Remember kids....

...when there is the possibility that Google might accidentally put someone's picture on the internet, its a horrendous crime and violation of privacy that warrants CPC MP Pierre Poilievre's careful attention and action on behalf of a constituent*.

But when its the same government which Poilievre's party forms and he is a junior Minister in decides to give the police the power to spy on its own citizens without warrant and without probable cause, well that's just fine.

Or to randomly pull-over and search people, under the guise of "road-side breath tests".

'Cuz that's different, right?

The Conservative Party of Canada - police state fascists who seem to like ignoring the Charter and the law.

*Irony Alert!

Good ole Pierre, so worried about his constituent's privacy that he would berate the head of Google in a committee decides to call the constituent by name and have it published in a national newspaper. So what might have been an otherwise been an anonymous picture, now has a name and location attached to it.

Now who violated Mr. White's privacy more, the Google Truck or the smarmy Pierre Poilievre, looking again for cheap attention?

Way to go Pierre.

Of course this is provided this fantastical story is, in fact, true and that Mr. white isn't a member of the Nepean-Carleton Conservative Riding Association....

Barack Obama - Liar and Fraud

I always knew I would strongly disagree with Obama on economics. He is, after all, a Keynesian spender and will, like Bush before him, lead the US down to economic collapse with his nonsense ideas about "stimulus packages" and his warmed over socialism with his nonsense "bailout" plans for big auto and big banks, corporate welfare queens who should have gone out of business long ago.

At least he would stop the wars and pull the US back from despotism and restore rule of law and respect for human and US constitutional rights, right?

Nope.

Obama has decided not to release the torture photos and to continue the cover-up of the crimes of the last administration.

He is keeping US troops in Iraq until 2011, instead of the 6-9 months he stated during the campaign.

He is increasing the presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and best estimates think they will be there for at least 10 more years.

He is refusing to prosecute the war criminals in the last administration, from the actually torturers all the way up to Cheney and Bush. They all get a pass.

He has decided to continue with the Military Tribunals in Gitmo - kangaroo courts that violate nearly every rule of justice and evidence that the West and the Common law has evolved since 1215.

What has Obama delivered but more and bigger deficits than Bush and has either covered up or continued Bush's crimes around the world.

You can call that a lot of things, but it ain't even close to being "Change".

Right now, the only difference between Bush and Obama is that the latter is smarter and able to fool a lot more people while doing exactly what the former did.

Barack Obama - Bush lite.

The Man Who Would be Mullah Omar...

...is dead.

I am reluctant to celebrate the death of another human. After all, the man did have a family who loved him and whom he loved. In those circles, he will be missed as any of us would miss our father or brother or uncle. But the world is a much better place now that this man no longer walks the earth, but is buried in it.

Jerry Falwell's legacy is one of hatred, bigotry and devotion to authoritarianism of the highest order. He taught not that we should love our nieghbours as ourselves, but that those not like us are evil and should be persecuted. He excused the murder of 2800 people as "God's will", punishment for "secularization" and the fault of his favourite whipping boys - gays, feminists and 'liberals'. His attitude toward individual freedom was utter derision - believe as he want you to believe or you are evil.

It is no accident that Falwell, along with Jim and Tammy-Faye Bakker and Pat Robertson inspired the theocracy of Gilead in Margaret Attwood in "The Handmaid's Tale". He would have happily transformed the US into a repressive, authoritarian Christian theorcracy similar to Iran or Afghanistan under the Taliban is given the chance.

Ironically, perhaps, is that Falwell's greatest legacy was to forever damage and smear Christianity, both in North America and around the world. Christianity is now seen by most non-believers as a religion bent on world domination, willing to force itself on people through coercion, extortion and outright violence. Christianity is seen as an enemy of liberty, a supporter of the authoritarian ancien regime. Because of Falwell and his bile filled pronouncements wrapped in "Christianity", the religion is no longer associated with the good works of Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, Bishop Romero or even the actual words and teachings of Jesus himself. In otherwords, he has managed to do what no atheist could ever do in a thousand years of trying- give Christianity abnd Christians a bad name.

Do not take the above as a blanket attack on Christianity or religion in general. I am an atheist, but I know and appreciate that when the supreme being myth and other fairy-tale nonsense is removed, most religions have the same message: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Help those less fortunate. Live and let live".

Falwell was more interested in forcing conformity with his narrow views than following the prinicples and teachings of his own religion. Indeed, religion was merely a vehicle for his authoritarian, fascist fantasies, rather than a way to make the world a better place.

Everyone, Christians especially, should be glad this man is no longer among us. He was indeed a "false prophet".

I don't believe in heavan and hell. Falwell is just worm food now. But if I'm wrong, I suspect that Falwell found himself in the neighbourhood of Gehena rather than Paradise this morning. And such a fate for him would be well deserved.

Good bye, Jerry Falwell, may those like you follow you soon to the gates of hell. Good riddance.

They Hate Us for Our Freedom

In a rare, but not unprecedented, unanimous 9-0 judgment earlier today, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the security certificate sections of Canada's anti-terrorism laws. The Court said that these certificates violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Every judge, man or woman, left or right, Liberal appointed or Conservative appointed, agreed.

Not surprisingly, the Court has essentially ruled that it is unconstitutional for the state to hold a person indefinitely, without charge or trial or being able to see the evidence against them. For those of us that value freedom and liberty, this is absolutely obvious. Those kinds of powers are usually exercised by totalitarian, fascist and dictatorial states like Cuba, the former Soviet Union, South Africa under apartheid, Saddam's Iraq and Pinochet's Chile to name but a few. Canada is not, nor should not be in this league.

The Court, in essence, has balanced the real danger of terrorism versus cost to our civil liberties of these draconian measures and civil liberties rightly won.

Let's put the "problem" into perspective:

In 2004, according to the US State Department, approximately 2000 people were killed world wide from acts of terrorism. In the past 20 years, about 5000 Western civillians have died "due to jihadist and Arab insurgent violence", including Lockerie, Bali, Madrid, London and 9-11.

Canada hasn't had a terrorist attack since 1985, when Air India was bombed. Last year, the "Toronto 17" were apprehended while possibly planning an attack (though the real threat may have been exaggerated and the 17 may have been coaxed into action by the government's own mole) without resorting to extraordinary police powers or judicial measures.

According to Michael Rothschild, a former business professor at the University of Wisconsin, your odds of being killed in a plausible terrorist attack in your lifetime are 1 in 1282:

Even if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity, that would mean your one-year risk would be one in 100,000 and your lifetime risk would be about one in 1300. (300,000,000 ÷ 3,000 = 100,000 ÷ 78 years = 1282) In other words, your risk of dying in a plausible terrorist attack is much lower than your risk of dying in a car accident, by walking across the street, by drowning, in a fire, by falling, or by being murdered.

Further, prescription drugs are 16,400% more dangerous than terrorism.

So in response to this minuscule danger, the government decided to allow the state to arbitrarily detain people without charge or trial indefinitely while not allowing them to see or challenge the evidence against them. Today the Supreme Court said "Not so much."

Now given this logic and the clearly totalitarian nature of the law, one would expect that most people who value freedom and liberty would be overjoyed at this development. Sadly, this isn't so. As Canadian Cynic points out, some are quite devastated by this:

• Socialist Gulag: "For the second time in a week the Liberal elites in this country provided aid & comfort to those who wish us harm all in the interest of maintaining slavish devotion to that damn charter."


• Civitatensis: "Friends of Osama?"


• Canadian Blue Lemons: "Who will rid us of these pestilent priests and protectors of the enemies of our society?"


• Dr. Roy: " Canadians are less safe today thanks to the fiberals and the fiberal supreme court."


• mesopotamia west: "Court in Bed with Terrorism."

There are others. I am amazed that people still think that security certificates and indeed the other sections of the anti-terrorism act are necessary considering the (lack of) magnitude of the problem.

Are these people really so scared by the remote possibility of dying in a terrorist attack that they would gladly give the state - hell anybody - the power to throw them in a tiny prison, essentially forever?

Are they truly that cowardly?

I almost wish they were. I believe with these people it is something deeper and more sinister. As the Vanity Press discussed yesterday, I think it occurs because these people are projecting their own hatred of our freedoms outwards. They want to do exactly what they say the jihadis what to do - take away our liberty and impose their moral view on everyone, to use the full force of the state to make society in their narrow image of reality. How else can one explain people that on one hand, do not want the government to have the power to force someone to do their job when it comes to marrying gay couples, but are more than happy to grant that same state the power to detain and imprison people indefinitely without charge or trial, on the other hand? They agree with what they say the jihadis believe - that we are corrupt, morally bankrupt, promiscuous and on the verge of collapse. They propagate these things despite all evidence to the contrary, as demonstrated here and at the Vanity Press.

Read just some of those posts above. They see enemies everywhere, in society, in different religions and even in other political parties. They want the power the state wields over all of us, in order to be able to change us to their liking, by force if needed. They abhor the idea that people can be different from them, live different from them and even think they are wrong. The Supreme Court saying 'no' to that power is what angers them, not the thought that the terrorists are under every bed. They abhor us being free, acting as we like. Each one of them want to be rid of the Charter in order to force upon us some fix for some perceived moral outrage in society - abortion, gay marriage, women's rights, non-white immigration or the lack of Christianity in our institutions as examples.

My liberty, freedom and way of life is not threatened by religious zealots on the other side of the world, who may hate us because of bad Western foreign policy decisions over the last 50 years, it is threatened by these people. They are here, right now fighting hard to get the power of the state to do to us exactly what they claim to fear from the terrorists. They are a far greater threat than terrorists will ever be. They are the terrorists best friends.

They hate us for our freedom.