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May 25, 2005
Sinclair Stevens is at it again
Former Conservative Cabinet Minister in bungled black-op
A bunch of my fellow bloggers are abuzz about new shenanigans from former Mulroney-era Cabinet Minister Sinclair Stevens. Mr. Stevens detested the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance, waged a (sometimes dirty) war to prevent the merger of the CA and the Progressive Conservatives and has a massive hate-on for Stephen Harper, the Leader of the united Conservative Party. So it is no surprise that he reared his head last week as it appeared Canadians might be heading to the polls sooner rather than later.
The latest weapon in his war against the Conservatives is the website bloc-harper.com. The site is, apparently, an attempt to smear the Conservative Leader and to tie him to separatists in Quebec. (Mr. Stevens has clearly forgotten he sat in the same Cabinet as the founder of the Bloc Québecois but has not forgotten that age old lesson: Never let the facts get in the way of a good smear.) The site itself states it is supported by "Freedom International" which to the best of anyone's knowledge is a "rights group" out of Australia that has nothing to do with Canada and has not updated its own website since 2003.
Thursday, the site prompted Brent Colbert to ask who was behind the site. Though it claims to be the work of "Freedom International", I commented chez Brent that the really interesting thing was that Mr. Stevens registered the site in the name of the Royal Commonwealth Society of Toronto which boasts the Governor General and the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario as Patron and Honorary Chair respectively. I doubt either the GG or the LG would be that excited about being associated with such a site.
Others were on the same track. Monday, Bill Strong posted along the same lines. Small Dead Animals (quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs) ran with it and uncovered today that the registration of the site name has been changed - undoubtedly due in part to the attention the site's dubious provenance has generated and the concerns expressed by Chris Churchill of the RCS (via Brent).
Bloggers' feeding frenzy aside, this is, at its heart, a bungled political black-op. Sinclair Stevens wanted to smear Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party but not look responsible for it. He created something called "Freedom International" and created a website. He failed to realize the his made up advocacy group's name is already taken and that that anyone with the least bit resourcefulness could figure out he was behind the whole thing. He was so careless in the whole thing, he implicated a respected organization in his vendetta.
The lesson here: If you are as blinded by rage as Mr. Stevens, you should never run a black-op - you'll be found out inside of a week.
Posted by maxthecat on May 25, 2005 at 08:40 PM | Comments (0)
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Title: Freedom International Canadian Chapter
Blog: Colbert's Comments
Tracked on: May 26, 2005 12:54 AM
Excerpt:
Update to the Sinc Stevens/Royal Commonwealth Society/Freedom International/Bloc-Harper Story.
I received a note via e-mail from someone who decided to take a swing by the headquarters of Freedom International's Canadian Headquarters and was hardly ... More...
