ConCalls: Fraud, but No Punishment #RoboCon #cdnpoli UPDATED

The Federal Court found there was fraud in the 2011 federal election (duh), but decided the irregularities were not enough to justify calling byelections to let a fair election play out in each of the six challenged ridings.

Six contested election results stand but Federal Court finds evidence of robocalls fraud in 2011 election. Story soon.—
Glen McGregor (@glen_mcgregor) May 23, 2013

FUCK!

Updates likely…

UPDATE I:
The court by ruling there was a “concerted campaign” to defraud voters, has decided the Members of Parliament for those cheated out of a fair election. Votes have been denied to some Canadians twice now, first when they were tricked by malicious fraudsters backing the Conservative Party of Canada, and now again by the Federal Court for its refusal to uphold the intention of the law which is to make election fraud pointless because the benefactors of crime will not win.

Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley ruled that the calls “struck at the integrity of the electoral process by attempting to dissuade voters from casting ballots for their preferred candidates. This form of ‘voter suppression,’ was, until the 41st General Election, largely unknown in this country.”

The evidence points to “a concerted campaign by persons who had access to a database of voter information maintained by a political party,” Mosley writes[...]

The cheaters won in 2011. They are still winning. This is an outrage! The Federal Court is corrupted somehow! This continues the outrage of the Supreme Court decision regarding Etobicoke Centre.

“I am satisfied, however, that the most likely source of the information used to make the misleading calls was the CIMS database maintained and controlled by the CPC, accessed for that purpose by a person or persons currently unknown to this court.”

Mosely blamed CIMS, but said there was not enough evidence to finger RMG, RackNine, or even the CIMS owning CPC! The impotent Elections Canada investigation drags on behind closed doors for years, so we may never know what stones they left unturned. The guilty are getting away from the Federal Court. The DPP has charged only 1 person, not mentioned in this Federal Court ruling so far as I can tell.

WikiLeaks: Hollywood Hatchet, Swedish Swindle

The problem with how Sweden, the UK, and the United States have been treating Julian Assange of Wikileaks, has dragged on for years. It’s left the foremost journalist in the world stuck in a London apartment building that houses the Ecuadorian Embassy where Assange is trapped as a political prisoner. He sought asylum from the Swedish extradition order, and Ecuador granted him that request. Assange’s home country of Australia has sided with the United States in wanting him imprisoned and taken offline, because they’ve failed to negotiate his safe return to Australia or Ecuador where he could be free.

In February there was a great response to a New Statesman article by a former Assange supporter who has now betrayed him by working for Hollywood/CIA who is set to smear him in a widely distributed film.

Khan complains that Assange refused to appear in the film about WikiLeaks by the American director Alex Gibney, which she “executive produced”. Assange knew the film would be neither “nuanced” nor “fair” and “represent the truth”, as Khan wrote, and that its very title, We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, was a gift to the fabricators of a bogus criminal indictment that could doom him to one of America’s hellholes. Having interviewed axe-grinders and turncoats, Gibney abuses Assange as paranoid. DreamWorks is also making a film about the “paranoid” Assange. Oscars all round.

It’s also worth reading this summary by WikiLea’s J. Farrell, of Assange’s present legal and political problems:

Over a lunch you [, Khan,] questioned this fear of extradition to the US, and when I asked you what you would do in his position you refused to answer the question. I asked you more than six times what you would do in his shoes. Having offered to cooperate with the Swedish investigation non-stop for the past two years and been refused with no proper explanation, and believing that you would end up in an American prison for decades, in solitary confinement and under SAMs, what would you do? You never gave me a concrete answer. Instead, you skirted the question with another question and discounted the numerous legal opinions out there, favouring instead an article by David Allen Green. I reiterated that Julian had never said that it would be likely in practice that he would face the death penalty, although the Espionage Act permits this. But more to the point, and one that everyone always ignores, there was (and still is) the fear of being extradited to face life imprisonment and almost certainly torture or other inhumane and degrading treatment for his publishing activities.

I told you that the Swedish authorities could, if they wanted to, charge Julian in absentia. Even if they were to do that, they should, according to their own procedures, conduct an interview with him before requesting his extradition. I repeated that he remains available even in the embassy for questioning by the Swedish authorities should they wish to employ the standard procedures they use regularly in other cases.

I think it was David Allen Green who I was arguing with once on Twitter about WikiLeaks. He’s clearly not very objective, and is out to present the situation in a way that will result in Assange ending up imprisoned.

In response to the sexual assault allegations, here are people who recognize what is going on:

Khan is rightly concerned about a “resolution” of the allegations of sexual misconduct in Sweden. Putting aside the tissue of falsehoods demonstrated in the evidence in this case, both women had consensual sex with Assange and neither claimed otherwise; and the Stockholm prosecutor Eva Finne all but dismissed the case.

As Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote in the Guardian in August 2012, “. . . the allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction . . .

“The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will . . . [Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential step to their investigation? What are they afraid of?”

They are afraid of Skype, or a plane flight to London. Here’s a fricken map for them to find Julian Assange for that interview they claim to want on behalf of Assanges’ accusers.

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NOT a “threat to national security”

The Conservative government is out of control. The Guardian UK newspaper confirms what environmentalists have already suspected (since the Conservatives have openly accused them previously): This Conservative government regards environmentalists as a threat to national security. It’s offensive, absurd, and an extreme step into authoritarian police-state behaviour.

-(UofR image, to keep this blog post from appearing boring.)

“We’re aware of this” said Greenpeace Canada’s executive director Bruce Cox, who met the head of the RCMP last year. “We’re an outspoken voice for non-violence and this was made clear to the RCMP,” Cox said.

He said there was real anger among Canadians about the degradation of the natural environment by oil, gas and other extractive industries and governments working for those industries and not in the public interest. Security forces should see Greenpeace as a “plus”, a non-violent outlet for this anger, he argued. “It is governments and fossil fuel industry who are the extremists, threatening the prosperity of future generations.”

Has there been a report of Greenpeace violence lately? Ever? How about the RCMP, how’s their record for violence lately? Rape. Taser death. Etc.

The reason the Conservatives view environmentalists as a threat to national security, is because Harper thinks he is the nation, and his secure grasp on power is threatened by peaceful protests that spread the truth about his support of environmental and economic collapse for the crude gain of his wealthy backers.

In a Canadian Senate committee on national security and defence meeting Monday Feb 11 Richard Fadden, the director of CSIS said they are more worried about domestic terrorism, acknowledging that the vast majority of its spying is done within Canada. Fadden said they are “following a number of cases where we think people might be inclined to acts of terrorism”.

I’m someone who was once under investigation by CSIS, in order to get a job I had a while ago. It was like an advanced CRCheck, except by our national spies instead of local police. I don’t say this in jest, and my family and friends will confirm it if you ask them. I was (obviously) deemed no threat to Canadian national security, because I’m a loyal Canadian, and a peaceful person. I am also an environmentalist. I am not a terrorist. I care deeply about our country and its people. I have no good way to tell if I’m presently under targeted state observation, but assume I am. This does not make me paranoid, it makes me aware of my surroundings and news reports, and does not significantly change how I go about my life.

If CSIS, the RCMP, and the Cons had announced that since they were aware of “a number of cases” where Christians they were monitoring had been threatening violence, they’d since begun monitoring all Christian groups as possible threats to national security, can you imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth then? How is that different from monitoring all environmental groups because some violent people happen to support protecting natural ecosystems (and apparently not people)?

The Conservatives are literally making you pay for spies and police to monitor grandmothers and children who attend peaceful gatherings, in order to eliminate them as potential threats to Canada. That’s pretty messed up, and it describes what has been going on. Are you going to put stopping it at a lower priority than other things you care about next time you vote?

Newspaper Comments Highlight Canadian Racism

The comments sections on some newspapers and online news sites can be infamously bad. The Calgary Herald’s commenters, many of them frequent enough to be “top commenters”, put on a despicable display today. Chief Spence ended her hunger strike, and was hospitalized as a precaution because she’s been without proper nutrition for six weeks. Obviously such a drastic diet, with the purpose of forcing an emotional outpouring of support for political ends, is not healthy.

Mike Neumeier · Top Commenter
Look at her, there’s no way she was on a liquid-only diet – stop lying already. I’m pretty sure I saw her pounding down 6 mama-burgers at A & W the other day.

Ah yes, fat jokes about the lady who has been starving the past six weeks. Starving because the Prime Minister is too prideful to grant even an hour for himself and the Governor General to meet in person with some First Nations leaders. Starving, because First Nations people across Canada tend to suffer and be murdered at higher rates than other Canadians, yet this is not deemed an emergency that needs immediate correcting, according to the Prime Minister. She was starving for justice, and you mock her.

At least one journalist at CTV realized that there are some stories where there is a clear morally just side, and another where people die needlessly*. Can the corporate media as a whole begin to extend this realization to the issue of racism also? It’s not like racism has ever killed millions of people before, but their imaginations need to be stretched (if they can’t recall any race based genocide).

I don’t know how these people listed below will feel later about their negative comments, but if I’d ever made a nasty comment about someone based on their appearance or their race, I’d feel ashamed. These people signed their names to racist, fat jokes, some while listing their employer. That either takes guts (minus a heart), or a heck of a lack of brains.

Ken Schmied · Top Commenter
Hopefully the poor dear will be able to quickly put on some weight. She looks emaciated.
Reply · 16 · Like · Follow Post · 22 hours ago

David Kolling · Telephony Analyst at Shaw Communications
I think we as canadian tax payers should pony up and pay to send her to a really nice spa for 3 or 4 months to help her heal. You’re right she looks awful. Hahahahaha.
Reply · 7 · Like · 17 hours ago
Ken Schmied · Top Commenter
Grand Valley would be a wonderful resort for her to spend 6 to 10 years with time off for good behavior.
Reply · 3 · Like · Edited · 17 hours ago
Alan Beaulieu · Top Commenter · Calgary, Alberta
Looks like she could have done a few pushups and situps while she was Idling.
Reply · 1 · Like · 2 hours ago

Throw National Post a Lifeline

I haven’t encountered a Kelly McParland article that I can say I agree with. His latest, about Elizabeth May’s attempt to subvert the stalemate in Parliament amongst the opposition parties, is missing the point. May isn’t just out to help the Green Party, which of course is a given, despite McParland’s ridiculous claim that he’s revealed a dastardly, secret trap that the NDP or Liberals could fall into. May’s insistence that she’s putting the country before partisanship isn’t hot air, she’s attempting to win the next election using co-operation. Co-operation was not tried on a grand enough scale the last 3 elections, and the Liberals, NDP, and Greens have come out the losers in them as a result. (Widespread election fraud by Conservative supporters, didn’t help either, of course.)

“Should the other parties agree to pool resources with her in some ridings, as Ms. May suggests, her troops are likely to gain far more than they can contribute.”
This notion that McParland puts forward is built upon the opinion that it’s unfair for Canadians to be represented proportionally in the House of Commons, based upon popular vote election results. May isn’t only out to help the Greens take seats from Conservative MPs, she’s offered to help Liberals and NDP MPs win in place of Conservatives also. The result from another First Past the Post (FPTP) election could very well be totally unbalanced, where the NDP, Liberals, and Greens win all but a dozen seats, and the Conservatives end up under-represented in the House. The next step isn’t to hold onto power unfairly, but to change the electoral system so Canadians can decide and feel more satisfied with the resulting Parliament.

The dull, partisan point McParland is trying to have people agree with, is that it’s better for Canadians to be subjected to FPTP perpetually, than it is to support Greens who oppose it. May is seeking a functional, practical solution to overcoming the system, but McParland wants to protect that system, along with Mulcair, and other power hungry political leaders who think they are better off with all or nothing. The Greens hold a sort of ‘nuclear option’ as does any other national party that can get a million votes or more. If co-operation isn’t reached in time, the Conservatives can basically win by default (or so it seems). This means the NDP and Liberals have more to lose by failing to talk with the Greens, than they have to gain by ignoring co-operation. If it’s more important to Mulcair that May’s Greens not pick up any more seats, than it is for him to win his party a fair amount of power, then McParland and the Conservatives get what they argue for.

So how does a national newspaper writer get national politics so very wrong? Probably intentionally, right? It’s hard to see how his analysis supports the progression of a fair democratic country, unless we assume that’s not his mark.

ConCalls: Another Poutine Style Recording in #RoboCon

Elections Canada may be allowing the Conservative Party to set the glacial pace of the criminal investigation across Canada into illegal election robocalls that misdirected and harassed electors. May be? Who are we kidding. It’s well past 600 days since the crime that calls into question the right of the Conservatives to represent our country, and Elections Canada investigators are moving so slowly that newspapers are announcing their next move before they bring suspects in for questioning.

The full audio of a clip previously available in a CBC story, is posted in the latest from the Citizen.

The message captured by O’Reilly’s voice mail purports to be a get-out-the-vote call from Liberal candidate Doug Ferguson and directs her to a voting location far from her home. The message is recorded in a female voice with what sounds like a slight American accent.

According to Dickson’s statement, Ferguson said his campaign did not make the call.

Some useful analysis of the call can be found on this blog.

Hawthorne Rd. was where Donna was misdirected to. She lives, according to 411, on Wayne Crt, London ON N6K 3Z6

The message, from a woman claiming to be with the Ferguson campaign, arrived mid-afternoon on election day, May 2, advising O’Reilly she could vote at a polling station at “the Emily Carr public school” on Hawthorne Rd. O’Reilly had already voted at her assigned station – not that school, which is about 10 km from her home – when she got the message. She forgot about it, she says, until this weekend.

“Honestly, I thought, wow, what if this call was one of the calls (they’re) looking for?” said O’Reilly, who added she never erased the message, as it’s her family’s habit to “hold onto things forever.”

A News Hope

I missed this Rap News from last May. You won’t want to miss it. If it’s confusing though, you’ve got fifty minutes of documentary catch-up, plus some news footnotes to follow up on. Plus, it helps if you’ve seen Star Wars. If this is all greek/geek to you, it’s a good thing you’re reading my blog, you’ll be up to speed in ‘know time’.

I love that Hrafnsson’s daughter commented on the video. [Strange she missed an 's' in the name though ;-)]

Wikileaks: “A little group of activists…” – Julian Assange

Oh Kay, That’s Low

“The doctors haven’t actually examined Ms. Spence. They seem more like political cheerleaders with medical-school degrees.”
(fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/04/barbara-kay-on-theresa-spence-you-call-that-a-hunger-strike)

But Barbara Kay has examined Chief Spence? She questions the seriousness of the Chief because her hunger strike includes no solid food for 25 days, but has some nutrients suspended in water? No, Kay has no medical degree, or first hand inspection of the Chief.

Then, it gets worse:
“Meanwhile, she may actually end up doing her body a favour.”

This is the kind of shitty, racist, unhealthy, Government-defending editorial section we get when Conservatives own newspapers. I didn’t think it likely there would be more than one Kay at the National Joke who deserves harsh criticism.

“I am not actually encouraging Chief Spence to go on a real starvation regime. I am only saying that at this rate, it is going to take her a very long time to get the job done — if that is indeed what she wants.”

What she wants, clearly is justice for her people, you jerk! Do you think anyone truly wants to starve themselves? Not even people with eating disorders want to starve to death, they just want to attain a goal through extremely dangerous eating habits.

I honestly can’t read any more of that filth from Kay. I think newspapers may stay in style, because I have a strong urge to throw one across a room, or paper the bottom of a bird cage now, and can’t do that with an iPad.

–
Hat tip to Mr. Glass

On a Trek for Stars

I can’t simply make a fun Star Trek related blog post, I have to tie it into the Canadian political discourse also. So, here we go.

Ottawa Citizen reporter, Glen McGregor came up with a manifesto to guide modern journalism. He’s seen journalism fall prey to some ridiculous habits, like commenting on the tweets of celebrities as if they are newsworthy. It’s hard to deny that celebrity tweets are amusing, but they are rarely “newsworthy”. Journalists, in newspapers, should stick to roughly the guidelines in Glen’s #cdnpoli Dogme95.

A few days ago I posted a video of the International Space Station zooming over Regina. More recently, William Shatner who played James Tiberius Kirk on the sci-fi TV show Star Trek, tweeted to Commander Hadfield who is a Canadian working aboard ISS. Although it’s not really news, it does help promote the news that the Canadian commander is tweeting from aboard the space station, so it’s not so bad that CBC is using time to write about it, especially since it’s their entertainment/community team focused on it. It’s when they automatically make it a “Top Story” that I worry for the state of our country’s journalistic defenders.

@WilliamShatner Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we're detecting signs of life on the surface.—
Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) January 03, 2013

.@TrekMovie @Cmdr_Hadfield @WilliamShatner "I just love scanning for lifeforms" youtube.com/watch?v=dWBmaK… Tiny little life-forms. Where are you?—
Saskboy K. (@saskboy) January 03, 2013

@Cmdr_Hadfield So long as you're fixing the ISS warp drive, alien threats will consider you to be Scotty, not the token Red Shirt.—
Saskboy K. (@saskboy) January 04, 2013

Get ISS fly-over times at Heavens Above.

ConCalls: Week of Hell #RoboCon

The Conservatives have had a (deservedly) rough week, and it’s about to get more rough next week. The Council of Canadians’ court challenge is Monday. The Prime Minister closed out the final news cycle hour this week by actually taking questions from the press, (which has hardly ever happened before). The Conservatives procedurally pushed a public petition calling for a Royal Commission inquiry into Robocalls, to next week. Will they prorogue first?

.@impolitical Yeah, this from a PM who had a convicted fraud, Bruce Carson, advising him on oil matters. @pmoharper #cdnpoli #nexen—
Saskboy K. (@saskboy) December 07, 2012

Coyne absolutely defines the Harper Conservatives, meaning I think to refer to the F-35 contemptuous boondoggle, but can be generalized to nearly any Conservative initiative.

When I say mess, I don’t mean to suggest charming ineptitude, but culpable incompetence, mixed with deliberate misrepresentation. What started with a catastrophic failure of oversight, progressed through many months of dishonesty, secrecy, and stonewalling, culminating in what can only be called electoral fraud — followed by still more dishonesty about everything that had gone before.

[emphasis added]
Yes, he actually pointed out the Conservatives were involved in election fraud following the fall of their government in 2011 due to contemptuously hiding the true F-35 figures from Parliament. Today we further learned that the PBO was correct and was unfairly smeared by the lying, bungling Conservatives.

Harper won the last election not only via election fraud but also by knowingly misrepresenting facts of a major purchase, the #F35s #cdnpoli—
Danno (@___Danno) December 07, 2012

So, what can we the people do before 2015? Plenty. First, this weekend in Regina is a C-45 protest on Sunday at noon, at the Legislature.