Quotulatiousness

December 8, 2010

Worried about your upcoming citizenship test? Publius has the answers for you

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, History, Humour, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:48

Publius has done all the hard work for you so you can ace the new citizenship test:

So from the mouth of well meaning ignorance, how would a typical Canadian fare on Mr Kenney’s new immigration test? Thanks to the vast resources of this blog, and its network of agents and correspondents through out the Dominion, we have located the typical Canadian. He’s a male in his late thirties and lives in Kenora. Which I think is in Alberta. But from Toronto it’s hard to tell. We brought the typical Canadian to our high-tech testing center at the corner of Center St and Universe Ave, in downtown Toronto. Here is the test. And here is the typical Canadian’s answers:

– Identify four (4) rights that Canadians enjoy.

The right to complain about the weather. The right to complain about how taxes are too high. The right to complain that the government isn’t spending enough money on me or my community. The right to stand in the middle of the cookie aisle at Loblaws and block everybody’s way (I know who you are).

-Name four (4) fundamental freedoms that Canadians enjoy.

The freedom to speak, unless it offends a politically influential minority group. The freedom to own property, unless it offends a politically influential environmental group. The freedom to protest, unless it offends visiting dignitaries. The freedom to bitch about the weather, unless it offends a co-worker who is a ski-nut.

[. . .]

-What did the Canadian Pacific Railway symbolize?

That graft, corruption, political manipulation, juvenile anti-Americanism, and screwing over people who don’t live in Ontario and Quebec, has been a Canadian tradition since the beginning.

-What does Confederation mean?

Like federation but with more “con” in it. Like transfer payments.

[. . .]

-What is the role of the courts in Canada?

To uphold the laws of Canada, unless it conflicts with their personal political beliefs. At that point they just make stuff up, and then use some latin terms to cover their tracks.

-In Canada, are you allowed to question the police about their service or conduct?

Yes, but not during the APEC conference, the G20, or if you’re living in Caledonia.

November 29, 2010

Blatchford: “Fantino wasn’t ‘there for the little guy’ in Caledonia”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:45

It’s probably safe to say that Christie Blatchford isn’t a fan of Julian Fantino, the Conservative candidate in the Vaughan by-election:

Now when Gary McHale, then of Richmond Hill, first poked his nose into the occupation that was going on in the town of Caledonia south of Hamilton, and began in late December, 2006, organizing rallies for those who objected to the way the Ontario government and the OPP were handling the occupation, Mr. Fantino had just taken over as the OPP boss.

He immediately demonized Mr. McHale, not a Caledonia resident, as “an outsider” with “an agenda.”

In a flood of internal e-mails to the officers who worked for him (these later were made public as a result of Mr. McHale’s various disclosure requests in court) and in his public statements, the then-commissioner went to remarkable lengths to characterize Mr. McHale and his supporters, to borrow from one of the e-mails Mr. Fantino sent, as “interlopers who put their own personal agendas” ahead of the purportedly grand peace efforts at the negotiating table.

It was an astonishing use of the resources of the state against a private citizen who had done nothing but exercise the very freedoms guaranteed by the Charter.

Of course, what made Fantino such a “great cop” is exactly why the Conservatives want him on their team:

But the point is, for a man hailed as the Conservatives’ hot new law-and-order fellow, there are some real questions about his credentials, at least as they showed themselves in Caledonia where the rule of law was shattered, and a rather terrifying indication of his willingness to turn the full beam of his attention and power upon individuals whose only sin is to disagree with him.

In this regard, I’m afraid, Mr. Fantino seems a sadly good fit for a party whose approach to law-and-order strikes me increasingly as cartoonish.

It must be pointed out, however, that the Liberals also tried to recruit Fantino to run for them. That reflects just as badly on Michael Ignatieff’s party as it does on Stephen Harper’s party.

If he is elected by the voters of Vaughan, he’s rumoured to be a shoo-in for a cabinet position. That says it all for the federal Conservatives.

November 22, 2010

“Anti-racism” is not the same as being opposed to racism

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:33

Ed West responds to reader complaints about a recent column:

The conventional definition of racism is the belief that “race” (however one defines that) is a primary or significant cause of differences between men; that some of these races are superior to others; and that it is acceptable to discriminate on grounds of race, or to behave unpleasantly to someone because of their race. The term dates to the 1930s, although “racialist” and “racialism” go back to the Edwardian period.

“Anti-racism” means something altogether different, and is best explained by the Civitas book Racist Murder and Pressure Group Politics, an account of the Salem-like events that gripped Britain in the 1990s. The authors cite the example of the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW), which in 1991 set out the implementation of its new Diploma in Social Work.

The first tenet was “the self-evident truth” that “racism is endemic in the values, attitudes and structures of British society”.

The training manual then stated “steps need to be taken to promote permeation of all aspects of the curriculum by an anti-racist analysis”. All “racist materials” had to be withdrawn from the syllabus and CCETSW would decide what was racist.

In the rules there would be no freedom of speech for opinions that can be constructed as “racist” or favourable to “racism”, and “anti-racist practice requires the adoption of explicit values”. The first value is that individual problems have roots in “political structures” and “not in individual or cultural pathology”. (In other words, if different groups have different outcomes in terms of education or crime levels, it is all the fault of British racism, not of individuals).

A second value is that racial oppression and discrimination are everywhere to be found in British society, even when invisible. In other words, impossible to disprove!

November 21, 2010

Pat Condell: Human Rights Travesty

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

He comes not to bury Twitter, but to praise it

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

Linked from one of Walter Olson’s Twitter updates, an interesting summary by Alan Rusbridger on the things that Twitter does for media folks:

I’ve lost count of the times people — including a surprising number of colleagues in media companies — roll their eyes at the mention of Twitter. “No time for it,” they say. “Inane stuff about what twits are having for breakfast. Nothing to do with the news business.”

Well, yes and no. Inanity — yes, sure, plenty of it. But saying that Twitter has got nothing to do with the news business is about as misguided as you could be.

Here, off the top of my head, are 15 things, which Twitter does rather effectively and which should be of the deepest interest to anyone involved in the media at any level.

There are lots of people who send Twitter updates on what they made for dinner, or what they’re watching on TV, but you don’t have to follow them. I’ve been amazed at how useful Twitter has been to me for keeping on top of what I think of as “blogfodder” items: things that I think my own readers would be interested in.

November 16, 2010

It was such an urgent threat that only a week later, the authorities reacted

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:29

A good round-up of the “Twitter bomber” case:

It all started with a moment of grumpy sarcasm on Twitter. Frustrated that his planned trip to Northern Ireland was put in jeopardy by heavy snow at Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster, Mr Chambers whipped out his iPhone and posted the following message on the social networking site: ‘C***! Robin Hood Airport closed. You have got a week to get your s*** together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!’

A week later, he was in a police ­station being quizzed as a potential terrorist. He was eventually prosecuted under a law aimed at nuisance calls rather than under legislation for bomb hoaxes, which requires stronger evidence of intent.

After all, it was plain as a pikestaff that Mr Chambers didn’t have any intent to bomb anything at all. Even so, he was hauled before magistrates, found guilty of sending a menacing electronic communication and fined £385. A few days ago, Mr Chambers lost his appeal against his conviction and sentence.

He will now have to pay £2,600 legal costs as well. Judge Jacqueline ­Davies, who was sitting with two magistrates, ruled the tweet was ‘menacing in its content and obviously so’, claiming ‘any ordinary person’ would ‘be alarmed’ by it.

November 14, 2010

Life replicates art, kinda

Filed under: Books, Cancon, Education, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

As one of the comments on this article in The Cord points out, it’s highly ironic that “at a speech about a book detailing how the police did nothing to uphold the laws of the land the university did exactly the same thing.”

What was scheduled as a speech by Globe and Mail columnist Christie Blatchford turned sour tonight as protesters opposing the journalist’s new book Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us took over the stage.

Three protesters locked themselves together at the centre of the stage where Blatchford was meant to speak at the University of Waterloo’s (UW) Humanities Theatre in Hagey Hall, with another individual acting as their “negotiator”. A fifth, Tallula Marigold, acted as the group’s media representative.

“We don’t want people who are really, really racist teaching [the people we love],” said Marigold of Blatchford. “And we don’t want that person to have a public forum because it makes it dangerous for others in the public forum.”

If nothing else, the passion of the protesters has persuaded me that I must buy and read Blatchford’s latest book . . .

November 11, 2010

Even more reason to believe that ACTA is a bad deal

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:45

From the folks at BoingBoing:

New revelations on ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a secretive global copyright being privately negotiated by rich countries away from the UN: ACTA will require ISPs to police trademarks the way they currently police copyright. That means that if someone accuses you of violating a trademark with a web-page, blog-post, video, tweet, etc, your ISP will be required to nuke your material without any further proof, or be found to be responsible for any trademark violations along with you. And of course, trademark violations are much harder to verify than copyright violations, since they often hinge on complex, fact-intensive components like tarnishment, dilution and genericization. Meaning that ISPs are that much more likely to simply take all complaints at face-value, leading to even more easy censorship of the Internet with nothing more than a trumped-up trademark claim.

November 10, 2010

Pat Condell: Free speech in Europe

Filed under: Europe, Law, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:24

November 8, 2010

We’d love to talk about this First Amendment case, but we’re not allowed to

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:08

I sometimes wonder if there was ever any point in the US founding fathers putting that pesky Bill of Rights in place, when it’s so easy for those rights to be circumvented:

Liptak, who has seen part of the secret 10th Circuit order that keeps the amicus brief sealed, says one reason the appeals court gave for its decision is that allowing distribution of the brief would help I.J. and Reason publicly make their case that Reynolds is being persecuted for exercising her First Amendment rights. One of their goals, the Court said, “is clearly to discuss in public amici’s agenda.” Obviously, we can’t have that.

It bears emphasizing that the I.J./Reason brief is based entirely on publicly available information. It does not divulge any confidential grand jury information, protection of which is the rationale for sealing the documents related to Reynolds’ case. The only purpose served by sealing it is to make talking about the case harder.

Discouraging public dissent, of course, is how this case got started. Tanya Treadway, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Stephen and Linda Schneider, was so irked by Reynolds’ public defenses of the couple that she unsuccessfully sought a gag order telling Reynolds to shut up. Later Treadway initiated a grand jury investigation that resulted in subpoenas demanding documents related to Reynolds’ activism as head if the Pain Relief Network (PRN), including a Wichita billboard defending the Schneiders and a PRN documentary about the conflict between drug control and pain control. Those subpoenas, supposedly aimed at finding evidence of obstruction of justice, are the subject of Reynolds’ First Amendment challenge.

First there were those secret laws in the wake of 9/11, now you’ve got courts ordering information on First Amendment cases to be kept from the public. One fears to ask “what’s next” for fear that they’ll already have an authoritarian answer teed up and ready to go.

November 3, 2010

Liberty: consistency matters

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

James Delingpole, after suddenly discovering a man-crush on Marco Rubio, outlines how the Tea Party can still succeed:

[. . .] I’d suggest that the key lesson of yesterday’s mid-terms is this: it is simply not enough to stick a Tea Party label on any old candidate and hope that the US electorate’s growing antipathy towards Big Government will take care of the rest. Christine O’Donnell was more than proof enough of that. Not only did her candidacy allow the liberal MSM to tar the entire Tea Party movement as the natural home of anti-masturbation ex-witches and other fruit loops. But it demonstrated a worrying complacency and ignorance within the Tea Party movement about what it stands for and what it ought to stand for.

Christine O’Donnell puzzled me . . . if she’d actually been a witch, then her anti-masturbation activities made no sense. I’ve met lots of witches, and it’s hard to imagine any of them being anti-sexual in that kind of dogmatic manner. I didn’t follow the story, but I assume that she lost on the basis of both accusations influencing different voting groups.

So, if O’Donnell and other marginal candidates can’t depend on just wearing the “Tea Party” label to get elected, what do they need to do?

The Tea Party does not stand for: banning lesbian or sexually active single women from teaching at schools; discouraging onanism; banning abortion; keeping drugs illegal; God; organised religion generally; guns; or, indeed, Sarah Palin.

The Tea Party stands, very simply, for small government. So long as it understands this, a presidential victory in 2012 is guaranteed. If it forgets this — or doesn’t understand it in the first place — then hello, a second term for President Obama, and bye bye Western Civilisation.

In other words, Delingpole is calling for the Tea Party to be true to a minarchist vision: the least possible government to get the job done.

If you are against Big Government, you are for liberty. If you are for liberty you are also for free citizens’ right to choose whether or not they get out of their trees on cannabis, or indeed whether or not they have the freedom to terminate unwanted pregnancies or never, ever, go to church and in fact worship Satan instead.

Liberty is not a pick and mix free-for-all in which you think government should ban the things you don’t like and encourage you things you do like: that’s how Libtards think. Libertarianism — and the Tea Party is nothing if its principles are not, at root, libertarian ones — is about recognising that having to put up with behaviour you don’t necessarily disapprove of is a far lesser evil than having the government messily and expensively intervene to regulate it.

November 1, 2010

QotD: The emergence of the Tea Party movement

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

There’s something else that’s been making me very happy lately, and frankly I don’t give a chipmunk’s cheeks who knows or what they may think about it. After years, decades, what even seems like centuries of unremittingly putrescent political news, we are suddenly all witnesses to the spectacular emergence of the so-called Tea Party movement.

The Tea Parties are just one of a number of historically pivotal developments (including the Internet, conservative talk radio, and perhaps even on-demand publishing) that became necessary to get over, under, around, and through the Great Wall of the Northeastern Liberal Establishment and its numberless, faceless hordes of duly appointed gatekeepers.

In that sense, the Tea Parties are exactly what the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left always aspired to be and never really were.

Just like each of those other developments, the Tea Parties are essentially a medium of communications. So far, they are leaderless and centerless (and at all costs, must remain that way). They have no founders, and no headquarters. They have no constitution, no by-laws, and no platform to argue over endlessly. More conventionally-minded politicrats might view all of these qualities as weaknesses, but they would be mistaken. As presently (un)constituted, Tea Parties can’t be taken over by high school student government types or mercenaries from the major political parties, who have nothing better to do with their lives.

I would point out, especially in the light of the recent Bob Barr embarrassment, that this arrangement is inexpressibly better suited to libertarians and to libertarianism than any formal, hierarchical structure copied from the other political parties (and I have been doing exactly that for almost thirty years) but that would be a digression.

L. Neil Smith, “My Tea Party”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2010-10-31

October 28, 2010

Help some Canadian bloggers against “lawfare”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:03

Richard Warman is suing several Canadian bloggers (among many, many suits he’s launched), including Kathy Shaidle:

As many of you know, I — along with Ezra Levant and others — are already being sued by former Canadian “Human Rights” Commission employee Richard Warman.

Now my husband Arnie — a.k.a. the blogger BlazingCatFur — is also being sued by Warman, also for criticizing his activities at the CHRC.

Warman is suing for $500,000.

Arnie has already spent $10,000 in legal fees. We’ve put off asking for help for more than a year, but we now are coming to you for assistance.

Among the issues in the latest suit is the claim that merely linking to a “far right website” (in this case, SteynOnline) can be considered actionable.

October 23, 2010

Has Molly Norris become an un-person to the Society for Professional Journalists?

Filed under: Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:45

Matt Welch sees little positive effort and much bitchiness from one of the organizations that should have been front-and-centre to help Molly Norris:

On Sept. 15, it was announced that Molly Norris, the Seattle-based alt-weekly cartoonist who suggested, then eventually backed away from and repudiated, the “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” protest against Comedy Central censoring bits of a South Park episode, had gone into hiding with the FBI’s assistance so as to hopefully avoid being murdered by Islamic assassins. It was a dark, dark day for American journalism and the freedom of expression. On Sept. 20, the Washington Examiner newspaper wrote an editorial criticizing the professional journalism/free speech community for its comparative silence on the issue.

[. . .]

I don’t expect journalism organizations to share my priorities. But I do expect them to do more than raise an eyebrow when a cartoonist goes into hiding after being threatened with death, then act all bitchy when someone calls them out on it.

October 16, 2010

Court makes a mockery of “freedom of speech” in bail conditions

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:30

I’m not particularly fond of the organizers of the G20 protests (see the general tone of my posts during the G20 meetings for proof), but this court decision is obscene:

Alex Hundert’s words will not appear in this story.

Unlike other Canadians, he’s not allowed to speak to the press.

At least that’s how a court interpreted the new bail conditions placed on Hundert, an accused ringleader of violence during the G20 summit in June.

“It’s staggering in its breadth,” said John Norris, Hundert’s lawyer. “I’ve never heard of anything as broad as that.”

Hundert, 30, faces three counts of conspiracy pertaining to G20 activities, and was released in July on $100,000 bail with about 20 terms, including not participating in any public demonstration.

Shortly after his release, the Crown filed an appeal to revoke his bail. Superior Court Justice Todd Ducharme ruled against that appeal.

On Sept. 17, shortly after Ducharme’s decision, Hundert was arrested for participating in a panel discussion at Ryerson University — which police deemed to be a public demonstration.

On Wednesday Hundert agreed to the new, more stringent, bail conditions.

They include a clarification of the no-demonstration rule, to include a restriction on planning, participating in, or attending any public event that expresses views on a political issue.

This is just wrong. No government or court should have this power: he’s an accused criminal, but he has not been convicted of a crime. This is an unjustifiable restriction of his freedom and should never have been imposed.

H/T to Darian Worden for the link.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress