November 3, 2018 - No. 38
Supplement
Bill C-76, the Elections
Modernization Act
Extra-Parliamentary
Supranational
Deliberations
Inform
Election
Law Changes
- Anna Di Carlo,
National Leader, Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada -
A feature of the current
state of Parliamentary
deliberations, in this case on the subject of electoral reforms
and the threats to democracy, is that many substantive
discussions do not take place in open sessions and those that do have
nothing
to do with informing the people about the problems at hand. Many
committee proceedings are held in camera, as was the case with
almost all of the deliberations of the Procedures and House
Affairs Committee (PROC) on the recommendations of the Chief
Electoral Officer for changes to the election law. To add insult
to injury, those brought in to make presentations to the PROC are not
individuals or bodies
which represent the people and their interests. They represent
supranational interests in the framework of the contention of the
big powers and their competing military and economic blocs, in
which Canada is positioned as a prop to U.S. imperialist aims.
Even Members of Parliament
are woefully uninformed about what
is driving legislation, which is being kept close to the chest of
the Cabinet and Privy Council and other advisors. For instance,
during PROC's meetings on Bill C-76, Ruby Sahota, Liberal MP for
Brampton North told its members: "... I've been dying to ask what
the government's intentions were behind changing its fundraising
rules to not allow candidates or nomination contestants to be
present when conducting any kind of fundraising activities."
Many discussions that seem to inform decision-making
take
place in extra-parliamentary, bilateral and multilateral
gatherings with little public media attention. These proceedings
are conducted and shared by elite government officials, policy
advisors, data-analysts, behavioural scientists, national security and
military circles, and financial oligarchs.
The Hansard Reports and proceedings of various
Committees,
contain discussions and statements about democracy and electoral
amendments that are embarrassingly low-level and vacuous, mostly
limited to matters such as the use or non-use of Voter
Information Cards and the like. They indicate that the real
discourse that is informing decisions and the direction of
electoral and political reforms is taking place elsewhere.
CSIS "Academic Outreach"
One example is an "Academic Outreach" workshop convened
by
the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in November
2017. It issued a report in February 2018 entitled "Who Said
What? The Security Challenges of Modern Disinformation." Its
stated purpose was to "examine the strategic impact of
disinformation and national security and the integrity of
democratic institutions." Notwithstanding the title of the
report, the meeting was held on the basis of the Chatham House
Rule which prohibits reporting on "who said what."[1] What was revealed is that
the
workshop was "designed around the knowledge and experience of a
multi-disciplinary group of experts from Canada, the United
States and Europe to explore the manipulation of information for
political and related purposes, examine several recent cases, and
critically discuss related security threats."
The CSIS Academic Outreach program was established in
2008
and aims to include "a wide variety of disciplines and cultural
backgrounds, universities, think-tanks, business and other
research institutions in Canada and abroad." Among other things,
the November 2017 meeting posed the problem of traditional media
being displaced and weakened by "a torrent of data from an
infinite number of originators." The report states that "within
that torrent is a current of lies and distortions that threatens
the integrity of public discourse, debate and democracy."
The CSIS report distorts the meaning of disinformation
to
what is generally described as "fake news." This covers up
disinformation as a tool used by state institutions and ruling
circles against their own populace that deprives the people of an
outlook to guide them in sorting out what's what and on the basis
of which they can address the problems facing the polity.
CSIS states: "Disinformation has become a highly
effective
tool for state actors, profiteers, status seekers, entertainers
and true believers." Taking its cue from the U.S. national
security agencies, Russia and China are presented as the main
threat to democracy at this time, while "true believers," are
those who willingly or unwillingly become their dupes. In this
regard, the CSIS report says, "state disinformation agencies are
part of a complex system which includes independent activists
with different overlapping motivations." Some are conspiracy
theorists, the CSIS says. These "independent activists," whoever
they might be, "believe Western governments are untrustworthy,
manipulate world events, and are aided in hiding the truth by the
traditional media. Most are anti-globalist, with a nationalist
and anti-immigration rhetoric that attracts elements of both the
left and right. Independent actors use social media and
specialized web sites to strategically reinforce and spread
messages compatible with their own. [... ] The extent to which
activities within this complex system are orchestrated, and by
whom, remains unclear."
The CSIS report also states that social media
corporations
have a "limited understanding of the world of intelligence
operations." CSIS views this as a problem, because "they are
reluctant to ally with intelligence agencies and mainstream news
organizations to take up the detailed task of monitoring
content." Whatever reluctance CSIS is talking about, Facebook has
shown itself more than willing to cooperate. On October 26 it
announced it had removed 82 pages, groups and accounts which it
stated "posted about politically charged topics such as race
relations, opposition to the President, and immigration." Since
May of this year, Facebook has been partnered with the Atlantic
Council, a Cold War think tank and public relations organization
that aims to build support for NATO. Katie Harbath, Facebook's
Global Politics and Government Outreach director announced at the
time that the partnership was necessary "to prevent our service
from being abused during elections." Harbath, a former digital
strategist for the Republican Party Senatorial Committee, said
that Facebook's security team and artificial intelligence experts
would work to get "real-time insights and updates on emerging
threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world. This
will help increase the number of 'eyes and ears' we have working
to spot potential abuse on our service -- enabling us to more
effectively identify gaps in our systems, pre-empt obstacles, and
ensure that Facebook plays a positive role during elections all
around the world."
The Atlantic Council is funded by many corporations
such as the Blackstone Group, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Ford
Motor Company. The largest Council
contributors are the U.S. State Department, the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office of the UK, and the United Arab Emirates.
Other contributors include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Boeing, BP, Exxon
and the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Talk about
foreign influence and interference!
Recently, the Atlantic Council's assistant director
published
an article that uses Canadian intelligence reports as sources. It
writes of the "distress of the Five Eyes spying network about
Chinese foreign influence." It notes that "a Canadian
intelligence report in June described deep penetration by Chinese
actors in New Zealand" and quoted the report's assessment that
China is following "an aggressive strategy [that] has sought to
influence political decision-making, pursue unfair advantages in
trade and business, suppress criticism of China, facilitate
espionage opportunities, and influence overseas Chinese
communities." This shows how the Five Eyes spy agencies feed into
each other to create the same scenario of threats to justify
their surveillance and suppressive activities and their own cyber
warfare.
The CSIS report lists some "persistent major themes" of
concern for it, such as the view that "Western governments are
fascist, or world leaders represent a powerful elite disdainful
of, and acting against, ordinary people." Another persistent
theme holds that "the U.S. government and other Western or
NATO-affiliated governments are untrustworthy and are unjustified
aggressors in conflicts around the world. These governments and
other powerful people manipulate world events to ensure their
power..."
"Disinformation," CSIS writes, "poisons public debate
and is
a threat to democracy. Raised public awareness is needed to
distinguish the real from the false. There are many ways for
governments and organizations to counter the threat, but there is
no guarantee that even effective counter-campaigns can defeat the
high volume flow of malicious communications."
A complex web, CSIS says, has coalesced around
the
"anti-globalist term," which "pulls people from seemingly
disparate parts of the political spectrum onto common ground. For
example, they connect left-leaning individuals who oppose
globalization and foreign military intervention by the U.S. and
other NATO governments with right-leaning individuals who oppose
immigration and favour nationalist policies. State-sponsored
information operations interact with organic communities of
online users to spread disinformation."
Note how all these coincidental connections are turned
into
an imminent threat to be opposed no matter the cost. It is all
done in the name of democracy.
Disdain for Political Discourse
One of the glaring features of police reports such as
the one
issued by CSIS, in which the Trudeau government places so
much stock, is the disdain for the existence of a polity. Neither
is the fact that the polity is comprised of citizens and
residents recognized, nor that it is through the exercise of the
right to engage in political discourse and affirm their
conscience that citizens and residents express their
humanity.
In this light the CSIS report on who said what about
the
security challenges of modern disinformation raises the issue of
what it calls "independent activists" who are holders of "sincere
ideology." It writes:
"One set of actors within this system is ideologically
motivated. These persons, including individual social media users
as well as small organizations that operate web sites, blogs, and
other feeds, are 'true believers' of the messages that they are
spreading. The messages are largely anti-globalist (i.e.,
anti-imperialism and anti-globalization on the left;
pro-nationalism and anti-immigration on the right). They are also
explicitly critical and distrusting of mainstream media. These
actors may indeed be affected by political propaganda, though
causation is difficult to establish. At times, they can be seen
to act as amplifiers of political propaganda, seeded with
messages that they repeat and amplify. But many sincerely
ideologically motivated actors also can be seen to generate their
own content, without the continued need for direct seeding or
coordination of messages."
The CSIS report goes on to identify other ways in which
"independent activists" are enmeshed in the so-called network
of state-sponsored foreign influence. It is a classic example of
how police organizations work. In this case, through sleight of
hand, this category of "independent activists" who are "sincere
believers" becomes ipso facto a category of potential
criminals. The CSIS report concludes:
By focusing on explicit
coordination by and collusion with
state actors, and ignoring or under-appreciating the roles and
motivations of these independent actors, researchers,
journalists, and policy-makers risk over-simplifying the
complexity of this system, limiting the development of effective
solutions, and under-informing public awareness of the problem.
Importantly, the opportunity to assist everyday users of these
systems to recognize the role they play within the disinformation
phenomenon is missed. In other words, the problem of
disinformation cannot simply be attributed to the design of
technological systems or the deliberate actions of
government-funded trolls. Solutions to this problem must also
take into account the people who are interacting with and
affected by this information, not merely as victims, but as
agents in its creation, propagation, and (hopefully) its
correction.
UK-Canada Colloquium on "Dilemmas of Democracy"
Another example of sources of information upon which
the
Liberal government relies for its electoral law changes is the
November 2017 Canada-UK Colloquium on Dilemmas of Democracy:
Challenges to the International Order. In a June 2018 report, the
Colloquium published summaries of its deliberations and
recommendations that had been presented to the British and
Canadian governments and 'their policy advisors.'
The preface to the Colloquium Program, co-written by
Philip
Peacock, Chair of the Canada-UK Council and the Hon. Hugh Segal,
former Canadian Senator, and Chief of Staff to both Ontario
Premier Bill Davis and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney,
boasts "a wide range of knowledgeable experts from both
countries" providing "a mature prospective to the many issues
confronting democracy and the democratic process, as we have
known it in the post WWII era." The Colloquium received letters
of support from both prime ministers, while Democratic
Institutions Minister Karina Gould delivered a keynote
address.
Other Canadian participants
included several government
officials, such as Jordon Deagle, Senior Communications Planner
in the Office of the Prime Minister. Several think tanks were
represented, including Graham Fox, President of the Institute for
Research
on Public Policy; and Grant Bishop of McKinsey & Co which is a
U.S.-based global management consulting firm that says it "serves
a broad mix of private, public and social sector institutions" in
120 cities in 60 countries, with 14,000 consultants worldwide.
The military was also present, with Karim Kanji, Vice-President of
the NATO Association of Canada, General Tom Lawson, a former
Chief of the Defence Staff, and Tina Park, Executive Director of
the Canadian Centre for Responsibility to Protect. Cliff van der
Linden, Founder and CEO of Vox Labs/Vote Compass attended as well.
Vox Labs/Vote Compass has been the recipient of numerous
contracts from the Liberal government, including the
widely-ridiculed "consultation" website on proportional
representation.
The Colloquium preamble states that "the context
inhabited by
these two well-established and strong political cultures was
notably anxious and unsettled. There was a perception throughout
the discussions that as societies become more open and connected,
individuals sense a feeling of empowerment and want to be more
directly involved in their own governance. This made it harder
for representative democracy in its traditional form to satisfy
their demands, and thus to sustain trust in its
effectiveness."
Nevertheless, the report states that the Colloquium was
held
with "a prevailing feeling that the strength of the financial and
human capital available in both countries would equip them well
to face the future, and the dilemmas of representative government
in particular."
"Participants," the report states, "were well aware
that for
the immediate future it was vitally important to have sharper,
clearer and more persuasive answers to critical questions about
what values the West is seeking to sustain; how we seek to shape
rules for national and international governance and, above all,
why? When the cry goes up: 'Why your values and rules, and not
ours?' there must be answers that carry weight," it said.
At no time however, does it explain why this discourse
is not
taking place among the polity and begin with how the issue of
democracy poses itself in the 21st century. Far from it, the
Colloquium boasts of upholding British empire-building
values of the 18th century and its foundation in the 1647 Magna
Carta. In her letter to the Colloquium, UK Prime Minister Theresa
May wrote: "The venue -- Runnymede, site of the sealing of the
Magna Carta -- is evocative and appropriate. As I said recently
at the UN General Assembly, in today's world we face challenges
that go right to the heart of who we are as nations. These
challenges test our values, our vision and our resolve to defend
the rules and standards that underpin the security and prosperity
of our fellow citizens."
Why such a meeting is being held among elites,
maintaining the racist Anglo-American Cold War ideology which
exudes privilege, power and the superiority of the values of
English-speaking nations over the entire world is a serious
question. It is reminiscent of Prime Minister Winston Churchill's
1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri where he launched the Cold War
against the peoples of the world and declared that there were
dupes and spies everywhere representing a "growing challenge and
peril to Christian civilization."
Among the recommendations made by the Canada-UK public
policy colloquium, is one to "pursue ongoing collaborative work on
joint
strategies, around the world and specifically in the
Commonwealth, to promote the linked values of pluralism, open
markets, the rule of law and human rights fundamental to the
freedom based development of the Western world."
To divert attention from its defence of the racist
Anglo-American definition of values imposed on the entire world
through wars of aggression and occupation, one of the concerns
discussed was the use of referendum and the "danger it poses" by
enabling the majority to decide.
The manner in which the laws passed in the House of
Commons
are being informed by the upper echelons of the political police
of the U.S. and NATO allies in cahoots with think tanks of
supranational private interests to maintain the system they have
in place is a serious matter of concern for the polity. The
Minister of Democratic Institutions claims that the main concern
of the Liberal government is to "strengthen the participation of
the people in democracy." This is simply not the case.
Note
1. The Chatham House rule reads as
follows: "When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the
Chatham House rule, participants are free to use the information
received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the
speaker(s), nor that of any other participant may be revealed.
The originator of the rule is the London-based Royal Institute of
International Affairs, which is commonly known as the Chatham
House.
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