Here’s my remix of Brad Turcotte‘s (a.k.a. Brad Sucks) “Feel Free! Plastic Surgery!” from his 2012 album “Guess Who’s a Mess“. Brad’s track is awesome but it doesn’t match my musical sensibilities (abilities?) so you’ll find that it’s a bit of a departure from the original.

This tune is the first of what I hope will become a collection or album of some kind. The idea for the Boreds of Canada name can be heard near the end of my version of the song and, besides Brad, the ditty was loosely inspired by Doxent Zsimond’s “acoustic” rendition (quotes and their contents mine). Rest assured that as soon as I discover other Canadians worthy of my deft acoustic touch I’ll be adding them to the Boreds repertoire.

FEEL FREE! TO DOWNLOAD THE MP3!
(It’s licensed under Creative Commons)
^{There’s also an instrumental version}

I usually scan the major daily headlines once a day or so, a habit I’ve had for years of which I’m sure there exist examples here on TCL.

Based on this, I was surprised to see one such daily running modern warfare scenarios between Canada and the U.S. “Haven’t seen this before,” I thought to myself at the time.

Upon further reflection, maybe I have.

It’s something I’d stumbled on a few years ago, a nearly decade-old comic series named “We Stand On Guard” which took much the same tone, albeit set ninety-nine years into the future (as of this year).

Spoiler alert: a good number of the rebellious Canadian “heroes” die and ostensibly take a large part of the water-deprived U.S. civilian population with them. Hooray!

Long story short, the artwork is great but the tale is bleak.

I suppose it the headlines wouldn’t have had quite the same ring to them if they’d read:

“American nature magazine’s drab choice for Canada’s national bird”

Yet, in some ways the  bureaucratically-coloured “Gray Jay” seems like the perfect choice to represent Canada and its government: few people will ever get the chance to interact directly with the elusive bird, known to the Cree and Algonquin tribes as a trickster that destroyed the world, and despite the fact that it was (by a long shot) neither the first or even second popular choice of birds to represent Canada it has nevertheless been chosen by a select committee as the top finalist, being a “poster child … for climate change“.

Don’t get me wrong, it seems like a nice bird but it’s about as inspiring as the slush on the streets of Toronto come February. Couldn’t have a kick-ass bird like the snowy owl; no sir, that might send the wrong message.

By Cephas (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Although it’s lacking teeth,  an op-ed piece in the National Post fairly succinctly summarizes what I’ve been blathering on about for God-only-knows how long now. You don’t need to have a PoliSci degree to see what’s happening but although I doubt I’ll ever be able to shake my ageing parents’ (and many of their generation’s) scorn at my “naiveté”, “ignorance”, and “radical” views on government, at least I know I’m in fine scholarly company.

…the prime minister seems to have the unchecked power to decide when the House should be in session, when elections should occur, and even, in some circumstances, when their governments do or do not have the confidence of the House.

In the past I’ve referred to this as fascism, sometimes as a dictatorship, and often as a tyranny, but as I’ve tried to point out labels ultimately matter far less than deeds.

In the House, the prime minister and government have considerable control over day-to-day operations. This allows governments not only to set the agenda, but to carry it out with ease. The prime minister commands the steadfast loyalty of his MPs, largely through a carrot-and-stick approach; co-operative MPs might be rewarded with cabinet posts or coveted committee positions, while rogues can be — and at times are — punished with removal from caucus or even barred from running as a candidate for the party in future elections. All of these are vestiges of prime ministerial power. The party caucus has little leverage with which to counterbalance the prime minister’s power because party leaders are chosen (and replaced) by the party at large, rather than by the caucus. Thus, the government’s MPs have no effective mechanism through which to stand their ground against a very powerful leader or effectively represent his or her constituents.

Critics regularly cite our seemingly dizzying array of market choices as proof that government has little control in our day-to-day lives. Although they can hardly provide a straight and articulate answer without sneering derision, state supporters are often stumped by simple facts. For example, all of the so-called “choices” that the so-called “free market” offers are all directly controlled by government.

No?

Okay, name any product or service in Canada that doesn’t require government legal authorization, licensing, approval, etc. In other words, you have only the choices that government allows and you’re coerced, backed by threats of violence and imprisonment, into paying for this through taxes. Yes, you can buy things on the black market but you face the wrath of government if you decide thusly to exercise your “free choice” and of course you’re guilty until you can prove otherwise (which they can still arbitrarily reject).

Because they’re now stumped, government lackeys immediately pivot their argument to deflect by claiming that this is necessary to “keep us safe”. To this I would simply suggest cracking open a newspaper – the evidence of how government doesn’t keep us safe is in the news pretty much on a daily basis. Whether this involves food, health, personal safety, privacy, and a litany of other claims about protections, there are regular and glaring examples of how this simply isn’t true.

The statist argument typically changes course once again at this point to demand that nothing – our hospitals, roads, water and electrical systems, etc. – would exist without government. I’ve addressed these obviously specious arguments a number of times in the past but I will concede that government vehicles with government employees do sometimes drive up to a pothole, and one labourer and three supervisors spend three to four weeks filling it with a cop or two gladly accepting extorted taxpayer money to text or browse the web on their cell phones or chat with the crew, while out of sight pedestrians and cars are left to their own devices to share the dangerous inches left for them. Sounds an awful lot like the lazy welfare whores that government is keen to trot out to justify how we should receive even less state “benefits”, doesn’t it?

In other words, government supplies a few services through a wasteful, overpriced, badly (if at all) regulated process, something that is typically done far more efficiently by the private sector. This makes sense – the private business has to look out for their bottom line, government can just raise taxes and you’ll be brutalized or extorted by “authorities” and go to jail if you don’t like it. There’s no incentive for government to be efficient or benefit citizens in any way, and every single government institution behaves according to this.

Don’t believe? Just try and apply for any government “benefits” to see how hard your loving, benign government works for you. Call up a government “service” phone line and see for yourself how much service you receive. While you’re at it, try calling the cops when you actually need them – I have and that’s why I know better.

Rather than becoming more like a system of presidential executive authority, this situation has left Canadian prime ministers in a position more akin to historical monarchs. The evolution of Westminster democracy in Canada is very much a story about the struggle to wrestle power away from the Crown and shift it to Parliament, and specifically the House of Commons, our primary democratic body and check on unfettered prime ministerial power. The ability of prime ministers to retain and use these Crown powers, alongside other powers over MPs and the House of Commons, is resulting in a situation where prime ministers have the power to make decisions, partisan and otherwise, that limit or negate Parliament’s role as a guardian for accountability in our democratic system.

This is not simply about politics or even personalities. Almost all recent prime ministers have used these powers to try to advance their partisan interests. What it is about is the erosion of our democratic institutions and the effect on democratic governance.

The next rhetorical recourse of any good government lapdog is to state that, yeah, okay, maybe government isn’t perfect but we have “checks and balances” to ensure that things more or less work out for most people. And if we don’t like it we can vote in someone else!

These are other points I’ve addressed at length and are yet more claims that can be factually rebutted with a mountain of evidence to the contrary (this blog is filled with it). And while it’s claimed that the media would surely alert us to these issues it’s easy to demonstrate that this is highly unlikely to be the case. Unless you seek out increasingly derided alternative sources you will only know what government and friends want you to know.

If your final argument is that people are too stupid to know what’s good for them, hence the need for unquestionable government, then kindly shut your ignorance hole – you’ve just brilliantly insisted that you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.

Put this all together and the will of the people is entirely irrelevant and, in fact, something to be suppressed.

It’s at this point when state defenders throw up their hands and exasperatedly exclaim, “Oh well! Then I guess we must be living under a King or Queen then, huh?!”

Yeah, smart guy. Flip over your Canadian money or do a Wikipedia search – Canada is a monarchy and whether the titular head is the queen or Harper the effect is the same.

The Harper government is signalling its intention to use hate crime laws against Canadian advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel.

…

The government’s intention was made clear in a response to inquiries from CBC News about statements by federal ministers of a “zero tolerance” approach to groups participating in a loose coalition called Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS), which was begun in 2006 at the request of Palestinian non-governmental organizations.

Asked to explain what zero tolerance means, and what is being done to enforce it, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney replied, four days later, with a detailed list of Canada’s updated hate laws, noting that Canada has one of the most comprehensive sets of such laws “anywhere in the world.”

…

In January, Canada’s then foreign affairs minister, John Baird, signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Israeli authorities in Jerusalem, pledging to combat BDS.

It described the movement as “the new face of anti-Semitism.”

A few days later, at the UN, Canadian Public Security Minister Steven Blaney went much further.

He conflated boycotts of Israel with anti-Semitic hate speech and violence, including the deadly attacks that had just taken place in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket.

Blaney then said the government is taking a “zero tolerance” approach to BDS.

…

“We’ve asked our lawyers. What does that mean?” says CUPE president Paul Moist. “Is it now a criminal offence to walk around with a sign saying close all the settlements, Israel out of occupied territories?”

In France, the law has for years criminalized hate speech based on national origin, and authorities there have in recent years been using it to prosecute BDS advocates. To date, more than 20 have been convicted.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-cites-hate-crime-laws-when-asked-about-its-zero-tolerance-for-israel-boycotters-1.3067497

“I find this provision almost Orwellian,” said Fred Vallance-Jones, an associate professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax and an expert in access to information law.

“It seeks to rewrite history, to say that lawful access to records that existed before didn’t actually exist after all, and that if you exercised your quasi-constitutional right of access to those records, well too bad, you’re out of luck.”

The government is setting a precedent to move retroactively on any record it doesn’t want exposed, Vallance-Jones said.

“That to me is the deeper concern.”

Michel Drapeau, a lawyer, former military colonel and access-to-information author, noted there has never been a charge laid under the Access to Information Act, let alone a conviction.

He said the rationale of moving retroactively to prevent a possible prosecution is “a dangerous and unwelcome precedent” that should be as unwelcome to the RCMP and the administration of justice as to freedom-of-information wonks.

“The optics of it are not good: ‘Oh, so that’s the way it works now?’ If you do something against the law in the RCMP, you’ve got your friends in high places, they change the law,” said Drapeau.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/budget-bill-c-59-rewrites-access-law-to-protect-rcmp-on-gun-registry-cp-1.3072548

So now that we have Harper basically signing top secret free trade deals with anyone and everyone and in the process directly trying to undermine and sign over Canadian sovereignty to foreign entities without so much as a group huddle (isn’t that treason?), it’s worthwhile to ask what kinds of wonders Canada can realistically expect when all of these agreements are loosed on us.

Chinese companies will be able to seek redress against any laws passed by any level of government in Canada which threaten their profits. Australia has decided not to enter FIPA agreements specifically because they allow powerful corporations to challenge legislation on social, environmental and economic issues. Chinese companies investing heavily in Canadian energy will be able seek billions in compensation if their projects are hampered by provincial laws on issues such as environmental concerns or First Nations rights, for example.

Cases will be decided by a panel of professional arbitrators, and may be kept secret at the discretion of the sued party. This extraordinary provision reflects an aversion to transparency and public debate common to the Harper cabinet and the Chinese politburo.

Patrick Brown, CBC

This isn’t my area of expertise but I did manage to get a sense of what might happen economically — the base justification for all of this — by looking at some Toronto-based data (PDF) around the time when the last two free trade agreements (FTA and NAFTA), were dropped.

Across the board the numbers indicate a major blow to the economy, unemployment rate, number of jobs, housing prices and starts — almost everything was hit hard and most indexes have not yet recovered back to late 80s numbers.

I don’t remember these being part of the promises being heaped on Canadians by the government 25 years go, do you? In fact, we were promised the opposite. Funny how what the government promises and what we get are often diametrically opposite. Well, at least we can stuff flimsy paper ballot boxes to our hearts’ content; tell ’em what we think at the next election! (because they give a shit)

Those Australians are on to something…

I’m sure this isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned how the state and its agencies are getting so bold with our basic, fundamental freedoms that to compare them to East Germany’s post-World-War-2 Stasi is in no way an exaggeration.

A constant, around-the-clock surveillance on all citizens, guilty or innocent, is taking place – that much is now well and publicly established fact. Granted, we don’t have the secret police disappearing people off the streets just yet, but both Harper (Bill S-7) and Obama (NDAA) have made sure that that kind of thing will be all nice and legal when they decide to roll it out. Or they just passed these laws for shits and giggles, maybe? Oh, I know, it’s just for the bad guys, right?

Thankfully, there’s a growing backlash in the United States:

And we’re seeing some fightback from the CCLA on the topic too. But government is just one tiny step away from business, and the same scummy lack of morals and ethics pervades both houses of rot and greed.

Just recently, Bell announced it would be sharing your data with third-parties to bring better-tailored advertising to your mobile phone. According to a contract which would otherwise be viewed as being produced in bad faith (but, you know, big money), Bell reserves the right to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as do most banks and other big business we are forced to deal with at a cost and by law — unless I haven’t heard and the Canadian government is using its own solely legal tender (cash) again?

Oh sure, you can opt-out of the ads, but only whenever they feel like getting to it. Oh, and they’re still gonna track you and share the data with whomever they please — just to be clear.

Rogers recently did something similar, albeit in an opt-in fashion. Funny thing is, if Rogers is the good guy, it really makes you wonder what kind of shit is going on behind the scenes at Bell. As you may recall, Rogers spent months fighting tooth and nail against having to tell the truth in their ads because they claimed it infringed on their freedom of speech.

Simultaneously, our governments are pulling the rugs out from under their citizens by clamping down on unbiased scientific information in exchange for government propaganda, which is almost 100% pro-business and pro-big-money, and increasingly just simply telling their subjects that they’re not entitled to any information or say on things like massive, global, secretive agreements and deals like CETA, which will directly affect most of them negatively for a very long time — importing dirt-cheap European labour while Canadians remain unemployed, higher drug costs (government “subsidies” come out of Canadians’ pockets as taxes, don’t forget), and I’m sure a few other surprises and gotchas too — not like anyone’s allowed to actually see the damned things. But we might get cheaper eau du toilette though!

Even the people who Harper claims that the fast-tracked CETA is supposed to help aren’t happy with it. Ain’t the first time he’s pulled this stunt either. But what does King Harper care?

He’s become so accustomed to getting his way that as he was busy throwing his appointed minions under the bus, he and his helper monkeys became enraged when most news stations refused to air his recent caucus speech because he demanded that only cameras be let in — NO ONE MAY ASK QUESTIONS!

But our benevolent government is throwing us lowly serfs one little bone among all this, they’re going to allow us  to look over results of drug safety analyses of Health Canada. Yeah! Now we’re allowed to see the information produced with the money that is seized from us in order to determine if something might kill us or not. Aren’t we lucky?! Of course, the previous reasoning was that they would be giving away business secrets with this information, which obviously trumps God himself.

Is it just me or is this shit starting to get real old?

There are many things that, at one time, were the exclusive domain of the tinfoil hat brigade. Claims such as the government spying on everyone, or that that same government is engaged in a global plot to enslave its citizens under corporate rule through coercion, outwardly hypocritical violence, fear and intimidation, secrecy, open criminality, and many massive rights violations, all promulgated by a colluding mass media as perfectly normal and certainly not worth informing you about.

Seems like those tinfoil-donning lunatics were onto something; it even turns out that tinfoil is pretty good at blocking out the types of radio waves that can affect a human brain. So these days, when those same crazies talk about visitors from other planets, I’m much more apt to take a few moments to hear them out.

I’m still on the fence about the existence of extraterrestrial creatures. Yes, I think the chance that other life exists out there is extremely good; intelligent life too. But I can’t remember ever seeing a UFO or anything that might look otherwordly so I can’t rely on any personal experience.

When I have to resort to trusting the accounts of others I steer towards those who have some established credibility. Paul Hellyer, former Canadian Minister of National Defense,  for example, seems like a pretty solid bet. Not only was Hellyer a rarity among politicians (he had some qualifications for his position!), but he has remained a sensible and balanced public voice maintaining that UFOs are real and being covered up by governments worldwide. Contrasted against the way governments operate, Hellyer’s claims seem even more plausable.

Here’s what he had to say earlier this year at an official-looking “hearing” on UFOs and ETs in Toronto:

The truth is out there.