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Pat Condell: The Enemy Within
July 29, 2010 — xanthippaTaxes, serfdom and the story of Kozina
July 28, 2010 — xanthippaWhen the practice of ‘serfdom’ was first introduced, it was nowhere as oppressive as it grew to be later on. In some instances, at the beginning, the ‘serfs’ had to provide as little as 3-4 days of service to the ‘lord’ per season – in return for the ‘lord’ being responsible to maintain peace and order in his domain..
Gradually, the amount of work required of the serfs kept creeping higher and higher, the responsibilities of the ‘lord’ to the serfs kept getting smaller and smaller and the powers of the ‘lord’ over the ‘serfs’ kept getting bigger and bigger as the ‘lords’ increasingly used their powers against the ‘serfs’ instead of in their protection.
By the end, things were not so good…. People were compelled – often forced by armed guards – to work for their ‘lord’ from sun-up to sun-down 6 days a week, every week…
These days, we pay so much of our incomes in taxes – it can reach more than 50% of a family’s income. The State sets the level of taxation one-sidedly and The State has usurped for itself extraordinary powers to compel you to pay these taxes, even suspending your innate civil rights as irrelevant in the process!
Indeed, the parallels to serfdom are increasingly undeniable!
Which is why I’d like to tell you a story about a peasant who refused to become a serf (in the original, ‘robotnik’ – this is the root of the word ‘robot’). His name was Jan Sladky Kozina.
This narration is not exactly the way the story is written up in the history books. Nor does it match the ‘official’ or even ‘semi-official’ narratives put on the internet by people who claim (probably rightly) to be the genetic descendants of the Dogheads. I am not re-telling the story with any claim to ‘factual accuracy’.
Rather, here and now – to us, this version of the story has great archetypal relevancy!
Like Kozina, this storyteller (who was in his 90’s when, I was a child,) was a Chod, born and raised as a ‘Doghead’ – but a ‘few’ generations too young to have lived through these events himself. Still, he was not so young as to not have heard the story from the grandchildren or great-grand-children of the actual people who lived this story! (While there are many guesses – some of them more educated than others – there is no definitive answer as to who the Chods were, where they came from or what their mythology truly was.)
OK – to the story, as I remember it having been told me by an ancient story teller:
The ‘Dogheads’ were not your ordinary peasants. They were a people of their own, with a proud and ancient heritage.
One of their unique skills was in animal communication and training – especially training dogs (hence they had the head of a dog in their clan symbol (is it a coat of arms when it refers to the clan and not a specific person?) – and the nomicker ‘Dogheads’). The Dogheads were the only bunch of people in feudal Europe to have a document officially exempting them from serfdom.
Many historians claim it was written by John of Luxemburg, the father of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, in recognition for ‘extraordinary services’.
That was the ‘outside’ story.
Our ‘inside’ tradition says that the papers GIVEN to us by John of Luxembourg were simply his acknowledgment of much older and more powerful claims/documents (depending on who told the story, it was either ‘ancient claims that everyone acknowledged’ or a chest full of very ‘ancient documents’). (A few old Dogheads actually claimed these ‘even older’ documents put the Dogheads outside the jurisdiction of even the Inquisition – but that is hard to believe…)
For centuries, all the kings respected this.
Until a bad, greedy king came to power.
He refused to recognize the Dogheads innate freedoms and documents ordering all kings to recognize our rights to these freedoms. This bad king deeded their land to a nobleman who paid him off – effectively turning the Dogheads into this man’s serfs (this was a little over 3 centuries ago).
The Dogheds were not keen on this. They refused to submit to serfdom (‘robota’) and petitioned the king, but the king refused to hear the petition.
The Dogheads did not know what to do.
Many wanted to take up arms and die fighting rather than submit to serfdom – but taking up arms against the king was abhorrent, because it would be an open rebellion against the position and not just the evil man who occupied it.
They could never justify such violent means to achieve any good end.
So, Kozina (that is how he was referred to commonly by his clan) chose a different way: He publicly displayed the documents guaranteeing the Dogheads freedom from serfdom in perpetuity, proving to everyone that the king was indeed the one who was breaking the laws!
This cost the king dearly, because all the noble houses and all the people saw him for what he was…. a criminal thug! An usurper! An unfit king!
But, he still had a big army…
Embarrassing the king publicly was not so very good for Kozina’s longevity. The king had Kozina tossed into jail and sent in his army to install this nobleman (whatever his name was, we called him Lomikar) as our overlord.
Then, the king permitted Lomikar to have Kozina tortured and publicly hanged.
At the gallows, Kozina looked at Lomikar and said:
“Lomikare, Lomikare! Do roka a do dne, zvu te na sud Bozi! Hync sa hukaze – “
Kozina spoke in the old Chod dialect…..and the way the words are put together is said to have the quality of a magical incantation. Roughly translated:
“Lomikar, Lomikar! In one year to the day, I challenge you to God’s judgement! Then it shall be shown – “
He never got to say any more, because Lomikar was wildly gesticulating to the executioner to ‘get it done’ and not let Kozina talk, because he feared he himself might get lynched by the people watching the execution, as the Czechs were rather empathetic to the Chods.
One year later – on the day which was the anniversary of Kozina’s execution – everyone expected Lomikar to be judged by God. Lomikar lives – Lomikar (and, by extension, the king) was right.. Lomikar dies (and stays dead) – Kozina was right.
To show just how ‘not worried’ he was, Lomikar put on a bit of a feast to which he invited his friends (but not the Dogheads).
Just as he was about to make a toast – to mock Kozina’s last words – Lomikar grabbed his chest, fell over and he breathed nevermore…
Nobody else wanted to be the overlord who turned the Dogheads into serfs. The king was told unceremoniously to stuff it and leave the Dogheads be, because God would punish ANYONE who tried to oppress us.
So, after one year of serfdom, the Dogheads were free people once again!
I do hope you liked the old storyteller’s tale. We still can learn from Kozina!
Ontario’s illegal ‘eco-tax’ scrapped and ‘under review’
July 20, 2010 — xanthippaLast Saturday, there was a protest at Premier Dalton McGuinty’s constituency office. Yes, even his brother, David McGiunty (a federal MP for this part of Ottawa) showed up at the protest!
The protest was sparked by a totally evil thing the McGuinty Liberals have done: on the same day that prices went up because of the introduction of HST (no problem with the ‘what’ of the HST, but rather the ‘how’ – it was imposed on tons of products previously tax exempt – an unelected agency of the Ontario Government, whose board of directors is composed of ‘industry partners’, imposed an ‘eco-fee’ on over 8 thousand new items…
I say ‘new items’, because this ‘eco-fee/eco-tax’ had first been introduced in 2008: but so quietly, on not that many items, and not so high…..so nobody really ‘noticed’ it. Having ‘established’ this method and legitimized it (no protests were seen against it), the McGuinty Liberals then cynically decided that the danger was ‘past’ and they can begin to ‘tighten the screws’.
This is an important pattern we must be aware of: a government – any government – can introduce some measure. Perhaps this measure is not really noticed (like this ‘Stewardship Ontario’ program – not to be confused with a completely different and unrelated government initiative called ‘Ontario Stewardship’), or perhaps it is even applauded by the populace because it appears to remove a perceived (rightly or wrongly perceived) threat (like, say, banning the full Islamic facial veil). Once the measure and the method has been ‘accepted’ and ‘normalized’, the government can then expand on it: using this new ‘tool’ to their own benefit. If anyone speaks out – they can claim this is ‘the accepted way of doing things’!
That is why we need to really really examine not just the ‘what’ of each thing a government does, of each new law passed, but perhaps even more importantly – the ‘how’ of it! But, I am off on a tangent….sorry, I have the attention span of a gnat!
Today, the Ontario Environment Minister announced that the ‘eco-fees’ are ‘scrapped’.
Not exactly ‘gone‘….
Just their current format is ‘scrapped’.
For now, the Ontario Government will take 3 months to ‘study’ the issue – and pay five million dollars from general revenue over the next 3 months to maintain the programs while it tries to figure out another way to stick us with the bill.
Bob Chiarelli, the Ontario Government’s Communication Minister (and thus the guy who ought to have told us about this), has openly claimed in both the press and radio interviews that ‘NONE of the money collected through the eco-fees goes to GOVERNMENT’ – yet we are now told that programs like the ‘Blue Box recycling’, which we have been told are paid from our municipal property taxes and their cost used as a justification to raise the municipal taxes, well, we are now being told these programs are being 100% paid for through the eco-fees!
So – which is it?
Are we paying for recycling programs through our property taxes – as our municipal politicians are telling us – or are we paying for it through this eco-fee? One level of government or the other has GOT to be lying!
But, I am off on a tangent again…
What is important – really important – about this ‘eco-fee’ is the HOW of it all…
Ontario Government had – ages ago – created ‘Stewardship Ontario’ with a board of ‘industry partners’ to work on these recycling initiatives. The idea was that since industry is producing the things which need to be diverted from garbage dumps, they ought to be consulted on ways to deal with diverting ‘stuff’ from the dumps. We were told it was supposed to be a sort of a ‘think tank’ type thing.
The Board of Directors of Stewardship Ontario is truly made up of ‘industry giants’: from McCain Foods and Canadian Tire Corp. to Procter & Gamble and Loblaw Companies Ltd. …
So, this ‘arms-length’ organization, with a BOD made up entirely of ‘industry partners’ (read ‘big business corporations’) is given power, by the government, to tax citizens!!!
What is the definition of fascism?
Ah – fascism is DEFINED as ‘the collusion of big government and big business’!!!
How much more ‘collusion’ can there be between ‘big government’ and ‘big business’ than for the government to give the big business the ability to levy taxes (which is what non-voluntary fees are) on the citizens?!?!?!?
Ontario taxpayers have seen some serious money mismanagement in the past. The ‘e-Health’ scandal has been a billion-dollar program that funneled money from the woefully broke medical system to ‘advisers’ who were not just highly overpaid McGuinty cronies, they also provided exactly zero value for their services….
Now, Lisa McLeod, an opposition MPP, has revealed during a radio interview that some of these same e-Health consultants are also ‘consulting’ for Stewardship Ontario…
Please, think of this: the very sleazy skum-buckets who claimed the Ontario Government is not the one who imposed these ‘fees’ have had no problem ‘scrapping them’…because now, the Ontario Government is taking credit for ‘scrapping’ them.
And, in 3 month’s time, they hope to have figured out another way to weasel the money out of us!
Photos from ‘McGuinty eco-tax’ protest, Ottawa
July 17, 2010 — xanthippaToday, a crowd of several hundred people had gathered in front of Premier Dalton McGuinty’s constituency office to protest the illegal taxes he has imposed on Ontario taxpayers, disguised as ‘eco-fees’.
The photos speak for themselves:
There was a visible – put very polite and respectful police presence. Their only concern seemed to be that nobody got run over by the many cars driving by (and mostly honking). One could not help but get the impression that they kind of agreed with the protesters!
The above picture is across the street from Dalton McGuilty’s office – the parking lot in the ratty-little strip mall where he has his office was too small to hold the protest, so it spilled across the street (no sidewalk there) and even into the near side street!
Dalton McGrinchy himself made an appearance!
With his trusty ECO-VAC, he was vacuuming everyone’s money!
The reporters/media just LOVED Dalton McGrinchy!
OK – I am a really really bad reporter – I don’t even know the names of the people who organized it , or most of the speakers. However, I did recognize CFRA’s popular Rob Snow, who really got the crowd whipped up!
By this point, it had begun to rain – a little.
Then, somebody (OK, Jessica) made a discovery: David McGuinty, Dalton’s brother and a Liberal MP for this riding, was sitting in his car in the parking lot!
While we all concluded that even Dalton’s brother supports this protest, once his identity had been revealed, he drove away bravely. Due to the rain, the picture I got turned out too foggy to use… Sorry!
Anyhow…
It was quite a crowd: young and old and in-between!
Dalton McGuinty was unavailable for comment: rather than coming to the protest and facing the music, he chose to go on holiday….on our dime!
G20, police behaviour and the ‘split’ on the ‘right’: part 1
July 7, 2010 — xanthippaAll right – this is a difficult issue to tackle. Still, it is an important one. So, if I go off on a tangent – please, comment and re-focus me!
The G8/G20 event cost over 1 Billion dollars in ‘security’ costs. Many people complained – yet, though I thought the figure high, I did not complain because I thought that if the people in positions to know thought the security costs were that hight, I was unwilling to double-guess them. In no way ought this event have been turned into a showcase for ‘unlawful people’ – if that was going to be the cost of upholding the rule of law, I was willing to pay the bill and not grumble (too much).
I am, if such a thing can be said to exist, a ‘pro-law libertarian’: it is my deeply held conviction that it is only through the rule of law that our rights can be respected and our liberties can be exercised.
I take a poor view of each and every individual who breaks the laws – even ‘bad laws’ (two ‘wrongs’ do not make a ‘right’), provided citizens have a recourse through their ability to lobby to change or otherwise get rid of ‘bad laws’. Even living in a totalitarian state, (though young) I thought that leaving everything behind and running away (not so bravely) was preferable to taking the law into my own hands: it would take a lot, including absence of any other course of action, to get me to break the laws or to condone others to do so.
Having explained my philosophical bend, I also ought to explain my attitude towards the police (and, yes, I am volunteering with the Ottawa police because I think cops ought to be ‘the good guys’).
Police officers occupy a very unique position in our society: they are the ‘Agents of the State’ whom we entrust with upholding the rule of law in our society. As such, they occupy a position of trust unlike those of most other people in society: trust which has to be continuously earned by their behaviour, because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate. (Yes – I still have the nightmares…)
Unfortunately, ‘the police’ have recently been entrusted with two completely different goals: one is to ‘uphold the law’, the other is to ‘maintain order’. These two tasks are not necessarily in ‘extreme’ opposition to each other – but neither are they completely congruous with each other, either!
Example (from the past – to keep the current tempers even):
A large number of militant anti-Israeli protesters sees an Israeli flag in the window of an apartment and threaten to break into the building to get rid of it (presumably looting, or at least ‘damaging’ the building in the process). The police, ‘in order to maintain public order’, illegally enter the apartment and remove the ‘offensive’ flag in order to appease the mob which is threatening lawless violence.
These individual police officers chose to break the law, in order to ‘maintain public order’, instead of waiting for law-defying individuals to break the laws, then arresting them in order to uphold the laws of the land!
That is only one such example where the police chose to ‘maintain public peace’ rather than to ‘enforce the laws of the land’: had they enforced the laws, they would have waited for individuals to damage the property, then and only then arrested these individual lawbreakers and brought them to justice.
We have also seen a parallel to this in Canada, when a lone pro-Israeli protester (not breaking any laws) faced a large number of anti-Israel protesters in Alberta: the police threatened the lone, law-abiding, not-violence-threatening individual with arrest in order to ‘not provoke’ the violence-threatening (and thus law-breaking) mob because the law-abiding man’s ‘presence’ was a ‘provocation’ and thus a threat to ‘public order’. (Sorry, I can’t find the link – if you can, please, do so in the comments: yet, this is so common, most of us are aware of many parallel incidents!)
George Jonas (a fellow escapee from a totalitarian police state) phrases his observation of the role the police in our society are increasingly choosing to play:
‘The only group exhibiting Canadian-style restraint was the police. They cast a calm eye on the pandemonium, took a balanced view and chose no sides between people trying to exercise their rights and bullies trying to prevent them.’
These occurrences are not isolated: over and over, in much of the ‘free world’, we have seen police preferring to aid law-breakers (who are ‘difficult-to-handle’) in oppressing the population… instead of upholding the laws of the land.
Just consider the going-ons and race-based policing in Caledonia!!!
So, how does this relate to the G8/G20 situation – and the ‘split’ on the ‘right’?
In how the people usually considered ‘little-c-conservatives’ perceive what happened and how we evaluate the role the police played…
Let me first get a few things off my mind: it was idiotic to hold the G20 meeting in the middle of downtown of Canada’s largest city. Ensuring the security of the participants was going to be a nightmare. It was a situation where just about every possible outcome was going to draw serious – and ‘warranted’ – criticism. In other words, it was likely to be a ‘no win’ situation…
The police who were entrusted with the task of providing security for this event were in an unenviable position: ‘ensuring security’ necessarily put them into conflict with their primary role – that of ‘upholding the laws’!
Why?
Because ‘ensuring security’ meant the police were responsible for preventing any law-breaking which would result in ‘breeches of security’ at the summit.
However, the actual and proper role of the police is to uphold the laws: this means that they are only permitted to intervene AFTER a law has been broken!
How can a person (or collection of persons) possibly prevent a crime – when they are, by law, permitted to intervene only after a crime has been committed?!?!?
(Continued in ‘Part 2’ and ‘Part 3’)
‘Consensus-building’ and ‘leadership’
July 3, 2010 — xanthippaFrom our schools to our media to our bureaucracies, every aspect of our society is so infested with Cultural Marxism that ‘Newspeak’ has seriously corrupted not just our language, but our very ability to think clearly. We no longer even recognize it when we hear it.
One such example is the currently popular claim that ‘leadership’ requires one to be skilled at ‘consensus building’.
First, let’s look at the meaning of ‘leadership’ and what constitutes ‘a leader’:
‘Leadership’ is the ‘ability to lead’, fulfilling the role or function of a ‘leader’.
‘To lead’ means to ‘show way by going in advance’, ‘to guide’, ‘to direct’, ‘to inspire’.
So, whom do we, as a society, regard as the greatest leaders of all times? I did a little bit of googling on this – please, do the same. While the leaders ‘closest’ to us necessarily dominate our cultural memory, there were some names that consistently keep being mentioned, by educational sites, journalistic/populist opinion sites and discussion boards alike.
In no particular order, these are just some of these names that keep cropping up over and over when people discuss ‘great leaders’:
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Elisabeth I of England
- Gengis Khan
- Epicurus
- Alexander the Great
- Ghandi
- Margaret Thatcher
- Golda Meir
- George Washington
- Cyrus the Great
- Winston Churchill
- Muhammad
- Constantine
- Samudragupta
- Wu Ti
- Ivan III
- Napoleon
- Thomas Jefferson
- Abraham Lincoln
- C. D. Howe
- Ronald Reagan
- Bismarck
So, how many of these were known as ‘consensus builders’?
If I may quote from ‘What is ‘Cultural Marxism’?’, a guest-post on this blog by CodeSlinger:
Another example is the concept of intersubjective rationality, developed by Habermas, which replaces the individual process of reaching a conclusion based on the objective criterion that it follows from valid reasoning and known facts, on the one hand, with the social process of establishing a consensus supported by the subjective criterion that the group feels good about it, on the other hand. In today’s schools, those who do the former are maligned for being judgmental and demanding, while those who do the latter are praised for being good team players.
‘Consensus’ literally means ‘coming together’ (con) ‘of feelings’ (senses, sentiments). Dictionaries typically define ‘consensus’ as an opinion or position reached by a group as a whole.
In other words, ‘consensus building’ is a form of governance a group of people will resort to when it lacks ‘leadership’.
How does this translate into the political world? We are constantly bombarded with the message that great political leaders ought to be skilled at ‘consensus building’…
Our ‘Western’ societies have built-in safeguard mechanisms to ensure that ‘governments’ remain accountable to the citizens who elect them. Perhaps the most important single element in this mechanism is that our elected bodies are based on the adversarial principle.
It is precisely because the political adversaries of those who propose a particular policy or course of action bring public scrutiny to it by publicly pointing out the flaws or shortcomings of this proposal that the issue is brought to public attention and thoroughly examined. It is certainly not a pleasant process (nor is it meant to be pleasant), but it is one through which at least some light is shed onto what is being proposed – in as much detail as possible – and which engages the electorate in the debate (at least a little bit).
This is the method through which, in our system, we the citizens keep our elected politician accountable to us. It is therefore important that we do nothing which would minimize this process!
What would happen if, before proposing a new law or introducing a new project, the head of the group that is proposing it went to all the elected representatives and put just enough of an ‘incentive’ into the proposal for each an every one of the representatives to not want to loose that ‘carrot’?
Certainly, any such project would be significantly costlier, because in addition to the core cost, it would now have to also bear the cost of a ‘carrot’ for each of the elected representatives – the bit that got them to ‘go along’ with it.
Of course, any such law or rule would be significantly more convoluted because it would now have to accommodate/fulfill/have exemptions for/’bundle in’ all the ‘carrots’ for each of the elected representatives – the ‘incentives’ that would be built in to it to ‘facilitate the building of the consensus’.
Every ‘quid’ would have a ‘quo’.
All policy would be shaped by back-room deals, where ‘consensus builders’ would be busy building ‘accommodations’ and ‘incentives’ into everything that would placate or mollify any potential dissent….among the elected representatives.
Once this process was done, the product would be presented to the public as a ‘done deal’. I imagine the ‘dialog’ with the electorate would go something like this:
We have worked it all out, the proposal is so awesome that we all agree on it!
What? You want to see the details?
Why?
We, your elected representatives all agree on this so this must the best course of action. We have examined it in detailed and built a consensus – you needn’t worry your pretty little heads about it!
What? You don’t like it? You want to vote us out?
And replace us with whom? EVERYONE agrees with this!
In other words, if there is a consensus among our elected representatives on a proposed course of action, if each and every one of them considers it in his or her best interest to proceed with it as is, it is very unlikely that the voters, the citizens, will have any opportunity to learn much about it before it is implemented. There is another word for this type of ‘consensus’: collusion!
In an environment like this, an environment of back-room-deals and political collusion, where there is little controversy which leads to public debate or scrutiny of proposed policies, corruption can be very easily hidden.
In my never-humble-opinion, ‘consensus-building’ among elected representatives is not just anathema to responsible government and an abdication of leadership, it is an active attempt to corrupt our governance structures and eliminate accountability of elected officials to the citizenry.
I would even go further than that: politicians who tout governing through ‘consensus-building’ are openly admitting they intend to rule through corruption!
Obama to get power to turn off the internet – worldwide
June 18, 2010 — xanthippaSit up and pay attention.
I have been ranting on and on, that we need to set up a parallel system to the internet: one so diffuse that it could not be controlled by any authority.
Why?
Because various governments have been attempting to strangle the freedom to exchange information which people all over the world have been exercising: and which has been a powerful weapon against suppressing information that various governments would rather not make public.
This coming Sunday will be the first anniversary of the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan. If her death was not caught on video and posted on the internet for all the world to see, would we know as much as we do about the protests against the rigged elections in Iran? (On this note – the demonstration which is taking place in London, England, to mark the anniversary of her death this Sunday has had its location moved by the police at the last minute: instead of Trafalgar Square, it will be held at Richmond Terrace junction with Whitehall opposite Downing Street.)
Of course, this is just the tiny tip of a huge iceberg!
It’s EVERYTHING!!!
It usually starts with ‘protecting children’ – after all, who could be against protecting our children?!?!
So, filters and tracking traps go on.
Then it’s pornography.
And black lists.
Of course, history has shown us (the last revelations were from Australia, were they not?) that most of the sites that are blacklisted and censored do not actually have anything to do with paedophilia or even pornography. Rather, most have been political sites critical of the ruling government and/or the censorship bodies.
After these two biggies comes ‘security’.
Again, it is an emotional appeal that precludes any reasonable argument without being accused of siding with terrorists and criminals and other ‘enemies’.
And it is exactly this reasoning that lies behind the PCNAA (Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act) that Joe Lieberman, with vigorous support from Jay Rockefeller (the guy who thinks the world would be better off without the internet) is pushing through!
This bill – once law – would give Obama the power to shut down the internet.
Everywhere.
Remember that saying – the one about people who are willing to give up freedom for security not deserving either?
So, any ideas on an alternate method of connecting up?
If we get a few good ideas, we can take this off-line: you know, before the line goes dead….
Is a Canadain Government agent attempting to ‘influence’ a court?
March 17, 2010 — xanthippaWhen I first read this – that the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) is retaining a lawyer who is attempting to intervene in a private lawsuit between two citizens, and that the CHRC may have been giving quite a lot of legal advice to only one of the parties in the lawsuit, making us the taxpayers pick up the tab, I was angry. And, I started to write this up as exactly that.
Ezra Levant exercises his freedom of speech to ridicule another lawyer, Mr. Vigna. Mr. Vigna sues Mr. Levant for damages to his reputation. A court will decide whether the line between ‘fair comment’ and ‘slander/libel’ has been crossed: and so it should be. The CHRC ought to butt out and it is wrong of it to meddle and to pursue its vendetta against Mr. Levant simply because he dared to stand up to them.
In other words, I was angry – but focused on this ‘Serene Queen‘ case.
But, the more I thought about it…
The CHRC is an arm of the government. As such, any lawyer retained by the CHRC and acting on the CHRCs behalf is, legally speaking, an agent of the state.
Now – IF I understand this correctly – this agent of the state has just disregarded proper legal procedures (not filing for an intervenor status prior to the case and therefore being bound to give the defender access to what they will argue, so the defender can prepare a defense) and has inserted herself into the proceedings, approached the judge and attempted to influence the course of the court case!
Please, consider the implications!
An agent of the state can influence the courts, without following proper legal procedures!
Is this not a thing that only happens in states so corrupt that there is collusion between the courts and the government?
Our judiciary is there as a check on the power of the government – to ensure the government is not able to circumvent the constitution and rob citizens of their rights and freedoms. Is it not? I am not a lawyer, but, this is what we were taught in our civics class…
So, for the government agent to be able to CIRCUMVENT follow proper law and procedures and all that, and INFLUENCE A JUDG in case where the government is not an interested party (as in, they are not doing either the suing or the defending) – that is a really, really dangerous thing!
This is much bigger than just some government agency wasting taxpayer dollars.
This could very well constitute an attempt by the government (through this agent) to corrupt our courts!
As such, I think we need an immediate police investigation of this!
City of Ottawa to English employees: “No Saturdays For You!”
March 4, 2010 — xanthippaThis is just a tiny little example of the malaise which is crippling the City of Ottawa!
The ‘French Languages Services Branch’ decided that right now, when the City of Ottawa is so broke it cannot prevent raw sewage from flooding people’s basements, over and over… when the City of Ottawa is unable to pay the upkeep on municipal buildings so that some have become safety hazards (like, say, the stands as the Landsdowne Park that had to be pulled down)…..when the City of Ottawa has no funds to maintain public housing, turning a deaf eat to senior citizens’ requests to have cockroaches and bed-bugs and, yes, rats (!) exterminated from their meager citty-run housing….
… when all this is happening, the French Languages Services Branch decided that it is time to celebrate the excellence with which they deliver French Language Services to the citizens of Ottawa!
And, to be honest – they are doing as bang-up job!
All the ‘keep out’ notices on condemned buildings are translated into flawless French and high-quality signs with it are posted all over!
And, all the letters requesting that the City bring the housing units it runs up to code are replied to in both English AND most elegant French, telling them that their concern is noted and once there are funds, someone will look into it. May be…
And all the numerous glossy fliers we receive at our residence from the City of Ottawa, informing us of which services are no longer going to be provided by The City – well, those are also flawless in both their layout and excellent bilingual formulation of the esteem The City holds its citizens in!
So, you see, they really DO deserve a little ‘pick-me-up’, a ‘pat on the back’, an unmistakable message that their dedication to excellence and best practices is appreciated..
This ‘appreciation’ took shape in a fancy glossy calendar. Full colour picturesque pictures of scenic Ottawa may have brought the printing costs up a little – about $16,000 for the 2,500 calendars printed (somewhere near $6. 50 per calendar, if my math is not mistaken). But, it was for the employees – to show appreciation – so it was worth it!
The calendars have arrived. No, they do not provide any ‘City-of-Ottawa specific’ information – you know, like when seasonal event seasons start and end, or when The City delivers specific services (you know, like which is the 1-morning-a-month when the ‘hazardous materials’ depot (where we are supposed to bring used-up batteries, and so on) is open, and where (it moves around so it is hard to keep up with it) and so on). It only lists the ‘usual’ information that any glossy, colourful $1.99- over-the-counter calendar does.
And, this 2010 calendar arrived and was handed out before the end of February 2010! Big cheer for efficiency!!! Yeeeeeay!
But, there was a tiny, itsy-bitsy mistake.
So tiny, it took days for anyone to notice it.
Well – there was no mistake in French, only in English, so you can understand how the French Services Delivery Branch would not really notice it. After all, it is not the Bilingual Services Delivery Branch! And, to the best of my knowledge, there isn’t an English Services Delivery Branch to partner with in collaborative efforts!
So, the days of the week – all through the 12 months – go as: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday.
Yes – there is no Saturday! Not one!
Now, I do not believe it is a sign of systemic anti-Semitism within the French Services Delivery Branch, because I do not believe this was an attempt to expunge or hide or otherwise ‘get rid of’ the Sabbath. (Still, a simple check of the French Services Delivery Branch’s hiring statistics, to ensure they are fully compliant with the multicultural hiring quotas, is probably warranted – just to make sure!) ;0)
But, I do think this belies a cultural prejudice: in Quebec, most calendars adhere to the ‘Mainland European’ standard of starting the week with Monday and ending it with Sunday. In Ontario – both the English and the Franco-Ontarien adopt the ‘Anglo’ standard of starting the week with Sunday and ending it with Saturday!
Therefore, I suspect that far from being a language issue – this mistake is the fruit of a growing cultural gap as Franco-Ontarien culture is systematically being eroded and replaced by Quebec culture… because it seems to me that the most likely way this ‘mistake’ would have happened is that a Quebec-culture person, at the last moment, noticed that the week is not ending in ‘Sunday’ and ordered the change!
I, for one, find that highly offensive!
‘Language’ and ‘culture’ may be related, but they are not the same thing!
And, too often – especially here in Canada – we confuse the two.
But that is a grave mistake! Just look at the rich cultural diversity among different countries that are, say, Spanish-speaking! The culture of the Dominican Republic is not the same as the culture of, say, Argentina, is it? Yet they share a common language…
Similarly, Franco-Ontariens may speak French, but,they have a very different culture than Quebec does! Let’s not forget this – ‘French’ and ‘Quebec’ are not synonymous! Listening to people, it sounds like Franco-Ontariens are as deeply frustrated (if not more) by the Quebec French-language militants who are exporting their discord into Ontario as the rest of us are!
So, I present to you: this little typo is not a ‘language’ mistake – it is a ‘culture-gap symptom’!
It shows that many of our City of Ottawa employees are less interested in delivering services to us, the citizens, then they are about playing politics with our money! Spending our tax dollars in sowing cultural discord within the city and building their own bureaucratic empires, funding ‘perks’ for the employees – till there is none left to provide even the most core services!
…all the while The City can’t afford to fix the tons of raw sewage still spilling into the Ottawa River.
How fitting!
Listen – and weep…
January 26, 2010 — xanthippaHaiti was hit by a horrible earthquake. This created a tragedy the proportions of which most of us have a hard time wrapping our brains about.
The good part of this is that so many people, all over the world, have done their best to send help to the people of Haiti. Good on each and every one of you!
Still, when bad stuff like this happens, even when other people try to help, there will be snags. These are unfortunate, but – they WILL happen! After all, this place has had so much of its infrastructure destroyed that it is a credit to all those truly ‘trying’ that so much of what needs to be done has been done!
Which is just sad when one looks at what the Clintons are doing….
Hillary Clinton owns a bunch of land in Haiti. She has planned to put up some extremely fancy hotels there….
Bill Clinton is in charge of a charity through which much of the US aid to Haiti is being channeled…help, like creating tourist jobs in swanky hotels…. You know – like using the `reconstruction`money to put up them hotels your wife always wanted!
Like I said, listen and weep…. (you might want to skip the first few minutes) as John C. Dvorak & Co. `follow the money’.
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
