'A Chimpanzee's Tea Party'

George Monbiot reveals how Canada became "the urgent threat to world peace"

AUTHOR: George Monbiot in the Guardian, Monbiot, and AlterNet

THESIS: "The urgent threat to world peace is ... Canada"

POPULAR IMAGE OF CANADA: "the world's peace-keeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight ... decent, civilised, fair, well-governed"

MONBIOT'S MESSAGE: "Think again"

CANADIAN GOVERNMENT IS LIKE: "A chimpanzee's tea party"

CANADA IS BECOMING: "A corrupt petrostate"

CANADA'S SECRET: "Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of raging Neanderthals to trample all over it"

CURRENT 'RAGING NEANDERTHALS': "Tar barons," the owners and extractors of the Canadian tar sands

GOAL OF CANADA'S 'TAR BARONS': To turn "this lovely country into a cruel and thuggish place"

CONSEQUENCES FOR CANADA: "The Fossil of the Year award," and a campaign "to expel Canada from the Commonwealth"

MANBIOT'S ACTION (ALONG WITH PUBLISHING IN THREE SEPARATE FORUMS): At the urging of his desperate friends, he has "broken [his] self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto"

FROM TORONTO, PROPOSED COURSE OF ACTION: Unclear

THE LAST WORD:

Timber companies were licensed to log the old-growth forest in Clayaquot Sound; fishing companies were permitted to destroy the Grand Banks: in both cases these get-rich-quick schemes impoverished Canada and its reputation. But this is much worse, as it affects the whole world. The government’s scheming at the climate talks is doing for its national image what whaling has done for Japan.

I will not pretend that this country is the only obstacle to an agreement at Copenhagen. But it is the major one. It feels odd to be writing this. The immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world comes not from Saudi Arabia or Iran or China. It comes from Canada. How could that be true?