Harper announced yesterday that he will ban Canadian travel to countries he doesn’t like if he is re-elected.
He doesn’t like Russia. So, presumably, Russian-Canadians can’t go home again. And I can’t go with ’em even if I wanted to – which I don’t (I don’t think I like Russia much, either) He isn’t keen on Pakistan, Somalia, Ethipoia and well, I am guessing…Venezuela…so those folks with relatives there are also now trapped by the new Harper one-way ticket policy to Canada. ‘Course the Middle East is largely off-limits, I am sure. Mind you, he likes India and China – despite their human rights shortcomings – so I guess we can go there. Exception to the rule: he likes Israel but not Syria…some parts of the middle are OK?
I wonder how he feels about Thailand, Argentina or Portugal? Ya know, Fid might wanna go back to his roots someday….jus’ sayin’…
Doesn’t matter, really. He has made his point: YOUR travel to a foreign country will not be permitted without first obtaining Harper’s approval. Kim Jong-Un (N. Korea) feels the same way. They are both leaders, don’t ya know? Maybe North Korea will be on the OK-to-visit list?
Seems I will soon need my prime minister’s approval to travel outside of Canada? It is a small step from that to being forbidden to leave the country at all. Who would have thought that a Canadian would experience such oppression?
Mind you, our scientists were gagged a few years ago. And, to their collective shame, they have remained silent for the most part. Our MPs have been ‘whipped’ into pudding and, for the most part, they seem to like it so they aren’t complaining. Not doing much of anything, really, except bleating in unison and cashing their paycheque – no heroes there, I am afraid (except Elizabeth May). Very Pre-WW2 Germany-like.
But, to be fair, I have pretty much petered out my own traveling bug, the odd country notwithstanding, so I was not planning on going too far afield myself. I mean, I have been to all the places where I really wanted to go and so I would have been pretty content to stay home rather than try to stretch my ever-shrinking 70-cent dollars to afford a hostel in Turkey or a souvlaki in Greece, anyway.
Not so much now! Now I want to go where Harper doesn’t want me to go. The bastard! NOW I may have to travel as a form of protest rather than as a manifestation of personal interest. You see, I like to think that I am FREE TO DO AS I PLEASE (within the bounds of reasonable legal constraints, of course. And good taste). And I intend to do that. So, arrest me when I get back from Turkey, you dictator. Taser me. Lock me up, Adolph! You ego-maniacal bastard!
My minor dilemma: if I am truly free and I don’t want to travel anymore, why should some anus forbidding me to travel have any effect on me whatsoever? It is only by being knee-jerk responsive to that dictatorial act that I truly lose my freedom….oh, what the hell….I hate the guy…that’s a good enough reason all in itself!
The key word is reasonable. And he is not. NOT in anything I have opinions on, anyway. He and I disagree – fundamentally – on who is and who is NOT a terrorist, for instance. And now, Stephen Harper is proposing to unreasonably restrict my legal freedoms – AS IF I WERE A TERRORIST!
And not for the first time. He already restricts your right of assembly by requiring permits for protests and harassing associations and societies (with Rev Can) engaged in political work he doesn’t like – not unlike Hitler and Stalin did to their people. It is that simple. This is government oppression. Soon they’ll be issuing coloured arm-bands but, don’t you worry your pacified little head about it. They will be issued to the Muslims first. Then some damn coloured folks. Maybe First Nations next.
You’ll be fine if you’re white and moneyed.
We have had government exploitation forever. We have had government criminality forever. And we have had government corruption forever. But we have not experienced too much in the way of direct personal oppression ever before. Well, not white folks, anyway. Some newcomers to the country have been hassled. Some have had their land, homes and fishboats taken away. Others spend years in prison. And some poor souls get tasered and jailed and sent packing or to the morgue for no good reason. But your basic, bona fide three-generation white Canuck has been pretty much free to do what their wallet and their wives will allow.
NOT ANYMORE! That kind of freedom of choice is over if Harper is re-elected.
Our Off the Grid Home 
Surrey has a gang problem and the conservatives promised one hundred RCMP officers to Surrey but so far only nineteen officers have been delivered. Many promises are being made with little likely hood that they will ever be fulfilled. Harper has dropped the economic plank in his platform and is pushing plank two; terrorism. The Tyee wrote, “And so the government that after nine years in power failed to protect even Parliament now claims it will save all of us from terrorist threats.” Harper thinks that by banning visits to areas controlled by ISIS/ Al Qaeda, Canada will be safer…? “Some of the perpetrators of the attacks [911] were students in Hamburg, Germany before they came to the U.S.” There are no direct flights from terrorist areas to Canada, All the 911 actors were in transit before they eventually arrived in the USA. Keep Harper and live in fear as his rhetoric suggests.
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His are the statements of an ego-maniac. A dictatorial, ignorant, sick bastard. How in the name of all that is sane, did he get this far? And how in the name of all that is sane is it possible that he can get re-elected?
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You’re right, there should be a law against it. To re-elect the sick bastard, I mean.
You and I are on the same page – now we have to somehow convince the rest of the voters, and the non voters too. Maybe there should be a law that anyone that does vote for him MUST visit one of his verboten countries. And stay there.
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The BIG problem, JA, is that so many people I talk to are not even interested in the election. They don’t care. They don’t follow. They don’t listen. They don’t think. We often wonder how the Jews could have let Hitler go so far without resisting in some way…..well, now you know….it just creeps up on you and, next thing you know, you are marching for the cattle cars wondering, “Gee, where are we going?”
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Plank three has been delivered and it’s a war on drugs. He claims that he will be compassionate to those who are addicted and throw away the key in dealing with the dealers. Wasn’t he the one who wanted to close the safe injection site run by Costal Health but was stopped by the Supreme Court. Are these the actions of a compassionate man!
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Harper is compassionate to oil producers that are killing the planet and hard on thieves and low-lifes that are under-educated, unemployed and basically as vulnerable as the people they target. He needs to get his head focused into the light and not remain in that smelly place where the sun-don’t-shine. Or, better yet, he can go pump oil and get the Hell out of Ottawa.
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I see Harpers announcement on banning Canadians from traveling to certain countries as a knee jerk reaction to the whole security concern with ISIS sending legitimate Canadian citizens back after being trained to stir up shit.
Citizens of Britain and France HAVE returned and while most are just glad to be back……all it takes is one indoctrinated idiot to kill innocent people.
That being said.
Typically, its a poorly thought out plan tossed out to the electorate. It costs nothing to talk about during a campaign and even less if its never implemented. To be honest. I dont think the majority of voters give a rats ass about ISIS or the middle east. A stupid issue that probably wont earn Harper a spittoon full of votes.
Im sure there will be challenges to the Laws legality from innocent citizens returning home to “banned” countries to visit dying parents or something similar.
Im waiting for the Return of the Mike Duffy trial and all the slime that will stick
🙂
I can dream cant I?
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I kinda agree….it seems a stupid statement to make at best and an illegal one most likely. But that is not so much the point. The point is that it is illustrative of the ‘thinking’ of this guy. He thinks he is GOD. He is ego-maniacal. He thinks he has the right to determine whether I can gather or assemble with my friends to protest or travel to a country that he hasn’t ‘approved’. Who the Hell does he think he is? He thinks he is a world-class uber- leader, a visionary and a determiner of the lives of free people. OK, OK, I know we are NOT free in oh-so-many ways but, on the surface, we are free to speak our minds and travel where we want to. It is an essential element of what makes us part of the ‘free world’. But this guy thinks he is SSSOOOooooooooooo powerful that he can change all that. What a moron!
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Yeah, I agree.
Mr Harper has alienate his staff, his caucus and more importantly the majority of voters with his arrogant “leadership” style. I liked his “low key” approach to explaining issues but after 10 years and escalation of the National debt, the same corruption scandals, enough.
I’ve always voted on issues rather than the leader but after 10 years…..this guy’s head is too big to fit into Parliament Hill.
Time for a change.
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I figure he has a pretty big colon for his head to be where it is.
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ahahahahahahaahha.
Good one.
Totally off subject.
Persedies meteor shower?
Are ya staying up after midnight to see the “show”?
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Our PM is exasperated and it clearly shows. His mind’s eye envisions a dark place. Far darker than most of us ever experience. Two thirds of Canadians do not resonate to this dour vision and he does not understand why he is not connecting.
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I think you are right. To use the word ‘sincere’ implies acceptance but a delusional paranoid is sincere and we don’t necessarily accept their perspective. And I think the dude is delusional. I really do. I do not accept what he thinks is real, practical, constructive or healthy. He is not crazy by very much (or else he couldn’t have gotten to where he is) but, like Hitler, he harbours dark thoughts and they are emerging. They have been emerging for some considerable time but this one is a step-too-far for anyone even of a right wing bent. He is Karl Rove-esque. Dick Chaney. Harper is Rushing to Limbaugh.
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