Webistemology

Here’s one view of Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the show throwing journalist now facing charges in Iraq. What does it say about the so called ‘successful surge’ (and isn’t than an offensive euphemism?) when normal working journalist are so caught up by events that they apparently snap. If this is at all representative of the mood of the ‘moderates’ in the country, then the trajectory of Iraq is not towards stability, as posited by the mouthpieces of the occupying forces, but towards perhaps even more fundamental change.

Family: Shoe thrower hates both US, Iran role

“He hates the American physical occupation as much as he hates the Iranian moral occupation”

globeandmail.com: Fanning the fires of national disunity
According to the Globe “…we have a power-hungry man who will be recorded as the first prime minister in Canada’s history to deliberately create a political crisis and set the fire of national disunity.”

In case it wasn’t clear from the types of links that I’ve posted about this lately, I’m incensed about what Harper has done. Not because I disagree with his politics, although I surely do, but because this is yet another in the long line of attempts that he has made to restructure the Canadian state – and not in a healthy way. He acts and speaks as if he truly does not understand the nature and history of parliamentary democracy. Harper has consistently worked to centralize power in the hands of the Prime Minister and to keep anything meaningful out of the hands not just of parliament – our actually elected members – but even from his own cabinet. The PMO, in this formulation acts as a kind of appointed politburo acting on the whims of the man at the centre.

Enough is enough. This man, with ambitions to be the President for Life of the Oil Republic of Canada, should no longer be the Prime Minister of Canada. Coalition or not, his own party should take him out behind the wood shed and come back without him.