Patrick Brazeau’s diatribe:
When you contradict, shame or make the PM look bad regardless of its significance, watch out because some of his soldiers are coming after you. Is that “PROVEN LEADERSHIP?” No, its “PROVEN DICTATORSHIP” and it scares me and it should scare you.
Jeffery Simpson expounds this same theme in The Friendly Dictatorship, and in recent columns.
And yes, MPs and whole legislative bodies can be bought too. A glaring example is not far from Canada.
Will Harper Party culture now be Conservative Party culture? Key questions to answer this question are: How does the party benefit from such tight control? More to the point, [b]whose money is backing the party/PM[/b]?
Harperism will be further ingrained in CPC culture if he wins another majority. This could irreparably infect the political culture of all anglo Canada as well. If he wins only a plurality, he might stay on a little longer (and excessively longer if the Libs, [b]for whatever reason[/b], support him.) If he doesn’t win at least a plurality, he’ll be soon replaced as leader. So how much will a new leader (Ford? Kenney? ever-eager Poilievre?) operate as he does, after having seen how his methods function? Of the Conservative candidates running this time, which do not want to be mere crying Calandras (one must wonder what has trumped that MP's dignity and prevented him from resigning), and which candidates aspire to be a different kind of leader once Harper’s gone? Michael Chong?
More importantly, how to change the institutions of Parliament to diffuse more power among MPs, and make the PMO less susceptible to being influenced by unelected puppet masters who embolden the use of undemocratic methods?
And they'll stop at no low.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/election/conservatives-looking-for-vetera...
Here's where it leads and what a Canadian government will, without careful activist citizen control and supervision, be inclined to 'harmonize' itself with. The danger signs - police state renovations, 'balanced budgets', Neoliberal global trade treaties, advocacy or participation in imperial ventures such as Libya, Ukraine, Syria, Palestine etc, are already indicated. These are accompanied by almost complete indifference, confusion or denial by the domestic citizenry. In short, a Canadian style of 'friendly fascism'.
I very much fear we will find when Harper goes, these tendencies will continue.
Global Capitalism and the Culture of Mad Violence - by Henry Giroux
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/02/global-capitalism-and-the-culture...
"Global capitalism has taken on a range of characteristics that demand a new language for understanding such shifts along with the effects these economic, political and pedalogical registers are having in different degrees upon those that bear the weight of its oppressive forces.
Not only have we seen a separation of power, which is global, from politics, which is local, but we have seen a full-fledged attack on the social state, the rise of the punishing state, and the emergence of what might be called an authoritarian culture of cruelty.
Under such circumstances, I have tried to capture the current savagery of various regimes of neoliberal capitalism by developing a paradigm that focused on what I have called the politics of disposability..."
