20 February 2015

Elisa Hategan Comments on Danger of Giving More Power to CSIS

We posted an article on the blog earlier this month where we suggested that government legislation that would provide CSIS more powers wasn't in the best interests of the Canadian people. We based that conclusion on the role CSIS and their mole Grant Bristow played during the early years of the Heritage Front. It was during the years that Bristow was involved (1989 - 1994) that the Heritage Front was at it's most dangerous.

We later received the following comment:

Personally, I don't think that Heritage Front has anything to do with CSIS. The Heritage Front was a Canadian neo-Nazi,white supremacist organization founded in 1989 and disbanded around 2005.

That isn't an entirely accurate sentiment unfortunately, and Ms. Hategan goes into a great deal of detail outlining the role CSIS played in the first five years of the Heritage Front. We'll provide the link to Ms. Hategan's here and at the end of our part of the article. First, we need to make the following points:

16 February 2015

Thwarted Valentine Day Massacre In Halifax Not Politically or Culturally Motivated?


When we learned about the arrests in Halifax related to a planned killing spree to have taken place on February 14, we thought we would take a look to see how the folks on Stormfront would respond. And as expected, they figured that it was in some way related to Islam.

And of course the Jews, because you know.... why not?

 
 

It's important to note that by the time this Stormfront thread had been started, it was already pretty clear that the incident had nothing to do with Islam. In fact, according to the Justice Minister, the two who were arrested and charged, as well as the one who was found dead in his home, had no ideological motive at all. Peter MacKay suggested they were just a bunch of "misfits" but that as their motives were not, "culturally-based" that it therefor was not a, "terrorist event."

Aside from the semantics (after all, planning on killing a large number of people in a public location strikes us as as being an act of terrorism in and of itself even if devoid of a purely political or cultural motivation), there is a lot of reason to call into question the claims that there was no ideological motive:

15 February 2015

A Response to Fromm's Condemnation of the Canadian Flag

Fifty years ago today, the Canadian Parliament adopted this as our nation's national flag:


While there certainly was a significant debate at the time, since the adoption of the current flag most Canadians surveyed have supported it as an appropriate symbol for the country.

Well, not everyone:


This isn't exactly new. Paulie has this particular bug up his ass for the better part of his career as a figure in the Canadian White Nationalist movement in Canada. His followers certainly support his position for, what is to them, the obvious reason.

They don't like da' ethnic folks:



It might come as a surprise to Mary to know that the maple tree is not in fact found all over the place. It might also come as a surprise to Mary that the maple leaf has been a national symbol since before Canada became a country. Paulie in fact used to play "The Maple Leaf Forever" before the beginning of his Stormfront radio program, and that song was at the time of  Confederation.

Things also got a little weird in the comments....


....but that is neither here nor there.

What is important is that Paulie insists on the return of Canada's REAL national flag!

This begs a further question. Which of the post-Confederation flags does Paulie want?

9 February 2015

Request for Information

Would the person who left a message today regarding the relationship status of a person we have featured here on the blog please contact us at arc.collective200(at)gmail.com. We would like to discuss the matter further.

6 February 2015

Give CSIS More Powers? Sure! What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Artwork by Nina Bunjevac

Back in November, two Canadian soldiers were murdered by individuals who may have been radicalized by an extremist interpretation of Islam, but who most certainly were not right in the head. The two incidents were horrible tragedies and, for a time, most Canadians were able to put aside petty, partisan, bickering.

In response to these two murders as well as the real or perceived threats posed by extremists (particularly those associated with ISIS, or ISIL, or EIEIO, or whatever the hell they are referring to themselves as now), Harper's Conservative government proposed a new law that would give sweeping new investigative powers to CSIS, Canada's spy agency. Justin Trudeau has suggested that the Liberals will support the legislation. Mulclair has said the NDP will oppose passage of the bill.

We say, good for you Mr. Harper!

These are dangerous times and we need to do everything we as a nation can do to protect the citizens of this country from fanatics who would harm us all. CSIS should be given every tool it can to stop the maniac before they can act.

Right?

Sure, there are people who suggest that the current laws are perfectly fine as evidenced by the arrests of suspected extremists that have already take place without the use of the advanced tools that the proposed law would give to CSIS. Oh, and there is concern that the wording of the legislation is so broad as to encompass any group the government decides is a threat:

.... On close inspection, Bill C-51 is not an anti-terrorism bill. Fighting terrorism is its pretext; its language reveals a broader goal of allowing government departments, as well as CSIS, to act whenever they believe limply defined security threats “may” – not “will” – occur. 

So why does this bill exist? What is it fighting? And why is it giving intelligence officers powers that are currently reserved for the RCMP and other police forces? 

CSIS is an intelligence agency. It is secretive, and it is supposed to be. Why does it suddenly need police powers to do its job? Until now, police powers were reserved for the police – an organization that is public, and which in a democracy must be. 

Have you ever met a CSIS agent? Was he out in uniform, walking the beat? No. CSIS works in secret. It is furthermore immune from Parliamentary oversight. 

And now, if Bill C-51 passes, CSIS will be able to disrupt anything its political masters believe might be a threat. As the bill is currently written, that includes a lot more than terrorism.

And of course there those who foolishly worry that CSIS might, through the use of an informant, infiltrate a group of people who have extremist views but who haven't the tools or the wherewithal to act on those views, but then go on to encourage members of the group to act in such a way as to become a threat and thus justify their investigation of the group.

Well that is just speculative crazy talk! That could never, ever, happen. CSIS would never endanger Canadians by making already dangerous individuals far more dangerous by organizing them and providing with resources and training.

Right?

Uhm.... right?




There was a lecherous old newspaper man from Pennsylvania who once said that people who would give up their essential liberty for a little bit of security deserve neither freedom nor security. This seems to be an especially pertinent sentiment now.

If our readers would like to know more about the potential dangers of giving CSIS the new powers proposed by the government, you need to go no further than Elisa Hategan's Race Traitor, a first hand account of Hategan's recruitment into the Heritage Front. More relevant to this discussion though is how Hategan explains how a group of already dangerous boneheads were provided with the organizational structure and resources that made it significantly more dangerous than it would otherwise have been by Grant Bristow who was credited as one of the founders of the Heritage Front while also on the payroll of CSIS.