Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 3 of 11 (Year 2016)

2,818 thoughts on “Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 3 of 11 (Year 2016)”

1. Although there are the usual, ‘what do you have to hide?’ comments, there are a lot of Canadians who are not happy with CBC’s announcment yesterday that it “will ban the use of pseudonyms for readers commenting on stories on the CBC.ca website.” Close to 8,000 comments so far to the CBC article, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cbc-news-online-commenting-no-pseudonyms-1.3496467

   wessex comments:

   This is not about “hate speech”. Hate speech is a foil.
   There was precious little of that, if any, on CBC threads.
   It’s obvious the CBC has lost touch with what “hate speech” actually is, and is using the term to describe anything it doesn’t like.
   But what this is really about is the new Liberal government consolidating its power within the CBC with an iron fist.
   This is much worse in its grassroots impact that even Bill C-51.
   This reminds me in many ways of Trudeau the First’s “War Measures Act”, but it is more surreptitious, dangerous, and far-reaching.
   Trudeau does not want his actions to be criticized, and the best way to stem this is for Trudeau to throttle online public discussion and assembly.
   CBC journalist keep mentioning that the Trudeau honeymoon will end eventually.
   Well folks, I don’t know about Justin’s honeymoon, but I can assure you that our honeymoon with him is over.
   We now have a taste of “government by Trudeau” – a very bitter taste.
   And there’s much more that will be hard to swallow to come.
   But it seems we will have to take it in silence for fear.

   aprilmaid writes:

   If nothing else, the number of comments – currently 7504 and rising ! – should tell the CBC in no uncertain terms how important people think it is that we have a chance to air our opinions. Christopher Lasch (The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democrracy – 1995) was concerned about the lack of places where people could gather to exchange opinions. The Internet has taken the place, to a degree, of those places and provided those of us who think about the life, the world, etc., a place to meet kindred – or opposing ! – spirits. Without things like the Comments sections we will be deprived of that opportunity – is that what the CBC has in mind – a muzzling of opinion on the part of thinking Canadians?
   Surely not . . .

2. @ WhiteKat
   I have joined you in the CBC’s “Comment Disabled” penalty box. I put one comment in on the their comment policy changes article and the mod squad slapped it down. It was really quite innocuous (I thought). I merely said:

   I will never comment using my real name so I guess this is it for me too. I’ve tried to LIKE as many of the thousands of like-minded comments here as I could. I wish CBC would reconsider its decision after reading these comments because thousands should count for more than “a number of”.

3. @Embee, interesting that CBC disabled your comment, but not the ones I copied above. I suspect it has something to do with their mandate to keep comments balanced. There cannot be an inordinate amount of comments on the ‘wrong’ side. I bet the ‘What do you have to hide?’ comments rarely get status CONTENT DISABLED.

4. @ WhiteKat
   I’m not gonna fret about it because you’re probably right. The mods are trying to not let the naysayer comments exceed by too much the yaysayer comments. When comments get into the thousands they all get drowned out anyway.

5. @Embee, not fretting here either, just find it interesting.

6. Embee, …and sad, but it is what it is.

7. A few questions.

   * How many Charter Lawsuits are there currently? Is there a list somewhere?

   I have been chasing Canadian Civil Liberties to recognise the ADCS Charter Lawsuit, yet it appears they have not recognised any lawsuits? Maybe they should recognise all of them on their website?

8. OTTAWA — A list of some current legal and constitutional challenges and appeals surrounding Conservative legislation:

   http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/10/27/news/list-pending-legal-constitutional-cases-against-conservative-legislation

   ours is not listed

9. Thanks Patricia. So the answer is about a dozen.

   The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is associated with one and the BCCLA is associated with another. Is perhaps lack of interest by CCLA in the ADCS suit because that one is already being pursued?

   Patricia, what do you do when the head of the CCLA tells you the philosophical implications of CBT are to be taken up with the US, the tax treaty protects most, and uses such language as”US citizens resident in Canada”?

   I don’t see any others in regards to privacy, so then what is the Privacy Commissioner doing with himself?

10. Patricia – I e-mailed the National Observer and asked them to add ADCS lawsuit. That list has a date on it so perhaps as recognised at that time.

11. @JC

    Patricia, what do you do when the head of the CCLA tells you the philosophical implications of CBT are to be taken up with the US, the tax treaty protects most, and uses such language as”US citizens resident in Canada”?

    perhaps:

    1) explain how CBT sucks capital out of Canada
    2) the Tax Treaty is being used in order to violate PIPEDA
    3) explain that the primary citizenship to be recognized when dual is the one that is resident therefore a dual Canadian US citizen in Canada is first and foremost, A Canadian citizen resident in Canada

12. This is more FYI, since the article came out a few days ago, but it does suggest that the U.K. is getting fed up with the U.S.’s arbitrary use of the power of the dollar, at least when it comes to enforcing its versions of sanctions against Iran. The Telegraph is not a newspaper given to U.S.-bashing and is quite close to the ruling conservative party (its nickname is the Torygraph). So it is striking that it says that “What’s happening is a form of American imperialism. Whether the policy is deliberate or not, the effect is unfairly to enhance the global position of American banks at the expense of European ones, which find themselves effectively locked out of Iran by dint of past history.” Unfortunately, Cameron seems to continue to blame the banks for their reluctance to follow U.K. policy not U.S. policy. See commentary in middle called “Iranian Blues”:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/11/osborne-must-not-soak-business-to-pay-for-pre-referendum-giveawa/

13. More on CBC’s decision to disallow pseudonyms: March 19, 2016 — “How CBC’s ‘real name’ commenting policy could work”

    Some are skeptical of the move, including Jeremy Hunsinger, professor of communications studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., who says the policy could “open up another set of problems,” such as readers no longer wanting to comment.

    Although a real name policy could be considered an overhaul of the CBC’s comment section, it is not entirely unprecedented in the corporation’s history.

    etc.

14. Thanks for emailing the National Observer, JC. Hopefully, the ADCS lawsuit will be recognized there and given better awareness, lacking for such a long time.

    I hope the latest Elizabeth Thompson post at iPolitics.ca, https://ipolitics.ca/2016/03/17/revenue-minister-could-have-to-face-committee-on-record-sharing-with-irs/, will gain ground in Canada’s mainstream media. If not, something’s rotten in Canada, rather than Denmark.

15. I pitched an article to the editor of iPolitics yesterday through Elizabeth Thompson. The editor will review it on Monday.

    I have another one ready to pitch to other publications, but I will wait until after I hear from iPolitics before I send it.

    Maple Sandbox is down. I have not been able to fix it. I’m more the content person, Outraged Canadian is our tech person. She is sick and has a whole bunch of things happening in her life but she will try to get it back up today.

16. Thank you Blaze for your continued work on this.

17. Thanks, Blaze.

    …and to Outraged Canadian, my protest buddy, please get well soon.

18. @ Blaze
    Fingers crossed on that article approval. Thanks for doing this and all the previous 24 articles you’ve written and co-written (if I haven’t miscounted).

    @ Outraged Canadian
    Speedy return to good health.

19. Outraged did her magic work. Sandbox is back in the playground. She thinks the problem was with the host. I couldn’t even get through to them on the phone or via e-mail so perhaps the problem was bigger than just ours.

20. @EmBee Really? I didn’t realize that many were published. There are others I have written that have not been published.

    The biggest disappointment has been that I have not been able to have any published in main stream media. They only seem to want to “come clean” type of articles.

21. Major FBAR lawsuit, it appears:

    http://www.law360.com/tax/articles/773059

22. @Barbara – thanks for that link.

    Two more accounts:

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/swiss-banking-lawsuit-against-irs-could-have-wide-impact-1450374899

    http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/12/18/man-wages-1-3-million-fight-with-the-irs.htm

23. Bernhard Gubser, the plaintiff in the FBAR case, was apparently one of several thousand UBS account holders whose details were handed to the IRS by UBS as part of the QI settlement. Subsequently some sued UBS – http://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/ubs-depositors-fail-on-pleadings-in.html

24. What are Gubser`s chances of winning this? It sounds like a quiet disclosure, and that he was planning to move back to Switzerland one day and never declare anything, as he could have, pre-FATCA. Can the IRS provide evidence of this?

25. It seems to be all about what standard of evidence the IRS has to meet to prove “wilfulness”.

    http://www.anaford.ch/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/taxnotes.com_-_suit_challenges_preponderance_of_evidence_standard_in_fbar_case_-_2015-12-18.pdf

    In other words, does he get hit for half the balance, or “only” for the $10,000 “non-wilful” penalty.

    According to Gubser, he didn’t know he was supposed to file FBAR until 2010, at which time he backfiled for 2009 but was “too late” to backfile for 2008, so it’s 2008 the IRS want to apply the “non-wilful” penalty to.

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