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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (87281)	2/18/2012 12:01:45 AM
From: average joe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 219497

This is too funny - stupid Canadian minister falls victim to his own tricks. Vic Toews wanted unlimited online surveillance, and now Twitter has given him just that Published On Fri Feb 17 2012 Safety Minister Vic Toews asked the Speaker of the House on Friday to launch an investigation into whether the Vikileaks30 tweets detailing his divorce originated within Parliament. CHRIS WATTIE/REUTERS By Heather MallickStar Columnist As Public Safety Minister Vic Toews demands an investigation into how the story of his alleged infidelities, love child and subsequent divorce ended up on Twitter, I am demanding a different investigation entirely. How did a man like Toews find not one, but possibly three women who found him attractive enough to go the distance, so to speak? I would have thought it would be just the long-suffering one, Lorraine, to whom he was married for more than three decades. Toews, a 59-year-old lawyer from Steinbach, Man., is a severe, humourless man, rigid in his Bill C-30 quest for online surveillance of Canadians. And indeed no new laws were required to find out about his 2010 divorce, which is public information. In Canada we have never cared to know about the private lives of our politicians, however faultless or grotty, dull or delicious they may have been. I myself am not entirely certain how many children Stephen Harper and his wife have. Two, possibly seven. It’s not my business. But in the U.S., no tweeted crotch snapshot, tax return, washroom stance, mistress nor prostitute hire goes unhunted. The Harper government, the most American in style we have ever had, is paying a very American price for turning hard right on individual freedoms in the guise of investigating child pornography. It is using astonishingly totalitarian police tools. It’s open season now. And that’s what social media do. They flip all life inside out, the private made public. Then the worthy public political part becomes weirdly less interesting. This isn’t good. But this huge S.S. Twitter ship cannot be turned back in an open ocean of information. Look, I’ve been “following” Toews too. I’ve been tweeting via hashtag #tellviceverything crucial questions about myself that only intense police work would know. Where are my reading glasses? Where is my childhood dog buried? (He was called Skipper, if that helps. Patchy black and white, tail spinning with love, Vic, I miss him so.) In Toews’ world, he’ll know more about me than I know myself. Toews himself is saying nothing. “I won’t get involved in this kind of gutter politics. Engaging in or responding to this kind of discussion leads nowhere.” He tweeted this, of all things. Does he not understand that Twitter doesn’t take no for an answer? Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird then accused the NDP of tweeting nuggets from the divorce affidavits, but if he has proof of this, he didn’t share it. The way for a politician to protect his private life is to avoid remarking on the private lives of others, i.e., don’t say the things Toews has said. “Marriage is one of the cornerstones upon which our society has been built,” he intoned in 2002. In 2005 during a Parliamentary debate in which he opposed gay marriage, he pronounced, “Heterosexual marriage has a unique social purpose that other relationships simply do not share.” Study that. In retrospect, that’s pretty faint praise of marriage. And here we have an eternal rule. One of the most erotic things about marriage is how it makes adultery possible, indeed enhances it. It’s called “wedlock” for a reason. Going by the timeline of the protracted end of Toews’ marriage, he seems to have contracted an illness called “mentionitis,” first identified by the writer Nora Ephron, whose husband conducted a notorious affair while she was pregnant. When you’re thinking of cheating, you can’t stop mentioning the desired one’s name, can’t stop talking about nice clean marriage and the dirty and the bad. Everyone has secrets. So heavy is their weight that I sometimes wonder how people sail through the day in their company. Toews should not have poked his finger into the online life of law-abiding Canadians. It was a well-baked pie. You can’t stuff all those secrets back inside, as he has learned to his cost. hmallick@thestar.ca thestar.com

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (87281)	2/18/2012 5:22:58 PM
From: Snowshoe	Respond to of 219497

Yep. Candians are cruel to baby seals, Métis people, and anti-tar-sands activists. But we love you anyway... :o) Americans feel love for Canada, Gallup survey finds Canada gets highest rating of any country since poll began two decades ago cbc.ca Hey, Canada: Americans like us. They really, really like us. In fact, they like us better than anyone, anywhere on the planet. Nearly all Americans, a full 96 per cent, have a favourable view of Canada, according to a new Gallup survey. That's the loftiest ranking for any foreign country since Gallup began the poll two decades ago.