The Steve and Bibi Show

There's the Canadian coverage :

SunNews: Stephen Harper gets 'rock star' welcome in Israel

The Star: Stephen Harper gets a hero's welcome in Israel

CBC: Harper welcomed as 'great friend" of Israel

although NaPo went with  : 
Harper’s bromance with Netanyahu designed to shift focus from PM’s domestic troubles

It’s fair to say that Mr. Harper’s arrival was less momentous news for the average Israeli. There were no local journalists at Ben Gurion airport to greet the prime minister.
When we arrived at Mr. Netanyahu’s office compound for the official welcome ceremony, the more visible flags were those of Romania, whose president is also in town on an official visit.

And then there's the Israeli coverage :

Haaretz: Canada's Foreign Ministry on eve of Harper visit: Settlements are illegal, obstacle to peace
Despite belief that Canadian PM fully supports Israeli policy, updated policy paper shows Ottawa doesn't back nearly any of Israel's demands; Harper dodges question on Israeli settlements during Ramallah visit.

Netanyahu considers Harper his best, perhaps only, friend among today's world leaders, and a wholehearted supporter of his government's policy.
[I]n describing Harper, Netanyahu stressed that the Canadian prime minister "expresses a clear and courageous moral position with regard to the truth and to the necessary criteria in the international community toward Israel and the conflict here."

But despite Netanyahu's warm words, the latest document posted on the Canadian Foreign Ministry's website ... shows that the Canadian government is not backing nearly any of Israel's demands in the negotiations with the Palestinians. In fact, Canada's policy is practically identical to the official policy of many of the EU countries.

Further excerpted from Haaretz :

Canada does not recognize permanent Israeli control over territories conquered in 1967 and says the settlements constitute a violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

Canada does not recognize Israel's unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem. 

Canadian policy statement also does not express support for Netanyahu's demand for recognition of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. 

The policy statement does not endorse Netanyahu's position that not a single Palestinian refugee will return to Israel. 

Here's the DFAIT page referenced by Haaretz, dated Jan 13, 2014. 

ForeignAffairsMin John Baird is on that trip.

Will be interesting to see if the website receives an unexpected update or if, as several commenters under various other Haaretz articles have noted, Steve is a useful idiot for Bibi and this is really only about placating Steve's evangelical supporters while courting more Jewish supporters in Canada for the next election.

Yesterday morning David Akin of SunNews released the names of the 208 shnorrers along on Steve's plane to Israel. Many rabbis, and some CEOs of course, plus seven members of the Jewish National Fund - founders of Canada Park built on top of 3 Palestinian villages - who gifted Steve that bird sanctuary info centre in his name at their annual Negev fundraiser dinner in Toronto last month where Steve announced this visit to Israel .

Stephen Lautens, BigCityLib and Dr. Dawg have a look at that list.

h/t Haaretz article : Canadian Cynic

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Update : SunNews posted vid of Harper's address to the Knesset and did a little editorializing  of their own on the end :

"He laid out his clear rationale for why Canada has unwavering support for Israel, going as far as suggesting that criticism of the State of Israel amounts to anti-Semitism."

I think he stopped just shy of that, but only just. 
Following remarks about the 'old anti-Semiticism having been translated into more sophisticated language for use in polite society', he added a few spoken words to the written transcript of the speech here which I have hi-lited in red . 

"Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state.
Think about that.
Think about the twisted logic and outright malice behind that: a state, based on freedom, democracy and the rule of law, that was founded so Jews can flourish, as Jews, and seek shelter from the shadow of the worst racist experiment in history, that is condemned, and that condemnation is masked in the language of anti-racism.
It is nothing short of sickening.
But this is the face of the new anti-Semitism.
It targets the Jewish people by targeting Israel and attempts to make the old bigotry acceptable for a new generation.
Of course, criticism of Israeli government policy is not in and of itself necessarily anti-semitic.
But what else can we call criticism that selectively condemns only the Jewish state and effectively denies its right to exist, to defend itself while systematically ignoring – or excusing – the violence and oppression all around it?"

So there are two versions of his speech out there outlining his version of what constitutes the new anti-Semitism- the written one, and then the spoken one which adds on that pivotal loaded phrase "its right to exist".

Update 2 : While the SunNews and CBC transcripts edit out "its right to exist", the PM's official site includes it.

Haaretz : Harper proves a good friend of Netanyahu, but not necessarily of Israel

In an historic Knesset address, Canada's PM missed out on a few truths, while earning first class berths on the Titanic that is the Israeli government.

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Stop Harper action interrupted by long dull dreary throne speech

In subsequent interviews to her brilliant Stop Harper protest during the Speech from the Throne, the now-former Senate page Brigette DePape repeatedly mentioned climate change and inaction on the environment as a motivating factor for her own action. Notable because the Throne Speech mentions neither.

Yesterday SunMedia's David Akin joined the alarming number of politicians and their media fluffers - who are apparently aghast and appalled that a woman would stand silently holding up a piece of cardboard for twenty seconds - with this long dull dreary post :
Memo to Brigette : There are no shortcuts in politics. It takes long, dull, dreary work.

According to Akin, working the inside political corridors completely precludes ever protesting against that same self-serving self-perpetuating hegemony and Brigette DePape broke that most solemn of all Fight Club rules. Oh, boo.
He also apparently did not hear Brigette's interviews on CBC and CTV in which she said she didn't think just holding up a sign would affect anything all by itself but hoped to inspire others to action because politics and democracy is not just about elections.

Seriously, Akin, how the fuck long do you think it will take to get the environment mentioned in a Harper majority Thone Speech the "long dull dreary" way?

Antonia Zerbisias on climate change : Time for a Climate of Change (italics mine)

"Well-known American environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben founded the grass-roots group 350.org, which attempts to get people all over the world agitating for laws, regulations and policy aimed at reducing GHG (greenhouse gas emissions) reductions.

“We need to do (civil disobedience) on a mass scale," McKibben, author of many books including Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, tells me. “We need to do it in a way that makes one thing clear to all onlookers: in this fight, we are the conservatives. The radicals are the people who want to alter the composition of the atmosphere.”

“Non-violent civil disobedience is justified when there is a history of long-standing harm or violation of people's fundamental rights; when legal and policy means have failed to reduce the harms and violations; and when there is little time remaining to address the problems,” University of New England professor John Lemons and Penn State’s Donald Brown wrote in last month’s Journal of Science and Environmental Politics."

“Simply put, people do not have the right to harm others who have not given their consent to be harmed "

All the important social movements of the last century - rights for minorities, women, LGBT, children, POWs, FN, workers, differently abled, the environment - all of them were or continue to be actively suppressed by our governments, who only jump into the front of the parade after a whole lot of outside protest.

From CathiefromCanada : About Protest - the proof that protest works

Post title shamelessly ripped from a great post by Your Heart's on the Left : Harper stunt interrupts Canadian statement delivered by DePape
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Fox News North - Fairly unbalanced

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Corncob Kory Teneycke, a founding member of the Reform Party, ethanol lobbyist, and Steve's former communications director, has been busy rustling up a 24-hour rightwing cable news channel for Canada modelled on Fox News. It is contingent on whether Quebecor Media are successful in nabbing that all-important "basic cable" licence vital to beaming more US celebrity mudwrestling straight into your livingroom.
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So far, the previous comedy stylings of Mr. Teneycke, the brains behind Oily the Splot! , have already won over David Akin, formerly of Canwest/CTV, to be its first TV host.

Earlier this year David Akin amused us all with his personal choice of questions for Steve at the year end interview. Proroguing Parliament? The Aghan detainee issue? Nope. Here was David Akins' final question to Steve as delivered by the National Post:

"Do (you) see yourself in a decade -- you may not be prime minister -- do you see a career for yourself after this? I don't sense you're the board of directors type but I don't know, maybe you are -- an academic? What do you want to do? Where are you in a decade?"

Practically serves as a Fox News North job interview all by itself, wot?

h/t to Ian, Waterbaby and Beaver co-blogger Bob by e.
Edited for spledding mistake.

Democracy and Parliament not sidestepped, only suspended

We would like to thank Con MP Brent Rathgeber for that lovely explanation of Steve's dismissal of parliament - first ignoring its will and then proroguing it - and move on to how the media props up that contempt by ignoring it.

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With a little help from his friends ...

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As pointed out by POGGE here and here, CBC and CTV/CanWest both blew their year-end interviews with Steve.

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Mansbridge took a stab at getting some explanation from Steve on why he prorogued parliament but then allows Steve to blow him off with bafflegab about how Canadians don't care about it anyway. The question Mansbridge should have asked is why Steve is ignoring a parliamentary motion to hand over unredacted documents on the Afghan detainees and did he shut down parliament to avoid doing so?

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At least Mansbridge gave it a shot. In their year end interview, the CTV/CanWest tagteam of John Ivison and David Akin don't even mention proroguing or detainees, never mind ignoring the will of parliament. They just skip the whole friggin thing. In fact their interview, which ran in the National Post, opens with this :

IVISON: "Prime Minister, it seems there is not going to be much for us to write about, unless there are Senate appointments in our near future."

Yup, year end review, not much goin' on here right now. What ever will we write about?

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In his blog entry : Interviewing Harper: What to ask? Why not ask about prorogation? David Akin explains that Mansbidge already covered that issue - no, David, clearly he did not - and that they did not have much time to ask questions that could be rewritten up by their affiliate papers :

"[T]he goal for Canwest, at least, is to leave the interview with a story that the local editors of the Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen and other Canwest papers would find interesting enough that they would make (valuable) space for in their papers."

Yet within that admittedly short 13 minutes there was apparently ample time for questions like this :

AKIN: Do (you) see yourself in a decade -- you may not be prime minister -- do you see a career for yourself after this? I don't sense you're the board of directors type but I don't know, maybe you are -- an academic? What do you want to do? Where are you in a decade?"

Steve in a decade? Who gives a rat's ass? We want to know where our parliament is right now.

Akin responds in comments at Pogge's.

Happily the conservative US UK mag The Economist, in two separate articles, goes straight to the heart of what the Canadian media to a truly frightening degree ignores :

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Harper goes prorogue

Parliamentary scrutiny may be tedious, but democracies cannot afford to dispense with it

Never mind what his spin doctors say: Mr Harper’s move looks like naked self-interest.
His officials faced grilling by parliamentary committees over whether they misled the House of Commons in denying knowledge that detainees handed over to the local authorities by Canadian troops in Afghanistan were being tortured.

A legislature matters more than the luge
Mr Harper is a competent tactician with a ruthless streak. He bars most ministers from talking to the media; he has axed some independent watchdogs; he has binned campaign promises to make government more open and accountable. Now he is subjecting Parliament to prime-ministerial whim. He may be right that most Canadians care more about the luge than the legislature, but that is surely true only while their decent system of government is in good hands. They may soon conclude that it isn’t.

Canada without Parliament - Halted in mid-debate

Stephen Harper is counting on Canadians’ complacency as he rewrites the rules of his country’s politics to weaken legislative scrutiny.

The danger in allowing the prime minister to end discussion any time he chooses is that it makes Parliament accountable to him rather than the other way around.
It is now up to [the opposition] to show that Canada cannot afford a part-time Parliament that sits only at the prime minister’s pleasure.

One would hope it would also be a matter of some concern to the Fourth Estate.

CANADIANS AGAINST PROROGUING PARLIAMENT - 92,000 120,000 140,000 and counting ...
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