Because You Were Worried About Poor Ezra Starving…
We thought we’d better update you on the state of his fundraising.
You will recall that more than a month ago, with a grand flourish of URQ trumpets and choruses of “Hosanna” rising from the ranks of the moronosphere, Ezra Levant announced the creation of the UNION OF BLOGGERS, whose purpose was to provide “…Canadian bloggers with the legal, financial and political resources to resist baseless attacks on their freedom of expression.” My emphasis. We’re certainly all in favour of that here, and we tried to post a comment on Ezra’s new UNION OF BLOGGERS site expressing our support.
Oddly, that comment never appeared. I think it might have been because we also asked politely why Ezra was asking people to send money to a “UNION” that had no membership criteria, no Board, no Executive, no posted plan or objectives, no description of how our money would be spent or accounted for, no description of how leadership will be selected, and not a hint about how its “members” will participate in this “UNION”. You know, minor details like that.
Those questions were never allowed to appear – on a site allegedly promoting “Freedom of Expression”. In fact, the only commentary visible on this site promoting “Freedom of Expression” is fawning praise for Ezra. And, of course, there’s a paypal contribution page. All that other boring stuff was secondary, but you can send him money.
Well, I tell ya, URQs are funny folks. They didn’t seem to mind sending their bucks to Ezra without a clue how it was going to used or reported on, and they didn’t seem to mind joining a “Union” while completely ignorant of its objectives, structure, management, governance, accountability, membership, or operation. And they seemed to think there was something rude about the Bunker’s humble inquiry. In fact, some of them got downright snarky: we were accused of everything from anti-Semitism to being islamofascinazihomocommunatheists.
We Bunkerians being the agreeable and reasonable sorts we are, we thought we’d just wait and see. After all, it takes time to set up an organization. And Ezra said he “hoped” to have “something in place” by the end of February.
So I check in this morning and see how the ole “UNION” is shaping up.
Well, first and most important – the Paypal Page is working fine. You can still send Ezra money without a glitch. I know you were all worried about that.
And that’s good, because that’s still apparently the only way you can “join” this “UNION”. Under the “JOIN!” tab, the site reads only: “We’re currently working out our terms of membership. Sign up with your details now, and we’ll contact you when we’re ready for you to join us!”
Ah. So still no memberhip information. How about information on how the “UNION” is going to be structured, governed, and managed? “The Union of Bloggers is currently developing a formal governance structure.” That was on February 4th. On February 12, Ezra announces his goal of “putting in place a governance structure, financial controls, terms of membership and other basics. Over the next few days I hope to recruit a board of directors — small enough to make decisions, but broad enough to have a variety of views on it.” Nothing yet, apparently.
However, the comments section is loaded announcements from people who’ve already signed up, even in the absence of any meaningful information about what they’re forking over their money to.
And, mirabile dictu, they have ANOTHER opportunity to stuff money into poor Ezra’s no doubt reluctant pockets – his website (not the “UNION” website), features yet ANOTHER paypal link to yet ANOTHER “Poor Suffering Me” fund to support Ezra, also described as “not a registered non-profit organization.”
Now, I hope no-one interprets this as criticism of Ezra. I love his shtick, and I have nothing but respect for a man whose grasp of his admirers’ credulity is so finely tuned that he can continue to extract contributions from them while boasting about how well he’s doing. My hat’s off to the dude, and This Way To The Egress.
We’ll try to keep you up to date on the state of the “UNION”.
Send me $1,000 and E. will send you a link to a website claiming that you are the 1,000,000 visitor and you have just won a million dollars.
I’m glad there’s still a PayPal link. I think I’ll donate today’s proceeds from my sales of crack to school children to the cause. I’m sure I can get a receipt.
Unfortunately not, Tig. He states quite specifically that he can’t issue receipts for your generous contribution. But go ahead. Now that the pending lawsuits against Blazing Cat Fur and Mike Brock and Canadian Scentinel – you know, those vile assaults that gave those luminaries such a delightful frisson of faux-victimhood – seem to have evaporated, I’m sure Ezra will find something noble and heroic to spend your money on.
Well, I’m being sued for managing a wiki (Site A) by that Wayne Crookes fella. The wiki listed candidates running for the council of the Green Party of Canada (GPC). Many people could edit the wiki. Most candidates had their own sites as well, so the wiki had links back to their sites. Well, one of those sites (Site B), which I had no control over, had a link to another site (Site C), which had some content he claims to find offensive, though I still don’t know what that was. Many months after the link between Site B and Site C was no longer there, I was sued because my site linked to a site which linked to a site Crookes’ found offensive.
I have no money to defend myself.
The owner of Site B has not been sued.
The content of Site C holds fairly tame commentary (by our standards) concerning political matters within the GPC. I am not the author of it.
Crookes also sued Google for this blog:
http://greencompostheap.blogspot.com/
The entire blog has been suspended from the face of the planet over the contents of just one post… without, I believe, even a court order. The post seemed to be pointing out that there are better ways to solve disputes than suing people for libel, especially when right-of-reply is so easy online.
He is also suing lawyer Michael Geist following similar logic, and Toronto Centre Green candidate Chris Tindal. And more…
And, of course, Harper is threatening to sue Dion et al for online content…
I look forward to Ezra giving us all a hand.
Ezra? Hello…..?
I didn’t know Geist and Tindal were being sued, or if I had, I’d forgotten.
==
On another topic, I waited to long and can’t reply anymore here:
http://www.stageleft.info/2008/02/16/so-what-do-you-think-makes-a-good-political-blog/
A good blog leaves comments open,despite the risk of trackback spam, on the offchance that someone from the future wants to comment on them
We’re supposed to be worried that poor, persecuted Ezra might be starving? How come no one sent me the memo, Balbulican?
And by the way … would it be irresponsible for me to comment that he looks rather well-fed for someone who might be starving? It would be irresponsible not to!
I’m not the least bit worried about poor persecuted Ezra either starving or getting by – he’s got a … well ….. er …… a skill set that seems to be serving him well. Not to mention the lines of willing
dim bulbssupporters willing to come to his aid.What’s real fun is to track some of his acolytes to their lairs, and engage in polite discussion with them about Ezra’s apparent non-progress in actually developing an “organization” to connect to the cash he’s raising. They don’t seem to think there’s anything at all unusual about it.
This is even better than Ezra’s Western Standard Writing Contest that cost $50.00 to enter! First Prize was having your essay be published in the Western Standard!!!
Whoopee!!!
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