Deux poids, deux mesures

Some who followed my Twitter _deBeauxOs1_ account may have noticed my prolonged, unsolicited absence from that social media platform.

Yes, kittens. My account was suspended and Twitter has provided no answers to my questions, no grounds for justification to my appeals. It may be restored. But no worry, if you miss my daily injection of bons mots, droll thoughts and vivid excoriation of venal CONjob politicians — do check in here, at DJ!

Sanitary Panels is a political cartoonist who neatly captures the double standard that Facebook and Twitter apply to complaints with regard to content providers who allegedly flout their sacrosanct _Terms of Service_.

Or, as ASaintL and others put it:

Indeed. Why is that?

Infuriating, but I'm not the only person punished according to Zuckerberg's and Jack's pro-Toxic Masculinity and gynophobic, double standards.

Not all harassment victims are viewed or treated as equal.

The journalist Ashley Csanady currently has a PostMedia piece that addresses Twitter harassment in general and in particular what happened when Michelle Rempel filed a complaint with the police.

Her excellent article provides a short account of the Rempel case as well as an overview of recent events, viz. the GAE trial.

It is factual and clear.

It doesn't editorialize or misrepresent as Blatchford is wont to do, when the demands of click-bait reporting or sob-sister sensationalizing gives her the cover she needs to champion the MRA cause.

Further to what Csanady wrote, there are points that bloggers and op-eds can raise.  This is where DJ! weighs in.

Last week I posted this about the sleazy grease of GAE's triumphant sneer.

The main difference between GAE and Damany Skeene is that the former oozes the slimy CONjob smarm that allow him and Ezra Levant to enjoy notoriety.  Their venal vituperation is widely disseminated and cheered by right wingers, racists, homophobe and misogynists.  In addition, GAE walks and talks the MRA/PUA philosophy. His entourage enables his narcissism and promotes him within the audiences of gynophobic orcs that slither at the edge of the world wide web.  He scored a point for Rape Culture!  His victims were not really victims because they had the NERVE to fight back against his vile invective!

Skeene, it would appear, is not supported or validated by any group.  In fact most people recoil from him.  One assumes the only compassionate attention he's likely to receive is administered by healthcare professionals.  He had used Twitter promiscuously to vent fury and hatred against a variety of targets.

The difference between Rempel and the women that GAE harassed, threatened, stalked and abused — online and "in real life" — is obvious. She was a Minister in the Con government when Skeene directed vile threats and verbal sexual abuse at her Twitter account.  Her complaint was legitimate and important because she was an elected official.  Police allocated the required resources to investigate, document, and prepare a case for the Crown to prosecute.  Her squadron of RCMP body guards was likely doubled.

But as Csanady points out, the trial unfolded under the media radar.

This gave me pause. Why did the PMO not seize this opportunity to demonstrate how their government was *tough on crime* and violence against women?

I suspect that if Skeene had been an individual who clearly associated with any left wing or progressive group such as anti-pipeline activism, or had expressed agreement with LPC or NDP policies, the PMO would have gleefully exploited the opportunity to smear the Harper regime's opponents.

But the truth is: deep down, Harper Reformist Cons never really gave a damn about Canadian women or even those prominent in their party. PMSHithead was a spiteful opportunist who attacked women who challenged him, and ditched or undermined those who became politically inconvenient: Deborah Gray, Belinda Stronach, Bev Oda, Helena Guergis, Beverley McLachlin, Cindy Blackstock ... a never-ending list, really.

Which is why Rempel was circumspect, and kept a low profile. There was no advantage then in using the criminal harassment trial to score political points for herself.  The PMO, or CPC HQ would have ground her into the dust.  She noted how the party destroyed Eve Adams because she wouldn't stick to the PMO script.

Nothing about Rempel's circumstances could be framed as a narrative that might enhance public sympathy in Harper's favour.  In fact, it was probably flagged as a potential nuisance and diversion from the grand election campaign plan.

But now.. Rempel is jockeying to gain an advance on other putative candidates for the CPC leadership.  I predict she will judiciously exploit the Twitter harassment trial, to establish credibility and to leverage whatever is beneficial to the image she is carefully crafting.

Update: As the tweet below points out, online campaigns that embolden threats of physical violence against Premier Rachel Notley in Albert keep escalating. The Wildrose Party leader has mildly spoken out against his supporters using these tactics that replicate the worst of US right-wing political dumpster fire rhetoric.

Alheli Picazo rigorously screen caps and archives evidence of online political incivility of all stripe. She documents what she has observed and caught before the thuggish authors delete them.  She regularly posts them in her Twitter line to remind partisans of that "people in glass houses.." thing.

Kathleen Smith has also noted and confronted those who instigate explosions of aggressive attacks against Alberta political figures.

Some journalists have reported on the scurrilous and terrifying threats expressed on Facebook, Twitter and in the comment threads at Levant's monetizing project, Rebel TV.  It is claimed the RCMP is investigating.

Yet NO charges of criminal harassment against the alleged RWNJ *rebels* have been filed yet, even though campaigns of online hatred against Notley have been encouraged and fed by Levant and his goons for over a year, now.

Marcel Aubut, Sean Penn & GAE

What do they have in common with each other?

All three have been exposed as men who harm women, along with their histrionic narcissism and their inability to grasp why their actions are violent.

Exhibit 1: Marcel Aubut: our DJ! blogpost on complaints lodged against him.  For decades people working with Aubut tolerated his preening ego.  They were also conveniently indifferent to his sustained sexual harassment of hundreds of athletes, journalists, officials, lawyers, staff members, etc. etc. 

After an investigation that unfolded quickly and efficiently, the Canadian Olympic Committee recognized that Aubut created a toxic environment through his abusive actions, and that its organization was negligent in not addressing the issue judiciously.

Three senior staff were punished for not handling the Aubut situation correctly.  However, the abuser himself has yet to suffer any consequences for his behaviour, nor has he taken responsibility for the harm he did.

Exhibit 2: Sean Penn 

Though Penn has been indefatigable in his efforts to establish himself as a saviour and a serious thinker, most recently as putative writer for Rolling Stone - he's still the same poseur previously known as a really *bad date*. Like George C. Scott, Penn has physically and mentally abused his partners. His explosive, violent temper and eggshell ego are epic. But he always gets a pass, because he's a privileged white man with connections and admirers.  

One hopes when Charlize Theron abruptly ended their relationship, she made the point that she doesn't suffer violent men gladly and that he got off relatively lightly, having dropped the mask and ceased to amuse her with his malignant charade. 

Exhibit 3: Gregory Alan Elliott

This summarizes why charges of criminal harassment were filed against him.

Now, let's get a few facts straight: Elliott is not on trial for having a difference of opinion with someone. He is on trial for criminal harassment. He tried repeatedly to contact Guthrie even after she had explicitly asked him to leave them alone. He monitored Guthrie's movements via Twitter, shadowed events she attended, and flooded any hashtag she participated in. He made it clear that he was following her every move by publicly commenting on her tweets, even after she had blocked him. He sent messages to people who interacted with her online, making it clear that he was observing everything she did.

Though the judge found the complainants' testimony honest and credible, the bar for proving malice aforethought and deliberate criminal intent was set very high because the women fought back against the bully's campaign of harassment.  The tweet below addresses that perception; click on link to see how GAE supporters aka Men's Rights Activists and crusading gamegaters, responded.

His defence argued *honest* belief with regard to GAE's entitled sense that what he did was not wrong.  That bar is set low, as with many sexual assault cases. Also, GAE's complete pattern of harassment and incitement to others to do the same, could not be entered into the record.

When he was acquitted, the judge made it clear the decision did not mean GAE was innocent of wrongdoing as charged.  Yet, to borrow the words of Anne Thériault, GAE "mobilized his mob" to attack anyone who wasn't bellowing for his glorious vindication.

A reminder that, like predators Aubut and Penn, it's likely GAE's abusive actions won't be his last.  This exposes what he does: he harasses women and claims that he is the victim.

It's also a chilling warning to women: patriarchy may appear to be in its death-throes, but men who have enjoyed privilege or aspire to it, will do anything to crush those they view as insubordinate or unwilling to meet their demands, and those who have the temerity to challenge them. 

As some of us at DJ! painfully learned, this type of malevolence is not limited to a specific political ideology.

So, where's the CONspiracy? Has #TGDN gone global or delusional?

#TGDN = Twitter Gulag Defense Network.

In case you don't gaze towards the Excited States of America much these days, or don't tweet, this little right-wing nutjob conspiracy hoohaw might have not caught your attention.

From here:

Twitter makes it easy to report accounts for spam. When enough users report an account, it automatically gets suspended. Some users abuse this feature by organizing a group to report or “spam-block” a single account in order to get it suspended.

Conservatives created the “Twitter Gulag Defense Network” or #TGDN to stop spam-blocking attacks. Aware that accounts with more followers are less likely to get suspended, they mutually followed anyone else using #TGDN. Now that their group is organized and members are protected, they have begun targeted spam-blocking of progressive accounts, exactly what their group was created to oppose. Ironic.

Bloggers at LGF have been diligently following this phenomena and its permutations. Many have posted about the various Hatriots and other right-wing, firearm-fetishizing nutjobs who are involved.

One of my twitter friends, @fem_progress, drew my attention to this item:

A little known policy slips quietly under the radar in January 2012 as our friends at Twitter announce they will censor tweets, if a country’s government requests them to do so. A year later, Australia becomes the first modern democracy to identify, filter and ban free speech whilst not in a state of War.

In recent weeks, the censoring of tweets by Australian conservatives, or, indeed anyone who dares to either engage in political debate or offer opinion on the ruling Labor-Green alliance, has become so pervasive many have thought it was a bug with Twitter. You can read Twitter’s well hidden censorship policy here.

But now I can reveal that Twitter is actively censoring Australian tweets at the direct request of the government.

It sounds like the rantings of disgruntled Australian RWNJs and neo-cons, but if that Twitter policy does indeed exist, it could be deployed in accordance with the whims of a tinpot dictator like PMSHithead, at the request of his PMO/Politburo, to censor progressive or anti-Harper conservative tweets.

So, if this Aussie idiot has stumbled upon a MASSIVE ploy by his government, why hasn't that happened in Canada yet?  Critics of the Harper regime have certainly been quite vociferous in their excoriation of CPC electoral fraud, its corruption, its censorship of scientists and other public servants, its quasi-legal and illicit manipulations, its incessant prevarications and Rovian tactics.

My intuition tells me that it serves a greater purpose to have us scurrying around in plain view, expressing our anger, our fears, our hopes.

Harper's CPC is focused on perfecting the military precision of a volunteer and staff infrastructure that will facilitate the rigging of the next federal election in their favour, while their opponents are distraught, scattered and distracted.

Their May 2011 machinations were a taste of things to come.  Alison at Creekside has done an extraordinary job of investigative work on this matter.

So we have to get cracking on the coalition and cooperation-building NOW.  Talk is cheap, and the Cons have millions in their election war-chest, likely from the Koch Brothers foundations and possibly more that will be siphoned off from public funds now that Kevin Page is gone.

Wednesday's M312 Report

On the Twitter #M312 timeline there are a few new players, some yet to be blocked by the Woody Wankers.

One such, Voice of Reason, tweeted at Stephen Woodworth himself:

‪@WoodworthMP‬ ‪#M312‬ You do of course realize that you are becoming single-issued. What would be your favoured outcome of this debate?‪#cdnpoli‬

And s/he got the typical weaselly reply.

‪@V_of_tReason‬ ‪#cdnpoli‬ My favoured outcome of ‪#M312‬ would be that Parliament&Cdns are better informed abt the implicatns of S223(1)

Voice of Reason immediately recognized this for the faux-innocent dodge that it is and returned with:

@woodworthmp #M312 "Just asking the question" - exemplifies a common logical fallacy often preferred by conspiracy theorists. #cdnpoli

— Voice of tReason (@V_of_tReason) August 1, 2012

Rev Paperboy jumped in and a genius hashtag was born.

@v_of_treason Does @woodworthmp still take heroin when he worships Satan? #justaskingthequestion #prettysureanswerisNO @fernhilldammit

— Rev.Paperboy (@revpaperboy) August 1, 2012

I applauded the good Rev's genius and asked him to use the #M312 hashtag. He said he was a tad busy but told me to feel free.

Then Voice of Reason spelled it out for the dimmest of fetus fetishists.

@fernhilldammit @revpaperboy #justaskingthequestion a.k.a "begging the question", a.k.a "JAQing off" #CPC practices logical fallacies daily

— Voice of tReason (@V_of_tReason) August 1, 2012

Surely the smart creative people who read DJ! can come up with some other fun snarky questions for the pro-M312 crowd to be tagged with #justaskingaquestion or #JAQingOff for short(er). (Goes well with Woodworth's Wank, doesn't it?)

In related news, every day certain people spam-tweet MPs and other politicians with one or both of two scripted tweets. Today I noticed that the same MPs and politicians are targeted each day. Are they programmed? Are they bots?

And speaking of bots, another new player is M312FETUSBOT, who is totally pro-M312 and a demanding little twerp to boot.

Viz.

Okay, that's it. I'm trading her in for a Porsche. As a person, I am entitled to apply for credit. Where do i sign up? #cdnpoli

—M312FETUSBOT (@M312FETUSBOT) August 1, 2012

With all this fun stuff going on and more and more uncomfortable questions being lobbed at the fetus fetishists, I'm thinking that Woody regrets swapping his spot. He probably had a better chance of sneaking his sneaky motion past MPs in June.

The second hour of debate is on September 21, with the vote on September 26.

If you don't do Twitter, you might consider busting a cherry for this one. ;-)

Doin' the Twitter Block!

It happened to JJ. It has happened to fern hill.

And now, I'm proud to report that many right-wing, religious zealots that people Twitter have also made me the target of their hissy-fit blocking.

It happens of course when prochoice activists ask too many inCONvenient questions and point out CONtemptuous fallacies in the tweets of abortion-criminalizing fetushists.

So, I've been blocked by cpc MP Stephen Woodworth.

In his *parting* tweet, Woodworth even had the chutzpah to throw back at me the words of the brilliant Molly Ivins that I quote on my Twitter profile page.

There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful.

I responded to his tweet by pointing out he had no idea who Molly Ivins was. He also appears aggrieved and to consider himself victimized by prochoice activists who can think faster and better on Twitter than he does.

Time flies when you're ^NOT having fun.

So it was one calendar year ago today that the majority of voters said WTF? as they took stock of what would eventually be known as The Great CON electoral fraud.

On Twitter, the numerous critics of The Harper Regime©™ vented, expressing some amusing and scathing observations about PMSHithead's first year of rule.

Here's a sample of #Harpers1stYear:

There's a lot more of those, naming the numerous anti-democratic *accomplishments* of this fraudulent governement.

My own CONtribution:

More about the CON elxn41 voter suppression and electoral fraud, here.

So, it seems Toews has a reputation as a bully ...

A piece in the Winnipeg Free Press goes a long way towards explaining the media silence around the serial adulterer and, as we learned also sex predator, Vic Toews - minister of Public Safety in the Harper government.

We've blogged about the incidents that were not published in the media, even those on public record and more, about Toews.

Then, there's Toews' violation of the Manitoba Elections Act. We've come to expect that PMSHithead will appoint lying, unscrupulous CONs to his cabinet, since he did appoint a felon as his minister of Justice.

The Winnipeg Free Press piece is instructive. Who would guess Toews has no impulse control, sending unsollicited, hectoring email blasts?

This is a politician who has become renowned among a small audience of Manitoba political junkies for sending out long, rambling, emails to his "supporters," in which he angrily attacks opposition MPs, journalists and anyone else with the temerity to disagree with him. As a regular target of these emails, I have never responded to the tortured logic or his tenuous grasp of the facts. He is entitled to have his say. If anyone asked me for a reaction to his rants, I merely directed them to take note of the time the emails were sent -- which more often than not was somewhere around 3 a.m. -- and then expressed my regret that I had written something that caused Toews to lose sleep.

But that was before Toews discovered Twitter, a more immediate, pervasive and, we have come to learn, less thoughtful way of venting your most volatile thoughts the moment they burst into your skull. Toews slowly began to move from the innocuous to the abusive in his emails. He taunted the opposition, howled when they disagreed with him. When the opposition voted against a Tory crime bill, he accused them of helping child kidnappers. [...]

On Thursday, he alleged that NDP MP Paul Dewar, a candidate for the leadership of that party, was behind a campaign to exploit the details of the divorce file. This was based on the revelation that a provincial NDP staffer, who happens to volunteer on Dewar's leadership campaign, had examined the divorce file.

Toews is now in full attack mode on Twitter, lambasting opposition parties for not supporting his bid to get a full parliamentary committee investigation of @Vikileaks and the Anonymous videos. [...]

Unfortunately, this is where Toews lacks any perspective on his own tenuous place in the universe. If his reputation has been tarnished, it has been by his own hand as much as anyone's. His closest political advisers pleaded with him to stop sending overnight email blasts, which they viewed as conduct unbecoming a federal cabinet minister. Those same advisers can hardly be pleased with his stream-of-consciousness Twitter activity.

If tough journalists were intimidated by the minister's fury, imagine what it must have been like for a 17 year old girl. The former teenaged babysitter for the Toews family, who caved in to pressure from her employer and had sex with him, would well know how unpleasant refusing Vic's demands would be.

ADDED: a tweet from Errol Mendes reminded me that Toews, a swinish CONjob, once called internationally respected Justice Louise Arbour *disgraceful*.

#CPCCluetheboardgame

As with the cascade of revealing tweets from @Vikileaks30 and #TellVicEverything, people expressed healthy sarcasm to leaven the heavy, lumpen realization that the CONtempt Party lied, cheated and used illegal methods to "win" the last election. We call it rightfully Election Fraud.

When the CPC decided to throw a lowly flunkie under the bus, people were incredulous. A 23 year-old engineered a multi-riding scam all by himself - did he have the savvy, the authority and the budget to do that? C'mon!

So a Twitter game was launched, based on Clue, the board game which has set characters, locations, weapons. The point is to find who committed a murder. It's a game of logic and deduction, quite amusing actually.

The resolution comes when one player, confident that she or he knows the identity of the killer, declares: "It was Colonel Mustard in the study with the pistol."

This trope lent itself to a diverting exploration of "a CON committed a crime; where and how?" Here are some of the best responses I've gathered.

It was the entire CPC in the parlour bludgeoning the truth with a blunt object.

It was a ConBot in the #cdnpoli thread with a load of horseshit.

It was Jason Kenney, in the Library, with a samosa in hand.

It was Pierre Karl Péladeau with the Rupert Murdoch manual on how to create a network that reports fake news.

It was not Bev Oda, not smoking a cigarette, not rolling her eyes every time Poilievre opens his mouth. Not.

It was Vic Toews at the babysitter convention with a copy of Yeats' greatest pick up lines.

It was Bruce Carson in the water treatment plant with a monkey wrench.

It was Stephen Harper at the NAC with a tone-deaf version of "With a Little Help from My Friends".

It was Bernard Généreux in Kamouraska/Rivière-du-Loup with a deforestation project.

It was a call centre, in Montana, with ill-gotten voter lists.

It was James Moore with funding cuts to Canadian Theatres and Festivals.

It was Peter MacKay in the Conservatory joining the Reformers.

It was Leona Aglukkaq, in the restaurant, with 50 pounds of unlabelled Trans Fats.

It was Baird Clement and Flaherty in the kitchen with the Mike Harris cookbook.

It was Rob Nicholson in a brothel with unreported, I repeat UNREPORTED, criminals.

It was Jim Prentice at CIBC with the last laugh.

It was Doug Finley in the Senate with an In-and-Out scheme.

It was Bev Oda in an NGO's Office with a rope tied in NOTS.

It was David Emerson in the cabinet with the Olympic Torch.

It was Dimitri Soudas, at a meal with Port de Mtl board members, with the support of the PMO.

It was Brad Trost and Maurice Vellacott and Stephen Woodworth in the wombs of the nation with a Bible.

It was the National Citizens Coalition in the lobby, with the batshit.

It was Candice Hoeppner at a victims' rally shouting: "in your face!"

It was Stephen Harper, in the bathroom, with a tantrum.

It was Steven Blaney with a 'denied' rubber stamp inside a cone of silence.

It was Rona Ambrose in Copenhagen with a pipe line.

It was Joe Oliver in the #tarsands with a dead duck.

It was Diane Finley, in the retirement home, with a knife in the back to seniors.

It was that fool Preston Manning who opened the way for a more powerful, nastier Harper.

It was "Prof" Tom & "The Honourable" Doug with a $1M insurance policy, in Cadman's office.

It was Harper & McKay holding cement shoes & stuffing Richard Colvin into a big bag of lies.

It was us with apathy in the last election.

It was Stephen Harper in China with a "Canada For Sale" sign.

It was Tony Clement with his $50Million at the G8 in Muskoka.

It was Clement at the shredder with the long-form census & any semblance of evidence-based decisions.

It was Kellie Leitch in the oncology ward with a bag of asbestos.

It was Kenney at a fake citizenship ceremony with a recipe for curry in a hurry.

It was John Duncan in Attawapiskat with a third-party manager.

It was Peter Kent in Durban with a denial.

It was Helena Guergis in the PEI airport with her stiletto boots.

It was Gary Goodyear in the lab without a clue about evolution.

It was Rob Nicholson in Bad Cop Drag with his HardOnCrime bill.

It was Gerry Ritz in the House of Commons with Maple Leaf baloney.

It was Jim Flaherty in a hole with the largest deficit in Canadian history.

It was Peter Mackay in the Search & Rescue chopper using F-35 estimates as bait for fishing trip.

It was Trost in the kitchen with the turkey baster singing Every Sperm is Sacred with Vellacott on violin.

It was the Blogging Tories in their own words.

It was Diane Ablonczy in a Denny's with the unfounded allegations and lies about Jane Stewart.

It was Rob Anders in the House of Commons with a pillow.

It was Stephen Woodworth in the kitchen with the medical dictionary.

It was Julian Fantino in the cargo container with the sand and rocks.

It was Lisa Raitt in the limousine with the isotope.

It was Maxime Bernier in the cleavage with the classified documents.

It was Michael Sona on the grassy knoll with a cell phone reading from an old union handbook.

It was Peter Kent in the main hall with the large crock.

It was Jason Kenney in the vestibule with the unregistered squirt gun.

It was Ezra Levant in the bitumen with the ethical shovel.

Depending on the point of view, it almost reads like a list of reformaTory *accomplishments*.

There's much, much more on Twitter. Search the hashtag #CPCCluetheBoardGame.

Numbered Troll Snarks

*Grumble. Why hasn't someone done a wiki of old jokes?*

Old joke: Guy goes to the Comedians' Convention. Various comedians get up and instead of telling jokes, use numbers, e.g.,'Number 345!' Some laughs at most. But uproarious hahahaha for one. Guy turns to comedian beside him: 'That was just another number. Wassup with that reaction?' Comedian says: 'It was the way she told it.'

There was another #occupytoronto event today, so of course, on Twitter, the bitter and twisted trolls trotted out all the old attempted snarks/snipes.

I suggested they take a page out of the comedians' convention and use numbers for Twitter brevity.

I helpfully started a list for #NumberedTrollSnarks. Twitter being what it is (and me being somewhat sloppy with hashtags), I have compiled a handy list here.

1. Get a job.

2. They're all dirty hippies.

2a. They're all spoiled rich kids.

2b. They're all paid union thugs.

3. They're all foreign/bussed in. (This one is well loved by despots the world over.)

4. The numbers are wildly inflated. (Also popular with above.)

5. It's the weekend, dummies. No one is there.

6. Boring!

7. It's a huge waste of taxpayer money and/or police resources.

8. They all have Iphones (computers etc.) and there is some kinda logical thingy here about protesting companies that make Iphones etc. that I just can't quite get, but wassup with that?

9. They should all move to Cuba/North Korea.

10. ALL-PURPOSE SNARK: You kids, get offa my lawn!

Now, I really don't expect the actual trolls to use these, but I've been amusing myself by replying with the number or numbers they've used.

Seems to piss them off.

Works for me.

Discussion Boards Dead? Discuss.

I cut my virtual teeth at babble, which, I just learned celebrated its tenth anniversary in April. I joined in 2002 or 2003, near enough to 9/11 that the OMFG-handholding-minute-by-minute-planes-crash-into-WTC thread made for riveting reading. (I just had a lazy look for it, but couldn't find any threads older than 2005.)

There was some major unpleasantness, totally ignored in the anniversary story, and a bunch of babblers left in high dudgeon.

Judging from this, same old shit is going on.

Many of the dudgeonistas fetched up at something initially called 'babble strike' or somesuch but became after a democratic vote (natch) enmasse. (I was pumping for 'Herding Cats', which got some, but not enough, votes.)

Further unpleasantness and a further rift ensued, this time dudgeonistas found themselves at Bread&Roses. That's where deBeauxOs and fern hill met and started our blogging careers at Birth Pangs.

Just to round out the round-up of Canadian non-partisan political boards, I should add Free Dominion, aka The Dark Site, where I frequently still lurk.

So, nowadays, leaving aside my FD lurking, I rarely go to any of them. They seem just plain sad to me. They seem to function mostly as link-farms where people stash stuff they may want to go back to. Membership is much diminished and the personal schticks are getting pretty old.

Once vibrant -- B&R in particular was the chosen hang-out of some of the snarkiest lefty bloggers and blog-commenters -- now left behind in Twitter-dust.

On a slightly peripheral note, I hate the new Facebook, but still occasionally visit some political groups I joined around the second prorogation to see what people are talking about. But I don't -- and never really did -- feel any connection to it.

Blogging and tweeting are enough for me.

What do you think?

Tech Gods Are Pissed at Humans

At the same time! Twitter is screwed up.

And so is Blogger.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

We're investigating an issue which is preventing login and comment posting for some users, and hope to have a fix released shortly.

Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Yeeheehee. I seem to have the joint to myself. dBO can't log in and commenters can't comment.

Now, where's the liquor cabinet?

Are the 'Speechies' Right, er, Correct?

Mark Fournier of Free Dominion is conducting on-line seminars on Bill C-51: Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act.

Today's instalment (bold in original; one typo fixed): Canadian government plans to outlaw internet anonymity.

Yesterday we examined how the Canadian government is planning to effectively outlaw internet linking by making Canadians permanently legally responsible for the content of any webpage they link to using the Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act. Today we will look at how the same Act will outlaw internet anonymity.

Clause 11: The existing provisions of the Code regarding the offences of sending a message in a false name and sending false information, indecent remarks or “harassing” messages (the French term “harassants” currently used in subsection 372(3) of the Code is replaced by “harcelants” in the bill) refer to certain communication technologies used to commit those offences, such as telegram, radio and telephone. Clause 11 of the bill amends those offences by removing the references to those specific communication technologies and, for some of those offences, substituting a reference to any means of telecommunication. As a result, it will be possible to lay charges in respect of those offences regardless of the transmission method or technology used.

This is an exact duplicate of the process that brought thought crimes legislation, Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, to the internet and enabled the Canadian Human Rights Commission to engage in acts that were finally ruled to be unconstitutional by the very Canadian Human Rights Tribunals that rubber stamped convictions in 100% of the cases brought before it. Only this time it is to be expanded upon and enshrined in the Criminal Code of Canada. If this Bill is passed the Canadian government can throw out the reviled Section 13 of the CHRA, they won't need it anymore because they will have something even worse to use against us.

Look very carefully at the wording of Clause 11 above. The key word is “and” which follows the words in bold text (text not bold in original document). It would be bad enough if the new law proposed making it an additional offense to use a false name (an internet alias) “while” “sending false information, indecent remarks or “harassing” messages”, like using a firearm in the commission of a robbery, but this wording makes “sending a message using a false name” a stand alone crime. Think long and hard about the implications and dangers of this part of this proposed bill.

Where are internet aliases most commonly used by Canadians today? They are almost universally used in internet forums, bloggers' comments sections, and comment sections of other websites. This law will make using an alias a crime. It is not likely they will try to prosecute everyone using an alias online but it will give the government the means to identify and criminalize anyone who writes anything the government disapproves of. Imagine an internet where Canadians were forbidden by law to speak anonymously.

Think it would never happen in Canada? Never forget what happened with the CHRC and never give those who enabled that disaster the means to do it again.

Yesterday, Fournier pointed out the dangers of linking contained in the same bill. He quotes Clause 5.

Clause 5 of the bill provides that the offences of public incitement of hatred and wilful promotion of hatred may be committed by any means of communication and include making hate material available, by creating a hyperlink that directs web surfers to a website where hate material is posted...

And goes on to explain.

Hyperlinks are at the very core of the internet, they are what enables every internet user to view any available page on the internet and direct others to view pages. This bill will put the control of all hyperlinks into the hands of government bureaucrats and put all Canadian internet users in legal jeopardy.

This clause essentially makes any Canadian posting a link on the internet legally responsible for the content of any web page linked to even though the person posting the link has no control over the content of that page. If the person who does control the page you've linked to changes the pages content you are still legally responsible because you posted a link.

This will make it unsafe for any Canadian to post a link to any page on the internet that he does not control.

This bill will also make it impossible for any Canadian to operate a forum or a blog that allows for public comments. Even if a blogger vets every posted link on his blog with a bevy of lawyers at his side he still will be held legally liable if the content of the outside web pages changes. The only way to safely operate a blog will be to disallow links to other sites and pages.

Beyond the dangers of this bill as it is supposed to function lies the massive potential for abuse by government agents and private individuals. A person who dislikes you for political, competitive or personal reasons could easily set you up with legal problems. Using readily available proxy servers and disposable emails anyone could set up a simple webpage outside of Canada with a theme of “I hate [enter favoured group here] and then post a link to it on your forum or blog. A screen shot of both the created page and the hyperlink on your page is all the evidence needed to show the new law has been violated.

I am no kinda expert on human rights tribunals/commissions (paging Dr. Dawg), but I do know that the speechies loathe them. (And today, we find out that Ontario Top Con Man, Tim Hudak, has backed off from his promise to axe the tribunal here. Building a 'big tent' party ain't so easy, is it, Timmie?)

But if Fournier's reading is correct -- if a little paranoid -- then blogs like DJ! are in beeeg trouble. Not to mention Facebook pages, Tweets, and whatever new fangled toys the Intertoobz geniuses come up with.

Given that we are facing four or five years of authoritarian, liberal-loathing Harperism, shouldn't we progressives be a tad worried?

And, for that matter, shouldn't the telcos and ISPs be howling at the expense of such monitoring?

It seems to me that this could be a great issue for the Fucking Useless Opposition® and a way to make some new and old Con MPs veeeery uncomfortable under a deluge of outraged letters, emails, tweets, and phone calls.

But, as Fournier points out, we'd better act quickly. SHithead vows to pass his omnibus Stoopid on Crime bill within 100 days.

Oh-oh. Brian Lilley is on it. I like his last paragraph.

The Harper Conservatives won a majority Monday, they can pass this bill without relying on any other party for support. But they still need your support and your donations and the Canadian public should tell them they will get neither if they put forward bills like this that attack liberty.

UPDATE: HOLY CRAP! Link to Michael Geist from reader Mark Francis.

. . . more important than process is the substance of the proposals that have the potential to fundamentally reshape the Internet in Canada. The bills contain a three-pronged approach focused on information disclosure, mandated surveillance technologies, and new police powers.

And now: Twitter opp!

Ugh. Contempt Party leader hit a new low with this kind of opportunism. And, if the above was a genuine interaction, why the complicated staging and framing for the benefit of the astro-turf purported grass-roots supporters (I believe that the Contempt Party is compensating those *real* people who show up at its campaign events) and the media.

From here:

There’s a second conversation going on between the political parties and their direct audiences — the thousands of potential voters who are “following” — or reading — them.

At times, that appears to be an intimate conversation: Conservative Leader Stephen Harper tweeted on Day 1 of the campaign to his son Ben. “Ben, Great win! And against older guys! The team must be excited. Congratulate them all for me. Dad.”

Yet, even the intimacy was no doubt meant for the broader audience. A photo on the Conservative party website shows Harper on the campaign plane, typing the in-flight tweet to Ben on his iPad after Ben’s “team had just won a volleyball tournament.”

But never fear, Contempt Party leader. Someone who "knows who the important people are" claims she's got Stevie UnSpiteful's number. Scroll down to get the ZOMG quote.

The Evolution of News-Gathering in Real Time

If you are interested in developments in North Africa and the Middle East and/or the evolution of journalism and you're not following Andy Carvin on Twitter, you should.

The Guardian has a profile on him.

Andy Carvin is getting a little sick of talking about which verb best describes what he does. "It's somewhere between reporting and collaborative network journalism, and George Plimpton-like oral history, except that I'm doing it in real time in 140 characters. I don't know what to call that and I don't care as long as people don't waste my time trying to give it a name."

Whatever Carvin's particular brand of news gathering should be called, it has made him a must-read source on the Arab uprisings – and possibly the most talked about person at SXSW. "All roads now lead to Andy Carvin," declared media critic Jeff Jarvis at a discussion on the future of news.

(SXSW is an annual festival held in Austin, TX. Carvin was there recently, still tweeting.)

Many, if not most by now, journalists use Twitter, but nobody does it like Andy.

Although Carvin had a network of blogger contacts in the region whom he used to check information being tweeted, what marks him out is his willingness to retweet unverified material and ask his followers for help to establish its accuracy. "I admit that I don't know the answer to things and see users as potential experts and eyewitnesses. In some ways what I'm doing is not that different from a broadcast host doing a breaking live story with a producer in one ear, talking to pundits and all the while anchoring the coverage, but rather than producers I have followers."

Imagine that, friends of truthiness. Fact-checking! As opposed to making shit up.

Here's an example:

"I see my Twitter account as a newsgathering operation and the success or failure rate is clearly tied to the expertise of the people who follow me. I would rather have almost no one following me and have them all be experts than have a million followers."

That expertise was highlighted recently when he tweeted a request for help identifying a photograph from Benghazi of "a guy holding up the biggest bullet I had ever seen". After some discussion among his followers, US military serviceman sent him a link to an image of a Russian anti-aircraft round that matched it perfectly. "There is no way that I or anyone else at NPR could have done that on our own."

Or so quickly.

It will be fascinating to see if this catches on. And in the meantime, it's just plain fascinating to follow Andy Carvin.

Prolife Drinking Game

At hashtag #prochoice on Twitter, I am amusing myself -- and apparently hardly anybody else -- with suggestions for triggers for the Prolife Drinking Game.

I was thinking of retweeting especially rich fetus-fetishist ravings, but I am not yet skilled enough twitter-wise to RT and explain what the hell I'm doing in 140 characters. This, for example, would be a strong contender for a prize (yet to be determined).



Some of my suggestions for PDG triggers: unborn, babies, jesus, bible, sluts, murder, proaborts, brainsuckedout, taxdollars, Nazis (yes, at least twice today that I've seen), holocaust, etc. Anyone who reads DJ! with any regularity could come up with 15 or 20 in as many seconds.

Then, there are the new coinings that may or may not survive. Currently, these include Gosnell and sextrafficking.

Of course, turn-about being fair play, same could be done for pro-choice side: science, facts, research, humanrights, forcedbirth, fetusfetishist, LunaticRightWing, etc.

Since I'm not getting any takers on Twitter, I thought I'd blog my little notion.

Feel free to submit suggestions for more triggers and/or contenders.

Fun! Prizes (yet to be determined)! Mockery!

Can't blink.

In the hilarious stand-up comedy monologue below Janeane Garafolo - about whom it is claimed that she bears a slight ressemblance to fern hill in the same way that Patsy Stone looks like deBeauxOs - refers to US rightwing religious fundamentalists Con zombies using the expression "Can't blink". Garafolo riffs about that, and Stevie Spiteful.



I suspect the expression "Can't blink" was borrowed from military jargon, and it's exploited in the RepubliCon discourse just as terms such as pre-emptive strike and collateral damage are deployed.

Nonetheless, it reveals a political reality in the US - and elsewhere, as events in Northern Africa and the Middle East demonstrate - that one should remain vigilant with regards to the actions of ideological opponents.

fern hill's post about the US RepubliCons' MASSIVE push to re-criminalize abortion with legislature that limits women's access to abortion exposes the depth of their hypocrisy. As this NYTimes op-ed says:

House Republicans are preparing to push through restrictions on federal financing of abortions far more extreme than previously proposed at the federal level. Lawmakers who otherwise rail against big government have made it one of their highest priorities to take the decision about a legal medical procedure out of the hands of individuals and turn it over to the government. [...]

A separate Republican bill would deny federal funds for family planning services to any organization that provides abortions. It is aimed primarily at Planned Parenthood’s hundreds of health centers, which also provide many other valuable services. No federal money is used for the abortions. This is a reckless effort to cripple an irreplaceable organization out of pure politics.

Remember how ReformaTory HarperCon backbenchers' Preacher Vellacott and Rod Bruinooge kept introducing private members' bills to impose legislated restrictions on a legal medical procedure and re-criminalize abortion in past parliamentary sessions?
From another NYTimes op-ed:

The objective is to provide the Supreme Court’s conservative majority with a new vehicle for further tampering with Roe v. Wade’s insight that the decision about whether to terminate a pregnancy is best left to women and their doctors pre-viability.

Americans who support women’s reproductive rights and oppose this kind of outrageous government intrusion need to respond with rising force and clarity to this real and immediate danger.

This incremental erosion of women's right to choose when and if to procreate in Canada is a toxic spillover from US rightwing zealotry - and bigotry. Don't blink, because the HarperCons are following the lead of their ideological brethren in the US.

Egypt!

MASSIVE protest. Cops seem to be restraining themselves. All over Egypt.

Hashtag #Cairo is trending worldwide. I'm following #jan25.

ADDED: Guardian live-blog.

UPDATE: Al Jazeera finally starts reporting.

Reporting from #Tunisia

Like all obsessed people I suppose, I can't understand why everyone isn't rivetted by events in Tunisia.

I'm no kinda expert in any element of this story, but I have learned a great deal and propose to share some tidbits with DJ! readers.

This website, Al-Bab, is a great place to start.

Al-Bab aims to introduce non-Arabs to the Arabs and their culture. Western explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries portrayed the Arab world as a strange, exotic and sometimes terrifying place. Al-Bab seeks to portray the Arab world neither as an object of fear nor as a cultural curiosity - fascinating though it may be.

At the moment, blogger Brian Whitaker (at link above) is reporting on unrest in Libya and suggests a 'Tunisia test' for distinguishing major and minor protests.

The #Tunisia hashtag has been running about half and half Arabic and non-Arabic. Lots of commenters are speculating on where else such protests may break out. Libya, Jordan, Egypt are frequently mentioned.

Probably the 'coolest' queen on earth, Queen Rania of Jordan, tweeted thusly yesterday:

Closely watching developments in #Tunisia and praying for stability and calm for its people.

Which drew this much retweeted comment:

@QueenRania I honesty think u should start palace-hunting in Jeddah, coz u and your husband r next. #sidibouzid #Tunisia #Jordan

There are two female journalists I'm now following: Mona Eltahawy and Dima Khatib, both funny and smart. (Dima Khatib writes in about five languages.)

It was Mona Eltahawy yesterday who, in assessing Ghaddafi's whacky appeal to Tunisians (live-tweeted here), said something like: 'To give him his due, Ghaddafi is the only Arab leader nutty enough to even go there.'

Less so today, but popping up occasionally is the spat between people saying this is a 'Twitter revolution' (I was guilty of that yesterday; in my defense, I am only slightly newer to North African politics than I am to Twitter) and others who say that is Western-style BS and totally disrespectful of the real revolutionaries.

Here's the case for 'Twitter' revolution and here's the spectacular smackdown.

More succinctly, our friend Mattt Bastard put it like this:

I don't understand how the people of Tunisia overthrew their government without me signing an e-petition or changing my Twitter avatar.

That's it for now. I gotta get back to Tunisia. And, I guess, wash my hair, put some clothes on. . . .

ADDED: Reuters report. I don't think this sounds like 'street theatre'.

More on Tunisia

Tunisia's revolution, if that's what it will turn out to be, is still moving too fast.

But, man, I'm learning a lot. So are many people, it seems. I just retweeted this:

@greeneyedlilo Jayelle

Read tons about #Tunisia this am. Asked myself, "How did I not know about this?" Turned on cable news. That answered it.

For now, some links:

Somebody has made a searchable tweet aggregator.

A long, fascinating article from al Jazeera on how the government tried and failed to wage cyberwar on activists.

Ben Wedeman, a reporter for CNN, is there and tweeting now from his hotel room. Curfew is effect.

That's it for the moment. I've gotta go back to #tunisia.

And besides, it's snowing here.