Kory, the NRA, and the long gun registry vote

Photoshop inspired by Steve Harpo : "From my clammy pudgy hands"

(h/t Antonia Z)

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Here's Steve's former communications director Kory Teneycke on CBC's Power and Politics, Sept 3, 2010 (Time mark : 6:50), comparing the Avaaz petition against a must-carry licence for Teneycke's Fox News North to a 'hypothetical' case of the NRA meddling in Canadian politics :

"We're having a debate on gun control right now in Canada on the long gun registry, a very hot debate. What if the NRA came into Canada with petitions and advertising campaigns, trying to influence Canadian policy and Canadian decisions? People would be outraged. People. would. be. outraged."

OK, Kory, let's go with that.

From the NRA website : Standing Guard by Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive VP :

"If all goes well in the Canadian parliament, Dominion gun owners will be freed from 14 years of living under the crushing weight of a bureaucratic, scandal-ridden, wasteful, invasive, $2 billion, error-ridden and inarguably worthless long gun registry."
"The NRA of America supports and endorses the work done by the CILA [Canadian Institute for Legislative Action] and strongly encourages all Canadian firearms owners to become CILA supporting members."

Tony Bernardo, head of CILA :

"We have been working hand in hand with the NRA regarding international issues for the past three and a half years...in fact, the NRA was instrumental in the formation of CILA…the NRA provides CILA with tremendous amounts of logistic support."

Foreign Policy, July 2006 :

In December, an NRA official was scheduled to offer a "legislative training workshop" at the annual meeting of CILA's parent organization.
"How do we protect our rights?" went the promo for the event. "By being more politically active and effective at the grassroots [level]. And who better to show us how than the most powerful lobby group in the world, the National Rifle Association and their Institute for Legislative Action."

CBC, today : NRA involved in long gun registry debate

Bernardo, a frequent guest on NRA chat shows updating U.S. gun owners on the fight to kill the Canadian registry, said the NRA was instrumental in helping him set up his Canadian lobby group, CILA, the lobbying arm of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA), and a mirror group of the Institute for Legislative Action, the NRA's lobbying arm.

The CSSA's communications director, Brant Scott, was previously an aide to Con MP Garry Breitkreuz, featured here on the NRA website.

CSSA media release, June 8, 2010:

"While Brant was working with Garry Breitkreuz, he acted as liaison with the CSSA on a variety of gun-related issues, including the long-gun registry. The CSSA worked with the MP's office on Bill C-301 and later Bill C-391," explains Bernardo."

Garry Breitkreuz is chair of Canada's parliamentary Public Safety and National Security Committee.

Back to the CBC :

Michael Bryant, formerly Ontario's attorney general, said the NRA has been agitating in Canadian political backrooms for years.
Canadians need to know the role the NRA has played in the gun registry debate, Bryant said.

"For a lot of people in Canada, if they knew that the NRA was part of the effort to get rid of the gun registry, they would think more about their views," he said.
"And they would think, 'well, wait a minute, I thought this was about, you know, wasting taxpayer dollars. The NRA's involved? Really? That makes me very uncomfortable … ' "

So. "Uncomfortable" or "outraged"? Your call, Kory.

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G&M tonight : Tories deny NRA 'conspiracy theory'

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Yep, I'll bet you're really really sorry now you reminded us of the NRA's reach into Canada, what with the Cons precious, the long gun registry vote, coming up on Sept 21st and all.

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h/t Dammit Janet

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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?
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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.

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

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9/11 nine years on

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Steve : Fresh muzzles all round for everyone!

According to Jane, Steve has a new initiative to protect the Cons from their own appallingly bad ideas.

Twenty-six committees, comprised of three senators and six MPs each, will vet "proposed legislation, regulations and even ideas" before they hit daylight or an uninitiated Con MP's lips. Under the watchful eye of John Baird and his former chief of staff, Rick Dykstra - both Mike Harris alumni - and with the parliamentary secretary from each ministry serving as the committee chair, the idea is to identify C.R.A.P. ideas - like gutting the census and building sports arenas in Con-convenient places - before they can set the curtains on fire.

"These permanent committees have a mandate to provide a new layer of troubleshooting ... to flag potential policy land mines to cabinet, catch issues that may fly in Ontario but won’t play well in Western Canada, help with communications strategy and reduce the dependence on ministers receiving advice from bureaucrats sitting in Ottawa."

Screw the policy making; let's ignore the already muzzled people who have spent their professional lives making policy and just troll for better PR in the Bushlands .

Mr. Harper asked several of his senior caucus members – Mr. Dykstra, ... Marjory LeBreton, the leader of the Government in the Senate; and former House leader Jay Hill – to work on the initiative."

That would be the same Jay Hill, now replaced as House bully by John Baird, who previously oversaw the implementation of the Cons dirty tricks manual, aka the Cons Guide to Chaos, for destroying the parliamentary committees.
You know, the same all-party parliamentary committees these new Steve-appointed Con committees are so obviously intended to eventually replace.
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International Spurn A Moran Day

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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 ...

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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.

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Prince of Pot's US prosecutor: "Our pot policy is dangerous and wrong"

Friday, Sept 10 Update : Sentenced. Five years.

In a guest column in the Seattle Times last Friday, the former US attorney who indicted Marc Emery in 2005 for selling pot seeds over the internet wrote :

"The U.S. war against marijuana has failed and actually threatens public safety and rests on false medical assumptions. Our marijuana policy is dangerous and wrong .... the law has failed, the public is endangered, no one in law enforcement is talking about it and precious few policymakers will honestly face the soft-on-crime sound bite in their next elections."

This includes our own homegrown cowards, principally Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Rob Nicholson, who had Marc Emery, a Canadian citizen, deported to the US in May to serve a five-year sentence that will begin next week.

As Lib MP Ujjal Dosanjh put it back in March when he joined forces with Con MP Scott Reid and NDP MP Libby Davies to present petitions from 12,000 Canadians in the HoC asking Justice Minister Rob Nicholson not to sign extradition papers :

"It appears to me that we have assisted a foreign government arrest a man for doing something that we wouldn't arrest him for doing in Canada."

The rhetoric from the DEA at the 2005 bust was absurd :

"Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General's most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets.

Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement."

In a letter to his wife Jodie yesterday, Emery remarks on the importance of getting supporters to write to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and the US DoJ for the Saturday Sept 18th Marc Emery Support Day. I don't care if you don't smoke pot - I don't smoke pot - but write a letter or support a rally on Sept.18th. I'll stick up a reminder then.

History, ironically aided by his former prosecutor, is already moving to vindicate Emery. Too bad he still has to serve the time so that Canada can continue to suck up to the phony US War on Drugs.

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Fox News North : Kory's cat and dog show

Here's Korncob Kory Teneycke on CBC's Power and Politics today, stating that his baby, Quebecor's Fox News North, never asked the CRTC for a must-carry licence—the kind that would require cable and satellite providers to include the channel in their basic package:

"We are not nor have we ever asked for mandatory carriage of this station where Canadians would have to be obliged to pay. We're saying that we would like to have it offered but theoretically it could be carried by no one."

Really?

G&M : CRTC refuses Sun TV’s bid for preferred status

"In a private letter sent to Quebecor on July 5, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission rejected Quebecor’s request for a rare must-carry license. It would have guaranteed distribution by all cable and satellite firms – and the subscriber fees that come along with that distribution."

After the CRTC rejected the Fox News North must-carry application that Mr. Teneycke just told us they never applied for, Mr. Teneycke responded :

“We’re not particularly fazed by that letter"

and Serge Sasseville, Quebecor's VP of corporate affairs clarified :

"We'll get exactly what we're asking for at the end of the day.
We'll ask the CRTC exactly the same conditions we've been asking with a Category 1, and we're pretty confident we'll get it. You can ask for a must-offer even for other categories. It's only labelling. You can call a cat a dog but at the end of the day it's still a cat," he said.

Care for a redo on your cat and dog show performance tonight, Mr. Teneycke?

See also Pogge, Dammit Janet, Rusty Idols, and Kady for more on hate media and the suspicious sabotage of the Avaaz petition asking the CRTC not to buckle under pressure.

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Banksters, Afghan style

Der Spiegel in July: "Billions of dollars are being secreted out of Kabul to help well-connected Afghans buy luxury villas in Dubai."

The Dubai villas are usually registered in the name of those issuing the loans, such as Sherkhan Farnood, deposed chairman of Kabul Bank, who transferred hundreds of millions of dollars from Afghanistan to Dubai in 2009.
In July Farnood boasted :

"Kabul Bank is so flush that it is building a 30 million headquarters, a cluster of shimmering towers of bulletproof glass."

Since yesterday Kabul Bank is more like a clusterfuck of shimmering droves of Afghans making bank withdrawals and the only bulletproof part is the time-honoured bankster strategy of asking the US Treasury for a bailout. Farnood today :

"If we survive Saturday and Sunday, we will be okay," said Farnood, who spoke at his luxury waterfront villa in Dubai shortly after his return to the Persian Gulf emirate from Kabul.

Mahmoud Karzai, brother to President Karzai, third largest shareholder in Kabul Bank and ... wait for it ... proud owner of a Dubai villa :

"America should do something. If the Treasury Department will guarantee that everyone will get their money, maybe that will work," said the president's brother, who rushed to Kabul on Wednesday from Dubai, where he spends most of his time in a Palm Jumeirah villa purchased with Kabul Bank money. "

Quick financial status update on your investment as a shareholder in those Dubai villas :
Canada's aid in Afghanistan will amount to $1.9B over the ten-year period ending in 2011, making Canada one of Afghanistan's largest donors. In the 2008/2009 fiscal year, Canada disbursed approximately $224M in Afghanistan but unfortunately the Dubai real estate market was already collapsing by 2008.
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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".
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