#Canadian Conspiracies

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Over one hundred conspiracy theorists have been camping out in a farm field 40 minutes east of Ottawa for three weeks plotting to replace Canada’s government.

Not only has the group staged daily protests near Parliament Hill, resulting in several criminal charges and one man getting tasered by police, a dozen members of the group were recently invited into the House of Commons by one of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative MPs.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[that-gay-jedi]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars + last verse of "I Wanna Be in the Cavalry"

Eps 4.09 "Plan of Dissent", 6.04 "Orders", 7.11 "Shattered" and 7.12 "Victory and Death"

Screenshots via Cap-That.com, lyrics by Corb Lund and Stan Rogers (most listenable cover is this one from Colm McGuinness)

[junk-thrillz]

"Detention gets out at 4:15. Guess where I am instead of there?"

Well, I WAS going to post this for Day 12 of Cringetober (because the prompt was 'Niche Interest'), but I somehow forgot, even though I literally drew this back in September. Anyways,

Detentionaire is the show ever. I'm obsessed. Everyone should go watch Detentionaire RIGHT NOW. I drew this back when I hadn't even finished Season 1, so you can tell I saw a bunch of out-of-context spoilers and rolled with them haha. The triangle's because of the pyramid in the basement (which I saw a screenie of and promptly lost my shit over), and the tail is because tatzelwurms are typically reptilians with feline heads. Cartoon win, this character is... a cat-lizard! Wahoo! I don't care that it isn't canon, I'm just happy I got to draw my guy.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Big Business can't stop its illegal, fantastically lucrative gossiping

Seven years ago, I called Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows “the perfect anthem for our times.”

Everybody knows the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That’s how it goes Everybody knows

https://memex.craphound.com/2016/11/11/leonard-cohen-wrote-the-perfect-anthem-for-our-times/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/16/compulsive-cheaters/#rigged

That was just after Cohen died, and while the world seems to want to settle on Hallelujah as his totemic song, Everybody Knows keeps inserting itself into the discourse, in the most toxic, hope-draining way possible. Whenever some awful scandal involving the great and the good breaches, we’re told that “everybody knew” already, so let’s move on.

This current has been running through our society for decades now. Remember when the Snowden leaks hit and a yawning chorus of nihilists told us that they knew already and so should anyone else with the smallest iota of sophistication? Back then Jay Rosen coined a rejoinder to this counsel of despair: “Don’t savvy me”:

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/344825874362810369

Everybody knows. It’s what we heard after the Panama Papers. Swissleaks. Luxleaks. The Paradise Papers. Everybody knows! It’s what the nothing-to-see-here crowd said about Propublica’s explosive IRSLeaks, back in 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/15/guillotines-and-taxes/#carried-interest

The leaks revealed the tax-dodges of the richest and most powerful people in America, which were jaw-dropping in their audacity and shamelessness. Sure, maybe you suspected that the 400 richest people in America paid less tax than you — but did you really guess that the means by which they did this was through taking massive deductions on their elite hobbies?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/13/taxes-are-for-the-little-people/#leona-helmsley-2022

Maybe “everybody knows” that the game is rigged, but did you know how? Like, did you know that REITs — a tax shelter for mom-and-pop investors who buy an income property for their retirement — have become a primary vehicle for gutting unions at hotels, slashing wages and imposing brutal, dangerous working conditions?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/01/reit-modernization-act/#reit-makes-might

The leaks are cumulative. By combining data from one leak with another, we can build out a far more detailed picture of the conspiracy — and it is a conspiracy — among the utlrawealthy and their Renfields in the law, real-estate and accounting trades to duck their responsibilities and mound ever-more treasure on their hoards.

Take the Jersey Offshore leaks (2020), comprising the internal memos of La Hougue, a fantastically crooked firm of fixers on the Isle of Jersey, one of the lawless tax-crime jurisdictions that the UK pretends it has no control over. La Hougue has a playbook, 11 tactics for lying about your taxes. The remarkable thing about these 11 tactics is how flimsy they are, how easy it is to penetrate their lies. When Parliament says it can’t possibly do anything about the criminal havens in the Channel, remember the Jersey Offshore leaks and remind yourself that not even Parliament is that credulous. They know. Everybody knows:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/20/la-hougue/#complexity

Why do working people think the Democrats are just another party for the ultra-rich? Maybe it’s Pelosi’s relentless opposition to meaningful curbs on insider trading. Or maybe it’s the kinds of politicians that the Democratic Machine likes to rally behind — like Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who raised millions in 2021, in large-money donations from Democratic finance-sector donors in her bid to become the DA of Manhattan. Farhadian Weinstein and her husband have more than $100m in annual income, and yet, paid no federal tax in 2013, 2015 and 2017. In 2014, they paid $6,584:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/17/quis-custodiet-irs/#trumps-taxes

Propublica isn’t done with the IRS Files. Today, they published a long investigation into ultra-rich corporate executives who buy and sell their competitors’ stock for massive profits with suspiciously precise timing. The data comes from 1099-B filings, which brokerages file with the IRS with each trade, but which the IRS doesn’t share with the SEC:

https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-irs-files-trading-competitors-stock

Here are some examples:

Ohio billionaire August Troendle, CEO of Medpace, repeatedly bought and sold shares of $Syneos — his company’s archrival, timing the transactions with a management shakeup that dropped the stock by 16% in one day, and an SEC investigation that crushed Syneos’s stock by 25%. His precision timing made him at least $2.3m in profit.

Isaac Larian, CEO of Bratz-maker MGA, made $28m trading shares in Mattel, MGA’s nemesis and frequent litigant — during a period when Mattel stock crashed by 57% (!). Larian boasts that “I made a LOT more money shorting Mattel stock than they did running a $4.5 billion toy company.”

Larian’s trades also involved some very precise timing. Sometimes, he took positions just before his own company announced its upcoming products, and others positions immediately preceded major disclosures from Mattel. Larian’s subordinates told Propublica that he is “is a boss with an endless appetite for information about his company and its competitors, constantly grilling subordinates on minutiae about the industry.”

Larian couldn’t explain the timing of these trades. His lawyer told Propublica that it was “false and defamatory” to suggest that he “possessed material, nonpublic information that Larian knew was obtained in breach of a duty.”

Next up is Gerald Boelte, founder and chair of the massive oil company LLOG. LLOG partners with other companies for its oil drilling. Companies like Stone Energy. Boelte bought a huge position in Stone the day before the company’s 2015 earnings report, in which they revealed an increase their reserves’ value, pulling in a 65% one day profit. He’d never bought shares in Stone before.

Boetle told Propublica, “I do not and have never traded on any material, non-public information of competitors, business partners or others… Any implication that I was investing based upon advance knowledge is therefore clearly false.”

Jim Sankey is CEO of Invue. He bought $3.2m worth of shares in his rival Checkpoint, while checkpoint was in secret negotiations to be acquired by CCL Industries. Sankey was already thoroughly connected to Checkpoint, having sold a $150m product line to them in 2007. There’s no record that he’d ever traded Checkpoint before. He made $2.3m. Sankey says “he did not know Checkpoint was going to be acquired.” He says that his company was not approached by Checkpoint as a potential acquirer.

Barry Wish was a board member of Ocwen, a company he co-founded. After the Great Financial Crisis, Ocwen bid unsuccessfully to buy $215b worth of Bank of America mortgages. The winning bidder was Nationstar. Three weeks before Nationstar’s winning bid was announced, Wish bought $600k worth of Nationstar shares. After the bid was announced, he sold them for for a $157k profit.

Wish told Propublica that he never traded competitors’ stock: “No, not at all.” Propublica read him the details of the trade from his leaked 1099-B. He said “You might see it, but I don’t have any recollection” and hung up.

Steven Grossman is a cardboard heir — a nepobaby who inherited Southern Container Corp from his grandpa. After he sold the company to Rock-Tenn for $1b in 2013, he stayed on as a senior exec. Over the next 5 years, he traded large blocks of shares in Rock-Tenn’s competitors, companies like Temple-Inland, a company that he made a 37% profit on after its acquisition was announced in 2011, one week after Grossman started buying its shares.

Grossman falsely told Propublica, “I haven’t traded stock since then.” IRS records show that Grossman continued to trade. Grossman also told Propublica that he had no role with Rock-Tenn, despite being on their payroll for five years. When asked about his extremely lucky timing buying and selling Temple-Inland, he said “That was 10 years ago” and hung up.

As Propublica’s Robert Faturechi and Ellis Simani write, Securities regulations have their origins in the crash of 1929, and the subsequent collapse in confidence in markets and capitalism, the sense that the system was rigged for the wealthy and political insiders. That is a pretty good summation of sentiment today:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

It’s not just that corporate executives are corrupt, it’s that they’re lavishly, shamelessly, endlessly, incorrigibly corrupt. Take Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern, the sixth- and seventh-largest Class I railroads in the USA, whose merger was just approved by the Surface Transportation Board.

There are plenty of good reasons for the STB to have blocked this merger. The rail industry is already excessively concentrated, and its top execs are so convinced that they’re both too big to fail and too big to jail that they’re rendering entire towns permanently uninhabitable in order to eke out a few more points in profit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

But there are specific reasons to have blocked this merger, starting with the whistleblower report about CP and KCS executives illegally coming together for a three-day “retreat” at The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, a notorious site for Republican operatives to collude with the business lobby:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2023-03-16-canadian-pacific-kansas-city-southern-rail-merger/

As Luke Goldstein writes for The American Prospect, both companies spent millions in 2020 and 2022 on campaign contributions to “grease the skids” for the merger — in particular, ensuring that the combined company could transport Alberta tar sands oil (the filthiest, most energy intensive oil in the world) to US ports.

Though the STB was informed of the illegal meeting — in which the two companies behaved as though the merger had already been finalized — STB chair Martin Oberman told Goldstein that the Board did not write to the companies for an explanation before waving through their merger.

Instead, Oberman dismissed the complaint on the grounds that “Railroads have to be able to talk to one another to function.” Typically this takes place over a free phone call, though — not on a three-day executive junket at a hotel where the rooms run $1,500/night.

Oberman knows what happened at that meeting.

Everybody knows.

It comes as no surprise to learn that before FTX imploded and destroyed the savings of its depositors, it paid out $3b to its top executives, including the criminal Sam Bankman-Fried:

https://gizmodo.com/sbf-ftx-crypto-sam-bankman-fried-1850232043

It comes as no surprise that Silicon Valley Bank paid out bonuses to its execs and employees hours before it collapsed:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/11/silicon-valley-bank-employees-received-bonuses-hours-before-takeover.html

Everybody knows.

It’s comforting to think that the tax code loopholes that the ultrawealthy exploit are an epiphenomenon of complexity, an unavoidable consequence of the technical requirements of a big regulation that spans 300m+ people. But the truth is, the loopholes in the US tax code were inserted by politicians who got massive campaign contributions from donors who directly benefited from those loopholes. Senator Ron Johnson got $20m from the owners of Uline (Dick and Liz Uihlein) and roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, then he blocked the Trump tax bill until his fellow lawmakers inserted a loophole that produced $215m for the Uihleins and Hendricks, in just the first year:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#shitty-man-of-history-theory It’s not even surprising that a sitting US Senator amended a bill to give hundreds of millions of dollars to billionaires who gave him tens of millions of dollars.

Everybody knows. It’s weirdly comforting to think that everyday people vote for demagogue wreckers because Facebook hired a legion of evil sorcerers to fashion a mind-control ray out of Big Data and AI, but Facebook lies about everything, and everyone who ever claimed to have a mind-control ray was a liar.

Maybe people vote for demagogue wreckers because they believe the system is rotten, and maybe they believe the system is rotten because the system is rotten. Maybe the self-described evil sorcerers of Big Tech aren’t “hacking our dopamine loops” — maybe they’re just helping opportunists target people who are justifiably angry:

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

The problem with this explanation is that it requires “progressive” parties to actually do stuff to demonstrate that they are on the side of people, not the side of paperclip-maximizing immortal colony organisms and the corporate executives who pretend to run them:

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1184004730722217984

I try to have hope — that is, I try to believe that if we can only make changes to our material circumstances, however small they may seem, that we might attain a new vantagepoint that reveals more possible changes within our grasp:

https://gen.medium.com/hope-not-optimism-943e88291b

Some days, it’s hard to have hope. Some days, it’s so obvious that everybody knows, all that I can muster is fury. Fury is not a full substitute for hope, but it’ll do. It’s a far superior alternative to the fatalism that “everybody knows” and thus nothing can be done.

Some fights you win, and other fights, you just fight, because surrender isn’t an option. Everybody knows, right? If everybody knows, then everybody might just decide to do something about it.

Next Monday (Mar 20), I’m doing a remote talk for the Ostrom Workshop’s Beyond the Web Speaker Series.

[Image ID: A smoke-filled room lit by candles. Around a large formal table sit various 19th century gentlemen-type people. One of them stands and reads from a memo. The shadow he casts is in the shape of a dollar-sign.]

[arctic-hands]

[Image Description: snippet from the Wikipedia article for "2024 United States East Coast wildfire smoke", that says "The wildfire smoke has encouraged several conspiracy theories, including some associated with QAnon. Far-right media personality Stew Peters wrote that the smoke is a directed-energy weapon. Other conspiracy theories referenced include that Canada is using a flamethrower drone (another theory spread by Peters), Antifa is setting Canada ablaze, the New York government is seeking to use the smoke to implement lockdowns, the smoke is a precursor to a potential alien invasion, the smoke is being used to create 15-minute cities, and that Canada is creating a solar blackout.[22]" End I.D.]

People are stupid

[dbaydenny]

Canadian fires,

a plot of flames, destruction

a devious trick

undermining the world's health,

seeking order from chaos.

.

D W Eldred

[seeminglyseph]

Sometimes I feel like Canada being labeled as “America Lite” has resulted in most of Canada’s global identity being completely destroyed, and I don’t fully know how to explain that? On top of the fact that the people who speak for Canada think that like. The Prairies, Maritimes, and Territories are so uninhabited that they don’t count despite that leaving Ontario, Quebec and BC.

But the politics of Canada matter less than shit. Sometimes I feel like we’re in an economic war with America so they can just fill the gap between Alaska. Just cut as much trade deals and send as much bad product choke us out out or something. Modern colonial conquest.

But I’m stoned and paranoid and Alberta had to stay open during Covid so they could have a highway to Alaska. We couldn’t close shit because of American business. Blah blah blah

People live in the entire country of Canada. The population may not be huge and metropolitan, but people live there. Even in the territories where it’s sparse they deserve infrastructure and support. The situations the citizens living in our country have been forced into to become accustomed to because “there aren’t a lot of people there” “nobody lives there” “it has like a population of three hicks”. Only seeing them as people briefly in videos about charities but then you kind of fade back into the numb idea of Canada being an untamed wilderness of frozen forests and farmlands full of hicks and rednecks who kinda deserve it. But someone might remind you about the reservations out here and you’ll get solemn and realize maybe some real people live out here too. But we’ve seen time and time again than Ottawa has no problem breaking promises to our Indigenous population because Ottawa seems to have done a really good job of making everything serious an “over there” problem.

And when things are “over there” problems then they don’t matter. I mean we have more people in our Federal Government concerned exclusively about Quebec politics than Alberta has seats available to them because there is a Federal Province of Quebec party that wins many of seats on Federal Council because by population Quebec and Ontario hold majority.

I feel overwhelmed and insane sometimes.

[starscelly]

roope in his criminal era

[sanstropfremir]

switching to a funnier topic and seeing you mention a bts member's birthday... have you ever heard of the jungkook is princess diana reincarnated theory 💀 there was a fan who gen believed princess diana turned into jk cause he was born the day after her death

LAKSJDGH'FALSKJDFADSFLJK YES that's my favourite conspiracy theory behind justin trudeau is fidel castro's bastard because it always provides endless comedy. the memes about him squaring up with trisha paytas' baby when the queen died were HYSTERICAL

[sweetteaandpie]

Ask me anything...

I'm a 40-year old queer neurodivergent pagan Appalachian American-Canadian librarian. Want to hear a crone opine?

Ask me about life, love, the cosmos, witchcraft, music, poetry, Appalachia, classic movies from the 1910s-1950s, the paranormal, ouija boards, grief, trauma, mental health, spirituality, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, Hacks, Amanda Tapping, Mary McDonnell, fanfic....all the things. want me to pull a tarot or oracle card for you? Sure.

I look forward to your messages.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Earth is flat. We have been secretly contacted by intelligent beings from other planets. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did not land on the moon in 1969. They may sound like bizarre statements, but a new poll suggests a sizable number of Canadians believe in these and other conspiracy theories. About five per cent of us are flat-earthers, the poll suggests, while 11 per cent say they think the lunar landings were a hoax. And one-third of respondents say they think evidence that aliens have been in contact with our planet is being hidden from the public.

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Recruiting Director Tells Of Communist Infiltration Efforts,” Windsor Star. May 8, 1942. Page 15. ---- SASKATOON, May 8. - Communists are actively engaged in attempts to infiltrate Into the Canadian army, Lt.-Col. James Mess, director of army recruiting for Canada, said in addressing the Canadian Club here. 

“I wonder how many of you realize that we have a Communism problem today?” he asked. “Communism Is one of the problems facing Canadians right now.” 

“I bring this question up in order that you may be warned,” he said. Too many people were content to sit back and wait for orders instead of taking the initiative. 

He said Communism became quite active in this country about a year ago, and a first step in the program of the party members was to win the confidence of the Canadian people and infiltrate into the Canadian army. 

“They started with a Red Cross rally. It was quite a success. Then they began a recruiting rally, followed by conducting a number of demonstrations of loyalty." But unfortunately, along with these worthy enterprises came demands for release of anti-Fascists.” 

He said plans of the Communist Party included the picking of numbers of volunteers who enlisted in various branches of the armed forces as nuclei.

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

THE CONSPIRACY (2012)

This “found footage” movie is about a couple of Canadian guys who start to film a documentary about Terrance, an old crank who wanders the streets and rants about conspiracies and “big government.”  (Oh, this movie takes place during the height of the Obama presidency, and a lot of the same, real-life, cranks at that time were mostly upset that a black man had the gall to be president, but never mind that.)  Anywho, one day Terrence just ups and disappears.  The documentarians, Aaron and Jim, gather up his materials (newspapers clipping) and take them home.  Aaron falls down the conspiracy hole and becomes a crazy conspiracy person too.   He “solves” the puzzle of the random newspapers clipping by linking them to the “Tarsus Group,” a Bohemian Grove-style organization of rich and powerful assholes.  They get in touch with the author of a singular news article about the organization.  He spouts ominously about the Tarsus Group and the power it controls over ALL PEOPLE AND ALL LIFE and links it to the ancient worship of Mithras.

Naturlich, Aaron and Jim become spooked by the black trucks following them around and stuff.  Jim’s wife becomes increasingly pissed at Jim for entertaining Aaron’s delusions.  Through their journalist source, they find a way into the upcoming Tarsus Group meeting.  They put on cheap suits and sneak into the meeting.  They participate in an initial ceremony for new members.  Jim ends up with a raven mask.  Whilst waiting his own turn for the ceremony, Aaron sees their journalist source, who is a member of the Tarsus Group!  Aaron participates in the initial ritual, and he gets a bull mask instead of a raven mask.  The Tarsus Group members then chase after Aaron, because he is the sacrifice!  (Inside the building, Jim has been detained by some other people.)  After some nonsense, Aaron is caught by the Tarsus Club members and stabbed to death!

Except he…isn’t?  We get an epilogue where Jim explains that the Tarsus Club is so used to being infiltrated by randos that they work it into their festivities.  They only pretended to stab Aaron to death, but we never hear from him because apparently he’s just up and disappeared, like Terrence.  Jim talks a bit and his wife is with him and she looks pissed.  We also hear from executives of the Tarsus Group, who offer platitudes about networking and stuff.

This is a middling entry into the field.  Perhaps there’s a meditation here about the nature of obsession and seeking patterns where there might not be any, a la “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988), but the plot is forgettable and doesn’t offer up any spooks, frights, or even moments of trepidation. I’ll also note that this film shows an airplane crash of 9/11 a lot, which is a cheap way of tying that horror into this piece of crap.

[immunobiz]

🤔🇨🇦🙏🇨🇦🤔🇨🇦🙏🇨🇦🤔🇨🇦🙏🇨🇦

This liberal government is too ashamed to tell Canadians how they have destroyed our once beautiful country and economy… RIP CANADA!

YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS MADNESS??

😊SHARE THIS VIDEO OUT & POST YOUR HONEST COMMENTS!

___________________________

🤔🇨🇦🙏🇨🇦🤔🇨🇦🙏🇨🇦🤔🇨🇦🙏🇨🇦

Ce gouvernement libéral a trop honte pour dire aux Canadiens comment ils ont détruit notre pays et notre économie autrefois beaux... RIP CANADA !

VOS PENSÉES SUR CETTE FOLIE ??

Si tout le monde peut s'il vous plaît prendre une petite seconde pour vous abonner à notre lien YouTube dans la bio principale, nous vous en serions vraiment reconnaissants !

😊PARTAGEZ CETTE VIDÉO ET POSTEZ VOS COMMENTAIRES HONNÊTES !

🤔🇨🇦🙏🇨🇦🤔🇨🇦🙏🇨🇦🤔🇨🇦🙏🇨🇦

[nando161mando]

Alex Jones introduced the short video defending Ernst Zündel which also manages to include climate denial, bizarre numerological conspiracy theories, and claims “hate speech” originated with a 1980s Canadian legal battle.

[thegeniusidiotnstickmerchant3728]

I'm trying to figure out some fact I just made up top the Russenoorlog, but I literally can't.

It all sounds made up.