June 02, 2005
The BBC apportions blame for the French "non"
A report on the BBC website gives more than just a nod to the far-left bloggers who led the online efforts to persuade voters against the constitution.
The French newspaper dubbed Marseille law teacher Etienne Chouard "Don Quichotte du non".
Mr Chouard did not much care for the EU Constitution, but instead of simply voicing his upset to his neighbours, he wrote an essay and set up a blog to explain why he was voting 'Non'.
Just ahead of the vote, his blog was getting 25,000 hits a day and his anti-constitution broadside had been photocopied, faxed and blogged about across France.
Despite overwhelming support for the constitution by the governments of both France and the Netherlands and a huge media campaign by political leaders in both countries, voters have rejected the constitution.
And just as the media and political establishment in the US found during last year's presidential election, European elites have now felt the sting of these online upstarts, the bloggers.
I guess this means that blogging is "over", now that the MSM is willing to grant that bloggers have had some effect in the real world. . .
Hat tip to Elizabeth for passing along the URL to the BBC article.
Posted by Nicholas at June 2, 2005 05:15 PM
I wonder if Mr. Chouard could do the same thing in Canada. It may depend on the X_Box factor. The percentage of Canadian bloggers who are more X-Box prone than writer prone.
We certainly have a National crises. We could use some public focus to fix things in Ottawa before our economy falters and inflation sets in.
You know, interest rates start upward, houses stop trading, jobs evaporate, fear causes white knuckles on savings and people stop spending.
Here is a suggestion. It's free, it's legal, it's easy and if everything does go south, you can say you did somthing.
Don't worry about the address. It's a depot.
Anthony Robinson 197 - 2401 Cliffe Ave -3 Courtenay B.C. V9N 2L5
Governor General of Canada
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa Ontario June 2nd, 2005
Dear Governor General,
This letter is my formal written request that you announce the dissolution of Parliament. There are many reasons clearly evident to every Canadian.
The house of commons is currently wasting Canada’s valuable time, quibbling about tapes. There are civil courts for that.
The present party in power has proven to be totally incompetent as they have been unable to stem the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of our National revenues, on-going for well over ten continuous years now.
Over ten years ago, Mr. Allan Cutler blew the whistle on phantom invoices that he refused to sign in Mr. Guite’s office. The W.B. law was without teeth. Mr. Cutler was sacked and as we know, hundreds of millions continued to evaporate through the Guite office.
Today, in the house of commons, there are no motions to enact law to protect our National revenues. There are no proposals to enact Whistle-Blower Protection law with penalty provisions to ensure effectiveness.
Also, even though Mr. Martin promised this, there are no tabled proposals for Individual Ministry and departmental Accounts and Audit controls.
Time is marching on, and Canada can not afford to limp along in this crippled manner any longer.
There is no point waiting for the completion of the Gomery Inquiry as Prime Minister Martin knows, it will be delivered to his crippled Liberal Party and there is no legal obligation to act upon the findings at all. Attempts at secrecy failed. The evidence is public knowledge and on record anyway.
The crippled Liberal Government is in a desperate and stalled mode. They gave 4.6 billion in concessions to N.D.P. demands just to hold N.D.P. voting loyalty. This is criminal and not legislation by debate as Canadians have a right to expect. It smacks more of blackmail.
Please shut down the non-working commons now and allow Canadians to vote.
Sincerely, A. Robinson
Surely, others with a little nerve could post similar appeals. This note could use some tuning. Help yourself, or pick your own tac. BendGovernment.blogspot.com
