Month: April 2005

Two days ago I wrote about “Snap elections, government turnover and the bankruptcy of the Liberal brand” where I mused:

“Now that we’ve all been given morsels of gossip from the Gomery inquiry, parliamentarians are speaking of confidence motions and snap election calls. However, is this merely the beginning of a radical shift on the Canadian political landscape? … Is the Liberal brand itself on the verge of electable bankruptcy? … Will the Liberal party become the new pariah of Canadian politics?”

The CBC reported this morning (Hat tip: Kate)that the Alberta Liberals are considering a name change to shake the association with the federal Liberal Party of Canada:

“[Alberta Liberal] Party leader Kevin Taft, who has been elected twice in the riding of Edmonton-Riverview, said it’s difficult enough to run under the Liberal banner in Alberta.

But if rumours emerging from the Gomery commission are true, it could “forever change the political landscape” in Canada, Taft told the Edmonton Journal.”

And it begins…

Just a thought…

Along the loopy lines of logic of this publication ban farce…

Since there is forbidden testimony that is available on the Internet could Internet Service Providers be liable for allowing Canadians to access this testimony? Are ISPs acting as accomplices to the violation of Judge Gomery’s order? (A similar argument is currently being debated before the courts concerning music downloads)

It would be quite simple for Rogers, Telus or Bell to add a few lines of code into their global settings to ban a certain IP address of a certain website (which cannot be named) to prevent Canadians from accessing this information. In fact, an order could come from on high from our government protectors to implement this decree across all servers providing internet access from dialups to University networks. Free speech at Universities? Only when it serves the government!

In fact, this practice is currently in use in China, Cuba and Iran. These countries filter certain internet websites to prevent their citizens from accessing certain information. For example, western media websites such as CNN.com and BBC News are unavailable to most Chinese internet users. I’m sure these countries would be happy to help our government figure out how to protect us from this awful thing called free speech.

Today, former Groupaction chief Jean Brault continued his ‘explosive’ testimony in Montreal. This secret testimony is officially available to reporters only as it is subject to a publication ban imposed by Judge Gomery.

I have also had access to this second day of secret testimony through that American website which cannot be named. The American blogger was on the CBC National tonight and they wouldn’t even name him. The CBC even showed a digitally scrambled image of the blog’s front page.

Gomery secret testimony is the new pornography in Canada.

The only unscrambled image they showed from the blog was the Republican National Convention Official Blogger button that [CENSORED] shows on his website. Is the CBC linking the current attacks on the Liberals to the Republicans? No, that would be silly of course (yeah right). I’m sure they merely were letting the audience know that this mystery American blogger was only one of a few accredited bloggers at the RNC (after all, that’s what I got from it — thanks CBC!)

So, what’s in the secret testimony given on this second day by Jean Brault? Well, details of course, cannot be divulged for fear of being in contempt of court, but it can be safely said that this testimony added a new level of complexity to say, the entire situation at large (how vague…). I will say that this second day of testimony by Jean Brault is about as shocking as the first.

I shouldn’t say anymore because as that old saying goes…

“Loose lips sink ships”