From the Telegram a former chief of staff in the Premier’s Office puts it as eloquently as only he could: If public discussion, questions and debate on any issue should be dropped because “the people who have the political and corporate power to make it happen want it to happen,”
Continue readingTag: free speech
When the right whines about ‘free speech’, what do they want to say they can’t say now?
Conservatives on both sides of the border love to wail about how their right of ‘free speech’ is being curtailed. Yet it’s not clear to me at least what they are talking about. What is it that they want to say they can’t say now? Reading Conservative blogs one can
Continue reading350 or bust: Mining Industry Caught On Tape Plotting To Corrupt Media
* This week Australian mining billionaire Gina Rinehart became the largest shareholder in Fairfax Media, having already bought a stake in Channel Ten. But this new video reveals this move is bigger than one woman’s ambition — it’s part of a coordinated and very deliberate strategy, with anti-science climate idiot
Continue readingRogers Communications wants to change Ontario law so it can continue ‘misleading advertising’ in peace
I love when the right and big corporations use the ‘free speech’ (or in this case, ‘freedom of expression’) argument from everything to excusing defamation and libel to putting out false claims about products. The legal battle with Rogers began in November 2010, when the bureau went to court to
Continue readingImpolitical: Let’s not be arresting bloggers in Canada
There’s a case going on in Fredericton, New Brunswick that deserves some attention: “Fredericton blogger's arrest attack on civil liberties.” This blogger, Charles LeBlanc, who blogs here, was arrested last week on charges of criminal libel. His computer was seized in the course of a search warrant execution. Here’s a
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: Mitt The Ripper
The unaffiliated (definitely not co-ordinating with Stephen Colbert) SuperPAC “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow” has just released the following advertisement, which logically proposes that if “corporations are people” then Mitt Romney should be regarded as a serial killer… The way Colbert has methodically gone about illustrating on his show
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Fixing Vision Vancouver’s Democratic Deficit
Now that Vision Vancouver has self-actualized as a political party, it’s time to see if they’ll now address some longstanding democratic deficits. The complexion of the city changed markedly last night as Vision elected all its candidates, the Greens got a seat on council, the NPA increased its representation and
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: Robert Reich @ UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley Professor (and former US Labor Secretary) Robert Reich delivering the Mario Savio memorial lecture last night.
Continue readingTerahertz: Freedom of linkage and hatred
It seems like liberals (of the traditional variety) have reason to celebrate Canada’s current Supreme Court bench. First, the Court ruled unanimously that Insite, Vancouver’s Safe Injection Site, could not be shut down as the evidence clearly demonstrated that the facility was saving lives. Now, the Court has also ruled unanimously that a mere hyperlink […]
Continue readingTerahertz: The end of “parental rights” in Alberta?
More good news out of Alberta, premier-elect Alison Redford is hinting that she may reverse the most controversial bits of Bill 44. The bill was an overdue amendment to Alberta’s Human Rights Act, which added sexual orientation to the list of protections. However, sensing there might be a social conservative revolt to the idea that […]
Continue readingA Tale of Two Georges
I shouldn’t have to say it, but for the benefit of the cerebrally-deprived I will anyway: I am not a fan of George W Bush — far from it. But this is ridiculous: Next week’s appearance by former U.S. president George W. Bush at an event hosted by a local evangelical Christian university has been […]
bastard.logic: Why I’m Not Jumping On Board The Google+ Bandwagon
by matttbastard Jillian C. York on why the current corporate backlash against online pseudonymity is misguided: There are myriad reasons why an individual may feel safer identifying under a name other than their birth name. Teenagers who identify as members … Continue reading →
Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.
– Just as in this year’s federal election, the NDP will need to look to move voting intentions once the campaign is underway. But also just like in the federal election, there’s reason to like the party’s cha…
Continue readingThe Happy Wanderer: Political Rights
My condolences to the families of the 92 people killed in the Norway attacks. It is a horrible thing to kill children and terrible to kill fellow human beings in the first place.
News has come out that the killer belonged to party promoting intoleranc…
Continue readingTerahertz: “Not an inch of space”
Never mind that Europe is supposed to be all metric all the time, here’s a quote relating to yesterday’s tragedy: "That the perpetrator apparently comes from the far-right scene shows once again how dangerous racist and anti-foreigner ideologies are," Germany’s opposition Greens said in a statement. "We must not allow them an inch of space […]
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the need for Canadian workers to follow Kai Nagata’s example in valuing and insisting on the right to express their opinions.For further reading…- Sandra Thomas’ rebuttal to Nagata serves mostly to highlight why most workers can’t afford to …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading.- Kai Nagata’s post on why he quit his job as a reporter is well worth a read in full. But let’s particularly note his observations which may apply just as much to many other jobs as to positions in the media (eve…
Continue readingReloaded: This Is How The End Of Democracy Is Hastened
First, the mainstream/corporate media largely abdicates its raison d’être, i.e. reporting facts, the truth and keeping checks on the Powers-That-Be.
Second, corporations collude with politicians not only to make policy, but to facilitate increased su…
Continue readingRight of Center Ice: Wikileaks: It’s not free speech
Part 1: An issue of semantics? Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but I don’t necessarily view the Wikileaks drama as being an exercise of acting on a person’s right to free speech. My question: how is it a person’s right to be able to view a confidential document, pass judgment on
Continue readingDTK: 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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