The Wall Street protests continue, with activists promising to hold out for months. However, another element has been brought in, that has no place in a legitimate rally.
Topless women with signs requesting that gawkers not look at them but listen to them. I can't help but think that Karl Rove has outdone himself. They need to stop off at Wall Street, pick up their pay cheques for discrediting the movement, and then let the grown-ups take over.
Did they really think people would listen to them if they took their clothes off?
The message of the protesters is an important one. They represent the 99% of Americans that are propping up the top 1%, and they are sick of it.
Remember the 2006 leaked Citigroup memo? (Equity Strategy, By: Ajay Kapur, Niall Macleod, Narendra Singh, Citigroup Global Market Research, October 16, 2005)
The World is dividing into two blocs - the Plutonomy and the rest. The U.S., UK, and Canada are the key Plutonomies - economies powered by the wealthy. Continental Europe (ex-Italy) and Japan are in the egalitarian bloc.
... We can see a number of potential challenges to plutonomy. The first, and probably most potent, is through a labor backlash. Outsourcing, offshoring or insourcing of cheap labor is done to undercut current labor costs .... Low-end developed market labor might not have much economic power, but it does have equal voting power with the rich .... the third threat comes from the potential social backlash.
All we have left is "equal voting power", yet people are still refusing to vote, casting their ballots instead for the continuation of our plutocracy.
When does Stephen Harper ever talk about income disparity or poverty? Never. He was handed a Senate report on how to help alleviate poverty, and he stuck his nose in the air and then threw it in the trash.
Morton Blackwell, the man who helped Preston Manning set up his anti-democracy centre, and trained people like Karl Rove and Rob Anders, is one of the key players in the Neoconservative movement.
He has made their intentions clear. In a forward to Plinio de Correa de Olivier's English language edition of his book: Nobility and Analagous Traditional Elites, that promotes "the restoration of influence of authentic elites over the multitudes", Blackwell writes:
'One does not have to accept Papal infallibility to appreciate a case persuasively made, using theological, moral, and prudential arguments. This book will convince many readers, whatever their faith, that good elites are legitimate, desirable and, yes, necessary'.
Unfortunately these are not good elites. They are just greedy elites and it's time that the "multitudes" started governing themselves again, by taking back their democracy. A little "social backlash"
The Wall Street protests are important and those topless women need to put on some clothes or go home.
I must admit that I had never heard Ann Coulter speak, but have read many of the things she has written. Certainly no intellectual, but if I understand correctly, she is a comedian, akin to a shock jock.
Bill Maher had her on as a guest this week and my "shock" was not in her anticipated "hate speech", but in how ignorant she is, or at least acts.
Coulter was blaming the current debt crisis in the U.S., on medicare and social security. When pressed about the wars and the extension of the Bush tax cuts, she declared that they had nothing to do with the current debt.
WHAT???
No. Apparently, the sick and the elderly are to blame.
Not expensive wars or corporate tax cuts. Not the bailing out of Wall Street.
Ezra Levant, that chick magnate, is smitten with Ann Coulter, and interviewed her recently on Fox News North, opening the segment with scenes of an "angry mob", protesting Coulter's intended visit to the University of Ottawa.
Although Levant prefers to use the terms "Demonic Mob" and "Mad Mob".
In the photo above, the young man in the background, with the red eyes, is not part of a demonic mob", but young neocon, Michael Sona, a Conservative staffer.
The votes in that box were allowed to stand, but it had the desired effect, because Sona's actions resulted in a ruling that no other special ballot polling stations, similar to the one in Guelph, would be authorized anywhere else in Canada during the campaign.
In the above segment Coulter and Levant discuss the mob mentality, with Coulter suggesting that the only violence, or threats of violence, come from the left wing.
Obviously she hasn't been watching the Tea Party protests, where one man carried this sign.
Coulter also claimed that only the left will compare right-wingers to Nazis and/or other dictators. Again she needs to get out more.
Even Canada's Sun Media jumped on the bandwagon.
Of course, the intent is not to have us believe what they are saying. They know it's not true but it doesn't matter. The devotees will believe it's true and they need to keep them angry and loyal. 'Don't be ashamed of those thoughts because we agree. We're just like you'.
Classic Karl Rove.
And Karl Rove's counterpart, Guy Giorno, has advised the same to Stephen Harper. Protect that "base" at any cost, even if it means appearing stupid.
Mob Mentality
In a bit of an intellectual aside, Coulter brings up Gustave Le Bon, a French social psychologist, sociologist and author of A Study of the Popular Mind. Without really going into his study, she simply suggests that he has the demonic left-wing mob mentality down pat.
Viewers swooned. She speaks French.
Le Bon suggested that the mob will take on the intellect of the lowest among them.
This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated.(A Study of the Popular Mind, By: Gustave Le Bon, Book One: The Mind of Crowds)
It should be noted that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda mastermind, read Le Bon religiously, to reach to the lowest in Germany, and Mussolini kept a copy of A Study of the Popular Mind beside his bed.
Le Bon's biggest fears were realized, because he was concerned that in the wrong hands, the book could be used as a guideline to manipulate the masses for the lesser good, and indeed it was.
I can't help thinking that that is exactly what Fox News North and its big brother Fox News is attempting here. Reach out to the worst of people, and the worst in people.
Philosopher Hannah Arendt covered the Nazi trials at Nuremberg for the American press, and remarked on how "Unimaginative, ordinary and unthinking" they were.
Others may have hoped to see Bluebeard in the dock, she wrote, but for her, the horror lay in the fact that "there were so many like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic ... [but] terribly and terrifyingly normal." She was one of the first to refute the "monster theory" of less-than-human Nazis. ( Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History, By Erna Paris, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, ISBN: 0-676-97251-9, P. 318)
And yet there were many PhDs in the party.
But to do what they did required ignorance, not intellect. A numbing of the masses, so the worst could dictate the actions of all.
In that atmosphere, hatred goes mainstream, and we all become desensitized to it.
Bombings, human rights abuses, war crimes.
Shrug.
“Crowds are somewhat like the sphinx of ancient fable: It is necessary to arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychology or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them.” Gustave Le Bon
"Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the “remaking” of the Reich ..." Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Jolly Berlin crowds in the brightly-lit Kurfürstendamm nightlife district had more fun last week than these beery, sausage-stuffed revelers have had in months. Well-dressed German women and their swank, duel-scarred escorts vied with shopgirls and mechanics in spurring on with laughter, cheers and songs the most savage Jew hunt since those which immediately followed Adolf Hitler's elevation to power ...
The Jew hunters; tall, blond, mighty-muscled Nazi youths in civilian clothes, appeared suddenly on the Kurfürstendamm but seemed at first not to know quite what to do. Soon group leaders dashed up in snorting Mercédès and the Jew hunt was on, a peculiar feature being that the sidewalk crowds joined in a hunting chant taught them by the hunters. This was roared out one line at a time by the group leaders, all present then repeating in a fervent chant: Perish Jew! Get the Hell out! Blood-running noses! The best Jew is a dead Jew! Perish Jew! Suiting action to words, the Jew hunters plunged into night clubs, theatres, and cafés, dragged out every customer who looked like a Jew, beat him bloody on tho sidewalk, and slugged any women who seemed to have been with Jews irrespective of whether they were Jewesses or not.
The above is from a Time magazine article published July 29, 1935, under the heading 'Jew Hunt'.
We are all well aware of that horrible time in history, but what might be surprising is that while the Nazi youth appeared to be doing the beating, "well-dressed German women" spurred them on with "laughter, cheers and songs" and that "the sidewalk crowds joined in a hunting chant".
Ordinary Germany citizens desensitized to hatred.
The poster above is from the Young Americans Foundation, a conservative youth movement that has become increasingly volatile, especially toward non-white immigration and of course Muslims.
I've written of them before, under their other banner 'Young Americans for Freedom', both simply referred to as YAF. They have links to Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, on which Preston Manning fashioned his Manning's Centre with a single corporate donation of ten million dollars.
Both Karl Rove and Harper MP Rob Anders graduated from Blackwell's school and Rove was once a member of YAF. Enough said.
In the poster above the group tells students how to identify a Muslim with things like "lasers in their eyes, venom from mouth and a peg-leg for smuggling children and heroine".
This is not unlike a children's book, The Poisonous Mushroom, written by Nazi Julius Streicher.
- One can tell a Jew by his nose. The Jewish nose is bent at the tip. - ...the lips are another distinguishing feature; they are usually puffed up - From the eyes one can see that the Jew is: A false, deceitful person
So how are the teachings of YAF and Streicher any different?
Both promote xenophobia. Xenophobia that can lead people to accept horrifying things.
Fox News North and the English Defense League
So what does all of this have to do with us?
In the following piece from Sun TV, the station that came about after Stephen Harper's taxpayer funded lunch with Rupert Murdoch, Brian Lilley presents an interesting commentary.
He says that he had no interest in the Royal wedding until he learned that there was a group of Muslim protesters planning to disrupt the event.
Says Lilley: "Hopefully, maybe some soccer lads would take them out if they were to go ahead - rip them limb from limb..." Then he mockingly reminds his viewers that England is a Christian nation.
The video earned 42 'likes' and only 8 'dislikes', with one comment that someone should report Lilley to the CRTC. Fat lot of good that would do. Harper has appointed 11 of the 14 members, so I imagine that Lilley and his cohorts will be allowed to say pretty much anything.
However, this story is even more disturbing.
First off, the Muslim group was not the only one planning to protest that day. There were anti-capitalist groups, environmentalists, anti-poverty activists. But the only ones singled out were the Muslims.
The police themselves said that the biggest threat came not from any of the groups but from 'fixated' individuals.
While terrorist groups, anarchists and other political extremists are the most obvious potential security threats to the royal wedding, the most potent danger comes from obsessive lone operators, say experts.
These 'fixated' individuals are such a threat that in a small office not far from Buckingham Palace in central London a team of psychiatrists, psychologists and police officers are busy trying to counter that threat. The team is part of the Fixated Threat Assessment Center (FTAC), a unit established in 2006 with the responsibility of identifying and the power to indefinitely detain individuals who harass, stalk or threaten the royal family and others in public life.
However, if radical groups still concern Lilley and his faithfuls, I would be more concerned with the English Defense League, who promised to be on hand to take care of the Muslims.
The English Defence League uncovered: Formed less than a year ago, the English Defence League has become the most significant far-right street movement since the National Front. The Guardian spent four months undercover with the movement, and found them growing in strength and planning to target some of the UK's biggest Muslim communities.
As warned the video contains coarse language, but it's the message that I find more disturbing than the profanity.
If they break through "they will murder them all."
As Canadians we should also take note that these guys use Geert Wilders as a role model. The same Geert Wilders who was given permission by the Harper government to speak at this year's Tulip Festival in Ottawa.
The Tulip Festival for heaven sake. Why were Canadians not outraged? Are we also now becoming desensitized to hatred?
In Lawrence Martin's book Harperland, he speaks of our immigration department specifically stating "NO MUSLIMS" in their recruitment ads. Why do we accept that?
The G-20 in Toronto is now best known for the largest number of domestic human rights violations in Canadian history, where citizens were beaten, strip searched, and held in cages. Where was our outrage?
Instead we shrugged and said "well, you shouldn't have been there".
Social activist Joe Levitt once stated that he had "lost confidence in the common man". And Gerald Caplan, NDP insider and columnist, laments that we are "going backwards into a world that we thought would never exist again." (p.12)
Why are we standing on the sidewalk cheering on the attack of everything that Canada once stood for? We might as well put on the jackboots and join in if we are going to do nothing.
What if Geert Wilders had spoke out against Jews at the Tulip Festival? Christians? The disabled? Would we have reacted differently?
This government is not only condoning hatred, but encouraging it.
He starts out in his column wondering why half of the country believe that we are heading in the right direction, yet Harper is barely able to hold onto a third support in the polls.
The answer to that is quite simple. With a media blackout, the Canadians who believe we are headed in the right direction, have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. Ontarians, like myself, have some idea, because when Jim Flaherty looked after finances for Premier Mike Harris, he had everything hidden under his desk. When he left office and the books were opened, it was a nightmare.
Our "balanced budget" turned out to be six billion dollars in the red.
But another factor to consider, is that while half of Canadians believe we're on the right track, many don't attribute our success to Stephen Harper and his government, but measures put in place before his arrival, that have kept us out of trouble. Again, if those same people realized how many of those safety measures the Harper government has torn down, they might feel differently.
But Harper's low polling numbers are a direct result of his actions. As Coyne points out, "Clearly, it’s the way they govern, rather than the results—their tail-gunner style of politics, notably—that is the issue."
And he lists several undemocratic actions.
The census debacle "... what on Earth the Conservatives could have been thinking. Playing to the base?" That's a Karl Rove tactic, who constantly told Bush when he had doubts, to always "play to the base". When Guy Giorno, Canada's answer to Karl Rove, was Harper's chief of staff, he told Harper to "play to the base" by leaving safe abortions out of maternal health.
And their anti-intellectualism that has to exclude expert opinions - again George Bush.
I think my colleague John Geddes came closest in his piece last week. It isn’t just that the Tories habitually ignore the expert consensus on a wide range of issues—crime, taxes, climate change—it’s that they want to be seen to be ignoring it. It’s the overt antagonism to experts, and by extension the educated classes, that marks the Tory style. In its own way, it’s a form of class war.
And the sneering references to Michael Ignatieff because he not only taught at Harvard but earned his PhD there. No different from Mike Harris who referred to Rhodes Scholar Bob Rae as "the Professor" with just enough spittle on his chin. If your qualifications don't equal your opponent's, then tear down your opponent's qualifications in as ignorant a fashion as possible ... playing to the base. That 30% that won't desert you, and believe that anyone educated at Harvard must be the devil. Harvard educated Obama is getting the same nonsense from the Tea Party. And as Coyne reminds us:
The intellectuals that conservatives generally rail against are those they disagree with. But the Harper Conservatives are just as hostile to the interventions of experts on what one might suppose to be their own side. The decision to cut the GST, rather than income taxes, was made in defiance not of radical economists, but of the orthodox free-market variety.
... The result is a uniquely nasty, know-nothing strain of conservatism. The Thatcher Tories, unlike their forebears, weren’t anti-intellectual: her cabinet contained some of Britain’s most fertile social and political minds. Ronald Reagan, though hardly an intellectual, did not demonize expert opinion, or pit the educated classes against the rest.
Again, the anti-intellectualism is George Bush and the Republican strategists he surrounded himself with, including Frank Luntz, the man who has played a huge role in the Canadian Reform movement.
But that kind of politics failed to resonate with Canadians. All the cunning and personal attacks have wore us down. "After so many miscues, unforced errors, too-clever tricks and utter botch-ups, does anyone still cling to the “strategic genius” view of Stephen Harper?"
He's just annoying now. Add that to his economic myths, and I think we have enough to vote him out of office. Hallelujah!
A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada
Although many Canadians don't yet realize it, we are at war; a worldwide class war of capital versus everyone else, a war which the bubble of the Keynesian welfare state temporarily obscured. In this war, the Right has daunting weapons. Over the past 20 years, capital has forged a unified coalition of business, politics, and fundamentalist religion. It owns most of the national and local media ... And through speculative manipulations, they have the power to disrupt the entire Canadian economy. As a result, they wield enormous influence over all levels of government and public opinion. The Right speaks with almost one voice and its vision is insinuating itself into the popular consensus. (1)
We are indeed at war, but our enemy is not the police, who are only following orders. And our enemy is not the corporate media, who write what they are told to write. And our enemy is not even Stephen Harper, who in this phenomenon of image politics, is only the current face of a formidable movement. He has no more power than we do.
Our enemy is Neoconservatism.
And now that we've been able to define that, we need to mobilize our allies, if we have any hope at all of restoring our democracy: "Because the success of the Right comes through carefully managing public opinion, the starting point for defeating the Right is through creating a well-informed public." (1)
Breaking Down the Conservative Myth
In 2004 Philip Agre wrote a paper: What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?
Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to conservatives for a quarter century. In order to start winning again, liberals must answer two simple questions: what is conservatism, and what is wrong with it? As it happens, the answers to these questions are also simple:
Q: What is conservatism? A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism? A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world. (2)
What Agre is describing is not Conservatism but Neoconservatism, and therein lies the problem. The party now headed by Stephen Harper is not our historical Conservative "Tory" party, and we need to constantly remind Canadians of that. Neoconservatism is the antithesis of Conservatism and relates more to fascism than democracy.
But rather than force a demagogue on a democratic society, they wrap him up in a cloak of moderation and sell him as a man (or woman) of the people.
One time girlfriend of Leo Strauss (who is deemed to be the father of the neoconservative movement), Hannah Arendt, herself a respected political philosopher, once questioned whether Nazi Germany was in fact a full totalitarian dictatorship, since it depended so heavily on a "certain societal consensus". (3) Their success depended on directing and exploiting public opinion, and they did it masterfully.
That consensus was engineered by the masterful propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Today it is engineered by people like Karl Rove and Guy Giorno, who not only help to get their "leader" elected, but stick around to make sure they do as they're told. And when the government gets into trouble they send their "leader" on a photo-op, so they never have to wear the controversy, leaving others to clean up the mess.
Defining Our Allies - We're Stronger Than we Think
The conventional wisdom in electoral politics has been that getting the support of great numbers of people was more important than courting the wealthy who had money to spend. Rather than pleasing the well-off, good politics decreed that a party design policies to appeal to the great mass of middle-income voters, not the top 20 percent, but the 60 percent in the middle-income brackets. The bottom 20 percent could be safely ignored, as they could be assumed not to vote. However, their basic needs would be covered, not forgotten or left to charity. The favoured electoral strategy was to unite the middle, build support around programmes with wide appeal, and show how each benefits from programmes available to all. (4)
But neoconservatism takes a different approach. They unite upper-income voters around a programme that appeals to the interests of the wealthy, and then convince many middle- and low-income people of the advantages of more business and less government.
But more importantly they create common enemies of the 20% of society that are a nation's most vulnerable. Those who are invisible.
What about the economic insecurity of our poorest fellow citizens? Why can't our politics address this? It can't be because everyone has shared the fruits of our recent economic boom. It can't be because the poor don't exist. It must be because they have become invisible. (5)
We need to include that 20% and convince them that they must vote, and once we have voted out this neoconservative government, we need to make sure that our most vulnerable never become invisible again. Neocons want us to believe that our "too generous and unaffordable" social programs must be cut or eliminated and wages must be held down (6) to feed this monster named "economy". Meanwhile, the wealthiest citizens just keep getting wealthier, while they are going through with massive corporate tax cuts, and preaching austerity to everyone else.
And of that 60% in the middle, those who support social programs and demand rights are marginalized. And intellectuals who try to cloud issues with facts are dismissed as "university types" and demonized.
So while we advocate for specific groups, march and demonstrate, we have to remember that we are all in this together. We have a common enemy and as such are allies. Neoconservative governments do not allow dissent, but they cannot ignore 80% of the population.
We keep hearing about Harper's "base", that he is pandering to, but who is this "base"? I suspect that many believe they are voting for the party of Sir John A. and John Diefenbaker, without realizing that if the full agenda of this party is implemented, they too will be thrown into the fire, if we lose our public health care and access to education.
In 1994, speaking on behalf of the National Citizens Coalition, Stephen Harper was discussing the accomplishments of the NCC.
"Universality has been severely reduced: It is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy. The family allowance program has been eliminated and unemployment insurance has been seriously cut back." (6)
He believes that if you are successful, it's because you worked for it, forgetting that things like access to public education and medicare, helped toward that success. And if we allow this to continue, we will end up with a Third World type of societal structure, something that has long been a goal of neoconservatism. It's why they fought so hard to maintain apartheid in South Africa and keep Nelson Mandela in jail.
The Politics of Fear
Harper's former VP when he was president of the National Citizens, Gerry Nicholls, wrote recently that:
"Hate and fear make the world go around. Those are the two emotions you must arouse to mobilize citizens. Why is that? I would venture to say that it’s because they are powerful primal emotions that trigger the fight or flight response. What’s important, though, is that you recognize and harness their power." (7)
Another element to the success of the neoconservative movement is fear. It was no accident that at the G-20, journalists and advocacy groups were targeted by riot police. There was a message there. Cross us and you will pay. He is sending the same message to NGOs who risk losing their funding if they challenge any government decision.
But it is also fear of other forces. Rick Salutin explains:
Since the Second World War, the U.S. economy has been built around what you might call the fear sector: its military-industrial complex, its crime-prison complex and its homeland-terror complex. We're now seeing the first attempt by a Canadian government to follow this model.
... The Harper government is clearly impressed. They don't seem to mind big government, if they can tax and spend in the fear sector. So they've expanded our military budget and just announced a $9-billion (or maybe $16-billion) purchase of 65 U.S. jets we'll have to find some use for. They're increasing the prison population through U.S.-style sentencing laws and planning "major construction initiatives" that will boost (sorry) corrections costs by 43 per cent. On homeland security, there's that amazing $1.2-billion spent at the G20.
But it's a hard sell. Canadians will have to be persuaded to shift more money from a stretched health-care system to the fear sector. The benefits here aren't as obvious. For buying those jets, all our firms get is the right to bid on U.S contracts. Lotsa luck. Mostly, though, there's the fear culture that you need for a fear sector. (8)
So we need to cut through all this. Some suggest that we should study the tactics of Karl Rove and emulate them, but I don't agree. I hate divisive politics and I don't think those tactics help anyone. They just turn people off.
We need to mobilize the 2/3 of Canadians who don't support the Harper regime, and educate those of the 1/3, who believe they are supporting the Canadian Conservative tradition.
There are several grassroots attempting to do that, including:
Canadians for a Liberal-NDP-Green partnership NOW!! (If you like the idea of a coalition. I prefer a Liberal government with the NDP as official opposition, but would definitely be on board with a coalition if that's what it takes)
I'm going to end with one of my favourite John Lennon songs to get us in the mood. I share it often, but am sharing it again, because .. well, this is my blog and I love John Lennon.
Sources
1. Open for Business, Closed to People: Introduction, By Diana Ralph, Fernwood, 1997, ISBN: 1895686733, Pg. 15
2. What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It? By Philip E. Agre, Polaris, August 2004
3. The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda, By: David Welch, Routledge, 1993, ISBN 0-203-93014-2
4. The Rights Revolution: CBC Massey Lectures, By Michael Ignatieff, Anansi Books, 2000, ISBN: 978-0-88784-762-2, Pg. 20
5. Comes the Revolution: Waiting for the Pendulum to Swing Back, By E. Finn, Canadian Forum, August 1995
7. The Trudeau Empire Has Fallen and It Can’t Get Up! Why now is the time for the Canadian conservative movement to win the War of Ideas, By Gerry Nicholls, December 3, 2008
A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada
"I notice one provision of this bill; it's the only new provision, and this is dangerous. Some of you who have been around this House for a while will know this, and some in the cabinet must be concerned. The new provision eliminates the policy and priorities board of cabinet, effectively giving more control of government decision-making to the Premier's office. Well, we know who that means. That means Guy Giorno's got more power ...." James Bradly MPP St. Catherines, 1998 (1)
I started reading the book Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, and it was like getting hit between the eyes with a brick.
Where had I heard this story before?
Well of course. They were describing Guy Giorno and Mike Harris. The criticisms that Americans had about the Rove-Bush duo were the same ones that were heard about the Giorno-Harris duo. But even more alarming, they are now the same criticisms of the Giorno-Harper duo. The only difference is that up until a few weeks ago, we didn't realize how much power Guy Giorno had.
Stephen Harper may not be a dictator after all. He's a cardboard cutout made to look prime ministerial. That's why he doesn't talk to us because if you got too close, you'd realize there's nothing there. He's an illusion.
And all this time, the media has been calling him a brilliant strategist, which never really fit. He's always been more an attack dog, than a thinker. Just like Mike Harris.
And reading a bit of the official transcripts from that session of the Ontario legislature, was like deja vu. How did we miss this? Giorno is not centralizing power for Stephen Harper. He's centralizing it for himself.
We need to be concerned about this, because he is not an elected official, and all of his actions are not based on what's good for the country, but how to get his cardboard cutout reelected. Next election we have to make sure that Canadians know who they are really voting for. A corporate attorney, who has been in more executive washrooms than Heidi Fleiss.
So no more lurking in the shadows. We need to make his, the most visible face in the country.
That Session of the Ontario Legislature Reveals Even More
What was being debated when Bradley realized that it meant Giorno would have even more power, was Bill 25, "An Act to reduce red tape by amending or repealing certain Acts and by enacting two new Acts."
This was the birth of the "Red Tape Commission" that really meant no more bothersome inspections. And the end of those bothersome inspections, resulted in the Walkerton Water Tragedy.
This is a story about fanaticism and death. The dead are buried in fresh graves in the cemeteries of Walkerton, Ontario. The fanatics are very much alive, going about their daily business in the Premier's office and the cabinet room in Queen's Park ... Investigators are still working to determine exactly how deadly E. coli 0157 bacteria found their way into Walkerton's water in May, causing at least seven and perhaps 11 deaths, and leaving hundreds seriously ill. The story of the Walkerton tragedy is not, however, primarily a story about Walkerton at all. This was no unforeseen accident. It was the predictable - and predicted - result of deliberate policy decisions which gravely compromised the safety of Ontario's drinking water. The broader story of Walkerton is the story of repeated warnings, from many different experts, officials, and agencies, that the Harris government's environmental cutbacks were putting public health in jeopardy. And it is the story of how those warnings were dismissed ... (2)
And guess what was in the last budget? Yep. Canada now has a "Red Tape Commission". It will be like playing Russian Roulette every time you eat or drink anything.
Drawing inspiration from the way British Columbia and Ontario streamlined regulations, Flaherty announced the creation of a new Red Tape Reduction Commission, with a mandate to reduce the paper burden of complying with federal rules on small business in particular. Less regulation and freer trade are both well within Flaherty’s comfort zone. (3)
Now back to Ontario in 1998 (following emphasis mine):
The policy and priorities board of cabinet is the most important committee of cabinet. It is the committee that deals with the priorities for the government and the general policymaking for the government. Now that's taken out of the hands of the cabinet and I think that's going into the hands of Guy Giorno and the whiz kids in the back rooms of the Conservative Party ...
... Of course those who are still hopeful of getting into cabinet interject in favour of Guy Giorno and that crew, because they know that Guy is going to be checking off checkmarks for who's getting into cabinet ... I tell my friend from Brampton that if he wants to get into the cabinet, like his colleague, he should be good to Guy Giorno and Deb Hutton*. Deb's now been with the Tory caucus 10 years; celebrating her 33rd birthday in mid-August. She has all kinds of power.
All these people advise, so what I'm saying to the members of the Conservative caucus who want into the cabinet is, yes, be nice to Mike, laugh very loudly at the jokes, lead the applause when Mike speaks and gives an answer that zaps the opposition, but the most important thing is to ingratiate yourself with Guy Giorno and the whiz kids, because they will be advising the Premier on who goes into the cabinet, who gets shuffled one way or another ... you all thought he was being honest with you, being true to you, and now you find out that Guy Giorno is going to have even more power and all those people, the whiz kids in the back room, are going to have even more power. Some of them get elevated to the cabinet. I see that my friend Tony Clement, the member for Brampton South, has less power now that he's in the cabinet than he had when he was a whiz kid ... (1)
The bill passed and among the 'ayes' were Jim Flaherty, John Baird and Tony Clement, while those "Whiz Kids" continued to whiz all over Ontario for a few more years. We're still trying to scrub off the stains.
Footnotes:
*Deb Hutton is married to Tim Hudak, the new Ontario neoconservative leader, who's being groomed by Mike Harris.
Bush is the product. Rove is the marketer. One cannot succeed without the other .... The inherent danger in an arrangement where the political advisor also drives policy is that the consultant is deciding what is best for the next election cycle and his political party while the president needs to be considering what best serves the country beyond election day. These two interests are frequently divergent and in conflict.
The end result is obvious: Karl Rove thinks it, and George W. Bush does it. That's the way it works. And it works well. Rove's political strategies are steering administration decisions on domestic issues and foreign policy. Karl Rove's political calculations have proved more often right than wrong and, for a president interested in reelection, a formula that sways a constituency or adds electoral votes is something he cannot afford to ignore. (1)
This relationship left Rove's biographers to point out: Karl Rove has posed a new and disturbing question for American voters and their republic. Who really runs this country? (2)
When Guy Giorno, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, made a rare public appearance recently to testify before a House committee looking into government secrecy, even some veteran Parliament Hill news photographers needed to have him pointed out so they would know which way to aim their lenses. Giorno’s spotlight-shy style makes him an unfamiliar figure, but the issues he’s intimately caught up in couldn’t be more conspicuous. In the past, critics inside the Conservative party have grumbled that his bad advice led to missteps by Stephen Harper—sparking a public backlash when the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament in January, and bringing the Tories to the brink of defeat in late 2008 when the opposition formed a coalition over the threat of losing their federal subsidies.
On the other hand, senior Tories credit Giorno as a key architect of last year’s budget, and the aggressive marketing of it as “Canada’s Economic Action Plan”—a springboard for the Conservatives’ bounce in the polls this spring ... “People can pick apart and second-guess individual tactical decisions that impact the Ottawa news cycle ... but Giorno has gotten the big things right.”
Sometimes, however, predicting when this week’s tactical decision might turn into next month’s unwelcome big thing is not easy. As a devout Catholic whose faith has never been far from the centre of his politics, Giorno is assumed to have played a role in the government’s decision to ban foreign aid funding for abortions. It was controversial from the outset, but the move has grown to cast a huge shadow over Harper’s bid to make “maternal and child health” in developing countries his signature cause when he hosts the G8 and G20 summits in Huntsville, Ont., and Toronto next month.
Perhaps more than any issue that’s arisen in Giorno’s nearly two years as Harper’s top adviser, outlawing overseas abortion funding threatens to drag him unwillingly toward the centre of media attention. Montreal’s Le Devoir reported a few days ago that an unhappy Harper wants the matter defused before world leaders, many of whom disagree with his stance, arrive in Ontario for the summits. But Giorno is reportedly worried about how Conservative supporters would react to any retreat and is urging Harper to “protect the base.” (3)
"Urging Harper to protect his base"? The job of a Canadian prime minister is not to "protect his base". The job of a Canadian prime minister is to do what's best for Canadians. And to do what is expected from Canadians, not a backroom operative. And yet that's what's happening here.
Guy Girono made the decision to end voter subsidies.
Guy Giorno made the decision to prorogue Parliament.
Guy Giorno was the architect of the budget.
Guy Giorno made the decision to spend millions (and millions, and millions) on campaign style advertising at our expense.
Guy Giorno made the decision to ban foreign aid funding for abortions.
Which begs the question: Who really runs this country?
Sources:
1. Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, By James Moore and Wayne Slater, John Wiley & Sons, 2003, ISBN: 0-471-42327-0, Pg. 11
2. Moore and Slater, 2003, Pg. 17
3. Guy Giorno: national man of mystery: PM’s chief of staff target for blame, but insiders say he gets big things right, by John Geddes, May 31, 2010
I was sent this video and I love it. Very much in the 'Joe Canadian' vein. Between possible war crimes and Harper may be losing us our spot in the Commonwealth because of his inaction on climate change, it's hard to get pumped up about Canada these days. But this video reminds me who we are.
Harper would hate this. No oil, guns or war. And no Republicans.
I am noticing though lately more people, especially in the mainstream Media, discussing Harper's involvement with some of the worst that the Republicans have to offer and how the Reformers have muddied Canadian politics. Karl Rove comes up a lot lately and Frank Lutz.
Have they just now figured out what's going on here?
One of my favourite journalists, Murray Dobbin, knows though and has always known, exactly who Stephen is, was and will always be.
Watching the sickening performances of the Harperites in the House of Commons this week – out right lying, bullying, slander, contempt for the public and parliament, and a stunning disregard for the public good – brings home a hard reality: we are witnessing the Republicanization of our political culture. And it’s not just the torture issue – it’s the Conservative labeling of Liberals as anti-Semitic – a kind of shit-house rat politics virtually unknown in Canadian political history. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that Karl Rove is on the PMO’s payroll; his disciples certainly are ....
We must stop this man before he literally destroys the country – that is, destroys the core of who and what we are and how we see ourselves. The first step is recognizing that we are in grave danger.
And the answer to that question. Get the Reformers off the Hill!!!
For any of you who don't know, Karl Rove is one of the most despicable men on the planet. He helped George Bush steal an election and is responsible for some of the dirtiest politics known.
He once distributed a push poll when Bush was running against John McCain for leadership of the Republican Party, that asked the question: "If you found out that John McCain had an illegitimate child with a black woman, would your opinion of him change?"
McCain's wife had adopted a little girl from Africa, who was included in family photos, but those pictures and that seed of doubt did the trick.
Don Newman recently stated that he noticed politics got a whole lot dirtier when the Reform Party first entered Parliament, and an American journalist noticed a change in our political discourse when Stephen Harper became Prime Minister.
Now we are seeing similar tactics used by the Harperites, when dealing with sticky situations. And of course the media is complicit in the nonsense, because they not only condone it, they promote it.
What's also interesting is that while Peter MacKay is suggesting that there is no proof of torture because Colvin didn't witness it personally, he claims that the opposition are supporting "people who throw acid in the faces of schoolchildren and who blow up buses of civilians in their own country." Did he personally witness any member of the Taliban throwing acid in the faces of children or blowing up buses? How does he know that the Karzai government didn't do it, or the Americans?
He would probably argue that he just knows. Well... you don't have to see it for yourself to know that it's happening, and MacKay's argument is weak to say the least.
The Harper government is using smear-your-opponent tactics borrowed from the U.S. Republican Party that are "poisoning the well" of Canada's political culture, NDP and Liberal MPs say.
They cite as one instance Defence Minister Peter MacKay's (Central Nova, N.S.) heated responses in the Commons to allegations last week the government tried to cover up knowledge that Canadian troops handed detainees over to Afghan forces during the early stages of the Kandahar mission knowing there was evidence the prisoners would be tortured.
The allegations from Canadian intelligence officer Richard Colvin, made in testimony at the Commons Committee on Justice and Human Rights, included charges that senior government officials up to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) office were aware of the information but suppressed it and instructed him to keep it out of official internal memos. Although aspects of the Afghan prisoner controversy first became public in 2006, and the government later instituted a new prisoner transfer agreement with the Afghan government, Mr. Colvin's claim of a cover-up added a new and potentially damaging charge, one which Mr. MacKay was determined to defuse the minute it hit the Commons floor following Mr. Colvin's testimony.
Mr. Colvin said he spoke to four of the detainees claiming abuse and admitted he was certain only one had been handed over to the Afghans by Canadians, but he referred also to information from other sources, including the Red Cross. Mr. Colvin told the committee many of the prisoners were farmers, truck drivers and peasants "in the wrong place at the wrong time" but others likely did carry arms for the Taliban, possibly for pay or under coercion.
In fact, at the time, the Foreign Affairs Department referred to some detainees in the Kandahar prison where they were taken as "political prisoners" and Canadian Forces also referred to its detainees as suspected Taliban supporters.
"According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured," Mr. Colvin told the committee.
When the opposition seized on his allegations of a cover-up and wider Afghan abuse of prisoners Mr. MacKay responded with an accusation that Liberal MP Bob Rae (Toronto Centre, Ont.) was relying on testimony from "people who throw acid in the faces of schoolchildren and who blow up buses of civilians in their own country."
Mr. MacKay said the opposition was relying on "second and third hand information and Taliban information."
The claims prompted NDP Leader Jack Layton (Toronto Danforth, Ont.) to recall the government's attacks against the opposition during a 2007 controversy over detainees, when Harper accused then Liberal leader Stéphane Dion (Saint-Laurent-Cartierville, Que.) of sympathizing with the Taliban. Conservative MPs at the time also derided former NDP MP Dawn Black in similar fashion, heckling her as "Burqa Black" and "Taliban lover" during Question Period.
"I can understand the leader of the opposition and members of his party feel for Taliban prisoners; I just wish they would show the same passion for Canadian soldiers," said Mr. Harper said to Mr. Dion. The claim shocked the opposition and Mr. Dion demanded an apology, saying Mr. Harper had "insulted the entire Parliament."
The opposition response was similar after Mr. MacKay's latest charge that the opposition was relying on evidence from Taliban terrorists as they pressed the government about Mr. Colvin's cover-up allegations.
"This is McCarthyism, this is absolute McCarthyism," Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh (Vancouver South, B.C.) said in reference to the 1950s-era Republican Senator who was eventually censured for widespread and unbelievable allegations of Communist sympathy in the United States. "This is absolutely unthinkable, that a Canadian minister would accuse those who want to restore and protect the reputation of this great country of being Taliban sympathizers. I can't comprehend that."
NDP Leader Jack Layton (Toronto Danforth, Ont.) cited the response as being among the reasons the opposition is demanding a public inquiry into Colvin's claims. "These are very, very serious allegations and the government is attempting to sweep them under the rug and divert attention by calling those who raise questions names," he said.
The opposition says the governing Conservatives have mastered more-recent Republican-style wedge politics in attacks against their Commons opponents, including the use of flyers suggesting the Liberal party supports anti-Semitic groups and other flyers that targeted opposition MPs for allegedly supporting the federal gun registry.
Liberal MP and former justice minister Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal, Que.), who is Jewish, claimed Conservative flyers distorting the Liberal position on anti-Semitism, terrorism, and Israel were circulated in his Montreal riding, which like others where similar flyers were circulated, includes a large Jewish population. Among other things, the flyer claimed Mr. Cotler and other Liberals participated in a conference in Durban, South Africa, that took on anti-Israel tones. Mr. Cotler, as he argued the flyers breached his Parliamentary privilege, pointed out Liberals and other Canadian MPs went to Durban to attend a world conference against racism, but it became a controversial conference dominated by anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiments.
In the case of Conservative flyers targeting opposition MPs over the gun registry, Commons Speaker Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands, Ont.) ruled there was evidence, on the surface of a complaint from Nova Scotia NDP MP Peter Stoffer (Sackville-Eastern Shore, N.S.), that a Conservative flyer on the topic circulating in his riding may have breached his Parliamentary privilege.
The circular under the name of Saskatchewan Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott (Saskatoon-Wanuskewin, Sask.) claimed Mr. Stoffer had voted in favour of the registry—even though he has consistently opposed it—and also included false allegations about Mr. Stoffer's position on the registry. On a motion from Mr. Stoffer, the House agreed to send Mr. Vellacott's possible breach of Mr. Stoffer's Parliamentary privilege to the Procedure and House Affairs Committee for an inquiry.
"This is boiler-plate wedge politics," says NDP MP Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre, Ont.). "We've seen this used with the Republicans in the States; I'm sure they've been sharing how to take that kind of approach, during the (U.S.) health debates they've been using it. But this goes back further, that's how the Republicans gained a lot of ground. It poisons the well of our political culture."
I hadn't heard of Mike Wallace until yesterday. I don't mean the American broadcaster, but the Conservative MP for Burlington; so you can imagine my surprise when I received an attack ad in the mail from him. I live in Kingston.
I initially assumed that it came from our local Conservative 'also ran', Brian Abrams, but then of course that would mean he'd have to pay for it himself. By using an elected Member of Parliament, it didn't cost him a dime.
It's the Canadian taxpayer who gets stuck with the bill.
I guess I shouldn't have been that shocked. After learning that Brian Abrams had hired a American Republican pollster to run his next campaign, I actually expected a visit from Karl Rove. I just didn't expect it so soon.
Angry as hell I looked into Mr. Wallace's past and found that this wasn't the first time he'd cheated taxpayers to get free advertising for Conservative candidates. When Lisa Raitt was challenging Garth Turner for his seat, this Burlington MP mailed 29,000 flyers to Turner's constituents. 29,000 campaign style flyers that WE PAID FOR. She won and look how that turned out.
I'm getting so tired of this.
Canada is now running the largest deficit in our history, and we are in last place for climate change initiatives. But what is our government doing? Telling us why we shouldn't vote for the other guy.
Maybe it's time for the people of Burlington to find out what their MP has been up to, because clearly he's got too much time on his hands.
As the media is starting to put two and two together, and wondering what was really behind this complete character assassination of Rhuby Dhalla; Jason Kenney has started to find himself on the defensive for his role in the fiasco.
On CTV's Question Period, Kenney scoffed at the suggestion, made by Dhalla's lawyer, that there may have been some sort of political conspiracy to bring down the Brampton, Ont., MP.
This past week, three foreign workers came forward to allege they all worked illegally at Dhalla's family home, and were mistreated and underpaid. None of the allegations have been proven in court.
"There is no truth to them," he said. "The only question is, who's really behind them and who orchestrated or assisted or enabled these former employees of her brother to suddenly come forward one year after the last of them worked providing care for her mother?"
On Sunday, Kenney said he didn't want to comment specifically on the Dhalla case, but said, as immigration minister his "broader concern is ensuring that we protect the rights of caregivers."
Kenney also said he only became aware of the case after the Toronto Star released its report. He also said that, to the best of his knowledge, he has never met the caregivers. But he said it may be possible they attended some of the roundtable discussions he's held for caregivers in the Greater Toronto Area.
However, he did add that his department has indicated to the nannies' legal counsel that "if they're acting as whistle blowers that will not be held against them, that if they're providing information about offences we're not going to penalize them."
This just keeps getting better. 'To the best of his knowledge ... It may be possible they attended ... If they're acting as whistle blowers ... Sounds like subterfuge to me.
This doesn't have to be a conspiracy theory involving the Toronto Star. He just let his 'Mine-Me' use his PI skills to track the women down. Had two of them (who never worked together) file a complaint, and the rest just fell into place.
Kenney, in an interview Sunday on CTV's Question Period, insisted he takes no partisan delight in the allegations levelled against Dhalla by three immigrant women who worked as caregivers for her family.
"One never likes to see a colleague from any party facing a difficult personal situation," said the Conservative minister.
"Frankly, I like Ms. Dhalla and have gotten along quite well with her. And I think she does deserve the benefit of the doubt."
And yet before the ink was dry on the first story, he was gleefully listing the crimes she could be convicted of; taking a lot of delight in her demise. But then for a 40-year-old virgin (by his own admission), what else does he have?
