Saturday, August 25, 2007

The allegory of the three agent provocateurs




Photo: LeDaro. See animated version here.



Is it possible that these three unidentified agent provocateurs at the Montebello Summit are simply an allegory of the summit itself and the three “leaders” who convened it? Bush, Calderon and Harper.

Like the masked men themselves, do we really know who these three “leaders” are and their true intent with the power that they hold in their hands? They fashion themselves as the three amigos, as if to signal friendliness. Friendliness to whom? We know that they had considerable time to listen to the innermost thoughts of the 10 CEOs that they had each selected to sit on the NACC. Apart from the facile jelly bean agenda of David Ganong, little is known about how these 30 CEOs are going to improve life for the other 500 million residents of North America who were devoid of representation. I understand that David Ganong thinks all our problems will be solved if only he could ship his jelly beans in one standardized printed package to the US. Does this universal packaging concept of his contemplate dropping  the French language requirements under Canadian packaging standards?  It’s far from certain whether US consumers of his jelly beans would appreciate their new French language packaging in the new Freedom Fry country called the US of A, which is the Bush mandated politically correct name for what the rest of the world calls French fries and the US did too before Chirac didn’t see fit to join Bush to rid Iraq of its cache of non existent WMD and replace it with a cache of otherwise non existent IEDs.

If not, I guess that means the universal packaging initiative proposed by David Ganong contemplated moving to a trilingual standard to also include Spanish. Or did his thinking not go that far? How far did his thinking go beyond the confines of his own jelly bean manufacturing facility? What will his “solution” mean for the $6.3 billion (as of 2002) packaging industry in Canada who profitably exist in this country primarily because of the (relatively) low volume runs that they provide under Canada’s bilingual packaging standards? No doubt these offsetting concerns were being fully dealt with by others on the NACC. Perhaps Manulife CEO  Dominic D’Alessandro knows a lot about the packaging industry since he launched one of the most successful packaged products in Canada during the last year by the name of Income Plus, with a little help from the unforeseen (at least by those in the public) tax measures to tax income trusts. If not, we can be well assured that the CEO of Home Depot Canada knows what’s best for Canadians, which is no doubt the only reason why Stephen Harper made room for her on the NACC.

Unfortunately very little else is known about the Summit itself except for the jelly bean communique and the allegory provided by the three masked agent provocateurs.

Perhaps it isn’t an allegory, but rather an unfortunate annoyance, this agent provocateur thing, who some in the press have aptly called the Three Stooges

The unfortunate aspect of that is that the Three Amigos and their jelly bean agenda may have been totally undermined by the Three Stooges, in which case  the SPP Summit at Montebello will unfortunately be forever known as the Subversion of Police Protocols.

Or maybe none of this occurred by accident, and these Three Stooges tactics were condoned by those staging the summit and the architects of SPP, in which case the summit is deserving of being known as the Subversion of Parliamentary Procedures since the SPP has been methodically set up in such a way so as to avoid parliamentary oversight. Just ask the architects themselves. While you’re at it, ask them just exactly what they meant when they said their overall operating tactic for the SPP will be one of "evolution by stealth".

Doesn't sound very security or prosperity-like to me. But that’s for the other 500 milion not represented at the summit to fuss about, or as I pointed out in an earlier e-mail, let them eat pesticides, as we march down the road called the lowest common denominator in search of the holy grail of corporate profitability and the further concentration of power amongst the corporate elite. The proverbial bottom line of SPP. Phooey to that.

2 comments:

Dr Mike said...

Put a mask on a man & he believes that anonymity makes him invincible --put a man behind a mask made up of feel good statements such as "level the playing field" & "Tax Fairness" & he thinks he is invincible.

As long as he is allowed to hide behind this thin veil of deceit ,enabled by the media & big business , he will be sucessful in his attempt to remove this valuable asset from our investment portfolios.

The very fact that the same Big business bosses that wanted trusts destroyed are advising the members of the SPP is no coincidence--the very mask that aids Flaherty has been placed there by these same individuals.

The fact that the Prime Minister talks about Jelly beans to make light of a serious situation says a lot about his character & his level of empathy for the Canadian public--just another mask thrown out there to hide what was really talked about

Does he think we are so ill-informed that we will beleive that all these millions were spent just to talk about jelly beans--give us a break--even the three "provocateurs" know better than that.

Just remember that any man or any group hiding behind the mask of deceit is of little use in a democracy & as far as I can tell , Canada is still considered to be just that.

Dr Mike.

Anonymous said...

A lot of us good Pweebles want some splaining. Them there Stock answers don't work so good no more.

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Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day Is Wrong, Labour Says - Answering Every Question Now Would Be Honourable, says Georgetti
August 24, 2007

OTTAWA – “A responsible government that is on the side of the people should not run away from difficult questions and hide behind the lame excuses of a complaint process,” says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian labour Congress in reaction to the Honourable Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety refusal to explain the police wrongdoing in Montebello on Monday and the three-day cover up that followed.

“Canadians’ trust in their democratic institutions is shaken by the belated admission by the authorities that they had undercover police officers at a peaceful demonstration. Every added minute of silence by the Minister of Public Safety will further erode this trust. He is wrong not to answer questions and wrong not to order an open and public investigation.”

“Delays, obfuscation and buck passing will only cement the negative public opinion about the SPP agenda, the summit meeting and the police apparatus used to hide them,” explains Georgetti.

“Answering every question now would be the honourable thing to do because the Minister of Public Safety is answerable to government and Parliament for the actions of all police corps involved in the summit.”

Canadians want to know now:

why was one of these undercover police officers with a rock in his fist?

why did the various police corps spent days denying they placed these officers in the peaceful demonstration?

who was in charge of this operation? and once blown, why try to cover it up?

how many other peaceful demonstrations did the police manage to subvert? when? where? and with what sad consequences?

who in government knew about this? when? and what did they do about it?

is the SPP so devoid of relevance that the government needed such an untoward distraction to hide it?

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Contacts:

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Jeff Atkinson, 613-526-7425 and 613-863-1413

http://canadianlabour.ca/index.php/august/1223

08-24PoliceAnswersEng.pdf

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