Author: Greg

DTK: McGuinty Just Wanted to Help the Police

In response to the Ombudsman’s report that the use of a wartime act to police the G20 protests in Toronto was probably illegal and unconstitutional, our Premier had the following to say:

“We moved pretty quickly on this thing in order to help our police at the earliest possible opportunity,” he said. “We did not take the appropriate steps to communicate this to the public.”

No, Mr. McGuinty. You’ve got it all wrong.

The problem isn’t that you “didn’t take the appropriate steps to communicate …”. The problem is that you didn’t take the appropriate steps at all.

Your job, in case you’ve forgotten, isn’t to facilitate the police. Your job isn’t to protect the people with riot gear, batons, guns and tasers.

Your job is to protect the freedom of the people. You were supposed to protect our rights. It wasn’t that you communicated your unconstitutional law in a poor manner. It’s that you invoked an unconstitutional law and interrupted the freedom of the people to speak their minds.

That’s the unforgivable crime here.

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DTK: Diplomacy and Secrecy

I watched a CBC interview, linked from Greenwald‘s salon blog. About half way through that video, a former Canadian diplomat comes on for a interview in which he derides the latest Wikileak as bad for diplomacy. His argument, boiled down, is this: 1. The Indonesian gov’t was carrying out horrible

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DTK: Diplomacy and Secrecy

I watched a CBC interview, linked from Greenwald‘s salon blog.

About half way through that video, a former Canadian diplomat comes on for a interview in which he derides the latest Wikileak as bad for diplomacy. His argument, boiled down, is this:

1. The Indonesian gov’t was carrying out horrible human rights abuses against the East Timorese
2. The East Timorese told the Canadian diplomat
3. The Canadian diplomat told the Canadian gov’t
4. The Canadian gov’t could use this information in negotiations with the torturing, human rights abusing Indonesian gov’t.

His argument is basically that, should this path of the information (tortured -> diplomat -> gov’t) be broken by a lack of secrecy, it would fall apart. Victims would no longer feel safe to complain. Diplomats like himself would be too scared to report.

Seems reasonable, doesn’t it?

Except it’s bullshit.

His argument boils down to the idea that I should trust Stephen Harper, Jean Chretien or Paul Martin – under cloak of secrecy – to solve human rights problems the world over.

Really? That’s your best argument? That political leaders will do the right thing if we just cover our eyes and ignore them?

I have very little patience for that level of willful stupidity, especially as it comes from someone who ought to know better.

The best thing, Mr. Diplomat, is transparency. You know what stops wars? Seeing little girls burnt by napalm. Seeing helicopters pilots shooting up vans full of Iraqi children. Seeing East Timorese slaughtered and executed by the tens of thousands (which, you’ll note was not prevented by our diplomatic cables).

Would I prefer to trust the Internet or the government?

I think you know the answer.

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DTK: Diplomacy and Secrecy

I watched a CBC interview, linked from Greenwald‘s salon blog. About half way through that video, a former Canadian diplomat comes on for a interview in which he derides the latest Wikileak as bad for diplomacy. His argument, boiled down, is this: 1. The Indonesian gov’t was carrying out horrible

Continue reading

DTK: Arguing About Hate Crime

Once it had been explained to me, I found it pretty simple. When you single out a group of people as a target for hatred and violence, you assault a whole community (where “assault”, legally speaking, includes “threatening”). So we made a law to make it clear that inciting hatred

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DTK: Arguing About Hate Crime

Once it had been explained to me, I found it pretty simple.When you single out a group of people as a target for hatred and violence, you assault a whole community (where “assault”, legally speaking, includes “threatening”). So we made a law to make i…

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DTK: Arguing About Hate Crime

Once it had been explained to me, I found it pretty simple. When you single out a group of people as a target for hatred and violence, you assault a whole community (where “assault”, legally speaking, includes “threatening”). So we made a law to make it clear that inciting hatred

Continue reading

DTK: Officer Bubbles vs. YouTube

Constable Adam Josephs: Officer “Bubbles”. Among all the evil that happened during the G20 protests and the ridiculous police crackdown – among all the illegal arrests, harassment, beatings and everything else – the thing we will most remember will be Constable Adam Josephs threatening to arrest a girl for blowing

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DTK: Officer Bubbles vs. YouTube

Constable Adam Josephs: Officer “Bubbles”. Among all the evil that happened during the G20 protests and the ridiculous police crackdown – among all the illegal arrests, harassment, beatings and everything else – the thing we will most remember will be Constable Adam Josephs threatening to arrest a girl for blowing

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DTK: Cannon fodder

Quite an uproar over the “cannon fodder” video.

It involves a fictional mother of a Canadian soldier lamenting that she might not have had children if she had known that they would be used as cannon fodder.

Lots of anger over that, including one nonfictional mother of a slain soldier who said, “Because they died in combat, [these women] have the nerve to describe them as cannon fodder.”

Nerve?

Yes, I suppose it takes nerve to break the veneer of patriotism that tells people that their children died a great and wonderful cause when in reality they’re dying for no particularly good reason.

But if it’s true that the war is pointless and wrong, and no one says anything, more children are going to die.

Seriously. If you want to convince the rest of us that you’re right. If you want to convince us that the war in Afghanistan is worthwhile and winnable, then show us how you’re going to win. Show us how you’re already winning. Show us what you could possible hope to accomplish.

I see a lot of nothing. I see the schools we built being used for storing and shipping marijuana. I see our money ending up in villas in Dubai. I see the government we set up mistreating its women as badly as their enemies did.

That’s not worth dying for.

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