The Fourniers Will Fight On!!!

Update (21 June 2015) – Connie Fournier and Mark Fournier, the only remaining defendants in this action have rejected an offer to settle of $1 in damages plus $2,500 costs each that I would donate to charity (outlined below). I suggest people remember this next time they ask for $.

Everyone else surrendered last week.  The Fourniers, however, want to throw away even more money. Because they're royal fuck-heads who think losing a string of legal decisions will secure them a place in history.  And, by the way, if you wonder why I wonder at all the panic over C-51: why I suspect resistance to it might be spearheaded by a coalition of gassed-out but unfortunately not yet overdosed hippies and white supremacists getting too old for their leathers...its because C-51 is The Fourniers latest windmill to charge at.  Read the gist of their opposition to it here: its nutz.  But The Left has embraced it.  So maybe they're nutz too.  That's my line of reasoning.

New Poll Suggests Ignoring Hippies On Bill C-51

That's my takeaway, at least.  All the raging away on twitter is merely the caterwaul of elderly scenesters trying to relive that golden time when they flipped the bird at a traffic cop and ran away, freak flags lifted in the wind.

Also, Scott says this.

You're Not Helping

I am conflicted re Bill C51.  Michael Geist is a pretty smart guy; the information sharing provisions do seem overly broad.  But since the Snowden revelations never impressed me (its all meta-stuff about spies spying), I sometimes find myself wondering if at least some of the complaints over C51 are similarly over-egged.

And so then Connie Fournier of (the relaunched) Free Dominion comes along and writes this for Open Media:

The part of the Bill that concerns me most is that provides CSIS with the power to "disrupt" groups of Canadian citizens. This word sets off alarm bells for a couple of reasons.

First, it is a word that was used in a "Five Eyes" PowerPoint presentation that was released some time ago by Edward Snowden. The "Five Eyes" countries include Canada, the USA, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. This presentation was given to the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group and it was entitled, "The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations".

[...]

Secondly, this is where it becomes personal. Beginning in the Spring of 2006, government operatives began signing up on our discussion forum, Free Dominion. We have since identified operatives from the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), the Department of Defence, at least one Police Department, and many, many posters using proxies who posted divisive or racist comments in our forum. In 2007 we received a Section 13 complaint with regard to a link that was posted on our site. We reacted strongly and publicly to the complaint and it was later dropped.

[...]

We don't believe that it is any coincidence that the self-described strategy of the government employee who sued us four times and ultimately caused the forum to be closed, is called "Maximum Disruption". The fact that that same word shows up in the "Five Eyes" powerpoint, and that it also shows up in Bill C-51 is, to say the least, chilling.

OK,  now we've hopped the train to crazy town.  And just to address one point.  FreeD's problem with racist comments didn't stem from undercover cops, "operatives" from the CHRC, or anonymous posters.  They were typically contained in diatribes by the likes of long-time regulars such as Ed Kennedy, Bill Whatcott, Marc Lemire, and EdS.  You can google their names.  They were hate-mongering lunatics, and all members in good standing at FreeD until they became too toxic to keep around.

Of course, nobody reads Open Media but, arguably, people read The Tyee, so its particularly disappointing to see the same kind of nonsense expressed over there.

In brief, if you are dealing with thr Fourniers you're dealing with kooks.  Having these people on board the anti-C51 cause will not help it.

Very Little Separates The Parties On Bill C-51

A twitter argument I had with NDP MP for Newton - North Delta  Jinny Sims:

She retreated then, knowing perhaps that her ass had been kicked.

But the bottom line is that before the bill's inevitable passage the NDP will do a little dance like this, and the LPC will do a little dance like that.  In a sense the LPC's position is the more honest of the two.   The NDP clearly sees some good in the bill, otherwise they would promise something beyond a mere tweaking once they got in power.  But then why try to kill it now and have to start all over again to achieve an mostly identical result?