Mockery Is All They Deserve

Crawford Kilian of The Tyee poses an interesting question/suggestion:

What If We Made 2015 the Year of Poking Fun at Conservatives?

While there is certainly no dearth of mockery emanating from the blogosphere and people like Rick Mercer, Kilian suggests that 2015 is a propitious year for Canadians to return to a time when we were known for our irreverence and refusal to defer to those who claimed to be our betters:

The first Canadian volunteers to reach Britain in the First World War soon gained a reputation as bloody-minded, disrespectful and insubordinate. Today's Canadian is defined as the kind of person who says "sorry" when you step on their foot; the Canadian of a century ago would have punched your lights out.

Kilian notes that our formerly insouciant ways extended beyond soldiers' disdain for pretentious officers to politicians themselves, and continued well into the last century:

In the midst of Trudeaumania in 1968, the great man was already being lampooned in books, opinion columns and cartoons. Journalist Stanley Burke and cartoonist Roy Peterson collaborated in the 1970s on Frog Fables and Beaver Tales and a sequel, which portrayed Pierre Trudeau as a frog -- amusing many and scandalizing none.

Nor were Conservatives granted an exemption, as

the CBC's Max Ferguson made his reputation with a sendup of John Diefenbaker's pompous, wattle-shaking speaking style. The Royal Canadian Air Farce skewered Brian Mulroney's oily good cheer, Joe Clarke's awkward laugh, and Preston Manning's Prairie whine.

The writer suggests that somehow, things gradually changed, and not for the better:

In interviews, journalists began to speak with excessive respect to prime ministers and their cabinet officers, as if the politicos were the bosses and not the servants. Mulroney, Clarke and Manning lived to become statesmen, not jokes.

One need only note the recent deferential year-end 'interview' the most reverent Peter Mansbridge conducted with Stephen Harper for an egregious illustration of that fact.

Clearly, the time has come for some widespread and much deserved disrespect, given the material the Harper regime supplies on an almost daily basis:

So Pierre Poilievre had us rolling in the aisles with: "The root cause of terrorism is terrorists." He and his Conservative colleagues have themselves become punchlines, like Paul Calandra and Dean Del Mastro.

Stephen Harper must wonder how long he can keep a straight face. For eight years he's been the guy with the boffo gags (Prorogation! StatsCan! Vic Toews! The F-35! Robocalls! Julian Fantino!) while seeing off a string of inept straight men like Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff.

Kilian concludes with this observation:

It's going to be a very solemn 2015 indeed if the NDP and Liberals (and the media) don't lighten up and start giving the ridiculous Conservatives the ridicule they deserve for running this country into the ground for the past eight years.

I suspect there are few among us who could disagree.

A Double Standard?

Under normal circumstances, a court of last resort would be welcomed in the pursuit of justice, but it is apparently an entirely different story when it involves holding Israel to account

Paper News

There is a new online publication called Paper News with the following mission:

A brand new online publication, Paper News is looking to bring a new voice to the national conversation, providing Canadians with a unique spin on issues spanning every coast and prairie.

The organization is looking for submissions. I recently wrote a piece for them covering the ongoing problem of police brutality and abuse of authority, topics upon which I have written extensively on this blog. You can access it here.

With the large pool of writing talent and opinion evident in the political blogs I read, I hope others will consider sharing their views with Paper News.

And Now, A Word From PropCan

About two weeks ago, the Toronto Star carried a story about the Harper regime's engagement of the services of a publicity agency called News Canada Ltd.. The organization provides copyright-free material to any media outlets that wish to carry it.

The Harper government pays up to $1.5 million annually for its services, but the real story is that there is nothing in any of the video or text materials that reveal they are sponsored content. It is a propagandist's dream.

The Star reports about one of their videos that casts Health Canada and Aboriginal Affairs in a misleadingly positive light:

An undated video about the Nutrition North program available for use on the News Canada website states as fact that it has increased access to fresh foods in remote areas, leading grocery retailers to pass on the subsidy to consumers by reducing prices

A quick Internet search for any real news story about Nutrition North might turn up results about how the auditor general said the aboriginal affairs department does not actually know whether that is true.

You can access the video by clicking on the link below:

Bringing Nutrition To Canada’s North


This leads me once again to reproduce more fine letters from perspicacious Star readers, who have no trouble seeing through yet another Harper-orchestrated deception:

Re: And now the news – brought to you by the Tories, Dec. 20

The use of News Canada Ltd. by the “Harper Government” to “create and distribute government-approved news items” is compelling evidence that the Conservative Party of Canada is acutely aware that something fundamental is missing from their ability to effectively communicate with Canadians. That something is credibility.

Credibility must be earned and it must be maintained through honesty, integrity, competence, sound judgment, empathy, and fairness. The Conservatives have amply demonstrated that these values are sadly missing from their partisan culture.

Our economy is suffering because of a lack of vision and diversification. Our veterans cannot get the help they so desperately need while budgets are cut and $1.1 billion is returned to government coffers. The gap between rich and poor grows ever wider ever more rapidly. Environmental groups and left-leaning think tanks that question government policies are audited. Northern Aboriginals scavenge in the dump for food while the minister reads her newspaper and refuses to answer questions. The list goes on.

There are two ironies in the credibility crisis the “Harper Government” now faces. The first is that the Conservatives have brought this upon themselves. Years of “truthiness,” cheating, bullying, and hypocrisy have eroded their credibility with Canadians to the point that the Conservatives now believe the only viable way they have to get their messages out is through deceit.

And therein lays the second irony. This attempt to deceive Canadians will only serve to further erode what little remains of the “Harper Government’s” credibility.

Lyle J. Goodin, Bowmanville

Harper has stolen another page from Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels’ book. Harper’s advisers then created an enemies of the PM list as did field marshall Hermann Goering with his blacklist to warn Hitler of his enemies. Meanwhile Canadians receive weekly propaganda leaflets from their Tory MPs across the country telling of their accomplishments.

Bill Tuer, Cobourg

To read the rest of the missives, please click here.

Pope Francis Is On The Right Track, But Not With The Right Wing

You know that when Fox News starts howling, someone is doing something right.

The reactionary network is issuing dire warnings:

Fox News reported on Pope Francis' upcoming action on climate change by promoting climate change denial and suggesting that the pope is aligning with "extremists who favor widespread population control and wealth redistribution."

The segment exposing the Pope's 'dastardly plan'

also featured climate "skeptic" Marc Morano -- who is paid by an industry-funded group to run the climate change-denying website ClimateDepot.com -- to falsely claim that there has been "no global warming" for "almost two decades".

An Inse Suggestion

In my morning post, I reprinted the following letter from The Toronto Star:

With Stephen Harper’s Conservatives intent to push science back to medieval times, it may be time for Canadians to embrace those efforts and get with Harper Times. Issue all conservatives a bell to be worn in public. They have become pariahs of society, like the lepers of old, and should be treated as such.

How a party representing less than 40 per cent of the electorate can be allowed to systematically dismantle our democracy and scientific institutions shows the current first past the post voting system is a relic that has long passed its expiry date.

Tyler Lindsay, Niagara Falls

Inse subsequently sent me the following, which I post with thanks, clearly reflective of the spirit of Tyler Lindsay's missive:

The Fearless Pope Francis

Yesterday, The Mound of Sound had a post on the role that Pope Francis is playing in the climate change debate. Given his growing moral authority and extensive popularity throughout the world, those with vested interests in retaining the status quo that is destroying the earth, and their aiders and abettors, (Stephen Harper et alia), have, I think, much to fear.

Here is a video well-worth watching from Democracy Now! that discusses Pope Francis and the encyclical he is slated to release in March on climate change. It is so refreshing to see a pontiff who is doing what we should all be doing: comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.