and note that Lekstrom didn’t actually oppose the HST, just “process” stuff. this kept him from burning bridges with the federal HST legislators.

slick move.

In addition to the example given by Anita Romaniuk of boards that were, there were two more examples.

The same year that the Vancouver board was fired by the Social Credit government, the Cowichan board was also fired for not accepting the cuts demanded by government.

The NDP also fired the North Vancouver board during the 1990s over a budget dispute.

Although the specifics should be corrected, the firings really support your point that elected boards feel they have an obligation toward the people who elect them that is greater than that toward the provincial government.

Can you please send me an email. I would like to reprint your item as an article.

larry.kuehn@gmail.com

sadly, that’s nothing new i fear.

assault by trespass is another irony-free idiocy.

i’m sure glad i posted this!

A truly conscionable person born into her position, one who had the faintest idea about suffering at the hands of others, would close shop forever and give the vast majority of her ill-gotten gains back to the people. Now that would be an ‘example to the world’ worth mentioning.

As Queen of England, the endurance of her position’s hypocrisy is rivalled only by that of the pope.

Thomas Paine pointed out in The Rights of Man, the idea of any hereditary public positions is as inconsistent and absurd as that of the idea of hereditary mathematicians or poets….“its an office which could be filled by any child or idiot. It requires some talents to be a common mechanic; but to be a king requires only the animal figure of a man”.

“The Olympic protesters had support until they disrupted the torch relay, and children and veterans were disappointed and property was damaged.”

the disruption of the torch relay, which began when the torch landed in canada months before the olympics, may have reduced support, but i’m not sure the support that was there for anti-olympic politicization was all that useful.

i’m not sure what that support translated into. did it stop people from patronizing coke or the bay? maybe. did it stop people from participating in olympic boosterism? maybe.

did it stop people from opposing future olympics? we’ll see.

but more importantly, did whatever support there was in place help canadians properly oppose the sequel of security insanity at the g8/g20? not really.

you said you oppose the police response to the peaceful protesters. but what will that translate into in terms of action from all the canadians who agree with you?

so the support may not yet be translating into anything tangible. not to say that it won’t over time, but it’s easy for people to say that suspending the constitution is bad, but will they really do anything about it?

the governments [so far] rightly bet they won’t. that kind of complacency will lead to more soft fascist, constitution suspending, authoritarian behaviour.

There’s a common thread of argument/fallacy that lionizes a few exemplars of amazing non-violent protest. Ghandi and MLK are the ones that are often used.

Question for you, though: did all the segregationists in the South US hear the “I have a dream” speech and instantly think to themselves, “hmm, sounds good, let’s get rid of ‘colored’ water fountains.” ? MLK’s nonviolent part of the civil rights movement was accompanied by a radical movement.

Even the mostly nonviolent Indian independence movement had threads of militant organising.

A huge part of the Suffragette movement was radical militant organising.

There can be a place for both aspects of a movement. I’m not saying the Toronto actions were appropriate, but I am saying that we shouldn’t rule them out as potential tactics.

Asking the government politely to stop being idiots works only a certain amount, until they stop listening.

billions already don’t have access to land for at least subsistence farming.

even in bc, the poor are more geographically vulnerable than the rich:
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/projects/climate-justice-project/about

it’s magnified significantly in the developing world.