Case in point – what’s down at the bottom of the OpenMedia.ca site? “Hosted by Koumbit”. Awesome.

(and on a closely-related note to the OpenMedia link: on May 2nd, my fellow Canucks, remember your ABCs when you head to the polls…)

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” — John Gilmore

“How many of you have broken no laws this month?” — John Gilmore

“So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” — John 8:7, King James Bible

We say we are “in” traffic, dramatising ourselves as a lone vehicle of noble and rational intent, with a sea of malevolent, deadweight antagonists stretching endlessly fore and aft. It was in a bid to highlight the flaws in this position that a German transport campaign erected roadside boards reading: “You are not stuck in traffic – you are traffic.”

An otherwise quite ordinary Guardian Comment is Free column on the latest Chinese super-traffic-jam points out something I’ve blogged before: the exceptionalism of insulated, protected, self-absorbed car drivers.

We’re all traffic. Traffic is never “them”, it’s “us”, and that bears repeating in the (faint) hope it might eventually stick.

Now the Guardian tells us Top Canadian lawyer told he will not face trial over Toronto cyclist’s death, while the CBC’s headline is Charges against Bryant in fatal crash withdrawn.

Even better, and even more flagrant, road-raging Bryant is considering a return to politics. Anyone running against Mr. Bryant would be well advised not to show up at political events on a bike.

So the moral of the story, folks: killing someone with your car doesn’t even need to be more than an eight-month interuption to your political career. It was only a bicyclist, after all. People who matter drive cars.

Because May 20th is not just another day, and this might not be just a stick figure.

And if this stick figure offends you, consider whether it’s the stick figure – or you.

This collection would cause VANOC to collectively crap themselves, especially the VANOC logo redone with drug paraphernilia.

Over on the other side of the country, the Mounties in yet another attempt to quash more anti-Olympic sentiment. Because we’re all supposed to be happy and joyful that we’re hosting this corporate greedfest disguised as a sports event, haven’t you heard?

Previous Olympic excitement here.

Erosion of civil liberties!

Biohazardous Waste!

Oh, and some sport somewhere in there. Yay.

Michael Bryant charged in cyclist’s death

Bike courier and car driver clash. Bike courier is killed, run over by the car. Car driver is charged with only “criminal negligence causing death” and “dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death”. Fuck that. If he’d met the guy on a sidewalk and shot him with a gun, the victim would have been just as dead, but the charge would have been manslaughter, 2nd degree murder, or similar.

Why the fuck are car drivers privileged above other homicidal fuckwits? How is it that “road rage” ending in homicide is treated differently than other sorts of more pedestrian rage ending in homicide?

Christie Blatchford in the first story I link to above talks about “The reaction was a bit of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I mixed with sheer terror.” and talks about the “bubble” that car drivers are able to surround themselves with. Why the hell does this protective, insulating bubble extend into the judicial realm, too?

If you wish to commit homicide (or found that you have done so in the heat of the moment), you’d better hope you used a motor vehicle as your murder weapon, as former Ontario attorney-general Michael Bryant has done. You’ve got an much better chance of getting away with it — and that fucking sucks.

Canadian politics are frequently very, very dull – according to even most Canadians, never mind anyone else. No charismatic, exciting leaders. No mobs occupying airports and being threatened by the military. Nobody burning cars in the street.

Thankfully.

What we’ve got instead, currently, is a control-freak Prime Minister desperately attempting to hold onto his minority government’s power. CBC quotes PM Harper as wanting to use “every legal means at our disposal to protect our democracy, to protect our economy and to protect Canada,” &mdash but what he mostly seems to want to protect is his own power.

A huge number of Canadians (possibly including PM Harper) appear to have taken a basic Canadian PolSci course… Westminister-style democracies (this would include Canada…) do not, repeat not elect “governments” as Mr. Harper claims. We elect Parliaments, which then form governments. When one party has a clear majority in Parliament (which hasn’t happened in Canada for several Parliaments in a row now) that party forms the government. When you have a minority, generally the largest party gets to be the government &mdash but if a coalition of other parties can make a government work, that is just as legitimate and democratic as a simple minority single-party government.

Seriously, this is very, very basic Canuckistani political science, folks. Why does it seem to be so broadly mis-understood?

For the record, no, I don’t like Mr. Harper. I don’t like any of the current four big-party leaders very much, though. Harper has been trying to run his minority government as if he had a majority, though, and he needs a good, sharp reminder of the other options available under Canada’s system. Which also have the side-effect of removing him from the Prime MInister’s office, to his obvious distress…

The CBC has a good overview article on the current state of the mess. Making Light has a thread on the basic discussion and a spinoff, awesomely geeky thread attempting to express Westminister-style democracy in pseudo-code. Planet Ubuntu readers – go check that last one out, it really is a hoot.

In the meantime, no, we aren’t having a coup up here in the Frozen North. No great anti-democratic seizure of power, really, despite Mr. Harper’s ranting and much confusion at many levels. More people need to take first-year university Political Science courses…

Most of the results are in; it looks like Canada’s federal election has been won (kind of) by the Conservatives. Pity. At least they’re still a minority government; that’s more than they deserve but at least they didn’t get a majority out of this unnecessary electoral waste of time.

Locally, our Conservative MP is back in (pity, that) and the Conservatives are also one seat up on Vancouver Island, at the expense of one of the few Liberal MPs I actually liked. An even greater pity, that.

I haven’t seen total voter turnout numbers yet – still rummaging through CBC’s website – but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them down over previous elections. I’m not the only one who things this election wasn’t actually needed – pity Mr. Harper disagreed. (And yes, I did so vote. That’s why I’m allowed to complain…)

Random post-election observation: CBC’s comments section is giving YouTube’s a race for “Dumbest Commentariat on Teh Intartoobs”, it really is…