Thursday, August 27, 2015

Bitter Truth

This is the butchery Paul Manly stood up against - and it cost him the NDP nomination in Nanaimo-Ladysmith.



One thing is for sure. If Mulcair becomes prime minister, Canada will sure as hell not be part of the "international process" to bring Israel to account.


16 comments:

Anonymous said...

If Canada is to take a meaningful role in the Middle East it has to do it from a neutral position.

Only the NDP can restore Canada's place in the world as a nation of peacekeepers, which the Liberals flushed down the toilet when they went to war in Afghanistan.

Calling Israelis war criminals will not accomplish anything.

ron wilton said...

FYEO: Found this much on harper. Scroll down to near bottom for a little historical background.

http://www.abeldanger.net/2013/01/ray-novak-stephen-harpers-gay-lover.html

The Mound of Sound said...

"Only the NDP... " Anon, you're hilarious. What this campaign has shown is that most New Dems would rally behind shit on a stick if it carried their initials. They're just like the Tory and Liberal faithful - largely full of hyper-partisan bullshit.

The Mound of Sound said...

Ron, I haven't seen any compelling evidence suggesting that. Not to say such evidence doesn't exist and I do have to confess, not proudly, that the same thought did cross my mind.

deb said...

I assumed Ray was harpers lover too, as he hasnt been roadkill yet and because they have a really weird and close relationship.

deb said...

(not to say that having a lover is weird) but it was living in the garage of the home, that threw me lol

Anonymous said...

So! We are on the verge of voting to power Tom MulBLAIR.

LeDaro said...

Mound, I have some information to share with you but I am hesitant to share it with you on your blog. It is of some concern.

The Mound of Sound said...

Hi, LD. You can reach me via parksbmw@shaw.ca

Anonymous said...

"What this campaign has shown is that most New Dems would rally behind shit on a stick if it carried their initials."

The NDP is right to take a balanced position on Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This is the traditional Canadian position.

Calling Israelis war criminals or calling the Palestinians terrorists just adds fuel to the fire.

As for "shit on a stick" that would be a good description of the Green party platform. More neo-liberal ideology repackaged and painted green. But as they say, you can't polish a turd.

The Mound of Sound said...

Okay, Anon, you've had your say and you just keep talking crap. Do yourself a favour - find a book in your library about Tommy Douglas and discover how debased you've allowed today's NDP to become.

Scotian said...

Anon@7:47P:



Yet you keep on applying that spit to it and wiping it and wiping it in the futile hope it transforms into something other than the turd that it is. BTW, you actually CAN polish a turd, if you ever watched mythbusters you would have seen them prove this point, yet another fact Dippers seem ignorant of. Why one might want to is another matter of course, but that it can be done, yep.

As for MoS's wider point to you, he is quite correct. While he and I have different views on how to deal with the current political situation in Ottawa we are in agreement on both the Harper CPC and how over the last dozen years or so the NDP went from being a party of principles, that practiced what it preached, that cared first about the institutions of our democracy into a lusting for power first, murdering competition in alliance with the greatest anti-progressive party and especially leader this nation has ever known, and with Mulcair leading a say anything to get elected monstrosity, a monstrosity it used to claim the PCPC and Libs truly were at heart.

Mulcar has only made matters worse by showing that for him he is all about the power, his refusal to debate without Harper AND the willingness of so many Dipper partisans to justify that as reasonable when if any prior LOO had done so when the NDP were the third party the NDP would have gone up in flames about how anti-democratic that was, how it was collusion on the two leading parties to shut out other voices from being properly heard by Canadians, etc. (and they would have been right to do so AND on the substance, which makes their willingness to embrace it now just that much more obvious for the expediency driven power at all costs action it truly is) Worse, the willingness of Dippers to not just swallow it and say may I have another but actively defend it as only proper, well that PROVES the NDP you claim exists is not the one the actions SHOW exists today.

For all the NDP bleating earlier this year about how important protecting our democracy was in the wake of C51, when it comes to something that might actually pose any electoral risk for the NDP protecting themselves and their leader is all that counts. This position has less moral defensibility than the choice Trudeau made on C51, which since that was clearly on expediency and protection grounds as well underscores just how loathsome AND egregious this move by both Mulcair AND Dippers supporting/defending it truly is. Mulcair "leads" here by giving Harper the power of choice, leadership like that is NOT what I consider a good thing!

This is NOT the NDP of old, and it has become that which it used to for decades denounce in the PCPC and Libs, and the most disturbing sight is not that the leadership has done this. No the most disturbing sight is how many long time Dippers went along with this without a whimper, or rationalize it as needing to abandon their principles to gain power and then they can get the practiced, as if that is either ethically or realistically viable, which if you know human history you damned well know it isn't!

Scotian said...

"Mulcar has only made matters worse by showing that for him he is all about the power, his refusal to debate without Harper AND the willingness of so many Dipper partisans to justify that as reasonable when if any prior LOO had done so when the NDP were the third party the NDP would have gone up in flames about how anti-democratic that was, how it was collusion on the two leading parties to shut out other voices from being properly heard by Canadians, etc."

The above is missing the closing words and an additional sentence, I missed it while proofing, pain issues occasionally make it hard to catch some of these things, I'm sorry to say. It should have closed with:

...shows by actions, not just words that his and their lust for power is the true primary concern, and not anything else despite the claims to the contrary. Actions always speak louder than words, especially actions that have real world immediate impacts like this one does.

Sorry about that.

The Mound of Sound said...

Well put, Scotian. Dippers (what a suitable pejorative) revel in demonizing Elizabeth May, something that requires a profound ignorance of fact. She, alone, did not hesitate to denounce C-51 from the outset, giving clear and cogent reasons for her position. Mulcair dithered, waiting to see the 'safe' route. May, alone, denounced the brutal carnage inflicted on the civilian population of Gaza. Mulcair was foursquare with Harper save for a brief comment of regret toward the end when it was safe enough.

If that's "balanced", it's balanced in the FOX News sense, balanced horseshit.

The u-turn speaks volumes of these types. All those lofty, progressive principles they used to nobly spout in rebuking Libs and Tories were a political device of convenience for most of them,artifacts of the days of Douglas, Lewis and Broadbent. Layton was the Judas Goat who led the flock all too gleefully to centrism which, in today's context, rests well within the fold of market fundamentalist neoliberalism. Their hypocrisy is breathtaking.

The Mound of Sound said...

Then again, what would Noam Chomsky make of the ex-Liberal, Thatcher-adoring, Harper-courting, market fundamentalist neoliberal, Likudnik Mulcair? I expect he'd see Mulcair for what he is. Chomsky's Canadian equivalent, Yves Engler sees straight through Tommy Angry Beard:

https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-n-in-ndp-now-stands-for-neoliberal

Scotian said...

MoS:

This is part of why I get so annoyed. The Libs for all their faults generally are what they represent, there is of course not always a 1 to 1 correlation in the proportions of their beliefs when they run to when they govern, but in the main you generally know what you are getting with them, agree or disagree with it, and competent government is almost always a given with them too. The NDP on the other hand, went from being a party that I saw practice what it preached into the horror it always portrayed the PCPC and Libs as even when they weren't that bad.

I really find the Lib Tory same old story crap infuriating when it is used with the CPC as the comparison, as you well know I always agreed there was some truth in that with the Libs and PCPC, but to equate the CPC and PCPC you have to be so far left you are falling off a cliff! Yet we STILL see that to this day! And now it gets even worse in this election, the debates thing in particular really infuriates because you know as well as I do what the NDP reaction would have been in any prior election when they were the third place party how they would have reacted, and they would have been right to do so, and as I noted already, right on the substance!

As I have said many times before, I find the stench of hypocrisy irritating, but it comes with the nature of being human and politics, as much as I dislike it. However, there is something especially nasty in the stench of sanctimonious hypocrisy that has become Eau de Dipper these days. Worse, the party leadership and strategists clearly have been taking notes on how Harper did it and are clearly replicating it for their side, no matter how much that contravenes traditional NDP values and positions. As I also noted you and I differ on the solution in this election, but we both have seen that the NDP has clearly worked to become the dark mirror of the NDP, clearly back in the Layton years collaborated with Harper to not merely defeat the Libs, which would have been fair game, but to DESTROY the party as an electoral presence altogether so they could be the only two voices, which is anti-democratic and runs contrary to decades of preaching from Dippers about the importance of multiple voices in the political system!

As I am sure you have noticed now that the NDP think they are the ones to beat, suddenly not supporting them is bad, and they are targeting Greens with that message, and ridiculing Greens for sticking to their principles, just the sort of behaviour for decades Dippers denounced in the Libs. Pot and Kettles anyone? I know you are sticking with the Greens, and I understand why, and I respect your position even while I choose a different path, because I know you are informed, but for me I honestly believe the best way to remove Harper is with the Libs and Trudeau, and you know why I feel that way. Neither of us agrees with the other, but we are able to respectfully disagree without the name calling that has become not just the norm with CPC partisans but Dipper partisans, and that in itself says a lot about what the NDP has devolved into.

We also agree that we are entitled to our own opinions but not our own facts, something the Reformers/CPC first really imported, but now the NDP seems to want to practice as well. Mulcair's latest claim to do all he claims yet have a balanced budget in his first full year in good times with the deficits Harper has created would be hard enough to swallow, but in the economic realities we have been seeing for the last half year? Really?

Anyway, thanks for the props, I'm just getting so very tired of the sanctimony and the naked lust for power oh so thinly dressed up as being a "real" progressive. *sigh* I feel like one of the two old dudes from the balcony in the Muppet Show too often these days, and I'm not quite 50.