Indeed. And the NDP opposition will certainly be interesting!>> ^Zifnab:

No shit, I didn't see that coming a few weeks ago. I am happy with the decimation of the Bloc and the fact that Elizabeth May was elected.
>> ^Fusionaut:
Fuck!

No shit, I didn't see that coming a few weeks ago. I am happy with the decimation of the Bloc and the fact that Elizabeth May was elected.
>> ^Fusionaut:

Fuck!

n.b. Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, was not allowed to participate in the debates this year, despite participating last year and even being considered the winner of the English debates. The Green Party has candidates all across the country compared to the Bloc Quebecois who only have candidates in one Province.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/03/29/elizabeth-may-not-invited-to-leaders%E2%80%99-tv-debates/

>> ^Payback:

If Harper is Palpatine, Ignatief is that other pod racer from Phantom Menace, and Layton is the Gammorean Guard Jabba dropped into the Rancor pit.
(The Bloq are those Bothans who died getting the fake Deathstar info to the rebels)


You just didn't say that the Bloc was were the Bothans who died in getting the fake deathstar info to the reb's did you? Well yes I see you did. I'm having trouble fitting the context, since the Bloc are xenophobic, actively anti-anglophone, and several other dozen things. Along with the belief that the rest of the country 'owes' them, and they should be able to keep getting money even if they leave.

@blankfist I can't speak for every state (and BTW, this is almost entirely an issue left to the states to legislate on), but there's nothing legally stopping a divorce from being settled out of court in Ohio. You don't even need an arbitrator, if the parties can come to total agreement on the disposition of the custody of the children and all the relevant property disputes. In such cases, the state basically just acts as a witness to the agreement.

Almost no divorces happen that way, largely because the couple can't come to a full and wide-ranging agreement. Not only that, they usually can't even agree to binding arbitration. My parents couldn't, and instead went into the full legal food fight in civil court.

At no point in here do I see how taking civil court off the table helps.

As far as my own parents' divorce proceedings, my observation was that all the advantages went to my dad, largely because he was the sole income earner in our household. The only topic mom seemed to get preference on was with custody, and I think that was more a case of dad relenting than mom getting some sort of preferential treatment.

Even so, unfair laws aren't written in stone, and I'm sure you could cobble together a pretty potent PAC of pissed off rich men who're mad about how women get too much of a free ride when it comes to divorce. Bad judges can be impeached, and many state courts elect their judges anyways (we do here, and they even all have partisan affiliations -- the Ohio Supreme Court is 100% Republican again).

And as far as judges are concerned, I'm sure the voting blocs are driven more by abortion than anything else, and I guarantee you that the abortion-should-be-illegal crowd are a lot more likely to rule against agnostic parents over "proper" Christian ones in divorce proceedings.

In terms of actual statute, I suspect a lot of the stagnation of law in this area is because the law is set at the state level. Just about no one gets into the details of what their state legislature does unless it catches the attention of the national media (e.g. SB1070, Prop 8, Prop 19, Romneycare, etc.). Even a political junkie like me is hard pressed to say what issues my state legislature has even tried to address over its last session.

As far as some sort of anarchist state-free system, let me quote James Madison, who puts it far more eloquently than I do:

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

>> ^chilaxe:

What I do object to is what seems to be the attitude in my liberal community that liberalism doesn't need to be self-critical and try to continually decrease its error rate.
For that reason, the safest prediction seems to be that its error rate will remain at the same level. (That's why liberals in Canada were surprised to find they had elected their enemy Harper, even though they had 4 years to ponder US liberals' 2000 loss.)


I don't get the sense that liberals aren't self-critical enough. On the contrary, the problem I see is that we can't stop being self-critical long enough to actually form a cohesive bloc that can agree on a course of action and rally around it.

I'm not sure what the fix for that really is. Republicans get a lot of mileage out of strong, hierarchical discipline, but as a result they seem to have zero capability to have self-critical conversations anymore.

I was kinda hoping Obama would spend a little more time trying to rally and unify liberals than make all these ill-fated attempts to reach out to conservatives.

@kronosposeidon, I also don't think it helps when we have a solid bloc of Congress that demands the resignation of anyone who says, even fleetingly, that the war is a bad idea.

If you deleted all the Republicans from Congress, the wars would end.

Hell, if you eliminated the organized manipulation of the press by conservatives, it wouldn't just be a moderate majority opposed to the war, it'd be at least 80%.

it's anything but senseless. the operative word is DIRECT action. and the ethic is that no person or personal (there's difference between personal and private property) property is destroyed. the targets are clear, financial institutions, multi national corporations, the police, the military. the state. not people or their belongings.

the message is also clear, it's written in spray paint on the sides of barricades. the insight and societal critique is quite clear and easily accessible. there are libraries and warehouses full of the literature, and houses and collectives full of the living message and the people sharing their visions and stories.
what kind of message of does a bunch of stinky kids sitting in a circle send? "we don't like what you're doing, but you said we have to stay here, so ok!" that's not at all productive, and will never change anything. after 3 generations of peaceful sit-in style protests, what the fuck has changed?

this kid did it get right though, the media narrative is designed so that you don't see the message, all you see is "senseless" violence. so the anarchists look like a lynch mob.

i think the black bloc has the target wrong, the media should be the first thing we throw bricks at.

>> ^peggedbea:

fuck those hippies. if they had ALL gotten up and smashed shit, joined in the black bloc.. that really would have SAID something.
you're right to protest is a sham, expressing your dissent how the oppressors tell you you are allowed to express dissent changes nothing for future generations.. NOTHING. nothing changes without direct action, without disrupting business as usual and these lazy, self righteous hippies aren't changing shit.
on the other hand, that black bloc reminds people that they really are so sick of the status quo they do want to blow up military recruiting centers and smash cops cars with baseball bats, oh canada!


What kind of message does smashing shit send besides a general cry of discontent? What kind of constructive criticism or insight on the inequities of modern times does burning a police car provide? What positive change does it engender, what good does it do for the rest of humanity?

Societal problems are multifaceted and complex. Simply destroying something is not a solution. The world needs thinkers, not a bigger lynch mob. Fuck your senseless violence; It brings nothing but chaos and terror.

fuck those hippies. if they had ALL gotten up and smashed shit, joined in the black bloc.. that really would have SAID something.

you're right to protest is a sham, expressing your dissent how the oppressors tell you you are allowed to express dissent changes nothing for future generations.. NOTHING. nothing changes without direct action, without disrupting business as usual and these lazy, self righteous hippies aren't changing shit.

on the other hand, that black bloc reminds people that they really are so sick of the status quo they do want to blow up military recruiting centers and smash cops cars with baseball bats, oh canada!

g8/g20 summits are fucking sham/show. the real decisions have already been made else were. waste of money as far as i'm concerned and an ironic one at that seeing as how the stated purpose of this summit was deficit reduction.

i'm all for black blocs and the destruction of property, but there are standards. you don't cause physical harm to anyone, and you don't destroy personal property (there's a difference between private property and personal property... like, it's great to throw bricks at banks but you don't spray paint an innocent civilians house).

i am totally unconcerned with the "destructive minority" "ruining it" for "peaceful protesters". you're "right" to protest is bullshit, "you can say whatever you like as long as you don't disrupt business as usual", if you don't disrupt business as usual then what is the point??? there is a time for direct action and i'm pretty sure now is as urgent a time as any.

as far as agent provocateur's are concerned, SOAR and infoshop are saying no evidence of agent provocateur's this time around as far as they see.
here is the statement from SOAR.
there's more articles about it from the anarchists but i'm too lazy and hurty right now, you can find some on infoshop.org if you care to search.

oh i'd like to see the g8/g20 focus on fucking itself.

i'd go about solving the worlds problems by eliminating the "state" and posing an alternative to rampant capitalism and rejecting authoritarianism and oppression in all forms.

@shogunkai : Oh you're so tough, you think being punched in the face is nothing... that does not diminish how wrong this is in any way. A police officer should NOT punch a reporter who is doing NOTHING but filming what is going on. PERIOD. So, it's ok that they punched him in the face, but maybe a kick to the groin would be too much? Where is your line.

Retarded.

And you can see with the horse video that he was already on the path and the horses rode over him.

Gotta love the people here standing up for this sort of shit behaviour.

However, I dislike the tone the video took in regards to the black bloc behaviour, that's just bullshit, that doesn't help anything or anyone. That's outright thuggish bullshit that shouldn't be condoned (which the video pretty much did).

That is the whole point, they didn't engage the black bloc, but they did attack reporters and arrested peaceful protestors.

You don't think that's oversimplifying things a touch?

You've got the police lines on one side, the bloc block rampaging on the other, and a sea of protesters in the middle. The truth couldn't be that the few city police there were available to pursue the black bloc earlier were just inadequate and late? The truth couldn't be that the black bloc dispersed into the protesters before the city police could respond. It couldn't be that the black bloc fully planned on the police responding to their actions and intended to do their damage and then hide before the police response?

And yes, it is some kinda of crazy, because it was completely unexpected from Canadian government!

Oh right, now it makes sense. This is EXACTLY what the government wanted all along. The entire mess with the black bloc plays right into their hands. The only thing standing in Harper's way was finding someway to sway public opinion against himself and his government.

@bcglorf

That is the whole point, they didn't engage the black bloc, but they did attack reporters and arrested peaceful protestors.



And yes, it is some kinda of crazy, because it was completely unexpected from Canadian government!

We need an *awesome tag for this.

So the summary I get is this:
1. No blame at all is to be laid on any of the peaceful by-standers and protesters who, like this guy, just stood around and watched or took pictures of the black bloc criminals as they burnt, trashed and looted the area.
2. The police are at fault for not trying to engage the black bloc.
3. The police are at fault for trying to engage the black bloc.
4. The black bloc were probably connected to the government somehow.

That is some kind of crazy.

I see a radically different picture.
1. The 'peaceful' protesters lose the defensive claim to peaceful assembly when the buildings and property immediately adjacent to them gets destroyed, looted, or is set on fire. They are then part of an active crime scene, and the police DO have the right to remove them from the vicinity, whether they came to protest peacefully or not.
2. The police did not engage the black bloc when they were far from their lines, because they were ordered to hold a line. The police did engage the bloc when they came in close among the peaceful protesters.
3. The black bloc's goal is incite anger and hostility against the police and government. Blending into a peaceful crowd to hide from the police accomplishes the goal. The police are damned if they go after the bloc, and damned if they don't.
4. Some police officers get tired of seeing this crap and use the furthest extents available to them against these tactics.