Wednesday, March 18, 2015

RCMP spying on climate change researchers?

This, via Creekside.
Tim Takaro, a health sciences professor at SFU, says he was having lunch in Tofino with his family on Wednesday when his daughter's cellphone rang.
When she answered it, she was told it was the Burnaby RCMP calling and they were looking for her father.
"I was very upset that he had called my daughter and that he was basically threatening, intimidating on the phone," says Takaro.
He says the officer asked him if he had recently had been taking photos near a Trans Mountain pipeline work site on Burnaby Mountain. They also told him they knew he had been to protest rallies that had taken place there a few months earlier.
A few days before, Takaro says he had been taking photographs along the Burnaby Mountain conservation trails when a guard at the nearby work site approached him and told him he couldn't take any photos.
From this we might deduce that the RCMP or CSIS  or some other agency, photographs people at rallies or protests, identifies them and compiles a database, and they (or perhaps private security from Kinder Morgan) puts them under surveillance and then intimidates them by calling his daughter's unlisted number. It's also probably fair to say than any scientist involved in climate change or environmental research is likely now under some kind of surveillance.

If you or I did this to someone, we'd have the RCMP on our doorstep. It's fucking creepy and no doubt highly traumatising for both Professor Takaro and his family.

No crime has been committed. No charges. Just a phone call that tells a much bigger story.  Such is the apparent extent of collusion between the fossil fuel industry, the Conservatives, and the security services.

Bill C-51 will permit the security forces much greater reach in disrupting people's lives than a phone call. We haven't seen anything yet.

They go after the intellectuals first, you know.

14 comments:

Dana said...

This is Canada's new normal. It will be Canada's habitual normal before you know it. Too many of our fellow "citizens" are perfectly comfortable with the idea. Short of massive armed revolt and civil war, WHICH I AM NOT ADVOCATING DEAR MINISTRY OF LOVE, I fear this new, soon to be habitual normal, is the future of the western world, perhaps the planet.

Democracy is dead. Long live democracy.

Scotian said...

But those Liberals, oh they are just the same as the CPC. You think after a decade now it might be finally sinking into the heads of those on the left that this is bloody well crap? This is *NOT* something you would expect as business as usual from a Lib government, and if such a story had come to press it would be getting a lot more attention than this one appears to be.

Harper has to go, at all costs, and the only way to make sure of that is with a Lib majority. So suck it up Canadians of all stripes, it isn't about what is fair, what we might each prefer under normal circumstances, this time around the argument that voting Lib is the only way to protect us from the crazy right-wingers is clearly true!

Maybe now after this majority and the last decade of PM Harper those people who called me hysterical and a Lib operative for making this point a decade ago have finally seen enough for themselves to understand that these days Lib Tory (not that CPC is Tory)are NOT the same story, not even eff'n close!

I will close with this point, this story shows a pattern that has been around for a while, and a convergence of the use of the tools of the state for partisan purposes unheard of in our history, and a very dangerous convergence at that. That the RCMP even had this woman's unlisted number is bad enough, that they thought it was an appropriate action to take in any way is downright terrifying, and that doesn't even begin to address the question as to why such amount of limited resources are being used by the police and intelligence agencies against a climate scientist and protestor when there are much more serious threats to Canadians in both the criminal and terrorist worlds to begin with!

One of the things when you look back at what the Reform and especially the CA used to claim the Lib governments really did are what they actually are doing now, and worse. I wonder if they truly believed that back then and simply feel they are leveling the playing field, not understanding that they are creating these problems out of whole cloth to the detriment of us all. I know, that is likely being overly charitable, but it is hard to believe there are so many essentially traitors to Canadian values and principles as this government has within it and is supported by.

Webgogs said...

Harper is an old control freak dictator from way back. Harper is also the same typo tyrant, as all dictators are.

There was a NEB e-mail lauding? The citizens can no longer have any say over pipelines. This is very fascist behavior.

The RCMP are Harper's police state
All they need to do is to, change their shirt color to brown.

Lavrenty said...

Yes Scotian, the Libs are different than the Cons. They don't agree with Bill C-51...but they will still support it. And if they become the government then maybe, just maybe, they will amend this legislation.

Dana said...

Lavrenty, tell me what the real politik benefit of opposing the bill would be? In the face of Harper's majority opposition would be symbolic only so any benefit to those opposing would be symbolic at best, meaningless more likely.

The greatest real politik benefit would accrue to Harper, giving him something else to attack Trudeau with.

Of course maybe you're just another Harperian wanker and that's the hard on you're looking for.

Or you're a dipper wanker and you don't know shit from shinola beyond the tip of Mulcair's wet pink tongue. Given your pseudonym I lean toward this option.

But, hey, go ahead and make all the meaningless, empty gestures you wish, Commander Beria. It is, however, most unlike you.

Lavrenty said...

Trudeau is a vacuous idiot who deserves to be attacked for having elastic principles. Only an imbecile would think that being on both sides of an issue is real politik.

Dana said...

OK, second option confirmed then.

Easily ignored as rigid ideologue with no capacity for independent thought.

Scotian said...

Dana:

Agreed. Another useful idiot that Harper relies upon for his majority heard from. BTW, thanks for responding to that one, my patience has worn extremely thin with such over the last decade. After all only an idiot would think that doing exactly what your enemy clearly wants when he makes as obvious a trap as C51 for you is the principled course, especially when that leaves said enemy better positioned to remain in power despite all the harm he does.

This is one of my core problems with some NDP partisans, they are a mirror image of CPC partisans, only their values matter and to hells with the rest of us, if we cannot see the wisdom in their principles then we are clearly wrong and the enemy. The problem for these Dippers is that for most Canadians, or at least the largest voting block plurality, it is being in the center not being overly ideological in either direction that is what is a core value/principle, so when such voters see/hear Dipper voices pull that crap out and trash Trudeau in the manner this one did of course they become alienated.

Trudeua did the best in a bad situation with this bill IMHO. I don't like it, but I place the blame on Harper for creating the bill, not Trudeau for having to deal with it. If he had said he was supportive without the amendments, and without saying they will be part of the election platform if not included, or if this was in a minority as opposed to majority government situation, then I might agree with the characterization being used here, but that level of nuance is of course being unprincipled for these purists.

This is the sort of mindset that goes with those that believe voting for the lesser evil is wrong and therefore to not vote is the more noble choice, despite the record showing that usually means the greater/greatest evil is the overall gainer. This is the mindset that lets those like Harper in the door and into the PMO. We have had a decade of hell thanks to this mindset, and it leads to places like this blogpost discusses. There is a reason for the cliche "for evil to triumph only takes good men to do nothing".

ENOUGH ALREADY!

Dana said...

Scotian, I find it cruelly amusing that a political party once known for the philosophical steadfastness of it's leadership would select a former Liberal cabinet member from Quebec to lead them and then continue to pretend that there was anything philosophically contiguous or steadfast about them.

The most hypocritical political organization in the country.

Steve said...

One can just imagine the dirty tricks with the No Fly list alone. Then the name goes global and try walking that back.
Its kindergarten run like the lord of the flies.

e.a.f. said...

In my opinion bill C-51 has little or nothing to do with "terrorists" and everything to do with supporting corporate agendas in Canada. With all the trade agreements harper signed and the latitude these agreements grant foreign governments and corporations, Canadian citizens will most likely want to protest. This will not make foreign interest happy and they will insist harper and his herd do something about it. With Bill C-51 in place, he'll be able to do it.

so in the end we will not have jobs, our environment will be destroyed and we will not have the right to protest, without being put in jail. By that time the jail will most likely be run by an American for profit private prison corporations which is traded on the N.Y. Stock Exchange. Welcome to harper and his herd's real agenda for Canada.

Purple library guy said...

The funny thing about denouncing lefties as both
a) The mirror image of the Cons in their rigid insistence on their values and point of view, and
b) Therefore ineffectual and foolish people who should be more realistic,

Is that the Cons are in government. Evidently this rigidity has not prevented them from winning. To the contrary, they have used it as a tool for victory. So should the NDP. More so than they actually do, if anything.

The Mound of Sound said...

The only way to deal with this is to overwhelm them with sheer numbers. Every day run 15 or 20-people with their cameras through Kinder Morgan's target area. A different bunch every day. And every time these tar-heads draw a line in the sand, respond in a similar manner. We're long overdue for some real push back against these bitumen thugs and their state police minions.

It's worked elsewhere, repeatedly, and it all comes down to numbers.

The Mound of Sound said...

Stasi, anyone?