The Unreasonable Man

Canada’s Tories seem to have seriously lost their way, judging by the news.

Start with the ill-timed but presumably well-intentioned Census flap. Support the libertarian wing of the Tory heartland in a way so inept that it is guaranteed to do them more harm than good.

Follow this by Stockwell Day’s comical insistence on new prisons for undefined “unreported crime”.

Now add the laughable new “measures” to criminalise anyone who is having any non-Calvinist fun. The keystone cops could not have handled it all less ably.

Adults who engage in sex for pay, people who sell any quantity of marijuana (which of course a large proportion of Canadians have used), people who gamble for money: all these are looking at five-year jail sentences. More, any three or more people engaging in these types of fun can be classified as an “organized crime” group. Three poker buddies are the mob, according to Preacher Stockwell.

These laughable efforts at imposing prairie Calvinism on the rest of us will of course fail. The “War on Drugs” has utterly failed in the USA, and it will of course fail just as miserably here. Adding a War On Sex and a War On Poker will of course not help.

Except in filling our new prisons. Yeah! Let’s put as many Canadians in jail as the Americans do (which is more than any other civilised nation). Great moral values, Tories.

And how do we pay for this all? That’s where the Tories do well, right? The economy?

Oh. Maybe not. The litany continues.

Not only did we have the “stimulus” for select industries (cars; but not photographers. Why reward those who failed?), but now our Tory masters have announced, according to The Post, that in spite of the resulting $54bn deficit, there will be no cuts to the civil service. In addition, says House Leader John Baird, quoted in today’ Post, there will be more money for… “defence, airport security and law and order”.

So now we have ever-increasing and unintelligent nannying by socially backward yahoos, an utter lack of economic sense, and a Bush-style War On Everything. Send in the clowns!

Incredibly, this makes me wish for the Lieberals back. They were corrupt and unprincipled, but at least they were neither unintelligent nor a joke. Canada deserves better than this lot: they are insane.

As of today, Saudi Arabia has banned the Blackberry. The United Arab Emerates are about to do the same. Indonesia, India, Lebanon and Algeria appear to be close behind.

That is because all these dictatorships want to listen in on all conversations, emails and messages sent and received by their citizens.

Evidently, we should stand up to this. But instead, the Canadian government and Hilary Clinton have expressed “understanding”. “We know that there is a legitimate security concern,” according to Ms Clinton.

Why? Because the governments in question have referred to “national security” and “avoiding terrorism”, and so on. Nonsense terms that just mean “you’re not allowed to argue with this”.

The same terms our governments use whenever they want to restrict freedom. That’s why they are not arguing more.

Good for RIM for standing up to this. Let’s see how long the Arabs survive without their Blackberries.

Get good service, tell a few friends; bad service, tell them all. And that is what I am doing here, in an off-topic post.

Executive summary: Avoid Sears Oakville, and in particular their clock and watch department.

I took my Omega watch in to them a few months ago to have the battery, which had recently finally died after several years, replaced. This is a thin watch and is hard to handle. The last battery was installed there too, but by a watchmaker.

The current manager of the clock department, Nancy Kaye, told me she was not a watchmaker.

That became obvious. She broke my watch. I got it back not working, with the dial turned. She tried again: now completely broken, and the dial dented.

“We have no way of knowing it was working when you brought it in”, she and Sears say. Cost: $350 plus tax. My cost, they say.

So beware, when you bring a perfectly functioning watch (and not a cheap one either) into the clock and watch department at Sears, and they break it, you end up paying, and they wash their hands of it. Implicitly accusing you of lying.

This is not acceptable. My letter to the Better Business Bureau has gone out. Facebook is next. Small claims court too, maybe. Thousands of you now also know that having Sears do anything is taking a huge risk. I assume this will cost them much more than owning up would. I hope so: this kind of running roughshod over the customer is not acceptable.

The grey suits in the copyright industry will never get it, will they?

For the first time in years I am about to buy music. Patti Smith, two albums, meaning I am about to spend $20 on MP3s. Amazon sells MP3 music - good decision, because I know it’s standard format and not copyright-addled.

So after I do all the work of choosing etc I get this:

We are sorry… We could not process your order. The sale of MP3 Downloads is currently available only to US customers located in the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

OK, not, then. I guess I’ll just have to go steal it again. Idiots.

Ontario passes a temporary law in secret, without debate. And even worse, a police officer’s word is considered convincing proof under this law. Huh? I am not sure even the Nazis went quite that far. Amazing, what our government will do.

…third world cops who do not know the law, it seems: read my blog post on this here.

I posted a few snaps of that preposterous “security fence” here:

http://blog.michaelwillems.ca/2010/06/11/berlin-wall/

… wall, that is.

For the next weeks (a total of a month) Toronto is in chaos. Roads closed, cameras mounted, a billion dollars of tax money (my tax money) being wasted in “security” (yeah, security: Hitler and Goebbels used that excuse too). And of course luxury hotel rooms and four-star food for the people providing all this stuff.

Not for me: my life is just disrupted by road closures, armed police and army, and a Berlin wall. Toronto is being cut in half by a concrete and steel wall designed to keep people away from teh VIP politicians. Incredible to see this in a civilized country. A ten foot high fence to keep people out. The VIPs are much more important. Roads are closed when these “dignitaries” travel.

You know, I am tempted to become a protester just because of this. Not one person in the media has seen the parallel between this wall and the Berlin Wall. A wall guarded by stormtroopers. And we accept this? Worse -  we pay for it?

Until this, I was the biggest defender of globalization and economic conferences. No more. A Berlin wall, storm troopers, and a $1bn tax bill: whoever arranged this should be in prison, not in power.

Alas: I fear the population will be stupid enough to be misled by this “security” nonsense, and to vote for them again at the earliest opportunity.

My sympathy for the “protesters”:

• Before this conference: 1%
• Now: 85%

Mission accomplished, politicians?

OK, so Toronto has to host the G20 conference. I see the following:

• Thousands of people in the run-down Toronto congress centre (a disgrace by international standards)
• Much of downtown entirely closed for two days, with a closed Berlin Wall fence around it.
• Severe disruption in the days leading up to, and after the conference as well.
• New Big Brother cameras are being installed all over the city.
• A $1bn (yes, billion) bill, mainly for “security”.
• Legitimate protesters are being told to go protest in designated protest areas (a.k.a. “where no-one will hear you).
• 600 students at U of T being evicted in the week leading up to the conference.
• Businesses are being closed or disrupted, and there is no recompense.
• Traffic will be chaos, as “important” people need roads cleared for their convoys.

As usual, “security” is being used to justify all this. As always: whether you want to take away rights, disrupts lives, start wars, or spend $1Bn on caviar, just by saying the magic words “security” you ensure that no-one can argue.

And if they do, you say meaningless things like “the greatest civil right is the right to be free of terrorism”. That sort of thing.

…you can’t hide. I see that my old comments on The Economist web site are here:

http://www.economist.com/user/mwillems/comments

Fortunately, I think I still stand behind them…!