"Every budding dictatorship...

... begins by muzzling the artists, because they're a mouthy lot and they don't line up and salute very easily."

Margaret Atwood, CC
24 September 2008

"Art is a hobby."

Harper supporter
Commenting on this blog
29 February 2008

I need to find the time to study Margaret Atwood's hobby more closely.

Hat tip Impolitical

Painting the town blue, Olympics edition

After whipping their base up into a regular santorum of outrage over government funding for swears and lefties and rock stars, the program that supported "Young People Fucking" is still intact, but $40M of moneys to promote Canadian arts and culture has been transferred to fund 2010 Vancouver Five Ring Circus sports events like the $24.5M torch relay.

Well you couldn't really see Steve cutting a ribbon to open YPF, could you?

Ottawa to shift arts funds to Olympic programs

"More than $40-million in savings the federal government will reap from controversial cuts to arts and culture funding will be redirected to the Vancouver Olympic torch relay and two other programs, exacerbating fears that replacement initiatives are not in the cards."

Well thanks, G&M but Kady and Jennifer at Runesmith and Beijing York are already all over this.
Unlike Josee Verner who has been busy explaining the Cons had merely cancelled inefficient programs in order to replace them with better ones. Yeah but not arts programs though, huh, Josee?
OK, so what's this arts and culture funding laundered mainly into sports gonna look like then?

Ottawa aims to put its stamp on 2010 Games
Vancouver opening ceremony must help Harper government 'achieve its domestic and international branding goals,' memo says

"The Harper government says the 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony must reflect its agenda as the price of its $20-million commitment to the event, an internal government briefing memo [dated Feb 5 ] says.
"The Minister [Emerson] has recently confirmed with VANOC in writing that the Department of Canadian Heritage intends to invest $20-million toward the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games in order to ensure that the event adequately reflects the priorities of the Government and helps to achieve its domestic and international branding goals," the memo says.

Ensure...priorities of the Government?
Domestic and international branding goals?
Good lord, they're going to paint the town blue.

Toon and badly cobbled together post at Creekside.

Harper's war on culture - Con remix edition

Harper's box of hammers gets caught ...

1) Military historian and acclaimed film maker Gwynne Dyer is asked by Harper's government to go to Cuba in 2007 to give a lecture for $3000 in airfare and hotel expenses.

2) Unbeknownst to Dyer, DFAIT pays for his expenses out of ProMart grant funding.

3) When the Cons decide to axe ProMart, they use Dyer as a public example of what is wrong with the program, referring to him as :
"a left-wing columnist and author who has plenty of money to travel on his own," and
"not exactly the foot that most Canadians would want to see put forward."

Here is Gwynne Dyer's response :

"When the Canadian government announced it was shutting down the PromArt cultural diplomacy program, it named me as one of the free-loaders who abuse the grant system - in my case, by going off to Cuba to misrepresent true Canadian values. The Conservative talking points said I am "a left-wing columnist and author who has plenty of money to travel on his own," and your editorial The Arts Belong In Foreign Policy (Aug. 11) said "those grants never should have been approved, and the criteria should be tightened to prevent such abuses."

But, in fact, I was asked to go to Cuba in early 2007 by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Some embassies in Havana were bringing in experts to talk to groups of influential Cubans about how things work in free societies. Fidel Castro was on the way out, and the embassies were being creatively subversive. I talked about the media to young journalists, and about civil-military ties in a democracy to senior military people.

I didn't get paid for the work, but the Canadian embassy gave me $3,000 in cash to cover my travel costs. I never applied for a grant, and I never heard of PromArt until last week, but obviously some wily accountant at Foreign Affairs took the money for the Cuban project out of the wrong pocket. Stephen Harper's ministers just can't keep control of their departments."

Care to rewrite your bullshit editorial now, NaPo?

Jennifer at Runesmith has great background on the ProMart program and wonders who is going to get fired for fucking up the talking points this badly.

Accidental Deliberations points out that the Cons appear to see all public resources as slush funds.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Update : HA HA HA HA
Meanwhile the crack(ed) editorial team at Western Standard stakes out the high moral ground for the Cons, just in case, you know, they had misplaced it :

Conservatives abandon White Man’s Burden and end funding for cultural imperialism
"Artificially injecting our culture into another nation like an imperial poison? No way.
Using millions of dirty petro-dollars taken from Alberta to displace the indigenous culture of a struggling developing nation? No way.
That’s not Canada. That’s Amerika.
Didn’t our Prime Minister just apologise to Canada’s aboriginal community for an earlier version of a White Man’s Burden program called Residential Schools?"

stop...stop...I can't stand it...must breathe...oh noes, there's more...

"In my judgment, these programs come dangerously close to promoting cultural imperialism. It's a good thing the Conservatives canceled these programs before Canada’s international reputation was tarnished.
PMO staffer Kory Teneycke, a brilliant and principled newish addition to Harper’s team..."

.....make..it..stop...oh no.....I'm...melting.....

Steve and Kory and their box of hammers crowd

G&M : "Administered by the Department of Heritage, Trade Routes, valued at about $9-million annually, helps cultural groups such as Hot Docs and the Canadian Independent Record Production Association export and sell products abroad."

A program to promote Canadian culture abroad. The Cons have axed it, naturally, with KornKobKory muttering something about docs being "ideological" - Take that, Avi Lewis! - and thus saving every taxpayer less than .30¢!

Woo woo. .30¢ The Con base must be just ecstatic.
Let's have a quick look at the comments under that G&M article to see how they're doing ....

Bluer than You from Canada : "Exactly, we need a majority to re-educate these sinners. Just wait until the CPC has a majority and then we'll see some real fundamental changes...."

Bluer than You from Canada again : "We are embarking upon a new age....
A new crusade led by great men like George Bush and Stephen Harper. They share the same values and ideas with the majority of Canadians."

Bluer than You from Canada again again ! : "It's about time! I urge all readers to save yourselves and follow the real Conservative values, learn what you must do and thank S.Harper.
I urge you to view our site which has the support of many CPC politicians including S.Harper.
Hopefully he will begin funding our efforts as promised by the CPC.
http://www.familyaction.org/index.htm "

Family Action Coalition ? Our site? Oh. Wow. I. mean. just. lol.
Note to Bluer than You : Actually, Harper is kinda trying to keep any CPC association with anti-choice anti-gay anti-immigrant religious nutbar groups on the qt, otherwise he'll never get a shot at that moral majority of yours. Just sayin'.

Now I'm guessing that Blue just might be a satirical troll and is foolin with us.

Who else we got over there?

Green Konstantin from Canada : "When you lefty parasites scream and moan like this, it proves we're doing the right thing. Go soothe yourself with a nice round of gay sex with a piece of furniture or whatever you're into."

Tom Robinson from Not from muslim Toronto : "Real Canadians hate Toronto... How do you know that Native Canadians were not immmigrants at one time in this country. No-one knows for sure, so I could be right. How many muslims, asians, pakistanis, indians, or any other Torontonians serve in the military?"

Yup, that's them alright : Steve's box of hammers crowd - anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-FN, plus the obligatory reference to something or other military .... in a discussion about the arts.

Not exactly "happy as ..." though, are they?

Cross-posted at Creekside