DJ!'s Fix for the Broken News Biz

It may well be as we suggested earlier that the Corrupt Party government-paid army of hacks were too busy with other ongoing trainwrecks to try to spin Tom Flanagan back out of the hole he'd pitched himself into.

But his brethren and sistren in the media have rallied. I'm not going to link -- you can find them. They have twisted themselves into various unattractive pretzels to find grounds on which to defend or mitigate his faceplant.

One thing they have in common though was noticed by our pal trapdinawrpool.

It appears the gatekeepers are upset the we mere proles took down one of their set #Flanagan #cdnpoli

— trapdinawrpool (@trapdinawrpool) March 1, 2013

Things get almost weepy at Pandering and Pissing Contests.

Dammit! Don't we proles get it that it's the pundits' job to end people's careers?

Another thing that can drive manly journos (of all genders) to weepy despair is the financial state of their biz.

I have a modest proposal. Fire all the opinionators. Keep the good reporters who actually ferret out what our overlords don't want us to know.

And leave the punditting to thoughtful -- and free -- bloggers like kirbycairo.

Win-win! More funding for real reporters, less noxious bloviating in the media.

Besides, it's not like the opinionators couldn't find other work worthy of their talents and ethics.

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.

Karma Is a Bitch

I gotta say I'm enjoying the hell out of Tom Flanagan's implosion today.

It's so good to see real-time karma in operation. And in this case two ugly vultures have come home to roost.

First, it was First Nations youth, possibly/probably aligned with Idle No More, who instigated it. Arnell Tail Feathers (I've seen two spelling of that) recorded and uploaded it. Levi Little Moustache (again, two spellings) did the research and asked the question.

Little Mustache, a youth on the Blood Tribe reserve southwest of Lethbridge, said everyone was shocked when Flanagan repeated his view.

“The whole crowd just kind of gasped,” Little Mustache said. “Everyone was just taken aback by that. And then the moderator just kind of shook his head.”

He said four people in the audience walked out. His friend, Arnell Tailfeathers, recorded Flanagan’s remarks and posted the video on YouTube.

Flanagan's views on First Nations are simply loathsome. He's been used as a more than willing apologist for colonialism in court cases and the media. In his role as Asshole-in-Residence at CBC, he's been very vocal in dissing the Idle No More movement.

So that's kind of sweet.

Next, the issue: child pornography, which should rightly be called crime-scene evidence.

Flanagan was national campaign manager for the Corrupt Party in 2004, a campaign that will be remembered for its general narstiness and in particular for the attempted smear of Paul Martin for his 'support' of child pornography.

What goes round, comes round, eh, Tom?

So, hoist on his own petard by a couple of savvy yet somehow 'less advanced' young First Nations men.

Yes. A good day.

Update by deBeauxOs: CBC backgrounder on Canadian case law with regard to child p0rn0graphy.  Also, Flanagan's tactic to smear Paul Martin and Jack Layton in the 2004 federal election.

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.

Bonjour la pôlisse! Got a permit for your *protest*?

Too, too funny.

Montreal Police are holding a press conference and a "manifestation" - a protest or a demonstration - today in front of the SPVM headquarters for their union members.

During Le printemps érable - literally, the Maple Spring - last year, at the height of the student protests against university tuition increases, the Charest government put pressure on municipalities to enforce their by-laws regulating demonstrations in public areas.

Two veterans of those 100 and more days of protests, tweeted about the cops' media event.  Very droll these two.

frogsarelovely in particular, who documented each protest with her smartphone camera and her tweets, was roughly handled by SPVM cops one night. She was held overnight on a trumped-up charge; a cop claimed that she had uttered threats. She is a pacifist, and her tweets reflect that.

So now the two of them are thinking that this protest needs to have a citizens' anti-riot squad to control such an unruly group, one that has a history of behaving violently. It's a union!  Of cops!  Where's their permit, to show that they're holding a LEGAL protest?

Justin Ling a journalist who covered the Carré Rouge protests in Montreal shared his observations and personal experience of police brutality, here.

[...]I found myself handcuffed, sitting on the sidewalk on a residential street in the Gay Village. Waving around my semi-official press credentials elicited only blank stares and occasional instructions to shut up from police officers. My get-out-of-jail-free card came in the form of a Tweet I managed to mash out before getting carted off to a detention facility. I, luckily, was released before being sent up the river.

There's little doubt that SPVM tactics during these protests have been reactionary. The dragnet put out there to catch vandals and criminals has netted over two thousand of arrests, including journalists, confused bystanders and peaceful protesters alike.

There's lots of anecdotal evidence that the officers have treated press freedom like a bit of a joke. Student journalist Pierre Chauvin's press pass actually got laughs from a few SPVM cops.

My situation -- which spawned a whirlwind of press -- had much to do with my method of escape, and the SPVM's quick thinking on Twitter.

But here's a thought: the police shouldn't be arresting journalists.

[...]Mainstream media outlets have been challenged to shell out the overtime to get online reporters into the streets each night, and independent journalists have been pushed to churn something out other than the traditional cut-and-dried head-news that have dominated much of the strike coverage.

[...]I have spent most of the protest working for OpenFile Montreal. Along with a crack team of other young journalists, we've published nightly coverage that has been consistent, insightful, and -- if I may say -- pretty damn good.

OpenFile has proved itself a strong challenger to the Montreal Gazette on the protest coverage, and has, I think, surpassed other anglophone mainstays like CTV. Hard-nosed journalism that hurls itself to the frontlines, finally, appears to be getting some recognition.

Enter CUTV.

The little campus-station-that-could has far surpassed expectations, becoming one of the staples of coverage for anyone following the strike.

Yet its in-your-face coverage (maybe bordering on overly aggressive,) coupled with a hard pro-protester editorial line have made them persona non grata amongst the police force.

I've seen the CUTV camera crews out every night, throwing themselves into this strike like few others have. Whether or not that's always a good thing is still a matter of some debate. Has CUTV moved away from covering the story, and towards becoming the story?

Still, CUTV's on-the-ground footage has, amid some snickering, been picked up by local, national and international news. It has captured images of police kettling, bonfires that plagued the Latin Quarter and instances that probably constitute undue use of force by the SPVM.

One wonders if CUTV was on the invitation list for the police union's press event AND demo/protest.

Fortunately or perhaps unfortunately, matraque... ah, matricule 728 aka Stéfanie Trudeau won't be able to attend the protest.  She is currently attending court-ordered psychiatric treatment.  In any event, the judge also issued a restraining order which forbids her access to police premises and contact with her colleagues, allegedly because she alluded to Christopher Dorner during one of her epic rages, this one in the offices of the SPVM police employees' union.

Too bad. Some judiciously applied pepper might nicely balance the dose of heavy salt on those Montreal streets after the snow storm...

Added: Justin Ling is known these days for his co-authorship of this piece of investigative journalism. 

Update: The Montreal Gazette reports on the Police Union's *manifestation* today.

Today in Harpocrit Land

It's Pink Shirt Day today.

I booted up the Twitter machine, checked the hashtag for Warawa's Wank and nearly blew camomile tea out my nose.

Today is Anti-bullying day. Bullying in all forms is wrong. Standing up for victims helps! #M408

— Mark Warawa (@MPmarkwarawa) February 27, 2013

I wasn't the only one struck by this hypocritical drivel.

@mpmarkwarawa Right. Remind me again which party voted against the NDP anti-bullying motion? #hypocrisy #CPC #M408 #cdnpoIi

— Claudine Jacques (@ClaudineJacques) February 27, 2013

Well, we all know the answer to Claudine's question, don't we?

Votes from a handful of Conservative backbenchers weren’t enough to push through an NDP proposal to strike an all-party committee to study and craft a national anti-bullying strategy.

The motion from NDP backbencher Dany Morin was defeated Wednesday night in the Commons by a vote of 149 to 134. About half a dozen Conservative backbenchers voted in favour of the motion, but the support was not enough to have it passed.

I looked and found the five Cons who voted for it: Smith, Allen, Brown, Tilson, and Bezan.

Mark Warawa, champion of bullied fetuses, not among them.

I know. You're shocked.

UPDATE: Courtesy of Radical Centrist, here is the division. Note Warawa among the NAYS, not conveeeniently absent.

Condemn, Then Defund

In this tweet, the agenda behind Warawa's Wank, aka Motion 408, a private member's bill to keep the abortion issue on the bubble, is revealed.

Australian bill to defund gender-based #abortion. Good idea for #Canadian MP/MPPs! smh.com.au/opinion/politi… #M408 #prolife # #cdnpoli #onpoli

— Jack Fonseca (@JackFonsec) February 26, 2013

Condemn, then defund.

The Australian legislator sounds about as dim as our own Fetus Lobby®.

THE Democratic Labor Party senator John Madigan will introduce on Wednesday a private members' bill seeking to remove Medicare funding for abortions ''procured on the basis of gender selection''.

Senator Madigan, who could hold a balance of power vote in the Senate after the September election, said he would ''seek support from other politicians who are on the record as being pro-life''.

He said he had ''seen data that abortion on the basis of gender selection is happening overseas and that means it is likely to be happening here'' although he conceded it was ''difficult to get Australian data'' on the issue.

Doesn't know if it is happening, but it's 'likely'. So let's be prepared and defund it now.

How, exactly, abortions could be defunded for one reason and not for others is of course not spelled out.

That revealing tweet is from Jack Fonseca, who describes himself as 'Pro-life activist, Project Manager at Campaign Life Coalition, political observer'.

And yes, it is Campaign Life Coalition behind the Defund Abortion Rally, now scheduled for maximum Catholic school kid participation on Tuesday, March 19.

Count on it. If the meaningless motion passes, bleating about 'Canadians want us to ACT on this' will commence.

Harper fosters culture of secrecy and impunity in his government.

Here's a round-up of recent news items regarding the ongoing micromanagement of the Harper government by its tinpot tyrant.

Aaron Wherry has been monitoring what he has aptly named "The quiet cuts".

Some excerpts from his excellent ongoing overview:

CBC reported last week that the government will close eight Veterans Affairs offices.[...]The Canadian Forces recruiting centre in Windsor has closed. And Canada Post is considering service cuts.

Meanwhile, there are new concerns being raised about the end of the Police Officer Recruitment Fund—see previously, The Demise of the Police Officer Recruitment Fund. Vic Toews defends the fund as a “one-time investment.”

In Vancouver, the Kitsilano Coast Guard station was quietly closed last week, apparently to the surprise of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. Global News wonders if the closure has something to do with selling the land the station is located on.

The Conservative government’s spending restraint is focusing on front-line services while back-office spending continues to rise, says a new report from the Parliamentary Budget Office.

That’s exactly the opposite of promises made by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who said last year that the majority of Ottawa’s $5.2-billion austerity program would target administrative and support costs without impacting service to the public.

Nearly a hundred employees at the National Research Council have received affected notices.

“There’s a much larger game afoot but it’s being rolled out in a really stealthy way,” said Kennedy Stewart, the NDP critic for science and technology. “When we look back in a couple of years we’ll see that it really is part of a larger plan and it will probably have an impact on our international standing.”

[...]94 National Research Council employees across the country received notification letters that their services “may no longer be required,” according to a statement released that day by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. Those employees include scientists, researchers and business development officers who work in the life sciences, engineering, and business management divisions. They are located in Halifax, Moncton, Fredericton, London, Regina, Winnipeg and Ottawa, the union’s statement said.

So front line service workers and staff in critical positions, professionals who ensure the departments' mandates are implemented, have have been removed.  Is this an insidious way for Harper to profoundly subvert the civil service in order to put in place non-union employees that are mere cogs in the machinery of his government's servitude to corporate interests?  This identifies how he will accomplish his goal:

Economist David Macdonald decided to find out how many consultants, contractors and temporary workers the federal government was hiring and how much Canadians were paying for them.

It took him about a year. What he discovered was a burgeoning “shadow public service.” Last year it cost taxpayers $1.2 billion. That was 79 per cent higher than when Prime Minister Stephen Harper took power in 2006.

Despite a spending freeze in the federal bureaucracy, it is still growing by leaps and bounds.

“Without prompt corrective action, outsourcing costs will continue to soar,” said Macdonald, a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

He sifted through 300,000 government contracts and pored over the five years’ worth of public accounts to find out what was happening, pinpoint the big spenders and track the trends. The deeper he looked, the more troubling the pattern became.

Not only had the cost of contract workers ballooned, the nature of their work had changed. No longer were they brought in for short-term projects or hired to provide expertise the government did not have. They did exactly the same work as public servants. They sat alongside them, had government email addresses and handled confidential government information.

That last bit... "handled confidential government information"... such as this?

In an email, Privacy Commissioner spokeswoman Anne-Marie Hayden confirmed that the office is looking into the possible involvement of a Department of Justice Canada employee. “Our office is contacting those who have already filed an official complaint against HRSDC in relation to the USB key incident to seek their consent to an amendment of their complaint to include both HRSDC and Justice Canada as respondents.”

“Administrative investigations are underway to determine all the facts surrounding this matter. The Department of Justice is part of the investigations,” wrote a Department of Justice Canada spokesperson in an email. She declined to comment on specific details, writing that, “It would be inappropriate to comment further while the investigations are ongoing.”

Ted Charney, senior partner at Falconer Charney LLP, one of the law firms involved in the class action lawsuit on behalf of CPP applicants whose information was lost, finds it disconcerting that CPP information may have been shared with the Department of Justice Canada.

“I don’t know how somebody’s confidential health information to apply for a CPP disability pension ends up in front of employees with the Department of Justice,” he said. “I don’t know if somebody when they applied for a CPP disability pension ever realized that the government intends to show that information to other departments, including the DOJ.”

Charney said that nearly all of the 5,000 people affected by the first data breach have registered with the class action lawsuit. “To the extent that the class members are additionally harmed because of the Department of Justice investigation, it could expand the nature of the claim. It certainly expands the nature of our inquiry into what’s been going on federally in terms of protecting information and how it’s exchanged between various departments.”

It certainly seems Harper, an ambitious, greedy man playing chess with Canadians' collective and individual well-being whilst being a loyal and indebted servant to corporate rule, is carrying out his stated objective of making this country over, so that no decent citizen will recognize what it's become.

More quotes from PMSHithead, the man who engineered a majority government with 39% of the vote, likely through election fraud and vote suppression, here.

Also, read the fierce response from the Public Service Alliance of Canada, here.

Added: As fern hill pointed out on Twitter, 900-foot Jesus at her blog Of Gods and Monsters, has also been diligently tracking CON fraudulence, for example this.

Recreational Abortion

A new one to me.

From Iowa, recreational abortion.

Sen. Jack Hatch, a Des Moines Democrat, said he doesn't expect the legislation to advance. But he said GOP lawmakers will likely again try to block the use of state Medicaid funds for a small number of abortions performed in cases of incest, rape or when the life of the mother is at risk.

“These are not recreational abortions, they are medically needed,” said Hatch said, who said he thought that any such effort would ultimately fail.

Hatch is prochoice. Clearly, the discourse on abortion is totally fucked up in Iowa when even prochoice people use the phrase.

I went looking for other instances of 'recreational abortion' and found some.

The Onion (of course) from 2004.

Recreational-Abortion Enthusiasts Applaud Repeal Of Partial-Birth Ban

WASHINGTON, DC—Hundreds of abortion enthusiasts gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court Monday to voice their support for recent rulings repealing the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. "We just adore abortions, and now they're more convenient than ever," abortion lover Nayla Forster said. "Some women found it a real pain to squeeze the procedure in before the third trimester." Forster said that she personally tries to get out and have an abortion at least every four months or so.

Something called Issuepedia (who knew?) calls it a 'troll phrase'.

Then among a variety of fetus fetishist sites, I found this explanation: 'Recreational sexual intercourse leads to recreational abortion.'

Funny, innit, that 'creation' is part of both procreation and recreation?

We need a new movement: the anti-creation movement.