Harper is Genuinely Afraid – Of Us

Stephen Harper doesn’t like the people of Canada. No, really, he doesn’t. Just look at how he mocked the Canadian people – you and me – for the sport of his elite American friends in the ultra-secret, uber-right Council for National Policy when he was honoured with an invitation to address them in Montreal a decade ago.

“It may not be true but it’s legendary that if you’re like all Americans you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians.”

“The NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the lives of men. Some people point out that there is a small element of clergy in the NDP. Yes, this is true. But these are clergy who, while very committed to the church, believe that it made a historic error in adopting Christian theology.”

“Before the Reform Party really became a force in the late ’80s, early ’90s, the leadership of the Conservative party was running the largest deficits in Canadian history. They were in favour of gay rights, officially – officially in favour of abortion on demand. Officially – what else can I say about them? Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized health care system and multicultural policies in the constitution of this country.”

But, jesting or not, Harper’s plainly stated contempt of the Canadian people – you and me – has morphed (as it was bound to) into fear now that he heads a minority government that keeps bashing into the wall of his decidedly un-Canadian dogma.

Fear? Of course. The proof lies in the information lock-down imposed by our Furious Leader on departments in the spotlight such as the Department of National Defence and Environment Canada.

Prime minister Lardo is petrified that someone in those departments might inadvertently blurt out – the truth – and make him look bad. Can’t be having that because the truth doesn’t match the message. The more you know, the less believable Harpo and his policies become.

It’s gotten to the point where even the KanWest gang has had its fill of our Furious Leader’s antics. From the National Spot:

Robert Marleau, the information commissioner of Canada, says that contrary to Mr. Harper’s election pledge to make transparency a hallmark of his administration, a “fog over information” has crept across the government’s activities.

Marleau said complaints to the commissioner’s office about lack of access to government information have doubled in the past year.

The Access to Information Act seems like the only way for MPs, interest groups, journalists and others to get government information, Mr. Marleau said in an interview.

Donald Savoie, a New Brunswick academic who has documented the trend toward “governing from the centre,” says the Mr. Harper team’s penchant for below-the-radar policy making is risky.

Mr. Savoie says Canadians should take Mr. Harper’s [transparency pledge] with a grain of salt.

“I don’t think we’ll ever have an open, transparent government as long as we have a minority government,” he said. “There is a lack of confidence or insecurity because they don’t know where the landmine is going to come from, and when it’s going to blow up. So, they try to control it.”

 

America’s Media – Still Cheney’s Lapdog

The past six years have been perhaps the darkest in the history of American journalism. Time and again the networks and print jockeys have fallen on bended knee, opened wide and swallowed whatever incredulous bucket of swill was chucked their way. Some have been gullible, some stupid, some cowed into unquestioning servitude, some have just been well-rewarded collaborators.

There was reason to hope that, after the Iraq WMD scam, the American media would find their feet again and stand up. Forget it.

Historian and US national security policy analyst Gareth Porter, writing for Inter Press Service, reveals how the media were all too willing dupes for a planted story about Iranian threats in the Persian Gulf:

Senior Pentagon officials, evidently reflecting a broader administration policy decision, used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the January 6 US-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story demonstrating Iran’s military aggressiveness, a reconstruction of the events following the incident shows.

The initial press stories on the incident, all of which can be traced to a briefing by deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in charge of media operations, Bryan Whitman, contained similar information that has since been repudiated by the navy itself.

Then the navy disseminated a short video into which was spliced the audio of a phone call warning that US warships would “explode” in “a few seconds”. Although it was ostensibly a navy production, Inter Press Service (IPS) has learned that the ultimate decision on its content was made by top officials of the Defense Department.

The encounter between five small and apparently unarmed speedboats, each carrying a crew of two to four men, and the three US warships occurred very early on Saturday January 6, Washington time. No information was released to the public about the incident for more than 24 hours, indicating that it was not viewed initially as being very urgent.

The reason for that absence of public information on the incident for more than a full day is that it was not that different from many others in the Gulf over more than a decade. A Pentagon consultant who asked not to be identified told IPS he had spoken with officers who had experienced similar encounters with small Iranian boats throughout the 1990s, and that such incidents are “just not a major threat to the US Navy by any stretch of the imagination.”

By January 11, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell was already disavowing the story that Whitman had been instrumental in creating only four days earlier. “No one in the military has said that the transmission emanated from those boats,” said Morrell.

The other elements of the story given to Pentagon correspondents were also discredited. The commanding officer of the guided missile cruiser Port Royal, Captain David Adler, dismissed the Pentagon’s story that he had felt threatened by the dropping of white boxes in the water. Meeting with reporters on Monday, Adler said, “I saw them float by. They didn’t look threatening to me.”

The naval commanders seemed most determined, however, to scotch the idea that they had been close to firing on the Iranians. Cosgriff, the commander of the Fifth Fleet, denied the story in a press briefing on January 7. A week later, Commander Jeffery James, commander of the destroyer Hopper, told reporters that the Iranians had moved away “before we got to the point where we needed to open fire”.

By any measure it’s not sage these days to take much of what comes out of the American media, or their like-minded allies here in Canada, at face value. They’ve simply allowed themselves – whether out of fear or gullibility, coercion or reward – to become full-fledged partners in a massive and powerful propaganda machine.