Standing Up to Conservative Bullying

clipped from blogs.salon.com Canadians, for the most part, love peace and nature, and we are progressive in our thinking. Unfortunately, we are also complacent, naive, and poorly informed. This has allowed a small but determined conservative minority to steal the vast majority of our country's resources and sell them, cheap and raw, to foreign corporations who often use them to manufacture goods they then sell back to us at a huge markup. It has also allowed warmongers with a right-wing ideological agenda to commit our defence forces to a partisan role in the Middle East, not the peacekeeping role we were duped into believing we were committing to. In the last few days, two important events have set the stage for a war of wills between a passive progressive majority and an aggressive conservative minority: Classical neocon tactics are being used to spin both events: Brinkmanship Absolutism It's time, not just in Canada but throughout the affluent nations, to stand up to conservative bullying and say enough

Here's a bit more to explain the brinkmanship and absolutism:

"Brinkmanship is being used to force the federal government to write a blank cheque for the pipeline, and indemnify Exxon against ecological disasters and further cost increases..."

"Absolutism (Bush-style "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" framing) is being used to bully Canada into committing to keep our troops in the midst of the anarchy and civil war in Afghanistan. The PR from the military is increasingly using the term 'enemy' to describe anyone in Afghanistan who opposes the continued presence of foreign troops in their country. The ideologically rabid Harper Conservative minority government routinely uses the

"if you don't support our war, you don't support our troops"

line to disparage anti-war groups. And today a military spokesman lambasted the Canadian media for daring to publicize opinion polls showing Canadians' strong opposition to the war, saying it was "demoralizing our troops".