Stop the NeoCons! Vote strategically against Harper

[Risus]

Yes the problem is the "first past the poll" electoral system. Someone with 34% of the vote beats the other two with 33% each. When Fort William and Port Arthur alagamated the new city's name was decided by referendum. The choices were:

1) "Lakehead"
2) "The Lakehead"
3) "Thunder Bay"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_Bay,_Ontario#Thunder_Bay.27s_name

Guess which name won the most votes. Guess which name the people who set up the referendum wanted. Is that democracy or manipulation?

A better system would require the winner to get at least 50%+1 of the vote. If the first vote doesn't result in a clear winner, the top two go to the next round. I'm voting like the NDP and Green were eliminated by the first round of voting and now the choice is between the Liberals and the Conservatives.

Seems to me there would be a lot of wasted money voting 2 or 3 times...

 

[earth_as_one]

If you believe finding out the will of the people is a waste of money, then why bother holding elections at all?

Why not hold an auction and let the highest bidder win. That's how the US electoral system works more or less. Think how much money we would save...

I very strongly dislike the idea of "neo-con Stephen Harper" leading Canada on the same path as "neo-con George Bush", "neo-con John Howard", "neo-con Nicolas Sarkozy", "neo-con Angela Merkel", "neo-con Tony Blair" and "neo-con John Brown".

All of these people say the same things and want to take their countries down the same path. Its not a path which represents the best interests of the majority, but one which does represent the best interests of the power elite who pull these leader's strings.

The wreckage of Harper-Bush policies

Stephen Harper may not have known that his 2003 speech urging Canada to join the war on Iraq had been plagiarized from then-Aussie Prime Minister John Howard. But he did wholeheartedly agree with its contents.

Like Howard, Harper stood four-square with George W. Bush on Iraq, as he has since on a string of other policies: the assault on Kyoto; the disastrous war on terrorism; the botched war in Afghanistan; the vindictive war of starvation on the Palestinians for electing the wrong party in an election; the failed policy of trying to stop the Iranian nuclear program by demonizing Tehran; and the blind support of Israel.

Canadians have been opposed to many of those policies. But Harper chose to back Bush rather than back Canadians.

At times, Harper has backed Bush more than either Howard or Tony Blair, both of whom have since been driven out of office because they were seen as Bush's poodles. Others who suffered a similar fate for similar reasons include Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, José Maria Aznar of Spain, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy (who has since made a comeback, after Iraq receded into the background), as well as the leaders of Hungary, Ukraine, Norway, Slovakia and Poland.

On Guantánamo Bay, both Blair and Howard lobbied Bush to get their citizens freed. But Harper wouldn't intervene on behalf of Omar Khadr. In fact, he said he preferred Gitmo's discredited military trials to the Canadian justice system: "Mr. Khadr is accused of very serious things. There's a legal process in the United States. Frankly, we do not have a real alternative to that process."

That wasn't the only time Harper chose to stand with his foreign friends rather than stand up for Canadian citizens.

His government maligned Louise Arbour, head of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights, because she had criticized the United States (for Guantánamo Bay) and Israel (for civilian casualties during its 2006 invasion of Lebanon).

In that war, Canadian Forces Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener was killed by an Israeli bomb, along with three others at a UN monitoring mission. Harper refused to criticize Israel for that – or for the bombing deaths of a Montreal family of eight.

At times, Harper has been more pro-Israel than Bush. He made Canada the first country to start starving the Palestinians for electing Hamas in January 2006.

On Iraq, it is worth recalling that Harper was in the same league as Mike Harris, Ernie Eves and other right wingers in advocating an invasion. He even went on the American right-wing Fox TV to say, wrongly, that only the Québécois, with their "pacifist tradition," were opposed to invading Iraq. "Outside of Quebec, I believe very strongly the silent majority of Canadians is strongly supportive."

On Afghanistan, Harper's support for Bush's policy of more war and no talk is well-known.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with Harper, there's no denying the disastrous results of the policies he has so wholeheartedly backed.

There's more terrorism now than before Bush began his war on it.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. There's no end in sight, despite the expenditure of $1 trillion and tens of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people.

Today, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are stronger than before. Hamid Karzai has just asked Saudi Arabia to help facilitate talks with the Taliban, to help end the seven-year-old conflict. Ehud Olmert has just said that Israel must withdraw from the West Bank as well as East Jerusalem to make peace with the Palestinians, and that it must give up the Golan Heights to make peace with Syria.

Tehran has more nuclear know-how than before Bush set out to stop it from acquiring it.
Relations with Pakistan, ostensibly the West's staunchest ally in West Asia, have deteriorated to the point of military skirmishes.

One cannot recall a time when Canada was on the wrong side of so many global disasters.

http://www.thestar.com/FederalElection/article/509958

So yes I'd rather vote Green or NDP than Liberal. But voting for either of these parties in my riding would not result in either getting elected. The only way my vote can make a difference is to prevent a conservative from edging out the liberal.

Also consider that there is more at stake in this election than color of Stephen Harper's sweater or his "family values". A neo-con war is coming in the middle east. Our next Prime Minister will decide whether we get involved or not. Harper does not represent the best interests of Canadians. Harper represents the same people who caused the US to invade Iraq. Harper's speech was based on the same talking points as Howards. There was no plagiarism, because the same person wrote both speeches. But to cover up the truth a loyal conservative jumped on his sword to protect Harper. But for an instant we saw the man behind the curtain, rather than the Wizard of Oz. We are not in Kansas anymore...