It was a chilling example of what might happen if Andrew Scheer's sinister Con cult is allowed to spread fake news, in a crude attempt to influence the result of the upcoming election.
Just like Donald Trump and his henchmen did in the United States.
An example that began with a truncated video clip put out by Global News, and was quickly picked up by the grubby Con propagandists at the obscenely named Canada Proud.
It's just another grotesque attempt to try to smear Justin Trudeau, by suggesting that Jair Bolsonaro, the fascist president of Brazil didn't respect him enough to even shake his hand.This is just sad. Nobody respects @JustinTrudeau pic.twitter.com/uLwDqPj3GM— Canada Proud (@WeAreCanProud) June 29, 2019
But despite the tawdry reputation of Canada Proud, some members of the Con media were quick to jump on board, with people like David Akin, Charles Adler, Jen Gerson and many others helping to spread the story.
Not only across Canada but also around the world.
With a feverish excitement that can only be described as depraved.
So depraved in fact that they even attracted the attention of Vladimir Putin's favourite mouthpiece Sputnik News.
For like the Cons the Russians are only too eager to try to put down Justin Trudeau and make our decent country look weak.
Even though that story turned out in the end to be nothing but fake news.
Here is a more accurate portrayal.@JustinTrudeau politely hand gestures Brazilian President @Jairbolsonaro that someone wishes to shake his hand on the opposite side of him.— Jaro Giesbrecht🇨🇦 (@JaroGiesbrecht) June 29, 2019
Then the two leaders shake each others hands & smile at the #G20Summit #Cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/NFWzaNbhg2
Suddenly all the Cons were deleting their tweets including the ghastly Gerson.
As many of you have pointed out, the full video shows that Trudeau did, in fact, land that handshake with Bolsonaro on the second pass. I'm happy to send out the correct link and I appreciate the correction: https://t.co/Z5qJUexuHb— Jen Gerson (@jengerson) July 1, 2019
But neither Gerson or any of the others bothered to apologize, and of course by then the damage had been done.
It is as this well known counterterrorism expert says, the dumbing down of political discourse.
Some Canadian journalists & other partisans totally fell for CanadaProud's doctored clip of Trudeau at G20. They also don't have integrity & honesty to admit it & are happily sharing the clip as is. This is the dumbing down of political discourse, at the national level. #cdnpoli— Mubin Shaikh (@MrMubinShaikh) June 30, 2019
But it's also more than that. For imagine the same thing happening during the last weeks of the election campaign, not once, not twice, but many times.
And if you add to that the number of fake accounts and bots that are exploding all over social media, it's easy to see how those fake news Cons and their shabby media stooges could threaten our democracy.
And this is the bottom line:
There are now signs that Andrew Scheer and his sinister Cons have created a shadowy propaganda network the likes of which this country has never seen before...
One that some believe has ties to foreign actors.
And we must expose them and neutralize that network.
Before the Cons destroy this country....
Have you seen the latest bullshit about LeBlanc? How quickly after deAdder got fired and exposed their agenda, and the latest polls came in. The Irvings must have made a call, probably to Wornout or one of their other media stooges. This is Crooked Hillary all over again. I wouldn't put it past them to deep-fake a Trudeau sex tape at this point, particularly since Wornout was behind the Gropergate bullshit and probably had the two mean girls as clients. Even while that was going on, the Proud networks were already floating trial balloons on social media about "investigating" Justin's teaching career. We know Scheer went low enough to accuse Lorne Nystrom of being sympathetic to child pornographers, and how Pizzagate was so detrimental to Hillary Clinton. Get the U.N. involved and a Robert Mueller of the North. The CSIS, RCMP, whoever you need to call in. That's what Hillary did. Or, you know what, tomato-tomahto, potato-potahto, better call the whole thing off. Harper prorogued parliament. As much as they'll hem and haw about a power grab, with evidence of Russian involvement, Justin should pull the plug and call the Cons and their astroturf PR fake-news organizations before an inquiry. Wornout too. Investigate the Daisy Group. This election is already illegitimate.
ReplyDeleteHi Jackie...The Cons may be trying to store up shit, but people in glass houses really shouldn't throw stones, and I wouldn't be surprised if they are soon hit by a massive scandal of their own, in addition to the scandals of the Ford regime that are dragging them down. Stay tunn d for further developments....
Deletelatest Nanos poll - Liberals 35%, Conservatives 32%. Expect a lot more crap to come out this summer.
ReplyDeleteUU
I just saw on Twitter, there's already talk within the ONPC caucus of deposing Doug for Princess Caroline and it could come as early as July 4th. Talk about fireworks. Trudeau running against Mulroney, haven't we seen this movie before? So sick of summer reruns.
DeleteHi UU...I'm very encouraged by that new Nanos poll, and by other signs the Cons are slipping. It's depressing how much damage that SNC fake scandal did, but when Canadians are called upon to choose between Trudeau and Scheer I am still optimistic they will choose wisely...
DeleteI'm not jealous of Trudeau having to shake hands with that fascist, ecocidal, genocidal (Indigenous people + Brazilians of colour) piece of shit, but it is a requirement of diplomacy and international relations.
ReplyDeleteOops, I forgot homophobic! What a vile human being. Of course Marielle clicked many of those boxes, as well as simply being from the favelas.
ReplyDeleteHi lagatta...homophobia was what made Bolsonaro long before he also became known for his revolting misogyny and racism. I think Trudeau showed a lot of class sitting between Those two fascists, I would not have been so polite...
DeleteWell isn't this an interesting development that makes it blatantly obvious the real reason the Cons and their propagandists want him gone: They want the white man to own all the oil. Kochservative Kult of Kanada, aka Bloc Alberta, slogan 2019: "Let the Injun bastards freeze in the dark"
ReplyDeleteConsumer confidence jumps after Trudeau green-lights pipeline
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-02/consumer-confidence-jumps-after-trudeau-green-lights-pipeline
...and 2
Trudeau's TMX nightmare could end with Indigenous-led $6.9B bid for majority stake
https://calgaryherald.com/commodities/energy/aboriginal-pipe-dream-might-end-trudeaus-trans-mountain-nightmare/wcm/ea38907d-f88a-48cc-b298-d1075d4625d2
They're incensed over Trudeau II's National Energy Program even more than they were about the first one. Not to mention the fact that this is probably the last pipeline that will ever get built and is going to use the revenue to fund a transition to renewables. Thus putting the fossil-fuel dinosaurs out of business once and for all.
No wonder the Cons and their racist U.S. backers are out to destroy him. The revenge plot against Trudeau is not just about petrodollars and keeping a dead industry alive past its expiry date. It's about deposing a "race traitor." Go Justin, let the Kudatah Kleptokrat Klan bastards drown in the swamp!
Of course, we wouldn't be worrying about the Cons stealing the election if Trudeau had kept his promise on electoral reform. As Simon said at the time, "There's nothing that scares the Cons as much as electoral reform, and Justin Trudeau's plan to scrap the so called first past the post system. They know that it would cripple their chances of ever ruling Canada again."
ReplyDeleteSadly, the high of unlimited majority power with only 2/5ths of the vote went to Trudeau's head and he caved. If Scheer wins in the fall, it'll be thanks to a Trudeau own-goal.
This meme needs to die and it's making me so angry. This is the maple fauxgressives' equivalent of "I'm staying home because Obama didn't go through with single-payer healthcare." No, you stop stamping your feet over a single issue and hold your nose to stop fascism, period. In Canada that means "vote strategically." Not doing so in the U.S. worked out just great in 2010 and 2016, didn't it? The problem isn't the electoral system it's people who stay home or protest-vote because the only decent candidate isn't "pure" enough. Obama won the electoral college and popular vote twice. Hillary won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. Why? Because of purity voters who stayed home or threw away ballots on Ralph Nader, Jill Stein or write-ins for the vaunted St. Bernard. They put purity before country and now look at the mess they got us all in.
DeleteNone of this was Trudeau's fault. It was the Dippers and the Cons who blew that whole thing up into a shitshow and then bitched when he punted. Trudeau's "error" was in not just going ahead with it (for which they would have called him a dictator over), but sincerely trying to get the other parties on board to find agreement and COMPROMISE. I guess Common Ground isn't so common anymore? Which is really a shame. He has faced nothing but unscrupulous backstabbing and sabotage for 4 years from people who put their own agendas, bitterness and ad-hominem hatred of a Trudeau ahead of what's best for the country. They are the northern equivalent of Mitch McConnell and the Bernie-or-bust cult. They suck.
None of which excuses either the abhorrent behavior of the tabloid-quality Con media, and their feeding frenzy over bullshit nontroversies like Jody's petulant tantrum, the Bollywood thing, the public humiliation they subjected him to at G20, and now this smear campaign against LeBlanc. We've seen this movie before. It's called "Hillary's Emails 2: Canadian Boogaloo."
If the Cons get in, the fault will be on the hands of the spoiled ideologues, stay-at-home protesters, and "conscience voters" who absolve their own conscience by deflecting the blame to everyone but themselves, just like with Bush, Trump and the Tea Party coup in 2010. That's not a "Trudeau own-goal." That's selfishness on the part of the populace forming circular firing squads that Obama warned us about. And I for one am tired of it.
Hi anon @ 9:25 PM...I'm sorry but I totally reject that argument. Firstly the NDP did more to kill electoral reform than Trudeau, when their little partisan rat Nathan Cullen sided with the Cons who were demanding a referendum knowing that it would bury electoral reform for a generation. If they had sided with the Liberals and backed a ranked ballot which is the kind of ER I support, it would have been in place for this election. Secondly, electoral reform is not something most Canadians care about, as seen by that most recent referendum in B.C. Most Canadians couldn't give a damn. And lastly but most importantly if Scheer and his racists and fascists are elected it will have nothing to do with ER, but will have everything to do with the progressive snowflakes who couldn't bring themselves to vote for the only leader who can defeat the Cons. I have always voted for the NDP but never ever again...
DeleteSimon, did you see this? Boy, did you ever call it!
ReplyDeleteCanadians are being targeted by foreign influence campaigns, says CSIS
https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/07/02/canadas-voters-being-targeted-by-foreign-influence-campaigns-spy-agency-says.html
The problem is that pinning everything on "foreign" influence downplays the fact that the robocall is coming from the right side of the House. The domestic media is complicit just like they were in Australia, Britain and the USA. It's not 100% Putin -- it's Marshall and Ballingall, and Maple Pravda's fault just the same.
Hi Jackie...yes, I actually could add quite a bit to that story. But I can't because it might reveal my sources. But what I can say is that the Russians are already up to their ears in our campaign, and with a little bit of luck the Cons are going to hang for it...☠
DeleteThe Con's only hope of winning is by making JT look bad because lord knows that making Scheer look good is impossible. Their fake news enablers are pulling out all the stops in hoping that a mass case of stupidity will propel Scheer into a position he has no right to and with absolutely nothing to offer Canadians. If this isn't cheating at the highest level I don't know what is.
ReplyDeleteWake up Canada! Don't fall for these lowlife, lying bastard's bullshit. Show them you're not akin to a brain dead Trumpling by rejecting the empty suited Scheer, who's strings are pulled by Harper and who's hidden agenda will offer Canadians nothing but a return to the Harper years of scandals at the highest levels of government.
JD
Justin is male Hillary. Like their inbred Republican cousins, their only hope is painting him as vaguely "corrupt," "incompetent," and a "hypocrite," "sellout," a Falsedeau rather than a Trudeau. Meanwhile, the garbage media soft-pedals a white supremacist Kochroach who actually is an idiotic puppet letting nihilistic fake-populists with the absolute most deplorable agenda lead him by the nose. All so that they can get tax cuts and other perks, sell advertising spots and subscriptions, and most importantly, avoid having to take a look at themselves. Media delenda est.
DeleteFYI: Just saw more evidence of the degradation of Canada's media landscape. On Twitter, Frank Graves, Quito Maggi of Mainstreet and John Corbett have just called out CBC for their incendiary, negative push polling. Besides their companies, there's a reason why Nanos is one of the few reliable pollsters out there. Who the fuck is Blue Maru? It sounds like an 1980s New Wave band or an anime cartoon rather than a reputable surveying firm!
ReplyDeleteYour taxpayer dollars paid for the national broadcaster to ask divisive questions about refugees and, in another poll, the level of Indigenous "anger" at Trudeau over Jody's petulant tantrum. Nobody should be polling about "anger" in this climate, but rather trying to diffuse it (as Trudeau said so brilliantly in an interview prior to his Canada Day speech), particularly after a bunch of hicks at some redneck bar in Alberta decided to host a "piñata party" and take whacks at him in effigy. If this is the kind of "just asking questions" bullshit that Grenier promotes in his spare time, he needs to knock it off, go back to calling balls and strikes or resign.
Fix the CBC or yank the "news" division. The Cons want to do the same anyway and nobody trusts the M$M anymore, so the Liberals might as well beat them at their own game and redirect the $1.5B wasted annually on a public propaganda arm for the Cons and redirect it to a meme network called "Liberal Proud."
It's not just the media and big business that concerns me it's also the power of the International Democratic Union
ReplyDeletehttps://www.idu.org/about/history/
There is an incredible amount of money and powerful forces that are working against us, the people. I fear democracy may be dying.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." Winston Churchill
Usually with people why say 'I'm not racist, but.....'
DeleteYes, the Conservative communications department and their affiliates know no bounds in their underhanded doctoring of videos and images. If I may, here's my take on another example of nasty Conservative politics:
ReplyDeletehttps://thecailleach.blogspot.com/2019/06/media-literacy-distraction-and.html
I commented on your post about vote-splitting, Cailleach. I am American and watched this happen in the U.S., and think Canada's under attack from within. All the same patterns fit. Here's a National Observer article about how bot campaigns and signal-boosting in key swing districts flipped the election for Trump. Mark my words, they're going to boost the Greens and NDP in swing ridings too.
Deletehttps://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/07/04/analysis/weaponized-bots-are-coming-your-mind-canada
The pipeline "debate" is already being hijacked to boost the Greens, which benefits the Cons. The Green Party seems to be a popular target for astroturf sabotage. Elizabeth May is Canada's Jill Stein whether she realizes or admits it or not. Which makes me wonder: is it possible that chatter on the election reform debacle was hijacked too? I know the immigration one was, and now look at what's happened: a new poll (and an Internet opt-in panel at that) says Canadians have turned their backs on refugees in favor of "high-skilled immigrants" only. And yet they're mad that immigrants are taking their jerbs. Well, how about that. Cognitive dissonance, it's the Con doublethink way.
I remain convinced that SNC (aka "Justin's emails") was artificially signal-boosted as well to do maximum damage to Trudeau. There's no reason whatsoever why that bullshit should have stayed in the headlines for three whole months. In an election year? The timing and strategy is obvious. The India trip coverage was relentless and also caused him to drop in the polls, which causes me to think that was a dry run. (Modi is a member of Harper's IDU. He does not like Sikhs or Muslims, and India's government objects to the fact that Trudeau is accepting of them and has them in his cabinet because he is accepting of everyone.)
Furthermore regarding SNC, knowing who those two backstabbers are/were "involved with," I demand an investigation into whether Daisy Group has gotten involved with Proud and/or One Persuades. The IDU needs to be investigated as well. Trudeau is playing fair, but he got blindsided by unexpected sabotage from within, and he is up against a corrupt international monolith with an unlimited abyss of dark money to pull from (including provincial tax dollars, in an unprecedented and unethical "Kudatah" whereby the premiers are actively working together to take down the government).
This is nothing like what his father faced, particularly since the PCs at that time had a conscience. Stanfield must be rolling in his grave, while Clark and Mulroney are no doubt in shock. Campbell, I know, is disgusted over what her former party has mutated into and the tactics they pull, because she's said as much herself. Trudeau therefore should not be blamed if the Cash Plutocrats of Canada steals illegitimately in October. Democracy met with the Internet and corporate cable news, and was found to be "just not ready."