Friday, May 09, 2008

Heh.

This latest fuckery from the Harper administration is chilling. Let's take a quick tally:

1. Attacks on the very institutions that support democracy and public safety in this country. Elections Canada, CNSC, etc.

2. Legal attempts to neuter the Official Opposition outside of parliamentary means.

3. Attempts the legally enshrining the consolidation of immigration control into the PMO.

4. Attempts empowering the PMO with regulation of cultural expression.

5. Directing populist, inflamatory, and fundamentally dishonest accusations of anti-Semitism at the Opposition.

6. A party with a membership linked to all manor of extreme religious and social conservative groups.

7. Public Safety Minister. Title, proto-Orwellian.

8. Public Safety Minister with past associations with far-right fascists.

9. Attempts at rigid information control.

10. Message control in extremis. Firing of any civil servant that could potential counter party propaganda.

11. Party styles itself as party of the armed forces.

12. Pursues policies that put the armed forces at centre stage.

13. Frames debate over foreign policy in nationalist, militarist terms.

14. etc.

Harper has a plan. Hehe.

We are entering what may be a period of severe economic and ecological uncertainty. A far-right party and egocentric leader willing to attack any and all institutions and individuals perceived as obstacles is at the helm. This could get interesting.

However...



...no system based on lies and oppression has survived a people unwilling to accept it. By assaulting the institutions of state, the party also cannibalises the mechanisms through which it exercises power. Delegitimising these institutions, in turn, legitimises other forms of resistance. By ignoring unpalatable realities, the party willfully blinds, and therefore weakens, itself. There is much to work with here.

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