For the first two weeks of March, Palestine’s supporters around the world focus public attention on Israel’s continued brutal occupation of the West Bank and its even more vicious siege of Gaza. They do so through Israeli Apartheid Week and this is the sixth year the public education campaign has taken place.

One of the principal signs of its success has been the ferocious counter-campaign by supporters of Israel. Like so much of the history of Israel’s powerful propaganda machine, the facts about Israeli separation of Jews and Arabs — also known as apartheid — are beside the point. The response to criticism of Israel has always been one of self-righteous indignation and outrage, accompanied by charges of anti-Semitism.

Yet there is absolutely no doubt that the system of separation of Arabs and Jews can be compared with the apartheid system in South Africa. Indeed, many experts on how the apartheid system was run claim that Israel’s system of hafrada, or separation, is far more brutal and deliberately humiliating than anything devised by the racist regimes of Pretoria.

Even members of the Israeli political elite use the term apartheid to describe the system they administer — the latest being the current defence minister (and former prime minister) Ehud Barak who stated: “If there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic… If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a binational state, and if they don’t, it is an apartheid state.”

Shulamit Aloni, who once served as Minister of Education under Yitzhak Rabin, wrote: “The state of Israel practises its own, quite violent form of apartheid with the native Palestinian population.” And in November of 2007, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “If the day comes when the two state solution collapses, and we face a South African style struggle for equal voting rights, then as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.”

Michael Ben-Yair, Israel’s attorney general from 1993 to 1996, described Israel’s approach to the Palestinian territories captured in 1967 as apartheid in 2002:

“We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities… We developed two judicial systems: one — progressive, liberal in Israel. The other — cruel, injurious in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture.”

Worse than South Africa?

Those who compare Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza to the apartheid regime often express shock at how much worse the Israeli system is. Nothing like Israel’s settlement structure in the West Bank ever existed in South Africa. The illegal settlements are all connected by a special set of paved highways. As Shulamit Aloni describes: “Wonderful roads, wide roads, well-paved roads, brightly lit at night–all that on stolen land. When a Palestinian drives on such a road, his vehicle is confiscated and he is sent on his way.” Some four million Palestinians are governed not by civil law but by Israeli military law, which is enforced by soldiers. On a daily basis, Palestinians face systematic and deliberate humiliation at hundreds of these road-blocks.

At literally every turn, Palestinians are treated as people with no rights. Israel controls water in the West bank and while its citizens have swimming pools, Palestinians are on water quotas — prohibited even from digging wells. Ask blacks in South Africa if they were ever faced with a 20-foot concrete wall dividing their communities, their land and the roads connecting their villages. Palestinian land is still being seized for use by Israeli settlers, their orchards bulldozed.

And what of Arab “citizens” living in Israel? This “fact” of Arab citizenship is at the core of the myth of Israeli democracy, for even here a milder form of apartheid prevails. Arab citizens can vote but must carry ID cards saying they are “Arab.” Most are obliged to live in exclusively Arab villages that are not allowed to expand; they cannot work for the Israeli government; their schools are starved for funds while Jewish schools are well endowed. Arab political parties cannot advocate for a change in the Zionist system of differential treatment based on race. The current Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Leiberman has mused publicly about expelling all Arabs from Israel proper — reflecting the widespread view that Israeli Arabs are a “demographic threat.”

Israeli ‘exceptionalism’

This morally repugnant state of affairs is often described as Israeli exceptionalism. Israel and its supporters use the horror of the Holocaust to argue that nothing critical can be said about Israel because Jews went through a unique horror — a horror so unimaginable that no other injustice can compare, nor be used to criticize the survivors, no matter what they do to survive. Israel has always painted itself as fighting for mere survival while under siege by hostile Arab states. Yet, with the fourth most powerful military in the world, with the U.S. as its ally, and no Muslim state (even Iran) seriously considering attacking it, this argument is not convincing.

Israelis and their supporters point to anti-Semitism and hateful declarations by Arabs as justification of their system. But they cannot admit their own hatred. Israelis, in order to rationalize their colonial system, must maintain the belief that as the Chosen People, by definition, they are incapable of evil.

And yet evil there is. What sticks in my mind about the first Palestinian Intifada were the dozens of young Palestinian boys, some as young as nine or ten, who were summarily executed by Israeli soldiers (some just teenagers themselves) for throwing stones. These were not kids caught in a crossfire — they were, on many occasions, shot in the middle of their foreheads by snipers. In his book Palestinian Children and Israeli State Violence, James A. Graff reported that between Dec. 8, 1987 and Dec. 8, 1989 Israel soldiers and settlers killed 138 children (16 years of age and younger) by gunfire. The numbers of children seriously injured by gunfire and beatings was approximately 30,000.

Serious injury of children was state policy. There is video evidence on YouTube of Israeli soldiers holding down a young man, stretching out his arm and smashing it with large rocks. They were following Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s orders to Israeli soldiers called the “break their bones” policy. What other democratic country in the world has ever undertaken such a grotesque campaign?

I often wondered just what the snipers thought as the crosshairs found the centre of the child’s forehead. What was going through his (or her) head and what did they feel afterwards? I didn’t get the answer for 20 years — not until the reporting of the deliberate targeting of civilians in the invasion of Gaza in December of 2008, when over 900 civilians died (an action for which Israel has been accused of war crimes).

‘Just because you can

In March of 2009, reports in Israeli newspapers revealed the atrocities committed by Israeli troops — described by the soldiers themselves in a group discussion at an Israeli college and transcribed by a professor. One of the incidents involved a mother and two children who misunderstood the instructions of the Israeli soldiers and turned the wrong direction when ordered to leave their house. An Israeli sniper shot all three dead on the spot. Said the squad leader: “The lives of Palestinians, let’s say… is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers.”

In another incident, reported by the Toronto Star’s Oakland Ross: “a company commander is said to have ordered his troops to shoot and kill an elderly woman walking past them. ‘You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it — to write ‘Death to the Arabs’ on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them — just because you can,’ said a squad leader who opposed the order.”

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz at the same time discovered T-shirts made for soldiers who had served in Gaza. According to a BBC report on the discovery, “One, printed for a platoon of Israeli snipers, depicts an armed Palestinian pregnant women caught in the crosshairs of a rifle, with the disturbing caption in English: ‘1 shot 2 kills.’”

As shocking as these revelations were, they should come as no surprise. For if the Israeli political class harbours these overtly racist feelings, they also model them for their soldiers. The Oct. 18, 1973 entry of the British House of Commons in Hansard records the reporting of MP R.J. Hislop to the House on his experience as part of a parliamentary delegation to Israel. He had been a lunch guest of the foreign affairs committee of the Knesset.

“After lunch, the chairman of the committee spoke with great intemperance and at great length about the Arabs. I was constrained to say, ‘Dr. Hacohen, I am profoundly shocked that you should preach of other human beings in terms similar to those in which Julius Streicher spoke of the Jews. Have you learned nothing?’ I shall remember his reply to my dying day. He smote the table with both hands and said ‘But they are not human beings, they are not people. They are Arabs.’”

This is an election budget, no matter when it comes this year. The real Stephen Harper will emerge – he hopes with a majority – after the next vote, having lulled people into thinking he has become just an efficient manager of the nation (something the polls already give him).

As predicted, there are no major targets for the opposition to shoot at. No big cuts to social programs like transfers for health/education/social assistance (a lump sum transfer to the provinces) or to individuals (pensions, OAS, EI, etc.).  So he isn’t about to anger provincial premiers or the elderly just yet.

His so-called “cut” to the defence budget is not a cut at all – just lowering the planned increase over the next 5 years by $2.4 billion, which still leave the military with the largest budget, relatively, since World War II. But it looks good because it is counter-intuitive for the most hawkish PM in 60 years. The $4.4 billion cut to foreign aid is extremely cynical but Harper also knows that it is not a deciding factor in how people vote.

He has also tried to pacify the science community – who aren’t effective lobbyists but are nonetheless part of the elite and have influence behind the scenes. He tossed them $222 million after cutting much more than that last time. Most of the groups cut will not see any of this new money which is narrowly targeted to nuclear and other research, not to the research-funding agencies which make arms-length decisions about research projects.

His freeze on salaries for MPs and Senators is a transparent populist ploy but it will probably work – politicians are near the bottom of the popularity list and people like to beat them up any way they can.

The sleeper in the budget is the freeze on the so-called “administrative budgets” of all departments. No new money will be made available to meet the costs of a 1.5 per cent pay increase for the public service this year and there will be no new money for the following two years as departmental operating budgets will be frozen at current levels in 2011-12 and 2012-13. That means that all departments will have to make cuts to actual programming when real increases (meeting increased need) have been about 6% annually over the past few years.

While framed as just cuts to paper-pushing (“administration”), these are in fact real and substantial program cuts – add the 1.5% cut to the loss of the anticipated 4 – 6% increase and these are major cuts, totaling close to 15% over three years. The fact that they are across the board cuts reveals once again Harper’s disinterest in actually governing. Not all departments are equal in terms of their impact on people and communities. One of the areas that will suffer is all of those departments which are responsible for the health and safety of Canadians and the environment – less money, fewer inspectors and investigations, and more “self-regulation.”

And there hints at more of the same with a promise to establish a Red Tape Reduction Commission – a euphemism for rationalizing more deregulation, likely in line with the on-going deep integration process which is “harmonizing” Canadian regulations with those in the US – almost always to our detriment.

Harper continues his culture re-engineering of the country with $2 million for a new War Memorial Program, glorifying our ugly occupation of Afghanistan.

No one should be fooled that this is the end of it. Harper’s approach to cutting things he doesn’t like is that he will do it by stealth, sneaking cuts in over time and hoping that no one will notice – the slow bleeding of the social and cultural fabric of the country. There is no law that says such cuts have to be in the budget – as the cuts to Kairos, the Arab Federation and other agencies that offend Harper’s ideology, demonstrate.

The only good news out of this budget is that it gives civil society organizations time to organize the most critical movement we need in this country right now: a movement for tax justice.

But more important, as they are reminders of the depressing deadlock Canadian democracy finds itself in, were statements from Michael Ignatieff and Harper’s right hand man, Jason Kenney. The first reminds us of why we never, ever want Ignatieff to have a majority government. The latter reminds us of how totally corrupt the current government is – a government of liars who use the political authority given to them to pursue their own personal agendas, the law and integrity be damned.

Ignatieff distinguished himself with a truly despicable diatribe about Israeli Apartheid Week – denouncing it as anti-Semitism and using the same offensive intimidation tactics used by B’nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress against any criticism of Israel.

He wrote (on behalf of the Liberal Party): “[Israeli Apartheid Week] is part of a global campaign of calls for divestment, boycotts and proclamations, and it should be condemned unequivocally and absolutely. Apartheid is defined, in international law, as a crime against humanity. Israeli Apartheid Week is a deliberate attempt to portray the Jewish state as criminal.

The very premise of Israeli Apartheid Week runs counters to our shared values of mutual respect and tolerance, regardless of nationality, race or creed.”

Except that, in fact, Israel is an Apartheid state and has been so described by none other than its most decorated soldier, its current defence minister, and former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak. He stated recently:

“As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic,… If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”

Ignatieff’s disingenuous condemnation of Israeli Apartheid Week should remind everyone that this is the same man who gave loud and unequivocal support for the invasion of Iraq and didn’t change his mind for years. The same man who condones torture. This ethically challenged, dishonest politician does not deserve to be prime minister.

As for Jason Kenney nothing he says or does in terms of manipulating and lying to the public should surprise us.  The Canadian Press through Access to Information, ferreted out emails from his department that reveal he intervened in the preparation of a new guide for Canadian immigrants to excise any reference to the fact that discrimination against gays and lesbians is illegal in this country.

After the original reference was removed on Kenney’s orders, Neil Yeates, his deputy minister recommended putting it back in:

“Recommend the re-insertion of the text boxes related to … the decriminalization of homosexual sex/recognition of same-sex marriage,” says a memorandum to Mr. Kenney fromYeates. Kenney rejected the advice.

But when the gay-rights group Egale Canada met with Kenney last December after learning the booklet made no reference to gay and lesbian rights, he told them gay rights had been “overlooked” when the guide was being prepared.

In other words, he lied. Just as he did in reference to the elimination of the budget for Kairos. This despicable man has no right to sit in the House of Commons.

We need to keep reminding ourselves that if we want to inspire people to change the world we have to do more than scare the hell out of them.  The issue of global warming is becoming less and less important to Americans (I haven’t seen recent polling regarding Canadians) and the reason, according to a couple of prominent environmental analysts, is what they call apocalypse fatigue.

The numbers are not encouraging. The major increase in public attention and concern brought about by Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth film, and his media blitz, seemed to promise a permanent change in attitude. But according to Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger that concern is rapidly decreasing. “Belief that global warming is occurring had declined from 71 percent in April of 2008 to 56 percent in October [2009] — an astonishing drop in just 18 months. The belief that global warming is human-caused declined from 47 percent to 36 percent.”

But those numbers aren’t the bad news. According to Nordhaus and Shellenberger the actual support for government action on climate change has been very consistent over the past 20 years – regardless of new science or other developments that play to the issue. “Roughly two-thirds of Americans have consistently told pollsters that global warming is occurring. By about the same majority, most Americans agree that global warming is at least in part human-caused…”

No, the bad news is that although people express support for action, that support is very weak. “Looking back over 20 years, only about 35 to 40 percent of the U.S. public worry about global warming ‘a great deal,’ and only about one-third consider it a ‘serious personal threat.’ Moreover, when asked in open-ended formats to name the most serious problems facing the country, virtually no Americans volunteer global warming.”  Other environmental problems – like pollution and air quality – get mentioned more often.

Why do only half of those who support action on climate change say it’s a priority for them? Nordhaus and Shellenberger turn to political psychology for the answers and find some in the notion of “system justification” which they describe as the fact that“…many people have a psychological need to maintain a positive view of the existing social order, whatever it may be. This need manifests itself, not surprisingly, in the strong tendency to perceive existing social relations as fair, legitimate, and desirable, even in contexts in which those relations substantively disadvantage the person involved.”

The other factor making commitment to action weak is that the threat seems far off and is connected to very ordinary daily activities – not some specific, looming event. In response to this low level of commitment, some climate activists emphasize the worst case scenarios as if they were the most likely – hoping to push people to greater commitment.  But it isn’t working – it is driving moderates and conservatives, climate fence sitters away rather than getting them to make a greater commitment.

I have written before that what we are really talking about regarding climate change (combined with the limits of growth and the finite nature of energy and other natural resources) is a cultural revolution. While Nordhaus and Shellenberger aren’t calling for such change they make the point that implied in the demands of climate activists are changes most Americans (and Canadians, I expect) are not prepared to make – at least not to prevent a far-off apocalypse. “Having been told that climate science demands that we fundamentally change our way of life, many Americans have, not surprisingly, concluded that the problem is not with their lifestyles but with what they’ve been told about the science.”

Nordhaus and Shellenberger are focused narrowly on the issue of climate change and try to end their article on an optimistic note saying most Americans will support action on climate change: “…so long as the costs are reasonable and the benefits, both economic and environmental, are well-defined.”

But that optimism contradicts their own analysis. In fact, the costs are not “reasonable” if we accept uncritically as a basic assumption the continued existence of  a perverse consumer society based on continued unlimited economic growth around the world. To make the demands of climate change action “reasonable” we have to redefine what reasonable means – and that calls for a for a revolutionary change in the way we see ourselves, the way we live our lives, our relationship to nature and what actually makes us happy.

Until we integrate the demands of climate change into a positive vision of the future – until we quit organizing for progressive change by  trying to address a whole list of single issues, only vaguely connected to each other, real change will remain elusive.

One of the prime minister’s greatest accomplishments (if it can be called that) has been controlling the gaggle of mouth-breathers and bottom-feeders who still occupy parliamentary seats for the Conservatives. A lot of the Conservative MPs are old Reform Party members and they are not a pretty bunch. Preston Manning was  pretty good at controlling them but every once in a while they get free of their leashes and run wild on topics ranging from abortion, to forcing gay employees to work at the back of the restaurant if they offended customers.

Whatever Harper has threatened these people with is just as affective. Red neck Myron hasn’t uttered a word in four years – at least not one that any one has reported.  Maybe one of them will reveal the secret when they retire.

It was interesting to see how quickly Harper (or rather his press flak, pit bull Dimitri Soudas) distanced the government from Goldring’s ranting. Goldring put out a pamphlet to his constituents to set the record straight on the Metis founder of Manitoba. “Riel didn’t `Father’ Confederation; he fought those who did,” said the ill-informed Goldring.  He didn’t stop there: “To unhang Louis Riel and to mount a statue to him on Parliament Hill would elevate anarchy and civil disobedience to (the level) of democratic statesmanship.”

Apparently no one told Goldring that Riel is considered a hero in Quebec – a province where his leader is already in trouble because of his climate change position and cuts to culture. The PMO did not need another insult to drive him down in the polls. Soudas’s apology left no room for interpretation: “This document is absolutely not … an initiative of our government or our party. This is a personal initiative of MP Goldring which we strongly disapprove of.”

But let’s be clear: the disavowal had nothing to do with affection for Riel or the Metis vote. Harper’s long-time mentor and one time political advisor and campaign director, Thomas Flanagan, more accurately reflects Harper’s attitude towards Riel. A one-time on authority on Metis history, Flanagan is now known among the Metis for his vicious slanders against Riel and his very selective use of historical facts to suggest that second Riel Rebellion was little more than the personal vendetta of a mad man. Literally no one in the academic world supported his position but it fit well with the Reform Party’s racist core “values” when he was expressing it.

As for Guergis, the NDP and Liberals have called for her dismissal as junior minister for the status of women. Guergis reflects the Harper government’s contempt for the law – when anyone wants to apply it to him or his government. This is not just a personality disorder (though it may be that, too). Guergis’ nasty and foul-mouthed assault on Air Canada and airport employees is completely consistent with this government’s conviction that they are above the law. Just as the government is spending over a billion dollars to tighten security at airports, Guergis demanded that even existing security measures (taking off her shoes) be waived for her.  When she finally had to comply, she declared: “’Happy f–king birthday to me. I guess I’m stuck in this hellhole.’”  That’s the charming, laid-back Charlottetown she was talking about. When she got to the gate she yelled at Air Canada employees (telling them “I’ve been down here working my ass off for you people.”) Then she tried to push through locked doors to get to the plane which was being closed to more passengers – whereupon she unleashed her mouth once again, this time against security personnel.

Anyone else would have been arrested.

These glitches may just be aberrations and Harper will no doubt try to lay down the rules once again. But it may also be that his MPs and ministers are wondering why they should be careful not to make mistakes when their leader makes even bigger ones – like the last one which has them stuck eight points lower in the polls. It’s a lot easier to keep your troops in line when they think their future is safe in your hands. Once that belief starts to falter, anything can happen.

That was then and this is now. By ‘this’ I mean some rather odd emanations coming from Nik’s shop – odd and wrong. First, he didn’t get it even close to right the last election. And then, in January, he came out saying the whole issue of shutting down Parliament was a big yawn that no one cared about. Nanos told the Globe on Jan 5^th that prorogation was unlikely to have a significant influence upon voting behaviour.

“Will this annoy the opposition parties? Absolutely.”  But ordinary Canadians are unlikely to be upset by a two-month pause in partisan politics. According to Nanos “Especially since, from the perspective of voters, there really isn’t a big issue that requires the emergency attention of the House of Commons.”

Ouch. Poor Nik. 230,000 Facebook names and 60 simultaneous demos with 25,000 people later…and, oh yes, Harper down in the polls by 10 percentage points (or nearly one quarter of his previous share of public opinion).

This was odd for Nanos not just because it was so totally off the mark but because it seemed counter-intuitive to his polling history. People were pissed off because their democracy was being trashed and Nik was saying things that were a little too soothing to Harper and his thugs.

Stepping into the breach was the Rideau Institute (disclosure: I am on their advisory body) which did a self-selecting poll posted on the CAPP (Canadian Against Proroguing Parliament) site, aimed at figuring out just who took part. Over 340 signatories answered eight questions. The results were surprising and encouraging;

“…despite the perception that CAPP members are university and college students or recent graduates with active social lives, half of the respondents are 45 years of age or older. Thirty-four per cent of the respondents are 31-44 years of age and 16 per cent are aged 18-30.  …the respondents are politically engaged people: 88 per cent described themselves as either somewhat or very engaged in federal politics. In addition to this, 96 per cent of the participants indicated that they voted in the last federal election.”

The margin of error in such a poll is obviously fairly high – but even so, it was revealing of who is using Facebook to express their views. These are not people jumping on the next political bandwagon – they are the people who determine elections.

Now Mr. Nanos has taken it up a notch with a perverse poll asking people whether or not governments should actually listen to anything anyone says on the social media. According to the Globe’s Michael Valpy, Nanos claims a poll he did showed that only a “small minority” (oddly for a pollster he offered no hard numbers) of young Canadian adults “…think social networking forums should sway government.”

Nanos himself said: “They see it as an enabler of political discussion, and a kind of low-entry political transaction. But that shouldn’t be confused with [the political intentions of] the broader population and whether a government should change or modify its policy just because of something that’s on the Internet. We should delineate between Facebook as a mobilizing force in politics and Facebook as having political heft in the ballot box.”

Nik, Nik, you have to quit drinking your own bathwater. Is this actually supposed to encourage people to use your services? (I am thinking here of the dozens of civil society groups and unions who use social media – the ones you just insulted.)

The Harper government shouldn’t “modify its policy” based on 230,000 people and 60 demos? You’re kidding, right? A whole lot of Conservatives are scared spitless at the huge drop in the polls – a drop that is holding steady now through several surveys.

And as for “low-entry political transaction” just what does that mean? Is low level a level for stupid, thoughtless people, Nik? I guess high level is calling up the PMO and having a chat with the President, er, Prime Minister. Since when is it a bad thing to make it easy for people to engage in democracy? Because it’s easy, it’s not legitimate? People’s anger over Harper’s trashing of democracy is just as legitimate on a Facebook page as it is in an email or letter to a politician.

Mr Nanos will have to offer some sort of explanation and proof of his proposition. He should be arguing that this is a fabulous use of the internet. One of the reasons people don’t engage in politics by writing to or even emailing a politician is that the likes of Harper and Company have made it clear they don’t give a damn about what people think.

People are now so over-worked and overwhelmed by their daily lives that the traditional methods of engaging in politics have become all but impossible for most “average voters.”  The vicious partisanship of the Harper Conservatives is deliberately intended to disillusion people and make them disengage. Anything that counters that trend is positive.

Better sharpen your pencil, Nik. Or get off the bus.

This is the politics of the back streets where you get to rule if you are tough enough to beat everyone else up.

The latest victim is about as counter-intuitive as it gets: the PMO is going after Ed Clark, the CEO of TD Bank. He had the nerve to suggest that Canada cannot get out of its debt and deficit situation without raising taxes.

What is most interesting about the latest attack is that it is directed right at Bay Street and its leadership – demonstrating that corporate Canada did not realize just what kind of fire it was playing with when it quietly promoted Harper as prime minister. They evidently mistook Mr Harper as someone who was rational or could at least be persuaded to be rational (read: controlled). Because Harper is a free-market champion, Bay Street and its most powerful voice, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), had assumed that Harper would, like every prime minister since the early 1980s, listen to their wise capitalist counsel. Until Harper, not a single federal budget was presented in parliament before being vetted by the CCCE or its predecessor, the BCNI. And Harper has been completely on-side when it comes to the deep integration agenda of the CCCE.

But Harper actually listens to no one. And his hatred of government is visceral, not rational, no matter that public investment is actually critical to the corporate sector. Just because the CCCE and the head of the TD Bank also believe in deregulated capitalism doesn’t mean Harper will show them any respect. If they cross him, they are legitimate targets.

And that’s what Ed Clark did.  Messing with Harper’s long term plan to starve the federal government into irrelevance by creating a structural deficit (one that won’t go away even with economic growth) Clark said at a meeting in Florida that Mr Harper was not listening to the voices on Bay Street that were telling him the best way to get rid of a large deficit is through tax increases.

Just calling for tax increases would have been a no-no. But openly criticizing the PM unleashed a ferocious assault – sweeping up Michael Ignatieff in the net, accusing the Liberal leader of a secretly planning tax increases if he becomes prime minister.

According to the G&M report, the PMO fired off an email to Conservative MPs and supporters entitled “Millionaire Ignatieff Economic Czar Calls for Higher Taxes.”

Just because Clark was among a group of “senior economic thinkers” whom Ignatieff met with last fall, Harper proclaimed: “We can be pretty sure that in the coming months he will use the statements from his well-heeled economic advisers to justify his plans for massive new tax hikes on working- and middle-class Canadians,” stated the e-mail, adding that Mr. Clark earned $11-million in 2009. “He can afford higher taxes. Can you?”

Ignatieff has actually toyed with the idea of tax increases and Harper wants to make sure he never does again.

The revelations of Harper’s latest junk-yard dog imitation are interesting not just for the PM’s attack Bay Street (almost unprecedented for a prime minister) but the fact that Bay Street is actually talking about raising taxes as necessary to deal with the deficit. Under the former leadership of Tom d’Aquino, the CCCE was like a one-trick pony – taxes could never be cut enough. It seemed to be in synch with Harper who stated last year “Actually there is no tax I like.”

So what’s up with Bay Street? Is it possible that because the CCCE is now led by a former Liberal finance minister, John Manley, that the CEOs recognize being competitive with the rest of the world involves more than just low corporate taxes? Or are they worried about another economic meltdown which will require more bailouts – or perhaps a bursting housing bubble which could require Ottawa to pony up $50 billion to bail out CMHC?

The Globe story actually quoted TD’s Ed Clark as telling the Florida conference “…that almost every person at a recent meeting of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives said “raise my taxes” to erase [the deficit].”

The TD bank is well known for having the boldest CEOs amongst the big five banks – though it’s an easy title to grab. A former CEO, Charles Baillie, was the only senior corporate figure in Canada to ever praise Medicare and call for its careful preservation – on the basis that it provided a huge competitive advantage for large Canadian corporations competing with the US. Last year the TD faced the wrath of the Harper government for funding a study which said major new regulations were necessary to control Canada’s carbon output.

But here’s the thing. If the TD Bank (and the majority of the 150 CEO of the CCCE) can call for tax increases on high income individuals (Clark did not seem to be targeting his own sector), why are the labour movement, the NDP and civil society groups so reluctant to do so?

The biggest need in the country right now (well, right after we get rid of Harper and his wrecking crew) is to form a Fair Tax Coalition to put out there a detailed, coherent and reasonable plan for fair tax reform. A campaign to Tax the Rich has the potential for huge success. Signs are that Harper will leave key spending programs alone in the March 3^rd budget. That gives us time to organize. Now we just need the political will and commitment to do it – and some champion to take the lead.

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.

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.

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.