Stephen Harper, Nobel, and Me

When I first heard about Stephen Harper’s “nomination” for the Nobel Peace Prize I laughed.  Actually I did a quick Google search about it.  Other than the B’nai Brith announcement, there was only one other hit.  A RWNJ blog about how the Lefties’ heads were going to collectively explode over this.

“Yeah,” I thought’ “explode with laughter.”

Well it looks like he was partly right.  A bunch of people really do have their knickers in a knot over this.  There are petitions and blogs and Twitter Wars and all sorts of ranting and raving about this.

What I’m going to do is to ask you to step back a bit and look at this without kneejerk reactions and vehemence.

What does this “nomination” mean? 

Nothing much, really.

Other than the fact that some guy (Frank Dimant) is putting up Stephen Harper for the award.  There isn’t a lot here to talk about.

When I checked the Nobel site, there are a record 278 nominations this year.   47 of these are organizations and the rest, I assume, are people.  What this says to me is that there are going to be a lot of losers.  If you are interested in the list of 2014 nominations, the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) has a partial list.

This year’s short list, according to PRIO, includes Pope Francis, Malala Yousafzai, the Afghan girl shot by the Taliban for going to school, and others. 

Another nominee for the 2014 award is Vladimir Putin.  But he’s not on the short list, at least not according to PRIO anyway.

A Nobel nomination is usually for disarmament, or for peacemaking but can also include things like multicultural understanding or food security.

Being a cheerleader for Israel’s retaliation on Palestine or shouting at 2014 Nobel Prize nominee Putin doesn’t really seem to make the cut.  Even if Steve wore a short skirt and ferociously waved his blue pompoms, I don’t think he’s going to be a Nobel Laureate.

I’m sure that Harper sees it much differently than I do, but a Nobel nomination is not a huge deal.  There have been a few people besides Harper and Putin that most people wouldn’t want to have over for dinner.  Past nominees include Hitler, Mussolini who was nominated twice and Stalin who was likewise nominated twice.

So how do you nominate someone?  The Nobel Prize Organization’s website gives the rules.  Basically, if you or your group want to submit a name, there is a list there of who you need to submit it for you.  Your MP is one, a judge or a University Professor (like Frank Dimant) would be another. 

So if you want to nominate me for the $1 Million paycheque… kidding, just give it some real thought and don’t go rushing trying to nominate anyone simply because they aren’t Harper.  Deal?

Laters!

BC

On second thought, if you want to sign a petition or send an angry email then fire away.  Someone needs to take Steve down a peg or two.

More Harper equals Less Democracy

[Preamble:  I’ve had a number of thoughts running loose in my head and I’ve tried to stitch them together somewhat here.  At the risk of having Godwin’s Law or one of the corollaries tossed at me, I even read about Germany in the 1930’s.  There are parallels… look it up for yourself.

We as Canadians have taken our democracy for granted.  It seems our government was based on the idea that no party would go outside the mostly unwritten rules that have been followed for over 140 years.  Ooops.

Democracy in Canada is at risk, if it still exists today. 

This is a bit of an omnibus rant, a catchall for my thoughts. 

If you have any thoughts to add, please do.  I’d like to hear what other people thinking.  B.C.]

In a recent post, I wondered about the cost of the F-35 JSF program to Canadians.

What I was thinking was Dollars and Cents, but the biggest costs are to Truth, Honesty and Integrity of our government and our system of government.

We live in a Parliamentary Democracy.  Or at least we used to.  The voice of every member of the House is supposed to be equal and every member is supposed to be representing the voice of their constituency.

These members are charged with the responsibility of listening to and taking part in the arguments for and against proposed legislation and policy of our government both at the committee level and as part of the House.

How can this be done without the actual information that backs the proposals made by the government?

This pulls me right back to the F 35 fiasco as well as just about any legislation that the Stephen Harper Party (SHP) puts forward.

How can you realistically decide on what kind of aircraft we can afford when the numbers being provided by the SHP don’t agree with anything outside of the SHP’s little scenarios?

And now we get yet another ominous omnibus bill.

This time it’s a budget bill… 498 pages of budget bill (or so I’ve read) which contains over 100 pages of changes to the way environmental assessments are performed in the future.  Basically, the Harper Party doesn’t want interlopers like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace from having a say in any assessments, only those who are directly involved.  So if they want to run a pipeline through Your community, you can say something, your neighbours can too… then the corporate lawyers representing the corporate interests get their say.

Who will have a better argument?  I’ll bet on the lawyers.

And if some organization wants to stick up for you?  They’re not directly involved, they don’t get to speak.

And then there are changes for EI in this “budget bill” as well, such as moving changes in EI rules from legislation to regulation.

Meaning what?  That now the changes to EI will be decided behind closed doors by Ministers rather than being debated and voted on in the House.

Oh yes, they’ve limited debate on this bill as well.

Is this what the Reformers wanted?  I thought Reform was all about grass roots democracy, more say for the people.

What we are getting is less debate, more decisions behind closed doors and no say for the people.  Less democracy.

What we are getting are omnibus bills with limited debate and whole provisions added with no formal announcements or explanations from the government.  Again, less democracy.

For the first time in history we’ve have a Prime Minister who was found to be in contempt of the House of Commons for failure to provide information requested by the House.  We have Bev not Oda who lied to the House and earned a charge of contempt as well.  A government who privately boast of doing “God’s work” in promoting the Tar Sands… the list just goes on and on.

Whenever things got bad in the House for Lord Stephen in a minority, he locked the doors.  In a childish tantrum he picked up the ball and went home…  Well actually he ran to the Governor General and hid behind her skirt… twice.

Now that he has a majority, he no longer needs to run away, he just yells “Shut Up!” and limits debate and then we go to the Marionette Theatre once again.

Look, this old cat has been around long enough to see his share nonsense floating around in Ottawa.

I just want an honest and open debate about why they are doing what they are doing… without invoking closure or limiting debate.

That is democracy Stephen.  If you don’t like it, take your Party and leave.

On an aside, I wonder if instead of calling them the Stephen Harper Party (SHP) I should have called them the Stephen Harper Team?