Electoral Reform for Dummies - that would be us.

Well that was then. 
Today some sixteen months later, having attended exactly zero electoral reform committee road meetings or community-based townhalls these past few weeks, our legacy media is jointly suggesting Trudeau throw in the towel.

Susan Delacourt : Time for Trudeau to cut his losses on electoral reform
"Mayrand just gave the Liberals a face-saving excuse. They should take it."

Ms Delacourt manages to interpret Elections Canada CEO Marc Mayrand's caution that :

any new electoral system should enjoy broad support beyond a simple majority of MPs (Liberal MPs, in this case) in the House of Commons.

“I believe that changes to the Elections Act should reflect a broad consensus, that’s for sure. And I believe that a single party, whatever the majority of that party is, should not be entitled to change the act unilaterally,” Mayrand said.

into an 'out' for Trudeau, as if somehow the NDP, Bloc, and Elizabeth May, not to mention the wildly cheering Canadian public who voted for reform above, do not count. 

Having hung this on something Mayrand didn't say, she goes on to speculate about "what Mayrand didn’t say (but could have)" and it goes downhill from there, although I give her points for not mentioning a referendum until several paras in - perhaps because Mayrand says it's unnecessary. 

"I don’t think electoral reform is a top-of-mind issue for Canadians," she says, apparently oblivious to the irony that, aside from Kady O'Malley, a media boycott might be having some bearing on that.

Toronto Star : Mayrand is right – give the people a voice on election reform: Editorial

The Star editorial board first plumps for a national referendum but settles for kicking reform down the road aways:

"Trudeau’s best move would be put election reform to a national vote and let Canadians chose the system they want, even if it means breaking a promise to do away with first-past-the-post during his first term in office."

Ditto the Ottawa Citizen : It's more important to do electoral reform right than to do it quickly

"First, the Liberals need to break the promise that 2015 will be the last first-past-the-post election. Second, they must replace that promise with a new one to pass enabling legislation for a voting system change prior to the 2019 election, but give up on the idea of implementation by that date."

So did you all get the same phone call from Butts?

Who have I missed here? The Sun papers are sticking with their slogan No Referendum, No Reform.  Oh, and the Globe and Mail - nothing from them. I guess their entire interest in electoral reform was exhausted in their Minister Monsef birther scoop.

Not really much use to us alive, are you, legacy media?


The truth is though there is a problem with the ERRE committee. 
Electoral reform advocates and activists remain resolutely positive and, in the spirit of the multi-party nature of the committee, open to whatever form of proportional representation is leading despite individual preferences for one system or another.
But underneath that there is concern.

Despite a mandate to come to a consensus about implementing a new electoral system, at least three of the four Liberals on the committee appear unconvinced electoral reform is even necessary and one is still making up his mind about a referendum. They've had 36 meetings and over a hundred witnesses, yet still take turns repeating bs rightwing Keep It Simple talking points about ballots the size of bedsheets and how complicated it would be for voters to rank several candidates/parties on a ballot instead of just one. 

Committee Liberals also complain that the members of the public who show up to public ERRE meetings are biased in favour of electoral reform. As if people unconcerned about being represented in government are going to make a special trip in to say 'I don't care about this'.

Last word goes to Conservative MP and ERRE member Gérard Deltell, speaking on electoral reform at the Quebec National Assembly on Sept. 27, 2011:

"We have almost 30 months before the next election. We have time to do what all the parties have always urged, that is, a proportional system.'

.

The Conservative Broadsided Corporation

                                                               updated below

Noam Chomsky : "That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital."


All graphics from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting




I get Dr Dawg's point : "Dismantle. Then remantle out of new material" 

But I'm afraid once the goal of dismantling is achieved, there will be no remantling.
More likely, just as the dismantling is almost complete, the Cons will opt for keeping a severely controlled ConBullshitCorp limping along under an ever diminishing mantle as a useful and somewhat less ridiculous version of SunNews.

CBC is really just a reflection of our society at large - a whole lot of self-serving repetitive corporate-driven drivel interspersed with occasionally rewarded bright sparks of public-spirit, principles, and courage.

So how about we support those who splash some much-needed cold water on CBC from time to time without actually drowning the CBC in the Cons corporate cronies' bathtub :

Friday Update : Progressive Economics Forum : The CBC - the Corporate Broadcasting Corp.
Good overview of Canadaland/Amanda Lang controversy and CBC's pro-corporate evolution from former CBC insider Bruce Livesey

Predictable response and hit piece on Canadaland from Globe and Mail: 
Journalist Jesse Brown is quick to expose the failures of Canadian media. But what about his own?

Canadaland's Jesse Brown responds by publishing email exchange between himself and author of G&M hit piece. Ha!

Saturday update : Amanda Lang's softball CBC interview with Royal Bank CEO Gord Nixon on TFWs and RBC/iGate in-and-outsourcing in April 2013 was revisited when Canadaland revealed Amanda Lang is in a relationship with RBC board member Geoffrey Beattie.  

I don't really care who Lang is doing.

My own interest in Lang stemmed from her outrageous G&M opinion piece, also from April 2013, defending outsourcing while attacking her CBC co-worker's TFW coverage as "a sideshow" - a mere 10 days before Lang's scheduled keynote address at an iGate/RBC sponsored conference on outsourcing. 

Dear G&M : re your piece on Canadaland's Jesse Brown yesterday and your many "disclosures" including one on Lang's piece for your paper.

You missed one. 

The US Security and Exchange Commission - General Electric 2013 Annual Meeting of Shareholders lists Lang's beau Geoffrey Beattie as "a director of the Globe and Mail" in addition to being on the board of RBC. That bio is also repeated here.

You're welcome.
.
Tuesday update : 
George Monbiot at The Guardian : Our ‘impartial’ broadcasters have become mouthpieces of the elite reviews the CBC debacle

Frank Koller : CBC Ombudsman Declines To Review Conflict-of-Interest Policy Violations
.

Harperism : From Harper and Hayek to Koch and Coyne

Neo-liberalism : trickle-down, deregulating, deunionizing, globalizing free market privatization of government.

When Stephen Harper was studying under the "Calgary school" in the 80's, he became so enamored with the neo-liberalism of Austrian philosopher Friedrich von Hayek - guru to Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, the Chicago boys, the IMF, and the WTO - it formed the basis of his 1991 political economics thesis. 

Why, wondered Harper at the time, did the conservative revolution of Thatcher and Reagan bypass Canada and what could be done about it?

Happily, the Mont Pelerin Society - founded by Hayek and Milton Friedman of the Chicago School, and featuring Charles Koch CEO of Koch Industries as a board member - was there to help, founding and funding a plethora of free market think tanks in Canada via the corporate-funded neo-liberal prototype, the Institute of Economic Affairs in London UK. 

The Charles Koch Foundation on their Fraser Institute grant funding page :

"Since its inception twenty-five years ago at a series of conferences hosted by Milton Friedman and Michael Walker [executive director of the Fraser Institute from its inception in 1974], the Economic Freedom of the World Index has been used as a reliable measure of economic freedom in countries around the world."

As Donald Gutstein explains in Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada, this transformation was achieved through what Hayek called *professional second-hand dealers* - "newspaper columnists and editorial writers who parrot reports by neoliberal think tanks such as the Fraser Institute, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Frontier Centre for Public Policy, Montreal Economic Institute, and Atlantic Institute for Market Studies."

As it happens, the heads of all those think tanks he mentions :

• Michael Walker, founding Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute; 
• Brian Lee Crowley, founding President of Atlantic Institute for Market Studies [Atlantica!!!], and Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute;
• Peter Holle, President of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy;
• Michel Kelly Gagnon, CEO of the Montreal Economic Institute

are themselves all members of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Funding to link think tanks, politicians, and journalists comes from corporations and U.S. donors, but also Canadian billionaires like Peter Munk of Barrick Gold and his Aurea Foundation.
DeSmogBlog : 

The Aurea Foundation was founded by Peter Munk, the head of Barrick Gold, and is a major funder of a small but influential network of free-market think tanks in Canada, including: The Fraser Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, the Frontier Center for Public Policy, the Montreal Economic Institute and the MacDonald Laurier Institute.

Gosh, same bunch again.

National Post columnist/CBC political analyst/Manning Centre for Democracy advisor Andrew Coyne is a director at Aurea Foundation, along with former National Post editor Ken Whyte and, up until he became Stephen Harper's chief of staff, Nigel Wright.  

Hayek devotee, former advisor at the federal Department of Finance in 2007-8, and Coyne's friend, Brian Lee Crowley of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute is also particularly ubiquitous in promedia. Crowley has written regular columns for the Ottawa Citizen and G&M (where he spent two years on the editorial board) expounding on subjects dear to Harper : why all of Canada benefits from the tarsands, why we need more foreign investment, the benefits of two-tier healthcare and tankers off the westcoast, and why inequality is no biggie because poverty is a matter of character.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty hosted a private fund-raising dinner for Macdonald-Laurier Institute, advising invited corporate executives that he was giving MLI his personal backing and "I hope you will consider doing the same."

Charlie Smith at the Georgia Straight interviewed Gutstein two days ago :

"Gutstein makes the case that neoliberalism is far more sinister than simply having a desire for smaller government. A central tenet of his new book is that Harper is undermining democracy by marshalling the power of government to create and enforce markets where they’ve never existed before.

“He’s gradually moving the country from one that’s based on democracy to one that’s based on the market, which means that the decisions are not made by our duly elected representatives through the laws that they pass and the regulations that they enact,” Gutstein says."

Coyne responded : 

You can buy Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada directly from Lorimer Publishing. 

Book launch with expert panel on issues raised by the book and hosted by the author - Wednesday October 8, 5:30 to 7:30pm at SFU Harbour Centre 

OK, if you must have a sneak peak, here's a few pages on former Liberal leadership hopeful Martha Hall Findlay at the Calgary School of Public Policy advising Harper how he could successfully dump supply management without losing any votes in order to ease Canada's entry into the investor rights deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. 
The "second-hand dealers" went absolutely apeshit for that one.
.
Edited @ 11:15 for clarity

Monday update : Well this will help to cloister the second hand dealers....

The Tyee : Postmedia could soon own almost every English newspaper in Canada. What could possibly go wrong?

Tyee also has an excerpt from Gutstein's book up today : Meet the people who made possible Stephen Harper's reign.

which in turn leads to this from Andrew Mitrovica :  The Hill media war chorus clears its throat … politely
.

When will Canadian MPs show this kind of guts?

Over 20 strong statements from members of the Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Democrat parties in UK 10 days ago, even before the most recent Israeli shelling of UN schools and hospitals with one child now being killed in Gaza every hour.

Note how these British MPs have vaulted right over the despicable cowardly practice, apparently obligatory among politicians in Canada and the US, of "fair and balanced" mealy-mouthed equating of the occupied and occupier - as if the blockaded and collectively punished people of Gaza (600 dead civilians) are somehow responsible for the security of their occupiers in Israel (2 dead civilians) with its Iron Dome and $3billion a year in US aid.

Yes, and while we're at it, when will the Canadian media show this kind of guts? 
Jon Snow, Channel Four :


.

CSEC spies on Canadians : watchdog report

While whistleblower Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald have published reports about the USA's NSA and UK's GCHQ joint electronic surveillance of Brits and Americans, we've been pretty much in the dark in Canada about our own government's surveillance of us.

An annual report tabled two days ago from the independent watchdog commissioner for Canada's electronic eavesdropping agency Communications Security Establishment Canada elicited the following timid headlines repeated throughout yesterday's press coverage.

Post Media : Canadians may be victims of illicit spying 

NaPo : Canada’s spy agency may have illegally targeted Canadians: watchdog 

CBC : Security watchdog says agency may be spying on Canadians  

Star : Eavesdropping agency may have spied on Canadians, watchdog says

Whoa. "May be spying on Canadians"? "may"?   Which report did they read?

Several of the articles quote this reaction from a spokesy for DefMin Rob Nicholson :

 "The privacy of Canadians is of utmost importance. CSEC is prohibited by law from directing its activities at Canadians anywhere in the world or at any person in Canada."

Sure. Part (a) of CSEC's mandate** prohibits spying on "any person in Canada" or Canadians anywhere in the world.
Part (b) is a little looser, permitting CSEC to use information acquired by the Government of Canada system owners to protect their computer systems from mischief.

But Part (c) ... Part (c) specifically directs CSEC on when it may spy on Canadians on behalf of CSIS.

Communications Security Establishment Commissioner, 
Annual Report 2012 - 2013

CSEC assistance to CSIS under part (c) of CSEC’s mandate (Page 21)

In 2009 ... the Honourable Justice Richard Mosley*** ... issued the first warrant permitting CSIS to intercept the communications of Canadians located outside Canada using the interception capabilities of CSEC ... from within Canada.This assistance includes CSEC supporting CSIS with the interception of Canadians’ communications if CSIS has a judicially authorized warrant. 

CSIS is authorized to collect threat-related information about Canadian persons and others and, as discussed above, is not subject to territorial limitation.

...  the collection of the information by CSIS with CSE[C] assistance, as proposed, falls within the legislative scheme approved by Parliament and does not offend the Charter.
CSEC’s assistance to CSIS under the warrants may include use of Canadian identity information and the interception of the communications of Canadians.

So what's with these timid headlines, national press? Are you suggesting that while CSEC was permitted to spy on Canadians for CSIS, they didn't actually do any?

No, obviously not. Page 24 :

During the period under review, CSEC responded appropriately to two related privacy incidents it identified involving the unintentional release of Canadian identity information of some of the subjects of the warrants. 

 ... another incident involv[ed] the interception of communications for CSIS for a small number of days after a particular warrant had expired [due to] unintentional human error 

 Page 27 : the amount and treatment of private communications and Canadian identity information acquired by the activities as well as a sample of those private communications and Canadian identity information used by CSEC

Private Communication: “any oral communication, or any telecommunication, that is made by an originator who is in Canada or is intended by the originator to be received by a person who is in Canada"

Page 33 : In 2012, CSEC started using a new on-line secure system to process requests for and disclosures of Canadian identity information. CSEC provided my employees with a demonstration of the system, which is currently used with CSEC’s principal clients. CSEC intends to extend its use to other partners starting in the coming fiscal year. 

Headlines later on in the day gave us the CSEC response : 

Ottawa Citizen : CSEC Says It Is Not Breaking The Rules About Spying On Canadians  

PostMedia : In wake of spying allegations, Communications Security Establishment Canada insists it didn’t break law

No, CSEC isn't breaking the rules but only because those rules allow it to spy on Canadians while working under the guidelines of CSIS. 
But they don't say that, do they? Instead we get weasel crap like this :

“The commissioner’s statement about a lack of records is a reference to a single review of a small number of records gathered in the early 2000s, in relation to activities directed at a remote foreign location,” the agency said in an emailed response.

Yes, part of the commissioner's complaint is directed at incomplete records in "early years". Doesn't exactly address CSEC spying on Canadians since though, does it?

So how did all you reporters at different media outlets all separately decide to downplay the watchdog commissioner's report on electronic surveillance of Canadians to "may be" spying?

Yes, I realize he wrote a nice positive preamble about how he sees himself as working with CSEC on a "complementarity" not an adversarial basis, "more as CSEC’s conscience than as a sword of Damocles" and how he's been quite pleased with the results.   Further he writes that "where I have no mandate to follow-up, I may refer questions to SIRC that concern CSIS".

We recently learned that since 2009, CSEC - as a Five Eyes intelligence partner with the US, UK, New Zealand, and Australia alongside CSIS, RCMP, and CBSA - has been authorized to exchange intelligence with other nations even if there is “substantial risk” that sending info to or requesting info from a foreign agency would result in torture ... just as long as a deputy minister or agency head gives it the ok. 

What happened to Maher Arar - once so shocking to all of us - has a legal basis here now.

So you reporters in the Canadian media can't be letting us down like this.  
Read the friggin report - it's only 46 pages long.


More from POGGE : On watchdogs with no bite.

**CSEC’s mandate [Page 9 from Commissioner Robert Décary's report ]

When the Anti-terrorism Act came into effect on December 24, 2001, it added Part V.1 to the National Defence Act, and set out CSEC’s three-part mandate:  

• part (a) authorizes CSEC to acquire and use foreign signals intelligence in accordance with the Government of Canada’s intelligence priorities;  

• part (b) authorizes CSEC to help protect electronic information and information infrastructures of importance to the Government of Canada; and 

• part (c) authorizes CSEC to provide technical and operational assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies, including helping them obtain and understand communications collected under those agencies’ own lawful authorities.

***The Honourable Justice Richard Mosley was a primary architect in the drafting of the 2001 Anti-Terror Act and more recently the judge in the six-riding election fraud case.
.
Sunday update : Michael Geist :

"Canadian domestic communications that travel from one Canadian location to another may still transit through the U.S. and thus be captured by U.S. surveillance. Despite these risks, Bell requires other Canadian Internet providers to exchange Internet traffic outside the country at U.S. exchange points, ensuring that the data is potentially subject to U.S. surveillance."

Steve and Barry have a little chat

Really excellent background from The Tyee on the outing of the numpty non-issue of charity speaker gig fees that the Cons used to waste the last week of the House of Commons before summer recess.
Tyee Bonus : Spot the Lickspittle

And as Dammit Janet asks : Why did no other media outlet but that one tiny paper, the Barrie Advance, realize that the real story here was the PMO sending out partisan trumped-up *anonymous* leaks on the taxpayers' dime?
.

CSIS recycles old leaks slagging Abdelrazik, Charkaoui

A leaked 2004 CSIS report from LaPresse on Thursday purports to be a summary of a conversation between Abousfian Abdelrazik and Adil Charkaoui  in 2000 in which they plotted to blow up an airplane enroute between Montreal and France. It has already been enthusiastically repeated across our national press :
CBC : CSIS file reveals plot to bomb plane: La Presse
Gosh, CBC, your previous nice pix of Abdelrazik and Charkaoui are now replaced by scary ones
G&M : Abdelrazik and Charkaoui plotted plane bomb: report
AFP : Two Canada terror suspects plotted France attack: report

etc. ... etc. ...
Never mind that this 'news' was already reported nearly two years ago after a federal court judge annulled Charkaoui's security certificate because government lawyers refused the judge's order to reveal their wiretap evidence, citing "security concerns".
About now you are probably wondering what kind of "security concerns" trumps giving evidence about someone you allege was plotting to blow up a plane.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney :

"I read the protected confidential dossiers on such individuals, and I can tell you that, without commenting on any one individual, some of this intelligence makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck,” he said. “I just think people should be patient and thoughtful and give the government and its agencies the benefit of the doubt."

The re-leak has nonetheless been greeted with skepticism by Boris, Dr. Dawg, Pogge, Sixth Estate and no doubt many others because we all remember previous security leaks from government officials who are more than happy to anonymously rejig conveniently-timed select bits of complete bullshit to a cooperative media.


Let's review just the anonymous bullshit security leaks about Maher Arar for instance, for which no public officials were ever called to account and who are presumably still happily at it.

In 2002 while Arar was being tortured in Syria, an anonymous official source linked Arar to "a suspected member of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network." That suspected member was Abdullah Almalki - later cleared by the Iacobucci inquiry.

Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar :

CanWest bureau chief Robert Fife, July 24, 2003 :"Terror threats in Ottawa: Two kinds of fear: Report says
Syrian intelligence helped U.S. to foil al-Qaeda plot on target in Ottawa : One official would only tell CanWest News Service that Mr. Arar, a 36-year-old Ottawa engineer, is a 'very bad guy' who apparently received military training at an Al-Qaeda base. "

As noted by Justice O'Connor in the report : "the apparent purpose behind this leak is not attractive: to attempt to influence public opinion against Mr. Arar at a time when his release from imprisonment in Syria was being sought by the government of Canada"
Coincidentally the sudden re-issuing of this "new" leak about blowing up planes happens to coincide with Abdelrazik's attempt to get his name off the UN 1267 terror list this month.
To continue :

G&M, Oct 10, 2003 : unnamed Canadian government sources said that Mr. Arar had been “roughed up,” but not tortured, while in detention in Syria

CTV, Oct. 23, 2003 : “senior government officials in various departments” said that Mr. Arar had provided information to the Syrians about al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and cells operating in Canada.

Juliet O'Neill, Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 2003 : “Canada’s dossier on Maher Arar: The existence of a group of Ottawa men with alleged ties to al-Qaeda is at the root of why the government opposes an inquiry into the case.”

Fife : Dec. 30, 2003 : "US, Canada '100% sure' Arar trained with al-Qaeda" : “a senior Canadian intelligence source said the United States had an extensive dossier on Mr. Arar and that “if the Americans were ever to declassify the stuff, there would be some hair standing on end."

Toronto Star : Learning from media mistakes in Arar case May 2009 :

"Unnamed officials also told Craig Oliver at CTV News that Arar was only released because he had given information to the Syrians about Al Qaeda and about other Canadians suspected of terrorism activities. Oliver later explained that he felt the story was credible because his sources were senior officials in two different government departments. Nonetheless, years after the Arar inquiry's report, he apologized to Arar in person for running the story. He also told him of an offer he had turned down – a photograph of Arar training in a camp in Afghanistan. As he describes: "The source wanted me to use the information without showing me the photograph. That was a very solid source... This experience has made me more skeptical... I knew these people very well."

So you'll have to forgive the rest of us if we also share Craig Oliver's reluctance to be conned into accepting any more conveniently-timed leaks and smears from anonymous security officials who for all we know are the same ones who previously set out to turn public opinion against Arar even as they destroyed his life for reasons they have yet to account for.
.

WikiLeaks links

"If Wikileaks was the 9/11 of diplomacy, we can soon expect the US government to retaliate by invading Wikipedia."
~ seen at TweetChat#wikileaks

" ... journalism’s stock-in-trade is disclosure. As we have seen this week with WikiLeaks, power loathes truth revealed. Disclosure is messy and tests moral and legal boundaries. It is often irresponsible and usually embarrassing. But it is all that is left when regulation does nothing, politicians are cowed, lawyers fall silent and audit is polluted. Accountability can only default to disclosure. As Jefferson remarked, the press is the last best hope when democratic oversight fails, as it does in the case of most international bodies."
~ Simon Jenkins at The Guardian

So how is the "last best hope" doing with the latest WikiLeaks exposure of the mythology of power?
For the most part, not well.

What is WikiLeaks? It is The Blueprint. Brilliant.

74 mirror sites for WL which is currently accessable at : http://213.251.145.96/ or http://88.80.13.160/

Best site for news updates on WL : WL Central.

Wiki downloads : Wikisnatch
.
Monday Update : Freedom of information is priceless; for everything else there's Mastercard
.

A Maclean's Conjob MP Circle Jerk

On Tuesday Michael Petrou at Maclean's reported on a controversial Peace Conference organized by two current and two former Green Party members, due to take place in Ottawa today:

"An RCMP “ethnic liaison officer” is urging his colleagues to attend a conference on a “Just and Sustainable Peace” that was organized in part by a Green Party of Canada candidate who believes the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job,” and whose participants include the director general of an NGO that endorses hate-filled stereotypes about Jews. Three academics from Iran are flying in for the event."

A bit further down he notes that Zijad Delic, head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, will also be attending, and that he was advised by organizer Paul Maillet, a retired air force colonel, that, in the group's effort to get a free Hill booking :

"Bloc Québécois MP Richard Nadeau was originally booked as a sponsor but canceled due to a scheduling conflict."

On Wednesday a new piece by the same author at Maclean's reported the following exchange in the House :
Mr. Steven Blaney (Lévis—Bellechasse, CPC):

"Mr. Speaker, we recently discovered that some Bloc members are supporting a conference that will be attended by the executive director of an NGO that sanctions hateful stereotypes about Jews. The spokesperson for the Canadian Islamic Congress claims that all Israelis over 18 are legitimate targets for Palestinians. That organization will be represented at the conference. Those remarks are unacceptable."

Can the Minister of Public Safety comment on the Maclean’s magazine article that reports that the Bloc Québécois member for Gatineau is sponsoring this hateful event?"

Six years after former CIC head Elmasry made his ill-chosen remarks about the Israeli draft system - remarks for which he apologized and resigned - a Con MP pretends those were the words of Zijad Delic, the current head of the CIC, and Maclean's duly reports the Con MP's disinformation at its "World Desk".

Back in the House on Wednesday, Bloc MP Nadeau says he has nothing to do with the Peace Conference and asks Con MP Blaney for an apology :

"I am not giving a speech anywhere tomorrow evening, nor have I given any of my own money or my member's allowance to the organization hosting the conference tomorrow. I would like the Conservative member who said that I support hate groups to explain himself and apologize."

Blaney :

"Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Gatineau for his point of order. I would just like to remind him that in my question, I was referring to the fact that it was reported in an article published in Maclean's, which is a trustworthy magazine."

And round and round it goes ...

Result : Elizabeth May made a frowny face at the four Greens; Vic Toews ordered the RCMP not to attend.

Actually the most interesting exchange occurred when the aforementioned colonel Paul Maillet showed up in the comments under the first Maclean's article, where he patiently explained to the resident ZOMGs freaking out that peace talks are, by definition, pretty much usually held with people with whom you may at first violently disagree.

It's a difficult point to grasp, I know.
.

On media pron and tabloid police work

It's time to pull the media off the pictures of the serial killer wearing a girl's bra and panties.

My veterinarian's guidebook advises the best strategy for separating them is to talk soothingly to them until the swelling goes down and do not throw water on them.

Well fuck that. Here's some much-needed buckets of clear analysis from Antonia Z and Mirabile Dictu on how media pron covered up tabloid police work :

Forced entry .

WTH is up with Mallick? .

Caught flat-footed .

Serial killing 101 .

Antonia wants a public inquest. I want to know why coverage and analysis like hers and Elizabeth's isn't running on the front pages of newspapers.

.

RCMP coup d'etat ; CSIS soup de jour

Yesterday my co-blogger Bob at the Beav posted the first part of this Postmedia story about the RCMP's intent to return to an emphasis on "national security" :
RCMP warn against threat of coup d’etat

He titled his post Canadian Coup de RCMP because the second part of that news story was about an alleged attempted coup against Lester Pearson perpetrated by the combined efforts of the RCMP and the CIA.
Shortly thereafter the Postmedia story disappeared off the web but has since reappeared this morning almost word for word at the Montreal Gazette : RCMP identify coup d'etat as threat.

I'll pick up the second part of that story where Bob left off in case it disappears again :

Over the past year, the Mounties have signalled a renewed emphasis on national security issues that have been pushed aside by law enforcement's preoccupation with global terrorism since 9/11.

In a major speech last fall, for example, RCMP Commissioner William Elliott said while transnational terrorism and "homegrown" radicalization remain big threats, so too are economic espionage by foreign states, transnational organized crime, proliferation issues, illegal migration and other border-security issues.

While hyperbolic, the mention of a coup threat appears to reflect the force's return to a broader operational approach to guarding national security.

It's also not the first talk of a government overthrow.

The 1999 book Agent of Influence alleged the U.S. CIA plotted a de facto coup of Lester B. Pearson's government in the early 1960s.
Canadian author Ian Adams claimed that after the 1963 assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy, CIA counter-intelligence branch head James Jesus Angleton became convinced Pearson was an agent for Russian intelligence and supposedly had information from a Soviet defector backing him up.

"The CIA took great personal offence at Pearson's independent stands in foreign policy, his grain trades with the Soviet Union, his antiwar positions on Vietnam, and especially his friendly stance on Cuba," wrote Adams.

To get at Pearson, the CIA set its sights first on Canadian diplomat James Watkins, Canada's ambassador to Russia in the mid-1950s and a friend of the prime minister.
After 27 days of interrogation by the Mounties, the 62-year-old Watkins's troubled heart gave out and he died, apparently without supplying the confession the spymasters hoped could bring down the government.

Chilling if a Canadian ambassador died under RCMP "questioning" at the behest of the CIA. A defacto attempt at a Canadian coup de RCMP.
Although the story references "James Watkins", Holly Stick correctly noted the mistake at Bread and Roses - reporter Ian Macleod actually meant "John Watkins"

While RCMP Commish Elliott seems to be signalling that the RCMP wants a budget to return to handling national security intelligence issues, CSIS was created in 1984 precisely to separate domestic policing from spying.

Yesterday CSIS policy on torture-based evidence was muddied up again.

Much was made back in March 2009 of CSIS testimony before the public safety committee in which CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O’Brian admitted there is no absolute ban on using intelligence that may have been obtained from countries with questionable human rights records on torture.
Not possible to tell whether a particular piece of evidence was obtained through torture, he explained, allowing that Canada continues to share intelligence info with Egypt and Syria.

The following day CSIS Director Jim Judd explained that O'Brian was "confused" and Van Loan issued a statement to the effect that CSIS does not knowingly use any information obtained by torture, which is in effect pretty much what O'Brian originally said anyway.

Not noted in the media at the time was that 24 minutes into that committee meeting, when the same question was put to him, RCMP spokesman Gilles Michaud, then only eight months in the job, backed up O'Brian's comments on torture-derived info :

"I want to be clear here - there is no absolute ban on the use of any information by the RCMP."

which should come in pretty handy should the RCMP expand its scope back into the "national security" business .
The G20 police state shenanigans are looking more like a practice run all the time, aren't they?
.

Gordo appointee cans Elections BC officer who axed his HST mailout

The popularity of Lotusland's estimable premier is currently running at 12%.

There are a lot of very good reasons for this but let's just go with what 83% of the people polled told Angus Reid : they don't trust the bastard.

Here's another reason, not that you'd know anything about it from reading our local press.

When Gordon Campbell was planning to mail out a plushy $780,000 pamphlet hawking the benefits of his new Harper Scam Tax to the same BC residents who were successfully gathering sufficient signatures to have that sucker repealed, Elections B.C. Deputy CEO Linda Johnson told him he couldn't do that. No advertising during the repeal drive, she wrote in her decision, because Elections BC is an independent office which covers referenda as well as elections.

Finangling Minister Colin "HST wasn't on my radar" Hansen was some pissed about that.

Meanwhile the chief electoral officer ended his term in June and Gordo appointed a temporary replacement, Craig James, formerly the clerk of committees, who immediately enraged everyone by not sending the HST repeal petition to committee until business groups could do a court challenge to it. Nice.

Now that same Craig James has fired Linda Johnson, 19 years the deputy chief electoral officer.

Ah, but it's not a firing, said some flack, they're just restructuring Elections BC without a deputy now.

Sure they are. Because what better time to fire the #2 person who has been deputy officer for 19 years than just three months after the #1 guy has left and just as a major confrontation on the HST is in the offing. And what the hell is a temporary Campbell-appointed CEO doing "restructuring" Elections BC anyway?

It would be good to hear something from Acting Chief Electoral Officer Craig James about this but unfortunately he is apparently away doing volunteer work somewhere for the moment.

Well, there'll be volunteer work aplenty after the recalls start.

.

thanx to RossK for the horrible pic. Yup, Gordo endorsed Steve's election.

.

International Spurn A Moran Day

.

And not just this moran - all the morans.

If a moran burns a Quran in the forest and no one is around to plug and play it ...

.

Mike Thomas at the Orlando Sentinel (h/t Dammit Janet)

What if media had ignored Terry Jones? :

We created the Rev. Terry Jones from dust. And in two weeks, to dust he shall return. Then we'll move on to the guys who plan to run over the Quran at their monster-truck pull. Whatever it takes to keep your attention.

.

Down the memory hole : Two accounts of domestic terrorism

Out of the many many published accounts of Canada's newest domestic terrorism case, two appear to have disappeared down the memory hole.

Last night the Globe and Mail published a story on authorities apprehending the child of the so-called fourth terror suspect, Awso Peshdary. He's the one who was arrested Friday and interrogated for six hours, released, and immediately re-arrested on domestic assault charges dating back to April as a result of police having bugged his house for the last six months. That G&M story read :
Authorities seize child of man targeted in terror probe

The six-month-old daughter of Awso Peshdary is in custody of Children's Aid Society after police, unable to make terrorism case, lay charges of domestic assault.

The G&M included a link to a blog supportive of Peshdary which gave an account purportedly of Peshdary's wife going to the Elgin Police Station to inquire after her husband, being interrogated for five hours without a lawyer present, being coerced into making statements against her husband, and having her child apprehended. Is all this true? We don't know. 660 News reported the child being apprehended today.

But even if Peshdary is accused of assault and uttering threats to his wife, I thought, why apprehend her child from her while he is locked up?

I posted a link to both the G&M story and the blog account on the Bread and Roses forum last night where it was read and commented on by regulars, but by 11:26 this morning deBeauxOs reported at BnR that the G&M story was missing.
Gone. 404ed down the memory hole.

Now the G&M is notorious for rewriting their online copy so we waited for the new version to appear. Dr Dawg reported a new version, which incidentally is minus the phrase "unable to make terrorism case", but now it too is gone, as is the blog post purporting to be Mrs. Peshwary's account of events. Dawg has cached copies of the revised G&M story and the missing blog post : Abuse.

Last night at BnR, Pogge quoted the following from the original G&M account :

After al-Qaeda’s attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, Canadian police were given extraordinary powers to temporarily arrest suspected terrorists when a solid criminal case failed to materialize. Police were also given powers to compel individuals to testify against alleged terrorist associates.

Parliament voted against extending those powers in 2007. Now, the Conservative government hopes to revive them, meaning MPs are about to embark on a renewed debate as to whether counterterrorism agents have sufficient powers to deal with people on the periphery of a suspected plot.

As Pogge said last night, this is today's installment of Things That Make You Go "Hmmmm".
.

Project Samosa : The media and their sources in the war on terror

The publication ban on Project Samosa, the RCMP's latest salvo in the war on terror, has the media scrambling to get unnamed sources and security experts to augment and substitute for accounts of court proceedings. By a happy coincidence for war on terror fans, this allows for far more pants-pissingly terrorfying conjecture than mere straight news would allow.

So far, "sources" have told one security expert, an ex-RCMP and CSIS operative quoted at CTV, that the accused :

1) "would have targeted the Parliament buildings and Montreal's public transit system with bombs",
2) "that the ringleader went to Afghanistan and to Pakistan to receive training",
3) "some of their suspected accomplices could be in Iran or in Dubai."
4) "were assembling components for one or more bombs and had raised money for al Qaeda and the Taliban"
5) "the ringleader was about to take a trip abroad, maybe to deliver the money himself"

This last is the reported reason for the arrests. After a year of watching them :

"Police say a terror attack was likely still months away when they pounced on the plot, but they moved because they feared the men were about to start sending money to other terrorists in Afghanistan."

Last I heard "terrorists" in Afghanistan were already rolling in US tax dollars and drug money but whatever.
A year ago The Star ran an excellent piece on the media's relationship with their "sources" in the Arar case when he was the terrorist du jour :
Learning from media mistakes in Arar case

Canadian Press journalist Stephen Thorne quoted an official source that linked Arar to "a suspected member of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network."

Robert Fife, CanWest's Ottawa bureau chief, "cited an anonymous official who described Arar as a "very bad guy" who had received training at an Al Qaeda base and that intelligence received from Syria had helped the CIA avert an attack on the U.S. embassy in Ottawa."

Craig Oliver at CTV News was "offered a photograph of Arar training in a camp in Afghanistan" Oliver :"The source wanted me to use the information without showing me the photograph. That was a very solid source... This experience has made me more skeptical... I knew these people very well."

Ottawa Citizen's Juliet O'Neill was fed a story headlined "Canada's dossier on Maher Arar: The existence of a group of Ottawa men with alleged ties to Al Qaeda is at the root of why the government opposes an inquiry into the case."

Even after Arar's return to Canada, "Robert Fife was once more the vehicle that Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials used to inform the public that they were "100 per cent sure" that Arar trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan."

Some of these reporters have since stated they were used and apologised to Arar; some have not. The point is they were all used to disseminate false information from anonymous government and police sources to the public. Something to bear in mind when "sources" are once again where we will be getting most of our information on this newest batch of alleged terrorists, given it will likely be months if not years before they go to trial.
.

Apparently we the public are annoying to Steve now

“They don’t bother us. It’s just that they are annoying,”
a "senior Conservative official" told the G&M's Dear Jane this morning about the public's uproar in reaction to the Cons' scrapping of the compulsory long-form census.
"Census freedom," this same anonymous Conbot amusingly called it.

Apparently we the public are "annoying" to Steve now.

And not just the Lib/NDP/Green/I-don't-fucking-vote-for-any-of-those-bastards public either.
Not even Con voters support Steve's "Après moi, le déluge" style of government.

According to Angus Reid, only 31% of people who voted Con last time "side with the government's argument that the long form census is intrusive", while 53% of previous Con voters "believe that the long form census yields data that is important to make policy decisions in all areas of public service, and should remain mandatory."

Jane's column header today is Clement digs in heels and gains a supporter on census
The "supporter" turns out to be a rightwing radiohead.
Ok ... that's one.
I dunno, Jane, I don't think you're helping here.
.
Over the weekend Feschuk took the piss out of Jane's many columns consisting almost entirely of quotes from anonymous "seniory super-inside long-time party whatever" Con sources. Lols.
.
For a decent column on the census containing actual, you know, facts : the incomparable Zerb.
.

The Military-Industrial-Media-Government Complex

In a 2007 article entitled "The Conference of Defence Associations gets $100,000 a year from the Department of Defence", CDA executive director Alain Pellerin told Maclean's John Geddes :

"We also have to write a number of op-eds to the press."
Asked if there is any aspect of Tory defence policy the CDA opposes, he couldn't think of one.

Six days ago the Ottawa Citizen ran an article "End the Inquisition" by Paul Chapin which rather hysterically equated the Afghan committee's hearings on the detainee issue with Senator Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunt. The Citizen did note in Chapin's bio that he is director of the above-mentioned Conference of Defence Associations, but rather unhelpfully failed to mention he was also the author of the very detainee agreement he was defending.

Yesterday Harper Bizarro had a very good post up detailing missing bio info in a Globe and Mail David Bercuson editorial, Liberals, lay down your arms. In it Bercuson advised Iggy to clamp down on Lib defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh and Lib foreign affairs critic Bob Rae re their determination to get to the bottom of the Afghan-detainee issue. As noted by Harper Bizarro, the G&M omitted to mention that Bercuson is director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary and director of programs at the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute(CDFAI), and therefore has funding ties to the very Department of Defence he is defending. h/t Pogge

Also worth noting is that the comment editor at the Globe and Mail who runs these pieces joined the Advisory Council of CDFAI in 2006.


At 13 university centres across Canada, the Department of National Defence funds defence 'studies' through its Security and Defence Forum. This is from Embassy Mag in 2007 :

"According to the Department of National Defence, over 600 people, including 183 faculty members, are employed in these centres across Canada. In 2005-2006, scholars from these centres churned out 600 publications, including articles, books, and chapters. In this same period, the centres received funding worth $1,255,000. As of October 2006, DND approved a 25 per cent increase in funding. In the next five years, the funding will shoot up to $1,650,000, a 32 per cent increase."

Steve Staples, Rideau Institute, Feb 2007 :

"It's not about scholarly journals, peer reviewed articles that they have written -it's really about appearing in the mainstream media. What you tend to get as a general trend, is a steady stream of hawkish opinion from academics that are all linked together through Department of National Defence funding."

Not all this hawkish think tank funding is DND of course. CDFAI donors for instance also include Enbridge, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin.

Something to think about given that media Rolodex seems to fall open so easily to the same DND and corporate funded analysts over and over again.

As Pogge says, "What we have here is taxpayer dollars being laundered through the defence budget and used to pay academics to lobby us ."

.