Panglossian Notes

Super secret Harper or is John Howard simply whispering in Steve's ear?

The TO Star is beginning a series, starting with this article about the Harper government and its endless, some might say mindless, attempts to control information from reaching Canadians regarding it, its policies and routine information Canadians pay to have collected.

This first article seems to be just an introduction or a teaser, as there is little new information in it regarding what Harper seems to be candestinely trying to accomplish.

My hopes are high that the series will have some "new" information regarding the super secret Harper and the increasingly ridiculous and cowed federal civil service.

The Canadian conservative authoritarian bent isn't new for conservatives in parliamentary systems world wide, whether the particular party runs under the banner of Liberal in AU or New Labour in the UK all seem to have a primordial need to control.

In the case, of the Liberals in AU and New Labour in the UK it seems to work for awhile, the control that is, but then it seemingly falls apart at some point and the party that attempted it is destroyed at least for a time while the PM under the strategy rushes off to large rewards from moneyed friends and cronies.

The whole matter, keeping everything, yes everything, secret, seems to have caught Canadian traditional media without their pencils or pocket recorders. Hard to appear balanced when there is only one side to a story so most journalist school grads would appear screwed as they stumble with having to actually ignite a modicum of curiosity and not simply take dictation from two opposing sources of information.

For Harper it would seem he is simply following his real father John Howard and trying to turn Canada into Australia, a bit of a bore but without the beaches.

Let's see if the Star does a comparison between Howard and Harper on this super secret anti-democratic trait. A quick search on Google turns up lots of articles and essays about the Howard approach I expect to see Harper moving more and more in this direction but wonder whether we'll see as much debate about it in either our press or supposed "big" thinkers groups.

For anyone interested about the AU situation under Howard, one article to start with would be the original silencing dissent (the link is to a html of the pdf, but the pdf can be had from this link) piece, then a review of the book that sprang from that article, Silencing Dissent and finally some Q&As about the book.

And, of course, there is the Quarterly Essay by David Marr: His Master’s Voice: The Corruption of Public Debate under Howard [finally, I think, available online from freelibrary] A quick review of this essay here and a short interview of Marr's which may, if it hasn't already, announce what we in Canada can expect from Harper et thugs.

================================

[Earlier, in this big gambit, as Harper et al clamped down, some indications were that the PCO & PMO approval would be required to access weather forecasts. This particular trial balloon was shot down when some brilliant soul within either the PCO or PMO realized that most air traffic would be shut down within Canada as pilots waited the required 30, 40 50, 60, 100 days for an answer out of "downtown" as to what the expected weather patterns might be in areas they were about to fly. The completely Kafkan like situation seemed even to be evident to Canada's best and brightest at the center of the civil service (sic). Baird the environment minister after a day or 2 of rumors was finally dispatched by Harper (PMO) and Lynch (chief scribe at PCO) to calm universal laughter.

You could conclude from this simply that political and civil servant conservatives of any stripe are anti-funny, humour and joy (ignoring the rapture type, of course) and not that they understood the policy implications of a truly inspired "wingnut" idea.]

Technorati Tags: Accountability, Australia, Canada, Harper government, Politicians, Politics, Spin, The Toronto Star, Thugs, writing

Technorati Tags: Accountability, Australia, Canada, Harper government, Politicians, Politics, Spin, The Toronto Star, Thugs, writing

Comment on the face of the day

An interesting picture over at the Atlantic, the Andrew Sullivan section of their blog entities.

I like the big fans in the background and the picture of the little girl below the right fan and just to the left of the chair.

I also wonder, fool I am, whether the picture am suppose to focus on was posed.

Awful, eh.

Is the little round faced beauty the father is mourning really his daughter or could his child be the little girl whose picture is by the chair.

Or could it all simply be a nicely staged fake?

What stories - Pearl Buck where are you?

Technorati Tags: Accountability, Andrew Sullivan, China, Shnoring?, The Atlantic, Useful idiots?, Wondering

More scandals in the US Department of Justice????

This stuff is starting to be funny, but I know it's serious. I wonder how much more crap is buried off to the side.

From Josh Marshall's TPM, hints that a new "princess" maybe lurking around just about 304 miles, or, if you prefer, 489 kilometers, South-West of Paul Shaffer's old home, Thunder Bay, ON.:

There've been a few hints that something fishy was up in the Minneapolis US Attorney's office where 33-year old Rachel Paulose was sworn in to office last month in a lavish 'investiture' ceremony some have called a 'coronation'.

Four of her top staff voluntarily demoted themselves Thursday, fed up with Paulose, who, after just months on the job, has earned a reputation for quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings.

(April 05, 2007 -- 11:47 PM EDT)
Talking Points Memo

Hey that bible verse stuff is neat, eh. Bet it helps you get a great buzz first thing in the morn for you get down to prosecutin.

Still more on the staff shake-up in the Minneapolis US Attorney's office, where 33-year old Federalist Society member and former Gonzales aide Rachel Paulose was just sworn in last month. Below we noted that the simultaneous resignations of all four top officials in the office came just after what the Star-Tribune called a "visit to the office by a representative from the Executive Office of the U.S. Attorney in Washington."

(April 06, 2007 -- 12:51 AM EDT)
Talking Points Memo

These instance, under G. W. Bush, help you really know that the US is a pretty rich country. The incompetencies seem to be piling up, but the place just keeps rolling along. Hey look at what Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe! Oh, that's taken 26 years - Zimbabwe inflation heads for 2 500%

(An aside: you do have to love hyper-inflations though, it keeps you nice and slim. If you earn anything, then you run like hell to spend it before the cash in your hand is worth nothing. Great way to stay fit and slim. I can think of why Mugabe hasn't mentioned it).

Technorati Tags: Accountability, Confused, Economics, 2 years ago I couldn't spell inganear now I are one

The David Hicks Case -all is revealed!

In my e-mail in-basket, first thing this morning, there were 2 updates from, the down-under independent news service, Crikey. I get the squatter version 'cause I'm too cheat to spring for the full blown service. One was the regular update, which lets me read a couple of stories about the goings on of Bushies "deputy sheriff", John Howard and assorted other quirky characters, and the other a Special Addition.

The Special Addition should help, maybe some of the rest of us, understand, even indirectly, the working of a "terrorist" mind and the new improved US kangaroo* justice [sic] system.

All the links are, of course, dummies which lead to great undisturbed expanses of whitespace. There is a "gag-order", remember.

*I couldn't help myself by using the name of everyones favourite marsupial's as an adjective. It just seems appropriate.

__________________________________

Dear Squatters,

Because we live in a true liberal democracy, we've decided to publish a special Crikey edition. A special David Hicks edition.

Containing 21 stories, we present the inside David Hicks story -- by the man himself and by those key figures around him, including his father Terry and Australian Attorney General Phillip Ruddock.

We hope you find this special Crikey edition useful in understanding the important legal, political and societal issues in the Hicks case.

It won't take long to read (because we live in a true liberal democracy).

Because we live in a true liberal democracy, we've decided to publish a special Crikey edition. A special David Hicks edition.

[ALL THE LINKS ARE DUMMIES SO DON'T CLIK ON THEM]

THE HICKS CASE

1.Why I made a guilty plea

2.The guilty plea: how I advised David

3. My island home: first weeks at Guantanamo

4.Ten torture techniques in 12 months

5.Solitary confinement was one thing, just don't get me started on the food

6.I never met a DFAT official I didn't like. Come to think of it, I never met a DFAT official

7.Afternoon tea with Osama: My thoughts on a terrorist mastermind

8.The orange people: The daily grind of Guantanamo

9.After three years in solitary, I lost my mind on a Tuesday

10.Things my son has told me

11.Afghani diary: training for Al-Qaeda, a day by day account

12.How a shy Adelaide boy became an international political pawn

13.The real story of my long hair and those prison pyjamas

14. What the US Senator said when he saw me in chains

15.What the judge said I couldn't say and when I couldn't say it

16.How I'll be voting in this year's election

17.Why even Adelaide was better than Guantanamo

18.Gitmo diet: How to lose 30 pounds in a month

19.The thrill of war: my Afghan adventure

20.On release: why I'm not planning to take my revenge on the West

COMMENTS

21.Comments, corrections, clarifications, and c*ckups

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Taliban, Taxi Rides, USA

Crowbar hotel for some horsemen and women?

Looks like the messes within organizations charged with looking after policing and security at the national level aren't isolated to our neighbours below the 49th parallel.

There is an emergency meeting of the Public Accounts Committee this morning down on The Hill to start to ask more questions of the boys and girls in the red serge.

This should be fun to watch but really not a very good circumstance for the RCMP, as a whole.

Cover-up, perjury, unexplained shootings? Call the police! What police? The ones that took 20 years to investigate the Air Indian bombing, yeah sure.

Our federal cops seem to be more and more compromised. The Arar case, the aftermath of which caught the RCMP Commissioner in some less than truthful statements, the ongoing shootings in British Columbia - less known about at the national level, troll around the web and you can find other unsettling cases where the RCMP seems to be a bit compromised, particularly where they act for provincial or territorial governments as regional police.

So, maybe start pulling passports of every senior current and former RCMP officer?

Technorati Tags: Canada, CBC, RCMP

Spin, or just a poor choice of words

Carol Goar has an article, in this mornings Toronto Star, about the problems pollsters are having actually getting responses from people whose thoughts they are trying to ferret out.

Seems 8 out of 10 people hang up on the pollsters when they call. I'll bet, given the tricks electronic phones are geared for now, any incoming phone number, with a pesky 800, 822, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, 880, 881, 882, or 888 prefix, can simply be blocked for the price of a few moments pouring over the instruction booklet that came with the phone. Goar has been talking to Angus Reid, the guy who started the Angus Reid Group, a polling firm, which he sold it to to the Paris based conglomerate Ipsos.

Well Reid is now hot to trot about web based surveys like the YouGov in Britain. I'm not completely clear on YouGov's methodology but from a quick look at their site it does, offhand, look random, but hey, eh, maybe Reid is thinking about modifying the Brit's approach.

Oops, no he doesn't seem to be modifying it, in fact, it looks like he may have adopted their approach holus-bolus:

The new company's research would be conducted entirely online. Respondents would be recruited over the Internet for a 100,000-person national panel. For each poll, a statistically representative sample would be drawn. Questionnaires would be sent by email, to be completed at the participants' convenience. Cash incentives would be provided.

Carol Goar
The Toronto Star
March 28, 2007

YouGov's methodology is to obtain responses from an invited group of Internet users, and then to filter these responses in line with demographic information. It draws these demographically-representative samples from a panel of more than 150,000 people in the UK.

YouGov
Methodology
Wikipedia

Anyway, my point in this note, isn't really polling, either the old annoying phone or door banging way, it's a particular couple of sentences in Goar's story and the use of two words which may or may not have been intended to convey an impression.

He [Reid] can show respondents pictures. Recently, for example, he provided a video clip of Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion speaking English to anglophone voters and a comparable clip of Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaking French to francophone voters. He asked both groups to rate the linguistic competence of the leader in question. Only 56 per cent of anglophones considered Dion's English satisfactory. Harper's French was given a passing grade by 81 per cent of francophones.

Carol Goar
The Toronto Star
March 28, 2007

The two sentences are italicized and the words are in bold face. I wonder what impression is being spun, or trying to be spun, and I wonder who is trying to do the spin? It could be, of course, that I'm just far too too skeptical about anything I seen written down or spoken by someone in the MSM.

Ignoring the percentages, the word satisfactory seems just not quite as good as passing.

Is this what Reid might have said to the reporter?

Is it what the reporter gleamed herself from looking at the survey results?

Is the reporter trying to tell the reader that francophones think Harper speaks good French? - "He passed with 81%!" Or is it that Harper speaks what what French he has well?

Is the reporter trying to tell the reader that anglophones think Dion does not speak English well? "He passed with 56%!" Or is it that Dion does not speak good English?

Yeah, it must be just me, I should get out and enjoy the sun and spring weather.

Technorati Tags: Media, MSM, Toronto Star

"Unfortunates" according to The Harper.

Just to keep the tally sort of honest or maybe updated, it seems that our Southern partners may have actually killed 34 innocents as we manned the road blocks leading into Aziz.

Does this mean that The Harper says "unfortunate" twice.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, Canada, Chaos, Harper, Stupidity

Tory Government!

I think the Emerson behavior is completely inexcusable.

Everyone can be nicy nicy about it but it has pointed a pretty ugly finger at our so-called Canadian democracy.

This guy should be run out of town on a rail.

Jeffrey Simpson in a "to and fro" with G&M readers today called his behaviour undemocratic.

A very polite way of describing completely unacceptable behavior on the part of a politician.

Sorry Jeffrey this guy needs to be given a message. You maybe competent as a technocrat but we don't want you in our political system: you smell. You are odious.

Harper, unfortunately has shown really bad judgement at the beginning of his tenure and tried to paper it over with sweet comments that odious Emerson served Paul Martin well and has now gone over to the CPC.

Jesus is the guy, Emerson, a Deputy Minister or a Member of Parliament representing a particular party.

Seems that the odious Emerson is nothing but a Deputy Minister.

Would have been nice if he'd told his constituency this, you'd think.

Ah, but no, not part of the modern politicians reason for being.

In consumer law I think there are mechanisms for correcting this type of flim flam - even though for this particular character the rail and some tar and feathers may be more appropriate.

Guess we'll have to wait to see what the polls say. I'll bet the Vancouverites will forgive:

"oh he is a really nice man"

"he never let his dog shit on my lawn"

I'm just waiting for it. See I have a theory that too many laits diminish your gray matter, least those cells that have something to do with self-respect.

Technorati Tags: Accountability, Canada, Globe and Mail, Politics

The Campaign Today!

PM PM brings out his first "star candidate", Marc Garrneau. From what I saw on TV I was more impressed than I thought I would be. Garrneau is talking about the future which is refreshing.

Media pundits are spinning that the unveiling of Garrneau has been eclipsed by Chretian filing his papers challenging the Gomery report - BS - I don't buy it. Sorry I got bored quite awhile ago with the supposed honesty/ethical issue and I think at least some others did also.

I want to know what's planned for the future from all the parties.

Harper who, it appears, is never one to let some reference to our great and confused cousin south of the border pass him by has cooked up the idea of a "special federal prosecutor" to go after all bady politicians both past and future.

Hey can we dig up John A and finally get him for that railway fiasco. I know this has been really bothering me and what about Sam Hughes for inflicting all those awful Ross rifles on the WWI expeditionary forces. With these veterans almost completely gone now maybe Harper's special cops can give us some of that famous closure stuff. And lets not forget ..... .

Holy mackerel mask crusader what are the RCMP and Crown prosecutors doing right now.

Am I missing something, or is this guy just a bit off.

I guess this Gomery stuff will just keep going around and around.

Layton, no hope of forming a government, is on the hustings taking credit for C-48. Remember that's the Act that authorizes the Minister of Finance to make certain payment - i.e. the promises for $4.5 billion to be spent on retrofitting low-income houses, education, public housing and foreign aid.

The NDP slogan is "getting results for people" so I guess even the party knows the NDP is only going to play some sort of subservient role, maybe, after the election. Talking about being defeatist, sorry realist.

Today Gille Duceppe, at least, indicated that Harper is a bit bent with his ideological stance on gay marriage. Good for him.

Technorati Tags: Accountability, Canada, News and Politic, Politics, Stupidity

Just the beginning!

The question as to whether or not there will be a new federal government soon - i.e. PM PMs minority government falls - commands lots of print and airtime space.

However, following up on old problems that need to be resolved before the country shifts gears into the new century maybe independent of which party forms any new government.

Jeffrey Simpson at the G&M had indicated the nature of the questions that need to be asked in dealing with one these matters.

But no one is going to go down the road of forced re-settlement again, are they? The law suits aren't settled from the last couple of centuries attempts at social engineering - residential schools for example.

So even if someone gets the bright idea, stop.

I don't want to pay from it nor do I want the next generation to pay for policies that backfire.

The fact that I immediately jumped to re-settlement as a solution may, of course, mean that I'm already disqualified to think of a way out of this type of problem. It means I think that small isolated communities with no economic rationale for existence are doomed to substandard living conditions relative to the population as a whole in a modern world.

Richard Gywn over at the The TO Star points to an attitudinal change in the population that may mean very different answers to hard questions if they are asked now.

This actually may mean that the current crop of federal politicians could, in the immediate term, get things quite wrong. Case in point PM PM has indicated already that he wants to throw more money at the problems.

To put things into some context, maybe it's time to take a breath, eh. Hope PM PM can keep his problem solving spendthrift inclinations under control.

I wonder how much of this will filter into the policy halls. Realistically, I wonder how much will pass into the public perception which now, I would think, assumes that the worse is always going on.

So, most from Kashechewan have got a trip out, usually a good thing for those in a remote community if it isn't for medical reasons. I suspect Wal-Mart may notice an increase in sales as people do the sensible things and stock up before the trip back.

Will anything really change though? I hope it will but there will have to be movement on both sides for any real solution to occur and about this I'm much less optimistic.

As implied by Richard Gywn, the country as a whole is moving on and about to embark on a new immigration policy. These issues need to be settled shortly or risk being completely marginalized in a new society with no residual burden of guilt for past policies of either the 19th or 20th century.

Technorati Tags: Accountability, Canada, First Nation