felis_ultharus | (no subject)

Politics

Like the rest of the 62% majority who voted to the left of Harper last election, I'm very much hoping for the coalition. Harper seemed genuinely shocked that his attempt to kill off the other parties by destroying their funding has provoked a passionate reaction.

This is a great time to be an NDPer. I'm really hoping that parliament doesn't get prorogued. And in this most anti-Harper city of Canada, I keep catching that rarest of creatures, the cheery conversation about politics. Whether Liberal, NDP, or Blocquiste, those who follow federal politics in this city are almost giddy.

I feel sorry for Michaëlle Jean. I figure that governors general are like retired superheroes -- they likely don't think about their special powers, and then they only hope never to have to use them.

Video Games

The excitement didn't keep me from finishing Shadow Hearts, yesterday. This is a game made by the small company Sacnoth, founded by alumni from the Final Fantasy franchise. Someone told me they thought the Final Fantasy series was too repetitive, and felt it needed something else.

Apparently that something else included 13th-century English scientist Roger Bacon and his pet imp, wild historical inaccuracies, daughters of married Catholic priests, gay acupuncturists with very little professionalism, gods of death, anatomically correct monsters, anatomically very incorrect monsters (how does that thing stand?), pretty vampires, steampunk treadmill-operated teleporters, and space-alien gods.

It is a very fun game, with some highly original elements, and well worth the playing. It's incredibly campy, but when your Dickensian orphan is taking down an space god in orbit with his slingshot, you're too distracted to notice how strange the game is. Very absorbing.

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In my Gov. Docs class we have what the prof. calls "media watch" every week. For once everyone was desperate to contribute. I feel like people are actually getting invested in Candian Politics for a change.(although they were also quite upset about the Westmounter who might go to jail for feeding a squirrel two peanuts so maybe we were just excitable Tuesday ;))

Everything is better with pretty vampires and I love steampunk and the generally bizarre. I guess that explains my love for the Shadow Hearts series. ^_^

I'm glad you enjoyed it. ^_^

Thank you for recommending it. It took me awhile to get inot it, but I really did like it. And I've tried out the sequel, and it does look a lot better.

The whole situation in Parliament is quite exciting, I guess. I hope she tells Stevie H to stuff it and we wake up to a Coalition Gov't someday soon.

I hadn't heard of that game. Shall check it out.

It's well worth playing -- silly, but very funny at times. And a lot of fun to play.

And unfortunately a beast of the PS family. Sigh.

Yeah -- that's the only console system I have.

I'm a Nintendo boy.

I've got everything crossed for the coalition.

There's a blog called Making Light that one of my American friends pointed me too when I posted about this. Author did a post about our political situation and got some great comments, including a couple trying to explain the role of the G-G to befuddled Americans.

One at 63 says:

Lee @45, I've always thought of it this way.

The sovereignty of Canada is a sort of supernatural spirit. It exists at all times, having been conjured up in 1867 from the depths of wherever such things are conjured from, but is only on rare occasions actually present in the person of a charming elderly woman from London, and is cursed by the Statute of Westminster (a rather powerful spell cast in the early 30s) from ever escaping Canada's national borders.

Whenever Her Majesty is actually on Canadian soil, the sovereignty of Canada is vested in her person, and she is mystically transformed into the Queen of Canada. However, the moment her plane leaves Canadian national airspace, her Canadian sovereignness exits her body and proceeds instantly (through a sort of political version of quantum entaglement) to Rideau Hall in Ottawa, where it roams free, occasionally venturing out to scare Supreme Court justices whenever anyone sues the government, and from time to time taking possession of the body of the Governor General to compel her to sign bills, read throne speeches, and call elections.

While for most Americans, this all sounds terribly silly, it makes perfect sense to most Discworld readers.

It also makes it a lot easier to explain Canadian constitutional law, since the Queen is also, independent of her role as Queen of Canada, Queen of each of the 10 provinces. Thus, Her Majesty in Right of, say, Alberta, can take legal action against Her Majesty in Right of Canada, before Her Majesty's Supreme Court, without anyone in London having to miss a night's sleep.

Then there's one which the author liked so much he turned it into an independant blog post.

That does make sense.

I tend to just describe her as the symbolic leader of Canada -- she entertains dignitaries, gives arts awards, attends funerals and cuts ribbons, so that the PM doesn't have to do things. But she also plays final referee in elections. This time I think she's made a bad call.

I agree. I wonder if she felt pressured into it given the Conservatives' suspicions of her left-leaning/separatist politics, and the fear that standing firm against the prorogation would give them fuel to voice those suspicions more loudly? I hope not.

It was a difficult position for her to be in, but this decision sets a bad precedent. Now anytime a prime minister is in danger of a vote of non-confidence he can just say, "Please, Mme Governor-General, may I have a prorogation?" Way to dodge the will of Parliament, there.

Please excuse my ignorance but what's this Harper bloke done? I've been sick along with the kids with a super conjunctivitis bug. I just noticed another Canadian friend of mine on FB ranting about how the guy should be drawn and quartered.

He's a very polarizing figure. Only 37% voted for him, and 62% voted for the other parties. That sounds like business-as-usual, but that 62% is generally understood to despise Harper at the 37% who voted for him.

Thing is, Harper's party is the farthest to the right -- farther to the right than any Canadian party in history. The Liberals are centrist (fiscally conservative, socially liberal), the NDP are left, and the Bloc are left on most issues. So what's really going is a culture war.

Harper led the fight against same-sex marriage. He's fought hard to remove regulation and monitoring on corporations. He's been a global-warming denier from the get-go. His government has tried to dismantle all the pay-equity infrastructure and cheap daycare programs to keep women in the home. Most recently, he tried to deny the smaller parties funding, and destroy the right of government employees to strike.

He's also a fundamentalist Christian, and a creationist, and while he never talks about this in public, his party is filled with some of the country's most nasty, extreme fundamentalists -- Stockwell Day has always been a minister in his cabinet, and he gave Focus on the Family's Darryl Reid a place in his inner circle of advisers.

If these were just simple ideological differences, he wouldn't raise quite the rancour he does. Problem is, he's also the most machiavellian prime minister Canada's ever had. Even under our most corrupt leaders -- Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien -- Canadian politics has always been a gentleman's game, and our politicians have followed some basic rules of fairness.

Harper, though, manipulates some of our archaic, broken parliamentary rules to ensure he stays in power. His party stays in power thanks to turning every vote into a confidence motion, knowing that the Liberals will hold their nose and vote for the most retrograde legislation because they can't afford to fight another election. This crisis came because he tried to use that to deal a deathblow to the Liberal Party. And because we have a first-past-the-post system, 37% gives him very close to a majority.

More than that, Harper is a master of what could be called the "Rove lie" -- lies outlandish and easily disproved, but which aren't meant to convince, merely throw the enemy off-balance long enough to strike. When caught in a lie, he simply pretends he wasn't. He doesn't even bother to keep his lies consistent.

Harper's the greatest danger this country's ever faced. And 62% want this man out of office by any means necessary.