Entries Tagged 'Canada' ↓

Radical right wingers, or perhaps whingers is more appropriate, always cry that their right to free speech is being impinged when they are shouted down. However, I say shout down, shut up, and drive out people who actively seek to promote hatred and divide us against each other. We have seen the results when we allow such people to speak freely.

Ann Coulter’s speech at the University of Ottawa was cancelled last after protesters shouted her down. Here are comments from a redditor who was there. And now she’s going to file a human rights complaint.

For those who don’t know, Ann Coulter is not a decent person. She’s part-shock jock and part-racist, frequently attempting to divide the United States into hard right and left, and then to set the two against each other. She has stated that Canadians should consider themselves lucky not to have been invaded for refusing to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

I say good riddance to a dangerous fool.

They were nice enough about it – told him they really just came to look at his car. (He has a Ferrari.) They had left a card earlier for him, from some constable in the Saanich Police Department, asking him to contact them. Brad* hadn’t seen it until I gave it to him that evening, when a few of us came by to talk and play some pool.

But it’s not that nice, is it, when you discover that some police force, somewhere, is monitoring your email and has detected something they regard as potentially dangerous.

In this case, Brad had sent an email to a group of six people, including me, that mentioned blockading the tar sands. The cops had it with them, and they had some questions.  But my question is, how did they get that email? It went to six people; all say Of course they didn’t forward it.

The officers (three of them; perhaps they were worried they were dealing with an insane jihadist) did not mention a warrant. Does this mean that Canadian email is run through filters – put in place by whom? I don’t recall any Act of Parliament authorising domestic spying on Canadians.

And finally, why are the municipal police coming to the door? I am pretty sure the Saanich police department is not monitoring Brad’s emails. That would come from the federal police or a spy agency: the RCMP or CSIS.  Perhaps that agency wanted to send a message. As someone who received Brad’s email, message received.

You’ll notice that this site has a GGoD page, on which is a statement and a manifesto. Some of us on the planet have noticed that a few of us are making a fabulous profit at the expense of the rest of our lives, that they are smart people doing very foolish things. They are wrecking our future. There are seven original members of that group, of which I am one, who exchanged a number of emails discussing ways to stop climate change.

Two of those members mentioned, in emails, that blockading the tar sands, would certainly send a message. No action has been taken in that regard; ideas were simply being discussed.  None of us would have forwarded an email containing those ideas without telling the rest of us. So I believe, and I have asked the group to confirm.

That leaves electronic eavesdropping. Apparently, if you mention “blockade” and “tar sands” in a email,, that is picked up by some police organisation’s email filters somewhere – Canada or the U.S.? – and you may be visited in your home by the police.

Disturbing. That emails are almost certainly being monitored, and that local cops are being sent out to intimidate the citizenry into silence.

UPDATE 1: Brad emailed to say:

I can’t imagine how they got a hold of that email but the implications are certainly stunning and very concerning as it appears that the authorities can access any information which in any way might challenge their authority or threaten the evil and corrupt industries they are (indirectly) in bed with!

UPDATE 2: To those commenting on the apparent hypocrisy of owning a Ferrari and being green, Brad started going green quite recently. He has been mostly vegan for many years; that ought to ‘pay’ for a few of his Sunday afternoon drives this summer.

He hadn’t really considered climate change until recently. Less than 10 years ago I was driving an Infiniti QX4: I didn’t know anything about “global warming” or peak oil at the time, and would have spouted the usual denier propaganda had you asked me. Now that Brad is realizing the predicament we face, what does he do with the Ferrari? Sell it? Then it’s still on the road. Crush it? What?!

Except for people who have been hippies since birth, we all go through a stage where our dawning green awareness leads to the realisation that so much of what we do is harming someone and/or the planet. At that point we all have to make choices about what and when we will cut back – considering that almost nobody else is.

UPDATE 3: Changed paragraph 3 and added 4 and 5 for clarity.

*Name changed, not that it matters at this point.

It is common for people who are concerned about looming catastrophes like climate change and peak oil to appeal to the humanity of those doing the damage. They think that, if only they could have a word with people like former U.S. President Bush or current Canadian Prime Minister Harper, climate action obstructors both, they could get through with an appeal about caring for their own children. This is highly unlikely, and more importantly, is a waste of precious time.

It is not that these people do not care about their children, but that they have a different morality than you and I. We like to think that, deep down, everyone is just like us. This is a dangerous delusion, and it should be clear to anyone who observes human behaviour even briefly. There are some obvious examples, including psychopaths who murder others for reasons we don’t understand, like Jeffrey Dahmer who murdered and ate young men, or Clifford Olsen who was a serial child murderer, or the freaks who go into a school and start shooting. These people are not like us, they clearly have a different morality, and it matters little whether it is due to nature or nurture: Either way, we must protect ourselves from their dangerous behaviour first, psychoanalyse them later.

There are less obvious examples; the documentary The Corporation has pointed out that corporations behave like sociopaths; they have no social conscience. Their CEOs are responsible for and profit greatly from this behaviour, so I think it is fair to call them antisocial to such an extent that they are a danger to the rest of us.

In fact, I think it is a fair argument to say that most people who seek power are not like you and me. Power comes not only through politics, but also through climbing the corporate ladder, accumulating vast wealth, aligning yourself with powerful people, or murdering others. People who lust for power operate from a predator morality, in which might makes right. In practice, this means that whatever they can get away with is morally acceptable.

Most people concerned about climate change or social justice simply reject this. They want to believe that these people, who are doing clearly immoral acts, can be reasoned with, that their innate humanity can be appealed to. This is delusional. These people are ignoring the psychopath’s behaviour and projecting their own values upon him. Continue reading →

There is a campaign right now in my province of BC to ensure that the new Harmonised Sales Tax (HST) does not apply to bicycles. The HST is replacing the federal and provincial sales taxes, and bicycles, apparently, are currently exempt from Provincial Sales Tax (PST) but will not be under the HST. One of the two major parties in BC is running a campaign to gain an exemption for bicycles from the HST.

And this, it seems to me, is at the heart of the NDP’s loss of moral authority. The federal NDP party is no better, having not long ago campaigned hard against bank fees. Both the federal and provincial NDP parties claim to ‘get’ the danger of climate change, and frequently complain bitterly that the Green Party is taking voters from them.

But…they clearly don’t ‘get’ it.

I understand that we want to encourage more people to ride bikes. It’s good for their health, it reduces traffic congestion, and it cuts greenhouse gas emissions. And of course nobody except banks likes bank fees.

But rather than fighting for a special exemption of a few percent for bicycles, why not fight against the subsidies to fossil-fueled vehicles? If you’re serious about climate change, if you’re serious about improving health through reducing pollution, and if you don’t think we should be subsidising fossil industries, you should be working for streetcars, and building codes for shopping malls that allow electric buses to drop passengers inside the mall, instead of across the parking lot, and pedestrian and bike-friendly neighbourhoods.

If the HST adds a few percent to the cost of a bike – that should be no big deal for most people. And bike riders use roads, too, do they not? Are those not paid for with taxes?

If you’re concerned about social justice, then you should be fighting to ensure that bicycles are not such a major expense that paying a few percent more discourages it. Continue reading →