Happy Shut-the-Fuck-Up-13 Day

At his last Con caucus meeting and presser five months ago, Harper so disliked the grilling he got from media about Nigel Wright's cheque to Senator Mike Duffy and what Steve knew about it - see above - that today he decided to allow only cameras into his pre-throne speech caucus meeting without the accompanying annoying reporters.

The press gallery rebelled, responding that if reporters weren't to be allowed in, then cameras and photographers wouldn't attend either.
No one was surprised when Sun Media broke ranks and bravely stepped into the breach with a:

Sun News Exclusive : Harper addresses Tory caucus

"Our Sun News cameras were allowed in. You will not see that video anywhere else."

But no worries, Steve sent out the whole speech at 140 characters a pop from the safety of twitter so as not to be entirely left out of Speech from the Throne Day, now affectionately known on twitter as # STFU13 or Shut the Fuck Up Day 

Dear Governor General David Johnston :
After you give Harper's speech, don't forget to wash your hands afterwards and put the seat back down.

5pm Update : Conflack Fred DeLorey :

"You won’t believe what the Press Gallery just did in Ottawa.Some media decided to boycott an important speech by our Prime Minister – one where he laid out his vision for our country, before today’s Speech from the Throne."

Yes, this speech was so important Steve didn't want any reporters there.
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Stop Harper action interrupted by long dull dreary throne speech

In subsequent interviews to her brilliant Stop Harper protest during the Speech from the Throne, the now-former Senate page Brigette DePape repeatedly mentioned climate change and inaction on the environment as a motivating factor for her own action. Notable because the Throne Speech mentions neither.

Yesterday SunMedia's David Akin joined the alarming number of politicians and their media fluffers - who are apparently aghast and appalled that a woman would stand silently holding up a piece of cardboard for twenty seconds - with this long dull dreary post :
Memo to Brigette : There are no shortcuts in politics. It takes long, dull, dreary work.

According to Akin, working the inside political corridors completely precludes ever protesting against that same self-serving self-perpetuating hegemony and Brigette DePape broke that most solemn of all Fight Club rules. Oh, boo.
He also apparently did not hear Brigette's interviews on CBC and CTV in which she said she didn't think just holding up a sign would affect anything all by itself but hoped to inspire others to action because politics and democracy is not just about elections.

Seriously, Akin, how the fuck long do you think it will take to get the environment mentioned in a Harper majority Thone Speech the "long dull dreary" way?

Antonia Zerbisias on climate change : Time for a Climate of Change (italics mine)

"Well-known American environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben founded the grass-roots group 350.org, which attempts to get people all over the world agitating for laws, regulations and policy aimed at reducing GHG (greenhouse gas emissions) reductions.

“We need to do (civil disobedience) on a mass scale," McKibben, author of many books including Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, tells me. “We need to do it in a way that makes one thing clear to all onlookers: in this fight, we are the conservatives. The radicals are the people who want to alter the composition of the atmosphere.”

“Non-violent civil disobedience is justified when there is a history of long-standing harm or violation of people's fundamental rights; when legal and policy means have failed to reduce the harms and violations; and when there is little time remaining to address the problems,” University of New England professor John Lemons and Penn State’s Donald Brown wrote in last month’s Journal of Science and Environmental Politics."

“Simply put, people do not have the right to harm others who have not given their consent to be harmed "

All the important social movements of the last century - rights for minorities, women, LGBT, children, POWs, FN, workers, differently abled, the environment - all of them were or continue to be actively suppressed by our governments, who only jump into the front of the parade after a whole lot of outside protest.

From CathiefromCanada : About Protest - the proof that protest works

Post title shamelessly ripped from a great post by Your Heart's on the Left : Harper stunt interrupts Canadian statement delivered by DePape
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Gutsy Senate page's "Stop Harper" protest

                                                                                                 Photo : Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press

Senate page Brigette Marcelle DePape, 21, stood silently holding up a Stop Harper stop sign for 20 seconds during the Speech from the Throne today before being ejected from the Senate Chamber and fired.

Here she explains the reasons for her gutsy protest to CBC's Evan Solomon :



Shorter Solomon : Why didn't you choose some other venue for your protest that nobody would have paid any attention to?

Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett called the protest by a security-cleared employee "an abuse of parliamentary privilege."  "There's lots of room for that out on the lawn, or whatever," she said.

Lots more stuffy tut tutting all round in the media and from other MPs, including Elizabeth May, about "respecting our heritage" and "protesting appropriately".

They can all just stuff it. Because Brigitte's 20-second silent protest doesn't even begin to approach the level of contempt both Harper and our chamber of sober second thought has been dishing out to Canada lately.

Saturday Update : Boris nails it.
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"Thou Dustiness Command"

Friday Update : After 68 days of careful deliberation and a mere 48 hours after its inclusion in the throne speech, "thou dustiness" gets binned, having succesfully served its purpose of providing an amusing distraction from the other dust collecters in the speech.



According to this poll at CBC, most do not think two months off were required to consider recalibrating the gender neutrality of the national anthem.

O Canada

Our home and native land

True patriot love

Thou Dustiness command

"Thou Dustiness" is doubtless responsible for the idea of a National Monument to the Victims of Communism in the throne speech in addition to the dust bunnies under my bed.

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Speech from the Throne 2010 - "Now and For the Future Markets"

Today's Throne Speech is already leaking on the parquet, hours ahead of schedule.

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We may have 1.5 million unemployed with a third of those jobs not coming back, but no worries because Steve has a plan :

We're going to import more immigrant workers from overseas.

and

Throne speech to allow increased foreign investment

"The Conservative government will use the throne speech and budget to allow for more foreign investment in Canada and fewer bureaucratic hurdles to business, a senior government official said Tuesday. It's also expected to include policies aimed at reducing the regulatory burden, luring foreign investors, relaxing foreign ownership restrictions, and recruiting foreign talent.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet believe Canadian business has relied on a low dollar over the past 20 years to compete internationally rather than investing in equipment and technology needed to become more productive."

What Steve and his cabinet actually believe is that it is government's job to promote private sector business so that a combination of its creativity and profits will trickle down to solve all our social and economic problems, relieving him of those responsibilities. Unfortunately the private sector's job is to be responsible solely to its stockholders. How's that working out for us so far?

Progressive Economics :

"Private sector non-residential capital investment is only expected to increase by 2.8% in 2010. This is despite expectations of an increase in pre-tax corporate profits of 15% this year and 16.5% next year, according to RBC’s latest forecast .

After tax corporate profits are set to rise even faster, with Harper and Flaherty’s corporate tax cuts giving up $8.6 billion in revenues this year, rising to almost $15 billion in 2013/14."

"Sometimes you have to walk and chew gum at the same time in this business," Mr. Harper told reporters in Vancouver. When what we really need here is a different brand of gum and a whole other way of walking.

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Presumably the speech will also feature gloating and families and security and homilies and hand-outs that will last till the next election.

Be sure to wash your hands and put the seat back down on your way out.

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