statism watch

This is absolutely shameless. There’s nothing like a good crisis to ram an agenda through, and Brown can hardly contain himself: is it too much to ask that the British PM refrains from mangling the ‘Queens’ English’ next time he pounds one of these tracts out? Global, global, global… I got a little tear in my eye at the end. Come on. We see right through you, Brown, and you will not have your new world order, your new Empire, the dream of tyrants.

Flashback: EU backs sweeping new financial rules, more power for IMF | Gordon Brown seeks sweeping reforms to give IMF global ’surveillance role’ | Gordon Brown hails UK job cuts as birth pangs of new world order | Gordon Brown calls for new world order to beat recession | Baron Rothschild tags along with Gordon Brown, expects new world order

Gordon Brown, The Sunday Times
March 1, 2009

Historians will look back and say this was no ordinary time but a defining moment: an unprecedented period of global change, and a time when one chapter ended and another began.

The scale and the speed of the global banking crisis has at times been almost overwhelming, and I know that in countries everywhere people who rely on their banks for savings have been feeling powerless and afraid. But it is when times become harder and challenges greater that across the world countries must show vision, leadership and courage – and, while we can do a great deal nationally, we can do even more working together internationally.

So now is the time for leaders of every country in the world to work together to agree the action [sic] that will see us through the current crisis and ensure we come out stronger. And there is no international partnership in recent history that has served the world better than the special relationship between Britain and the United States. [Ed. Note: Wow. Just - wow.]

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Mmmmn, yes, the plebes must know their rightful place. Don’t be getting uppity, now, as your pensions and future are drained away.

Geraint Jones, Daily Express
March 1, 2009

Top secret contingency plans have been drawn up to counter the threat posed by a “summer of discontent” in Britain.

The MI5 logo. Look familiar?

The “double-whammy” of the worst economic crisis in living memory and a motley crew of political extremists determined to stir up civil disorder has led to the ­extraordinary step of the Army being put on ­standby.

MI5 and Special Branch are targeting activists they fear could inflame anger over job losses and payouts to failed bankers.

One of the most notorious anarchist websites, Class War, asks: “How to keep warm ­during the credit crunch? Burn a banker.”

Such remarks have rung alarm bells in Scotland Yard and the Ministry of Defence.

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Crank up the printing presses, the ‘crack-up-boom’ can’t be far behind. ‘Quantitative easing’ is doublespeak for the monetization of debt. And the sad fact is, the longer we put off deflation, the worse the depression will be. But any sort of national recovery in that situation – such as might still be possible if Canadians immediately switched at least some portion of their economic activity to sound money and community barter – would be inconvenient in the extreme for those pushing world economic regulation and an international fiat currency. Really, what more is there to say?

Flashback: Optimistic central bank expects speedy economic rebound

Kevin Carmichael, The Globe and Mail
March 1, 2009

OTTAWA — Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney is approaching uncharted territory.

Widely expected to reduce the benchmark lending rate to 0.5 per cent this week, Mr. Carney and his advisers on the governing council have reached the point where they must consider more radical measures to a fight a recession that shows little sign of letting up.

“We’re sitting at a pretty key point,” said Doug Peters, former chief economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank and a junior finance minister under prime minister Jean Chrétien. “I don’t think the policy makers know exactly where we are at the moment.”

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This is a crucial shift in messaging. And, of course, an immensely hypocritical one for Stephen Harper, but no one worries about that sort of thing in politics these days – suddenly he’s decided to pick up a book on Afghanistan. We could have saved a lot of money and lives if he’d done that a few years back. Like in the novel 1984, the messaging shifts from one day to the next, we remain complacent, and the power of the media is such that we forget our own histories. What Harper is saying now is debateably true, of course, but only because it’s time now to turn down the heat on this conflict to a sort of perpetual reconstruction/counter-insurgency effort. Perpetual warfare through low intensity conflict has been the raison d’etre of the American military establishment since the Bush/Reagan presidency, and is required to drive and transform the inflationary economy into a militarist state now that the manufacturing base has been destroyed.

Paul Koring, The Globe and Mail
March 1, 2009

WASHINGTON — Canadian and other foreign armies can’t defeat the Taliban, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

“Frankly, we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency,” Mr. Harper said, more than seven years after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban regime. Canadian troops have been fighting and dying in Afghanistan since 2002, but this is the first time the Prime Minister has explicitly said defeating the Islamic extremists can’t be done.

Mr. Harper, in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, said that despite sending thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan and suffering more than 100 troop deaths, the “success has been modest” and any gains made could be lost.

“We’re not going to win this war just by staying,” Mr. Harper said, and pointed to the long history of Afghan insurgencies successfully driving out foreign invaders – including the Soviet army in the 1980s and the British a century earlier.

“[From] my reading of Afghanistan history, it’s probably had an insurgency forever, of some kind,” Mr. Harper said.

But Mr. Harper didn’t rule out sending more troops or extending the Canadian combat commitment beyond the current 2011 deadline.

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