Murray Dobbin's Blog

Everyone concerned about the future of Canada’s social programs, transfers to individuals (like pensions), and government programs in general should be keeping a keen eye on Ottawa for the next month as we get closer to budget day on March 3^rd.  The Harper conservatives have been thinking about this day for a long time but their plans, usually firm long before implementation, and designed personally by Harper, are in disarray this time.

Harper is juggling various strategic balls at the moment and each of them has risk associated with it. First, Harper did not expect to be heading for this first big deficit budget tied with the Liberals in the polls. His gross miscalculation about the impact of shutting down Parliament has thrown a serious wrench into the works. While it is impossible to be certain, there is good reason to believe that he might have forced an election on the budget – placing in it some calculated outrage that the opposition parties would have to vote against. Polls in the fall – when planning began in earnest – suggested a possible majority. That is now dead in the water.

According to the Globe and Mail there is real dissent within the ranks of the government over the relative political benefits of going after the deficit versus continuing stimulus spending – or at least, not cutting normal expenditures. This question takes on much greater significance given that Harper now does not control the political agenda. Even in early January Finance Minister Flaherty was warning about “restraint.”  No more. The message now is more nuanced and exposes real confusion in the bunker.

Both Harper’s options have risks. If he starts hacking away at the things he hates – almost everything but defence spending – Harper risks angering even more Canadians whose economic insecurity is still front of mind. Unemployment is not coming down and many Canadians are maintaining their life style in spite of hardship by borrowing on the increased value of their homes. The rapid increase in home values has postponed the moment of truth for many people. But the real estate bubble that I warned about last fall is now beginning to worry even the executive of the Big Six Banks – the short term beneficiaries of easy mortgage money. If that bubble – not in danger of bursting just yet – should grow and stimulus funding cause inflation and higher interest rates, the risk of a mortgage default crisis becomes real. Harper does not want to be planning for an election during such a crisis as it would mean certain defeat.

It is fascinating to watch how the framing of an issue can change almost overnight in the right circumstances. I, along with a lot of others, would have thought that the sustained and relentless 1990s campaign against deficits would have placed a permanent taboo on public acceptance of them. But the financial crisis changed that. When those who were most vociferous about no more deficits (the hit-the-debt-wall crowd) suddenly reversed course, the taboo simply melted away.

That is what a recent poll suggests.  When asked which should be the government’s priority – spending to create jobs or controlling spending to eliminate the deficit, 51% of Canadians said keep spending versus 44% who said control spending. Even amongst self-identified Conservative voters the numbers were very close: 50% were for controlling spending, 46% for continuing the stimulus.  Women, who are now moving to the Liberals away from the Conservatives, were in favour of continued spending by a margin of 55% to 40%. In every important contested province except Quebec the numbers supported spending – in BC 53% to 38%.

There is good reason to believe that any serious cuts will be postponed – perhaps only till the fall and an economic update. But that time will be valuable for progressive forces because it will give us time to organize a campaign to tax the rich – and corporations – as the only sane and rational way to get back to fiscal health.

Maybe I missed a story or a headline somewhere but I am having trouble finding much media reference to the NDP these days – and by these days I mean the days of a new democracy movement (they are the New Democrats, after all), the decline of Stephen Harper, the public anger at prorogation and the elephant in the room – the March 3^rd tighten-our-belts budget. I know that the NDP see the Liberals as their natural competition so I am curious as to why they aren’t competing.

Michael Ignatieff, for whom I have endless mistrust, is out-maneuvering Jack Layton these days (especially on the prorogation issue) and that should worry NDP supporters and progressives in general. It may come to nothing, but if the tentative forays into the realm of real issues by Ignatieff continues, he will be out there with a list of progressive policies while the NDP is still tinkering with tactics.

The other day Ignatieff made a bold statement on child care, saying that he would not let the deficit stop a wise program:

“[The Conservatives] are saying you can’t invest in anything that makes this a fairer country because we have a $56-billion deficit. Well, who created it in the first place? I am not going to allow the deficit discussion to shut down the discussion in this country about social justice.”

Social justice? Whoa…these words coming from a New Millennium Liberal? I haven’t that kind of talk from a Liberal since their Red Book of 1993. That election platform document became known within a couple of years as the Liberal Book of Lies – but it got the slippery Liberals elected. Such talk could do so again.

Then we had another trial balloon released by the darling of the left-wing Liberals, Gerard Kennedy, who said on the CTV show Power Play, that Canadians were actually supportive of tax increases if the money went to rebuilding municipal infrastructure. Kennedy could not be cornered into supporting a GST hike or any other tax hike – but it was clear he was putting it out there, softening up the public for the eventual conversation about tax increases. His boss did the same thing last spring – but it was a one shot effort.

Kennedy quoted from a poll done by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and showed “that 32 per cent of Canadians would support raising the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to pay down the federal deficit, but up to 70 per cent would support an increase dedicated to local infrastructure repairs and upgrades.”

Canadians almost always support tax increases by a similar margin if the poll says the money would be targeted to Medicare, education or poverty reduction. All this should be heartening for the NDP because these are NDP values bolstering what should be NDP policies.

Then, today, Ignatieff took on the Conservatives hard-core support by going after Harper directly on the abortion issue. Anticipating a possible Harper bone-toss to his right wing constituency at the G8 summit, Ignatieff did a pre-emptive strike. Harper’s highly suspicious pledge to make women’s health a new international priority got an aggressive response from the Liberal leader. Daring Harper to mimic George W. Bush (who banned federal funding to international NGOs that provided information about abortion) Ignatieff stated:

“We want to make sure that women have access to all the contraceptive methods available to control their fertility because we don’t want to have women dying because of botched procedures, we don’t want to have women dying in misery.”

This is gauntlet being thrown down, not to the Conservatives, but to the NDP. But the NDP team has an excess of tacticians who aren’t very good at strategy. Unless the House is in session and they can do their magic to get that day’s 15 seconds of TV coverage, they don’t know what the hell to do. It’s time to trade a few of them in – and put the strategists in charge. Otherwise the Liberals could leave them in the dust – like they did in the 1993 election when the NDP came away with nine seats.

It has been said by many American commentators critical of Israeli policy in the occupied territories that Israel in effect writes US foreign policy in the Middle East. It is hard to dispute the claim even though on occasion the US does balk at the most outrageous Israeli plans such as its eagerness to bomb Iranian nuclear sites (the US knows it wouldn’t stop there and a wider war would almost certainly ensue).  If any proof were needed one only has to look at the policies of Barack Obama who, it could be argued, is even more sycophantic towards Israel than George Bush was.

Before he was inaugurated as president, Obama made it clear that the enormous military and civilian aid provided by the US – some $2.5 billion a year – was not on the table. In other words, before even developing a policy towards Israel, Obama gave up literally the only leverage he had. And just in case the Israelis were too slow to get the message he followed by allowing Israel to continue building more settlements in the West Bank – literally the only deal breaker as far as the Palestinians are concerned. It was an unmistakable message: the US has no intention of pressing for a peace deal and the two-state solution, the focus of bargaining for twenty years, is dead.

It is difficult to imagine a country more accepting than the US of any Israeli policy or bad faith but Stephen Harper and his Israeli file manager, Jason Kenny, have shown they can out do the US. The Harper government appears to develop its policy vis a vis Israel and the Palestinians not from any consideration of Canadian interests in the Middle East or by any reference to the considerable expertise in DFAIT – the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.  These normal inputs into foreign policy are simply by-passed and the government seems to simply seek the direction of Frank Dimant, executive vice president of Jewish advocacy group B’Nai Brith. Every time Canada announces another policy plank – that is, an attack on any agency or civil society group that ever criticizes Israel -  Dimant is there to congratulate them.

The latest chapter was revealed recently (following closely on the heels of the attack on Kairos and the elimination of its $7 million development budget) – the decision by Ottawa to cancel its $15 million (we were the seventh largest donor)  in general fund contributions to UNRWA – the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, alleging strong ties between it and terrorist groups. Like the claim used to justify the cancellation of funding to Kairos (that it was a strong advocate of the boycott of Israel) this claim is vehemently denied by literally everyone close to the situation except, of course, Israel, B’nai Brith and other Israeli lobby groups in Canada. The government’s own foreign affairs officials have never made such a claim.

CIDA Minister Bev Oda and (then) Treasury Board president Vic Toews two weeks ago quietly confirmed that Canada’s would be directing its $15 million specifically to “food security” instead of supplementing core funding and the general budget of UNRWA.

According to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME): “UNRWA   provides assistance to 4.67 million Palestinian refugees scattered throughout the Middle East and administers programs in the areas of education, health and other social services in 59 Palestinian refugee camps. The agency operates solely through donations from various organizations and governments. It is currently under severe financial duress due to the increasing number of Palestinian refugees, the deterioration of their socio-economic level, unemployment and food insecurity.”

The alleged terrorist group that the UN is “tied” to is Hamas – the duly elected government in the Gaza Strip. As with the Kairos example, the government presented no evidence of any kind to support its claim.

This put Canada far to the right of even the US which continues to be the second largest funder of UNRWA and flies in the face of the request by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas – the last real Western hope for a moderate Palestinian leader – told Canadian parliamentarians in Ottawa last year to continue its funding of UNRWA. According to NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar:

“When we met with Abbas here, he was very straightforward with us. When we asked the classic question, ‘What can Canada do to help?’ he said ‘Stick with your commitments, the commitments that you have made, including UNRWA.’ He was very specific.”

None of this matters to the Harper government. It listens to Frank Dimant who said of the move: “This is certainly a step in the right direction. I believe it’s beginning to break out of the mold and the pattern and so I believe it’s a very progressive step forward.” His organization and other Jewish groups have long lobbied for Canada to end funding to UNWRA. Ironically, people on the ground say that this move will actually have the effect of making Palestinians even more dependent on Hamas which offers similar services to those of UNWRA.

The movement for democratic reform is undoubtedly one of the most heartening developments in Canadian politics in a very long time. Not just because it was great to see some 25,000 people out in the streets protesting the Harper dictatorship, but perhaps even more importantly giving a wake-up call to the social and labour movements who have become dormant largely on the excuse that Canadians have become more conservative. This is simply not the case.

This outpouring of anger at something declared by the pundits as beyond the pale for most Canadians, will hopefully inspire those same organizations to get on the bus. Or shame them into it – it hardly matters which. These politically opportune moments do not arrive very often and it is incumbent upon existing organizations to rise to the occasion, support the nascent movement and begin gearing up their own machinery to take the fight to Stephen Harper and his government.

But one question does arise in observing this exciting development. What is our goal?  Do we want to finally rid the country of this execrable politician once and for all, or do we want democratic reform for the sake of democratic reform?

While the concentration of power in the PMO is hardly a new phenomenon (it started in earnest with Pierre Trudeau in 1968) Harper has taken it to genuinely dangerous levels. Given the momentum now for reform – and the likely pillorying of any leader who dares try to use Harper’s tricks as a precedent – it may be time to think about the possibility of an election in the spring.

The now humbled pundits seem to agree, backed by the polls, that the anti-prorogation movement is sticking. Harper is, in the latest (and largest-sample) poll by Ekos, mired at around 30%, in a dead heat with the Liberals. The massive – if questionable – government response to Haiti has not helped him at all. This may be a long-term 10% drop-off in support. As one party flak said the other day, Harper’s core support is about 30% while there are 10% of Canadians who might or might not support him, depending on the circumstances. The anger is such that this entire soft potential support has disappeared.

If the numbers stay where they are the Liberals might be tempted to defeat the government on the up-coming March 3^rd budget.  An Angus Reid poll suggests Canadian are no longer so opposed to the idea of an election – with a “throw the bums out” sentiment growing according to Ekos’s Frank Graves.

The numbers show a continuing free-fall for the Conservatives in the two key provinces: with the Liberals at 39.2 per cent in Ontario compared to 31.6 per cent for the Conservatives, and with  29.1 per cent in Quebec compared to 16.2 per cent for the Conservatives.

According to the G&M story:

“Plugging his new poll numbers into his seat projection model, Mr. Graves has the Liberals winning 119 compared to 110 for the Tories if an election were held today. The NDP would win 30 seats, the Bloc could garner 46 and Elizabeth May’s Green Party would win one seat – in Ontario – with two more going to “other” parties or independents, according to Mr. Graves’ projection.

Last week, he had the Tories with 117 seats compared to 114 for the Liberals. The Tories now have 145 seats to 77 for the Liberals in the 308 seat House of Commons.”

Those are very interesting numbers and would give the country a minority Liberal government with critical support from the NDP and Bloc putting pressure from the left on their policies.

It is important to remember what most Canadians want – getting rid of Harper. The democratic reforms are clearly important but it is Harper who is the principal villain in this regard. No prime minister in Canada has shown such contempt for democracy or such a tendency to dictatorial rule.

There is something else. There are many more reasons we want to get rid of this vicious government than its violations of democracy. Harper’s goals are crystal clear for anyone who has the intestinal fortitude to contemplate them – he aims to dismantle the country as we know it. We need to keep getting rid of this man and his government as soon as is feasibly possible, front and centre.

The movement for democracy can only claim victory if it first dispatches Stephen Harper from the PMO – simply because he is the immediate threat to democracy and will continue to be as long he is in office. Then the movement can work on achieving the reforms to the system so no one ever gets the chance to run roughshod over democracy again.

Of course, an election decision is not in the hands of the movement or anyone else other than, practically speaking, the Liberals or the Conservatives. But as we work our way through February and watch how the situation unfolds, we will have the opportunity – and the choice to make – on whether to call for an election, and to throw the bums out.

Sometimes you get things wrong. A couple of people have forcefully pointed that out to me re: my post on Haiti contrasting the killing of the war in Afghanistan with the response to the earthquake in Haiti. In my zeal to criticize the government’s role in Afghanistan I glossed over the repressive role of the Canadian government in Haiti. While I referred to Canada’s role in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jean Bertrand Aristide, I suggested that the role of the police (and now the army) was more honourable – bringing some semblance of peace to the country – than the occupation of Afghanistan.

That, pointed out Derrick O’Keefe, is just wrong. He wrote:

“Like in Afghanistan, Canada’s police training and “peacekeeping” in Haiti has been part and parcel of propping up an illegitimate regime. If Haiti is more peaceful in recent years, it is the “peace of the graveyard,” following years of savage repression, including the taking of political prisoners and the outright murder of hundreds and thousands of members/supporters of the party of the ousted elected president, Aristide. The Haitian National Police force, which the RCMP is there to train and assist, has committed many of these atrocities. Years of this “politicide” and repression under UN occupation has evidently left Haiti with basically zero public sector with which to prepare for and respond to a small disaster, let alone a catastrophe on this scale.”

I did refer to the militarization of aid in Haiti and the Canadian Peace Alliance has spoken more on this issue.

The Georgia Straight has had a couple of articles on the issue, pointing out, amongst other things, the role that Canada has played in virtually outlawing Aristide’s popular political party from participating in the country’s political affairs:

“Canada has supported the exclusion of Aristide’s political party, Fanmi Lavalas, from every election since 2004, …. ‘Haitians are very knowledgeable about what Canada is doing in their country, and they are generally not happy about it at all.’”

Peter Hallward, the author of Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment wrote of Atistide’s removal from office in 2004:

“In late February 2004, France, the U.S. and a few other old ‘friends of Haiti’ [including Canada] called on the country’s elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to resign.

During his last few days in office, these countries threatened Aristide with a ‘bloodbath’ if he chose to serve out the remainder of his term in office. By early 2004, Haiti’s oldest friends had done everything to make such a threat look imminent. Even before he returned to office in 2001, they went to considerable lengths to promote both a political and a paramilitary opposition that adopted the elimination of Aristide as their very raison d’être. Relentless pressure from these opponents, combined with punitive economic measures implemented by their foreign patrons, eventually backed Aristide into a corner from which he couldn’t escape.

By February 28, 2004, the area of the country that remained under the government’s control had shrunk to little more than Port-au-Prince. A small but well-armed and well-funded military force led by ex-soldiers Guy Philippe and Jodel Chamblain was apparently poised to attack the capital. The government’s rather less well-armed security forces were no longer reliable, and the international community made it clear that it would only intervene if Aristide stepped down.

With his back to the wall, did Aristide choose to save his skin and accept a U.S. offer for safe passage to a friendly third country? Or, was he forced to resign by hostile foreign troops before being led, manu militari, onto an American plane?

Did Aristide leap to safety, or was he pushed into captivity?

In my opinion it’s blindingly obvious that Aristide was pushed out by the immediate prospect of overwhelming violence against unarmed civilians, coupled with the longer-term prospect of a debilitating civil war.

Aristide’s government wasn’t perfect, but its violent removal was an outrageous political crime.”

One of the best sources for information and background on Haiti is the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade. I urge you to visit the site. We all, me included, need to know the terrible details of our destruction of democracy in Haiti and our continued complicity in the repression of the population. More to the point we need to be holding the Harper government to account for the current militarization of the disaster response.

Watching the response of the Canadian government to the catastrophe in Haiti I am sure I am not the only person to see this as a powerful counterpoint to our grotesque participation in the occupation of Afghanistan. How do Canadians feel, for example, when they hear of an RCMP officer killed as a peacekeeper versus a soldier killed in Afghanistan? Sadness for both, of course – both were doing jobs they were told to do. But the death of the soldier in Afghanistan is much more complicated. For me, the death is doubly tragic because that soldier is there illegally, the killing he is engaged in (both civilians and the Taliban) is done for no purpose the government can explain, and the mission itself is almost universally recognized as ill-conceived and doomed to fail – no matter how its goals are defined. Nothing good will come from all those lives lost, mangled or ruined by serious injury.

While the RCMP’s role in Haiti can never be seen to be completely pure and altruistic, given Canada’s shameful role in ousting Haiti’s president, by most accounts Haiti had become less violent. And the Haitian people generally welcomed the development, such as it was, and the peace. At least our mission there, tainted as it was, allows for honourable deaths of soldiers and police if and when such occur.

In Afghanistan, ultimately, no such honour is possible. We send our soldiers, most of them young, to a place that does not want them, where they know that progress is either temporary or non-existent, where they are propping up a terminally corrupt Afghan government and are complicit in the geo-political objectives of the US in securing oil and gas supplies. A death here is tragic because it is we, as Canadians, who are sending soldiers to die for nothing. Worse, to die for an ignoble cause.

They could be doing peacekeeping. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, there are more active peacekeepers now than at any time in the UN’s history – personnel in the field has grown more than five fold since 1999 with 97,569 military and police now serving in 15 UN-led peacekeeping missions. Canada, however, has fallen from being the single largest contributor of UN peacekeepers in 1992,  to 56th place today. Once the contributor of nearly 3,300 peacekeeping soldiers, Canada now contributes just 57.

The peace movement, or what is left of it these days, should be taking advantage of the dramatic contrast of “our” soldiers in Afghanistan, doing America’s dirty work, and the massive aid efforts being made in Afghanistan. Which makes Canadians feel proud of being Canadian?

Having said that, I must admit the jury is still out on the role that Canadian troops will end up playing in Haiti. Has Stephen Harper suddenly changed his mind about peacekeeping missions for which he has shown such disdain in the past? If he has it’s only for opportunistic reasons connected with his 10 point drop in the polls. The US has already been accused of militarizing the aid efforts and many see the US presence there as intended to ensure that progressive forces do not once again organize grass-roots anger and discontent and demand radical change. It is quite possible that the Harper government has joined forces with the US in this cynical effort to support the repressive status quo. We need to be vigilant in watching exactly what the military is doing, this time, in our name.

Someone could have made a bundle five years ago betting that Stockwell Day, alias “Doris”, and a man who believes that humans and dinosaurs cavorted together way back when, would be where he is today. Harper’s cabinet shuffle has elevated Day to the position of President of the Treasury Board.  While the Finance Minister is the more prominent economic minister, the head of Treasury Board is the guy that actually wields the knife when it comes to serious budget slashing. And as I warned last week, Harper is set to start hacking away at the country’s core nature in the March budget. Of course, Harper will make all the major decisions but this move is a clear message to his core Christian fundamentalist constituency. Harper’s going to let one of their own heroes symbolically wield the knife.

For those who have (for their own peace of mind) forgotten who this truly awful politician is I urge you to read a piece I did on him back in 2004. While it may be mildly amusing to think of Stockwell walking side by side with dinosaurs, this extremist, mean-spirited, right wing Christian is anything but funny. His history as a politician in Alberta is peppered with bigotry and abuse of power.

In 1997, Day suggested that serial-child killer Clifford Olson should be put into the general prison population and let notorious “prison justice” follow its course. “People like myself say, ‘Fix the problem. Put him in the general (prison) population. The moral prisoners will deal with it in a way which we don’t have the nerve to do.’”

Day was relentless in badgering his cabinet colleagues in the Alberta government to end abortion funding. In 1988 Mr. Day said granting greater access to abortion would prompt a rise in child abuse. “The thinking is, if you can cut a child to pieces or burn them alive with salt solution while they’re still in the womb, what’s wrong with knocking them around a little when they’re outside the womb.”  He would deny abortions even to victims of rape and incest.

From 1979-85, Day was administrator of the Bentley Christian Training Centre an independent school run by the Bentley Christian Centre, a fundamentalist Pentecostal church. An Alberta government audit was highly critical of the American curriculum which created “a degree of insensitivity towards blacks, Jews and natives.”   Day denied the curriculum was bigoted and declared:  “God’s law is clear: Standards of education are not set by government, but by God, the Bible, the home and the school.”

He attacked Lorne Goddard a prominent Alberta lawyer for defending a man accused of having child porn stating: “Goddard must also believe it is fine for a teacher to possess child porn.”

He boasted of the fact that he was one of the first customers at holocaust denier Jim Keegstra’s new garage after he was convicted of hate crimes.

Much later, when he was the Conservative’s foreign affairs critic, Day refused to send condolences to the Palestinian people when Yasser Arafat died. Why? Because he believed (based on an article by fellow right-winger and Bush speech writer David Frum) that Arafat died of AIDS (with the strong hint that this was a result of Arafat’s alleged homosexuality).

Where would Day be on the prorogation issue? In 1995 he mused publicly about canceling the fall sitting of the legislature because “The longer we’re in here, the temptation is too great to come up with more laws and more regulation.” Back when he was running the Bentley school, Day claimed that democratic governments “…represent the ultimate deification of man, which is the very essence of humanism and totally alien to God’s word.”

Lest we forget…these reform party Neanderthals never change. Their bigotry and hatred of secular government are deeply rooted in their Christian fundamentalism. The only thing protecting us from them for the moment is their desire for even more power – that is, a majority. If you need motivation to do everything you can to ensure that doesn’t happen just imagine dinosaur man as Justice Minister in a majority Harper government.

But in the meantime, if Day has influence over the cuts, what might be on his death list?  Day stated in 2000 that he would eventually end all taxpayer financing of CBC television and eliminate all cultural subsidies to all cultural institutions and individuals. And he was part of the Klein government which cut health care spending by 30% and hiked health premiums.

The horrible earthquake in Haiti should remind us that for all we detest Stephen Harper and what he is doing to the country we, all of us, are incredibly lucky to live where we do – in a “first world” country. It should give us pause to think that we are wealthy because billions of other people are poor. And there are no poorer or more star-crossed than the people of Haiti.  It should also remind us that Haiti might well be further down the road to social justice if it were not for Canada’s shameful complicity in the forced exile of its popular leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Last spring I wrote a couple of columns that were meant to drag me (and you) out of the left’s nearly pathological preoccupation with the negative – of being experts, as I like to say, at telling people that things are actually worse than they think they are. Supposedly, we want to engage people in such a way that they become more involved in the politics of the country and the community – not less. But our constant attention to the bad stuff the bad guys are doing, does not inspire people to act – at least not for long.

It’s good that people are really angry about Harper’s assault on democracy – putting the lie to the conventional wisdom of the elite that people don’t care whether the House is sitting or not. They do care – they care about democracy and they detest arrogance. Every time Harper forgets that he gets whacked up the side of the head.

But I have noticed that there is very little in the commentary about the shutting down of Parliament that looks at what we might do that is positive in response to this totalitarian attack on democracy.  Shouldn’t we be imagining some reforms of the system that would prevent such a thing from happening again – or at least throw some constitutional road blocks in the way? Shouldn’t we be using this as leverage to push for proportional representation which would relegate Stephen Harper and his awful government to the dustbin?

This was the point I was trying to make in the spring. Here we have the worst crisis in capitalism in three generations and the progressive community – activists, thinkers, politicians, academic, women, young people – have virtually nothing to say about what we should replace it with.

It is too easy to slip back into defensive mode – a response to Harper’s strategy of “permanent war” against all his enemies, Parliamentary and otherwise. The argument is obvious: where am I going to find the time to think about the kind of world I want? The one I have – and it’s not too bad – is threatened?

Yet that was true twenty years ago when the FTA and NAFTA were signed and we were saying it then, too. The problem is we have been fighting all that time and things are worse.

There is no better time than now to take the time to imagine the kind of world we want – and the kind of economy we need to replace the madness and ruin of corporate globalization and its neo-liberal rationalizations.

Perhaps we should be forming study groups (that really ages me but these intellectually challenging forums in the ‘60s and ‘70s were a critical part of what it meant to be an activist).  We need to be talking to each other, all of us of like mind, about what we actually want. We could all start by each of us suggesting one thing we hope the world would feature in twenty-five years that it doesn’t now.

To get things started, I would suggest you read A Roadmap to a New Economics: Beyond Sociaism and Capitalism a great article in Tikkun Magazine (run by Michael Lerner, the author of The Politics of Meaning and other books, who I quoted extensively in one of my columns). The author, Riane Eisler,  is well known for her books The Chalice and the Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics.

She starts of the article with the following suggestion as to how we might approach the task of redefining economics for a just and sustainable world:

“When thinking of a new economics, let’s not think of stocks, bonds, derivatives, or other financial instruments. Let’s think of children. Let’s ask what kind of economic policies and practices are good for children. Let’s ask what’s needed so all children are healthy, get a good education, and are prepared to live good lives. More fundamentally, let’s ask what kind of economic system helps, or prevents, children from realizing their great potentials for consciousness, empathy, caring, and creativity — the capacities that make us fully human.”

I could give you more tid bits from this essay but I want you to read it. It’s a great start to imagining the world we want. The sooner we do, the sooner it can happen.

Stephen Harper is the classic political gambler – he takes chances where others would hold back. It often pays off (like proroguing Parliament in December 2008 to stave off certain defeat by the opposition coalition). But his arrogance often leads to spectacularly bad judgement – such as his attack on culture before the last election which lost him the seats in Quebec that might have given him a majority.

I recently suggested that Canadians may have become too cynical about politics to care about arcane notions such as prorogation. I was wrong. Canadians care enough about democracy to spend the time thinking about what their dictatorial prime minister has done. And they are pissed. There are many signs, as Judy Rebick points out in her recent rabble article, including a rapidly growing petition (now over 80,000 names) and planned nation-wide demonstrations for January 23^rd.

The latest Ekos poll shows Harper at just over 33% – the furthest he has been from majority territory in six months.

In what is an almost unprecedented development, even the media has taken up the cudgel against Harper, rightly sensing that this man is not just arrogant and contemptuous of anyone who disagrees with him but actually dangerous. Even the Economist magazine – barely able most of the time to admit that there is any role for government – has denounced Harper for displaying “naked self-interest” in shutting down Parliament. The Globe and Mail has had two editorials attacking Harper and even Andrew Coyne, the neo-liberal editor of McLean’s magazine, referred to Harper’s actions as “dictatorial behaviour” on his blog.

Perhaps these normally complacent free marketeers are worried their complicity in Harper’s rise to power has created a monster that they must now try to reign in. There are many examples in history to name where the economic elite has miscalculated in their support for a politician only to find that he no longer needs them – or thinks he doesn’t. The result can be real dictatorships.

This may well be the best chance progressives have had in the four years of Harper government to deal him a decisive blow and frame him and his government as unfit to run the country. He has clearly been hurt by this but Harper will not go away quietly and if we do not take advantage of this moment and take the next two months to press the issue of democracy (and the Afghan detainee issue which prompted Harper’s move) we can count on Harper to recover – especially given the current weakness of both the Liberals and the NDP.

So long as we show an interest in the issue the media will keep covering it – once our interest wanes, the media will move on.

Here’s a few things you can do:

Take part in any on-line poll you see on the issue and send it to your friends. There’s one on the CBC The National site now.

Check out the site listing the towns and cities where demos will take place and get involved. If there isn’t one in your location – get some friends together and organize one. Join the local Facebook groups associated with the rallies.

Some newspapers allow you to vote thumbs up or down on stories and/or recommend the stories. Reporters pay great attention to these – use them always.

Sign the petition organized by Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament and send it on to your friends.

Join my Word Warriors letter-writing project if you haven’t already. Or simply write letters to your local paper – and copy the letters editor at the Globe and Mail: letters@globeandmail.ca

Keep on top of the CBC – send emails to national@cbc.ca – complimenting its coverage so far and expressing your anger at Harper’s actions.

What happens when an empire is run by people who have a visceral contempt for government and all it stands for? You have an empire that will ultimately fail and collapse because whatever else you might leave to “market forces” administering a global empire and protecting the motherland from attack is not something you want to leave beholden to the profit motive.

We have become so accustomed to the US being a clumsy and inept giant that it’s frighteningly stupid responses to crises (most of its own making) don’t even warrant comment any more. Only if the catastrophe is on the scale of Katrina do people notice. Take the response to the Nigerian who nearly blew a plane out of the sky – an operation effective in its planning but fortunately not in its execution.

The system should have worked and the US had extraordinary luck in being informed by the man’s father that he was becoming increasingly – perhaps dangerously – radical in his Islamic beliefs. Other intelligence told the CIA and the National Security Agency that a Nigerian was being trained in Yemen to attack an airplane.

Yet the most powerful, well resourced, empire in the history of the world still could not prevent the attempted attack. What on earth has to happen for the system to work? The source of the failure was apparently territorial jealousy at the agencies which declined to share the information with other critical players in the anti-terror security network. This lack of co-operation is taken as normal but from any reasonable assessment it is as if the whole intelligence community consists of miscreant teenage boys too addled by testosterone to take even minimally mature decisions to save their own country.

But even that idiocy pales in comparison to the response to the attempted bombing. A massive “security” effort after the fact which caused, and continues to cause, chaos in air travel without any evidence that flying is safer. The terrorists didn’t manage to kill anyone but they must be delighted at the hundreds of millions in damage to the economies of the West they have caused.

The defensive reaction – pat downs of mothers and their children from Peoria to Podunk – would be humiliating to any self-respecting nation. But the US is not a self-respecting nation – it is free market loony-bin – a private capital free-for-all encouraged and facilitated by a terminally corrupt government made dysfunctional by corporate money.

The edict that no one can now go to the bathroom in the last hour of a flight was breathtaking in its stupidity – as it was apparently based on the fact that the terrorist tried to detonate his device in the last hour of his flight. Can this be happening? Will they ban bathroom trips in the first hour of flights if the next terrorist tries in the first hour? Do they think that blowing up a plane in the last hour is a tenet of Islam?

Did the US government and its seventeen (!) intelligence agencies not have somewhere in its hundreds of possible attack scenarios that someone would try exactly what Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried? Did they decide it was, what? Unlikely? Too expensive to guard against?  The mind boggles.

Except that this is exactly what we should expect from a country whose elites consist of people becoming obscenely wealthy while 25% of their country’s children survive on food stamps, or the pols and their hangers-on who see being elected to government as nothing more than an opportunity to receive bribes from corporations.

It’s just one small part of the failed security apparatus (price: $75 billion a year) but it is telling: the last line of defence against a terror attack on planes in the US is carried out by airport security people being paid minimum wage working for private firms ever-obsessed with the bottom line. They are untrained, unmotivated, unorganized and the turnover is what you would expect of such unrewarding jobs. That is how serious the US is about fighting terrorism.

Hendrik Hertzberg writing in the New Yorker a few years back put it best: “when the ameliorative functions of government are held in contempt, then a single thread ties together upper-income tax cuts, the dismantling of environmental and safety protections, the shredding of the social safety net, the peopling of regulatory agencies with cronies hostile to their purposes, and, finally, outright corruption. If government is seen as a whore, why not treat her like one? All that remains is to fleece the johns and divide the take.”

When the US Empire finally enters its death throes this quote would be a suitable inscription to place on its grave stone.