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Friday, October 23, 2009
Potemkin 2010
Like airbrushing a blemish, really:
But the B.C. Civil Liberties Association says what the city and province are trying to do with a bill that grants municipal workers the power to enter private property and remove illegal signs with 24 hours' notice.
People are only allowed to display signs that already exist or new "celebratory" signs that foster a festive spirit around the Olympics in a designated 40-block zone, said the association's David Eby.
Offenders could face fines up to $10,000 or six months in jail, he said.
Amazingly Stephen Harper, who gave tacit sanction to Section 13 last year, makes some of the right noises:
"I would not support any actions in the name of security that stifle political free expression.
"That is what our country is all about," Harper said in Vancouver.
You betcha Stephen. Canada is free and freedom is its nationality. One of your predecessors said that, you might want to look him up. He won far more votes in Quebec that you ever did or will. Just a suggestion. The statist paranoia about Vancouver not being absolutely perfect this coming February is as futile as it is obscene.
The City Fathers are fervently praying no one notices just how awful the downtown east side really is. Vancouver is one of the world's most livable cities with a stunning natural setting. Not good enough. It has to be perfect. No obnoxious poor and sick people being poor and sick. No addicts being addicted. No vagrants, except perhaps ones that have been thoroughly Disneyified. The unpleasant ends of the social spectrum don't have to just keep to themselves, they have to be kept out of the way completely. Out of sight, out of camera shot. Dissent? None in Vancouver the Perfect. Happy smiling people in a happy smiley land. For what? So that Canada's third largest city can play host to a statist boondoggle with a sporting competition attached.
Posted by Richard Anderson on October 23, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
Harper has no idea what freedom means.
Posted by: DrGreenthumb | 2009-10-23 10:55:30 AM
Vegan, I had exactly the same thought, but you beat me to it.
Of course any signs denouncing the Chinese government and its abuses of human rights (real ones as opposed to the phoney ones) or even the Olympics must not be tolerated, since they give the lie to the image desired.
Posted by: Alain | 2009-10-23 11:16:21 AM
The modern Olympics were conceived in the imperial and proto fascist era.
They are the ultimate statist event, promoting the fiction that state funded and recruited athletes from this nation or that can be used to prove the greatness of the State.
Canada is no different.
Especially this time, in Vancouver.
Harpo will bask in the glow of the event for personal and political gratification.
Simply because he makes a few noises -- that shoudl be GIVENS -- in the direction of a minimumly less fascist event should not entitle him to a medal of any sort.
As always the Olympics will be a wall-to-wall abuse of civil rights, including the civil right everybody has NOT to be forced to fund this occasinally fun, but obscenely pharmaceuticalized and politicized event.
Posted by: John Collison | 2009-10-23 2:31:07 PM
Maybe the druggies and bums can be given a free ride to downtown Saint John's until well after the Olympics. Shouldn't cost more than a few event tickets. Maybe a trip on a CN train and a ferry boat. For some reason, Saint John's does not have enough of the drug addicts and voluntary homeless in their downtown areas. It would be a nice change for those downtown eastside Vancouver citizens. At least they should be made the offer.
Posted by: Agha Ali Arkhan | 2009-10-23 6:47:17 PM
hear, hear Publius
Posted by: shel | 2009-10-23 8:28:42 PM
"Canada is free and freedom is its nationality."
On what planet? Canada is arguably one of the least free countries in existence. Show data supporting your contention or retract it: I have numbers showing that based on taxation and incarceration - not to mention a complete lack of freedom of expression - Canada is perhaps the 85th most free country in the world.
Factor in Richard Warman, the HRCs that have operated and oppressed for over 4 decades, and the "inciident specific legislation" that our feminine and flamboyant electorate favours in large numbers and, well, freedom and Canada don't belong in the same sentence. China is certainly more free than Canada and, having worked with a number of Cubans recently and discussing politics with them, Cuba might be too.
It's Peace, *Order*, and Good Government, the word freedom scarcely exists in Canadian constitutional law and Canada and Canadians were never really big on freedom. Don't shoot the messenger, Publius, I wish it were different.
My own view is that you can have freedom, or you can have democracy, but you cannot have both, and as the so-called "free" industrialized nations spend themselves into bankruptcy and legislate themselves into a corner, my view carries more weight every day.
The first step is admitting that you have a problem, folks: just admit that Canada isn't a very free country by any reasonable measure and never really was and we'll be on the road to recovery. Have a pleasant day.
Posted by: Canada is not free | 2009-10-24 8:51:56 AM
"Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality" is a quote from Wilfred Laurier. So a hundred years ago it was very true. Just trying to remind the PM that Canada hasn't always been so statist. It's true the BNA didn't have the pro-freedom rhetoric of the US Constitution, that was because by the 1860s individual rights were seen as so obvious very few people questioned them.
There were exceptions, public education and railroads being the obvious examples, but the Victorian Canadians were among the freest in all human history. Read up on Laurier, Alexander Mackenzie and George Brown. The Left has spent quite a lot of energy distorting our history to make it far more statist than it ever was.
It's certainly true that the abolition of property qualifications on voting helped lead to the creation of the welfare state.
Posted by: Publius | 2009-10-24 9:47:07 AM
There should be bus tours (and or walk-abouts for tourists during the Olympics) through the Downtown East-side with on-board hosts detailing the efforts of countless municipal and provincial regimes pandering to the politics of poverty. This is their special place.
Posted by: John Chittick | 2009-10-24 11:50:09 AM
" 'Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality' is a quote from Wilfred Laurier. So a hundred years ago it was very true."
It's true just because Laurier said it? What a stupid claim. Did you know that not a single Canadian woman ever voted for Laurier. Why? Because women were not allowed to vote in federal elections until seven years after he left office. Ask any descendants of aboriginal people of Laurier's day how free school choices were and how free they were to speak their own languages. Ask any Chinese-Canadians whose parents or grandparents had to pay a poll tax to come to this country (raised by Laurier's government in 1900 from $50 to $100 and then raised again by Laurier in 1903 to $500) how free it was. Ask any descendants of Jewish or black Canadians how the freedom of Laurier's day compares to freedom today. Ask any homosexuals who were jailed for consensual sex how free Canadians were in Laurier's day. The list goes on and on.
The bottom line is this: Anyone who thinks Canada was more free in Laurier's day than it is now has no knowledge of history or is a bigot who thinks the freedom of heterosexual, Christian, white men is all that counts.
Posted by: Fact Check | 2009-10-24 11:53:29 AM
I love you too FC.
Posted by: Publius | 2009-10-24 12:27:30 PM
"It's certainly true that the abolition of property qualifications on voting helped lead to the creation of the welfare state. "
Now we're talking turkey! Now, will you follow up on this in a future post, or are we going to stay on the not clever enough by a quarter "I'm Not Conservative In The Slightest But Stephen Harper Isn't Conservative Enough For Me" jag until your boy Iggy forms a government? Are you aware that some of your fellow writers here (Brock, Janet) have come out explicitly in favour of the welfare state which you loathe?
Ever notice how you don't see conservatives complaining that self-described "Tax and Spend Liberal" and putative Socialist Coalition leader Michael Ignatief isn't socialist enough? We don't do it because it would be silly; similarly, radically left wing individuals - such as the entire Western Standard staff - should refrain from complaining that Harper isn't conservative enough, because nobody is buying your schtick.
Posted by: Canada is not free | 2009-10-25 2:07:18 AM
I have heard some rumors from people in the northern B.C. town of MacKenzie that, because of the high vacancy rate in that town, the B.C. Govmt has indeed sent some of the 'undesirables' to live there until after the Olympics are over. I admit that this is indeed just a rumor at this point, but in support of this rumor, keep in mind that MacKenzie is a depressed little town with very few job opportunities and lots of empty apartments and houses. In recent months there has been a noticeable swell in the number of new people living there with no jobs or visible means of support. There has also been a very big up-tick in property crimes that has the RCMP working overtime to control. A family member of mine had a burglar very brazenly attempted to break into his house in the late evening while they were watching TV. Very unusual in a town where people were used to never having to lock their doors. There has been many of these types of crimes as of late. Also, keep in mind that MacKenzie is WELL off the beaten path and a very unlikely spot for transient people to gravitate to on their own.
I'm just sayin'.....
Posted by: arctic_front | 2009-10-25 9:20:25 AM
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