Palin

I have my disgareements with Ms Palin.

But I freakin' LUV watching Obama supporters in panic mode.

By the way, didn't Mr Obama make some kind of big speech a couple of days ago? Not much mention of it on the news ;-)

This article is almost too stoopid for words...

If Everyone's Talking, Who Will Listen? (Washington Post)

The article starts off talking about how there's just so much freaking information out there...

But the implications for our democracy are troubling. To achieve their goals, political movements need to reach and influence tens of millions of citizens. Despite conventional thinking that the Internet helps spread information, such reach is actually impossible online...

The opportunity to educate [read: propagandize--ed.] millions of citizens, so essential to significant movements of the past, has dwindled. In the early New Deal era, the Roman Catholic "radio priest" Father Charles Coughlin promoted ideas for economic reform to a weekly audience estimated at 40 million, which helped pressure President Franklin D. Roosevelt to enact Social Security, the Works Progress Administration and other programs...

Plain english translation: "If there isn't any rationing of the media, of information, people might/will stop acting like sheeple. It'll be harder for us folks who know better than most people to manipulate them.

The madness doesn't stop:

Rather than call for government regulation of technology itself...

Yeah, let's not take away people's computers. Folks might not stand for that.

perhaps the best way to limit the avalanche is to make the technologies that overproduce information more expensive and less widespread. It could be done via a progressive energy tax designed to keep energy prices at a consistently high level (while providing assistance to lower- and middle-income Americans)...

Make the price so high they just stop using 'em.

It's possible that over time, an energy tax, by making some computers, Web sites, blogs and perhaps cable TV channels too costly to maintain, could reduce the supply of information. If Americans are finally giving up SUVs because of high oil prices, might we not eventually do the same with some information technologies that only seem to fragment our society, not unite it? A reduced supply of information technology might at least gradually cause us to gravitate toward community-centered media such as local newspapers instead of the hyper-individualistic outlets we have now.

Plain english translation: tax stuff until people can only go to the few places the zombie who wrote this drivel likes for their information ration.

But why be surprised? Take a look at what this pompus airhead thinks is good news, and why:

This solution may sound radical and unlikely, but as an environmental analyst, I've spent long hours studying energy consumption. Two years ago, I wrote an article speculating that the real problem behind America's loss of manufacturing jobs was low energy costs that made shipping so cheap that employers had overwhelming incentive to send jobs overseas. My argument that higher energy prices could reverse 50 years of outsourcing was met with skepticism. Yet that's exactly what has begun to happen this year as the high cost of oil has brought some manufacturing jobs back to such cities as Bowling Green, Ky., and Danville, Va.

That's a "socially concious" way of saying that "high energy prices" is good news and "low energy prices" is bad.

Tell that to your wallet. Watch your wallet belly-laugh.

Dusty Horwitt is a lawyer who works for a nonprofit environmental group in Washington.

Really? There's a shocker.

What a fukkin dolt. As my brother says: "Gawd save me from people with a plan."

All of which ties in nicely with this.

Good on ya , Conrad

Lord Black on Strip Searches and fellow inmates (National Post).

Best wishes.

Mr. Biden

Mr. Biden might be the purest proof recently of the idea that political ambition is about obtaining power, not about principles.

Now the Vice-Presidential candidate with Mr. Obama, Mr Biden had this to say a short while ago:

On Mr. McCain: "I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off."

On Mr. Obama: "Is he ready? Right now I don’t believe he is, the presidency is not something that lends itself to on the job training."

Obviously, he just wants the job. He'll work for anybody.

People are going to find out what "suspended" means...

...because Der Rodham didn't quit her campaign. She suspended it.

Billy might be wrong and, if so, I'm wrong too.

There is nothing I trust about that woman. Except her ambition.

Rules are not a substitute for thought...

Over at Billy Beck's Two-Four:

'Til tomorrow, ponder this item, ladies and gentlemen, linked at Say Uncle.

I have no idea what Billy will have to say about it, but I'm going to concentrate on this, from an online commenter named "Steve":

I witness crimes and call 911 on a weekly basis and there is nothing I can do but watch the crime take place and relay the information to 911. If I had known that I was able to intervene I could have stopped a violent sexual assault in front of the YMCA on Tuesday evening. So what's the law? Are we intervening on our own now or what? [emphasis mine]

Note that Steve is not asking whether or not he "should" intervene; he's asking something different. Steve wants to know if he is "able" to intervene on his own and asks, looking for an answer: "what's the law?".

That's pathetic. What is this "we" garbage? I'm able to decide that sort of thing for myself.

Finally...

BRITISH COPY EDITOR NARROWLY AVOIDS CLICHÉ!!!

A bus doesn't plunge: "One dead and 44 hurt in bus fall" (BBC).

Will wonders never cease?

Pro-censorship mental gymnastics...

Lea Anderson writes in The Calgary Herald:

Demanding the elimination of human rights laws to allow a journalist to be offensive or contemptible to a fellow Albertan is not the longstanding western tradition I know.

Actually, Lea, (other than the quickly overturned Alberta Press Act) allowing a journalist to be offensive or contemptible to anyone, Albertans included, is *exactly* the longstanding western tradition I know.

But let me ask you, Lea: what mental contortions could lead you to actually propose censorship while stating:

Milke demands we gut our human rights laws, the very week George Bush requested China allow more basic rights and freedoms, and the week Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died. He was famous for chronicling the abuses and terror of the Russian gulags, one of the biggest human rights catastrophies ever.

??? I just don't get that. Solzhenitsyn was punished because he was a journalist who offended someone.

Perhaps you aren't familiar, Lea...China and The Soviet Union aren't exactly known for...uh...freedom of expression. In fact, and to be specific, Soviet bureaucrats found Solzhenitsyn very offensive; that's why they put him in the Gulag.

I understand you might find this complicated, Lea, but it might help you to read the next bit and pay special attention to the bolded, underlined parts.

From Wikipedia:

During World War II, he [Solzhenitsyn] served as the commander of an acoustic recognizance unit in the Red Army, was involved in major action at the front, and twice decorated. In February 1945, while serving in East Prussia, he was arrested for writing a derogatory comment in a letter to a friend, N. D. Utkevich, about the conduct of the war by Joseph Stalin, whom he called "the whiskered one," "Khozyain" ("the master") and "Balabos", (Odessa Yiddish for "the master"). He was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda under Article 58 paragraph 10 of the Soviet criminal code, and of "founding a hostile organisation" under paragraph 11.[12] Solzhenitsyn was taken to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he was beaten and interrogated. On 7 July 1945, he was sentenced in his absence by a three-man tribunal of the Soviet security police (NKGB) to an eight-year term in a labour camp, to be followed by permanent internal exile. This was the normal sentence for most crimes under Article 58 at the time. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Lea, I think your position on this subject is kinda contemptible; the sheer lack of logic you display is offensive to me, especially every time I think of you voting.

I admit though, I was especially entertained by this word salad of yours:

Milke's attempt to defend free speech abuses by eliminating human rights is an assault on our dignity.

You toss those terms together ("free speech", "abuses", "rights", "assault", "dignity") with such careless, delicious abandon; it reads almost like you understand them.

Oh, of course I trust the government...

...and the folks who work for 'em.

Words fail me. This just just horrible.

...and par for the course these days.

He's (she's ???) got a point.

I think we need to change the name of our country to Kafkada... (batb at SDA)

I don't know batb at all, but still that's straight up dead on the money.

Update on Mandatory Voting...

Readers may remember a discussion I had with Werner Patels over at his blog on the subject of mandatory voting (details here).

As I described in the post at the link I just referenced, Werner found me difficult and asked me not to post at his place. I comply: king/castle and all that, as I noted.

However, I revisited the thread to see what had gone on in my requested absence, and I noticed a few things, and I'm still free to comment here.

First: Werner's statement that:

Australia has implemented mandatory voting -- an entire country like that (especially Australia) isn't wrong when it goes down that path.

Sorry, Werner, "another country did what I think is a good idea" isn't a rebuttal; it's just a variation on the old logical fallacy known as "the appeal to authority". In other words, nice as Australia might otherwise be, so what?

Second, this paragraph from Werner:

Sorry, but unless you [ed.--meaning me, Ron] can show me that you are at least somewhat a decent person who is not only concerned with his own beer-drinking or hockey-watching time, and how going to the polls would cut into that "precious" me-time for you, I refuse to waste my time with someone who leaves his dirty boot imprints on our democracy.

Do me a favour, Werner, don't trot out "unless you can show me..." after telling me I'm not welcome to speak at your place to what you're writing. That's just bad manners.

In any case, dealing with your pre-emptive (and, as it happens, wrong-headed) smear, I hardly drink ever (a six-pack would be a very heavy year of drinking for me), and I don't watch more than a couple of hockey games every few years. Also and in any case, your valuation of the usefulness of what I do with my time is worthless when it comes to being a good argument for how I owe some of it to accomplish what you want.

My time is *my* time, and I use it for *my* purposes. I have enough respect for you to allow you the same, in spite of your very evident lack of regard for me or the time or differing values of others. And you have the gall to question if I'm decent all the while you trot out that authoritarian, clearly coercive "force 'em to vote" nonsense.

Third: commenter "Ben" followed with this:

Interesting how Ron Good claims that he doesn't have time to vote, but he DOES have time to write long posts explaining why he doesn't have time to vote!

I agree with you, Werner that non-voters give up all rights to the benefits of democracy. It disgusts me when people say give excuses for not voting, and then complain about the outcome. If you don't vote, then as far as I am concerned, you forfeit your voice.

Again, Ben, for starters, my time is *my* time, just like yours is properly yours. Also, I think posting my opinion in detail and perhaps affecting the viewpoint of others is a hell of a lot more civilized (and, I think, more effective) than pushing people around either with my vote, or by forcing people to vote. So: I didn't *ever* say I didn't have time to vote; I said my time is my time and I have other things to do with it.

And these two quotes coming up aptly explain why I don't--and won't--agree that my rights are contingent on your approval or the approval of some democratic vote:

"Neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. All errors he is likely to commit against advice and warning are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to do what they deem his good." John Stuart Mill

"Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." from The Law - Frédéric Bastiat

(And no, that's not an appeal to authority: the relevant thing is what they said, not who said it,)

But then, Ben, you take the "forcing folks to do what you want" stuff to a brand new level:

Well, after some thought, I have the following proposal. Make voting mandatory, but in addition, force voters to write a simple test before voting. This doesn't need to be a long test -- maybe just 3-5 short-answer questions, asking them to specify the main issues of the campaign, and each party's view on each issue. For simplicity, the parties could be limited to the Liberals, PCs, NDPs, and Greens, but the voter could address other parties' views if they want. The test would also be designed to ensure that he voter is not forced to divulge their preferences, i.e., it would be non-partisan.

If the voter gets a minimum 60% grade on the test, then they can vote who whomever they want. Otherwise, they are not allowed to vote, and they are fined some pre-fixed amount.

Ah, so "after some thought" your genius proposal is to force folks to vote except they have to also write a test first to see if they're qualified, and if their test answers don't meet your suggested bureaucratic approval, you fine 'em and disenfranchise 'em.

Fourth: Ben closes his post with:

And if all parties agree to the new rule (which they should, if they really are worried about low voter turnout), then voters will not have the option of voting for the party that would repeal the law.

Ah, I understand. If Ben has his way, in the name of freedom, voters forced to vote would also be prevented from voting for what they might vote for.

Man, and you think those statements somehow display a logical and deeply considered commitment to freedom and individual rights, Ben?

Fifth: Werner ends the thread with:

at least people will have to participate in the democratic process, which would make the eventual outcome at least halfway legit (unlike the current government in Alberta, which claims majority status but has the support of less than 22% of the entire electorate).

Uh, yeah...a democratic vote is somehow more legit if people are forced to vote than if they choose to vote. That's just weird.

I don't think *I* will play along.

On Language (New York Times)

So what effect has capitalizing “I” but not “you” — or any other pronoun — had on English speakers? It’s impossible to know, but perhaps our individualistic, workaholic society would be more rooted in community and quality and less focused on money and success if we each thought of ourselves as a small “i” with a sweet little dot. There have, of course, been plenty of rich and dominant cultures throughout history that have gotten by just fine without capitalizing the first-person pronoun or ever writing it down at all. There have also been cultures that committed atrocities even while capitalizing “you.”

Still, there seems to be something to it all. Modern e-mail culture has shown that many English speakers feel perfectly comfortable dismissing all uses of capitalization — and even correct spelling, for that matter. But take this a step further: i suggest that You try, as an experiment, to capitalize those whom You address while leaving yourselves in the lowercase. It may be a humbling experience. It was for me.

Tata Air Car

Gawd, I love capitalism :-).

...sucker runs on compressed air and needs a 1 litre vegetable oil change every 50,000 miles.

Omar Khadr's lawyer said:

"We're hoping that the Canadian public will recognize that if you put aside any concerns or guilt or innocence... and look at the compassion we feel, that children have a special significance in society," (Canoe News/CP).

Why in the world would I want to put guilt or innocence aside?

...in a courtroom, no less.

Given the strong emotional response from the public to the video, Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae cautioned that Khadr's fate should not be subject to a "popularity contest."

"He was brainwashed and sent in to fight NATO troops. I think we all recognize that's deeply troubling to Canadians," said Rae.

"We have our troops there, obviously it's deeply troubling to all of us. The issue is not that. The issue is, isn't it appropriate for Canada to take responsibility for Mr. Khadr?"

Canada?

Nope. I wasn't involved and none of my friends were either.

But, heck, I'll go with the brainwashed bit for the sake of argument. Let's see where that takes us...

So... If not Omar, how about the parents taking responsibility and paying the appropriate price? Would that work for you, Bob?

After all, isn't responsibilty a direct correlate to control? Who controlled him, Bob? It wasn't "Canada" pulling Omar's strings.

Mandatory Voting...

Over at Werner Patel's blog (Werner Patels - A Dose of Common Sense) Werner's running a couple of posts in favour of mandatory voting, here and here.

I gather Werner is displeased at my behaviour on his blog because he's asked me not to post there any more. I'm not sure why he found me that troubling, but: fine with me; it's his place, so if that's how he wants it, that's what he gets. Castle/king and all that very good stuff.

But that doesn't mean I'll just let things slide. After all, Werner did say: "From now on, please stay on your blog..." ;-)

I challenged the idea of forcing people to vote on ethical grounds. You can read the details by visiting his site, and in any case Werner didn't really address those objections. He chose instead to engage in name-calling and also to note how lots of folks agreed with him.

Well, OK, he's free to behave how he wishes at his place...

But anways, all purely ethical considerations aside in favour of more practical considerations, I was re-reading the two threads, including additional queries posted by ScruffyDan, and I came across these curious exchanges:

Scruffydan:

Mandatory voting may increase voter turn out, but not voter education. I fail to see how forcing uneducated voters to cast a ballot will make things better.

...to which Werner replied:

Voter education as such is a hopeless undertaking -- at least, in this country. We'd have to raise the general level of education first and then move on to political education. As this re-education process will take decades, and we don't have time to wait for that, must happen now:

(a) Mandatory voting (plus stiff fine for those not voting)

Evidently, Werner thinks (even apart from the ethical considerations he chose not to discuss) that forcing uneducated people to vote *now* will somehow still improve things--even though the voters won't be motivated or knowledgeable.

Exactly how that will work isn't explained but I'm sure the mental gymnastics required to even make the idea seem sensible would be thrilling to watch.

But there's another flaw in Werner's reasoning.

Werner and I had this exchange:

Werner: "Look at the rotten and corrupt government Albertans are now stuck with because so many people didn't do their share".

Me: "Actually, by your logic, the damage was caused by the only people who *did* do their share: the folks who voted."

In reply, Werner wrote:

The last Alberta election clearly demonstrates what happens when people are too lazy to vote (they were home getting drunk or watching a moronic hockey game, no doubt): we end up with a government that has no democratic legitimacy (with only 22% of the electorate, it is certainly not a majority government and therefore doesn't deserve the number of seats it claimed for itself) and that views itself as being not accountable to voters at all (after all, only a tiny minority of voters showed up for the election, so the government doesn't feel obligated to do right by the people of the province).

and Werner had stated earlier in the thread that "Most of those who stayed home would not have voted for Stelmach, because the 22% who did already represent his only remaining core support (give or take).

That's fascinating.

If Werner is correct (and he has no way of knowing, actually--he's just assuming) then, logically, Werner *must* be saying:

• that it was the *left* that was too lazy, too ignorant, too selfish or too stupid to vote, and
  
• that Mr Stelmach's supporters were the only folks responsible enough to do what Werner calls "their civic duty".

I'm not sure those were the points Werner was trying to make, but those are the only things that logically follow.

------------------------------------------

An aside:

Don't take this post as any sort of blanket condemnation of Werner. I disagree with him lots about this issue and others, but he often makes good points; he works to be benevolent and he's worked hard to gain some considerable skills. Plus, he's brave enough and straight-up enough to put his real name behind what he says. He stays on my "Blogs I Appreciate" list.

This is *my* place.

From an article written by...

...Imam Zijad Delic in the Ottawa Citizen:

The limitless free speech model -- which posits that the solution to harmful and hateful speech is more and better speech -- does not work for minority communities, and our complaints illustrate that.

Too bad, Imam Delic. It works for me, and I'm a minority of one. What you propose doesn't work for me.

What your complaints best illustrate is that you are willing to use the force of law, and are ultimately willing to use "main force", to compel some level of obedience to your standards.

I object, and I refuse.

Quite frankly, I obviously respect you far more than you evidently respect me. Because: as long as you physically leave me and mine alone, I don't give a rodent's butt about your standards--except that you're welcome to them, and you are free to live by them. And that's not me giving you permission--that's me understanding your rights.

You are also free to offend me, to call me and the ideas I hold dear every and any name and insult you can muster, wherever and whenever you like, and you are free to tell people that you don't think they ought to support me in any way; you are free to tell people that they ought to dislike me.

As long as I treat you likewise, what you can't properly ever do is touch me, or tell others that they should touch me, in any physical, tangible way, ever, at all. And, consequently, you can't properly shut me up.

Your problem with the "solution to harmful and hateful speech [being] more and better speech" is actually only that you understand that accepting that definition requires more effort on your part than you are willing to provide; accepting such a definition requires skill and patience--and, ultimately, better arguments, and it requires a commitment not to coerce others. Simply, your abject lack in those areas is exactly why--and the only reason why--that definition doesn't work for you.

You wrote:

The fact is that a discussion of free speech cannot be divorced from a discussion of who in our society has the power to express themselves and through which medium.

Oh, horse puckey. Wrong. The fact, instead, is that a discussion of free speech must be divorced from a discussion of who in our society has the power to express themselves and through which medium.

In any case, as long as you have access to a working mouth, let alone a podium, a megaphone, a CB radio or a photocopier, you unarguably already have all the tools you need to express yourself.

If you want room in a national magazine, you are free to buy one or build one, and all you need then do is freely convince enough people to read it. That's what Macleans has already done; you just don't want to have to go to the trouble yourself. If I didn't know how hard you are working to take away my ability to speak freely, I'd have to say you were just plain lazy. As it is, you merely value expediency in getting what you want over principles. In other words, you are impatient and willing to push people around.

Besides, the fact I read your article is more than evidence enough that you have sufficient access to express your views. You plainly disagree with me and, yet, here you are: in the Ottawa Citizen, with a potential world-wide audience--and it didn't cost you a dime. Clue in, Imam Delik: you have the freaking Internet.

All of which are side issues.

Understand this, Imam Delic, my right to free speech is not up for negotiation in any case. It's mine, pure and simple--and no one except a band of arrogant, self-righteous, presumptuous thugs would ever consider curtailing it.

A beautiful article on...

...use of the semi-colon (Slate).

From the article:

Slate's founding editor, Michael Kinsley, once noted to the Financial Times that "[t]he most common abuse of the semicolon, at least in journalism, is to imply a relationship between two statements without having to make clear what that relationship is." All journalists can cop to this: The semicolon allows woozy clauses to lean on each other like drunks for support.

I use semi-colons but only ever as a way of joining discrete sentences that share not the same general thinking but, instead, more the same thought. In other words, I use them only when the connection between two sentences is clearly much closer than the general relationship between other sentences in the same paragraph. I use them to recognize a connection, not to imply a connection.

I also don't ever use semi-colons to connect anything that couldn't otherwise stand as two complete sentences.

I love punctuation, so: how about you? How do you use semi-colons, if you do?

Where things come from...

Talking about Ireland's refusal to go EU over at Werner Patel's place...

One well-known writer (whose name shall not be mentioned; I'm not interested in laying troll-bait) noted the essential difference between the view of human rights held in Europe as opposed to Britain and North America. Succinctly, the difference is that Europeans generally regard human rights as mere permissions granted by God or government, while the classical liberal (British/North American) tradition holds that humans have rights innately, entirely regardless of the opinion of governments, God or deists/theists.

That difference is glaringly obvious when examining the machinations of the EU dogmatists--just as obviously as it is when examining the "Civil" legal theory of Quebec law as opposed to the (albeit eroding) "Common Law" underpinnings of English Canadian law.

You've described where the impetus is coming to erode Britain's autonomy and common law legal tradition; in Canada the eroding of common law and individual autonomy comes just as directly from the heavily Quebecois (in other words: European) influenced eastern Canadian large-L Liberal party and the NDP/marxist and Bismarkian/European influenced Fabian statists they raid for practical ideas on how to increase or (where necessary) re-apply the power of the State.

Freedom, limits and blasphemy.

"I don't think freedom of expression should mean freedom from blasphemy," said Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade, the chairman of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference. "There can be no freedom without limits."

Look: there is *no* proof for the existence of a deity--not any proof, not for any of them, not God, not Allah, not Odin or Zeus. There is proof that each of those had adherents, but--again--no proof whatsoever for the existence of the deities themselves.

That makes *all* religious/theological belief mere opinion.

Freedom with limits is just newspeak code for a discussion regarding the size of the cage and who gets to be the zookeeper. Making blasphemy illegal just makes religious people the zookeepers.

I am a human being. I am no one's property and no one's rightful subject, and I am likewise subject to no deity or deities.

So, to Mr. Wade of Senegal or any others who would restrict or remove my freedom of expression based on such charges:

If you attempt to charge me, convict me, fine me or jail me based on your mere wish not to be offended, understand that I will always take those attempts as mortal threats to my life, peace and security, and that I will hold all who act in support of such attempts as mortal enemies as well.

I will not instigate aggression, but--anytime I choose, whenever it suits me, and whenever I think it's necessary and appropriate--I *will* fight back.

In other words: Don't Tread on Me.

Pay attention.

These people get it.

For reasonable people who believe in equality and safety for all, it is easy to condemn Boissoin’s hurtful and inflammatory language. Furthermore, the temptation is strong to want to silence such an angry diatribe which might find an audience of people willing to join his war against equality.

While it is difficult to support Boissoin’s right to spew his misguided and vitriolic thoughts, support his right, we must.

If Boissoin was no longer able to share his views, then who might be next in also having their freedom of expression limited. Traditionally, the LGBT community’s freedom has been repressed by society and its laws.

Plus, it is far better that Boissoin expose his views than have them pushed underground. Under the glaring light of public scrutiny, his ideas will most likely wither and die.

The BCHRC should pay attention.

h/t Ezra Levant

(You know, I really don't know much aboutwhat Ezra thinks about a lot of things; I'm just not that familiar. But I agree completely with his opinion regarding so-called Human Rights Commissions and Tribunals. There are courts for real grievances.

Commissions and tribunals are insults just by their existence; they are designed specifically to control people politically as opposed to control acts of aggression or fraud.)

What Mark Steyn and Macleans are putting up with in BC is both absurd and frightening; the Commissioners are acting like ideological thugs--but the Alberta Human Rights Commission order against Rev. Stephen Boisson is so dementedly juggernautish in it's bullying, the reasonable mind staggers.

As Mr. Levant (properly) puts it:

It is the most revolting order I have ever seen in Canada. Ever.

I'll excerpt a few lines from her ruling:

In this case, there is no specific individual who can be compensated as there is no direct victim who has come forward...

That's insane already. No-one was hurt. The complainant was an officious intermeddler, a busybody, the town scold, an anti-Christian activist named Darren Lund who had an axe to grind, and Andreachuk gave it to him.

Dr. Lund, although not a direct victim, did expend considerable time and energy and suffered ridicule and harassment as a result of his complaint. The Panel finds therefore that he is entitled to some compensation.

So a busybody with no standing spends time filing complaints -- and gets a tax-free reward for doing so. Oh -- and for his "suffering". Not suffering at the hands of Rev. Boission, but "as a result of his complaint". People in the community ridiculed Lund for filing the complaint -- as they should. And so Andreachuk will get the pastor to pay for that. Why the hell not? Who's going to stop her? Her political patron, Ed Stelmach?

There's more--and it's not pretty. Go Read. And pay attention (and, no--as it happens I don't agree with the good Rev one tiny bit...but that's not the point).