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On Selling The Water On Mars & The Slow Americanisation Of Canada

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by Sean Orr | Appeal to emotion of the day: The Province puts some sad pictures of ghost towns on its cover. Oh, dear! Can LNG save the day?

Roped into selling your land: Natural gas facility aimed at protected farmland. Quote of the day: “I was trying to build a rodeo. It wasn’t like I was trying to build a … gas plant or something…”

Related event: “The Future of the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), Climate Change, and Food Security”– A free public lecture by Richard Bullock.

Meanwhile, don’t tell Christy Clark they found water on Mars:

Been saying this for years: British investors sitting on thousands of acres of land in West Vancouver. “Lest anyone think it is only foreign investors from mainland China buying and holding land with no immediate development plans in a market starved for supply, think again…”

Harper diminishes Canada’s credibility with Muslim headgear farce.

Of course the truth is that nobody cared a fig about citizenship ceremonies until some focus-group maestro stumbled over a perfect race nugget to burnish into the finest political gold. This whole affair is coldly calculated by the Conservatives as a divisive emotional flashpoint that manipulates the national media into weeks of coverage.

Even Rex Murphy gets it, sort of. He’s still a white man talking about what women should or should not wear. And when he talks about what the real issues are he also fails, like most of the media, to talk about the TPP and TISA trade deals which are slowly privatizing our country, not to mention the misogyny-fuelled murder of three women in Wilno, Ontario.

So why has the Left been suckered into this debate? George Lakoff would argue that the “vision of progressive politics is compromised and weak”. His prescription is as follows:

“The abandonment of argument by evidence in favour of argument by moral cause; the unswerving and unembarrassed articulation of what those morals are; the acceptance that there is no “middle” or third way, no such thing as a moderate; and the understanding that conservatives are not evil, unintelligent, cynical or grasping. Rather, they act according to the moral case as they see it.”

To wit, Harper resorts to epithet and the romanticism of the Canadian ideal — The Nixon of the North. A touch heavy on the hyperbole there! We’re not even close to America. Harper hasn’t ruined Canada. He is Canada. The image that we have of ourselves is outdated by two decades. And yet we’re still smug:

Now, I’m sorry to say, we can no longer invite you. I mean, we’d still like to, but you wouldn’t make it across the border. And normal, peaceful, thoughtful Americans wouldn’t enjoy it here anymore. We’re becoming precisely what you’re trying to escape.

Related: Four in 10 Americans want a wall built on Canada border to ‘keep the illegals out’. And just who is keeping who out?

But yeah, hyperbole can be pretty effective. Here’s Citizen Vrooman dissecting Harper’s wall of secrecy. That campaign ad though…

We are White(caps): Security staff at Vancouver Whitecaps game eject fans with banner welcoming refugees. No words.

PSA of the day: STOLEN musician GEAR (Vancouver).

On Ken Sim’s So-Called “Swagger” and ABC’S Class War

Sean Orr is back from his hiatus with a rundown of the local headlines that have been running on a ticker tape through his mind over the past six months...

On Post-Election Recuperation, Platform Paradoxes and Refund Communities

In his latest read of the local news headlines, Sean Orr finds irony in "safety, affordability, and sustainability", and shouts out a bunch of amazing local organizations working on the frontlines.

On Running for City Council, Playing Whack-a-Mole with Homelessness, and the Public Washroom Deficit

In his latest read of the local news headlines, Sean Orr finds a park ranger with a grudge, a gross misuse of air quotes and Tripadvisor slander.

On Living in a City Preoccupied with Street Cleaning, Chandeliers, and Campaigns Against the Homeless

In his latest read of the local news headlines, Sean Orr hones in on the recent Langley shootings, and the ongoing criminalizing and dehumanizing of the homeless population.