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Try per capita....cmon! I'll summarize: The per capita mortality from handguns in the USA is 4.6 times that of its closest contender, Israel; 23 times that of Canada, and 265 times that of Great Britain.

G8/G20 Summit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_G-20_Toronto_summit

McLean's article: http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2010/06/27/torontos-g20-summit-a-failure-all-around/

The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/27/g20-rioters-toronto-protests (Note that the video attached to this article is now unavailable because the Guardian "no longer has rights to it". Isn't that another lame example of DRM?). Note the law concerning coming within 5m of the fence mentioned at the bottom of the article never existed, and was a fabrication of the Toronto Police Dept.

Police assaulting a reporter: http://www.thestar.com/news/torontog20summit/article/902236--toronto-journalist-witnessed-police-brutality-at-toronto-g20

Parliamentary Committee Slams Police Brutality during the Summit: http://drdawgsblawg.ca/2011/03/parliamentary-committee-slams-g20-police-brutality.shtml

Amnesty International: http://rabble.ca/news/2010/06/amnesty-international-wants-g8-g20-security-reviewed

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxuYOoNk7U
  Notice that most of the people are really there to watch the spectacle and take pictures on their cellphones. Only a handful stand up at the police line and passively protest. The police presence here (almost 1Bn spent on security for this event - although a lot of that was misappropriated pork-barreling by politicians as well) is a bit overboard.

Police as Agents Provocateur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbLU9tdDwxo

Just some quick grabs from the Interwebs.

I don't know who your targets often are but one of your recent results from the Yes Lab and Black Flood was to fool people into thinking that The Hobbit was being filmed in the Tar Sands in Canada. This apparently raised awareness of the Tar Sands but also there were complaints that you were no longer limited to fooling corporations and that this prank tricked activists as well. So I must ask, is there a line that you won't cross on who you will prank and who you absolutely will not prank? Is anyone a potential target for these shenanigans? Is no one safe? Children? Impoverished people? Cancer patients? Related follow up, have you personally ever felt bad about someone or some group (perhaps an innocent bystander) that fell into being duped by your antics?

"I love capitalism -- moderately free enterprise beats the hell out of managed economies if only because the latter are invariably even less free and more entrenched."

You love capitalism because you're in the top 1% of the global population in terms of wealth, you wouldn't love it exactly if you had just been bombed.

http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/migrant-matters/2011/10/michael-parenti-face-imperialism

Let us face facts that our capitalist elite aren't exactly friends of more humane and mixed-market socialistic enterprises that the people wanted in other countries and they destroyed just so they didn't have to compete. The truth is american capitalists are scared of other models that work just fine and are on par with the american model and they don't want to lose their position which and wealth much of which is ill gotten. In america I understand you love it but the more you learn about what goes on in the world the less invested you become in ideology when you get old - you look at facts and prize analysis over ideology, since ideology is the wrong approach.

Criticism of all views is absolutely necessary to solve major problems facing us all and if that means tweaking or modifying or throwing out aspects of this or that ideology then so be it.

> Did you also resent having your money taken at gunpoint to go into Iraq? Afghanistan?

Damn right I do! Neither Iraq nor Afganistan have any ambition to invade the US, nor did they ever. We're in Iraq to control the oilfields and to build huge military bases there. We do that to keep telling the Middle East to do our bidding and to create profits for Haliburton and its ilk. We're in Afganistan because US oil companies want to build a pipeline there. Or, at least, they did, before it became obvious that Afganistan will never become the sort of stable country where such a project can succeed. Neither of these goals does anything to enhance my personal safety and security. They're just about the power elite grabbing more power. Why should I pay for that?

> To fund your local fire and police departments?

To fund them to oppress and terrorize us? If you have ever had to deal with the police, you'd swear not to ever, under any circumstances, call them again. And as for the fire department, why should I pay to put out your fire? In most cases, it will have been your own stupid fault for leaving candles around (it's the single major cause of fires).

> To provide clean drinking water in your community?

Clean drinking water is not free. Maybe you don't know that if you live in an apartment, since the landlord pays the city water bill for you. Out in the country many people have their own wells and don't have to pay for water. If the city government did not provide the water service, someone would start a company doing it if it were cheaper to do so than to have everyone install their own well.

> To provide education for the children in your neighborhood?

Who's providing education? The quality of public schooling is atrocious. And with all the government propaganda children are exposed to in public schools, there is no friggin way I'm sending my child there, and I certainly don't recommend anyone else to do so. Instead get together with your neighbors and homeschool your kids. If you stagger your days off, four adults could educate their children while working full time. Your kids will likely have a better relationship with you and be happier too, if you just spend more time with them.

> It is THE COMMUNITY that you live in, that allows for a rule of law, so that when your neighbor
> decides that he doesn't love you as much as he loves his other neighbors and decides that he
> should roll up in your house and take all your possessions in the dead of night, that there
> is a system in place to protect you from that.

Contrary to what you government advocates belive, most people respect private property. I have no interest in robbing my neighbors, and I know they have no interest in robbing me. If you live in a neighborhood where they do, maybe it's time to move.

Furthermore, you don't need an official police force to prevent such things, even if you do decide you need to. Back in the middle ages, a small village in the middle of nowhere would have been able to handle the above situation just fine. The neighbors get together and confront the thief, and he'll probably apologize and never do it again.

If you really want to have a police force, a private police force works much better than a squad of government goons. For an example see the special police of San Francisco; it's a private police force (although it does have official recognition), funded entirely through subscriptions by individuals and business in the area.

> The COMMUNITY is what allows you to live a non-third-world existence.

The lack of excessive population growth is what allows me to live a non-third-world

c6gunner appears to be spouting a lot of right-wing propaganda about this case, so I'll throw in some left wing stuff.

From reading on this topic a few months ago, I came to the conclusion that the "100% conviction rate" is based on complaints made before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal by a human rights lawyer (alas, I can't recall his name) who chooses his battles carefully. The actual number of complaints he has filed to date is small; less than ten, IIRC. But he has won all of them.

The political left in Canada is very much in favour of human rights commissions and tribunals. They are one way for less advantaged (and monied) people to make complaints of discrimination on the basis of race, colour, creed, gender, and sexual orientation. But even on the left there's considerable debate over the merits of this case. Anyone interested in seeing a part of this debate can visit this thread on Rabble.ca (which politically is probably further left than the Slashdot majority.)

http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get _topic&f=5&t=001759

someone may have tracked down activa holdings.

activa's web site is "under construction"...

as found here

Peter Armbruster
Vice-President, Operations
parmbruster@activagroup.ca

website (under 'construction' - HA!)

Wow, this happened in my University town of Waterloo Ontario. More here http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get _topic&f=5&t=001759 I wonder how this will turn out?

This is supposedly the URL:
http://ca.geocities.com/infringements@rogers.com

of course, its exceeded its transfer alloted for the day, so its down.

Typical. It IS cached by google, though.

Found some info here:
http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get _topic&f=5&t=001759

Theres some info with contact information for the woman and the company.

--dave (who went to university in KW) c-b

I picked up a copy of The American Conservative recently and was flabbergasted. It's even more scorching against Bush than any critique from the left. Under a headline that reads "Red ink conservatives," one story denounces the "mongrel of big government and big war." Another reports with alarm on a policy group in the Pentagon working to justify the use of "mini-nukes" in the war on terror and denounces "the fanaticism of the neo-conservatives."

The testiness is in fact everywhere in the serious conservative press in the U.S., where the word "neocon" is increasingly spat out with contempt. These progeny of conservatives are no longer that. In the gathering view of many conservatives themselves, they are the opposite -- liars, extremists and dangerous adventurers, all the more so when they're at the helm of the ship of state.

At a time when the speed of change always threatens to overwhelm us, the true conservative would be a useful thing -- one who can tell the children not to be so quick to dump the old ways and who could denounce pretentious humbug wherever it's found. In fact, this instinct does exist in most of us. To the extent that the old Tories, or the American Republican party, gathered some of that as a political force, now they no longer can.

The moderate conservatives have been marginalized by the radical ones for whom only money and power count. In fact, these "new conservatives" want to conserve nothing except corporate prerogative, and as such are radical agents of change. They are arguably more "liberal" than "conservative" -- confirming the accuracy of the French expression for "neo-conservative" which is, of course, "néo-libéral."

I think this Naomi Klein commentary ads a dimension to Friedman's commentary: http://rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=30806