CalgaryLiberal

Archive for March, 2010

I have a few big ideas and the Calgary Beacon picked up on one of them. And I quote…

Vincent St. Pierre is a university student and blogger who says he is involved in politics and was encouraged to attend the conference by a professor.  As someone who is a frequent user of web-based technology, St. Pierre says his big idea would involve streamlining government to allow small teams (presumably comprised of bureaucrats and members outside government) to work collaberatively on policy issues.  This innovation, he argues, would speed up response time while reducing costs.

Of course this would take a highly invested in workforce, both in educational and in monetary investment. Also, it could only really be applied in certain areas: it couldn’t be applied at the ground level at the post office or passport office due to the regulatory requirements of such work. However it could be quite well applied to issues on foreign policy, health-care crisis management, and areas that require quick creativity, which is ever more important in an ever quicker changing world.

Watch online now @ http://can150.ca/live/?lang=en .

Update:

A comment from the web gallery caught my attention:

[Comment From Arnold Murphy ]

I like the way McCallum just asked his question, he admitted not knowing something and asked it with genuine concern and interest. It is very telling how Ignatieff is impacting the decorum and real enthusiasm of what I thought were tired politicians. Keep surprising me and the rest of the Nation with such vision and the Liberal party will lead us out of these hard times.

Update (2):

Another great web comment.

Adam Goldenberg:
Incidentally, Michael Ignatieff takes copious notes. I’ve seen him do it. He’s a machine. He uses little leather-bound notebooks and writes left-handed. Every panel discussion, every roundtable, Question Period, etc. He always has one with him, and refers to it constantly. He’s not kidding when he says, “you can’t lead if you don’t listen.” That’s his style.

Globe and Mail link–”Tories release reams of Afghan detainee documents”

And 12 hours and 40 minutes (+ crack CBC analysis for added spice) later…

CBC link–”Afghans routinely executed detainees”

With Conservatives dodging a contempt charge by releasing these documents we can now see the troubling scenario in Afghanistan. No wonder Harper didn’t want Canadians to see this. In light of my last post this is made even more frightening,

Update: (30 hours, 40 minutes since release)

A Canadian soldier who in 2007 helped Afghan security forces interrogate a prisoner later told his boss he worried the detainee had been abused. The soldier recounted his story to Canadian Capt. Simon Parker.

In a February 2007 email, Parker wrote that the Canadian Forces needed to better prepare Canadian questioners for the rigours of working with Afghans because they “don’t follow our policies on detainee handling if you know what I mean.“

Source.

Attending her Calgary speech was interesting to say the least. Notable things include her denying evolution, making fake debates about climate change, declaring women shouldn’t vote, and that everything west of Calgary should be taken over by the USA.

Personally, I would sooner die than become American. And denial of suffrage to women and the denigration of science are simply horrid policies.

Although her positions may boggle the mind: that’s the point. She is aiming, in an almost tactical and academic matter, to attack the things that would rile people and gather attention toward her books. She referred to her books almost eight times during the entire escapade so, honestly, it’s quite obvious why she was there–to sell and sign books.

And the best way to sell books? Controversy.

That Ottawa stunt was planned. There were not 2,000 but only 170 that showed up to protest her. The police didn’t advise her to leave Ottawa but stated simply that it was a single option out of many and that her organization was terribly inadequate to handle the attendees. Also, the change of venue in Calgary was too quick, too easy–it tends to take a month to register an event for the Red & White club and, obviously, she had booked it well in advance. As noted by Ezra Levant (who introduced Coulter) after Ottawa the attendance for the Calgary event doubled. It’s a set up. It’s faked. It is that simple.

But that’s not the point, really. To sell books is the aim of her game, and she stirred up enough controversy to get that attention and get those sales. There. It’s still not her words or how ignorant she is, either.

These are  not the core of what she represents. (Side Note: You can still be only in it for the book sales and make some form of a point.)

Free speech, even at the cost of common decency, is her showcased ideological bent. Ethics of free speech doesn’t matter to her and only the gain of controversy is her aim. There is nothing more to it. When I asked her a question during her Q&A period tonight I asked about her thoughts on 1 Timothy 6:12 where the bible informs the reader that people have to keep their promises and make good on their commitments along with “fighting the good fight”. Coulter said that it wasn’t her duty, nor the politicians’, to answer for their promises or be held to any standard. She then went into a diatribe on how the USA wasn’t founded on any responsibility to others–which was odd, considering that the locale of this speech and this question was in Canada.

(As a side note: I rarely use the bible in political arguments. In this case I did so I could circumvent the howling that would have went on by the polarized audience if I used secular reasonings. Also, self-described conservatives tend to have a tough time refuting the premises of the bible and that makes a whole subsection of ‘dodging the question’ both out of order and political dead ends. Using the bible forces them to answer the question, really, albeit Ms. Coulter still dodged it none-the-less by babbling on about the ‘greatness’ of the USA.)

There is no duty to common sense and common decency in her book. It’s not there.

The Conservative Party of Canada have constantly called for the destruction of the Human Rights Commission, a policy that Ann Coulter heartily endorses. Wait a second, however–although Coulter’s steadfast, definitely outlandish, wish for abuses for free speech to be allowed is unquestionable the Conservative’s wish for open communication and free speech is not. Our Conservatives (note the upper-case lettering) are not as crass as she. However,  they are as malign and in the opposite direction with regards to speech. Instead of book sales they want votes (like any other party) and (here’s where the anti-Coulter comes in) shut down freedoms.

Oh, and I should probably make the argument that the Conservatives are anti-freedom of speech and anti-open government. This is easy. Frightfully easy, in fact. To make such an argument  is simple since Harper is rather brazen in his actions. Just check out the following list:

• The Conservatives shut down Dr. Tushingham from promoting his book on climate change over ideological qualms.
• Gagged Rights and Democracy staff.
• Fired Linda Keen of the Nuclear Safety Commission when she spoke out, after weeks of roadblocks set up by the Conservatives, on the topic of nuclear safety. Medical isotopes, needed for cancer treatment and other medical procedures, were to become scarce according to her (and did so) and, well, the Conservatives couldn’t have that scandal and fired her.
• Smeared and silenced Richard Colvin for providing testimony under subpoena.
• Hiding our brave dead soldiers from the public.
• Shutting down the Military Police Complaints Commission.
• Conduct overt exercises in sabotaging parliamentary committees (they even made a printed guide for mass consumption amongst their aids!)
• This above noted handbook also teaches people how to hide reports, shut down Access to Information requests, and sabotage the spread of documentation on Afghan detainees
• Cut KAIROS funding.
• Then, on top of all of this, the Tories are shutting down the only the offices for the Human Rights Commission in Vancouver, Toronto, and Halifax, where almost 70% of the human rights complaints are filed. So expect the number of complaints to drop dramatically since the Conservatives are shutting down access to these offices.
• Also (as noted in the above linked to article), in 2006 the Conservatives shut down the Court Challenges Program and close Status of Women Canada offices across the country as their first orders of business.

So lets recap: Coulter is interested in her personal gain. The Conservatives are in politics for their own  gains, votes or otherwise. Coulter showcases unfettered free speech. Conservatives want to clamp down on such endeavours. Note the similarities in the first two and the conflict of the last two. So before anyone tries to tie Coulter to the Conservatives (or conservatives) they should make clear this distinction in their standpoints on freedom of speech (amongst other freedoms).

So if you see any Conservatives argue that Coulter is a Canadian conservative, or that Coulter is something to look up to as a conservative… Well, obviously that’s not the case. If at any time you see a Conservative thump their chest over freedom of speech, and how the HRC harms it, re-examine the situation because their words and their actions are not one and the same. It’d be blatant hypocrisy since Coulter is diametrically opposed ideologically to the Conservative Party of Canada, and the acts do no line up with the words of the Conservatives.

Something is definitely rotten in the state of Denmark.

Who else is talking?

An enlightened savage is talking quite enlightened about Coulter.

Big City Liberal talks big. (1) (2)

Jim Currie pokes Coulter in the eye.

Lawrence Martin, of the Globe and Mail, writes on ‘A capital where freedom’s in short supply’ (fixed)

CBC video (Interview), Power & Politics interviews Coulter

Ann Coulter talks about Vice-President-Provost of the University of Ottawa’s Tuesday night bikini wax escapades.