Who's the real enemy: Esso or Celine Dion?

You think gas prices are inflated? The next time you're filling up at the pump think about the Private Copying Levy. As Michael Geist points out in his blog, the Private Copying Levy in Canada can increase the cost of blank media by as much as 333%! That means an $18 pack of CDs can cost almost $60. (And that's BEFORE taxes!)

What's worse is "while songwriters and music publishers are eligible regardless of nationality, only Canadian recording artists and record companies may receive payments". So even though people are burning quality bands like Tool, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, or the Rolling Stones, the revenue from the purchase of that blank media is helping Canada produce more Celine Dion, Alanis, and Simple Plan.

Perhaps the worst part of the entire scheme is the implied guilt. The levy is paid by manufacturers and importers of the media, and passed on to consumers in the price. So the assumptions is if you're buying blank media, then you must be pirating Canadian music so you should pay a fine immediately. So even honest, law abiding citizens who buy media for backing up business or personal data or authoring home DVD's or photo CD's are paying the fines. While I don't agree with the RIAA lawsuits in the United States either, at least they are supposed to prove you actually committed a crime before they can hit you with a fine!

Almost there!

Four days to go!

That's MY train!

If you've been watching the olympics then you've probably seen the Bombardier commercials: some Canadian tourist notices a train or plane made by Bombardier and gets excited. Then the announcer says "Thousands of Canadians are behind Bombardier, and proud of it."

That's only half the truth though. The announcer should say "Thousands of Canadians are forced to support Bombardier financially, and don't even know it." Or maybe more accurately, "Thousands of Canadians are bent over in front of Bombardier and getting..." well, you can complete the sentence yourself.

CBC's The National ran a story this evening about hundreds of Bombardier jets sitting idle in a field in Arizona. Guess who owns those jets? You do. That's right, you, your neighbour, your co-workers, every Canadian taxpayer owns a piece of those jets rusting in the desert. Here's how it works. Bombardier builds a bunch of jets that nobody wants to buy. Export Development Canada, a Federal Crown Corporation, takes billions of Canadians' tax dollars and loans it to foreign companies whom the regular banks consider "high risk" with the condition that the companies use the money to purchase the aforementioned jets from Bombardier. Now, those high risk companies have defaulted on those loans and EDC is stuck with the planes. Since EDC isn't an airline, the planes sit in the desert and collect dust.

As if that loan/bribe scenario wasn't enough, the government still routinely coughs up billions of dollars in direct subsidies to Bombardier (because they still can't seem turn a profit, even with a bribed customer base) with the excuse that the company "provides jobs". Who are they kidding? I mean come on, if the government's going to do that, then skip the middle man, give the billions directly to the workers, and send them home to be productive already!

Yes, our roads are terrible, our military is an international joke, our taxes are outrageously high, and people die waiting for health care, but still the government finds it more important to use your money to buy airplanes that don't fly.

More Cartoon Rioting

More riots have erupted over controversial and offensive cartoons.

Fighting fire with fire

The Freakonomics blog has a link to an Israeli anti-semetic cartoon contest created in response to the psychopatic Muslim protests. Now excuse me while I go watch Curb Your Enthusiasm...

Special thanks to Cutie for giving me the link ;)

This just in...

In the spirit of Duck and Cover, Air Canada has banned pictures of Muslims with hats resembling bombs on all flights and in their lounges. Real Muslims with real bombs still allowed.

Getting Excited!

Less than two weeks to go!

Another Added Bonus

I found out today not only does my employer have a great benefits package, but I don't have to pay any premiums. I guess that stands to reason since they're an insurance company. ;) So the only non-government deduction on my paycheque is 75 cents for the social fund. Sweet!

Steyn hits the nail on the head (again)

Another great commentary on lunatic Muslims by Mark Steyn

No Thanks

Please don't thank me for my reaction to the cartoons. I fully support them and the cartoonists who drew them. I'd print millions of them and drop them from the sky if I could. I would post them on every telephone pole and in every paper and magazine in the country.

It's perfectly acceptable to Muslims for a Mohammed to blow up a real building, but draw him with a bomb and it's blasphemy. Now a Pakistani cleric has offered a $1-million US bounty for the murder of the cartoonist. And we're supposed to be rational with these people??? I don't think so. I've lost all respect for Islam.

Bizarro Islam

So I've been thinking about this whole cartoon holy war going on and after watching the media reports I had to ask myself: Am I the only one on this planet who thinks Muslims are overreacting? The media keeps treating the Muslim reaction as a normal response to being offended. Many columnists, reporters, and letter writers have asked "wouldn't you feel the same if someone offended your God?" Sure, I might feel the same, but I wouldn't act the same. And that's what differentiates Islam from other religions. Jews don't burn flags and bomb shopping malls everytime someone denies the holocaust and Hindus don't fly planes into buildings everytime someone in the West eats a hamburger. Instead, other religions work within the system and express their outrage within the boundaries of the rule of law.

In light of the flag burnings, murders, embassy vandalism, and calls for mass destruction it's getting more and more difficult to defend Islam. After September 11, western Muslim leaders kept telling everyone that the perpetrators of the attacks were not representative of Islam, but mislead extremists. After watching the cartoon violence I don't think that explanation holds. I see millions of Muslims burning flags, shooting AK-47's, and calling for the the murder of westerners on a nightly basis. It's not a handful of people doing this, it's millions. In fact, it's only a handful of Muslims saying the violence isn't right. On the news you see a few million Muslims in a blood frenzy and then some lone cleric from Toronto saying violence isn't the answer.

The Islamic world has become a bizarro world where the moderates are the extremists.

UPDATE: Muslims are insane psychopathic.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Winnipeg Free Press, Page B2, Column 5 :)

More on the Cartoon In-toon-fatah

Here's another great commentary on the cartoon fiasco.

Canada's (Spineless) Response

I was going to write a criticism of Foreign Minister Peter McKay's statement on the cartoon fiasco, then I read Ezra Levant's commentary and figured, why duplicate?

Freedom of speech... just watch what you say draw

The following letter to the editor appeared in The Winnipeg Free Press on February 8, 2006:

The protests against controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad have spread across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. It is the satirical intent of the cartoonists, and the association of the prophet with terrorism, that is indeed very offensive to all Muslims alike. Many in Arab media describe it as a modern crusade. They speak of a campaign to distort and discredit Islam. America's war on terror is still largely perceived in several Muslim countries as a war on Islam -- a perception reinforced by the fact that it is happening exclusively in Muslim countries; namely Iraq and Afghanistan.

The controversy appears to pit Western traditions of free speech against a tenet of Islam that says images of the prophet are strictly forbidden. In the final analysis, the right to freedom of expression by no means implies the right to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory and offend religious beliefs.

My response:

The author does not understand the right to freedom of expression when he says it "by no means implies the right to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory and offend religious beliefs." Actually, that is exactly what the right to freedom of expression implies and is designed to protect.

It is easy to protect or defend expression that one agrees with. Nobody requests censorship of expression they support. It is only offensive expression that provokes calls for censorship and supression. Freedom of expression is freedom of ALL expression, not of specific expression as determined by select individuals or groups. The foundation of such a right is the recognition that the best way to combat incorrect, inaccurate, or inflammatory ideas is with facts, data, and better ideas, not the heavy-handedness of censorship. Opponents of expression resort to censorship when they are unable, or unwilling, to effectively contradict the offensive material intellectually.

As for the association of The Prophet with terrorism, the responsibility for that impression rests solely with those who fly planes into buildings, behead hostages, murder innocent civilians, and preach death and destruction in His name, not a cartoon in a newspaper.

In memoria illorum quisnam mortuus: Cineri gloria sera est