Despite the often-brave posturing we hear about rebuilding after natural disasters, perhaps it is time to lose the hubris and realize that yes, even North America is subject to the devastations wrought by climate change. The American hubris of exceptionalism will not protect them from the fury of nature that has visited so many other regions of the world.
It must be a sobering and, one hopes, humbling, realization.
The following is from Ft. Meyers, Florida, brought to you by Hurricane Ian.
Given that it is World News Day, a few reflections from the Star's former public editor, Kathy English, seem appropriate:
Trustworthy journalism is news and information that is accountable, accurate, fair, and produced in line with journalism’s highest ethical standards. That means correcting our mistakes when we err. It means making clear distinctions between fact and opinion. It demands centering diversity and inclusion in the subjects and sources on which we shine journalism’s light and in the corps of journalists who report the news.
World News Day is intended as an important reminder to the public of why journalism — at its best — matters. As journalists we have an obligation to explain to you the ethical standards that distinguish responsible journalism in the public interest from much of the noise of the net.
In 2019, English asked Star readers why journalism matters to them.
“In this age of the public’s acceptance of lies and misinformation coming at us from every direction we must be able to rely on at least one institution that respects the truth, forces public figures to answer to those who serve them and holds commitment to the public good as something to strive for,” wrote reader Leo Keeler.
“It is my conviction that in a world without fact-based reporting, the powerless will have no voice, the powerful will not be held accountable and the public will never know the difference,” [Devan] Munn said.
And finally, Brittlestar has some thoughts:
By now you have probably heard about Pierre Poilievre's outrage over an apparent threat against his wife, Anaida.
Here is a shot of PP with MacKenzie:
Poilievre had previously sidestepped calls to denounce MacKenzie, including from leadership rival Jean Charest, after the men were photographed together at an event during the Conservative leadership race this summer.
Nick Seebruch wrote on Sept.2,
Jeremy MacKenzie, the de facto leader of the Diagolon cult... has gone on social media calling for the execution of Canadian Armed Forces personnel. He has encouraged his followers to harass health care professionals, and is facing assault and weapons charges in Sask., and weapons charges in N.S. in an unrelated case as well.
After the photo of MacKenzie shaking hands with Poilievre began circulating on social media, he refused to denounce MacKenzie or Diagolon by name instead stating: “As I always have, I denounce racism and anyone who spreads it,” then deflecting by pointing to what he called “. . .Justin Trudeau’s many racist outbursts . . .”
Then there is the unpleasant participation of PP's wife, Anaida, in inciting hatred, associating Trudeau with pedophiles and terrorist, as I wrote about in a previous post:
That the rage-farmer's wife is all in with Pierre's pursuit of power at any price is evident in a recent Tweet she sent, recommending Canadians visit an extremely right-wing site trafficking in sensational headlines, love of 'freedom' and hatred for Trudeau.'
I could go on and include references to Poilievre's own indifference when members of the media, especially females, have been subjected to terrible abuse and threats, as well as his self-serving response in reaction to Chrystia Freeland's verbal assault when she visited Alberta, but I think you get the picture.
The hands of both PP and his wife are unclean, precisely what happens when flinging mud at others. The fact that Poilievre now posts supreme outrage at the inevitable result of stirring up the baser instincts of people is unseemly and hollow.
One suspects he is making the "Great Pivot" to appear now as a regular public official, only concerned about his family.
And who, if they don't know any better, could argue with that?
UPDATE: Our national satirical treasure, The Beaverton, has some acerbic fun with PP. Here is their headline:
The gullible and the stupid will always be with us.
What none of them want to know or understand is that serious journalism entails great responsibilities, one of the foremost being accuracy. And reputable journals own up to it when that responsibility is not properly discharged.
An excellent illustration of this pertains to a story journalist Michelle Shephard filed in 2010 from Somalia that turned out to be less-than-accurate. Donovan Vincent, The Star's public editor, writes:
Michelle Shephard, then a national security reporter for the Star, travelled to Mogadishu to write about 17-year-old Ismael Abdulle, who told her that the year prior he had been captured by members of Somali terrorist group al-Shabab on his way home from school.
When Shephard met Abdulle for the interview, he was missing his left foot and right hand, limbs the extremists cut off as part of their extreme interpretation of sharia. It was a lesson for turning them down, Abdulle told Shephard.
As a consequence of the story, members of the Toronto Somali community mounted Project Ismael", and ultimately the lad was accepted into Norway as a refugee.
Unfortunately, a significant element of Abdulle's story was false, something he ultimately admitted to Shephard in 2019.
He confessed that he was in fact a thief when al-Shabab caught up with him, just as the terrorist group had claimed publicly at the time. He was armed with a pistol when they grabbed him, he said.
Abdulle and the other boys didn’t escape from al-Shabab after the amputations. They were let go — another lie, he said.
Why did he misrepresent the facts? Abdulle says he made up the story because he wanted to find a westerner to help him get to Europe. That’s when Shephard came along.
He told her he created the story at the time to make himself look “innocent.”
While there are traditional safeguards in place to ensure the accuracy of stories, the fact that this reporting was from a conflict zone complicated matters significantly. Nonetheless, Vincent sees this as a serious breach.
In the Star’s lengthy journalistic standards guide, the blueprint for how we operate as a news organization, you’ll find this line: “Good faith with the reader is the foundation of ethical and excellent journalism. That good faith rests primarily on the reader’s confidence that what we print is correct.”
We can’t lose that faith. It’s our duty to print the truth and be able to stand behind what we say.
The case is a cautionary tale for all journalists.
Whether it’s a war zone or any other challenging circumstance, journalists need to find ways to confirm whether the details they’ve gathered are true. And if there’s a doubt, there’s always the option of simply not publishing.
No matter how sympathetic the victim, reporters still need to ask probing questions and maintain a level of skepticism. In cases involving victims of torture, for example, we have to balance that skepticism with compassion.
The non-thinking, reflexive elements of our populace will say this story verifies their cries that mainstream media are purveyors of fake news. What they will conveniently ignore, however, is the real story, that even after almost 13 years, the inaccuracy of Shephard's reporting is being addressed in an effort to set the record straight.
I have yet to see such efforts on Rebel News or any other fringe source of 'information'.
Sometimes, humour is the best weapon.
If you are sensitive to coarse language, do not watch. Otherwise, enjoy this rejoinder to the TrudeauMustGo hashtag and those who embrace it.
H/t Dave Anchovy
There is never a moment in my post-teaching life when I have regretted retiring. The paperwork was bad enough, but in the latter part of my career, the politics were becoming very difficult for someone like me to tolerate. The careerists were always looking over their shoulders, ever fearful of obstacles on the horizon that might impede their constant upward trajectory. Even phone calls from dissatisfied parents affrighted them.
The real victims in all of this were basic educational principles and, most sadly, the students.
The following letters to the editor exemplify this fact:
Ontario schools cancel the Crown. How?, Sept. 17
The York Region District School Board issued guidance to teachers that discussion of the Queen’s death is “not encouraged” because it might be “triggering,” as “monarchies are steeped in problematic histories of colonialism,” and so on. Children are curious and resilient. With the help of adults, they may deal with events that are distressing: the divorce of their parents, the death of their grandparents.
Educators now have the opportunity to explain why millions mourn this woman, while others think of her as the symbol of historical colonialism and imperialism.
And yet the York board wants to silence educators on the subject.
The problem is not that the York board has a low opinion of the Queen.
It is that they have a low opinion of children.
David Mayerovitch, Ottawa
Last year, in the high school that I teach in, a teacher was temporarily removed from class for reading part of “To Kill a Mockingbird” aloud. The teacher had, of course, very carefully laid the groundwork for the book and prepared the students for its disturbing content. They had were well into reading the book. But that day, a student in the class had their phone on, recording, waiting, and after the passage was read, they asked to go to the washroom. Instead, they went right to the office.
There was a flurry of activity after the complaint, and, to make a long story short, the book has been pulled from the whole board, along with several others that the administration (or the board) deemed to be potentially sensitive.
So one student complained, and, instead of working it through, the books were taken from the hands of the rest of the students in the class, who never got to finish the story or the discussions of the issues inside it.
I wonder what exactly they learned from that experience.
Your article says “Basic civics — teaching students about the complications and contradictions in our constitutional system — can’t be taught if educators are told to duck controversy because of potential sensitivity.”
This is exactly what is happening in libraries and English classes all over the country.
We need to be able to talk about racism, and every other damaging “ism,” without the fear of being accused of being racist.
But the fear is real in the teaching profession, and I imagine everywhere else.
No one wants to be escorted out of the building and have their reputation tarnished or ruined.
These discussions are being silenced, and this is a great loss to our education system.
I doubt that I have ever used the word piffle before in writing. Yet it seems the appropriate choice in this instance.
I am extraordinarily embarrassed for those in the mainstream media who think this is news and tantamount to a scandal.
Thankfully, we have in Brittlestar the one to set things to rights with an ingredient we all need more of: a sense of humour.
Just one more thing, from Moudakis.
It is ugly, and it is real.
H/t Aaron RuparEspecially chilling are the hand gestures of the faithful
That was apparently not good enough for PP. A friend of mine, who joined the Conservative Party in order to vote in its leadership campaign and follow it more closely (he is neither a Conservative nor did he vote for PP), received the following from the newly ensconced leader after the Atkins event.
Ray,
You won’t believe this. I couldn’t believe it, and it happened to me.
Today, I was delivering a statement about how Trudeau’s inflation is hurting everyday Canadians when someone started shouting.
First, they hurled obscenities and then started shouting at me.
Was it some left-wing protestor? Maybe it was a Liberal MP or staffer?
No, it was a member of the media.
That’s right. David Akin from Global News was swearing, shouting and heckling. He wasn’t interested in hearing what I had to say, and he certainly wasn’t interested in reporting it in an unbiased way.
This is what we are up against.
It’s not just the Liberals with all the advantages and resources of the federal government at their disposal.
It’s the media, who are no longer interested in even pretending to be unbiased. They want us to lose.
But we have a secret weapon.
You, and hundreds of thousands of other Conservatives across this country. People who want inflation to go down, the out-of-control spending to end, the CBC to be defunded and all the hurt caused by Trudeau turned into hope for a better future.
We can’t count on the media to communicate our messages to Canadians. We have to go around them and their biased coverage. We need to do it directly with ads, mail, phone calls and knocking on millions of doors. And to do all that we need your help.
Chip in to help us go around the biased media.
Thank you,-Pierre Poilievre
PS. We can’t take on the Liberals and the media and win without your help. Chip in here: donate.conservative.ca
If the above looks familiar, it should. It is a ploy taken directly out of the Trump playbook, the one in which the media are demonized as repositories and promoters of 'fake news,'' their avowed aim to tear down elected officials in order to advance an unholy 'woke' agenda.
Much is being written these days about the perils to democracy in our country. At the top of the list should be the threats posed by demagogues like PP and his ilk, whose motives in their rants have nothing to do with promoting our most cherished political principle.
Here in Ontario, things are moving at a fast pace - if you happen to be a senior in a hospital but have been deemed medically fit for discharge.
This is thanks to the undebated passage of Bill 7, called the More Beds and Better Care Act. As with so much else that pertains to the Ford government, there is far less here than meets the eye.
While the bill's ostensible purpose is to free up beds in our overburdened hospitals, its abject indifference to the lives of affected seniors is egregious. As it now stands, those awaiting placement in one of their five preferred long-term care homes can now be sent anywhere within certain certain geographic limits: 70 kms in larger urban areas, and 150 or more kms if residing in the north. The logistical challenges for elderly caregivers should be obvious. And if patients refuse to go, a levy of $400 per day can be applied by the hospitals.
As someone who has navigated the health-care system on behalf of my brother, a Parkinsons Disease sufferer, I know well the perils that exist in some long-term-care facilities, but I won't bore you with the details. All I will say is that the rosy picture being painted by the government is wholly inaccurate, including the claim that many currently '"blocking hospital beds" can go home with the proper supports, as if arranging for home care were a simple and expeditious process. Experience with my brother showed that to be a myth.
Like a carnival barker inviting everyone to step up and take in the world of cruel illusion on offer, Doug Ford and his fellow travellers are hoping you will not scrutinize the situation and realize the hoax they are perpetrating.
- They are giving the illusion of making progress on our quickly-unravelling health-care system
- They are doing this in a way that costs the taxpayers 'nothing'.
The reality is somewhat different, in that Bill 7 does almost nothing to help solve our problems, the majority of which are caused by overworked doctors, nurses and technicians, many of who are either off sick, burnt out or leaving their respective professions. Add to that the fact that the province is villainizing a sizable part of an older demographic by suggesting they are the real problem.
Closely related to the above is the effect of Bill 124, which severely limits pay increases (to about 1%) in the public sector, including much-needed nurses, many of whom have reached their limits and are leaving in large numbers:
Morgan Hoffarth, the president of the RNAO, cited statistics that said nursing vacancies in Ontario have more than quadrupled over the last five years, adding there was a 56-per-cent increase in vacancies during the first half of 2021.
So for those who stayed home in the last provincial election or voted for Mr. Ford and his crew, as the old saying goes, "How's that working out for you?"
You'll find out, sooner or later.
UPDATE: Despite the rush to get oldsters into LTC homes that may be dangerous to their health, Press Progress reports that proactive, unannounced Resident Quality Inspections to determine their quality, will not yet resume:
While, in Summer 2020, Premier Ford promised “We are going to do surprise inspections right across the province, so my message to all long term care homes is to get your act together” that did not materialize.
Ontario Health Coalition Executive Director Natalie Mehra noted ... “Going into the homes and asking residents if they feel safe is how you find out about abuse,...It’s how you can tell if the resident is declining, or losing weight or have bruises or that they’re staring up at the ceiling because no one has positioned them to even watch TV. If inspectors don’t go into the home, they don’t see that.”
Increasingly misanthropic, I'm not sure I needed this video, sent to me by my friend Dom. It's been around for awhile, but if you haven't seen it, or would like to see it again, please enjoy this spectacle of our species at "our finest".
Considering the current state of politics and people's ongoing credulity, the above should serve as an object lesson for all
Although my medium, for better or worse, is words (sometimes too many, I know), I have long admired the brilliant succinctness of some editorial cartoonists; while there are several whose work I savour, preeminent in the pantheon is Theo Moudakis.
This illustrates why:
With the passing of our beloved Queen, an icon of selfless dedication we fondly thought would go on for much longer than her 96 years, mortality is on the minds of many - especially if they have 'achieved' a certain stage of life.
A friend sent me the following, which puts things into perspective, I think.
Clearly, these miscreants lack the courage of their 'convictions'. Yet the damage they do is severe.
Here are a few examples of that damage:
Prior to fleeing to Canada as a refugee, Saba Eitizaz worked for the BBC in Pakistand. She left after fielding a number of death threats from the Taliban, and landed a job at the Toronto Star, but her newfound feelings of security proved to be ephemeral:
An Aug. 4 message, using a fake name and the encrypted email service Mailfence, said several men were looking at the photos of female reporters, who were described in racist, misogynistic terms. Eitizaz was singled out as the men decided “which ones need to be silenced first.”
“So I’m just waiting for a gunshot or for somebody to show up at my place or with a firearm,” Eitizaz said. “It takes just a little bit more anger or a little bit more of a feeling that you can do this with impunity for online violence to become real-life violence.”Eitizaz is one of several Canadian journalists — nearly all of them women, many of whom are Black, Indigenous, and women of colour — targeted by an escalating hate campaign using encrypted email services. The emails drip with racial hatred and include threats of violence and rape. In at least one case, threats were directed at a reporter’s family.
Presumably because she is a woman, a Global News reporter has also been repeatedly targeted with a variety of threats and obscenities. One of the mildest is this one:.
In Ottawa, Rachel Gilmore of Global News was told in an email that “Judgment Day is coming, sweetheart. You had better make peace with your god.”
Over at one of Torstar's sister papers, things are not any different.
After two and half years of covering the COVID-19 pandemic and receiving an avalanche of hate mail laced with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories (and more references to the Nazis than she can remember), The Hamilton Spectator’s health reporter, Joanna Frketich, had come to believe nothing could surprise her anymore.
She was wrong.
The author of the email was playing at being cryptic, but it was only that. Playing.
It was filled with references Frketich knew well. The school her child went do. Her husband’s business. Their home address.
“Someone was threatening my children and my husband and my home. So that was something I’ve not really experienced ever in my journalism career,” Frketich said. “That took things to a whole new level for me. I pretty much try to ignore the personal attacks but that one did stop me in my tracks.”
Young journalists with limited time in the industry are feeling especially vulnerable:
The Spectator’s Fallon Hewitt, having been working in the industry only since 2018, has spent nearly half of her career working in an ecosystem of harassment.
Like Frketich, Hewitt said the pandemic radically and rapidly changed the tone of the kind of emails she received.
“It all seemed to actually relate to coverage I was doing about the pandemic,” she said. One particular story about a business that violated COVID-19 public health rules triggered a response so vitriolic that Hewitt joined the ranks of reports who wanted to avoid pandemic coverage.
The business owner fired off a message dripping with vulgar and sexist language.
“When this is all over, I honestly hope you rot in hell you sleazy piece of s--t. God forbid we ever cross paths,” the message said. “You should be f--king ashamed of yourself ... I hope you live a lonely miserable life!”
I won't reproduce some of the filth that has been directed at these people, but outside of the affront to human decency these cowardly notes represent, there is an even higher cost. According to an IPSOS survey, some 33 per cent of respondents have or are considering leaving the profession. As well,
[t]he vitriol has left some journalists avoiding story subjects that they fear could worsen the harassment.
It is not hard to understand how all of this has developed. Egged on by people like Donald Trump in the U.S., who labelled the press "the enemy of the state," and echoed by Trump wannabes like Pierre Poilievre and Maxime Bernier in Canada, what has become know as rage farming has found especially fertile ground amongst the disaffected, the gullible, and the just-plain stupid, all supreme cowards for the tactics they employ because they cannot accept views that run contrary to their own.
However, probably the biggest victim in all of this is democracy. While I realize there are many who disdain the MSM as being mere toadies for their owners, the fact is that newspapers, as opposed to self-selected stories on social media, provide a much larger array of news and sense of the larger world than can be found by simply following our online biases. And when journalists begin to limit the stories they cover out of fear of reactionary blowback, we are all the poorer, and less-informed, for it.
It is a question I have asked myself on an almost daily basis these past few years, and it is the question TizzyEnt asks here:
UPDATE: Here is the link to an update posted by TizzyEnt. The only thing that has changed in the video is the location where this atrocity apparently happened.
Wasn't Socrates executed for corrupting the youth?
Courting a child wearing Minnie Mouse ears sets my 'Spidey sense' tingling.
H/t The Salamander Horde
