Coming Soon to Canada, "Fortress B.C."

The CBC's Stephen Smart sees rough waters and rocky shoals ahead for Ottawa-B.C. relations after Tuesday's provincial elections.

Perhaps for the first time in his reign our eastern ruler may be confronted by a province spoiling for a fight.

Most of the past dozen or so years can be seen as the golden era in B.C.’s relationship with the rest of the federation.
Former premier Gordon Campbell went to exhaustive lengths to maintain good relations with other provinces, especially Western provinces, and also with the federal government.

...But that was then, this is now. That golden era had already started to tarnish in the run-up to this election and, depending on the outcome of Tuesday’s vote, it could come to a complete end with much more of an us-versus-them mentality dominating B.C.’s attitude toward some of its key provincial and federal partners.

...While playing nice might get B.C. more in the long run, British Columbians have often rewarded past leaders who are seen to stand up for their province.
Given the positions of both Clark and Dix recently, they seem to be very aware of that reality.
The stakes are, arguably, higher this time, given the commercial importance of Alberta’s “landlocked” oil and the Western political base of the Harper Conservatives.

Fortress B.C.?  Sure.  Never in this province's history have the people had such good cause to feel imperiled and set upon by their distant, federal government.   Canada has morphed in to a petro-state and Parliament is full, on both sides of the aisle, with petro-pols whose only vision for the future entails sacrificing our coast and our way of life to peddle bitumen to Asia.

Ottawa wants to force British Columbia into submission, a state of  political occupation where the overwhelming view of the populace is suppressed and subordinated to the will of that distant authority.

We are confronted with a government whose henchmen have already dismissed the views of a solid and growing majority of our people as "extremist" and who have branded us as "inimical" (hostile to/enemies of) to Canada.   They have proclaimed our disagreement a "battle."   And now they're intent on political occupation of our homeland.

Any people subjected to occupation are moved to resistance.  Fortress B.C., perhaps, but only if Ottawa leaves us no other choice.

They Are Not Of Us

An interesting essay from George Monbiot today on the grooming of oligarchs and why, even though they govern in our name, they don't rule on our behalf.   They rule as they were born and raised to rule.   An excerpt.

In the Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explains that the nobles of pre-revolutionary France "did not regard themselves as representative of the nation, but as a separate ruling caste which might have much more in common with a foreign people of the same society and condition than with its compatriots".

Last year the former Republican staffer Mike Lofgren wrote something very similar about the dominant classes of the US: "the rich elites of this country have far more in common with their counterparts in London, Paris, and Tokyo than with their fellow American citizens … the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it."

Secession from the concerns and norms of the rest of society characterises any well established elite. Our own ruling caste, schooled separately, brought up to believe in justifying fairytales, lives in a world of its own, from which it can project power without understanding or even noticing the consequences. A removal from the life of the rest of the nation is no barrier to the desire to dominate it. In fact, it appears to be associated with a powerful sense of entitlement.

So if you have wondered how the current government can blithely engage in the wholesale transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, how its frontbench can rock with laughter as it truncates the livelihoods of the poorest people of this country, why it commits troops to ever more pointless post-colonial wars, here, I think, is part of the answer. Many of those who govern us do not in their hearts belong here. They belong to a different culture, a different world, which knows as little of its own acts as it knows of those who suffer them.

Ignatieff was clearly of this ruling caste.   He never demonstrated a real grasp of the country or our people.   Harper, despite his more middle-class upbringing and his fondness of hockey and cats, may not be a member by birth of the ruling caste but certainly shows himself its eager water-carrier and thereby may hope to earn his rightful place among them.   Such are the aspirations of those who govern a petro-state.

Don't Let Our Democracy Go the Way of America's

Cenk Uygar is right.   Corporatism has utterly corrupted American democracy and, as shown by the Citizens United decision, the country's top court to boot.  The thing many don't understand yet is that the deed is all but a done deal.



We in Canada can wipe the self-righteous smug grins off our faces.  With the support of every party in the House of Commons, Canada is descending into the squalid status of a petro-state in the very worst sense of the term.  If you don't really understand that I'd recommend you read Andrew Nikiforuk's Tar Sands, Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent.