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Can we start banning trolls?

Otherwise updates

The two men arrested following the deadly shooting at a Quebec City mosque Sunday night have been identified as Alexandre Bissonnette and Mohamed Khadir, Radio-Canada has learned.

Sources told CBC's French-language service the identities of the two men on Monday morning.

Six men died in the shooting during evening prayers at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec (Islamic cultural centre of Quebec). Nineteen people were also wounded.

Police refuse to reveal any information about the men other than the fact they are in their late 20s or early 30s.

Police also said it's too early to know the motive, what charges may be laid or when they will appear in court.

Premier Philippe Couillard has described the shooting as a "murderous act directed at a specific community."

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So, apparently one of the suspects has been released by the RCMP as a witness instead of accomplice.

Details are hard to come by, so this speculation, but I imagine it was the second individual arrested, who had called 911 stating he wished to help.

I've heard that a crowdfunding initiative has been launched to aid the victims and their families-- I'll be donating once I get home and have a chance to track the details down.

It's my hope that this kind of hate crime is investigated diligently, quickly, and that those responsible are punished to the maximum extent of the law.

Sickening.

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RCMP are labeling this as a lone wolf type incident, and a profile is starting to emerge-- quiet loner, chess club, former cadet, bullied... who, though not necessarily related, grew increasingly intolerant after France's Le Pen visited Canada.

So... the repressed, angry white guy problem strikes again.

 

 

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Spicer attempts to justify Trump's policies in light of this: 

Quote

“We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms. It’s a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant, and why the president is taking steps to be proactive, rather than reactive, when it comes to our nation’s safety and security,” press secretary Sean Spicer said at his daily briefing on Monday.

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8 minutes ago, Aemon Stark said:

Spicer attempts to justify Trump's policies in light of this: 

Honestly, I don't even want to hear it. If some of the comment sections on new sites covering this story could be considered indicative, Canada has its own relatively large portion of the population that's just as uneducated and intolerant as our southern neighbor's.

Repressed angry white guy syndrome is a mental health issue.

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Reading the on-line comments section of the CBC, the Globe and the Huffington Post Canada has been a real eye opener these past couple of years. So many shameful, angry and disgusting comments. You know the CBC had to institute a policy that no stories about anything to do with First Nations would have a comments section, because they were so racist

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25 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

RCMP are labeling this as a lone wolf type incident, and a profile is starting to emerge-- quiet loner, chess club, former cadet, bullied... who, though not necessarily related, grew increasingly intolerant after France's Le Pen visited Canada.

So... the repressed, angry white guy problem strikes again.

 

 

I also read he was posting a lot on anti-feminists sites and something about identity politics but it was in French so not easy for me to understand.

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Trudeau has reneged on his promise to overhaul our voting system.  The NDP and Greens are outraged( and I can see why as if they got PR  as they were pushing for it would give them more influence on policy matters).  The Liberals no doubt wanted a PB and with that not an option will stay with FPtP.

I doubt the issue is that big with a majority of voters but it could be for a lot of the NDP votes that went to the Liberals last election.

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Yeah, I was reading a little bit about that. I can't recall what kind of reform Trudeau had campaigned on, and while some new reports castigated the decision, others seem to be implying that it was a bad promise anyway. Not sure how I feel about it because there doesn't seem to be any clear consensus on how I should. Color me confuzzled. 

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Yes, I posted on a thread started by angry young NDPer friends that people lost interest once Harper was gone and I was told they had no interest in hearing anything from me, so I un-followed them.

To me it seems that Trudeau asked for feedback from Canadians and listened to the feedback. And now that Trump has been elected the next four years are going to be very busy with, frankly, more important matters.

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10 hours ago, snake said:

Trudeau has reneged on his promise to overhaul our voting system.  The NDP and Greens are outraged( and I can see why as if they got PR  as they were pushing for it would give them more influence on policy matters).  The Liberals no doubt wanted a PB and with that not an option will stay with FPtP.

I doubt the issue is that big with a majority of voters but it could be for a lot of the NDP votes that went to the Liberals last election.

It was a bad idea anyway, and as has been said there are bigger fish to fry.

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11 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

Yeah, I was reading a little bit about that. I can't recall what kind of reform Trudeau had campaigned on, and while some new reports castigated the decision, others seem to be implying that it was a bad promise anyway. Not sure how I feel about it because there doesn't seem to be any clear consensus on how I should. Color me confuzzled. 

I forget what it's called, maybe the ranked voting system? You rank the candidates, first, second third etc, and if your first pick doesn't win your second choice is used. The argument against this system is that most NDP supporters would pick Liberals as their 2nd choice, and most Conservatives supporters would also choose the Liberals as their 2nd choice, whereas Liberals would split their votes. The supporters of proportional representation claimed that everything was slanted that way.

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15 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I forget what it's called, maybe the ranked voting system? You rank the candidates, first, second third etc, and if your first pick doesn't win your second choice is used. The argument against this system is that most NDP supporters would pick Liberals as their 2nd choice, and most Conservatives supporters would also choose the Liberals as their 2nd choice, whereas Liberals would split their votes. The supporters of proportional representation claimed that everything was slanted that way.

Eh, if true that sounds silly-- and not the kind of promise that would've seriously impacted his appeal had he not made it at all. As snake put it earlier, only the NDP and the Greens might lament its loss. I personally would rather see Senate reform, but that's been a bone of mine for many years.

How about O'Leary today huh, what a fucking idiot.

His PRpeeps bounced me off his FB page, so I've been researching him for going on a week, girding the loins so to speak, and learning the ins and outs of Twitter because I'm going after him. But then he gives us his video today of him at a gun range, firing pistols and automatic weapons, and posts the damn thing just as the funeral service in Quebec was commencing.

A clod of the highest odor. 

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12 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

To me it seems that Trudeau asked for feedback from Canadians and listened to the feedback. And now that Trump has been elected the next four years are going to be very busy with, frankly, more important matters.

No, he made a definitive promise ("last election under first-past-the-post") without actually promising an alternative. The government's behaviour ever since the election has been to make a mess of the issue and backpedal, with the now-sacked minister of democratic reform having epitomized absent leadership on this. 

It's true enough that electoral reform can be something of an esoteric issue. The notion that this was about "feedback" is nothing more than a Liberal talking point. Trudeau made an entirely clear promise, then consistently downplayed it while failing to show any kind of leadership. It was thoroughly intellectually dishonest to suggest this was about lack of some sort of "popular will". 

While I've never been much of a Mulroney fan, his policy successes and failures came from actual leadership, whether it was the "free trade" election in 1988 or the ultimate morass of constitutional reform. 

55 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I forget what it's called, maybe the ranked voting system? You rank the candidates, first, second third etc, and if your first pick doesn't win your second choice is used. The argument against this system is that most NDP supporters would pick Liberals as their 2nd choice, and most Conservatives supporters would also choose the Liberals as their 2nd choice, whereas Liberals would split their votes. The supporters of proportional representation claimed that everything was slanted that way.

It has various names, but this is the "alternative vote", which employs instant-runoff ballots in single-member constituencies (as opposed to, say, the single-transferable vote (STV) which uses similar ballots in multi-member districts). In Canada it was used in BC most notably after WWII, with the unique situation of a Liberal-Conservative coalition in opposition to the CCF. This worked fine for them (-ish) until the Socreds came along and became a popular second choice. After they won power in 1952 they did away with that system and BC has had FPTP ever since (although almost 58% of voters did opt for STV in a 2005 referendum, reform failed because of a ludicrously high threshold of 60%). 

The bottom line is that electoral reform has been studied extensively previously, not least with the government's own Law Commission of Canada in 2002. I urge everyone to read (or skim at least) their detailed report where they ultimately recommend a mixed-member proportional system with one-third of MPs elected from multi-member provincial/regional/territorial districts via an open list system. 

Some of the observations of the Commission: 

Quote

(First-past-the-post) has been criticized as:

  • being overly generous to the party that wins a plurality of the vote, rewarding it with a legislative majority disproportionate to its share of the vote;
  • allowing the governing party, with its artificially swollen legislative majority, to dominate the political agenda;
  • promoting parties formed along regional lines, thus exacerbating Canada’s regional divisions;
  • leaving large areas of the country without adequate representatives in the governing party caucus;
  • disregarding a large number of votes in that voters who do not vote for the winning candidate have no connection to the elected representative, nor to the eventual make-up of the House of Commons;
  • contributing to the under-representation of women, minority groups, and Aboriginal peoples;
  • preventing a diversity of ideas from entering the House of Commons; and
  • favouring an adversarial style of politics.

In any case, the Liberals do not deserve a pass on this for a second. 

41 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Eh, if true that sounds silly-- and not the kind of promise that would've seriously impacted his appeal had he not made it at all. As snake put it earlier, only the NDP and the Greens might lament its loss. I personally would rather see Senate reform, but that's been a bone of mine for many years.

All well and good, but Senate reform is a far more challenging problem. Arguably, it's a lot less relevant too, unless you actually want to make it an empowered upper chamber that routinely blocks the Commons. 

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47 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I forget what it's called, maybe the ranked voting system? You rank the candidates, first, second third etc, and if your first pick doesn't win your second choice is used. The argument against this system is that most NDP supporters would pick Liberals as their 2nd choice, and most Conservatives supporters would also choose the Liberals as their 2nd choice, whereas Liberals would split their votes. The supporters of proportional representation claimed that everything was slanted that way.

Alternative Vote and Single Transferable Vote both do that. IMO STV is the best system since it has aspects of AV and MMP, but at the end of the day pretty much any voting system is better than FPTP.

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1 minute ago, TrueMetis said:

Alternative Vote and Single Transferable Vote both do that. IMO STV is the best system since it has aspects of AV and MMP, but at the end of the day pretty much any voting system is better than FPTP.

My only issue with STV is that it mostly does away with single-member constituencies. Open-list MMP on a provincial and/or regional basis would in some way provide "double" representation, but there's much to be said for providing more reflective regional representation in the Commons than FPTP is capable of. 

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2 minutes ago, Aemon Stark said:

The bottom line is that electoral reform has been studied extensively previously, not least with the government's own Law Commission of Canada in 2002. I urge everyone to read (or skim at least) their detailed report where they ultimately recommend a mixed-member proportional system with one-third of MPs elected from multi-member provincial/regional/territorial districts via an open list system. 

Huh. I actually like that idea.

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