Showing posts sorted by date for query autarch. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query autarch. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Trotsky on Harper

The Reform Party of Preston Manning is Dead. The Canadian Alliance of Preston Manning is Dead. The New Conservative Government of Stephen Harper has liquidated it's Reform Alliance democratic populist ideology for the politics of the Strong Man.

Wait a minute...the Reform/Alliance party was always a one man show, it was never really a grassroots democratic movement after Preston consolidated power. It was always about the Cult of Personality.

Stephen Harper understood that, which is why he quit the Reform Party under Preston and came back to usurp the King and make the R/A/Conservative party his own.

Which is why since his election as PM he has personally dominated his party and the government. We did not elect a political party we elected a PM. The party may be in a minority position but the PM is not. Thus the cult of personality that is now appearing on the Conservative home page.

Fellow blogger Jeff Davidson made the observation today about the Conservative Party website which features endless pictures of Stephen Harper... Link to Conservative Site I agree, what's up with that? Is it a one man party? I have heard the stories about Harper being a control freak, but I think this says something about his character and the party; that it is about Stephen Harper. Link to Jeff's Blog Post

Ironically the Supreme Leader of Canada now appears to have done to his party what Trotsky accussed Lenin of wanting to do the Russian Social Democratic Party.....

The most prescient critique of Lenin's style and methods was contained in Trotsky's 1904 pamphlet, "Our Political Tasks":

"Lenin's methods lead to this: the party organisation at first substitutes itself for the party as a
whole; then the Central Committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally a single 'dictator' substitutes himself for the Central Committee."


And of course the result of Lenins 'dictatorship' was Stalin, the founder of the cult of personality, who seems to have a special place not only in Stephen Harpers library but in his view of the world.



See





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Monday, January 01, 2007

Post Modern Conservatives


In an interesting article on the German Right Wing Conservative revisionist Carl Schmitt, who is the father of modernist conservative anti-parlimentary/ anti-liberalism, Matthew Sharpe contends that Schmitts theories apply to the Howard Government in Australia.


Australian conservatism & Carl Schmitt

What kind of conservatism (understood as non-liberalism) is emerging in Australia? I have mostly tracked this in terms of a hostility to multiculturalism, the national security state, the war on terror and hostility to Islam. I have taken it no further than this apart from gestures to Burke and Schmitt. AlI I've done is introduce Schmitt's idea of state of exception into the discussion as this is what the war on terror stands for.

Matthew Sharpe, in an article entitled A Coincidentia Oppositorium? On Carl Schmitt and New Australian Conservatism in Borderlands, argues that the new conservatism emerging in Australia has its roots in a different political paradigm to the Burkean one that is usually invoked by Tony Abbott and John Howard. Sharpe says that:

...my contention in what follows is that the recent revival within Western academe of the thought of authoritarian political theorist Carl Schmitt - already one more very interesting sign of the times - becomes only more interesting. For Schmitt's radical conservatism did not draw its inspiration from Burke. His conservative heritage instead came principally from Cattholic counter-revolutionaries Joseph de Maistre, Archibald de Bonald, and Donoso Cortes. This essay will read Schmitt's political theory as it were from within today's Australia, in the light or the quickly-changing shadows of our political times.

In fact they apply equally to the leadership style and politics of RH Stephen Harper as well. He has created a crisis of state over major issues, such as the Accountability act when he appeared in the Senate, the first Prime Minister ever to do so, to tell them to pass his act or else. Or else what? Face an election. On every issue that he has faced opposition over he challenges from a position of power; call an election. Knowing the opposition won't.


Matthew Sharpe
A Coincidentia Oppositorium? On Carl Schmitt and
New Australian Conservatism

After having deliberated on these theoretical matters, let me return to present political concerns, and the question of whether our circumstances allow us to say that a new political conservatism is emerging much closer to Schmitt's than to Burke's. A recent essay on "The Life and Legacy of Carl Schmitt" concludes with the ominous affirmation that "for better or for worse, the actuality of Carl Schmitt will soon become apparent" (anon., 2005).

In Part I of this paper, we saw how Schmitt's prescriptive positions are built around a strident critique of parliamentary liberalism, the "murky indistinctions" of its procedures, and its founding, internally divisive and existentially debilitating, faith in "unending discussion". The features of Schmitt's critique, I suggested, do strikingly anticipate the rhetoric, and many of the policies, of the Howard government in Australia which distinguish it from its Liberal predecessors.


In Part II, we proposed that
Schmitt's thought can be differentiated from that of Burke and the anglophone conservative tradition, because it is above all a post-traditional conservatism. Schmitt is under no illusions about the sufficiency of a solely conservative appeal to tradition in the face of political liberalism, and the emerging social democracy of the twentieth century. Although Schmitt recognises the value of tradition or myth in generating cultural unity, that is, his fear that liberalism might collapse the "friend-enemy" distinction push him towards actively advocating the construction of new conflicts - for the sake of generating some post-traditional simulacra of the traditions uniting pre-modern societies. This move is carried out by him through the construction of an authoritarian theory of a decisionist sovereign defended for His existential "decisiveness" in the face of enemies and emergency alone, rather than by reference to any higher or inherited notion of the political good.

Harpers autarchic politics since gaining office reflect the politics of the crisis of the state that Schmitt adovcates. And it began with the crisis of morality of the Liberal party. The Conservatives used this as an excuse to manufacture a both a moral crisis of governance and a moral politcal response to it. As advocated by Schmitt.

Schmitt maintained that liberals overemphasized legality: their quest for a precisely organized system of legal rules was a futile effort to avoid political decision.


The crisis of a dithering Liberal party, indecisive, unable to resolve its own internal party crisis vis a vis being the State allowed Harper to then act as an autarch in power, with is Schmittian Strong Man act. Since then the main theme of the Conservatives is that they are The New Government of Law and Order.

Taking a leaf from the Spanish Catholic counter-revolutionary of the 1830s and 1840s (Donoso), Schmitt goes after middle-class parliamentarians for excessive reliance on legal arrangements.


And he is attempting to get around the Constitution and parliamentary law,as advocated by Schmitt, through Senate Reform, privatizing the Wheat Board and with their Law and Order agenda.

Regardless of our historical and political distance to Carl Schmitt, his writings continue to pose serious questions for any discussion of liberalism and parliamentary democracy,specially at a time when both in the United States and in the European Union the interpretation of constitutional law is undergoing considerable change.

Harpers first publicity act was to go out in uniform as Warrior King to visit the troops he sent to the front lines. And to go to war was not his toughest decision, it was a natural for the Schmittian autark.

In fact Harpers whole politics reeks of Schmitt. His self created political image; the strong man, decisive, decision maker, damn the torpedos. Unlike Mr. Dithers.

The crisis in the last parliment was a Schmittian construct, the Liberals legalistic approach compared to the Conservatives political approach. The Liberals wanted wrong doers exposed, the Conservatives knew who the wrongdoers were, the Liberal Party as a whole, and they wanted them punished.


True democracy, for Schmitt, means popular sovereignty, whereas liberal democracy and liberal parliament aim at curbing popular power. For Schmitt, if democratic identity is taken seriously, only the people should decide on their political destiny, and not liberal representatives, because "no other constitutional institution can withstand the sole criterion of the people's will, however it is expressed."

Harper has adopted the mantel of the Soverign. "The Peoples Soverign", and through his New Government of Canada the people are soverign. Not the politicians. They are not the real voice of the people, the real voice is Harper and his minority government. Best expressed in his outburst that only the Conservatives are the voice of the West and Western Farmers. So Damn the Constitution I will just go around it is his motto as it waqs for the Reform Party.

His is a short term government, one that face replacement by the Natural Governing Party; the Liberals. He must change Federalism and the Federalist State forever. In order not to allow the state to fall back into the hands of the Liberals, Harper must make irrevocable changes in the structure of the State, before he hands it back to the Liberals.

And he has only one chance to that. So his autarchic approach is not personal, a quirk, but is political, a Schmittian purge of all that is Liberal in the Canadian State. And this can be seen by the constant refrain of the Conservatives chanting You had 13 years and you did nothing, every time the Liberals say anything. The party of the Strong Man will do something. Because it may be the only chance they get.


Carl Schmitt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 1921, Schmitt became a professor at the University of Greifswald, where he published his essay "Die Diktatur" ("On Dictatorship"), in which he discussed the foundations of the newly-established Weimar Republic, emphasising the office of the Reichspräsident. For Schmitt, a strong dictatorship could embody the will of the people more effectively than any legislative body, as it can be decisive, whereas parliaments inevitably involve discussion and compromise:

“If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship.”


And Schmitt had a huge influence on the Godfather of modern Neo-Con Politics; Leo Strauss, who influenced both the Bush Cheney Rumsfeld White House and the Calgary School. When I think Strauss and Schmitt in practice besides Harper I think of one of his Calgary School mentors; Herr Professor Ted Morton.

Undoubtedly, the easiest access, and the best introduction, to Schmitt's radically original and disturbing vision of politics is afforded by his slim but immensely suggestive treatise, The Concept of the Political. Far more insinuative than what its modest title claims, the treatise forms, according to Leo Strauss, perhaps the most incisive and astute commentator of this infamous text, 'an inquiry into the "order of human things",... into the State.' Instead of offering an exhaustive and academic definition of the political, Schmitt conceptualizes it 'within the totality of human thought and action', in terms of the primordial and seminal antithesis between 'friend' and 'enemy': 'just as in the field of morals, the ultimate distinctions are good and evil, in esthetics, beautiful and ugly, in economics, profitable and unprofitable, so the significantly political distinction is between friend and foe.' For Schmitt, then, the political is primordial; it comes before the State and transcends its mundane and routine policies. It reveals itself, historically, at the foundational moment of the polity, and conceptually, in the unwritten metaphysics of the constitution. Indeed, the political in the specifically Schmittian sense incarnates existential totality and determines a choice between being and nothingness.
[PDF]

Carl Schmitt in English



See:

Stephen Harper

Autarky

Autarch




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Saturday, December 02, 2006

Harper Not In Cuba

While the leaders of Latin America celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, Harper was in Mexico attempting to make the phoney government of Felipe Calderon look legitimate.

More than 1,300 politicians, artists and intellectuals from around the globe were attending the tribute to the man who governed Cuba for 47 years. Bolivian President Evo Morales, Haitian President Rene Preval, Nicaraguan President-elect Daniel Ortega and Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez were among the guests of honor.

Oh well Castro didn't make the Celebrations either.

And while folks were comparing what Calderon and Harper had in common, he shares a common authoritarian personality with Castro and he comes from the other One Party State in the hemisphere, so he would have felt right at home.

See

Castro


Cuba

One Party State

Harper Autarch

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Saturday, September 16, 2006

Stephen Harper Man Of Steel














Man of Steel in Russian is Stalin. As I posted here at the begining of his Reign of Terror as PM, and as did another precient blogger, Harper has a penchant for imitating a disturbing role model......

Stevie Stalin

But Harper's choice of reading material has disturbed even some of his own party members.

The senior Tory recounted being told Harper had "read and mastered" the biography and leadership style of Russia's Communist dictator Josef Stalin, and said the prime minister has adopted some of the same tactics.

"He plays people off against one another, he attempts to inspire fear rather than respect, he is unpredictable and he is 100 per cent focused on eliminating the opposition," the senior Conservative explained.


And you know who also admired Stalin? This guy

The image “http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ro/c/c0/Saddam.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

No wonder Stephen is so chummy with Georgie Porgie King of the USA, he knows what happened to Saddam, who wasn't Georges friend.

And perhaps this gives us some insight into Harpers rejection of the Kelowna accord. Pewrhapse intends on treating First Nations the way Saddam treated the Kurds.




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Saturday, June 24, 2006

Define Nation



Huh? Does this make any sense....

Mr. Harper said that he respects the National Assembly's declaration that Quebec is a nation, but that Ottawa has no need to enter the debate.
"I recognize that the Quebec National Assembly has adopted that position. I don't know quite frankly what its legal significance is," he said, adding later that "it just seems to me to be a semantic debate that doesn't serve any purpose."

Nope but then again Mr. Haprocrite can claim not to be a lawyer which is good because even as an economist he is a failure. And he says Ottawa doesn't have to enter the nation state debate with Quebec. Gee I thought that was the debate. And considering repatriation of the Constitution, Meech Lake, the Charlottetown accord, it is far from semantic.

Nation hmm lets look that up shall we;

Nationalists define individual nations on the basis of certain criteria, which distinguish one nation from another; and determine "who is a member of each nation". These criteria might include a shared language, culture, and/or shared values which are predominantly represented within a specific ethnic group. National identity refers both to these defining criteria, and to the shared heritage of each group. Membership in a nation is usually involuntary and determined by birth. Nationalism sees most human activity as national in character. Nations have national symbols, a national culture, a national music and national literature; national folklore, a national mythology and - in some cases - even a national religion. Individuals share national values and a national identity, admire the national hero, eat the national dish and play the national sport.




and it should not be confused with the Nation as State;

Historians Benedict Anderson or the Communist author Eric Hobsbawm have pointed out that in fact, the nation-state precedes nationalism. According to their conception, nationalism is a creation of the nation-state, and not the reverse. For example, French nationalism emerged in the 19th century, once the French nation-state already constituted through the unification of various dialects and languages into the French language, and also by the means of conscription and the Third Republic's 1880s laws on public instruction. However, in countries divided into multiple states such as Germany or Italy, the sense of a common membership to the same cultural movement, as in the Volkisch movement, can be said to be nationalism, and in this case precedes the unification of the various states into the German or the Italian state.

One of the earliest, and perhaps oldest example of a nation state was the Dutch Republic (1581 and 1795).The Eighty Years' War that began in 1568, triggered a process of what we would now call "nation-building", the following circumstances/events were very helpful in this process:



And Quebec nationalism does not mean the end of Canada.It is the source of the greatest classic liberal (as in Thomas Paine the Rights of Man) political critique of the Canadian State that originated in the great Con that was the federation of 1867.

Coincidently both founding ruling classes in Pan-Canada; the English/Scottish and Irish Freemasons, and the French and Irish Catholics celebrate the summer solstice with St. Jean Baptiste/St. John the Baptist celebrations. They are the rites of Bourgeoisie nationalism.

'Fete nationale' a Canadian holiday: Harper As in Les Canadiens. Since the Canadian National anthem originated in Quebec as part of its St. Jean Baptiste celebrations.

And Quebec and Canada are federated nations, who also share a common colony; Haiti. That makes them both bourgeoise nations and Imperialist.

And behind the Harpocrites dismissal of the Quebec Nation as semantic, is his self professed status as autarch of the Canadian State.

And we know how anarchists feel about the State, and nationalism. They are last refuge of the scoundral.

The ever growing power of a soulless political bureaucracy which supervises and safeguards the life of man from the cradle to the grave is putting ever greater obstacles in the way of the solidaric co-operation of human beings and crushing out every possibility of new development. A system which in every act of its life sacrifices the welfare of large sections of the people, yes, of whole nations, to the selfish lust for power and the economic interests of small minorities must of necessity dissolve all social ties and lead to a constant war of all against all. This system has been merely the pacemaker for the great intellectual and social reaction which finds its expression today in modern Fascism, far surpassing the obsession for power of the absolute monarchy of past centuries and seeking to bring every sphere of human activity under the control of the state. Just as for the various systems of religious theology, God is everything and man nothing, so for this modern political theology, the state is everything and the man nothing. And just as behind the "will of God" there always lay hidden the will of privileged minorities, so today there hides behind the "will of the state" only the selfish interest of those who feel called to interpret this will in their own sense and to force it upon the people. Anarchosyndicalism by Rudolf Rocker - Chapter 1

But it is Rudolph Rocker (1873-1958) who, in Nationalism and Culture (1937), provides the fullest anarchist discussion of nationalism. To Rocker it is clear that 'The nation is not the cause, but the result of the state. It is the state which creates the nation and not the nation the state.' (28) This assertion becomes more plausible when he proceeds to distinguish between a 'people' - what Proudhon had called a 'folk-group' - and a 'nation'. 'A people', he explains, 'is the natural result of social union, a mutual association of men brought about by a certain similarity of external conditions of living, a common language, and special characteristics due to climate and geographic environment. In this manner arise certain common traits, alive in every member of the union, and forming a most important part of its social existence. The nation, on the other hand, is the artificial struggle for political power, just as nationalism has never been anything but the political religion of the modern state. Belonging to a nation is never determined, as is belonging to a people, by profound natural causes; it is always subject to political considerations and based on those reasons of state behind which the interests of privileged minorities always reside.' And in a passage relevant to the manifestation in recent years of both 'sub-nationalisms' and the nascent 'supra-nationalism' of some ideologists of the EEC, Rocker insists: 'A people is always a community with narrow boundaries. But a nation, as a rule, encompasses a whole array of different peoples and groups of peoples who have by more or less violent means been pressed into the frame of a common state.' 'National states' (he concludes) 'are political church organisations...All nationalism is reactionary in its nature, for it strives to enforce on the separate parts of the great human family a definite character according to a preconceived idea...Nationalism creates artificial separations and partitions within that organic unity which finds its expression in the genus Man.'Resisting the nation state


Also See: Quebec

A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914.

Rebel Yell

Origins of the Captialist State In Canada

Voting for Capitalism On January 23

The Neo Liberal Canadian State



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Friday, June 09, 2006

Made In Cuba Green Policy

On Clean Air day Rona Ambrose assured reporters, again ad naseum, that sometime soon we will have a Made in Canada Green Plan.
My message to you, on Clean Air Day, is that the Government of Canada is working towards a “Made-in-Canada” approach to deliver real change and real results for all Canadians, in our common campaign to clean up our air and to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

So instead of Ambrose the Minister of Do Nothing standing up in the house talking about how the US is ahead of us, ad nauseum;

Hon. Rona Ambrose (Minister of the Environment, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the truth of the matter is that thanks to the Liberal government being in power for 13 years the Bush government has done more on the environment than this country has for the last decad. The Americans are outperforming us on pollution control. They are outperforming us on emission reductions. This government is going to ensure that we outperform not just the Americans but all of our counterparts.


How about we start comparing the Made In Cuba plan with the lack of plan that the Tories have. Because Cuba is way ahead of Canada, and the U.S.

Castro's new soldiers
Richard Gott
03 May 2006 04:59

At a petrol station outside the Cuban town of Cienfuegos, half a dozen teenage girls stand languidly by the pumps, jumping to attention when a car or lorry pulls up. They work the pumps efficiently, take payment and enter the transaction on to a large official form. They are dressed neatly in T-shirts and jeans and a slogan across their backs proclaims their identity as trabajadores sociales, or social workers. They are Fidel Castro’s latest army of guerrillas, deployed in the struggle against corruption, the scourge to which state-run economies have always been peculiarly vulnerable. They are also the vanguard of the generation upon whom the future of the Cuban revolution will depend.

On earlier visits to Cuba I have observed the petrol problem. Driving through the countryside you could always find a willing accomplice to direct you to a tank in someone’s back garden, where petrol would be sold at an advantageous price, or simply off-ration. It had been siphoned off the state’s supplies. The practice seemed harmless enough. Yet it had begun to create a large hole in the economy. Castro complained that “as much petrol was being stolen as sold’’, and last year his government stepped in with a novel solution. About 10 000 young activists, more than half of them women, have taken control of the country’s pumps, while the usual attendants have been sent home on full pay.

The social workers’ jobs do not stop at the petrol stations. They also go from house to house to hand out low-energy light bulbs, to check that everyone has the new electric pressure cookers provided by China and to prompt the exchange of old, gas-guzzling fridges from the 1950s for something more energy efficient. Others will move on to examine financial practices in bakeries and the construction industry. About 30 000 of these revolutionaries, aged between 16 and 22, have been deployed across the country. Identified some years ago as a potentially counter revolutionary class, they are helping to keep alive the revolution’s mystique.


Maybe the Tories could mobilize all their Blogging Tories and Fraser Institute student Interns to be Green Social Workers like Castro has done.

Besides both parties share the same intials; CPC. And same style of authoritarian leadership.


And don't forget all the Canadian investment in Cuba. Like Sherritt Gordon.

And we have a long tradition of being business and social partners with Cuba.

Our CPC could learn some lessons from the Cuban CPC.

Other Great Leaders of Canada have.



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Saturday, May 27, 2006

No More Mr. Nice Guy


Provinces won't dictate equalization, Harper says
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the national equalization program falls under Ottawa's jurisdiction and none of the provinces can dictate how the money collected from taxpayers gets divvied up among poorer regions.
So much for Asymmetrical Federalism. Gee this guy is sounding more and more like Trudeau.

In representative first past the pole parliamentary democracy it's so much easier to be an autarch than a democrat.

If Trudeau was Canada's Philosopher King, then the Harpocrite is Pooh-Ba, the Minister of Everything.




Also See: He Won't Share


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Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Revolt of the Fifth Estate


His Majesty King Stephen the First has ticked off the fifth estate. Journalists boycott Harper news conference as media battle heats up Now if only the other four Estates would follow suit, we good bring back public executions of the autarch. After all the King is in favour of Law and Order, something the French Revolution executed quite well. And why pray tell is the Fifth Estate ticked off, well because King Stephen is using King George the Second's play book, again.

The Prime Minister's Office insists on choosing who gets to ask questions based on a list it compiles.



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Tuesday, May 02, 2006

The Man Who Would Be King


A tip o' the blog Steve Janke for this. It gives new meaning to that old conservative phrase; For King and Country. Well we know he is an autarch.

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Monday, March 13, 2006

Harper's Chef, Nanny, and Car Washer Fired


King Stephen the Harpocrite continues his purges, not unlike that other famous autarch.

It has been revealed that Mr. Secrecy has recalled five diplomats prior to their completing their terms.

Now he has fired his Chef.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is being sued by a man who claims his dismissal as a Stornoway chef was "insulting, high-handed, spiteful, malicious and oppressive."


Yep that sounds like the Harpocrite. Even worse the poor man was subjected to being demoted in his job by Mrs. PM and relegated to the duties of a nanny.

He alleges he took on other duties for which he was not paid, including babysitting the couple's two children, washing the family car and burying one of Harper's pet cats after it died.

Lundsgaard alleges that about one month before Harper won the Jan. 23 election, Laureen Harper led him to believe he would become the head chef at 24 Sussex Drive. Both the prime minister and his wife are named in the suit.

Lundsgaard says he received a letter on election day telling him that his services were no longer needed.


The rich and powerful you see have nannies to take care of their needs and their children. Which is why the Harpocrites see no need for daycare for working mothers and working class families.

Why every family should have a nanny, Chef, car washer and cat mortician. If not then what are wives for?




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Sunday, March 05, 2006

Harper the Autocrat


Our newly elected King, Stephen the Haropcrite is an autarch. Some excuse this as the role of the PMO in the parliamentary system. Stephen Taylor said... Eugene, the PMO is inherently autarchic.

But King Stephen's rejection of the ethics commissioners request he answers questions about the Emerson affair shows that being an autarch is his personal political predilection. Always has been. The Harpocrite is just practicing good old Alberta style politics in Ottawa.

He ran the Alliance and the Conservative party as a one man show. Belinda Stronach faced his wrath and crossed the floor. Peter MacKay faced his wrath and has been sheepishly quiet of late. William Stairs faced his wrath and was fired. He has announced that he will impose Senate reform without consulting the provinces. And the man has been in office for just over a month now!

The Harpocrite ran the 2004 election as a one man show. He ran the 2006 election as a one man show, firing no less than three communications directors, before and after the election. Now this.


Harper has found his Scott McLellan in Susan Buckler. The smear of Mr. Shapiro starts NOW!

BRIAN LAGHI

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Stephen Harper and Canada's Ethics Commissioner were headed on a collision course yesterday after the Prime Minister said he is disinclined to co-operate with a preliminary inquiry into his conduct over the political defection of David Emerson.


Some comments on this from the Progressive side of the Canadian Blogosphere include

Harper Loathes to be Accountable by using more Conspiracy Theories...

Still in the picture

Bernard Shaprio was also a Tory Appointment

Harper: "Loath to co-operate" with ethics commish Polunatics insiteful take on this whole affair with background on the controversial Ethics Commissioner.

And typical of the right wing the Blogging Tories all line up waving and cheering our friendly dictator on. It seems they are loathe to apply their sharp criticisms of ethics and accountability and disgust with the autarchy of the PMO to the Harpocrite as they were to Chretien or Martin.

Ethics Czar loses his credibility, just like that

Another useless ethics investigation

Mr. Shapiro, Investigate Yourself!

Ethics Commissioner on a witchhunt


And then our supposed liberal media pundits get in on it and reveal once again their easy ability to sashay to the right.
Shapiro has to resign immediately says Paul Wells.

See what happens when you surround a liberal with neo-conservatives at Macleans they end up committing political suicide from sharing tainted water at the office cooler.




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Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Democracy Is Messy

Sources tell CTV the regulatory changes to the registry will be fast-tracked through cabinet to avoid a messy parliamentary debate. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office reportedly want quick action on the file because it's a key campaign promise. Federal gov't planning a gun amnesty:

Ah yes that business of democracy is so messy.

Harper is once again showing his mastery of Alberta politics where King Ralph despite his overwhelming majority, and one party state, uses the same tactics to push through spending and policies to avoid facing question period in the legislature. As I have said Welcome to Ottawa, Alberta.

Harper's comments came during a rare press conference where reporters were allowed to pose questions to the prime minister. He touched on a number of topics including the recent murder of a Canadian couple in Mexico, Alberta's move towards a two-tier health system, and his plans to legislate the election of senators.

Press conferences are rare in Alberta and tightly scripted.
Don Martin should feel right at home. Martin has just published a book called King Ralph, an unofficial biography on the life and times of Ralph Klein, the premier of Alberta.


Oh yes and remember how consultative Harper promised to be. Well forget that when it comes to Senate Reform. Harper is the ultimate autarch, he is acting positively Presidential. To bad this is Canada where we don't elect a President seperate from his party no matter Harpers illusions that this is so. Since we are a parlimentary system the PMO is an autarch now under Harper the PM is King. In Ottawa, Alberta we now have King Stephen I.

Harper said nothing stopped him from unilaterally creating an electoral process to have simultaneous elections for the Commons and Senate."While I obviously would like to see the co-operation of the provinces, it's a commitment our government has made to pursue Senate elections and that's something we believe we can do from Ottawa.'' Harper plans quick action on elected Senate

Yep he will impose his version of Senate reform on parliment in the grand tradition of that other English parlimentarian King Henry VIII. The fact is that the Senate itself is an elitist institution that denies youg or poor Canadians and renters the right to representation in the Red House. It is the very essence of the British Aristocracy the propertied rentier class.

Senators must be at least 30 years old, hold $4,000 in mortgage-free property. They earn more than $100,000 a year, plus pensions and benefits.

Real electoral reform would be to Abolish the Senate and expand the House of Commons through proportional representation.

Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, who champions abolishing the Senate as fundamentally undemocratic, had a cautious reaction to the prime minister's announcement.

"Every Canadian knows that reform or abolition is needed and if Mr. Harper can come up with a scheme that addresses both the election of senators and the powers of the Senate, that would be a great contribution.''

"If he aims at just dealing with the elections, I'm not optimistic of the outcome.''

Harper said he did not need the provinces' OK to reform the upper house, but urged them to support his initiative.

The King is dead! Long Live the King!




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Tuesday, February 21, 2006

The Conservative Dictatorship

Conservative blogger and a founding member of the Blogging Tories, Stephen Taylor has called a spade a spade, he says of the Harpocrite Regime in Ottawa ; the evolving tradition of the Conservative Party's consultatively autarchic approach to PMO power.

For those of you that don't know here is the definition of autarchic.


autarchic

ADJECTIVE:Having and exercising complete political power and control: absolute, absolutistic, arbitrary, autarchical, autocratic, autocratical, despotic, dictatorial, monocratic, totalitarian, tyrannic, tyrannical, tyrannous. See OVER, POLITICS.


Autarchy

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Autarchy, in American English can refer either to a form of self-government, or to the absolute rule of an individual. The word comes from the Greek autarkhos (απολυταρχία), "auto" meaning self and "arkhos" meaning "ruler".

Traditionally, autarchy refers to a system of absolutism (see also: autocracy, despotism, dictatorship, monocracy, tyranny). It also implies a state enjoying absolute sovereignty.

In its self-government meaning, autarchy refers to a libertarian idea, championed by Robert LeFevre, of stateless self-governance, distinct from anarchism (a system which many associate, rightly or wrongly, with violence).

However, in British English Autarchy is the same as the American equivalent, Autarky, meaning a national economic policy that aims at achieving self-sufficiency and eliminating the need for imports (by imposing tariffs, for example). Such a goal may be difficult, if not impossible, for a small country. Countries that take protectionist measures and try to prevent free trade are sometimes described as autarchical.


And there is nothing conslutative about it, unless you mean that the Supreme Leader 'lets' people give him opinions which he may or may not listen to.

Which is what Temp PM Stephen Harpocrite has been doing. So the New PMO is no different than the Chretien one; whom Jeffery Simpson called the
"Friendly Dictator" .

Like all autarch's the Harper has already purged his office of those who disagree with his bunker mentality.
Harper fires spokesperson after early PR stumbles


Harper loses aide over Emerson row

William Stairs, the Prime Minister's director of communications, left Mr. Harper's office after what sources said were problems putting out the fire over Mr. Emerson's decision to leave the Liberals and join the Conservative Party.

The sources said Mr. Stairs departed after arguing 10 days ago that the PMO and the Prime Minister needed to deal more forcefully with the Emerson problem. The Prime Minister had kept mostly silent on the difficulties surrounding Mr. Emerson despite the urgings of Mr. Stairs and a number of other individuals within the government.

Mr. Stairs had been assigned the communications job after doing similar duties during the successful election campaign. But sources said the veteran Hill staffer, who had previously worked for Progressive Conservatives in the Senate and has been a long-time PC, ran into similar difficulties as those experienced by his predecessors. Mr. Stairs's departure makes him the third communications director to leave the job within the past 18 months or so, after James Armour and Geoff Norquay.


Now I hope that clears everything up and makes you all feel better, as I have said before this is Alberta Politics on the national stage.

The only difference between these two autarch's is the moustache. And notice how all autachs use the finger.















And for those of you who think that I am being harsh in comparing these two, just remember that in Russia Stalin is considered the hero of the Conservatives in that country. Those who support a strong state, family values, etc. etc.

This month is the Fiftieth Anniversary of Krushcheva's release of the Secret Testimony on Stalin that shook the CPC USSR to its foundation and laid the basis for its slow death which ended in that autarchies final burial in 1989.

The day Khrushchev buried Stalin

By Nina L. Khrushcheva, Nina L. Khrushcheva teaches international affairs at New School University in New York. Her latest book, "Visiting Nabokov," is forthcoming from Yale University Press.

It was only later, when I got older, that I learned about the "secret speech" my great-grandfather gave 50 years ago this week, in which he denounced the crimes committed by Stalin and the "cult of personality" that developed around him. The story of the speech is not a straightforward tale of good versus bad, of a benevolent, democratic leader replacing a tyrant. It is far more nuanced than that. Khrushchev, after all, had been one of Stalin's trusted lieutenants, who by his own admission "did what others did" — participating in the purges and repressions of the 1930s and 1940s, convinced that the total "annihilation of the enemy" had to be a communist's uppermost priority in order to ensure the shining future of international communism.

The most liberating events — Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign of 1956, or Boris Yeltsin's privatization of 1991 — generally end up in disillusion or disarray, suggesting that Russian society is never fast enough to digest modernization or patient enough to see the liberal changes through.

Instead, Russians look back fondly on their great victories and parades and, eventually, after short periods of thaw or perestroika, find themselves wanting their "strong" rulers back — the rulers who by inspiring fear provide a sense of orderly life, whose "firm hand" is associated with stability. Stalin's order was unbreakable while he lived; Vladimir Putin now promises a new order in the form of his "dictatorship of law."


Why Russia Still Loves Stalin
By Nina L. Khrushcheva

This is why the country rallies behind President Vladimir Putin. Putin promotes himself as a new Russian "democrat." Indeed, Russians view him less like the godlike "father of all nations" that Stalin was, and more like a Russian everyman -- a sign of at least partial democratization. Putin often notes that Russia is developing "its own brand of democracy." Translation: His modern autocracy has discovered that it no longer needs mass purges like Stalin's to protect itself from the people. Dislike of freedom makes us his eager backers. How readily we have come to admire his firm hand: Rather than holding him responsible for the horrors of Chechnya, we agree with his "democratic" appointment of leaders for that ill-fated land. We cheer his "unmasking of Western spies," support his jailing of "dishonest" oligarchs and his promotion of a "dictatorship of order" rather than a government of transparent laws.


Sacrificing Stalin

By Boris Kagarlitsky

Soviet society was never entirely monolithic. The proof of this can be found in the novels of Alexander Solzhenitsyn as well as in the Soviet archives. There was, however, a strong sense of a common fate and a common cause that united not just the working class and the bureaucratic elite, but even gulag inmates and their captors. The Stalinist regime was directly linked to the history of the Revolution. It was a sort of communist Bonapartism. It combined totalitarianism with democratic principles, fear and repression with enthusiasm and sincerity. This blend made the 20th Party Congress possible.



Outrage at revision of Stalin's legacy

After a number of delays, the "Stalin Museum" dedicated to the once-venerated Father of the People is due to be opened at the end of March in Volgograd, the World War II "hero city" once known as Stalingrad.

The project is being privately financed by local businessmen but will controversially enjoy pride of place in the official complex that commemorates the epic Battle of Stalingrad.

The museum will boast a writing set owned by the dictator, copies of his historic musings, a mock-up of his Kremlin office, a Madame Tussauds-style wax representation of him and medals, photographs and busts.

Svetlana Argatseva, the museum's future curator, told Ogonyok magazine she felt the project was justified.

"In France people regard Napoleon and indeed the rest of their history with respect. We need to look at our history in the same way."



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