left_alberta

Yes, for the benefit of American Woman and anyone else, the BC Liberal Party rose to power by absorbing the voters left abandoned by the collapse of Social Credit, which was one of the most right-wing political parties ever seen in Canada. So, that puts the BC Liberals well to the right of their federal namesakes, with whom I believe they do not have any formal association.

Jacee: Yes, but your argument could apply to anyone who goes to another country to break laws. If a Canadian goes down to the US to help "pro-lifers" vandalize abortion clinics, gets arrested and charged, and people say the government shouldn't help him because his actions were illegal, are you going to reply: "Well, the French Revolution was illegal as well"? And, even in cases where I support the illegal activities, the people undertaking them have to realize that they're on their own insofar as dealing with the consequences. If someone left England to help the French Revolution, that may be a justified cause, but it does not follow that the British government had an obligation to help him out if he gets arrested. Bascially, by leaving Britain and breaking laws in a foreign country, he put himself outside the protection of British law. If you're gonna go overseas to support revolution, you had better hope that your side wins. Otherwise, you are rightly at the mercy of the government you were trying to overthrow.

Actually, there was a case a few years back of South Korean Christian missionaries going to Afghanistan and getting kidnapped by the Taliban. The Korean government paid a fairly large ransom, even though the missionaries had been advised numerous times againsy going, to the point where the government had actually banned them from flying in directly. Can't say I symapthized with those missionaries too much, since a) the government HAD warned them repeatedly, and even without the warning, it shouldn't take a genius to figure out that handing out Bibles in Afghanistan 2007 was not a really bright idea. In general, I don't think the government has much obligation to protect the rights of travellers who get into trouble overseas, if it's clear that they were breaking known laws in those countries. In the case of Greyson-Loubani, a mitigating factor might be the arbitrary nature of the situation they walked into: Egypt is in a state of political turmoil, and they might not have known that the military was going to react the way they did. Not so much sympathy for those Greenpeace activists recently arrested in Russia, who were doing things that are illegal in almost every country, and should easily have foreseen the legal consequences of their actions. http://tinyurl.com/2okc7d

According to the Star reporters, they watched the video several times to verify that the guy seen with the pipe really looked like Rob Ford. So, if the man in the video really was the actor who answered that ad, he must look a HELLUVA lot like Rob Ford, not just a general resemblance. The film-maker really struck gold there. Plus, you're an actor applying for what sounds like an indie-film gig playing Ford puffing on a cigar. You show up at a house, and someone hands you a CRACK PIPE and tells you to smoke from it? I think most actors would assume that they were involved in a blackmail video, and try to get the hell out of there. Though I guess the actor might have felt afraid for his life at that point, and just did done whatever the film-makers wanted. Still kind of odd that people producing that kind of thing would recruit someone from the want-ads.

This has been some good discussion on l'affaire Flanagan. Best that I've seen on the internet, in fact. I do find it interesting that, in the last fifteen years, two Alberta conservative bigwigs, Stockwell Day and Tom Flanagan, have been brought down by the child pornography issue. What's especially odd is that they were saying pretty much the polar opposite thing from each other.