen Harper near the bottom among all leaders in the Americas.
“In an international context, Harper has a lower level of trust than almost every other national leader in the hemisphere,” Mr. Neuman said.
The levels of trust are also low for the Canadian Parliament (17 per cent), political parties (10 per cent) and mass media (6 per cent).

It's good to see that the population here hasn't lost their critical faculties after nearly a decade of the Tory rule - mind numbing and dishonest as it is. However, it's not like Harper has gone out of his way to be, you know, trustworthy. He has lied and covered up decisions of his government - from the F-35 boondoggle to handing over Afghans to be tortured. In fact lying seems to come second nature to the Tories. And when challenged on an issue, they throw mud at opponents rather than engage the issues - who can forget "Taliban Jack" that was thrown at NDP Leader Jack Layton for his anti-war position or the slander thrown at present NDP Leader Tom Mulcaire for suggesting that oil producers ought to pay the real cost of the tar sands.

The growing list of public shenanigans has grown quite long - using robocalls to misdirect voters; putting out a pamphlet to caucus members on how to disrupt and derail the work of Parliamentary committees - one can only imagine the kind of behind the scenes dishonesty that hasn't come to light. Harper has Brian Mulroney's arrogance and corruption. With any luck he and his party will suffer the same fate.

What was also interesting in this article though, was the lack of trust in all the main institutions of Canadian life. Not just those listed above but also the military (53 per cent) and the RCMP (36 per cent). Amusingly, the G & M (which suggests that Harper and Parliament aren't trusted because he was forced to endure six years of minority government), spins these numbers as though they represent a strong endorsement.

At the same time, Canadians are holding on to their positive views of the Canadian Forces and the RCMP, an above-average appreciation of their law-and-order institutions.

Given that two of Canada's central symbolic pillars are the Dudley Do-Right Mounties, in their red jackets riding on a horse and the image of Canadian troops as peacekeepers in a conflict-riven world, this is hardly a ringing endorsement. In fact, its even less impressive that it's "above average" when you consider that the survey includes Haiti - run by former death squad leaders who overthrew their democratically elected president with US help - Colombia - which also has a long history of death squads - Honduras - where their elected president was overthrown by a right wing coup - Paraguay - ditto on the coup. The list could go on. If you can't come in above average against these regimes and their police forces, you're in big trouble.

No, what the survey indicates more than anything is that Canadians don't trust the institutions of the country. Stephen Harper and his gang of thieves has a lot to do with that. But they've had help along the way from a lot of other corrupt, unaccountable and out of touch institutions.

Why Are The Tories Pushing Canada Into Recession?

Remember how the Tories are the party you want to vote for in tough economic times because they're great managers and willing to make the tough decisions? Remember all that stuff?

Yeah, well, the Tories are poking holes in the Canadian economy faster than the rest of us can bail.

Two figures tell the tale. The first relates to the government's quiet austerity. At a time when, if anything, the economy faces contraction and deflation, the last thing you want to do is add momentum to that contraction and deflation. In fact the Tories promised a stimulus budget in the last election - they fought the election on that basis. But as soon as they were elected, it now turns out, the Tories scrapped the budget and started slashing. Is it any surprise that unemployment remains stuck at 7.4% and that the economy shrank in August?

Really, the only thing that has kept the economy on life support has been China's continued demand for resources and cheap money, that made it possible for workers with otherwise stagnant income (at best) to borrow & buy. But the Tories & Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney have put the kibosh on that strategy of ad hoc Keynesianism by making mortgages harder to get. There's still cheap money for the corporate sector - but they aren't buying and are, instead, simply banking hordes of cash. There's no stimulus to the economy from here.

The result: the housing sector, particularly the condo market are headed towards freefall with a 30 percent contraction in Toronto's condo market in the third quarter. Home sales nationally are off by 15 percent. With the industrial sector contracting, this is like solving the sickness of the economy by killing the patient. According to a CIBC report:

"A 5-per-cent per year drop in house prices, for example, would shed roughly a half-point off GDP growth through its wealth effect on consumer spending, given historical sensitivities," he added in his report. "The shift in the volume of construction will be even more consequential. If, as we expect, homebuilding returns to levels aligned with the longer-term trend in household formation, taking [housing] starts from the 220,000 per year range today to 180,000 by 2014, there will be a near 1-per-cent adverse swing in the contribution of homebuilding to GDP growth ... before allowing for any multiplier effects.

The same report forecasts growth of perhaps one percent, but given that August saw a .1 percent contraction, even that seems optimistic. If the housing market continues to contract, with house prices declining, that 1 percent prediction could easily be wiped out. The real question that arises is: why do the Tories want to push the country back into recession?

Tory Terrorists More Dangerous Than Child Pornographers

The Tories' "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act" has more to do with suppressing dissent than with stopping child pornographers. I mean, where is the evidence that child pornography is such a major problem that it requires the introduction of a piece of legislation that is a serious intrusion into the right to privacy? Of course, the Tories have never been worried about statistics in their drive to conservatize the nation - a process similar to creating zombies in a lab, methinks. Remember Stockwell Day telling us we needed more prisons to house all those criminals for crimes that aren't being reported?

Nor is this particular clampdown separate from the recently released security reports that label Greenpeace and PETA as extremists and lump them and anti-capitalists (like me!) in with Nazis and terrorists.

“Multi-issue extremists and aboriginal extremists may pursue common causes, and both groups have demonstrated the intent and the capability to carry out attacks against critical infrastructure in Canada,” says a November, 2008, assessment prepared by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Personally, I think that PETA are kind of bonkers but Greenpeace has the "intent...to carry out attack against critical infrastructure..."? Really?

What these both speak to is that the Tory agenda is one that makes a meaner, more desperate Canada. In a nation where austerity is the modus operandi of government and the lives of thousands, if not millions, are made more precarious as a result, there will be opposition. In a country where planet-destroying oil projects are the new model for economic growth, regardless of the cost in terms of environmental destruction and the health of rural and aboriginal communities - people will organize to prevent it from taking place.

No, if the Tories wanted to protect our children they wouldn't have scrapped the national childcare act when they were first elected - or for that matter the Kelowna Accord with Canada's aboriginal peoples that would have gone some distance to eliminating poverty on the nation's disgraceful reserves. If they wanted to keep Canadian infrastructure safe they wouldn't be giving tax breaks to companies like Caterpillar that are smashing our manufacturing capabilities and destroying jobs.

The Tories don't care about children, they bomb them in Afghanistan, close their daycares, and drive their parents into poverty. The Tories don't oppose terrorism, they support corporate terrorism and state terrorism. The Tories are the biggest threat we face.

Facing a backlash, Ottawa moves to retool cybercrime bill - The Globe and Mail:

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Psst...Torture's OK. Pass It On.

Vic Toews, Minister of Torture and Morality

We've always known that the Tories mission is to makeover Canada into a far-right Republican spa resort by stealth, since most Canadians hold values to the left of their lunacy. So, they change tax rules for film financing here and chip into same sex marriage by removing it as a right for foreigners there. Bit by bit until next thing you know we're a vacation paradise for Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum after they lose the Republican nomination.

Well, here's another tasty treat of Tory hypocritical fuckery to enjoy. Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews, quietly told CSIS that it was OK to use "information" obtained under torture to "make the protection of life and property its overriding priority."

Will this be effective? Of course it will. Why, if some Tory banker sticks bamboo under my nails and attaches electrodes to my genitals I'll confess to keying his or her Rolls Royce - even if I didn't do it. In fact, I'll tell you anything you want to hear. Isn't that great? It's like a way to get information from anyone on anything. In fact, to really protect life and property we ought to find volunteers to be like those bald people in the jacuzzi in Minority Report's department of pre-crime. It could be an internship opportunity to serve their country for budding young conservatives - like Ezra Levant - to help us find out wherever in the world evil is being done and to stomp it out with our now highly funded Armed Forces.

Or maybe that information extraction technique only works on brown people of the Muslim persuasion. Unfortunate for them that they have to save Canadian lives and property by surrendering their um... lives and property.

No matter, what's important is that this stuff is an excellent opportunity to protect our way of life. While we're at it maybe we could use torture to defend the traditional definition of marriage by discovering those who are about to threaten it - a cause dear to Vic's heart. And maybe through the creative use of torture we could find out exactly when an embryo becomes a human so we know when to ban abortion and imprison women who seek it out - maybe even before they seek it out. Or is it hypocritical and unChristian to degrade the sanctity of human life in order to protect the sanctity of human life? Perhaps we can torture someone to find out. Or, better yet, ignore the problem and just head on to the gay bathhouse with Vic "Minister of Family Values" Toews for a little two on one fun.

Now the Minister of Family Values has struck again, this time making an appearance a couple weeks ago on "Co-ed night" with another young lady at a Winnipeg Gay Bathhouse called "Aquarius" . Toews arrived with the woman while wearing a hat and sunglasses and the couple rented a room where Toews stayed in the entire evening while his young lady friend cruised the bathhouse looking for playmates. We are told a husband and wife couple joined Vic and his friend in their room for over an hour before Toews left on his own a couple hours later. We don't know the details of what went on in that room......we will leave that to your imagination.

Ottawa tells spies to use possible torture info in ‘exceptional’ cases - The Globe and Mail:

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Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Drops The "H-Bomb"

I'm not talking about that other H-bomb, the one that the US government dropped on innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No, I'm talking about Adolph Hitler, yes, that H-Bomb. Every time our leaders want to justify a war against another people they whip out the Hitler's name. He is our Great Satan, the face of incomprehensible evil. There is nothing to be understood about Hitler, he was made of pure brimstone and, therefore, whenever he is reincarnated - which happens fairly often - he must be wiped out utterly and completely.

It's rather convenient and closes the door off from any sort of critical thinking at a moment when critical thinking should be at an absolute premium - prior to war. So, it has been used to label Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Robert Mugabe and that favourite of mine "Islamofascism", which tars an entire religious tradition with being Hitler. This time, of course, it is the incomparably stupid and opportunist Canadian foreign minister, John Baird, who whipped it out after his fanboy tour of Israel.

“Obviously when the influential leader of Iran said [Friday] that he wanted to remove a cancer from the Middle East and remove Israel from the map, obviously you can understand why the Jewish people, why Israel would take him seriously,” he said. “Hitler wrote Mein Kampf more than a decade before he became Chancellor of Germany and they take these issues pretty seriously here. But it’s not just an Israeli question. The fear in the Arab world, in the entire region, the Gulf, and the entire Middle East is palpable on this issue. And it’s increasingly a significant security threat for the West: for Canada, the United States and our allies in Europe.”

And there you have it. Israel equals the Jews, Iran wants to eliminate Israel therefore Iran wants to eliminate the Jews. Adolph Hitler wanted to eliminate the Jews. Iran is like Nazi Germany and its leadership is like Hitler. Bombs Away!

Except that it's rather more complex than our Tory friend, apparently, can fathom. First off there is no necessary identity between Jewishness and Zionism or Israel as John Baird - a tireless promoter of Israel - demonstrates. But, on the other side, Jews have been some of the most vocal opponents of Israel and its policies, from Norman Finklestein to Noam Chomsky to Shlomo Sand. Zionism and the founding of Israel was one amongst several political responses to anti-Semitism in Europe prior to World War Two.

Secondly, Baird demonstrates his inability to understand context. The Middle East is not Europe or North America, where Jews were historically terribly oppressed, particularly in Eastern Europe where pogroms were too often a matter of course - not to mention the ultimate pogrom, the terror of the Holocaust. That is not the history of the historic Jewish communities of the Middle East. The antipathy towards Israel is rooted rather in the fact that Israel is a settler-state, whose existence is founded upon the displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population and whose continued existence is premised upon its service to the American empire as a Sparta - an armed camp - to control uncooperative Arab regimes... like that in Iran.

Thirdly, Iran poses no threat to Europe or North America, unless we're talking about imperial interests in the Middle East. Iran's leadership are no radical democrats or serious anti-imperialists. They rule their country like our rulers rule theirs: in the interests of a ruling class who own and control all the levers of political and economic power. Iran has democratic elections - just like us. And it suppresses rights that are inconvenient, just like us. It's true that Iran is rather more repressive than, say, Canada. But it is a matter of degrees as the participants in the Occupy Oakland protests found out, or the G20 protestors in Toronto. But, in any case, even if Iran is qualitatively more repressive than North American governments it would be simple hypocrisy to suggest that we have any problems with dictatorships - after all, Stephen Harper has been touring China - a much more repressive regime - sucking up to any Communist Party bigwig that he could in order to sell our natural resources to them. Then there are "our allies" in the Middle East, like the Saudi dictatorship and the former dictator of Yemen. We have not a single problem with dictatorships.

And the idea that there is "palpable fear" in Israel is just so much bunk. How many countries has Iran attacked or invaded since the Iranian revolution in 1979? Zero. How many has Israel? Well, they bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 in a rather deja vu claim about it being intended for military purposes.

Iraq and France claimed that the Iraqi reactor was intended for peaceful scientific research.[8] Agreements between France and Iraq excluded military use. The American private intelligence agency STRATFOR wrote in 2007 that the reactor "was believed to be on the verge of producing plutonium for a weapons program". In a 2003 speech, Richard Wilson, a professor of physics at Harvard University who visually inspected the partially damaged reactor in December 1982, said that "to collect enough plutonium [for a nuclear weapon] using Osirak would've taken decades, not years". In 2005, Wilson further commented in The Atlantic: the Osirak reactor that was bombed by Israel in June of 1981 was explicitly designed by the French engineer Yves Girard to be unsuitable for making bombs. That was obvious to me on my 1982 visit.

In addition to the Iraq bombing, Israel invaded Lebanon (for the second time) in 1982 and again in 2006. They invaded Gaza in 2008-2009, leading to widespread human rights abuses and destruction - which the Palestinians have been prevented from repairing by the Israeli blockade. Of course, if we went back farther we'd see that since Israel's founding (and since the majority of Jews at the founding were Europeans, one could easily argue that this was the first invasion) it has invaded Syria in 1951, Egypt in 1956, and in 1967 Israel attacked Syria, Egypt and Jordan. It is also likely that Israel is involved in the present covert (and illegal) operations against Iranian nuclear scientists and infrastructure. It's also worth noting that this, the most belligerent country in the region, is the only one that has nuclear weapons.

So, John Baird's H-bomb is meant as nothing more than mere handwaving to distract us from the truth of the situation in the region. It's job is to put the question of Iran outside of rational discourse. To even question the bellicose rhetoric is an admission that you WANT TO KILL THE JEWS! The idea is so stupid as to be utterly laughable, were it not so terribly dangerous and were it not for the fact that they are playing with the lives of tens of thousands of people. But then, who would expect anything less from people who would use the memory of the Holocaust for such cynical ends.

Baird compares Iran’s threats to Hitler's racist book - The Globe and Mail:

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Why Peter MacKay Is So "Highly Regarded"

I didn't hear Harper's weasel words defense of our frequent flying Defence Minister, the Honourable Peter MacKay, so I can't for certain. But I can only assume that Harper took a pause for breath between his description of MacKay's reason for using all those VIP flights, including on search and rescue helicopters, and his statement "that's why [MacKay] is so highly regarded." I only say that because when I want to tell a lie without exactly telling a lie that's what I do. If my boss says to me, "why didn't you get your work in on time?" I might reply, "Sorry. I broke my finger playing balloon volleyball and had to get a splint." Now, technically, I'm not lying. I was sorry. And I did break my finger playing balloon volleyball and had to get a splint. When I was ten years old.

Same thing here. MacKay does attend the repatriation of remains - though it is a lie that half of his flights were for repatriations. And MacKay is highly regarded. But they are unrelated. If you want to know why MacKay is highly regarded, you might get a sense from taking a look at who invites him to his exclusive, luxury cottage.

It’s the latest piece of bad news for the party’s Atlantic Canadian star, who has been criticized in recent days for enlisting a search-and-rescue helicopter to ferry him from a Newfoundland fishing camp vacation in 2010. The camp is partly owned by a family friend whom the Conservatives appointed as chair of a federal Crown corporation.

In other words, he is highly regarded for giving expensive appointments to his pals. Of course, the Tories protest, there is no conflict of interest here since MacKay didn't get a gift from the recipient of a cushy appointment to the top of a corporation. Except for a free fishing vacation. Isn't that a gift? Lord knows I wish someone would not give me a gift like this. I could use a little fishing. Did the non-gift include some single malt whiskey? A cigar or two perhaps? I'll take those non-gifts too.

The real point here is that these guys are a bunch of crooked liars. They will treat the government as their own personal property, whose perks they will dole out with aplomb to their fishing camp owning family friends. All the while they will assert that we ought to make do with less, slash social services, etc. etc.  And when they are caught using our tax dollars to hire search and rescue helicopters like you might call a taxi to come home from the bar, they will deny it. And we trust these people with government.

Harper invokes fallen soldiers in defending MacKay’s VIP flights - The Globe and Mail:

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Harper's Unearned Economic "Credibility"

It's one of those "truths" in politics that is beyond questioning, like the "necessity" of an independent (i.e. free from democratic controls) central bank, but which, like everything else has evolved from a time when it wasn't actually the truth. I'm, of course, speaking of the popular idea that the Tories are "good economic managers". Underlying this prejudice is a more foundational idea that in tough times you need a government run by tightwads and hard-hearted bean counters. And nobody would ever accuse the Tories of being anything but hard-hearted. Thus comes the story the other day in the Globe & Mail that the Tories popularity is on the rise as Canadians switch from being concerned about health care (a left wing, touchy-feely issue) to jobs and the economy (a hard-headed, objective issue).

Now, it may well be true that the reason for the Tories' rise in fortunes this fall is that people believe they are best able to manage rough economic waters - though I personally suspect that it is more complex than that. But even if that is the case, it doesn't change the fact that this belief is simply wrong. Of course, the Tories are a party of big business and so are chock-a-block with (mostly) men in suits with MBAs and experience running companies and banks. Harper himself is an economist who formerly wrote policy for the conservative National Citizen's Coalition (which is, ironically not made up of citizens but of corporations). So, yes, we must grant that they likely know how to balance books, monitor supply chains and all sorts of other micro-economic administration. The trouble is the present crisis has been caused by (mostly) men in suits with MBAs who run big corporations and banks. Why should we trust the "business sector" when that is the origin of this crisis?

In fact, Harper appears to be channelling the ghost of Herbert Hoover with his insistent calls for debt reduction as a solution to the crisis. As has been pointed out by myself and many other, rather more important economists, like Paul Krugman, cutting government spending in the middle of a contraction in demand, i.e. a recession, is like pouring gasoline on the fire. That doesn't mean that debt isn't a problem but while debt is a problem it isn't the problem. The sovereign debt crisis and the debt ceiling battles in the US are symptoms of a deeper issue, which is the decline in the rate of profit. And the only way to solve that more fundamental problem is either to get rid of a system based upon production for exchange as commodities - capitalism - and replace it with an economic system based upon the democratic allocation of resources based upon need. Or to smash the living standards of the majority of people - the working class - in order to direct more money into profits.

I'll give you two guesses as to which is Harper's preferred solution.

In the Globe & Mail opinion piece by Harper that I linked to above, Harper's whole "plan" can basically be summed up as: keep doing the same thing that caused the mess, plus shore up the banks that over-extended themselves, plus attack working class living standards to increase competitiveness under the guise of "fighting the deficit/debt". Could this "work" - sure, I suppose so but not without big battles (people tend to resist big attacks on their living standards), lots of instability and the real possibility that the economic downward spiral that such a fierce attack on demand causes will not be offset by the effect of restoring the rate of profit. What's more, Harper's chest-thumping bravado about the state of the Canadian economy and state finances is disingenuous.

Canada's low state debt (not private sector debt - Canadians are in hock up to their eyebrows, as was recently pointed out by the IMF) is as much the result of Canada's peculiar position in the global economy as it is about what was done at the policy level. We are a small nation with a very big land mass, lots of natural resources and an advanced economy. The bread and butter of Canadian capitalism is global trade and investment. In recent years we have been cushioned from the decline of the US economy, our biggest trading partner, by the rise of China, which has a voracious appetite for Canadian resources such as lumber. Seeing natural resources as strategic to their own economic growth has also encouraged a boom in Chinese investment into Canada's resource sector. And China's boom is the result of heavy state intervention into the economy and financial sector, including keeping a tight rein on exchange rates to keep Chinese goods affordable in the West. In other words, China is doing precisely the opposite of what Harper is demanding. The failure of the Harper model and the success of the Chinese model doesn't exonerate capitalism as an exploitative, destructive and inefficient system but it does demonstrate that even on its own terms it is silly to think that the Tories are great economic managers. They are dogmatists whose "theories" have past their best buy date and are likely to deepen an already very deep crisis.

It’s time for Europe and the G20 to act decisively - The Globe and Mail

Dirty Oil Has More Freedom To Move Than People

Free ride for dirty oil, border checks for people. But which is more dangerous?

It's one of those typical injustices of capitalism that money, capital and dirty, earth-destroying, toxic oil products, have more right to cross borders and move around the world than do people - often including people who are trying to flee the impact of toxic oil products or governments who repress their population to protect foreign money and capital. So, we shouldn't expect any different sort of behaviour from the Canadian and American government in relation to their own populations. And that's exactly what they're doing.

As Canada and the US try to push forward with their multi-billion dollar pipeline of liquid death, it seems the US is also trying to find ways to put up fences and surveillance cameras along the 6,400 km border that we share. Why? For national security, of course - which means restricting the movement of people. It's worth noting that the security of the Keystone I pipeline and the rogue oil that passes through its innards is rather less secure than would be the border. In one year of operation the pipeline that was supposed to only have one spill every 7 years had twelve. This high rate of spillage is consistent with the experience of pipelines in Alberta with speculation that dirty tar sands oil is highly corrosive, compared to other forms of oil.

Despite its relatively recent construction, Alberta’s hazardous liquid system had 218 spills greater than 26 gallons per 10,000 miles of pipeline caused by internal corrosion from 2002 to 2010, compared to 13.6 spills greater than 26 gallons per 10,000 miles of pipeline from internal corrosion reported in the United States to PHMSA during that same time period. This rate of spills due to internal corrosion is sixteen times higher in Alberta than in the United States. [page 9]

Of course, it doesn't help that TransCanada, the builders of the pipeline, are apparently willing to use cheap, second rate steel and is petitioning the Canadian government for the right to abrogate existing laws on steel thickness, as well as maximum pressures allowed within the pipe. It has to be said that as a result of past practices, TransCanada have been ordered to dig up whole swathes of pipe for replacement.

TransCanada is digging up 10 sections of a new, $5.2 billion crude oil pipeline, including one in Missouri, after government-ordered tests identified possibly defective steel may have been used in the construction.

And if you think that a couple of people sneaking across the border to sell pot in North Dakota is worth laying on fences, cameras and motion detectors (as opposed to, say, de-criminalizing marijuana) then you ought to lose your mind over the fact that oil leaks in the mid-west drain into the soil, which then sinks into the Ogallala aquifer - an underground sea that provides 30% of the groundwater for US agriculture as well as drinking water to populations stretching from Texas up to South Dakota. The health of millions of people could be directly affected by poisoning this key water source - not to mention the economic impacts. Of course, the Tory government believes people who oppose this "national security" disaster in the making are "extremists", including the Official Opposition, the NDP. This only demonstrates that the no price is too high for Canadian and American workers to pay in order to ensure that the Tories' buddies in the oil industry make fat profits. It doesn't matter of indigenous communities suffer high rates of birth defects downstream from tar sands projects. It doesn't matter if the drinking water of the entire mid-west of the USA is poisoned, ultimately leading to tax payer funded clean-up. And if you think any different, then you are an "extremist". However, spending billions to stop a few people from sneaking across a border that's supposed to have been opened since Free Trade, that's rational.

Baird's UN Rant Is A Museum Piece

Baird was the attack dog for the Harper government at the UN yesterday with his meandering rant that read like it was written by the Israeli ministry of international propaganda. Claiming people and nations who didn't support Israel were akin to appeasers of fascism and communism, Baird demanded that Israel's struggle against extremism and terrorism be recognized, along with its struggle to defend its borders.

Huh?

Apparently nobody sent Baird the memo that Israel is illegally occupying other people's land, not the other way around. Nor that Israel has initiated more wars against its neighbours than any other country in the region. In fact, it would be worth pointing out that Israel, as a colonial settler state, constitutes in its majority people who are not indigenous to the region. They have, in other words, taken over someone else's land. This is all in the public record and non-controversial.

Baird knows this, as does Harper and Jason Kenney, who have both been on the trail this week attacking the Palestinian leadership for finally standing up and stating what has been obvious since shortly after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 - that negotiations with Israel are pointless appeasement. After all, Israel has accelerated its settlement building project since the Palestinians agreed to a negotiated solution to the Israel occupation, breaking both the spirit of the agreement and the letter of international law. As a result the two-state solution is all but dead as a realistic possibility, with close to half a million Israeli settlers now living in highly developed West Bank suburbs.

The reason for Baird's attack has nothing to do with ignorance and everything to do with playing to the band of Canada's homegrown Republicans. Most of the time foreign policy is a freebie, failing to rouse most Canadians to protest or even change the character of their vote. Harper and his cronies can say the most outlandish stuff, no doubt to many eye rolls and head shakes in the UN, because while the hard right in the Tories laps this stuff up with the Christian right believing that the ultimate domination of Jews over the ancient land of Israel will lead to the Return of Jesus (where he will then dispose of the Jews who fail to convert).

Playing to the Tories motivated, activist base at a time when Harper and Flaherty are intending on being "pragmatic" on government spending is a useful counterbalance to maintaining support where it really counts for the Tories. It's also true that these guys fully understand the important role that Israel plays as a watchdog for imperialism in the region. That role is under threat now more than at any time in Israel's history as a result of the Arab Spring, the mantle of which the Palestinian leadership of Mahmoud Abbas is now trying to seize for its own, rather more moderate ends. For Israel nothing could be worse than democracy in the Arab world. It has only been the restraints of domestic repression that have kept Israel from being utterly isolated in the region where the country is popularly seen for what it is: an invading, colonial regime with a racist disdain for the indigenous Arab population.

In addition to the explosive shifts in regional politics, there has also been the rise of Turkey, with a population the size of Egypt and a fast-growing economy. The US is also seeing a historic decline in its influence as its economic power  becomes relatively less important to the global economy and it has damaged its esteem and power of persuasion by its inability to get a handle on Afghanistan, the poorest nation on the planet. The rise of China is aiding this process as an alternative pole for developing nations. All this adds up to make Baird's speech look like the rantings of a cranky old man with a loose grasp on reality. But, then, that describes the core of Tory support so it will have done its job, even as it isolates Canada internationally as being led by extremists and, yes, appeasers.

Tories $20 Million Auditors Are Serial Fraudsters

If you're the government and you want to find "gravy" - to pick a random metaphor - that you can eliminate in the provision of services in order to reduce the deficit, what do you do? Why, you hire an auditor of course. An auditor has specially trained staff and expertise in finding "savings" and "non-essential" line items that can be eliminated. Their word and reputation, built up over innumerable clients provide you with an objective measure of what is essential and what isn't. Stephen Harper's Tories are paying $20 million to Deloitte Inc (aka Deloitte Touche Tomatsu Ltd) to review government departments and programs and come up with $4 billion in savings from an $80 billion budget. Deloitte was one of just a few firms that were invited to submit proposals, presumably based upon their past record of impressive results. As Finance Minister Jim Flaherty put it:

“The fact is that we feel we need to have outside advice. It isn’t good, quite frankly, for a government to just look at itself. There’s a lot of expertise in Canada on the subject of public-sector productivity, for example, and we look forward to having the advice of, in this case, Deloitte,” he said.

Well, maybe not quite.

The trouble is, Deloitte has a long string of rather shabby auditing practices. In fact, as late as the end of August a Quebec judge ruled that a class action suit could go ahead in which Deloitte is one of the accounting firms being sued, along with the Mount Real investment company. Mount Real was a ponzi scheme that ripped off unsuspecting investors to the tune of $130 million, including many people's retirement savings. Don't get me wrong, I understand that everyone makes mistakes it just seems to me that for an auditing company to fail to notice and report on the fact that a large investment company is, in fact, a shell game, is a sign that they aren't very good at their job. You might even suggest that they aren't worth $90,000/day. On the other hand, perhaps the federal Tories are just following the example of Mayor Rob Ford, who hired KPMG to provide a similar audit of Toronto finances, even though KPMG's most notable success is its string of failures, frauds and lost law suits.

And if you think that it stops at the Canada-US border, you'd be wrong. In fact, just last week the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US filed a subpoena against the recalcitrant auditor, which has refused to cough up important documents to the federal regulatory body.

DTT was the auditor of China's infamous alleged fraud Longtop Financial Technologies (LFT)-- a software firm that sells its product to firms in the banking and insurance sectors in China.

This refusal might lead one to suspect that Deloitte is worried about being exposed for fraudulent accounting practices on behalf of the company that contracted them. After all, Deloitte was forced to pony up $50 million in damages for their role in covering up the massive Adelphia scandal that saw the owners illegally and secretly loaning themselves money from company funds to the tune of billions. And in 2008 Deloitte also faced a $1 billion lawsuit by the liquidators of the Bear Stearns mortgage funds. Bear Stearns went belly up in March 2008, before Lehman Brothers followed suit in September, as a result of being loaded down with toxic debt from the subprime market, which it was also packaging and selling to anyone who would buy it.

The suit charges that the company, the fund managers, and Deloitte violated their fiduciary and professional duties. The suit said Deloitte's preparation of the funds' audits was "at a minimum negligent."

Back in Canada in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Deloitte was also called on the carpet for covering up the shabby state of finances at Livent, the entertainment company owned by Garth Drabinsky. Livent went belly up and the bankruptcy receiver launched a $450 million lawsuit against the auditors for reasons that will sound familiar.

The Post says the lawsuit alleges negligence, breach of duty, breach of fiduciary duty, and.or breach of contract on the part of Deloitte & Touche. Documents filed by the receiver reportedly claim Deloitte & Touche failed to uncover financial and accounting irregularities at Livent, and that Deloitte signed off on Livent financial statements that it knew were "materially false and misleading".

As shocking as this short list is, it isn't by any means exhaustive - there was Deloitte's role in AES, the electricity company that cooked its books with hidden loans a la Enron, or their role in helping to inflate the profit numbers at now-bankrupt telecom giant Nortel for which they also faced a lawsuit. All of which might lead you to ask yourself why the media has failed to pick up on any of this and, more importantly, why the federal government would hire an auditing firm with a record of aiding their clients in the commission of fraud, which sometimes - as in the Mount Real ponzi scheme - led to the loss of life savings by tens of thousands of ordinary people.

The media, of course, has their own reasons for perpetuating a memory hole, down which all history of past crimes disappears. But neither is it incompetence that the Tories would hire these crooks. Fraud and manipulation is exactly what they want from an auditing firm. As with the ratings agencies, auditors don't exist for the purpose of objective measurement of financial viability or good quality accounting practices. They are there to provide whatever their clients want. When the investment banks hired ratings agencies to look at their investment packages, they pronounced utterly worthless "collateralized debt obligations" as triple-A investments. When those same corrupt investors want governments to sell off state assets at fire sale prices - they downgrade state debt that has considerably more inherent value than the sub-prime crap or even the vastly larger private sector debt load. When failing companies want to cover up internal financial crises, auditors like Deloitte know how to cook the books. When governments want them to spin cuts as efficiencies, they know how to do that too. They are, in short, the most craven example of how math and business "science" are in fact nothing more than tools of the rich and powerful to screw the poor and powerless. And for that service - from the perspective of Tories and corporate CEOs - they are indeed worth $90,000 per day. From the perspective of the interests of the vast majority of the population they are crooks of a much greater magnitude than any bank robber. They ought to be shut down, their assets liquidated and their executives sent to the hoosegow for a very long time.


And, speaking of the role that auditors play on behalf of conservative governments which want to sell of assets, check out this video of Toronto Councillor Adam Vaughan grilling KPMG on their past record of recommending service privatizations:

Riotous Double Standards

Some riots we like, some not so much - by Oliver Heinrich

I've been swamped with work - and working on a longer post on science geek stuff that I hope to post by Monday. In the meantime, my old friend Oliver sent along the above cartoon, hopefully the first of many.

Like a lot of people, I've been disgusted by the shameless double standards involved in the prosecution, and persecution, of accused rioters. People who took a bottle of water are getting six months in jail - two kids who did nothing more than put up a post on their facebook wall got five years of juvenile custody. Compare that to the treatment of the scum from Murdoch's tottering empire - all close friends of Tory ministers, including David Cameron.

They received a polite call requesting that they show up for arrest and were then released immediately on bail. The bankers, of course, who have given us years of economic and financial turmoil, have received nothing - except big fat bonuses.

So, it's no wonder that on top of these hypocrisies, they pile the fact that they encouraged revolts in the Middle East and the use of social media to organize battles with the local cops - and now they are talking about shutting down access to the internet during protests and upheaval. In San Francisco, the local transit authority actually did shut down internet access to stop a protest taking place.

In the end, the only thing consistent about the Tory's response is that it is driven by hatred and fear of the poor. It only differs from the out of touch, condescending response of the dictators of the middle east in that the riots didn't turn into a movement to bring down the government. Hopefully that won't be a permanent difference. As an article in the UK Guardian newspaper points out, it is the poor who have suffered and rioted and who are being punished with unprecedented sentences.

One of the most striking features to emerge is the proportion of those who have appeared in court so far who come from deprived neighbourhoods.
He found that the majority of people who have appeared in court live in poor neighbourhoods, with 41% of suspects living in one of the top 10% of most deprived places in the country. The data also shows that 66% of neighbourhoods where the accused live got poorer between 2007 and 2010.

This was a revolt by the poor fed up with austerity.

Why Is The NDP Buckling On The Bloc?

It's sad to listen to Nycole Turmel's mea culpa's in the news as she pleads over and over that she is now and has always been a federalist. Almost half the province of Quebec are sovereignist for God's sake. It's a legitimate political stance and supporting the Bloc - a legal, mainstream party in Quebec - is entirely reasonable and nothing to apologize for. The Tories - whose roots include "Western alienation" stupidity (amongst them Stephen Harper) - have had no bones about recruiting right wing Quebec sovereignists in the past and the present. They supported the ADQ, which was a sovereignist break from the Quebec Liberals - with many of their members campaigning for that party. This whole phoney concern is such paper thin hypocrisy that it's hard to believe that it's taken seriously by anyone.

This stuff is such a pathetic joke that the NDP ought to have the guts and the brains to simply stand up to it and reveal it for what it is - bigotry and anti-democratic bullying. The danger here is that the NDP will destroy its credibility in Quebec by pulling an Apostle Peter and denying Turmel's past over and over again, alienating Quebecois workers, who flocked to the NDP in droves in the last election. And she will alienate English Canadian workers whose bullshit detectors will be blaring full blast because, having been a member of the Bloc for five years wasn't an accident. The Bloc is a significant part of the Quebec landscape and denying its legitimacy won't make the issue of Quebec's right to self-determination disappear any more than it will make the sovereignist movement disappear. Toughen up, for God's sake.


NDP’s Turmel vows to sever all sovereigntist ties - The Globe and Mail

Could Ontario NDP Pull A Layton?

This is interesting:

The Forum Research survey found Hudak’s Tories at 38 per cent — down from 41 per cent in June — to McGuinty’s Liberals at 28 per cent, up from 26 per cent. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath jumped to 24 per cent from 22 per cent and Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner was down to seven per cent from eight per cent.

The article goes on to note that the NDP leader - Andrea Horvath - has the highest rating of all the leaders. I have to admit that while I read the papers regularly I have seen almost nothing about Andrea Horvath in the news. That's not at all a criticism of her. The NDP are not the Official Opposition in the Ontario Legislature and tend to not get covered, plus not much has been happening, except for the early stages of campaigning - mostly statements from the Tory leader about what scumbags they'll be if we're dumb enough to elect them. What this suggests to me is that there is a continuing impact from the federal election, which gave the NDP massive national momentum, particularly in Quebec though they began to pick up steam in Ontario in the dying days of the campaign. The second thing that this suggests is that the population is shifting to the left.

It has helped that Hudak made the mistake of announcing that he's anti-choice on abortion in a province where a whopping +90% describe themselves at least nominally as pro-choice. Only about 8% are against abortion under any circumstances. But, the economy continues to be a source of concern for working people with manufacturing having not recovered from the recession of 2008-2010 and not likely to return to pre-recession levels for several years.

Manufacturing shipments slipped over the past three months from a post-recession high in January, largely reflecting a slowdown in export sales to the United States. Sales in April remain 13.6 per cent below the prerecession high in July 2008.
In the first four months of 2011, sales totalled $84.6 billion, up $5.7 billion (7.2 per cent) from the same period last year. Year-to-date, year-over-year growth has been led by transportation equipment, primary metal, machinery, fabricated metal and petroleum/coal products.
Looking ahead, Ontario’s manufacturing industries are forecast to post relatively small GDP growth rates through to 2013. Total manufacturing GDP growth in 2002 prices (i.e. net of price inflation) is forecast at 1.8 per cent in 2011, 1.8 per cent in 2012 and 2.1 per cent in 2013, down from 8.2 per cent in 2010. Ontario’s export-oriented manufacturers will struggle over the next two years with a currency around par and below normal demand in the U.S.

Employment remains unstable and isn't looking to improve. In fact, the debt ceiling fiasco in the USA makes it likely that we'll suffer negative economic consequences, particularly in the manufacturing (and thus export) heartland of Ontario. It's likely that there is a receding appetite for deeper neo-liberal assaults on living standards at a time of difficult economic conditions - not dissimilar to opinions in the US where only 7% of people think cutting services is a good idea, rather than dealing with jobs. The Tories are, of course, most associated with Republican style cuts to services and taxes for the rich. The NDP are associated with spending on services and investment. The Liberals are seen as being the party that holds the line, "finds a balance" and all those other cliches that cover for the fact that they use compassionate rhetoric while implementing Tory policies (not so very different from the NDP when it comes to economic issues actually). It probably doesn't help that our mayor is both a Tory and a moron and is doing a tag team routine with his brother (and their trained monkey, Giorgio Mammoliti) to lose the respect of as many people as possible in the GTA in record time.

Ontario and Quebec between them have well over half of Canada's total population and a solid majority of the country's manufacturing. Let's hope that opinion continues to swing leftwards towards the NDP. A big uptick in NDP support - and seats in the legislature - will help continue the Orange Wave that is transforming Quebec politics and mark a real Achilles heel for the federal Tories.

China & Canada: It Was Never About Human Rights

There's much foofaraw in the media about the visit by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird to China. Are we now neglecting human rights in the interests of profit? Have we stopped supporting liberation struggles, like those of Tibet? NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar suggested that the Tories lacked "coherence" in their policy, focusing now on profit whereas before it was all human rights. He raised the "constructive engagement" of Richard Nixon as a model. Nixon?!

Well, I think there's a third axis of consideration that the polarity of profit vs human rights fails to take into account that has everything to do with geopolitical considerations that can't be simply reduced to profit.

First off, let's not kid ourselves, human rights have never been of any real consideration when it comes to Canadian trade or foreign policy. We have a free trade agreement with Israel - even as it builds illegal settlements and kills civilians with the same routine effort as a someone mowing their lawn. We traded with Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship. Likewise with the brutal dictatorship of Suharto in Indonesia. We supported the overthrow of the elected government of Aristide in Haiti and help to enforce the suppression of Lavalas, the most popular political party in the country - for what crimes I'm not sure (I guess the crime of not being sufficiently subordinate). We backed Mubarak in Egypt and the Saudi monarchy that won't allow women to drive and kills people with beheading. Hell, until three months ago we were trading and investing with Gaddafi in Libya.

No, human rights has nothing to do with it. It is merely a convenient fig leaf to cover other intentions. After all, who can say no to human rights? And, it's true, in places like China human rights are suppressed in regular and brutal ways. So, there is the ring of truth to such claims. But, as usual, the biggest lies are always dressed up in the brightest colours of truth to hide the ugliness of what's really going on.

Afghanistan is a fine example of this. The official line is that we're there to aid in democracy, defend the rights of women, human rights, development, etc. etc. Yet this doesn't square with our actual policy on the ground, which involves propping up and funding warlords and drug dealers who think human rights means the right of some humans (them) to kill, rape, and rip-off other humans. As was clear from the revelations regarding Canada's cover-up of routine torture of suspects, we happily went along with that conception. But it would also be wrong to think that there is some kind of one to one relationship between what we're doing in Afghanistan and some immediate financial interest. It would be more immediately profitable to run the gas and oil lines from Kazachstan through Iran, which already has pipe infrastructure - but Iran is an "enemy" and so, instead, extra money must be spent to run it through Afghanistan then Pakistan. It's also about "containing" China, which is a neighbour on the other side of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is thus of strategic interest.

Our relationship with China is not dissimilar and reflected our synchrony with US foreign policy on this issue. US pressures on China are about jockeying and geopolitics. It's about the US reminding China who is the boss in subtle ways - and that the relationship between the two countries is not that the US couldn't do without. What has shifted for Canada is the growth in Canadian trade with China, which is sucking up softwood lumber at a ferocious pace. Softwood lumber exports to China are now greater than such exports to the US. China has also become a significant investor in Alberta oil and gas production, as well as mining and smelting. And with the decline in the US dollar relative to the Canadian dollar, our trade with the US has been harmed. After years of running significant trade surpluses, Canada began to run trade deficits starting in 2009. As a trading nation there is pressure to find more markets - and if the US can't be that market, Canadian manufacturers and resource companies need to find one elsewhere. The decline in US/Canada trade reduces the incentive to follow US foreign policy quite so closely, which is why Obama met last week with the Dalai Lama and Harper & Baird didn't mention Tibet once. This shift is, in general, part of the shift to a less stable, multi-polar world. Harper's obsession with Arctic sovereignty and the increase to military spending are also part of this. While the US remains - and likely will for sometime - the pre-eminent world power, with military spending at levels that dwarf any other power, it nonetheless faces challengers, for instance China's move into Africa. It can't simply be assumed that hitching your wagon to the Yanks will get you what you need. Canadian imperialism wants to have a little more freedom of action. Baird's visit and honey-coated words for the Canada/Chinese relationship is part of that. It is just as cynical and corrupt as was our previous relationship.

Calling China an ‘important ally,’ Baird turns cold shoulder to fugitive - The Globe and Mail

Proof That Cowboys Are Kind of Morons

Apparently riding bulls whose nuts have been twisted to drive them into a frenzy of pain and rage is a stupid, fucking thing to do. According to a recent study, rodeo contestants are 20 times more likely to suffer a "catastrophic injury" than is a football player.

I'd humbly like to suggest that there is a relationship between stupidity and politics and that we can prove it in this way.

1) The Calgary Stampede is the biggest annual event in Alberta.

2) Alberta has had a Tory provincial government for longer than Gaddafi has been in power.

3) Alberta's vote for the federal Tories was at a level approaching that of a Stalinist dictatorship.

Here's the thing. I admire the hard and dangerous work of cowboys who work in the cattle industry - or did in the 19th century - just as I do miners, construction workers and waitresses. But, let's face it, those frontier hardscrabble days are largely gone, replaced by industrialization of the food industry (which has its own dangers that are far less romantic and far more toxic). Rodeos are just affectations for stupid, stupid men to put their lives at risk and needlessly hurt innocent animals. I mean, if they want to do it - go crazy. As Darwin might have put it: nature always finds a way...

Rodeo one of the most dangerous sports in the world: study - thestar.com

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty Is An Asshole

Hey, sometimes you want to be all intellectual and stuff; analyze underlying trend and put it in its proper context to provoke scholarly debate. But some shit just deserves to be called by its regular name.

This guy was all for spending $1 billion on a security boondoggle for the G20. He supports the billions spent in Afghanistan to kill people and prop up warlords and drug traffickers. He is happy to provide subsidies to the oil sands - perhaps the most environmentally destructive petro project on the planet. And, he and his Tory government get boners at the thought of blowing $30 billion for a fighter jet that doesn't even work. But provide stable funding to a proven theatre festival that draws crowds of thousands every year and contributes to the cultural landscape of Toronto? "Don't count on it."

Where I come from, that makes him an asshole and, just in case they haven't, someone needs to tell him that.

Flaherty to cultural institutions: Annual funding? Don’t count on it - The Globe and Mail

Live Stream: 48-Hour Greek General Strike Against Austerity

The fight is on. Greek workers are under a massive assault as international bankers, speculators, governments and capitalists try to force a brutal austerity package down their throats. Last year's austerity has already doubled the unemployment rate to 16% and led to a collapse of government revenues as incomes decline and the economy collapses - leading to more debt, more austerity, etc. ad infinitum. The next two days is key as the government votes on the next round of austerity and the fire sale of Greece's publicly owned assets. And the outcome is anything but assured with numbers of the governing PASOK's MPs threatening to vote against the package.

If the Greek government, backed by international pressure from global capital, can defeat the most militant working class in Europe, it will make it that much easier to impose austerity across Europe and North America. Conversely, if the Greeks can soundly defeat their government's austerity plans, it will give confidence to workers in other countries who are facing their own assault on living standards and the welfare state. I'd hazard to say that it would give confidence to workers in Canada who face the Tory axe. Let's hope that the Greeks win big.
Meantime, you can watch the live stream of the 48 hour general strike below.

LIVE STREAMING: Γενική Απεργία ενάντια στο... by News247

Greece begins 48-hour general strike | World news | guardian.co.uk

The Tories Sneaky Social Engineering

I often thought that the right wing canard directed against the left that we were interested in "social engineering" was one of the more banal and pathetic insults that they tossed around. It presumed a "natural" state of human nature, any deviation from which would be detrimental to progress. Of course, human nature is conveniently defined in terms that suit the right and usually owe more than a little to Hobbesian notions of humans as inherently competitive, greedy, and so forth.

Really, of course, they were always just talking about themselves in two senses. The rich, who are the source of right wing ideology and the ones who actually benefit from it, do relish greed - though evidence from history suggests that to satisfy their greed, the rich do everything possible to eliminate any existing or potential competition, either by destroying or buying rivals or conspiring with them to jig markets to their benefit.

And in actual fact it is always the right who try to regulate human behaviour and human thought to exclude anything that challenges their domination or their ideas of what constitutes human nature. It is the right who try to suppress alternative forms of love and family - they oppose gay marriage. They constantly seek to undermine trade union rights - when trade unions were the spontaneous (more or less) act of working people to defend their standard of living. The right opposes abortion. The right inevitably supports overthrowing government that don't do what we like. The right supports the cops.

So, it should be no surprise that Stephen Harper's Tories should follow this pathetically predictable path of suppressing free thinking. And it is no secret that Harper and his ilk want to transform liberal-minded Canada into a bastion of social and economic conservatism. The trouble is, the population are not as right wing as Stephen Harper and his ilk. What's more, since they are subject to some form of democratic accountability, Harper has been forced to downplay the public discussion of their real agenda, to deny it even, so that people don't get spooked by their agenda of making us all into right wing drones. But, behind the scenes, the Tories use the many levers, particularly financial ones, to penalize and crush anyone who challenges their agenda.

There is something to be said for the Globe headline that calls a play about one person's real relationship with a man who was convicted as part of the Toronto 18 "terrorist" conspiracy a "terrorist play". That's one of those set-up labels that is designed to illicit a bias response, like "accused wife abuser" or "Jamaican immigrant". Nonetheless, the story is interesting because it fits with a pattern of social engineering through stealth - like with the Tories' elimination of funding for KAIROS (a religious charity) because of their support for the Palestinians. Then there were the attempted changes to tax laws that would deny tax credits to film productions whose content it deemed offensive. In this instance, Heritage Canada has slashed almost $50K from Summerworks, a popular theatre festival in Toronto. Everybody knows that the reason they did it is because of the play about the Toronto 18 - or rather the failure of that play to portray the issues in the form of a good vs evil comic book. But the Tories simply lie and - like with KAIROS - state that the decision is merely an administrative one about funding.

What is clear is that the Tories can't bear the thought of a free-thinking population or of culture that fails to pass their parochial standards of morality and decency. That they have to be sneaky about it is heartening in one sense because it demonstrates that they are out of sync with the majority of Canadians. Hopefully their lies and subterfuge will catch up with them and they will, like Mulroney, be punished by Canadian workers - both at the ballot box and in the streets. Meanwhile, let there be no doubt - the Tories want to control what you think. They just don't have the guts to say it to your face.

Ottawa cancels funding for Toronto theatre festival that presented terrorist play - The Globe and Mail