Hutto update: Harper accepts child imprisonment.

Update on the case of young Kevin, held in the T. Don Hutto Family Concentration Camp, down in sunny Texas. The ACLU has filed suit on behalf of Kevin, his father Majid and mother Masomeh as well as nine other detained children. The official Canadian response has been a cowardly failure to speak or to act, a disgrace to this nation.

Quoted in the CTV article Stephen Harper says, "his government isn't "in a position to dictate what happens in other jurisdictions."

What the sweet fuck is that supposed to mean? Canada's government isn't being asked to dictate, but it is certainly expected that it will advocate. Harper is nothing but a sad marionette and he refuses to pull back on the masters string. This abject failure to intercede on the behalf of a Canadian born child, imprisoned in conditions that fail to meet basic minimum standards, is a blight on this nation. We are not a nation that sanctions the organized state abuse of children. We are not a nation that refuses to address human rights issues in any nation.

Stephen Harper is a lying sack of crap. The Canadian government routinely comments on all manner of human rights abuses around the world. If Kevin and his family were named Stewart or Theberge or Bernstein, I suspect Mr. Harper would have rather more to say. I'm relatively sure that if China or Venezuela or Turkey were to imprison a Canadian child and his refugee parents, Mr. Harper would be far less reticent. I'm not used to being ashamed of Canada and I don't much like it.

Stephen Harper, not my Prime Minister.

PARDON THE INTERRUPTION (by CC): I don't want to step on PSA's toes on this post, but I wanted to point out that, when it suits him, PMSH has no problem whatsoever "dictating what happens in other jurisdictions":

[Huseyin] Celil's imprisonment has caused friction between Canada and China -- a nation whose human rights record has been publicly questioned by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, among others.

In fact, Harper pointedly spoke about Celil with Chinese President Hu Jintao while in Vietnam, where the two leaders were among 21 gathered for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit last November.

Harper also referred to Celil while en route to that conference.

"When a Canadian citizen is taken from a third country and imprisoned in China, this is a serious concern to this country," he said.

More recently, unnamed Canadian officials this week took to the media to slam Canadian diplomats for their failure to attend the hearing, and there were reports that Harper himself was upset at the handling of the case, The Globe reports.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay's spokesman, Dan Dugas, told The Globe that MacKay had personally called the Canadian embassy in Beijing.

"The Chinese government is not co-operating with the Canadian mission in China and we aren't going to stop asking them for what's happening with Mr. Celil," said Dugas. He would not comment directly on claims Harper was angered that no official was in the court.

"I can tell you he is not happy either," Dugas said, referring to MacKay. "He's asking for answers. He wants to know what is being done and what the next steps are going to be."

I'd ask Canada's wankers to discuss the double standard here, but I'm guessing they're all a bit tied up explaining how Scooter Libby is nothing at all like Bill Clinton. Or something like that.

the government of new canada

dave at galloping beaver points at this cp globe diagnosis that gives our ailing new government only 60 days to adapt or be broken. the house will vote on wednesday, on a liberal bill that requires the new government to lay out their new plans for meeting new canada's kyoto accord commitments. this could be the iceberg that sinks the hmcs neocanadian. get one of your wetsuits laundered stockboy, there'll be some deckchairs to rearrange.

sandra buckler, stephen harper's work mommy, scored some brown acid and made this trippy assessment,

"It's like trying to say, 'I'm going to pass a motion that says I'm going to change the laws of gravity,"' said Buckler. "Well, how are you going to do that? You can't just say that . . . . Just because you say the sky is green, that doesn't make it so just because you legislate it." - cp/globe & mail

oh dude, have you ever noticed your hands? fingers are so, like, wierd. gosh sandra, have a soda, i think you're freaking out.

what new liberal perfidy is this? expecting our new government to obey a law that fails the oilpatch purity test. piffle and pshaw.

the upshot is that our new canadian government doesn't feel beholden to the law of the land, if it runs counter to ideology and prior interests of the special kind. our nation entered into an international agreement to limit and reduce our emissions of green house gasses, carbons to attempt to reverse or ameliorate the effects of global climate change. that is the will of the canadian people. it appears the the conservatives have no intention of obeying this law, when passed. and pass it will, having easily cleared a first vote with tripartite support.

60 days. what then? well, that's when things get interesting. if harper and his minority government refuse to abide by the law, they can either call an election or be sued on constitutional grounds. should they fail to comply with a court order, then we enter uncharted territory in canadian politics. a coup d'etat, for all intents and purposes and a constitutional crisis. i hope it doesn't come to that. i think it is time for mr. harper to answer to the people. canadians don't much care for autocrats and these tank grown thinkers don't seem to get it. so let's help them get it.

as far as sandra buckler's demented response, it is predicated on the notion that the 6% emissions reduction by 2012 will just wreck everything. we can't do it, there's no way, it's impossible. these cuts would end up "crippling the economy"! so we won't even think about trying until maybe at some indeterminate point in the future. okay? what they aren't saying is that they are some cozy with big petro, profit now, worry later. since they slashed all manner of standing federal environmental initiatives and programs, they have offered nothing but limp slogans and empty promises to act. their policy: when all the fossil fuels run out or become too expensive to extract, then we'll talk. foreward thinking all the way.

they poo poo here and they poo poo there, and the minions, flacks and ministers poo poo everywhere. but a bill that passes both houses and is signed into law by the governor general can't be selectively ignored. canadians will only stand for so much of that poo poo. the economy they are so terrified of crippling is on borrowed time, the carbon rich fun is coming to an end sooner than later. what do these sage souls plan for an economy when big oil runs dry? truth is, they've probably never considered it. it doesn't make the radar. what matters is right now and tomorrow. next week is someone else's problem. the economy they are interested in protecting is called exxon or texaco or shell. frankly, i don't really give a fuck if these barons of industry fall. their survival is far less important than that of my nieces and nephew and their kid's futures.

it appears that the harper economic vision is to burn off our natural resources as fast as possible, with as little control as possible and damn the torpedoes. rumour has it he's an economist. question is, who does he work for? wouldn't seem to be the people of canada. i work with the public and every day people talk about the weather with a bit of dread. this isn't some pie in the sky theory. people sense the shift in their environment, they talk about it and they are worried. harper might be an economist but any doctor will tell you that a condition of permanent, unsustainable growth is cancer. sad that the conservatives have forgotten the meaning of conserve, to keep and husband. our rapacious corporate culture is diseased.

these tweezer heads have neither a vision beyond lunch or a memory beyond the last slight they need to revenge. in the course of only a hundred years, society saw fantastic growth and change. cities were redefined by the private automobile, in a century we paved the earth and drove all over it. the economy went through huge shifts as business empires fell and new empires rose. some of those new empires demand that we not accept the next logical shifts in economic paradigms or social reality. we should continue headlong toward a well marked cliff because they refuse to adapt or change their ways. well fuck that.

we all know that stephen harper stands tall against the scourge of innovation. so it is little surprise that he would turn away from imagining an economy that isn't the one he's beholden to. so fuck him (i won't be getting hired as anyone's campaign blogger). without facing our problems, we can't solve them. our homes are among our largest sources of greenhouse emissions. conservatives pretend to be all about tax cuts and then sell us back our nickels after they've been shined. home heating in canada is, for the time being, an expensive necessity. civil engineering has transformed our cities and dwellings repeatedly over time. where an old industry fails a new one can appear. federal support could help found a massive geothermal home heating industry, with research and development, manufacturing, sales, installation and management sectors. retrofitting the nation with a safe, renewable and intelligent source of warmth and comfort would take years. but those years would be well spent. we would reduce our carbon footprint drastically and our remaining fossil resources would last years longer.

there are a lot of ways to live smarter and still foster a robust economy. one that we can all breathe in. failure to imagine alternatives, failure to innovate, failure to accept change, it all adds up to failure. here's looking at you stephen.