RTH’s latest issue is out. I would link directly to my contribution, which I referred to in On the Board, but Editor Ryan McGreal apparently decided it was front-page material, because there it is, right on the index page – a first for me. Thanks Ryan!

When I got married, I was reluctant to leave my bank, which is one of Canada’s enormous, super-profitable savings-sucking behemoths, in favour of the credit union where my wife had her account.

As you’d expect, she won that argument, and of course, she was also right:

When was the last time your bank PAID you money instead of screwing you for every last cent you’ve got?

Father’s Day is here, so why not save a couple of bucks and print out one of these heart-warming cards.

There’s a bar near my place that wants to expand. Their expansion plans have caused some controversy, with some residents opposed to the idea because they are worried about increased noise (the plan includes a patio where none exists currently), drunken patrons, and associated problems like, presumably, vomit on the sidewalk and cigarrette butts in gardens.

I decided to write an article about the issue for Raise the Hammer, and I started by interviewing the owner of the bar. To get the opinions of residents, I decided to attend the local neighbourhood association meeting, which was this past Monday.

It turned out to be the annual meeting of the Kirkendall Neighbourhood Association (KNA), and the board of directors – which was just one woman – was resigning. A new board needed to be elected.

My fellow meeting attendees, who were on average 20 or 30 years my senior, had a number of pressing concerns: graffiti on mail boxes, the expansion of the bar mentioned above, speeding traffic, and young people.

Apparently, “swarms” and “gangs” of youth are a real problem in Kirkendall. They are prone to walking through parks on their way to unknown destinations, which really irritates some people.

I was compelled to remark, as one woman pressed the cop in attendance about what they could do about this “problem”, that walking places with a group of friends is not a crime. “This was at 2:30 am!” she barked at me. The elderly woman next to me leaned over and loudly whispered, “they were probably just trying to have a good time!”

To sum it all up, when it came time to elect the new board, I decided to stand for election. I nudged the woman next to me and asked her to nominate me, it was seconded, I accepted, and it passed.

If you want change, we’re often told, you need to get involved. As I’m learning here in Hamilton, it’s a lot easier to change the course of your city than the course of the province, let alone the country. And now I have the opportunity to have a little bit of influence on the course of the neighbourhood I share with all the wonderful citizens here.

If you’re frustrated with how things are right now, I have to ask: are you aware of your neighbourhood association? Maybe they need a new board member.

[tags]Kirkendall Neighbourhood Association, grassroots democracy, community involvement[/tags]

Just how stupid are Canadian terrorists?

Imagine you’re one of them, just for a minute. You’re squirreled away in your lair, making nefarious plans. They involve explosives, so it’s a good thing that you’ve got some coming.

You hear a truck rumble into the driveway. The front doorbell chimes.

“Honey, could you get that?” you yell. “I think it’s the explosives delivery!”

———

I was thinking about how absurd it is to order in your explosives, and how bizarre it is that they were delivered by the RCMP, and I decided to get the story straight. I typed incompetent Canadian terrorists into Google and got the goods.

They had a “training camp” in [tag]Washago[/tag], which is north of Orillia. The Washago web site describes the town as a “picturesque village” that is “rich with history and local talent and offers quaint gift shops and a quality clothing store”, where, presumably, a budding young terrorist can shop after a hard days work of…paintball.

Star columnist Thomas Walkom describes what what happened when they showed up there:

[T]heir activities — shooting off firearms and playing paintball — were so obvious and so irritating that local residents immediately called police. […] [The men] apparently didn’t realize, or perhaps didn’t care, that large groups of brown-skinned urbanites dressed in camouflage are not a common sight in rural central Ontario.

So when local resident Mike Côté came upon a group of just such men near his Ramara Township farm last December, he immediately informed police.

As he told the Star this week, the group appeared cold, wet and bedraggled. Some had fallen though the thin ice into a marsh. The leader of these alleged terrorists was so disgusted with his young charges that he complained to Côté about their incompetence.

In T.O. Terror Cell’s Disorganized Crime, Maisonneuve’s Phillippe Gohier points out news items “that suggest that the threat may have been unfairly amplified”, like Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail:

How dangerous is crazy talk? When does crazy talk cross the line into incitement, and to what extent is that a crime? At what point does a gang of hotheads morph into a terrorist cell, and revenge fantasies into a plot? When does the plot become credible? Are we dealing with terrorist masterminds, or are they just a bunch of stupid goofs?

Stupid goofs shouldn’t be taken too lightly, of course. One need only look south to see the harm that electing one can cause. I’m glad these fools were arrested before they hurt somebody, probably by accidentally blowing themselves up.

But I’m more glad that these wannabe jihadists share that same blissful Canadian incompetence we look for in our government. After the Air India trial debacle, where our justice system firmly established itself in the tradition of Inspector Clouseau, it’s a real relief.

[tags]terrorism, Toronto terror cell[/tags]