Ontario Provincial Police racially profiles & arrests 8 people in Caledonia, Ontario

December 4, 2011 — xanthippa

It is difficult to believe that this is still going on…

Canada in general, Ontario in particular, have recently been absorbed in the Attawapiscat scandal:  millions of dollars have gone to support an aboriginal community of a few thousand people, yet the living conditions for ‘regular’ band members there are so deplorable and despicable, words fail me.  This is a very difficult situation to deal with:  the current rules/regulation/philosophy imprisons our native populations in far northern ghettos in the name of ‘protecting them’…yes, the language of ‘tyranny of the nice’ – oppressing people while all the time pretending that one is doing it in their name.

Here is some excellent commentary on this topic  (including an interview with the brilliant and Honourable Patrick Brazeau).  (Aside and completely unrelated:  senator Brazeau comes from the Kitigan Zibi community which twins Maniwaki.  This region is in one of the most beautiful corners of the world – one I have visited annually for about two decades and which has completely enchanted me, my spouse and our children.  It would be difficult to convince me that there could possibly be a more beautiful area in all the world!)

Yet, when I was in a fast-food restaurant in Maniwaki only 3-4 years ago,  I personally witnessed  the residents from Kitigan Zibi be refused service on the grounds that the person taking their order did not understand English and thus could not serve them.  Standing directly behind them in the line, I (being the nagging person that I am) decided to, on this occasion, use English only to order and I feigned inability to speak or comprehend French:  yet I was served without any difficulty!  Incensed – yet afraid to make a scene (it was not my neighbourhood to rock the proverbial boat in), after I was served, I went and caught up with the people who were refused service because they spoke English and were native – I offered to place the order for them, but, they declined.  I can understand their position…

So, yes – I can honestly say that I have experienced (as a witness) discrimination against Canadians, simply because they were Native Canadians.  And, yes – I was deeply disturbed by it.  And, yes – I DID all I thought was in my power to defeat it without adding animosity to the community in which it occurred.  This discrimination is not ‘theoretical’ – and it is something that I condemn, with every fibre of my being!!!

It is my deepest held principle that all humans must be treated as equals in the eyes of the law:  this focus on the individual is the only way we can prevent the erosion of innate civil liberties that ‘group-politics’ of the totalitarian/collectivist Cultural Marxism is fighting to defeat.

This is why I am just as upset that people were discriminated against for NOT being ‘natives’ as I am that people were discriminated FOR being ‘natives’!!!

Yet, this is exactly what has happened in Caledonia…

Read the latest shameful details here.

As long as people are discriminated against on the basis of race – whether ‘in’ or ‘out’ is irrelevant – we can never have equality of citizens before the law!

And that is shameful – however anyone may try to justify it!

Update:  more information with pictures and video about what had happened in Caledonia.

Posted in corruption, freedoms, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

BC Supreme Court rules against polygamy

November 24, 2011 — xanthippa

The Supreme Court of British Columbia has upheld the law which forbids polygamy.  This is an important ruling – and one which is bound to end up before the Supreme Court of Canada.

It is also an issue I am deeply conflicted on:  just where does the line lie between individual choice and State interference lie?

This article by Lorne Gunther in the National Post captures much of my own thinking on the subject:

“On an intellectual level, polygamy amongst men and women who have reached the age of consent should be no one else’s business but the participants’.”

“The cold, hard fact is that in the real world, non child-abusing polygamists are pretty much non-existent. Non-wife-abusing polygamists are rare, too.”

While I might disagree with some minor points Mr. Gunther makes, these are tangential to the subject of his article, the body of which reflects my own opinions quite accurately.

Let’s hope that now that we have confirmation of the validity of anti-polygamy laws, these laws will be applied to all members of our society equally!

 

Posted in freedoms, society. Tags: , , , . 7 Comments »

City of Toronto ‘multifaith’ prayer room

November 21, 2011 — xanthippa

BlazingCatFur got a tip:

‘The cab driver was mortified to see that prayer room, it is in no way shape or form inclusive or respectful of others, in fact it’s downright threatening to those who suffered at the hands of Muslims in their countries of origin.’

Living up to the challenge and went to investigate:

Head over to his site and check it out.

Of course, I maintain that prayer – under all circumstances – is demonstrably immoral and offensive and that not a penny of any taxpayer money must be permitted to go to anything even remotely related to religion(s).  No publicly funded prayer rooms, no publicly funded preachers and no praying in public.  That would avoid this all mess!

In somewhat related news, here is some advice from Mark Vandermaas over at VoiceOfCanada:

‘Our Western countries have become divided states, one part for the radicals and one for the majority of citizenry — and, by virtue of our free and fair society, they are both afforded the same rights.’

And, I know this is a few days old, but:  check out women’s rights under Sharia! (And, yes, this is precisely why we must not have a law banning the burka:  the moment the state is given the right to legislate how we dress, we are giving up our right and ability to protest against this.)

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Feeling Dehydrated? Don’t say that drinking water may be beneficial – in the EU, you could go to jail for that…

November 20, 2011 — xanthippa

OK – the idiotcracy that is the EU has been my pet peeve for a long time now.

Having been born in what is now the EU, I ‘get an earful’ about how things went from ‘optimistically enthusiastic’ to ‘pre-WWI-Austrian-bureaucracy-induced-paralysis’ (my great-grand-father lived to almost 100 years of age and he used to tell us, kids, the stories – plus I read ‘The Castle’).

This, however, takes the cake!

According to the EU, after a ‘multi-year-study’ by 21 ‘scientists’, ‘there is no evidence that drinking water may prevent dehydration‘!?!?!

Whom the {insert expletive of choice} are they using as ‘scientists’?  The IPCC quacks?

Oh, and if you make a claim to the contrary, you just might face a 2-year jail term…

The EU has systematically stripped away the ability of citizens within the EU zone to affect the laws.  The EU bureaucrats have methodically and systematically replaced democratic processes and constitutional civil rights guarantees with bureaucrat-designed-and-implemented rules which, once drafted by the bureaucrats, even the elected members of the EU Parliament are unable to prevent from being enacted:  the best they can hope for is to delay the implementation for a few months!

This is yet another glimpse of the disconnect with reality among the ruling bureaucrats and the actual physical world.

Abolish the EU now, IF you still can!!!

And all of us living in North America:  we need to increase our vigilance against the NA zone (which would mirror the EU zone), which can be glimpsed in acts such as SOPA….

When reason and the scientific method are thrown out the window are thrown out the window in favour of some ideological ideals (be they religious or secular – it does not matter at this level), it signal the type of corruption which sounds the death-knoll for society and ushers in an era of oppression of individuals in the name of these ideological ideals.

It’s happened before.

It has started again.

Let’s not let it come to fruition!

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The Agile Panda: US Bill Creating the Great Firewall of America

November 19, 2011 — xanthippa

A few places have been picking up on the implications of the US SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) bill, but I think that The Agile Panda has a very good analysis of the situation with comparisons to how this is being done in China.

Michael Geist, of course, has an excellent post:  SOPA:  All Your Internets Belong to US

“To put this is context, every Canadian Internet provider relies on ARIN for its block of IP addresses. In fact, ARIN even allocates the block of IP addresses used by federal and provincial governments. The U.S. bill would treat them all as domestic for U.S. law purposes.”

Yes, SOPA would define ‘all’ Canadian IP addresses as being under US jurisdiction – and if you want to argue about it, just to get your foot into the door to register a complaint, you must acknowledge US has jurisdiction…no, I am not being circular, SOPA is.  And, as we have seen with other internet legislation, an accusation is sufficient to force your ISP to deny you service – as well as all online financial services would be cut off based on an accusation.

Lovely, is it not?

The Agitator points out that the US is trying to make it a federal crime to lie on the internet.

As I have said before – and doubtlessly will say again – we really really really need a diffused peer-to-peer internet alternative that will, by its very structure, be uncontrollable.

H/T:  Hacker News, Blog of Walker

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So many wrongs – and they don’t add up tp any ‘rights’

November 19, 2011 — xanthippa

I have little liking for the #occupy folks and have said so before.

But…

There is so much wrong in the police responses to the #occupy evictions that I don’t even know where to begin ranting.

Please, consider the following video:

 

First, a cop assaults a bunch of #occupiers (he uses unreasonable force against clearly non-violent people who offer no resistance, at least one of whom had to be taken to a hospital for treatment as a result of the assault), then the whole group of cops gets cowed and cowardly runs away when the mob advances on them!

The use of unreasonable force, especially against people who do not resist, is the second worst thing the cops here did.  The worst thing they did was to let themselves be run out by the mob.  A peaceful mob, but a mob none-the-less.

The lesson here?

If you are non-violent, police will assault you.  If you begin to – even just a tiny bit – look menacing, the cops will run away.

Just marvellous…

This sends a clear signal that the police are willing to neither obey nor uphold the rule of law.

Of course, we have seen this type of a response by police before:  peaceful citizens are bullied, beaten and arrested while violent law-breakers go unchallenged.  This is true from the Islamist rallies in the UK to Caledonia in Ontario and on and on.

All this type of police response will result in is that all protests will take on a violent streak, if only to protect themselves from police violence.  People will loose any vestige of trust they still have in the police,and, by extension, in the rule of law.

How can those calling the shots in the police responses not get it?

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xda-developers: The Rootkit of All Evil – CIQ

November 18, 2011 — xanthippa

Do you have a smart phone?

Then you might want to read this article at xda-developers about CIQ (CarrierIQ), which proclaims on their own website:

“…we give Wireless Carriers and Handset Manufacturers unprecedented insight into their customers’ mobile experience.”

 

‘Unprecedented’ is right!

It is understandable that any business would like to have a deep insight into their customers’ needs and desires in order to serve them better: satisfying customers is good for business.

However, customers also have a right to – and most have at least some expectation of – privacy.

The problem arises when customers are not even aware of the volume and detail of information about them that their mobile devices routinely report to their carriers: this lopsided information level makes any meaningful discussion about privacy vs data-mining virtually meaningless.

From the article:

“This [CIQ software] is given root like rights over the device, which means that it can do everything it pleases and you will have nothing to say about it.”

“…Because of all the metrics that could be obtained via the different triggers, that same network admin will not just know that you got a dropped call at 5 pm in California, but he/she will also know where in California you were located, what you were doing with your phone at that given time, how many times you accessed your apps until that time, and even what you have typed in your device (no, this last one is not an exaggeration, this thing can act as a key logger as well). Scared already? If not, here is a snippet of some…”

“…what kind of permissible purpose is out there that can allow a company to legally place a key logger on something and use it when you are not even getting service out of them?”

 

And, of course, we know no person or corporation would ever abuse any information they get access to!

Read the full article and weep.

H/T:  CodeSlinger

 

Posted in corruption, freedoms, opression, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Daniel Hannan: The lamps are going out all over Europe

November 18, 2011 — xanthippa
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Soon, we might be sitting around unvaccinated and in the dark

November 17, 2011 — xanthippa

Funny, how things work out when competing ‘special interests’ collide…

A few years back, the incandescent light bulb industry was on a verge of a revolution:  a new, more energy-efficient  version of the incandescent light bulb was developed and the people who manufacture them were about to re-tool in order to produce them.  Their plans got scuttled when, jurisdiction after jurisdiction, politicians announced that they would ban ‘the incandescent light-bulb’ because of its inefficiency…

Yes, the politicians were not letting the marketplace decide.

And yes, they were not willing to differentiate between the old-style, inefficient incandescent light bulbs and the new, high-efficiency incandescent light bulbs:  they announced they planned to ban them all!!!

The natural result of this was that the manufacturers did not invest their hard-earned money in order to change the production in their factories from the old fashioned incandescent light bulb to the high-efficiency one:  there simply would not have been enough time for them to earn back their investment in the short time before ALL incandescent light bulbs will have been banned…

In a very short time – as of 2012 – it will be illegal to sell incandescent light bulbs in Ontario….despite the fact that there is no viable alternative on the market.

Oh, there are alternatives – they are just not viable…

Alternative number one is the LED light bulb.  I have recently bought the best (way more expensive) LED ‘light bulb’ the market has to offer….and, frankly, it simply does not produce anywhere near the light levels an incandescent bulb does. Quite literally, it leaves one in semi-darkness..,

The other alternative, of course, is ‘the curly bulb’ – you know, the type David Suzuki posters have been promoting for years!

Yes, they do produce ‘light’.

But, they are not an acceptable choice, for a  number of reasons…

Some people find the light they produce is ‘harsh’ and ‘uncomfortable’.

Others find the light that comes from ‘curly bulbs’ triggers their migraines.

Scientists in the UK have conclusively demonstrated that it triggers people’s immune systems to attack healthy tissues – especially in immunocompromised individuals, like, say, people with lupus (SLE) and so on.

But, EVERYONE is affected by the ‘curly bulbs’ at the end of their life-cycle:  they contain mercury!!!

Enough mercury, in fact, that if one breaks, people are advised to treat the area in which it broke as a toxic hazard area…

Soon, this could come to an end:  there is a possibility that an international treaty would ban the use of mercury in light bulbs (as well as in vaccines) in the near future!

Where this would leave us, who live in areas where the incandescent light bulbs will have been banned, is anyone’s guess.

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OpenMedia.ca: You and half-a-million Canadians changed the internet

November 16, 2011 — xanthippa

Today, I received  this email from OpenMedia.ca:

This is what we’ve been waiting for. Together we’ve stopped Big Telecom’s plan to impose usage-based billing (Internet metering) on all Canadians. Big phone and cable companies tried to rig the market but they were caught red-handed.

A year ago the CRTC decided that big telecom giants could force their small competitors to adopt metered billing. This would have killed Big Telecom’s independent competitors, and it would have meant a more expensive and controlled Internet for all Canadians. It was this outrageous move that led OpenMedia.ca to launch the now half-a-million strong Stop The Meter petition that forced the CRTC to reconsider their plan.

Yesterday, finally, the CRTC pulled back from its mandatory metered billing decision. This decision won’t stop all big telecom metering, but it could provide a much needed unlimited, independent option for many Canadians. It is truly rare for people to outmaneuver Big Telecom lobbyists, but together, we did it. Thank you for playing a crucial part in safeguarding the affordable Internet.

We changed the foundation of Internet billing in Canada—that’s a game changer—but we’re concerned that uncompetitive pricing may be buried in the pages of the policy that the CRTC released yesterday. We’ll study the details of this decision closely in the coming days and, with your help, take whatever action is necessary to push for fair pricing.

What’s next?

We held the line on Internet affordability and prevented Big Telecom from taking complete control, but they still dominate about 94% of the Internet service market. This is why Canada is still falling behind the rest of the world on speed, pricing, and (as we all know) customer service.

Big Telecom makes record profits while Canadians are overcharged and disrespected. Those profits are then used to lobby for more control and price-gouging. Now more than ever we need to break this cycle.

The only thing Big Telecom companies understand is their bottom line, so let’s hit them where it hurts. Let’s get as many Canadians as possible to switch to an independent provider.

Here’s what you can do now:

Here’s the plan:

 Get the CRTC to allow indie ISPs to offer an unmetered Internet.

 A wave of Canadians cancel their service with Big Telecom, and subscribe to an independent competitor—delivering a swift financial cannon shot directly at Big Telecom’s lobbying budget.

 Businesses, civil society groups, and people across Canada work with policy-makers to fix our broken telecom system once and for all.

By pledging to make the switch, you’ll send a clear message to policy-makers that all Canadians want independent choices for Internet service.

We’ll let Prime Minister Harper and Industry Minister Paradis know how many Canadians have made this pledge.

As an active member of the pro-Internet community, your participation is key.

For our digital future,

Steve, Lindsey, and the OpenMedia.ca Team

P.S. The CRTC’s decision yesterday is likely to meet an aggressive reaction from Big Telecom. Let’s push forward for Internet openness and affordability now, while they’re still reeling from our success. Let’s get moving! Pledge to switch today.

Posted in freedoms, society, technology. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »
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