Electile dysfunction 2008
Alienation Autopsy
Canadian Arab News
October 19, 2008

Let’s see…Stephen Harper decides to waste $300-some million to con the electorate into giving him the majority government he so richly doesn’t deserve, and he…lost.

Stéphane Dion, the only electable alternative to Harper’s one-man theocratic despotism, ran on a largely environmental platform—the carbon tax—and he…lost.

NDP leader Jack Layton used hackneyed appeals to Mr. and Mrs. “Ordinary Canadian” to get him into 24 Sussex Dr., and he…lost.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May proved that a fledgling, fourth-place national party, no matter how sincere, only serves to split the anti-Harper vote. Yep, she lost, too.

In fairness to May, though, no honest expression of the popular will was possible because of Canada’s undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system, and the Israel Lobby’s political and media influence.

That Harper and his gang would end up forming a second minority government was not surprising—most people expected it, given the lacklustre alternatives—but the fact that he gained seats is an appalling indictment of the state of Canada’s democracy. Voters faced a no-win choice among parties led by The Goof, The Bland or The Ugly, and the result can be read as an expression of disgust with all three.


The Ugly
Stephen Harper The Ugly
Stephen Harper
Going into the election Harper had no coherent economic policy, was caught lying about his prior cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq, and tried to sell out the country’s sovereignty to the U.S.

His campaign, if you can call it that, amounted to a sustained personal attack against Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and denigration of his carbon tax. Many of his humanoid sockpuppets across the country refused to attend all-candidates meetings or even speak to the press.

In a sense, this was to be expected; had Harper and his gang not hid behind slogans and ad hominem attacks they would have had to defend the party’s betrayal of Canadians and Canadian law.

Thanks to the corrupt mainstream media, Harper got all the spin he needed. If the media had been free to do its job properly, it would have highlighted Harper’s undemocratic, criminal misconduct. Here's but a sample of the damage Harper did to Canada that was known before Parliament was dissolved:

‘Foreign’ Policy
Harper expanded Canada's role in the bloody military occupation in Afghanistan, which is now extended until at least 2011. To date, 97 Canadians and thousands of Afghans have died in a war that has cost an estimated $8 billion.

After revelations that prisoners captured by Canadian troops were tortured by Afghan police, Harper dismissed the reports as “rumours and allegations.”

Even after Israel’s July 2006 bombing of the village of Qana in Lebanon and the Israeli killing of a Canadian military observer, Canada refuses to call on Israel to desist from acts of aggression against neighbouring states, to respect the rights of Palestinians, and to withdraw completely from the territories occupied since 1967, in violation of international law and numerous UN Security Council resolutions. Harper even insulted the murdered soldier’s widow after she demanded action be taken.

Harper slavishly supported the U.S.-led Iraq War in 2003. Since taking power, he has refused to criticize the disastrous military occupation that has led to 1 million deaths and millions of refugees.

Domestic Paranoia
Despite a House of Commons resolution supported by the majority of MPs, the Harper government has begun deporting U.S. war resisters who refuse to fight in the illegal and immoral war in Iraq.

Former child soldier Omar Khadr remains the only citizen of a Western country still imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp, and the Harper government refuses to demand his return to Canada.

Ottawa's “no-fly list” raises serious concerns about privacy and individual liberties. The names are shared with Washington, and many Canadians are on the list due only because of similarities with the names of alleged security risks.

A Supreme Court ruling ordered Parliament to amend “security certificate” provisions that allow the state to imprison foreign nationals as “suspected terrorists.” The changes adopted by Parliament do not eliminate “security certificates,” and suspects are still not allowed to see the evidence against them.

Anti-statist Corporatism
Canada's sovereignty is being jeopardized by NAFTA and by the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, a plan that seeks to "harmonize" some 300 critical areas of legislation and regulation, mostly in accordance with U.S. standards. On May 10, 2007, Harper’s MPs shut down parliamentary hearings on the SPP and stormed out after Professor Gordon Laxer testified that Canadians would be left to “freeze in the dark” under plans to integrate energy supplies across North America.

Corporate pre-tax profits now account for a record-high share of Canada's national income—14.6% of GDP compared to a 25-year average of 10%. Yet the corporate tax-rate was cut from 28% in 2000 to 21% in 2006.

Despite the parliamentary defeat of a bill that would strip the Canadian Wheat Board of its single-desk authority, the Harperties refuse to halt their attack on the CWB.

Harper’s increased standing in Parliament is the result of apathy, stupidity and perfidy. Democracy had nothing to do with it, because no rational electorate would knowingly elect a party of traitors.


The Bland
Stéphane Dion The Bland
Stéphane Dion
Stéphane Dion deserved a better fate. Though not charismatic, he is intelligent and capable of rational thought, which is more than can be said for the Harperites.

Unfortunately, a Dion-led government would differ only superficially from the Harperite cabal. The Lobby would still call the shots, thus ensuring there would be no genuine national government. We saw evidence of this is the case of Lesley Hughes and Ken Dryden.

Dion asked Hughes to step down as the party’s candidate for Kildonan-St. Paul in Winnipeg, but only after Hughes found out about from the CBC! What caused this severe punishment? A six-year-old freelance article in which Hughes merely restated previously published facts about the World Trade Centre attack. The “offensive” passage was:

“Many official sources are claiming to have warned the American intelligence community, which spends $30 billion a year gathering information, about the attacks on the twin towers on that heartbreaking day. German Intelligence (BND) claims to have warned the U.S. last June, the Israeli Mossad and Russian Intelligence in August. Israeli businesses, which had offices in the Towers, vacated the premises a week before the attacks, breaking their lease to do it. About 3000 Americans working there were not so lucky.”

More than a dozen news organizations, including Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, had reported this information, which is 100 percent verifiable, so why was Hughes fired? Bernie Farber, head gangster of the Canadian Jewish [sic] Congress, said Hughes’s comment amounted to (what else?) anti-Semitism! The perversity of this tired, cowardly slur was self-evident, yet Dion capitulated without a fight. “I have reviewed the past comments of Lesley Hughes and it is clear they do not meet [our] standard,” he said.

Hughes did not even get a chance to explain herself or discuss the matter with Dion. Even her unnecessary apology was not good enough, Nobody with an independent mind on the WTC attack can be allowed to run for office because the official lie of what happened is what justifies official persecution of Muslims.

Liberal MP Ken Dryden, meanwhile, earned a much different fate. He faced direct opposition from The Lobby in the form of B’nai Brith president Rochelle Wilner. What’s more, his riding of York–Centre is heavily zionized, as the intimidating machinations at York University have shown. Thus, to appear more zionist that Wilner, as if that were possible, Dryden openly endorsed genocide: “Stop all aid that flows into Gaza. While that may seem a harsh measure that will hurt Palestinian civilians… it is the right thing to do at this time.”

Despite a feeble attempt to backtrack, Dryden’s message was clear, as was Dion’s. He came to Dryden’s defence and asked that people not judge him harshly

There you have it: An honest candidate is punished for telling the truth and a zionist panderer who advocates a war crime is protected. A Dion-led government would amount to Harper-lite, and for voters, that amounted to no choice at all.


The Goof
Jack Layton The Goof
Jack Layton
I don’t have much to add to what I said earlier about Jack Layton and his political myopia, so I will focus on its consequences.

In the end almost 2/3 of voters rejected the Harperites, yet Harper still came dangerously close to forming a majority. His share of the popular vote rose less than two percent over the 2006 election, but that was enough to give him 19 more seats. The Liberals, with only 20% less support fell to about half as many seats.

Out of 308 seats only 114 were won by a majority. The riding of Gatineau was the worst: the Bloc Québécois won it with just 29.1% of the vote!

All parties except the Green Party benefited from vote splitting, but it is safe to say that had the Liberals and the NDP worked together instead of against each other, Harper would not have gained as many seats as he did (if any). Layton mused about a coalition arrangement with Dion during the campaign, but that didn't stop him from thinking he could win a two-front war.

Undemocracy in action

YEAR
POLITICAL PARTY

Harperite
Liberal
NDP
2008 (# of seats)
2006
143
124
76
103
37
29

2008 (% vote)
2006
37.6
36.3
26.2
30.2
18.2
17.5
The most inexcusable instance of NDP vote-splitting occurred in Mississauga-Erindale, where popular MP Omar Alghabra lost to a rabid neo-con by 0.4 percent or 239 votes. Why the NDP ran a Muslim in a riding held by a Muslim was monumentally stupid. Even five percent of the 4,767 votes that went to Mustafa Rizvi would have been enough for Alghabra to retain his seat and keep Harper from creeping closer to a majority.

(In B.C. the Greens were also guilty of major vote-splitting, sometimes moreso, so Layton and the NDP can’t be blamed entirely.)

Electorally speaking, Canada will not be a democracy unless two things happen, and happen quickly.

1. Canada’s electoral system must be reformed to allow for the use of preferential ballotsnot proportional representation!—so that the electoral will can be expressed. A preferential ballot would help to de-zionize the country, by allowing voters to vote for their favourite candidate as well as their next favourite. Such a ballot would take power out the hands of parties, place more of it in the hands of voters, and make elections possible again. The zionist hammerlock on our country is most painful during the nomination of candidates, because if The Lobby can determine who can run, it can control the outcome. Even B’nai Brith underboss Frank Dimant admitted that there was little difference between the two.

2. Canada needs a genuine, mature national party to give Canadians a hopeful choice of government, which is more than they have with the no-win scenario of “Zionist A” or “Zionist B.”