Christopher di Armani.com

Every day there is another asinine law passed, and every day there is another story of how some bureaucrat has abused a citizen because some rule buried in a regulation handbook says he can.

John Stossel has made a career out of exploring all of this stupidity, and his latest entry into the absurd is called “Illegal Everything.”

If you think you’ve seen every bureaucratic atrocity imaginable, think again.  Stossel has found some even I had no idea were happening!

From criminalizing children for setting up a lemonade stand, to the Midway police chief’s absurd justification for attacking the children, to fining a man $2,000 per day for having the wrong type of tree on his property and demanding a couple holding a home bible study to have a Conditional Use Permit.

Then there’s the man who was sentenced to 8 years in prison for the crime of importing lobster tails in bags instead of boxes.  Sound absurd? It is, but that doesn’t make it untrue.

As I’ve said many times before, Bureaucrat’s Rule #1 says “The Rules are more important than People.”  When governments take that to an extreme, all of society suffers.

When bureaucrats believe they know what’s best for you and me and wish to impose their believes upon us, nothing good can come from it.

C.S. Lewis once wrote something very profound on this subject:

“One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons—marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who use them, he has taken the wrong turning.”

Indeed.  Both America and Canada have definitely “taken the wrong turning.”

I was horrified by some of the examples John Stossel cites in this program.  I’m sure you will be too.  Read More »

Bureaucrat’s Rule #1, Lemonade Freedom | Comments (1)

Texting while driving is a skill that must be developed if one is to successfully navigate the new mandatory texting and driving test.

Watch the video below to see what I mean.

Then watch the second video for a serious message about the consequences of paying more attention to your smart phone than the road…

 Read More »

Common Sense | Comments (0)

William Swinimer’s story shocks me, not because I can’t believe it happened, but because of how the vice-principal of Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin, N.S. characterized William’s T-shirt.

The moronic school bureaucrat called the T-shirt offensive and was nothing more than “hate talk.”

The language on this so-called “offensive” T-shirt?

“Life is Wasted Without Jesus”

Yeah, that just screams of hatred, doesn’t it?

Perhaps in the minds of idiots it does, but anyone with the common sense God gave a gnat will comprehend that William Swinimer is merely exercising his Right to Freedom of Speech and his Right to Freedom of Religion.

I guess he should have worn a T-shirt promoting one of the “approved” religions, although the vice-principal didn’t seem willing to identify which religions would be okay to have on a T-shirt.

That said, I can’t imagine any student would have been suspended from school for 5 days if they had, for example, worn a T-shirt that said “Life is wasted without Allah.”  No, the school would never have dared attack a Muslim student in this fashion.

Interestingly, the school’s Staff List has been removed from the school’s website.  A web search shows that it existed at http://www.fhcs.ednet.ns.ca/about-us/staff-list/ until recently but has since been taken down.

I guess the vice-principal is willing to issue a suspension for wearing a T-shirt but the he or she is too cowardly to stand up and express his or her rationale for it.  Even worse, the school board is protecting this yahoo by removing the staff list from the internet.

Gotta love gutless God-hating bureaucrats.

What I do love about Willian Swinimer is his response to the stupid edict of the so-far unnamed and protected vice-principal.

“I believe this is worth standing up for — it’s not just standing up for religious rights, it’s standing up for my rights as a Canadian citizen; for freedom of speech, freedom of religion. I don’t think this is right.”

Swinimer has worn the Jesus T-shirt every day since his series of in-school and at-home suspensions began and will wear it again when he returns to school after his 5-day at-home suspension ends.

Do you think this bureaucritter will have the backbone to carry out his or her threat to suspend William for the rest of the school year for wearing his Jesus shirt again?

If the comments of South Shore Regional School Board superintendant Nancy Pynch-Worthylake are anything to go by, they probably will.

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Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech | Comments (6)

As you no doubt recall, Katey Montague decided to take a step back from political activism because she felt the cost was simply too high for her to continue.

After watching her father endure 7 years of trials that ended in a prison sentence and the impending seizure of the Montague family home by the Ontario government who can blame her for not wanting the same fate for herself?

Bruce Montague stood on principle against an atrocious law that turns law-abiding firearm owners into criminals.  He paid an extremely high price for that stand, and is still paying that price as the Ontario government seeks to extort $50,000 from him in exchange for “allowing” him to keep the home he built with his own bare hands.

I’ll be writing more about this disgusting abuse of government power in the weeks ahead, but suffice it to say that the Montague family will never agree to pay off government extortionists.

The reason I bring up the Montague family’s ongoing persecution and Katey’s decision to step back from exercising her Right to Freedom of Speech is highlighted by the experience of Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

As you may recall, Wilders is an outspoken critic of radical Islam and the failed multiculturalism experiment that has left his nation torn in two.

Wilders has just published his autobiography in which he highlights the incredible cost he and his family has paid because of his very public stand against radical Islam.

Because Geert Wilders dared exercised his Right to Freedom of Speech he must now live under 24-hour police protection.

Why?

Because proponents of Islam, the so-called “Religion of Peace”, have repeatedly threatened his life and have attempted to kill him at least once that we know of.

“I live in a government safe house, heavily protected and bulletproof. Since November 2004, when a Muslim murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh for the crime of offending Islam, I have been surrounded by police guards and stripped of nearly all personal privacy. I am driven every day from the safe house to my office in the Dutch Parliament building in armoured police cars with sirens and flashing blue lights. I wear a bulletproof jacket when I speak in public.”

Freedom and Liberty never come cheap, yet so few pay the actual cost of defending them.

When courageous men like Geert Wilders and Bruce Montague give up everything to defend our Rights and Freedoms, the very least we can do is say “Thank You.”

Yours in Liberty,

Christopher di Armani

Freedom of Speech | Comments (4)

I was actually shocked to come across a story about how the NBC network has fired three [alleged] reporters for doctoring and/or fabricating the transcript of George Zimmerman’s 911 call after the shooting of Treyvon Martin.

Lillia Luciano, pictured here, is the third person fired for attempting to manufacture a story, instead of doing their job: reporting the news.

The first to get the axe was an unnamed NBC producer responsible for doctoring the 911 tape, which NBC insiders have attempted to characterize as a “mistake”, not a deliberate attempt to mislead the public.

That’s a nice theory, but what else can you call editing the 911 call to make it look like George Zimmerman is the one who brought up race when he did not?  That is a deliberate and calculated altering of the facts to fit a preconceived version of events.

Most people would call it lying.

Here is what Lillia Luciano wrote, followed by the truth:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or on drugs or something. He’s got his hand in his waistband. And he’s a black male.
Dispatcher: Are you following him?
Zimmerman: Yeah.
Dispatcher: Okay, we don’t need you to do that.

But here’s how George Zimmerman’s 911 call really happened:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he white, black, or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.

The courageous producer who manufactured the lie and the two reporters who fabricated the 911 call transcript to fit their preconceived notion of what went on all need to go back to kindergarten to learn what right and wrong mean, since they all clearly missed that lesson.

 Read More »

Censorship, Stupid Human Tricks | Comments (1)

If you have never heard of Geert Wilders then I urge you to watch this brief video and learn about the man who has sacrificed his personal freedom by speaking out against the threat of radical Islam.

Wilders has been elected to the Dutch Parliament as the founder and leader of the political party Partij voor de Vrijheid or Party for Freedom for the past 8 years and is unwavering in his fight to rid his country of the threat of radical Islam.

He has been taken to court repeatedly for his public comments on Islam and has been cleared of all hate speech charges.  Those court battles have been massive victories for the Right to Freedom of Speech in The Netherlands and have made him a lightning rod for the lunatic left’s assault on freedom both in that country and around the world.

Wilders has just written his autobiography (with a forward by Mark Steyn) called “Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me” that highlights what he has gone through as a result of speaking out publicly against Islam.  He now lives under 24-hour police protection because of all the death threats he receives.

Geert Wilders is living proof that exercising our Rights and Freedoms often comes at an extremely high price.  In his and his family’s case it is personal freedom that has been the cost.  I cannot imagine living how he does as a result of his determination but I applaud his courageous stand for Freedom of Speech in defense of his country.

Freedom of Speech, Radical Islam | Comments (3)

According to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada Keith Ashfield and Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, the Stephen Harper Conservative government proposes to amend the Fisheries Act.

An article posted April 24 by Margo McDiarmid, CBC Environment Unit, quoted Gerry Ritz as telling reporters on a conference call that farmers and landowners have been pushing for changes to the Fisheries Act for years because it’s too restrictive.

“We have heard from Canadians across the country that the current rules protecting fish and fish habitat go well beyond their intended conservation goals, bordering sometimes on the bizarre,” Ritz was quoted as saying.

He explained there are lots of examples of the current Fisheries Act preventing activities like “farmers flushing out their irrigation canals… or cottagers prohibited from keeping up their properties.”

He said that the proposed new law “will adopt a common sense approach to managing real and significant threats to fisheries and the habitat that supports them while minimizing the restrictions on everyday activities that have little to no impact.”

As for waterways like small streams or wetlands that have no commercial fisheries, Ritz hinted the job of protecting them could be downloaded to provinces and territories, noted the CBC article.

It’s way past due for government to prescribe a “common sense approach”. And the first thing I recommend is that the Harper government makes provisions to rein in and rehabilitate the armed, jackboot, badge-bearing bullies who have too much dictatorial, discretionary power and rule by sheer force and threats.

Front-line enforcement officers should learn to make sensible decisions and exercise good manners and common decency when dealing with the public.

Otherwise, the government should fire the whole lot and start over.

One day, some years back, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) lost its fish and had to lay the blame on somebody–anybody.

My neighbour, who lived two blocks down 4th Avenue, called me, a freelance writer, to bring my tape recorder and attend a meeting he had arranged with the DFO Chief Enforcement Officer and Steve Smith (phonetic), a DFO Field Supervisor.

Nobody in his right mind would ever go into a closed-door government meeting alone, especially one that carried the potential to be confrontational.  Read More »

Abuse of Authority, Bureaucrat’s Rule #1 | Comments (2)

The Christopher di Armani-produced Rights and Freedoms Bulletin of April 28, 2012 carried a frustrating article about the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) declaring war on British Columbia’s Fraser Valley farmers.

The ditches the farmers dug to drain their land have been designated “fish habitat”.

The heavy-handed, gun-toting, jackboot boys told the farmers they can no longer clean their ditches or farm within 30 metres of the ditches, regardless that no fish will ever inhabit the drainage channels.

If farmers are forbidden from dredging their ditches, their properties will flood, thus raising the water table and greatly encumbering their ability to graze cattle and grow crops that feed their families, neighbours and communities which are inhabited by those jackboot bureaucrats.

Further, Fisheries decided it would take control over any bridges and other crossings and has demanded that farmers plant trees along the banks so the bureaucrats can declare the land unfarmable when the work is finished.

The land guardians have no way to appeal Fisheries’ overzealous application of the federal Fisheries Act which has been a thorn in the side of every land-user in Canada for the last eon.

“The DFO is taking this land from these farmers without any concern about their livelihoods or understanding about agriculture,” said Jordan Bateman, Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s British Columbia Director, whose organization stepped up to the plate to give assistance.

“Why are we spending thousands or millions of dollars to employ Fisheries and Oceans bureaucrats to persecute in-land farmers?”

Good question.  Read More »

Abuse of Authority, Agenda 21, Land Issues, Property Rights, United Nations | Comments (0)