Canada

Labatt almost sues Montreal Gazette over dismemberer’s photo

Jason Thibeault, , , , 13 Comments

They wisely backed off after a Twitter campaign to remind them of the Streissand Effect, but the makers of the least complicated beer in Canada very nearly sued the Montreal Gazette over publishing this photo from Luka Magnotta’s Facebook feed.

What’s the big deal though? It’s a picture of the killer in a club or something, holding a Labatt Blue. Surely even serial killers and snuff film makers who send dismembered body parts to political parties need to wind down too, after a long hard day with the bonesaw!

I’d covered this sicko when news broke, and I’m happy to report that Magnotta was caught after fleeing to Berlin and will not fight extradition back to Canada. Normally I’d be careful to say “alleged” killer, but the evidence is pretty iron-clad, and he’s admitted he “can’t stop killing”, so… yeah.

The victim whose body parts got sent to the Liberals and Conservatives was Jun Lin, a Chinese engineering student. The kid apparently had a promising career ahead of him before Magnotta made him famous. Bloody shame.

But seriously, who drinks Labatt anyway? It’s trying to be a less-offensive Coors Light or something, and failing miserably.

Labatt almost sues Montreal Gazette over dismemberer’s photo
{advertisement}

Onoes, the religious are being bullied by Gay-Straight Alliances in Canada!!

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , 26 Comments

In Ontario, there’s apparently been a bit of a row over school anti-bullying clubs naming themselves Gay-Straight Alliance, or something similar. The row comes mostly from the Catholic schools — naturally — where the proposed clubs are denied on the basis that they have the word “gay” in them, where these Catholic schools consider homosexuality to be evil, sinful, et cetera. The provincial government is debating amending the education laws surrounding anti-bullying initiatives in such a way to prevent schools from denying these clubs’ existences, so an archbishop threw a shit-fit.

“Why is a piece of provincial legislation being used to micromanage the naming of student clubs?” he said.

On Friday, the Liberal government at Queen’s Park said it would introduce legislation that would require all schools to accept clubs by that name.

Continue reading “Onoes, the religious are being bullied by Gay-Straight Alliances in Canada!!” →

Onoes, the religious are being bullied by Gay-Straight Alliances in Canada!!

Some sick freak is mailing body parts to the Conservative Party of Canada (Update: and Liberals too!)

Jason Thibeault, , , , 16 Comments

I thought about starting this post by saying “look, I hate the CPC as much as the next guy”, but quickly realized that evidently, I don’t. Someone — possibly multiple someones — has sent two body parts to the Conservative Party of Canada headquarters.

Police would not say what the body part was, nor where it was found, though they did say it was not found at the Conservative Party offices on 130 Albert St. where the foot was sent.

Media reports said the second package, containing a human hand, was not addressed to the Tory headquarters. Police said the major crime unit continues to investigate.

Police were called to the building at 11:20 a.m. ET after a suspicious package was delivered there. Police called for the hazardous materials unit after they noticed what appeared to be blood on the package.

It’s interesting that the foot was mailed directly to the Tories but the hand wasn’t. I don’t know what that means yet.

I can envision a few scenarios where this might make sense to some deranged person — in protest of the Tories and Harper’s government’s policies, as a taunt to the police to catch a serial killer, maybe even mailing the body parts of someone they felt was victimized by the government out of revenge. I can only hope that the parts come from the same body, rather than two different ones, and that the person those parts belonged to was not freshly killed for expressly this purpose. Regardless, this story is disturbing on a number of very visceral levels.

Update: Holy shit. Okay, it’s not targeted at the CPC at all. The hand was delivered to the Liberal Party. And they have the rest of the body, and a suspect who’s been known to kill kittens on video, who may or may not have a link to Karla Homolka.

Montreal police are looking for Luka Rocco Magnotta in connection with the delivery of a human left foot to the Conservative Party of Canada headquarters in Ottawa and the discovery of body parts found in Ottawa and Montreal.

Police said Magnotta, 29, also known as Eric Clinton Newman, is wanted on a Canada-wide warrant and police are asking for the public’s help to find him.

Police said Magnotta knew the victim whose torso was found in Montreal on Tuesday.

Some sick freak is mailing body parts to the Conservative Party of Canada (Update: and Liberals too!)

Jesus t-shirt kid pulled from school by dad til they stop discussing being respectful

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , 17 Comments

The story I mentioned yesterday has another twist. But first, I need to set a few things straight.

Everything about William Swinimer’s “defiant” wearing of the t-shirt that calls non-Christian lives “wasted” smacks of martyrdom to me. In a very small township like Chester Basin, in a school where most of the population is Christian and of the less than tolerant kind, Swinimer’s exhortations that he’s doing it to stand up to the bullies smacks not only of hyperbole but of outright fabrication. My first instinct when I read this story was not to once again assign blame for the situation on the ridiculous hate speech laws Canada has to suffer (which, yes, this case does have that fatal flaw at its core), but rather to lament that the school board completely mishandled this case and let it spiral out of control, taking action at the least-actionable offense to their, and all of our, detriment. This led to some misunderstandings about my feelings in comments and on Facebook, but they’ve evidently since been cleared up.

There’s a lot more to the story than the National Post discussed, though. For instance, via CBC, apparently William’s father John pulled him out of classes on the same day he was supposed to return from his suspension, wearing the probably rank t-shirt and all, when all students were scheduled to be able to participate in voluntary sessions on how to discuss religion without being disrespectful of others. Evidently William could have opted out, but his father opted him right the hell out of school altogether.

But John Swinimer said he wants Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin, Lunenburg County, to only teach the basic courses, leaving religion out of it.

“He will not attend this school unless they are having reading, writing and arithmetic — good old-fashioned academics,” he said, waving a New Testament bible. “When they’re having forums, when they’re having other extra-curricular activity, he will not attend that school.”

Emphasis mine.
Continue reading “Jesus t-shirt kid pulled from school by dad til they stop discussing being respectful” →

Jesus t-shirt kid pulled from school by dad til they stop discussing being respectful

US puts Canada on piracy watch list yet again!

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , , 10 Comments

Remember how, last time around, Conservative Industry Minister Tony Clement convinced the US to put Canada on a piracy watch list despite us being in last place on a list of 46 countries? Given the circumstances of that particular attempt at sabotaging our country’s standings so baselessly, can you understand why I might be skeptical of the motivations behind this news?

In its yearly report on countries that are not doing enough to protect the U.S. copyright industry, Canada is listed on the Priority Watch List with China, Russia, Ukraine and a handful of other countries.

The Special 301 Report reads:

“Canada remains on the Priority Watch List in 2012, subject to review if Canada enacts long-awaited copyright legislation. The Government of Canada has given priority to that legislation. The United States welcomes that prioritization and looks forward to studying the legislation once it is finalized, and will consider, among other things, whether it fully implements the WIPO Internet Treaties, and whether it fully addresses the challenges of piracy over the Internet.”

Other countries are more lucky.

Spain, for example, has been taken off the list after it implemented a harsher copyright law. Last December the US ambassador threatened to put Spain on a trade blacklist if the country failed to pass a SOPA-style site blocking law.

Weeks later the new law passed.

I maintain that the worldwide copyfight is an attempt to maximize short-term profits for the content middleman industry expressly at the expense of individual liberties. Hobbling Canada’s international standing in a cynical game to force us to pass SOPA-like anti-privacy anti-piracy measures is a wholly unsurprising tactic. Pulling the same tactic twice, though requires that we all forget what happened last time around.

US puts Canada on piracy watch list yet again!

Canada’s bill C-31 would make us an isolationist country

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , 7 Comments

Seems times are tough all over. The US just passed in the House a bill that effectively repeals the 4th Amendment, and as usual any time some really terrible bit of freedom-abrogating law is passed in the States, people are talking about moving to Canada. However, I’m really hoping they’re just joking, because they’re going to find that increasingly difficult. See, the laughably named “Protect Canada’s Immigration System Act”, bill C-31, is probably going to pass due to the steamroller government in power at the moment.

This bill is laughably named because its entire purpose is protect Canada from refugee immigrants by putting them in jail for a year without review, preventing them from seeing their families for five years thereafter, and leaving their immigration status in question, all at the sole discretion of the Minister of Public Safety (presently, Vic Toews).
Continue reading “Canada’s bill C-31 would make us an isolationist country” →

Canada’s bill C-31 would make us an isolationist country

SCOC ruling: Harper’s warrantless internet wiretapping unconstitutional

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , , 7 Comments

Via Ottawa Citizen:

The Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark ruling that emergency wiretapping without a warrant is unconstitutional — which could pave the way for a new federal law that better safeguards privacy rights — is being used by critics to revive their attacks on the Harper government’s controversial Internet surveillance bill.

“It’s a huge blow to the Conservative’s Internet snooping bill,” NDP justice critic Jack Harris told Postmedia News.

Continue reading “SCOC ruling: Harper’s warrantless internet wiretapping unconstitutional” →

SCOC ruling: Harper’s warrantless internet wiretapping unconstitutional

MP Stephen Woodworth won’t answer a simple question about rape and abortion

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , 36 Comments

The question in question is, “if a woman is raped, do you support her right to an abortion?”

Woodworth’s the guy that’s trying to reopen the abortion debate as a private member proposal despite Harper’s campaign promise that the present abortion laws would not be revisited yet again. So, with tacit approval from his party — who, while they aren’t backing him explicitly, certainly are more than willing to allow the debate to happen, and with their steamroller house numbers would almost certainly win if they voted in lockstep with their party — here we go again. Expect no engagement on the topic in parliament, since that’s well out of fashion these days. But expect at the same time some heavy trolling on the internet to make it seem like there’s popular support. Not that the populace brought this forward, or are encouraging it.

Oh sure, he’ll engage personally with people like Steve Thoms (SomeCndnSkeptic) on Twitter for weeks on end, getting science wrong, getting the law wrong, getting simple words wrong, and smearing opponents as being like Bashar al-Assad, dictator of Syria.

Continue reading “MP Stephen Woodworth won’t answer a simple question about rape and abortion” →

MP Stephen Woodworth won’t answer a simple question about rape and abortion

Quebec gun registry spared (very) temporarily

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , 7 Comments

Yesterday, a Quebec Superior Court judge granted a five-day injunction against the Harper government’s attempted early destruction of the long gun registry. You’ll remember that I reported back in December that they were totally going to go ahead and destroy it once the law passed even if the court case was ongoing. Well, the court case has at least another four days now, and the government is disallowed to jump the gun, so to speak.

Via the CBC:

The Quebec government sought the injunction in court in Montreal Thursday, in anticipation of royal assent for C-19, the Harper government’s legislation to fulfil a longtime campaign promise to scrap the registry.

The injunction granted Thursday applies to the data collected on residents of the province of Quebec, but also covers the accessibility, availability and integrity of the system holding the registry, as well as the equipment and tools that allow access to the Quebec data. That means the federal government can’t take further steps on ending the registry while the injunction is in place. And Quebec can keep adding data to the registry.

Continue reading “Quebec gun registry spared (very) temporarily” →

Quebec gun registry spared (very) temporarily