Spies Are Us: this week’s HuffPo #BCpoli column 

— 03.24.2017 11:40 AM

Some people wear tinfoil hats. Some see conspiracies everywhere. Some even look around at public meetings, and see spies where there are none.

B.C. NDP MLA David Eby, for instance, sees spies. B.C. Liberal spies, to be precise.

A little while ago, Eby — who seems like a nice fellow, albeit a bit paranoid — was at a meeting in Richmond, B.C. A few young folks had gathered to talk about housing, which is the subject matter of Eby’s critic role in the B.C. legislature.

A B.C. Liberal caucus researcher was there, too. She wasn’t trespassing or anything — it was a public gathering in a public place, one that had been promoted on Facebook and whatnot. The researcher recorded some of the proceedings, as researchers — and reporters, and NDP staffers everywhere — are wont to do.

Eby, however, went completely bananas about it. Later on, Eby — who (historians will note) is the guitarist for a band called World of Science, for which (the band says) he writes “sad bastard lyrics” — spared no adjective to describe the wicked, immoral and frankly Satanic presence of the young B.C. Liberal person.

It was “appalling,” he said. It was “reprehensible.” It was “a violation of the privacy rights of youth.” And so on and so on. World of Science’s sad bastard lyricist probably would have called it a war crime if he could have gotten away with it.

Except, David, it isn’t. It wasn’t. Sending staffers to the other side’s public events, in fact, has been going on since Jesus was a little feller, and you know it.

In every election campaign since time immemorial, in fact, political operatives have been quietly doing what that young B.C. Liberal researcher did. Intent on witnessing an opponent’s misstep, they are ever more showing up to capture mistakes made when the mainstream news media aren’t present. Like Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth did with the Republican golden boy, George Allen.

George Allen’s sad tale goes back to 2006, when he was seeking re-election to the Senate as the Republican standard-bearer. Allen was widely seen as a future possible presidential candidate, and he assiduously sought the support of so-called cultural conservatives — that is, those folks who want to preserve “one culture for one nation.” They’re not fussy about foreigners, particularly foreigners who don’t look like them. Allen was their (white, Christian) man.

One young man who didn’t look like Allen, but knew a great deal about him, was Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth. At the time, Sidarth — who also answered to Sid — was a straight-A senior at the University of Virginia and a Hindu. He was Virginia born and raised. Though he was studying engineering, politics was what interested him the most. He’d volunteered on a few Democratic campaigns, and by 2006 he was devoting himself to Democrat James Webb’s Senate battle.

His role was to be what I call a “road warrior”: following around the Repubican standard-bearer with a camcorder, basically. He’d capture misstatements or mistakes, and then relay them back to the central campaign in Arlington. This went on for a few weeks, and while Allen’s people didn’t particularly like Sidarth following them around — like David Eby doesn’t like to be followed around, apparently — they didn’t do anything to stop him, and mostly treated him courteously.

Until one Friday afternoon event in a park near the Kentucky border, that is. At that event, Allen did something he hadn’t done before: he singled Sidarth out. He pointed at him. “This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca or whatever his name is, he’s with my opponent,” said Allen. “So welcome, let’s give a welcome to macaca here! Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia!”

The crowd cheered, even though some of them knew, or suspected, that George Allen had just used a disgusting slur. “Macaca” means “monkey,” and it has also been infamously used to describe African immigrants. Sidarth, who knew what the word meant, was shocked. On the resulting footage, you could see that his hand was shaking.

They’re not only allowed to be there. They’re helping democracy, too.
As with most such things in politics these days, the clip of Allen calling Sidarth a dark-skinned “monkey” eventually ended up on YouTube. Sidarth didn’t upload it himself, but he wasn’t upset about what would happen next. “This event,” he said, “reflected on Allen’s character.”

It indisputably did, and it would also indisputably end Allen’s political career. A Washington Post reporter wrote a short item about the “macaca” statement, and — within hours — the story went super-nova. Very soon, many other stories were written, alleging yet more bigoted statements or behaviour by Webb.

The conservative Great White Hope denied it all, of course, but he started to lose his double-digit lead in the polls and he never regained his footing. In November 2006, Allen lost to Webb by nearly 10,000 votes, his once-unstoppable multimillion-dollar campaign effectively felled by a quiet young man with a camcorder. Even in the old Confederate-era stronghold of Dickenson County, where Allen had made his racist remark. Even there.

Moral of the story, David Eby? Those quiet, polite young people showing up to public events and recording public statements by public figures? They’re not only allowed to be there.

They’re helping democracy, too. Ask Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth if you don’t believe me.


Comments (2)

Calling all cyber-detectives: your Ontario political mission, if you choose to accept it

— 03.23.2017 10:09 AM

It could be disgruntled Liberals, sure. It could be a certain ambitious cabinet minister, aided and abetted by a lobby firm and trade association he is connected to. It could be Tories or Dippers trying to cause dissent and trouble. It could be some shadowy lobby group trying to exert pressure to achieve some policy goal. It could be average folks, too – but those people wouldn’t likely be hiding their identities, I don’t think. They’d say who they are.

One thing is certain: this effort is pretty slick and there is money behind it. They’re using Nationbuilder, for example, and Nationbuilder ain’t cheap. It isn’t nothing.

I’ve got some of the smartest, web-savvy readers around. Who wants to dive into this, and try and find out who the sneaks are who are behind it?  Let’s out them, for fun!


Comments (19)

This makes me sad

— 03.23.2017 07:14 AM

It perhaps explains Donald Trump, Kellie Leitch et al. It also can’t be dismissed as a methodological error – the question(s) were very straightforward. 

Mostly, however, it makes me sad. We have a long way to go. 


Comments (38)

The part of the budget that suggests to me that this isn’t the full budget

— 03.22.2017 05:41 PM

From the Globe:

Despite calls from the United States for Canada to increase its contributions to international military efforts, there is no increase in defence spending in the 2017 budget. In fact, the Department of National Defence is reallocating $8.48-billion that it expected to spend on capital projects, such as planes, ships, trucks and large infrastructure, before 2036 to future years when it will be used to purchase fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft and new light-armoured vehicles.

That’s quite a stark contrast from the military-industrial complex fiscal orgy that the Unpresident kicked off a few days ago with his “budget.”  From the Times:

President Trump put both political parties on notice Monday that he intends to slash spending on many of the federal government’s most politically sensitive programs — relating to education, the environment, science and poverty — to protect the economic security of retirees and to shift billions more to the armed forces.

The proposal to increase military spending by $54 billion and cut nonmilitary programs by the same amount was unveiled by White House officials as they prepared the president’s plans for next year’s federal budget.

No increase in spending up here, $54 billion down there. Given that Agent Orange has threatened to kill NATO to save it – given that he has said (perhaps appropriately) that all NATO countries need to pull their weight – I don’t see how Canada’s 2017 budget can possibly be the last word on defence.

Unless we want to enrage the lunatic to the South, we will need to spend more. I think that today’s Parliament-hallway noises about some sort of a long-term defence spending plan mean that Messrs. Trudeau and Moreau plan to do just that: spend more on guns and tanks and fighter jets and whatnot.  Why be Neville-Chamberlain-like with the Unpresident for two months, and then abruptly piss it all away in a single budget?  Makes no sense.

Trump will eventually win what he wants from Canada, even if it didn’t seem that way today.

Oh, and Obama wanted it too, folks.


Comments (9)