Harper in Copenhagen: a feat of MASSIVE diversion?

A war of words has erupted between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the premier of Quebec, with Jean Charest tearing a strip off Ottawa's environmental performance.

In 25 years in politics, Charest says, he's never seen a federal government rely so heavily on the White House before taking a position on an issue, with Ottawa now saying it will model its climate policy on Washington's.

Exactly what did Harper do in Copenhagen? Didn't in fact Stevie Passive refuse to participate actively in the discussions and negotiations, and thus tacitly supported China's strategy at the climate change conference?

China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. [...] China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait.

[Mark Lynas] saw Obama fighting desperately to salvage a deal, and the Chinese delegate saying "no", over and over again. [...] the Sudanese delegate Lumumba Di-Aping, who denounced the Copenhagen accord as "a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries". Sudan behaves at the talks as a puppet of China; one of a number of countries that relieves the Chinese delegation of having to fight its battles in open sessions. It was a perfect stitch-up. China gutted the deal behind the scenes, and then left its proxies to savage it in public.

Here's what actually went on late last Friday night, as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish prime minister chaired, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN. Probably only about 50 or 60 people, including the heads of state, were in the room. [...]

The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his "superiors".

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. "Why can't we even mention our own targets?" demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil's representative too pointed out the illogicality of China's position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and [...] Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point.

Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord's lack of ambition. China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak "as soon as possible". The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised.

So, back to Stevie Spiteful's shameful performance in Copenhagen. Remember where Stevie traveled before he went to Denmark?

A capitalist country that's perfected a secular model of authoritarian government? A country that holds $800 billion of the U.S. debt? A country Stevie once disdained but now embraces.

Could it be that Stevie and his Harpocrites are kowtowing to their new economic overlords? And, contrary to the overt declaration from the Harper Government, Canada has now become one of China's puppets, with regard to climate change?

The V word.

Kim and Amy Sedgwick, founders and co-owners of Red Tent Sisters have urged Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett to contact the federal health minister.

Bennett, a medical doctor, wrote to Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq this week, asking the government not to "shy away from legislation that protects us just because the topic of sex toys make us uncomfortable. [...] "In Canada, we are not yet doing enough to protect women against very high concentrations of materials linked to reproductive and other health issues."

Vibrators and other plastic sex toys contain chemicals such as bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates, which make plastics soft and flexible. Canada has banned BPA in baby bottles, and in June, Health Canada proposed a ban on phthalates in all children's toys.

More here, here and here.

Bennett's initiative is likely doomed to failure as the only dildoes and dickheads palatable to ReformaTories are the ones in Stevie Spiteful's cabinet.

Of Attack Parrots and Lowly Fishies.

How many Attack Parrots™© are required for the loathsome ReformaTories to hang onto power?

The Attack Parrot™© tactic was officially branded in December 2008, when Stevie Spiteful's Harpocrats tried to discredit the nascent Progressive Coalition. An e-mail flew out from the PMO with specific talking points, very detailed scripts for Tory partisans to use on radio phone-in shows, a template for letters to newspaper editors and a couple of "Just The Facts" cheat sheets.

Dr Dawg neatly summarized that episode in Canadian political history:

Our PM and his media allies, trading on the average Canadian's abysmal ignorance of our political system, talked of coups and separatists and (horrors) back-room deals and cabals. A flowering exercise in political democracy was made to look so scary that Canadians got worried. A PM that they never elected was about to be toppled by three other parties, one of them separatist. (Never mind that the fear-monger in question made his own deal with the devil in 2004, and his then-party the Canadian Alliance tried the same thing back in 2000.)

We noted the regurgitation of speaking points from the PMO - it was a constant yammering loop of fallacies and prevarications, including the shameless accusation that the Progressive Coalition was attempting to illegally seize power in Parliament and "overturn the election". Remember, the Opposition parties held the majority of elected seats. They still do.

So - the return of the Attack Parrots™©. Daniel Petit of course. And the biggest, loudest, open-screeching-maw, repeat-repeat-repeat-repeat Attack Parrot™© of them all - John Baird.

They're proliferating, it seems.


Meanwhile, back in our poor abused oceans, the lowly and once plentiful menhaden may be facing ignominious extinction.

So what? Well, it turns out the menhaden may be the only living creature that most ressembles the schmoo, in its uncanny capacity to minister to a range of human needs. And it also cleans the water in the oceans!

Won't someone think of the little fishies?

What's next? Holding their breath until they turn blue?

Oh wait. They already are. ReformaTory Con job blue.

This morning I heard a most revolting, though predictable, interview on Radio-Canada. Daniel Petit, MP for Charlebourg-Haute-Saint-Charles was asked why his Conservative colleagues did not attend the scheduled meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Afghanistan. His rote answer - in reply to every question - was that they would not allow the Canadian troops to be dirtied by the opposition's accusation that they are war criminals. Over and over again. The interviewer tried to get a truthful response in spite of Petit's broken record technique. "Why do your MPs disrespect Parliament and the electorate who expect them to do their job?"

Second verse, same as the first from Petit: "We will not allow our brave soldiers to be dirtied by such accusations." Petit stonewalled his way through the exchange, clutching the party line and waving it like a flag bespoiled by fatuous spin doctors in the Con ranks.

One tactic I doubt Stevie Spiteful and his Harpocrites would ever use is the hunger strike. Look at that rotund assembly of sleek double-chinned wonders. One week without food and they're grilling Senator Porky Pig on a spit.

Update: Daniel Petit is the political equivalent of a sock-puppet; at all times you're aware that somebody off-stage is pulling the strings, especially the one that triggers the scripted blather-loop.

There's so much more of course, to the dog-and-pony show. C.C. nails it in his post: Brave, brave, brave Sir Stephen. As does Balbulican, here.

Lest we forget ...

LuLu at Canadian Cynic blogs about Stevie Harpocrite -  Canadian Cynic: Hypocrisy ...

Bald-faced lying is the trademark and standard operating procedure of Stevie's New™ Government.

Will the usual ReformaTories and Con sycophants rail against the never-ending obfuscations?

Or better still, will the haters direct their vitriolic rage against this individual who is suing the government for complicity in his torture as they did against Suaad Hagi Mohamud, spewing xenophobic fear-mongering and racist loathing by the bucketful?

I suspect not.

Rightwingnut haters howl and shrieeek.

Suaad Hagi Mohamud and her lawyers have given legal notice that they are going to Federal Court to sue the Canadian government as well as to demand a public inquiry and to secure a formal apology. From here:

An inquiry must be called to investigate whether Mohamud's race and culture played a role in how she was treated, said one of Mohamud's lawyers, Julian Falconer.

Falconer represented Maher Arar in his lawsuit against Ottawa. "If a Caucasian person had been in Suaad's position in Kenya, would she have received the callous and reckless treatment she did?" he said.

"We don't know the answer. We need someone to look at it and answer that question, because frankly, I find it hard to believe that a white, Anglo-Saxon person in her position would have been treated the same way."

Read the irrational loathing spewed in the 300+ comments at the CBC website following the news item from supporters of Stevie's Harpocrites if you have the stomach for it.

As we observed here and here, there's a certain selective political opportunism at play when anti-feminists shrieeeek "Where are the feminists?"

Though it's possible a few fundamentalist christian, rightwing religious conservatives just might support the legal rights of brown-skinned women if they're dead, pregnant, or a fetus. Even then, not so much.

Will Zygote Zealots Rule at the Con Con?

Back in July, Le Devoir disclosed that members of the Québec CPC were unanimously opposed to a resolution that was presented in the slate of policy resolutions for discussion and ratification at the November convention.

Some party members from the West have inserted a proposition to integrate Bill C-484 into the Conservative platform. C-484 is a law that would recognise the fetus in a case where a pregnant mother is murdered. In such a case, the murderer would be charged with two murders instead of one. This is, in fact and despite what the bill itself says, a backdoor way to outlaw abortion because it
recognises the fetus as a legal person. It isn’t a far step to go from that to claiming the termination of the fetus in an abortion to be murder as well. And this isn’t just an over-reaction, similar laws in the United States have led to the outlawing of abortion in certain jurisdictions.

From here.

In the interval between then and now, Stevie and his Harpocrites threw Ken Epp and his Bill C-484 under the bus in a miscalculated bid to placate Québec voters and remove any obstacle to their desired majority rule. Now it has been revealed that a modified version of C-484 is among the hundreds of resolutions up for approval next week at the Con Con.

Is anyone actually surprised? I hope that there are fireworks and MASSIVE confrontations between the fundamentalist religious Cons and the pro-choice Cons.

First posted at Birth Pangs.