“Canada spied on communications at Brazil’s Mining and Energy Ministry, according to Canadian intelligence documents revealed Sunday by Globo television. The documents were leaked by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. His disclosures including that the United States spied on the same ministry, on President Dilma Rousseff and her aides, have greatly strained US-Brazilian ties. In the disclosures broadcast on Globo, documents purportedly from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service leaked by Snowden show a detailed outline of the Brazilian ministry’s communications including phone calls, emails and Internet traffic. Canada does have interests in Brazil, particularly in mining, Mining and Energy Minister Edilson Lobao told Globo, calling the development “serious.”……………..”

““But a dark secret lurks in the northern forests. Over the last decade, Canada has not so quietly become an international mining center and a rogue petrostate. It’s no longer America’s better half, but a dystopian vision of the continent’s energy-soaked future. That’s right: The good neighbor has banked its economy on the cursed elixir of political dysfunction — oil. Flush with visions of becoming a global energy superpower, Canada’s government has taken up with pipeline evangelists, petroleum bullies, and climate change skeptics. Turns out the Boy Scout’s not just hooked on junk crude — he’s become a pusher………………….”

Apparently I discovered
that I have been paying a lot of attention to Canada over the past year
or so. More than, say, I have been paying to more important countries
like Brazil or Argentina or India or China:

Here is what I wrote on this a few weeks ago: Okay. Stephen Harper is the son of an Imperial Oil loyal senior accountant/pencil pusher and a fundamentalist evangelist (a Christian not a Muslim one). An evangelical Likud-nik Salafi, of the sort that Sarah Palin pretends to be (but certainly is not). When Canadians elected him, they probably did not realize they were voting the oil-industry fox into their beautiful environmental hen house. That explains it all, including his ‘more royal than the king’ attitude toward the Middle East.

For example I also wrote this in another posting here.

Before that I wrote in an earlier posting right here.

Before all that, I tried to write seriously in a posting here. You can see why that was difficult.

I also wrote before that on this strange Canadian episode in another posting here.

I even wrote this next hasty posting linked here.

Okay, I might as well throw in this last one, a bonus, but not my favorite.

Cheers
mhg