Monday, August 10, 2009

Tory Turmoil? Who is The Blue Network?

We are an organization that has been developing over the past few months We are a group of party members, MPs, volunteers, and Canadian Citizens determined to take back our Conservative party through democracy and allow for internal party resolution of policy. We want to take GRASSROOTS democracy back for the party members who make up the party.

What is their Mission?

To form an independent network, whose purpose is to bring reforms within the Conservative Party of Canada. We believe in a party built and run from the membership base. We believe the party principles, the constitution, the leaders, and the policy should all be chosen within a framework democratically elected by the membership base. Without the membership, the party does not exist; therefore, we wish to encourage a return to a responsible grassroots party.

And here is their website. Not much there, not even a contact email. Here's what a standard whois lookup gets you:

BLUENETWORK.CA - Domain Information
Domain
bluenetwork.ca [
Traceroute RBL/DNSBL lookup ]
Whois server
whois.cira.ca
Created
04-Jul-2009
Updated
--
Expires
04-Jul-2010
Time Left
327 days 10 hours 2 minutes
Status
EXIST
DNS servers
ns49.domaincontrol.com
208.109.14.200ns50.domaincontrol.com 208.109.255.25
BLUENETWORK.CA - Geo Information
IP Address
97.74.144.173
Host
bluenetwork.ca
Location
US, United States
City
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Organization
GoDaddy.com
ISP
GoDaddy.com
AS Number
AS26496
Latitude
33°61'19" North
Longitude
111°89'07" West
Distance
10384.25 km (6452.48 miles)


...which is to say its anonymously hosted (by GoDaddy) out of Arizona. The obvious thought is that its a third party (Liberal Party?) ploy, a counter to Republicans for Ignatieff--that is, designed to stir up some press attention in the slow summer months and perhaps tease a damaging response out of CPoC officials. The network also wants a fair bit of individual information out of site visiters before they deign to respond, and memberships are currently "on an application-only or referral basis", so the point may be no more than to suck a measure of personal information out of disgruntled Conservatives, to be used later.

On the other hand, if the Melissa Baghat and Lisa Raitt nominations have shown anything, its that Canadian Conservatives take the concept of grassroots control their representative political organizations very seriously. It is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that a wing of the party (given the reference to "conscious-driven councillors", most likely the SoCon wing) might form an exclusive/secret group in an attempt steer the CPoC towards its party base, which has been sorely tried these last three years.

1 comment:

Ti-Guy said...

I'm quite willing to believe this is a genuine "Conservative" grass roots movement. Maybe this time someone will try to explain to the grass-roots what conservatism actually means. Hint: it doesn't imply radical change to turn back the clock.