The Liberals lost the election.
The BQ lost seats and popular vote.
The Conservatives lost seats in BC and even a hope of a majority government.
The NDP gained seats, but lost the power to influence the government themselves.
The Greens lost in every riding across Canada.
The Independents lost going from 2 to 1.

Looks like last night was about losing. The only winners were the Canadian voters and democracy. HOORAY!!!

Thank God for the sane and sensible voters of Atlantic Canada: they denied the Conservatives their messianic majority.

But . . .

The Conservative election campaign began last night with the acceptance speech of Stephen Harper.

Belinda Stronach needs to learn French. Fast.

Will Harper freeze RAV funding? A big question, because RAV was designed by Liberals to benefit Liberals. In short the taxpayer is spensing about $1.4 billion more for a metro/subway, than LRT running dowm (oh my gosh) Owens riding!

And we move blindly back into denial about an electoral system that does not serve Canadians. FPTP is garbage. The shortcomings are numerous, but I want to focus one one: the siren call demanding nothing less than a majority government.

That is, the FPTP system offers a majority of seats with a minority of the popular vote. Because of this in-built obscenity, the elite power brokers will not accept a minority government, in seat count that is.

So, immediately the votes are counted and a minority declared, the countdown to the next election begins. If we had a system of proportional representation we would not be continuing in perpetual preparation for an election that will or will not deliver a majority of seats from a minority of the vote.

A PR system would likely, in the Canadian experience, result in monority governments and would force the elites to actually consider other points of view and craft legislation that would have broad support. That, percisely, is why PR will never come to Canada. It would be a surrender of power by the central elites, and that will not happen.

All the parties have lost and they all deserved to lose. It was a pathetically stupid campaign all around and the winners were the best PR hacks, working in the Harper camp .

What the commentators forget, or dismiss, is the simple fact that it isn't Harper who makes his policies, but the big business mind benders who ran his campaign.

The others didn't even come close to their effectiveness, stomping around in the mud. Whenever Harper was away from their influence, he put his foot into his own mouth, as on the question of abortions.

Harper's minority is probably more dangerous, than if he'd received a small majority.

The coming action plan is now obvious. Harper will act sweet as honey and beat his chest as the "Great Canadian". He'll introduce a few motherhood type legislations the others can not afford to oppose.

In between he'll also put forward some minor issues he can afford to lose without losing power. But that will be done with the planned purpose for the record to give him the excuse to claim that his minority position prevents him from him from acting on the country's behalf, crying his eyes out for public support to "make Canada great and independent".

Then, when his handlers feel that the polling numbers are moving in his favour, he'll introduce some major legislation the others can not support and it will be the Conservatives who'll force an election, begging for majority.

As a diehard "deep integrationist free trader" if he gets majority the next time around, the first thing he'll do is to put up signs all around the country "Canada for Sale".

As if Canada hadn't already been sold, with our economy controlled from abroad.

Now....will he follow Mulroney's footstepts to Washington to get his orders, within the next few days, or will his mindbenders advise against it, fearing public disapproval?

In any case, the next year or two will be the rule of PR campaigns by multinational PR hacks to ensure a Harper landslide the next time around.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Can slim pickenns with 124 seats kill kyoto, go star wars, ban abortion, kill innocent civilians etc etc?
Let's see him actually follow the centrist path he proposed throughout his election campaign.
I already know that I'm gonna save a bundle when I buy my new rolls-royce via the gst cut.
yeeeehhhaaaaaaa!!!

Wallace states:

TOO RIGHT! Last night I voted strategically for the Liberal (and it's a good thing too, as the race was close with the Conservative), but I didn't like it one bit.

I sense, on these Tyee forums, that there is a rising tide of people who are sick of FPTP. Let's continue to agitate in whatever way we can for some alternate voting system (I prefer a mixed-proportional rep system, German-style).

At the heart, this election was all about the Liberals. Everyone else was a bystander.
Putting aside the core die-hard C, L, N, BQ, G supporters, you either were mad at the Liberals, and wanted them out, or you weren't.

Even though people were mad at the Liberals, the election was shaping up with the L and Cs seat counts reversed. Then the RCMP inexplicably dropped their bomb on Goodale, and the day after more got mad so L and C party fortunes reversed. Overnight. Anger was subsiding, and trends show that given another couple of weeks, Liberal support would have risen to match or surpass the Conservatives.
They almost did it anyway

Party policies had zero to do with it.

Harper has no "mandate" in any meaningful sense of the term. so what happens now that the anger modus operandi has disappeared is anybody's guess.

Forwarded from Vive le Canada.

Today's Featured Article:
Tuesday, January 24 2006 @ 09:29 AM MST
Election
Election 2006: Another Case of Electoral Dysfunction
Contributed by: jesse
Fair Vote Canada - News Release
fairvotecanada.org/
January 24, 2006

Once again, Canada's antiquated first-past-the-post system wasted millions of votes, distorted results, severely punished large blocks of voters, exaggerated regional differences, created an unrepresentative Parliament, and may possibly have even given us the wrong government.

[Note: The following commentary is based on returns at 1:00am EST, January 24, 2006.]

The chief victims of the January 23 federal election were:

# Western Liberals: In the prairie provinces, Conservatives got three times as many votes as Liberals did, but won nearly ten times as many seats. In Alberta, the Conservative Party won 100% of the seats with 65% of the votes. The 500,000 Albertans who voted otherwise elected no one.

# Urban Conservatives: The 400,000-plus Conservative voters in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver should have been able to elect about nine MPs, but instead elected no one. The three cities together will not have a single MP in the governing caucus, let alone the cabinet.

# New Democrats: The NDP attracted a million more votes than the Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 51 seats, the NDP 29. Nearly 18% of Canadians voted NDP, but the party won less than 10% of the seats and does not hold the balance of power, unlike the Liberals and the Bloc.

# Green Party: More than 650,000 Green Party voters across the country elected no one, while 475,000 Liberal voters in Atlantic Canada elected 20 MPs.

# Federalists and nationalists: As usual, the voting system turned entire regions of Canada into partisan fiefdoms, rather than allowing the diversity of views in all regions to be fairly represented in Parliament and within each national party.

"How can anyone continue to think that this voting system gives us good geographic representation," said Wayne Smith, President of Fair Vote Canada, "when it fragments and divides our country like this?"

"Had results been fair, it is possible that we may have even seen a different government," said Smith. "The Liberals, NDP, and Greens represent a majority, and together they would have held a majority of seats."

Had the same votes been cast under a proportional voting system, Fair Vote Canada projected that the seats allocation would have been approximately as follows:

# Conservatives - 36.3% of the popular vote: 113 seats (not 124)
# Liberals - 30.1% of the popular vote: 93 seats (not 103)
# NDP - 17.5% of the popular vote: 59 seats (not 29)
# Bloc - 10.5% of the popular vote: 31 seats (not 51)
# Greens - 4.5% of the popular vote: 12 seats (not 0)

However, Smith emphasized that speculation should be tempered.

"With a different voting system, people would have voted differently," he said. "There would have been no need for strategic voting. We would likely have seen higher voter turnout. We would have had different candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We would have had more real choices."

"The voting system really matters Â* a lot Â* and the system we have is simply not acceptable in a modern democracy."

fairvotecanada.org/fvc/Current_News/#results
(19 Views)

Fixed election dates are part of the problem, not part of the solution!

Fixed election dates allow money a tighter grip. Money is good at planning; the more warning it gets, the stronger it gets.

Short campaign cycles demoralizes and confuses money. It barely has time to get its act together before the election is over.

Deny money influence, and the people win. Increase money's influence, and money wins. Don't be like the place I'm fleeing, the home of "one dollar, one vote!"

And don't blame me if fixed election dates result in one more infiltration of Amerikan culture into Canada. I hear an MP in Toronto can get by with a campaign of C$100,000. To get elected to the US House, the price STARTS at US$1 million!

That's what fixed election cycles does fer ya!

Fiat Lux
If you can tell me who these "multinational pr hacks" are I will see to it that they are disapeared from the planet.
I hear that theres a flight leaving for Pluto any day now!

I am happy with the result of this election.
Remember Harper was the underdog in December.
He turned out to be a good campaigner.
The Conservatives are in power. The Liberals have been defeated. The NDP are still a marginal party at best.
Alberta is 100% Conservative. Landslide Annie is gone.
All is well in Canada now, I am so glad we got rid of the Liberals.

If there was a criminal negligence charge for yellow journalism, most reporters would be spending a few years in jail for their election coverage.

It is their negligent reporting that allowed the religious right most from one US based church to hijack the Conservative party constituency by constituency using the tactics so successful in gaining control of the George Bush's Republican party. Once ensconced these odious individuals consolidated their grip on the party by announcing nomination meetings to a select few only a few days in advance, ensuring only their religious homeys could get the nominations. Even ex- Surrey mayor was unable to run for the Surrey Newton nomination.

And just as in the US where these fundamentalist groups are seizing control of Democratic Party district associations, this group has turned their attention to Liberal party constituency associations, hijacking any they find vulnerable.

Chuck Cadman's final crusade was an effort to put an end to the odious practices, yet no journalists made any effort to report on this massive fraud on the Canadian voter, despite Chuck's effort to get them to listen.

Now as a result of journalistic neglect, we are stuck with a Conservative party charged with the task of cleaning up and modernizing the mess in Ottawa. A party that is singularly bereft of any administrative talent whatsoever with the great majority of MP's believing the earth was formed 5000 years ago, man walked with dinosaurs and the sciences of geology, chemistry and anthropology are all based on unproven theories. The probable next Canadian foreign minister believes all the above and his last job was driving a backhoe.

Before the next election we need to know the details of how many conservative and liberal constituency association are associated with the religious right. How many are controlled by individuals from one specific church. How many liberal and conservative candidates and MP's are from this group. How open is constituency membership and nominations to interested Canadian citizen not associated with the religious right.

And we need lots of discussion on how to end these immoral and destructive even treasonous attacks on Canada's democratic institutions.

And they did, 4Canada. The country got it just about exactly right, within the context of the limitations of the times, and the real limitations of choice within current capitalism. We have even managed to humiliate the Libs some, without letting the Blue Bull have total run of the china shop. Even now, after a good night's sleep, I think this is actually quite a good result, at least as good as could realistically be expected.

NDPers, Libs and Cons, even Greens, will have their own read of the entrails, of course, and about where we are at in the aftermath of this election, but so will and do those of us of a more rationally radical view of social events. :-) And that is, I think, that the socio-political uncertainty, an atmosphere of unresolvability of clashing class interests within current neoconservative capitalism, and still unresolved crisis of "national sovereignty direction" and the further development of democracy continues. An unchecked Neocon threat has been contained, for a time at least, but the essential character of the crisis in the times and the nation which the national ruling class have, in league with corporatist interests within The Empire and throughout global capitalism have been responsible for bringing down on the majority working class citizenry, is ongoing. That remains. And we should not allow ourselves to be tempted to think otherwise, in my view.

The real ruling and reactionary forces within the system, rooted in ownership and control of society's economic base, behind the surface "democratic facade" remain in place, and determined to continue on the neoconservative course of looting "the peoples" standard of living, and social and economic security, and continuing the harmonization/ integration of the country into The Empire. That all remains in place. Some formal and practical "political limits" have been placed on them with the election outcome, for sure, and that is a positive thing, but to assume from that they are powerless, will not maneuvre and look for a way through these limitations on their power, is naive, I think.

The Liberals are now about to go through a crisis process and re-examine their direction and leadership, and the course and outcome of that can/will have a great deal to do with all of this. The so-called "left" of the Liberal Party around Shiela Copps and others has already largely been uprooted and driven out of the party. What is the strength of such more or less moderate/moderating voices left within the Liberal Party versus the more right wing fraction which Martin early came into power with and speaking for?

Continued next post...

From previous post...

There will be a clash of these contending interests and forces within the Liberals occur right now, in all likelihood, and on that outcome could much determine the degree to which the Liberals will facilitate or oppose the more reactionary programme ambitions of this Conservative government. And I won't even attempt to predict the outcome of this.

My suspicion though, is that the ascendant strength of the "right" across the entire political process and spectrum is not, beneath the short term surface appearance of things, as a consequence of ongoing minority governance, to have much changed. And to break that "power" logjam, re-determine the direction of its flow, and re-secure "a majority governance" option again, much favoured by the real movers and shakers within the economy of capitalism, much will depend here on what occurs in the upcoming power struggle and race for the leadership within the Liberal Party.

It is still entirely possible that the presumptions that seemed to have been there in the outcome of this election, could still go down, suffer a setback, in a kind of end run. And what can go wrong often does, is my experience with the world. Which is not the same thing as saying it certainly will.

You can bet though, there are forces both within the Liberal and Conservative camps who have all of this much on their minds, at least as much as I do.

The question being, is there room for BC style Liberal-Conservative politics to become the Federal model for the future?

The answer has to be, yes. It's merely a question of whether or not that will be the decision taken.

We shall see, eh? With bated breath. :-)

Another excellent post, Fait. Always good to read you here.

If I didn't know better I'd think certain intellectual types on this site are suggesting a vast right-wing/fanatical christian conspiracy regarding every aspect of north american economic, cultural and social life.
Our new leader, whose vision will lead us into the 3rd millenium...bible totin', shot-gun shootin', racial-profilin', bush-ass kissin', back-hoe drivin' gated community-buildin', right on DAY!!! (sung to end of Maude theme)

Fixed election dates are part of the problem, not part of the solution!

Jesterjogger,

The most visible "multinational pr hacks" are the so called "prestigious conservative economic think tanks" like the Fraser and CD Howe Inst. Then the hacks working for the Bilderbergers, the Trilaterals, the World Economic Forum etc. etc.

There are over 100 so called "economic think tanks" in North America: the Heritage Foundation, Cato, etc. etc. among the biggest and most known, in Canada the Canadian Council of Chief Executives under Tom d'Aquino, etc. etc.

Then there are the agencies like Burston Marsteller etc. etc., and the countless nameless individuals, underground, paid by big business to infiltrate, or take over NGO groups, advise political pimps and quislings like our BC Lib and federal Conservatives working under the Leo Straussian ruling theories to further the globalized corporate dictatorship agenda.

Is this a "conspiracy theory" ? No. It is well proven conspiracy to colonize, rob and enslave,
called "unstoppable globalized market economy" taken, refined and improved from the old communist theories of the "Internationale" world domination. In a way, a mild version of Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Here's a funny story: A still very good friend od mine, former classmate and at the time a Marxist economist in one of the Soviet satellites wrote to me in the late '60s that things are moving in the direction for them to take over in about 30 years. The whole caboodle collapsed over their heads exatly 30 years later. He's now retired and a hot neoclassical, capitalist economist.

By coincidence, the neoclassical capitalist theory started raising it ugly, world dominating head also about 30 years ago.

Economic theories have historically short lifespans, but in the meantime they usually enslave, destitute and kill millions. As this present crime wave of neocon capitalism is doing now in the name of "wealth creation".

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

ED
What do you make of the South American situation?
Is there any real hope there or is that too a sinister facade?
Don't the neo-cons realize that as a viable bio-sphere of finite yet interconnected ecosystems we are quickly running out of time? How can you have continuous, linear economic growth in a closed system with finite bounds?
To do so is a certain recipe for self-destruction is it not?

The extreme rightists do get it right actually, in a number of ways, like I've said here before, but with a twist at the end. They see the world as it is, more or less as we do. They merely choose to actually get on board with the ruling class interest and serve it, and work against the working class interests, those of the poor, natives and the environment.

Nothing must be allowed to interfere with the so-called wealth creation that passes to the already wealthy, even if it has to be lifted from the people's social services, impoverishing them, and the sale of their "public property" like BC Rail, and passed on through tax breaks and other corporate welfare subsidies to them . Capitalism only works at all if it enriches the already rich, right. And there can only be a "rich class" if there is the contrasting "poorer classes" created in the process.

These guys see themselves onside with "the winners" in that "survival of the fittest" struggle, of which has been spoken in another thread here. And if they serve the ruling class well, those of them from the lower strata, live in the hope that their service will be recognized, and that they will be raised up, at the Day of Judgement, to be allowed to serve on high and share in the rewards of The Ruling Class.

And no doubt, as jesterjogger does, they have good reason to gloat to here.

Nailed that one, bun,...that was the exact turning point in the events that reversed the fortunes of the Liberal campaign...up until that time things were flowing fairly smoothly for them.

Not that I'm shedding any tears for the Liberal campaign but the "inexplicably dropped their bomb" part of bun's quote is the really interesting part. It tells us a lot about the forces in play inside Canadian politics ...(and perhaps outside of us)...and hey, how safe and protected they have become by our largely wimpy state of investigative journalism - loyal servant that it is now to the status quo.

Jesterjogger,

I have for the past 21 years, with a proven paper trail, been working on an economic reality based on strict physical laws, with the support and approval of world class scientists in the field.

This is what my 1991 " A Principle For the Application of Physical Efficiency to Economics" is about.

The neocon ideology and the neoclassical economic theory are the certain road to environmental and economic collapse, and the self destruction of human civilization.

We have no snow here in the Cariboo. We should have had at least 8- 10' fallen by now this winter, but we only had less than 2', with hardly any left on the ground and temperatures around the freezing mark, when we should have -15 to 20C.

"Wealth can not be created, only taken from other sectors, the environment and the future"

Global warming and climate change are the prime examples of the damage caused by "wealth taking" . The same applies to South America.

I'm not an ideologue, or a theorist, but a practical person who knows how to design and build economic systems with the least environmental damage, because I've done it.

Ed Deak.

I am really beginning to wonder whether constant exposure to organic methane gas can inhibit your brain’s ability to function properly.

Here we are, with the strongest economy of all of the G8 countries in the globe, we witness, almost every day, the unmitigated disaster that neo-con, right-wing governing has done to our neighbor to the south – both socially and economically and what do the rural hicks in Canada do? Knee-jerk react and vote in the most radical right-wing government this country has ever seen. Yet in urban areas like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver – the three most cosmopolitan of Canadian cities, not one Conservative is voted in. We now have the same polarized scenario that exists in the U.S.: Urban versus Rural. Well, I guess our rural hicks in Canada are just as short-sighted and dumb-founded as those in the U.S. - I wonder if they will wake-up any quicker?

If you want to see some keee jerk, stupid statement re-read your own posting.

I, the rural hick, happen to be a long standing member of the NDP, a tradesman qualified to teach apprentices, used to teach night classes in several, skill related, practical fields.

Canada doesn't have the "strongest economy of the G8 countries", but a colonized economy under foreign ownership, with brainwashed economists and quisling politicians, falsely accounting the sale of resources and the products of automated machinery as "income" and GDP, most of it taken out of the country by foreign colonizers, while almost 900,000 Canadians, a good percentage of them minimum wage earners, are lining up at foodbanks.

Anybody who accounts the sale of resources as an income is either a crook, or a bloody fool.

This is not an economy, but a crime wave, growing by the minute.

Go to google and type in "GATS", to see what these crooks are planning for Canada in the future.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

working slog, Tim Hortons beat Starbucks. That's all.

Flat lux,

No insult intended to all rural folks. I simply do not understand why so many rural folks appear to vote against thier own best interests. They vote for intollerant religous reasons only to cut - off thier nose to spite thier own face.

Just look at Alberta. I can tell you unequivically, having lived in Calgary, Toronto & Montreal that Alberta does not represent what I know as quality of life. Culturally, Toronto & Montreal are far more tolerant and culturally mature.

There is more to life than oil money. Try a healthy environment, a viable, respected working class - compassionate care for others.

Mr Erwin,

Not quite, Tim Hortons was founded in Southern Ontario.

When you're hot brother, you are hot.

Bang on. And it's amazing how many city dwellers don't get it either. They actually still think we are our own country. Except for the signing of the final papers, the name change, and the Corporate Amerika logo, it is all but a done deal. At best, we are a kind of quasi-colony of the Empire already. They've to here just allowed us to keep the empty shell semblence of real nationhood, just enough to annoy them from time to time, like children throwing a tantrum.

We just haven't 'fessed up to the reality of our position yet.

"Help keep things under control in Afghanistan for us, will ya. So we can be freed up to kick ass and build empire in Iraq.

And try not to **** it up too much."

Whispering behind our backs. "Even after we blow them away with 'friendly fire', these Canucks keep coming back on their knees, begging for more. Total phucking gitz, they are. Don't even realize everyone is really laughing at 'em behind their backs."

That should be, "And try not to fuch it up too much." :-)

I don't know how Tim Horton's comes into this debate, but it is no longer a Canadian, but a US, Wendy's owned company and has been for some years.

Also, please don't lump everybody under this silly rural vs. city nonsense. Many people around here are highly educated, who have lived in many different areas. In my case in 4 countries and 24 years in Vancouver, 22 years as a manufacturing business owner.

Why people vote in certain ways remains a mystery to me and to anybody, but it has nothing to do with where they live, perhaps a certain degree with their family background.
On the other hand, I was born in an arch conservative, royalist family, but have never followed their footsteps, or voted their way. My late mother didn't speak to me for 6 years because of this.

I wish somebody could explain to me why, in these solid union towns people still vote for the remnants of Reform ?

Ed Deak.

Us "City Dwellers" we are certainly not quite as naive as you may think. There are certainly lots of conspiracy theories that we could spend copius amounts of time contemplating - many which I would not be surprised are closer to the truth that one would imagine. However, I choose to spend my life's energy trying to effect change at a realistic level and keep self-serving, right-wing interests at bay as much as possible. All in an effort to maintain and enjoy nature and life's bounty as an ordinary working class individual. The other stuff, I choose to ignore as I would rather enjoy a glass of wine and a walk on the beach and not allow those paranoid, power & control zealots get the best of me. It's not worth compromising my life in that regard.

Ed asks:

I'm not sure I have THE answer, but could it be that the "original" Reform advocated some pretty sensible "reforms" in terms of things like a EEE Senate. Could it be that your average blue collar guy just doesn't comprehend why the NDP and the Liberals appear soft on crime? Could it be that the guys in Alberni and Prince George don't get this whole gun registry stuff?

ED, I'm not sure either, but I think that sometimes the NDP strays too far from its roots.

I've truly enjoyed the vast majority of these posts: Fiat Lux, right again.

Coyote: The suggestion of cities not getting it goes contrary to how the big three went in this election. Cons: none.

Just from this account alone, I see a major lack of support for the Conservatives in the future, and, it is not by accident. Christ, the Con opportunity to pick up more votes couldn't have been more golden. Income trust leaks did major damage to the Libs. The media hyped it, showing in some ways that they might even have been bought by "special interests". Montgomery will be more distant in the next election. The Cons will have a lot of obstacles ahead of them in the days to come.

I see either Ralph Goodale, Ken Dryden, or a distant third Belinda or unknown fourth as being the leader of the next Lib party.

I see a possible alliance with the Libs and Quebec, but only if it benefits them both in the next election. If they did, they could make the Cons look very dumb, very fast.

I see the Cons failing in trying to pass any kind of paper that has to do with money, regardless of how motherly it is. There is a difference between spending money on areas and spending it wisely.

I see a Joe Clark term with Harper leaving this continent for the first time in his life, but for now, he's nothing more than a King without a throne. (and that jester, Flanagan isn't about to be forgotten any time soon).

The libs spent to much time containing damage, and not enough time creating it in this election. They won't be so foolish next time. Harper talks about flexibility. The Libs could have buried him with it with past letters and speeches. Libs went back to Harpers 97' speech, but they had Alta. Firewall, a host of blunders by opponents. Look what the Libs could have done locally with Rob Anders alone!

Beyond all of this, the parties who put out the best candidates have the best chances of increasing their seats. I liked the NDP candidates in this election overall. 3 ridings need completely newer and better faces. We need impovement in Candidate to run, and if your into it ED Deak, I'll back you.

I can't believe it! Ron Erwin and I agree on something: we are both pleased with the result.

Unless of course Ron is lying.

Think about it, folks. The conditions for a Conservative win could not have been better:

1) The Libs had been in power for 12 years.
2) The Libs were caught in a corruption scandal of gargantuan proportions.
3) The Tories kept the wing-nuts quiet for a change.
4) The Tories ran an excellent campaign.
5) The Libs ran a terrible campaign.
6) The media loved the Tories, hated the Grits, and ignored the NDP, as usual.

All cylinders were firing and what did the Tories get?

36%.

Any right winger who claims to feel good about this has got to be kidding.

Appreciate where you're coming from brother.I have spent about half my life in cities, and the other half, including currently, in backwoods and small towns. Currently small town.

A glass of wine is nice, for my palate, especially a nice red, but I am more partial to a good Scotch Whiskey, and for a change, maybe a Russian or Finnish Vodka. Other than this minor "difference" I too prefer being out in the great wide world of nature. It's just too bad that "politics" has to intrude into these simple pleasures indeed, but intrude they do and, if we have any awareness at all, demand our attention, ehh? :-)

A good day to you brother. Gotta keep the peace between us urban and rural folks. :-)

I don't know, but there is a certain truth to it, that rural folks in many areas do tend to vote right wing. I'm not exactly sure the reason for it, but think it has to do with rural folks being a little more cut off and not infrequently a tad behind the times more. And there is someting about that isolation and "closerness" to nature that seems to encourage "old time religion" superstitions and a kind of small "c" conservative, really "straight" value system. Which easily, in the hands of especially right wing demagouges and populists seems to get translated into big "C" Conservative.

(Part of it having to do too, with rural folks living closer to and rubbing elbows more with the small business class too, even being dependent on them for approval and jobs, where they're known as "gypos", as in "gyp" meaning "swindle". Which class element has a propensity to adopting Big Capitalist style politics. And there's no Catholic near as zealous as a converted Catholic, as they say, or a small businessman who wants the approval and to be like one of the Big Boys in suits, what drive around in Mercedes. Which all gets passed on down the line more directly and effectively in small town and rural settings than in big urban centres, where there is quite another kind of "class isolation" opportunity, that seems to free up the thinking of the urban working class a little more, and encourage at least some more, more progressive and independent thinking.)

It's more complex even than all this, most likely. But this has been my lifetime evolved take on a big part of it.

We live in a capitalist dependent society, and for jobs and wellbeing, the working class tends to need, or feel he/she needs the approval of this class. Which does much to encourage the working class to think like the ruling class, in order to get that. Which encourages that observation that even Karl Marx noted, that the ruling ideas of any age, tends to be the ideas of its ruling class. And even city workers still fall prey to this phenomena, probably more than is good for them, at least their independence, and more than we like to admit.

And then, of course, you've got the admonitions of religion and the ancient "tradition pull" come down through slavery from before even the Greeks, to "Give Unto Caesar That Which is Caesars, and Unto God That Which is Gods."

Caesar being the ruling class of course. The rest being obvious enough too.

For the rest of us, this life is said to be but a vale of tears, in which we are destined only to suffer until we die. Bullshit, for sure, but it was that way for a long time, and that teaching still has a certain hold on the thinking of many in even the modern working class, in more and less subtle forms and ways of manifesting itself.

A good day to ya, brother.

Indeed, as the Mrs. just pointed out to me, life, even here in this country, is still "a vale of tears" for very many men, women and children. It ain't just way over there.

He's lying. It's called the brave face of defeat.

What even makes this victory sweeter, is that Prime Minister Harper gets to fill the vacancy on The Supreme Court.
He will also be able to get moving on the McKenzie Valley 4 billion dollar project underway.
How about offshore drilling ?
Oh, it's a brave new world.

Fcuk off-shore drilling! I already heard corporate yes-man dick "nixon" neufeld crowing about that on the CBC today! What a disgrace.
Hey neufeld guess what... the NDP just got elected in that riding, not the cons, so why don't u put your drilling rig back in your pants! A significant reason why is popular support in that riding to MAINTAIN the moratorium not lift it. GET IT YET?
Oh and from above Ken Dryden !!! That's perfect. Who doesn't love him. (well except maybe some long-suffering canuck fans with even longer memories-consider Saturday night's humiliation a little bit o paybeck les habitant!!! BOY-YA!)

The idiot ron can try all he wants- it's a simple fact that Harper will not be able to do as he pleases. The numbers just aren't there. A perfect example is the gun registry- those that think that it will be repealed are dreaming- it ain't gonna happen.

Coyote: I'll drink to that. ;-)

Ron: Do you really think the Cons can pass any kind of money bill without a non-confidence vote? I'm nowhere's close to confident on that one. I see the Cons holding power until money needs to be spent. You might see the Libs and Quebec try something, though. I can see why, too!

Bloc gets a federalist nod of support giving them legitimacy to keep the balance of power... Libs get the nod for wanting to work in parliment. They both come out smelling like winners to see that right handed Con shot get handily snuffed by a Dryden save.

The Con government's future is about as long as the countries ability to function without the need to pass paper with needed spending. All Harper is right now, is a crowned king without a throne. I believe the popular word to describe it, is... figurehead. Enjoy your Joe Clark government while it lasts.
:-)

Can't help but notice how BEFORE the election the conservative press was predicting a 155+ seat majority for the Conservative Party. This manipulation of public opinion having failed, they are now touting the majesty of the restoration of Conservative members to government, even though they are more than 30 seats shy of their prediction. Talk about making lemonade out of the lemon (but I guess that's what the entrepreneurial spirit is all about, eh?).

The Con cannot pass any old legislation that they want.
There is a lot they can do, without requiring legislation.
I won't keep anyone up all night with nightmares.
I am thinking more about pipelines, infrastructure, training labour, investing in secondary education.
I can tell anyone who fears a social agenda, relax, it's the last thing on the 'To Do' list.
I think the goal is to make us ALL more prosperous.
The Gun Registry ? It will be starved gracefully.

I have a policy proposal to suggest to the new conservative government.

Lets quadruple the defense department budget, and provide an opportunity for any Canadian youth to enter the armed forces after high school for one year, during which time they receive equivalent college credit. The new military increases will involve no air force, no armour and no navy. All increased spending will be put toward assault rifle, light machine guns and light artillery type weapons such as mortars, rpg launchers and shoulder fired anti-aircraft missles, along with the training needed to use them.

I like it fishguy,as long as its voluntary. But unfortunately we don't have enough guys in combat arms to do the training right now, especially with the Afghan adventure.

But over time, sure. I don't think quadrupling would be necessary although there would have to be some increases.

"Lets quadruple the defense department budget, and provide an opportunity for any Canadian youth to enter the armed forces after high school for one year, during which time they receive equivalent college credit. The new military increases will involve no air force, no armour and no navy. All increased spending will be put toward assault rifle, light machine guns and light artillery type weapons such as mortars, rpg launchers and shoulder fired anti-aircraft missles, along with the training needed to use them." fishguy.

Actually, I think, a very good and powerful suggestion. This kind of a defense focus is more in like with what are likely to be our real world "national" needs going forward. I'm unsure about the actual budget sum that would be needed to develop this "military" planning strategy, but certainly it is preferable to building a military really more designed to serve The Empire, such as our Conservatives are wont and anxious to create, for their master's voice.

What the Cons propose, and the Liberals, is rather much more like conciously and deliberately dragging your enemies Trojan horse to within your own city walls.

Wow. Enlarging the infantry as a way of reducing youth unemployment. Brilliant. Problem is what infantry really means; "cannon fodder". A soldier's job is to die as well as to protect.

If there's an increased military, where it should go is into humanitarian and disaster relief and an expanded, UN-based peacekeeping role. Even as a Green voter I can deal with that; but not arming the military for assault, .....well, who do we conquer first? Morocco? Portugal? Belize? Maybe we should go to war with Denmark over that Hans Island thing, and take Greenland.....

Better, if they want a fighting army, that they offer amnesty to young men involved in organized crime and other low-level gang activity, give them uniforms and rifles and let them go expend their testosterone and macho vibes at least on the training, if not actually sent into combat. These are the same kind of guys that the Brits drafted out of the streets and filled the ranks of the Royal Navy with - and populated Australia as well. Spending $100k a year on putting such guys in jail makes no sense at all if they can be enlisted, rehabilitated as valued citizens (military veterans, after all), and flesh out the ranks of the military that everybody seems so hell-bent on restoring the numbers of.

And I know they'd be surprised how many would take up that amnesty. And once you take away the drug trade - if the Tories can suppress it, and I think they can't (it's a many-headed hydra; cut off one head, nine more grow back, as the US well knows) - there's going to have to be something for all these guys to do, if they're not arrested in the process of breaking up the vast underworld in which young men in this country have sought their only real economic opportunities of the last twenty years....

Radical? Yeah, sure. But all the conventional "solutions" have never been shown to work.

Worth pointing out, also, that a similar amnesty, though informal, helped end Prohibition......

S F Giant, I don't envision them as tool for conquest, purely defensive.

Indeed, for invasion and conquest, which escapes the Greens, one needs precisely the kind of military machine The Empire has, and we complement for them; emphasis on hardware first, tanks, attack aircraft, aircraft carriers etc. Fishguys proposal is the model, in fact, is that of a classic light infantry, highly mobile home defence guerrilla force, not unlike Switzerland and a number of other European nations etc.

Friendly Giant obviously has no military background, only good intentions-, which in our relationship with The Empire is ulikely to be good enough.

One really must read and understand a concept before advancing a misplaced and misdirected critique of it.

And an emphasis on light infantry is not a way of resolving youth unemployment so much, though it does have that aspect, but rather more of defending the nation from ANY source of foreign invasion, rather more likely to come from the direction of The Empire than Afghanistan or anywhere in the Middle East, for example. Though again, the emphasis is on ANY.

And I would assume because it expands their horizons, lets them see more of Canada and other Canadians and teaches them both teamwork and that they can accomplish quite a bit themselves before noon when normally they might just be getting out of bed. Plus they could get enough money in return to help with education or tools etc. Many might even decide to stay in the reserves when they leave.

One year is not going to make an army of conquest but I think it would provide a shot in the arm for a lot of individuals and the country as a whole. And when they return to civvy street they are less likely to worship everything American after playing the latest Navy Seals on their Playstation.

And I agree with Coyote, you train up a large group of guys every year as infantry, then discharge them and take in a new crop and pretty soon you have a trained population and the country as a whole becomes unconquerable.

Napoleon limited the Prussians to a 20,000 man army after their defeat in 1806. So the Prussians trained a 20,000 man army, discharged it and took in another 20,000. When war came they had this huge pool of trained troops.

Fishguy quote: "S F Giant, I don't envision them as tool for conquest, purely defensive."

Defensive against who? Danish aggression? Invasion by Portugal? Aliens?

fishguy, I don't quite understand why you dragged this old red herring out onto the carpet.

Unlike what Colin says about military preparedness, my take is if you train your country's youth for war you are likely to send them off to war, especially if you live just next to a war-like Empire that is getting it's butt beaten up by a thousand small cuts by representatives of far more countries than those that joined the Empire's coalition of the buyable.

Send Stockboy Day as our sacrifice to the Iraqi invasionary forces and let our young people grow up without having to shed blood, whether it's theirs or not.

Instead of going that route why not enlist them to learn forest fire prevention, health care delivery and other techniques that'll make them useful in a civil defence or natural disaster way rather than learning to kill.

S F Giant

As Coyote says, "ANY source of foreign invasion" but if you need a straw man, lets say ummmm... China.

allan says

OR maybe you will find those arms and people trained to use them will come in handy when said Empire, getting desperate after the butt beating, starts to look for easy meat to slake it's thirst with tar-sand oil?

"OR maybe you will find those arms and people trained to use them will come in handy when said Empire, getting desperate after the butt beating, starts to look for easy meat to slake it's thirst with tar-sand oil?: Fishguy.

It is not enough to have a trained light infantry at home, if your plan is world domination. (Though I'm not averse to a light fighter aircraft force at home defence need levels, and even helicopters for rapid movement of your ground forces around the country, in the event of invasion, and a naval coastal patrol force, to secure our shores.)

But again, if your intent is world domination, or being the asswipe for such an Empire power so inclined, and we are currently just such an asswipe power-, to complement that Empire power and back up its ambitions, then you submit to such demands as comes from our Neocons here and their Washington Master; you get into long range naval deployment craft and forces, such as large scale Marine infantry for establishing beachheads on foreign soil, large paratrooper units etc., aircraft carriers, long range assault aircraft, a lot of heavey armour and heavy artillery, and ships and heavy lift aircraft to deploy them anywhere in the world. This is the current plan level of those who see us as primarily an adjunct of US imperial power. Its handmaiden backup.

Get the concept and the concept differences, and away from the old hippy-think, unless one buys into simply rolling over and letting any invader of one's homeland, say from China or Imperial USA have its way with you. If you intend to have a chance to successfully resist and defend your sovereignty, and you have a problem with the adequacy of the simplistic Mahatma Ghandi concept, which involves a whole other discussion, and accept that "self-defence" need as a reality, then you want a large population trained in light infantry warfare as a pool upon which to draw "in the event of" having to do so. (Think Switzerland, Sweden etc.Even insurgent forces in Iraq offer up some example of the value of this kind of home defense force, as did the Viet Cong, even NVA of an earlier time.)

Good intentions, peace and love sentiments, in such an eventuality, simply won't cut it.

My view of the real world, which I seem to share with Fishguy.

Coyote:

I think you got your self-defense concepts mail-order from Acme Inc.

Canada is an enigma because of its sheer size and lack of population.

To subjugate a country the size of Canada would take an unimaginable number of soldiers. We wouldn't even need guns for our resistance since we could turn the suburban meth labs into improvised explosive device factories.

Apologies in advance for my cheeky introduction.

Michael Clift

BUT it would require far fewer troops if a full one-third of the citizens of Canada were willing to side with the occupiers. What proportion of Canadian voters selected the party led by Stephen Harper?

fishguy, we could let them have a few right-wingers to help them in Iraq.

Of course, it would have to be with the understanding the U.S. will adopt these people so they can spend the rest of their live's enjoying Gee W.'s legacy in economics.

Well, at least they'd have partial Cdn. pensions.

Give them some old airplanes and call them Bush-pilots.

Canada is an enigma because of its sheer size and lack of population."

Sorry brother, but you gotta be on crystal meth in another kind of Acme lab.

If the old USSR could nearly be brought to heel by the old German war machine, bigger than Canada as it is even now, coming from across the rest of Europe with all the logistical nightmares that entailed, The New Reich of Amerika is certainly fully capable, assuming it doesn't collapse post Iraq, of taking a good run at Canada-, at least the power and population centres huddled along the border. After that, it's much just wilderness and resource towns. (Though much depends, in terms of lasting power or their ability to hold/secure, on who were its allies coming in, say Britain, and the strength of the Vichy syle, quisling forces of the right within this country itself.)

And that is not even considering as a number of military scholars in this country have observed, that the Canadian officer corp itself already identifies much of its and the native interests with those of The Empire. Indeed it is already much integrated into the US military command structure.

In any case, only a damned fool with no military background above sea cadets would make your assumption, even if it turned out you were right. It risks too much and is a dangerous assumption.

It's a beholden to Amerika and neocon wingnut assumption designed to disarm.

That should read, "...Canadian officer corp itself already identifies much of its own and the national interests with those of The Empire."

It wasn't cheeky, just full of shitt. :-)

http://www.glasnost.de/hist/usa/1935invasion.html

A link to the US plan to invade Canada. Sure its from 1935 but...

Frank,

I believe it was the Globe and Mail recently, which just had a rather large spread on the history of official US War plans to invade Canada. They have actually been rather extensive and go back a long ways. Indeed, the impression I certainly got from them was that they always have one current, likely even now. Though we are unlikely to know for sure for a good number of years yet-, certainly after I'm long gone. But it is certainly the safe assumption for planning purposes we should make.

Indeed, I forget for sure the year, in the 1920s (1928?) I believe, this country, then a "dominion" of the British Empire, was sufficiently concerned about US intentions, to have developed a war plan itself, to pre-emptively invade the United States.

Our current Harpo Neocon crop may feel all kissy-kissy with The US Empire, and inded there has always been that element in this country, but indeed there have been a number of times in the history of our relationship with "Amerika", that concerns about possible war with them, and invasion, have been treated quite seriously. As they need to be today, if we are indeed to ever get out from under them and seriously re-secure control over our own national economy and full, non-beholden, non-ass-kissing sovereignty.

The Empire is over-developed, over-populated and fast consuming its way through its own resources and those of many other nations, including ours. We need to re-examine this resource export dependant relationship we are locked into with them, and act to correct it and put it right, and recover control and the right to husband our own resources for our own primary use and interest. Which will far from please them, of that one can be sure.

They already make presumptions about us, as their "sphere of influence" and our obligations to them. So too our own right wing Braunshirts.

Coyote, I agree. I blog with some Americans on a regular basis, guys I share work and hobbies with. Now and then subjects come up like oil, water, power etc. Even blue-state Democrats think that if push ever came to shove they could just take over Canada and solve those problems. In fact, Canada being easy-pickings when need be seems to be something Americans of all political stripes agree on.

I've told them they'll be drinking their last glass of water as they freeze in the dark before that happens but they do seem to believe they are entitled to their entitlements, this one being all North American energy and water.

It just doesn't require a huge leap to think that in a world of dwindling resources and expanding population it might be a good idea to make sure everyone has some training. If you're willing to defend yourself and go to the wall to keep what's yours it makes the bullies think twice about rolling over you. And infantry training is cheap and is all it takes to turn your country into a porcupine if need be.

Small regular army backed by massive numbers of trained reservists. Then we let 'em know we're cutting the umbilical chord and getting out of NAFTA. Keeping our resources for ourselves, the Canada Advantage if you will.

You people are dreaming in technicolour. Get real. Even if we could muster a military large enough to fight off the pillaging Americans, we'd never have the guts to go for it. We're Canadians, ya know? Look how we handled softwood lumber. "Let's not make them mad at us or they'll kick sand in our eyes."

Oh, and as far as keeping our resources for ourselves, you know, don't you, that when we signed on to NAFTA, we gave the Americans the right to help themselves to our oil and gas resources regardless of whether we need it for ourselves or not. We cannot refuse them. So, let's pray we don't get a couple of winters (could happen, as the climate change is making year-to-year weather very loopy). If that happens, we stand to literally freeze, while Americans get our energy to heat their swimming pools and keep Vegas in lights. Oh, and we can't sell it to them for less than we ourselves pay for it. So, kiss the theory goodbye that we own our energy resources.

And if we do build up our military, we will just be subsidizing the United States. The Americans would just take over our military forces, and use them to supplement their own (something like what we are letting them do now by sending several thousand more Canadian troops, this time to engage in active combat in the lawless corner of Afghanistan in which violence is escalating daily). Coincidentally, U.S. troops are pulling out of the country. Man, what a bunch of patsies we are. Get ready to see more Canadian soldiers coming back in pieces.

ps Excellent posts Fiat, and many others as well. By the way, there are more of these so-called "think tanks" fronting for the right being created every day than the old-school Burston-Marstellar. One of the most quoted these days is something called "The America Enterprise Institute" a haven for people like David Frum (a Canadian who worked as a speechwriter for Dubya). I read a good article somewhere lately (Harper's?) that said there are no balanced, unbiased think tanks around anymore. They've mostly all been converted into propaganda machines, some advocating the left, but mostly, it's been the tool of choice for the right. The right is always nastier, and that's why they win a lot of the time.

Geez, you guys took me seriously. I should have used quotation marks and exclamations and such, and made the satire a bit more pointed. Youth unemployment and social disengagement solved by an expanded military? I was JOKING that such an idea is even around in neo-Con ranks or anywhere else.

I'm all for organized youth service/training, but there are different kinds of militaries and military preparedness. And the government better have other more positive ideas for young people in this country than saying, well, gee, in the absence of other opportunities how'd you like a uniform, some travel, a free degree, and a gun?

Why not invest in THOSE opportunities? i.e. instead of in military adventurism. Repeat after me - A-D-V-E-N-T-U-R-I-S-M, which is the path of the Bushite Empire. Better on something between Katimavik, CUSO and the Peace Corps - the Mennonites know this, and train their youth in community and emergency relief services. Not in war. If you prepare for war, you go to war. I'm a historian and it's an old axiom about armies and militaries and budgets - partly psychological, partly economic, partly deterministic, i.e. because you've armed yourself someone will perceive you as warlike, and give you reason to have armed yourself. Very Pynchon-esque (paranoias manifest themselves into reality by belief becoming action).

So I was being catty, pointed and sarcastic. I'm surprised you guys didn't pick up on it, but type isn't speech, so the timing and intonation just wasn't there I guess....

And the context of my failed lambaste was "why does it have to be INFANTRY??" I was responding, remember, to the idea that the focus should be on infantry, not on the navy or air force. If we don't have an air force, we'll still be dependent on the US or Britain or someone to transport us (to THEIR wars), and if we dn't have a navy, we'll have to ask the US to defend the Northwest Passage for us (against themselves).

A rapid-deployment disaster relief force? A rapid organized response to famine and pandemic? Why the fuss about building a killing machine when there's other, so much more useful things, that we could do with an expanded "military".

Frank's quote: "you train up a large group of guys every year as infantry, then discharge them and take in a new crop and pretty soon you have a trained population and the country as a whole becomes unconquerable."

Well, Frank, that's all well and good, so long as we're not at war. If we were, every year that new crop trained up will replace the guys who got caught in the field, and they won't come home. And those that do, like many of my father's and mother's generation, were damaged by active service (neither of my folks went overseas during the war, thankfully) and thousands of them became devout pacifists because of the horrors they'd seen (and some, maybe, taken part in).

Military hypesters in this country love to point at Ypres and Vimy and what great moments in our nation's history those were. Yup. Thousands of guys sent into withering machine gun fine and gas and shell bombardment, with only a handful surviving. Glory all right. National honour all right. For 40 yards of ground that was lost a few days later....

Madness. War is madness. Total madness. Here's a reading assignment, all you fans of the remilitarization of Canada: AJP Taylor's Illustrated History of the Great War 1914-1918. Terse and pointed, and sums up in the inanity and outrageous mass atrocity perpetrated upon the young men of Europe and North America by their political leaders and their generals. (It's a short read but very rich in content).

Yeah, there'll be a fresh crop of bright young faces every year; and they'll have credentials and a pension and all that - so long as they don't actually have to be soldiers. Reality is that the foot-soldier's PRIMARY ROLE in military tactics IS TO DIE. When war comes, as in Bush's world it must, those bright young faces will vanish the same way that the "lost generation" of 1914-18 just never came home....

It's hard not to get a kick out of Americans loving to be numero-uno top-dog so much; and then being so reserved about actually having any soldiers DIE. Heavens that sending troops into the field should involve any risk!! I gather that's the same theme here - just a training plan for youth, get the adolescence out of them, and make them into loyal flag-saluting jingoists like their new political masters, ready to trot off to the most meaningless war because some group of dolts called Cabinet decided that their lives were expendable on behalf of someone else's war.

And from fishguy: "As Coyote says, 'ANY source of foreign invasion' but if you need a straw man, lets say ummmm... China." Hmmm. Why conquer someone with armies when you can do it with money? When you already HAVE conquered it with money? 'Nuff said?

And if China's going to attack North America, there sure as hell not going to use Prince Rupert and Tofino as beachheads, and the target will not be Canada. We might wind up being like Belgium in both world wars - the doormat for an invasion (e.g. two million Chinese paratroopers and heavy armored divisions landing in Winnipeg and heading south, dodging tactical nuclears en route...doesn't sound very plausible does it?)

Or maybe you think the infantry can defend us from ICBMs and who-knows-what-else will be invented in coming years? Infantry? Might as well invest in a bow and arrow....

Thing is China has much better places in the world to attempt military adventurism. There is no strategic gain in destroying your biggest customer, nor is there any value to a Chinese invasion or occupation of North America in a strategic sense. ESPECIALLY because the North American monied classes are so willing to sell out their resources and economy and nationhood to the new emerging superpower; like supplicant kings coming to kowtow at the Dragon Throne.

China's bucking to prove itself as a new military power, as well as an economic superpower; but it's so much easier to do "police actions" in neighbouring countries than actually reveal yourself as an aggressor, such as an attack on North America would do. In a different world 100 years from now there might be a reason and a means for the Chinese to attack Canada (without attacking North America), but to me all this talk about Canada being invaded is puff-n-stuff.

Sure, someone's going to seize the Arctic because all we've ever done is fly the flag and map the place, but a major investment in the military to protect the High Arctic seems of dubious value; unless there's more oil, gold and diamonds up there, and we really have a way to control the Passage. Never mind whip those nasty Danish pirates who have dared to assault Canadian sovereignty.

So back to the troops - why spend all that money on military training when the SAME AMOUNT could be spent on other kinds of education and community, social, economic and cultural development for Canadian youth. Why should their main opportunity be via the military, as is the subtext to many comments; throughout the US and indeed other countries, the military attracts the economically and socially disenfranchised.

o that they can come into the outside world not as guys with guns and medicine kits, but guys just with books and medicine kits. Guns vs books. It's that simple.

As for making this country unconquerable, I'd wager that in the event of an invasive war (even by the most likely suspect) Canadians would fight tooth and nail, with or without the waffling of their leaders (who of course would try and take all the credit). But arming the country to defend yourself against an IMAGINARY ENEMY is sheer folly. Claiming that remilitarization is for defence of the nation when we all know that "defence of the nation" can come to mean intrusive, adventurist wars in distant lands. The US does it all the time, even long before Iraq.....

Where's the Duchy of Grand Fenwick when we need it, anyway?

A lot of space to say not much, Mr. Friendly.

I don't think, myself, at this place and time that a Canada, seriously moving to recover and secure its sovereignty is likely much under threat from China, or us to anybody else frankly, though China was used as a theoretical example-, but much more likely from a much closer source that is and has demonstrated its contempt for other folks "national" needs and desires. But in any case, ANY threat to the nation that might come down the pipe in the form of a threat or invasion on our own territory. And no question, not being a Mennonite or Quaker, most of us, we are going to need, outside of considerable infantry and support forces, some future determined elements of naval and air forces-, again designed for and configured for the security of our shores and own national air space, NOT for ferrying troops to far off lands to serve, defend or extend the US Empire.

For a reputed "historian", you really are having difficulty getting a simple concept straight here. (Maybe that's a problem, things look different up there than they do down here in the real world. :-) Switzerland has similarly designed forces, and likewise does Sweden, know to me, and they have not if ever, certainly in a very long, long time invaded anybody, but merely been used truly defensively.

And I do not see any contradiction, as you mechanistically and in a straight line insistant thinking way seem to do, in the concept that there could/should be a year long national military service, as part of the "home defence" military preparedness strategy of the nation AND, in conjunction with, alongside there ALSO being other forms of national service such as you suggest. The two concepts do not necessarily need to exclude each other in order for both to exist at one and the same time.

And the final element I notice in your pieces above is the insistance, over the design of the military defence concept, that the plan is to send troops abroad again and again, into foreign lands for the purposes of our own conquest for Empire presumably, if not for the Amerikan Empire as the current State does, I presume. Which again compells me to reiterate, that IS NOT the intent of which we speak here, indeed I am opposed to, but the security and defence of our own national territory, sovereignty, people and resources.

Which presuming you have the capacity for important distinctions, should make it unnecessary for us to chew over this particular issue again.

SFG, I've read AP Taylor. I've read his book on WW1, WW2, the 19th century hyphenated wars etc. He's an entertaining author and his 19th C one, the title escapes me, is his best in my opinion.

I'm not a subscriber to the "Lions led by Donkeys" school of thought, I don't think WW1 generals were any dumber than their WW2 or 1870 counterparts.

My family has lots of military background and have lost many a 20 year old going back to being sunk on a transport during the Napoleonic Wars, or killed at Chrysler's Farm, right through to Korea.

I'm not saying we use those troops in offensive or foreign wars, only to protect Canada.

Why not indeed? Its not either or. But right now, its a case of nothing at all. I'm simply suggesting the opportunity should be there. If a 19 year old wondering what to do with his life wants to join the military or search and rescue, or fight forest fires or whatever, I would like those opportunities to be there.

But the military has advantages that even Otto von Bismarck recognized. Germany too was beset by regionalism. The army was used there as a unifying force. It didn't mean the army had to be used it was simply a way of providing a shared experience for Bavarians, Prussians, Hanoverians etc. Brought them all together as Germans.

It also meant Germany was taken seriously by the historiaclly stronger powers around it such as Austria, Russia and France. Of course after the offensive wars of 1866 and 1870 Germany was suddenly considered the strongest power.

Coyote and fishguy and I are not advocating offensive war or providing a ready group of cannon fodder for the US in foreign adventures.

What we're saying is that the military, even for just one year, can both expand a kid's horizons as he becomes part of a team with other kids from across the country and help him on a personal level gain confidence in himself. Helping him out after he's finished is just another plus.

The country gains by having a huge pool of trained men available for defensive purposes only. They would just be infantry after all. Great for defence, no one is saying we should outfit them with expensive, offensive equipment.

Sunny,

Well ya, I agree we have to get out of NAFTA.

Infantry is the only arm that has survived for thousands of years. Its indispensable in all wars. It can hold ground, nothing else can. Certainly not ICBM's. If someone wants to take over Canada they will have to do it with lots and lots of infantry. Preferably mechanized but infantry nonetheless.

And no oneis advocating building a large army. Its only one year of training, they're not being kept in for 5 or anything. Its a trained pool to turn to when needed for defence.

Sure, the troops may never be used, good. But the goals are still realized. The individuals benefit from the time spent and the country benefits from the glue of the military. We'll save a fortune on buying little Cdn flags from China and putting up maple leaf billboards.

Of course, especially given the particular long colonial and quasi-colonial history of our country, it should be expected to be found, right wing elements drawn to "Bully Power" such as the US Empire, who just want to hold their jacket, kiss their ass, and "join up" with them. They are and will be an ongoing problem. Likewise there are always the roll over and die, its hopeless, just let them have their way with us element like smiley face Sunny Samson above. That too is an attitude/belief structure to be expected coming out of the long subservient history of our nation, first to the British Empire and now the the US Empire.

Likewise, there has always been the peace, love and non-violence, turn the other cheek and love your enemy to death school to which some religious/middle/upperclass kids and folks are more often prone than working class types. (Though some working class kids too, but more as the exception.)

Following a stint of regular force military service myself, (and a backgound of it throughout my growing up), out of which I emerged disgusted with the already evolving military subservience of Canada to the then emerging US Empire, already moving in to occupy the global positions being abandoned by British and French Imperialisms, I, a blue-collar working class young family man, hung around, was involved with a lot of these folks in the anti-Vietnam War movement of the sixties. While I still actually have a certain sympathy for their warm and fuzzy sentimentality, I never did and do not buy into their real world "practicality", in most regards. (Fair numbers of whom either became Hari Krishna's, moved into Scientology or returned to their privileged familie's lives where they become MBAs, lawyers and lower level anti-union management types. One of lifes many little ironies.)

I merely do not buy into or otherwise agree with the conclusions they draw about Canada, about the practicality of its ongoing existence as an economically and politically sovereign nation, and its ability to stand on its own two feet, and even defend itself if push comes to shove with the Bully Power to our south. And unlike these folks, perhaps again coming out of my early blue collar working class roots and life, I take nothing for granted nor do I assume that things will work out all of their own. Similarly with the pursuit of the recovery of control over our national life. It is going to take preparation and roll up your sleeves, and get down into the details/entrails, real, practical, and possibly very dangerous work.

If you ain't got the stomach for that, fly South to your Sugar Daddy, hide behind your books in your ivory tower, or otherwise just get the fuk out of the way. It ain't gonna be easy, and if it becomes a cause that does get taken up by folks, it's likely some fur is gonna fly.

Excellent piece immediately above me Frank. You always surprise me, though I don't know why. :-)

Smack! Bang on! :-)

Thanks Coyote, geez, I've been here almost two years ya know

OK, you guys; if there's a way to define "defence" legally so that a Harper government or other superpower-puppet regime can't define "defence" as meaning "we have to go kick the shit out of Grenada as a defensive measure". To the US theorists/spindoctors, even Vietnam was a defensive war; to the Bush regime, Afghanistan and Iraq are defensive wars. If you guys can come up with a formula for "home defence only" that's OK with me; but in a real sense that's not what the Tories have in mind, and they're not even really talking about.

Frank: Taylor's big opus was "The Struggle for Mastery in Europe: 1848-1918" and yeah, I think it's his best too. Somewhere in there - wish I knew the page number for something I'm writing - he makes a quip about the circumstances of the Oregon Treaty of 1846. Apparently between the time the ratified treaty left Washington on its way to London for ratification there, there was a change of government in the UK; the outgoing foreign secretary had been set to reject the treaty and declare war; the incoming was a survivor of Austerlitz and a pacificist who adopted the treaty, despite its many shortcomings (Lord Aberdeen, I think). The book is full of intersting obscurities like that; I think it should be required reading for anyone studying international relations or diplomacy etc.

Now, as for Coyote's comments:
"For a reputed 'historian', you really are having difficulty getting a simple concept straight here. (Maybe that's a problem, things look different up there than they do down here in the real world. :-) Switzerland has similarly designed forces, and likewise does Sweden, know to me, and they have not if ever, certainly in a very long, long time invaded anybody, but merely been used truly defensively."

Yeah, but that's because they actually have people to DEFEND THEMSELVES AGAINST. Sweden was once a great imperial power, and an adventurist into Central and Eastern Europe and has a reputation for military strength, even since its conversion to pacifism under the Bernadotte dynasty. Given its location, armed neutrality was the only possible neutrality - not that the Soviets couldn't have taken Stockholm in an afternoon. But the Swedes were a useful portal between the two hostile realms of NATO and the Warsaw pact for it to be worth conquering directly; formerly the terror of Northern Europe, Sweden became its go-between. And in providing such "services", that was tantamount also to a defence policy; we're more valuable un-invaded than we are invaded......

Same deal with the Swiss, except they have even more potential enemies on all sides; interesting tidbit is that the Swiss "death strip" (a mini-Maginot line girdling the country) is twice as thick against France as it is against any of the other three countries surrounding it (well, four including Liechtenstein). Why? Because France is the only nation in recent memory to succesfully invade Switzerland, and the Swiss don't forget that kind of thing.

The Swiss have a military culture that is centuries old and rooted in their struggle for independence from the Holy Roman Emperor. Their military strength is impressive, and it was largely successful as a deterrent by anyone contemplating invasion. The logistics of "taking Switzerland" are absurd, as even Hitler knew. And if you've already got their banks working with you, actual invasion is not necessary.

Friendly relations with its neighbours doesn't mean that the Swiss trust any of them in the long run. The Swiss constitution or some Swiss lae also forbids the use of Swiss troops outside the country, with the exception of the Swiss Guard at the Vatican.

cont...

But here's another reality about Switzerland, told to me by more than one Swiss: it's a police state, with everyone tracked cradle to grave and the command structure of the military present in everyday society; the guy you work with at the bank may be your C.O., for instance. And political discord and dissent is closely tracked, and many expat Swiss are glad to be away from the heavily bureaucratic regimentation of Swiss society and the ongoing gaze of the secret police.

Back to the point: a country that mends fences well often doesn't have to build any. A country that prepares for war, goes to war. Comparing Canada's defence situation to Sweden's and Switzerland's is a non-starter; we're not surrounded on all sides. We've only got one country bordering us, and what coastlines we have are either military impregnable (BC and the Arctic) or so far from the centre of power (Atlantic) as to be strategically irrelevant.

The ongoing irony persists that the US wants us to start spending money on the military like they do; but they're the only ones who have ever invaded us, or are ever likely to.....

That's it. I read the library one and have always made a check through used book stores on the internet now and then to see if a cheap copy pops up in Canada. Good book.

.

I agree, its an entertaining and very interesting read.

On the blog I mentioned earlier, it seems that the show 60 Minutes did a thing on the Alberta tar sands. Suddenly one American, a lefty actually, says Canada has two trillion barrels of oil so why are "we" in the Mid-East? A few others had seen the same program. The conversation took off from there and even my normally reasonable US blue-state friends decided that taking over Canada was not a bad idea. That was just this week.

I just don't think any US gov't so inclined would have a problem convincing the American people that taking Canada's resources, if we refused to sell them, would be such a bad thing. They seem easily swayed by the idea. Of course comments like we're almost like them anyway do come up too.

The only reason Finland has remained independent is because they were willing to go to the wall to fight the Soviets. I see Canada in the same sort of situation. Instead of just resigning ourselves to the idea we'd lose, why not make ourselves a porcupine, a defensive military that says we just want to be left alone.

But that aside, what sells me on fishguy's idea is I think it would be good for tying the country together and helping youth get a start.

Yes I agree its a problem. Parliament is supreme and there's no way to tie a future gov't to the idea that the military can't be used outside the country. And there will always be those who want to buy the latest whiz-bang piece of equipment in spite of it being offensive in nature.

Perhaps put it in the Constitution.

Agreed, re the above quote. How did it take so friggin' long to get to here?

But again, whilst I point to elements of the way the Swiss and Swedes organize themselves defensively, I am not embracing every aspect of their military or political cultures. We are Canadians, a separate nation, and we have the right to pick and choose anyones ideas or ways of doing things as suits our own particular needs and wishes, and reject what does not.

And for fuks sake man, if you can't see that at least on one side of us, nay two counting Alaska, that this country is fronted by one "potential" major enemy, when and if we ever decide to assert control over our own territory, economy, politics, resources and culture, and not embrace its Empire imperatives and world view and desire to involve us, then I guess you come out of a quite different set of experiences.

For me, the reality is clear enough, and should be clear enough to any rationally aware person, obviously not shared by yourself, that our sovereignty, regardless of with who's cooperation, is already breached and in jeopardy.

But then, you see, below, he really does see it, but seems to be having trouble connecting it all together.

That's the point we have all been all working on here, isn't it.

But that aside, what sells me on fishguy's idea is I think it would be good for tying the country together and helping youth get a start." Frank's saying it saves me the need. :-)

Read the above carefully bro. My view of the matter entirely.

S F Giant says

The US wants us to spends LOTS of money on our military. Mainly they want us to buy lots of super expensive high tech hardware from them! When the day comes that they feel the need to more fully access the available resources in Canada.... Every damn one of the fighter pilots, tank commanders and basically the entire officer corps above Captain level are in the pocket of the Pentagon.

However if tomorrow Harper announced a plan (like the one which I put forward that started this discussion) anouncing two billion dollars a year of spending, with the majority of expenditure going to Russian arms manufacturers for a few hundred thousand AK-47s and RPG-7s, you can bet there would be smoke coming out the ears of the American ambassador, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the whole gang of PNAC war criminals in the white house.

They just about had a stroke when Venezuala announced the purchase of a half million rifles, why? I suggest it is because Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi people have shown the world what can be done to the world's pre-eminent super power with the military equivalent of rocks and sticks.

Glad to see your back, fishguy. And you've initiated a discussion that needs to be had.

And you got that one right. Certainly it was my observation when I was in the service. It's what makes our current military so potentially damned dangerous: Our officer corp, much of it, is in the pocket and under the control of The Empire. (Even some of the pongo/grunts sound like US style neocons.)

Not a situation that can long be tolerated. The entire system needs reconfiging, and the underlying motivating assumptions set that drives the current military ideology. (I've got some stories there even, that go back a long ways.)

Fundamentally though, we have never shaken off our colonial mentality as a nation, and we need to, and it infects our military.

Should have been, "Glad to see you're back..."

Frank quote (how do I do those nifty block quote things?): "For me, the reality is clear enough, and should be clear enough to any rationally aware person, obviously not shared by yourself, that our sovereignty, regardless of with who's cooperation, is already breached and in jeopardy.
"

Very cute side-stab, Frank, but otherwise your point is the same as my own, despite the different hyperboles and different examples. We already are owned offshore, we already have a foreign power directing our military priorities (same as we used to in the days of the BEF), we already know who the prime potential enemy is. Preparing ourselves for possible threats from THEM is hard to do, since any of our military preparedness or even political policy groups have insiders - fifth columnists - or at least information moles.

Preparing, for instance, a scorched-earth policy that entraps US forces in hostile territory, say when they make a stab at seizing the Tar Sands or maybe some major hydro projects or other strategic infrastructure. Or, as with here in BC in 1983, Bennett's threat to use troops to suppress the looming general strike that fall implicitly wasn't about Canadian troops, but the two divisions of Marines that were on manoeuvres near the border that week.....

But if our politicians, our banks, our megabuck powerbrokers, our military, are all already in the hip pocket of the US, what's to be done?

National training for defence is a great idea, if it can really be constitutionally limited to territorial defence only, and not adventurist expeditions. And, importantly, if a good solid block of the population were trained in survival and emergency preparedness, the "home guard" would pay off in situations like the Ice Storm, the big blackouts, or when the "Big One" finally devastates the Lower Mainland, as inevitably it will (my dibs are on Mt Baker being a more dangerous threat to the region). In those scenarios, command structures break down and a "bottom up" approach to effective civil defence is very much needed......and people who can wing it with a box of matches, a pen knife and some cool thinking are very much in demand.

What's interesting here is that the potential for US military action - "police action" as they may style it, or "protecting America's national security interests" (i.e. oil/hydro) - seems obviously to be a big part of the Canadian national debate on defence, especially in blogdom. And this will only be seen (or rather portrayed) in the US as unfriendly or at best irrational. Yes, it will define us as a porcupine, and I agree with that strategy; but in order for the porcupine to use his quills, he has to grow them first. And if those quills are obviously designed against potential US aggression, it's going to be hard to justify to them as anything but "well, you asked us to militarize. This is what you get".....

RRG explained how to do it to me. You copy the text and paste it into your current message, then you highlight and then go to that little menu above your message and you can select "B" for Bold, "I" for Italics, "U" for Underline or the caption thingy which does the quoting effect.

Anyway, that's not my side-stab, its Coyote's.

Friendly Giant,

Venezuala currently, Cuba in the past and presently, and indeed large national sections of Latin America have and are currently dealing with this same reality of the "power of The Empire", as we would/will have to. They, Bolivia, Venezuala and elsewhere, of course, while we lag sorely behind, are moving to take advantage of the US being bogged down and preoccupied in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East. Much, in my view though, depends on how quickly these states of Latin America can build sufficient critical mass to stand up to the Empire down the road a ways.

(Though it is possible, and certainly The Empire is planning on being where they are in the Middle East, if one believes their current talk, for years, certainly the next decade. Though that may be wishful thinking on their part too. Which assuming even current insurgency levels, and that they do not grow and extract a greater price, is going to much bleed the treasure AND military of The Empire. Already its national indebtedness is at levels beginning to scare many of its debt and currency holders.Which is the flip side of this whole business, of course, The Empire could well in the end be coming out of Iraq, in even worse shape than it did Vietnam, with its tail between its legs and broken, economically and militarily.)

The point being however, where there is the national will and

, it can be done. Relatively small and weaker states can and have successfully stood up to much greater powers and won-, Vietam being one that immediately springs to mind, but also many former states in Africa and the Middle East, before the Amerikans, against the old British and French Empires.

So while it would be naive in the extreme to attempt to minimize the inherent risks in a nationalist assertion of sovereignty in this country, it much depends on the degree to which those precursor elements of "opportunity", "will" and "creativity" are already in play and in motion-, as in Latin America, of which there is presently very little evidence in this country, that I can presently see, I have to concede. There is more an air of defeatist resignation rather than strong will, insofar as I can still see as well, to be honest for sure.

Still, there is a low level debate beginning to occur, and in the right circumstances, all things social, economic and political can change very quickly in the right circumstances-, witness the arrival and development of this currently traitorous Neocon period.

Continued next post...

From previous post...

So much depends on how the debate within our society develops, and whether any further than this at all, how the politics of the nation, now under "ostensible" neoconservative control evolves and shakes out, at the tolerance of the Empire, and what occurs in public attitudes and loyalties over the coming period, which is the real deal maker or breaker, because that is the real support base, which has to underpin and drive it all.

I am not yet really very confident yet, I will confess, but much depends on outcomes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East-, and forces already at work within the economy, and the lives of the working class mass of society, impacting their standard of living, sence of security and loyalty to the status quo. Much of this already being in an advanced state of flux.

So really, let's face it, the ascendant Neocons are really the most likely intrusion into post WW2 "social capitalism" to **** up the social concencus that has held it all together to here for capitalism and its ruling class, to create and drive in the class and other social wedges that will undo it all, and send it all flying apart for them. In that regards, as I have said before, they are preparing the ground for those of us with a quite different nationalist and socio-economic agenda, whether they know it or not.

What we have to do mostly is whip them into a lather, and drive them into the frenzy that will be their undoing. Pay attention to them here. It is already happening.

And organize, organize, organize.

Really? you're kidding? I didn't live here in 1983 so I didn't hear about this.

FG,

Yep, they might not appreciate it. And there is a vulnerable lag between deciding we're going to follow a porcupine strategy and actually being one. Which is too bad because now would be a great time to start and I just don't see any governmental will. As fishguy says above, its whiz-bang US equipment that Harper will probably want to spend increased defence money on. Too bad.

Coyote,

I think its wishful thinking. I'm basing that on this article

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060124/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/army_breaking_point

Recruiting is down and the army is being worn down.

And as you say, this time the US will have a debt hanging over their heads like never before. I can't imagine how they expect to pay that back or even if they expect to.

Perhaps some Romanesque "tribute from allies"?

And you and I have always agreed on this point.

Harper's off to a great start. Not officially the PM yet and he's already decided that Canada will not recognise the new democratically elected Palestinian gov't.
Says he can't recognise it because they're terrorists.
He doesn't have a problem recognising and even working to improve relations with the most dangerous terrorist regime on the planet.
How much did he say he was going to sink into military hardware and who is he going to buy it from?
I guess we'll be hearing a lot more from Gen. Rick "kill the scumbags" Hillier now that we've got a real War Prime Minister running things.
I feel safer already.

I don't believe their current talk, not one bit; it's just the public voice they're using. They can't be seen to be intending to withdraw until they actually do; any hint that they're thinking of it is weakness, as Sun Tzu or von Clausewitz probably say somewhere. There's some odd things out there in the world; the large US bases in the Central Asian Republics come to mind, so much upstaged by the Afghan War and the carnage that is Iraq that their actual stragetic significance (encirclement of Iran) goes overlooked, although the Chinese are well aware of suddenly having US forces where Soviet forces used to be.

What's going to determine the overriding US national security interests is a) oil and b) oil and c) oil. By 2010, supposedly the world's largest producing "field" will be the Tar Sands, and it's expected to remain that way by the end of the century. Realistic, uninflated oil reserve figures for the Middle East are finally starting to surface, and they're not anything like they're supposed to be. Faced with the alternative of a century-long war, in a region that has bogged down famous empires for millennia, vs a simple political manipulation to bring the nearby Alberta Tar Sands into US territory, or at least US domination, I'll wager is not only the biggest motive behind US enthusiasm for Harper, but also the most likely course of US political machinations in the next ten years. The other powers don't care about Canada - Britain wrote us off decades ago - so we're extremely vulnerable, and I don't necessarily mean militarily. Political manipulation rather than overt annexation is far more likely; proxy-state status over actual statehood(s).

Used to be I'd rant a bit about how annexing Canada might moderate the US; for one thing we'd want the two-senators-per-state thing, and there's likely to be more than 10 Canadian states if that were ever to come to pass (BC could easily be three, for instance). And all those left-liberal voters suddenly diluting the American electorate's (supposedly) staunch conservatism, and all the other fuss and muss of the mechanics of formal annexation; too costly, too confusing, too politically risky. Better to coopt our political process and install leaders who willing prostrate themselves before the imperial throne.

Now, as for the comparison to Venezuela and Vietnam and elsewhere (excluding Cuba in this comparison as you'll see why), what you have to remember gepolitically and strategically is that none of those successful-rebel countries share a common border with the United States; both Venezuela and Vietnam are mountainous, jungled and heavily populated with people of common purpose and resolve. Bolivia even more so, albeit less mountainous (though tremendously higher-up). Canadians are strung out on a thin 100-mile line along this impossibly long boundary, with the bulk of the population in three major city-complexes, all of them within an hour or two of the border (Vancouver: 30-40 minutes). We don't have an ocean and a mountain range and a difficult sea coast to protect us along that line, and we also don't have anywhere to retreat to except maybe the Shield, the High Arctic, or the recesses of BC's deep and often isolated valleys. It's not the same game; we're too close, too indefensible, too spread out.

"The world's longest undefended boundary" as the old saw goes. Yeah, but they all have guns, and we don't.....that's not exactly undefended....by the way, if you look along the border on maps that show enough (e.g. at topozone.com, the online USGS topos) you'll note that there a series of huge bases all the way from the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the border counties (as well as of course the Puget Sound mega-complex), right out through to the East Coast. Messina, adjacent to the Akwesasne-St. Regis Reserve, is a major US base (army I think) and was involved in the suppression of the Mohawk Civil War in 1990 on that side of the border.

What I'm getting at is that the US might raise a stink about us developing significant border defenses; reality is there's have been in place for over a century, and are still geared for aggression, and not so much for defence. We may have abandoned our "Code Plan Red"; as far as is known, they haven't abandoned theirs....

To Frank about '83: Yup, even in so many words. Bennett made an appearance on the Webster Show (ah, Jack, we miss ya!) in the week before the strike was supposed to start. Webster asked him what he was going to do, and Bennett said if it came to it, he would use troops. Webster asked him what troops and Bennett just sort of shrugged and gave a sly grin; was it a grin? Not exactly. He changed the question and answered differently, more like. Ominous, remember, because troops and private armies (Pinkertons etc) have been used in political crises in BC's past before.

Anyway, the next day the Vancouver Sun and Province came back into print, the sun sporting its nifty new yellow masthead (gotta wonder what the design dept was thinking!). Alongside the picture illustrating the huge rally that mobbed a cabinet meeting in the Hotel Vancouver (all 27 members of the CPC-ML supposedly representative of the other 120,000+ people in the crowd) there was a second headline off to the right about huge US Marines troop maneouvres in Sedro Woolley and Deming. Two divisions, on manoeuvres near Vancouver's suburban fringe, on the eve of a major potentially government-overthrowing strike. Yeah, sure, the Yanks were just practicing their Boy Scouts skills....

Didn't get lost on some people. I think even Webster quipped about it, but the waters were deep right then - and the story of what was going on in BC that year remains entirely distorted in other parts of Canada, and also in the retrospective mentions made by latter-day pundits. During the xtrike, the Globe and Mail had let the on-strike Sun and Province reports publish without interference - for a good four months or so. It was a marvel to read, and the taint and sniping of twits like Michael Smythe and Pete McMartin just wasn't heard; the rabble-rousers the Province hires to spit out negative, bigoted opinions to "talk to the common man" were totally absent. The Province's return to print featured its new Brit-jingo tabloid format; I can still remember one of the first tasteless headlines: "See Expo and Di" (when it was announced the Chuck & Di Show would open the fair).

The change to the yellow journalism when the paper strike was settled was notable, as well as the enthusiastic jingoism of the new editorial boards, such as the thing with the CPC-ML and the mention of the US Marines hanging out in the woods just over the border. Had everybody nervous, so when Jack Munro claimed to have struck a deal with Bennett (there wasn't one, except maybe favours for the IWA) everyone choked, for fear of major violence, and unknown and potentially dangerous retaliations by the Premier. And that mysterious threat of troops, and the strangely parallel mobilization of nearby US forces.

It would have taken a morning, or overnight, for the US to secure Vancouver - all by invitation of the Premier and the provincial government, to halt the "godless socialists" et al. If the general strike had gone ahead that next Monday and it had gotten to full bore by Thursday (more and more unions were to go out each day) the province would have been paralysis; the stakes were not just the resignation of the government, but openly discussed throughout the Solidarity Coalition (if not among Operation Solidarity's organized unionists) was for serious political reform:

Political reform to prevent a Premier from over-staying his mandate, as Bennett had done that spring. Political reform to prevent hijacking of elections by imported campaign machines, as the Socreds had done (Tory and Republican help). Political reform to prevent flip-flop on promises, or Bennett's misleading promise to govern with "restraint". Which, with our helpful mainstream media, we were encouraged to think of in small-r terms. When it turned out to be big-R Restraint, the media crowed that this is what the public had voted for; i.e. as if they'd voted for neocon economic radicalism, when in fact the Social Credit campaign had been speaking as if restraint meant the status quo.

Frank
I enjoyed your perspective on the positive unifying effect military service can instill into fellow countrymen.

re your comment :
" The country gains by having a huge pool of trained men available for defensive purposes only. They would just be infantry after all. Great for defence, no one is saying we should outfit them with expensive, offensive equipment. "

It would also serve Canada's offensive military needs better to ensure ever higher standards in her officer corps. A nation's military prowess - at home or abroad, relies on good internal leadership.

Without the intervention of actual hostilities, an officer corps can become slack due not cashiering ineffective officers.
.

cont: It was a complicated summer and there was a lot of anger, including many local strikes and blockades, all winter, including some violence in towns where non-union workers were starting to work in the types of projects previously the turf of the unions. Rocks were thrown, things burned, I seem to recall a couple of shots fired somewhere up in the Omineca. Got pretty tense. The city hunkered down to a certain sort of dark mood, begrudging the failure of what had seemed like a halcyon summer of political awakening, and the various polarities sharpened their ideologies and rhetorics for the next round, whenever that might be. The decades-old compact that had provided BC with relative labour peace, forged by Bennett's father, was ended; government and public construction projects would no longer be union by default, and an era came to an end. And, in my opinion, were sown the seeds of the Leaky Condo Crisis and other matters relating to the downgrading of labour standards and worker protection in BC.

An accurate account of the Solidarity Crisis has never, to my mind, been written and the media pundits when they mention it talk about it as a victory for Social Credit's winning ways with the BC public, and how the labour movement failed in its attempts to overturn the Social Credit budget; any mention of the political uprising is tit-titted like a joke, as if it were a la-la-land delusion, something to be mocked like those buttons we all used to wear back in '80 and '81 (when lapel buttons, strangely enough, were fashionable, even avant-garde).

It remains one of the most troubling events in recent British Columbian history, and set the tone for the bitter, testy society that Vancouver has become since. And one that other Canadians, for the most part, have been carefully insulated from.

We were fed up. We wanted a new way to run the political machinery of the province, so that we got governments that did what we wanted, not lied and cheated and cajoled so that they could do what THEY and THEIR BACKERS wanted. What was happening in BC was not "labour strife", as it was painted in the Calgary and Toronto papers when I visited them during the crisis, but out-and-out revolution. Or an awakening, maybe? But we choked, we qualed, we backed down, and Bennett smugly sat out the remainder of his reign, then passed the traces to Willie Woodenshoes and the rest, as they say, is history.

Among the perks to those who helped Bennett win that spring, by the way, were SNC Lavalin or whoever it was that had come up with that expensive tinker toy called SkyTrain; they'd ponied up the campaign organization as part of the Big Blue Machine.

Guess which company got the contract for Vancouver's new subway/monorail? Gee, the one with the most expensive per mile, most complicated technology, and no track record in other cities' systems (such as Bombardier had). Interesting bidding process when the government's electoral backers are more expensive and not proven, but they still get the gig. I was on the damned thing today when the whole system had to shut down because ONE train had something wrong with it. Some high-tech marvel; one visit to Calgary's or Portland's LRTs and its obvious as day how misspent the money spent on Skytrain was; and for those who know the story, an object case in out-and-out influence peddling.

Of course, what the NeoCons want to shriek about instead is FastFerries, and how corrupt the NDP regime supposedly were. Yeah, well at least the NDP were trying to give BC workers jobs, instead of giving them to factories in Ontario.....

[Typo above: Globe and Mail had let the REPORTERS etc. (not "reports")

Carlos
re:
"Harper's off to a great start. Not officially the PM yet and he's already decided that Canada will not recognise the new democratically elected Palestinian gov't.
Says he can't recognise it because they're terrorists."

Actually - Prime Minister-elect Harper said 'his Conservative government won't accept Hamas as long as it continues to support terrorism and call for the destruction of Israel.'

Sounds reasonable to me.

If Hamas want's the recognition of free world states they should be prepared to meet some standards. The PM2b didn't declare they had to renounce values necessary for their survival.

Great piece of analysis and writing following my last post above, Friendly Giant. It is regrettable we got off on an initial misunderstanding of each other, and I apologize for any "indiscretions" I may have directed towards you. I'm not a genteel, mannered sort of guy-, though I can put it on when the circumstances require-, as difficult as that may be to believe. :-)

In any case, I think we finally have the table cleared of all our opening misunderstandings.

"Now, as for the comparison to Venezuela and Vietnam and elsewhere (excluding Cuba in this comparison as you'll see why), what you have to remember gepolitically and strategically is that none of those successful-rebel countries share a common border with the United States; both Venezuela and Vietnam are mountainous, jungled and heavily populated with people of common purpose and resolve. Bolivia even more so, albeit less mountainous (though tremendously higher-up). Canadians are strung out on a thin 100-mile line along this impossibly long boundary, with the bulk of the population in three major city-complexes, all of them within an hour or two of the border (Vancouver: 30-40 minutes). We don't have an ocean and a mountain range and a difficult sea coast to protect us along that line, and we also don't have anywhere to retreat to except maybe the Shield, the High Arctic, or the recesses of BC's deep and often isolated valleys. It's not the same game; we're too close, too indefensible, too spread out." Friendly Giant.

(A premature ejaculation above... I will simply carry on.)

Great piece of analysis and writing following my last post above, Friendly Giant. It is regrettable we got off on an initial misunderstanding of each other, and I apologize for any "indiscretions" I may have directed towards you. I'm not a genteel, mannered sort of guy-, though I can put it on when the circumstances require-, as difficult as that may be to believe. :-)

In any case, I think we finally have the table cleared of all our opening misunderstandings.

First, I agree with much of your overall analysis of how the coming period is likely to more or less evolve, and the major elements driving it; oil and a growing appetite for "security of supply" of other people's resources generally, on the part of The Empire. They are like a mammoth forest fire burning through their own and other peoples timberlands, brooking no natural or man made boundaries.

And it is true, even looked at in purely on the ground strategical terms, as you point out, that there are many unique elememts amd difficulties to even our geographic situation. And it all does complicate matters "militarily defensive", came it to that, no doubt.

Though I hasten to point out the open plains and desert vulnerability of much of Iraq as well, nonetheless thus far successfully denying Amerika even their oil supply, at current levels of the insurgency, in the quantities The Empire needs to pay for their own incursion into Iraq, and on which they were dearly counting going in. The distances are somewhat less for sure, but then much of the transportation technology available to the Iraqi insurgents I'm sure, will tend to make those distances look and feel greater than they may appear looking simply at a map drawing.

The point being, every determination to defend one's sovereign turf from a foreign invader/occupier carries with it particular strategic, logistical, tactical and other problems that have to be overcome. For the Vietnamese it was having to build and traverse extensive jungle supply lines, lacking much of a road structure, carrying much of their war materiales to the front on their backs, on bicycles and motorcycles, including such field artillery as they possessed, and building underground cave networks to safely hide and get a lot of these materiale, fighting manpower, lines of communication, medical services and command structure into close enough position to the enemy that they could function with any degree of security from The Empire's defoliants and airpower etc..

From previous post...

The point being, our geography poses a unique set of problems, no doubt, requiring its own unique creativity and effort to overcome, but that is much a matter of planning, attention to detail, manpower, the availability of suitable equipment, and then finally but no less, the resolve to do it and prevail. Which is not to deny the problems,or even minimize them, but merely to say, or claim, that it is nonetheless doable, assuming the prerequisite sets are in place. (Which is why "down in the dirt", "hands on", "put your back into it" working class forces tend to make the best troops, over other class elements. Not to exlude any hail and hardy persons, male or female. :-)

For starters, your description of the power and economic centres of the country being within a 100 mile strip, an hour or two from the border with the US is entirely accurate, as I earlier raised myself. Which says immediately to me, much of the preparation needs to be focussed, as in Iraq, rather than Vietnam as an example, on what is much likely going to be an urban defensive war situation. (Again, look to Iraq for the kinds of weaponry needed for that.) That has to be seen as the first and primary front, I think. That's where "they" will go and attempt to "secure" as their primary target.

Then adjuncted but tactically separate from that would likely be small, lightly armed and highly mobile "commando" type forces roaming the rural and resource town country side, as far afield as one can reliably spread them, depending on the location of your invader enemy's forces, sabotaging and otherwise harassing him, attempting to distract him, slow him up, extacting a price in blood and treasure, and generally denying him a secure environment in which to extract the nation's natural riches and move them south.

Again, without in anyway attempting to minimize all the inherent problems and risks to such a strategy. And while my "defensive war plan" :-), generated from the comfort of my keyboard, no doubt, is far from complete and being thoroughly thought out to every detail, does demonstrate, I think, that the "defense of the nation" in nearly any circumstance, including ours, is entirely possible, subject to adequate planning, assembly of forces and materiale, including suitable "light" arms, and then finally and in many ways most importantly, the creativity and will to succeed.

If these latter ingrediants of "creativity and will" are not there however, then you ain't got nothin', even to start with.

And it is this latter element, which the nation most lacks, and may never have, I don't know. But once and assuming that is in place, everything else suddenly begins to look at least immediately "more possible".

Then you hope it never has to happen, and that the US citizenry will see the wisdom of keeping their government in line and their troops at home.

But if there was ever a right time for this country to move, to recover its sovereignty and control over its own economic and political future, the time is now, while your "potential" foe is bogged down in another fight elsewhere. That, at least, Latin America has learned, even if we have, not YET.

Thanks maikeru, always nice when someone agrees.

Thanks SFG, I had never heard much on the Solidarity time except in passing. In fact, most of what I know was from Coyote and I believe allan and a few others on the Tyee.

Sounds like it would be something for a good documentary or book.

I would say this is a strength, not a weakness. The cities are in fact where our infantry would perform best and where the invader's offensive technology would perform worst.

Actually, as would I. This observation has likewise been confirmed in Iraq.

US Empire forces are of the more or less classic, two traditional armies lined up against each other on an open battlefield type, where outcomes are much decided by hardware, the speed and firepower of one's heavy armour etc. It's the trap Sadaam and his forces fell into in the first Iraq war, but learned from in advance of the second.

Deny US forces that open battlefield, and though they then whine about your cowardice and unwillingness to engage them like real men, you bring it more down to mano a mano level warfare, where the odds at least tend to balance out and are more contingent on the intangibles of fighting spirit, willingness to endure however long it takes, combat intelligence and creativity. Which general "intangibilities" tend more to fall to those forces defending home and hearth, over those far removed from it and fighting more because that is what they are merely directed to do by their "non-combatant elites."

That's if their OUR infantry, and not THEIR infantry in our uniforms....

But still:

This is dicey turf, what with the Patriot Act monitoring us friendly aliens and all, and "our" intel people working for them...not that we're talking insurrection here, but we're definitely in "extremely sensitive" terrain...

So anyway...urban warfare, huh? Shite. OK, well we've all seen Baghdad. Worth remembering a certain once-beautiful city named Sarajevo, and also worth remembering that Bosnia is about the size of the West Kootenay or the Cariboo, and Croatia you could fit into the valleys from Osoyoos up through Sicamous over to Savona. Some here are no doubt old enough to remember Beirut when it was in the throes of the madness of urban warfare.....

This is in connection with my scorched-earth comment earlier; the actual resistance's best redoubt is not in the cities, but in harrying the lines of supply from the resource empire farther north. The urban warfare would keep "their" hands full, as well as raise international alarums (if not any actual material support), but the real meal deal is the resource hinterland. Cities they've got lots of

Other than the automotive and aerospace belts in ON and QC, there's little strategic value to Canadian cities, i.e. in terms of controlling the landscape beyond. Sure, ports (Vancouver, Halifax), rail hubs (Wpg, Mtl, the Soo), and all that, but it's not like any city actually has a strategic control over the province associated with it; Vancouver and the Interior might as well be on two different planets, as we know.

Their strategic objectives, if pursued, will be the Columbia River Treaty Dams, the Bridge River and Nechako Diversions, key highway junctions across the Interior and North - Prince George, Ft St John and Kamloops particularly, all nuclear installations wherever they are back east, the federal and provincial capitals and the financial districts and telephone C.O.s in all the cities. But the main objectives? Oil and, oh yeah, water and a secure overland trunk route to Alaska. Our cities are a nuisance by comparison, and a political/diplomatic liability.

Now, there's the matter of Calgary, which might well welcome the US invaders with its legs in the air like some dance-hall floozie in love with the new marshall in town.....

cont:
Still, my ex-Yugoslavian friends and I have stood overlooking Greater Vancouver from the North Shore and from Burnaby Mountain. The scale of the Siege of Sarajevo was brought home to me when it was pointed out that a sniper on Capitol Hill could hit Blueridge or even lower Lynn Valley, and what a great place for an artillery emplacement to shell Metrotown from. The British Properties would make an ideal location for both barrage and snipers harrassing downtown.....and the hills of the East End make for ideal shooting-gallery turf.

Also consider that during an insurrection or other internal strife, the city's water and power supplies can be cut off, or destroyed (either by the occupying power or the resistance), thereby incapacitating the West End, Yaletown etc (elevator addicts...). Could get really ugly is what I'm saying. Food supply? And where does our food supply come from these days?

Revelation in 1983 was that the way it would happen is nothing would be in the air the day before, but you'd wake up with US tanks and APCs on all major intersections, e.g. Broadway & Cambie, Granville & Georgia, 41st & Knight/Granville/Oak, Burrard & Cornwall and many more, and the banks and the port and airport "secured" by US troops; or by "our" own guys augmented by US auxiliaries and heavy equipment.

Also, all us foolish open-mouthed politicos can be expected to have been rounded up overnight (the word "cupidity" comes to mind), or soon after, if we hadn't had the sense to see it coming and get out of the way....

Quite frankly, I'm a veteran of the old 81-82 Peace Movement and would rather see 200,000-500,000 people on civil disobedience than 200,000-500,000 people in violent urban insurrection. Whether giant sit-downs around US forces would be roughed up, or the glare of the international media would be strong enough to protect the demonstrator, either one is preferable to unorganized insurrection; not that we should take our beating, but more than to fight back, to engage, is to sink to THEIR level. This is all and very nicely alstruistic I know; but somehow the ideal of channelling Mahatma Gandhi is a lot more appealing that channeling Che Guevara; whether it's more effective has not clearly been shown.

Chances are it's going to be our own politicians - or military - that invite them in. That makes any resistance to the effort, when and if it comes, as "insurgency" and "rebellion" and maybe rump MPs/MLAs can form a "provisional government" in hiding. But we can tear each other to pieces in civil war, for all they care, while they take over the Tar Sands and divert a few rivers and such......

Defensive geography is further complicated in BC by the century-old reality that all the border valleys open south, rather than connect east-west; actual territorial unity is not achievable, in a military sense, until north of the Thompson River. Across the so-called "West", the 49th Parallel was a treaty boundary, not one evolved by geography or war; it is unnatural, a fiction, and utterly indefensible.

SFG, right, we can't stop them from taking our key objectives. What we can do though, like a porcupine, is inflict a level of pain that will make them decide its not worth it.

Urban warfare in the cities combined with commando style raiding of supply lines and blowing up of our own infrastructure to deny our resources.

I don't believe the US army is big enough to fight a war in Canada for longer than two years. They have enough problems with just Baghdad, if they were fighting in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal etc I think they'd wear down pretty quick. In Iraq they at least have much of the population in a peaceful position, that is they welcome democracy. Here, they wouldn't have that except in isolated pockets.
The expansion of a peacetime defensive army would also provide us with a better sense of unity if war came, those fighting in Vancouver would be reasonably assured they weren't on their own.

By fighting back we would also create the conditions for a strong anti-war movement there. Many Americans might think at first we'd welcome annexation, a "mere matter of marching" as they once put it, but once we fought back those illusions would disappear.

yes, food supply would be a huge problem. Assuming the enemy didn't feed our population to get them onside we would probably be incapable of doing it ourselves.

"Quite frankly, I'm a veteran of the old 81-82 Peace Movement and would rather see 200,000-500,000 people on civil disobedience than 200,000-500,000 people in violent urban insurrection. Whether giant sit-downs around US forces would be roughed up, or the glare of the international media would be strong enough to protect the demonstrator, either one is preferable to unorganized insurrection; not that we should take our beating, but more than to fight back, to engage, is to sink to THEIR level. This is all and very nicely alstruistic I know; but somehow the ideal of channelling Mahatma Gandhi is a lot more appealing that channeling Che Guevara; whether it's more effective has not clearly been shown." Coyote.

More of that same "post" prematurity. :-)

Many good points again, Friendly Giant. And I must admit too, I feel a little exposed here in this conversation as well. Big Brother is doubtless watching and listening. (Still, without some folks prepared to take some level of risk, nothing of any serious weight will ever get discussed, or measures taken.)

But re: your quote at the lead in here, I agree with Frank-, I don't think it is a question of either/or, but of a multi-fronted strategy, as it was even in Mahatma Ghandi's India in reality, where there was armed resistance to the Raj going on at the same time, thus including both the elements of armed resistance AND mass peaceful civil disobedience. Both front aspects need to be in place and being acted upon. (British Imperialism merely chose itself to give all the credit to Mahatma, for reasons that served them and their interests, at home and abroad.)

I'm less sure about the timelines Frank proposes, but certainly our geography and strategic facilities and resources placement pose problems for the hypothetical "enemy" as well. It spreads them out along a long front, and thins them out even more as they would move inland to occupy sources of raw materials etc. So even on the purely strategic and tactical military front, everything doesn't work to their advantage either, but indeed, works to level the playing (fighting) field for the home defensive forces as well.

Though I must also concede as well, I am no less worried about our own current, at least "ostensibly" national military forces, and who they would fall under the control of and serve. Under current arrangements with the complicity of the Canadian State, I don't think there is any doubt. But they are certainly going to be "conflicted" troops, as the struggle becomes more protracted, and the real nature of the struggle and its issues more clarified, of that one could bet with "reasonable" certainty.

Of the neoconservative forces such as we can observe and read here however, there is no doubt as to which Master's Voice they would serve. They already serve it as traitors.

What's all this talk of defending against American military intrusion ?
We're not pantywaists - we're the Canadians fer crissakes - we attack !!

We concentrate our forces in Alberta, then slash down through Montana, Idaho and Nevada and launch a massive blow on San Francisco !

Capturing California, and seizing ports such as San Diego would split the American military forces, and there would be no Dunkirk to save those trapped in Washington and Portland.

There are literally millions in America who recently talked of moving to Canada - much like American draft dodgers before them - to escape the tyranny of their own government, and who would welcome Canadian liberation forces and join up.

Bring it to them ! Fight on American soil ! Attack !!

And we should certainly feel free, as Canadians, to discuss the defence of our own nation.

And Maikeru is clearly just another wingnut provocateur. Or just a simple blithering fool.

haha Maikeru, I like it. We'll use anti-Bush blue-staters to augment our forces and act as fifth-columnists. Why stop there? We'll invite Venezuelan, Bolivian, Cuban and French International Brigades

Then we'll set the border along the Columbia, Snake, Missouri rivers and annex Alaska

Coyote, maikeru has two points. One, when the US invaded us in 1812 they attacked along 3 routes but Isaac Brock didn't wait for them in spite of being outnumbered on both the Niagara and Detroit frontiers, he took the offensive and took Detroit and destroyed Hull's army.

The other point is that with the domestic stresses on the US and the division into blue-staters and "jesusland" its always possible that it would be a weak America lashing out at us in an attempt to get everyone to unite around a foreign enemy and therefore we might have a lot of domestic US allies who would want to see their aggressive president defeated.

Bingo Frank !
Look what Israel did back in '67 when beset by a similar problem as Canada faces today with the threat of American belligerance all along the border. They attacked !
And a week later had grown in size faster than a sea monkey tablet dropped in a glass of water.

Oh, an interesting enough concept alright, though I certainly do not take it seriously, and still tend to view his suggestion more of the provocateur variant, regardless of their historical roots.

Still, anyone paying attention even to the US media these days, cannot miss the blips/random indications here and there of the neocon's class and race induced divisions beginning to re-arise within US society, no doubt. Also destined to evolve up here too, as well. Which is that positive aspect in a negative situation, destined to arise out of this period of neconservative dominance, which I have suggested is likely to drive the future politics of "opportunity" for the left here. Already beginning to do so. And which is destined to shape the "radicalized" character of that left, in my view.

And while the dynamic of military conflicts throws up its own kind of logic from the chaos, and in such a situation, future divisions/contradictions occurring and such as may yet further develop within US society itself may well certainly play a part as suggested here, it's a hook I would rather not take here, at this time. Indeed, for prudence sake, I won't even bite at it.

That said, once a military conflict is engaged, all options and possibilities suddenly are thrown open to consideration. I am aware of that. :-)

coyote
The best defense is a good offense. Hiding behind women's skirts is fine if you're a politician, but not the stuff of Canadian soldiers.

You're dang right Canadians should be free to discuss the defense of our nation, but that doesn't mean we can't talk too of liberating like-minded folks from tyranny, as our forebears did.

Remember if you will that Canadians invaded Hitler-controlled Europe more than 2 years before the rest of the allied forces landed. Unfortunately, the Dieppe beachhead was over-run before reinforcements arrived from Normandy (or was it Norway ?).

So, we seize Seattle and Spokane tomorrow afternoon, Portland and Salt Lake the next day, and San Francisco and Denver by the end of the week? Have I got that right? And we can count on the American left to launch a civil war within the US to back up our invasion? OK, I'm in.....

Time for my daily constitutional, get some groceries in for supper, and tend to some business.

I think I'll do something simple. I've got some really nice Bratwurst sausage, maybe some spaetzla, oooo, and a little fresh made pickled red cabbage. Not spectacular, but certainly tasty Deutsche peasant style fare. ( I like fancy schmancy too, but I'm also a bangers and mash kinda guy. :-) When it comes to women too. :-)

Dieppe, if my memory serves. And I'm well aware enough of the interchangeable relationship between offense and defense. :-)

Regards to ya, brothers.

Are you nuts SFG ?
What has Seattle got that Canada needs ? Certainly not the rain.
We can't even afford Air Canada - what the hell are we going to do with Boeing ? And Microsoft ...please !?

Have you ever seen Seattleites ? They're huge!! Feeding them after capture would take all the wheat in Saskatchewan.

You thinking way too small here.
Think Lee at Gettysburg arriving one day earlier !

Even Harper told the Americans to butt out when talking Cdn moves to protect our Arctic sovereignity.

Anyway maikeru, tell you what, we'll work on the defence and we'll send you as an agent provocateur to stir things up in the US. The US will shoot you of course if you fail. They're not big on Pancho Villas coming across the Rio Grande or the 49th.

Bada boom

I'm still trying to figure out the incantation required to have your own harem :-)

(I'm referring to yesterdays Tyee link to the guy in Japan)

Heck Frank
Johnny Canuck has already reconnoitered the situation down there. That's the trouble with you brasshats - by the time orders come down the pipeline they're too late, too limited and too long.

Chair-lifting snipers to the top of Grouse Mountain is a waste of resources which could be better employed at the Peace Arch right now against marauding murderers in Mercury's.

I note that Denmark's entire navy - already larger than Canada's - is ice-breaker capable....and also picking at the carcass
.
We'll deal with them after we take San Diego.

Nobody's yet explained how the California, Oregon and Washington Highway Patrols and State Troopers didn't intercept these guys farther south; it's not like I-5 is a network of complicated roads it's hard to trace someone along, right? And don't you think it odd that a run-amok pursuit like that would slam into the Canadian border on election day? Just all very odd......

I'm just thankful they didn't get the few more feet that would have entitled them to refugee status and a bank of tay-payer funded future-federal politicians.

There's your proof of my hypothesis that we have but to 'kick down the door and the whole rotten structure will fall'. Two guys, likely in a stolen vehicle, cross 2 state lines and get within Daisy Air Rifle range of another country.
How the hell are they going to stop our boys ?

The reason they failed was that their timing was off.
They had likely been paid to show up on election day here, but stopped off in Seattle to watch a Seahawk's cheerleader practise, arriving 2 days too late to bolster Conservative electoral chances.

That's likely why the Washington State Patrol received a tip-off.

Yeah, let's hope you guys all go out for your constitutional and then home for dinner. There's enough hot air around here to cook a feast. Just remember, while you guys are blathering on endlessly about the state of the country, women are, for the most part, busy getting things done around here. Let's see less talk and more action.

Just a quick note relating to blogging generally and the recent federal election.

We have identified at least a dozen so-called anonymous bloggers-and linked them back to individuals working in various government positions including at least one being paid by Public Affairs.

We are hot on the trail of these 'regular bloggers' including identifying if their blogs were sent during business hours with their government job.

The list is growing quickly, and we hope to have an unavailing of these culprits in the coming weeks, perhaps in conjuction with Accountability legislation.

We're having some fun now!

Cammy - this is cyberspace - talk IS action.

In real life guys don't talk much about such things because wimminfolk don't like that kind of talk.

One thing that always strikes me sideways when I visit folks in hospital is that most of the nurses are overweight. Why is that ?
It's a hospital fer crissakes !
Why are overweight nurses making emaciated old-age vets take their guldarn drip-stands outside to smoke in the guldarn rain ??

Really? Launched a national defence policy, have we? Exactly what have women been getting done while the few of us have been spewing here?

Your comment was, ultimately, sexist. If women are so superior to men, then....well, gee, we might as well just all go to the beer parlour then, and leave the business of running the country to YOU. When do you start?

Hey ROBBINS Sce Research:

If you find that government job I'm supposed to have, could you let me know what it is so I know where to go to pick up my paycheque? Gee, I might even have a pension and an RRSP I didn't know about.....

As noted in one of my other posts, either in this page or elsewhere, the last few days there've been a few voices appearing in the comments sections that sound and look way too much like the hack/jingo tripe that the papers are so fond of publishing these days; so many of them obvious political-party tub-beaters and disinformationists. You'd think they'd at least hire people that don't sound infantile and downright uneducated (don't mean you, climber, but the letters-column folks). That's that pandering-to-the-lowest-common-denominator thing that dumbs down everything, and obscures the important stuff with irrelevant sniping and name-calling.

Do let us know who you find out is here. Hilarious if it were Mark Marrissen or Norm Spector maybe. And, again, do let me know if I'm on someone's payroll, because I don't have my February rent together yet and if there's a government or political party cheque somewhere out there for me I kind of need it before Wednesday....

Kiss asss, Cammy. Just another neocon wingnut trying to control the conversation.

Well, we have one shared experience. :-) Which many women really need to get beyond, in my humble view.

Though even here, there is a tendency amongst more than women bloggers to view discussion of national defence/military issues as crank talk, not related to the real world. (Not being to say, such "military cranks" do not exist.) Which couldn't be further from the truth, of course. But regardless, it's as basic a discussion that needs to go on as that about jobs, medical care and education. Unfortunate, but true in even the "modern" world. (A phenomena about which US citizens are noticeably less reluctant to engage in serious discussion. Check out their blogs.)

I suspect it just makes folks uncomfortable. That or some insecure/nervous/frightened, I don't know. It seems to shore up the association of males with violence for these insecure folks.

When the ordinary citizenry don't talk about it and develop their understanding of it, and their knowledge of the military policy options, it winds up often being decided for you, as in this country, in ways that are contrary to yours and "the nations" interest.(Being how we have an officer corp much subject to US policy assumptions and integrated into their command structures, and a subject military generally, again more tied to serving The Empire and its interests, than that of our own nation.)

Get up to speed, Cammy, or go back to your knitting and leave such weighty matters to the men. <Heavy sarcasm>

And don't mistake that comment above. I personally welcome and invite women into this discussion and others that may occur on the same subject, even though they may feel some insecurities about it. Some again, of course, will not. It's a subject on which all are served by understanding it, I think.

A question is only stupid if one already knows the answer. Otherwise, all questions are appropriate. :-)

Robbin's,

We are hot on the trail of these 'regular bloggers' including identifying if their blogs were sent during business hours with their government job."

Very interesting, Robbin. I will be reading with much interest, to hear what you have to say on this subject in the future. (But then I always find your researches interesting, whether I agree with or like their result or not. I credit you at least with honesty, unlike some of the polling done.)

And I think you can read between the lines on what my suspicions are here, in the age of Echelon, the US Patriot and Homeland Security Acts, and the bootlick services our own security RCMP and CSIS agencies provide for their Foreign Master.

The reality is, the online community and others, especially the political blogs, are being watched and monitored. That's not paranoia, but a simple fact of life. And we might as well be aware of it.

http://www.echelonwatch.org/

And agents de provocateur, working for security agencies are out there, to spread their obfuscations and engage in a kind of "flushing out" and "entrapment", especially of nationalist and "left wing" persons they perceive to be dangerous.

Me? I'm too far along and old to really give a shitt. :-)

SFG-We have already nailed a big fish out of the Atlantic Provinces. Maybe I should give Danny's office a call.

These people shouldn't be blogging. The exchange of ideas should be pluralistic not contrived and cooked, that is why I admit who we are.

My partners (and some callers better known to me) don't necessarily agree with some of my comments, but it doesn't matter so long as they provide real data collection.

I think these others are cowards quite frankly.

Robbins, I blog during business hours all the time. Its when I'm on the computer that I'm working and doing the Tyee thing. Separate windows of course.

No gov't job here nor any boss at all.

Robbins,

But I gotta know one thing, why'd you pick the discussion on Cdn defence to post your warning?

Well, after my successful tour of Canada during the recent election, I realized first of all that the Tyee seemed to have the best debate-or at least I feel most comfortable here.

Secondly, I wanted to come into a blog that correlated more closely with the election date, thirdly the title had the word blog in it, and lastly and (probably least to normal people-not I) as an old ex national goalkeeper I know a thing or two about defence-kidding, but it occurred to me just how vulnerable blogs are (downside) and how new and dynamic they are (upside).

A teacher of mine from the past Karl Friedmann BC's first Ombudsman once told me I had a knack for linking seemingly unrelated subject matter-and secondly that my collective talents would be best served producing riots.

I am uncertain whether this was a compliment or not, but fact and whimsy (I am a big fan of whimsy)-even the leaves that swirl around in the wind eventually land somewhere-I am always curious if more land in one general area or another.

Coyote
There's no need to be telling wimminfolk to buss butt buddy.

Nor any merit in the accusation that some keyboard comrade is "Just another neocon wingnut trying to control the conversation."
when one has but to scroll up the thread to see it's in fact you who's trying to control the thrust of discussion herein.

You've several times tossed out the buzzword 'neocon' - always in a derogatory way including to actually equating the word with treachery.

Witness:
Still, there is a low level debate beginning to occur, and in the right circumstances, all things social, economic and political can change very quickly in the right circumstances-, witness the arrival and development of this currently traitorous Neocon period

Of the neoconservative forces such as we can observe and read here however, there is no doubt as to which Master's Voice they would serve. They already serve it as traitors.

That's a pretty serious accusation against fellow Canadians whose views you neither understand nor share.

It's you and your sort who are exhibiting treachery by attempting to control free speech in online discussion through libellous accusations.

Coyote- As a political science student I spent at least part of the time thinking and writing from the Marxist perspective. Admittedly, I am 'conservative' but I don't think I would fit in well with neocons per se.

But given the theory relating to communism-the utopia never achieved, and our understanding of how the system really works, isn't it fair to say that most governments in the western world whether they say they are conservative, liberal, or labour all really operating from a neoncon platform?

Frank re:
No gov't job here nor any boss at all.

Single, eh ?

Let's see now..... how much does it cost the taxpayers for each election we have?
Millions...
And another one in 2 years?
There has got to be a better system!!

Elections are cheap.
Gun registries are expensive.
How many elections could Canada have held with the funds pissed away to ultimately disarm law-abiding Canadian citizens ?

Where's the exclamations of disbelief - the well deserved derision - with our government's gall in effectively accusing law-abiding citizens of aiding and abetting criminal use of weapons stolen during criminal break-ins of law-abiding citizen's homes ?

That's like the guvmint taking away yer guldarn car after some punk breaks into it and uses it to commit mayhem.

"...but it occurred to me just how vulnerable blogs are (downside) and how new and dynamic they are (upside)." Robbin.

Yes, I think that is true. They are discussions conducted out where any person or agency can monitor them, for purely intellectual or tracking/entrapment purposes. And I don't think there is any question but that the latter goes on as well. So one is really quite "vulnerable" on line in fact, even though there is the illusion of anonymity. That's the down or "riskside".

(Nom de plumes certainly don't keep you anonymous from the intrusions of The Surveillance State-, like gun registries, merely from other innocent persons. One needs to be aware of that going in. There is only the illusion of anonymity. :-)

And the upside, which in my view outweighs the risks, is that it certainly extends the public debate and the level of it, around just about every issue imaginable, available even to Joe Average public, whose information access to here has been much controlled and spoon fed by corporate controlled media, and I think is destined, is changing and helping to drive a change in the direction and level of the dominant politics within even advanced capitalism. And folks heretofore "parent history determined" political loyalties.

I don't think there is any question about that, is there?

And though I am less certain myself about what label to wear around my neck, I clearly have a working class, as opposed to "academic" Marxist grounding, and even yet tend to think of myself as "my own kind of small "c" communist", it has been much modified and shaped by many other "ideas and experience elements" to which I have been exposed, within this "so-called" advanced capitalism-, and its particular Canadian context.

And from that very personal perspective, developed over a rather long time, I think you are right, that it is "-fair to say that most governments in the western world whether they say they are conservative, liberal, or labour, are all really operating from a neoncon platform..."

Indeed, I think that is a very astute observation on your part, and serves to demonstrate that one does have to be careful about judging "some folks" anyway, by the labels they hang on themselves. Certainly here in Tyee, that has been demonstrated to me again and again, on many occassions.

There are Conservatives and there are conservatives, Liberals and liberals, NDPers and ndpers, Greens and greens, and no less, Communists and communists.

I'm just less aware, at least as yet, that there are Neocons and neocons. They are still too relatively new a phenomena (though there is much about them that is rooted in fascism), yet grounded in the "Empire think" of an ascendant and "religiously ideological" and aggressive U.S. Empire School of Thought, for enough disappointment to have created that kind of a distinction..., at least yet.

Haha, ok, I have ONE boss

To which many a hetero male daily genuflects, and submits. :-)

Bless 'em.

Coyote- Great response (sorry for the one to one bloggers).

Let me go peyote on you for a moment. Imagine for a moment that everyone over the age of 18 was permitted to 15-20 sessions with a trained and lets presume (quality) psychologist.

The object in a very rudimentary sense for this discussion would be to break down defence mechanisms such as denial and its evil twin intellectualism (the use of large words like marmalade to effect denial), and permit all who took these sessions the possibility of personal evolution (as opposed to 'the horror the horror').

In this imaginary scenario do you think outcomes for a better society would be the result?

Oh on the paranoia question, any sponsor I have listed in any one of our polls has 'felt' the effects of strange happenings once they have become involved.

Back in 2001 when our polling offices were directly behind Christy Clark's in Port Moody, most of our callers experienced some type of harassment or interference. (I am not saying she was responsible).

Our newer sponsors (willing to have their name published) have recently informed me that people they do not know have come to their storefront taking pictures and such, and they are might conspicuous about it.

When I was publishing independently a decade ago, whenever I would sponsor a controversial subject matter there were always 'unknown suits' in the audience.

I have been audited so many times that it has become a fact of life, and even some of the audits have been purely manufactured fraud.

This is a fact of life when you don't play by the systems sense of what the rules should be.

Thankfully, I love to fight-I'm watching Gangs of New York again as soon as I blog off-

Cutter my fave!

Wingnuts and wingnuts...

Mr/Ms. Maikeru- tell us more about the Wingnuts and wingnuts...

http://iresist.com/cbg/strong1f.gif
http://iresist.com/cbg/strong.html
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http://www.ctv.ca/generic/WebSpecials/election2006/photo_galleries/gallery3/images/img19.jpg

Nice maikeru...any more?

That's one heck of a lot of psychologists....as for the trained/quality, IMO that's highly debatable given the questionable value of psychological theory. Despite its claims to be an "-ology", Psych is a "soft science" or "social science", though I'll grant among that group of vacuous fields it's among the few that actually attempt at scientific proof; but like so many such para-xciences it also has a bad habit of prejudicing its results in the design of the experiment....so it's not, in other words, a science; only pretending to be one.

And considering the ongoing revisions to pscyhological theory, and the number of holes that have been punced through, say, Freudian orthodoxy, there's no consistency in this field nor any guarantee that what the prevailing trend is to counsel or maybe medicate someone today (sigh), it is probably entirely the wrong thing, or will produce unfortunate results 20-30 years down the line. All the spoiled, disrespectful brats that came from the popularity of Dr. Spock for instance (K know - I was one of them).

The main "pyschological generator" for younger people is TV and/or videogames. Sitting someone down with a neophyte BA to talk about whatever is of much less importance than the media-ized brainwashing of the boob tube.

So, IMO only someone who places value in - or rather, takes too seriously, their B.A. (Psych), such as this Robbins Research guy (for some reason psych degress are popular with marketing/polling types), could recommend that a cure for social ills is to hire an army of psychologists and process everybody through them like some kind of cheese headed for a sandwich.

To me it's something like a graduate of a school of theology saying that all people need is some prayer and a talk with a preacher or priest; the psychologists espouse every bit as much mumbo-jumbo, and have apppointed themselves the priest-equivalents (Psychiatrists appointed thesmelves the high priests); but it's still all religion, and it's still all poppycock.

Just for the record, as though you don't recognize the writing style: Skookum1 is Sometimes Friendly Giant; I changed over as Skookum1 I'd used on Election Central and it's my main name in wikipedia and elsewhere...