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Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

ottawacitizen.com

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Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#22
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The federal government never asked for the so-called information operations campaign, nor did cabinet authorize the initiative

I wonder if that statement will stand the test of time (and declassification).

paper shredders are probably running in 3 shifts around the clock right now.

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#23
post #10

Not really surprising. The current leader's family has always maintained close personal ties to dictatorships, such as the Castro family. [0] [1] The father even went as far as to "suspend constitutional rights" (apparently that's a thing over there) for dubious reasons back in the 70's. [0] https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-trudeau-familys-love-of-... [1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/27/world/justin-trudeau-castro-…

You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. The War Measures Act [0] is a law that grants government powers in times of war or insurrection. There was, you guess it, an insurrection in the 70s [1] and the it was appropriately triggered. Also the whole article describes an operation that even senior military commanders were unaware of — what possible connection could there be to the PM? Pure dumb speculation.…

Didn't they end up not being able to prosecute most of these guys because of entrapment? [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its easier in canada. the charter of rights and freedoms has weasel words in it that make it not absolute. In the US they ignore it, in canada the courts can declare infringements 'reasonable' based on the 'limitations clause'. >1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a…

> its easier in canada No, its just explicit in Canada, where in the US it is, for the federal government, found implicitly in the tension between positive grants and negative restrictions in the Constitution, and, for States, the actual limits are only implicit in vague language (the 14th Amendment “Due Process” clause, into which much of the content of the Bill of Rights has been read in a form applicable against t…

how does that interplay with the 10th, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.", where it seems the residual between positive grants and negative restrictions goes to the states/people?

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#25
post #17

What's the difference between propaganda and good PR?

I tend to think the word PR is the result of propaganda applied to the word propaganda. It isn't obvious to me that there is a good form of propaganda. Useful, perhaps, but not upright and positive.

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#26
post #8

Not really surprising. The current leader's family has always maintained close personal ties to dictatorships, such as the Castro family. [0] [1] The father even went as far as to "suspend constitutional rights" (apparently that's a thing over there) for dubious reasons back in the 70's. [0] https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-trudeau-familys-love-of-... [1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/27/world/justin-trudeau-castro-…

> "suspend constitutional rights" (apparently that's a thing over there) That's a thing in the US too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

It’s very obviously a thing in the US, and you don’t need to look back into history to prove it. Every right guaranteed by the constitution can be suspended by the government, with the only limit being whatever SCOTUS thinks it should be. Given FISA courts are operated by the SCOTUS Chief Justice, it could be reasonable to conclude that SCOTUS hasn’t done a particularly great job of safeguarding those rights.

The US arguably makes some of the robust constitutional guarantees in the world, but they still pose little obstacle for a government that wants to subvert them. The illusion of civil liberties is even weaker in most of the rest of the world, where they’re often granted only by ordinary legislation, which can of course be changed by ordinary legislative processes.

The argument for this system is that the government must be able to suspend rights in response to an emergency, but the problem with that is that there’s always an emergency going on somewhere. The war on terror is already in its 4th presidential administration of being an emergency.

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#27

> The federal government never asked for the so-called information operations campaign, nor did cabinet authorize the initiative Plausible deniability. So, yes, sure, the generals decided to do this putting their careers at risk if/when discovered. And when the civilian government found this out, where was the indignant outrage that we could expect for what was clearly military insubordination?

Time to buy stocks in Canadian shredder companies...

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#30
post #4

> A military investigation determined what the Canadian Forces public affairs leadership was doing was “incompatible with Government of Canada Communications Policy (and the) mission and principles of Public Affairs.” I would hope that deploying the military against your own citizens is against more than just an executive branch policy that can be changed at any moment.

It's not, in Canada. The government may elect to invoke the War Measures Act [1]. Pierre Trudeau did this when he drove tanks into Montreal to quash the Québécois nationalist terrorist organization, the FLQ in the October Crisis of 1962 [2].

[edit] Posse Comitatus is more of an American thing - for the record the War Measures Act was subsequently replaced with the Emergencies Act [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Measures_Act

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act

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