CON omertà

kirbycairo's definitive post about the Flanagan plummet cuts through the superfluous noise about "moral panic".  

At the heart of Flanagan's discourse was the legal question of the efficacy, expedience, and import of prosecuting people who consume illegal material verses those who are actually involved in the production of illegality. It is not unlike the question of dealing with those who consume an illegal product like, say, heroin versus dealing with those who produce it and distribute it. Now, no matter how sensitive an issue is one might need to address this basic legal question, particularly in circumstances of limited legal resources. But it would be impossible for someone as glib and impertinent as Flanagan to actually discuss such an issue. Rather, Flanagan always has a knee-jerk, extremist reaction to any issue. Flanagan never actually wants to discuss an issue, rather he just wants to pontificate as loud as he can to anyone who will listen.

In other words Flanagan doesn't know when to properly tailor his discourse or just keep his mouth shut. And in the end this is why Flanagan split with Harper. If Harper learned anything during his time in public life it is to say as little as possible and even if one has controversial (some might say offensive) opinions, keep them on the DL. And this is why Harper has always jettisoned political allies who he can't control, and also why his government is a grand exercise in keeping everyone around him quiet. And even those close to Harper who are regularly in the media spotlight are continually coached and controlled concerning government message.

Flanagan fell from grace because he is a man full of deeply offensive opinions who is convinced he is a scholar and a genius. It was inevitable that he would shoot his mouth off in a way that would undermine any authority he may have had. Other Harper allies like Brazeau and Duffy are similarly obsessed with their own perceived wisdom and authority. Meanwhile, other allies are just headed to jail.

Dissecting what happened to a man that the CPC and its numerous wingnut-welfare-funded mouthpieces - the Manning Centre for example - once described as "a major intellectual figure in conservative circles", the blogpost zeroes in on the operating mode of Harper's party and his government.

We have written much here at DJ! about the MASSIVE publicly-funded millions Harper has invested in the daily production of Con spin and propaganda, to portray himself and his oligarchy in the most media-savvy frame of reference.  We've dubbed his PMO the Politburo.  Interestingly enough, many CPC websites have been scoured clean of texts and photos that involve Flanagan.

Our Twitter buddy Fuzzy Wuzzy responds to a videorecording of the basic neo-conservative approach to interacting with the media with a different version of its rightwing omerta.  Hilarious!

First, from Alheli Picazo - a literal observance of "no comment": 

Then:

Duckette later said that he had been instructed by the office of Alberta Premier Stelmach not to make any comments. 

So. It's not only scientists that are muzzled by Cons.

Pity poor Tom Flanagan.

Had his verbal faux-pas occurred at any other conjuncture of the Harper dictatorship, a hastily-assembled crew of communications serfs would have nimbly cleaned up his mess.

But the CPC propaganda machine has been woefully stressed to the cracking point recently, and so Flanagan was unceremoniously jettisoned.

The first sign that his party had dumped him was a tweet from the PMO's Andrew MacDougall.

It was eventually followed by another tweet, this one quite terse, from Stephen Taylor stating that Flanagan had been dropped from the Manning Networking Conference's line-up of speakers at the annual media-savvy shin-dig.

This is not the first time the man described, by the forementioned Manning Institute as "a major intellectual figure in conservative circles", has opined with regard to the depiction of "child p0rn".

From Michael Harris' excellent piece at iPolitics:

In a bizarre exchange with a student caught on video, Flanagan said that he didn’t think people should go to jail for possessing child pornography.[...]

“A lot of people on my side of the spectrum, the conservative side of the spectrum, are on a kind of jihad against child pornography. I certainly have no sympathy for child molesters, but I do have some grave doubts about putting people in jail because of their taste in pictures.[...]

The student who confronted Flanagan also made reference to a quote attributed to Canada’s answer to Karl Rove when the Manitoba government was hurrying through tough new legislation on child pornography. At the time, Flanagan suggested the whole subject was debatable: “What’s wrong with pornography in the sense that it’s just pictures?”

As my co-blogger and virtual roomie fern hill pointed out, Flanagan's fall from the heights of Con cronyism happened as the result of sustained Idle No More vigilance, with respect to issues and concerns important to First Nations, Indigenous, Métis and Innu peoples.

The tweetstorm in response to Flanagan's insouciance has been informative. This article reinforces Harris' point about the criminality and the organized child exploitation required to produce this material.

Will the stench of the Flanagan scandal trail the MNC events next week?  For good measure, we should keep up the pressure and investigate what dodgy, hypocritical, fraudulent and possibly criminal elements the other Con speakers bring to the table.

Update: Apparently Flanagan has become a liability to the University of Calgary, too.

With so many scandals exposed, the CPC is vulnerable, and its propaganda machine's capacities stretched to the limit.  Otherwise, it would have found a way to sweep his comments under the carpet, likely by attacking the First Nations videographer who posted the damning YouTube interview, but instead they hung him out to dry.

Like vultures or hyenas, Harper's conservatives have turned on a pack member who exposed an individual weakness, for fear his action could make the whole group vulnerable to its *natural* enemies.

Stinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy

It was in late May of 2011, at an event organized by the Ottawa Citizen, that I first saw Stephen Taylor in person.

I'd heard about him and even written about him; he was the self-aggrandizing co-founder of an aggregator that gathered a shrieking blob of venomously partisan, unabashedly venal and obdurately ill-informed bloggers under the deceptively benign label "Blogging Tories".  Taylor was also a beneficiary of wingnut welfare, in the guise of funding that allowed him to attend the Manning Institute for the Suppression Study of Democracy.

Fresh from feasting upon the remains of a recent kill, Taylor preened and posed in the manner of a political operative, an up-and-coming jackal rising to the top of his pack.

Ensconced in the comfortable appointment that CPC patronage bestowed upon him, he glistened from all the admiring licks that sycophants administered.

He blocked me on Twitter months ago; I can only catch glimpses of his malevolence when he interacts with accounts that I follow.

I've recently captured some of his disingenuous and mean-spirited utterances which are representative of the quotidian meretriciousness from religious fundamentalists, neocon dissemblers and unreformed reformers that scurry about and jostle for advancement within the ranks of the CPC.

Hyena snarls and furtive nips are delivered to those identified by the former Canadian Reform Alliance Party as unlikely to vote for them.

Such target - young, educated, female, muslim - provides easy trolling opportunities for one of PMSHithead's Politburo Attack Parrots. Remember, Taylor openly dismissed Irwin Cotler's concerns and those of the LPC when a CON polling company tried to plant rumours that he was resigning his seat.

When those tactics were exposed, Taylor had no smug response to offer.

Added: Unbelievably, Rob Anders woke up and spoke; his CONspiracy accusations temporarily eclipsed Taylor's odiousness.

Despite the Manning Centre's Wishful Thinking. . .

Canada is pro-choice and socially liberal.

And a new poll demonstrates it again.

According to an EKOS survey provided exclusively to The Globe, 52 per cent of Canadians describe themselves as “pro-choice;” 27 per cent say they are “pro-life;” 10 per cent chose “neither” and 11 per cent opted for “do not know or no response.”

The long-dormant abortion issue popped up earlier this year after the government announced that maternal health in the developing world would be a key priority for the G8 meetings hosted by Canada this year. This week U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton challenged the Conservative government’s view that such an agenda could be addressed without including abortion as part of the options for women.

EKOS pollster Frank Graves says these Canadian numbers are virtually unchanged from 10 years ago. He also says this latest survey challenges the theory put forward by the Manning Center that Canadians are becoming more small-c conservative on social issues like abortion.

The right-leaning think tank’s survey, released last month, found 60 per cent of Canadians strongly agree that abortion is morally wrong. It also concluded that the “political centre” in Canada is becoming more conservative.

The fact the EKOS poll asks the same question as one posed 10 years ago shows there is no movement on abortion, Mr. Graves says.

In his news release, the pollster hints that he is working on research that could counter the Manning Centre’s theory that Canadians are becoming more conservative generally.

“We are not yet in a position to consolidate our research, but the early evidence suggests that on issues of social behaviour, the trend seems to be, if anything, in the opposite direction,” he states. “When measured over time, we have found that on indicators such as same-sex marriage, the decriminalization of marijuana, and capital punishment, Canadians are becoming less conservative, not more.”

Suck it up, TheoCons.