The epic flooding of Calgary was no doubt a divine wrath scenario, not intended to wipe out the core Conservatives, only, sent as a warning.
The rescheduled gathering is also affected by flood conditions, this time it is the undammed issues of ethics and alienation, continuing to be debated and resistant to containment. Whether or not the senatorial situation, the cover-ups, the harsh treatment that has come to be called "under the bus," by common consent, are scheduled for conversation, Conservatives acknowledge that it will form the weft and the weave of the gathering, it is the one thing everyone wants to talk about.
Back in the spring, I had some reaction to news reports that unveiled the Three Accused Senators. Like many Canadians, i reacted-- not to the accusations so much as to the different treatment for the three accused: the white man's report was doctored, softened, whilst the woman and the indigenous man were frankly sanctioned. What's this? Why the special effort to repay Duffy's expenses, with no sign of a similar umbrella extended to the other two?
Questions and answers have continued to drip into the public domain, sometimes on the initiative of the Conservatives or Senators, sometimes as a result of curious reporters, following up, doing their jobs. Each revelation letting slip a little more of the same: contradictions, differential treatment, and a whole lot of smoke, mirrors, spin. The recent weeks of full-on he said/she said, has had some high points--top-notch oratory-- and bringing the challenge that Conservatives are facing well out front and centre: control versus ethics.
Helena G was a longtime Conservative, met her husband on the Hill and in the Party, had every reason to think she was what she thought she was-- a part of a unity, one of a pack-- until the swirl of innuendo and the suddenness of the dispatch, and she woke up, there on the road, under the bus. No legal recourse for this Sudden Liability, nor any actual legal charges to substantiate the swirling inneundo-storm that was the rationale behind this summary treatment.
Fortress Conservative, and the guards who in an era of kill lists and drone wars felt it appropriate to attack and remove a serving MP rather than pursue any inside or outside corrective or investigative options, preferring character assassination and public humiliations over any form of humane due process, was revealed as a force in our world.
The 2011 election moved Helena out of the public eye, while ushering in the robocall scandals. While news reports and criminal justice procedures seemed to focus on Ontario ridings, I am way out here in the irrelevancies of British Columbia, and I did receive the same two-part treatment that have been widely reported-- the hostile young man on the phone, asking me if I would be voting Conservative, followed by the diversionary robocall, seeking to mislead me with criminal intent, and to rob my family members of our right to vote in the federal election.
The "trench warfare" of the criminal trial, and the ease with which the media moves on to the next headline, combine. I have had no answers, from the electoral fraud investigators nor from my elected representatives, to tell me how my contact information ended up on a Fortress Conservative killlist. But the intended chill did have it's profound and intended effect. My willingness to communicate my views on political issues to my (legally or illegally) elected and appointed officials disappeared for a while. Clearly in a blinkered, hostile, and increasingly fascist governance scenario, any decision that any one takes to excercise our civic rights and our freedom of speech has consequences. Senator, MP, impoverished citizen, all are one when it comes to the targetting of the Fortress Conservative gun.
While pollsters tell us more believe Duffy than Harper, and a few have stepped out of line to defend Wallin, few seem to show an interest in sharing an umbrella with Senator Brazeau. But, I am one who listened carefully to his recent CBC interview. I found it thought-provoking. His characterization of a certain Senator as a person opposed to Aboriginal people and concerns certainly rang true for me-- bringing to mind my Grade 10 English teacher, a person who was clearly hostile to me for reasons I could not then, as an innocent and naive and well-intended youth arriving in southern Ontario society, understand. A few more decades of life, innumerable further assaults on my innocence, and I do know precisely the sort of person that Mr. Brazeau is referring to.
Like him, I am also curious about the nudging from position of many of these insiders, and wondering when we will hear the great investigative revelations, not only about the years of hubris and misuse of power and authority, not only the underlying class-race solidarity, but even more to the point: who is manning the guns today? Will these challenging weeks provide enough pressure for transformation?
Patrick Brazeau + Evan Solomon interview
(CBC 2013)
+
If fish deserve inquiry, so do missing women
(WFP 2012)
The journalist in this 2012 story implies it's bizarre to contrast the situation of indigenous women to that of the fisheries and the fish, however, I disagree. It seems there is interest in getting to the bottom of many questions, but, the orchestrations against indigenous women are not the same high-interest, central, shared concerns, neither for Fortress Conservative which is bent on dirty tricks means of control, nor for "the base," although more and more political and less political people have publically supported this call. Fortress Conservative, central Canada power brokers, continue to show hostility. Further still, they continue to serve us up non-consultative processes, and anti-democratic flavours of working the system, going through the motions of democratic and due process.*
It is useful to revisit what Brazeau points out as the turning point issue in his relations with his political masters, the insiders, the beginning of the end for him:
Brazeau Speech:
Murdered & Missing Aboriginal Women - December 2, 2009
image source:
*for a different example, on Al Jazeera's The Stream: