COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. DECEMBER 16, 2022. The main course here is just a list of what this morning’s cw editors meeting picked as the top four counterweights articles from the first quarter of 2022.

As a preliminary soup course, however (so to speak), here are some very quik introductory notes on : (1) the latest unbelievable political rhetoric from new Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre ; and (2) a video of a September 2021 “sticks and bricks” border clash between “Indian and Chinese troops” in the most populous new (and also very old) global heartland.

Right now : Pierre Poilievre’s latest unbelievable rhetoric

As reported by CTV News (which these days sometimes seems almost more left-wing than CBC News … well, sort-of, sometimes!) : “‘Stand on the side of the common people,’ Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre tells caucus.”

It was widely agreed at our meeting this morning that this particular Canadian conservative appeal to the “common people” altogether lived up to Mr. Poilievre’s high standard of unusually unbelievable political rhetoric.

Someone among us, eg, pulled down from the shelves of the office library (in the basement) a seriously thumbed copy of an excellent old “University Paperbacks” book called The Common People 1746-1946, by G.D.H. Cole and Raymond W. Postgate.

And then someone else googled this short G.D.H. Cole bio on the Goodreads site : “George Douglas Howard Cole was an English political theorist, economist, writer and historian. As a libertarian socialist he was a long-time member of the Fabian Society and an advocate for the cooperative movement.”

So a human being who has examined Cole and Postgate’s book on The Common People might ask : Is this the kind of “progressive conservative” Pierre Poilievre is now purporting to turn into — a libertarian socialist! Really? It all seems too much like a too widely admired leaf from the Doug Ford playbook, with its many (especially earlier?) bows to “the people of Ontario.”

The plain truth is that in this past June’s election (as in the one before) a clear democratic majority of the people of Ontario (the record-low 43.5% of them who bothered to show up at all, with the 56.5% most often not participating for their own good reasons, no doubt) VOTED AGAINST the Ford Nation government of Canada’s most populous province (by a 59% to 41% margin!).

And on the latest measure of such things, as 2022 winds down, only 34% of we the common people of Ontario support Premier Ford.

Still more to the point the new Pierre Poilievre federal Conservatives are not up against quite the same kind of progressive opposition that Doug Ford’s “Ontario PCs” faced, in either 2018 or 2022. And as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already urged in the Canadian House of Commons (and on TV), the trouble with all its new supposedly “progressive” avowals is that the Conservative Party of Canada has opposed almost all the federal legislation of the past few years to improve the lot of we the common people.

And then there is yet another point, raised by yet another of our own counterweights reports, from this past late September 2022 : “Has J.J. McCullough said something sensible at last : ‘In Canada, interest in the monarchy remains mostly an elite thing’?”

The British monarchy in Canada, as the (in some ways) conservative Mr. McCullough has wisely reminded us, is fundamentally about the interests of elites, not those of we the common people. And unlike other Canadian political parties the Conservative Party of Canada has support for the old mostly-an-elite-thing colonial monarchy embedded in its party constitution — not surprisingly for an organization that has traditionally pitched its appeal to more affluent elites.

And then … on the border of Arunachal Pradesh (aka “South Tibet”)

Meanwhile, CTV News has also recently posted a quite remarkable video showing how “Indian and Chinese troops fight with sticks and bricks”.

In an accompanying piece Jessie Yeung at CNN writes that : “The video, according to a serving Indian military officer with knowledge of the clashes on the China-India border, was filmed in the mountainous Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh at the Line of Actual Control — the de facto border between the two countries — on September 28, 2021.”

China claims much of the territory in Arunachal Pradesh as a so-called “South Tibet”. If the story it seems to tell is true, the quite remarkable video could be read as a Chinese effort to assert its claim, and an Indian effort to defend its practical administration of the places in question, without actually causing entirely serious physical damage to the parties involved.

Whatever else, could this possibly be a more civilized alternative to what is happening now and most of this year in Ukraine???? (And/or does it also remind us of George Orwell’s 1947 observation : “It may be that … in the long run some better form of society will arise in India or China”?? Probably not, but .. )

The Top Four counterweights articles for the first quarter of 2022

JANUARY 14 : “What happens to democracy in 2022 elections not just important in USA” ;

FEBRUARY 12 : “Freedom Convoy 2022 in Canada — a Tale of Two Protests”;

MARCH 1 : “Canada has two particular reasons for particular interest in cause of Ukraine” ;

MARCH 10 : “Suddenly we want to know Vladimir Putin better (and Alina Kabaeva — ‘reportedly the longtime partner’).”

Back soon, for the last three quarters of 2022 … happy holidays and all that!