Da Youth Iz Down With Surveillance

And the kids have a point.  The Internet used to be for porn; now it's also for spying. Stalking  old girl-friends, digging up embarrasing tweets from enemy politicians,tracking your husband's movements through the GPS on his cell-phone, using honeypots to trick pedos into revealing their IP addresses.  Little brother spies on little brother.  The Corporate World spies on the Consumer. 

The younger you are the more you have grown up in this reality.  So why not allow the nation's security service to do what Walmart's already doing?  And, really, if you want be radical and get away with it?  Well fuck don't brag about your crimes on Facebook. 

Levant Lawsuit Lurches Towards Conclusion

Buckets has emerged from cryo-sleep to give us this post.  After no less than two computer forensics companies declared that Richard Warman's computer had not even been turned on the day of the infamous "Cools Post", the judge has decided to put an end to at least this portion of the discovery phase.  Don't worry if you don't know what that means in detail, but the implications for Ezra's defense are pretty clear; he accused Warman of posting the Cools material, and his case relies on Warman's having done so.  Since there is no evidence of that on Warman's computers ("It's not there,"says the decision), we may assume with a good deal of confidence that when the case finally gets to a courtroom, Ezra will lose again.  And badly.

CPC Bounce Begone

Grenier notes that Nanos' latest has some actual voting intention numbers rather than their typical index thing:

Nanos's weekly index report has voting intentions numbers in it: 35% LPC, 31% CPC, 24% NDP, 6% GPC, 3% BQ (pg 22) http://t.co/VDSJUwPihr
— Éric Grenier (@308dotcom) January 28, 2015

Here's a cap from the NANOS website that shows the relevant trendline:

(Click on it to make it bigger.)

Pretty clearly the CPC "security bounce" has faded.  Whether it returns is probably more dependant on what happens on the home from than overseas.  I just can't see Harper and Co., try as they might, turning the country into a bunch of rootin' tootin' cowboys over the deployment of a few hundred of our guys in Iraq.  I can see them milking another "terrorist" attack.  Here's hoping for a peaceful year.

Fox News North Deal Stalls As Teneycke Balks?

From Canadaland:

Multiple sources tell CANADALAND that Sun News Network (SNN), the Quebecor-owned cable news channel that launched in 2011, is on the verge of closing.

Couple of weird things.  One is this:

As recently as three weeks ago, sources say that SNN management told several employees that negotiations with Zoomer looked promising and that a deal was close. But a dispute over potential severance packages for SNN executives (including Teneycke) who would not continue on with the network in the event of an acquisition has led to an impasse. 

If I am reading it correctly, the deal has gone sideways because Teneycke (among others) is demanding a bigger payout.  In other words, if his financial demands aren't met, he's threatening to stay.

The second is: who is The Source or sources?  Well shit one of them might be Ezra "The Source" Levant himself!  He was on the Canadaland podcast today...and suddenly this is news.  Did he blab, advertently or inadvertently? (talking on his cell in the john, for example?)

As a last note, I hope they hold up long enough for the CBSC to process my complaint.  It would be an end most fitting if these guys' last act as a news network was to run an apology for screwing up.

Gruending On John A. & Clearing The Plains

Since James Daschuk's Clearing The Plains came out last year Canadian's have been forced to reassess  John A. MacDonald's place in the pantheon of Canadian heros.  Among a fair bit of back-and-forth on the subject, Dennis Gruending's short piece stands out.  My favorite bit from it:

In Macdonald’s case, his attitude about the inferiority of indigenous people was commonplace at the time, but the scope of his actions presents a problem for his defenders. Did he use starvation and near starvation as a weapon against indigenous people in Western Canada whose communities had been decimated by loss of the bison? Daschuk says he did and that the deliberate withholding of food to hungry people led to hundreds of deaths by starvation, and also created the conditions for a tuberculosis epidemic in indigenous communities.

I have heard no worthy refutation of Daschuk’s claim.  In fact, he has been awarded the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for a Canadian book of history judged to have made the most significant contribution to an understanding of our past.  This is highly ironic but it also means that Daschuk has written a good book.

Incidentally, on the whole notion of  presentism; all we have to do to refute that charge in this case is to find a few folk back in John A.'s day who might have voiced moral objections to his policy.  And indeed we do find them, among the Canadian People themselves.  Apparently, MacDonald stopped just short of starving the native population to death due to worries this might cause a scandal in Eastern Canada.  From this we can conclude that at least some people back in the 1880s had qualms about refusing to provide readily available food to whole populations.  If they were allowed their doubts about John A.'s policy, so too can we be.

LPC Potential Nominee For Thunder Bay-Rainy River Is Very Hot

This is of course irrelevant to reasoned political discourse, but I thought I would mention it here. 

 I'd vote for her.  In a minute.  

Break The Law And Aussie Cops Will Make You Listen To Nickelback!

Oi Oi Oi Indeed. 

Should I Join "Ello!"?

Got an invite yesterday from some dude named "Lucian".  I've heard its like Facebook for hipsters, & with hotter women.  On the other hand, I was in one of my favorite Scarborough blue-collar pubs the other day and overheard some young fellow bragging about how he had just signed up.  He works on a City of T.O. road repair crew, and his nickname is "Pylon".

Notes On Obama's 2015 State Of The Union Address

Are you kidding me?  I'm not watching that crap.  You people think I'm stupid?  I gotta life.  I'm watching Guardians of The Galaxy for the 15th time, to maybe be followed by Godzilla 2014, for the 22nd time.  As for the speech itself, social media says The Big O is acting pretty Liberal.  Go Big O! The rich are just a giant ATM that the rest of us should be able to withdraw from free of charge.  Tax 'em up the fucking wazoo!

John Baird Pelted With Eggs: The Video

...is here.  And it is good.
Baird 'egged' in West Bank from Sasa Petricic on Vimeo.

I might poach a few tonight in celebration.  Or no: in sadness at a Palestinian people who have never missed a chance to miss a chance.  Just kidding: in celebration.

It Was Like Walking Through An Abandoned Walmart...

Target Canada has closed its doors.  I won't have much to remember them by, because they never had the product  I went to there to purchase, even when it was in their latest flyer.  And the staff seemed to be playing a store-wide game of hide & seek.  But I will think warmly of them whenever I throw my coat on the coat-stand I bought that one time.  I went there looking for pillows, but they had no pillows. They did however have this nice coat rack near where the pillows should have been, which I bought, and have been mightily pleased with ever since. 

Ezra / 8 or: Corbella Corrects

Licia Corbella has very quietly walked back her earlier figure for Ezra's court costs when he went up against the AHRC:

His offices were never bombed, but he was forced to spend about $100,000 defending himself before the kangaroo court of the human rights commission after Calgary Imam Syed Soharwardy lodged a complaint against him.

Worth pointing out that that figure is likely bullshit as well.  But it is at least 8 times less bullshit than the estimate Corbella gave previously.

That is all.

Ezra X 8

Licia Corbella has a pretty bad piece up, about how anyone who didn't publish the Charlie Hebdo covers after the shootings in Paris ought to go get fitted for their Burka, and so forth.  She reiterates the same old nonsense about Ezra Levant's being the bravest of men, etc., and then drops this:

The only publisher of the Danish cartoons at the time was Ezra Levant in his now-defunct publication, The Western Standard. His offices were never bombed, but he was forced to spend about $800,000 defending himself before the kangaroo court of the human rights commission after Calgary Imam Syed Soharwardy lodged a complaint against him.

Now, Ezra's claims re his HRC costs were always dubious, but Corbella manages to wildly inflate them even more.  Here the amount quoted, taken from his book Shakedown, is $100,000.  Here, again, Ezra claims $100,000.  And here again, same figure.  Be interested to know if Ezra provided Ms. Corbella with an upwardly revised amount, or if she just pulled it out of the air.

Martyred For Crap? And Other Reflections On The Shootings In Paris

Some media outlets have decided to reproduce the cartoons that got Charlie Hebdo in Dutch with the Islamists.  Some have suggested that they were just playful satire , although  this one looks like nothing more than crude race baiting.  If it were up to me I probably wouldn't do it; we after all have soldiers fighting in Muslim countries, and I'm not sure it  helps their mission if Canadian newsies insist on displaying this kind of stuff.

On the other hand, some feel reproducing the images is essential to telling the story behind this horrible crime.  Fair enough.

But one argument for showing the images needs addressing: that those who choose not to do so are acting out of cowardice.  Dan Gardner puts it like this:

@Bigcitylib2 Yes. I am. I was in the thick of newsrooms in the 2005 debate and that fear is exactly what underlay all the rationalizations.
— Dan Gardner (@dgardner) January 8, 2015

OK, so lets just respond by noting that any  journalist who actually fears retaliation here, in Canada, is smoking something.   And anyone who is publishing because they think it makes them braver than their non-publishing fellows should really get over themselves.

Similarly, if any news making decisions in 2005 were actually driven by fear of retaliation, than those people must have started believing the nonsense in their own papers.  And no when Ezra Levant published the cartoons back then he was not being "brave"; the only practical effect of his acts was to increase the amount of hate speech directed towards Calgary area mosques.

And of course the effects of republishing these cartoons will most likely be similar.  Already we have Christie Blatchford praising a deranged lunatic:

The day Charlie Hebdo was attacked, I had a story in the paper about an Ontario man named Eric Brazau being jailed another year for, at least in part, spouting off on a Toronto subway train about the Qur’an and Islam.

Yeah, Blatch, the other part of the reason he's serving time is for criminal harassment.  But in the wake of the shootings lets make these type of folks feel justified, shall we?

Gotta Get Me One Of Them Aztec Death Whistles

...'cuz it really does sound like the ‘scream of a thousand corpses’.  I can see these things being a great Halloween novelty, or maybe a stocking stuffer around Xmas.

I Am The Chicken, And You Are My Prey

Noted without comment, other than the obvious: never...ever..mess with an angry chicken.

Ezra Tells Scottish Police To Fuck Off on Twitter, Deletes Tweet In "Shit Flying Out Pant-Leg" Panic

But you can't find it online anymore, just some of the responses to it and, thankfully, a screen-cap made by one of Ezra's avid fans.

And so 2015 begins as 2014 ended, with Ezra in trouble.

Source.

Happy New Year From Julian Fantino!

The Veterans Affairs department says some veterans are exaggerating their injuries to continue receiving financial benefits from the government and to avoid joining the work force.

Rumour has it he won't run again, the notion being that if he planned to he would have announced already.

I'm not sure if the CPC would be better with or without him.  Most governments aren't really looking for a "Minister of Being A Douche-bag To Veterans", but this version has gotten so bent from its so-called Conservative Principles that they may find something useful about the guy.