#harperregime

[appalledbc]

Debt Makes the World Go 'Round and Eventually Down

The recent Bank of Canada interest rate drop is a desperate attempt to stimulate growth through debt, potentially suckering those already in debt up to their eyeballs through long-term mortgages, automobile payments, and of course credit cards and lines of credit.  An implosion waiting to happen, especially if the housing market, overvalued by up to 30%, continues to wobble.

But debt burdened Canadians could also decide to exercise some discipline and restraint with the lower rates and begin to pay down all that debt, in which case the average Canadian would presumably “consume” much less - thus inhibiting any imagined so-called growth through consumption.  Not a likely scenario, however, given stagnant if not shrinking wages throughout the country, no region a more obvious victim than Alberta.

In other words, neither monetary stimulus nor consumer spending is going to save the Canadian economy under the Harper Regime.

Now comes news that Canada had the second biggest jump in household debt-to-income ratios of any country other than Greece between 2007 and the second quarter of 2014. And other recent data indicates the ratio has moved up since then. Add to this stark news the fact that GDP shrank in November and continues to do so because of our unwarranted concentrated dependence on oil exports - the price of which is dramatically slumping - and that job numbers have been revised downwards for 2014 by StatsCan.

The root cause of this gloomy situation: neoliberal policy privileging the financial sector and investor class at both the federal and provincial level - everyone is a true believer -  and the failure to encourage a diversified productive domestic economy. Yet many Canadians, including the apathetic and indifferent when they they can find the time to hear the spin, continue to believe that the Harper Regime are “good economic managers.” 

Economics makes the world and “politics” go round but few really understand how economic policy impacts their daily lives. It’s where progressives should really be focusing their attention if they seek systemic change.

http://tinyurl.com/o9nfwfx

[appalledbc]

This column outraged all those who bought into the emotional vortex in which Nathan Cirillo’s unfortunate death swirled. The occasion of his murder was significant, to be sure, but was it really “heroic”? Why was he accorded such an extravagant public ceremonial funeral when so many other fallen Canadian soldiers, through combat or suicide, have not?

No matter what one’s take, it’s hard to deny that his death was shamelessly exploited by the #HarperRegime, the military, and especially big media. Does such action really honour the death of by all accounts a very good man?

[appalledbc]

Crassly ideological, the #HarperRegime's income splitting proposal is both ethically unfair in privileging some Canadians over others based on their marital status and economically stupid in draining revenue so significantly - two of the many disturbing hallmarks of the Regime.

[appalledbc]

If individuals and groups are portrayed as irrational, barbaric, and beyond the pale of negotiation and compromise, as this rhetoric would have it, then asking why they resort to terrorism is viewed as pointless, needlessly accommodating, or, at best, mere pathological curiosity. Those normally inclined to ask “Why?” are in danger of being labeled “soft” on terrorism, while the more militant use the “terrorist” label to blur the distinction between critical examination and appeasement.... By effectively placing designated individuals or groups outside the norms of acceptable social and political behavior, the rhetoric of “terror” has had these effects: 1) It erases any incentive the public might have to understand the nature and origins of their grievances so that the possible legitimacy of their demands will not be raised. 2) It deflects attention away from one’s own policies that might have contributed to their grievances. 3) It repudiates any calls for negotiation. 4) It obliterates the distinction between national liberation movements and fringe fanatics (for example, during the 1990s, the “terrorist” label was applied to Nelson Mandela and Timothy McVeigh alike); 5) It paves the way for the use of force by making it easier for a government to exploit the fears of its citizens and ignore objections to the manner in which it responds to terrorist violence. ...To put it bluntly, by stifling inquiry into causes, the rhetoric of “terror” actually increases the likelihood of terrorism. First, it magnifies the effect of terrorist actions by heightening the fear among the target population. If we demonize the terrorists, if we portray them as evil, irrational beings devoid of a moral sense, we amplify the fear and alarm generated by terrorist incidents, even when this is one of the political objectives of the perpetrators. In addition, stricter security measures often appear on the home front, including enhanced surveillance and an increasing militarization of local police. Second, those who succumb to the rhetoric contribute to the cycle of revenge and retaliation by endorsing military actions that grievously harm the populations among whom terrorists live. The consequence is that civilians, those least protected, become the principle victims of “retaliation” or “counterterrorism.”... Third, a violent response is likely to stiffen the resolve of those from whose ranks terrorists have emerged, leading them to regard their foes as people who cannot be reasoned with, as people who, because they avail themselves so readily of the rhetoric of “terror,” know only the language of force. As long as groups perceive themselves to be victims of intolerable injustices and view their oppressors as unwilling to arrive at an acceptable compromise, they are likely to answer violence with more violence. Their reaction might be strategic, if directed against civilians to achieve a particular political objective, but, with the oppression unabated, it increasingly becomes the retaliatory violence of despair and revenge.

Tomis Kapitan wrote this piece before the murder of two Canadian soldiers last week. How prescient and perceptive his remarks.  http://tinyurl.com/ph5rnoy

[appalledbc]

We are a wounded nation, not a terrorized one.... From what we've seen so far, the homegrown "converts" to some kind of violent extremism aren't highly trained lethal combatants seeking to destabilize Canada from within, but rather gullible, suggestible or delusional young men. There will probably be more. We should honour the sacrifice of Cpl. Cirillo and Warrant Officer Vincent by refusing to bestow their attackers with a name that accords them prominence and stature. Let's dial this back several notches and call this phenomenon what it is: violent treason. And the mental health aspect cannot be dismissed. Our focus should be soberly fixed on appropriate security, not obsessing over unstable individuals who are by their nature unpredictable. There will always be lunatics with guns and knives. Investigating them is a police matter.

http://tinyurl.com/npm9q89 Indeed. But of course the #HarperRegime is dialing it up for all they can get and the mainstream media is buying in with deep complacency - not unlike the roll-over media buy-in after 9/11. The propaganda machine is so overheated with patriotic sentiment,  #militarism, and faux "terrorism" it might explode.

[appalledbc]

How expedient we are being in our oversight of historical events — three RCMP officers assassinated in New Brunswick, four in Alberta, 14 women at a Quebec university, the more authentic “terrorism” of the FLQ back in 1970, or the attempted assassination of PQ leader Pauline Marois — that, for their occurrence, did not make Canada a more adult or less “innocent” place. There’s not a Canadian of right mind who has not understood that the effect of having fought in Afghanistan for 10 years, or of allying ourselves with ineffectual actions in Libya and now against the Islamic State, would have consequences — among these the moment when anger against the dominating power would be manifested here. The rescinding of Canadian “values,” a term that is permitted now that Harper is using it, must not be a casualty of this sad development. And we do ourselves no favours, combating “terrorism” especially, by zealously leaping into the sort of shoot-‘em-up world that saw the death of a couple of anti-social miscreants — the first, Martin Couture-Rouleau, swilling beer one day and declaring jihad the next, and the second, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, an itinerant petty criminal incapable of holding a job, likely mentally ill and sharing paranoid fantasies at the mosque — rather than their capture. Does the pathetic, desperate, criminality of this pair even deserve to be called “terrorism”? Were they financed? Were they part of a cell? With whom were they in communication? We won’t be finding out quite so easily now.

http://goo.gl/pQu5mM Noah Richler in today's Toronto Star. Finally progressive voices are speaking out, though I remain surprised at how many have been silent over the past few days. Out of respect or out of fear? It's not that chilly yet. Reminds me of the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when progressive voices also remained either silent or complacent.

[appalledbc]

Russell Brand sees through the classic war and terror handbook rhetoric spun by the boys in short pants for Harper's prime-time TV address to show us the absurdity it really was. 

[appalledbc]

Right on. Just listen to the loaded vocabulary oozing out of Harper’s mouth in his “address to the nation, ” and you'll see why Brand is raging.