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That the Parti Quebecois are filled with political intellectual deadbeats needs no explanation. However, lately their talk has increasingly become bold in its anti-democratic tone.It's easy to shrug them off but if we claim to be a vigilant, vibrant democratic and pluralistic society it is the PQ, Mr. Pierre Curzi, that needs to evolve. And trust me, I will fight you tooth and nail if you come remotely close to trampling on my civil liberties.The PQ and its flunkies will never achieve their dream (nightmare to moderates) through democratic means. It's not surprising they will try and test attacking civil liberties. And in a province that is socialist in its make up and with a tenuous democratic philosophy, this would be fairly easy to achieve I would suspect. Even the rhetoric is...

I will be posting a detailed documentation of how the corporate news media have distorted or attempted to minimize this story in the next day or so. But as I was looking over one of the many videos on Youtube of the incident where police tasered an unarmed, peaceful student for asking a question, I couldn’t believe what I saw for just a fraction of a second. I have a simple question for all you right-wingers out there who want to belittle, downplay, obfuscate or otherwise mis-characterize this incident: If the police weren’t acting out of line, then why was this police officer smiling just after he had sent 50,000 volts running through this kid’s body after the kid begged him repeatedly not to? “Freedom is the freedom to simply say that two plus two make four. If...

I just came back from a talk given by a fairly standard, run-of-the-mill civil servant who’s specialization is the new, over-hyped field of ‘conflict management’.  In the two hours I spend there, I think I must have heard the word ’peace’ used so much that it lost all meaning.  This got me thinking about how obsessed liberals are with ‘peace’ as some sort of idealized pancea that ought to be sought above all else. Surely, if we think about it critically, we can realize that, while nobody obviously wants conflict, peace, in and of itself is not necessarily a good thing if it serves to merely solidify other exisiting horrific social conditions. For instance, one could easily take this current liberal obsession with ‘peace’ and do...

It was easy to miss, but here are three examples of Big Brother tactics at the SPP protests this week in Quebec.  One of which is your standard George W. Bush doublethink, the second of which gives some interesting circumstantial evidence of government conspiracy to crack down on protesters (and has become an internet sensation), and the third of which proves the culpability of the government and police but which hasn’t been reported anywhere that I am aware of. #1. As many of you know, the leaders of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico (”The Three Amigos”)  met yesterday and the day before to negotiate a backroom, undemocratic deal to harmonize regulations at the behest of North America’s CEOs. This summit took place, behind closed doors and meetings were carefully...

When Tony Blair says things like that, it becomes really clear that he is one of the greatest politicians in my lifetime, if not the greatest:TONY Blair has hit out at judges and opposition MPs for putting the human rights of terrorist suspects above the protection of law-abiding citizens. He spoke out as the British government prepares to set out fresh proposals for anti-terrorist legislation after three men on control orders went on the run. Strengthening police powers to stop passers-by is being considered as part of a fresh raft of counter-terrorist measures to be announced before Home Secretary John Reid steps down on June 27 alongside Mr Blair. The outgoing prime minister insisted their disappearance was not the fault of the Home Office or the security services, making clear he...

I recently came across Sam Carson fantastic posts (available here) on the 2007 Amnesty International Report (available here).  If you haven’t taken a look, it’s well worth the read. In his post (actually it’s a series of posts) Sam draws attention to the sad cricism of Amnesty International by right-wing figures and organizations such as Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the U.S.-based Capital Research Center. I’ve always found Dershowitz et al’s claims that Amnesty International is biassed to be disingenuous at best and I think Sam’s done a great job bringing this issue to the fore. Specifically, the intellectually dishonest position of Dershowitz et al needs to have a better airing amongst true progressives so that the absurdity...

There are the beginnings of a growing grassroots movement underway in the blogosphere which I felt was necessary to add my voice to. The nature of the growing controversy stems from a pro-life rally which was held in Ottawa this past week.  It’s not the ideological content of the march which stirred the controversy since it was pretty much what one would expect from this sort of rally:  anti-choice, super-philosophies seeking to authoritaritatively impose their morality on everyone else. No, what was unexpected about this rally, however, was that the trademarked Government of Canada logo (so-called “wordmark” with the Canadian flag over the final “a” in the word “Canada”) would show up on the pro-life rally’s banners. Take a look for...

This is an absolutely fantastic quote and a great quote for any progressive person who wants to throw something back at liberals when they turn their noses up at us. “When capital and the ruling classes apologise for: Colonialism, the 14 hour day, class privilege, the 7 day working week, children in coalmines, the opium wars, the massacre of the Paris Commune, slavery, the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, starvation, apartheid, anti-union laws, the First World War, Flanders, trench warfare, mustard gas, aerial bombing, the Soviet Intervention, the Armenian Genocide, chemical weapons, fascism, the Great Depression, hunger marches, Nazism, the Spanish Civil War, militarism, Asbestosis, radiation death, the Massacre of Nanking, the Second World War, Belsen, Dresden, Hiroshima,...

Succumbing to partisanship, members of Parliament struck down the Anti-Terrorism Act which comprises of Bill C-36 and C-42 legislated by the Liberals in 2001.Canada as a whole is a moderate society. If we were an ice-cream colour we'd be vanilla. Nonetheless, it's a model democracy of sorts in some cases. That 's also a function of the reality that we're a middle power and do not face the same major security issues of countries like Great Britain, United States, Italy, Spain, France and others. So we can afford to act silly at times. Australia is moving to have an indepentent reviewer for security issues while we have politicians cut such important issues as though they are mere pieces of paper used in a lame game of political machoism. It's like a scene right out of West Side Story....