Swamp Blaney with information

So, Harper has ordered Public Safety Minister, Steven Blaney, to learn about and monitor every protest, everywhere by anybody in Canada.

The federal government is expanding its surveillance of public activities to include all known demonstrations across the country, a move that collects information even on the most mundane of protests by Canadians.
The email requesting such information was sent out Tuesday by the Government Operations Centre in Ottawa to all federal departments.

The Government Operations Centre is not allowed to issue such instructions. It's own terms of reference make it a body designed to respond to emergencies; not gather information on legitimate assemblies. In short the GOC is now spying on you. Welcome to Harper's Canada. (And the stinking turd has the unmitigated gall to call Putin a threat to stability).

Others have written extensively and eloquently on this. Dr. Dawg and Simon have pointed out very clearly what this means and if you don't get the "police state is here, now" flavour from their very clear messages, I would re-read them until you do.

So, what are you going to do about it?

Try this: Every community and local event, right down to a friggin' church bake sale should be reported to Blaney's office. Make every event a demonstration or protest.

Having a pancake breakfast? Make it a pancake breakfast to protest the consumption of toast.
Holding a bake sale to raise funds for the poor overseas? Make it a bake sale protesting the lack of foreign aid being provided by Canada.

Swamp the sonofabitch. They don't have the people or the resources to sort through it. And keep doing it. Don't let up and they'll eventually give up. You turn their own weapon against them.

You can send a letter, or thousands of letters, without postage, to:
Steven Blaney, MP
House of Commons,
Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6

Email: steven.blaney@parl.gc.ca

Fax: 613-995-6856

Phone: 613-992-7434

And feel free to tell your community newspaper what you're doing. They'll eat it up.
 

Why Is Peter MacKay's Anti-Cyber-Bullying Bill ... (updated)

... so goddamned big?

Because, it's simply a reworded regurgitation of the repulsive Vic Toews Internet Surveillance Bill. You know, the one that got killed because the public was outraged at the idea of giving the police and government the power to spy on your internet activity. Now they want the meta-data out of your smart-phone too.

Michael Geist breaks it down for you.

You just knew the Harperites wouldn't leave alone the idea of spying on ... just everyone. After all, if you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Right? Except that a complaining email to your Conservative MP could land you in jail.

And you're being called to the barricades again.


UPDATE: Just on time, Sir Tim Berners-Lee weighs in with his world-view. And who, (I know you are asking), is Tim Berners-Lee?

Good question.

I can guarantee you the frat-boys from the PMO, as they consume hours of streaming data in the Mayflower in Ottawa, and Peter MacKay wouldn't recognize his name if you created an app for their government issued smart-phones. THIS is Tim Berners-Lee.

G20 Ten Most Wanted and their control group

At yesterday's presser, the Toronto Police media guy announced their "G20 Most Wanted Individuals" list :

"They are individuals who are not suspects - they are people who are wanted for criminal offences and the only difficulty that the investigative team has is at this point we don't know who they are so we're seeking the assistance of the public to identify them to us ."

He further advised they have "over 14,000 still images of individuals and over 500 videos", which they will be sharing with the Canadian Banking Association to run through their facial recognition software. Keep those citizen CDs and vids coming, he said.

So after ignoring the rioters for an hour and a half on June 26th in favour of taking their pictures, and then rounding up, photographing, and IDing over a thousand hapless random citizens the following day, you will now use the banks' software tools to look for a match between the two groups.
Got it.
Well at least we know the point of the Sunday bucket detainments now - they're to be the control group.

G20 : Who gave the orders?

Oddly, Media Co-op has an opinion piece up, criticizing Paul Jay for doing this opinion piece.

Meanwhile, in an alternate universe :

After an emotional morning-long debate, city council voted 36-0 to "commend the outstanding work" of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, his officers and other police forces working during the G20 summit in Toronto.

Then they all signed another one of those "Please, sir, can I have another?" greeting cards everyone is sending to Steve lately and fired it off to him, just in case he missed their endorsement of Lockdown Toronto on the news.

G20 : Who was that masked man?

A photojournalist followed and filmed 75 to 100 Black Bloc for 90 minutes and 24 blocks as they rampaged through the streets of Toronto smashing windows and torching police cars while police looked calmly on from several different locations. Why was this rampage allowed?

Police say they had already infiltrated a Black Bloc group and knew what to expect, but tonight the head of G20 security operations told an incredulous Susan Ormiston on CBC that the police had better things to do than attend to the Black Bloc.

So much for "serve and protect" then if you don't happen to be a G20 fence.

The photojournalist is interviewed here by Paul Manly, who shot the footage of the three rock-toting police provocateurs at the SPP protests in Montebello back in Aug 2007 and wonders if this isn't a variation on the same theme as it was only after the rioters dumped their black gear and dispersed into the crowd that the police attacked the peaceful protesters.

Well, perhaps not all of them dumped their black gear. Below some 20 plainclothes, including a couple of blackclad guys in hoodies, are seen making a run for safety behind a police line. An crazyangry woman attacks the photographer and then scampers off with them.

So who were those masked men?

Do you have a complaint against the Toronto Police?

Were you harassed? Were you beaten? Were you treated as less than a citizen? Were you arrested for doing nothing more than trying to see through some overpaid goon's sunglasses? (That's right you fucking morons. If you allowed yourselves to be suborned by a questionable law which had yet to be published to give you comfort then you are an overpaid fucking goon.)

Did you have an ugly encounter with the cheapest members of law enforcement?

Too bad.

A police state is a tough thing to break down.

Documents? What Documents?

Oh! You mean these documents?

Chrolavicius sensed something was amiss when she independently obtained records related to Benatta's case through the Access to Information Act that had not come out through the court process.

Still, the government said in a submission to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice that additional documents and information "simply do not exist."

It said the allegation that the Crown's search for documents had been deficient was based largely on speculation, intuition, guesswork and erroneous assumption.

In December, the court ordered the government to come up with a more complete list of documents, saying the original was "deficient in form and substance."

Initially the government said 113 relevant documents existed, but it now acknowledges 972 items.

Gee, it's as if lower level civil servants were following the example set by those at the top or something.

I guess the RCMP now has a "OO" section

This outrageous ruling just gave the mounties the licence to kill anyone who loses their temper, no questions asked. It's funny no one ever dies of hysteria when the cops aren't involved. I have family friends who are in the RCMP - I don't think of them as killers, but these four don't pause for an instant to try to calm the man, they just kill him. 

Watch the whole video--I insist--and tell me this guy deserved to die or that the police acted in a reasonable way. He had been there for TEN HOURS, couldn't read the signs to figure out where he was supposed to go to get out to the arrivals lobby and he DIED FOR IT!

I hope someday these officers, the judge and crown attorney involved travel to some far off foreign land, say China or Pakistan or even, oh I dunno, Poland  -- and get lost in the airport for hours and hours and what with the jet lag and the lack of sleep and the confusion and frustration and the fact that no one seems to speak English, I hope they finally throw down their suitcases and just lose it and start shouting. I hope it doesn't cost them their lives because they deserve to live a long, long time with that poor bastard's needless death haunting their conscience every waking moment.

The four horsemen arrive at 6:12, at 6:40 they taser Robert Dziekanski, for the first time. By about 9:30 he seems to be dead, and the Mounties never even try artificial resuscitation, in fact they don't even seem to be in any rush to try to get medical help for the man they have just murdered.

Outlawing Nonexistent Crimes -- 2008 edition

The golden nugget from this article:

"Republican campaign consultant Royal Masset says, "[I]n-person voter fraud is nonexistent. It doesn't happen, and ... makes no sense because who's going to take the risk of going to jail on something so blatant that maybe changes one vote?""

And because we lo-ovvve US laws so much, we have to have one of our own.

I can't wait for parliament to begin. I am sure they will begin with a little housekeeping, getting rid of two useless laws -- one which is optional, and the other which outlaws something nobody does.

Noni