More Harper Lies

DAMMIT JANET! should have been doing this on a weekly, if not daily basis since Harper took power.

Since 2006, his regime has perfected the art of ideological spin to an artistic apex that surely has Goebbels clapping wildly in his grave.  Here's one wrap-up of obfuscations deployed by his thousands of communications flunkeys.

Remember Vic Toews' _line in the sand_ ...?

Boy, that sure was some hugely volatile speaking point, charged with insinuations that had previously worked momentarily for Harper in the 2005 election campaign.

Only it backfired again, this time with a MASSIVE pushback.

Here's the reality with regard to the Cons' disingenuous, desperate tactic.  It turns out that Harper's government isn't really all that committed to providing the RCMP with adequate resources to investigate, gather evidence, charge child pornographers and bring them to trial.

In fact, Harper and the RCMP dropped the ball as soon as it was evident that their regime could pursue other avenues for spying upon, harassing and destroying organizations and the lives of people who didn't agree with them, or openly opposed their policies as is allowed in a democratic country.

The CRA has been directed by Harper to audit specific organizations. The RCMP has been told to focus on First Nations, Métis and Indigenous resistance movement and its leaders, as well as environmentalists.  CSIS will be empowered to disregard constitutional rights as it spies on those identified as *terrorists* by Harper and MacKay.

And now, it appears that Harper/Kenney monstrosity, the _Monument to Victims of Communism_ might allow Nazis and Third Reich officials to be remembered, since the figures cited include these people.

[...]memory squares will be embedded in a series of ascending folded concrete rows, rising 14.5 metres at their highest point. Visitors will be able to walk among the rows and touch the memory squares to “viscerally experience the overwhelming scale of the Communist atrocities,” says the winning team’s statement of design intent.
At Thursday’s announcement, Kapusta referenced Josef Stalin’s infamous statement that “one death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”

As our friend Jay Watts III notes:

He also raises these valid points.

For the modest sum of $1000, folks who admire the work of Wilhelm Kube could have his name inscribed on one of the Memory Squares.  He is one of those "victim of Communism"... included in the statistics deployed by the Harper Cons.

The Contempt of Harper Conservative Reformists: enabling child pornographers, glorifying fascists and eventually jailing Canadians who disagree with them.

If things continue his way, Harper will be remembered for human rights abuses as egregious as those of Joseph Stalin or Robert Mugabe.

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.

Vatican Taliban Child Pornographers

This is from the website of the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

Then people wonder why some boys grow up to be Russell Williams.

Link from this tweet. Grand merci!

Added: The man in the background is dressed in full Knights of Columbus regalia. I wonder if Stephen Woodworth MP has one of those costumes.

^NOT standing with Vic Toews

This is all over the toobz, but I wanted a copy here. You know, just in case.



Added by deBeauxOs:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Joseph Goebbels

Toews: rhymes with *knaves*.

Rightfully so, given the Con adulterer's disingenuous attack against critics of his bill to award police unwarranted powers to spy on ordinary, "law-abiding citizens".

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ attempt to demonize opponents of his new Internet law — you’re either with the government, or with the “child pornographers,” he said on Monday [...]

What a god-damned liar Toews is. Earlier this month, a co-ordinated investigation by a number of police forces in Ontario busted a child pornography network. No *special* invasive legal provisions were required to give the investigators the evidence they needed to charge 60 men with these crimes.

Insp. Scott Naylor with the OPP's child sexual exploitation unit said the accused were tracked down with software the investigators created themselves.

In addition to Alison's post at Creekside yesterday, she provides link to Open Media which has *Stop Spying* email forms directed to Cons' big guns + petition.

The Greed-impaired World of Girls' Beauty Competitions.

What is scathingly wrong with the photo above?

Eden sang to her own kiddie-rap song “Cutie Patootie,’’ whose lyrics include references to “shakin’ her booty’’ and how she is all over the newspapers and the television screen. Whipping off a denim jacket during the performance, she twirled it above her head to reveal a two-piece, rhinestone-studded outfit to go with her cowboy hat, and smacked her backside for emphasis.

First hint: It accompanies a news item about Eden Wood and some of her 6-year old peers.

Second hint: The routines Wood and contestants in girls' beauty pageants chronicled by Toddlers & Tiaras are elaborated by adults, based on adult performances, judged by adults - and appeal to adult consumers' *appetites*.

Third hint: Though adults (parents, organizers, sponsors) involved in such events defend the hyper-sexualization of little girls by claiming the participants love all the attention they get, those who actually benefit financially from such displays are rarely the children.

Fourth hint: Try applying gender reversal to these activities. How would people respond to the hypersexualization of little boys, who arguably are as beautiful, adorable and appetizing as little girls are?

The Good Men Project, a loose network of men who challenge sexism and ideological assumptions that emprison men and women within gender-based caricatural behaviours and roles, has advanced some thoughtful ideas about this phenomenon.

Five-year-olds in princess costumes are cute. But the problem is that the compliments we give as fathers, uncles, and coaches have an impact on the self-esteem of little girls. As they grow up, they realize quickly (certainly by age 8 or 9) that Cinderella costumes won’t cut it anymore. If they want to sustain the same level of attention that they had when they were adorable first-graders, they’re going to need to employ a different strategy: sexiness. And that sexiness gets our attention all over again. [...]

[Girls' play-acting] sexiness has very little to do with sex, and everything to do with the craving for validation and attention. While all children want affirmation, princess culture teaches little girls to get that approval through their looks. Little girls learn quickly what “works” to elicit adoration from mom and dad, as well as from teachers, uncles, aunts, and other adults. Soon—much too soon—they notice that older girls and women get validation for a particular kind of dress, a particular kind of behavior. They watch their fathers’ eyes, they follow their uncles’ gaze. They listen to what these men they love say when they see “hot” young women on television or on the street. And they learn how to be from what they hear and see.

From here.

And if there were a remaining doubt that the increasingly competive environment of the fashion industry contributed to the hypersexualization of girls, this should dispel it. The blog Jezebel also provides valuable insights into this phenomenom.

Fashion images of girls years away from the age of consent who've been made by adult professionals to look "sexy" don't even register, to most people, as inappropriate — even though they obviously are, and even though the chances are that a successful 14-year-old model is working close to full-time hours with relatively little supervision (whereas most child models Thylane's age benefit from both a less all-encompassing work schedule and proper supervision). But then a magazine poses a 10-year-old in a similar kind of way to make a point about that very inappropriateness, and everyone is suddenly very concerned for The Children. The images are disturbing. They're meant to be. The point is that the practice they represent is disturbing, too.

But that Vogue Paris spread is not the photo spread that everyone has been criticizing. Child psychologists, journalists, fashion industry professionals, and bloggers have been drawing attention to the body of Thylane's work, not all of which is exactly age-appropriate. The Vogue Paris shots may be sensationalistic, but they're nowhere near as concerning as the topless shot of Thylane lying on a bed. Or that photo of Thylane posing, this time without any pants, on a (different) bed.

The line separating the hypersexualization of girls from child pornography has been blurred; adults are tampering with girls' sexual identity and expression for their own benefits, advantages and profits.

Link to an earlier DAMMIT JANET! post about Eden Wood and the validation of heterosexual pedophilia attitudes and behaviours.