Rejecting Anonymous Comments from goofball Green Party lurkers

For the first time in my life I exercised extremely reluctantly the tool of censorship. I received a slanderous and salacious comments from some total goof about other people who were prominent in the Green Party and in due course calling them fascists. Better to have a fascist than a cowardly gossipy sneak. To make matters worse this person, obviously a Green Party insider lurks looking for blogs stupid enough to publish their libelous statements.

This "coward" begged for anonymous status. I don't mind publishing anonymous comments so long as they are not slanderous or libelous and carry factual foundation to support or constructively criticize. The only statement which wasn't a libel insisted Elizabeth May was democratic.

Maybe this spamming coward doesn't really understand. I never meant to imply that she wasn't. That would have been an interpretation that could only made by a complete dyslexic too stupid to correctly read clear text. I meant to define her as a complete political idiot not fit to lead a national political party whose clear mission is to save the planet. And there are facts backing this up.

1. She is running against Peter MacKay. Of all the ridings in Canada that is the worst riding to pick. In the last sixty years only once has the Conservatives failed to hold that riding. Not only that MacKay is extremely popular in that riding. She is doomed to failure.

The Liberal support in that riding will not move to her instead it is more likely to move to their favorite son. Since Belinda betrayed him to shine in the Liberal light, any shake up in the demographic will favour his ass.

This is politics 101. Free fucking advice from a political expert here. No charge. A kindergarten kid could get the concept that in order to build a door ...you don't bang your head against a concrete wall.

2. "May" committed the ultimate failure of any political movement. She set back the Green Party grievously. By agreeing to anything with the Liberals publicly, by making this agreement with she handed the Liberals the principle foundational plank of the Green Party.

She allegedly commented that Dion is Green. Last I looked in his short tenure as Environment Minister, Dion did absolutely nothing. That is N. O. T. H. I. N. G.

Okay, lets suppose then, and she does defeat MacKay. She pulled the electoral platform feet out from every other Green in every other riding in the country for completely selfish egocentric reasons. Voters are not complicated people. Their major concern is self interest. They'll go for anyone who will lower taxes regardless of whether it causes bad government.

Here is the choice she left her constituency. Do I vote for a Green Party candidate, whose leader is so stupid to actually believe, that she can beat Peter MacKay. Do I vote for a Liberal who is running on the same environmental issues supported by the Green Party Leader, will be more likely to get to form the next government, who can then get me government grants for my gay child's dance performance. Or, do I vote for a Green Party candidate who won't form the government, who won't be able to enable green legislation based on the party platform, who won't be able to get me a grant for my gay child's dance performance.

Now who will these voter's choose. A enchilida or a single chili pepper. Isn't anyone in that Green Party capable of simple political concepts?

The riding May should've run in, Toronto Centre, was open with a dynamic voting pattern. That is why Bob Rae picked the riding its open to anyone phony lefties. Graham the puff adder, held the riding and did absolutely nothing for the constituents... and worse they didn't even mind.

The present perspective candidate in that riding for the Green Party, acts more like a goofy teenager than an a smart political animal. At one time ,I was actually interested in joining the Green Party, if only to stop Bob Rae's coronation.

Here's why stupidity gets contagious. So looking at this idiot's website, I saw an event where I could go and meet the person, press the flesh. I've done political work as a campaign management consultant for almost forty years. My political apprenticeship in practical politics was with the same campaign manager, Clem Downey of Nipigon, the guy who engineered the defeat of the most powerful Liberal in the country at that time, CD Howe.

People forget but CD Howe was big, big and he got dumped by an NDP guy. Such an upset would have been the same as hypothetically as Elizabeth May actually dumping Peter MacKay without Liberal help. Over the years I worked as a worker, advisor, driver, scrutineer, floor captain, rabble rouser, and manager on several campaigns until the normal middle age disillusionment with politics came into the fray. In short, I do know of what I speak.

I am an ad hoc member of Hoof & Cycle which is an ad hoc group which advocates on issues regarding active (human powered) transportation. We ad hoc a lot. Big. Really big on environment and practical not theoretical solutions. And the fearless ad hoc leader of our small but effluential ad hoc group, Wayne Scott was on the panel. Be there. Be square. Do a little ad hoc. Hoc. Hoc. Hoc.

So this Green Candidate, who shall remain nameless, because at this point I expect an apology for this person's simple minded behaviour from said person, listed in the "Calendar of Events." a panel discussion hosted by "Now" magazine which took place a couple of weeks ago. The topic was Bicycling and its perceived decline. To emphasize, I repeat, it was listed in the Green Party website. Not only that. The event occurred in his riding. Now Magazine's HQ and café is on Church south of Dundas East, and right inside the boundaries of Toronto Centre.

Hey I went. To be honest, most of these people are not in my demographic partying group. And they are stuck in bike lanes and most of them are jocks. Which isn't bad. Not at all. They are very good conscientious citizens. At least they cared enough to show up, unlike you know who. On the panel was the usual suspects in the Bicycle advocacy and the newly vetted TTC Chairman Adam Giambrone.

The hostess for this environment event, the co-founding CEO of Now Magazine, the beautiful Alice Klein, who is the most energetic environmentalists in the city. This was a not only the usual Toronto bitching-o-rama this was like a social environmental love-in. An ashram of purity and future light. This was the sunshine at midnight.

Not a demographic exactly in my personal comfort zone, but certainly it should be a must do for the Green Party. I mingled. Oh yes I did. Shook hands. Giggled at bad jokes. Grinned at boorish observations. Nodded at the inane environmental comments by urbanites who know squat about nature. Searching, searching. Screwing up the courage. Grinning like a lost child. I mingled.

The Green Party guy. The guy who has the most to lose in the next election Didn't bother to show up. Categorically no political reason for the Green Party to not be there even with a substitute. This was the guys Green demographic. This was the place to rally support. To press the flesh. To cash in on the moment. Get the momentum going. Garner support from those most likely to show up at the campaign rallies and campaign headquarter. I really looked hard.

Hey I am not going to give out free advice here. No way. I need the money. I know what I would be doing if I were the Green candidate. I be like behaving like there was no tomorrow. The race in this riding is open. Ripe for picking. Best chance to get into the House and shout insults at the Prime Minister. Best place to really go for the big bone. Got the right issue. Got the best alternative. I know what I would have done were I the candidate.

Also I know what I would have said if I were the campaign manager in the riding. Oh trust me. Tis would be a lesson. It would be a three... no a four hour fucking lecture with all the salient points and political examples extending back to Brutus's famous excuse... "Gee I didn't know that the knife was loaded!"

The guy didn't show. No one from the party stepped forward. It was on his website. Am I bitter about having to spend a half hour of time trying to ferret out the presence of this political movement? Did I feel bitter about having to pass up the free food service at the post game social reception to smile and ask people about people who should have been there? Am I bitter? Am I pissed?

I even went up to a scrawny look alike. I had too. There was a remote resemblance to the Green Party Candidate. Yes. At a function where I could have connected for employment. At a function where I could have scored a babe in my age category. You know what I was doing...? Oh yeah. Asking really stupid questions.

Oh ya a lot of fun going up to people. Are you ______? or Do you belong to the _____ Party? No? Hey what a fun time!!!.

Conclusion. I could not select the right name to accurately describe this ____ Party candidate. Please help. Go ahead. Pick a name out of this list: 1. idiot, 2. moron, 3. dog poop scoop, 4. pickle brain, 5. cubic minded ... aka blockhead.

I am at a loss to pick one, or just pick one. It is best to be democratic in the assignment of proper titles. We are all happy democrats here aren't we?

Now I don't blame this guy for being a (pick a name from above list). I've never met him. How could that happen. He's gotta show at the events he promotes, ya think? Maybe the guy had something to do? I dragged my sorry ass out of bed to attend this event. I had been in the hospital bed recovering from knee surgery less than a week before. But this isn't about me. I am just the victim of this really bad politic.

Maybe the (pick a name from above list) will read this post and go "Ooops"? But what it does show is just how politically unfit this particular political party is at the moment. Shit happens. Maybe he was in a hospital..? Maybe recovering from a double lobotomy? Who knows? Who knows?

And worst of all. Their alleged supporters and members of the Green Party's in Canada waste time with petty differences. Waste time with personality issues. Waste time in fractious and nugatory issues. They are basically leaderless, do need a political leader, and in the same breath, don't want a good leader. The whole globe is about to burn and these clowns are screwing up with kindergarten attitudes and infantile parochial infighting. How could these clowns unite a whole country when they can't unite a simple political movement? They are behaving absolutely small, they are thinking small when the issue, Global Warming is not just large but in quantity humongous.

Don't blame polluters. The people they should blame ...is themselves. The members of the Green Party are the most to blame for the future failure of environmental change if the course of this event.

What is more? I just really don't appreciate in having to be put in the position of being a censor. I apologize to my blog readers for that much.

Censorship is absolutely against my inner wishes. But allowing such specious comments would have definitely violated the slander and libel laws in Canada and since the person was too cowardly, too weaselly to attach a verifiable name to these false arguments they were in the final issue my responsibility and I put them into the garbage, without recycling them.

How's that for response no three R's not even one. Straight to garbage. I apologize to the garbage can whence they went. There was no balance in the text and article to the comment. And it was unfair to the people mentioned by name in that comment to publish it.

I know one thing, recalling that meeting. It is the most patent reason why the Green Party staggers. Almost all the people there at that meeting regarding the future of bicycling in this city were united in one thing. People who should be on side with all parties Green... Couldn't care less.


***30***

Blogging, Wikipedia and accuracy

Anyone who believes everything in a blog to be the gospel truth, is an idiot. Any blog, including this one is totally opinion.

Anyone who reads anything in Wikipedia and then believes it is totally true, is an idiot. In the preamble to all Wikipedia contributors it is clearly written out that it is meant to be a compendium of knowledge written by faceless contributors wishing to contribute. Initially all contributions are subject to further scrutiny and subject to later examination. All contributors are responsible for that data not the Wikipedia.

I am a contributor to Wikipedia.

On the topic of : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Dumont

Further discussion was encouraged. Fortunately some of that discussion was from a personal viewpoint but such a contribution bolsters the world knowledge. I may have been wrong but this was definitely opinion and written as such.

This was my contribution to world knowledge, it was to convey my deceased father's viewpoint who had been born only a couple of decades after that conflict and knew many of the people who had physically witnessed the relevant events.

The op-ed piece was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gabriel_Dumont

Another was on page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:North-West_Rebellion

Guess which one is my contribution.

Now for a jokes media types such as Don Landry of the Fan590 of Toronto decided to furnish false information into the Wikipedia on a topic relating to his more famous morning radio partner Gord Stellick. I forgot what Landry wrote. He thought it was funny. I believe he usually thinks anything he does is hilarious. But he lacks the brainpower to take on people like Sam Mitchell effectively mano en mano, as his usual Wednesday morning interviews with Sam Mitchell have proven.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gord_Stellick

You will note that as a repercussion of Landry's actions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_McCown

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Howarth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Swirsky

The Stellick entry has been corrected. As a result Landry, remains the only senior radio personality on the radio station who appears to be delisted on the Wikipedia. For any media savvy person with the hope of having any sort of future career an entry in Wikipedia maintains to a new modern de rigueur.

Such an open process can be subject to significant abuse. Of that is no doubt.

The scary thing remains that this misunderstanding will be maintained by those now wishing to shut down the process of the accumulation of knowledge. People are now suing such media as responsible for that which is published regardless of the long term convention that contributors are responsible for the data input.

To date the Canadian Supreme Court has supported this open process in such actions regarding the American interpretation of copyright legislation being applied in Canada. And so goes the course of justice. The problem with Common Law is that there is a belief amongst civil lawyers that it can be stretched. It can be.

Sites such as those being sued, have been used as a weapon of malice. According to reports to date, I believe a rather inept Green Party of Canada membership tried to splay some misinformation about a former officer of the party. It is a case before the courts. The plaintiff is trying to sue the site owners of such information. It will be interesting to see the effect of these legal shenanigans. The plaintiff has been able through litigious ambition to thwart the web sites in Canada and the United States. To date this has worked only because the defendants believed that surrender was the cheapest not the ethical response.

However the litigators largest problem will be to prove financial harm by these actions. From what I've seen is that the plaintiffs have not suffered any financial harm directly due to any information, or misinformation placed on the web.

Between Canada and the United States libel and slander legislation is a wholly different process. Lawyers are not always up front at the best of times. And this litigator appears to be dallying on down the rosy path laid out by his lawyers or lawyers who only tells him what he wants to hear.

Few actions of libel and slander in Canada have been successful. It is not a high percentage winner. And any litigation involves a double edge sword. If the defense capably defends itself all that information will be published and at a higher profile. Further the Canadian system of libel legislation follows the British model and not the American.

Significant harm must be proved in the British model. As a result winning may not be something to cheer. I recall that one libel award in the past as $1.00.

The problem is that most of the defendants have chosen to settle out of court. In the case of smaller site operators settling out of court takes on a significant onerous load. However taking on a site operator such as Google, the plaintiff should back off. Winning will not be all that easy.

All they have to prove is that that there is a foundation of truth within the alleged statements of slander or libel then the plaintiff's case is lost. If the court correctly believes that the blogging forum is opinion demonstrating facts that a blog constitutes a belief and not journalistic fact then the plaintiff's case becomes lost.

It seems a trivial but any op-ed writer knows that if a conjecture is prefaced by the phrase "I believe that..." the subsequent facts can be interpreted as a truth albeit false. The plaintiff is then required to shake that belief and place before the court a high level of proof that the defendant intentionally committed that statement knowing that it was false. It is a case of spreading a false truth.

For a person of journalistic background a court would find that there is a higher level of responsibility of getting the story right. However, and this is the problem with blogging, if the writer is enterring a belief in a blog then that blog is legally a truth despite being false. The vast majority of bloggers are amateur to the written process. Courts, especially civil courts apply a vastly different amount of mitigation to each type of writer.

A professionally paid writer has a vested interest in maintaining written accuracy. An amateur writer possesses no commercial advantage to whatever they wrote and the degree of truthfulness is much broader. As long as the writer truly believes that what they are writing is true beyond malice, that belief is total truth no matter how false it is.

British Law applied to Libel is a larger whole to fill and as long as the writer truly believes about the truthfulness of the statement then it cannot be libel. Remember libel and slander is only libel and slander if the teller knowingly made those statements knowing them to be false or without truthful foundation. The writer must be given adequate time to be contrite to revise, publish a retraction in the same media and/or apologize in a reasonable time.

If your eyes are crossing in that confusion, don't worry you are not alone. Google is only a search engine for data. The data doesn't have to be true.

Wikipedia publically states, from the outset, that the information may not be necessarily accurate. They do try however to make it as accurate as possible given the fact that it is constantly being bombarded by information.

And blogging is statement of opinions, not to be consider gospel truth. And opinions are beliefs not necessarily true facts. To the author - a truth. The site operator is not responsible for those beliefs.

You will note that I do not directly give you the litigants name until the court case is settled. Why am I writing this is that Canadian businessmen are employing malicious litigation to deter the truth about their business practice. They know that the lawsuit is frivolous.

Court action will prove that there is no adequate legislation regarding libel or slander in the internet world. Court action will prove that.

In final summation it should be put forward that Blogs, Wikipedia must be always construed as being an uncertified source of information. I use Wikipedia citations as the starting point to research not the final result in such material that needs a certification. Ninety nine percent of the material that flows into Wikipedia daily is accurate or accurate enough that a certain reliability of the truth can be ascertained. For almost everything it is a starting point, not an ending point of research and not the final word.