Let’s get something straight. ‘Robocalls’ is NOT a generic term for electioneering or marketing techniques that piss us off.

A robocall is a phone call that uses a computerized system to call targetted numbers and deliver a recorded message.

It is not unlike a flyer in your mailbox or an ad on your telly.

In Canada, robocalls are legally used for political purposes and are subject to regulation by the CRTC.

Sometimes, operatives misuse them — knowingly or not — and, when the system works, they get caught and fined by the CRTC.

As was reported last week.

Robocalls are the tie that binds politicos of all stripes — in trouble, that is, to the tune of $369,900 in fines for leaving voters in the dark on who was making the telephone sales pitches.

Running afoul of federal rules on the controversial calls is clipping the finances of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party, Montreal Liberal MP Marc Garneau, the federal NDP and Conservatives, Alberta’s Wildrose Alliance Political Association, Alberta Tory MP Blake Richards and Edmonton telemarketer RackNine Inc.

Scripts for their automated, pre-recorded telephone messages did not say which political party or candidate was behind the calls, nor did they leave a phone number, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission said Tuesday.

Some of these may indeed have had fraudulent intent or effect, but this ‘robocalls’ matter is a wholly different kettle of fish from the ELECTION FRAUD case.

The Federal Court has found in no uncertain terms that widespread election fraud took place during the 2011 federal election. The ruling clearly states that “there was an orchestrated effort to suppress votes during the 2011 election campaign by a person with access to the [Conservative Party's] CIMS database.”

“This Federal Court decision is a major indictment of the Conservative Party of Canada,” says Garry Neil, Executive Director of the Council of Canadians. “Either senior leaders of the Conservative Party were directly involved in election fraud or they were astoundingly negligent in securing access to their voter database. Illegal or incompetent — just like in the Senate scandal.”

Or as Andrew Coyne put it:

Someone is trying to frame the Conservative Party of Canada. Either that, or the party is the victim of a theft, possibly by its own supporters.

Someone, at any rate, hacked into the party’s closely guarded voter database in the closing hours of the 2011 election, using it to call thousands of voters across the country whom the party had previously identified as non-Conservatives, telling them, falsely, that their polling station had been moved. Someone, that is, committed massive electoral fraud, in a way that could only benefit the Conservative party and making use of proprietary party information. But they did it without the party’s knowledge or participation.

The means may have been automated dialling, but the resource was the Conservative Party of Canada’s ‘closely guarded voter database’.

And the beneficiaries were solely the Conservative Party of Canada.

And yet, said Conservative Party of Canada seems strangely sanguine about it.

Asked about the database breach, Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey said: “We take security very seriously.”

So. The Cons’ only plausible defence is that the database was hacked, yet that’s not what they’re claiming.

If anything, they are celebrating.

We are pleased that this baseless case by the activist Council of Canadians was dismissed by the court.

— Fred DeLorey (@FredDeLorey) May 24, 2013

And yes, they fight all investigations tooth and nail. And yes, they are trying to conflate ELECTION FRAUD with the CRTC’s robocall probes, which they are pleased to note nabbed actors from several parties. And yes, they are deflecting as hard as they can onto the Duffster’s greed and vainglory — who is leaking all those damning emails to the media, by the way?

But they seem quite unconcerned about their precious database.

Susan Delacourt is almost alone among the media wondering why.

Or as a famous detective wondered, why aren’t the dogs barking?

I’ll leave you with this because we are knee-deep at the moment and it’s going to get waaaaay deeper.

While everyone’s been glued to Rob Ford’s crack and Mike Duffy’s featherbedding, something even more important happened: the Federal Court confirmed that there was election fraud in the 2011 federal election.

Not just “robocalls” – that diminutive buzzword that the media clings to – but election fraud: a deliberate, targeted attempt at voter suppression. The conservative media has framed the ruling as a victory for the Harper Government^TM, because the court stopped short of nullifying the election results. But the ruling was very clear. Judge Richard Mosley wrote:

I find that electoral fraud occurred during the 41st General Election.

Some important and potentially damning details still have not been revealed. Who had access to the Conservative Party’s database? Who orchestrated and authorized the election fraud? Let’s join the Council of Canadians in demanding the Conservative Party answer those questions. They won’t do it, of course. But let’s show them we’re paying attention.

Go here to send your letter through the Council of Canadians.

* * * *

The ruling itself could not be clearer. Here are some choice excerpts. (A copy is posted here.)

* “Misleading calls about the locations of polling stations were made to electors in ridings across the country” . . . and the calls “appear to have been targeted towards voters who had previously expressed a preference for an opposition party.”

* 247 ridings were affected by fraud complaints.

* There was a “deliberate attempt at voter suppression during the 2011 election.”

* “Access to a party’s central database is carefully controlled. The calls at issue in these proceedings are most likely to have been organized by a person or persons with: i) access to the central information system of a political party that included contact information about non-supporters; ii) the financial resources to contract voice and automated service providers to make such calls; and iii) the authority to make such decisions.”

* “There was an orchestrated effort to suppress votes during the 2011 election campaign by a person or persons with access to the CIMS [Conservative party] database.”

* “RMG [marketing company], at the direction of the CPC [Conservative Party of Canada], called hundreds of thousands of electors and read a message stating that: “Elections Canada has changed some voting locations at the last minute”. This included calls to electors in five of the six subject ridings. The information was factually wrong in that there had been only one polling station change in all of the six subject ridings in which RMG made such calls….It was therefore improper for the CPC and RMG to deliver the message they did, and this should not recur.”

* “I am satisfied that [it] has been established that misleading calls about the locations of polling stations were made to electors in ridings across the country, including the subject ridings,and that the purpose of those calls was to suppress the votes of electors who had indicated their voting preference in response to earlier voter identification calls.”

As Dr Dawg points out, Judge Mosley came down hard on the Conservative Party’s use of the legal system to obfuscate, foot-drag, stonewall, and otherwise impede the democratic process. From the decision:

* “In reviewing the procedural history and the evidence and considering the arguments advanced by the parties at the hearing, it has seemed to me that the applicants sought to achieve and hold the high ground of promoting the integrity of the electoral process while the respondent MPs engaged in trench warfare in an effort to prevent this case from coming to a hearing on the merits.”

* “Despite the obvious public interest in getting to the bottom of the allegations, the CPC made little effort to assist with the investigation at the outset despite early requests. . . . While it was begrudgingly conceded during oral argument that what occurred was “absolutely outrageous”, the record indicates that the stance taken by the respondent MPs from the outset was to block these proceedings by any means.”

Judge Mosley awarded costs to the Council of Canadians, meaning the Conservative Party has been ordered to reimburse the expenses associated with all that foot-dragging and stonewalling. The Party of Transparency and Accountability strikes again.

* * * *

The Council of Canadians is calling on the Conservative Party to come clean: give us a list of everyone who had access to the national CIMS database and the authority to initiate those calls, and turn over the information to the Commissioner of Elections.

Let’s all get on board with that. Take five minutes from your day, and write a letter. Show Stephen Harper that some Canadians are paying attention. Go here to send your letter through the Council of Canadians.

Dan Gardner has an excellent question:

Somebody using the ruling party’s database tried to subvert an election. Why isn’t the country on fire about this? huffingtonpost.ca/2013/05/28/rob…

— Dan Gardner (@dgardner) May 30, 2013

Let’s turn our tiny, distractible minds away from the Senate train-wreck and the escalating Ford fuck-up.

The Contempt Party of Canada cheated to win its ‘strong, stable majority’.

And doesn’t seem the least bit concerned that their own database was used to commit fraud.

Asked about the database breach, Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey said: “We take security very seriously.”

He refused, however, to elaborate on the CIMS’ safeguards. Sources have told HuffPost, however, that the CIMS’ safeguards include passwords for need-to-know access and tracking of individual accounts.

Chris Selley:

The Federal Court refused to overturn any election results from 2011 because the onus of proof was on the plaintiffs to prove that an actual outcome was altered. And the plaintiffs, quite honestly, did a sorry job of this. But the court did affirm that election fraud had taken place, fraud almost certainly perpetrated by someone having access to the Conservative CIMS (Constituent Information Management System) database. Moreover, Justice Richard Mosley castigated the Conservative MPs defending the suit for attempting to “block these proceedings by any means” and making “transparent attempts to derail this case.” He actually used the phrase “trench warfare” to characterize their attitude.

The Tories don’t seem too worried that CIMS has been compromised, which would be their single worst election-readiness nightmare not involving an alien attack or dirty bombs. They are not even pretending to tell us how they intend to guarantee that this sort of election fraud will never happen again. The general attitude of their defenders outside caucus seems to be, “Ha ha, we introduced a horrifying dirty-tricks virus into Canadian politics and got away with it.” But, sure: ain’t that Senate terrible?

Yo! Fucking Useless Opposition®! THIS is the issue.

And FFS, stop calling it Robocall.

This month just keeps getting better

By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive: The Harper Conservatives will not be introducing the comprehensive “election reform act” they promised Canadians, after all. The bill was due to be tabled in Parliament on Thursday. Apparently, the Conservatives have discovered a “last minute” issue with their own piece of legislation. An issue so [...]

The post Harper Conservatives Delay Robocalls Justice… Again! appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.

“We can’t stop here, this is bat country!” 

― Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”

Word is out that JJ may be (soonish, DJ! hopes) posting at her blog.  In anticipation of this, as well as the tentative arrival of springtime in Ontario  ―possibly in Manitoba and Yurp as well― this seemed relevant. 

In 1985, responding to an influx of mailers promoting insurance company interests in his district, Senator Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) reportedly said, “A fellow from Texas can tell the difference between grassroots and AstroTurf.” He was referring to the difference between an actual, organic uprising among constituents and a manufactured movement often paid for by corporate or other interests to simulate the real thing. The name stuck, and since that time, the term “astroturf” has been used to describe these contrived public campaigns.

The Tea Party may be a movement that blossomed as a result of this kind of corporate astroturfing. A study by the National Cancer Institute found the tobacco industry paid millions to fund free-market oriented “grassroots” groups that were aligned with their interests against cigarette taxes, the Clinton health care plan and the EPA’s findings regarding the dangers of second-hand smoke. Many key players in the Tobacco-funded groups Citizens for a Sound Economy and FreedomWorks went on to play a major role in the formation of the contemporary Tea Party. Likewise, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and CSE are funded by the notorious billionaire Koch brothers, who have poured their wealth into causes such as abolishing social security, welfare and public schools.


Fortunately for astroturfers, costly forms of the practice, such as the building of physical crowds, are less necessary today now that so much of the public sphere has moved online. As a result, other forms of message control are blooming. Wikipedia is targeted by politicians, corporations and SEO advertisers desperate to improve their images on a neutral but participatory platform. The regularity of these editing campaigns can even be used to predict political appointments or running mates.

From here. Our emphasis.

It reminds us of the MASSIVE blogging fun we’ve shared, writing about the many failed efforts by the religious right-wing to appear significant to the majority of Canadians.

We’re hoping for a scathing follow up to Marci McDonald’s “The Armageddon Factor” or better still, an exposé by investigative journalists Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher on the complex range of CPC astroturf tactics, who directs them, how they’re funded and if they’re connected to Harper ReformaTories’ electoral fraud and voter suppression strategy.

Grand merci to Námo Mandos whose hilarious post at the other place brought Gittlitz’ piece to my attention.

#TGDN = Twitter Gulag Defense Network.


In case you don’t gaze towards the Excited States of America much these days, or don’t tweet, this little right-wing nutjob conspiracy hoohaw might have not caught your attention.


From here:

Twitter makes it easy to report accounts for spam. When enough users report an account, it automatically gets suspended. Some users abuse this feature by organizing a group to report or “spam-block” a single account in order to get it suspended.


Conservatives created the “Twitter Gulag Defense Network” or #TGDN to stop spam-blocking attacks. Aware that accounts with more followers are less likely to get suspended, they mutually followed anyone else using #TGDN. Now that their group is organized and members are protected, they have begun targeted spam-blocking of progressive accounts, exactly what their group was created to oppose. Ironic.

Bloggers at LGF have been diligently following this phenomena and its permutations. Many have posted about the various Hatriots and other right-wing, firearm-fetishizing nutjobs who are involved.


One of my twitter friends, @fem_progress, drew my attention to this item:

A little known policy slips quietly under the radar in January 2012 as our friends at Twitter announce they will censor tweets, if a country’s government requests them to do so. A year later, Australia becomes the first modern democracy to identify, filter and ban free speech whilst not in a state of War.


In recent weeks, the censoring of tweets by Australian conservatives, or, indeed anyone who dares to either engage in political debate or offer opinion on the ruling Labor-Green alliance, has become so pervasive many have thought it was a bug with Twitter. You can read Twitter’s well hidden censorship policy here.


But now I can reveal that Twitter is actively censoring Australian tweets at the direct request of the government.

It sounds like the rantings of disgruntled Australian RWNJs and neo-cons, but if that Twitter policy does indeed exist, it could be deployed in accordance with the whims of a tinpot dictator like PMSHithead, at the request of his PMO/Politburo, to censor progressive or anti-Harper conservative tweets.


So, if this Aussie idiot has stumbled upon a MASSIVE ploy by his government, why hasn’t that happened in Canada yet?  Critics of the Harper regime have certainly been quite vociferous in their excoriation of CPC electoral fraud, its corruption, its censorship of scientists and other public servants, its quasi-legal and illicit manipulations, its incessant prevarications and Rovian tactics.


My intuition tells me that it serves a greater purpose to have us scurrying around in plain view, expressing our anger, our fears, our hopes.


Harper’s CPC is focused on perfecting the military precision of a volunteer and staff infrastructure that will facilitate the rigging of the next federal election in their favour, while their opponents are distraught, scattered and distracted.

Their May 2011 machinations were a taste of things to come.  Alison at Creekside has done an extraordinary job of investigative work on this matter.


So we have to get cracking on the coalition and cooperation-building NOW.  Talk is cheap, and the Cons have millions in their election war-chest, likely from the Koch Brothers foundations and possibly more that will be siphoned off from public funds now that Kevin Page is gone.

Linda McQuaig recently wrote an excellent column about the blatantly false portrayal of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in the Western mainstream media. Chavez should be a hero to anyone who cares about social justice, but if your primary news sources are anywhere from CNN to the CBC to the New York Times, you might wonder why millions of Latin Americans mourned Chavez’s passing rather than celebrating. You might imagine they were in the thrall of a charismatic tyrant.

I found the mainstream media’s description of Chavez as a “dictator” particularly rich, given the US endured at least two fraudulent elections in recent times. Toronto activist Judy Rebick had this excellent letter in the Globe and Mail:

Your front-page article on the death of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez (Death Of A Revolutionary – March 6), calls him “a polarizing dictator.” He was certainly polarizing, as is our own Prime Minister, but Mr. Chavez was never a dictator. Mr. Chavez was elected several times over the past three decades, each time by a significant majority of the popular vote, which is more than we can say for Stephen Harper.

In 2002, Mr. Chavez’s opponents, including the right-wing media, organized a coup against him that was overturned by the massive mobilization of the poor people of Caracas. In 2004, the opposition organized a recall vote, a mechanism created by Mr. Chavez. It failed. In the 2006 election, he won with 63 per cent of the popular vote; in 2012, with 55 per cent of the popular vote.

You may disagree with Mr. Chavez’s 21st-century socialism policies, but please do not describe him as a dictator.

Judy Rebick, Toronto

McQuaig:

Had Hugo Chavez followed the pattern of many Third World leaders and concentrated on siphoning off his nation’s wealth for personal gain, he would have attracted little attention or animosity in the West.

Instead, he did virtually the opposite — redirecting vast sums of national wealth to the swollen ranks of Venezuela’s poor, along with free health care and education. No wonder he alienated local elites, who are used to being first in line at the national trough.
Chavez’s relentless championing of the downtrodden set a standard increasingly followed in Latin America. It explains his immense popularity with the masses and the widespread grief over his death last week.

Yet in the West, he was portrayed as a tyrant.

He was accused of muzzling the press, although anyone who’s ever turned on a TV in Caracas knows there’s no shortage of Fox News-style media outlets carrying a frothy mix of celebrities, U.S. sitcoms and anti-Chavez tirades.

He was also accused of being anti-democratic, even though he won elections which former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and his global election monitoring centre have declared “the best in the world.”

Chavez deservedly came under attack in the West — including from Noam Chomsky — for failing to order the release of a judge imprisoned for allowing a corrupt banker to flee Venezuela with millions of dollars.

But it’s striking to note that the West routinely ignores more serious democratic failings on the part of its allies, including torture and execution in full-fledged dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.

What actually appears to have infuriated the western establishment was Chavez’s audacity in challenging — and scoring some victories against — western dominance of the world economy. 

One such victory allowed Third World oil-producing nations to gain a bigger share of global oil revenues.

Up until the 1970s, the major western oil companies, known as the Seven Sisters, controlled the world oil market through a cartel established at a secret retreat at Achnacarry Castle in Scotland in 1928. The Achnacarry agreement set out in detail how the companies would maintain their lucrative control of oil markets into the future, setting quotas among themselves, never competing with each other and preventing competitors from getting in on the action.

In the 1970s, oil-producing nations in the Middle East and Venezuela organized and managed to replace the Seven Sisters with their own cartel, OPEC, striking a better deal for themselves and sending oil prices soaring. Some enraged westerners were left wondering, “How did our oil get under their sand?”

Read the rest of the column here.

McQuaig is the author of It’s the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet, among other books. I wrote about her excellent book Holding the Bully’s Coat here and posted an extended excerpt here.

Linda McQuaig recently wrote an excellent column about the blatantly false portrayal of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in the Western mainstream media. Chavez should be a hero to anyone who cares about social justice, but if your primary news sources are anywhere from CNN to the CBC to the New York Times, you might wonder why millions of Latin Americans mourned Chavez’s passing rather than celebrating. You might imagine they were in the thrall of a charismatic tyrant.

I found the mainstream media’s description of Chavez as a “dictator” particularly rich, given the US endured at least fraudulent elections in recent times. Toronto activist Judy Rebick had this excellent letter in the Globe and Mail: Your front-page article on the death of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez (Death Of A Revolutionary – March 6), calls him “a polarizing dictator.” He was certainly polarizing, as is our own Prime Minister, . . . → Read More: wmtc: hugo chavez vs lies western media tells us

For the record, DJ! apologizes to Michael Sona.

It appears the guy was in the throes of electoral fervour when he dispatched by CON war room bullies to play the role of a minor thug during the 2011 federal election.  For his troubles, he was thro…

During the 2011 federal election campaign that Harper’s CONtempt party *won* with a pathetic 39% of the popular vote (with the support of CPC fraudulent tactics that likely included voter suppression in key ridings), I wrote this review of wor…

You’ll get a kick out of this post. I guarantee it! Recently exposed: Gross mismanagement of funds and lewd sense of entitlement by #Ottawapiskat Chief Harper. #idlenomore twitter.com/shootsleft/sta… — Joanne DiNova (@shootsleft) January 14, …

Dean Del Mastro is Harper’s Parliamentary Secretary. He is also the point man for the Cons in dealing with the election fraud scandal. He is currently being investigated for cheating on election expenses (if found guilty he could face 5 years in jail).

Now, it has been discovered that there appears to have been some illegal contribution activity towards Del Mastro’s campaign.

So far, the guilt here points to Dean’s cousin, David Del Mastro, and the people who were paid to make additional contributions for David. But, there is no evidence (yet) that Dean knew of this contribution plan.
 
Excerpts from The Ottawa Citizen: Employees linked to cousin’s company each gave $1,000 to Del Mastro campaign:

You Cheat You Lose the Gold Medal
The citizens group the Council of Canadians is filing to overturn election results in seven ridings over election fraud.

The seven ridings across the country all experienced shady live or “robo” phone calls which a…