DancingSamurai.ca

This MacLean’s article, “A know-nothing strain of conservatism”, highlights one of my many reasons for unease with the reigning Conservatives of this otherwise fine country:

I think my colleague John Geddes came closest in his piece last week. It isn’t just that the Tories habitually ignore the expert consensus on a wide range of issues—crime, taxes, climate change—it’s that they want to be seen to be ignoring it. It’s the overt antagonism to experts, and by extension the educated classes, that marks the Tory style. In its own way, it’s a form of class war.

You can see it in the sneering references to Michael Ignatieff’s Harvard tenure, in the repeated denunciations of “elites” and “intellectuals.” In the partial dismantling of the census, we reach the final stage: not just hostile to experts, but to knowledge.

[...]

To whip up popular hostility to intellectuals is to invite the public to jump on its own funeral pyre.

How long do you think it will be before they start burning books? (via Dawg’s Blog)

I haven’t had much time to write about the new proposed copyright bill (C-32). In short, it has some good things, but unfortunately, like the last proposed bill, everything it offers, it takes away (and then some) by elevating digital locks (DRM) to trump status.

Calgary Herald:

Do you see what I see in the new copyright Bill C-32? Amid all the noise about new rights for users, upon closer scrutiny, this bill, rather than granting new rights, can effectively block users from making use of any and all of their rights, even existing ones. It is true that this bill now recognizes rights that we all thought we already had, like viewing our legally purchased Irish video in Canada, or playing our Leonard Cohen song on our CD and copying it to our iPod, or watching Desperate Housewives on Monday instead of Sunday evening. But even the new rights granted to teachers to use excerpts from Catcher in the Rye or clips from the Anne of Green Gables television show are meaningless if vendors choose to use a digital lock.

Globe and Mail:

The problem here is twofold. Practically, it puts all the power in the hands of digital content creators. They can wave a wand and – more or less arbitrarily – declare their content locked and beyond the reach of the hoi polloi and their “fair use.”

But more important, I think, is the fact that giving locks special legal status doesn’t make intuitive sense. If you want people to follow a law in their day-to-day lives, and you don’t want to create a police state to enforce it, you have to meet them halfway on the grounds of moral reasoning. And turning digital locks into unbreakable magic seals – as opposed to judging what the user does after they break a lock – is counterintuitive.

Haha, even thepiratebay is getting in on criticising Harper’s proroguation of parliament…

The cost of health care around the world Boing Boing.

Apparently people aren’t very happy with Obama. They elected some Rebuplican nut in a typically very Democrat state, or so I’ve heard. I think Dr. Dawg summed it up pretty well:

We have minority governments in Canada that govern like majorities. Obama had–and still has–a legislature with a rock-solid majority of Democrats in both houses, but he’s governed as though his party were in the minority.

…

Obama was sent an ultimatum by the electors in one of the most liberal states in the union. It wasn’t: please compromise more. It wasn’t: don’t forget to track down all the nuances before you make the slightest move.

We wanted accessible healthcare, they said. You handed the legislative process over to a gaggle of conservatives, and ended up with two patchwork bills that promise a windfall for insurance companies.

We wanted an end to ceaseless war that drains our resources and kills our young men and women, they said. It’s not stopping terrorism. But you sent a whack more troops off to Afghanistan instead–clutching the Nobel Peace Prize as you did so.

We wanted no more torture and extra-Constitutional measures and atrocities, if only because our country is getting a black eye over them. But Guantanamo is still there, a year after you took office. Prisoners may have been murdered there, and the cover-up is happening on your watch. The Blackwater killers in Iraq got off after your Justice Department threw the case. And you have embraced the same notion of Executive privilege that shielded your predecessor from Constitutional restraints.

We wanted a recovering economy and appropriate punishment for the Wall Street malefactors who did our country infinitely more harm than the terrorists. Instead, 2009 was the Year of the Bonus for the very people that got us into the recession in the first place. Bonuses that we effectively paid for ourselves with bailout money.

We wanted change. We got the same old, same old, same old, same old.

Yes, we’re pissed off enough to put a homophobic Cosmo nudie with a taste for waterboarding into the Senate. Did that get your attention?

I think Obama lost his lustre quite a while back. Will he actually do something after this warning shot? Knowing politicians – hell no.

This is a great list of events & articles showing the Conservative’s anti-democratic moves. A very small excerpt:

CONTEMPT FOR ACCOUNTABILITY
Ottawa moves to block detainee-transfer hearings [2008]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/article722656.ece

Redactions hamper Afghan detainee probe [2009]
Unreadable documents make meaningful inquiry ‘almost impossible’ and reflect government efforts to keep record a secret
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/redactions-hamper-afghan-detainee-probe/article1383375/

Ottawa won’t release Afghan documents
Harper government says it will not comply with Opposition motion passed by Parliament, setting stage for legal battle
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/afghanmission/article/737634–ottawa-won-t-release-afghan-documents

Tories to ignore vote on releasing prisoner reports
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20091211/afghanistan_motion_091211/20091211?hub=TopStoriesV2

Parliament in showdown with Harper government over Afghan documents
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/national/091211/n1211113A.html

Tories refuse to release uncensored documents on Afghan detainees
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Tories+refuse+release+uncensored+documents+Afghan+detainees/2330193/story.html

Tories force shutdown of hearing on torture [2009]
Opposition blasts boycott as whistleblower readies rebuttal to Ottawa today
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/afghanmission/article/739427

(via Dawg’s Blog)

Scary commentary from Dawg’s Blog:

Under Harper we have seen what I have referred to before as a veritable war on watchdogs. Blatant political interference in the workings of supposedly independent agencies–the CNSC, the SSHRCC, Elections Canada–is almost the order of the day. High-handed ministers of the Crown, acting more like princelings than representatives, have been actively involved in exiling Canadian citizens and more recently defaming and scapegoating an upstanding public employee and the respected charitable organization KAIROS-Canada.

Democracy in this country, always a stitched-together affair, is under increasingly serious threat, all hyperbole aside. As I have noted recently, this downward slide did not begin with the Conservatives: Pierre “Just watch me” Trudeau set the tone, and Jean Chrétien centralized all meaningful power in the PMO, ruling the country with an iron fist and the odd burst of pepper-spray.

But Harper has taken this trend through a quantum leap in four short years. His contempt for democratic process is never far below the surface. And now, once again, Parliament–Canada’s supreme elected body–is about to be flicked away like a mosquito.

We’re watching political accountability and responsible government melt away before our unbelieving eyes. As one commentator noted not long ago, “The Prime Minister is now in such command that he can get away with pretty much anything. And he is lauded for his conquests.”