McGuinty’s MMA Flip-flop a Way of Securing Pan Am Stadium for Hamilton?

I’m asking, not telling, but here are the dots.  You can connect them yourself.  

The Pan Am Games is an international sporting event.  The location for such events is chosen years in advance, in a contest.  Entering the contest happens as follows.  A number of good ole boys get together, smoke some cigars (literally), and dream up a scheme in which they will fill their city with new stadiums, track and field facilities, pools…and fresh new transportation infrastructure, like new roads and mass transit.  They are a mixed lot: politicians or former politicians who want to be praised and remembered for what they brought to their city, hotel owners and, of course, construction companies.  They call themselves a “bid committee”. 

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Shedding Light on Day: “Unreported Crimes” Code for “Cannabis Offences”

There is a perfectly logical – if disgraceful – reason why Canadian Treasury President Stockwell Day (a Conservative MP) yesterday cited “unreported crimes” as the reason for spending $9B on the building of more prisons.  I submit that, with the phrase “unreported crimes”, Day is implicitly referring to cannabis offenses and other consensual drug-related offenses for which minimum prison sentences will be imposed if Bill S-10 becomes law.  The Conservative government’s announcement today that it has expanded the range of things constituting “serious crimes” provides additional evidence to that effect. Read more

Bullshit, and the Ironic Invalidity of the Census Debate

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” – Professor Harry G. Frankfurt, “On Bullshit”, pp. 55-56.

The ironic truth is that a debate focusing largely upon the validity of census data is comprised of so much bullshit as to make the debate itself invalid. Witnesses and Parliamentary Members at committee hearings, columnists, and even those who write letters to the editors of our vestigial newspapers have decided that the this issue – more than most others – demands that all concern over truth and falsehood must be abandoned if the debate is to be resolved favourably.  The debate has turned even serially honest thinkers, writers and speakers into at least second-class bullshitters for the purposes of either backing or opposing the Conservative government’s decision to make completion of the long form census voluntary; to repeal laws that impose penalties of fine or imprisonment for failing or refusing to fill out the long form census and remit it to government. Read more

Optional Long Form Census a Blow to Racism

Canada’s Conservative government has announced that completion of Canada’s “long form” census will cease to be mandatory in 2011. Shrieks of condemnation can now be heard from a wide range of interests. None of them are justified. To the contrary, this is one step the Harper government has announced in recent history that is actually praiseworthy. Read more

Free Speech, Policing, and Falsified Assault as a Pretext for Arrest

The video speaks for itself.

Within one minute after the peaceful arrival of two Canadians at the Niagara Falls constituency office of Canada’s Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson, a police officer arrives on motorcycle. He says he has been called to the scene. He asks that the video camera recording him be turned off. When the camera person refuses to do so, the officer – shockingly – asserts that the camera filming him is “interpreted as a weapon”. Read more

Harper is not Harper: the libertarian Conservative delusion

Libertarian Conservative writer Gerry Nicholls wrote a blog post on the National Post’s “Full Comment” blog the other day in which he did his best to argue that A is not A. His subject was a book by Marci MacDonald titled “The Armageddon Factor”, in which she writes of the influence that evangelical Christians have over Canada’s Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and over matters of policy in Canada. The thrust of his argument is that the book will not succeed in turning people away from supporting the Harper Conservatives, but that it may actually drive social (read religious) Conservatives into the Harper Conservative camp. I see at least three problems with this theory. Read more

Cornies, Coren, and the Conservatives: all Sun, no light

Last Monday, (May 10, 2010), Canada’s Conservative Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson, decided to surrender Canadian activist and publisher Marc Emery for extradition to the USA. Emery faces no charges in Canada, but is wanted by the USA for having sold cannabis seeds to Americans via Canada Post. The decision has led to anti-Conservative outrage and protests across the country, and major newspapers have covered the developments. Perhaps most noteworthy, Canada’s national Globe and Mail newspaper reported Thursday that a group opposing the Conservatives’ decision to extradite Emery occupied the riding office of Conservative MP James Moore, where a Canadian licensed to use marijuana for medical reasons lawfully rolled joints on Moore’s desk, in protest. The Globe and Mail newspaper even posted a video of the event to its website. Read more

Conservatives’ Emery Extradition Shocks the Conscience of the Nation

Canada’s Justice Minister, Conservative MP Rob Nicholson (member for the riding of Niagara Falls) today decided to surrender Canadian citizen Marc Emery for extradition to the United States. Arrested on Canadian soil in 2005, and on bail since then, Emery is wanted by America for having sold cannabis seeds to Americans and others around the world via Canada post between 1998 and 2005.

Although selling cannabis seeds is technically illegal in Canada, Canadian authorities have rarely ever charged any of the numerous seed sellers doing business in Canada, in broad daylight. And the few that have been charged – including Emery – have received only small fines (in the $200 range) or community service as a sentence. Nicholson’s surrender of Emery was unconditional, and – though he was authorized by Canada’s Extradition Act to seek assurances that Emery would not be prosecuted except for the less serious offenses to which he has already agreed to plead guilty – Nicholson shockingly chose not to do so. Read more

Harper Government Faces Sovereignty Test Monday

Canada’s federal Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson, has until 4:00 PM on Monday, May 10, 2010, to decide whether or not to grant an American request that Canadian individual freedom activist and publisher Marc Emery be extradited to the USA. Emery has been on bail since November of 2009, while awaiting a decision by the Justice Minister. Because Nicholson still has made no decision, Emery will attend court again tomorrow at 9:00 AM will request an extension of his bail unless Nicholson has made a decision by 4:00 PM. The Justice Minister’s lawyers may also attend court tomorrow to request an extension of the time he is permitted (by Canada’s Extradition Act) to make the decision. If extradited, Emery faces 5 years hard time in a US federal prison, a sentence that – by Canadian standards – would be a cruel and unusual punishment. Read more

Harper Answers Prohibition Question on YouTube

Thousands of YouTube.com viewers posted their questions, and voted upon them, in anticipation of watching Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, answer them last night on the popular video sharing site. But the popularity of one question far exceeded the rest. Here’s the question:

A majority of Canadians, when polled, say they believe alcohol should be illegal, just like marijuana. Why don’t you start a war on alcohol and focus on non-violent criminals?

Here is Harper’s answer: Read more

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