Has Tony Clement Twitter Blocked You Yet?

In the last while I’ve seen more and more people wondering why they have been Twitter blocked by Tony Clement.  Quite a few of them seem perplexed as to why Tony blocked them.

Well I was blocked by Tony ages ago, I didn’t even realize it for a while.  I didn’t stalk Tony, but if I saw him comment I sometimes replied.  I don’t agree with Tony on many things, I don’t expect him to agree with me. 

Democracy.

We live in a Democratic country.  Part of that means we should have the ability to exchange ideas, and disagree.  Just because we disagree on Twitter is no reason to block someone, I don’t even bother blocking trolls.

I ignore them.

If someone sends me a tweet that is not worth replying to, I don’t reply.  It’s that simple.  I have blocked a few on Twitter, most of them tried to send me to a corrupt website to try and steal my Twitter information or infect me with a virus, a few were trying to raise money for nonexistent causes.  I blocked and reported them.  Done.

What I think that Tony doesn’t get is that Twitter is a communication medium, a crappy one, but it is a means to getting your ideas out.  If you decide that you don’t want people seeing your thoughts and ideas it’s like you’d prefer to preach to the choir or to the “Amen corner”. It doesn’t help get your idea out, it just gives you a false sense that what you are saying is right. 

It’s a bit like the old saw, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room”.

The other thing I don’t think Tony realizes is that if he is involved in a Twitter conversation with someone who I follow, I get to see snippets of that conversation.  If it interests me, I can just click to see the conversation and lo and behold I can see what Tony is typing!

Now for those of you thinking big deal, you can’t interact with Tony, that’s not why I reply to those tweets.  I’m sending my message to the others who are following the same conversation.  I’m not talking to the “Yay” people or the “Boo” people, I’m looking for the people in between, the ones that don’t drink anyone’s Kool-Aid.

So should you take it as a badge of honour that Tony blocked you?  I don’t really think so.  I think it’s sad that a Cabinet Minister doesn’t want to hear from his constituents and doesn’t want them to hear his message, he doesn’t want you to know what he thinks.

Maybe Tony failed civics or maybe he just forgot how government is supposed to work.  If one is named to a Cabinet position, one no longer represents the riding that elected him.  A Minister represents all of Canada, not just a small segment.  And in the same vein of MPs sending updates to their constituents, Tony should be communicating with us, all of us.

And he should be listening.  He doesn’t need to agree, but he should hear what people are saying.

I guess what I’m saying is that if Tony thinks this is going to shut me and other people up, he’s got another thing coming.  That, and if you’ve got something to say, say it.  Who cares if Tony sees it, other people will.

TTFN

BC

BTW I don’t mean Twitter is crappy, it’s just a bugger to try and get a point across in 140 characters or less, especially with long twitter handles like @canada_bearcat.  Cheers!

UPDATE:  I am no longer being blocked by Tony Clement.  Not only that, he's following me now... Welcome aboard,  Tony.

Harper Party Spies

To hear the Harper Party loyalists talk, you’d think that the Liberal Party of Canada has a problem.  Yet another Liberal has spoken words that don’t echo the words of their leader.

And this is a problem?

Let’s set the scene.  A woman asked retired General Andrew Leslie about his thoughts regarding the Israeli Palestine situation.  The General gave a long answer including the need for Israel to be able to defend herself from terrorists, such as Hamas, but he also blamed the Israeli military for the deaths of civilians in Palestine.

I guess the General didn’t realize that he was talking with a Harper Party spy.  Looking to get whatever dirt she could dig up on a noted Liberal contender for the 2015 Election and she hit the mother lode!  This guy thinks the Israeli military shouldn’t have killed Palestinian civilians!

What a horrid thought.  No mere MP much less a noted advisor to Stephen Harper would say such a thing.  No, Stephen’s troops would blindly parrot the talking points issued from the unelected, appointed, not ready for big boy pants crew in the PMO. 

Nope, they’d swallow their gumption and say whatever their Leader says they should say.  Here are your pompoms and here’s your script: “Israel is good, Palestinians are bad and they all deserve to die.”

Rah Team!

The problem with the Harper Party antics is that General Leslie is right.  As a professional soldier, trained in the military, he knows the rules and one of the biggies is that every effort must be undertaken to prevent civilian casualties or “collateral damage” as they like to say today.

What is even more horrid is the tactics that the Harper Team are stooping to in an attempt to try and demonize the Liberal Party.

While the Harper Party complains about the liberal media and “gotcha journalism” they are stepping down several rungs with these Secret Agent X19 tactics.  Sneak a recording device in and try and get the enemy to say something that can be used against them.  And then try to get the so called incriminating evidence into the public eye.

The Harperistas didn’t send their ill gotten booty to the media, not at first; they tried to hand it over to a prominent Jewish organization who put the kibosh on that plan.  They were smart enough to not get involved in petty politics, maybe they can read the writing on the wall or maybe they just don’t like the idea of being used as a dupe for the Harper Party?

So they went with Plan B.  Hand the audio over to the Sun News Network, the finest investigative journalists this side of 1972 Pravda.  And the Sun News Crew was more than happy to jump all over this.

The Harper People crow about this, they see nothing wrong, they just want people to know what goes on in the opposing camp.  What they don’t say is that this is putting a chilling effect on Democracy in Canada.

It is hard enough to get a politician to say anything in public now, they don’t want to annoy the Boss, but in the future, every politician of every stripe is going to be guarded in what they say lest there be a secret agent nearby.  And when they’re done with the named politicians, they can start on those who are merely considering running for office.

Seriously, it is hard to get a politician to comment on the weather anymore.  What with having to consider if this stretch of warm weather is bad for the farmers and so on it takes them tem minutes to come up with “Yep, nice weather.”  It is getting to the point that some politicians cannot scratch their butt without a note from the PMO.

Real boats rock, Steve.  Having people within a party who hold differing opinions is not a bad thing, it is part of Democracy.  Any Leader, be it in politics or business that surrounds themselves with kowtowing lackies soon finds themselves on the outside looking in.

But your echo boxes are half right.  How can Canadians decide on which candidate is best for their riding if we don’t know how they think and what they feel about the issues that we care about?  Simply put they can’t.

I am comfortable in voting for someone who has the wits and courage to speak their mind in public.  It means that they have the ability to speak up for me in the House and in the Caucus.  These are not your people, Steve.

They are mine.

And for what it’s worth, there are an awful lot of people like me who think that the killing and wounding of civilians is wrong.  It doesn’t matter which side does it.

I like General Leslie a hell of a lot more that any echo box you have to offer.

Ta ta for now,

BC

Black and White. Is This the World of Stephen Harper?

I’ve been pondering, again.

Lately I’ve been wondering about the black and white world view, well just about everything view of the Harper Party from Stephen on down.  It boggles the mind that someone in his position and the members of his caucus have such a distinct line, a hard line about just about everything.

Seriously, everything in the Harper World is good/bad, right/wrong, and yes/no.

The real world just doesn’t look like that or act like that.

Most of us, the real people, we see the world and events in the world in shades of grey or even in colour.  If we see a problem, we look at it from different angles, we try to understand the problem to figure out how to fix it or at least make it less of a problem.

Let’s take Gaza for an example.

To hear Stephen Harper or any of his people speak, Israel is right.  By default that makes Palestine wrong doesn’t it?  Many of us, a majority I’ll wager do not cannot see that situation as being that cut and dry.

Let me try and make the problem a little less volatile.

One day someone you know comes to you with a question.  He’s noticed that his neighbour tosses the rocks he finds while cutting the grass into your friend’s yard.  What do you tell your friend?

Just toss them back, he’ll learn eventually?  Get over it, just toss the rocks to the curb?  Throw them back or throw them at him?  Maybe the guy is being an ass because you have loud parties every weekend?  Or maybe the guy is just an ass.

A pretty childish example isn’t it.  But the case in Gaza isn’t all that different but it is far more complex. 

Pledging undying loyalty to one side or the other is not going to solve the problem.  But this is our government’s stance.

How about the question about how to get Alberta’s bitumen to market?  If you oppose pipelines because you have reason to believe that the risk is too high, then you’re anti-Canada.  You want to deny Canada the opportunity to sell its resources.  But wait a minute, the concern is that the pipelines and the people running them do have problems, there are leaks and spills and worse.  The question is not about shipping the product, the question is about shipping it safely.

Raising an issue like this should not put you or your group or charity on some sort of government hit list.

So why do Steve and his pals see the world in black and white?

I’m not sure that they do, but it is the easiest way for them to explain things.

If you asked anyone on the Harper side if they thought that businesses who sell liquor, wine, or beer do a good job of ensuring that they only sell to people who are of legal age they’ll probably say yes.  For the most part these people do a very good job of this.  But when someone proposes that these same businesses be allowed to sell packaged marijuana they scream “What about the Children?”

Look, if we trust these guys to not sell a six pack to little Jimmy, why can’t we trust these same people to not sell pot to him as well?

As much as we sometimes hate it, simple answers are only good for simple questions.  2+2+4.  To answer anything else is wrong.

When it comes to a government policy or a proposed bill a simple yes/no answer no longer works.  That is why we have debate in the House of Commons, to get the answers to the smaller questions to try and determine if a policy or law should be supported.  That is why we have committees that sit to discuss these things as well.

What we see instead is a government that imposes limits on debate almost as soon as a bill is proposed.  Committees that rush through their discussion and largely ignore any proposed amendments to try and improve the bills that they are dealing with.  Basically the Harper side says “This is what it will be.  If you don’t agree, then you’re wrong.”

And then they complain about Activist Jurists when Judges don’t do what Steve expects of them.  And then we spend lots of money going to the Supreme Court of Canada only to have those Judges, the majority of which have been put in place by Steve say that it’s a bad law and it needs to be fixed.

The system can’t work if you’re not willing to allow it to work.

This black and white thinking has cost us our diplomatic toolkit as well.  Canada used to be a country that could go and talk with the people on both sides of an issue and they were fairly confident that they would get a fair hearing with the Canadians.  We could look for the middle ground and help to find a starting point to try and settle a dispute.  It didn’t hurt that we had the ear of the Americans either.

Sadly this is no longer the case.  Stephen Harper calls this “going along to get along”.  Black and white. 

I think it has gotten to the point where more and more of us are drifting to the extremes.  We can no longer hear each other to talk about issues because of the fringe people screaming across the room at each other.  Whether it’s climate change or Gaza, the two opposing side are screaming and the rest of us can’t hear to make sense of any of it.  Maybe there is no sense to make of it.

So if we can’t have a discussion, let’s just go stand with the guys who think the most like us.

It’s not very helpful.  It’s less helpful when the politicians use the same tactics to try and divide us.

Eco-terrorists.

Anti-semites.

You either stand with us or you stand with the child pornographers.

How can you have any kind of conversation when the moment you open you’re mouth you’re branded as a black hat, part of the enemy?

It would go a long way to help if we actually had a government that said “This is what we propose, what do you think” and actually talked about what was being presented.  It would also go a long way if the opposition said “This is not a bad thing, but it needs some discussion” and all sides sat down to figure out the best way to deal with the issue at hand.

I’d give my eye teeth to see an honest political debate that was actually a discourse for and against a proposal.  Wouldn’t that be refreshing for a government to actually explain why they think their decision is the right way to go and to have the opposition explain why a different way might be the better way to go?

Beats the crap out of the attacks and smears we get to see if we bother to watch the nonsense that passes for debates in the House of Commons today.

But that’s just me.

And I’m not holding my breath over this.

Cheers,

BC.

Harper Democracy vs Putin Democracy

This week in the Netherlands, Stephen Harper loudly decried the actions of the Putin government in Russia.  He said that it was bad that the Russians were blocking a number of MPs from coming into Russia, but that one of the members of that group was denied entry because he was Ukrainian.  He thought that was even worse if I understood his statement correctly.

I have to agree with Steve here.  I think it is wrong to block someone or a group from doing a fact finding mission or even just a visit because of their ethnicity or because they are members of a foreign government that is currently at odds with the Russian government.  If the Russians want to send a group to say oversee one of our elections, I say let ‘em in.  I’d be curious what they’d have to say about how we do things versus how they do things.

But Steve is being a tad hypocritical here.

Let me explain.  In the House of Commons, a Bill to change some of the rules that govern our elections is currently in Committee.  A number of people who want to speak to the Bill are being denied the opportunity, not based on ethnicity, but because of their politics.

Elizabeth May (the Leader of the Green Party), as well as members of the Bloc Quebecois, and Independent Members of the House of Commons are being denied the opportunity to question witnesses or even speak to the matter of the so called Fair Elections Act.  The Opposition Parties, the NDP and the Liberals are willing to hear Elizabeth May’s words, but the Harper Party, the majority on the Committee are not.

Basically the Harper Party is telling Elizabeth May and those other MPs “We don’t like your politics, you can’t speak here.”  How different is that from the Russians telling Canadian MPs that they don’t like our politics, so those MPs should just bugger off?

Not very different at all.

The people who live in the ridings represented by these Democratically elected Members of Parliament are being denied a voice on this Bill.  Not very Democratic at all, is it?

No, it appears that the Harper Party’s view of Democracy is not all that different than that of the Putin Party.  We’ll get on fine as long as you recognize that everything We say is right, and everything You say is wrong.

The Russian backed referendum in Crimea echoes what we see in the House of Commons on a regular basis.  The Crimean referendum was whipped up and voted on in record time.  There was no debate, there was no questioning the referendum, the question put to the Crimean people was ludicrous…

Crimea should join the Russian Federation:___ Crimea should declare independence           :___

What if you wanted Crimea to maintain its ties with the Ukraine? 

Shut up, we don’t like your politics, you can’t vote here.

Back here in Ottawa, the Fair Elections Act was sprung on the House in a similar matter, rushed through to Second Reading and had Time Allocation slapped on it before anyone really had time to take a breath. 

A new record?

No, a tired old record played over and over again by Lord Stephen and his Party of Minions.

The imposition of Time Allocation took away the right of the Members of the Green Party, the Bloc, and the independents to speak to the bill while it was at Second Reading.  Again, Democracy denied to those people who sent the wrong Party to the House.

Oh, but didn’t Elizabeth May give a speech at Second Reading?  Yes she did, but only because the Liberal Party donated the time to her.  The Harper Party doesn’t want to hear what she has to say.

Maybe Steve and Vlad should sit down and have a nice chat.  I’m sure they’d both be surprised by how much they have in common.  Steve likes fishing and Vlad is a hunter, they both adore photo ops and like to be seen in action pictures (with guns--thankfully Steve keeps his shirt on though), and they both like to railroad things through and then look surprised when people challenge their methods.

Hmmmm.

Now before I sign off, if anyone wants to rant about how evil the West is in terms of the Ukraine and try and make the Russians look good, let me put it this way… both sides have dirty hands in this, you can’t see a White Hat anywhere when it comes to the situation in the Ukraine and Crimea.  The ones that are going to be hurt are the everyday people of those regions, the ones that go to work, pay their taxes, and try to make ends meet.

Kind of like how we’re going to pay the price when the “Fair” Elections Act gets rammed through here.

TTFN, BC