Damn Peasants!

The Globe and Mail sniffs in outraged offense at the peons daring to inconvenience or insult their betters.

Consider contacting the Globe and Mail and expressing how you feel about this display of patrician disdain.  Try to avoid any tempting four letter words.

Hat tip to Dawg

Shorter conservatives: Government bad unless somebody is getting hit or shot

Liberals romanticize government in every area other than law enforcement and defense, to which they apply a healthy skepticism. Conservatives suffer a mirror-image version of that myopia. They're incurable romantics when it comes to generals, policemen or spies - Gene Healy

I've never really met any liberals or leftists who 'romanticize' government - just ones who pragmatically understand that with public ownership comes more public control via the democratic choice of who will manage that public ownership and how.

Conservatives with their constant fear mongering about intrusive government reveal a lack of confidence in democracy and its institutions.

Or perhaps their fear is that democracy is too effective. That as the will of the public is in so many things and on so many subjects not what they would wish it were, a government that actually reflects that will is in fact their enemy. After all, its always conservatives who are trying to reduce the electoral franchise isn't it? You never hear right wingers complain that not enough people are allowed to vote but that too many - or at least too many of the wrong sorts are exercising their democratic rights. It's from right wingers in the US and Canada, through various vote suppression strategies like taking the franchise away from felons even after they serve their time or voter ID laws that disproportionately take the vote away from the poor or non-white that the franchise is restricted.

It's neo-liberals and neo-conservatives who in the last few decades have been democracy proofing the economy by treating trade agreements like 'corporate bills of rights' restricting the democratic rights of citizens from taking any action that big business doesn't like. For example, Canada had to water down our restrictions on toxic fuel additives and toxins on fruit and vegetables because they were a threat to the business of American producers of toxic fuel additives and toxin covered vegetables.

Rhetoric about 'big government' and 'state control' is about restricting the power of democracy and the rights of individuals in opposition to the rights of big business.

The more things change...

"We're in fact a bit worried in a couple of provinces that we have an indication that there's some political figures who have developed quite an attachment to foreign countries,"

"The individual becomes in a position to make decisions that affect the country or the province or a municipality. All of a sudden, decisions aren't taken on the basis of the public good but on the basis of another country's preoccupations." -Richard Fadden, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, 2010

Flashback:

"The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department." - Joe McCarthy, 1950

And what a coincidence, just before the G20 another government official offering dark, yet non-specific warnings of vague security threats. The climb-down has begun but the damage is already done.

UPDATE THURSDAY: Gary Mason makes the same connection I made yesterday.

Carter on Chavez

A nuanced and balanced criticism, blunted somewhat by being expressed in Colombia, a country with a far worse human rights record than Venezuela.

This Europa Press article is translated by Google, so forgive some of the clumsiness of phrasing but oddly enough this piece has more of Carter's mea culpas for past American behavior than any American write-ups about his remarks I can find:

BOGOTA, Sept 20 (EUROPA PRESS) --

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter expressed his "political disappointment" about the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, because drift "authoritarian" by his government in an interview with the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo '.

But Carter said his country itself was involved or had full knowledge of the failed 2002 coup against Chavez."I think there is no doubt that in 2002, the U.S. had full knowledge or at least could be directly involved in the coup. So he (Chavez) has a legitimate complaint against the United States," he said.

The former president admitted that Chavez has undertaken a transformation needed to Venezuela, "by allowing those previously excluded have equal participation in national wealth," but later the Venezuelan president has "disappointed".

"Personally I was disappointed to see him depart from what I think was a fair chance and honestly, that was the result of legitimate elections, to a growing domination led him to take a more authoritarian government," he added.

In his remarks, Carter said that "both Venezuela and Chavez, as international relations, would be better if he stop attacking and criticizing the United States. "For me, they are increasingly random in nature, and unjustified," he said.

In this regard, the former president said he was certain that the U.S. president, Barack Obama, wants to have friendly relations, social, commercial and diplomatic, with Venezuela. "But he (Chavez) makes it almost impossible," he said. "We made mistakes in the past, and (so have) Venezuelan officials," he said.

Carter here expresses quite well my own growing misgivings about Chavez, brought to sharp relief by his embrace of Ahmadinejad as Iranians were being killed in the streets as they demonstrated for their rights. But the historical context is that as President, Carter was far more sanguine about vicious pro-American dictatorships like Indonesia.

Again his remarks were made in Colombia, where there have been claims that Carter will support free trade with the murderously anti-union state, but the Carter Center denies it.

UPDATE: The American press discovers Carter's admission that the USA probably supported the coup attempt in Venezuela. Cue squeals of outrage.

All Refugees are Equal...

...But some are more equal than others.

For Mr. Kenney, it wouldn't be necessary to impose visa restrictions to stem the flow of asylum-seekers if false claimants knew before coming that their cases would be heard swiftly and they would be returned home immediately after a decision was made.

"This does underscore the need to reform our asylum system so that it ensures that real victims of persecution get swift relief and protection in Canada, and that economic migrants seeking to abuse our generosity are shown to the door quickly," he said.

Of course systematic economic discrimination against specific ethnic or religious groups is real persecution. But no Conservative or Liberal MP could ever concede that point. For the same reason that Canada is one of the last countries on Earth that hasn't signed on to the the U.N.'s declaration of indigenous rights.

NAFTA, a trade agreement that Canada is a signatory to, has caused massive economic dislocation in the lives of Mexican farmers with indigenous Mexican suffering some the worst of it. Economic persecution is still persecution.

The Roma of Czechoslovakia, crudely known as Gypsies, may not be facing the torch-wielding mobs that make up far too much of Roma history but they are unambiguously situated at the permanent bottom rung of Czechoslovakia's social and economic totem pole.

Today, six million out of the estimated 10 million European Roma live in Central and Eastern Europe.

Up to two million are to be found in Romania, whose established Roma slave markets horrified Western travellers until as late as the 19th Century.

Decades of communism and the recent admission of Eastern countries into the EU seem to have made little difference to their history of exclusion and poverty.

Most Roma families live in small shacks with no electricity or running water, and international institutions calculate that Roma poverty rates are up to 10 times higher than those of the majority population where they live, while their lifespan is 10 or 15 years lower.

I would argue that taken alone economic discrimination on this scale would have to be considered legitimate grounds to claim refugee status, economic persecution is still persecution, But its not the only kind of persecution Roma are subjected to.

At a shelter just outside Toronto, Zaneta Gananova lifted up her shirt to show why she fled the Czech Republic.

Gananova, a young mother of six, revealed two swastikas, purple scars that she says were carved into her body two months ago by a group of skinheads.

"It was very bad. I didn't want to go out," she said. "I was afraid for my children, and for my life. I thought they would kill me."

Marek Polak, 24, said he no longer worries when he heads outside to take a walk in his new home in Hamilton. When he was 17 and was out for a walk in Prague, he said, his life changed.

"And I turn around and I saw four skinheads, like around me," he said. "They started to say to me, 'Hey Gypsy, today you will die,'" Polak said, using a once-common term for a Rom.

Polak said the men threw him to the ground, then punched him and kicked him, all the while yelling racial slurs. He ended up in hospital for a week. His mother, Anna Polakova, decided to move her family to Canada two months ago.

"It was a very hard decision for us. We had our life in the Czech Republic," she said. "But when they beat my son, and the continued attacks in the years that followed, I knew we had to leave."

These are the people Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says aren't discriminated against in Chekoslovakia. That they are just 'economic migrants seeking to abuse our generosity'.

. . .

This seems to me to be an essential misunderstanding of the meaning of the word 'generosity'.

The Canadian Right Wing doesn't like Obama either

Let's be charitable and assume that when Greg Weston refers to Obama as 'boy' in his Sun chain column today it's just an example of thoughtless stupidity rather than actual racism.

His opinion that Obama's concern for workers and desire to re-negotiate NAFTA and other trade agreements to protect labour rights would be bad for Canada on the other hand, is just the usual parroting of right wing talking points instead of real analysis.

For a start, this champion of hope for curing what ails America is also an apostle of the deep Left -- among other things, an advocate of stronger unions with tougher labour laws. While making U.S. industry less competitive may intuitively seem like an unearned advantage for Canadian business, not much hurts the American economy that doesn't eventually bite here, too. But there could be a bigger problem with our boy Barack of the labour left.
At a union-sponsored forum in Chicago, Obama was asked whether he would scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement if he became president.
"I would immediately call the president of Mexico, and the president of Canada," he said, "to try to amend NAFTA because I think that we can get labour agreements in that agreement right now."

Aside from the trivial mistake of referring to Canada's head of state as 'President' there really isn't anything in this statement that is that controversial. Why should workers consider successful, agreements that make cross border wealthy people wealthier while driving workers rights and gains downward? We've learned that trade harmonization almost invariably means worker and consumer protections race to the bottom and beyond.

In short, protectionism always gets a big cheer at the union hall, but less so when the workers start losing their jobs to trade wars.

While so called 'free trade' gets even more cheers in the board room when Canadian jobs are lost to overseas outsourcing and the collapse of our local manufacturing sector and workplace, environmental and consumer protection standards get lower and lower. Remember when Canada had to lower our standards of minimum poisons on food because they were a 'trade irritant' to American firms with lower standards for toxins on fruit and vegtables? How about having to repeal Canadian laws against toxic fuel additives because American firms saw it as restraint of their trade in toxic fuel additives?

NAFTA had even worse effects in Mexico as family farmers were driven out, sometimes violently by huge corporate agribusiness.

Renegotiating NAFTA and other trade agreements to bring true cost environmental, consumer and labour concerns to the table is only a threat if you think such things are some kind of lefty plot rather than simple common sense.

Sold out from under us

Quietly, behind closed doors the corporate elites continue the Deep Integration agenda, setting about making binding changes to the very concept of sovereign national rights. Without input or debate, our ability to use democratic government or the courts to protect us from corporate excess is being wiped out with the stroke of a pen.

Read this excellent Tyee piece if you haven't already.

Eugene provides some background.

Canada to allow more pesticides on fruit to avoid 'irritating' US

Canada is set to raise the amount of maximum pesticide residues allowable on hundreds of fruits and vegetables, reports the Ottawa Citizen, as part of "an effort to harmonize Canadian pesticide rules with those of the United States."

The differing standards are a "trade irritant," we are told.

Apparently our desire to not be poisoned is a trade barrier.