| Hair. |
[2009-11-17 (Tuesday) at 07:44:00] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Emilie Autumn , "Organ Grinder" | ] |
You ever run into someone whom you haven't seen in person for close to nine months, and not recognise them at first because 1) their hair is way longer than you remembered and 2) even longer than it is in any of their photos? It trips you out for a second. |
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| Urban vs Rural: Black Powder |
[2009-11-12 (Thursday) at 01:56:00] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Skinny Puppy , "DaddyuWarbash" | ] |
The ruling Conservatives are moving to scrap the federal "long-gun" registry, supported by MPs from other parties who represent rural ridings. And, once again, Quebec has proven itself to be the most civilised, intelligent and just society in Canada, although it is by no means the only supporter of the registry; sections of Ontario and BC are also overwhelmingly in favour of it, or so I'm told.
The registry has always been controversial, since it covers not just assault rifles and auto-shotties* , but also covers single-shot rifles and shotguns that are intended for use in hunting. In rural areas of Canada, these so-called "long-guns" are part of the way of life; people maintain single-shot long-guns for defence against large predators on farms, and for hunting for food (and for the less-than-noble practice of sport hunting). Urban Canada, on the other hand, has no need for or interest in firearms of any sort, and consequently is more concerned with keeping tabs on where such guns are than with the slight inconvenience that rurals suffer as a result of the registry.
Most of the police chiefs in Canada have defended the registry as being incredibly helpful, with the notable exception of Julian Fantino. Fantino, who is presently serving as the Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police after being fired from the Toronto Police Service, made quite a name for himself by running the Toronto Police Service into the ground during his tenure as its top officer, so I'm not about to take him seriously. In fact, I think that Fantino's opposition to the registry is a point in its favour.
I'm personally of the opinion that the registry needs to be maintained, but I can see why the rurals have an issue with it: People living in communities in the Far North might have an easier time finding a moose than getting to a grocer, and they're sometimes forced to fill out mountains of paperwork in order to legally keep firearms that they have legitimate need of as a result of that simple logistical issue. We could get around that by banning all guns entirely, but that's going to leave those aforementioned rurals with legitimate need of them in a bit of a bind, so we unfortunately need to keep them legal at the moment. As long as they're legal, it's better to have controls in place to ensure that the police have access to a database of which-ones-are-where, because legally-purchased long-guns are occasionally used in crimes. Thus that database is an invaluable asset to cops who are attempting to ascertain the origin of ones that get used in crimes. Those were, as far as I know, the very good reasons we had for creating the registry in the first place, and given that the money has already been spent to create it, discontinuing it now would be to allow that money to go to waste.
The most intelligent thing to do would be to keep the registry and repair it so that it works for the purposes it was meant for, without causing problems for Joe Crow in the BC interior who occasionally needs a shotgun to scare wolves away from his cabin, and without continuing to cost anyone an unreasonable amount of money. However, that's unlikely to happen at this point.
The Urban/Rural divide transcends political parties: New Democrats and Liberals who represent back-country areas are voting alongside the Conservatives (who as a party do not hold any urban ridings at all) to scrap the registry.
Ironic, this. The Conservatives like to present themselves as being fiscally responsible, and also being the party most interested in "law and order" ... yet they want to abolish of something that police services say is a valuable tool, just to pander to their mostly-rural support base. The irony only increases when one remembers that crimes committed involving firearms are far more common in Rural Canada than they are in Urban Canada.
Rurals may want to start stocking up on Kevlar body armour now, so that when their wish to have the registry scrapped is granted, they don't pay too high a price for it.
* = It should be noted that "auto-shotty" is a term used by PC gamers to descibe such weapons (I first heard it used to describe a weapn available to me during a game of Counter-Strike). I have no idea if the term is used by bona fide gun nuts.
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| Observations. |
[2009-11-12 (Thursday) at 00:35:00] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Revolting Cocks , "Stainless Steel Providers" | ] |
If a conservative doesn't like guns, he questions his manhood.
If a progressive doesn't like guns, he moves on with his life.
If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thumps his chest.
A progressive opens lines of communication as soon as he can.
If a conservative is homosexual, he remains closeted.
If a progressive is homosexual, he demands respect.
If a person of a minority ethnic group is conservative, they see themselves as entitled.
Their progressive counterparts see themselves as moving on up.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he blames other people.
A progressive looks around to see how he can better himself by helping others.
If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host he sends threatening letters.
Progressives understand that everyone is entitled to their opinion.
If a conservative is a non-believer, it is because he thinks that tithing sucks.
If a progressive is a non-believer, it is because they see more important things to do in this world than simply wait for the next.
If a conservative decides he needs health care he gets it – then complains, 'cause it is socialized.
A progressive sees health care as a right he has fought for.
If a conservative slips and falls in a store, he thinks he was tripped.
If a progressive slips and falls, he gets up and carries on.
If a conservative doesn't like abortion, he outlaws it for everyone.
If a progressive doesn't like abortions, he doesn't get one.
If a conservative is against gay marriage, he outlaws it, hoping it will go away.
If a progressive is against gay marriage, he doesn't marry someone of the same sex.
If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he'll see it as more menacing than it really is, because he fears the Other.
If a progressive sees a foreign threat, he wonders how to reduce the threat by means other than violence first.
If a person of a minority ethnicity is conservative, they see very few others like them among conservatives, but don't wonder why that is.
Their progressive counterparts see the same thing and ask questions.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to get a job with a company on "corporate welfare."
A progressive wonders why there's no money left for him to collect from the employment insurance he's paid into for 20 years, after conservatives ran up huge deficits by giving out "corporate welfare."
If a conservative doesn't like a show with racy content, he demands that show be cancelled.
Progressives just change the channel.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't distance himself from Christian Fundies if it helps his guy get elected.
A progressive non-believer wants to reinforce the barriers between church and state while protecting civil liberties.
If a conservative reads this, he'll immediately get angry.
A progressive will read it and wonder, "why state the obvious?"
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| Folk art for a post-industrial society. |
[2009-11-04 (Wednesday) at 23:50:00] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Godspeed You Black Emperor! , "Moya" | ] |
Performance art piece Dance Of The Cranes (2009) by Brandon Vickerd (Toronto, Canada), with thanks to IUOE Local 793.
Brandon Vickerd choreographed the movements of a pair of construction cranes (which happened to already be in place at a site in Nuit Blanche's Zone C) to "Moya" by Godspeed You Black Emperor! ... The use of construction equipment in an art project, operated by construction workers and choreographed to a post-rock track, was easily the most memorable project that evening.
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| Pitiful. |
[2009-10-20 (Tuesday) at 08:23:00] |
I know that my now-ex-employers don't really appreciate someone who does their job properly on the first try, because they advised me yesterday that they wouldn't be renewing my contract. It expires on the 29th of October.
They failed to give me two weeks' notice, which is par for the course for them. The 12-month contract in question was retroactive in the first place (they failed to present me with a contract to physically sign until after the day it was supposed to take effect). This year, when they gave me a three-month extension on that contract, they failed to give me the papers to sign until six weeks into the extension.
The fact that they opted not to renew my contract isn't all that surprising or detrimental to me.
For one thing, if they'd renewed my contract, I'd have been due for a raise, which they wouldn't have wanted to give me. Lately they'd been making a lot of idiotic decisions: they let go a lot of competent staff, and hired a chronic pothead back after they fired him for smoking pot during his shift (and I started looking around for a new job as soon as I noticed that was happening). Also, I had noticed that a lot of the more intelligent staffers were quitting over the last little while, which is never a good sign as to how things are going.
Needless to say, I'm not really missing the job. Incompetent employers are just as bad as incompetent co-workers. And really, I've got more than a year of E.I. banked, and now that I've been let go I'm eligible to claim it.
I will be looking for work as of... well, tomorrow. Today I'm working on my Halloween costume.
If anyone hears of any openings, be sure to let me know. |
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| Filled With Fail |
[2009-10-18 (Sunday) at 05:24:00] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Numb , "Wasted Sky" | ] |
The French edition of Vogue caused a bit of a furor when a group of very white models was made up with black-face for a photo-shoot. While the editors of the French edition of Vogue are obviously morons for letting these photos be used, it is entirely possible that the French people who arranged and shot the set had no idea that the photos were going to strike the kind of nerve they did. French racism is directed mostly against people of Arab descent rather than blacks; France has little or no recent history of a local black-face performers' scene, unlike our immediate neighbours to the south; and, of course, people who work in the fashion industry are infamous for being ignorant of world affairs and shallow in the extreme.
It wouldn't be the first time people in one country have taken a nasty cultural symbol from another culture, one that is now frowned upon as being solely associated with racism in the culture in which it originated... and taken it out of context because they didn't realise the meaning that the symbol carries in its source culture. A blogger based in Seoul, Korea has reported that former genocidal German dictator Adolf Hitler has become a cartoonish mascot for a style of nightclub in Korea, with Hitler-themed bars cropping up all over the city. Koreans admire Hitler as a leader who instilled discipline in the Germans, and Koreans in Korea are reportedly very racist themselves. That said... Koreans are likely to have been very ill-informed of what the situation was in Germany under Hitler. Most people I've met who grew up in East Asia or the Orient didn't have a very clear picture of why the Nazis were so despised until someone here or in Europe told them in detail. Apparently between the language barrier and the fact that it didn't take place in their own backyard, it wasn't as big of a concern to them as, say, atrocities by Chinese or Japanese against each other and against Koreans might have been.
I can't say I'm surprised: I was equally ignorant of the racially-motivated Japanese slaughter of Chinese in days gone by until just recently, didn't know about the internecine racist rivalries in Western China until it became world news, and can't even name any of the members of The Akazu organisation that co-ordinated the Rwandan Genocide, even though Canadian Lt. General Roméo Dallaire's experiences during that crisis were so well reported in the Canadian news and spawned a film. Even the name of Mao Zedong is just a name to me, even though the people of China blame his regime for the deaths of millions. I didn't experience any of those things first-hand, and none of them happened in "the West" - but the images of North American black-face minstrels and the West's Hitler certainly have an emotional impact on me, having learned about them extensively within my own culture. In similar fashion, the black-face scene in American culture may not trigger the same emotional response in people from France as it does in north Americans, because they didn't experience it first-hand and don't have a cultural memory of it as we do in North America.
This line of thinking only somewhat excuses the French editors of Vogue, and leads one to the conclusion that the modern world has failed to properly communicate with itself.
History will be repeated if it is forgotten. In an era of mass tele-communication that instantly carries information across the planet and back, how have we failed so miserably at educating each other as to what has gone wrong in other parts of the world?
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| To save you the trouble of googling. |
[2009-10-17 (Saturday) at 23:24:00] |
For those of you who will be engaging in a bit of costume shopping in Toronto soon, I present this:
West End:
Amazing Party & Costume
923 Oxford Street
Etobicoke, ON M8Z 5T3
(416) 259-5959Hours: Mon 9am to 9pm
Tue 9am to 9pm
Wed 9am to 9pm
Thu 9am to 9pm
Fri 9am to 9pm
Sat 9am to 6pm
Sun 11am to 5pm
Central:
Malabar Ltd
14 McCaul St, Toronto, ON M5T 1V6
(416) 598-2581
Hours:
Mon 10am to 6pm
Tue 10am to 6pm
Wed 10am to 6pm
Thu 10am to 6pm
Fri 10am to 6pm
Sat 10am to 5pm Mon 10am to 6pm
Tue 10am to 6pm
Wed 10am to 6pm
Thu 10am to 7pm
Fri 10am to 7pm
Sat 10am to 5pm
Sun Closed Mon 10am to 7pm
Tue 10am to 7pm
Wed 10am to 7pm
Thurs, Fri 10am to 8pm
Sat 10am to 7pm
Sun 12pm to 6pm Mon Closed
Tue Closed
Wed 12pm to 7pm
Thu 12pm to 7pm
Fri 12pm to 7pm
Sat 10am to 6pm
Sun 12pm to 5pm Mon 10am to 6pm
Tue 10am to 6pm
Wed 10am to 6pm
Thu 10am to 6pm
Fri 10am to 9pm
Sat 10am to 8pm
Sun 10am to 5pm |
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| The Gears Of The Machine |
[2009-10-09 (Friday) at 08:33:00] |
October 8th's At Issue Panel discussion topic: Stephen Harper has been caught on video covering the Beatles!
Conservative supporters all seem to be very, very displeased. Hell, even Andrew Coyne seems rather displeased (but don't take my word for it, watch the actual broadcast and see what he had to say).
Ah, Stephen... what was that you were saying last year, about gala events being for the "liberal elite" and how you wouldn't go to them them? It's all a little different now it's been another election, another year, and you're still trapped in minority territory, isn't it?
Much to the chagrin of the people who voted for you specifically because you weren't part of this hypothetical liberal elite... you're now partaking in contrived publicity stunts to impress people who they seem to think are the liberal elite. Much to the chagrin of the people who voted for you specifically because you weren't part of this community of liberals whom they believe have too much money to identify with the average middle-class rural Canadian... you now seem to look a lot like them, Stephen Harper. In fact, I've heard some people pointing out that the last guy they remember pulling the "musicianship" stunt was the relatively liberal Bill Clinton.
Last year, you were doing your best to convince everyone that you went to Coffee Time for coffee, rather than to a bistro for a latte. Last year, you guaranteed you would not make significant advances in Québec, by cutting federal arts funding and loudly claiming that ordinary people weren't into the arts. Look at you now, Stephen Harper.
Heh heh heh... the longer you stay in office, the more you seem to realise the necessity of playing by the rules and fitting in to the traditional political culture that so many Conservative voters were voting against. The longer you stay in office, the less you look like the old, rural-minded, number-crunching Reformer and the more you look like you belong in Ottawa. The longer you stay in office, Stephen, the less you look like the old NCC conspiracy-theorist and the more you look like one of those people you railed against while you were in the NCC.
In case you were wondering... this didn't do anything to humanise you. Frankly, when I watched that performance, the first thing that came to mind is the fact that the song you chose to cover was cheaply-made in a foreign country. Quite appropriate; it seems to adequately symbolise your lack of ability to stand up for Canada and your willingness to sell out our economy.
However, I'm still grateful for your performance, Stephen Harper. It's giving me the satisfaction of telling everyone who was voting for you "in order to get a change from traditional political culture" (as I heard someone put it recently) that they wasted their votes.
Beware how thy enemy becomes thyself.
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| Optics. |
[2009-10-08 (Thursday) at 04:27:00] |
Centennial College's new advertising campaign features poster kids that don't adhere to the squeaky-clean, up-and-coming-professional look.
Friends of mine will testify that I never say the usual squeaky-clean, up-and-coming-professional image that colleges and universities portray as being at all appealing. The squeaky-clean, up-and-coming-professional look portrayed in a lot of college ads always inspired me to turn away from the poster portraying it. In fact, my friends will further testify as to my response to that image up to this very day: For instance, when I looked at one of Humber College's ads recently, the guy portrayed in that ad was squeaky-clean, up-and-coming, wore dress pants with a T-shirt and sported a smirk. The ad asked "Curious to know how far you nan go in life?" I responded by jerking a thumb toward the guy in the ad and saying "Not if he's going to be there."
Let's face it: people you met going into college or university for the first time never looked like the kids in the brochures, did they? A lot of teenagers were either intimidated by, un-inspired by, or blatantly contemptuous of, the look that colleges usually use in their advertising, weren't they? Really, who were the kids in the brochure supposed to appeal to? The parents, or the teachers perhaps, but certainly not the students who would potentially be applying.
When I was in high school I spent a couple of months doing a co-op assignment at the school board's main offices. While I was there, some squeaky-clean, up-and-coming marketing people asked me to take a look at two possible advertisements they were creating for one of the school board's study programmes. One ad featured a studious-looking teenager hunched over a microscope. The other featured what appeared to be a surfer kid in a sweat-suit, sporting a self-satisfied smile; the opposite of studious, I think. When I pointed to the surfer as the one to go with, they asked why. The explanation I gave was as follows: "Okay, here's you're problem: You're marketing this programme toward teenagers, and that ad" I said, pointing to the one featuring the microscope, "looks a lot like it's marketing work, rather than marketing the benefits that I'd get out of this programme. You don't want to try to sell work to teenagers. No one is going to go for that shit; work is boring. This jackass" I said, jerking my thumb toward the ad featuring the blonde surfer dude "screams look at me, I did the program and now I'm a step ahead. He's screaming success in a language I can understand: he did the programme and now he's reaping the benefits. This is what you want to say if you're trying to get the attention of a bunch of teenagers, and it certainly doesn't hurt that of the two of them, this jackass actually looks like a teenager."
In a similar fashion, I commend the decision of Centennial to aim their marketing toward their actual potential applicants, rather than the potential applicants parents or teachers or whoever the frell the previous adverts were supposed to appeal to. If colleges want to actually get kids attention, they need to at least show that they know what college students actually look like.
Humber College, in particular, should wake up: its best-known alumni is George Stroumboulopoulos. He doesn't look like the squeaky-clean, up-and-coming-professional image at all. He looks like he grew up listening to speed metal. Try to reflect that in next year's ad campaign, Humber, because I'm sick of seeing that smirking shit-brake in the slacks who is on all of your advertising.
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| Call and response. |
[2009-10-08 (Thursday) at 03:27:00] |
A study by a University of California economist indicates that California's plan to slow climate change will boost the state's economy and save hundreds of thousands of jobs, which are being put at risk by rising energy costs..
In your face, oil lobby.
Some schools in the United States, wary of "sexual harassment" or "improper touching" complaints, have either banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule.
Banning hugs? Seriously? Look, America, I realise that you're all neurotic and repressed, but look at it this way: on the one hand, male Russian athletes kiss each other full on the lips after scoring a goal; on the other hand, those American youth who aren't hugging in schools are often shooting them up or lobbing pipe bombs into them. Hugging seems like a happy medium to me and I think you really want to encourage this kind of behaviour, m'kay?
Bananas didn't always look like the ones in your fruit bowl (thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) aevin for this link). They were bred to the current specifications by farmers, who are now watching them die as the resulting lack of bio-diversity leaves their crop susceptible to disease.
All those Christian fundamentalists who insist that the banana's unique combination of shape, nutrient concentration, seedless-ness and and ease of harvesting are proof of the existence of a benevolent god are thus reminded: no one's god made the banana the way it is. Humans did.
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| On gang colours and border security. |
[2009-10-02 (Friday) at 02:01:00] |
The Czech Republic was recently visited by a man named Joseph Alois Ratzinger. Mr. Ratzinger's known aliases include:- "Joey Ratz"
- "Benny 16"
- and "Pope Benedict XVI"
... you might be more familiar with these. Either way, Ratzinger is presently the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, and was in the Czech Republic trying to promote religion in general.
The Czech Republic is one of the most secular nations in Europe. Organised religion was almost completely stamped out of the country under Communist rule between 1948 and 1989. Quite separate from their drive to implement a socialist economy, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia also implemented an authoritarian government that took its cues from Joseph Stalin, including drives to shut down religious organisations. In 1985, with the election of of Mikhail Gorbachev as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia's government found itself pushed to loosen up and discontinue its authoritarian policies. Although both Slovakia and the Czech Republic maintain socialised economies to this day, after the Soviet Union instituted the policies of perestroika and glasnost, and then published Lenin's Testament, it was impossible for the authoritarian regime to maintain any pretense of legitimacy. Thus, by the end of 1989, Western-style freedom of religion was introduced to the region.
However, once the authoritarian regime had loosened its grip, the Czechs proved to be in no hurry to reclaim their religion. Roughly half of the people who responded to a recent national survey stated that they don't believe in god. Those numbers aren't isolated to former communist states, either: they're in tune with the rest of Europe - Western, Eastern and otherwise.
The Czech Republic has likely been singled out for harassment by the Vatican because it hasn't even bothered to re-establish formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican in the two decades since the fall of the old authoritarian government.
So here's Joey Ratz, doing his damnedest to try to get the Czechs to suddenly do an about face and reverse a trend that takes up most of living memory, saying "Now that religious freedom has been restored, I call upon all the citizens of this republic to rediscover the Christian traditions which have shaped their culture."
Three things come to mind.
One is that the Christian traditions that the Pope is carrying on about include fratricide. If the Pope had read any history, he'd have noticed that the Czech Republic's history consists of a lot of sectarian violence. This violence was specifically Protestant versus Catholic, with each side forcibly converting or expelling members of the other from Czech lands at different times. Do the Czechs really want to go back to that? I don't think they do.
The second is that freedom of religion includes the freedom to have none at all. Joseph Alois Ratzinger's plea for people to take advantage of religious freedom to convert to Catholicism betrays a complete misunderstanding of what freedom of religion means.
Lastly... Learn to pick your battles, Joey. The fifty years of authoritarian rule that went out of its way to suppress organised religion in Czechoslovakia was concurrent with widespread education and a trend of secularisation in Europe in general. None of the Czechs I know personally are religious; hell, one of them identifies himself as a Buddhist (which is technically not a religion). Taking that into account, how likely is it that anyone will take religion that seriously in the Czech Republic any longer?
This story really became a comedy about four days after Ratzinger's speech, when news broke that Raymond Lahey, a ranking member in the Roman Catholic organisation, was on the run from the law in Canada.
A native of Newfoundland, Lahey was serving the Catholics as a Bishop in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, when he arrived at Ottawa International Airport on September 15th. His laptop computer was confiscated when agents of the Canadian Border Services Agency found files on it that concerned them, although they released him at the time. His sudden resignation from the church on Saturday, September 26th, surprised the Catholics... until the CBSA announced on September 30th that a subsequent examination of the hard drive on his confiscated laptop computer had turned up child pornography. Ottawa police promptly obtained a warrant for Lahey's arrest, but by that point Lahey had gone to ground.
Of course, abusing children and fleeing prosecution is one of those Christian traditions that Joey Ratz would rather we not talked about. It's going to be amusing watching him try to say that secularism hurts people when his own foot soldiers keep getting arrested for actually hurting people.
This has been cross-posted to canadianatheist, and antitheism, from my personal journal.
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| Shattered Dreams |
[2009-09-25 (Friday) at 06:50:00] |
"I think people who don't live in the US still feel that America holds a great deal of promise."
Sorry to burst you bubble, but that's really not the case.
We all remember the 60 Minutes special that interviewed a bunch of Europeans who were studying at American universities, and the baffled face of the interviewer when they all said that they'd be returning to Europe when they were done school, because they'd never want to raise their children in the United States.
After eight years of George W. Bush, people who live outside of the USA are using the USA as an example of why democracy doesn't work.
After twelve years of Fox News, when people who live outside of the USA want to make the case the freedom of speech does not guarantee a just society, they use the USA as an example.
After decades of terrible business practices, the American auto industry is now reviled by the rest of the world. American cars, which once symbolised freedom, now symbolise air pollution and oil wars.
After decades of forcing its will on the rest of the world through military force, the United States has gone from being seen as a beacon of freedom to the world to being seen as one of the oppressors.
After countless years of American Christian fundamentalism, the European nations that people once came to America to escape are now the destination of choice for many of the world's modern refugees as they flee persecution in their homelands.
Hell, even people who live in nations that the United States of America thinks of as its allies would like to see the USA go bankrupt and belly-up, just so that the USA will stop exporting things like Evangelical Christians, McDonalds, Oprah, and gas-guzzling cars.
The "American Dream"?
When non-Americans hear that phrase now, the first thing that comes to mind is a scene from Vanilla Sky: Tom Cruise, his face warped and hidden from view in shame, screaming "Tech Support! Tech Support! It's a nightmare!!!"
America has poisoned its image globally, and no one in the rest of the world looks at it the way they used to.
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| The Origin Of Stupidity. |
[2009-09-25 (Friday) at 04:56:00] |
I'd like to point out to Kirk Cameron that his very existence is proof that humans are descended from lesser primates, but this "ZOMGitsCriss" character on YouTube is far more eloquent.
...
...
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| Small-business owners are, apparently, lethal. |
[2009-09-23 (Wednesday) at 23:12:00] |
I posted an entry earlier this year stating that "Small-business owners are, apparently, dangerous." That was in relation to this story about a triad of shopkeepers in Toronto's Chinatown who chased a suspected shoplifter and and assaulted him badly enough that the police arrested all three of them along with the original suspect.
Now, this story has floated to the surface, and tells of a shopkeeper in Winnipeg who may have killed a suspect, after whacking her on the head with a bat, over a can of Stuff Posing As Meat that was priced at less than two dollars.
Now, while I'll be the first person to say that this belligerent behaviour is the result of the recession (itself the result of the inherently unstable and destructive capitalist economy that we use) I will also be the first to say that it's no excuse.
Shopkeepers always complain that they are beset by thieves, burglars, arsonists, and vandals, even during times when business is good and crime is at a low point, and use it as an excuse to mark goods up to astronomical levels. At the moment, with the economy in recession, that astronomical markup is probably the only thing separating these shopkeepers from bankruptcy, as fewer and fewer people are buying from them. Add to that the increase in petty crime that comes with an economic downturn: people will perform acts of break-and-enter, smash-and-grab, and shoplifting just to keep themselves fed. I can understand that the aforementioned shopkeepers might feel a little stressed out.
However, they themselves made the choice to enter a profession in which they were dealing with the general public; knowing full well that the general public are an unruly bunch and that some of them steal. If they can't deal with that in a civilised manner then they're quite simply not cut out to be shopkeepers.
This one shopkeeper in particular seems like a headcase. Watching The National last night, I saw a clip which is linked to on that page, in which the reporter uncovers information from local residents indicating that this shopkeeper is prone to violent acts: a woman told the reporter that the bloke attacked her son with a golf club in an attempt to break her son's knee after her son was caught lifting from the man's store.
I used to stick up for the little guy, but after Toronto bartenders demonstrated against the city's smoking ban, I had less sympathy for the little guys. Reading stories like this, I'd now be quite happy to see some of the little guys get dragged away, face-down, by the cops.
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| Priorities. |
[2009-09-23 (Wednesday) at 21:32:00] |
I have to wonder why, with so much evidence available that proves that Winston Blackmore and James Oler of Bountiful, B.C. are trafficking underage women across the Canada/US border for sex and engaging in the organised rape of their underage faimly members, B.C. attorney general Wally Oppal chose to focus on the polygamy that both suspects preach.
The prosecutors clearly had their priorties out of order.
For all of the emotionally-charged bluster and sentimentality surrounding marriage, it is simply paperwork to the legal system. The police are not at all the best way to enforce what amounts to a clerical offense.
Furthermore, prosecuting Blackmore for polygamy was never going to survive a Charter challenge. Given the number of polygamous marriages that carry on just fine without the involvement of the legal system, given the number of religious groups that insist that their religion allows them multiple spouses but do not ask that the law be amended to accommodate them, and given that polygamist marriages are effectively symbolic and carry no legal weight anyway (which Blackmore's wives will find out after he dies), charging Blackmore criminally would have been a waste of time.
Lastly... no one frelling cares about the polygamy issue. The two men in question are raping children. I don't care what anyone's silly gut feelings are about people who carry on multiple concurrent relationships... sexual assault is at the heart of this story and is a grave criminal offense.
B.C. attorney general Wally Oppal should have instucted his prosecutors to go after Blackmore for either:
(a) contravening section 151 of the Criminal Code (sex with someone under 14).
OR
(b) contravening section 28 of the Marriage Act (BC) (illegal to marry someone in BC under the age of 19 without parental consent).
However, B.C. attorney general Wally Oppal chose to focus on the polygamy, and as a result, Blackmore is back for more.
I remember reading somewhere that in some law enforcement theory, cops and prosecutors are really there to enforce social norms rather than enforce the law, and that the law is merely the tool they use to enforce those norms.
I suspect that B.C. attorney general Wally Oppal subscribes to that theory and that he decided to go after Winston Blackmore and James Oler for breaking the normal boundaries of marriage.
The problem with that theory and with trying to apply the law in that manner is that social norms change, and as they change, judgements change with them. A hundred years ago in Canada, the concept of marriage was so rigid that a judge might have been inclined to annul a traditional marriage if the participants were of different ethnicities, citing public decency or some other such frivolous legal concept.
Today, however, traditional marriage is dropping off the radar like an aircraft plunging into an ocean: "straight" people can't be bothered to participate in it; same-sex marriage (for the few homosexuals who are interested in it) is commonly accepted; and the time-honoured practice of men cheating on their wives with their secretaries has faded as more and more married couples practice open relationships and polyamoury. Most people, hearing the word polygamy, simply shrug and in true Canadian fashion, utter "eh."
Raping kids, however, is still frowned upon. So why did B.C. attorney general Wally Oppal waste taxpayer time and money by bothering with the polygamy charge?
What an idiot.
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