The Proletariat Congress

My blog is woefully out of date, but it happens. I’ve been rather busy lately with this pesky thing called “the real world”; that big, scary place out of the internet. Mostly due to the post-grad. However, some of my time is being devoted to the riding association. I’ve volunteered my Thursdays to working on the David Sparrow election campaign. He’s the NDP’s candidate for the Don Valley West riding. Through a combination of distributing signs, sealing envelops (and standing in pointless lines because the person in front of me and the cashier have little English); checking over spread sheets of voter data, I feel I’ve made a small contribution to my riding.

The riding was originally to have been in a federal by-election on September 22nd, but because Harper violated his own law that would have seen the next federal election in October of 2009, Canada is going to the polls on October 14 of this year.   Of course, that’s just one of many broken promises by the double-faced twat who is undeserving of the position of being Prime Minister.

“Fixed election dates prevent governments from calling snap elections for short-term political advantage. They level the playing field for all parties and the rules are clear for everybody.” ~ courtesty of CBC News and ABC

Though I know how I intend to vote – it should be obvious from the opening paragraph – I support the statement that is being made by ABC (Anything But Conservative); a site sponsored by Newfoundland-Labrador Premier Danny Williams. We as a nation need to vote for all the other parties. Vote for the NDP, Liberals, Green and Bloc. We need to stop the Conservatives from selling out Canada to the corporations; from destroying healthcare and everything else that makes Canada unique and not just the 51st American state.

We need to make the right (or rather left) choice and the choice is to vote for someone who will be figuratively sitting with you at the kitchen table when you lay out the budget and not thinking of how to save the corporations money in the form of tax cuts.

Despite that in recent months, the Conservatives have mounted an election-style smear campaign against Stephane Dion and the Liberals, alleging that the Liberals would blow the federal surplus (wait, wasn’t that surplus a result of former Prime Minister Paul Martin’s tenure as Minister of Finance? Not that it matters but it seems that there would be no surplus to speak of without Martin…), soften the sentences for repeat offenders, take away the child tax credit (a whole $1200/annum, which doesn’t even pay for a month of child care in a major city)… and basically polluted the air waves with their diatribes about how Dion is unfit to be PM… the same Conservative Party is now sueing the Liberals for $2.5 million…

So, what exactly is Harper having a tantrum over? Oh right, the Cadman affair, in which the Conservatives supposedly funded life insurance for the former MP. The condition was based upon his return to parliament in 2005 to help topple Martin’s minority Liberal government. And this would be easy to clear up if Cadman (Chuck Cadman) hadn’t been diagnosed with terminal cancer and hence had his time on earth cut short.

Here’s the kicker, it seems that in the end, Cadman didn’t follow throw and instead voted with the Liberals. This makes the situation sticky, but either way, unlike the allegations being used against the Liberal party, this one actually has water and could hold up in court. That’s if the judge doesn’t decide that this lawsuit is frivolous and throws it out, leaving no recourse other than a parliamentary investigation (just what we need, another snore-a-thon a-la Mulroney-Schrieber affair and the endless pointless questions…).

As for evidence indicting the Conservative Party and Harper, there is a tape (isn’t that convenient?) in which party officials are heard making the offer to Cadman. Nevertheless, Harper and his cronies are alleging that it was doctored, according to court documents. That doesn’t change the fact that there is still a tape implicating them as key players in this scandal.

The alleged tape, used by Vancouver author Tom Zytaruk who penned the newest Cadman biography is also said to be incomplete, though the author, unconnected to the parties involved says otherwise.

Now then, to complicate matters further, the Liberals had gone as far as to publish this issue on their website, giving it a spot on their site’s headline. And this is precisely why the Tories are taking them to court, because the material was published on the Liberal’s website. Never mind that the Tories were using other mediums to get out their hate messages.

Pot, meet kettle…

Harper files lawsuit against Liberal over website claim

Today I was asked by my father who is out of town to go check on his plants and water them, as well as pick up any mail that would be on the floor. Two of the pieces of mail on the floor caught my eye. Both were propaganda leaflets from the Conservative Party, attempting to brainwash the voting public into buying their line.

The first one challenged voters to pick whether or not they wanted to keep the ‘Child Tax Benefit‘. The two options were yes, represented by Harper and no, represented by Dion, who had voted against it in the first place. What this little piece of paper fails to inform you of is that this Child Tax “Benefit” that Harper is pimping out really doesn’t cover the true cost of child care and that in created this “benefit”, he scraped the federal childcare programme, which despite its flaws helped more people than this paltry hand out would. Mere peanuts and we’re expected to jump for joy because the government is pretending it understands what it means to make ends meet every week and the burden of sacrifice in order to put hot food on the table.

The child tax benefit is a mere $1200 per annum, which barely covers one month of child care in any Canadian city. It does nothing for those who need it, and those who can afford it, it’s just peanuts for those citizens anyway. It is nothing more than an insult to the tax paying public.

The second leaflet was more general, targeting Dion’s poverty elimination programme, which would involve spending and raising taxes. Again, the public was presented with options, either accept the tax and/or debt or neither if they go with Harper. The thing is however, that in order to reduce poverty, there needs to be money spent. Money needs to be raised to reduce the total deficit that may be acquired during this campaign to raise Canadians above the national poverty line.

The federal government is touting a 10 billion, yes, that’s BILLION, dollar surplus in this year’s budget; 10 billion going towards the federal debt, with Flaherty saying that the government needs to spend less. And the public… we get just peanuts. Of course, what the government isn’t telling the people is that it inherited this carefully managed surplus from the Liberals; that this budget is a product of the Chretien era, when Paul Martin was Minister of Finance.

The budget, being touted as prudent does nothing to aid the crumbling infrastructure of Canadian cities nor to alleviates the crippling poverty that has some Canadians struggling to survive. Nothing for child care.

The two flyers in question do nothing to shake my immense hatred of the Harper administration and its pandering to the Bush administration and it’s failing war on terror, as well as other failed policies. It merely reaffirms what I have always believed.

And “Hon” (nothing honourable though) Peter van Loan, MP (c/o CRG Government Caucus Services, 131 Queen Street Suite 8-02, House of Commons, Ottawa ON, K1A 0A6)… it’s obvious you are in line with the party on the environment because your little flyers are nothing more than a waste of paper and yet more garbage to add to our ever growing landfills. Of course, there are some environmentally minded Canadians out there who will merely toss this tripe into their black boxes or use it to line their bird cages…

The spineless, cowardly Canadian Conservatives have blindly caved into American pressure once again. The ever weak-kneed Tories have decided roll over on Bush’s command and remove the US and Israel from its torture watch list because the two allege that they would never be involved in such inhumane activities nor should they be associated with rogue states like Iran and Syria. Those states engaged in torture. The US simply engages tactics to up the extraction of information using provisory amenity readjustment; it’s not really torture if the Americans do it…

Nor is it torture when the Israelis kill bystanders in their fight against Hamas or when they leave eight hundred thousand or so people in the Gaza strip without power. It’s not torture when they do it because they’re “protecting” Israelis from those poor Palestinians civilians… err, I mean, evil Islamic terrorists who just want to live in their homeland. Never mind that this affects everything including hospitals, medical clinics, water works, houses et cetera. Of course, that doesn’t matter to Israelis because the Palestinians aren’t “God’s Chosen”.

Gaza City plunged into darkness

Rather than worrying about the people who are suffering, I mean, “enjoying” their provisory amenity readjustment, the resolutely obtuse Harper administration has elected to willfully ignore the plight of those in these two nations in favour of international relations. Never mind that Canadians would rather keep rogue nations on the torture watch list, even if they are our “allies”. Of course, if they were truly worried about international relations, they would be in contact with our NATO allies who have qualms about engaging in such inhumane activities, with a flagrant disregard for human rights.

Like the good Harper ass-sucking Tory he is, Maxime Bernier, the Foreign Affairs Minister has come out (sorry, it’s not a closet; Harper won’;t give up the key for it), assuring America and Israel that it was simply an error and that it was never meant to be. He attempted to make it crystal clear that they, the Tories would never see to displease their extraterritorial overlords ever again. This pleased Israel’s Ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, who had been most displeased upon seeing the document naming Israel along with the rogue state of Iran. He was most insulted but was placated upon receiving reassurances from Bernier that it would never happen again.

The US Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins has uttered his displeasure with the government by terming it “offensive” that his country was considered on par with such insolent nations like China, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Afghanistan and Syria. He had a wee tantrum has he told a well-controlled press conference about the gross error in judgement made by the puppet government in Ottawa, saying it was, “Quite frankly it’s absurd. For us to be on a list like that is just ridiculous.”

How can it be ‘ridiculous’ when the two nations are known to engage in such activities that are contrary to the well being of others in the world? How is it not torture? Is it only torture when your enemy does it? Or because you’ve made the claim that you’re not actually torturing people because you’re simply trying to protect the world from terrorists? Sorry, playtime’s over children, let the adults take over and you can go sit in the corner and think about the crimes you’ve committed as you wear that lovely orange state-issued jump suit that you’ve given to the detainees at Gitmo.

Canada to rewrite Manual US criticized

Israeli envoy slams torture claim

Ottawa reverses torture stance

Canadian FM regrets ‘torture list‘