Stephen Harper Quotes

Quotations are selected from this pool (and other quotation pools) in a pseudorandom way every hour and inserted at the top and bottom of some of the major pages on this website. Feel free to copy any of these quotes and paste them for whatever purpose you please, including on your own website, blog, social media page or forum debate posts.

Famous Last Words

We will not run a deficit.

~ Jim Flaherty (1949-12-30 2014-04-10 age:64)

I never met Mr. Flaherty, so I can’t comment on whether he was as saintly as the tributes claim. However, I know he was a terrible finance minister, utterly disastrous for Canada. He took money from the poor, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), the underprivileged generally and gave it to the corporations and the wealthy. He squandered unimaginable amounts of money on military toys for Mr. Harper to play general. He was a climate change denier, doing nothing about climate change. Canada is the worst country on earth vis a vis climate change as a result.

Breaking Kyoto

We’re gearing up now for the biggest struggle our party has faced since you entrusted me with the leadership. I’m talking about the Battle of Kyoto — our campaign to block the job-killing, economy-destroying Kyoto accord.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Canadian Alliance fundraising letter, 2002 fall

Harper can’t have it both ways that Kyoto is both job-killing and expensive. Spending on green technology obviously creates jobs. If it could be done without spending any money, it would not create any jobs. Jobs require money to pay the people who fill them. They are good jobs too, ones not easily outsourced.

Count the Lies

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Hansard, 2002-10-11

That is like saying Kyoto does not help catch more cod. There is no reason to think it should. If you are the government, you can define pollutant to mean anything you please, but that does not change the fact that excess CO₂ in the atmosphere has extreme lethal consequences. The function of a SCUBA (Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) rebreather is two-fold, to provide oxygen and to remove CO₂ which becomes fatal above 4%. It is not an inert gas like nitrogen or helium. Mr. Harper, I invite you to put a bag over your head and see if you don’t die from CO₂ poisoning to prove it is harmless. But even that is irrelevant. Excess CO₂ in the atmosphere causes lethal climate changes. 1/5 of all mammals are expected to go extinct soon. Are you not in the least curious? Instead of asking lobbyists in the oil industry, ask some qualified scientists who can give you a straight answer. You are like a miner with cageful of dead canaries and no curiosity.

CO₂ Emissions

Greenhouse emissions [in Canada] are going down.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) in the first 2015 leader debate.

This was the most outrageous lie, a repeat of the one he told 2014-10-07. Not even his most optimistic projections are going down.

Dissembling Extraordinaire

Carbon dioxide which is a naturally occurring gas vital to the life cycles of this planet. Smog is an entirely different issue is not covered by this treaty.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Rafe Mair Show, CKNW Radio Vancouver, 2002-11-29

Harper’s comment betrays an attempt to snow or his abysmal ignorance. CO₂ acts as a chemical global thermostat. It’s a Goldilocks problem. Too little CO₂ and you get an ice age. Too much and you sear the planet. It has to be just right. We have inadvertently jacked the planet’s thermostat way way up to unprecedented levels. It is up to us to rectify the problem that we have created for the entire planet.

Goal: Militarised Canada

Only when Canada is all that it can be is our work done.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) in a campaign ad aired on 2011-04-30

Be All You Can Be was the recruiting slogan of the United States Army for over twenty years.

Harper Against the Environment

No, what I am supportive of is, frankly, not ratifying the Kyoto agreement and not implementing it.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, CTV (Canadian Television network) News, 2002-09-06.

This is the same man who lied brazenly on national television in 2008-10 claiming his political party had the strongest plan to deal with greenhouse gases. Cough!

Harper Hysteria

illegitimate, undemocratic, crazy

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59)

That is how Harper characterises a potential coalition between the Liberals and NDP (New Democratic Party). Harper himself forged a coalition between the Reform Party and the Conservatives. Was that illegitimate? He also proposed a coalition between the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécios. Was that crazy? A coalition is perfectly legitimate. Britain, the creator of our system of government is currently ruled by a coalition. It is completely democratic. If the Liberals and NDP together have more support than the Conservatives, it makes sense they should be dictating policy, not a minority of right wing, anti-environmental, pro-war, plutocratic Harperite fruitcakes.

Harper Insults Canadians

This may be a lot of fun for a few scientific and environmental elites in Ottawa, but ordinary Canadians from coast to coast will not put up with what this will do to their economy and lifestyle…

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Toronto Star, 2002-09-05

I ride a bike. I would love it if diesel trucks emitted less crap in my face. That would be an improvement in my life style I would greatly enjoy.

Harper Leads Country to Suicide

The accord does negatively impact every region of the country. So rather than talk up separation, it is important to build a coalition across the country to defeat Kyoto.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Report Newsmagazine, 2002-12-16

Harper Lies

There is no environmental benefit [to Kyoto] of any kind.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Rafe Mair Show, CKNW Radio Vancouver, 2002-11-29

Since Harper considers selfish economics as the only valid motivation for action I will confine myself to financial benefits. Given that global warming allowed to run rampant will kill billions, that will reduce Canada’s markets for goods. Global warming will submerge the Vancouver International airport and other highly valuable land on the Fraser River delta. Global warming causes extreme weather (droughts, floods, high heat, hurricanes, tornadoes and forest fires from increased lightning, winds, heat and drought). Such weather is less conducive to agriculture. This will impair Canada’s ability to export wheat, beef, canola etc.

Harper Lies a Biggie

I don’t think we should consider signing on to a deal that makes us virtually the sole country in the world that is going to take any action.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Toronto Star, 2002-09-05

Harper has it backwards. Canada is one of the few deadbeat countries which includes the other two biggest polluters Australia and the USA. The Europeans met their Kyoto targets.

Harper Lies Yet Again

This is just the beginning of the biggest black-hole boondoggle in Canadian history.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, National Post, 2003-08-13

On the contrary, doing nothing about alternative energy, efficiency and Kyoto is a boondoggle to put the country at the mercy of big oil, who will be able to jack their prices as high as they please because there will be no alternatives and a shrinking supply of crude.

Harper Spits on Truth

You’re a journalist and we all know journalists make bad politicians. Politicians know they have to stick to a message. That’s how they are successful. Journalists think they always have to tell the truth.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper chastised former Minister of Revenue, Garth Turner, before kicking him out of the party. Turner wrote Sheeple: Caucus Confidential in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa about his experiences.

Harper Wanted War In Iraq

Canada remains alienated from its allies, shut out of the reconstruction process to some degree, unable to influence events. There is no upside to the position Canada took [to stay out of the Iraq war].

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59)

Harper, Climate Change Denier

We think the deal itself [Kyoto] is simply bogus.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Rafe Mair Show, CKNW Radio Vancouver, 2002-11-29

In a sense, Harper is correct. Kyoto is just a baby step, about 1/30 of the job. However, refusing to even start guarantees failure.

Harper’s Big Lie

We can debate whether or not… CO₂ does or does not contribute to global warming. I think the jury is out.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of interview on the Rafe Mair Show, CKNW Radio Vancouver, 2002-11-29

That is simply not true. Harper is parroting FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) put out by big oil. Back in 1824 Fourier discovered the greenhouse effect (when Marx was still only 6 years old). Svante Arrhenius, the great Swedish chemist published his calculations in 1896 about how atmospheric CO₂ concentrations control the average global temperature and how certain amount of CO₂ was needed to prevent an ice age.

Harper’s Biggest Lie

[Global warming is] a scientific hypothesis and a controversial one.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Toronto Star, 2002-09-05

Global warming by greenhouse gases was discovered in 1824. There was some controversy about where the CO₂ was coming from, but that was ago settled because we have good records of all the fuel we burn.

Harper’s Irrelevance

Kyoto does virtually nothing to deal with pollution and to deal with the quality of the air that we breathe. Let’s forget about this unworkable treaty… Kyoto’s never going to be passed.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Toronto Star, 2002-09-05

Some of the techniques for reducing CO₂ also have a beneficial effect on other pollutants as well. For example, more efficient appliances means less coal has to be burned to produce the electricity, which means less sulphur and acid rain. More fuel-efficient cars mean less emissions of all types. Green technology for heating means less particulates emitted. Wind and solar don’t produce any emissions of any kind. But even if reducing greenhouse gas were to have no beneficial effects on traditional pollution, you still have to do it. It threatens global human survival.

Harper’s Kyoto Big Lie

Canada’s implementation will not lead to global reductions of CO₂. In fact the transfer of wealth, jobs and emissions to non-target countries virtually ensures that carbon dioxide emissions will increase under the Kyoto Protocol.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Address at the Ottawa Leader’s Dinner, 2002-11-20

That makes no sense. If Canada reduces its emissions, the global emissions will still be lower than if Canada had done nothing. Canada can’t very well chide other nations for failure to act until it has done its promised bit. Harper is like a guy who never cuts his lawn but runs around the neighbourhood with a bullhorn calling others deadbeats for imperfections in their lawns. You must lead by example.

Harper’s Kyoto Lie

[Kyoto] is designed to address the so-called greenhouse gas phenomenon, the hypothesis that the increase of certain gases — not necessarily pollutants — contribute to a long-term global warming trend.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Address at the Ottawa Leader’s Dinner, 2002-11-20

The phenomenon has been called the greenhouse gas effect since Fourier discovered it in 1824. Harper tries to imply the name is illegitimate in some way. He further lies, calling In a hypothesis. It is a measured fact. The effect is hardly controversial or new. Harper is just trying the pretend there is doubt where there is none.

Harper’s Kyoto Lie

[The Kyoto Accord is] a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations… [The Accord is] based on tentative and contradictory scientific evidence about climate trends.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Canadian Alliance fundraising letter, 2002 fall

Harper has lied about global warming so many times, I think he truly believes it himself. There is no controversy among scientists. There is unanimous consensus that global warming is real and a major threat, with a handful of hold-out shills and people without credentials who are funded by the oil companies. Harper of course gets all his information from big oil, who continue to pump out FUD. If you have any doubt, just peruse some peer reviewed scientific journals or read about the Naomi Oreskes survey.

Harper’s Kyoto Lie

As economic policy, the Kyoto Accord is a disaster. As environmental policy it is a fraud.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Address at the Ottawa Leader’s Dinner, 2002-11-20

Harper is fixated on the costs of implementing Kyoto, estimated as high as 1% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). However, he refuses to consider the costs of not implementing Kyoto which the famous economist Nicholas Stern estimated at 5 to 20% of GDP. Harper also refuses to consider the economic benefits of implementing Kyoto in energy saving and the benefits of marketing Canadian green technology to other countries.

Harper’s Mindless Opposition to Kyoto

As the effects trickle through other industries, workers and consumers everywhere in Canada will lose. There are no Canadian winners under the Kyoto accord.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Canadian Alliance fundraising letter, 2002 fall

Given that doing nothing about global warming will lead to the deaths of billions of people and economic damage that makes a 30s style depression look like a picnic, I’d say there are no losers if you implement Kyoto.

Harper’s Rôle for Canada

Canada must be a courageous warrior.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) in a campaign ad aired on 2011-04-30

This is Harper’s mad desire to emulate Napoléon. Canada traditionally wants to do peacekeeping not wage wars of empire.

Holding Responsible

I am not going to hold any of the other people who work for me responsible for their actions.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) a Freudian slip.

Idiotic Statement to Hurt Federalism

Make no mistake. Canada is not a bilingual country. In fact it is less bilingual today than it has ever been.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada.

Granted not everyone speaks both English and French, but English and French-speakers can access government services anywhere in Canada. Leading federal politicians all feel obligated to learn and speak both English and French so they can follow debates and speak to all Canadians.

Kyoto Is Not About Smog

Carbon dioxide does not cause or contribute to smog and the Kyoto treaty would do nothing to reduce or prevent smog.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Toronto Star,2004-06-10

Yes and Kyoto won’t do anything to help acne either. That is not what it is for.

Meat Inspection

Our number 1 priority is to ensure this standard is met with Japan-eligible carcasses. Ensure that non-Japan-eligible carcasses are not inspected for spinal cord/dura-mater, OCD (Other Carcass Defects) and minor ingesta… Ignore them.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) source

In a leaked memo confirms that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency ordered meat inspectors to not enforce health standards for meat going to Canadian consumers. Instead, they were instructed to focus on meat that would be exported. This double-standard directive was issued in 2008, and then again in 2010 and 2011. It confirms that the Conservatives have been mismanaging food safety for years, endangering the safety of Canada’s food.

More Harper Double Talk

I have no difficulty with the recognition of civil unions for non-traditional relationships but I believe in law we should protect the traditional definition of marriage.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada.

Harper is a bigot and wants to impose the views of his fundamentalist extreme church on all Canadians.

More Harper Lies

The Kyoto protocol does not deal with critical environmental issues.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Address on the Kyoto Accord, 2002-12-09

Of course. There are many environmental problems it does not attack, but it does attack the #1 threat to humanity. Just because there needs to be work on the #2 and #3 problems too is no excuse to do nothing about #1.

Opposing Kyoto

My party’s position on the Kyoto Protocol is clear and has been for a long time. We will oppose ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and its targets. We will work with the provinces and others to discourage the implementation of those targets. And we will rescind the targets when we have the opportunity to do so.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Ottawa Citizen, 2002-11-22

This sounds a bit like a pact with the devil. Harper is pledging to increase greenhouse gas emissions and destroy the earth. He even admits his motivation is money.

People Don’t Matter

Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) National Post 2000-12-08

Harper’s measures the status of a country by the size of its military. No wonder Harper fawned over Bush like a female teenage Beatle fan.

Prelude to the Senate Scandals

There’s going to be a new code on Parliament Hill: bend the rules, you will be punished; break the law, you will be charged; abuse the public trust, you will go to prison.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59) 2005

Cough.

Skirting Abortion

But I’ve been very clear in this campaign — I don’t believe the party should have a position on abortion.

~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59)

This is preposterous. A government has to have some policy. It might be simply to leave the law as is or to defer to the supreme court. The federal government is in charge of all criminal law, including that surrounding abortion. He was just weaselling to avoid offending anyone.

Harper and Oliver War on the Environment

Frankly, I think it [cutting the environmental staff in half] is part of a larger war by Mr. Harper, Mr. Kent and Mr. Oliver. They are at war with the environment and they are at war with people who are interested in preserving the environment. There is just no other way to describe it. These cuts and all the other things that have been going on and there are a lot of them, are a huge disaster in which the Canadian federal government is systematically disbanding our ability to respond to pollution events; they are disbanding environmental legislation; they are disbanding enforcement capacity. Its systematic.

~ Professor Ian L. Jones , podcast

Harper’s War on the Environment

Frankly, I think it [cutting the environmental staff in half] is part of a larger war by Mr. Harper, Mr. Kent and Mr. Oliver. They are at war with the environment and they are at war with people who are interested in preserving the environment. There is just no other way to describe it. These cuts and all the other things that have been going on and there are a lot of them, are a huge disaster in which the Canadian federal government is systematically disbanding our ability to respond to pollution events; they are disbanding environmental legislation; they are disbanding enforcement capacity. Its systematic.

~ Professor Ian L. Jones podcast

Excuses for Stalling

Canada will not sign onto a new agreement that does not include all major [ CO₂ ] emitters.

~ Christian Paradis (1974-01-01 age:44) Conservative Minister of Industry, government spokesperson on the environment. Hansard 2011-11-28 .

Canada is the only country reneging on its obligations of the Kyoto treaty. By Paradis’ reasoning you could say, I won’t go on a diet and stop smoking until all the other grossly obese smokers do so as well.. When I was a child I heard Peter O’Toole and Siân Phillips do The Taming of the Shrew on a LP (Long Play recording). In Act IV scene iii, Petruchio denies the famished Kate meat finding every excuse why it is not suitable. Then he denies her clothing claiming the tailor’s offering was a custard-coffin, a bauble, a silken pie. Paradis, Kent and Harper are using that same old tactic to deny Canada climate change action.

2015 Canadian Federal Election

• The Harper Conservatives have been kicked out of office. This means their policies of promoting climate change will be stopped in their tracks by the Liberal 184 seat majority.
• The Liberal policies are progressive e.g.: getting rid of the useless F35 fighters, legalising marijuana, wealth transfer, welcoming Syrian refugees…
• The Harper Conservatives won 99 seats. They are now the official opposition. We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it.
• The NDP were decimated from a wide lead down to 44 seats. They are the only party to take climate change seriously. They were sacrificed by strategic voting to get rid of Harper.
• The Liberals voted for the repressive bill C-51, and they have expressed support for the environment-killing and civil-liberties killing TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

2015 Election

The majority of Canadians do not like Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. However, the opposition support is split between the NDP and the Liberals. In Canada the first past the post electoral scheme means the Conservatives can still win in a landslide. This gives the Harperites the right to do whatever they please no matter what the opposition thinks.

To get rid of Harper, the NDP and Liberals (and maybe even the Greens) have to co-operate by running only one candidate in each riding, at least in ridings where the Tories are a threat. So in return for four almost-guaranteed seats, the Greens would effectively hand over their substantial bloc of votes elsewhere to the Liberals or NDP. Perhaps the opposition might experiment with a handful of ridings, field a full slate, but spend nothing in the co-operative ridings. However, this would not help when people vote purely by party.

Ideally you should be able to rank you votes so you could for example vote Green, but if that candidate were knocked out, transfer your vote to NDP, then to Liberal. That way you could vote your true preference while still voting strategically. Harper would never allow that because he would instantly be out on his bum.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Accountability

There is a general principle, that if any government body spends money, it should be possible for the public to discover how the money was spent. Further, if any government body contracts to spend money in future, that should be open to the public as well. Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks his expenditures should be an exception.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Advantage 2015

One of the perks of living in 2015 in Canada is the Harperites have not yet completed setting up their police state.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Alberta Sucks

Alberta is my least favourite Canadian province. Granted the Rockies leap from the plains in a way that takes your breath away, but Alberta is the most American province.

• Albertans have most adopted the American single-minded pursuit of money.
• Albertans have adopted the mindless hatred of gays from American evangelical religion.
• Albertans are proud of their anti-environmentalism.
• Albertans form the core of the support for Stephen Harper and his American-style militaristic policies.
• Alberta is the centre the climate change denier lunatic fringe.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

All Eggs in the Oil Basket

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier of BC Christy Clark are putting all of Canada’s economic future in the fossil fuel basket. This so risky. Our tar sands oil is the most expensive in the world to extract. It is thus the most vulnerable if for any reason there is a temporary glut in fossil fuels. Over the long run, clean energy gets fractionally cheaper every day. At a tipping point, fossil fuels suddenly become obsolete. Their use will then be only for fertilisers and plastics. The market for fossil fuels will collapse permanently almost overnight. Yet, we will be stuck with the mortgages for all the fossil fuel extraction and transport infrastructure. We must not be so blinded by promises of short term profits that we fail to diversify.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

America’s Choice for PM

American corporations want a leader of Canada who lets them destroy the environment, exploit Canadian workers, sell huge amounts of unnecessary military hardware etc. It is thus no accident that Harper was caught using the exact same illegal dirty tricks pioneered by Karl Rove in the USA to steal the 2010 election.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Anti Terrorism Law

Harper wrote a new law making it illegal for Canadians to go off and fight for the wrong side in foreign wars. In every war, both sides butcher civilians by the thousands. That make them all terrorists. Harper does not use the word terrorist that way. For him, it only applies to those opposing the party he favours. So if you go fight for the party he opposes, you can go to jail for ten years for terrorism, similar to what happened to Omar Khadr. If you go fight for the party he likes, he will consider you a hero, no matter how many kids you kill. Harper has even prepared a list of whom he considers the good guys and the bad guys in every foreign fight. I think he is overreaching his power.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Appeal of CCRAP (Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party)

Why would you vote for the Conservative Party of Canada née CCRAP, pronounced see-crap?

• You are a fundamentalist Christian. You believe if your bible was good enough for Jesus it is good enough for Canadians and should be forced down the throats of the heathens followed by wallop of castor oil.
• You are a bigot and want to make sure those uppity homos are kept in their place, preferably dead.
• Your young son is likely going to become serial murderer. He is already eviscerating neighbourhood cats. You want to ship him off to Afghanistan where he can rape, pillage, torture and murder to his heart’s content and still be treated like a national hero.
• You are allergic to pollen and you hate mosquitos. If you had your way, all the wetlands and forests would be paved over for condos. Almost nothing matters to you but your investments. You have no kids. You could care less if the world ended the day after you died.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Avoid Criminals

Most people’s moms warned them to avoid criminals. Don’t socialise with them. Don’t have any business dealings with them. Moms know how innocent interactions can lead to grief. Why then did Canada negotiate the FIPA (Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act) deal with China? We already know that China is an ecological vandal. We know it ignored Canada’s labour and safety law when its giant Sinotec set up shop in Canada. We know about their civil rights abuses. We know the way they steamrollered Tibet and Taiwan. Just months ago, China launched a cyberattack against the National Research Council.

We locked ourselves in to FIPA for 31 years even before taking the agreement for a test drive.

There is no reciprocity. China gets everything and Canada almost nothing. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May accused Harper of selling out to China by ratifying FIPA. Many business pundits agree. I suspect China bribed or threatened Harper. There is no benefit in the deal for Canada. Why else would he sign such a one-sided deal?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Balancing the Budget

If Stephen Harper were your roommate, he would balance the budget by accidentally forgetting to mail the utility bill and declaring himself a financial genius.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bias

On 2012-11-17 Stephen Harper quite properly chastised Hamas for firing rockets into Israel. However, he has never once in his entire reign chastised Israel when it attacked Palestinians. He never once acknowledged the Israelis invaded and occupied Palestine in 1948.

If you are a parent trying to stop your kids from squabbling, you must chastise them both. You can’t pretend not to notice any of the wrongdoings of just one of them. That sort of favouritism is unfair and further it stimulates even more fighting. It gives both of them additional motive to continue the fight.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Biggest Expenditure in History

Stephen Harper plans the biggest military expenditure in Canadian history for F-35 jets even though they can’t be used in the dark, a supposedly mandatory requirement since in the North, Canada is dark half the year. Given how Mulroney took envelopes of cash from Airbus, I find difficult to believe he did not teach his protégé Harper how it is done.

Just who are these jets needed to defend against? The country most likely to invade Canada is the USA, the designer of the F-35, desperate for our water, oil and minerals. The Americans will have even more technologically advanced jets than ours. Our white elephants won’t deter them, besides the Americans won’t even need to use their military to take us over; they can do it with lawyers, briefcases and NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bigots Love Harper

Even though Harper kept his anti-gay beliefs largely under wraps during the election, it is no accident that the map of Conservative victories also maps the areas of higher than average bigotry.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Blind to Danger

Harper’s blithe ignorance of the dangers of global warning are like a glutton who explains to his doctor he will consider giving up donuts, tobacco and beer only after he needs a quadruple bypass and a liver transplant.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Boycott Alberta!

Boycott Alberta! Albertans gave Harper the majority mandate to continue and expand killing children in Afghanistan. Canada’s attack on Afghanistan is illegal. All who aid or abet this aggressive war are guilty of a capital war crime. Read up on the Nuremberg war crime trials if you doubt. Alberta is also the worst behaved province when it comes to protecting the environment and stopping global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Breaking Our Promises

The thing that the Canadian federal government does that burns me up most is breaking our international promises. It reflects on the integrity of every Canadian. My parents taught me you must keep your promises, no matter how inconvenient. You must be very careful not to promise to do things you may find difficult later. If you are concerned about future circumstances, just do the right thing, but make no promises.

In particular, I am livid about Canada reneging on its Kyoto treaty and its broken promise to donate 0.70% of GNP (Gross National Product) to foreign aid. It was 0.48% in 1993 and under Harper it has dropped to 0.25%. To put this in perspective, Saudi Arabia, the supposedly greedy Arabs, donates 5.50% — 22 times what Canada does. record of other countries.

As Canada gets relatively richer and richer it gets more and more selfish, less and less environmentally responsible and breaks more and more of its promises. I feel disgraced to be a Canadian because of Harper’s sleaziness.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Breeching the Separation of Church and State

When Stephen Harper was challenged in English about CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) using government funds to convert people to Christianity, he replied in his wooden French that Canada ignores the religious affiliations and activities of those to whom they give money for third world projects. In other words, he admitted CIDA deliberately blinds itself to the misuse of taxpayer funds for religious purposes. As an extreme fundamentalist, Harper sees nothing wrong with governments using taxpayer money for God’s work. He has increased funding for faith based institutions by 42%. RESULTS has been after CIDA for a decade on this.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Burning the Tar Sands

Harper wants to burn the entire Alberta tar sands. This will release twice the greenhouse gases released in all recorded history. Environment Canada has said the effect will be second only to global nuclear war. Harper is insane. He is willing to sacrifice the entire planet for a few quick bucks. It is absolutely imperative he be relieved of office, far more important than it was that Hitler be removed from office. Hitler never wielded a weapon as deadly as the one Harper is actively using to kill off the planet. Most Canadians are in denial about global warming. They are unprepared to make any sacrifice at all to save our species. They are insane, but they are the ones holding Harper in power. Global warming is the most important political issue. It is literally a matter of life and death.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Canada the Worst Nation on Earth

Year after year, Canada is voted the worst nation on earth vis a vis climate change. The corruption and religious delusions of Stephen Harper are the prime causes of this dishonour.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Canada-China Investment Treaty

Obviously the 31-year FIPA trade treaty with China is not to the advantage of the citizens of Canada, otherwise Prime Minister Stephen Harper would not be trying to lock us in long after he leaves office. He would not be keeping us from debating it now or even knowing what we are committing to. Presumably citizens of China will be worse off too. The treaty is part of Harper’s plan to plunder the environment based on his bizarre fundamentalist religious beliefs about end times and a god who has nothing better to do than clean up after him. Who benefits? Corporations in China get to sue if a Canadian federal, provincial or municipal government passes environmental or other laws that reduce their profits. Effectively, Harper is handing control of Canada’s laws to Chinese crown corporations. We are surrendering to China without a shot, without even a vote in parliament. Granted, Canadian corporations get a similar privilege to derail China’s attempts to move to clean energy and clean up their environmental disaster of a country. In the short term, this irresponsible behaviour is profitable to anti-environmental corporations, mainly big oil. In the long run it is suicidal. Harper is orchestrating a slow-motion coup to gradually dismantle democracy and install a corporatocracy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Canada’s Global Warming Subsidies

At the Rio Climate Summit in 2012, the nations of the world decided a good measure to reduce greenhouse gases would be to ban fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful oil and gas use. Canada and Venezuela opposed the measure. Canada wants everyone to subsidise increased global warming. Send your comments to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the man irresponsible.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Canada’s Most Evil Deed

Canada attacked Afghanistan unprovoked. We helped the USA kill and torture millions of Afghan civilians. This is by far the most evil deed Canada has ever done. On 2011-05-02, we elected Harper and gave him a majority government mandate to extend the war at least another six years. We Canadians, especially those who voted for Harper, fully deserve to die by the millions for that war crime.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Can’t Trust Harper

Stephen Harper cannot be trusted. Why?

• On 2005-02-14, Harper signed the Atlantic accord which laid out the rules by which the federal and Atlantic provinces would share revenue. Then he tore it up and imposed his own rules without any renegotiation.
• In the campaign platform document for the 2006-01-23 federal election, Harper promised never to tax income trusts, a popular form of saving for retirement. On 2006-11-01 he announced a tax on them so substantial it pretty much terminated the income trust. Many people lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars as the value of trusts suddenly collapsed. To make matters worse, insiders leaked information about the sudden change so that friends of Harper could reap a windfall.
• On 2008-09-10, Harper promised to end the Afghan war by 2011. Then he changed his mind. Now there is no end is sight for this war that has dragged on pointlessly for 16 years and 7 months.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cause of Homelessness

A panel charged with finding the cause of homelessness discovered that the rise of homelessness exactly mirrored the decline in public housing. In other words, the problem is Prime Minister Harper’s fault. Why they are we punishing the homeless who had nothing to do with creating the situation? Harper is the only one with the power to fix the problem. In other words, homelessness is cause by a lack of homes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The CBC and Israel

During the Harper era, the CBC was heavily biased toward Israel. I assumed Harper was leaning on the CBC, but I discovered even during the later Trudeau era, the CBC acts as a dishonest propaganda organ, pumping out pro-Israel propaganda. What are the problems?

• The CBC refers all the time to Palestinian terrorists. They give the impression the Palestinians daily attack the innocent, peaceful Jews. But the fact is 28 Palestinians have died for every Jew who died in the conflict. Mathematically, the Jews are much bigger terrorists (killers of civilians) than the Palestinians.
• The CBC suggests the Jews have a perfectly legitimate claim to Palestine and the Palestinians are stubborn and ignorant for refusing to acknowledge it. In 1948 the Jews attacked Palestine unprovoked. They have occupied it ever since. This is illegal according to the UN (United Nations) charter. It is even more illegal than the Nazi invasion of Poland. The only claim the Jews have is might makes right, not counting their totally bogus cockamamie religious claim.

• I posted the following on the CBC website. The CBC censored it.

  Carol Off of As In Happens is ignoring the fact Jews invaded and occupied Israel illegally. The Jews have no claim to Israel other than might makes right. It improper to pretend Jews have an equal moral claim, as most Canadians presume. That ignores the evil events of 1948. They are analogous to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. To pretend the Jews are blameless is shameless racism against Arabs.
• Any criticism of the state of Israel is treated as hate speech and anti-semitism which much be censored.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CBC Decline

Every year, Stephen Harper slashes the CBC budget. The CBC has reacted by gradually transforming itself into a mindless AM radio station. I gather spinning pop records is cheap. If they keep this up, the CBC might as well shut down. There are more than enough AM stations already. It must provide what you cannot find elsewhere to be of any use.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CBC Radio

I am a passionate supporter of the CBC radio. Every day it brings to me fascinating stories from all over the planet, interviews with people I would encounter in no other way, quirky people, music, people who see the world in alien ways… such a pot pouri. It is literally mind expanding. It is routinely better than anything else on TV or radio with the possible exception of some NPR (National Public Radio) programming. I like to imagine all the taxes I pay into the pot eventually get funneled to the CBC.

However, Harper hates it. It resists his propaganda demands. It does not overtly oppose them. It dares to discuss climate change. Harper muzzles government scientists from doing so. This is enough impertinence for him to vow the CBC’s destruction, both radio and TV. He has been killing it by cutting its budget massively every year and firing 2000 people at a pop, over and over. I hope the electorate depose Emperor Harper before he strangles it beyond recovery on cements himself on the throne like a limpet.

You might check out Friends of the CBC. They are like-minded people organising to protect the CBC.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Censorship

Like the medieval Catholic Church, Stephen Harper has created an orthodox government science, considerably at odds with conventional science. In particular, it has beliefs compatible with Conservative Party pro-business ideology about fish stocks, endangered species, fossil fuel extraction, mining and, of course, climate change. Harper blocks all government scientists from talking to the media. Only if they submit their publications to him and he pre-approves them do they reach the public.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Civil Rights are Not a Popularity Contest

Civil rights should not be determined by popularity and voting. The principles of liberty should be embedded in the constitution, inviolate from the whims of religious superstition or bigotry and adjudicated by sober reflection of the supreme court. The whole point of civil rights is to prevent the majority from bullying minorities. Civil rights would not be necessary if the minorities were popular. The very notion of empowering the majority to grant or deny rights on whim with a vote on the popularity of the affected minority is ludicrous.

I despise those who insist on playing parent to people a decade or two older than they are. This applies to gay marriage, marijuana use, right to die, abortion, forced religious indoctrination…

In particular, I am furious with Prime Minister Stephen Harper for forcing his religious superstitions on the rest of us. The arguments against liberty are invariably fueled by religious superstition and fanaticism.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

Canadians usually have the sense to avoid electing barking mad creationists and UFO-abductees but they happily elect far more dangerous climate-change denier flakes like Stephen Harper, Allison Redford and Christy Clark.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cluster Bombs

Canada negotiated a treaty to ban cluster bombs. The USA refused to sign. Then Harper, in the legislation to ratify the treaty, sabotaged it by allowing Canada to use them when on joint missions with non-party (e.g. the USA) states. Earl Turquotte, the diplomat who negotiated the treaty for Canada, said cluster bombs are an even more barbaric weapon than land mines. Harper is a treacherous sadist.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Conflating the Party and the Government

When the Nazis won their first democratic majority government, they insisted on putting their party flag on all government buildings, as if the government itself belonged to the Nazi party. Stephen Harper did something similar by insisting the government of Canada be branded as the Harper government. Hitler did not go as far as Harper. Hitler tied the government to his party. Harper claimed the entire government as his personal property. Harper, like Hitler, is far too full of himself.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Confusing Pensions

Retired people in Canada get three different types of government pension. They have similar sounding names. You must apply for them separately. The tax computers know perfectly well who qualities for what and when. Pensions could be handled fully automatically, or when that fails, by submitting a single form. The intent of the Harper government’s system is intended to cheat the least able citizens of Canada out of the pensions they paid for.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Crazy Man

If your house is on fire and you are hosing it down with water and Stephen Harper comes along and starts hosing it down with gasoline, what do you do? You have to stop him somehow. It is not a matter of negotiating a compromise or striking a balance between sane and insane behaviours. That is a metaphor for Stephen Harper and global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Creating Jobs by Firing People

Where does Harper get off claiming his budget is designed to create jobs when it fires 19,000 people and cuts the spending that pays indirectly for many more?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Crime is the Coverup

Richard Nixon had to resign not because he ordered a break in, but because he committed so many crimes covering up the original crime and covering up the cover up. Stephen Harper is making the exact same error that Nixon made, namely committing crime after crime trying to cover up for Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau, Nigel White and himself. The matter at this point should be handed over to the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) for prosecution. So long as Harper is still running the show, he has dictatorial powers to protect himself and pervert justice. He must be forced to resign until his name is cleared, the same as we would expect of any other minister of the crown.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Criticising Israel ≠ Antisemitism

Stephen Harper dishonestly equates criticising the government of Israel with anti-Semitism. Making disparaging comments about all Jews is anti-Semitism. It is not bigotry to criticise the actions of any individual or any government. The degree of Jewishness is irrelevant. It makes no sense to disparage all Jews because they are all different. It is valid to criticise the government of Israel because it has a single coherent set of policies, just like any other government. Bigotry is about making broad over-generalisations ignoring the details of the case at hand.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Criticising Israel ≠ Antisemitism

Stephen Harper equates criticising Israel’s apartheid system with anti-semitism. This is just a cynical attempt to cover up bad behaviour on the part of the Israeli government by playing on sympathy for the Jews who suffered under Hitler. Just because one group of Jews suffered horribly does not give another group of Jews the right to make Palestinians suffer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Definition of Poetic Justice

The definition of poetic justice: Harper drowning in a toilet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Denying Medical Care

Stephen Harper has decided to deny all medical treatment to refugees, even emergency care. This is penny wise and pound foolish for two reasons:

1. Refugees come to Canada with more diseases and parasites that the average Canadian. If they don’t get treatment, they will spread them to everyone else, costing far more than if you treated the source.
2. Some percentage of these refugees will eventually become citizens. Let’s say you leave them untreated for diabetes, cancer or high blood pressure. By the time they do receive medical, their conditions will have deteriorated appreciably and will cost far more to treat.

Harper makes decisions with a cold-hearted ideology. He imagines he is a great economist, but he is not.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Deposing Harper

Almost everyone in Canada has a pressing reason to depose Prime Minister Stephen Harper even if they are not aware of it yet (e.g. because Harper is encouraging greenhouse gas emissions which are building up a massive extinction event, comparable to the end of the dinosaurs).

Among other sins, he is both censoring and dismantling the CBC. The CBC could bet the farm during the next federal election campaign. The CBC are not permitted to editorialise, but… They could reveal a new scandal every day leading up to the election. Canadians are happy to give up their democratic freedoms, ignore election fraud, bomb people for no legitimate reason, ignore tax dodges installed for Conservative party donors, give up their privacy and shovel billions to defence contractors to buy obscenely priced equipment that will not protect anyone.

However, they are incensed by small acts of greed, such as Bev Oda putting a glass of $16 orange juice on her expense account. They can relate to such extravagances at a personal level. The Canadian public easily understand such a crime and the mindset of the criminal.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ding Dong the Wicked Witch Is Voted Out Of Office

Stephen Harper’s federal budget for Canada expressed his personal weirdness.

• As a religious fundamentalist, he hates scientists and academics. He has fired most of the scientists and arranged that only those university scientists with sponsoring industry partners will be allowed to get funding, equipment or to testify. He has cut science, research, technology and science education. These are what Canada needs to generate high-paying jobs.
• As a religious nutcase, he is a global warming denier. He has muzzled environmental groups and greased the wheels for oil companies to railroad environmentally hazardous projects. He discourages green energy projects — the foundation of Canada’s economic future.
• He has repealed the notion of endangered species, except for a few food fish, forgetting entirely that fish eat other fish that humans don’t eat.
• He despises the elderly. He improperly confiscated a giant hunk of their pension fund and spent it on his pet projects. Now he wants the elderly to keep working another 7 years longer before than can retire. This is breaking a contract. You cannot ask people to contribute to a pension fund promising certain benefits, then abscond with the funds and give them hundreds of thousands of dollars less.
• He is an ideologue. He wants to build expensive new prisons even though the crime rate is dropping and there is plenty of evidence that prison is not effective for drug crimes.
• He is a crook, just like his mentor Brian Mulroney, taking benefits from military contractors. He wants to make the biggest purchase in Canadian history for F-35 jets that cannot even fly in the 6-month night of the Canadian north he claims they are intended to defend.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. See my essay

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Downsides of Bitumen Peddling

Harper’s goal to rapidly sell off Canada’s bitumen resources is flawed for several reasons.

Harper’s goal to rapidly sell off Canada’s bitumen resources is flawed for several reasons.

• Shale oil technology (fracking) is reducing the American need to import fossil fuels. To sell to them, even now Canada has to offer a 50% discount. Shale oil is abundant all over the world, including China.
• If Canada succeeds in selling off the tar sands, it will triple the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions by all humanity in all history.
• Flooding the global market with cheap fossil fuels, by the law of supply and demand, will depress prices so that Canada’s yearly revenue is reduced.
• The price of solar is steadily dropping and the demand to stop global warming is growing. It will not be long until the era of fossil fuels is over. Yet we will still be on the hook for the mortgage payments for billions of dollars for pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Election Law

Because of the way Canada’s election laws work, with support of only 24% of the eligible voters, Stephen Harper received a majority. He interpreted that to mean that he personally had a mandate to make all decisions until the next election. He repeatedly acted against the wishes of a clear majority of Canadians, for example pushing the Enbridge pipeline on BC where every municipality rejects it, firing half the environmental scientists, dropping protection of endangered species, spending billions on useless jets…

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

End-of-Life Arrogance

Christians, like Stephen Harper, imagine they are qualified to make end-of-life decisions for others, even when those others would rather make them for themselves. There are two serious problem with this:

• These Christians have never been seriously ill. They have not the faintest inkling of what unbearable means.
• Their rules are based not on compassion or common sense, but remnants of delusions of a vengeful deity from iron age myths.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Evaluating Harper

Stephen Harper is a poor choice for leader of Canada. Why?

1. He has no concern for climate change. Canada has the worst record of any developed nation in controlling the rise of greenhouse gases. He is on record as a climate change denier.
2. He belongs to the fundamentalist Christian and Missionary Alliance cult. His eccentric religious beliefs taint his political judgment.
3. He believes his personal opinions and revelations from God trump science. He takes this so far as to censor all government scientists and fire those who dare contradict him.
4. He has no concern for preserving the environment. He does not understand how the environment sustains all life and all economic activity.
5. His concern is for the welfare of the corporations and those who own them. He is completely willing to sacrifice the interests of everyone else for the benefit of the haves.
6. He subscribes to the Karl Rove school of dirty tricks in stealing elections.
7. He is a hawk, eager to spend money wastefully on defence contractor/contributors and get Canada involved in foreign wars.
8. He is up to his eyeballs in the senate scandals.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Exploiting Harper’s Ego

Perhaps if we renamed the Great Lakes the Harper Lakes, our Prime Minister, purely out of ego, would consider protecting them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

F-35 Costs

On 2012-04-26, the auditor General revealed that Stephen Harper and his cabinet knew way back in 2008 that the F-35 fighter jets he planned to buy would cost $25 billion, not $16 billion as he lied repeatedly to Canadians and to parliament. And that is not counting the inevitable overruns in such a large contract without a fixed price. But he also told another even more egregious lie — he lied about the purpose of the jets. Harper claimed they were to defend the Canadian north. The F-35 is a single engine short-range stealth fighter designed to be launched from a ship, close to a hot spot, to launch surprise first-strike attacks on another country. It it useless for defending the vast Canadian North. It is actually for tagging along on American resource war strikes. Surely we have had enough of that nonsense already with Afghanistan.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Source

F35 To Fight Whom?

Stephen Harper wants to spent $26 billion plus on F35 fighter jets. He says these are needed to defend Canada’s unoccupied north. Just who might consider challenging control of resources in the north? Russia might build an oil well. Would we dare bomb it and risk environmental disaster and nuclear reprisal? Would Canadians stand for such a violent response? Wouldn’t it make much more sense to send in the coast guard out to escort them out of Canada? China might mine the sea bed. Would we dare sink the ship and risk nuclear reprisal? Which country is Harper worried about attacking us with fighter jets? The USA is the country most likely to challenge control of the north’s natural resources, but they will proceed with lawyers, briefcases and NAFTA. They would not need to use their overwhelming supply of F35s. The military has made not even the most feeble attempt to explain why this particular weapon is needed, why in such numbers and the probable scenarios it which it would be effective.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

False Status

Because Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada, among the ranks of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Lester Bowles Pearson and Sir John A. Macdonald, we presume he could not possibly be on the take, even though his mentor Brian Mulroney was. We presume he could not possibly be involved in voter fraud, even though his buddies George W. Bush and Karl Rove were. We presume he would not lie outrageously, even though he tells outrageous lies as part of his fundamentalist Christian faith, even though we have caught him lying over and over.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fight at the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) Saloon

Deputy Jason: Sheriff, there is a huge brawl down at the ISIS Saloon.
Sheriff Harper: I know what to do. Let’s kill some kids. That will calm ’em down.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Firing the Auditors

On 2012-11-16 Harper announced he was slashing 1,232 jobs from Revenue Canada supposedly to cut the deficit. However, this a lie. Every additional Revenue Canada employee brings in many times more money than his salary. What Harper is really doing is like a bank manager firing the auditors and firing the guards to make it easier for his buddies to rob the bank.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Firing the Department of the Environment

Stephen Harper fired half the department of the environment and many other government departments. However, he found money to fund an extended celebration of the War of 1812 between the USA and Canada. There are costumes, parades, flag and guns all through eastern Canada, even in towns that had nothing to do with the war. Why is he doing this? He loves war. He wants endless war. He wants to funnel billions to the war industry that funds his political campaigns and this is his way to sell war as fun. It is insane to celebrate people getting their limbs blown off. It is insane to celebrate gangrene.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Firing Science

Harper fired half of the government scientists. He wants to travel blind. He is not interested in any evidence that his religion-based decisions are flaming nuts.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

First Nations Delusion

I applaud the first nations people holding Stephen Harper’s feet to the fire over his abandoning the environment to the short term financial interests of big oil. However, First Nations people have been infected with a truly nutty delusion. They imagine if Harper were out the way, they could hunt and fish without restriction the way they did traditionally before the coming of the white man. That is utterly impossible. Why?

• There are far fewer fish and animals now that there were back then.
• There are thousands of times more people, both white and first nations than there were back then.
• All those people have been hunting and fishing with factory technology driving animal and fish populations down.
• The best hunting lands have been paved over with cities or turned to farms and tree farms. The animal habitat has shrunk.
• Mining and manufacturing have poisoned most of the lakes, rivers and inlets.
• People now outnumber the animals. Originally the animals greatly outnumbered the people.
• If first nations people hunted and fished the way they did in 1400, they would drive every species extinct within a decade. They simply can’t. It has nothing to do with Harper. It is a childish insanity to think huge populations of first nations people can hunt and fish all they want without killing off all the remaining fish and animals. Too much has changed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

First Strike Weapons

Stephen Harper wants to buy 192 F35 fighter jets. These are first strike weapons, intended for attacking third world nations like Iran. How did he come up with the number 192? At the Iraq war peak, the USA averaged 45 sorties a day. Just how big a fight is Canada planning to pick?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Foolish Contracting

Imagine ordering a custom-built yacht without first seeing the plans or a having contract nailing down the price. You are just asking to get screwed, same as Harper did with the F35s.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Foolish Public

A country that elects a known mentally ill person, e.g. a global warming denier such as Stephen Harper or a cocaine and alcohol abuser such as George W. Bush, fully deserves extinction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Foreign Wars

There are dozens of wars waging all over the planet. Most are civil wars. Most Canada does not participate in. However, Prime Minister Harper makes a list of who he thinks the good guys are in each conflict. If you so much as think about going to fight for the wrong side, or raise money for them, you will be put in jail as a terrorist, perhaps without trial. It seems to me what you do in another country should be subject to that country’s laws, not Canada’s.

I think ex-patriates are in much better position than Mr. Harper to decide which side deserves support.

In 1937-04, it became illegal for Canadians to participate in the Spanish Civil war. This, of course, helped Franco establish his right-wing dictatorship, the intent of the act. Now, most Canadians would consider that interference a mistake.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Forget Remembrance Day

There is a private members’ bill C-597, proposed by New Democrat MP (Member of Parliament) Dan Harris in the Canadian House of Commons which is likely to pass, to make Remembrance Day a National Holiday. On the contrary, I think we should stop celebrating Remembrance Day altogether. Why?

• Those who died in WWI (World War I) and WWII (World War II) are long dead. They cannot accept fresh honours.
• The parents, wives, sweethearts and friends of those who died in WWI and WWII are long dead. There is no need for ceremonies to soften the blow of their losses with sweet white lies.
• Those who enlisted in the Afghan war were fully aware that Afghanistan had no possible means to attack Canada. Canada illegally struck Afghanistan first, unprovoked. This violates Canada’s UN treaty. Anyone who aids and abets such an aggressive war commits a capital (hanging) war crime, as did all the soldiers who signed up with the possibility of being sent to Afghanistan. Why did they enlist? They could not get a real job, love of war, adventure, killing, torture, bullying… We hanged all the Nazis at the end of WWII for this very war crime. War criminals do not deserve honour, even if they died committing their crimes.
• Imagine a wife who, at the drop of a hat, would enumerate everything her husband ever did wrong during the entire history of their relationship. This is what Canada is doing with its annual Remembrance Day breast beating. Canada revives the ancient Hun-hating, Jap-bashing jingoism of the two world wars. These two countries have been our good friends for at least 50 years. Most of their citizens were not even born during the hostilities. Why must we keep rudely rubbing their noses in the sins of their grandfathers?
• What is Remembrance day for, really? Harper and the CBC milk Remembrance day year round with even more coverage than Christmas in order to sell the old lie, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (Latin for sweet and honourable it is to die for one’s country). Why would Harper do that? He is a hawk. He enjoys war and war toys. He enjoys playing general. He likes shoveling money to the defence industry because they finance his campaigns.

Harper has been pumping money into war memorials, war pageants, war reenactments, and general pro-war propaganda. I think it is time to reverse that tide starting with removing those overwrought ugly war memorials.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Freedom of Speech

You would think freedom of speech lets you criticise your own country in an armed conflict, saying that the other side is in the right, but with Harper’s new law you could find yourself quietly disappeared and held without charge indefinitely as a potential terrorist. Further, if you are held in secret, there is nothing stopping torture.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fundamentalist Harper

Stephen Harper is a long standing member of the fundamentalist Alliance Church.

• It believes Jesus Christ will return to earth in an apocalypse.
• It refuses to ordain women.
• It strongly opposes abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research and divorce.
• It condemns homosexuality as the most base of sins.
• It believes those who aren’t born-again are lost.
• They oppose daycare.

Like James Gaius Watt in the USA, Harper believes conservation and preservation of the environment is a total waste of time because Jesus will come soon and make all things new. Jesus promised to show up within the lifetime of those he spoke to. He didn’t show. People have been expecting him every year since. He has never shown up, even once. Harper has no right to lead Canada in such a deluded mental condition.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

G35 Already Obsolete

Stephen Harper’s G35 fighter jets will be obsolete before they are even built. Unmanned jets are cheaper, lighter, faster, more fuel efficient and more maneuverable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Gagging Government Scientists

Harper has gagged all the government scientists. Harper makes decisions then demands his scientists concoct false evidence to support them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Gas Bomb

Harper wants to mine and burn the entire Alberta Tar Sands. This will release twice the greenhouse gas than has heretofore been released in history. The earth will be toast. Harper imagines his god Yahweh, will magically repair the damage. Get rid of Harper or Harper will get rid of you.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Cards

In general, religion should not provide you with a get out of jail free card to bypass any law.

However, the laws against niqabs are similar to a law prohibiting wearing crucifixes. They have no point other that making one particular religion grovel before another. I am so ashamed of what Mr. Harper is doing just to assert that Muslims are not welcome in Canada, to pander to his bigot base.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Glorifying War

Despite the general cutbacks, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has freed up all kinds of money for glorifying and memorialising wars including the Afghan war, WWII, WWI and even the war of 1812. I will not speculate here on Harper’s nefarious motives for doing this. Why is this such an unwise and childish thing to do?

• It glorifies war. It is not a good idea to prime the public to adore war as fun and exciting. It is a giant lie.
• It glorifies wasteful, corrupt military spending.
• Nobody involved is still alive who was involved in 3 of the 4 wars. We might as well be celebrating the Battle of Hastings.
• Basically it amounts to gloating over past victories. This is hardly going to improve relations with our current day ally, Germany. It long past time to get over our grudge. We are behaving like Al Qaeda.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Good News

Despite having a Prime Minister to the right of Attila The Hun, Stephen Harper, Canada has progressed socially. For example:

• gay marriage thanks to the supreme court.
• physician assisted suicide thanks to the supreme court.
• The Alberta Tar Sands, the dirtiest energy project on the planet, and its associated bitumen pipelines are all on hold, thanks to low oil prices, compliments of Saudi Arabia.
• Contraception and abortion are still legal thanks to the supreme court.
• Native rights are steaming ahead thanks to the supreme court.
• Transgendered people are more and more mainstream.
• Church attendance and church wealth continues to drop.
• Child rapist priests are finally being prosecuted.
• We still have universal public health care second only to Switzerland.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Grasshopper vs Boy Scout vs Gambler

There are three basic approaches of dealing with the future:

1. The grasshopper: Do what would be optimal if you hit by a bus tomorrow.
2. The gambler: Do you best to predict what is going to happen, the bet the farm you are right.
3. The boy scout: Be prepared.

Is Prime Minister Stephen Harper a grasshopper or a gambler in his deliberate destruction of the Canadian environment?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Greatest Extravagance

Harper wants to spend more on some fighter jets than Canada has ever spent on anything before. He claims the fighters are for defending Arctic sovereignty. If that were true, you would expect him to buy planes that:

• Were hardened for the extreme cold of the Arctic.
• Were long range, capable of spanning the vast expanses of the Arctic without refueling.
• High altitude so that they could scan large amounts of territory.

But what did he choose? F-35s.

• Planes that cannot handle icy conditions.
• Very short range planes, with poor fuel efficiency, designed for wars like Afghanistan where a plane takes off from an aircraft carrier and drops its bombs within a couple of hundred miles.
• Stealth for surprise first strike attacks.

Harper is not stupid. He is fully aware of the requirements for Arctic surveillance. He is lying to us about the purpose of these planes. They are for aiding the USA in future Afghanistan-like resource wars in the middle east. Monitoring incursions into Canada’s north would be much more efficiently and cheaply handled with high altitude drones. He is blowing all that money as part of his end of the deal to reward the manufacturers for contributions to the Conservative party.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Greenhouse Gas Criminals

Harper and the Conservatives are incredibly bald faced liars when it comes to global warming. Pay attention to what they do rather than what they say. Do their actions make global warming better or worse? You can’t both promote fossil fuel sales and reduce greenhouse gases. If you want to reduce greenhouse gases there is no other way than burn less fuel (perhaps through more efficient use of fuel). All Harper cares about is increasing fossil fuel sales. He thinks if he ignores the consequences, he can wish them away like clapping to revive Tinkerbell.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Growth Is Not Good

On 2013-05-31 Prime Minister Harper crowed that the economy was growing at 2%. What does this mean? It means Canada’s resource-based economy is destroying the environment 2% faster than it was last year. Harper wants to increase this rate of destruction even further. But how fast is the capacity of the environment growing to sustain all this activity? It isn’t. It shrinks every year. Harper’s dream is not sustainable. He is batshit crazy. He pretends not to notice, no matter how many scientists warn him. The problem is his fundamentalist religion and his obsessive way of seeing everything as a problem in economics. He is convinced, without any evidence, that Yahweh will come and make it all better.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Gutting the CBC

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has gutted the CBC by cutting its budget by $200 million dollars. This will mean firing 650 people and drastic cuts in programming. Next to old age pensions, the CBC is the most popular government service. There is nothing remotely like it in the private sector. It is the main institution for national unity keeping everyone informed about what people are up to in all parts of Canada, especially the remote and rural parts. At the same time, Harper wants to spend over $25 billion dollars on white-elephant F35 jets. He has made it clear, he wants only 100% Conservative-approved, global-warming denying, pro-corporate, pro-oil, pro-mining, anti-environment propaganda on Canada’s air waves. The CBC broadcasts too wide a spectrum of views to suit his autocratic ways.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper = Hitler

In the 1930’s a pudgy ridiculous little German slowly salami sliced away democracy in his country. People ignored him because he was such a pathetic creature because each slice he stole was so thin and because people did not want the confrontation or to look as if there were overreacting. Everyone pretended not to notice what was happening. Stephen Harper is doing the same thing today in Canada. Recall that Hitler too was laughable up until the point he had consolidated sufficient power. Harper is both corrupt and delusional. He believes he does not need science, statistics or even raw information to guide him. Voices in his head that he believes are the god Yahweh are all he thinks he needs. He is a sadistic reincarnation of the religious kook, William Lyon Mackenzie King.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper = Mulroney

Stephen Harper is getting into deeper and deeper trouble with every passing day. He is becoming another Brian Mulroney who single handedly took the Progressive Conservative party from a tsunami majority to non-existence. Mulroney is involved in the following scandals and politically unpopular deeds we already know about:

• Lying about the exorbitant cost of the F-35s.
• Numerous election fraud scandals including robocalls to send voters to the wrong polling places.
• Trashing the environment.
• Pouring a torrent of money on big oil.
• After slashing jobs and salaries, secretly giving his friends raises.
• Dragging the Afghan war on for years after the public screamed More than enough!

And there are probably half a dozen more we don’t know about yet. So what is Harper to do?

• He could resign, but the damage is already done. The Conservatives are tarred with aiding and abetting his crimes.
• He could commit suicide. This would be a sincere apology. The people would feel he and his party has suffered enough and would give them a fresh start. He thinks far too much of himself to make that sacrifice.
• The inner circle could facilitate/stage his suicide.
• Take the Conservative party down with him.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper = War Criminal

Stephen Harper is a war criminal who has brazenly committed a capital (hanging) crime, namely aiding and abetting an illegal aggressive (first strike) war — the unprovoked invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Apes Hitler

Hitler came to power gradually and legitimately. With each democratic election he increased his share of the popular vote. He appealed to bigots. He gradually consolidated his power. He engaged in election fraud. His early tactics were indistinguishable from those of Stephen Harper.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Censors Science

Harper told government scientists they were permitted to say only what he wanted them to say. Then he fired 50% of them. They are terrified to tell the truth. When Harper said he was going to let science decide the fate of the Enbridge pipeline, he meant It is going to go my way. As usual, he will decide based on ideology and personal self interest. I trust this arrogance and dishonesty will prove sufficient to kick him out of office at the next election.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Censors Science

Indeed scientists strive to speak with one voice. They want desperately to home in on the truth. They are not content to leave people to opinions. To get consensus, must debate. But what is happening in Ottawa is much worse. Politicians are telling science what they should say and Conservative politicians are preventing them from espousing the consensus scientific truth. Harper is as eager as any historic pope in his desire to suppress scientific truth. His motives are economic and religious.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Climate Change Denier

I have often puzzled why Stephen Harper would deliberately lead his country and his planet to destruction by blocking all national and international attempts at controlling greenhouse gases. Elizabeth May, the head of the Green Party, told me she is convinced he is simply misinformed, since she has seen him with his kids and he clearly loves them. I don’t see how this could possibly be so. His own scientists have informed him of the truth. His professed kooky beliefs have made Canada the butt of international ridicule. He is not some uninformed hick. I think the best model is a meth or nicotine addict. An addict is fully aware the drugs will eventually kill him, that they will destroy his health and they will harm his family, but he takes them anyway because the short term pleasure is too irresistible. Addicts often pretend to be in denial about the dangers of addiction. For Harper, the short pleasure is the is the money he gets from the oil companies to pretend to be a global warming denier. That money pays for the campaigns that let him have the supreme satisfaction of being Prime Minister of Canada. He is willing to sacrifice his own family and his own country for that petty, sick power trip. Unlike most of his predecessors, he likes power for the sake of power, not for what he can do with it to serve his country and planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper the Counterfeit Scientist

Harper fired most of Canada’s climate scientists and insists on his office censoring anything any scientist says on climate. Harper is one of the biggest climate change deniers in the world. He should be pelted with mud balls as the author of the 2013 Calgary flood damage. Albertans also deserve to pelt themselves. They believed Harper, a professional liar aka politician who has no background in science, over all the scientists is the world. What were they thinking?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper the Crook

Stephen Harper and Mike Duffy conspired to rip off the Canadian taxpayer by claiming Duffy lived in Prince Edward Island when he actually lived in Ottawa. This way Duffy could claim for travel expenses and hotel expenses he never incurred. Why is only Duffy on trial? Harper and Nigel Wright are equally involved.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Day Care

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper uncharacteristically proposes a very expensive day care plan. The reason it is so expensive is most of the money is given to people who do not need day care, e.g. the parents of teens or to stay-at-home moms. Further the plan does nothing to increase the number of day care spots. Why would he do that? An election is coming and he wants to reward his base by taking from those who do not vote for him and giving to those who do.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper the Emperor

Harper is not only a poor leader, he is not right in the head. He is more and more entrapped in the delusion he is the emperor of Canada, trying to run everything personally. Part of the problem is he takes his fundamentalist Christian religion too seriously. He needs to be removed as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party. Some of the problems include:

• Harper has announced the Enbridge pipeline is going ahead even though he has not seen an environmental impact statement. He does not care what science has to say. He does not care what the people of BC want, even though it is their environment and coastline at risk.
• Harper has fired half the scientists. There is nobody left to monitor greenhouse gases. All ocean pollution monitoring has stopped. Industry is free to pollute at will. Canada is like a blind man when it comes to the environment. Harper has gouged out both its eyes. Harper idiotically trusts the god Yahweh to clean up after us.
• Harper has gagged the scientists. Government scientists are no longer permitted to tell the truth. Everything they say is censored. If they say anything unapproved, it brings dismissal. That is not science. That is propaganda. I went to a rally on 2012-09-15 where a government scientist had to speak in disguise.
• Harper is a climate change denier, a kook, though he sometimes pretends to less of a crank than he really is. Watch his actions not his words.
• Harper has dropped support for endangered species, unless they are food fish. Even if you concur with his Philistine view, it ignores the fact that food fish eat other non-food fish species in a chain. You must protect them too.
• Harper wants to spend a minimum of $45 billion on stealth F-35 fighter jets. These are supposedly to protect Arctic sovereignty. The catch is they are not suited for cold weather. They have only a short range incapable of spanning the vast stretches of the Arctic. They are intended for surprise first strike attacks from air craft carriers. Harper lied about the price, keeping two sets of books. He is also lying about their intended use. Military projects usually go at least ten times over budget. Once they get going they have a life of their own. Everyone else in Canada has been told to drastically tighten his belt while Harper throws his backers in the defence industry baskets of cash. The sort of incursion we need to deal with is some other country drilling an oil rig, or sending a tanker through the north west passage. These do not require supersonic destruction, but rather satellite monitoring.
• Harper, a Christian fundamentalist, has promised a new bureaucracy, the Office of Religious Freedom, hailed by American religious right-wingers. In the jargon of the religious right, that means laws to permit Christians to force their beliefs and superstitions on others on such matters as contraception, abortion, gay and female equality, and force Muslims to adopt western dress.
• He is shutting down Coast Guard stations but claims it will have no effect on monitoring trouble or getting to the site of the emergency in time. Could he spend just a couple of days seeing what the Coast Guard does before making nutty changes like this? I know, God told him it would be OK.
• The list goes on, bill C-51 — the anti-liberties bill, refusing to accept the court giving the right to wear the niqab. Selling out the public with increased pharmaceutical prices as part of the TPP treaty. He is 110% biased toward Israel. He helps block peace plans between Palestine and Israel.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Favours the American Economy Over Canada’s

Stephen Harper changed the rules for Canadians going to the USA to shop. They can now buy far more duty free than before. The result as been an unprecedented surge of millions of Canadian shoppers going on overnight trips to shop till they drop in the USA. In my view, this is not a Good Thing™. It means extra greenhouse gas emissions from extra travel and lost sales for Canadian businesses.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper the Ideolog

Stephen Harper says that he just knows, despite the evidence of the Netherlands and California, that it is pointless to legalise marijuana because the exact same criminal gangs will control the trade. By his logic, when the USA repealed prohibition, organised crime must have continued to control all alcohol production and sales. By Harper’s logic, criminal gangs could easily make billions off selling chocolate, coffee or Aspirin since it does not matter if something is legal or illegal to make it attractive to criminals. He is just playing dumb and counting on his base being dumb enough to fall for it. Why is he trying to deceive Canadians?

• Because his base like the idea of punishing cannabis users for holding left-wing ideas that they find abhorrent.
• Because his donors make huge amounts from building and running prisons. They need more prisoners to fill them. There are not enough criminals, so they much manufacture them scapegoating those who commit victimless crimes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper in Diapers

When I was 13, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was still in diapers. It is galling him pretending to be my mother threatening me with jail if I were to defy his religious objection to marijuana. I am far more qualified than him to make the cost/benefit analysis for myself.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Lies about the Environment

Stephen Harper claims his cuts to environmental science, attacks on environmental groups and repeal of environmental legislation are all to improve Canada’s environment. If that were true, the majority of environmentalists would agree him. However, he has not a single environmentalist supporter in the entire world. Canada was voted the worst country in the world at the 2012 Rio environmental conference, that is worse than the USA, worse than Russia, worse even than China.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Loves Foreign Business

Stephen Harper claims to be a right wing free enterpriser. He claims governments should not interfere in business. But he allows foreign dictatorships to take over Canadian businesses and run them. Surely that is even worse than the Canadian government doing the same thing. Then he said he wants to personally decide whether every takeover of a Canadian business can go ahead. He is not prepared to reveal a set of rules or policies. He wants to decide on whim like King Henry VIII. Surely that sort of arbitrary meddling is the worst form of government interference.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper or Hitler?

In the 1930s, there was a politician who was elected democratically to office. Bit by bit, he muzzled various groups of people and gradually eliminated them and used government money to sell his toxic ideas. Bit by bit, he concentrated power in his office and eliminated anyone whose job was oversight. He eventually became a dictator and gave the world a rough time. You may remember him — Adolf Hitler.

In the 2000s there was a politician who was elected democratically to office. Bit by bit, he muzzled various groups of people (scientists, environmentalists, archivists, auditors…) and gradually eliminated them and used government money to sell his toxic ideas. Bit by bit, he concentrated power in his office and eliminated anyone whose job was oversight. Oddly, despite the trend, like Germans, few Canadians are concerned about his dash to dismantling democracy. You may know him — Stephen Harper.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper the Sadist

Stephen Harper’s observable behaviour is like someone whose early masturbatory fantasies were about pulling the wings off flies, then who progressed to fantasies of slicing up living infants with a salami slicer, then who got a copy of Saddam’s tapes of people being tortured, then of some of Bush’s Iraq torture/rape videos. Now he wants a giant fleet of elite fighter jets so he can destroy entire cities in under an hour in an orgy of suffering and pain. He sabotaged the cluster bomb treaty so he can use them on non-Christian children he so despises. The power excites him something fierce. You can see it in his eyes and the swelling in his crotch. The man is losing control of his sadistic impulses. He must be removed from office.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Spying

Harper’s Conservatives have amassed Canada’s most detailed database of personal information they use is fighting elections. This is amusing since they expressed mock horror at the much smaller long gun registry.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Strategy

I wondered why Harper was misleading people, trying to convince them that the NDP was doing much better than they actually were. I think the idea is he was hoping to scare right-leaning Liberals into the Conservative camp to stop an NDP majority government.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Wants Greater Ocean Pollution

Harper canceled all monitoring of ocean pollution. Corporations are now free to pollute as they wish. He claims this will improve environmental quality.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper Worse Than Hitler

Given that the consequences of Stephen Harper’s bungling of climate change will cause more havoc than even Hitler’s mad push for world domination, I think treachery on the order you might consider to thwart Hitler would be fully justified in removing Mr. Harper from office.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper, Politically Inept

I am surprised at Harper’s political ineptness. He could have simply spent an hour with Chief Theresa Spence, said nothing and promised nothing and effectively defused the Idle No More Protest. But instead, his ego got in the way. Now he can’s meet without losing face. On the other hand, if he does not meet, he fuels a country wide revolt which is spreading to white people too. He is an arrogant prick, bullying first nations people changing the rules without consultation. This predicament is of his own making.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harpers Broken Promised

If we want to survive, we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050. That is impossible if we develop the Alberta tar sands. That takes us in the diametrically opposite direction. Harper has lied to us promising both.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Campaign Lies

In his 2015 campaign, Harper repeatedly told lies such as:

• The Liberals have announced they want to raise your taxes. The Liberals actually said they wanted to raise taxes on the top 1% of income earners and reduce them for everyone else.
• Harper claimed he is he is the only leader with the proven track record of surpluses, year after year. But this is nonsense. He had deficits every year for the decade he was in power.
• Harper claimed government spending on basic research is higher than ever. However, they fired the basic research scientists, closed the research libraries and destroyed the books and muzzled the rest. Two prestigious science journals wrote about it.
• Harper claimed the F35 fighter jets were for defending Canada. They are short range, do not work in the cold, and are designed to be launched from aircraft carriers — they are designed for middle east wars, not defending Canada.
• Harper claimed it was necessary to attack ISIS to defend Canada. There are good reasons to attack ISIS but defending Canada is not one of them. ISIS attacks Canada by creating videos suggesting Canada attack itself.
• Harper rarely tells the truth. He just makes up whatever he wishes were true and spouts it with a straight face. Here are a few of his other lies: source source source source

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Christian Hate for the Environment

Stephen Harper hates the environment with an irrational passion. I think this aberration came partly from his anti-environmentalist fundamentalist Christian upbringing and from accepting money from American oil companies who don’t care about the environment, only short term profit.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Dictate

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has effectively told British Columbians that supertankers loaded with bitumen are going to ply the BC coast, period. He does not care what British Columbians think. He does not care what scientists think. He does not care than no technology has yet been invented to clean up a bitumen spill. He does not care about greenhouse gases and climate change. He is convinced he knows what is best for everyone. He is blinded by the tar sands profits for Alberta. To him, nothing else matters.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Extended Mandate

Harper believes he has a mandate to legislate whatever he pleases, even things that will be very hard to reverse long after he leaves office, simply because he won a majority. Just because he has the legal right does not mean he has the moral right. Only 20% of the eligible voters voted for his party. A prime minister is supposed to represent the interests of all Canadians, not just those of his own party. As Martin Luther King warned us, Everything Hitler did was legal.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Heaven

• In Harper’s heaven, the NRC (National Research Council) creates finished inventions for industry and hands them over royalty free. All the corporation has to do is forward the plans to China for manufacture.
• In Harper’s heaven, there are only foreign workers.
• In Harper’s heaven, there are only foreign-owned corporations.
• In Harper’s heaven, all scientists, except those that work for him, leave the country.
• In Harper’s heaven, those who benefit from his reign donate so much money that he can bamboozle the rest that Harper’s heaven in their heaven too.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Law

There are two schools of thought on how one should enact laws:

• Attempt to protect people from harm, including from family members, sometimes even from themselves.
• Hurt people who disagree with you to weaken them.

Harper’s style is usually the latter. He pretends concern for free speech, charities, prostitutes, environmentalists then sneakily stabs them in the back.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Long Term Political Effect

Harper is doing for the Conservative Party what George W. Bush did for the Republicans. Conservatives concerned about the long term viability of the party would be wise to replace him before he pulls a Mulroney on party popularity.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Mega Lies

In the Canadian leadership debate on 2011-04-12, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper both told two mega lies:

• The Afghans like being occupied and would be disappointed if we left.
• We are in Afghanistan to bring democracy.

If the majority of Afghans welcomed the invasion, then the war would have been over in months. How could a minority of Afghans have prevailed for 16 years and 7 months against the combined might of the majority of Afghans, the USA, Canada, Britain…?

We have imposed dictator Hamid Karzai on the Afghans. He is the biggest drug lord on the planet. He is the world’s most corrupt politician. He imposes draconian Shari’a law, (e.g. whipping women), the same as the original Taliban government did. There is no way you can characterise that as bringing democracy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Non-Plan

The middle east is a mess. Harper’s plan is go in without clear objectives, without an exit strategy and kill a bunch of people (whom, yet to be determined), mostly kids. He thinks this will help the situation. I am not convinced. He tried that in Afghanistan. He killed lots of people, including Canadians, and spend a shitload of money, and Afghanistan is worse off than when it started. The USA had a similar experience in Iraq. Males have a problem with testosterone. It fools them into thinking that killing people is the universal solution to all problems.

Yet we know this rarely works, especially when you wade in slugging without thinking about the consequences. With hindsight, is there anything else Harper might have done with that massive budget in Afghanistan that might have been more effective? or that might have increased Canada’s security or welfare? What he did made it worse. If he were not the prime minister, we would call him a serial killer and child killer worse that Clifford Olsen. You can tell he thoroughly enjoyed what he did.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Notion Of Responsibility

Harper claims that moving toward monitoring the destruction of the environment and the release of CO₂ is as good as actually reducing them. What a ****!

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Plan

Harper’s plan is to reopen the failed Iraq war and fight ISIS even more half-heartedly than last time. It seems to me blindingly obvious that the odds of success are much worse than last time. I don’t know what we should do, but I do know this plan is pointless. It has all the disadvantages of going to war and none of the advantages.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Priorities

In his 2011 campaign speeches, Harper has made it clear his top priority is the well-being of Canadian business and the military. The environment and the welfare of the poor are not even on the radar, neither is ending the Afghan war.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Sell Off of Canada

Harper OKed the takeover of Canadian oil company Nexen by CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corporation), China’s state oil company. Then he OKed Malaysia’s state owned oil company Petronas to buy Progress Energy Resources. Harper claims the most terrible thing in the world is socialism, state ownership of corporations, unless, of course, they are foreign states run by people with contempt for democracy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Harper’s Two Sets of Books

It turns out Harper kept two sets of books on the F-35 fighter acquisition. Think of how many crooks were nailed when their double set of books were discovered. It is incontrovertible proof for court of criminal activity.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Harper’s War on Science

Harper is disproportionately firing scientists with his supposed cost-cutting measures. What he is really doing is shutting up rational opposition to his seat-of-the-pants, ideological and fundamentalist-Christian-based ways of making decisions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Will

Mr. Harper’s will requests that his ashes be scattered over an oil slick.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Helping the Rich

Harper’s priority is making multi-billionaires into mega-billionaires. One of the ways he does that is to sacrifice the health care system, once best in the world, now ranking below some third world countries. It has got to the point you are in more danger from physician error or anti-biotic resistance infections that you catch in the hospital than you are from the condition for which you were admitted.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

His Holiness Turned Tar Into Oil

Prime Minister Harper decreed that henceforth, Canada’s tar sands would be known as the oil sands. Of course, the tar (aka bitumen) still sinks making spills impossible to clean up. It still takes far more energy to extract than oil. It still emits far more greenhouse gas than oil. This conversion strikes me as like the transubstantiation miracle where nothing happens.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hitler or Harper?

I think most Canadians drastically underestimate how dangerous Prime Minister Stephen Harper is. I contend he is a far greater threat to the planet than Hitler ever was. This is a startling thing to say, but I mean it in all seriousness.

Who is worse? Hitler or Harper?

Who is worse? Hitler or Harper?
	Hitler	Harper
Goal	To take political control of every country on earth. To eliminate all Jews.	Wealth for big oil To destroy the environment of Canada. To eliminate most species on earth. Accelerate the end times so he can have lunch with Jesus.
Motive	Hatred of Jews White supremacy	Short term profit for big oil Nutty fundamentalist religious beliefs about God as cleaning lady and end times. Creationist with a general distrust of science. Hyper loyalty to Alberta
Means	Conventional warfare Death camps	Burning the tar sands which will release twice as much CO₂ as all of mankind has released in recorded history. Firing those in charge of protecting the environment. Gagging scientists Repealing environmental legislation, particularly protection for endangered species and fish. Transporting raw bitumen which is impossible to clean up if it spills.
Consequences if he succeeds	We all speak German We put up with a totalitarian regime until it can be replaced.	Most species on earth extinct. According to Environment Canada, the consequences of climate change are second only to nuclear war.
Odds of Success	Very low. He is dead	90%. He has the backing of big oil.
How he sold his plan	By killing Jews you get to keep their wealth.	By sacrificing the environment and poisoning the entire planet, Albertans will get oil wealth.

In the by-elections on 2012-11-26 Canadians in the ridings of Calgary Centre and Durham gave their stamp of approval for Harper’s destruction of our planet. What I think of these planetary traitors is unprintable. They are worse than the Germans who supported Hitler. In a democracy, we get the government we deserve. We get chance to be rid of him entirely on 2015-10-19 with the general election. I hope I don’t get to say I told you so.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hitler’s Lesson

The lesson Hitler taught us is the time to stop a tyrant like Harper is before they have successfully assumed dictatorial power.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How to Choose a Party

Justin Trudeau’s latest ad says we should vote for him because he has the nicest hair Nice hair, nice platform. There are reasons to vote for Mr. Trudeau, but surely such trivia are not among them.

Stephen Harper says we should vote for him because he will defy the supreme court and force Muslim women to remove their niqabs when they take the oath of citizenship. Whether Muslim women are covered or uncovered has absolutely no effect on you. Harper is trying to distract you away from much more important issues with his appeal to bigotry.

By far the most important issue is climate change. If we don’t elect a party who will get on with dealing with it, most of us, our children and grandchildren, will die quite horrible deaths. This is a downer and politicians refuse to talk about it. Not even the Greens and the NDP have given the issue center stage. Harper is a climate change denier. Trudeau is on the fence. For me because of the supreme importance of climate change, there are only two plausible parties running, the Greens and the NDP. The other two are barking mad delusional.

Further, Mr. Harper subscribes to an archaic Christian sect that rejects science, including climate change. With Harper, we might as well be running the country’s science with ouija boards.

The economy goes up and down mainly from international effects (such as the price of oil). Nothing politicians do has much effect, yet at election time they all pretend to be masters of the universe. Anything they claim about the economy is just hot air. Politicians are a bit like roosters crowing, imagining they make the sun rise. Harper claims to know the magic of balancing budgets, yet he did not manage it even once is the last decade. He faked one for the election by not paying bills. Because Harper put all the country’s eggs in the oil basket, no one will be able to balance the budget until the price of oil rises.

Each party has a loyalty to a different economic group. The NDP serves the poor and the middle class. The Liberals serve the upper middle class. The Conservatives serve the top 1% and corporations, foreign and domestic. You can vote for your own financial self interest, or you can vote for what you think is fair. But if you are poor and vote for the Conservatives, you are a blithering idiot, imagining real soon now you will join the elite. Wealth mobility is very low in Canada.

The other reason I would not recommend Mr. Harper is he is fond of trade deals that do such things as:

• Allow foreign corporations to veto Canadian environmental law.
• Make whistleblowing on corporations illegal.
• Force Canadians to sell resources even when we need them for ourselves.
• Remove labels so you cannot tell the country of origin or whether something is GMO (Genetically Modified Organism).
• What do we get in return? less than a tenth of a percent optimistic projection in increased GDP.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hypocritical Harper

Stephen Harper sang and played John Lennon’s Imagine in a campaign ad. The hypocrisy is a bit thick:

• The song calls for peace. Harper has dragged the Afghan war on for 16 years and 7 months for no apparent purpose but enriching his contributors in the defence industry.
• The song calls for the abolishment of religion. Harper tries to impose his evangelical Christian views on others.
• Harper did not get permission to perform the song. Normally, he is a strict law and order man, always on the side of corporations. Yoko Ono demanded he withdraw the ad. He has refused to. He is a scofflaw. YouTube pulled the video.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hypothetical Enemies

By far the biggest threat to Canadian security is climate change. There are hundreds of different ways it seriously threatens us. Yet Prime Minister Harper wants to spend nothing on climate change and the lions’ share of our defence budget on F35 fighters, a weapon specialised for fighting geographically localised wars serviceable by aircraft carrier such as the Iraq war. F35s are useless for patrolling the vast expanses of Canada’s frozen north because they don’t have the range or the ability to handle low temperatures. In just what scenarios does Mr. Harper plan to use these weapons to defend Canada and against which hypothetical enemies? He never tells us. Why is he doing this? The only answer I can think of is corruption. Why else but he is taking bribes, perhaps technically legal bribes or he is under undisclosed threats? Can you think of other possible motives?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ideological Stupidity

Stephen Harper and Vic Toews believe in longer, tougher prison sentences, even when they cost more, increase crime and increase recidivism rates. To them, revenge is more important the preventing crime. This is self-indulgent emotionalism.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Illegal Robocalls

RackNine aka 2call is a company that makes robot phone calls during elections. Elections Canada traced fraudulent calls to them that they made during the 2011 Canadian federal election, purporting to be from Elections Canada telling voters their polling place had changed. They targeted Liberal and NDP voters sending them out to non-existent addresses to vote. Twelve candidates from the Conservative party of Canada made extensive use of legitimate services from RackNine, in their campaigns including Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Now the Conservative Party and RackNine all claim perfect innocence. Harper claims it must have been some rogue teenager acting on his own. I find it hard to believe a teen was able to finance and organise a dirty tricks campaign in over 47 ridings that has so far generated 31,000 complaints. That strains credulity, especially when the Conservatives were caught in hundreds of other dirty tricks. Who else had any motive to commit the crime? Who else could have done it? Who else has the reputation for it? There might not yet be enough evidence to convict Harper in a court of law, but there is certainly enough to convict him in the court of common sense. He should resign. His denials are as believable as someone whose bank account received a million dollars in embezzled funds.

This crime could not have be committed without the help of technicians, speaker/actors, robocall management of three different robocall companies, people who made the arrangements for all 47 ridings and, of course, somebody with substantial cash to fund it all. It should be only a matter of time until somebody blows the whistle.

Cui prodest scelus, is fecit. (The one who derives advantage from the crime is the one most likely to have committed it.)

~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC 65 AD age:68)
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Impossibility of Withdrawing Citizenship

Harper wants to withdraw citizenship from anyone with dual citizenship if they are accused of terrorism. Let us say a person has dual US and Canadian citizenship. If both countries wash their hands of him based only an suspicion, what then? Our terrorist is 50% Canada’s problem. It is irresponsible to try to fob that problem off 100% on the USA. What if other countries did the same to us dumping their problem citizens on us?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Income Splitting

Harper’s $2 billion income spitting program, ostensibly to help financially-pressed families, is actually a con man’s ruse to take from the poor and give to the rich. Single parents get nothing since they have no one to split with. Poor parents get nothing because both parents are in same low income bracket. Middle income working parents get nothing because both parents are in the same income bracket. People who live together but are not formally married get nothing. Who then gets all the money?

• High income earners with stay-at-home spouses.
• High income earners with a spouse with a low income hobby job.

These people are doing fine. They don’t need a subsidy paid on the backs of the rest of us. Income splitting is just a political payoff, a carrot to persuade the wealthy to donate to the Conservative party.

Joe Oliver, the Conservative Finance Minister, lied to the House that income splitting benefits middle class and low-income families, when only the richest 15% get even a penny.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Increasing Danger in the Name of Safety

At the request of a group of prostitutes seeking safer working conditions the Ontario Supreme Court overturned several laws that make the sex trade more dangerous than it need be. Harper is launching an appeal, but outrageous part is he claims he is doing it to improve sex trade safety! What utter nonsense! He simply wants to re-impose his religious values. He wants the trade as dangerous as possible. He wants hookers beat up and murdered. In his puritanical fundamentalist view, that is their just reward.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Inflation

The Harper government says it has a target of 2% inflation per year. In other words, they allow the banks, (or do it themselves), to print money to increase the total supply by 2% each year. During the low oil prices panic, they announced they were not inflating fast enough, so were lowering the interest rates the government charges to the banks to encourage them to print more.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Job Competition

In parts of Canada there are 14 people competing for each job. Consider a Canada where there were 14 employers competing to attract each worker. The very thought would cause Stephen Harper to awaken from his nightmare, sweating profusely in terror. The imbalance makes exploitation inevitable. The key fact to understand is corporations prefer high unemployment. It gives them power over workers. It lets them offer lower wages. So it is no wonder the Stephen Harper corporatocracy consider job creation to have a very low priority.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Job Creation

Harper’s notion of job creation is to fire 2000 people from their dream jobs at the CBC to subsidise new foreign worker jobs at McDonalds. The new job numbers look so good.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Justin Trudeau

The Liberal party is about to commit a protracted suicide with the coronation of Justin Trudeau (1971-12-25 age:46) as party leader. He is the famous, charismatic son of one of Canada’s most famous and capable Prime Ministers, Pierre Trudeau. Justin is handsome and has politically appealing just-left-of-center policies. The Liberals hope to sweep to power in a Beatlemania like recreation of Trudeaumania that swept his father to power. The catch is what happens after the Liberals win the election. Trudeau will be expected to take on a very difficult executive position, in charge of all of Canada. He has never so much as run a hot dog stand. He will fall on his nose and discredit the Liberal party for a generation. Harper and his successors will never let Canadians forget. The Liberals should pick somebody else for now and make sure Justin gets some relevant training and experience over the next decade, so he can do a bang up job as PM later. They can still use him now for star power.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Keep the Prisons Filled

Stephen Harper announced his goal is to keep the prisons filled. Consider for a second how effective prisons are at rehabilitation — persuading criminals not to reoffend. We lock them up with hardened criminals. Through peer pressure, they pick up even stronger anti-social attitudes. They learn new criminal skills from fellow inmates. They learn to hate and distrust anyone who works in the criminal justice system. They come out with a criminal record, which blocks them from getting a job.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Keep Your Promises

Stephen Harper likes to make big promises involving things like climate change, foreign aid and helping veterans. Then he does not carry through. It is not clear if he ever had any intention of keeping his word. In my view, to promise then renege sneakily is ten times worse than promising nothing in the first place.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Killer Bathtubs

Terrorism is not even in the 100 leading causes of death, yet we spend more on it than anything else. You are more likely to drown in your bathtub. Why then is the Harper government trying so hard to panic the Canadian public about the danger of terrorists?

• It wants more power to control all citizens. It wants to annul the civil rights of those who oppose the Conservative Party agenda in any way, just as they have silenced all government scientists.
• They want to shovel even more money at the terrorist industry since they are a prime source for campaign contributions and kickbacks.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Kinder Morgan

Texas oil company, Kinder Morgan wants to transport tar sands bitumen across British Columbia to sell to China. The downsides are:

• Spills that will destroy rivers and oceans.
• They want to use parks as part of the route.
• Extracting the bitumen will create huge CO₂ emissions.
• China will create immense CO₂ emissions burning that carbon.
• The project has a short life. It will have nowhere near the 60-year life used to estimate profitability. Fossil fuels are a sunset technology. The taxpayers will be on the hook for infrastructure mortgages.
• The government assumes much of the risk and startup cost, but Kinder Morgan gets the profits.
• Low-paid temporary foreign workers will largely do the construction. Even these jobs are temporary.
• Kinder Morgan is a scofflaw. They use their immense wealth and political influence to get away with it. They are not an ethical corporation. It is almost like doing business with gangsters.

Proponents claim these projects will fill government coffers to overflowing which compensates for any disadvantage. The CEO (Chief Executive Officer), Richard Kinder makes $500 million a year. Corrupt men in government have created loopholes for him so he pays $0 personal income tax. Kinder Morgan has more than 11,000 employees and has a combined enterprise value of approximately $125 billion yet Kinder Morgan pays less than $1 million per year in corporate income tax for all their many activities across Canada, less than the cost of one house. This is hardly staggering wealth. People like BC Premier Christy Clark and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have been seduced by dreams of avarice and have encouraged Kinder Morgan to con them, or, given the way they have acted as cheerleaders for Kinder Morgan, they may even be in on the con.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Law Is an Ass

Canadian lawmakers get so rattled with dealing with sex and pornography, they often enact laws that make no sense. Consider that an 18-year old male was sentenced to a six months for distributing child pornography for posting explicit pictures of his 16-year girl friend on a Facebook friends page out of malice. What makes this somewhat nuts is it is apparently legal to have sex with a 16-year old girl but not to look at a naked picture of one. This is what happens when you mix Christian fundamentalist Harper supporters and the law. What the boy did was clearly wrong, but nothing to do with distributing child pornography.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Leading By Bad Example

Religious leaders assert that behaving well sets the bar and encourages others to behave well. If you behave badly, it gives an excuse for others to behave badly. Canada’s Prime Minister Harper and environment minister Peter Kent disingenuously assert the opposite. They claim the more Canada emits greenhouse gases the more it will encourage others to cut back. What an absurd excuse for toadying to the oil companies!

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Legitimate Coalitions

Harper falsely claims that coalitions are illegitimate, that they are not permitted by constitutional law. He felt threatened by a possible NDP-Liberal coalition. This is nonsense. There are plenty of historical precedents, including Britain and Australia today. A coalition, to rule, must have more seats than any other single party. There is nothing in the least undemocratic about it. You can think of a coalition as a temporary merger of two parties.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Liberal Lie

The Liberals are telling a lie that capitalises on Harper’s unpopularity. They come into a riding like Victoria where Denise Savoie of the NDP is in the lead. They tell people that if they vote NDP, it will split the vote and the Conservative candidate will win. That is not true, if they vote Liberal, it will split the vote and the Conservatives could squeak in, using their money machine. What the Liberals claim is only true in a riding where a Liberal is in the lead, or where a Conservative is in the lead and a Liberal is in the #2 slot.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Long Campaign

Stephen Harper chose an extremely long election campaign for the 2015 federal election. This has two consequences:

1. If every day each party makes a spending promise, the country will be broke by-election day.
2. There is plenty of time to get bored with each topic. This means the ones Harper wants to avoid such as climate change and muzzling scientists may eventually come to the top.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Loss of Freedom of Information

Under the Harper government Canada dropped 11 rankings to 51st in the world in terms of freedom of information.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lying about F-35 Costs

On 2012-04-03, Michael Ferguson, Auditor General of Canada, raked dozens of people in the department of defence over the coals for lying about the useless F35 fighter jets, the biggest procurement in Canadian history. They lied that the cost of the 65 jets, claiming it would be $16 billion when it would actually be at least $25 billion. As Thomas Mulcair, the new leader of the NDP put it, If the Prime Minister knew, what he did was egregious, if he did not know, he is incompetent. Which is it? The auditor general did not specifically mention the lies of Prime Minister Harper or any of this cabinet ministers, but even more important than the lying is the motive for lying. It is traditional for a contractor to win such mega contracts by bribing everyone and his dog. The bribe is not necessarily a Mulroneyian envelope of cash. It can be a tip where to purchase a yacht for $50. Consider that on an $25 billion sale, a bribe of $1,000,000 for each of 100 people amounts to less than half of 1% commission.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mad Stephen Harper

Prime Minister Harper’s deadly embrace of Enbridge and the tar sands despite the global warming consequences and despite the financial consequences from the coming sudden collapse of the bitumen market reminds me of an old joke my statistics prof told us. It was a mathematical joke, so I will translate. A drunk heard there was a $100,000,000 prize for swimming from New York to London. He was all keen to set out. His friend said You will surely die you nincompoop. Yes, but the prize is worth it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Majority ≠ Majority

In Canada’s electoral system, it is possible for a party to win a majority government with less than 1/3 the vote. This gives the Prime Minister the powers of a typical dictator for up to 5 years. The majority and party discipline protects him from a vote of non-confidence. Unfortunately, Prime Ministers such as Stephen Harper falsely interpret their majorities as approval by all Canadians to do whatever they please. They pretend to forget most Canadians voted against them and that they are sworn to look out for the interests of those people too.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Make the Rich Richer

Stephen Harper’s goal is to transform Canada’s multi-billionaires into mega-billionaires. He is primarily using four techniques:

1. Transferring wealth from the 99% to the 1%.
2. Trashing the environment.
3. In the same gradual Hitler-like way, concentrating all power in his office.
4. Replacing Canadian labour with foreign workers and outsourcing.

He has convinced a plurality of Canadians to vote against their own self-interest. How? Many Canadians, like Russians, believe you need a strong man as a leader. Harper is a bully. He appeals to their inner bully. He has much the same sort of appeal as Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly.

Thankfully he is now gone.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mandate to do Anything

I predict that Mr. Harper will pull the same filthy trick as the Republicans in the USA, claiming his majority gives him a mandate to implement all manner of unpopular policies he barely mentioned during the election.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Manhattan Beads Revisited

Harper traded rights to Canada’s water for two pandas, actually just the right to rent them for a million dollars a year each for ten years. Why does this story sound familiar?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was the shooter at the War Memorial and Parliament killed 2014-10-22.

• Why attack the War Memorial Monument? That is almost purely symbolic. I think it was meant to protest Canada’s pride in how it behaved in Afghanistan. The shooter could have blown the monument up in the middle of the night, but he chose to kill a ceremonial military guard instead. I guess that was a symbolic blow at the Canadian soldiers who illegally invaded Afghanistan.
• What is the significance that the shooter used a Winchester .30-30 rifle rather than an automatic weapon? Perhaps was the only weapon Canada’s gun laws made it easy for him to acquire.
• What is the significance that the shooter was Caucasian? It means he was not a foreign ISIS agent, though he was an Islamic convert and ISIS sympathiser.
• Why did he walk right past the caucus room door where Stephen Harper was? I presume it was because he not plan his attack even to the point of looking at a floor plan. This suggests a confused drug-induced or delusion-induced state.
• terrorism is defined as killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation. So, since the only person killed was a soldier, neither of the two events is terrorism, though Stephen Harper claimed otherwise in his address.

I suspect all we have is a random attack by a mentally ill person. We have been overreaching to it as if it were a Mossad style operation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mike Duffy Scandal

Mike Duffy, a Canadian Conservative Party appointed senator, defrauded the government of about $90,000 in invalid expensive claims. The Conservative party wanted to cover up the scandal of their star senator (a former media personality) by having him repay the expenses. The catch was, he had already spent the money. So Nigel Wright, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Chief of staff, gave Duffy $90,000 out of his personal account. Unfortunately for Mr. Wright and Mr. Duffy, giving large amounts of money to senators is considered a bribe.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper pretends to know nothing of the $90,000 cheque. I find that highly implausible, why?

• Mr. Harper has a reputation for micromanaging not only the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office), but also the whole government. Nothing happens without his approval.
• This a highly dangerous political gamble that could destroy the Conservative Party. Mr. Wright was a prudent, team player. There is no way he would pull such a stunt without permission. Harper has surrounded himself with spineless yes-men.
• Mr. Harper is quoted in an email as saying he was good to go on the plan to handle the Duffy scandal. Harper claims he meant only that he was OK with Duffy paying back his own expenses. That does not make sense. There was no need for Harper to OK that. If he approved, it had to be something which at least in theory he might have vetoed.
• When talking about himself in this scandal, the Prime Minister refers to himself in the third person. This is trick commonly used by liars to try to distance themselves from their misdeeds.
• Mr. Wright is not being charged, citing lack of evidence, even though the RCMP have the illegal cheque. Somebody pulled some strings to get him off the hook. Pretty well the only person who could do that is Mr. Harper.
• Harper is claiming the same I-know-nothing-about-what-happens-in-my-office as Nixon did in Watergate. It is simply not believable in such control freaks.

For me the most interesting question of this scandal is what did Harper do/promise/threaten to induce Mr. Wright to part with $90,000 to bail out Duffy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Misusing Word Terrorism

According to historian Caleb Carr, terrorism is killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation. That did not stop Stephen Harper from accusing Omar Khadr of terrorism, even though he was accused of killing a soldier in self-defence who was illegally invading Afghanistan. There was not one element of terrorism in Khadr’s alleged act. Terrorism means whatever Harper wants it to mean. To him, it is any violence anyone does he does not like. The term has no business in law without a clear official definition such as Harper’s new law that withdraws citizenship from accused terrorists.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Motive For War on Syria

Harper claims he has to declare war on Syria to protect Canada from ISIS attacking.

Hitler had tanks, planes, a navy, subs, rockets and two major allies. He could not keep even a two front war going.

ISIS has no tanks, planes, navy, subs or missiles. It has only Boko Haram as an ally. How the heck could they keep 50 fronts going?

Harper wants war as an excuse to spend money on his backers and concentrate his power. It has absolutely nothing to do with defending Canada. ISIS are a danger, but only to those in the middle east.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Musical Chairs

Homelessness is like a game of musical chairs. The problem is more people than housing.

If you draw a graph of homelessness in Canada and another graph of federal spending on low cost housing, you will see they are exact mirror images. The villains are Paul Martin and Stephen Harper who have an ideological hatred of the homeless.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

National Unity

The most important function of the CBC is national unity. When Canadians hear daily from other Canadians in other parts of the country, they are much more sympathetic to their problems and much more willing to compromise to make sure it works out for everyone. When you hear the music, festivals and troubles of other people like you, you can’t help but care for them. If the CBC starts merely rebroadcasting excellent British, American or world broadcasts, it will totally lose this function. I don’t think this important benefit merits even a line in Harper’s budget-think.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Next Federal Election

The Canadian government services I most appreciate are:

1. CBC Radio.
2. Environment Canada.
3. Health Care.

The government services I least appreciate are:

1. Promoting tar sands extraction.
2. Helping the USA fight foreign resource wars.
3. Ceremonies to celebrate past wars.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has worked tirelessly to kill the government services I appreciate and balloon those I do not. So I cheer that liquid-fat enclosed in a sausage skin, otherwise known as Mike Duffy, dragging him down in scandal.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

No Drugs for Africa

The Harper Conservatives defeated bill C-398 148 to 141. The bill would have made it easier to manufacture and export pharmaceutical products to address public health problems afflicting many developing and less developed countries, especially those resulting from HIV (Human Immuno-deficiency Virus) /AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics. It allowed generic versions of key drugs to be made available to the developed world at reduced cost. An earlier form of the bill had already been passed, but was too bureaucratic to actually be useful. The pharmaceutical industry said they would not oppose it. It created new sales for them they would not get otherwise. So why did the Conservatives defeat it?

• Bigotry. They really don’t like the poor or the non-white. This was a way to eliminate them without using the military to do it.
• The pharmaceutical industry, which is one of the owners of the Conservative party, were not wildly enthusiastic about the bill and would have preferred a bill as useless as the first. The Conservatives defeated the bill as a present for their masters.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

No Drugs for Africa

The Harper Conservatives narrowly defeated bill C-398. The bill would have allowed low cost generic HIV drugs to be sold to Africans to people who otherwise could not afford them. The drug companies were tepidly on board for it. So why this Grinch-like attitude? Why condemn hundreds of thousands of Africans to certain death?

Mike Lake, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, explained that the reason was Canada was already helping fight AIDS so no more effort was necessary. But why block others from helping too?

Stephen Lewis, the former United Nations Special Envoy for HIV / AIDS in Africa, said this was nonsense. Canada’s efforts against AIDS were pathetic.

I can think of two reasons for their opposition and neither are very pretty.

1. Racism
2. Desire to curry favour with drug companies who would rather Africans die than receive discount drugs.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nose Despite Your Face

Harper closed the embassy in Iran. Whom did this hurt? Canadians of Iranian extraction visiting relatives back in Iran.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Now Legal to Destroy the Environment

Surprise! Harper is repealing six major environmental laws. There is not a single environmentalist, biologist or botanists in the country who thinks this is a good idea. The public has not called for it. Even two ex-Tory cabinet ministers have expressed their outrage. Harper is doing this purely on behalf of the bastards who violate these laws. He is doing it because they give him money to fund his elections. Harper belongs in prison if not worse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Fever

Alberta’s financial problems are caused by oil fever. Harper, Klein, Stelmack, Redford and Prentice along with BC’s Christy Clark bet the farm on fossil fuels. That was an irresponsible thing to do. Every businessman knows you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I think they did it because of corruption. Big Oil is where the big contributions came from. They sealed their eyes shut to the environment, to climate change and to the historic volatility of fossil fuel prices. They all deserve a good swift kick in the pants.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Heroin

I am baffled that anyone would ever take heroin. Surely potential users have seen others do so and how it takes over and ruins their lives. They must have a way of blanking out the negative consequences and focusing only on the short term pleasure.

Prime Minister Harper has the personality of a heroin addict. His idea of heaven is to sell off all the tar sands for fuel, releasing more CO₂ than released previously in all history. He squirms in pleasure at all the money he would get for doing that. He refuses to even consider the negative consequences of massive global frying from the CO₂ emissions:

• Killing off all the perennial vegetation on earth.
• Wiping out the coral reefs which are the nurseries for about half the world’s fish.
• Flooding most of the world’s agricultural land with rising oceans.
• Fossil fuels are a sunset technology. They are already rapidly being replaced in Germany by green energy. The world will abruptly abandon them entirely as soon as the cost of green energy drops below that of fossil fuels, or the world wakes up to the impending doom of climate change. Harper won’t get to sell the entire tar sands, but Canada will be left holding the bag for the entire mortgage on the infrastructure to extract them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

One Man Wrecking Ball

On 2012-12-04, 2.5 million rivers were protected in Canada. On 2012-12-05, that number was cut to 62. What happened? Stephen Harper the one-man environmental wrecking ball.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Only Canada

All the other world leaders, even China, India, Brazil and Europe are on board for stopping climate change. Only Canada’s leader, Stephen Harper, is a climate change denier. Obama acknowledges the problem but still does nothing. It is no co-incidence Harper belongs to a whacky Christian fundamentalist cult. However, as the son of an oilman, his true church is the church of Oil. Because of Harper, the rest of the world think Canadians are crazy and no longer listen to us.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Orwellian Harper

Stephen Harper pushed through an Orwellian Bill C-30 that requires ISP (Internet Service Provider) s to record everything their customers download over the Internet. No warrant is required. I think this is utterly foolish for eleven reasons:

1. The bill is ostensibly to help catch paedophiles, yet it casts a net thousands of times wider than necessary. The suggests the real purpose of the bill has little to do with kiddie porn. Harper will use it primarily to spy on environmentalists whom he considers to be terrorists.
2. It would be ridiculously expensive for the hardware and software to comply. Only the largest ISPs (Internet Service Providers), the ones who support Harper with financial contributions, could stay in business. All the smaller competition would have to fold. These costs would be passed on to Canadian consumers, who already pay more than almost anyone else on the planet for Internet services. This would put Canadian business at a disadvantage internationally.
3. There are not enough disks on the planet to store and index all this information. Consider that every time a customer downloads a movie, the ISP must burn, index and store the equivalent of one DVD (Digital Video Disc). Every view of every newspaper page by every customer has to be collected and stored. Even a little viral video of a cat licking a bunny could require collecting and saving millions of copies of it, just in case it contained some kiddie porn. Every webcam stream must be collected in its entirety by every ISP whose customers view it. The total storage capacity of computers in Canada would have to increase by thousands of times. This would be prohibitively expensive. This goofy scheme is not even technically possible as it stands. That shows how little thought has gone into it.
4. Who is going to look at all this junk? It is hoarding on a colossal scale. It would make much more sense just to collect traffic from known kiddie porn sites broadcast on a list produced by the police. This would be a much more manageable stream. And there is no need to actually capture the stream content — the police can do that. All they need capture is the URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), namely who requested what from the kiddie porn sides, a minute fraction of the cost of Harper’s grandiose scheme to spy about everything on everyone.
5. It is not CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) collecting and protecting this data, just ordinary civilian ISPs with no experience in high security. That means this data will leak and be used for all manner of improper purposes.
6. J. Edgar Hoover illegally spied on anyone he felt like it without warrants. This god-like power corrupted him. He used it to try to force Dr. Martin Luther King to commit suicide. I don’t trust Stephen Harper with that smorgasbord of information, or ordinary police officers or ISPs for that matter.
7. With these kinds of Orwellian powers to snoop, what is to stop Harper from turning or your webcam remotely and secretly spying on you?
8. If you want to stop kiddie porn, it would be trivially easy for ISP s just to block kiddie porn sites on a list provided electronically by the police.
9. Capturing https: or encrypted streams tells you nothing at all about the content. All financial traffic is encrypted. You cannot ban all encrypted traffic. Google has been pressing all sites to encrypt everything.
10. Computers will track everyone, no exceptions. This means all kinds of things that should be kept top secret will be caught in the drag net and eventually accidentally/criminally revealed, potentially including embarrassing tidbits about what Mr. Harper does in his bedroom.
11. The coming fibre optic revolution delivering radio, music and ultra-high definition TV on demand will explode the amount of data traveling over the Internet, blowing out of the water even the most costly attempt to record all the traffic.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Our Traditional Freedoms

• If you are arrested, you must be charged with a specific offence within 24 hours or released. (Habeas Corpus)
• You have a right to a speedy trial.
• You cannot be kept incarcerated without being convicted of a specific crime.
• You can only be punished for things you have done, not things you might do.
• If you are arrested, you have a right to notify your family where you are. (Your one phone call.)
• You have a right to your opinions and to express them. You can even criticise Canada or Prime Minister Harper.

Your New Freedoms

Stephen Harper with his new bill C-51 has done away with nearly all our constitutional freedoms. Our dictator has power similar to those of the divine right of kings.

• You can be put in jail indefinitely. You need not be charged. There need be no evidence whatsoever you have committed a crime. You don’t have to be accused of breaking any law. You don’t even have to be accused of wanting to break some law. All it takes is an RCMP officer or CSIS officer or someone in the Prime Minister’s office to consider you suspicious.
• You can be disappeared with nobody knowing what happened to you.
• If you write on your website suggesting Canada is wrong in its middle eastern policies and the terrorists have a case, the RCMP could take down your website and detain you without charge.
• Given there is no oversight, you could disappear merely for criticising Mr. Harper. The slice by slice way he has seized dictatorial powers mirrors the tactics of Adolph Hitler. The USA, Britain and Australia all have oversight.
• Basically you can be locked up on a whim, e.g. for being gay, native, Muslim, a personal enemy… Harper has nearly everyone bamboozled into thinking these Draconian measures would only ever be used on bona fide terrorists. The word terrorist is not even defined. Consider, all this happens in secret without political consequences. When has Mr. Harper ever told you the truth? Despite repeated requests from the opposition, he has refused to clarify the language to prevent some of the more obvious abuses, such as arresting pipeline protesters as terrorists. Harper has made it clear he considers all environmentalists and pipeline protesters, or anyone who interferes with commerce (even strikers) as terrorists.

Harper sells us baloney that ISIS is motivated by a hatred of our freedoms rather than revenge for illegally invading and bombing Afghanistan. ISIS has done nothing to harm our freedoms. It is Harper who has obliterated our freedoms that we have enjoyed since the Magna Carta. He is the one guilty of destroying our freedoms using the excuse of a pathetic band of terrorists on the other side of the world whose attacks amount to producing videos asking Canada to attack itself. Just as power corrupted the Inquisition, it is corrupting Mr. Harper.

The most effective thing you can do to correct this is to vote for the NDP or the Greens. The Liberals voted for the bill.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overstepping His Mandate

One of the most galling things about Stephen Harper is he believes his majority government (granted by a minority of voters), gives him the right to impose his personal religious superstitions and moral notions on those his senior.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Papers Please

At the insistence of George W. Bush, Stephen Harper made a law requiring permanent residents in Canada to get an ID card that lets them back in the country. To apply you must be able to account for your whereabouts and your place of work for the last five years on a week-by-week basis! Why on earth is that much information needed for a simple ID card? This is just hassling people out of sheer devilry. The kit to apply tells you that you must pay a fee, but does not tell you how much or where to send it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Penny Wise and Pound Foolish

The theme of the Harper government should be penny wise and pound foolish The latest bit of idiocy is making visas more difficult to apply for and taking longer. This hacks away at the language school industry and the tourist industry that used to bring in billions of dollars each year.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

People Are Supposed to Control the Government

In a democracy, the people are supposed to tell the government what to do.
Harper believes the government’s job is to tell the people what to think.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Peter Kent Betrayed The Planet

Environment Minister Peter Kent dismissed the protest by four former Fisheries Ministers (both Liberal and Conservative) by claiming they have not read the legislation. Wasn’t that Kent’s intent by repealing environmental protection in the fine print in the Omnibus budget bill? Why would Kent hide the legislation if he thought the changes would be welcome? Thousands of environmentalists and environmental scientists are pointing out Kent’s changes are suicidal and irreversible. Kent is the one without credentials powered only by his fundamentalist boss Harper’s certainty and blanket rejection of science. He has no evidence they did not read the bill. That’s the best rebuttal he can muster. What a toad! No, that’s not true; that insults the toad.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Petrostate Curse

Having petroleum reserves often turns into the petrostate curse. A nation relies more and more on petroleum exports for its income. It lets every other industry deteriorate. Eventually, for some reason, the petroleum exports fail, and the nation dies. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Premier Alison Redford of Alberta, and Premier Christy Clark of BC all aspire to this for Canada.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Phony Economy

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in the name of economy, fired the people in Revenue Canada who track down wealthy tax cheats, generating 6 billion in fines plus recovered tax revenues. This move clearly costs the treasury dearly. The real reason for this cut is a kickback for Harper’s wealthy political supporters. It is disguised corruption.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Phony Uncertainty

Dr. Hoople: Mrs. Smith, your son is clearly dying. We suspect it may be your habit of putting rat poison on his cornflakes each morning. Of course, we have no proof other than all the other children in your son’s class at school who eat rat poison are dead or doing poorly and the Europeans have banned the practice. The manufacturer of the rat poison is doing a 20 year study on the matter, after which we can take definitive action. We recommend wait and see. Rash action could affect rat poison sales (Drat! That would be terrible for my portfolio.). Even if we stopped the poison and your son got better, that still would not prove the poison was the culprit (Egad, lawsuits!).

How is that any different from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s do-nothing bee protection policy?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pink High Heels

Whenever I contemplate Stephen Harper’s fleshy lips, smugly pursed, I cannot help but think everyone in the room with him, under pain of death, is pretending not to notice that he is wearing pink high heels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Piss On Alberta

Politicians have been getting in hot water for criticising Albertans. They have been falling all over themselves to apologise. I think whipping Albertans with pismires is more than called for. Why?

• Albertans have repeatedly said the only issue they care about is money from selling tar sands oil. They don’t care about the environment, global warming or their impact on other provinces. They are happy to impose environmental costs on other provinces but are unwilling to share any of the oil revenue. They are eager to sacrifice the entire planet and all future generation of Albertans just so they can have a little more money in the short term. They are environmental pigs.

• Albertans vote solidly for Stephen Harper’s Conservative party, thus imposing him on the rest of Canada. Harper is the worst Prime Minister in Canadian history. A few of his sins that particularly irk me include:

  • Gutting environmental protection.
  • Climate change denial. Canada has been repeatedly voted the worst nation on earth when it comes to dealing with climate change. Harper is not content to do nothing, he actively sabotages the efforts of others.
  • Dropping protection for endangered species.
  • Crooked arms deals. Keeping two sets of books on the F35 fighter jets. Lying about the $25+ billion cost. Buying jets from his buddies that are not suitable far Arctic use — their alleged purpose.
  • Glorifying the military including wasting millions on glorifying the Afghan war and the hoary war of 1812.
  • Gutting the CBC.
  • Pushing a filthy bitumen pipeline and un-cleanupable oil tanker route on BC. No technology exists anywhere to clean up bitumen.
  • He keeps finding ways to push his extreme fundamentalist Christian views on others.
  • Gagging all scientists who receive government funding.
  • He is pro-gun, like an American.
  • He is a pro-Israel propagandist willing to tell any lie for the Jewish vote. He does all he can to block a two-state peace.
• Albertans hold the Calgary Stampede, which like Roman spectacles of the past, features animal cruelty and death as part of the entertainment. They think of the deaths as an necessary, unavoidable accidents. They refuse to do anything to reduce the injuries to the horses. All they care about is their sado-sexual pleasure. Albertans see compassion as sissified.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Plastic Money

On 2012-11-07 Canada released a polymer-based $20 bill featuring the Vimy Ridge memorial for a WWI battle victory. The monument, reminiscent of the twin towers under attack, is just two stone obelisks like something you might find in Mordor. zoom

Why such an ugly, irrelevant monument to a spat with our ally Germany back in 1917? Everyone involved is long dead. It was an pointless war. The new bill celebrates a era of planetary insanity.

Why? It is part of Stephen Harper’s relentless propaganda blitz to glorify war so he can justify unnecessary, increased military spending to pay off his backers in the defence industry.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Please Drain Harper

Please someone, poke Stephen Harper with a sugar maple tap to drain him of pus and all things unclean.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Political Parole

Harper is planning to change the way parole works for serious crimes. Instead of having judges, psychologists and other experts determine if parole is appropriate, politicians will, and they will base their decisions on how much mail they get thumbs up and thumbs down from people who know almost nothing about the case or how the prisoner has behaved. Politicians should set the laws, not adjudicate individual cases. Politicians are improperly taking powers away from the judiciary. Follow this through. You will be able to get a pardon with a sufficiently large donation to a politician, just as in the USA.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Population Growth

Everybody knows the earth is attempting to carry more population than it can sustain. You would think then government policy would be to try to get the population levels down to sustainable levels. The Harper government is doing the exact opposite. Canadians have got their natural population growth down to zero, a good first step. But the Harper government wants to balloon the population by bringing in people from countries where 10 children are the norm. All population growth now comes from this deliberate sabotage of the environment. He wants to stimulate economic demand to steamroller all attempts to protect the environment. We should select immigrants who limit their family size to 2 or fewer children.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Power Corrupts

The bright side of the 2011-05-02 Harper majority is that Harper is addicted to power. He won’t be able to stop himself from abusing that power in ways that infuriate the vast majority of the Canadian people. It will be a long time before the next election, but when it comes, the Canadian people will turf him and his party out for a generation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Presumed Safe

If you found a 2 metres (6.56 ft) snake under your daughter’s bed, would you ignore it until experts had reached consensus that they were absolutely certain the snake was seriously poisonous? The very idea is absurd. Yet this is the policy of the Harper government to toxic chemicals in our food, water, homes and work places.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Prime Minister of His Base

I wish someone could get it into Harper’s head that he is Prime Minister of all Canadians, not just those who voted for him.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Prisons in Norway

Norway’s prisons are derisively called country clubs. However, Norway has the lowest rate of repeat offending in Europe. Blind ideology made Harper pile on prison cruelties despite evidence it makes matters worse. He does not care. Cruelty feels more satisfying.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Profit Trumps the Environment

I can’t think of a single time when Stephen Harper acted to protect the environment when it would cause even a penny loss of profitability for some corporation. He is a climate change denier for pity sake. No matter what he promises, he has no intention of protecting the environment. He sees the world purely through the eyes of short-term economics.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Questioning W’s Story

Let’s review. President Bush told us that he had absolutely no idea that 2001-09-11 was coming, but within hours was 100% certain Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, was responsible. Later he announced that Mahmud Ahmad, the Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) head of security, bankrolled it. He presented no evidence, presumably because he was concerned such information might be valuable to terrorists. He announced that Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, though a wicked man, had no ties to 2001-09-11. Then he invaded, not Saudi Arabia, not Pakistan, but Afghanistan and later Iraq and set up puppet governments. He explained that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were still staunch allies. Stephen Harper, on 2009-04-04 explained that Canada did not actually invade Afghanistan, but had been invited by the Afghan government to help with security. That reminds me of the sorts of lies the Soviet Union used to tell about its suppression of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Harper is vague. He could be claiming the Taliban invited Canada in, or that the Karzai puppet government was in power at the time of the invasion. Either claim is preposterous. To cap it off, the bulk of the publicly accessible evidence points to 2001-09-11 being an inside job. According to the head of German security, bin Laden and his motley band were nowhere near capable of pulling off such a dramatic feat. But the really astounding thing is most Americans see nothing at all odd in any of this.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Religious Conflict

Canada as a whole is undergoing a religious conflict. Canadians believe firmly in separation of church and state. The state should not interfere with religious life. All religions should be treated equally. At the same time, Canadians hold other sacred values such as gender equality, equal rights for gays and protection of children. Fundamentalist Christian and Muslim religions do not share these values, especially when you watch how they are practised in other parts of the world. Conflicts arise in Canada over issues like:

• Should women cover their heads and/or faces in court?
• Should women be punished when they are raped?
• Should parents be able to deny their children effective medical care?
• Should people be able to carry weapons everywhere for religious purposes?
• Should people be permitted to harass gays?
• Should religious preferences in garb override uniform requirements?
• Should parents be able to decide whom their children will marry?
• Should vigilante murders of those who insult a religion be tolerated?
• Should male/female genital mutilation for non-medical reasons be tolerated?
• Though this is not the Canadian consensus because religions have no evidence to back them up, they all disagree with each other. This is a recipe for conflict. It would be best if we gradually phased them all out.

The issues are complicated by the fact Prime Minister Stephen Harper belongs to a radical fundamentalist Christian church.

The courts have been all over the map in their rulings trying to resolve these issues. I think we should develop some guiding principles:

• The constitution and the charter of rights and freedoms trumps everything else. The charter is rational and has broad consensus, whereas religions are faith-based, irrational and trusted by only a minority segment of the population.
• If a religion is given an exemption to some law, then everyone must be given that same exemption, e.g. exclusion from the draft, the right to cover the face in court.
• The right to be free of some religion trumps the right of that religion to impose itself on others.
• You may not make laws which restrict the religious activity of people unless there is a pressing practical need for them. Laws can’t just be intended to hassle the believers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Relinquishing Water

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have betrayed Canada by relinquishing the right of Canada to keep its own water. If the US wants it, we have to pump it to them even if we need it to sustain our environment or for our own needs. What is even more disgusting is what the Americans will do with it — squander it watering desert golf courses, polluting it with industrial processes that make no attempt to conserve water and flushing it down toilets 15 litres (3.96 US gallons) at a time just to flush away a 50 mls (1.69 fl oz) of urine. 15 litres (3.96 US gallons) of water is all it takes to sustain all needs of an African for a day. Harper is to the environment what Hitler was to Jews. His manic destructiveness must be fueled by some deep-rooted insanity. It is too hateful and contemptuous to be explained away by purely accepting bribes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reluctance To Act

Stephen Harper excuses his complete lack of action regulating the oil and gas industry because Obama hasn’t either. This is like refusing to cut your lawn because your deadbeat neighbour does not cut his.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Repealing Environmental Laws

Surprise! Harper is repealing six major environmental laws. There is not a single environmentalist, biologist or botanists in the country who thinks this is a good idea. The public has not called for it. Even two ex-Tory cabinet ministers have expressed their outrage. Harper is doing this purely on behalf of the bastards who violate these laws. He is doing it because they give him money to fund his elections. Harper belongs in prison if not worse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Resource Sale

Harper’s economic plan for Canada is to sell off its non-renewable natural resources as quickly as possible in as raw a state a possible. There is only a limited amount to sell. Then what?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Revoking Canadian Citizenship

Stephen Harper wants the power to revoke Canadian citizenship of those convicted of terrorism. I oppose this on several grounds.

• Harper often refers to people who protest pipelines or to environmentalists in general as terrorists. I don’t trust this law when Harper gets to define who is a terrorist. Harper is very casual in his use of the word terrorist. He happily applies it to anyone he does not like.
• The law allows people who were born in Canada to be sent back to the grandparents’country. The person expelled will not know the language or the customs. Further, Canada created this terrorist. It is improper to dump him on some impoverished third world country who had nothing to do with creating him. They don’t want him any more than we do. Why should they be stuck with him? They have a much better case to be rid of him that we do.
• A terrorist in a Canadian prison can do much less damage than free in some other country.
• This law applies to people designated as terrorists by other countries. So for example, if Saudi Arabia decides someone is a terrorist for insufficient deference to Islam, Canada may, at the discretion of Mr. Harper, or his cabinet minister, revoke that person’s citizenship. There is no option for a court review.
• It is not clear how serious infraction has to be.
• It means Canadian citizenship in general is indefinitely provisional. It can be revoked at any time, for generations later, for all practical purposes, simply at the pleasure of the prime minister. This will discourage immigrants from settling in. If they can be tossed out at any moment, they will tend not to settle permanently, e.g. buy a house or business.
• If Canada makes a habit of dumping its most undesirable citizens on other countries, those countries will, quite properly, refuse to take them. They will refuse to support dual citizenships for anyone.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rex Murphy

Cross Canada Checkup host Rex Murphy wrings his hands about ISIS, but pretends the thousands of times bigger atrocities the Americans committed in Iraq never happened. Surely he saw the photos of Abu Ghraib, the rape dogs, Guantánamo, the Frontline documentary on routine torture, the razing of Fallujah. He pretends the hatred the people the people of the middle east have for the west has no basis. What a filthy Harper propagandist! He knows exactly what drove the people of the middle east them into the arms of ISIS.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rona Ambrose Libel

Rona Ambrose was the Health Minister in the Harper Conservative cabinet. She has been interfering improperly in the court proceedings surrounding Omar Khadr. She said he should be denied bail because he was a convicted terrorist. He is not even an accused terrorist. The definition of terrorism is killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation. Khadr is accused only of killing a soldier.

The whole Khadr affair makes no sense.

• There is no evidence he killed anyone.
• He was tortured into confessing.
• It is perfectly legal to shoot people invading your country. At worst Khadr should be a prisoner of war. Killing invaders is not a war crime.
• The Americans were shooting at Khadr. That means if Khadr killed anyone, he did it in self-defence.
• He was only 15. He should have been treated as a child soldier.
• His civil rights have been violated. He should be released.

For some reason, the Americans decided to make an example of him by ignoring their own laws.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Screw The Albertans

During the Harper era, Albertans polluted and released greenhouse gases with abandon. Harper put all the country’s economic eggs in the fossil fuel basket. He let the rest of the economy wither. Albertans were selfish.

Then Saudi Arabia decided to put Canada and other high cost producers out of business by glutting the world with cheap oil. Now the Albertans have their hands out to the rest of Canada. I have no compassion for them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Scrooge

Prime Minister Harper has built his reputation as a penny pincher with a Scrooge-like indifference to the poor, homeless, aboriginals, immigrants, health care, education and the environment. But oddly he spend money like water on military toys that have no practical use, monuments and ceremonies to glorify the military.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Seal Massacre

I have talked to people who have viewed the Newfoundland seal hunt. It is not a hunt in the ordinary sense where hunters kill animals for food or pelts. They kill to punish the seals, to make them suffer as much as possible. Look at the original weapon they chose — the hakapik. Why? Because the fishermen/hunters refuse to take responsibility for overfishing and destroying the cod stocks. They foolishly blame the seals, even though 200 years ago there was no commercial seal hunt and there were astronomically abundant fish, even though seals eat the sickest and slowest fish, thus containing disease and improving the stocks. The international market has all but disappeared for seal pelts, but the Newfoundlanders continue to kill seals. They have an in-your-face attitude to the rest of Canada concerned about the brutality of the hunt or the bloody reputation (that hurts all exports) this tiny band is giving all of Canada. They are furious with the government and the rest Canada for not trying to force other countries to buy the bloody pelts. As a poke in the eye to those who oppose the hunt, they held a nauseating public feast where every dish contained seal — even the ice cream! What will the Newfoundlanders do next to gross out fellow Canadians — handing out sugar cookies drenched with menstrual seal blood at elementary schools? They are behaving like selfish unusually-immature children. The irony is, the more boorishly they behave, the faster the irrational seal scourging ritual will disappear entirely. Have a look at some Google Images of the seal hunt. Turn off Safe Search. I am so annoyed with these people I am to the point I wish Newfoundland left confederation. To make matters worse Harper has approved yet another seal cull, that scientists tell him there is no scientific evidence it will help fish stocks. He ignored science and instead bowed to emotional superstition. He despises science and worships irrational religious beliefs. So his decision is no surprise.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sell That Kidney

Harper has a book coming out this fall called Sell That Kidney! about how you can pay your bills by selling off the kidneys of family members for organ transplants. It is modeled on his experiences raising money for Canada through lax environmental policy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Selling Out to Big Oil

Harper did something politically insane. He has been giving away the store to big oil supporters and gleefully trashing the environment. He fired 50% of department after department, slashed salaries then sneakily raised the salaries of his close friends. This is bound to infuriate people to just short of murder. What the heck is going on? Perhaps Harper has seen his popularity sinking rapidly in the polls. Perhaps he knows what fury will rain down on him when the public finds out how widespread the election scandal is. Perhaps he is just trying to grab as much money as he can on his way out the door.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Senate Scandal

The Canadian senate scandal reminds me Watergate where the participants pretended they knew nothing about what was going on in the cabinet, then one by one, it came clear they did after all. In particular, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been pretending he knew nothing about Nigel Wright’s $90,000 cheque/bribe to Mike Duffy. Wright admits he told Duffy the Prime Minister had said the PM was good to go Wright later lied that he meant the PM was totally in the dark, and had simply given the OK for Duffy to repay his expenses. But that makes no sense. Duffy would not need permission to repay expenses.

Later analysis of the emails showed that everyone in the prime minister’s office knew about the cheque. The Conservative story is, by pure chance, none of them mentioned it to Stephen Harper. That is not plausible. This was not a surprise party they were organising for Stephen.

Justin Trudeau taunted Harper for firing only Nigel Wright considering his whole office were ostensibly guilty of the same crime of keeping him in the dark. To be consistent, he should fire the lot. The Conservatives cannot admit the staff did keep the PM in the loop. It is unlikely the entire PMO will be willing to fall on their swords when they did nothing out of the ordinary. If even one staff member of the PMO rats out Harper, he is toast. They have leverage to extract favours.

The cheque was an extremely politically risky piece of coverup. I find it implausible Nigel Wright would dream of going ahead with it without the PM’s permission. If it blew up, it would destroy the PM. He could not take that kind of career-destroying risk purely on his own.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Senatorial Duties

Canadian senators are given at least $135,200 each year. In return, the senator does not actually have to do anything. It is like a pension or retroactive bribe for past service to the Prime Minister’s party. In addition senators have lavish expense accounts with almost no auditing. You could think of it as a fund the PM can use to improperly reward his friends, legally. I think we could do without it.

Ironically, Stephen Harper originally opposed the senate, then appointed dozens of his buddies and then was mightily embarrassed by Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau who jumped into the pig trough a little too enthusiastically.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Short-Sighted Canadian Politicians

Trudeau can choose short-term jobs building pipelines, or long-term survival taming climate change. He cannot do both. To me, it is a no-brainer, but Trudeau is a politician. To Justin Trudeau, Stephen Harper, Brad Wall, Brian Pallister, Christy Clark and Rachel Notley, getting reelected is more important than the survival of everyone on earth. I hold them all in utter contempt for their stupidity and short-sightedness.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Shun Harperite War Criminals

People used to shun those who supported the illegal Nazi invasions. It is time to similarly shun those who voted to give Harper a mandate to continue and expand the equally illegal Afghan war. It is time they faced consequences for that war crime.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Silly Terrorist Definitions

Harper wants to revoke citizenship of anyone with dual citizenship if they are accused of terrorism (using the definition of terrorism in the country where the alleged offence occurred, e.g. holding a meeting of Jewish and Palestinian students or opposing Gadafi or Nelson Mandela’s opposition to apartheid.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Soul Of the Dictator

The key feature of dictators such as Adolf Hitler and Stephen Harper is they cannot tolerate being contradicted. The secondary characteristic is they harbour extreme religious delusions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Spending Cuts

Stephen Harper pleads poverty every time he axes popular spending. There three much better places to cut:

1. The military. No one is threatening us. Why is Harper spending more than ever? We about to make the biggest purchase in Canadian history namely F-35 jets to patrol the north that can’t be used in the dark, namely 6 months of the year. This is a joke!
2. Corporations are behaving badly, unethically and greedily. We need to reign them in. By endless unchecked mergers and acquisitions, Nestlé and Altria have taken control of almost every product you can buy in a supermarket. Farmers are going bankrupt while these middlemen siphon off an ever larger take. Large corporations exploit the loopholes they pay politicians to insert and pay no or even negative taxes.
3. You use about half your lifetime medical budget in the last year of life. I don’t want any painful, expensive or heroic measures that will just extend my life by a few months. Let me refuse these treatments without having to put up a battle royal. And when I find life has become intolerable, let me die peacefully, surrounded by friends, with a little medical help, while I am still coherent. Get those religious fanatics off my back.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Spending on Science

Spending on science and research brings benefits down the road. It gives us better, more efficient tools. It can give us a heads up to major problems coming down the pipe like climate change. But when you get a delusional, fundamentalist science-denier like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he sees no value in it. Refusing to spend on science is like coasting on your savings. You can get away with it for a while, but you pay heavily later on.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stephen Harper

Stephen Harper:

• creationist
• Bible-inerrantist
• homophobic
• anti-science
• climate change denying
• anti-stem cell research
• anti-same sex marriage
• anti-divorcee remarriage
• anti-pot
• anti-drug harm reduction
• pro-globalisation
• pro-dirty tar sands
• pro-proselytising
• Jesus will return soon
• conservative
• liar
• cheat

In the latest by-election, Conservatives were re-elected, as if nobody noticed what a disaster Harper is.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stephen Harper as Bugs Bunny

Stephen Harper is like Bugs Bunny yanking pieces out of a car engine because he does not understand what they are for. If you wipe out a fish species you can’t get it back. You need to be very very sure it is a wise thing to do. Harper wants to do it without any study and for the most trivial of reasons. I harbour fonder feelings for Adolf Hitler than Stephen Harper. Harper is crazy and dangerous. Gutting fish protection is just one of the outrages in bill C-38. I have summarised some of them. Every scientist opposes Harper. Harper is incompetent to legislate these matters. His enormous ego and religious ideology makes him think can do it single-handed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stephen Harper, a Bigger Threat to Earth Than Hitler

Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, is hundreds of times more of a threat to planet earth that Adolf Hitler ever was. If Hitler had got his way, he would have eliminated perhaps another 6 million Jews. Harper’s goal in life is to convert all the fossil fuel in Canada, including the tar sands and natural gas into greenhouse gases as rapidly as possible, triggering runaway unstoppable global warming. Environment Canada has said that would be second only to global thermonuclear war in its devastation. This will kill many billions of people. It is imperative to stop Harper from succeeding in his mad plan.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stephen Harper, Corporate Toady

Stephen Harper, corporate toady, is becoming more and more blatant in offering huge favours to corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens. Some examples include:

• Refusal to regulate the banks or corporations to stop them from cheating and misleading customers.
• Refusal to even permit organic farmers to label their food as not genetically modified.
• Destroying all the fishing villages of the Maritimes by handing over fishing rights from private citizens to corporations.
• Pushing a tar sands pipeline that will mean only a handful of long term jobs and inevitable destruction of the tourism, fishing and shellfish industries along the northern BC coast.
• Giving public subsidies to Caterpillar then let them fire everyone, leave the country and keep the money.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stephen Harper, Embezzler

Stephen Harper’s pitch to the voters went roughly like this: I may be an arrogant, fat SOB (Son Of a Bitch), but I can run the economy better than anyone in the opposition. The auditor general has questioned a missing $3.1 billion from the anti-terrorism budget. Harper has no explanation what happened to the money. Harper must now confess either to being a crook or to incompetence.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Stephen Harper, Megaliar

Stephen Harper’s propaganda machine sold the idea he was a man of integrity. That is preposterous. He lied about the most important issue of our time — climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stephen Harper, Purveyor of Junk Science

The Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has been spouting junk science for years. He threatened to fire any government scientist who contradicted him. He denies global warming. He believes regulation to preserve endangered species are not necessary. He believes that if you preserve food species, you don’t need to do anything to preserve the species they feed on. He is a fundamentalist fruitcake. He wants to burn all of Canada’s fossil fuels as fast as possible. He has no thought for the future, only the next quarter profit. In summary, he is a dangerous planetary traitor.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stink of Harper

Pudgy people like Stephen Harper have an unpleasant body odour, like a faint whiff of baby vomit.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Strutting

When Michael Zehaf-Bibeau killed a guard at the War Memorial and barged into the Parliament Buildings with a Winchester .30-30 rifle, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau exploded in bombast. They wanted to convert the ne’er-do-well homeless, drug addict Zehalf-Bibeau into an international criminal mastermind, a sort of Lex Luther plotting to destroy democracy. The whole performance was so overblown, I felt similar contempt for Mulcair and Trudeau that I usually reserve for Harper.

The proper question to ask is why couldn’t Zehaf-Bibeau get into rehab? That is the root cause of this whole mess.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Study Then Do Nothing

The federal government spent 3 years and $26 million dollars to study why the main salmon run unexpectedly dropped to 1/10 its normal size. The commission concluded there were multiple stressors killing off the run. What would a good capitalist do to save the fishery? Follow the recommendations of the commission, perhaps? Prime Minister Harper decided more study is needed, with no action of any kind.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Suicidal Vets

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is firing the counselors who look after returning Canadian vets from Afghanistan. One of the counselors went on the CBC and said that the counselors had to work full time to keep the vets from committing suicide. She was worried many of them would kill themselves if the counseling stopped. Why are these vets so suicide prone? Well, why does anyone commit suicide?

• They may believe that there is no hope for happiness in the remainder of their lives. This might apply to soldiers who lost their legs and genitals or those whose injuries made them hideous.
• They may despise themselves and believe they do not deserve to live. They are terminally ashamed of what they did or what they are.

But, you ask, soldiers did horrible things in WWII, such as dropping a nuke on Hiroshima and fire bombing Tokyo. Why did they too not have such a high suicide rate?

• Killing civilians has low military utility; it is just a distraction from the serious job of crippling the enemy’s ability to wage war. However, WWII soldiers convinced themselves any atrocity was justified since the Japanese started the fight. In contrast, the Afghan vets had no such excuse for their atrocities. Afghanistan was no threat whatsoever to Canada. If you doubt, ask yourself why is Canada withdrawing, not surrendering and why has no not one general fretted about how to defend Canada from Afghanistan?
• Because there was a draft in WWII, there no shortage of soldiers. They would be rotated into combat and relatively quickly rotated back out, before they burned out. However, in the Afghan war, there was no draft. A draft would have created public opposition to the war, so there was none. As a result, there were nowhere near enough soldiers. Soldiers thus got almost no time off. Neither were they permitted to retire even when they were completely burned out.

The quickest and least shameful way to commit suicide is to deliberately die in battle. This means the suicide rate is under-reported.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for the vets. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. They knew perfectly well that the war was first-strike and that first strike wars are illegal, making them guilty of a capital war crime. They had no motive to go to Afghanistan except bullying, rape, killing and torture. In short, that had no motive but sadism. Now they are feeling so guilty about what they did, they are killing themselves off. I say, let them. What they did to others was far more cruel than what they are doing to themselves to atone. I’m with Harper. People who commit capital crimes don’t deserve free counseling.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tanks for the RCMP?

The Harper Government has ordered $14 million in Navistar Military Armoured Vehicles for the RCMP. This is odd. All other sales of these vehicles have been to militaries. Apparently, the Harper government is planning to do something that will get Canadian so furious it will take military vehicles to fend them off. That is the sort of thing you associate with the Soviets in Poland or Hungary, or Pinochet in Chile, not Canada.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Temporary Workers

The Harper temporary workers program is unbelievably evil. The ostensible intent is to bring in temporary foreign workers when Canadian workers cannot be found. However, employers are under no obligation to look for Canadian workers or demonstrate there are none and because Harper lets them pay foreign workers 15% less, Canadian corporations are naturally replacing Canadian workers with foreign workers. It is so brazen, one company advertised speaking Mandarin required for an oil patch job.

The foreign workers are like slaves. They cannot quit. They cannot work for someone else if the employer treats them badly. They cannot file a formal complaint. Foreign workers have to pay approximately $20,000 to organised crime in China to get one of these jobs. The Harper government and Canadian corporations work hand-in-hand with organised crime to fleece the Chinese workers.

There has been such a squawk about this, it looks as though this program will get a major overhaul including no longer paying foreign workers 15% less.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Terrorism Legislation

Harper is broadening the definition of terrorist and tossing out constitutional freedoms. The new law, bill C-51, turns protesters into terrorists if they do not have a permit to protest. It turns unionists into terrorists if they strike illegally. People can be disappeared without trial simply because someone thinks they might commit a crime, not because there is evidence they will, or because they have committed a crime.

Jason Kenny, the Minister of National Defence, huffily said that these laws, would never be used that way. On other hand, the Harper government is unwilling to reword the laws to ensure they are not abused. The Harper government has also rejected calls for oversight for these new unconstitutional powers. What are they planning to do that overseers would block? The Harper government has referred repeatedly to those who oppose oil pipelines as terrorists.

The Harper government has dishonestly stampeded the public into thinking Canada is under attack from international terrorists. All we have had is a few lone wolf attacks by local mentally ill people — nothing whatever to do with what we usually mean by terrorism.

I think it naïve to trust the Harperites will never use these new powers to intimidate protesters and other political opponents.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Total Price

When you buy a car, you have to think about more than just the initial sticker price. You need to think about mileage, the cost of repairs and tires. If you are not careful you will be roped into paying for oil changes that cost 10% of the cost of the car, but if you miss one, your warranty is invalid. So Harper releasing only the sticker price of a the F-35 was clearly intended to mislead.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Trudeau Betrayal

I was disgusted when Justin Trudeau announced he would rather that Stephen Harper continued to govern than to give the NDP a chance. He said he refuses to co-operate with the NDP to defeat Harper because it might mean an NDP victory. All he cares about is having power for himself, not saving Canada from Harper’s disastrous anti-environmental policies.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Trust the Police Chiefs

Who would know better than the police chiefs if guns in the hands of the general public increase or decrease crime and harm? The police chiefs in Canada are overwhelmingly in support of gun control. Right now there are half a million illegal arms in Canada. The problem is the current Harper government ideologically does not believe in gun control, but does not have the votes to disband gun control so used the dodge of refusing to levy any penalties for violators.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Vote

I heard a native person say Voting contributes to our genocide. Could you imagine a Jew in WWI given a tool to unseat Hitler refusing to use it on those same grounds?. That is idiotic. Not defending yourself by all means possible is contributing to genocide.

I heard another claim But Harper has made it difficult for native people to vote. Harder than it was for blacks in the 1960s in the USA to vote? It least it is legal for native people to vote. We are most of the way there. Don’t give up now.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Vote Tampering

The Harper government has been caught in widespread vote tampering in the last federal election in 2011. Not only did the Conservative Party send out fake calls purporting to be from Elections Canada sending opposition voters to non-existent polling stations, they engaged in dozens of other dirty tricks that the Prime Minister learned from Karl Rove. The crookedness is so extensive, that it not clear if the Conservatives really won a majority or if they even won a minority. Very likely Mr. Harper has no mandate at all to ram through controversial measures like the spy-on-everyone bill C-30, or the destruction of the gun registry at the request of the NRA (National Rifle Association). The problem is Mr. Harper has no integrity. If he did, he would resign until the matter were resolved or call an election. If David Johnston, the governor general, had any integrity he too would call an election, but as Harper’s personal pick, he is unlikely to do that.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

War on English

The definition of terrorism is killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation. Prime Minister Harper uses the word in quite a different way:

Harper’s use of the word Terrorism

Situation	English considers terrorism?	Harper considers terrorism?
Hit and run involving two off-duty soldiers…
Non-violent protest demonstrations against Harper…
Canadian soldiers killing Afghan and Iraqi civilians…

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

War Tourism

You have to wonder about Stephen Harper and his multi-million dollar program to attract more American tourists — reenacting the War of 1812 when little Canada whooped their asses, repeatedly outsmarted them and burned down their White House. They’ll love that!

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wasted Advertising

Prime Minister Stephen Harper blew $24 million in advertising fruitlessly trying to convince Americans to buy more Canadian oil. Oil purchases are a purely financial decision. It is a matter of who can get a barrel of oil to market cheapest. Canadian oil is twice as expensive as anyone else’s. We can only expect to sell if after all the cheap oil in the world has been sold.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Did Canada Attack Afghanistan?

We all know why the USA is occupying Afghanistan:

• The Taliban refused Unocal a free right of way for pipeline to the north, strategically important in case Iran blocks the Straits of Hormuz.
• The US wants Afghanistan’s four trillion dollars in strategic minerals, particularly lithium, important for high performance batteries.
• But why did Canada attack Afghanistan too? Prime Minister of Canada at the time, Jean Chrétien, in his autobiography, My Years as Prime Minister, explained that Bush twisted his arm. The deal was if Canada would join in attacking Afghanistan, Bush would let Canada off the hook attacking Iraq in the coming Iraq war. But Bush is gone, why is Canada still pummeling Afghanistan?
• Obama, like Bush, is in the pockets of the defence industry. They want a permanent war, as expensive as possible without triggering a taxpayer revolt.
• The defence industry in Canada, is known for corruption. Harper is accepting benefits, possibly legally, from them. They want permanent war.
• Harper is mentally defective. He is like a child who wants to play general. Having a war to command makes him feel manly and important. His pudginess is a constant source of embarrassment to him. War is his way of dealing with the feelings of inferiority his body generates. Napoléon had similar body image problems with his short stature and deformed hand.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Did Harper’s Big Gamble Fail?

In a nutshell, Prime Minister Stephen Harper put all Canada’s chips on the Alberta tar sands bitumen, then unexpectedly the price of oil collapsed, taking the TSX stock market with it. Morgan Stanley is predicting prices to collapse as low as $43 a barrel. Harper recklessly bet the farm on bitumen and lost. Why did he ignore the classic advice Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.? Where did he go wrong?

1. As an economist with a large ego, Harper suffers under the delusion he just knows what all the prices and volumes of all commodity trades will be at all times in the future.
2. Harper, as an oil-patch politician, was well aware of the problem of peak oil — that most of the world’s oil has already been burned. It is running out. He reasoned this meant prices must inevitably rise spectacularly, bathing Canada in Croesan riches. Like a compulsive gambler, he let dreams of fabulous riches anaesthetise his prudence.
3. Harper presumed that if there were an oil glut, the OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) cartel would circle the wagons, reduce production and keep prices high. They didn’t. Instead they decided to hunker down and allow their competition to kill each other off.
4. He knew the effect that concern about global warming was having on oil prices as more and more people became aware that burning fossil fuels is suicidal. He took effective action, spreading disinformation about climate change and making empty promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By making Canada the worst-behaved developed country vis-a-vis controlling greenhouse gases, he discouraged all international containment efforts. What is the point of restraint if Canada continues to massively poison the atmosphere? He was under the delusion he could indefinitely, effectively derail the climate change threat to the price of oil.
5. He saw clean energy as his enemy. He simply ignored its steady progress, getting cheaper by the day, getting more efficient by the day, already employing more people than the tar sands, the way people were willing to pay a premium for it and the way European countries have been successfully converting to it.
6. Harper presumed pipelines to the USA were a done deal. He did not anticipate the powerful American fracking lobby who see the pipelines as competition.
7. Harper’s biggest error was presuming Obama would successfully oppose fracking and other new fossil fuel extraction in the USA. Instead, Obama gave such industries a blinding green light. Suddenly, our main fossil fuel customer became an energy exporter. The world is now awash is dirty fossil fuels and Harper is having a heck of time selling his ultra-dirty tar sands bitumen, the most expensive, most distant from ocean transport and environmentally harmful fossil fuel anywhere on the planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Harper Rejects Science

Mr. Harper seems to have blanket rejected all science. At first I thought this was just his over-focusing on the financial benefits of various megaprojects, but now I see it just as likely to be generated from his fundamentalist religious views. He is a serious danger to Canada and the planet. He, Peter Kent and Joe Oliver need to be replaced.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Harper Should Not Be Leading Canada

• He has no understanding or concern for climate change.
• He has not concern for environmental degradation. He is a pasty couch potato who has never even seen the wilderness.
• He has no compassion for the plight of the poor or homeless.
• He is a bigot.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Stealth?

The F35 is an first-strike attack weapon. Why else does it have stealth? It is not intended for defence. It is designed for attacking countries like Iran. Do we really want to spend that much money to give Harper a wet dream? Attacking Iran is not that important a priority for Canada. We give up far to much.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Blowing the Budget on Military Toys

Stephen Harper wants to buy 65 stealth fighter jets with 29 billion of our dollars.

DID YOU HEAR THAT? 65 FIGHTER JETS FOR 29 BILLION DOLLARS!!!

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it in the Globe & Mail

This will cost us $3,500 per family. Afghanistan has no fighter jets and neither does any country we have ever done peacekeeping in. Where are we supposed to use them? This is a boondoggle. The only reason has Harper to buy them is the kickbacks. Harper is squandering money. Consider the prices of other fighter jets:

• F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet costs $150 million
• Sukhoi Su-30MKI costs $35.74 million
• Eurofighter Typhoon costs €90 million
• Chengdu J-10 costs $27.84 million

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Breastfeeding Big Oil

Stephen Harper has a recurring dream where he is breastfeeding the CEO of a Big Oil Corporation.

In 2007, Harper cut $1.2 billion in spending for the establishment of quality national childcare. However, he never kept his promise to cut the $1.4 billion in tax breaks he gives to oil companies (the wealthiest corporations in history).

~ ShitHarperDid.ca

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Climate Change Denier

Stephen Harper is very good with people. If by good with people you mean getting people not to like you.

In order to protect the profits of his friends in Big Oil Stephen Harper has purposely sabotaged global efforts to deal with climate change. He has been so destructive in this regard that in 2009 prominent politicians and scientists called for Canada to be removed from the Commonwealth. This mark of shame had last been used against South Africa when it was still under racist Apartheid rule.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it in the Guardian UK

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Cowboys & India?

Cowboys & India?

Stephen Harper doesn’t know the difference between people from India and First Nations people.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it at source

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Egomaniac

What some see as egomaniacal, Harper sees as a perfectly normal hallway filled with photos of Stephen Harper.

Harper decorated the government lobby in parliament with photos of just himself, instead of the traditional portraits of former Prime Ministers.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca

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Food Unsafety

Stephen Harper thinks that what doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger. Unless it kills you.

In 2008, Luc Pomerleau, a biologist at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, discovered secret government plans to weaken regulations and allow corporate food producers to conduct their own safety inspections. Pomerleau leaked the news and was immediately fired. Then the listeriosis meat outbreak killed 17 Canadians.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca

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Greedy Jesus

Stephen Harper believes in Greedy Jesus.

Despite consistently bragging about how Canada’s economy was a global leader — Harper used the excuse of poor economic times to freeze aid to some of the world’s most impoverished countries. For a claimed Christian this seems very un-Christ like. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked Luke 12:48.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca

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Harper = Godzilla

If Godzilla could moonwalk, he couldn’t cause as much damage as Stephen Harper’s back stepping.

The Kelowna accord was a $5 billion breakthrough agreement to improve the quality of health and education for Canada’s First Nation’s Peoples. Harper canceled it in 2006, immediately after taking office.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca details

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Harper the Cheater

If you challenged Stephen Harper to a footrace, he would bring a jetpack.

In Spring 2011, a federal court found that Harper’s Conservatives broke election spending laws during the campaign which originally brought them to power in 2006. 4 Conservatives (including 2 Senators) currently face charges and possibly jail time.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it in the Globe & Mail

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Harper Fraud

Sometimes, when your friends are convicted of fraud, they deserve a second chance. Harper’s deserve 6.

One of Harper’s top aides, Bruce Carson, had been convicted of 5 counts of fraud. Most recently he was lobbying the government to buy water filtration systems for First Nations communities. He wanted the government to buy the systems from a company where his 22 year old wife was working.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it in the National Post..

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Harper the Spy

If you get a friend request from Ben Dingprivacylaws, don’t accept. It’s Harper.

On 2011-04-03, Harper had his people lurk a teenager’s Facebook page and then kick her out of an event because she had posed for a photo with the Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. This should come as no surprise from Harper — he tried and failed (4 times!) to create a law that would allow the government to obtain your personal information from an Internet provider — without a warrant.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it at cbc.ca

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Harper: End Times Crackpot

Stephen Harper believes the apocalypse is coming. Whereas many Canadians believe the apocalypse started 5 years ago.

The Alliance Church, to which Harper has belonged for decades, believes Jesus Christ will return to Earth in an apocalypse, won’t ordain women, strongly opposes abortion and divorce, condemns homosexuality as the most base of sins and believes those who aren’t born-again are lost.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it in the Vancouver Sun.

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Harper’s Mayonnaise

If Stephen Harper were your roommate and you bought some mayonnaise, he would put a sticker on it that said Harper’s Mayonnaise

Harper likes being in power so much, he renamed The Government of Canada to The Harper Government. Creepy right?

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it in the CBC

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Ignore the Danger

Stephen Harper doesn’t want your bad vibes harshing his mellow.

In 2008, Linda Keen President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission reported that the aging Chalk River nuclear facility was at a risk 1000 times greater than the international average. Harper quickly fired her.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it in the Toronto Star

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Let them Drink Blood

The majority of the human body is water, the majority of Stephen Harper’s body is cruel.

In the 2011 budget, the Harper government failed to allocate any new funding for drinking water on First Nations reserves. 100 First Nations communities currently have water advisories, including 49 communities which are high risk. Harper also refuses to sign the UN Declaration designating clean water as a human right.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it in the Rabble

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More Prisons!

Stephen Harper prefers the term Bad Guy Hotels.

Harper plans to double annual prison spending by 2015 (an increase of $5 billion annually), despite the fact that crime rates have been falling for a decade.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca

No History Of Colonialism

Stephen Harper rewrote history… with a racist crayon.

At the 2009 G20 Harper actually said this — We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it at Rabble

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Pampering the Rich

Stephen Harper believes the filthy rich have had it too hard for too long.

Harper’s economic recovery favoured the extremely wealthy. Over 321,000 Canadians lost their jobs in 2008 and Canadians’ average wages fell. Meanwhile Canada’s 100 wealthiest persons became richer, reaching an average net worth of $1.7 billion each, up almost 5 per cent from 2008.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it in the Tyee

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Pesticides Are Good For You

Stephen Harper wants you to loosen up and try these chemicals.

Stephen Harper weakened regulations so that more pesticide residue could be left on your fruits and vegetables.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca

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Screw Aboriginals

Stephen Harper is a cold hearted jerk and a horrible detective.

In 2010, Harper eliminated funding for Sisters in Spirit. An internationally praised organization leading investigations into 600 cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it in the Winnipeg Free Press

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Torture Canada

Stephen Harper turned our international reputation from Peacekeeper to Torture-Giver.

We detained and handed over for severe torture, a lot of innocent people. in 2009 Canadian Diplomat Richard Colvin shocked the nation with these words. In Afghanistan, Canada captured 6× more prisoners than the British and 20× as many as the Dutch. Colvin explained that Many were just local people: farmers; truck drivers; tailors, peasants… the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca Read about it in the Globe & Mail

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Uniformed Decisions

There are just some facts about Canadians that Stephen Harper doesn’t need to know. For instance, most of them.

The census is how our government determines the state and needs of the country. Harper tried to secretly eliminate the long form census so that he could quite literally make uninformed decisions.

~ ShitHarperDid.ca

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Condemned Beef

Stephen Harper is 300 pounds of condemned beef.

~ Mary Walsh (1952-05-15 age:65)

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