Mohawks join Toronto protesters

Heard on the radio news that Mohawks are bringing sacred fire to St. James park in Toronto to support the protest... and probably add theirs.

Joe Warmington of the Sun told John Oakley of 640AM talk radio that there already was a pile of wood. He stepped on one piece and somebody yelled: Get off the sacred wood.

Hello Caledonia!

Which reminds me how spineless Premier Dalton McGuinty was, so he purchased the property so the developers and home owners could get something back. McCastrated lost his balls when he sided with the native thugs. I think he, or the Mohawks, handed them over to his wife and she had them bronzed. Memories.

Caledonia Players: The Mohawk Warriors
http://voiceofcanada.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/caledonia-players-the-mohawk-warriors/

OPP takes natives' side in Caledonia dispute
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/weinreb081706.htm

Grand River land dispute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_River_land_dispute

Mohawks set up camp in Toronto’s High Park
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/05/16/mohawks-set-up-camp-in-torontos-high-park/

Now what will Mayor Rob Ford do with the leftist Chief Bill Blair of the Toronto Confused or Handcuffed Police?

Frankly, the hell with Toronto and the liberals and socialists inside the metaphorical political moat which separates the Greater Toronto Area.

But I feel for Rob Ford trying to clean up the financial mess and now this.

Bonfire of occupying vanities for city - Joe Warmington, Toronto Sun
http://m.torontosun.com/2011/10/26/bonfire-of-occupying-vanities-for-city?noimage

The Economy, An Eye Popping Bloody Mess



Let’s scrap the useless long-gun registry and move on

The long-gun registry is back in the news. The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has launched a plan to finally put the federal long-gun registry out of business, plugging the hole down which more than $2-billion of taxpayers’ money have already drained.

The Tories have long argued that registration of rifles and shotguns is a useless burden on firearms owners and are now, with their majority in both the House and the Senate, in a position to scrap the database.

So once again the debate on the merits of the Tory initiative heats up: politicians posture and rant during Question Period and cable news channels top-up their schedules with interviews with much the same characters as we heard during the debate on Manitoba MP Candice Hoeppner’s Bill C-391 in 2009, which would have repealed the long-gun registry back then, had it not been voted down by the opposition.

I hear two primary arguments for retaining this costly program: (a) it’s a valuable tool for police services; and (b) it reduces crimes committed with long-guns.

Firstly, just because police say they want to have a certain tool doesn’t mean they should be given it. Many police services would like to have the option of searching homes without a warrant in times when a neighbourhood child goes missing. We may sympathize with police reasoning, but that does not justify suspending our basic right to privacy and protection against un-lawful search. Our laws should not be crafted primarily to make police work easier, otherwise, there would be an across-the-board ban on all guns, and be damned with individual rights. As to statistics police chiefs use in support of their contention the registry is a valuable police tool, here’s a passage from a piece I wrote last September:

A frequently used statistic to support keeping long-guns in the registry is the 14,012 average daily queries the RCMP claim were made in 2010. This oft-quoted statistic is grossly misleading as only 530 of those are specific to firearms registration (i.e., licence number, serial number and certificate number). The remaining 96.3 per cent (13,482) are automatically generated every time an address is checked or a [motor vehicle] license plate is verified.

Secondly, crimes committed with long-guns have indeed been declining. Some rightly point to the fact that from the mid-1990s—when the firearms registry became law—to 2010, there was a reduction in long gun crimes. But, as pointed out by the National Post’s Lorne Gunter in Wednesday’s newspaper, “there was already less [gun crime] in 1998 than there had been in 1988, and less in 1988 than there had been in 1978.” In other words, violent crime per capita in Canada peaked in 1975 and the rate has been on the decline since then.

It’s been the law in Canada since 1934 to register handguns. Yet handgun crimes are rampant on the streets of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. If registration had the power to prevent crime and improve our safety, this simply would not be the case.

The long-gun registry applies only to sporting rifles and shotguns; all firearms classified as “restricted” or “prohibited” would remain registered, even after the House passes, as expected, its new bill.

Moreover, it is instructive to note there are alternatives in the form of other databases that keep track of firearm threats. Tom Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association, gives the following examples:

• The National Information Centre holds criminal records;
• Police have access to data on firearms licences; and
• Provincial databases such as PRIME (Police Records Information Management Environment) in British Columbia, collect information from previous incidents, including where police noted firearms at people’s homes.

The long-gun registry was inspired by the murder of 14 students at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique by Marc Lapine using a legally obtained Mini-14 rifle. The current law would not have prevented that tragic incident.

Since its inception, the long-gun register has been mired in controversy, distortions and scandal. The gun registry has been reasonable described as a boondoggle and one of the most embarrassing spending scandals in federal Liberal Party history.

Spin, half-truths and muddled reasoning have been hallmarks of this debate. Let’s scrap the useless long-gun registry and move on.
--

A version of this entry was also published at
Postmedia’s Canada.Com The Real Agenda blog.

 

© Russell G. Campbell, 2011.
All rights reserved.
 
The views I express on this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the views or posi­tions of political parties, institutions or organi­zations with which I am associated.

Jailing Western Farmers Wasn't Enough...

Now the Canadian Wheat Board wants to sue the taxpayers of Canada to keep their monopoly control over farmers. I ask you, what is good about a monopoly? How is lack of competition a good thing? The CWB has had their way for way too long. It was a good idea decades ago, now, it is so entrenched in it's power that it has forgotten to like about what is best for our farmers.

Basic economics instructs that a monopoly will charge a higher price to consumers. The CWB can also give farmers less than the market price because our western farmers, by law, can not sell their wheat to anyone else but the CWB. So, the CWB gets to screw farmers and consumers at the same time. No wonder they are scared to lose their monopoly.

"Going to jail to free western farmers was definitely worth it. It frustrates me that almost one decade has passed since then. It's hard to believe such a law still exists in Canada."

 Let's be clear here. The Canadian Wheat Board will still exist after this bill is passed. They will just have to compete and show western farmers that they will get the best price for them, and that scares the crap out of the glorified CWB.

Does the CWB try to work with the government? No, they are suing the government (meaning us taxpayers....just so you lefties understand who actually pays the bills) because their little kingdom is a risk of having to move into this century. Here is a sample of how lefties think, or not.

nowlistenhere

12:24 PM on October 26, 2011

It's ironic the way "free trade" will lift many restrictions, while strengthening the "corporate powers" that bind us. Without the Wheat Board's powers, greedy corporations (the wal-mart type) will move in. All the little guys get bought out, corporations (maybe Chinese), buy-up the land and up the prices. Profits leave the country, farmers are now minimum wage earners, and Harpo has satisfied another group of his cronies. "Happy Capitalism"? Sure! If you're in the minority that rules!

1 replies1 reply 1 replies

Natedawg

1:38 PM on October 26, 2011

Please explain how the apocalypse you describe will be brought about by giving individual farmers a choice on where to sell their wheat?

Lefties scream and yell about a woman's right to choose, but they do not understand that farmers should have the right to choose too.  Individual rights can not be allowed according to the lefties, unless it is something they agree with like the elimination of prayer in schools (except Muslim prayers, those are okay with the lefties), no more "Christmas" anything (can't offend all those "other" religions), and no letting kids be kids without adding sex education into kindergarten classes.

Everything that has been going on lately has reminded me of Atlas Shrugged. Maybe the wheat farmer's should forget to plant crops next spring, see what happens to the price of grain products. Maybe corporations should stop hiring all those union workers.

The CWB is sucking the blood out of our western farmers, and they are obviously running scared. If they had any smarts about them, they would work with the government to realign the laws, instead of suing us tsxpayers.

Free our western farmers! Give them the same choice that eastern farmers get.

SFL.. On the Road in Oakland-ish

Woodstock - they did such a great job in the 60's.. Why wouldn't it work just as well today?


Ok.

So I'm actually in San Francisco, across the Bay.

I'm having a lovely visit,and greatly enjoying the local reports of the 22% getting hauled away from their occupation.

Of course they vow to return.

The question is why? What are they accomplishing, besides sleeping and shitting in public parks?

Yes, we keep hearing about their intentions to give voice to the unheard.

They keep talking about how it's a reminder of the 60's movement.

Well, I've been thinking about that, as I wander about in the epicenter of the 60's movement - Haight-Ashbury and so on.. and it begs the question - what did the 60's really create?

I'll tell you what they created:

Edward Michael Liddy (born January 28, 1946) - CEO of AIG from 2008 to 2009 and before that, on the board of Goldman Sachs from 2003 to 2008.

Richard Severin "Dick" Fuld, Jr. (born April 26, 1946) is an American investment banker and business executive best known as the final Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lehman Brothers from 1994 until they went under in 2008.

Yup.

Two former "children of the 60's", both 23 years old when the "Woodstock Generation" was born on Max Yasgur's field.

That's right - both of these sworn enemies of the "occupiers of Wall Street" were children of the so-called "age of Aquarius".

So what the hell happened?

Well.. I'll tell you.

While Timothy Leary and his pals were tuning out on LSD, following up on the same sort of stupidity as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters driving around in their magic bus - the ground work was laid for greasy weasels like Liddy and Fuld to take control.

And they sure as hell did, and, sadly they still do.

Other 60's children?

Dick Cheney was 28 in 1969.

Karl Rove was 19 in 1969.

And, last, but not least.. their uberfuhrer, George W. Bush, was born in 1946, and was 23 years old when Jimmy Hendrix was lighting his guitar on fire.

Think about THAT for a moment.

And then ask yourself this:

If all these asshole "occupiers" are going to do is sit in a park and make a nuisance of themselves.. If all their supporters like Michael Moore are going to do is bitch and moan, but do little or nothing to pick up a shovel and start doing some heavy lifting..

Who is going to be the Lehman Brothers of 2051?

Who is going to be the power elite in the mid 21st century when the 22% cede control of government today, like they did in 1969?

Time to put on the "big boy pants", and start doing some work to give Government back to everyday people, instead of just shitting in the park like a bunch of ignorant farm animals in Yasgur's field back in '69.