|
|
By Rob Maguire, on April 17, 2013, at 3:40 pm The Raincoast Conservation Foundation had a permit from the City of Calgary to display their travelling art exhibition, Artists for an Oil-Free Coast, at city hall. However, once the show opened, a backlash from conservative politicians caused the city to revoke the permit, arguing the show was too “political” and violated municipal bylaws banning demonstrations inside the building.
Despite the show’s unambiguous title, the city claims they “weren’t aware there was a specific political agenda or cause associated with the art exhibit,” according to Sharon Purvis, the city’s director with corporate properties and buildings.
While the city is (Read more…)
By The Ranting Canadian, on April 5, 2013, at 7:20 pm Young woman arrested for posting photo of graffitti online:
According to CBC News:
A 20-year-old woman has been accused of criminal harassment and intimidation against a high-ranking Montreal police officer after she posted a photo of anti-police graffiti online.
…
Pawluck insists that she’s done nothing wrong and the actions of the Montreal police amount to harassment.
…
Montreal criminal defence attorney Eric Sutton says the Crown will have to prove that Lafrenière reasonably feared for his safety because of the photo posted by Pawluck.
…
“I think this may be somewhat of a political statement by the police
. . . → Read More: The Ranting Canadian: Young woman arrested for posting photo of graffitti online
By Anne Cottingham, on March 14, 2013, at 7:50 pm A magnitude 8.0 earthquake shook through Wenchuan County in Sichuan province of the People’s Republic of China on May 12, 2008. Official figures listed 69,197 dead, including 5,335 children, mostly killed as a result of shoddy school construction — a horrible tragedy, particularly due to China’s one-child policy, that caught the attention of a couple of artists, including the now infamous Ai Weiwei.
Ai had courted controversy before by being publicly outspoken about the Beijing Olympics, but his response to the Sichuan earthquake brought him into the sharp focus of the Chinese government. Working with a number of locals (Read more…)
By The Ranting Canadian, on March 13, 2013, at 10:56 pm Doug Christie: The Unauthorized Obituary (article in The Tyee):
Tom Hawthorn of TheTyee reiterates what I wrote in my post about the recently croaked lawyer Doug Christie. Despite his pompous self-declarations, Christie was not a true advocate for free speech; he was merely an advocate for racism, anti-Semitism and other far right views. Christie, in fact, used the court system to try to silence critics, which is the exact opposite of promoting unfettered speech. What a hypocritical, lying piece of shit.
Excerpts:
In the late 1990s, Christie represented clients who sued newspaper cartoonist Josh Beutel, the New Brunswick Teachers’
. . . → Read More: The Ranting Canadian: Doug Christie: The Unauthorized Obituary (article in The Tyee)
By The Ranting Canadian, on March 12, 2013, at 7:39 pm
Doug Christie – racist anti-Semitic lawyer, white nationalist activist and Western separatist wannabe politician from British Columbia – died on March 11, 2013 at the age of 66 from liver disease.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Historical revisionists – and others who may be well-intended but misguided — are (sieg) heiling the Nazi sympathizer as a underdog champion of free speech in Canada, but that empathy is misplaced.
Regardless of one’s stance on hate speech laws and censorship, one should never forget that Christie’s defence of free speech was extremely selective. He defended white supremacists, homophobes and Jew-haters not out
. . . → Read More: The Ranting Canadian: Doug Christie – racist anti-Semitic lawyer, white nationalist…
By Edward Hollett, on March 7, 2013, at 6:00 am On the front page of Wednesday’s Telegram was another instalment in James McLeod’s blockbuster on the provincial government’s policy of censoring public documents.
This one focused on the claim by a spokesperson for the public engagement office that orders in council were not covered by a section of the province’s access to information law that prohibits disclosure of cabinet decisions even though the orders are essentially cabinet decisions.
At the same time, the spokesperson said the orders were subject to other sections of the act that allowed government officials to censor them selectively.
Yes, that is exactly as screwed-up as it sounds.
. . . → Read More: The Sir Robert Bond Papers: The New Secret Nation #nlpoli
By Edward Hollett, on March 4, 2013, at 6:00 am Not only does the provincial government now censor public documents called orders in council, they can’t get their own scheme right.
Public engagement minister Keith Hutchings published a letter to the editor claiming that government had always censored orders in council. The Telegram dutifully went back and asked for some of the same documents they’d received before with censored sections blacked out.
A front-page story in this Saturday’s edition (March 2) lays out the details.
. . . → Read More: The Sir Robert Bond Papers: Censoring Public Documents… or not #nlpoli
By Obert Madondo, on February 9, 2013, at 4:53 pm By Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive, Feb. 9, 2013: Nearly ten years after Janet Jackson’s famous wardrobe malfunction, the CBS is on high alert concerning nudity. A “Wardrobe Advisory” email the network’s Standards & Practices department sent out to representatives of stars scheduled to perform at Sunday’s 55th Annual Grammy Awards is warning performers to adequately cover their breasts, READ MORE
By Guest Blog, on January 30, 2013, at 8:50 pm by Trevor Timm | Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jan. 18, 2013: One year ago today, Internet users of all ages, races, and political stripes participated in the largest protest in Internet history, flooding Congress with millions of emails and phone calls to demand they drop the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—a dangerous bill that would have allowed READ MORE
By jtoddring, on January 30, 2013, at 5:59 pm The Blackberry 10 has just been unveiled, and the question returns: Blackberry, iPhone or Google-based Android smart phone? Here are some thoughts, techno-weenie talk aside. We’re talking pure functionality and ethics here, not who has the best gizmo-gadgetry whiz-bang for the buck. Google is a partner in evil, willingly collaborating with the super-creepy NSA’s deeply [...]
By Obert Madondo, on December 7, 2012, at 10:32 pm Last week’s shutdown of Internet access in Syria has shifted the focus to the ongoing discussions of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Concerns abound that the discussions could lead to greater surveillance powers for governments, and crippling limitations on Internet-based democratic activity. RELATED: Google Exposes Harper Government’s Growing Internet Censorship Appetites Conservatives Bill C-30: Upset [...]
By AppalledBC, on December 4, 2012, at 12:10 pm Top federal bureaucrats stayed mum during discussion about silencing of scientists What the Canadian “Environment” [read>oil shil] Minister Peter Kent calls “communications management” the rest of us would call #censorship and&nb… . . . → Read More: Politics and Entertainment: Canadian Scientist Continue to be Muzzled
By Rob Maguire, on November 29, 2012, at 7:38 pm A Moscow court has ordered Russian internet providers to block videos by Pussy Riot, calling them “extremist” and seeking to incite “mass disorder”. . . . → Read More: Art Threat: Pussy Riot videos banned by Russian court
By Obert Madondo, on September 29, 2012, at 11:37 pm Meet Madi Lussier, one of the two witnesses from the Canadian Immigration Report or CIReport.ca, barred from speaking before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration earlier this week. Lussier and her fellow witness were invited to speak before the committee. Then they traveled all the way from Toronto to Ottawa to make the presentation, only to be told [...]
By Lorne, on September 12, 2012, at 8:30 am Yesterday I wrote a post about the Hamilton parent suing the school board for its refusal to notify him when a range of topics objectionable to his beliefs was being covered in the classrooom. His intention was to withdraw his children each time topics such as marriage, environmentalism, evolution, gay people were mentioned, these subjects somehow anathema in his religious world.
Today I came across an article dealing with the consequences of giving parents too much power, as has happened in Alberta, already not the most open-minded member of our confederation:
For over a year now, parents in Alberta have
. . . → Read More: Politics and its Discontents: When Parents Get The Upper Hand in Education
By Rob Maguire, on August 2, 2012, at 5:58 pm
As Russian president Vladimir Putin visits London to engage in both Olympic and diplomatic shenanigans, several major British musicians, including Pete Townshend, Jarvis Cocker and Corinne Bailey Rae are calling for the release of members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot, who have been locked away in a Moscow prison since March 3.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alekhina have been charged with hooliganism and face up to seven years in jail for performing a “punk prayer” against Putin in a Moscow cathedral this past February. (See the video below.) Their trial began earlier this week.
. . . → Read More: Art Threat: Rock stars demand Pussy Riot release – Feminist punk rockers jailed in Russia for performing "punk prayer" against Vladimir Putin
By Obert Madondo, on July 30, 2012, at 4:59 pm By now, most of you are aware that a second athlete from Europe has been ejected from the London Olympics for racism. Swill soccer player Michel Morganella got the boot yesterday for posting a racist message on Twitter insulting South Koreans after his team lost 2-1 to South Korea.
But most of the mainstream media isn’t telling us what Morganella actually said. Only the New York Post seems to have the courage to report the exact words he wrote on the micro-blogging site:
“I am going to batter the Koreans, burn them all… bunch of ‘trisos’.”
Last week, Greece expelled triple
. . . → Read More: Canadian Progressive World: London Olympics 2012: What the racist Swiss soccer player said
By Lorne, on July 21, 2012, at 5:54 pm The implications of this are truly and deeply frightening. Recommend this Post
By Simon, on July 19, 2012, at 8:56 pm Well I see a group of theatre companies in Vancouver are putting on a play based on Stephen Harper and his Con regime.
Even though there are fears Great Horned Leader might sue them.
Practically every theatre company in the city has joined together to mount a staged reading of a satirical play —Proud — that Toronto’s Tarragon theatre chose not to present after a board member raised concerns that Stephen Harper might have a case for defamation against anyone who staged it.
And although I support those theatre companies, I can't help thinking that only in Harperland could
. . . → Read More: Montreal Simon: Stephen Harper and the Culture of Intimidation
By Obert Madondo, on June 18, 2012, at 11:23 pm In a report released late Sunday, Google tells us Canada has joined the ranks of countries aggressively stepping up efforts to censor online political dissent through “censorship requests” to the giant search engine. Passport Canada authorities asked Google to block public access to “a YouTube video of a Canadian citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet”. The case is one of the highlights in Google’s semi-annual Transparency Report for the period July – December, 2011.
Now the question is: would you have wanted to watch the video and understand the protester’s motivations? I would have. When
. . . → Read More: CANADIAN PROGRESSIVE WORLD: Google Exposes Harper Government’s Growing Internet Censorship Appetites
By Andrew, on June 5, 2012, at 3:02 pm Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Campaigns to ensure that BC’s environmental laws protect the environment and allow democratic voices to be heard can take years. Or, as we saw last week, they can result in a win for the environment in a matter of weeks. The government has dropped its Bill C-37, the Animal Health Act, just days after West Coast Environmental Law wrote to the Minister of Agriculture to express concern that the Bill, as drafted, would silence scientists, journalists and citizens concerned about farm diseases. While we were only one of many voices expressing concern about
. . . → Read More: Environmental Law Alert Blog: The rise and fall of the Animal Health Act
By AppalledBC, on May 17, 2012, at 11:46 am Of course the so-called budget bill, stuffed to the gills with non-budgetary items as such, has multiple political purposes, but one of them is clearly to limit dissenting voices within parliament itself and to usurp parliamentary power and transfer it to cabinet – as can be seen, for example, in the new environmental regulation proposals. This is a significant undermining of parliamentary democratic legislative procedure, but equally disturbing are two other recent repressive tactics that smack of other repressive regimes witnessed in history.
Can there be any doubt that both the proposed further criminalization of wearing a mask at a lawful assembly
. . . → Read More: Politics and Entertainment: Repressive Tactics Smack of History
By Stephen Elliott-Buckley, on May 4, 2012, at 11:29 pm I’m happy the Globe and Mail is not responsible for defining words for us all. In the poll below, on its website tonight, we see them create a false choice about students wearing shirts at school that declare religious beliefs: freedom of religion versus secular public schools.
Secular public schools have to teach without a religious agenda. Secular does not mean that students cannot express religious beliefs, or political, ecological, musical, poetic, artistic, or any kind of belief. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, I think school is designed to encourage higher order thinking of that sort, not suppress it.
. . . → Read More: Politics, Re-Spun: The Globe and Mail Mis-Defines ‘Secular’
By Micah Goldberg, on April 27, 2012, at 10:48 pm If we, as Canadians, believe a woman ought to have the right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy, why are we so afraid of having our views challenged? Why is it so frightening to open up debate on this socially contentious issue? If we are an open, democratic society, where free thinking is encouraged while censorship is contemptible, we should allow our values to enter into debate, have them come under attack, only to demonstrate why they are the superior values.
Pro-Life Supporters Eager for Debate, MPs, Not So Much | Chris Wattie – National Post
Stephen Woodworth, a (Read more…)
By JJ, on March 28, 2012, at 8:23 pm “Speechies“? Hello?? Is this thing on?
|
|
