Who hasn't uttered something untoward at some point? Something that, if the words are taken literally, contain an ominous meaning.
Balbulican raises a good point. Perhaps Flanagan was speaking in outrageous exaggeration.
But, I don't think so. Despite his scramble to retract his statement the following day, I believe that has more to do with external pressure more than his conscience. He certainly didn't explain himself thoroughly enough nor offer enough contrition to satisfy me. He attempted to pour too little water on a fire of his own making.
I've watched the CBC video several times. Flanagan's statement would indeed appear to be an outrage fueled outburst. At first.
He was offered an opportunity during that interview to quell things and leave the interview with his assassination call removed. He didn't do that, however. This academic, the supposed mentor of a younger generation, who knows the power of the word, declined the offer to mitigate his words and chose instead to reiterate his desire to "disappear" the subject of his now so-called joke.
On the other hand, I don't take anything Flanagan says too seriously. In the bazaars in which I travel he is considered not a joker, but a joke.
Post corrected to link to Balbulican.
A tail dragging romp through the swamps of the world
Showing posts with label flanagan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flanagan. Show all posts
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Diplomacy, or just diplomatic word-smithing?
Expanding on Boris' excellent post I would suggest readers take in the analysis of Wikileaks and the assessment of the moral standards of some of the critics by Glenn Greenwald. Yes, they're both long, but that's Glenn simply laying out a thoroughly compelling case.
It demonstrates that the likes of Tom Flanagan uttering calls for Julian Assange's assassination are not isolated. Further than that, Glenn guts the Flanagan camp with one stroke. Flanagan would like Assange assassinated for dumping so-called state secrets into the public square and putting some individuals at risk. Yet that same group does not apply the same standard to those who perpetrated an aggressive and unprovoked war, laying waste to an entire country and killing more than 100,000 innocent civilians.
What he demonstrates is that the real reason for the outrage being demonstrated by the Tom Flanagan/Joe Klein bunker is the exposure of their adherence to a particular and dangerous permutation of The Noble Lie. Through all the screaming and howling, if they turned their own standards on their own behaviour, they could expect, at the least, to be apprehended and face criminal prosecution.
The term "Diplomacy" is being used as a cover by the power holders. What we're seeing is what has always happened. Diplomacy is the art of negotiation between parties without an eruption of hostile reactions. It is always carried out with a view to gaining some advantage. A problem arises when the diplomacy involves something different than honest negotiations and frank but polite discussions with other parties.
The diplomatic word-smithing fed to public communications sources, when it is significantly different than the intentions and motivations of the negotiating body, is not diplomacy; it is spying and subterfuge.
To express shock at the existence of state sponsored spying and subterfuge is naive at best and dishonest at worst. Of course it happens. What's wrong with it is when those behaviours become the staple of a state's diplomacy and they are viewed as the only effective tools with which to achieve a strategic advantage. Honest brokering and democratic institutions are either sidelined or become nothing more than a front for behaviour which, if exposed, would be considered abhorrent.
That's what has happened here. The problem is, if you're going to engage in that form of activity, you'd better find a way of keeping it out of the light. Securing that information is critical because exposure means that the supposed democracy (in this case the U.S.) will be exposed as nothing but a small, powerful group of elites engaged in theatrics staged to keep the masses sufficiently mollified.
It's not like we haven't already leveled such accusations in the past. The only difference now is that we have an unbelievable amount of proof. We always knew that the U.S. permanent government (and plenty of others) were dishonest. However, it took great pains to dig into the truth and put it into the public square, and without substantiating evidence those who voiced suspicion were dismissed by the powerful and "serious" people as conspiracy nuts.
Although not exclusively unique, the contents of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate Conspiracy were watershed events which exposed the extent of lying to which the powerful go to mislead populations and criminally destroy others in the name of some Big Picture which we plebes were just too unsophisticated to understand. In fact, they were criminal conspiracies perpetrated by those who feared losing the comfort of their power and wealth.
The Wikileaks acquisition of secret documents was inevitable for a variety of reasons. Just describing a few of them is all it takes to understand that inevitability.
As Boris described, the days of spy vs spy are very different from the conditions of three decades ago, and the oligarchy and political power elite have only themselves to blame for that. The advent of the giant library known as the internet has put vast amounts of information in the hands of common people, many of whom, three decades ago, might not have been able to afford a full volume set of printed encyclopedias. The information explosion is a side effect of another dramatic shift - economic and industrial globalization. As the rapid exchange of information and industrial connectivity has eroded national borders, culture and tradition, and has (at times criminally) exploited cheap labour markets, it also created a common portal through which information could flow to the masses. And the power elite could not have one without the other. In their hubris, however, they failed to properly evaluate the level of sophistication combined with the cynicism of the masses. While they sold us "globalization" as inevitable, so too was the ability of like minded people and groups to exchange information and ideas. It was inevitable that the very technologies they marketed to the common citizen would be used to infiltrate the secrets of the power elite.
Secrets are only secrets if nobody else knows about them. An old adage exists from days past: Once you share a secret, it's no longer a secret. Slapping a security classification on a document is all well and good, however, if you then distribute that classified document to thousands or millions of pairs of eyes, somewhere, somehow, a copy of that document will end up in a place you did not intend. This is hardly new. From the first time I was involved in classified material there was always a serious concern for the physical security and distribution of anything classified. The "need-to-know" is not some Ian Fleming invention. It is absolutely real and it means seriously limiting access to sensitive material. To "shotgun" distribution of something stamped SECRET was to immediately dilute the security classification. It meant too many people were seeing it and the risk of a physical breach increased.
The problem with limiting distribution of course, is that those in high office are unable to delegate work arising from highly classified information. If spying and subterfuge form the basis for a large amount of the information flow then, particularly in the case of a military super-power, it becomes impossible for the limited number of high-office holders to deal with. That means employing staff and that means extending the distribution of that information to a wider body. That means either declassifying information before delegating it or, as is the case in the U.S., extend security clearances to the wider group. That has the effect of diluting security clearances. Now huge numbers of people have access to things classified. It stands to reason that within that large body there will eventually develop a problem. The only way to contain the effects of the problems that develop within a large group of security cleared people with access is to create a dedicated watcher organization which in turn has access to the same classified material. Just try to keep a secret in that kind of world, especially one in which the "need-to-know" extends to file clerks and security guards.
Another thing which made the leak of information inevitable was and is the over-classification of information. As far back as the 1960s there was a noticeable change in the way the U.S. military classified their information. Where Canada, Britain and the U.S. were pretty much on the same page as to what did and what did not receive a high security classification, the U.S. started a process which can only be called "classification creep". Subjects which had been classified at a lower level started to inflate their way into a higher classification. This triggered an increase in the amount of information with a high security classification - some of it legitimately so; some of it not. Once again, this increased the need to have a wider body of people to process and manage the information thus increasing the security clearances issued to a wide array of workers. Think about it: you work at a job all day where everything passing in front of your eyes is classified at a minimum SECRET, and most of it mundane. Eventually, complacency takes over.
That's just a touch. The diplomatic pouch has been replaced by instant communications relay over global networks arriving on the monitors of hundreds of thousands of people.** To believe that such a traffic flow of information bearing inflated security classifications could be kept secure is somewhat delusional.
And so is calling for the assassination of the person who demonstrated how weak the system is, from the type of information being sent in such volume, to the ability to gather and dump it, to the exclusionary yet casual dialog of those who speak with two tongues.
** Added: That is not to say that diplomatic information hasn't been passed electronically for many decades. It has. But 60 and 100 words-per-minute teletype machines and their associated cryptosystems had much stronger limits than the way information flows today. And they had their own problems. ( In June of 1979 the Russians were breaking the KL-47, KL-11, KW-26, Adonis, KW7, KY-8, KG-14, KY-36 systems "with no problems".)
It demonstrates that the likes of Tom Flanagan uttering calls for Julian Assange's assassination are not isolated. Further than that, Glenn guts the Flanagan camp with one stroke. Flanagan would like Assange assassinated for dumping so-called state secrets into the public square and putting some individuals at risk. Yet that same group does not apply the same standard to those who perpetrated an aggressive and unprovoked war, laying waste to an entire country and killing more than 100,000 innocent civilians.
What he demonstrates is that the real reason for the outrage being demonstrated by the Tom Flanagan/Joe Klein bunker is the exposure of their adherence to a particular and dangerous permutation of The Noble Lie. Through all the screaming and howling, if they turned their own standards on their own behaviour, they could expect, at the least, to be apprehended and face criminal prosecution.
The term "Diplomacy" is being used as a cover by the power holders. What we're seeing is what has always happened. Diplomacy is the art of negotiation between parties without an eruption of hostile reactions. It is always carried out with a view to gaining some advantage. A problem arises when the diplomacy involves something different than honest negotiations and frank but polite discussions with other parties.
The diplomatic word-smithing fed to public communications sources, when it is significantly different than the intentions and motivations of the negotiating body, is not diplomacy; it is spying and subterfuge.
To express shock at the existence of state sponsored spying and subterfuge is naive at best and dishonest at worst. Of course it happens. What's wrong with it is when those behaviours become the staple of a state's diplomacy and they are viewed as the only effective tools with which to achieve a strategic advantage. Honest brokering and democratic institutions are either sidelined or become nothing more than a front for behaviour which, if exposed, would be considered abhorrent.
That's what has happened here. The problem is, if you're going to engage in that form of activity, you'd better find a way of keeping it out of the light. Securing that information is critical because exposure means that the supposed democracy (in this case the U.S.) will be exposed as nothing but a small, powerful group of elites engaged in theatrics staged to keep the masses sufficiently mollified.
It's not like we haven't already leveled such accusations in the past. The only difference now is that we have an unbelievable amount of proof. We always knew that the U.S. permanent government (and plenty of others) were dishonest. However, it took great pains to dig into the truth and put it into the public square, and without substantiating evidence those who voiced suspicion were dismissed by the powerful and "serious" people as conspiracy nuts.
Although not exclusively unique, the contents of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate Conspiracy were watershed events which exposed the extent of lying to which the powerful go to mislead populations and criminally destroy others in the name of some Big Picture which we plebes were just too unsophisticated to understand. In fact, they were criminal conspiracies perpetrated by those who feared losing the comfort of their power and wealth.
The Wikileaks acquisition of secret documents was inevitable for a variety of reasons. Just describing a few of them is all it takes to understand that inevitability.
As Boris described, the days of spy vs spy are very different from the conditions of three decades ago, and the oligarchy and political power elite have only themselves to blame for that. The advent of the giant library known as the internet has put vast amounts of information in the hands of common people, many of whom, three decades ago, might not have been able to afford a full volume set of printed encyclopedias. The information explosion is a side effect of another dramatic shift - economic and industrial globalization. As the rapid exchange of information and industrial connectivity has eroded national borders, culture and tradition, and has (at times criminally) exploited cheap labour markets, it also created a common portal through which information could flow to the masses. And the power elite could not have one without the other. In their hubris, however, they failed to properly evaluate the level of sophistication combined with the cynicism of the masses. While they sold us "globalization" as inevitable, so too was the ability of like minded people and groups to exchange information and ideas. It was inevitable that the very technologies they marketed to the common citizen would be used to infiltrate the secrets of the power elite.
Secrets are only secrets if nobody else knows about them. An old adage exists from days past: Once you share a secret, it's no longer a secret. Slapping a security classification on a document is all well and good, however, if you then distribute that classified document to thousands or millions of pairs of eyes, somewhere, somehow, a copy of that document will end up in a place you did not intend. This is hardly new. From the first time I was involved in classified material there was always a serious concern for the physical security and distribution of anything classified. The "need-to-know" is not some Ian Fleming invention. It is absolutely real and it means seriously limiting access to sensitive material. To "shotgun" distribution of something stamped SECRET was to immediately dilute the security classification. It meant too many people were seeing it and the risk of a physical breach increased.
The problem with limiting distribution of course, is that those in high office are unable to delegate work arising from highly classified information. If spying and subterfuge form the basis for a large amount of the information flow then, particularly in the case of a military super-power, it becomes impossible for the limited number of high-office holders to deal with. That means employing staff and that means extending the distribution of that information to a wider body. That means either declassifying information before delegating it or, as is the case in the U.S., extend security clearances to the wider group. That has the effect of diluting security clearances. Now huge numbers of people have access to things classified. It stands to reason that within that large body there will eventually develop a problem. The only way to contain the effects of the problems that develop within a large group of security cleared people with access is to create a dedicated watcher organization which in turn has access to the same classified material. Just try to keep a secret in that kind of world, especially one in which the "need-to-know" extends to file clerks and security guards.
Another thing which made the leak of information inevitable was and is the over-classification of information. As far back as the 1960s there was a noticeable change in the way the U.S. military classified their information. Where Canada, Britain and the U.S. were pretty much on the same page as to what did and what did not receive a high security classification, the U.S. started a process which can only be called "classification creep". Subjects which had been classified at a lower level started to inflate their way into a higher classification. This triggered an increase in the amount of information with a high security classification - some of it legitimately so; some of it not. Once again, this increased the need to have a wider body of people to process and manage the information thus increasing the security clearances issued to a wide array of workers. Think about it: you work at a job all day where everything passing in front of your eyes is classified at a minimum SECRET, and most of it mundane. Eventually, complacency takes over.
That's just a touch. The diplomatic pouch has been replaced by instant communications relay over global networks arriving on the monitors of hundreds of thousands of people.** To believe that such a traffic flow of information bearing inflated security classifications could be kept secure is somewhat delusional.
And so is calling for the assassination of the person who demonstrated how weak the system is, from the type of information being sent in such volume, to the ability to gather and dump it, to the exclusionary yet casual dialog of those who speak with two tongues.
** Added: That is not to say that diplomatic information hasn't been passed electronically for many decades. It has. But 60 and 100 words-per-minute teletype machines and their associated cryptosystems had much stronger limits than the way information flows today. And they had their own problems. ( In June of 1979 the Russians were breaking the KL-47, KL-11, KW-26, Adonis, KW7, KY-8, KG-14, KY-36 systems "with no problems".)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Who's the carpetbagger?
Given the latest batch of attack ads approved by the senior members of the Prime Minister's Office, one would wonder why, given the thrust of those ads, they allow one of their own, a born and raised American, to meander unfettered through the op-ed pages of Canadian newspapers depositing easily refutable bovine scat.
Tom Flanagan, Harper confidant, unrepentant aboriginal assimilationist and cheerleader of a free-market system from which he has remained insulated by lodging himself in academic institutions throughout his adult life comes out with another whopper of Reform Party bile.
Flanagan, the neo-human-rights activist*, suggests the solution to irrational prejudice and discrimination is to let the free-market sort it out. This, he opines, is much better than human rights commissions and tribunals which he describes as suffering from "blowback".
Both federal and provincial commissions are suffering blowback from their unsuccessful attempts to muzzle media gadflies Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant.Excuse me, but that is not what happened. The federal and provincial human rights tribunals rejected the attempt to muzzle by claimants. For a much more accurate and truthful picture of things, you must go here.
And the free-market observer's solution to the falsehood he initially presents?
There is discrimination in the private sector, but it is self-liquidating over time because of the costs it imposes on discriminators. Governmental discrimination, in contrast, perpetuates itself because it is backed by state coercion.Very cute. Except that the examples of private sector discrimination he provides took government intervention to eliminate. Normally, a larger government imposing rule over a smaller one and the greater whole (nation) exposing the regional discriminatory behaviour of a smaller constituency (state or province). The free market does little to sort itself out if it can get away with a discriminatory behaviour and still turn a profit. And Flanagan, in the examples he provides, fails to acknowledge that the free-marketeers' discriminatory behaviour of the past, (which had to be beaten out of them with legislation), was rooted in practices which, once made illegal, chewed into their bottom-line: African slavery in the U.S. and imported cheap oriental labour in Canada. Once the free-marketeers were denied access to those free and cheap pools of labour they treated those they could no longer indenture as a pestilence to be eradicated.
Flanagan knows this, lest he has forgotten some of his own written works.
The point here, however, is to shine a little light on the hypocrisy. As the frat boys in the PM's office bounce around like a bunch of primates at the San Diego Zoo flinging feces at anything that presents the slightest threat to their comfort and weak grip on power, they have among them a worse example than their current target, Michael Ignatieff.
They have Tom Flanagan and he can't seem to shut up.
Flanagan's public biography is short and lacking any substantial detail. Whether this is deliberate or not on Flanagan's part it fits with the model assumed by both Canadian reform-conservatives and US movement-conservatives. While Flanagan may have no particular reason, his fellow travellers do: they would have you believe they have always been great men destined for positions of power. They would like less of their past revealed because it would underscore parts of their lives which would ring negative in a world of valence politics.
The truth is, Flanagan's personal history weaves through a significant era of US and Canadian politics and his positioning in academic institutions on either side of the Canada-US border at particular times tells a story in itself.
Flanagan was raised in Illinois in a politically conservative upper-middle class family. As he was coming out of high-school the US was entering a phase of its existence which can only be described as tumultuous. Flanagan would have been subject to the US Selective Service System after his 18th birthday. Except that, like Dick Cheney, neither volunteering for US military service nor being available for conscripted duty was in Flanagan's cards.
As US involvement in Viet Nam expanded and the US Army started demanding more troops, the young men of the priviledged conservative white community found ways to avoid military service altogether. Educational deferments bought a minimum of 4 years of time - if one's parents could afford to keep their progeny in college, and Flanagan was a product of the social and economic caste that flocked to the universities as a means to avoid donning a uniform.
As the US draft cycled up and Viet Nam became the war of the less priviledged, Selective Service regulations were changing. As Flanagan's educational deferment would have expired his recent marriage would have made that deferment permanent, until Lyndon Johnson issued an Executive Order rescinding exemptions for married men.
And then, if the stories are to be believed, another American, E. Burke Inlow, recruited Flanagan to the University of Calgary. And then Flanagan, a year after the draft age in the US was expanded to include married males to age 35, was on the other side of the US border.
When Flanagan came to Canada he admits to knowing nothing of the place. Yet here he was, just as the Viet Nam war was at full heat, the same place US draft-dodgers and deserters found safe haven.
Coincidence?
It depends on whether you believe in coincidences.
And now he is manipulating our politics. An American conservative who imported his political beliefs and training.
And the shit-flinging primates in Harper's office have the unmitigated gall to call any other person a carpet-bagger.
* Sarcasm, for those who didn't catch it.
Monday, March 03, 2008
A wide variety of "No comments".
by Alison
from the scandal we wish everyone would quit calling "Cadscam" :
On Wednesday Harper's office released a statement : "The then-leader of the Opposition [Harper] looked into the matter with party officials and could find no confirmation."
"I'm not involved in politics anymore,"said Mr. Reynolds. "I have no comment at all."
Later Reynolds remarked to CBC : "the story seems fishy." and "Sounds to me like some kind of fiction story."
OK then, anyone else?
"Ryan Sparrow, a Conservative party spokesman, refused to comment on the allegations."
"Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said he's never heard anything about any buyout. "I've never even spoken with Chuck Cadman," he said."
"Jay Hill, now the Conservative government whip and Opposition whip at the time of the vote in question, told NaPo he had never heard of the events," which he also characterized later as a case of "unfortunate miscommunication" and "a so-called make-believe fairy-tale scandal."
Con MP and Treasury Board chairman Vic Toews : "He [Cadman] cared about legislation not money. We've heard this story for years. It's bullshit."
from the scandal we wish everyone would quit calling "Cadscam" :
On Wednesday Harper's office released a statement : "The then-leader of the Opposition [Harper] looked into the matter with party officials and could find no confirmation."
You will recall that former Con MP John Reynolds, who was also Harper's campaign manager, facilitated the meeting at which Finlay and Flanagan are alleged to have offered the $1M bribe to the late Chuck Cadman.
Asked about the incident, former Conservative MP John Reynolds told Canwest News Service he did not wish to comment."I'm not involved in politics anymore,"said Mr. Reynolds. "I have no comment at all."
Later Reynolds remarked to CBC : "the story seems fishy." and "Sounds to me like some kind of fiction story."
OK then, anyone else?
"Ryan Sparrow, a Conservative party spokesman, refused to comment on the allegations."
"Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said he's never heard anything about any buyout. "I've never even spoken with Chuck Cadman," he said."
"Jay Hill, now the Conservative government whip and Opposition whip at the time of the vote in question, told NaPo he had never heard of the events," which he also characterized later as a case of "unfortunate miscommunication" and "a so-called make-believe fairy-tale scandal."
Con MP and Treasury Board chairman Vic Toews : "He [Cadman] cared about legislation not money. We've heard this story for years. It's bullshit."
Defence Minister Peter MacKay was deputy Con leader at the time of the alleged offer : "I don't know anything about how this has come about. Certainly it was something that I was not involved with,'' said MacKay, "I think it's sad, quite frankly, that this seems to have come up. It's very unfortunate.''
Ok, so it didn't happen but if it did, it isn't true. Got it.
Monday, January 07, 2008
We're just not that into you.
Ipsos Reid : "In four polls in November, 43% of men said they would vote for the Conservatives, compared with only 28% of women.
"There really seems to be a very strong gender effect in Conservative voting," said Ipsos Reid president Darrell Bricker."
Well, duh, Darrell.
In fact compared to a number of polls over the previous year, like this one from Strategic Council in July, 28% actually represents a highwater mark for the Cons with women, who more usually only give them around 24% to 26% approval.
From this latest Ipsos Reid poll for CanWest :
Women's priorities : Environment 29%, Healthcare 27%, with Education and Poverty placing 3rd and 4th.
Men's priorities : Environment 28%, Healthcare 18%, and the Economy and Military Defence in 3rd and 4th place.
Darrell explains this divergent disparity in gender priorities :
Happily Harper's old eminence grease, Tom Flanagan, is on hand to explain why women's votes don't count if you're a Con : "Why are women's votes so uniquely important? Each vote counts one," he said in an email.
Yes! Someone put this old Milton Friedman fan back in charge of the Cons' electoral fortunes, because I can't think of a better strategy for going down in fucking flames than going into an election with a firm grip on the idea that the concerns of 52% of the electorate don't matter a damn.
Cross-posted at Creekside
"There really seems to be a very strong gender effect in Conservative voting," said Ipsos Reid president Darrell Bricker."
Well, duh, Darrell.
In fact compared to a number of polls over the previous year, like this one from Strategic Council in July, 28% actually represents a highwater mark for the Cons with women, who more usually only give them around 24% to 26% approval.
From this latest Ipsos Reid poll for CanWest :
Women's priorities : Environment 29%, Healthcare 27%, with Education and Poverty placing 3rd and 4th.
Men's priorities : Environment 28%, Healthcare 18%, and the Economy and Military Defence in 3rd and 4th place.
Darrell explains this divergent disparity in gender priorities :
"Women tend to not to be as interested in the big-P political-power issues. For them politics isn't necessarily about the cut and thrust of party politics or big-dollar economics or relationships among states," said Bricker. "They tend to be focused more locally; they tend to be more interested in things that affect them and their families."Apparently we're just too dumb to properly appreciate the greater importance of all that "cutting and thrusting" stuff.
Happily Harper's old eminence grease, Tom Flanagan, is on hand to explain why women's votes don't count if you're a Con : "Why are women's votes so uniquely important? Each vote counts one," he said in an email.
Yes! Someone put this old Milton Friedman fan back in charge of the Cons' electoral fortunes, because I can't think of a better strategy for going down in fucking flames than going into an election with a firm grip on the idea that the concerns of 52% of the electorate don't matter a damn.
Cross-posted at Creekside
Monday, September 24, 2007
SPP : Tom Flanagan vs Naomi Klein
Tom Flanagan, US poli-sci prof at the University of Calgary; Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute; and all-round 'eminence grease' to Stephen Harper, this Tom Flanagan, writes in Saturday's G&M :
Flanagan too has a book out : Harper's Team : Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power.
I'm guessing it isn't going to be "behind the scenes" enough for us though, so I thought we'd have a look at a 2003 policy paper from the Fraser Institute, the think tank where Flanagan is a Senior Fellow.
All the following are direct quotes from the first five pages :
Mandate for Leadership for the New Prime Minister
Bank of Canada : Create a currency union modeled after the European Monetary Union through agreement with the United States and Mexico.
Exchange Rates : Remove the Bank of Canada’s power to set interest rates and leave as its main responsibility the convertibility of Canadian into US dollars at par.
Environment : Withdraw from Kyoto protocol
Labour : Increase flexibility in labour market by, for example, introducing worker choice legislation for those covered by federal labour laws.
Int Trade & Foreign Aid : Remove Canadian regulations that restrict free trade (unilaterally if necessary), such as the Wheat Board.
Health : Repeal or change the Canada Health Act to remove limits on provincial autonomy over health care, as recognized by the constitution. Allow competition in health-care delivery, including, private insurance, for-profit and non-profit hospitals, and private surgery and other treatment facilities.
Defence : Work for inter-operability with NATO and US for air, naval and ground forces.
Judiciary : Abolish the Court Challenges Program to discourage special interest groups from bypassing the political process to obtain special privileges.
Aboriginal Policies : Restructure aboriginal policy to empower the individual, not band elites.
And skipping down a bit :
From Flanagan and the Fraser Institute's lips to Harper's ear.
And he who has the ear of the king is more important than the king, yadda, yadda.
Actually the above disaster capitalism wish list is so complete a description of Harper's SPP policies, I'm somewhat disappointed to find no mention in it anywhere of the infamous jelly beans.
Cross-posted at Creekside
"In times of perceived crisis, a conservative party can win by positioning itself further to the right, as shown by the victories of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris, and Gordon Campbell."G&M, Saturday Sept 8 :
"In Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine : The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, she argues that an idea that began with Chicago School economist Milton Friedman has determined much of the course of recent history – that a time of crisis, whether a war or a hurricane, offers a strategic opportunity to overwrite the resulting “blank slate” with market privatization and corporatism."She also argues that such a crisis can be a man-made destabilization of public infrastructure.
Flanagan too has a book out : Harper's Team : Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power.
I'm guessing it isn't going to be "behind the scenes" enough for us though, so I thought we'd have a look at a 2003 policy paper from the Fraser Institute, the think tank where Flanagan is a Senior Fellow.
All the following are direct quotes from the first five pages :
Mandate for Leadership for the New Prime Minister
Bank of Canada : Create a currency union modeled after the European Monetary Union through agreement with the United States and Mexico.
Exchange Rates : Remove the Bank of Canada’s power to set interest rates and leave as its main responsibility the convertibility of Canadian into US dollars at par.
Environment : Withdraw from Kyoto protocol
Labour : Increase flexibility in labour market by, for example, introducing worker choice legislation for those covered by federal labour laws.
Int Trade & Foreign Aid : Remove Canadian regulations that restrict free trade (unilaterally if necessary), such as the Wheat Board.
Health : Repeal or change the Canada Health Act to remove limits on provincial autonomy over health care, as recognized by the constitution. Allow competition in health-care delivery, including, private insurance, for-profit and non-profit hospitals, and private surgery and other treatment facilities.
Defence : Work for inter-operability with NATO and US for air, naval and ground forces.
Judiciary : Abolish the Court Challenges Program to discourage special interest groups from bypassing the political process to obtain special privileges.
Aboriginal Policies : Restructure aboriginal policy to empower the individual, not band elites.
And skipping down a bit :
Gosh, those all seem so familiar to us now, don't they?"When Canada did not agree to take part in the US ballistic missile defence (BMD) program, the US worked around it, locating the necessary radars in Alaska and Greenland. Space-based assets have made Canada’s geographic position less important than that of Poland or Rumania.
All of these issues (and there are many others) must be addressed in the very near future. They all point in the same direction: Canada can preserve its sovereignty and its prosperity only by a closer relationship, particularly in military and security policy, with the United States."
From Flanagan and the Fraser Institute's lips to Harper's ear.
And he who has the ear of the king is more important than the king, yadda, yadda.
Actually the above disaster capitalism wish list is so complete a description of Harper's SPP policies, I'm somewhat disappointed to find no mention in it anywhere of the infamous jelly beans.
Cross-posted at Creekside
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