This week, at the North American Leaders Summit in Montebello, Quebec, 3 undercover police officers pretended to be protesters in an attempt to provoke violent incidents. The entire series of events was captured on video, and shared via YouTube. The cops are the three goons with bandanas over their faces. None of the real protesters wore disguises. One of the cops is carrying a rock.

Agent provocateur with a rock in his right hand.

The real protesters intervene, trying to prevent violence. Somehow, they realize that the agents provocateurs are cops, and accuse them of that. The fake protesters stop dead in their tracks, and one of them can be seen leaning over and talking with one of the uniformed riot police - over the riot shield - and shortly afterward, the three “protesters” are yanked out, “arrested” and carried to the safety of the police side of the line.

The Quebec Provincial Police have admitted that the 3 “protesters” were cops in disguise.

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada (and, one can only hope, future Prime Minister of Canada) wrote a description of the event on her blog (the Green website is Drupal, by the way…) Similar events allegedly happened in Seattle and Quebec City. Police either staging or allowing violence in order to justify cracking down on protesters.

This is unacceptable. I expect all police officers involved in this action to be summarily fired. And the entire chain of command, up to whoever ordered this. We can’t stand for our police forces to be instigating violence. Thankfully this didn’t happen this time. But it was damned close.

As a Canadian citizen, I demand an inquiry. I demand it to be public and open. And I expect for this to never, ever happen again. We are above this.

What scares me is this - what would have happened without YouTube to get the video out? There was video taken at Seattle and Quebec City, but it stayed on analog tape and didn’t get as widely circulated. This is why “Web 2.0″ is important. Never mind personal publishing for cat blogging, and ego surfing and identity management. The reason Web 2.0 is changing the world is by putting the power back into the hands of individuals. Democracy is mass media, in action.

On Monday, I attended a memorial for a family member that passed away recently (part of the reason I was in a bit of a funk during Northern Voice). It was the culmination of a long illness, but was still a shock.

At the memorial, a friend of hers stood up to say some words. Not a bad speech, and a nice gesture. They had met while working to pass some legislation to protect self employed individuals in the province. I talked with him after the service, at the reception upstairs. And then he did something that really unsettled me. He handed me his card. He is a politician, working he crowd for support. I saw him handing out cards around the room, making sure to talk to everyone at every table.

At the time, it didn't bother me too much. He was a friend of the deceased, trying to make contact with other friends and family members.

But, the more I think about it, the more incensed I get. Dude. You're handing out BUSINESS CARDS at a MEMORIAL??? I don't care if you're the freaking widower. That's just plain and simple NOT COOL. I don't care if you're a politician, a salesman, or a dotcom billionaire. Using a family memorial to work the crowd to gather support (no matter how subtly done) is a huge faux pas in my book.

I was asked by several people during the reception about the "guy handing out cards" - people were surprised that anyone would have the gall to do that. I'm stunned. Even though I could never bring myself to vote Progressive Conservative in the next provincial election, I will not be able to vote Liberal either. If this is the type of person selected by the Liberal party of Alberta, it isn't a good sign.

Not cool, Len. Not cool. 

I had a long post written up about the execution of Saddam Hussein. I decided at the last minute to not click the “Submit” button. But, my friend Niran wrote up an eloquent post that says it much more clearly.

One thing I’d add is this: I’m truly curious about the proportion of the American population that think Saddam was executed as part of the War on Terror™, or to grant democracy in Iraq. His execution had nothing to do with either (no WMDs have ever been found, and execution by a foreign power - even through a fledgling local puppet government - is no way to instill democracy).

I just checked in on weblogs.ucalgary.ca, and was greeted by a wonderful surprise. Justin Trudeau was on campus on Friday November 24, and the full audio of his talk was posted to weblogs.ucalgary.ca as a podcast. I’ve grabbed the file, and have listened to the first couple of minutes, but this should be a great talk.

For anyone who doesn’t recognize the name Justin Trudeau, he is the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and is making quite a name for himself as both a public speaker and leader of youth activism.

I’m really interested to hear his thoughts on Quebec as a “nation” as well as his take on what we can do to address environmental issues. (my own take on the Quebec “nation” issue is that it only acts as a divisive instrument - instead of what we need, which is something that is unifying)

This is the kind of thing I’m hoping we can put into a itunes@UCalgary service, once we get that off the ground. For now, it’s hosted on our weblogs service.

Sami beat me to the punch, but it’s worth publicly repeating. Garth Turner, MP for the Halton Constituency in Milton, Ontario, was booted out of the Conservative Party yesterday. For blogging. An elected member of parliament was Dooced.

Here’s the comment I posted on Sami’s blog, but I want to repeat it here as well (in case someone like the MP for my riding happens to see it):

It’s strange. This is our Government, and they boot someone out for documenting meetings and voicing honest opinions. Isn’t that what we do every day? Isn’t that what we should expect, even demand, from our representatives? The MPs represent US, not Harper. They have (IMO) an obligation to be honest (and open, and public) participants, not party mouthpieces.

Turner was booted out because he was openly communicating with his constituents, even when he disagreed with the Prime Minister (who happens to be the leader of the party to which Turner was a member).

We need more people like Garth Turner, who put the people ahead of power. Who believe it’s more important to be open and honest than to tow the party line. Politicians aren’t on The Hill for their own purposes. Nor are they there to serve their Party. They are there to represent us, the citizens of this kick-ass country. One way to do that effectively is to communicate. Blog the hell out of meetings. Politics is a conversation, and all of that Cluetrain stuff.

Now, if he’d have been blogging in-camera sessions, that might be a different thing. If he’d posted Top Secret Plans For Canada’s Troops in Afghanistan or something, I could see sanctions. But from what I’ve seen, he’s simply been posting his thoughts and critiques of his own government’s actions and policies. Which is his right to do, but apparently not as a member of the Conservative Party.

My brother has a house in Phuket, Thailand, so I've been trying to follow news on this week's coup to see what's going on. I had no idea there was an ongoing corruption scandal of that magnitude. It seems unclear whether this coup was a good or bad thing. Some people say it's bad because it's "against democracy" - others say it's good because it gives a chance to reboot a democracy after cleaning out the garbage first.

I'd been following the story via Wikinews, which has been more useful than local/national newscasts. And then I stumbled across the Flickr coverage, linked from the Flickr Blog. They assembled photos from various Flickr users located in Bangkok, added audio from an interview with one of the photographers, and the result is a very powerful photographic slideshow.

Thailand Coup, told by Flickr users

In our North American State of Heightened Alertness, I doubt we’d be allowed to freely pose for photographs with active tanks in the streets, if such a thing happened on this side of the Pacific…

I’ve been thinking about the moronically shortsighted DOPA doowackie that got passed South of the Border. Basically, if I understand correctly, it attempts to protect children from online predators (which is a Good Thing To Do™). But, it wants to do this by banning minors from websites that let them contribute. They won’t be able to use MySpace. Or Blogger.com. Or Wordpress.com. Or Flickr.com. Or any other social “Web 2.0″ stuff. Kids will be protected by locking them out.

Which is akin to protecting your children from harm by locking them in the basement.

Sure, they’ll be safe, but they’ll be completely isolated and unable to function in a connected, online world once they reach the arbitrarily decided “safe” age of 18 or 21 or whatever silly number got picked from the hat.

You don’t protect kids by locking them away from danger. You cripple them.

And, this assumes the clever kids aren’t aware of anonymizing proxies, or something as difficult as clicking the wrong/right box on a web form, to gain access to verboten sites. Groups are working hard to provide these freedom tools to the oppressed civilians of China, unfairly locked behind the Great Firewall. While simultaneously allowing their government to impose the same arbitrary limitations on their own children.

Thankfully, there has been no word of a Canadian copycat legislation. Yet.

There are better ways to protect kids. The best, and most effective (but most difficult) way is to actually educate them. If they are aware of the issues (in whatever age-appropriate manner) they will be better able to safely cope with dangers. There’s already a handy group forming around this issue.

It’s better to teach kids to swim, than to trust a fence around the swimming pool. Or the lock on the basement door.

With the big brouhaha about the evacuation of Canadian (and American, and British, and French, etc…) civilians from Lebanon, I think we're all kind of missing the point.

There are 50,000 Canadian citizens in Lebanon right now. The Canadian government has had to rent some cruise ships to ferry them to Cyprus and/or Turkey for further evacuation by air. The process is taking longer than many would like, but our people are being transported out of the danger zone. Prime Minister Stephen Harper even used his PM Airbus (our version of Air Force One) to ferry a few Canadian civilians out (Stephen, that was a classy move. The only thing that would have topped that, since you were already in the area, would have been to clear everyone off of the plane, fill it to the gills with civilians, and wait for it to return with backup).

But, what about the Lebanese civilians? Are they officially to be left behind? If it's too dangerous for a North American or European civilian, why is it considered an acceptable risk for the 3.5 million innocent civilians that happen to live in the region?

I may be extremely naiive, but this really seems like a perfect candidate for the UN blue helmets to move in and help restore order. Likely a much better allocation of military and humanitarian resources than securing oil supplies to maintain a particular hegemony… 

This is so depressing. It looks like Harper might be on the path to a minority government on Monday - with a slim possibility of pulling off a majority. That is sad for so many reasons.

In my riding, “my” MP Rob Anders doesn’t even have to show up at local events and debates. He’s rated “F” for his performance in the House, he’s described as dangerous and scary by reporters across this country - even by reporters in the States, where he made an impact as a Republican cheerleeder. He called Nelson Mandela a communist and terrorist, and blocked the granting of an honourary Canadian citizenship to the man. Then refused to come to the phone when Mandela called him with a “WTF?”

And Anders is probably going to have yet another landslide victory handed to him. He doesn’t have any real competition - the Liberals don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell in Calgary. The NDP aren’t even trying to compete - putting up a U of C student as their best challenge to Ander’s seemingly neverending reign of mediocrity. I saw the NDP candidate yesterday - as he was running to class. I’m sorry, but if a party isn’t going to put forth a serious candidate, they should just concede a riding.

The thing is, I consistently voted for the Progressive Conservative Party. They tossed the Progressive part away in the merger with the right wing wacko Reform/Alliance. But, the vast majority of Calgarians will be voting simply for tax cuts, without thinking about the repurcussions of handing the country to these nutjobs. Even my senior citizen parents are rooting for the Conservatives, saying how the tax cuts will be great for them. But, they’re on a fixed income, and not paying much income tax to begin with. I’m really glad they’re involved in the process (volunteering for Harper’s campaign) but can’t understand the logic behind their choice.

Of course, the Conservatives will have to give so many concessions to Ontario and Quebec that even under a “western” party’s government, this side of the country will be neglected. And, the election will still be all but decided by the time the polls open here.

The thought of moving from Calgary is growing more attractive, but then the rednecks would win a little more. Leaving would be giving up.

2 words that are now synonymous with “Happy Holidays” - I first read about the uproar over SpyGate via Stephen’s NewsTrolls service. Then, I’ve heard it several times since then on American TV networks. On freaking TV.

So, an “elected” president apparently tramples the constitution, giving the nod for government agencies to spy on citizens just in case they might be doing something bad - without the need for judicial review or approval. And, that’s being acknowledged by Bush’s own people as an impeachable offence - with the story broken in the Traditional Media by the New York Times.

Maybe there’s hope, after all… If this story gets large enough, it can’t be ignored (even by Shrub). If it doesn’t make it to full impeachment status, at least it will make the next election a bit more interesting. But, with Bush not able to run again, maybe that’s a moot point…

Happy holidays, indeed!

Update: Now BoingBoing is pointing to a Miami Herald article that describes the Bush wiretap approvals as doing something that Bin Laden could not have done - erode the constitution and spread fear throughout the entire country, in the name of a president-come-king. It’s great when fearmongers are able to leverage synergy to amplify effect… (yeah - I used corporate marketing buzzwords to describe the business relationship between Bush and Bin Laden)

Just poked around the various party websites to see if any of the candidates were blogging - hoping to find a real person running, rather than a campaign manager puppet or a focus group byproduct. I found some interesting things.

Liberal party: They appear to have one blog - posted by Martin’s speechwriter via his Blackberry. Very cool. Subscribed. (but it doesn’t have full text of entries, just titles. maybe unsubscribing…) My candidate doesn’t even have an “about” page - just a map of the riding. Bad form. In the last election, Paul Martin published a blog - it was likely massaged by PR goons, but it was a start. I was hoping they might take the next step…

NDP: They’re using Drupal to manage the party’s online stuff! My candidate even has an (empty) news page which would be kinda blogish, if he was posting anything… Looks like the NDP is really only using Drupal to manage publishing press releases, speeches, and official responses. That’s too bad. So close…

Green Party: Jim Harris has a blog on Typepad (subscribed) but the candidate in my riding appears to be doing nothing online…

Conservative Party: Using a commercial CMS called Expression 1.7. No blogging, but they are podcasting and vodcasting. And they have a “live” photo gallery. Feels pretty massaged - not sure how much of this is “real” and how much is massaged by a PR expert…

Marijuana Party: Using SPIP. Couldn’t find any candidates blogging, but they seem to at least have bios for candidates.

Why on earth don’t parties encourage their candidates to blog? To show they are real people, and not just plastic committee-driven amalgamations of focus group fodder? That’s my perception of politicians, and has been for several years. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this. It would take very little effort to break this perception, if it’s incorrect.

Suggestions for the parties:

• Blog. If the candidates aren’t going to do it, at least link to other relevant blogs. But this is a pretty straightforward way to show candidates are human.
• Discussion forums for the issues. This can’t be a one-way publish/receive model anymore. Solicit actual feedback from constituents. And USE it.
• RSS feeds. Make it easy for us to follow along.
• Here’s a radical idea: use wiki pages for your position/issue papers. Let constituents provide feedback and help craft the documents. Sure, you’ll get some noise by “competing” parties, but managing that noise might be worth the benefit of actually including the constituents in the process…

Update: Tod Maffin did a bit of a breakdown of the major party web efforts.

This is completely unbelievable. 5 days after Katrina, and the first large-scale aid is just now starting to float into New Orleans. That boggles my mind. A natural disaster that is much larger in scale than 9/11 was (although the death toll is thankfully lower - for now - it’s estimated to top 10,000). It seems like the West was better prepared to respond to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami than it is to provide assistance within the borders of the world’s richest and most powerful nation.

On what planet would you build a city of 1.5 million people below sealevel, in the path of regular hurricanes, and not have an effective evacuation plan for the entire city? How is that allowed to happen? In my mind, that goes way beyond negligence. Tens of thousands of people who didn’t have the means to evacuate themselves were left behind to die, or at best, to fend for themselves in what is a highly dangerous post-hurricane flood zone. Toxic disease infested water, swarming with crocodiles. Roaming gangs of armed looters. No food. No water. No civility.

And the question of spending 30+ billion dollars to rebuild NOLA? That would be equally negligent. It would make sense to turn the area into a giant theme park. Disney-meets-Waterworld-meets-Las-Vegas. Don’t ever put a large population back there.. Spend the $30B on building sustainable housing for the displaced population in other areas outside of a hurricane-induced flood-plain.

The real question is where is the outrage within America? Outrage at the state of the nation, which is unable to provide aid to its own population. Outrage at the agencies that were supposed to either mitigate the effects of such a disaster, or provide plans to evacuate the population, or to provide assistance in case all efforts fail. Outrage at Bush for sending the National Guard to guard another nation, leaving the US vulnerable to something other than a manufactured election-year fear factory.

OK. So, assume that AdScam is going to nuke the Liberal minority government, and they don’t have a chance for re-election when it’s called. They’ll be written off (correctly or otherwise, it’s irrelevant now) as a corrupt, mob-riddled bunch of money launderers.

What are the options? NDP? Not likely (at least in a majority government). It would seem as though Liberals would go to them in droves, but the NDP is too expensive to get elected as a ruling party.

So… That leaves the Conservatives. The folks that have somehow convinced themselves that they are the Junior Republican Party of Canada, and have suffered extreme political schizophrenia since the desperate merger of two otherwise incompatible parties (the acceptable Progressive Conservative Party, and the Right Wing Wacko Alliance Party).

Which means, basically, we’re screwed, unless the NDP takes a more moderate stance and manages to get elected (which would actually be a pretty cool thing).

Or, perhaps the Marijuana Party has a chance now? Legalize it!

On the plus side, I quite like the concept of a minority government - having the ruling party essentially required to pay attention to the other party’s agendas in order to maintain the government adds some really nice checks and balances to the system. No runaway dictatorships are possible in a minority government - a re-election can be called any time.