I’m writing this blog post in green to show my solidarity with Iran

No, I’m not, that’s stupid.

But tonnes of people have turned their Twitter avatars green in solidarity with the Iranian demonstrators.  The only way for symbolism to be any emptier is if you were to pray for them – then you’d literally be doing nothing.

Don’t get me wrong on one point, I do think the demonstrators are the lesser of two evils.  Far, far lesser.  And I really hope they win.  Free people make good markets – I’ve had some Iranian clients in the past and they paid full price and got all the extras.  A brilliant people.

But you don’t change the world with St. Patrick’s day gimmicks.  If you’re the Iranian national soccer team, well ok, maybe then it matters.  But for you and me – who are we kidding?

But there might be something we can do – the Huffington Post had an interesting article with some suggestions and one stands out:

Don’t have cash? There are ways you can help for free without ever leaving your computer. You can create a proxy or Twitter relay to help keep those ever-important Iranian Twitterers connected and informing the world about the situation in Iran.

I’ve looked at the code, but it’s outside of my field, so if you know your SQL – please check out the Twitter Proxy thing and let me know – is it legit?

Filed under: Life , Green, Iran, twitter

Yes, you can get drunk off of Purell

There was this series on the local CBC radio this week about ‘Concrete Indians’ or ‘Urban Indians’, something like that.  Indians who live in cities.  And they were asking why it is that natives move to town rather than stay on reserve.

Why?  Here’s a classic example of why – Yesterday, Health Canada admitted delaying delivery of Purell to swine-flu-ravaged native reserves because they were worried that the locals might drink it.

It’s something straight out of your cracker aunt’s mouth.

Now the basic facts are true, you can get wrecked off of Purell – but it’s a safe drunk, or at least safer than huffing gasoline. And no doubt people on northern reserves want to drink – bad enough that it’s Manitoba, but tack on ‘northern’, ‘rural’, and ‘Indian reserve’ to the description and who could blame them?

But the premises are all wrong, first that hand sanitizer is going to do anything on an over-crowded reserve.  If swine flu were at the same rates here in the city as it is on the reserve, they wouldn’t be handing out purell, they’d be marching Hazmat teams down the streets and shouting at you to stay in your homes.

Take one reserve as an example :  Back on June 5th Manitoba’s St Theresa Point Reserve (pop. 2,700) had ‘over 100′ people infected with Swine Flu.  As of last week 27 of those people were in hospital.  What are the numbers of total infected now? I don’t think it would be far-fetched to imagine at least 10% of the population is down with swine flu (FYI: which would mean that there are more cases of Swine Flu on that single reserve than there are in all of British Columbia*).

If those numbers were extrapolated to Toronto, that would mean half a million people at home sick, 50,000 in hospitals.  In such a situation they wouldn’t just be handing out hand sanitizer (and they certainly wouldn’t be holding it back for fear of drunk Scarberians).  You see what I mean about the hazmat teams?

If they were anyone but Indians, they authorities would have freaked out already and sent in troops.  I do mean that literally.  If it’s as bad as they say, they need federal soldiers, army doctors.  This is the kind of health care availability they have on St. Theresa Point – this is how they plan to deal with an epidemic:

• Doctor   -   Once a week (3days)
• Dentist   -  Once a week (3days)
• Optometrist   -  Once a year
• Pediatrician   -  Quarterly
• Psychologist   -  Every 2 weeks

I don’t put all of that on Indian Affairs, the chiefs are probably most to blame.  I have nothing in particular to base that on, but when in doubt, blame the chief.

Back to the point – the second faulty premise is that it’s any of the government’s business that citizens want to get drunk in the first place.

That second thing, that’s the maind ‘livability’ problem with reserves, everyone’s always in your business.

St Theresa Point was in the news again this week because of a gang trial.  A bunch of gang-bangers murdered another gangster and one of them got sent up for 5 months.  The sentence is neither here nor there, or I guess it is, but that’s a whole other issue.  The point though is that one of the terms of his sentence is that the convicted murderer can’t return to his hometown ‘without the permission of the band chief‘. Think of how corrupting it must be to have that kind of power.  What other political figure in Canada has the power to exile citizens?

As a citizen, how could you want to live like that?  It’s like a post-nuclear dystopia – you live in a wasteland, you’ve got to deal with plagues (if it’s not swine flu, it’s tuberculosis), gang-bangers, you’ve got none of your basic needs taken care of, you get pushed around by an all powerful Chief, you’ve got to deal with the mother of all nanny states – Indian affairs – and on top of it you’ve got boredom.

The question the CBC should be asking, is why anyone is still on reserve.

Filed under: Canada , First Nations, Indian, Native, Swine Flu

That pride thing

I saw this video on Terry Glavin’s site (you`ll need to click through to watch it, because I can`t embed it) and it reminded me of an article I had read on Slate Magazine’s separate but equal cousin, “the Root”:

This month, hundreds of thousands of men and women around the world will take to the streets to march for visibility and solidarity in gay pride parades. Much like Dr. King before them, the LGBT marchers ask simply for the basic rights granted other Americans—the right to work, the right to safety, the right to equality.

Unlike Dr. King, few of them will appear in suits.

Probably the most succinct critique of the modern pride parade is a 2001 article from satirical paper The Onion, “Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance of Gays Back 50 Years.” In it, a straight female witness to a gay pride march in Los Angeles says, “I’d always thought gays were regular people, just like you and me, and that the stereotype of homosexuals as hedonistic, sex-crazed deviants was just a destructive myth.” She then adds, “Boy, oh, boy, was I wrong.”

The quote, like the rest of the article, is an exaggeration, of course, but the underlying point stands. With their ribald costuming and hyper-sexualized theatrics, pride parades are certainly things of joy, excitement and bawdy humor.

But at the risk of sounding like a staid homophobe, I’m often left wondering where the pride part comes in.

As per my new policy of under editing, I’m just going to leave it at that.  I think the connection between the two is clear. Maybe not convincing if you think too hard about it, but clear.

Filed under: Life, Politics , Gay

The difference between a socon and a libertarian

Re: this debate at the Western Standard …

Libertarian’s believe in a single absolute morality.  Social Conservatives do not – their morality is relative.

A question I read a while back – ‘Do you believe that there are some actions which are moral for a group to undertake which would not be moral if they were done by one of the members of that group?‘.  The libertarian of course says ‘no’.  Morality for one person is the same as morality for 100 people, or one million.  There’s no moral transubstantiation that turns an individual’s right to free speech, into the state’s right to censor – or the individual’s right to self ownership, into the state’s right to control what people put in their bodies.

Social conservatives tend to disagree.  Maybe primed by their faith, they’re happy to believe in miracles.  There is a long list of things a socon wouldn’t dream of doing himself, but that he would demand that his state do for him.  No socon would think that he as an individual has the right to tell his neighbour who to screw or what to smoke.  Faced with a stray sheep, he’d talk, try to encourage the person back on the straight and narrow.  Give him a state though and he’s begging for zero tolerance for crack heads, and a permanent ban on polygamy.

That’s the problem between the two sides of the right, not differing concepts of evil or the role of the state.  Not directly anyhow.  It comes down to the axioms of what morality is.  One side says that it’s a universal constant, the other side says that it changes depending on the size of the mob.  Or put in socon terms, one side is right, the other …

Filed under: Politics , Conservatives, libertarians

Babbling

I haven’t been writing much.  Busy.  Work has been keeping me up late, I’ve had a few hard files – but they’ve sorted themselves.

More than work though, what’s really been holding me back from writing is self-consciousness.  It’s easy to sound pretentious and when I write, I feel that a lot of it comes off that way.  So I cut, delete words, and end up with a blank post.

And don’t think I’m not writing because my head’s empty – total opposite.

Since I’ve had my own company, my mind has woken up.  I didn’t realize that I was sleeping, but the lack of challenge and autonomy involved in running someone else’s business, it put me under.  Now it’s like I’m back in university.  I care more about the things I read and see and I’m able to make the connections more quickly.  There’s so much that’s interesting.

But it’s hard to get that across without using some obscure grammar and thesaurus words.  And I’m not that person.

I’ll leave it at that, if I get past 100 words, I start proofreading.

Filed under: Life , Blogs

Canada’s Top 25 Political Blogs – June, 2009

I’m busy, very very busy, so it’s been hard to find time to do this.  But here you go.  The is the 22nd or 23rd edition of Canada’s Top 25 Political Blogs …

FYI – help yourself to the top 25 logo.

1.  Michael Geist.ca – pr7 – 226086
2.  The Hook - pr6 – 141889
3.  Small Dead Animals.com – pr6 – 179209
4.  Western Standard Shotgun Blog – pr6 – 318564
5.  Eaves.ca – pr6 – 416174
6.  SteynOnLine – pr5 – 125051
7.  GhostofaFlea.com – pr5 – 238884
8.  Ezra Levant.com – pr5 – 269320
9.  Five Feet of Fury – pr5 – 309254
10. Marginalized Action Dinosaur – pr5 – 318601
11. Calgary Grit – pr5 – 337609
12. Warren Kinsella.com – pr5 – 350603
13. GenXat40 – pr5 – 464021
14. Mitchieville – pr5 – 465699
15. Slap Upside the Head – pr5 – 479510
16. Quebec Politique.com – pr5 – 601125
17. Abandoned Stuff.com – pr5 – 616313
18. David Akin’s On The Hill – pr5 – 619074
19. Stephen Taylor.com – pr5 – 760713
20. Law is Cool – pr5 – 903533
21. Jay Currie – pr5 – 910380
22. Bene Diction Blogs On – pr5 – 915627
23. Vive Le Canada – pr5 – 980962
24. Blazing Cat Fur – pr5 – 996009
25. Chinese in Vancouver – pr4 – 524005

Filed under: Politics , Blogs, Canada

Canada’s Top 25 Blogs Coming Wednesday

It’s warm and sunny, business is overwhelmingly good – so the top 25 political blogs will be coming a bit late.  Look for it on Wednesday.  If you have a blog that you think should be on the list, or you know of one – please let me know by pasting a link into the comments of this post.

FYI – here’s what I did yesterday instead of working on the list:

Flew to Victoria via helicopter.  Helijet has a $75 standby fare from downtown to downtown.  It’s only about $30 more and 4 hours less than going by ferry and bus.

The flight back is really cool, you cross the entire city from Point Roberts to the North Shore:

It was great, we left at 11am and were back in time for the Night Market and steak on a stick:

I should have free time Tuesday evening for the blogs list, so if you get your sites in by then, they’ll make the indexing.

Filed under: Life , Blogs, Vancouver

Why so mum?

Mother Corp (the CBC) has sinned, and narry a word in the Canadian blogosphere?

This scandal couldn’t be more right wing friendly – it’s got xenophobic Quebecois, Obama jokes, racism, the CBC, and nanny-state speech regulations – what do you want, a freaking bow on it?

From Reuters:

Canada’s public broadcaster was wrong to show a skit that joked about the possible assassination of U.S. President Barack Obama and suggested he could be a thief, an industry panel ruled on Monday.

The New Year’s Eve “Bye Bye” comedy program — shown by the French-language Radio Canada network — generated more than 200 complaints. In one segment, two hosts discussed Obama’s election in November, 2008. Obama, who took office in January, is the first black U.S. president.

“We’re not racists. It will be good to have a negro in the White House. It will be practical. Black on white, it will be easier to shoot him,” one of the show’s hosts remarked.

The Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council said it found “nothing redeeming in the allegedly comedic notion that an American president should be shot, still less that this would be easier to achieve because of the colour of the president’s skin. It was a disturbing, wounding, abusive racial comment.”

The show also featured an interview with an actor pretending to be Obama. The host said, “The blacks, you all look alike,” and then warned viewers to hide their purses.

Filed under: Life, Politics , Canada, cbc, Obama, Racism, The horror

An example of unreasonable accommodation

Found in the jobs section of Craigslist Toronto today.

religion in the kitchen (Toronto)

---

Reply to:job-cdvpr-1187660152@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}
Date: 2009-05-25, 10:21AM EDT

I have been working at a restaurant in toronto for a year now and dont eat pork or shellfish because I am jewish. I am up for promotion to Sous Chef but will not be promoted because I dont eat pork or shellfish. I am just wondering if that is cause for going to the city? or just letting it go and moving on?

PostingID: 1187660152

What do you think, is it reasonable to promote a chef who refuses to eat his own food?

Filed under: Life

Where fiscal conservatives and libertarians part ways

Cross-posted at the WesternStandard

Today the OSCE criticized the Irish government for a proposed bill that will curtail free speech by reintroducing the crime of ‘blasphemous libel’.  Why would the Irish be introducing this bill just now?  Because a plebiscite on the matter is ‘too expensive’:

Last month Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern announced that he would propose a new crime of blasphemous libel in an amendment to the Defamation Bill.

The new section of the Bill will state: “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000.”…

[the OSCE's] Mr Haraszti has written to Mr Ahern and to the Oireachtas committee debating the Bill, calling for it to be passed without the blasphemy provision.

“I am aware that the new article is meant to bring the law into line with a constitutional provision dating from 1937,” said Mr Haraszti.

“Nonetheless, it violates OSCE media freedom commitments and other international standards upholding the right to freely discuss issues of religion.”

He added: “It is clear that the Government’s gesture of passing a new version of the ‘blasphemy article’, even if milder than the dormant old version, might incite new court cases and thereby exercise a chilling effect on freedom of expression.”

Mr Ahern insists he is obliged to take account of the offence of blasphemy, which is provided for in the Constitution.

Article 40.6.1 of the Constitution states that the “publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law”.

A spokesman for the Minister said he had two options, either to amend the Constitution, or amend the law.

The spokesman said Mr Ahern was “bemused” by criticism of his proposed amendment.

“He has to do it because he is the Minister for Justice and he cannot wilfully ignore the Constitution. Unlike the commentariat, the Minister does not have the option of wilfully ignoring the Constitution,” the spokesman said.

“He is the Minister for Justice and he is advised by the Attorney General that he has to have regard to the offence of blasphemy.”

Mr Ahern, he added, felt that in “the current economic environment” it was not appropriate to go to the people seeking to amend an article of the Constitution.

Those aren’t empty words from Ahern.  The Irish government is cutting back in a big way (€1.5bn), and raising taxes in an even bigger way (€1.8bn) – the net effect will be something like CAD$1,000 for each man, woman, and child in the Republic.  Rather than digging a hole for future generations, they’re digging out of a hole right now.  Take a read through Irish emergency budget and dream.

For libertarians and fiscal conservatives, this is the kind of budget, and the kind of responsible action on the economy that we’re all looking for.  But at the cost of free expression?

Let’s take Ahern at his word – that the government is in such poor shape that it has to go forward right now with banning blasphemy.  Would fiscal conservatives accept this as a worthwhile trade-off?  Would libertarians?  Or is this the precise spot where the two sides part ways?

Filed under: Politics , blasphemy, free speech, Ireland, rights

Do “white people” exist?

It’s a real question.  I’ve got this troll over at another site I write at rambling on about how “we, white people” are pissed off at ‘x, y, or z’ and have these certain opinions and will eventually do something to brown folk.

The thing is, are there such a thing as ‘white people’? Is there any group of white caucasians who get together and think – “we’re white people” and then go on to agree about things?

I don’t mean this in some dumb ‘can’t we all get along?’ kind of way.  I mean in seriously, is there a genuine group of human beings on this planet that says:

1. We are white people
2. We all believe in ‘X’
3. If you do not believe in ‘X’, then you are not a “white person”

In nerd speak, is there an epistemic ‘white’ community?

My suspicion is there isn’t.

There’s certainly a ‘native/aboriginal’ community out there.  They all agree that they’re natives, they say you have to believe in a pantheon of Hollywood Indian crap, and they’re very happy to say that if you don’t believe in that crap, you’re not native.

There are a couple competing black communities for damned sure.  Maybe the most prominent out there says ‘we’re black’, if you want to be black you’ve got to be ignorant and like a lot of self-destructive crap, and if you don’t, then you’re not black.

But are there honest to god – ‘white people’?  Some ‘in-group’ of pinkish human beings that says that if you don’t believe in some list of things, then you aren’t a whitey like them.

And if there isn’t a white epistemic community, then can ‘white people’ be said to exist at all?

Filed under: Life , Nerd crap, stuff white people think

Terrorist sympathizers arrested for waving flag

Canada isn’t the only western country facing protests by ethnic Tamils.  While not on the scale of what we see in Toronto, similar protests (including blocked streets) have appeared in Washington, Sydney, and London.

The Toronto Star call’s it a test of our tolerance.  In a way I think it is, and in London they’ve failed it:

The Metropolitan Police of London said they have arrested five LTTE [Tamil Tiger] demonstrators opposite the Russian Embassy at Kensington Palace Gardens at Bays Water Road junction in Central London for displaying material which supports a proscribed organization in the United Kingdom.

The Russian Embassy is the latest place the usually violent LTTE went for demonstrations but unlike at the Sri Lankan, Chinese and Indian offices of envoys the 150 strong crowd was more tamed. The five were arrested under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act for displaying material in support of a terrorist group.

Although the LTTE members were blatantly displaying the Fascist terrorist flags of their outfit before in front of foreign diplomatic offices this is the first time they were arrested for carrying the flag of the leaping ferocious Tiger.

Leave aside the usual immigration and multiculturalism angles for the moment – let’s be clear of the facts here: the protesters in London were peaceful and they were arrested for carrying the flags of a terrorist group.  British or not, immigrant or not, it’s a clear violation of their human right to free expression.

If you call yourself a speecher, or a libertarian, then you must (and I do) totally and unreservedly support the right of these terrorist sympathizers to wave the flag of the organization which invented the suicide vest.

Not to be overly dramatic, but as the old saw goes “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  I’m not asking you to jump on a landmine, but spare a word or two in the comments in support of the rights of these people to wave their rotten flag.

Filed under: Politics , free speech, Sri Lanka