Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty

                                                 http://beamingnotes.com/

Stephen Harper wants to build a monument to the victims of Communism. Critics call it a misplaced monstrosity. But while those critics bemoan the ugliness of the proposed monument, Harper has been busy constructing a much uglier monument to himself. It's called Bill C-51. Michael Harris writes:

C-51 is the transparent and triumphant work of someone who likes martial authority, likes being photographed around people in uniform, likes dishing out punishment to anyone who crosses him, and wants to turn Canada into a giant yard-sale for the oligarchs who run things. The most repressive kingdom on Earth gets Canadian weapons and the Wheat Board. The nation with the world’s worst human rights record snares a long-term trade deal and Nexen. Even Tim’s is gone.

And have you noticed that there’s no war Stephen Harper doesn’t want to get in on, or foment? His stupefying habit of baiting Russian President Vladimir Putin is only the most recent example; Harper runs Canadian foreign policy as though it were a rumble in a parking lot. And now he has navigated the most undemocratic piece of legislation of his term — his legacy bill — through the democratic institutions he controls completely for another few months.

Justin Trudeau should have known better than support the bill. The NDP and the Green Party did .And the hacker collective Anonymous does, too:

C-51 is designed for the things Harper doesn’t like. He doesn’t like free speech. He doesn’t like protestors who take their convictions to the street. He doesn’t like public information getting out there without his approval — so he doesn’t like any displays of independence from scientists, journalists, bureaucrats or judges. He doesn’t like unions, or environmentalists, or opposition in any form. C-51 is made by and for a man who — like every dictator everywhere — thinks that his should be the last word on everything.

Those who stood up against this kind of state intrusion were the victims of Communism. And now, in the name of less intrusive government, Harper gives us Bill C-51. He is Canada's Ozymandias.

Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Targets Of Our Fellow Citizens

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Bill C-51 has been passed by the House and is on track for speedy passage in the Senate. As it has from the very beginning, the Harper government is focused on aping the American experience. But, before we rush down that road yet again, we would be wise to consider what Chris Hedges recently wrote about the New American Security State:

A totalitarian state is only as strong as its informants. And the United States has a lot of them. They read our emails. They listen to, download and store our phone calls. They photograph us on street corners, on subway platforms, in stores, on highways and in public and private buildings. They track us through our electronic devices. They infiltrate our organizations. They entice and facilitate “acts of terrorism” by Muslims, radical environmentalists, activists and Black Bloc anarchists, framing these hapless dissidents and sending them off to prison for years. They have amassed detailed profiles of our habits, our tastes, our peculiar proclivities, our medical and financial records, our sexual orientations, our employment histories, our shopping habits and our criminal records. They store this information in government computers. It sits there, waiting like a time bomb, for the moment when the state decides to criminalize us.

The new security  state transforms all its citizens into snitches:

A state security and surveillance apparatus, at the same time, conditions all citizens to become informants. In airports and train, subway and bus stations the recruitment campaign is relentless. We are fed lurid government videos and other messages warning us to be vigilant and report anything suspicious. The videos, on endless loops broadcast through mounted television screens, have the prerequisite ominous music, the shady-looking criminal types, the alert citizen calling the authorities and in some cases the apprehended evildoer being led away in handcuffs. The message to be hypervigilant and help the state ferret out dangerous internal enemies is at the same time disseminated throughout government agencies, the mass media, the press and the entertainment industry. 
“If you see something say something,” goes the chorus. 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn provided witness to what happens in such as state:

His masterpiece “The Gulag Archipelago” . . . chronicles his time in Josef Stalin’s gulags and is a brilliant reflection of the nature of oppression and tyranny, describes a moment when an influx of western Ukrainians who had been soldiers during World War II arrived at his camp, at Ekibastuz. The Ukrainians, he wrote, “were horrified by the apathy and slavery they saw, and reached for their knives.” They began to murder the informants.

“Kill the stoolie!” That was it, the vital link! A knife in the heart of the stoolie! Make knives and cut the stoolie’s throats—that was it! 

That rationale for C-51 is that it protects us from the outsiders who seek to destroy us. But the reality is that the bill is aimed at those who the government deems the enemy within.

And, therefore, we are now the potential targets of our fellow citizens.

Could It Be That He Miscalculated?

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Stephen Harper believes that Bill C-51 will help pave the way to his re-election. But polls indicate that support for the bill is slipping -- even among Conservatives: Tasha Kheiriddin writes:

This week, Conservative MP Michael Chong, never one to blindly toe the line, criticized the bill’s lack of oversight in a statement to the House of Commons: “However, while I fully support Bill C-51, I also believe we need greater oversight of Canadian security and intelligence agencies by a parliamentary committee of elected MPs, who are directly and democratically accountable to Canadians. That greater oversight is even more important as we give these agencies new powers to combat terrorism.”

That same day, at committee hearings on the bill, Connie Fournier, founder of the former conservative online forum FreeDominion, criticized the bill’s infringements on privacy and freedom of speech. Fournier is going a step further, reviving her website to fight Bill C-51 — and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

I feel like we’re in some kind of alternate universe,” she recently told the Tyee. “You spend your life working for the Conservative party, and the Conservative party finally gets in, and (now) you’re saying, ‘I hope the NDP really steps up and protects us from our Conservative government.'”

The committee has heard criticism from others on the right as well. Former Conservative senator Hugh Segal supported the bill but called for more independent oversight. Former Security Information Review Committee chair Ron Atkey predicted the bill could not survive a constitutional challenge. So did Brian Hay, chair of the Mackenzie Institute, who said “… permitting a judge to break a law, or to ignore the Charter to uphold the law or to protect a society which is to be based on law, seems, at best, contradictory.”

Still, nothing is going to stop Mr. Harper from ramming the bill through Parliament. Clearly, there is no one left in the Harper organization with the courage -- or smarts -- to reign in his Dark Side. He has the votes. He'll do what he wants.

That's what he really meant when he said Canada needed a "strong, stable, national Conservative government."

Could it be that Canadians have finally cottoned on to who their prime minister is? And could it be that he miscalculated?

No Great Man

Stephen Harper is a champion of disaster democracy. Michael Harris writes:

Disaster democracy needs just three things; an atrocious event, a political leader sufficiently cynical not to let any catastrophe go to waste, and a public mindset willing to exchange liberties for the illusion of safety.

The great benefit of disaster democracy is that draws away public attention from matters of the government’s record and redirects it to a more emotional plane. It’s weakness is its limited appeal; disaster democracy only works with frightened populations.

His record is now clear for all to see. But he's doing everything in his power to divert public attention from that record. And he has seized upon the shootings at Charlie Hebdo to create that diversion. The problem, however, is that:

Wise leaders don’t build public policy on single events or facile solutions. The Liberals learned that in Canada when they brought in a wildly ill-considered gun registry in reaction to the massacre of 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989.

After the biggest mass murder in its history, the shooting of 77 people by right-wing extremist Anders Breivick, the Norwegian government didn’t think it was worth changing their society in the name of a deranged criminal. Not one new law was proclaimed. Somehow Norway has survived. A billion dollars later, the gun registry didn’t.

Small men hide from the world. They call forth the worst in us and play upon our fears. In the midst of a crisis, great men appeal to our better angels. Franklin Roosevelt firmly declared:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.

Roosevelt was a great man. Stephen Harper fans the flames of nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror. He seeks to transform Canada into a disaster democracy. He is no great man.

Canada's Elmer Gantry

                                               http://djardine.blogspot.ca/

There was a time in this country when those charged with enforcing the law broke it in the name of national security. Tom Walkom  reminds his readers why CSIS was created:

In 1984, CSIS was created specifically to get Canadian spooks out of the dirty-tricks business.

Before that time, security had been the purview of the RCMP which, as a 1981 royal commission found, routinely broke the law in its war against those it deemed dangerous radicals.

In one famous incident, the Mounties burned down a barn in order to prevent a planned meeting of Quebec separatists. In another, they circulated bogus medical information about a member of a small Toronto leftist group that they were trying to discredit.

The royal commission recommended that Canada’s spies stop trying to disrupt the activities of alleged subversives and concentrate instead on gathering and analyzing intelligence.

But Stephen Harper -- who looks at the world through a rear view mirror -- wants to return to those days of yesteryear. His new anti terror legislation, Bill  C51:

explicitly gives CSIS the right to contravene both the law and the Constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The only requirement faced by the agency is that it obtain judicial warrants before acting — a condition that shouldn’t be too onerous.

The government would criminalize the communication of statements that promote and advocate terrorism. This section seems to be aimed primarily at the Internet and, subject to a judge’s warrant, would allow police to seize printed or electronic material that they believe to be terrorist propaganda.

The definition of propaganda in the bill includes any writing or “sign” that promotes terrorism.

The question we should be asking ourselves is whether or not this legislation is needed:

But on first reading, it’s hard to see the point of Bill C-51. In Canada, it’s already a crime to plan or support terrorist activity. The RCMP already uses legal methods to disrupt planned terror attacks. That’s what it did with the Toronto 18. 

Or is this all about getting re-elected? The economy shrunk by .02 percent in November and the Loonie is below 80 cents. The man who planned to be re-elected on his economic record needs something else to sing about. Before long, instead of reedy versions of old Beatles songs, he'll be leading lusty choruses of "Onward Christian Soldiers."

He's become Canada's Elmer Gantry -- who, at the opportune moment, gave up selling vacuum cleaners and started peddling Bibles.