Canada's 2015 Federal Election

Apologies to Gary Larson 

The Non-Crisis about Canada's Senate

Regarding the Reichstag Fire Option

Following the Auditor-General's report about the Senate's trough feeding, there have been over-excited calls for its utter reform or its total destruction.

Really.

The Senate is a non-problem.  In fact it's a distraction from the disgraceful and disgusting attack on Westminster parliamentary democracy perpetrated by the "conservative party of  Canada" which is about as radical a government as you can get without reverting to a police state.  The fact that this is the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta has passed almost unremarked by the Canadian Commentariat who might believe it's a car parts company.

Michael den Tandt appears to advocate the Reichstag Fire option, or perhaps the Guy Fawkes option, which is to destroy the institution entirely.

My response to this is the Glenn Greenwald closely reasoned response which is "Fuck you."

If you have the arrogance to believe you can make over British parliamentary democracy with a single act of destruction then it seems clear to me you have no respect for history or the fragile evolution of government that manages to avoid raw power politics, or feudalism, or totalitarianism, or a police state, or whatever you want to call the simple minded application of a simple minded solution to a complexity that is too painful to bear, which is reality.

Here's Winston Churchill;

Thus we arrive, by our ancient constitutional methods, at practical working arrangements which show that Parliamentary democracy can adapt itself to all situations and can go out in all weathers.

 Here's George Orwell:

In power politics there are no crimes because there are no laws.

 The Senate is the least of  our problems.  Fuck you.

The defeat and vindication of Peter Bryce

D.C. Scott and Crimes Against Humanity

"The Story of a National Crime"

It's all here.

Neo-Fascists in Ottawa

Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act and the rise of fascism in Canada.


So Canada's Prime Minister is off to New York City this weekend to salivate over the 9/11 wreckage. Very tasteful. He has recently advertised "Islamicism" as being the major threat to Canada's national security.

NATO Principles of International Relations

1.  To resolve any intractable international or civil conflict, the use of military force is the first option.

2.  The first option never works.

3.  A long term solution can only be achieved through negotiation.

4.  Nobody knows how to do this.

5.  GOTO 1

First we killed Saddam Hussain so everything would be fine...

Then we killed bin Laden so everything would be even more fine.

Then we killed Ghadaffi so everything would be superfine.

So now we're trying to kill Assad so everything will be ultrasuperfine.

Also, we'd like to kill whoever is in charge of ISIS - whatever ISIS is - so everything will be hyperulatrasuperfine.

If we could only find the right guy...

New, Improved Hell in Brussels™

Bombing Libya provides expected peace dividends

Excerpt from The War Diary of SHAPE Public Affairs Rue Grande, 7020 Maisières April 20, 2015 9:30 AM 


Coffee en route to work. Urgent phone call from Chief.  Our new worst fears have been realized.  Our old worst fears were that Afghanistan would come to us, just like Lord Robertson  of Crossharbour said.  Or was that Conrad Black?  Anyway, whoever it was and now that it has, we can turn our full attention to developments in Libya. There are of course still details to attend to in shuttering the ISAF Public Affairs office:  moving furniture, shredding documents, and choosing paint. Libya will not wait however.  An urgent meeting was convened in the Bar of the Hotel Amigo, at lunch.  12:00 PM,  Hotel Amigo bar.  It's really very nice.  The task before us is to portray the Victory of NATO in Libya as the Great Victory it actually was.  Something triumphed over something else, and we won.  Now, after all that successful bombing and strafing  and budget expenditure, ungrateful wretches are washing up on shores all over the Mediterranean.  How to craft these images into strategic communication?  1:00 PM Adjourned for working lunch. 4:00 PM Reconvened. Brainstorming session.  Suggestions were: spruce up wretches for a few weeks, give them new clothes, and take them back to Libya at night;  the same, but put them all in Malta; shoot them.  The last was seen as unsporting, at least without giving them a head start. Hellfire missiles are much tidier (no survivors) and more cost effective (no food, clothing, or painful interviews to corrupt the Strategic Message).  6:00 PM  Voila, Declaration of the Hotel Amigo: everything is going according to plan, even though there was never a plan. Libyans who choose to swim the Mediterranean in hopes of a better life are unfortunately ill-advised. Public Affairs will develop an Education Action Plan for unrealistic Med swimmers. It will be in Arabic, even.  11:00 PM Informal discussion.