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Canada’s prime minister creates an “enemies list”

PressTVGlobalNews · July 19, 2013

It has been revealed that Canada’s Prime Minister Steven Harper has drawn up an “enemies list” identifying political opponents of the Conservative Party. Bureaucrats, judges and other members of the Canadian establishment are named on the list.

July 19, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , | Leave a comment

Spying on the World From Domestic Soil

By Katitza Rodriguez | EFF | June 21, 2013

The world is still reeling from the series of revelations about NSA and FBI surveillance. Over the past two weeks the emerging details paint a picture of pervasive, cross-border spying programs of unprecedented reach and scope: the U.S. has now admitted using domestic networks to spy on Internet users both domestically and worldwide. The people now know that foreign intelligence can spy on their communications if they travel through U.S. networks or are stored in U.S. servers.

While international public outrage has justifiably decried the scope and reach of these revelations, carte blanche foreign intelligence surveillance powers over foreigners are far from new. In the U.S., foreign intelligence has always had nearly limitless legal capacity to surveil foreigners because domestic laws and protections simply don’t reach that surveillance activity.

This legal framework, with no protection for foreigners and little oversight besides, has been exacerbated by the growth in individuals now living their lives online, who conduct their most intimate communications in cloud services that are hosted in the U.S. and across different jurisdictions. To make matters worse, the vast amount of Internet traffic globally is routed through the U.S. Last but not least, logistical barriers to powerful, mass surveillance have lowered and the application of existing legal principles in new technological contexts has become unclear and shrouded in secrecy, especially in a extra-territorial surveillance context. The US government’s FISA powers, which in 2008 opened the door to broad surveillance of communications where one side is an American and the other side is a foreigner, represent just an example of an increasing state capacity to conduct nearly limitless invasive extra-territorial surveillance from domestic soil.

International Backlash

On June 18, Germans rallied at a well-known Berlin Wall crossing point called Checkpoint Charlie. Under the motto: “Yes We Scan!” German activists protested against PRISM and NSA surveillance in response to President Barack Obama’s Berlin visit. Pictures of the rally show protest signs claiming that the Obama administration has become “Stasi 2.0” with the quote “All your data belong to us”.

The Stasi 2.0 campaign was originally designed in 2007 to fight Germany’s mandatory data-retention law, a law implementing an EU Directive that force ISPs and telecom providers to continuously collect and store records documenting the online activities of millions of ordinary Europeans. Roughly 34,000 citizens filed a lawsuit against the mandatory data retention in protest. The campaign was successful and in March 2010 a German court declared the law unconstitutional and ordered the deletion of the collected data. Now, the Stasi 2.0 campaign has shifted focus on calling upon their government to protect them against overreach scope of NSA foreign surveillance practices, Sandra Mamitzsch from Digitale Gesellschaft told EFF.

Germany has also increased its capacity to conduct sweeping and invasive extra-territorial surveillance from its domestic soil. As we noted, the German government has leveraged its ability to remotely compromise computer systems in order to spy on its citizens. The government has used commercial malware to hack private data. While there has been no confirmation that Germany is deploying these investigative techniques against persons outside German territories, extra-territorial surveillance is feasible because infection occurs via email and other Internet transmissions.

Campaigns against the NSA spying overreach are now being planned for July 6 all around Australia. Australians can get involved here: http://ourprivacy.org.au/

Micheal Vonn, policy director at the B.C. Civil Liberties Association in Canada, told to the Global News in Canada: “[w]e fully intend to get some pointed questions to the Canadian government about knowledge, complicity, alliance with this program. And whether, in fact, very, very quietly, the Canadian security establishment has been harvesting the fruits of this program for some time.”

EFF is demanding Internet companies to join our cause and protect the privacy of their international customers calling on Congress to create a committee to uncover the truth about the NSA alarming allegations. You can take action here. Current foreign intelligence surveillance targetting foreigners must be challenged to ensure strong human rights safeguards, transparency and accountability across the world. A global dialogue on extra-territorial foreign intelligence surveillance among all nations is much needed.

EFF will continue blogging about the impact of the NSA leaks on Internet users abroad in our Spies Without Borders series. Next, we will examine what implications the government’s use of these FISA powers has for Internet users abroad, with an eye to other jurisdictions and the requirements of international law.

This is the 5th article of our Spies Without Borders series. The series are looking into how the information disclosed in the NSA leaks affect Internet users around the world whose private information is stored in U.S. servers, or whose data travels across U.S. networks.

Image: Digitale Gesellschaft, licensed under a Creative Commons BY SA 3.0 license.

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June 23, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Regime Change for Canada

By Greg Felton | June 23, 2013

In the wee hours of June 17, 1972, a security guard at the Watergate Hotel found some door latches taped over to prevent them from locking. He removed the tape but later found it had been replaced. He called Washington D.C. police, who proceeded to catch five “burglars” conducting an illegal surveillance operation inside the office of the Democratic National Committee. As it happened, the name of President Richard Nixon’s White House security consultant E. Howard Hunt was in the address book of two of the burglars.

Ultimately, the burglars along with two White House functionaries, were convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws. On Aug. 9, 1974, Nixon resigned the presidency to avoid inevitable impeachment, but not for the break-in itself. He faced impeachment for his attempt to cover it up.

From this event 41 years ago this month, “Watergate” entered the language as a metonymy for “self-destructive illegal act of political hubris”. Now, Canada’s reigning autocrat Stephen Harper has created his own “Watergate” nightmare by trying to cover up a Senate spending scandal.

It all started when the glabrous Sen. Mike Duffy got caught claiming $90,172 in illegitimate living expenses, much of which was incurred during the last election campaign. In the grand fiscal scheme of things the amount was rather minor; not so minor was the image of a senator, a Harper-appointed senator, causing scorn and shame to rain on Harper and his imperious reign.

Harper runs the country like his personal fiefdom, dictating policy like, well, a dictator, which means that anything that might shed a critical light on his hyper-centralized, unconstitutional despotism cannot be tolerated. Therefore, instead of admitting Duffy’s venial impropriety and throwing him under the bus, Harper, like Nixon, thought he could cover it up, such is the hubris that infects those who think themselves invulnerable and above the law.

Harper might not have been aware of Duffy’s illegitimate expense claims, just as there was no conclusive evidence that Nixon ordered the Watergate break in, which turned out to be largely the doing of White House counsel John Dean. Yet for reasons of ego, paranoia or both, both leaders felt threatened and proceeded to obstruct justice.

What Harper and his minions did to disguise Duffy’s dubious declarations is no less criminal than what Nixon and his staff did to cover up the Watergate break in. From the following it will be clear that Harper must be charged under Section 119 of the Criminal Code of Canada. If the rule of law is still operable in Canada, Harper, like Nixon, must face impeachment.

CRIMINAL CODE OF CANADA

CORRUPTION AND DISOBEDIENCE
119. (1) Every one is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years who
(a) being the holder of a judicial office, or being a member of Parliament or of the legislature of a province, directly or indirectly, corruptly accepts, obtains, agrees to accept or attempts to obtain, for themselves or  another person, any money, valuable consideration, office, place or employment in respect of anything done or omitted or to be done or omitted by them in their official capacity, or
(b) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives or offers to a person mentioned in paragraph (a), or to anyone for the benefit of that person, any money, valuable consideration, office, place or employment in respect of anything done or omitted or to be done or omitted by that person in their official capacity. (Emphases mine)

Even though impeachment in the U.S and Canada are constitutionally different matters, a comparison between the Watergate cover up and the Duffy scandal is apt and instructive.

Nixon
As a result of the break-in, the public learned that Nixon secretly taped all conversations in the oval office. Citing executive privilege, Nixon steadfastly refused to turn over any tapes to the Senate Watergate Committee. That privilege ended on July 24, 1974, when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Nixon had to surrender the tapes. One tape, dated June 23, 1972—a mere six days after the break-in—showed Nixon and his aide H.R. “Bob” Haldeman discussing how to obstruct the FBI investigation into the burglary to prevent the money trail being traced back to the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP).

This admission of obstruction became known as “the smoking gun” that led to one of the three articles of impeachment. It proved that Nixon not only lied when he claimed not to know anything about the break in, but that he had obstructed justice from the outset. The consistent lying led the clamour for his resignation, and the proof of obstruction forced it.

Harper
1) On Feb. 17, 2013, nine days after the Senate initiates an outside audit of three senators’ expenses, Stephen Harper declares in the House of Commons that Sen. Mike Duffy met the residency requirements to be a senator from Prince Edward Island. Five days later, Duffy reports that he and his wife would voluntarily repay living expenses claimed against their primary residence in Ottawa. The repayment makes no sense if the residency claim were valid as Harper claimed.

Clearly Harper misled the House, which is defined as Contempt of Parliament, and for that he can be censured. By convention any minister found guilty of misleading the House resigns although Harper could continue in office even if censured since censure does not amount to a vote of non-confidence.

2) Not only did Harper mislead Parliament, but his senators obstructed justice and sanitized a critical report. First, the Senate reported on May 7 that Duffy violated “very clear [and] unambiguous” residency rules. The next day, two Harperites on The Senate Committee on Internal Economy forced a rewrite to remove condemnation of Duffy and to claim (absurdly) that the Senate’s long-standing residency rules are “unclear.” One key senator, Carolyn Stewart-Olsen, is a former press secretary to Harper and was his political advisor for more than 10 years, so a conflict-of-interest investigation into her conduct is also in order.

Nixon
This deliberate excision of key information reminds us somewhat of the infamous missing 18.5 minutes from one of the Nixon tapes. Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, claimed that she was stretching to reach something one day and her leg “accidentally” erased part of an incriminating tape. John Dean, remembers that it was the day he told Nixon the burglars wanted hush money:

“The president said, ‘Well, how much will it cost?’ and I said, ‘It’s gonna cost $1 million.’ And the president said to me, ‘Well, John, I know where we can get that.’ As soon as I left the office, he went in to see Rose Mary and ask her if she had any money. It got picked up on the taping machine.”

Harper
Payment of hush money to obstruct justice and protect the government leader, or at least the appearance thereof, can also be seen in the Duffy scandal. On March 26 Deloitte received a letter from Duffy’s lawyer stating that the expenses had been repaid and that Duffy would no longer co-operate with the audit into his finances. He later stated (May 14) that he took out a loan to repay the debt. However, on May 17, Harper’s office admitted that Harper’s chief of staff Nigel Wright cut Duffy a personal cheque for the full amount, calling it a “personal gift”. Harper denies any knowledge of the cheque, even though his office knows of, and confirms, its existence.

The ineptitude is mind boggling:

1) Duffy’s own government, in effect, calls him a liar.
2) No rational explanation exists for Wright going out-of-pocket to the tune of $90,000-odd to bail out someone he barely knew. What was his motive? Wright’s actions do make sense if Harper wanted to use him to provide a clandestine, untraceable way to pay off Duffy’s debt as a quid pro quo for Duffy’s refusal to continue co-operating with the audit, which would, among other things, expose Harper’s lie in the House. In fact this is what happened.

During a withering attack during Question Period on May 28, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair grilled Harper on an e-mail from Duffy stating that after being paid $90,000 Duffy stayed silent on orders of the prime minister’s office. Mulcair asked Harper to tell the House who told Duffy to remain silent. Harper begged ignorance, claiming he wasn’t privy to the e-mail, though this strains credulity to the breaking point.

Nixon
An embarrassing cheque and sacrificed subordinates also featured in the Watergate scandal. On the June 23 tape, we learn that a $25,000 cashier’s cheque from a Nixon campaign donor wound up in the bank account of Watergate burglar Bernard Barker:

Haldeman: “They’ve traced it to a name, but they haven’t gotten to the guy yet.”
Nixon: “Who is it? Is it somebody here?”
Haldeman: “Ken Dahlberg.”
Nixon: “Who the hell is Ken Dahlberg?”
Haldeman: “He’s a—he gave $25,000 in Minnesota and the check went directly in to this guy Barker.… It’s directly traceable, and there’s some more through some Texas people in—that went to the Mexican bank which they can also trace through the Mexican bank.”

Nixon then hatched a cover story to obscure the provenance of the cheque.

Nixon: “…when you open that scab there’s a hell of a lot of things and then ‘we just feel that this would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further, that this involves these Cubans, and Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves.’…”

Ten months later, on April 30, 1973, top White House staffers Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resign over the scandal. Dean is fired. Yet, these removals did not stop the probe into Nixon’s role.

Harper
In addition to Nigel Wright, further political corpses can be expected to pile up as the RCMP investigate the matter, an investigation that must lead to Harper. When this happens, Duffy, Stewart-Olsen and other minions will be fired or expected to fall on their swords to shield their boss. In Duffy’s case, this is virtually inevitable, given that his repeated prevarications about the cancellation of his debt make him an irredeemable liability. Such removals, though, would not save Harper.

The original scandal is now secondary to the larger issue of Harper’s misleading Parliament and obstructing justice, which must inevitably lead to a criminal investigation.

The Smoking Gun
Just as the June 23, 1972, tape shattered Nixon’s claims of ignorance of the break in, Nigel Wright’s cheque is the “smoking gun” that should bring down Harper.

• The cheque itself proves that Harper lied to Parliament on Feb. 17.
• The cheque implicates Harper’s office in a cover up.
• The cheque implicates Harper’s office in the obstruction of an outside forensic audit.
• The cheque amounts to a de facto bribe because Duffy’s silence, as revealed by Mulcair, appears to be bought.

On March 21, 1973, Dean told Nixon that the cover up was a cancer close to the presidency that was compounding itself. In the prime minister’s office a similar cancer is compounding itself. Whereas the U.S. Senate went through lengthy hearings to vote to impeach Nixon, the governor-general could impeach Harper in an instant.

Under the Constitution, the governor-general, as head of state, appoints the prime minister to form a government, and as such can just as quickly fire him. Despite the fact that the office is largely ceremonial, it still retains residual constitutional powers inherited from Great Britain that give the governor-general the right to dismiss a sitting prime minister, even if that should trigger an election.

Donald Johnston, Canada’s current governor-general, has a constitutional and moral duty to impeach Harper and end the cancer of corruption. He must be compelled to do so. The integrity of our system of government depends upon it.

For a select chronology of Stephen Harper’s Watergate, click here.

June 23, 2013 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

Canada pledges $100m in aid to Jordan

Press TV – June 18, 2013

Canada has vowed to provide Jordan with an additional USD 100 million in aid amid ongoing crisis in the Arab country’s neighboring Syria.

Canada Foreign Minister John Baird said in a statement on Monday that Ottawa offered another USD 98.4 million to the Jordan’s government to help the kingdom cope with the influx of Syrian refugees.

The aid followed Baird’s visit to Jordan on Sunday and his meeting with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh over the Syria unrest.

Ottawa’s move came after Pentagon said on Saturday that the US will keep its F-16 jets and patriot missile batteries in Jordan after the joint military exercises with the kingdom this month.

This is while reports say that US government was preparing to impose a no-fly zone over Syria.

On June 14, Obama ordered his administration to provide the militants with weapons, a day after the US claimed that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the militants and thus crossed Washington’s “red line.” Damascus has rejected the allegation as “lies.”

The delivery of the weapons, which include assault rifles, shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades and antitank missiles, would be carried out through the CIA, reports say.

Last week, a US defense official also stated that Washington would keep a unit of US Marines on amphibious ships off the Red Sea coast after consultations with Jordan.

The US-based Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that the no-fly zone could be implemented from Jordan.

June 18, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No Canadian NSA connection, but very own data snooping program

RT | June 11, 2013

Canada does not use the US NSA’s top secret surveillance PRISM program, officials revealed. Instead, it has a spying platform of its own that it claims manages to distinguish between domestic and international telephone and internet data collected.

The Communication Security Establishment (CSE) spokesman separated the National Security Agency and the Canadian surveillance program.

“The Communications Security Establishment does not have access to data in PRISM”, Ryan Foreman told Reuters, confirming that the “CSE uses metadata to isolate and identify foreign communications,” as CSEC is prohibited by law from directing its activities at Canadians.

Officials admitted that CSEC “incidentally” intercepts Canadian communications, but removes such data after it is obtained, according to the Globe and Mail.

Secret spying programs have come under scrutiny this week as whistleblower and former technical assistant for the CIA Edward Snowden leaked information about the NSA’s PRISM project, describing it as a massive data mining surveillance program which gave the agency backdoor access to emails, videos, chats, photos and search queries from nine worldwide tech giants, including Google and Facebook.

A secret electronic spying program was approved in 2011 by Canada’s Defense Minister Peter MacKay. It searches through international and domestic telephone records and internet data for suspicious activity, Canada’s newspaper Globe and Mail revealed.

Despite the reports, the government’s metadata surveillance program remains a mystery with little information available publicly. The records obtained from the Access to Information requests by the Globe had many pages blacked out, citing national security.

The program was first passed in a secret decree signed in 2005 by Bill Graham, the defense minister at the time then put on hold in 2008 for more than a year due to privacy concerns. On November 21, 2011, it was once again renewed, along with other top-secret espionage programs. And currently it is headed by the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), part of the Department of National Defense.

It is still not known how the data is being collected. Mining metadata can reveal who knows who and help the authorities to map out social networks and even terrorist cells.

“Metadata is information associated with a telecommunication … And not a communication,” according to a PowerPoint briefing sent to MacKay in 2011.

The Canadian surveillance program has been authorized by ministerial decrees, bypassing the parliament, and is under the sole oversight of the Office of the CSE Commissioner.

Opposition MPs have questioned MacKay about the surveillance reports, to which he replied that Canada’s surveillance initiative “is specifically prohibited from looking at the information of Canadians” and that “this program is very much directed at activities outside the country, foreign threats, in fact. There is rigorous oversight, there is legislation in place that specifically dictates what can and cannot be examined.”

Canada’s privacy commissioner admitted a lack of clarity on the subject.

“When it comes to the metadata program, we know very little specific information at this point – but we want to find out more”, Scott Hutchinson, of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, told the Globe and Mail.

The Canadian program was criticized 2008 by a retired Supreme Court judge Charles Gonthier, who questioned whether CSEC could be passing any data collected to other partner agencies such as Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

Gonthier’s biggest fear was that the data collection would lead to unlawful surveillance.

June 11, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Canadian prime minister makes promises amid deepening scandal

Press TV – May 26, 2013

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised to toughen the expense rules of the Senate of Canada following a scandal that led to the resignation of his chief of staff.

Harper also called for the prevention of any loops in the law on Tuesday morning before leaving for South America.

“I don’t think any of you are going to be very surprised to hear that I’m not happy. I’m very upset about some conduct we have witnessed, the conduct of some parliamentarians and the conduct of my own office,” Harper said, referring to the scandal.

On May 19, Nigel Wright, Harper’s chief of staff, announced resignation after it was revealed on May 14 that he had secretly given a check of 90,000 Canadian dollars (about USD 87,000) to conservative Senator Mike Duffy apparently for the purpose of helping him repay housing expenses.

Wright said in a statement that he had decided to quit “in light of the controversy surrounding my handling of matters involving Senator Duffy.”

Duffy and another senator, Pamela Wallin, resigned from the Conservative Party on Thursday and on Friday respectively. Wallin is involved in a controversy regarding her travel expenses. The Canadian senator awaits the outcome of an audit into her own travel expenses, which is claimed to have been USD 321,000 since September 2010.

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May 26, 2013 Posted by | Corruption | , , , | Leave a comment

Canada not to attend UN disarmament talks under Iran presidency

Press TV – May 15, 2013

Canada says it will not take part in the upcoming UN Conference on Disarmament under the pretext that the Islamic Republic of Iran will be assuming the rotating presidency of the event.

Rick Roth, a spokesman for Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird, announced on Tuesday that Ottawa would sit out the sessions of the conference, which will be chaired by Iran.

The Canadian official further claimed that the Islamic Republic is working against global disarmament goals in countries such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

Iran, which has frequently called for the elimination of all the weapons of mass destruction in the world, will accede to the rotating presidency of the 65-nation Geneva-based conference on May 27, and hand it over to another country on June 23 in alphabetical order.

The conference, which is considered the world’s most important disarmament negotiating forum, seeks to reach an agreement on global nuclear disarmament, preventing arms from spreading to outer space, and stopping the development of other weapons of mass destruction.

Ottawa made the announcement after Erin Pelton, the spokesperson for the US Mission to the United Nations, said on May 13 that Washington would not send its ambassador to the upcoming UN event under the same pretext.

May 15, 2013 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Canada can’t account for $3.1 billion in anti-fund terror: auditor general

Press TV – May 1, 2013

The Canadian government has been unable to account for 3.1 billion Canadian dollars in anti-terrorism funding, the auditor general says.

Michael Ferguson on Tuesday presented his spring report, which did not include information on spending and what was achieved with the money spent.

“Overall, we found many areas where the government should improve on the results that it achieves with taxpayers’ dollars,” said Ferguson.

The outcome of his audit of the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism (PSAT) Initiative showed that 35 departments had spent 9.8 billion Canadian dollars of the 12.9 billion allocated for security and anti-terrorism measures between 2001 and 2009.

However, Ferguson was unable to determine where the remaining 3.1 billion had gone.

The Treasury Board has not given any clear answers to the auditor general regarding the unaccounted gap.

Shortly after the presentation, the National Democratic Party (NDP) accused the conservative government of mismanaging public funding.

“It is really scandalous that [the government] can’t account for the $3.1 billion,” said NDP Member of Parliament Malcolm Allen.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended against the accusation by saying Ferguson’s report had nothing to do with the improper use of money, but rather how the spent money is categorized.

Treasury Board President Tony Clement said he has accepted the auditor general’s recommendation for his department to present to the public a clear picture of spending and the achieved results for federal programs.

May 1, 2013 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s slavish obedience to US, Israel

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This picture shows Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper (R) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shaking hands after a joint press conference on Parliament Hill, Ottawa, March 2, 2012.
Press TV – April 28, 2013

The world is taking note of the ruling Conservatives’ shameful betrayal of Canada’s once admirable reputation as a fair country, sincerely working on the world stage to improve the lot of the disadvantaged and suffering.

In the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review, Canada was criticized to such an extent that the Council decided to send the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and representatives of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, to investigate.

Minister of Foreign Affairs spokesman Joseph Lavoie dismissed complaints by

*China of “widespread racial discrimination”,

*Iran of “child sexual exploitation and trafficking, the right to food, discriminatory law and regulation against indigenous people and minority groups including Muslim, Arab and African communities”,

*Pakistan of “increased poverty and unemployment rate among immigrant communities”,

*Egypt of “racial profiling in law-enforcement action”, and

*Cuba of “racism and xenophobia” in Canada,

insisting that “Canada has a track record of being a human rights leader, at home and around the world.”

The visits come at an awkward moment for the Conservatives, as it makes a public display of victimizing Muslims as part of a campaign to ram through the “Combating Terrorism Act” (Bill S-7), which gives the state extraordinary powers to detain suspects without any charges and without any legal protections for up to a year.

This sorry state of Canadian political life is the fruit of the Conservatives’ slavish obedience to every US whim, and of its decision to abandon any pretense of an independent foreign policy, making all decisions in consultation with Israeli advisers under the public security cooperation “partnership” signed in 2008 by Canada and Israel to “protect their respective countries’ population, assets and interests from common threats”. Israel security agents now officially assist Canada’s security services, the RCMP and CSIS, in profiling Canadian citizens who are Muslims and monitoring individuals and/or organizations in Canada involved in supporting the rights of Palestinians and other such nefarious activities. Even the usually timid UN is appalled.

The past two weeks of public spectacle could be lifted from a perverse Alice-in-Wonderland scenario. The latest claim to have uncovered a dastardly scheme by Muslim furriners plotting to explode weapons of mass destruction came just a week after the now legendary Boston bombing. Both incidents were dramatically unfolded to a gullible public as classic ‘good vs evil’, though neither holds water.

Canadian authorities boasted Monday afternoon that, working in concert with the FBI and other US national security agencies, they had broken up a terrorist conspiracy involving an “Iranian-based al-Qaeda cell”. The announcement, made at an RCMP press conference, came out of the blue, just days after the Boston bombing, and a few days after the House of Commons agenda was changed to debate final reading of the draconian anti-terrorism legislation.

On cue, US Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson hailed the action as “the result of extensive cross-border cooperation” showing “that we face serious and real threats.” The men were arrested in a Hollywoodesque fashion–Chiheb Esseghaier while eating at McDonald’s in Montreal’s main train station; Raed Jason, by scores of police armed with rifles and accompanied by search-dogs at his workplace in the Toronto borough of North York. They were charged with conspiracy to bomb a New York-bound Via passenger train, though the RCMP conceded that there had never been an imminent threat of an attack or even a definite plan, that Esseghaier and Jaser have been under police radar since last August (based on a year-old tip from an imam), and that their alleged crimes date back to last year.

The reason for their delayed and then sudden arrest is beyond a doubt the notorious Bill S-7, a bill that was forced on Canada by Big Brother in post-911 2001, and which was not renewed in 2007 thanks to Liberal opposition (they originally passed it and then had enough sense to oppose it). The Conservative government suddenly changed the House of Commons agenda as US authorities placed Boston under martial law. The Canadian copycat arrests clearly are intended to add a Canadian pretext for proceeding with Bill S-7, while showing that “We are all Americans now.”

This episode calls to mind the terrorist scare in 2006, when the RCMP staged the dramatic arrest of 18 young Muslims, whom they accused of preparing extensive terrorist attacks, including blowing up the parliament buildings. During the trial, it emerged that the “Toronto 18” was riddled with police agents, one providing the arms instruction at a “terrorist training camp” while another providing harmless bomb-making ingredients. Nevertheless, eleven were convicted and most given lengthy prison terms.

When Esseghaier, a Tunisian-born Montreal PhD student in nanotechnology, told the judge, “These conclusions are being reached based on facts that are nothing but words and appearances,” he was told to shut up, and the hearing was shut down. Jaser’s lawyer John Norris said his client was “in a state of shock and disbelief” and “intends to defend himself vigorously”. Norris took exception to the police’s attempt to present his client as a non-Canadian, noting that the Palestinian refugee has lived with his family in Canada for the past twenty years.

Is it just possible that UN Human Rights Council members read the ‘news’, are appalled, and are genuinely concerned about what’s happening to human rights in Canada?

Canadians’ plight is bad enough, but this recent orchestration of Islamophobia has another angle, just as appalling. The RCMP assertion that these damn furriners acted under the “direction and guidance” of “al-Qaeda elements located in Iran” is a blatant falsehood, as Iran (like Iraq before the US invasion) is probably the most anti-al-Qaeda country in the world. The fundamentalist al-Qaeda delights in killing Shia, was (and is?) supported by the US and financed by Canada’s enlightened Saudi oil-millionaire allies. So it’s not just a question of stripping Canadians of their rights, but of adding toxic fuel to the US-Israeli fires intended to launch war against peaceful (pro-Palestinian) Iran.

The RCMP admitted that they had no evidence of Iranian government involvement, but still… (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). When Canada broke off diplomatic relations with Tehran last autumn, Foreign Minister John Baird labeled Iran “the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today”. All Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast had to do was to point to the hypocrisy and cynicism of Canada’s government backing the campaign to overthrow the Syrian government -a campaign in which some of insurgents are openly aligned with al-Qaeda: “The same [al-Qaeda] current is killing people in Syria while enjoying Canada’s support.”

And what about the latest hit on the American 911 funny bone? Tamerlan Tsarnaev was under surveillance for four years by the FBI, who were asked by the Russian government to arrest him in 2010 (which they did not do). They do admit to interviewing him in 2011 and sifting through his computer files, but, remarkably for someone allegedly radicalized by the internet, they found nothing of concern. It’s not clear why Russia let him go to visit his parents in the center of terrorism (Dagestan) in Russia in 2012, where purportedly he received some form of terror training or further Islamist indoctrination. Nor how he managed to attend a workshop next door in hostile Georgia organized by the “Fund of the Caucasus” (which works with the US rightwing thinktank the Jamestown Foundation) focused on destabilizing the Caucasus region.

Were both the FBI and the Russian FSB asleep? Was Tamerlan an FBI operative? Was he set up to do the bombing, or did he go AWOL on the FBI? Is this Chechen connection intended to frighten Russia into acquiescing to US-Israeli plans for Syria? “This [official] scenario is simply impossible in the real world,” writes former UK Ambassador Craig Murray. In an interview with Russia Today, Tamerlan’s mother said, “‘They were set up, the FBI followed them for years.” Is this international intrigue-intended to scare both Russia and Iran into abandoning the beleaguered Syrian government -really what Canadian domestic human rights and foreign policy should be based on? Why should we trust Ambassador Jacobson’s blah-blah about “serious threats”?

Canadians are left with security forces eager to show they are doing something, a craven government intent on passing a draconian bill to take away freedoms, and a foreign policy based on a US-Israel obsession with finding some spark to ignite the latest war craze -attack Iran. The supposed pretext -Iran’s nuclear energy program- is after all wearing a tad thin. Peter Osborne in the Telegraph explained how the West has turned down one serious offer after another by Iran (two in 2005 alone), and argues that it is western rather than Iranian intransigence that prevents a deal being struck today. So if no one believes the cry of “Wolf!” on that boondoggle, then the next best thing is “al-Qaeda”. Hell, Bush got away with it against Iraq in 2003; maybe it will work again.

Iran poses only an ideological threat -telling the truth to the US-Israeli tyrant and inspiring Arab Springs.

As for being killed by a bona fide terrorist, the odds are 1 in 20 million, while every year, 4,600 Americans are killed in workplace-related accidents, and more than 30,000 are killed by gun violence. Every 28 hours a black person is killed by police, security guards or vigilantes. On Boston Marathon Day, six Pakistanis died in a drone strike, while scores were killed in car bombs in Iraq. I won’t even begin to recount the daily horrors inflicted by the US in Afghanistan.

Not that these latter crimes against humanity -committed by us- justify retributive violence in any religion, especially Islam. “You shall not be treacherous, you shall not deceive, you shall not mutilate, you shall not kill children.” But the fact that we in the West are unconcerned with preventing senseless deaths at home, and are unaware or don’t care about the murders committed daily in our name abroad, does not bode well for the future. Only when we stop perpetrating violence will violence against us end.

April 28, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Canadian “Aid” as Tool for Foreign Policy

By Yves Engler | Dissident Voice | April 18, 2013

The Canadian International Development Agency is no longer. In its recent budget the Conservative government collapsed CIDA into Foreign Affairs, creating the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.

While there was plenty of commentary on the Tories’ move, no one — from the mainstream right to the development NGO left — pointed out that Canadian aid has primarily been about maintaining and/or extending the grip the world’s richest one percent holds over the entire globe.

Canada began its first significant (non-European) allocation of foreign aid through the Colombo Plan. With Mao’s triumph in China in 1949, the 1950 Colombo Plan’s primary aim was to keep the former British Asian colonies, especially India, within the Western capitalist fold.

To justify an initial $25 million ($250 million in today’s dollars) in Colombo Plan aid External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson told the House of Commons:

Communist expansionism may now spill over into South East Asia as well as into the Middle East … it seemed to all of us at the [Colombo] conference that if the tide of totalitarian expansionism should flow over this general area, … the Free World will have been driven off all but a relatively small bit of the great Eurasian landmass. … We agreed at Colombo that the forces of totalitarian expansionism could not be stopped in South Asia and South East Asia by military force alone.

Two years later Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent was even more explicit about the carrot and stick approach to defeating left wing nationalism (“communism”). In September 1952 St. Laurent explained:

In South East Asia through the establishment of the Colombo plan not only are we trying to provide wider commercial relations but we are also fighting another Asiatic war against Communism in the interests of peace, this time with economic rather than military weapons. We Canadians know that in the struggle against Communism there are two useful weapons, the economic and the military. While we much prefer to use the economic weapons as we are in the Colombo plan, we know that we may have no choice but to use the military weapons as we have been forced to do in Korea [27 000 Canadian troops participated in this war that left 3 million dead].

In other words, if some of India’s post-colonial population had not set their sights on a socialistic solution to their troubles — with the possibility of Soviet or Chinese assistance — Canada probably would not have provided aid. Five years into the Colombo Plan, Pearson admitted “Canada would not have started giving aid if not for the perceived communist threat.”

The broad rationale for extending foreign aid was laid out at a 1968 seminar for the newly established Canadian International Development Agency. This day-long event was devoted to discussing a paper titled “Canada’s Purpose in Extending Foreign Assistance” written by Professor Steven Triantas of the University of Toronto. Foreign aid, Triantas argued, “may be used to induce the underdeveloped countries to accept the international status quo or change it in our favour.” Aid provided an opportunity “to lead them to rational political and economic developments and a better understanding of our interests and problems of mutual concern.” Triantis discussed the appeal of a “‘Sunday School mentality’ which ‘appears’ noble and unselfish and can serve in pushing into the background other motives … [that] might be difficult to discuss publicly.”

A 1969 CIDA background paper, expanding on Triantas views, summarized the rationale for Canadian aid:

To establish within recipient countries those political attitudes or commitments, military alliances or military bases that would assist Canada or Canada’s western allies to maintain a reasonably stable and secure international political system. Through this objective, Canada’s aid programs would serve not only to help increase Canada’s influence within the developing world, but also within the western alliance.

This type of thinking continues to drive aid policy. Largely ignored in recent commentary, there are innumerable documented instances of Canadian aid advancing highly politicized geopolitical objectives over the past 25 years.

As an early advocate of International Monetary Fund/World Bank structural adjustment programs, since the early 1980s Canada has channeled hundreds of millions in “aid” dollars to supporting privatization and economic liberalization efforts in the Global South. At the start of the 2000s Ottawa plowed millions of dollars into supporting the Western-backed “coloured revolutions” in Eastern Europe and opposition to Jean Bertrand Aristide’s elected government in Haiti. More recently, the Conservatives have ramped up aid spending in Latin America to combat independent-minded, socialist-oriented governments. Barely discussed in the media, the Harper government’s shift of aid from Africa to Latin America was largely designed to stunt Latin America’s recent rejection of neoliberalism and U.S. dependence by supporting the region’s right-wing governments and movements.

An entirely unacknowledged, though increasingly obvious, principle of Canadian aid is that where the USA wields its big stick, Canada carries its police baton and offers a carrot. Or to put it more bluntly, where U.S. and Canadian troops kill Ottawa provides aid.

During the 1950-53 Korean War the south of that country became a major recipient of Canadian aid and so was Vietnam during the U.S. war there. The leading recipient of Canadian aid in 1999/2000 was the war-ravaged former Yugoslavia and Iraq and Afghanistan were top two recipients in 2003/2004. Since that time Afghanistan and Haiti (where Canadian and U.S. troops helped overthrow the elected government in February 2004) have been the leading recipients. Tens of millions in Canadian “aid” dollars have been spent to reestablish foreign and elite control over Haiti’s security forces.

There are a number of reasons for the lack of discussion about aid being used as a tool to maintain/extend Western capitalist dominance. NGO critics of aid policy are generally unwilling to point out the geopolitical underpinnings of Canadian aid because their jobs depend on keeping quiet. They stick to criticizing the ways in which foreign assistance is used to benefit specific corporate interests. This stakeholder criticism generally amounts to no more than NGOs saying: “Give the aid money to us not the corporations, because we’ll do a better job of whatever it is you want to accomplish.”

If you tell truth to power by saying Canadian aid is largely designed to maintain Western capitalist dominance of the Global South, you’re not likely to have your grant renewed.

The funny thing is, with the Conservatives in power, if you’re doing anything remotely useful to ordinary people, you’re not likely to anyway.

Yves Engler is the author of Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping: The Truth May Hurt. His latest book is The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s foreign policy.

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April 18, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Canadian police arrest 279 protesters in Montreal

Press TV – April 7, 2013

Hundreds of protesters have been arrested during a demonstration against Canada’s police tactics in the country’s second-largest city of Montreal.

The Friday demonstration was held in protest against the controversial municipal bylaw called P-6, which allows the police to declare a protest event illegal in case no itinerary is given to authorities prior to the protest.

At least 279 protesters were arrested and fined 637 Canadian dollars for participating in an ‘illegal’ protest.

The P-6 also forbids participants to cover their faces during a protest.

Critics say that the P-6 is a form of police repression.

The event on Friday was organized by the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, also known as CLAC, who said the protest was a family-friendly event that aimed to “take back the streets.”

CLAC argues that holding a peaceful gathering is a right within the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Since February, several protests against the P-6 have been held in Montreal, with a total of nearly 600 people arrested and fined.

April 7, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , , | Leave a comment

How police Agent Provocateur frame people

Video clip (apparently filmed in 2002) demonstrates clearly how agent provocateur-police officers frame peaceful demonstrators to get them arrested.
On this video, an undercover cop pushes a non-violent bystander (a journalist according to the video) against uniformed police officers to get him arrested, and then the masked provocateur leaves the scene without the cops bothering him/her.

~~~

Police (at least) in the UK, Canada, US, Italy, Greece have been caught using provocateurs at demonstrations. This is done to get an excuse to put an end to the demonstration, and to restrict people’s right to protest in the future.

You can find videos of some of these events by searching the internet, use the words “police agent provocateurs + name of the country”.

Not every police officer is in on this. This is mainly being orchestrated by a relatively small group of corrupt insiders who in reality work for high-level organized crime, usually called the “shadow government” or “deep state”.

“Police agent provocateurs” are also the reason why violent-activism is counter productive: If there isn’t enough radical behavior at demonstrations, the police might actually stage some. So if there is a far-right/left group willing to stage riots against the establishment, the “deep state” controlling the establishment is getting just what THEY WANT out of the these extreme-groups.

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March 24, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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