Apologies if I digressed earlier.. but it occurs to me that ‘The Hill Too Die On’ is getting very crowded.. and the current person(s) leading the charge are Pierre, the CPC, CSIS, RCMP, Partisan MainMedia clowns & a truly ungulate or bovine partisan base. So it seems very possible it’s not a hill.. but a buffalo leap
Last I looked It was Trudeau hosting the President of the f’n United States of America & Poilievre with his el flasho coiffured hair in the gladhanding lineup.. dapper in bespoke suit and tie.. not the ill fitting Marks Work Warehouse blue shirt & dark nondescript pantaloons & cheap black shoes.
These are two different homo sapiens eh. One is running a Nation called Canada in a truly troubled world and the other is mainly ‘running his mouth’ & photo opping for all he’s worth. What’s his count now ? Has he hit 125 ‘Rallies’ via Jenni Byrne’s rolodex of Evangelical White Polite Electoral District Association (EDA) Board’s of Directors. Hell, he’s wound up about 150,000 of those nice committed ‘Conservative’ voters from coast to coast.. but won’t go near any Ottawa Ridings.. and especially ‘his’ Carleton Riding
The old saying.. ‘he who rides the tiger.. dare not dismount’ applies. Herr Harper tried it in a Secret Meeting in Vladivostok, Russia with the FIPA Deal.. nicely wrapped in ‘Cabinet Confidence’ but funny thing.. it’s Canada that Harper left aboard the Chinese Tiger.
Harper & sweetie pie Ray Novak et al Inc bequeathed Trudeau & Canada countless Conundrums to battle. SNC/Lavalin for one. Another was his destruction of Environmental Protection Laws re Canada’s Fresh Waters. Poilievre was there through all of it.. and cohabiting with Jenni Byrne till the eve of the Live & RoboCall Election Fraud of 2011.. and Harper ‘had no knowledge of these things’ .. boffo & huzzah !
Well I guess we’ll also see this travesty of ‘journalism’ play out.. some way or the other.. but sure seems to me.. here in my dotage.. that there’s quite a void - or vacuum - in the upper reaches of Old School Journalism. I maintain that a total humiliation of Pierre4PM will end his ‘political parasite career’ and take out the CPC at the same time.. Can’t think of a more deserving parasitic hive it could happen too.. & as a freak of nature piratical dude.. will ‘Fight Fair n Square’ every inch of the way - to see er done .. eh 🦎🏴☠️
The former head of CSIS told the CBC yesterday (see link below) the agency would never release any information that would compromise their methods, their sources, their employees or tip off China. So if CSIS was wiretapping foreign diplomats, nobody will ever know about it. And a public inquiry will not reveal it either. The spy agency is not participating in any public inquiry. He said calling the leaker a whistleblower is nonsense by definition which he spells out. He said he thought the leaker has compromised the agency and the people he's literally gossiping about since there's no evidence of a damn thing from the leaker. He could be ruining a life, many lives.
Second, Stephen Maher is the same goofball who called Tamara Lich "a political prisoner". He refused to back down on that idiocy.
Third - and I'm just throwing this out there for history's sake. Stephen Harper appointed a literal criminal to h̵e̵a̵d̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵P̵r̵i̵v̵y̵ ̵C̵o̵u̵n̵c̵i̵l̵,̵ ̵ Chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, giving him access to state secrets. His name is Arthur Porter. Harper received warnings against appointing him which Harper ignored. He died in a Panamanian prison awaiting trial. My faith in the reform conservatives to respect secrets - esp after Skippy announced he would not take a briefing because it would compel him to respect secrecy - is NIL.
Correction: Arthur Porter was appointed to be Chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, and as such a member of the Privy Council. SIRC conducts reviews of CSIS activities. To have the job of Head of the Privy Council--the most senior official in the Government--is entirely different and vastly more important responsibility.
I stand corrected but let's add some context here lest people assume from your comment that Porter's position was a meh moment.
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Porter head of the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) on Sept. 3, 2008, giving him access to Canada’s most carefully guarded secrets, including information shared with Canadian spies by American and British intelligence agencies. In June 2010, Harper made him chairman of the five-member committee. SIRC’s job is to review operations of Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, by providing civilian oversight of operations and handling appeals from citizens who feel they have been mistreated by the agency. He stepped down amid controversy in 2011." https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/letter-warning-stephen-harper-against-appointing-arthur-porter-to-oversee-spy-agency-raised-no-red-flags
Great perspective mr Scrimshaw - timing is great !
I have to say that what strikes me goes back to Dear MP Candace Bergen’s sudden itch for ‘more time with family’ & resignation ?
It reeks of her getting rolled up via her Access to Classified Security Briefing re Convoy/Occupation.. the burning question is what was her source ? Surely she didn’t get caught ‘sharing’ knowledge gained via Classified National Security Briefing as Temporary Official Leader Of Her Majesty’s Opposition Party ? Oh say it ain’t so !
Or even worse.. CSIS rolled her up re communications with ‘Actors’ she shouldn’t be Conspiring With ! Look at it this way.. her sudden exit seems bizarre considering the CPC was bringing in their ShitHot Pierre4PM & dumping poor O’Toole who ‘was found wanting’.. She had a Front Row seat for the Glory Trail !
Funny you should mention something I picked up lickedy split.. wasn’t she the one shrieking daily - to wit - Trudeau accused all of us (us ? Canadians ?) of all being racist misogynists via a laughably translated transcript segment of French to English from a French Only interview.. somehow with ZERO context or that it was the Interviewer who introduced the word ‘Racist’ vocally as a ‘prompt’ to him..
Unfortunately.. even I.. a crack Hayloft & Barnsider bartender speaks ‘bar french’ & has produced hundreds of Accredited Medical CME in English & matching French can call bullshit & have repeatedly.. ‘nothing but the facts, ma’am’
But the reality now is that it’s purportedly ‘Historical Fact’ - when it’s a bald faced ‘Hysterical Partisan Lie’
and about the same as Pierre4PM.. and the rest of the CPC ScumGang echoing endlessly that ‘Justin wore Blackface so many times that he can’t even remember how often’. Have they never heard the term or response - in Court Of Law’ - “I don’t recall”
The other thing is we have a report of a snippet of a long conversation allegedly initiated by Dong. We also know he has had contact with the consulate for several years because of his work with the Canada China Business Council.
I think it is entirely plausible that a large part of the conversation was about that and that in the end he mentioned the Michaels as one might at a time like that. The help the Conservatives makes no sense and the screwed up translation seems more likely. The whole thing just stinks of a reporter getting over his skis because he has a long history of “going after” the China story and he thinks he has a tiger by the tail. His arrogant response to Stephanie Carvin is more of that “how dare you question me?” certainty that stinks as well.
Off topic, I know, but a few days ago you suggested that the best way to defeat Poilievre would be to use the "not ready" label.
Today, I see this type of framing is happening - it came up particularly with how he flipped out about the Biden dinner invite and then it turned out to be all his own fault, and also the inept way his caucus handled Dark Brandon's goad about standing up to applaud women in cabinet.
So I think you really hit the nail on the head about the way to undermine Poilievre!
It looks like Global is skating on very thin ice here. The scary thought is that they might be imitating Fox News - the point of the exercise is to discredit the Liberals by whatever means.
Hopefully this Cooper Canard will open the door to dealing with foreign interference in a non partisan and professional way.
Now that the cat is out of the bag regarding wiretapping Chinese diplomats, I would hope that Trudeau declassifies these transcripts and counters these accusations much more forcefully.
Although I find your analysis strong overall, I do have some thoughts. First, you assume that CSIS will tell the RCMP if they have proof that a crime was committed, which is simply not true.
RCMP intelligence is meant to support potential legal prosecutions. CSIS is focused on monitoring threats to national security. Not only is it plausible, it's actually likely, that CSIS would not have revealed to the police that an MP was working for China, as doing so could undermine ongoing surveillance on Chinese diplomats in Canada. CSIS does not want its methods revealed in court.
Second, many Mandarin speakers have said that Stephen Maher's hearsay comment about a translation error is not plausible.
Third, my reading of the Globe story is different from yours. If you take the Friday story by the Globe and Mail at face value, then the PMO lied. According to Sam Cooper, PMO told him that they only heard about the Han Dong call this week after Global contacted them. Now we know that PMO was aware of this call in early March.
Finally, if PMO concluded that there was no actionable evidence in the transcripts, then why let Han Dong quit caucus once Global published their story? If they had already read the transcript and seen nothing wrong, then what changed after the Global story? Why not simple say that they already reviewed the matter and concluded their is no evidence to support the allegations. My sense is that PMO is not being truthful about what they saw and what they know.
The whole affair is starting to smack of Russiagate where the US media operatives in conjunction with anonymous sources connected with security agencies insinuated Vladimir Putin had somehow gotten Donald Trump elected in 2016 and was “controlling him” -surely an act of treason. That is until the Mueller Report came out and said the whole thing was a nothingburher.
On the other hand JT is getting a taste of his own medicine when he was insinuating the anti-vax crowd was full of racists and extremists who were going around waving Nazi flags etc. What goes around comes around.
Regardless of the lack of visible and verified FACTs, I would strongly suggest that distrust in our institutions and democracy has been achieved.
Be it via foreign interference, shortcuts taken in reporting HEARSAY or both.
The question that remains is who benefits from all this?
The answer is a political entity that shares the same initials as the CCP.
The only path to victory for the CPC is to encourage non CPC voters to stay home on election day.
The leaker(s) must be found and stand trial.
The anonymous sources being hidden by Global and the Globe and Mail cannot hide behind legislation protecting sources as that legislation is not without exceptions and those exceptions were reached weeks ago.
Journalistic Sources Protection Act
S.C. 2017, c. 22
Assented to 2017-10-18
An Act to amend the Canada Evidence Act and the Criminal Code (protection of journalistic sources)
SUMMARY
This enactment amends the Canada Evidence Act to protect the confidentiality of journalistic sources. It allows journalists to not disclose information or a document that identifies or is likely to identify a journalistic source unless the information or document cannot be obtained by any other reasonable means and the public interest in the administration of justice outweighs the public interest in preserving the confidentiality of the journalistic source.
Apologies if I digressed earlier.. but it occurs to me that ‘The Hill Too Die On’ is getting very crowded.. and the current person(s) leading the charge are Pierre, the CPC, CSIS, RCMP, Partisan MainMedia clowns & a truly ungulate or bovine partisan base. So it seems very possible it’s not a hill.. but a buffalo leap
Last I looked It was Trudeau hosting the President of the f’n United States of America & Poilievre with his el flasho coiffured hair in the gladhanding lineup.. dapper in bespoke suit and tie.. not the ill fitting Marks Work Warehouse blue shirt & dark nondescript pantaloons & cheap black shoes.
These are two different homo sapiens eh. One is running a Nation called Canada in a truly troubled world and the other is mainly ‘running his mouth’ & photo opping for all he’s worth. What’s his count now ? Has he hit 125 ‘Rallies’ via Jenni Byrne’s rolodex of Evangelical White Polite Electoral District Association (EDA) Board’s of Directors. Hell, he’s wound up about 150,000 of those nice committed ‘Conservative’ voters from coast to coast.. but won’t go near any Ottawa Ridings.. and especially ‘his’ Carleton Riding
The old saying.. ‘he who rides the tiger.. dare not dismount’ applies. Herr Harper tried it in a Secret Meeting in Vladivostok, Russia with the FIPA Deal.. nicely wrapped in ‘Cabinet Confidence’ but funny thing.. it’s Canada that Harper left aboard the Chinese Tiger.
Harper & sweetie pie Ray Novak et al Inc bequeathed Trudeau & Canada countless Conundrums to battle. SNC/Lavalin for one. Another was his destruction of Environmental Protection Laws re Canada’s Fresh Waters. Poilievre was there through all of it.. and cohabiting with Jenni Byrne till the eve of the Live & RoboCall Election Fraud of 2011.. and Harper ‘had no knowledge of these things’ .. boffo & huzzah !
Well I guess we’ll also see this travesty of ‘journalism’ play out.. some way or the other.. but sure seems to me.. here in my dotage.. that there’s quite a void - or vacuum - in the upper reaches of Old School Journalism. I maintain that a total humiliation of Pierre4PM will end his ‘political parasite career’ and take out the CPC at the same time.. Can’t think of a more deserving parasitic hive it could happen too.. & as a freak of nature piratical dude.. will ‘Fight Fair n Square’ every inch of the way - to see er done .. eh 🦎🏴☠️
Couple of things.
The former head of CSIS told the CBC yesterday (see link below) the agency would never release any information that would compromise their methods, their sources, their employees or tip off China. So if CSIS was wiretapping foreign diplomats, nobody will ever know about it. And a public inquiry will not reveal it either. The spy agency is not participating in any public inquiry. He said calling the leaker a whistleblower is nonsense by definition which he spells out. He said he thought the leaker has compromised the agency and the people he's literally gossiping about since there's no evidence of a damn thing from the leaker. He could be ruining a life, many lives.
Link for interview with former CSIS director. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-2/clip/15974141
Second, Stephen Maher is the same goofball who called Tamara Lich "a political prisoner". He refused to back down on that idiocy.
Third - and I'm just throwing this out there for history's sake. Stephen Harper appointed a literal criminal to h̵e̵a̵d̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵P̵r̵i̵v̵y̵ ̵C̵o̵u̵n̵c̵i̵l̵,̵ ̵ Chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, giving him access to state secrets. His name is Arthur Porter. Harper received warnings against appointing him which Harper ignored. He died in a Panamanian prison awaiting trial. My faith in the reform conservatives to respect secrets - esp after Skippy announced he would not take a briefing because it would compel him to respect secrecy - is NIL.
Correction: Arthur Porter was appointed to be Chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, and as such a member of the Privy Council. SIRC conducts reviews of CSIS activities. To have the job of Head of the Privy Council--the most senior official in the Government--is entirely different and vastly more important responsibility.
I stand corrected but let's add some context here lest people assume from your comment that Porter's position was a meh moment.
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Porter head of the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) on Sept. 3, 2008, giving him access to Canada’s most carefully guarded secrets, including information shared with Canadian spies by American and British intelligence agencies. In June 2010, Harper made him chairman of the five-member committee. SIRC’s job is to review operations of Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, by providing civilian oversight of operations and handling appeals from citizens who feel they have been mistreated by the agency. He stepped down amid controversy in 2011." https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/letter-warning-stephen-harper-against-appointing-arthur-porter-to-oversee-spy-agency-raised-no-red-flags
Great perspective mr Scrimshaw - timing is great !
I have to say that what strikes me goes back to Dear MP Candace Bergen’s sudden itch for ‘more time with family’ & resignation ?
It reeks of her getting rolled up via her Access to Classified Security Briefing re Convoy/Occupation.. the burning question is what was her source ? Surely she didn’t get caught ‘sharing’ knowledge gained via Classified National Security Briefing as Temporary Official Leader Of Her Majesty’s Opposition Party ? Oh say it ain’t so !
Or even worse.. CSIS rolled her up re communications with ‘Actors’ she shouldn’t be Conspiring With ! Look at it this way.. her sudden exit seems bizarre considering the CPC was bringing in their ShitHot Pierre4PM & dumping poor O’Toole who ‘was found wanting’.. She had a Front Row seat for the Glory Trail !
Funny you should mention something I picked up lickedy split.. wasn’t she the one shrieking daily - to wit - Trudeau accused all of us (us ? Canadians ?) of all being racist misogynists via a laughably translated transcript segment of French to English from a French Only interview.. somehow with ZERO context or that it was the Interviewer who introduced the word ‘Racist’ vocally as a ‘prompt’ to him..
Unfortunately.. even I.. a crack Hayloft & Barnsider bartender speaks ‘bar french’ & has produced hundreds of Accredited Medical CME in English & matching French can call bullshit & have repeatedly.. ‘nothing but the facts, ma’am’
But the reality now is that it’s purportedly ‘Historical Fact’ - when it’s a bald faced ‘Hysterical Partisan Lie’
and about the same as Pierre4PM.. and the rest of the CPC ScumGang echoing endlessly that ‘Justin wore Blackface so many times that he can’t even remember how often’. Have they never heard the term or response - in Court Of Law’ - “I don’t recall”
The other thing is we have a report of a snippet of a long conversation allegedly initiated by Dong. We also know he has had contact with the consulate for several years because of his work with the Canada China Business Council.
I think it is entirely plausible that a large part of the conversation was about that and that in the end he mentioned the Michaels as one might at a time like that. The help the Conservatives makes no sense and the screwed up translation seems more likely. The whole thing just stinks of a reporter getting over his skis because he has a long history of “going after” the China story and he thinks he has a tiger by the tail. His arrogant response to Stephanie Carvin is more of that “how dare you question me?” certainty that stinks as well.
“getting over his skis” - lovin it m’man !
Off topic, I know, but a few days ago you suggested that the best way to defeat Poilievre would be to use the "not ready" label.
Today, I see this type of framing is happening - it came up particularly with how he flipped out about the Biden dinner invite and then it turned out to be all his own fault, and also the inept way his caucus handled Dark Brandon's goad about standing up to applaud women in cabinet.
So I think you really hit the nail on the head about the way to undermine Poilievre!
It looks like Global is skating on very thin ice here. The scary thought is that they might be imitating Fox News - the point of the exercise is to discredit the Liberals by whatever means.
Hopefully this Cooper Canard will open the door to dealing with foreign interference in a non partisan and professional way.
Now that the cat is out of the bag regarding wiretapping Chinese diplomats, I would hope that Trudeau declassifies these transcripts and counters these accusations much more forcefully.
Although I find your analysis strong overall, I do have some thoughts. First, you assume that CSIS will tell the RCMP if they have proof that a crime was committed, which is simply not true.
RCMP intelligence is meant to support potential legal prosecutions. CSIS is focused on monitoring threats to national security. Not only is it plausible, it's actually likely, that CSIS would not have revealed to the police that an MP was working for China, as doing so could undermine ongoing surveillance on Chinese diplomats in Canada. CSIS does not want its methods revealed in court.
Second, many Mandarin speakers have said that Stephen Maher's hearsay comment about a translation error is not plausible.
Third, my reading of the Globe story is different from yours. If you take the Friday story by the Globe and Mail at face value, then the PMO lied. According to Sam Cooper, PMO told him that they only heard about the Han Dong call this week after Global contacted them. Now we know that PMO was aware of this call in early March.
Finally, if PMO concluded that there was no actionable evidence in the transcripts, then why let Han Dong quit caucus once Global published their story? If they had already read the transcript and seen nothing wrong, then what changed after the Global story? Why not simple say that they already reviewed the matter and concluded their is no evidence to support the allegations. My sense is that PMO is not being truthful about what they saw and what they know.
The whole affair is starting to smack of Russiagate where the US media operatives in conjunction with anonymous sources connected with security agencies insinuated Vladimir Putin had somehow gotten Donald Trump elected in 2016 and was “controlling him” -surely an act of treason. That is until the Mueller Report came out and said the whole thing was a nothingburher.
On the other hand JT is getting a taste of his own medicine when he was insinuating the anti-vax crowd was full of racists and extremists who were going around waving Nazi flags etc. What goes around comes around.
Regardless of the lack of visible and verified FACTs, I would strongly suggest that distrust in our institutions and democracy has been achieved.
Be it via foreign interference, shortcuts taken in reporting HEARSAY or both.
The question that remains is who benefits from all this?
The answer is a political entity that shares the same initials as the CCP.
The only path to victory for the CPC is to encourage non CPC voters to stay home on election day.
The leaker(s) must be found and stand trial.
The anonymous sources being hidden by Global and the Globe and Mail cannot hide behind legislation protecting sources as that legislation is not without exceptions and those exceptions were reached weeks ago.
Journalistic Sources Protection Act
S.C. 2017, c. 22
Assented to 2017-10-18
An Act to amend the Canada Evidence Act and the Criminal Code (protection of journalistic sources)
SUMMARY
This enactment amends the Canada Evidence Act to protect the confidentiality of journalistic sources. It allows journalists to not disclose information or a document that identifies or is likely to identify a journalistic source unless the information or document cannot be obtained by any other reasonable means and the public interest in the administration of justice outweighs the public interest in preserving the confidentiality of the journalistic source.