Saturday, September 28, 2013
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Return of the Serial Proroguer
I was seated alone in the Strangers Bar in the Palace of Westminster, descending pleasantly into a haze of gin and tonic, when I was approached by a man of nondescript appearance. He wore a sou'wester, sea boots, and an inflatable parrot.
"May I join you?" he asked persuasively. I gestured to the seat next to me and smoothly ordered two more gins and tonics, lurching only slightly.
"Thank you," he said, "you are most kind. I am given to understand that you are concerned about the abuse of parliamentary democracy in Canada; in particular, the tendency of the current Prime Minister to prorogue parliament when he's about to be held to account."
"Who sent you?"
"I cannot reveal my sources, but I am permitted to refer to 'The Lady in Black'."
Her. Again. It was She who had sent me on a desperate quest to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to ask that they order Stephen Harper sent in exile to St. Helena, or in the alternative, to order the digging of a moat around Rideau Hall, filled with Alberta superheavy crude set on fire, in order to forestall attempts to usurp the role of Governor General of Canada. On the other hand, there was a new Governor-General who was a lawyer, who played hockey for Harvard, and who had a coveted role in Love Story. As an opening gambit it was incomprehensible.
To be continued...
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Bar Stool Op-Eds
One of the problems is the "think tanks". These are often portrayed as independent dispassionate institutes offering scholarly opinions when in fact they are lobby groups purveying propaganda. A flagrant example is the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Terminator-like resurrection of the Project for a New American Century. A recent Globe and Mail article quoted an "expert" from this Institute without offering any alternative views, such as those published by the Middle East Report and Information Project, an institution that has trouble getting air time in any MSM including the Globe and Mail.
A second problem is complete ignorance of history and the law. Recent examples are Samantha Power, who apparently has no grasp of what just happened in Libya, and Obama himself who seems unaware that the US was complicit in Saddam's use of chemical weapons, and who is now busily not noticing the coup and return of a police state in Egypt by means of an American-funded military oligarchy (>$1 billion/year) that apparently sees the massacre of peaceful protesters as a sound beginning to a new constitutional democracy. Apart from the fact that the Egyptian military is running a scam for its own benefit, it's worth remembering that the Muslim Brotherhood candidate was democratically elected, and the MB was around providing social services at times when previous versions of the oligarchy were enriching themselves at the expense of the peasants.
This is the background to fatuous opinions about "red lines" and "international norms" (good name for an Ultimate Frisbee team) as if we were making this up on the fly without even knowing about the existence of, say, international law.
The only guy making sense about Syria is Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. You can argue that Russia has supported a repressive, tyrannical regime in Syria, but that really doesn't distinguish it from American support for repressive, tyrannical regimes like Bahrain. Also, Uzbekistan. And of course, if we cast are minds back centuries to the 1970's and 80's, Argentina and Chile. And Honduras. El Salvador. Then there's Indonesia. And of course the Philippines. Wait, there's Libya...
Bring me an Alberta vodka, bartender, and keep them coming.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
