MOTHER
May I?

da Boss of Bosses

Adolf Hitler had Herr Doktor Goebbels. Capo Gordo Campbell has the minders and information manglers of the Public Affairs Bureau. The Ayatollah of the Canadian Taliban, Stevie Harper has the "...potent but little-known communication tool called the Message Event Proposal." Any dictatorial government, or government that intends to implement an agenda that goes against the interest of the voters AND the professed policy objectives expressed during the increasingly sham election periods MUST control the flow (or just as often STOP THE FLOW) of information.

According to Sunday's Toronto Star under the headline Documents expose Harper's obsession with control:

The Canadian Press has obtained almost 1,000 pages of MEPs* from several government departments, including the Privy Council Office, under the Access to Information Act. The PCO, the bureaucratic nerve centre of Ottawa, has been conscripted by an increasingly powerful Prime Minister’s Office to vet requests for public events across the federal government.

The MEPs have blurred the time-honoured separation of non-partisan public servants and political staffers and sidelined seasoned government communicators, sapping morale across the civil service.

They have become the political tool for literally putting words in the mouths of cabinet ministers, federal bureaucrats, low-profile MPs on the barbecue circuit, and seasoned diplomats abroad.

* MEP = Message Event Proposal

For a government that campaigned on transparency, accessibility and accountability, Harper's avoidance of most media and control freak approach to Canadians' access to information is hypocritical at best. But then if this flock of Reform/Alliance wingnuts disguised as Conservatives were out front about their agenda they would be out of elected office, if not incarcerated for treason. Mind you, if only bankers, Zionists and Oil Companies were allowed to vote, these guys would be government for eternity.

Not only did the Prime Minister's Office "decline to comment on this story," but:

The identities of senior sources who have worked at PCO* and other departments are not being revealed because they fear retribution from their political masters.

* PCO = Privy Council Office

The absurd length to which this government and its Control Freak in Chief will go to control the message is illustrated by this example of your tax dollars at work to keep you in the dark, or on the "right" (wing) page.

A 2008 request from an Ottawa journalism student for an interview with CIDA on its Canada Fund for Africa generated a detailed two-page MEP — even though there was only “remote potential for sale of the article to a Canadian magazine or weekend feature section of a national daily.”

There is even a template for a proper Message Event Proposal as follows:

• Event,


• Event type


• Desired headline


• Key messages


• Media lines


• Strategic objectives


• Desired soundbite


• Ideal speaking backdrop


• Ideal event photograph


• Tone


• Attire


• Rollout materials


• Background


• Strategic considerations

If I wasn't such a paranoid tin foil hatted conspiracy theorist, I guess I could take comfort in the thought that Uncle Steve and his Cardinals and Bishops Cabinet at least care enough about what I think to try and mould my thoughts non-violently. They could just water-board me or something until I agreed with whatever they wanted me to buy into!