John Allan Cameron, RIP.

Reading in the paper this morning that East Coast music vet John Allan Cameron has died of cancer at 67 surprised me. Frankly it's been a long time since I've seen anything to do with him. And this is kind of a surprise. Given the success of groups like Great Big Sea you'd think he'd have been more visible given that he was promoting East Coast Celtic music when a lot of today's performers in the genre were probably banging their heads in their bedrooms to Motley Crue.

The Sixth Family Under Attack.

As Canadian readers may have heard by the time they read this police have launched a major series of raids against figures in Montreal's "traditional" organised crime community. This includes senior mob figure Nick Rizzuto. Anyone interested in more background on this situation might want to check out The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto by Lee Lamothe and Adrian Humphreys. Lamothe and Humphreys present the history of the Rizzuto family's rise to the top of Canadian organised crime, and argue that it should be considered the Sixth Family of North American organised crime alongside the infamous Five Families of New York's Mafia community. Vito Rizzuto is currently in an American jail for his alleged role in the murder of several New York mobsters in 1981, an event detailed in the book and also presented in the Johnny Depp film Donnie Brasco.

Spy Versus Spy.

The front page of today's National Post carries a report that a man has been detained on charges he was conducting espionage against Canada. The news item alleges that the man was a Russian, and that he was an illegal, that is a foreign intelligence operative operating under a false ID, versus someone operating under diplomatic or other legal cover. The obvious question that came to my mind on seeing this is how the spies of an ally would be treated. Would say an American illegal be arrested and charged, or would a double standard be observed and said illegal quietly asked to leave the country?

Anyone who doesn't think allies spy on each other is foolish. The world of espionage is a dirty one, and you spy on whoever you can spy on. It has for example been alleged that the Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian equivalent of the US signals intelligence agency the National Security Agency, intercepted the telephone calls and other transmissions of American trade negotiators. Then there is the well known case of Jonathan Pollard, an American tried and convicted of espionage for US ally Israel against the US. In the end national interest trumps friendship.