Well, That's a Relief!

Israel has officially absolved itself of any wrongdoing in the murder of four Palestinian kids killed on a Gaza beach last summer.

The kids - they were children - had a soccer ball in play when an Israeli patrol boat opened fire on them with explosive shells. Unfortunately, for the Israelis, foreign journalists witnessed the slaughter.

The New York Times’s Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Tyler Hicks, who witnessed the incident, though from a different angle to the Guardian, wrote in a blog at the time: “A small metal shack with no electricity or running water on a jetty in the blazing seaside sun does not seem like the kind of place frequented by Hamas militants, the Israel Defence Forces’ intended targets.

“Children, maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, doesn’t fit the description of Hamas fighters, either.” 

Oh well, it was only four kids and, besides, they were Palestinian kids, worse yet they were Gazans.  All three Canadian parties supported Israel's "Dahiyeh" campaign against Gaza that saw civilians butchered by the hundreds so what's four kids in the greater scheme of things?

And, yes, those are news photos of those kids (the three who survived the first round) running for safety just seconds before they too were killed.  

Are You Supporting Politics of Nihilism?

2030.  You do realize that's just 15-years away.  Do you realize that 15-years is a heartbeat when it comes to making fundamental change?

So, what's so important about 2030?  Plenty.  By then we'll be experiencing climate change impacts that are disruptive and difficult to bear.  Take your head out of the sand, look around you - all around, and you'll see many of these impacts are already here and they're growing.

We're coping, more or less, at least most of us.  There's a certain leeway, call it resilience.  We've got resilience, so far.  However, as the challenges grow and worsen, our resilience, our ability to absorb them, wanes.

We think those of us in temperate zones can adapt to warming of 2C by 2100. No one is under any illusions we can equally cope with 4C of warming.  2C is a game changer.  4C is game over.

Yet 4C is now a distinct possibility and, if we want to avoid 4C, we have to choose to avoid it.  We have to do the things necessary to achieve that outcome. We have to make the choices and do the necessary things and we have to 'choose and do' within the remarkably limited time still available to us.

Top world experts at Germany's Potsdam Institute use the example of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to make their point.  CCS as a viable, mature technology is still about 10-years off.  2025.  But developing CCS is one thing, implementing it is quite another.  To get CCS up and running on any meaningful scale will take another two decades, possibly three.  That would be 2045 to 2055.

The thing about CCS is that it's used as a sop to justify continuing our extraction and consumption of fossil fuels.  It's a "don't worry, be happy" parlour trick.  It's a way to obstruct us from making the choices and doing the necessary things to avoid 4C and it will contribute greatly to our prospects of getting to 4C or worse. Not for nothing have the fossil fuelers seduced us with grand promises of CCS for so many years.

The scientific community has reached a strong consensus view that, if we're to have any reasonable chance of salvaging a 2C world, we have to leave at least 80% of already known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, unburned.  There's a choice.  It's pretty straightforward.

So, how do we restructure our economies and our societies so that we can leave 80% of known fossil fuel reserves untouched, safely in the ground?  What must we do?  How are we going to go about this?  How much time do we have to choose, how much time to plan, how long will it take to implement our choices? Hint:  it's going to take a while.  Hint:  it's not an open-ended option.  Time is not on our side.

As far as Canada's political parties are concerned, none of the leaders vying to run the country wants to make this fundamental, potentially existential choice lest, in making the choice, they risk political consequences.  Look, we've seen it before.  When Dion proposed the Green Shift initiative, the great Layton every bit as freely as Harper, used it as a cudgel to beat Dion senseless.   Layton showed how low the bar of Canadian political leadership has fallen and it's nauseatingly low. Mulcair is even more opportunistic.

I get a lot of this, "we've got to vote (liberal/ndp) because we've got to get rid of Harper."  Really, why?  If all three parties are inherently nihilistic, it's my obligation to reject them all.  No, sorry.  My vote, I get to set the bar and I will not vote for anyone below it - which includes Messrs. Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau.

ISIS?  You have to be kidding.  The assault on Canada is already underway and it has nothing to do with Islam.  If anything it's more affected by Christian fundamentalism and political partisanship.

The bottom line - if your party doesn't openly endorse the need to leave high-carbon fossil fuels, especially coal and bitumen, in the ground, then you're supporting and empowering the politics of nihilism.  There is no fence-sitting on this one.

New Contest. Spot the Progressive!

I'll bet you've got inside yourself some sense of progress, progressive, progressivism.  Even bad people have a little.

The question today is whether progressivism remains a real construct in Canadian politics.  Have our political parties become so neoliberal as to eradicate progressivism?

Let's take a look at some of the major problems of the day.  You think of how a progressive would respond.  Then compare that of any of the three main parties seeking power today.

What about an easy one, Palestine?  How would a progressive respond to that volatile and worsening problem?  How would Harper, Trudeau and Mulcair respond?  Short of condemning Israel for its half century of enslavement of a people, how would a progressive respond?

See what I'm getting at?  Take a problem.  Here's a partial list:  climate change, health care, education, inequality, bitumen trafficking, Arctic Canada, democratic deficit, free and fair elections, freedom of information, press freedom, corporatism... you could easily spend half a day tacking items onto this list.  Just pick a couple or a few and try to envision what would be a progressive approach to them.  Then "contrast and compare" that with the thin gruel being offered up by our major political parties.

Who knows, maybe you'll be able to Spot the Progressive.  Somehow I doubt it.

What Neoliberalism Has in Store For You

click to enlarge

From Le Monde, a timely explanation of how disastrous neoliberalism continues to thrive despite an endless string of economic disasters and what it holds in store for you even as you continue to vote for those who inflict it.  Hint. Neoliberalism is class warfare and it's being waged in our own Parliament against us.

Even neoliberal proponents recognize that it is a crisis-ridden system. In his popular book Why Globalisation Works, Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf writes: “Between 1945 and 1971, in what might be called the “age of financial repression”, there had been only thirty-eight crises in all.... Then, between 1973 and 1997, there were 139 crises. The age of financial liberation has, in short, been an age of financial crisis” (3).

Neoliberal policies have been implemented from 1973 in Pinochet’s Chile, in the UK and US under Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s and then across increasing swathes of the world. These policies include, privatization, the de-regulation of the financial sector, increasing openness to foreign trade and investment, and cuts to public welfare spending. Supporters of neoliberal policies argue that these will increase economic efficiency as state regulation of the economy is replaced by more accurate ‘market signals’. These are held to be better at encouraging and allocating investment, which in turn leads to higher economic growth and greater benefits for the economy and population as a whole.

So why do so many Western governments, including your own, embrace neoliberal, market-fundamentalist policies?  That's because it's actually successful only not in promoting a healthy economy to benefit all.  Its success lies in the quiet transfer of economic and political power out of your pocket and into the pocket of those it's actually intended to benefit.

Can it be said that neoliberalism is a success? And why are crises and austerity policies part of this success? One clue was provided by Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, in a speech in early October 2014 where he noted how real wages in the UK are around 10% lower than in 2007.

In his film Inequality for All, Robert Reich, who was Bill Clinton’s labour secretary between 1993 and 1997, documents the collapse of US wages over the last four decades. In the late 1970s the typical male US worker was earning $48,000 a year (inflation adjusted). By 2010, the average wage had fallen to $33,000 a year. Over the same period the average annual income of someone in the top 1% of US society rose from $390,000 to $1,100,000.

Neoliberal policies aim to reduce wages to the bare minimum and to maximize the returns to capital and management. They also aim to demobilise workers’ organisations and reduce workers to carriers of labour power — a commodity to be bought and sold on the market for its lowest price. Neoliberalism is about re-shaping society so that there is no input by workers’ organisations into democratic or economic decision-making. Crises and austerity may not be intentionally sought by most state leaders and central bank governors, but they do contribute significantly towards pursuing such ends. Consequently, these politicians and leaders of the economy do not strive to put in place new structures or policies that will reduce the recurrence of crisis.

...The rising levels of inequality associated with neoliberal policies are often decried by critics as weakening social ties and generating social conflict. But this is exactly what neoliberal policies are designed to do — to break apart social organisations such as trade unions, transform worker’s into individuals at the mercy of firms’ hiring and firing strategies, and transfer resources from workers to owners and managers of capital. In this regard neoliberalism uses crisis and austerity to great effect.

There is one downside for proponents of neoliberal policies however. Because they generate socio-economic crisis they erode public confidence in politics and economic policy. It is here that progressive political organisations can highlight the class basis of neoliberalism and propose a realistic alternative that favours the majority of the world’s population, not the minority.

It's hard to imagine that today's 'permanent warfare state' could ever have arisen absent neoliberalism and the commodification of state violence into for-profit warfare.  Likewise disaster capitalism is utterly dependent on the life support of neoliberalism.  What you need to understand is that, until we throw these people out of Parliament - the lot of them - this is only going to get worse, not just for you but even more so for your children and theirs.

It's Not That We Disagree, It's That I Despise Your Ideas

When ever I read another article and view another series of photographs of the carnage Israel has inflicted on the civilian population of Gaza and then think of the Netanyahu apologists, Trudeau and Mulcair, I despise them and any party that would tolerate much less follow their views.  That these two greasy opportunists haven't been tossed to the street for their blatant pandering tells me all I need to know about the Liberal Party and the New Democrats. 

Our general election is less than a year away, possibly much sooner if Harper sees a window of opportunity in which to catch the opposition off balance.  Trudeau is said to be the odds-on favourite and the ranks of non-Conservatives fairly swoon at the idea of someone "less worse" to replace Harper in ruining Canada.

We have, for years, been ruled by a despotic, manipulative, chronically secretive and dishonest, bully boy. Stephen Harper set out to dislocate Canada's political centre far and permanently to the right.  Fulsomely aided and abetted by the parliamentary lap dogs we still call Liberals and New Democrats, Stephen Harper has succeeded.  With the shameless collaboration of the so-called "opposition" parties, Canada is now firmly in the grasp of neoliberalism.  It's all free market capitalism from here on in and democracy and social justice be buggered. 

It is the fundamental duty of the Liberal and New Democrat leaders to campaign to restore Canada's political centre to its natural place.  Polls and studies show that, despite occasional claims to the contrary, the public remains slightly centre-left.  The Canadian people have been abandoned not just by the Conservatives but also the Liberals and New Dems.

"Less worse" is not an acceptable standard on which to support anyone and certainly not for the sake of replacing Harper with a Harper-lite.  That's merely substituting a coward for a fiend.  At the end of the day it may be a difference devoid of much distinction.

I understand all the arguments about how it is unwise for opposition parties to unveil policy in advance of an election campaign.  What puts the lie to that is the Green Party whose clear and sensible platform is available for all to see on its web site.  That platform sets a useful standard by which to measure both Liberals and New Democrats in the election that draws ever closer.  Prepare to be abjectly disappointed.

The 2015 election is not one that I look forward to if only because I expect disappointment on a grand scale from Harper's rivals. 

They'll make vague promises about electoral reform and call for more studies and position papers but the reform they can and should make if we're foolish enough to hand them the keys is voting reform in the Commons.  Anything that's not a confidence vote should be a free vote.  Whipped votes should be a last resort.

They'll probably support the already unviable bitumen mining industry with energy policies that are inconsistent, contradictory and unrealistic.  Mulcair says "no tankers" but I don't believe him for a minute.  If Canada is to make a meaningful effort to mitigate the impacts of climate change we will have to make hard decisions about the very future of Athabasca. 

They will ignore that other grave threat to Canada's democratic freedom - our corporate media cartel.  Only the Greens are honest enough to recognize this threat and call for a break up of the cartel through divestiture, the only effective way to undo toxic concentration of ownership and monopolistic cross-ownership of media outlets.  The Canadian people need the greatest diversity of voices expressing opinions of the widest range across the entire political spectrum.  That's how ideas and information are conveyed to nurture a genuinely informed public capable of exercising their political franchise. 

Inequality, that wrecking-ball of the middle class that corrodes social cohesion leaving the many vulnerable to the few, is getting scant attention from Trudeau or Mulcair.  I've not heard either of them acknowledge that most inequality has very little to do with merit or market-forces but is a largely legislated outcome arising from tax policy, subsidies and deferrals of all sorts, and the surrender of natural resources, the property of all Canadians, either free or at far-below market value.

I have yet to hear Mulcair or Trudeau acknowledge that fighting the scourge of inequality entails more than narrowing gaps in wealth and income but, even more, depends on bolstering equality of opportunity that requires rehabilitating our public education and healthcare systems.  If we want productive young people, we must ensure that they are able to access advanced education that is affordable.  We have to see funding health care and education not as a cost but as an investment.

They will avoid mentioning the urgent need to restore the balance between labour and capital so fundamental to the maintenance of social cohesion and prosperity.  Labour didn't abandon Andrea Horwath because it preferred Wynne's table manners.

They will not commit to the sort of national works programme Canada so badly needs to construct essential infrastructure capable of withstanding climate change impacts throughout this century.  We are struggling with infrastructure designed and built to cope with the climate we enjoyed in the 19th and 20th centuries.  The Halocene is over.  The Anthropocene is here to stay.  Even 'early onset' climate change is already visiting us with severe storm events of increasing frequency, intensity and duration.  We have to invest an enormous sum of money into this because, if we don't, the costs and losses will be even greater.

We need a foreign policy more akin to what we had in the post-WWII decades, not the 'muscular' foreign policy so admired by Ignatieff and Harper.  The world is awash in guns and soldiers to wield them. It doesn't need Canada's paltry warfighting ability.  We can do far more good furnishing what has become so scarce today - superlative peacekeeping forces and global, "honest-broker" mediation.  We've gone the "All the King's horses and all the King's men" route.  We did it in Libya and Afghanistan.  Just marvel in awe at our grand successes.

These are all matters that speak to the future of Canada and the wellbeing of our people, both today and for generations to come.  These are matters beyond the myopia of neoliberalism.  We have lost invaluable time during Harper's machinations.  We don't have the luxury of squandering even more time on those who are in line to succeed him.

Even Preston is Calling Bullshit on Steve

Oh, methinks the Cons are worried - very, very worried.  Preston Manning, self-styled Grand Dame of movement conservatism in Canada, can see that Stephen Harper's pseudo-democratic reform package is a rancid loser.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government should back off a proposal to muzzle Canada's Chief Electoral Officer that would "weaken" Elections Canada, and instead expand the agency's power to boost voter turnout, Preston Manning says.

The former Reform Party leader spoke out against a provision of the government's proposed "Fair Elections Act" in a speech Saturday, hours after the bill's sponsor, Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre, appeared at the same conference.

Conservatives are increasingly not viewed as the party that most champions democratic values, Mr. Manning said, a development that is "most worrisome for me personally and calls for, I think, immediate and serious attention."

Manning's fondness for democracy in Canada is sort of a dollar short and a day late, as though he'd been cryogenically frozen these past eight years.  He hasn't expressed any concern, much less outrage, at our fascist government shutting libraries or its relentless war on science or sequestering the public service from the Canadian public or wielding the levers of power within the PMO to pervert the Senate or, well, almost anything.  Only now - when it appears the public has had its fill of Preston's authoritarian protégé and the Conservative brand is heading for the crapper  - is Preston speaking out.

Vancouver Islanders Have Spoken

Vancouver Island's round of  faux public hearings into the proposed Northern Gateway bitumen pipeline have wrapped up.   The panel heard 253 presentations.

When they were done, the tally was 253 opposed edging out 0 in support of the supertanker initiative.   That's 253 to nil.   Sort of gives you an idea of what awaits the island's Conservative MPs in the next federal election.   Liberals need take no comfort in the Tories' plight.  It's a safe bet that ridings on the island and coastal mainland will be divvied up between the Greens and the NDP.

Then again, maybe that's just what the Liberals need - to be shut out of British Columbia entirely.

Is Canadian Progressivism a Farce?

The topic came up recently in a discussion I had with a prolific and thoroughly progressive blogger who will go unnamed.   He lamented that he had become fed up with Canadian prog bloggers who seemed not terribly interested in progressivism at all and, by contrast, far less interesting than their truly progressive American counterparts.

I think his criticism is fair and accurate.   Many of us, I suspect, consider ourselves progressive by virtue of an affiliation with a particular party that once, in times now past, had been more or less actually progressive.   For them, progressivism was a default setting, anything to the left of the Conservatives.   If you were a follower of one of the other parties you were, by definition, a progressive.   Yet surely one doesn't follow from the other.

American progressivism operates outside of the country's governing parties.   That's because the Democrats are only slightly less distant from progressivism than the Republicans who, at times, act as though they would like to see progressives tried and burned at a stake.

What would a progressive Canadian political party look like today?  Among other things it would be championing causes like dismantling corporatism, scrapping the petro-state we have so foolishly become, and busting up the corporate media cartel to restore press freedom in Canada.   All three of these things are like malignant tumors metastasizing in Canada's body politic, eating away at our once cherished democracy.  A progressive party would be promising to redress inequality and not just inequality of income and wealth but, more importantly, inequality of opportunity - the real scourge that threatens the future for our kids and grandkids.  That means restoring and bolstering health care and public education, the very cornerstones to rebuilding a vibrant, robust middle class.  A progressive would be committed to restoring collective bargaining rights to our economy.  A progressive would release the ties that bind us to America's dead-end militarism.

I'm beginning to think I sound like David Lewis or Ed Broadbent yet I've always considered myself centre-left on social issues and decidedly centrist on everything else.   I don't think I've changed.  To confirm that I have gone back to read  Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, two Republicans and a Democrat, all of them exceptional American presidents who served at critical moments in their country's history.  Were they a gang of closet Socialists?  I think not yet we would have to move our non-Conservative parties of today well to the left to bring them into line with Abe and Teddy and Franklin.

As a progressive it seems obvious that we need a reformation in Canadian politics.  We need to even the keel.  That can't be achieved by Tony Blaired New Democrats transforming into Latter Day Liberals or by Liberals continuing to morph into Conservative-Lite.   That only keeps Canada listing to the right and there's no good for our young and future generations that can possibly come from this.

You Need to Set the Bar High This Time

For the Liberal Party this is no time to settle for a pretty face or a familiar name.   You're already in the hole, neck deep to be honest, and one more mistake could be your last for a good long time.

If you want to remain Stephen Harper's water carrier, faithful assistants in his prime directive to shift Canada's political centre out to the right, then you may as well erode to political nothingness.  That's the course charted by the last non-performer, the one who got your party politically court-martialed and cashiered.

Since Harper weaseled his way into office the Libs' hapless response has been to wait for him to self-destruct and then be swept back into power by a repentant electorate.   But Harper was too smart for that.   He never let up.   He kept attacking the Liberals and their leaders.   He was relentless and he prevailed.   So successful was Harper that Layton played the same game with the same results.   Mauled into irrelevance, the Libs fell catatonic, capable of little beyond mumbling about funding for the arts and daycare, until their support atrophied to just their legacy vote.

The NDP always understood the Liberal "sweet spot" at the centre and Layton knew the IgLibs were too (your adjective here) to hold it.   So, as the IgLibs transformed the party into conservative-lite, the NDP shed its socialist skin to become the new liberal party.

At this point you Libs don't need a pretty face, you don't need a celebrity, you need someone to fight your way out of a very deep hole both your opponents are committed to keeping you in.    That means fighting Harper and it means fighting even harder against Mulcair.  Bugger this, "get Harper" business you'll hear from the NDP.  After their years of chicanery in helping Harper get into office and then helping him to his majority, that business about concentrating on Harper doesn't lie in their mouths.  Besides, as Layton knew, the way forward demands you stomp them back into third place.   You can't get into first without taking back second.

So get yourself a leader, one who knows how to fight.   Get yourself a leader who knows the way back runs first straight through the NDP.   Set the bar high.   This may be your last chance for an awfully long time if you don't.

Does Canada Need a Conservative Government Plus a Conservative Government in Waiting?

It seems to me that one Canadian conservative government is enough. Iggiphiles may see the transformation of the Liberal Party of Canada into a mild copy of the CPC as no great problem but what matters aren't Ignatieff backers but Canadian voters. As The Globe's Jeffrey Simpson points out, to many voters Iggy is just the "same old, same old" they've been getting from Harper:

...rhetoric aside, a convergence between the two parties is noticeable, as the Conservatives become big-spending middle-of-the-roaders and learn more about foreign policy, and the Liberals seem incapable or unwilling to present anything terribly arresting.

Both parties agree, for example, on how to eliminate the federal deficit – slowly and largely by counting on economic growth to spare them from making too many hard decisions. They are obviously content to let debt pile up because they fear being honest with voters that without tax increases and spending cuts, the debt burden will be passed on to their children. Both have ruled out increasing taxes on individuals, businesses and spending. Both insist they will protect Ottawa's massive transfers to provinces. Neither dares touch big federal transfers to individuals, such as pensions. Neither has mentioned slowing down the increase in defence spending.

What do these exemptions leave? It's simple mathematics: cuts to other government programs.
But which ones? Neither party will say, fearing political controversy. All the Liberals argue is that if they must cut, their cuts will be more compassionate.

...As for the... ...Liberals' foreign-policy critique, it is astonishingly thin for a party led by a man who lived so long abroad and visited so many other countries, including failed and failing states. Framing a foreign policy based on that experience ought to have been an Ignatieff high card; instead, his speech last week revealed something much lower down the deck.

A secretariat for the G20. A peace institute. These sound good, but are really quite silly. The return of Team Canada missions? Harmless. A new approach to India and China? See above. Complaints that Mr. Harper's government hasn't worked hard enough against U.S. protectionism are simply wrong. On Afghanistan and the Arctic, the Liberal policy is essentially the government's policy.

The one area of true disagreement comes in the Liberal promise to go to bat for Canadians facing death sentences abroad, or languishing without charge in foreign jails. That's a fair point for debate, but it hardly constitutes a different foreign policy, writ large.

The rhetoric infecting these speeches suggests wide differences and new ideas. Strip the rhetoric away, and the differences narrow and the search for interesting new ideas shrivels.

For those of you who think the mere name Liberal is a more than compelling reason to vote in support of the party, Simpson's comments will seem irrelevant or wrong-headed. But for those who believe that Liberal actually means liberal, there's a great depth of meaning in Simpson's observations.

I think Iggles would have been more comfortable running the CPC than the LPC. In fact I think Canada would have been much better off with a Conservative government led by Ignatieff than with a Liberal opposition led by that same man.