The U.S. Republican Party in Canada and Its Minority Governm

Written By: Robin Mathews
Date: 2006-01-26 11:53:00
<a href="/article/235302693-the-us-republican-party-in-canada-and-its-minority-government">Article Link</a>

Canadians upped NDP seats. They punished the Liberals, sending them scurrying to a genuine re-make or to death. They punished the Bloc Quebecois for similar arrogance (but not corruption). And they squeaked in the U.S. Republican Party in Canada – but hedged around by a force that can end that government’s life at any time.

The “delicate coalition” to which Brian Laghi, Globe and Mail Ottawa Bureau Chief, referred was made up of the major monopoly press in Canada, the pollsters, the jack-boot wearers, and (lying low) the corporations. If that’s a “delicate coalition”, what would a vigorous one look like?

No one needs to go over the Globe, MacLean’s Magazine, the National Post, and all the CanWest TV and press instruments working flat-out for a Harper victory. The only “delicacy” they engaged in was their generosity in admitting other parties were running. Let’s hope some enterprising Journalism or Communications student or professor does an analysis of election photos. The results are already in. Show Harper, always, looking demure, smiling, or even chuckling. Always. Show Paul Martin, always, looking harassed. Show Jack Layton, always (as MacLeans Magazine cover did so richly) looking a little like a robot or a wound-up tin soldier.

A usually very insightful friend said to me: “Layton should have shaved off his moustache. It defeated him”. My insightful friend didn’t realize the photographic Layton was the product of editors in the Stephen Harper Press Support Group. If Layton had shaved his moustache, the Stephen Harper/MacLeans/Globe and Mail/Natonal Post/CanWest Media Monopoly would still have trapped him.

The “general public” often isn’t aware just how dirty the game is. The sleazier Canadian journalism gets, the dirtier it gets. Canadians should be aware.

When I was fighting to get Canadians hired in universities, colleges, museums, etc., the corporation-owned press (hiring heavily outside the country) didn’t like me. Their journalists (sometimes not even Canadian) went to work. “Just talk,” the interviewer would say to me. “Just go on with the interview, and the photographer will snap lifelike pictures”. When I agreed, the editor always found a photo to publish making me look like a damaged drunk high on drugs. And I was lucky if the interview came anywhere near reporting what I said.

I had to make a rule that I sat for my photos. They’d be taken. The photographer would leave. And then we’d do the interview.

Politicans have to be photographed in action – which means Paul Martin can always be caught at some time in a speech looking stressed out. That’s called “death by Right-Wing journalism”. In a country with a free press (which Canada does not have) there’d be enough difference of opinion about the candidates that un-fixed photos of Martin and Layton would balance the fixed ones. But Canada has only a reactionary press. It doesn’t have press freedom.

The jack-boots on the side of the “delicate coalition” working for the U.S. Republican Party in Canada were worn by the RCMP. It marched into the election campaign, led by its head man, Zacardelli, with a sleazy announcement of a “criminal” investigation into the (apparent) leak about Income Trusts legislation. The RCMP announcement looked like a bald faced attempt to pick off Finance Minister Ralph Goodale and to drop the Liberal government.

The investigation was of a suspected leak from no-one-knows-where. The RCMP quickly (with full press assistance) dropped Zacardelli’s name. “The force” also admitted it had no one under suspicion – which meant it didn’t have the foggiest idea whether there had been a leak from government or not. Under such conditions, it could have proceeded with investigation, announcing nothing until the election was over. That would have been the appropriate behaviour.

But it didn’t follow appropriate behaviour. Does that mean Zacardelli is working for U.S. interests in Canada? Was he working for Stephen Harper politicos? (I analysed the sleaze attack by the RCMP in an earlier column that can be read on this site.)

The “delicate coalition” that elected Stephen Harper’s U.S. Republican Party in Canada begins to look something a little less than delicate.

The tedious subject of pollsters has to be looked at briefly, too. They work for themselves and for those who employ them – the people who buy their “work”. They are not only pollsters of politics; they are also political pollsters. They contaminate and are contaminated. The most recent papers after the election are saying: “Oh me. The election didn’t come out the way the pollsters said”. Well, Oh me. The pollsters were working, in large part, for a Stephen Harper victory, feeding their findings into a monopoly press and media dedicated to a Stephen Harper win. The poll reports kept telling Canadians, Rah! Rah! Stephen Harper is going to win; jump on the band wagon. Funny the election figures somehow didn’t follow the poll reports, eh.

Three days before the election Ipsos-Reid, the pollster, called our house. I told them we wouldn’t be questioned. All Canadians who care about democracy in Canada should refuse to answer any political pollster. Let reactionaries run pollster operations. Let reactionaries answer the pollster’s questions. Let the reactionary press and media publish the results. And let them get farther and farther away from real public opinion until their coordinated sham becomes obvious to all.

How did the corporations lie low? Simply by owning most of the monopoly, reactionary press and media, they could fold their hands, go to church, appear uninvolved, and let their hacks in the monopoly, reactionary editorial offices do their work for them.

“The beans are already spilling out”. Stephen Harper has appointed what the Globe calls “a Mulroney-era veteran” to lead his “transition team”. Derek Burney was always a devoted continentalist and a front-line fawner on the U.S.A. Harper, chortles John Ibbitson at The Globe and Mail (Jan 24 06 1), can change the shape of Confederation without consulting Parliament. And he will. The change (through Harper’s falsely named “Charter of Open Federalism”) can lock the federal government into licorice all-sorts federalism in which corporations gain increasing control and can stifle initiatives on behalf of the Canadian people.

The “Charter” can, moreover, ham-string Foreign Policy by making Provinces individually and severally partner-negotiators when their interests are “affected”. For Harper the only interests Provinces can have, of course, are monetary ones. Guess what that means? It means the kind of chaos corporations think they like. But even corporations can have a tough go in the wonderful world of stripping Ottawa of national power. As always happens, the corporations will wake up … too late. They have never had the experience of Canada being a broken wheel barrow in which every spoke digs into the ground instead of making the essential wheel turn.

With people like Derek Burney and Hughie Segal advising them, and with Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day showing their real teeth, “the beans are already spilling out”.

That sounds bad. Could it get worse? Yes. Will it get worse? You answer the question.

[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on January 27, 2006]

It's funny you'd say that Robin, because your words do read as if they were written by a "damged drunk hight on drugs". Your paranoia and bitterness shapes your reality. You sees what your mind wants you to see. Someone has been talking to Rosie O'Donnell it would seem. Robin, you stole her best line!

Apparently you missed the CBC Q&A sessions, which were seen across the country. Unlike CTV and CanWest newscasts, the CBC is broadcast into more homes than any other network. Martin was jovial and given the floor to promote his agenda (although we're still not quite sure what that was?). Smiles in the audience and and jokes from Peter Mansbridge. Harper on the other hand was put in front of a Toronto audience with the meanest looking faces I've ever seen on any newscast. Is it that hard to smile when you're on television? Every person who asked a question was wearing red, and Mansbridge was severely critical of Harper. It goes both ways and can be very subtle.

If you couldn't see Liberal baises in the media coverage, you're clearly blind Robin. The only party that has a legitimate complaint is the NDP, as they were often the butt of the media's jokes. And of course the Greens, who were shut out all together from the discussion. Based on my experiences, Robin would make an excellent journalist for CCTV 9 in the People's Republic of China. Either they're stealing his style, or he's stealing there's, I'm not quite sure who is stealing who's? Always with the reactionaries, the reactionaries. Although, you're right with regards to the pollsters, I agree.

Seriously, what kind of weed are you smoking out there? May I suggest getting off the BC bud, it does have that effect of making you extremely paranoid. Last time I smoked weed from BC, I thought I was going to die for some reason? You need some of the nice mellow, naturally grown variety. It'll calm you down.

Robin reminds me of the 'Think Twice' colation. Regardless of your intentions, you only end up playing Liberals off of Conservatives, and vice-versa. Instead of being typically Canadian by telling us what we should think, why not tell people to think for themselves for a change? I'd bet the NDP and the Greens might actually start to go somewhere, as opposed to people being herded by fear and fallacy into the Liberal Party. How Kim Campbell looses her own seat and is reduced to two seats in the Commons, and Paul Martin is rewarded with over a hundred seats is an embarassement that I just can't figure out. What does that say about this country?

I just heard Harper's first news conference on the radio. He's talking about full senatorial elections in every province. Yeah, things are getting really worse out there Robin.

---
"All great truths begin as blasphemies" - George Bernard Shaw

Under a minority system here in Canada the Conservative Party's far right will be kept very quiet. They know another election is within two years if things go either bad or very good. Obviously they want good so they can try for a majority, so let's see how they behave before passing final judgement. I am holding out for a well-behaved Conservative party... I know it's a stretch but stranger things have happened.

We should worry more about the opposition at this point as they really hold they sway votes.

This morning Harper rebuffed the U.S. over his artic sovereignty plans. If he keeps that up, he will have a supporter in me over that single issue.

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If there was ever a time for Canadians to become pushy - now is the time - for time is running out on this nation called Canada.

Well for the moment I am will to wait and see just how well he cleans up this sewer we call politics. I did not vote for Harper or any other , but if he puts the crooks behind bars who walked away with millions of Canadian tax dollars, he will be well on his way to getting my support.

What the hell sence is their in a party that fight for social justice and at the same time be breaking all the laws that the rest of us must abide by, meaning the liberal party.

Harper has two +years to prove he is serious about accountability, the Auditor General and collecting what was stolen. Forget about the USA , by the time we have another election Bush and that administration will gone.

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Good government is not a party government

The reason that Martin didn't do a Campbell is quite simple. In Ontario and other places which get more liberal support the economy is quite good -even in some places in the maritimes. In places where it is bad, namely rural areas, liberals got trounced. If you remeber 1993, the entire COUNTRY was in an economic mess, a recession, newly opened borders and a new tax. Martin and the liberals were very good at hiding the fact that they were dishing out 50's levels of federal spending, all except health care (who really cares about the unemployed anyway?)

The country is following the states into a 'rural-urban' division, much like the rest of the world. The problem has been that rural voters never had quite enough representation-until now.

However, personally, this is one reason why I see the benefit of a non-elected senate. It adds an extra 'check' to the system. Between a liberal senate and a minority government, a liberal party with no leader (meaning less dictatorship), then we can't see the conservatives pushing through an agenda on ANYTHING. In the states up to now it was almost always a given-vote for one party in one house, another party in another house-until now. So to 'just dive in' could be a bad mistake. When ANY party has too much power there's cause for concern-as the liberals have just shown us.

Will it get worse? Yes, Robin, it will! As I have said already, Harper does not come alone. Behind him is "the machine", <a href="http://www.pogge.ca/archives/000966.shtml">US-Neocon engineered</a>! I was not going to blog tonight but I just finished reading <a href="http://www.ledevoir.com/cgi-bin/imprimer?path=/2006/01/26/100528.html">this</a> and I had to link to it. What it means is that the efforts of the neocons are bearing fruit in Canada since this is exactly what <a href="http://www.atlasusa.org/reports/event04_slc_breglio.ppt">this</a> is all about! Particular attention is to be paid to the neocon concept of "liberty" as shown in the PowerPoint presentation and in the name of the club supporting the protests for the radio station CHOI-FM! [ I'll try to expand on it some time if I can in the next few days. For now I can only say that things look very grim indeed!] The paradigm of Canadian politics changed on January 23, 2006! There was no way that the NDP or the Bloc could be at the helm of our government. It was always a choice between the Liberals and the Neocons. Whatever their shortcomings, the Liberals could have been kept in check. If anything, we would not now be facing <a href="http://dykesagainstharper.blogspot.com/2006/01/let-them-talk-i-say.html">this</a>, nor <a href="http://myblahg.com/?p=557">this</a>. I am afraid that last Monday of two evils Canadians picked the one that was <a href="http://www.pogge.ca/archives/000970.shtml">beyond their means</a> to control.

I'm wondering if the polarized nature of politics in BC makes everyone out there believe that the "other side" in the left/right schism is the devil incarnate.

Perhaps if the Toronto Star, which is so unapolgetically Liberal that it should have just let Paul Martin write its editorials and be done with it, opened up a satellite paper in Vancouver, Robin would be happier. Isn't is enough that we as taxpayers, including those of us who *aren't* supporters of big government, are forced to subsidize left-wing, statist propaganda via the CBC?

Harper won a limited, but genuine victory. He owes it not to a friendly media, but to a sharp, focussed campaign that, when contrasted with Martin's desparate histrionics, made him look more credible than Mr. Dithers. The usual Liberal stew of fearmongering and anti-Americanism didn't work quite as well this time.

And that must drive Mathews mad - the thought that the vast majority of Canadians do not hate America (and Americans) as much as he obviously does.

If your could, for a minute, stop your ideologically induced, albeit very popular PR hysteria, you could perhaps realize the obvious that hating the irresponsible and criminal actions of certain self appointed ruling classes is not "hating the people" living under their thumb.

Just because almost 2/3 of Canadians voted against Harper it doesn't mean that they hate Canada. Or do they, according to your highly "individualistic" way of thinking ? What would Preston Manning say ?

The people of the world, including Canadians, do not "hate America and Americans", but the rulers who claim to represent them, the colonizing multinational corporations and the military enforcing the "free removal of profits", while millions die of starvation every year .

Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.

<<The people of the world, including Canadians, do not "hate America and Americans", but the rulers who claim to represent them>>

Ah yes, that familiar refrain....of course the theory breaks down occasionally as witnessed in Vancouver during the World Junior Hockey Championship. Whether you like it or not, the "people" of America did elect their "rulers". And with a greater percentage of votes than in many other countries, including our own. But, assuming the entire US gov'ts "claim" to rule is illegitimate, then you make a good case for less (not more) state intervention in the economy.

<<the colonizing multinational corporations and the military enforcing the "free removal of profits", while millions die of starvation every year...>>

Yes "millions" have died due to starvation. But mostly at the hands of communists like Stalin. And the starvation that continues today is largely occuring in South America, Asia and esp Africa - where, coincidentally, they have the most direct government involvement with the market place and all other aspects of daily life. In short, they all dabble in socialism that you so strongly advocate.

Communism is a bad form of government and rules with an iron fist. But don't forget, equally as bad is fascism. It rules with an iron fist as well. Will we ever see a day where the world is rid of communism, fascism, and the corrupt democracies of the world? Hard to say but I'm hopeful. It may take a good few global revolutions to do it.

---
"A person who walks in someone elses footprints leaves no footprints." Chinese Proverb

Before you go all "ain't we great" 
American hands ain't so clean either So lets not go there, shall we? 
 
<a href="http://www.unitedstatesgovernment.net/eisenhowersholocaust.htm">http://www.unitedstatesgovernment.net/eisenhowersholocaust.htm</a> 
 
for the rest of the article 
Eisenhower's Holocaust 
His Slaughter Of 1.7 Million Germans 
 
 
Author Not Known 
 
 
"God, I hate the Germans..." 
Dwight David Eisenhower in a letter to his wife 
in September, 1944 
 
 
 
First, I want you to picture something in your mind. You are a German soldier who survived through the battles of World II. You were not really politically involved, and your parents were also indifferent to politics, but suddenly your education was interrupted and you were drafted into the German army and told where to fight. Now, in the Spring of 1945, you see that your country has been demolished by the Allies, your cities lie in ruins, and half of your family has been killed or is missing. Now, your unit is being surrounded, and it is finally time to surrender. The fact is, there is no other choice. 
 
It has been a long, cold winter. The German army rations have not been all that good, but you managed to survive. Spring came late that year, with weeks of cold rainy weather in demolished Europe. Your boots are tattered, your uniform is falling apart, and the stress of surrender and the confusion that lies ahead for you has your guts being torn out. Now, it is over, you must surrender or be shot. This is war and the real world. 
 
You are taken as a German Prisoner of War into American hands. The Americans had 200 such Prisoner of War camps scattered across Germany. You are marched to a compound surrounded with barbed wire fences as far as the eye can see. Thousands upon thousands of your fellow German soldiers are already in this make-shift corral. You see no evidence of a latrine and after three hours of marching through the mud of the spring rain, the comfort of a latrine is upper-most in your mind. You are driven through the heavily guarded gate and find yourself free to move about, and you begin the futile search for the latrine. Finally, you ask for directions, and are informed that no such luxury exists. 
 
No more time. You find a place and squat. First you were exhausted, then hungry, then fearful, and now; dirty. Hundreds more German prisoners are behind you, pushing you on, jamming you together and every one of them searching for the latrine as soon as they could do so. Now, late in the day, there is no space to even squat, much less sit down to rest your weary legs. None of the prisoners, you quickly learn, have had any food that day, in fact there was no food while in the American hands that any surviving prisoner can testify to. No one has eaten any food for weeks, and they are slowly starving and dying. But, they can't do this to us! There are the Geneva Convention rules for the treatment of Prisoners of War. There must be some mistake! Hope continues through the night, with no shelter from the cold, biting rain. 
 
Your uniform is sopping wet, and formerly brave soldiers are weeping all around you, as buddy after buddy dies from the lack of food, water, sleep and shelter from the weather. After weeks of this, your own hope bleeds off into despair, and finally you actually begin to envy those who, having surrendered first manhood and then dignity, now also surrender life itself. More hopeless weeks go by. Finally, the last thing you remember is falling, unable to get up, and lying face down in the mud mixed with the excrement of those who have gone before. 
 
Your body will be picked up long after it is cold, and taken to a special tent where your clothing is stripped off. So that you will be quickly forgotten, and never again identified, your dog-tag is snipped in half and your body along with those of your fellow soldiers are covered with chemicals for rapid decomposition and buried. You were not one of the exceptions, for more than one million seven hundred thousand German Prisoners of War died from a deliberate policy of extermination by starvation, exposure, and disease, under direct orders of the General Dwight David Eisenhower. 
 
One month before the end of World War 11, General Eisenhower issued special orders concerning the treatment of German Prisoners and specific in the language of those orders was this statement, 
 
"Prison enclosures are to provide no shelter or other comforts." 
 
Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose, who was given access to the Eisenhower personal letters, states that he proposed to exterminate the entire German General Staff, thousands of people, after the war. 
 
Eisenhower, in his personal letters, did not merely hate the Nazi Regime, and the few who imposed its will down from the top, but that HE HATED THE GERMAN PEOPLE AS A RACE. It was his personal intent to destroy as many of them as he could, and one way was to wipe out as many prisoners of war as possible. 
 
--- "There is no reason good can't triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia." 
Kurt Vonnegut

Unfortunately, the above is very true. I have known and worked with many who have been in those camps, sometimes machinegunned at random by drunk soldiers.

A kid I was living and working with in England, was telling us how they used to dig out earthworms to eat. Some went crazy from thirst and hunger and walked into the guns to die. There was a creek running on one side of the enclosure, with US tanks parked on the other side. There were some 10,000, or more POWs on a wide open field and they were given 10 minutes every morning to wash and drink. They were only allowed halfway across the creek and when the thirst crazy throng pushed the front row too far, in the middle of the summer, they were machinegunned down by the hundreds.

His name was Dieter, which he changed to Peter, married a London secretary in '54. I was best man at their wedding and by then he claimed he forgot all his German.

There was a place in Austria, somewhere in Steiermark, they called the Death Valley, where Hungarians were kept, dying from starvation and sickness. Then, when the Russians started making hostile moves, the scenario suddenly changed and they started feeding and treating them, in some cases, the best they ever had in their lives.

Like the late Charles deGaulle said: "Nations don't have friends, only interests."

Ed Deak.

As thought the USA wasn't statist - ie "socialist" in your limited viewpoint. The difference between Canada and the US as to state involvement in the economy is only a matter of degree and of different emphasis. In the US they tend to spend more tax money on war and jailing their citizens, whereas in Canada we spend more on health care and social welfare. I suppose in your view state socialism that kidnaps and kills people is preferable to state socialism that helps them.

But millions don't die in Canada every year.

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"A Liberal is someone who refuses to take his own side in a fight".

-Robert Frost

"This morning Harper rebuffed the U.S. over his artic sovereignty plans. If he keeps that up, he will have a supporter in me over that single issue."

I don't know if you saw the actual press conference, Roy, but this came off very much as being a set-up. Harper read his speech and took questions (more on that in a bit) and then kind of tacked the response to Wilkins on the end. I think he thought there would be a question on it and there never was.

About the questions though...Harper didn't make his speech in the press room where these things are usually held. It is the press that decides who gets to ask questions and in what order in there. Instead Harper chose a venue where his people were decding who got to ask the questions. The implicit message to reporters is that if you mess with Stephen Harper, you lose access.

That kind of implicit message is something that Reagan and Bush used to their advantage. Mulroney cut himself off from the press almost completely for a time.