Biting political satire!

I did what I could. My skills are modest at best.

Donald Trump in the iconic Benito Mussolini SI SI SI billboard

No but seriously, dude’s a straight-up fascist, and a big chunk of your country is creaming itself with joy at the prospect.

When President Trump takes office, I fully expect that I’ll be marked an enemy of the state and I’ll have to beat a hasty retreat, all because I ‘shopped something mean and am jealous and a yooge loser.

Biting political satire!
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John Oliver on mental illness and the gun lovers using it as cover

Every time there’s another senseless act of mass-murder by a gunman with easy access to guns and ammo and a heaping helping of aggrieved entitlement, that’s when everyone in the political sphere suddenly remembers that mental health issues exist. Not that they often even intersect — just the mere fact that the guy (and it’s always a guy, and almost always white) killed a bunch of folks doesn’t actually say anything about their mental health. In fact, the Oregon shooter a few days ago passed a psych eval before his mass-murder. And yet everyone’s quick to say the problem here isn’t easy access to guns and ammo, but rather the murderer’s mental health.

John Oliver takes apart this situational and blatantly self-interested concern about mental health readily. Not that it’s hard, but nobody in the media is doing it, what with vested interests and an entire 33% of your country who thinks “a well regulated militia” means owning thirty guns in a misguided effort to try to take on the US government because you don’t like what some Republican has told you is going to happen to your gun rights.

John Oliver on mental illness and the gun lovers using it as cover

Labour Day

On this Labour Day (or Labor if you prefer), remember how your day off came into being.

In Canada, in 1872, a parade was held by the Toronto Typographical Union in support of reducing the work week to 58 hours. George Brown, their boss, had police charge these unionists with “conspiracy”, resulting in 24 arrests. Another parade was held on September 3rd in protest of the arrests, and eventually the laws criminalizing union activity were repealed. Canada set their Labour Day to the first Monday of September in 1880, and it’s a national holiday.

In the States, after the Haymarket Massacre in 1886 where a number of workers were killed by police on May 3rd, and unionists rallied the next day to push for an eight hour work week and to protest the deaths of the workers the day before, acts which were widely speculated to have been done by the police at the behest of the corporate interests. The protest ended in riot when some unknown assailant threw dynamite into the crowd, killing seven officers and four civilians — an act that resulted in arrests of 24 anarchists, but is frequently speculated to have been committed by an anti-union provocateur. No bomber was ever brought to justice.

While most other countries had May 1 as their labour day to coincide with (or *be*) International Workers’ Day, Grover Cleveland feared May 1 would be used to commemorate the events of the Haymarket Massacre, so he set it to the same day as Canada’s instead. Unions continued to push for a 40-hr work week, and eventually won it — of course, unless you’re salaried, then you’re expected to work or be on call basically all the time without extra compensation.

Remember that people literally died for your labour rights, and that even despite the massive income disparity and corporate-tilted playing field, you might have it even worse if it weren’t for unions and labour rights advocates.

Labour Day

The Conservative Party of Canada's platform has some objectively harmful religiously-motivated policies

So, the official party platform for the CPC as of February 2014 apparently has a bunch of real turds in amongst their planks.

Given that Canada’s heading into an election within the next two months (and given that this election might be the last I can actually vote in, despite being a tax-paying citizen), I want to make sure that my vote and my voice counts. The talking points are that we should vote on policy, and here’s their policy.

A good way to amplify my voice is to use what platform I have to inform people of some of the CPC’s official policies, e.g. the various regressions they’re actively trying to make happen despite being the party in power over one of the most progressive countries in the world.
Continue reading “The Conservative Party of Canada's platform has some objectively harmful religiously-motivated policies”

The Conservative Party of Canada's platform has some objectively harmful religiously-motivated policies

Please don't deny me the right to vote in my country of citizenship, Harper

Donald Sutherland is publicly airing grievances against a Canadian law change that directly impacts me as well. On May 4, 2014, the Ontario Superior Court voided a law preventing expatriates of more than five years from voting, on the grounds that it violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Ontario Court of Appeal, on government appeal, overturned this decision.

We live in Canada all the time we can. Our family house is here. Professionally, I still have to think twice when I say “out” or “house.” I have to restrain myself from saying “eh?”. In 1978, that’s nearly 40 years ago, the Canadian government made me an Officer of the Order of Canada. The Governor-General gave me the Governor-General’s Award a while back. I am on your Walk of Fame in Toronto. My sense of humour is Canadian. But I can’t vote.

Continue reading “Please don't deny me the right to vote in my country of citizenship, Harper”

Please don't deny me the right to vote in my country of citizenship, Harper

Twitter blocked in Turkey; activists graffiti alternate DNS workaround

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has instated a ban of Twitter ostensibly over concerns that it hosts pornography, but from all appearances actually in response to repeated leaks of damning recordings of government officials.

However, the way that the ban is implemented is very rudimentary — the government has forced all ISPs in the country to remove twitter.com from their DNS servers.

In response to this ban, activists have been graffitiing Google’s DNS servers:

Graffiti on a turkish wall reading 'DNS: 8.8.8.8 Alternatif: 8.8.4.4'

Picture obtained here, can’t find the original source — if you do, let me know.

It’s not clear how long this workaround will last, but there are other avenues. One could, for instance, switch DNS to OpenNIC, or if changing DNS no longer provides enough of a workaround and these ISPs are forced by the government to shut down all traffic to Twitter’s servers, then you could instead connect to Tor or some other anonymizing VPN or proxy service.

When people complain that they’re being silenced for being blocked or moderated on a blog, I have to laugh — that’s not in any way an abrogation of your freedom of speech. Having all access to the internet cut off by a totalitarian government, on the other hand, is most decidedly one, and is most decidedly something we all must fight.

Twitter blocked in Turkey; activists graffiti alternate DNS workaround

You can take our gun columnists, but you'll never take our freedom!

Here’s an interesting little situation that’s come up recently. Apparently, a gun columnist by the name of Dick Metcalf questioned the wisdom of gun rights advocates demanding there be absolutely no limits to the “Right to Bear Arms” by arguing that a sixteen hour course for a concealed carry permit was reasonable. As a result, he was fired from his column with Guns And Ammo, and now his career of 40 years has evaporated.

Just days after the column appeared, Mr. Metcalf said, his editor called to tell him that two major gun manufacturers had said “in no uncertain terms” that they could no longer do business with InterMedia Outdoors, the company that publishes Guns & Ammo and co-produces his TV show, if he continued to work there. He was let go immediately.

“I’ve been vanished, disappeared,” Mr. Metcalf, 67, said in an interview last month on his gun range here, about 100 miles north of St. Louis, surrounded by snow-blanketed fields and towering grain elevators. “Now you see him. Now you don’t.”

This is almost identical to what happened with that Duck Dynasty jackass being suspended by A&E for saying stupid homophobic bullshit, only that story had a “happy” ending — right-wingers successfully rallied to demand that A&E reinstate Duck Dynasty because HOW DARE THEY TAKE AWAY HIS FREEDOM OF SPEECH by… exercising their own freedom to choose what gets aired on their network. And A&E caved, mistaking the conservative outcry for something actually approaching a morally justifiable standpoint.

I anxiously await the protest by Sarah Palin, Brian Brown, and the whole host of conservative loonies to demand that Metcalf’s column be reinstated. I further await the people running interference on the Duck Dynasty issue as being a matter of freedom of speech to say something, anything, about this guy’s column about guns.

You can take our gun columnists, but you'll never take our freedom!

"Smokey Joe" Barton's long history of antiscience propaganda

Remember how Joe Barton apologized to British Petroleum for the government’s mild reproach and slap on the wrist after their oil spill destroyed the Gulf of Mexico and created a dead zone that will last for decades? Turns out he was one of the bigger names involved in the disinformation campaign waged by the tobacco industry.

Those of us who weren’t old enough or politically aware enough might not have known this fact about Barton, or might have let that information slip into the memory hole; we might otherwise think that this antiscience campaign waged by the oil industry against climate scientists is a unique phenomenon. Spreading this information about Barton’s and others’ tactics is therefore vital.

Normally, ad hominem is a fallacy. However, establishing a pattern of behaviour and modifying one’s treatment of or trust in another person based on such patterns of behaviour is entirely reasonable and rational. Seeing this man (and others, like Boehner) repeat the same tactics that worked so well in forestalling public acceptance of the truth behind tobacco’s deleterious health effects, used in a fight with vast and far-reaching consequences about the deleterious effects we as a species are having on our environment, is rather galling, but definitely useful information. It means we are forearmed against these tactics and can counter them. It means we are aware in advance of the fact that the people with their hands on the levers of political power in this country are not principled actors, and that they are more than willing to lie about reality for a quick buck to everyone else’s detriment.

"Smokey Joe" Barton's long history of antiscience propaganda

Skepticon: Not my Canadian pride!

Debbie Goddard fired a shot across Canada’s bow, viciously savaging us during her talk at Skepticon where she related her deconversion. She said — I am horrified to even have to type this; someone fetch my couch! — that we’re “not really foreign.”

More specifically, she related her experience visiting Oslo, where she was in “for the first time in a really foreign country, not like Canada”.

The GALL. The unmitigated NERVE!!! What a HORRIBLE thing to say to a Canadian! I cannot stand for this. No Canadian could. Now, on behalf of all of Canada, I am forced to apologize!

Wait, no, not apologize. Explain. Prepare yourselves, I’m about to Cansplain all over this.
Continue reading “Skepticon: Not my Canadian pride!”

Skepticon: Not my Canadian pride!