UNDERSTANDING U.S. POLITICS AND POWER

Under the above heading, the October issue of Dialogue magazine* published the following reports.

-- Editor, CIS' The political agenda behind the current U.S. regime Richard Moore forwarded the following article published in the (British) Sunday Herald on Sept. 15, 02, discussing a (not-so-secret) blueprint for US global domination. The blueprint, and other interesting information, can be reviewed on-line at the website of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC): www.newamericancentury.org.

The PNAC was created in 1997 and forms part of a vast U.S. network promoting 'right wing' politics, funded largely by foundations set up by U.S. oil, industry and munitions corporations. On the (following pages), Jim Lobe provides a little more background, going back to 1992, and another PNAC document looks at US-Europe relations, giving a glimpse of how they look at Canada too. Bush planned Iraq 'regime' change' before becoming president: by Neil Mackay A 'secret' blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001. The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defense secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumfeld's deputy), George W. Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein were in power. It says:

'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

'The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.' This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible,' the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively, win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission.' The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier.' The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.' The PNAC report also:
refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';
describes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';
reveals worries in administration that Europe could rival the USA;
says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene,' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';
spotlights China for 'regime change,' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia.' This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratization in China';
calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces,' to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;
hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack' -- electronic, 'non-lethal,' biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool;
and pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a 'world-wide command-and-control system.'

Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war. 'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'

You can read the document at: http://cryptome.org/rad.htm; Or at: www.newamericancentury.org/ RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf Anniversary of a Neo-Imperial Moment -- Jim Lobe, AlterNet September 12, 2002

EXTRACT When excerpts of the document, "Defense Planning Guidance," first appeared in the New York Times in the spring of 1992, it created quite a stir. Sen. Joe Biden, now chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was particularly outraged, calling it a prescription for "literally a Pax Americana," an American empire. The details contained in the draft of the Defense Planning Guidance(DPG) were indeed startling. The document argued that the core assumption guiding US foreign policy in the 21st century should be the need to establish permanent US dominance over virtually all of Eurasia. It envisioned a world in which US military intervention would become "a constant fixture" of the geopolitical landscape.

"While the US cannot become the world's 'policeman' by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the pre-eminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends," wrote the authors, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby -- who at the time were two relatively obscure political appointees in the Pentagon's policy office. The strategies put forward to achieve this goal included "deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role," and taking pre-emptive action against states suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. The draft, leaked apparently by a high-ranking source in the military, sparked an intense but fleeting uproar.

At the insistence of then-National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker, the final DPG document was toned down beyond recognition. But through the nineties, the two authors and their boss, then-Pentagon chief Dick Cheney, continued to wait for the right opportunity to fulfill their imperial dreams. Their long wait came to an end on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when two hijacked commercial airliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan and a third into the Pentagon outside Washington. And the timing could not have been more ideal. Dick Cheney had already become the most powerful vice president in US history, while the draft's two authors, Wolfowitz and Libby, were now Deputy Defense Secretary and Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser respectively. In the year since, these three men, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded officials strategically located elsewhere in the administration, have engineered what former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke recently described as a "radical break with 55 years of bipartisan tradition" in US foreign policy. End of EXTRACT

US view of Europe (... and Canada) Where does Canada stand, in the following look at Europe? Well, in another part of the PNAC website, there is a reference to "Western Europe and Canada...," so it would appear that, in the eyes of the PNAC, what goes for Europe, applies to Canada too. Read the entire 20+ page article at www.newamericancentury.org under NATO/Europe.

Power and Weakness by Robert Kagan, PNAC Director -- Policy Review, June 2002

EXTRACTS It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power -- the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power -- American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and co-operation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant's "Perpetual Peace."

The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. That is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less. And this state of affairs is not transitory -- the product of one American election or one catastrophic event.

The reasons for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and likely to endure. When it comes to settling national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the US and Europe have parted ways. (…) Some Europeans do understand the conundrum. Some Britons, not surprisingly, understand it best. Thus Robert Cooper (Tony Blair's foreign policy guru) writes of the need to address the hard truth that although "within the postmodern world (i.e., the Europe of today), there are no security threats in the traditional sense," nevertheless, throughout the rest of the world -- what Cooper calls the "modern and pre-modern zones" -- threats abound. If the postmodern world does not protect itself, it can be destroyed. But how does Europe protect itself without discarding the very ideals and principles that undergird its pacific system?

"The challenge to the postmodern world," Cooper argues, "is to get used to the idea of double standards." Among themselves, Europeans may "operate on the basis of laws and open co-operative security." But when dealing with the world outside Europe, "we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era -force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary."

This is Cooper's principle for safeguarding society: "Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle." ... What this means is that although the US has played the critical role in bringing Europe into this Kantian paradise, and still plays a key role in making that paradise possible, it cannot enter this paradise itself. It mans the walls but cannot walk through the gate. The United States, with all its vast power, remains stuck in history, left to deal with the Saddams and the ayatollahs, the Kim Jong IIs and the Jiang Zemins, leaving the happy benefits to others. ... In other words, just as Europeans claim, Americans can still sometimes see themselves in heroic terms -- as Gary Cooper at high noon. They will defend the townspeople, whether the townspeople want them to or not. End of EXTRACTS (End of the Sunday Herald items)
THE $64-QUESTION? Who constitutes the greater overall threat to mankind today: Saddam Hussein? or George Bush and those manipulating him?

On Target Section

Charter has warped the ideas it set out to defend

The following article by Ted Morton was published in the April 2002 issue of The Calgary Herald. Mr. Morton teaches at the University of Calgary, and is the co-author of The Charter Revolution and The Court Party. He is also one of Alberta's two Senators-Elect.

In politics, they say, a gaffe is telling the truth. If so, then the Canadian Alliance made a big gaffe at its recent convention in Edmonton. Blinded by common sense, CA delegates saw that a hyper-activist Supreme Court has subverted the original meaning and purpose of the Charter of Rights. Instead of constitutional supremacy, the court has given us judicial supremacy. The CA supports constitutional supremacy. It rightly opposes judicial supremacy. So it acted to uphold the former by voting to prohibit the courts from overriding Parliament. Liberal pundits have been quick to denounce the CA's initiative as a radical attack on Canadian democracy, a giant step backward. They have ridiculed the CA decision as evidence the party doesn't get it when it comes to rights. But just who doesn't get it? The policy adopted by the CA does no more than adopt the current practices in the United Kingdom.

Under the Human Rights Act adopted in Britain by the Blair government in 1998, citizens have the means to challenge government policy for alleged rights violations, and the courts have the power to scrutinize legislation for possible conflict with the enumerated rights. What the British judges do not have is the power to declare a conflicting law invalid and without effect. If they find an irreconcilable conflict between the actions of government and the act, the most the judges can do is issue a "declaration of incompatibility." Such a declaration then sends the issue back into the political arena, where the government and opposition have the opportunity to respond.

The Brits understand the difference between constitutional supremacy and judicial supremacy. The CA motion does the same. Academic and media defenders of the charter status quo argue the Supreme Court is not substituting its policy preferences for the intended meaning of the charter. They argue that the judges are just "carrying out the orders" found in the charter. While this view of judging was never completely accurate, it has been stretched to the breaking point under the charter.

It cannot be reconciled with the countless contrary declarations made by judges themselves, such as the late Justice John Sopinka's candid concession that "when deciding a charter case, the court is in a sense legislating." The "charta as law" scenario does not fit with Madam Justice Claire l'Heureux-Dube's declaration that "We (judges) have lots of discretion," and her advice to other judges, "So put yourself in where there is nothing else to go on."
The charter as law scenario was explicitly rejected by Mr. Justice Michel Bastarache in a well-publicized interview in 2001. Asked why he has dissenting so often, Bastarache replied the court was being "too subjective" in its decisions. Bastarache explained: "It's when your own values and our own personal convictions become the predominant factor in deciding the issue. "The result being, of course, what you think the law should be, rather than what you think the law actually is right now as written."

In sum, there is plenty of empirical evidence for the CA's perception that the court has exceeded its mandate. Justice Bastarache said he did not think the Supreme Court has "a mandate to ... define a whole social policy for Canada." The Alliance Party agrees with the justice and has made a constructive proposal that would end the Court's monopoly on rights. I for one would welcome a true charter dialogue between courts and legislatures in Canada. I support the Canadian Alliance delegates' decision not to repeal the charter altogether.
The choice they did make -- basically adopting the current British practice -- promises to promote real dialogue about rights issues which preserves a meaningful role for elected governments and non-elected judges.

Under the U.K./CA model, individuals and interest groups still have a forum to challenge government policy for alleged rights violations. Judges still are charged with the task of interpreting those rights and deciding whether there is a conflict. The difference is the pretence that this law would be dropped. The court would give advice, not orders to the legislature responsible. Judges would still have the opportunity to influence the development of our fundamental rights, but would have to do so by force of logic and moral suasion.

Critics of the Alliance's charter initiative would have Canadians believe that to reduce the power of the judges would place Canada outside the mainstream of the democracies of the world. The opposite is closer to the truth. Only the United States gives this much power to judges. The defenders of Canada's hyperactive Supreme Court have become more American than the Americans, who at least curb the courts from time to time. In other English-speaking democracies, the model proposed by the CA is much closer to the norm. (End of Prof. Morton's article)

COMMENT: Prof. Morton's words make very sound sense to us. Judges are appointed to uphold the law, not to make it. We elect Parliament to do that. However, there must be a better way to appoint our high court judges as at present when the P.M. seems to make all appointments of note, even though he might seem to be in a conflict-of-interest situation to some extent.

The Constitutional Proposal presently being put before Canadians by the Canadian Constitution Committee, respecting our Supreme Court, has this to say:
85. Candidates for appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada shall first appear before an All-Party Parliamentary Committee comprised of Senators and Members of the House of Commons, for questioning concerning their Qualifications, following which the Governor-General, after consultation with said All-Party Committee and his Council, shall appoint at his Discretion, the new Member or Members of the Court.
86. The Supreme Court of Canada shall be comprised of Eleven Members, One from each Province and One from the Territories combined, each of whom shall be a Member of, and have been recommended by, his respective Provincial or Territorial Bar.

If Lougheed's confession of failure is valid, then he certainly isn't the only guilty party.

The Sept. 23rd issue of THE REPORT newsmagazine, under the above caption, published the following column by Ted Byfield.

Peter Lougheed, premier of Alberta through 14 years of his province's fastest economic growth, made last month what can only be described as a confession of failure.
"I fouled up," he declared, and the foul-up consisted of failing to restore the teaching of history as a compulsory subject in Alberta schools. Mr. Lougheed made his confession on an auspicious occasion, his retirement after six years as chancellor of Queens University. After the traditional obeisances of a retiring chancellor -- the thanks, the tributes, the honour of being allowed to serve -- the whole tone of his address suddenly changed. "I want to talk about another subject, and this is a personal one," he said. "I'm a Canadian patriot, and I'm troubled about something about our country. It absolutely distresses me that only half our nation can identify our first prime minister. Absolutely distresses me! It seems to me so important. We have to think about that, about how we teach the history of our country, and the low priority we give to the teaching of our history."
Turning to his own record in government, he entered a plea of guilty.
"I was premier for 14 years, and I was wrapped up in energy and the Constitution, and I didn't really take a good look until the last two years at what we teach in our school systems and curriculum. I let this junk of social studies, which I grew up with, be part of it. I didn't do what I should have done, and it was too late. I tried to do it, but my successor wasn't interested. So I'm feeling that. I don't have many regrets about those years, but I'm feeling that one."
However, it is not in the Lougheed character to abandon the task even now.
"I want every province within a short period of time to make Canadian history mandatory at three levels: at the elementary, the junior high school as we call it in Alberta, and at the secondary level -- yes, mandatory."
Nova Scotia has already begun to do so, he said, and other provinces should follow the same path.

He also lauded the CBC for its series on Canadian history.
"They said, 'We'll average 700,000 to watch the programs.' They got well over two million." In other words, the public's interest in history is definitely there. What's missing is the educators' interest. For if Mr. Lougheed is guilty of negligence, he assuredly is not alone. He doubtless sees, but did not discuss, the sad fact that the same educational revolution which destroyed the teaching of history destroyed other vital disciplines as well. Chief among them were English grammar and classic English literature. The abandonment of standardized examinations was also part of the process, and (to give credit where credit is due) Mr. Lougheed's government was one of the first to reinvent them.
Behind these assorted changes lay a very specific educational philosophy born in the 1920s, which within six decades would eliminate history and formal English from the schools. What these enlightened educators sought to remove was the concept of objective reality. Children must not be burdened with facts and rules, they contended; rather, their feelings and inclinations should be nurtured. History was disfavoured because it presented the past as a structure of mere facts and data -- such as who was our first prime minister. Grammar was discouraged because it insisted upon structured rules governing correct usage. The classics were abolished because they stood as a social heritage the individual was obligated to preserve for the future.
Examinations were viewed as particularly offensive: almost entirely predicated on the existence of a right answer and a wrong answer -- anathema to the new educators. Children must be advanced, they said, on the basis of social conformity to the group.

Almost equally offensive to this philosophy, of course, are team sports with their inevitable winners and losers. However, boys in particular are difficult to wean from this sort of thing, so the idea of sports in which "everybody wins" was confined to the earliest grades. Now this educational revolution occurred under the noses not only of politicians but of the media as well. I covered the "school beat" for the Winnipeg Free Press when the changes were being made in the Manitoba system. I don't remember writing a single story on them, so I'd better add my own confession to Mr. Lougheed's.

Editorials commenting on the innovations were infrequent and generally positive, featuring snide references to "voices from the past" that wanted to go "back to basics." Well, we didn't go back to basics, and one casualty was universal literacy. (The newspapers discovered too late that illiterate people don't read newspapers; circulation as against total population has declined ever since.)

Peter Lougheed is right, of course. A nation ignorant of its own history will not long remain a nation. And a people ignorant of the concept of facts and rules will not long remain free. They will become serfs and slaves -- which will assuredly be our fate unless we can somehow repair this vast damage. (End of Mr. Byfield's column)

Even Noah's finding it tough (no sacrilege intended) It is the year 2002 and Noah lives in the United States. The Lord speaks to Noah and says: "In one year I am going to make it rain and cover the whole earth with water until all is destroyed. But I want you to save the righteous people and two of every kind of living thing on the earth. Therefore, I am commanding you to build an Ark." In a flash of lightning, God delivered the specifications for an Ark. Fearful and trembling, Noah took the plans and agreed to build the Ark. "Remember," said the Lord, "you must complete the Ark and bring everything aboard in one year." Exactly one year later, a fierce storm cloud covered the earth and all the seas of the earth went into a tumult. The Lord saw Noah sitting in his front yard weeping. "Noah," He shouted, "Where is the Ark?" "Lord please forgive me!" cried Noah. "I did my best, but there were big problems.
First, I had to get a permit for construction and your plans did not comply with the codes. I had to hire an engineering firm and redraw the plans. "Then I got into a fight with OSHA over whether or not the Ark needed a fire sprinkler system and floatation devices. "Then my neighbor objected, claiming I was violating zoning ordinances by building the Ark in my front yard, so I had to get a variance from the city planning commission. "I had problems getting enough wood for the Ark, because there was a ban on cutting trees to protect the Spotted Owl. I finally convinced the US Forestry Service that I needed the wood to save the owls. However, the Fish and Wildlife Service won't let me catch any owls. So, no owls.
"The carpenters formed a union and went out on strike. "I had to negotiate a settlement with the National Labour Union. Now I have 16 carpenters on the Ark, but still no owls. "When I started rounding up the other animals, I got sued by an animal rights group. "They objected to my taking only two of each kind aboard. "Just when I got the suit dismissed, the EPA notified me that I could not complete the Ark without filing an environmental impact statement on your proposed flood. "They didn't take very kindly to the idea that they had no jurisdiction over the conduct of the Creator of the Universe. "Then the Army Corps of Engineers demanded a map of the proposed new flood plan. I sent them a globe.
"Right now, I am trying to resolve a complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that I am practicing discrimination by not taking godless, unbelieving people aboard! "The IRS has seized all my assets, claiming that I'm building the Ark in preparation to flee the country to avoid paying taxes. "I just got a notice from the state that I owe some kind of user tax and failed to register the Ark as a 'recreational water craft.' "Finally the ACLU got the courts to issue an injunction against further construction of the Ark, saying that since God is flooding the earth, it is a religious event, therefore unconstitutional.
"I really don't think I can finish the Ark for another 5 or 6 years!" Noah wailed. The sky began to clear, the sun began to shine and the seas began to calm. A rainbow arched across the sky. Noah looked up hopefully. "You mean you are not going to destroy the earth, Lord?" "No," said the Lord sadly. "The government already has."

Is view of Bush-war changing?

A Sept. 28th e-mail included a report captioned "Congress Overwhelmed With Anti-War Calls From 'The Silenced Majority."' Following, are responses reported by Members of Congress in response to the pro-or-con of waging war on Iraq:

The national news radio show Democracy Now! conducted an informal survey of 70 Republican and Democratic (US) Senate offices. Of the 26 offices which responded to our inquiries, 22 reported an overwhelming majority - in some cases up to 99 percent - of constituents opposed war in Iraq; three said the response was split and just one office reported a majority called backing the war.

Among the findings: Democrats: Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl: Aides say they are receiving 1,002,000 calls a week with the overwhelming number opposed to an attack on Iraq.

Washington: Sen. Patty Murray: Over 5,000 letters and phone calls were received last week on Iraq, aides say. Only about 100 came from constituents who supported an attack.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein: Staff in her San Francisco office reported about 200 calls a day with 99 percent opposing the war.

Republicans : North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms: Staff declined to give figures but said the "majority is against" when it comes to calls on Iraq.

Nebraska Sen. Charles Hegan: According to aides, constituents favor diplomacy over war at a rate of 5 to 1.

Virginia Sen. John Warner: About 150 a day are calling, "a very small minority supporting military action," said one aide. ... "It's extraordinary that, as Senators work with the Bush Administration to draft a war resolution, their constituents are expressing overwhelming opposition to an attack against Iraq," said Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! "Unfortunately we are hearing very little about this in the media. These calls represent the silenced majority, not the silent majority."

Democracy Now! is a daily nationwide news show based in New York. It is broadcast over 130 public radio and television stations around the country. (End of the e-mail report)

Enterprise Section

Latin America blows up

The Australian On Target weekly newsletter (23/8/02), under the above caption, published the following report by the eminent Australian journalist Jeremy Lee.

While Argentinians continue to riot and starve, battering the banks and politicians in daily protests, the currency has devalued to such an extent that exports have burgeoned. They are now expected to increase by 16 percent in the second half of the year. The Australian Financial Review (13/8/02) reported: "The export boom could affect Australian primary producers as the crisis-hit South American nation ships out a big grain harvest, and beef sales begin to recover with the phasing out of foot-and-mouth disease bans. "The Argentine peso has lost 70 percent of its value since January, and exporters are so competitive there are fears there could be domestic shortages as they shun the devastated local market ... "

Argentina traditionally exports to its neighbors, Brazil and Uruguay, but these economies have slumped with the regional economic crisis …" In other words, there is enough for all in Argentina. Nobody need starve. But the currency has devalued to such an extent that exporters will send much-needed goods overseas while their countrymen and women go without. Truly, modern economics is a marvelous thing! Especially when Argentinian exports are going to make it tougher for exporters in other nations.

The money that Argentina receives, of course, will go to foreign bankers.

Uruguay Next In Line

The same violent protests are now occurring in Uruguay, where the government has been forced to close the banks to prevent a run on the peso. So great is concern in the US about the spreading crisis in Latin America that it is not waiting for the vultures in the International Monetary Fund to arrive, but is sending its own Treasury official Paul O'Neill, to hand out emergency bridging loans. The Guardian Weekly (8-14/8/02) gave this report:

"It is the first time the Bush administration has offered direct support for an economy under fire from speculators ... Discontent over Uruguay's imploding financial system and grinding four-year recession spilled onto the streets last week with labour protests and scattered supermarket lootings.

"The financial system has been hit by the economic collapse in neighboring Argentina, whose better-off citizens traditionally used Uruguayan banks as a safe haven. With Argentina's economic paralysis now entering its tenth month, Argentinians have been forced to draw on their savings. "Nearly $6-billion has been withdrawn from the banking system so far this year, 40% of all deposits. Fearing a run on the banking system and running short of foreign reserves to prop up the peso, Uruguay closed all its banks on Tuesday last week.

"With the increasing threat of a cash crunch, Uruguay's currency, the peso, has lost about half of its value since it was floated in June …" But, of course, it's not only Uruguay. The article continued:

"Speaking in Brasilia on Monday on the first day of his visit to the region, Mr. O'Neill indicated that he would also back an IMF bailout for Brazil, Latin America's largest economy ... Brazil is reportedly seeking some $10-billion to prop up the real, which tumbled sharply last week amid investor fears that the two leftwing candidates leading in October's presidential race would default on the country's $250-billion foreign debt …"

So by far the biggest debtor nation in the world, the US, is lending to much smaller nations to keep them out of trouble. It's a crazy world!

The President's Credibility

George 'Dubya' Bush's credibility goes from bad to worse. As secrets of corporate scandals are revealed, it now transpires that, during the final period of the presidential election, Bush's campaign workers rushed about trying to push the recount of votes in his direction. The corporate jets made available for this purpose came from Enron, Halliburton and Reliant Energy -- all now under investigation. Also, Larry Lindsay, chief economic adviser to the President, was a financial consultant and advisory board member for Enron before moving to the White House, while Harvey Pitt, who is supposed to be heading the crackdown on the corporate crooks and their balance sheets, was formerly a lobbyist for the very accountants he is supposed to be investigating.

Larry Thompson, heading the federal task force on corporate fraud, was found to have sold off $5-million in stock in Providian Financial Corporation, his former credit card company, a few weeks before it was revealed that some of its loans were suspect. Vice President Dick Chaney is of course, under a cloud for his activities in Halliburton. And Bush himself is not so 'squeaky-clean' in his own dealing in Harken Energy Corp. All this is widely known now among the US investing public, which has lost $8-trillion in savings over the last few months -- and looks like losing more. Every time Bush makes a speech about "corporate morality," the stock market tumbles again. How many may end up seeking asylum in Uruguay??? (End of Mr. Lee's report)

COMMENT (by Ron Gostick) Canadians, already heavily overtaxed, and with an increase in the GST tax to upgrade medicare now rumoured, not to mention increased unemployment and living costs to meet Kyoto environmental commitments, Canadians could soon find themselves facing similar problems now bedevilling Latin American countries. We note that Uncle Sam, whose massive industrial machine is the major polluter in the Western World, is opting out of the Kyoto treaty! Likewise, China and India. Could this Kyoto scheme Chretien and his inner group are playing be really more of a power game designed to give Ottawa increased control over the western resource-rich provinces for years to come?
Rather than a benignant concern to provide them with clean air and better health.

The Tyranny of the Court Party

The Report newsmagazine (2/9/02), under the above caption, published the following article by Paul Bunner:

The cornerstone of modern western civilization -- legal marriage between men and women -- felt the awesome deconstructive power of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms this summer. It's not dead yet, only grievously wounded by the ruling of Ontario divisional court Justice Harry LaForme, who found that the exclusively heterosexual definition of marriage in federal law violates the equality rights of gays and lesbians under the Charter.
Courts of appeal in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec will wrestle with the question in the months ahead, and the likelihood is it will ultimately wind up in the Supreme Court of Canada. In the meantime, a federal parliamentary committee will pretend that legislators have a say in the matter by conducting public hearings later this year.

As all that unfolds, it seems opportune to revisit the making of the 1982 Constitution Act. This document, after all, has been the catalyst for a monumental reordering of Canadian society. Marriage is only the latest ancient legal or social convention targeted by the network of political activists, lawyers, academics and judges who inhabit the aptly nicknamed Court Party. Among other things, they have succeeded in substantively boosting the legal rights of the criminally accused, doing away with all legal restrictions on abortion, entrenching a uniquely Canadian form of apartheid for Indians, and expanding the rights of pornographers and pedophiles.
Along the way, they have diminished the "fundamental freedoms" of thought, belief, conscience, religion, opinion and expression. Did the framers of the 1982 Constitution Act have any inkling that their work would come to this?

According to the surviving premiers I've talked to, the provinces knew or suspected that the Charter and other constitutional amendments made in 1982 could have a dramatic impact on Canadian law and society. Faced with Pierre Trudeau's fierce determination to implement his notion of a "Just Society," the provinces tried to limit the potential impact with safeguards like a "limitation clause," designed to allow governments to impose "reasonable" limits on rights, and the "notwithstanding clause," which gave legislatures the power to pass laws circumventing judges' interpretations of Charter rights. They succeeded in getting language into the document that should have protected the will of elected legislators from the whims of unelected judges. What they did not anticipate was the mighty determination of the Court Party to ignore or distort their intent, and the cowardly failure of future legislators to use the tools they were given. You could argue that the eight premiers who defended the principle of parliamentary supremacy should have put up a stronger fight, but Trudeau and his agents worked very hard to frame the argument as a dispute between noble defenders and nasty deniers of individual rights. The tactical brilliance and sheer deviousness of the federal side leaps off the pages of a leaked strategy paper that recently came into my possession.

Marked "MINISTER'S EYES ONLY" on every page, it was submitted to the Trudeau cabinet on August 30, 1980, just as the final, 18-month marathon of haggling that would result in the 1982 Constitution Act was about to begin. Attached to the memo were two scripts for television advertisements intended to drive home the idea that constitutional reform on Ottawa's terms was as Canadian as motherhood (which still mattered in those days) and maple syrup. One 30-second spot was to open with a re-enactment of the famous photograph of Donald Smith driving the "last spike" in the transcontinental railroad. The actors would then look up, startled, at a giant Air Canada 747 roaring overhead. Meanwhile, the narrator would observe that the only thing that had not changed since the railroad was completed in 1885 was the Constitution.
"Now's our chance to make it right. Make it work. Make it ours."

The spot ended with the first four notes of "O Canada" and identification of the federal government as the sponsor. The ads supported the plan, summarized in the memo, to demonize the provinces as enemies of Ottawa's "People's Package," which included patriation and the Charter. If the voters bought the idea, they might warm to Trudeau's threat to rewrite the Constitution without provincial consent.

The memo also revealed the Liberals' willingness to transfer power from legislators to the courts:
"The strategy on the People's Package is really very simple. The federal position on the issues within the package... should be presented on television in the most favourable light possible. The Premiers who are opposed should be put on the defensive very quickly and should be made to appear that they prefer to trust politicians rather than impartial and non-partisan courts in the protection of the basic rights of citizens in a democratic society. It is evident that Canadian people prefer their rights protected by judges rather than by politicians."

The thing to remember, as the Court Party beavers away at marriage law in the courts and public hearings this fall and winter, is that they got this far through threats, intimidation, dishonest propaganda, subversion of democracy and perversion of the intent of most of the framers. It's true that through it all they managed to keep Canadian public opinion mostly on their side, but 20 years ago nobody dreamed that the destruction of marriage was on their agenda, and we can only guess at what they have in mind for the next 20. They won't be stopped until we elect a new generation of politicians with the courage to defend the principle of parliamentary supremacy and the intent of the framers. (End of Mr. Bunner's article)

Quebec's surprising swing to the right

The Report newsmagazine (22/7/02), under the above caption, published the following item by Peter Stock:

Four late-June byelections in Quebec may be the first indicator of a dramatic sea change in Quebec politics. If so, the votes have significant consequences for the rest of the country as well. Led by the youthful and charismatic Mario Dumont, the upstart Action Démocratique de Québec (ADQ), which disavows separatism as a near-term option, beat the governing separatist Parti Québécois (PQ) in three of the four ridings. Jean Charest's provincial Liberals finished last in all four byelections.

Because a general election must be held in Quebec within the next year, the stunning ADQ victories are leading pundits to predict not only a possible ADQ victory, but also the death of separatism. "This is the biggest shift in Quebec politics in 30 years," says University of Western Ontario political science professor Ian Brodie. "Instead of talking about separatism, with two parties, one 'yes' and one 'no,' there is now room to talk about normal issues."

Prof. Brodie suggests this has come about because voters are growing weary not only with sovereignty obsession, but also with the PQ's left-leaning policies. "According to tracking polls, there is a strong strain of discontent on social issues in Quebec," he points out. "On justice issues for example, Quebeckers are furious about lax sentencing by judges, lenient treatment of prisoners, parole and so on." The ADQ represents the conservative alternative.

Mr. Brodie says it is impossible to predict whether the Liberals or the PQ will survive to champion the left in Quebec. "The PC may be demolished," the academic says. "That would leave the Liberals, under former federal PC leader Jean Charest, as the voice of the left."

Canadian Alliance MP Scott Reid, who has written extensively on Quebec, agrees an important political shift is taking place in the province. "Quebec politics is returning to the primary situation of a conservative party and a liberal party," he says. "The conservative option was in favour of smaller government, respect for minorities and freedom of enterprise. Under conservative rule, Quebec's economy grew much more rapidly than Ontario's until 1970."
Mr. Reid believes polarization along traditional lines at the provincial level will be mirrored federally, creating an opportunity for the Alliance. He points out that Quebec has traditionally been more conservative than Ontario. In fact, the PCs won two-thirds of Quebec seats in the 1958 federal election. While the Alliance and ADQ are close in policy, and "Stephen Harper has good relations with Mario Dumont," Mr. Reid vests little hope in an Alliance breakthrough in Quebec.
"The real action happens at 1,000 different town-hall meetings across the province," he says, and the Alliance has scant presence at them. Nevertheless, there is already some practical interchange between the ADQ and the Alliance. For example, Parliament Hill Alliance staffer Mark Buzan says he is seriously considering running for the ADQ. "They're the most fiscally conservative party in Quebec, and support a single-rate tax," he explains. "Also, they believe in democratic reforms such as recall. On social policy, the ADQ support school vouchers, private-public partnerships in healthcare and will do away with nationalized daycare in favour of a voucher system." Indeed, ADQ policies are probably more conservative now than those of any prominent political party in Canada. René Lévesque must be spinning in his grave. (End of Mr. Stock's item)

COMMENT: Mr. Dumont, according to reports, is in his very early 30s, and most of his active supporters and close associates are likewise of the younger generation. I first recall noting the name Mario Dumont about a decade ago, around the end of the Bourassa Liberal Quebec government. Mr. Dumont, a prominent officer in the youth wing of the Quebec Liberal Party at that time, was about to leave his Party because he felt a stronger sense of provincial jurisdiction, as set out in the terms of Confederation in the BNA Act, than his party was defending. And soon thereafter he founded the ADQ. If he's true to those founding principles, the ADQ could become a strong factor in returning our country to Constitutional government. -R.G.

A prospective best-seller? CANADA'S FUTURE: More Debt and Bankruptcy? or Financial Reform and Prosperity?, by Ron Gostick, only a week off the press, already looks like a prospective best-seller, judging by the initial response and multiple sales. This 66-page top-quality book reveals how we can overcome our present overburdened debt- and tax-ridden economic burdens, reclaim our rich national heritage, and rebuild our country as a model of prosperity and confidence for other nations. Price (including GST & shipping) - single copy $8; 2 for $15; 3 for $20, 5 for $30. (US and other countries please pay in US funds.)

The Canadian Intelligence Service
Box 338, Flesherton, ON N0C 1E0 Vol. 52 - No. 11
Supplementary Section November, 2002

Two successful conferences

This past month Neil Wilson of Alberta, chairman of the Canadian Constitution Committee, and Ron Gostick of Canadian Intelligence Publications, participated in the following most successful conferences in Quebec and Alberta.
Quebec City Friday evening and all day Saturday, Sept. 27-28, they joined a team of businessmen and constitutional experts in discussing the need for Senate and other constitutional reform, fundamental revision of our financial system, and the need for concrete, constructive steps toward genuine national unity.
Saturday evening the conference concluded with a most enjoyable banquet. While at this time, for security reasons, we shall not mention names of the Quebec scholars presenting papers, they were eminent and highly respected throughout the province. Several travelled from the Montreal area to attend this conference and were enthusiastic in their reception of Mr. Wilson's committee's new Constitution Proposal for Canada. Mr. Gostick's review of his new book just off the press, CANADA'S FUTURE: More Debt and Bankruptcy? or Financial Reform and Prosperity? was a highlight of the afternoon session, as was Mr. Wilson's outline of his committee's work and Proposal. They've already had further invitations to return to Quebec. The Quebec City conference was sponsored jointly by The Third Option for National Unity and The Canadian Constitution Committees.