Harper's paranoia reaches a new level ... a dangerous level?

Stephen Harper was in full psychic mode on a Calgary call-in show Thursday. He telepathically declared that Iran is "a regime that wants to acquire nuclear weapons ... and has indicated some desire to actually use nuclear weapons." An impressive feat—reading the minds of the mullahs.

The man is starting to look increasingly dangerous. As the Americans ratchet up their provocations of Iran, no doubt at the behest of the Israeli lobby, war looms and we can have little doubt that Harper, with his slavish devotion to Israel and his love of things military, would not hesitate to drag us into it.

The man feeds off paranoia. He pumps billions of our hard-earned dollars into prisons to protect us from the enemy within and weapons to protect us from the enemy without. Yet Canadians could hardly be safer. We live in a country with a low and declining crime rate. No other country has an interest in attacking us. Indeed, we have no enemies, unless of course we create them as Mr. Harper seems keen on doing with Iran.

According to psychologist and Harvard professor Steven Pinker and others who have researched the subject, we are living in the most peaceful period of our species' history. A fascinating talk by Pinker on the subject can be found here. What we Canadians really do not need is our prime minister exercising his psychic skills to manufacture hostility.