Screw Oversight! In HarperLand, We Watch YOU, You Don't Watch Us.

What's the point in having domestic spying if it means you're going to be, oh I don't know, "accountable?"

Canada's Closet Clausewitz, def min Jason Kenney, says there'll be no additional oversight of national security operatives after the Harper government rams through bill C-51.

Defence Minister Jason Kenney, who has functioned as the government’s lead spokesman for the legislation in recent days, rebuffed an appeal for more independent supervision of national-security agencies – one that came in the form of letter published in The Globe and Mail and signed by former prime ministers, ex–Supreme Court justices and others.

Mr. Kenney noted the letter’s key signatories, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, Joe Clark and John Turner, did not change the oversight of Canada’s spy agency, which is currently supervised by the Security Intelligence Review Committee, while they were in power.

“We have the same system that has worked well in Canada for over 25 years,” the Defence Minister told CTV. “I would point out those four former prime ministers all had exactly the same system of an independent oversight committee for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.”

Yes, Jason, they had the same system only they didn't have the same domestic spying powers because C-51 is the Orwellian hellspawn of your government. You created it, not Chretien, Martin, Clark or Turner.  Those wimps didn't think Canada should be a police state.  What were they thinking?

Now all eyes should turn to Justin.  Will Trudeau the Lesser grow a pair and oppose this terrible law or, just like Ignatieff, will he bow on bended knee to Harper?

Why PRISM Matters

The Guardian has done an excellent and vital job digesting the U.S. National Security Agency PRISM data leaked by Edward Snowden.  A good deal of it had come out, in part, in dribs and drabs but it was the British newspaper that put it all together in chilling context.

It's partly a warning about our governments spying on us and why.  It's also a warning of  what they might have in mind for us in the future.   They foresee unrest and potential upheaval in the future from climate change impacts.  Theirs is a world in which today's environmental activists are viewed as tomorrow's potential terrorists and they're gearing up for domestic military responses.

Read this summary.  Read it from top to bottom, the whole thing.  Then consider it in light of recent controversy over domestic spying on Canadians by Communications Security Establishment Canada or CSEC.

CSEC denies it is spying on Canadians.  That's bullshit.  The Americans, under the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, do the heavy lifting and share it with Canada's security agencies.  And we know that CSIS, in conjunction with the Calgary and Edmonton police and the RCMP, is running an active intelligence operation targeting environmentalists opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline project.   This is, after all, HarperLand. 

It's infuriating to realize that these same governments that drag their heels on doing anything meaningful about climate change nonetheless see it as a major threat warranting preparations for military intervention against their own populations.

HarperLand's View of Organized Labour - They're "Animals"

Harper LabourMin Lisa Raitt apparently got into it with disgruntled Air Canada employees last night at Toronto airport.   Three Air Canada employees apparently greeted Raitt with a round of slow-clapping, saying "Great Job."

Raitt reportedly took exception and asked that the RCMP "arrest these animals."   Then again, they were union members, and in HarperLand that's more than enough to be deemed anti-Canadian.