That Was Then; This Is Now

Funny about campaign promises. Most people take them with a large grain of salt, yet once in awhile, large segments of us are drawn in by the hope for a better day, hope fueled by an earnest politician who seems intent on upending the traditional shoddy, cynical and ultimately heart-breaking way of doing things that has become the default position of contemporary politics.

Such was the promise of Justin Trudeau.

But that was then, and this is now.

The Star's Tim Harper writes about the pipeline dilemma now facing Justin Trudeau, one, as I noted yesterday, is self-created:

For all the prime minister’s talk about how the economy and the environment go hand-in-hand, sometimes they become detached and action is needed, not a continuation of a Goldilocks not-too-hot, not-too-cold mantra that works as a sound bite, but not always as policy.

So here we are, a defining moment for the Trudeau government, with the clock ticking; a defining moment which Trudeau has largely brought upon himself.

The battle between Rachel Notley, desperate for a pipeline win if she is to have any chance at re-election, and B.C. Premier John Horgan, whose coalition with the Green Party will fall apart if he is not steadfast against the Kinder Morgan twinning, has grown increasingly acrimonious. Predictable, perhaps, but largely wrought by Mr. Trudeau himself:

It is important to remember how a campaigning Trudeau promised to deal with pipelines and other resource development compared to where he stood Tuesday.

On “social license” the Liberal platform read: “While governments grant permits for resource development, only communities can grant permission.”

Today, however, is a different story:

That was modified a year into the mandate with a more broad definition that dealt with consultation and dropped any reference to permission.

Another golden oldie from the Trudeau campaign trail:

...from the 2015 platform was a promise to Indigenous Canadians that they would be full partners on resource projects: “This will ensure on project reviews and assessments, the Crown is fully executing its consultation, accommodation and consent obligations, in accordance with its constitutional and international human rights obligations, including Aboriginal and treaty rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

Words have consequences, and now Trudeau will have to wear that betrayal of the Indigenous people:

Trudeau is going to have to force an unpopular pipeline expansion by bulldozing it past a provincial government, Indigenous leaders and protesters.

Trudeau will expend much more than political capital. He will have his green bona fides shattered.

Justin Trudeau will hardly be the first politician to break his promises. However, given the great hope Canadians invested in his election, he can expect some long-lasting consequences to his betrayal of the public trust.

That's Another Fine Mess He's Gotten Himself Into

In a post yesterday, The Mound offered a searing assessment of Justin Trudeau's abject failure on the climate-change file. Only the most ardent acolytes of the Prime Minister will fail to see that his soaring rhetoric has far outpaced his level of achievement. Says Mound:

Raising public awareness about climate change as needed to secure public support for carbon taxes only shines a spotlight on the hypocrisy of Trudeau's pipeline policy. You can't have people thinking too much about climate change when you're trying to ramp up the extraction, transmission and export of dangerous, toxin-riddled, environmentally devastating, high-carbon, ersatz petroleum. You simply cannot square that circle.

And Trudeau's dilemma is deepening as he is hoisted on the petard of his own pleasing rhetoric about social license, indigenous rights, etc., all of which some people, especially residents of British Columbia, have taken seriously, putting them on a collision course with both Alberta and the federal government.

Alberta's Rachel Notley is warning of an approaching constitutional crisis over B.C.s refusal to play ball with the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline:

The lack of action followed Monday morning comments by Premier Rachel Notley that British Columbia’s actions to halt construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion aren’t “too far off” from a constitutional crisis.

“If the national interest is given over to the extremes on the left or the right, if the voices of the moderate majority of Canadians are forgotten, the reverberations of that will tear at the fabric of Confederation for many, many years to come,” Notley said.

In his determination to get the pipeline built, Trudeau has a panoply of unpalatable options, all of which would entail a huge political price. As the following clip states, he could suspend transfer payments to British Columbia, impose economic sanctions on the province, or, most draconian of all, invoke the Federal Emergencies Act, which would allow him to call a state of emergency in both B.C. and Alberta, enabling him to suspend provincial law, thus paving the way for the pipeline construction.



None of these options is desirable, but again, Trudeau has brought himself to this precipice by his love of his own public image and rhetoric. One thing is certain in my mind,whatever option he chooses: in 'going to the mats' for the petroleum industry, Justin Trudeau will be making abundantly transparent that he is little more than a servile enabler of the neoliberal agenda.

The Kids Are Alright

You may note that in the title of this post, I chose the informal version of all right, lest there be any doubt about the ideology of many young people today. Hardly conservative in their propensities, it would seem that many of them are awaking to the potential for power that they have, as long as they are able to keep alive the surging outrage welling within them, the most recent catalyst, of course, being the Parkland shooting.

It would seem the survivors of that shooting are playing the long game in order to keep their mission for sensible gun laws alive. Here is their latest effort at deepening the momentum they have thus far achieved in raising crucial awareness that their country needs sane gun laws, the deep obstructionist efforts of the NRA and their supporters, including bought-and-paid-for corrupt politicians, notwithstanding.



Meanwhile, galvanized by the diseased leadership of Trump, and a sign that democracy is not entirely dead, a record number of women are running in the U.S. midterms.



Now, if we can only convince Canadians out of their complacency, maybe the least we can accomplish is strong turnouts in pending provincial and federal elections.

This Is Hard To Watch

The following incident occurred in Toronto on February 18 of this year. It is difficult to watch, but I encourage you to do so, and use headphones so you can hear, not only the anguished cries of the pinioned Black youth, but also the response of the onlookers, likely the only bright spot in this whole sorry episode.

But first, a little background:

Part of the video of a violent takedown captured on YouTube shows 19-year-old John Doe crying desperately while pinned to the ground by three men in TTC fare inspector uniforms. “I’m hurting, I’m hurting,” and “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

When Toronto Police officers arrive, they swarm the scene, keeping him down and then haul him up to take him to the cruiser and handcuff him.

At one point there appear to be at least seven men piled on to him.

Such excessive force. Why? Nobody knows. He was unarmed. He was already pinned down by three grown men. He wasn’t in any position to run.

Was John Doe's 'offense' that he is Black?

The teen and his mother have launched a $3 million lawsuit against the Toronto Police Services Board, the Toronto Transit Commission, two unidentified police officers and three unidentified TTC fare inspectors.

The lawsuit alleges racial profiling, assault, unlawful detention and negligence among others.

John Doe, a student of paralegal studies also working as a food courier, was just another guy on the 512 St. Clair streetcar preparing to exit at Bathurst St. when he was grabbed.

“He was suddenly and without warning attacked and thrown to the ground by TTC fare inspectors despite crying for help, held there, not told what was happening,” said Hugh Scher, one of his lawyers.

There was never any indication that the fare hadn’t been paid. And he had paid, Scher said. Nor was he charged with any offence of TTC bylaw infraction [Emphasis mine].

For those who say he should have simply cooperated with the authorities, all I can ask is, "How would you have behaved had you been subjected to such an apparently unwarranted and Kafkaesque experience?

Lifeblood For A Moribund Democracy?

By any measure, I think it is safe to say that ours is not a healthy and vital democracy. One only has to look at election turnout statistics to see ready proof.

In the last two elections, barely half of Ontarians bothered to cast a ballot — an embarrassing 48 per cent voted in 2011, and a dispiriting 51 per cent turned out in 2014.

Federally, the last election saw increased turnout, but that was only due to the lofty but ultimately largely empty rhetoric of Justin Trudeau, who attracted the youth vote, a topic I will return to momentarily.

While the virus of demagoguery is most readily apparent in the United States, Canadians are hardly immune. One has only to look, for example, at the Toronto mayoralty of the late Rob Ford, the crack-smoking bad boy who many voters could not get enough of.

And of course now, in Ontario, many are predicting that his brother, Doug, will be the next premier, despite the fact that he will not allow media on his campaign bus and is skipping out on the first leaders' debate on April 11. His strategy seems to be to speak in generalities (finding new efficiencies - where, oh where, have we heard that one before?) promising everything to everyone, and at a very attractive cost - none. And on top of that, he promises to lower taxes.

What is the cure, or at least an effective treatment, for this rash of nonsense? Perhaps it lies in lowering the voting age to 16. Lance Copegog, one of those 16-year-olds, writes:

It is a shame that voters in Ontario do not cherish their democratic right to vote.

Liberal MPP Arthur Potts, who represents the Toronto riding of Beaches—East York, introduced a private members bill that proposes the voting age be lowered from 18 to 16 in provincial elections.

His arguments have a compelling quality as he looks at youth activism:

First Nations-led youth councils are holding the government to account on its promises to Indigenous people in Ontario, young activists involved in the Black Lives Matter movement are advocating for systemic change, and many others are making a difference in their communities.

Most young people do not deny that climate change is the most pressing issue of our time. The action that we take now will determine our very survival.

As well, Copegog takes encouragement from what young people are doing in the U.S.

The activism of the survivors of the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting demonstrate that today’s young people are articulate, courageous, and passionate. Their activism saw them go head-to-head with the National Rifle Association and Senator Marco Rubio, a darling of the gun lobby.

I can see additional advantages to lowering the voting age. At 16, most are still in school, a wonderful venue to engage meaningfully on today's vital issues, promote discussion and foster some critical thinking amongst peers.

Voting at 16, whether through peer pressure or increased awareness, would likely further the chances of electoral participation as a lifelong habit.

Finally, such youth engagement might shame their indolent, disengaged parents into the same participation.

In his column today, Tim Harper offers sundry reasons for increased participation by young people who already have the right to vote, millenials:

They prefer government spending over balanced budgets (understood by Justin Trudeau and Kathleen Wynne), don’t believe corporations pay their fair share of taxes, don’t believe income inequality has been properly addressed and are more comfortable with big interventionist government.

They also want to see action on climate change, policies to lift people out of poverty and they back a more open immigration system.

Those very issues resonate with younger people as well. Theirs is a broken world that they will have to contend with far longer than someone of my generation will.

Why shouldn't they have a voice?

He Talks A Lot

... but doesn't seem to say much.

Here is our Prime Minister on anti-Trump protests:

Are Two Sellouts Pending?

He's loved of the distracted multitude,
multitude, who like not in their
judgement, but their eyes.

Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 3

As Claudius in the above states, there will always be those who suspend their deeper thinking when evaluating public figures, preferring to reflexively accept the public images the latter so carefully cultivate, often at the expense of some less attractive realities. Never has there been a more important time, however, for critical public vigilance.

For example, despite the soothing words of Justin Trudeau that his government will never accept a NAFTA agreement that is not in the best interests of Canadians, Thomas Walkom has some grave doubts amid reports that a deal is close:

In actual fact, Canada will be lucky to minimize its losses.

After having restructured its entire economy to become an integral part of the U.S. market, Canada has little appetite to walk away from even a diminished NAFTA.

I fear that the Liberal government’s brave talk about no deal being better than a bad deal is just that — talk.

Trump also needs a victory. He has called NAFTA the worst trade pact ever. He needs a deal that, to his supporters at least, plausibly seems better.

He must show that he has bested Canada and Mexico.

For example, Trump's

plan to bias government procurement in favour of U.S. companies, [is] blatantly detrimental to Canada.

There is a precedent for all of this. In January, the U.S. and South Korea began renegotiating a free trade deal that Trump claimed was unfair to the Americans. Last month, they reached an agreement in principle that gave the U.S. virtually everything it had demanded.

In return, South Korea was granted a permanent exemption from Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs — tariffs that never should have been imposed in the first place.

On another front, despite all the Trudeau talk about taking action on climate change, given the EPA decision to roll back vehicle fuel efficiency, environmentalists are wary of the pressure being put on our government to "go along to get along."

The auto industry wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to go along with U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to weaken fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks. Environmentalists want Trudeau to refuse, immediately, and join forces with liberal American states.

Thus far the feds has been noncommittal on the matter, and Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna's office has said it will make a decision based on “careful considerations of environmental and economic impacts.”

It hardly sounds like she is on the side of the angels here, a suspicion that has prompted Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist for Greenpeace Canada, to observe that

“standing on the sidelines is standing with Trump” rather than with the march of history.

Stewart says it is time to take a stand.

Cutting auto emissions is a significant component of Trudeau’s plan to meet Canada’s target, under the Paris climate accord, of cutting emissions by 30 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. Canada is not close to being on track to hit the target, a report released last week showed.

Finally, those still besotted with the early promise the Trudeau government showed on issues crucial to our collective survival should take a few minutes to watch this recent 'performance' by Catherine McKenna:



The Russians have a saying: "Better a bitter truth than a sweet lie." Unless and until we are able to make that choice (and our time is running perilously short, cooing government reassurances notwithstanding) we can only expect more temporizing and political expedience from this and any other government.

A Thought For Today

“He was not of an age, but for all time!” - Ben Jonson

The above quote, written about William Shakespeare, is as true today as it was in Jonson's time.

I am currently reading a book about The Bard. Given the power of the unhinged evangelicals, the rise of Doug Ford in Ontario, and, of course, the madness in the Benighted States of America, the following sentence by Stephen Greenblatt resonated with me:

"Shakespeare was fascinated by the crazed ranting of those who hate modernity, despise learning and celebrate the virtue of ignorance."

Not much has changed in 400 years, eh?

Google And Android Phone Data Mining - A Guest Post

Commentator BM left a very useful analysis in response to my recent post on ways to protect online data. Here it is:

Extreme lack of privacy suspicion back in 2010 or so made me never sign up with Facetrash or Twatter. Thank goodness.

Got a new Android phone recently since I've never bought into Apple's jive talk. The old Samsung G4 croaked. A new G8 is $1300, an utter uselessness to me for the money. Got a Chinese phone from the carrier for $80, all aluminum case - makes the old S4 seem like trash.

Since I use Gmail, I turned off all the usual privacy traps, and all was well. Then, a week later, Google "upgraded" me, unasked, to Android 6 on ye olde wifi. Well, that reset all the permissions to ON. Unasked. Another hour to root through all lines, submenus etc. to turn them off again. Worse than before, because Android 6 has more built-in crud than Android 5.1.

Not content with that, two weeks later, Google delivered me an updated Assistant, unasked for. First I knew of it was a message telling me what my favourite way to work was! Being retired for five years, this was indeed a revelation. So another round of turning off permissions was needed.

But I was not thorough enough. As I prepared to comment here, the "comment as" box had my name staring back at me. So thanks for the alert. It has taken several hours to learn even more of the little cul-de-sacs Google has built in to trap the unwary. Some processes require pressing a Pause button for 5 seconds to opt out. No instructions, of course. It's trial and error. Thank you, Google. And when you're finally successful, a page pops up to advise you of the error of your ways, in the most mincing words imaginable. Squawk, we won't be able to send you directed searches based on your history, whine, you won't get the latest directed ads, blah, blah. So far as I'm concerned, Great.

Google makes you opt out rather than opt in. Bloody data pirates. Anyway, that's why I comment anonymously. Probably only cosmetic, no doubt we all are still tracked anyway, but I feel better.

Speaking of which, contemplating a new car. Vehicles have been a lifelong passion. Mine's 11 years old and has none of these new touchscreen data traps, but she's getting on. Don't ever plan to visit the US ever again. Not one reason to want to go. Got most roads in NS memorized, so navigation not required. Listen to CBC, but hey I'm supposed to consume boughten iTunes music. Need no electronic bells and whistles. Want a good suspension, good steering - driving is serious and I enjoy it. But I do realize that there is no opting out of location tracking on any new car, regardless. We're all stuck.

The car companies are now in the data-mining/flogging business too. Android Auto will latch onto my phone like a leech for targeted ads on the big car screen. I mean, how many bum fast food hamburgers can anyone swallow at one go? Or pizzas? Or dreadful Timmies coffee? The Brave New World of advertising and consumerism, with dope soon being legal to tranquilize us all, even as history is rewritten in 1984 fashion in other ways, something the Americans are already past masters at. I mean, who won WW1 and WW2? America. And who really believes in global warming, soil despoilation and running out of resources? Not Amerika. Under Dems or Elephantz.

Good thing I got to three score years and ten and enjoyed myself before I really rumbled the BS we get fed by the greedy elite every day. This world isn't destined for long, I'm afeared.

The Pressure Builds

Following up on my post the other day, there is no sign that the pressure Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg has placed on Fox's Laura Ingraham is abating. Indeed, one wonders if she is now taking the same route that saw Bill O'Reilly's exit from the Fox News Network following a 'previously-scheduled vacation'.

You Can Close The Open Book That Is Your Data

Now that it has been demonstrated Facebook is not the benign social media giant it has always claimed to be, people are becoming more conscious of how vulnerable and how valuable their data is to unscrupulous entities. Among those who are concerned, there will be a corp looking for ways to keep more of their information private. Fortunately, you don't have to be a technical wizard to take prophylactic measures.

Exactly what does Facebook have on you? It is easy to find out, and easy to change your privacy settings to frustrate those who 'want to get to know you better'.

In the Facebook settings for your account — right below the link to deactivate it — there’s an option to download a copy of all your Facebook data. The file can be a creepy wake-up call: All those years of browsing the News Feed, and sharing selfies, engagements and birthday wishes on Facebook have taught the company quite a lot about you. You, the user, are part of the reason that Facebook has become so good at targeting ads. You’re giving them everything they need to do it.

Here’s a link that will take you right to the settings page, if you’re logged in to your account. One there, click on the link to download your archive, and follow the prompts.

The following video offers further explanation:



Yesterday I downloaded my data and, after nine years on Facebook I was amazed at what is stored there: all manner of messages, posts, photos and likes. While most of what I put on the social media is not personal, as I prefer to use it to post links to articles and interesting blog posts, in the past I have included vacation photos and other such memorabilia, but for the most part have always kept this information either private (available only to me, or limited to my FB friends). Nonetheless, I am not at all confident that the data could not be taken and sold by FB anyway.

However, it is easy to change your settings, and something privacy experts agree is a good start.

On a related note, I have stopped using Google for my searches, because all of them are tracked and sold; instead, I am using another engine called DuckDuckGo, which does no such tracking. You can click on this link to find out more about it.

Finally, those who are cavalier about their data may want to think twice after reading this article about the "extreme vetting" the U.S. is subjecting visa applicants to, expected to affect 14.71 million applicants, including those who apply as students, for business trips, or on vacation.

I Just Love This

I hope you do, too.

Your Apps Have Eyes

I am convinced that, like so many other traditional values, our right to, and desire for, privacy is quickly becoming but a vestige of an earlier era, We readily share information on Facebook, for example, most never checking their privacy settings, leaving ourselves open to all kinds of manipulations and intrusions and even giving potential employers ample reason not to hire us. When we download apps (since I don't have a smartphone, I am somewhat protected) we blithely check of the Accept Agreement that is mandatory before we get our 'free' new application that, after all, promises to make our life so much better given the promise of control literally at our fingertips.

However, as most of us know on some level, nothing is ever really free. At the very least, the following report should serve as a wake-up call to regularly check our privacy setting on all of our devices:

A New Record In Canadian Debt

It is $1 trillion and counting. While I am by no means a fiscal hawk, such a high debt level should concern all of us, given the looming spectre of interest rate hikes, which means the cost of servicing that massive debt has only one way to go - up.

Sadly, Justin Trudeau's promise to grow the economy 'from the heart outwards' is turning out to be just another of his empty rhetorical flourishes. With no discernible plan to manage and pay down that debt, we should all be worried.

Go to the 8:33 mark for the full story:

A Tonic For The Soul

Those who read this blog with any regularity would most likely describe me as an inveterate cynic. Indeed, it has become my default position. Nonetheless, when I see goodness and positive resolve in the world, my heart can still be touched, although not overwhelmed.

The massive anti-gun protests that swept the United States yesterday has occasioned a hopefulness that I haven't felt in a long time. Organized and led by young people, some of whom have been personally touched by gun violence, the Washington component of the massive demonstrations is estimated to have seen over 500,000 in attendance. And make n mistake about it - these were people with a strong and explicit message directed toward corrupted lawmakers: our lives are worth more than the money the NRA is paying for your deadly complicity in the deaths of far too many innocents.

“Vote them out!” they cried, over and over, on a dozen jam-packed blocks of Pennsylvania Ave., the street that connects Republican President Donald Trump’s White House with the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress. “Vote them out!”

Near the end of last night's NBC broadcast, two reporters were realistically positing the end of the massive coverage the media have given to this movement, news cycles being what they are. Apparently, the young people are undaunted by this reality; they intend to continue and deepen their campaign for sane gun laws through something they are very adept at: social media. I hope they succeed.

One of the most important aspects of these demonstrations, from my point of view, is that they have spawned a sense of unity, cohesion and oneness that is anomalous in a nation as fractured as the United States is. And that growing unity, that recognition of the commonalities that bind us together can transcend the things that separate us, is what the powers of darkness (for want of a better phrase) truly fear. The reactionary right is well aware their hold is facilitated by sowing division, discord and animus. As Abraham Lincoln famously said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

To that end, the NRA is bringing its mighty guns to bear in order to try to disrupt this growing unity. For example, while it maintained 'radio silence,' so to speak, for four days after the Parkland shootings (surely tactical move rather than a gesture of respect), after that brief period it strengthened its digital presence:

The NRA was already spending an average of $11,300 per day for online ads alone before the school shooting on February 14. Since February 18, online ad spending has more than quadrupled with a daily average of $47,300.

The majority of this increase was spent on Facebook in advertisements that were targeted to Florida residents. The National Rifle Association also jumped into the top 100 advertisers on YouTube and has maintained this new status since February 21.

But that is but one of their tactics. Consider Colion Noir,
a pseudonym for Collins Iyare Idehen Jr., a lawyer and gun rights activist from Houston who has nearly 650,000 subscribers on YouTube.



I imagine there are few things the NRA would not do to continue its stranglehold on America's soul. It is now up to those who have seen and experienced so much violence and death in their young lives to do mighty and sustained battle against a seemingly implacable foe.

May They Inspire Us All

Their voices, I hope, are growing too loud to be ignored any longer:

A Broad Canvas

If, like me, you are a retired senior to whom the fates have been reasonably kind, you have the luxury to contemplate the world around you at your leisure. If you are at all engaged in the larger world, however, that contemplation is rarely relaxing or enjoyable. You have seen too much in your lifetime.

A clear benefit and curse of advancing years is the context it confers. Without succumbing to mindless sentiment or nostalgia, I can remember earlier days when our society, although frequently roiled with major problems, was able to preserve and nourish something that now seems to be rapidly receding into the realm of the notionally quaint: the common good. People who ran for political office, it seems to me, more often than not, ran with a mind to represent the entire country or province, not a narrow or divisive constituency nursing some nebulous sense of grievance.

Today, that seems rarely the case. Nationally, of course, that 'narrowcasting' was most obvious during the foul reign of Stephen Harper, its main justification being to secure and retain power. His replacement, Justin Trudeau, while bearing the accouterments of a progressive populist, has disappointed deeply, purveying a neoliberal agenda and readily abandoning his election promises, an electoral reform that could have rejuvenated our waning democratic participation, and his pushing through pipelines without the 'social licence' he averred was sacred. Meanwhile, the Conservatives leader, Andrew Scheer, in true populist style in order to convince the electorate he is 'one of us,' dons a plaid short-sleeved shirt and bluejeans, while NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, courting the press, seeks to fashion himself as a Justin 2.0:



Here in Ontario, things are no better. We have a desperate Kathleen Wynne promising everything to everyone in a proposed spending spree which, should she be returned to power, would ensure at the very least another sale of public assets, the most likely immediate target being the LCBO. Her recent appointment of privatization czar Ed Clark as its chair was a barely concealed hint of a further implementation of the neoliberal agenda.

As a retiree, I am particularly offended at Wynne playing to the stereotype of the selfish senior by promising to remove the deductibles and co-payments under the Ontario Drug Benefit program, which provides seniors with free drugs. This will save the average person $240 per year. My vote really can't be bought, Kathleen.

Then, of course, there is the rise of the reactionary populist Doug Ford, promising to find 'new efficiencies' to save $6 billion with, wait for it, no job loss or government cuts! Shame on anyone who lived through the Mike Harris years for believing such patent malarkey.

Finally, we have the NDP's Andrea Horwath who, in a bald and venal play, gave up her balance of power leverage and triggered the last election, the same one that gave Wynne her majority, thereby allowing her to sell off 60% of Hydro One, a sale Horwath now promises to reverse by buying back the shares and lower hydro rates by 30%.

The contemporary canvas I contemplate is a bleak one. In Voltaire's Candide, Professor Pangloss avers "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". Notably, the work is a satire. Perhaps it is time for a new generation of readers.

Guess We Just Can't Know The Mind Of God

Whose Democracy Is It, Anyway?

While the Mound has been giving comprehensive coverage of the Cambridge Analytica assault on democracy, I am taking this opportunity to supplement his work with the following. I hope it sheds further light on the ongoing subversion of politics and citizens' rights, all for the sake of facilitating victory for those who have no goal other than to attain power for its own sake.



Fittingly, for Facebook's pivotal role in this monstrous scheme, its shares lost 7% of their value for a whopping market value loss of $40 billion.

The Simpsons Have His Number

Those whose memories extend beyond last night's hockey scores may recall that in 2011, while he was a Toronto city councillor, Doug Ford proposed an 'exciting' vision for that city's waterfront: a monorail, a megamall, and a giant Ferris wheel,:

“What we’d like to do is have a monorail system that’s running right from the Pan Am Games (site) right along the lakefront and stops at Union Station and Ontario Place and right across the front of the lake,” Ford said.

To complement this 'vision,' the megamall

“... would be 1.6 million square feet of one of the most prestigious malls in Canada. We’d try to attract Nordstrom and Bloomingdales and Macy’s".

The above 'magnificence' would be topped off by this 'gem':

The councillor said he hopes to have looming over all of it the world’s biggest Ferris wheel, similar to England’s London Eye, but that would be “just a cash cow.”

If you see nothing wrong with this scheme, please read no further, as you will only be offended.

Several years ago, The Simpsons tapped into this curious zeitgeist:



Notice how the huckster even bears a more-than-passing resemblance to the conman who now leads the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party and will, according to the latest poll, be Ontario's next Premier.

Fortunately, some are able to see through the facade and understand that all of Ford's faux populism is something that needs to be soundly rejected if one cares anything about an inclusive and progressive society. The lead letter in yesterday's Star amply reflects the need, not to embrace empty rhetoric, but rather to engage in one of responsible citizenship's harder duties: critical thinking:

Doug Ford purports to denounce the “elites” and stand up for the “little guy.” I’m not sure who these groups are.

Are these elites the Liberals who have introduced progressive initiatives such as labour reform and increased minimum wages? And does the little guy refer to those who have been subsisting on precarious employment and low wages? As premier, Ford would cancel the next minimum-wage increase, surely a blow to the working poor.

Are these elites the Liberals who brought in the beginnings of a pharmacare program for those under 25 and is the little guy all of those who previously couldn’t afford necessary medicines but now have access?

Are the elites the Liberals (and the PCs under Patrick Brown) who have embraced carbon taxes for assuming some responsibility for our planet? The federally mandated carbon tax is not something Ford can ignore. Is he not being disingenuous in suggesting otherwise?

As a wealthy business owner, is Ford not an elite whose pro-business and anti-tax policies meet his needs and not necessarily those of the little guy?

It is truly disheartening to see polls predict a PC win in June’s election when there is no platform — only promises to scrap the sex-ed curriculum, revisit abortion policies, cancel a much-needed minimum-wage increase and cut taxes.

We can’t go back to the 20th century. Times have changed and continue to change rapidly. We desperately need a truly progressive government.

Norah Downey, Midland, Ont.

So will it be the monorail or responsible government? You will literally have to decide which future best reflects the quality of your character.

America's Answer To The Homeless Problem

Call it thinking outside the box, but a U.S. candidate for the Senate has a novel idea about the homeless problem: arm them with shotguns.

Here is Libertarian Brian Ellison's plan, borne, no doubt, out of deep compassion:

... homeless people are “constantly victims of violent crime” and providing them with firearms would provide a deterrent.

[He] said he had settled on pump-action shotguns for practicality purposes.

“Frankly I think the ideal weapon would be a pistol,” he told the Guardian, “but due to the licensing requirements in the state we’re going to have a hard enough time getting homeless people shotguns as it is.

“Getting them pistols is probably next to impossible. The pistols need to be registered, people have to have addresses.”

Carrying a concealed pistol is illegal without a permit, Ellison said, “whereas open-carrying a long gun is completely legal”.

I can't help but wonder if it also occurs to Ellison that he may also have hit upon a cost effective plan to reduce the number of homeless people in America's midst.

Kind of a reversion to Hobbes' state of nature, eh?

And The United States Considers Itself A Civilized Country?

Enough To Warm A Cynic's Heart

No matter how bleak and pessimistic I may sometimes feel about my species, something always comes along to lighten my heart:





May they thrive, and may their momentum be unstoppable.

Seeking Sanctuary

Sometimes, living in Canada's most populous province is embarrassing. Anyone know a remote mountain top I can retreat to?

These letter-writers define my problem:

In light of the recent PC leadership convention that saw the resurrection of the anti-abortion faction, the denial of climate change, the renewal of the “no tax is good tax” fallacy, an anti-gay bias and the assertion that only parents undertake sex education of their children, I would propose that the party change its name from Progressive Conservative to Regressive Conservative — taking a giant step backward for all Ontarians.

Peter Lower, Scarborough

A mere two days after we observed International Women’s Day, the Ontario PC party membership decided to bypass a strong, highly qualified, intelligent woman in favour of a dense, inexperienced, impudent man who rode the populist wave to victory much like another well-known politician did south of the border over a year ago. For a man who doesn’t have an original idea in his head, Doug Ford certainly has a lot of people betting on his ability to beat Premier Kathleen Wynne in the upcoming election. Let’s hope this time the electorate chooses the strong, highly qualified, intelligent candidate.

John Fraser, Toronto

Columnist Martin Regg Cohn tells us that we should not rule out the possibility of Doug Ford being elected Ontario premier, and he may well be right. It is possible that Ford’s populist appeal will be sufficient to propel the PC party into government. However, it is also possible that Ford’s election will revitalize Liberal party fortunes and give Premier Kathleen Wynne a fighting chance of clinging to power. In electing Ford, PC party members chose to roll the dice with the future of both their party and the province, and they apparently did this with their eyes wide open. On June 7, we will know whether those who voted for Ford allowed Wynne to once again beat the odds.

Jonathan Household, Niagara on the Lake

Curbing An Addiction

A recent post outlined the terrible toll plastic pollution is exacting on the world's oceans and wildlife. We pay a very high price for personal convenience, but our addiction to plastic runs very, very deep, as you will see in just a moment.

But first, Tim Gray makes a plea for Canada to take a lead in the battle against this scourge, and for a very good reason:

Canadians are among the most wasteful people in the world, with 25 million tonnes of waste, including plastic, ending up in landfills in 2014. Of course, millions of plastic bottles and other plastic waste never even make it to the landfill, but instead end up in our streets and environment.

In our oceans, our plastic joins the waste of other countries to kill a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals every year, according to the UN Environment Program.

And just how can we work towards taming this monumental problem?

Provinces set the legislative frame for how waste is tackled. For example, all but two provinces and one territory have plastic beverage bottle deposit return programs that achieve high recovery rates. Ottawa could mandate that all provinces achieve at least a 90-per-cent recovery and let each of them design its own system.

This would ensure that the laggards in Manitoba and Ontario (which throws away 1.5 billion plastic bottles every year) get their acts together. If provinces don’t achieve the target, the federal government could impose a tax on the bottles and give the funds to municipalities for waste abatement programs.

The federal government could also require that major multinational corporations — like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Pepsi and McDonald’s — increase the amount of recycled material in their products and packaging to 100 per cent by 2023. High recycled content targets create market demand for recycled materials. They also make companies more likely to support collection systems that provide high volumes of high quality plastics, like deposit return programs.

Although Gray doesn't mention it, another avenue would be for us to wean ourselves off our heavy use of plastic. That, however, is easier said than done, as you will learn in the following video:



You can read about the above initiative here.

Just because something is difficult does not make it beyond our means to achieve. By educating ourselves about the problem and taking steps to reduce our reliance on plastic (through cloth shopping bags, reusable water bottles, etc.), we can all contribute to the reduction of one of humanity and nature's biggest blights.

Student Passion Versus NRA Polish

I'll put my money on student passion.

The Neoliberal Creep - Part 2

While Part 1 dealt with the neoliberal agenda influencing Bill Morneau's retraction of his pharmacare promise, today's post deals with that same influence, this time on Canada's 'evolving' position on foreign aid.

International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau says she wants to use the new $2 billion in extra aid dollars in the new budget to attract insurance and pension funds to invest in fight against global poverty.

Bibeau said her priority is going after wealthy private-sector investors, because governments can’t provide the level of spending needed to do development in a world where conflicts are lasting longer and displacing people for decades at a time.

Given the aversion too many people have to taxes and government expenditures, on the surface this proposal would seem to spread out the costs of doing good. A win-win situation, right?

Maybe. Maybe not.

The need for foreign aid is beyond question, both for the well-being of the recipient countries and the security of the larger world. Those who are suffering and disenfranchised today are the recruits for terrorist organization tomorrow. However, if improving the well being of those in the targeted countries is the overall goal, one has to ask a fundamental question: Is private investment the best vehicle by which to accomplish it?

Private investors, whether institutional or individual, are seeking a decent return on their money. If the goal of foreign aid is better the recipients' lives, how, exactly, is entering into partnerships with pension and insurance funds going to accomplish that? Unfortunately, Ms. Claude-Bibeau leaves that question unanswered. Perhaps she felt that given most Canadians' shallow engagement on public policy, simply making an announcement on cost-saving measures would satisfy them. But the key question to ask is whether or not the goals of private profit and foreign aid are compatible.

A report by the OECD-DAC sheds some much-needed light on this issue:


As you can see in the above, the first unspoken 'rule' is that 70% of the private investor's funds are guaranteed against loss. Guranteed by whom? The taxpayer, of course.

But surely that is not enough to attract such investment. There must also be the prospect of earning a healthy return on investment. And therein lies the tension and potential conflict between development and private sector goals. A 2013 study into the American experience with PPPs (Public-Private Partnerships) may shed some light:

Some development officials are concerned that opportunities to access private resources through partnerships can pull mission staff away from established country plan priorities. The availability of private funding, they argue, is hard to ignore, even when a proposed partnership does not fit well within an established mission priority. Given very limited staff resources at many USAID missions, the opportunity cost of following through on PPPs that are not necessarily aligned with stated mission priorities can be high.

In other words, the prospect of 'free money' can subvert a government's development goals.

There is a host of other problems associated with these partnerships, including overlooking needier countries in favour of more-developed ones so as to provide greater opportunities for the private sector to profit. This issue and many more you read about in the above report.

Will Canadian go blindly into this brave new world of foreign aid PPPs? Given the decidedly neoliberal bent of the Trudeau government, I think that is a distinct possibility.

Canada, and its foreign-aid recipients, deserve much, much better than this.

A Species Under Indictment

The species: the human race. The charge: depraved indifference.

Watch the following to see for yourself whether conviction is a forgone conclusion:


If you would like to learn more about this ubiquitous problem, click here for a good primer.

A Heedless Nation

One of our much-vaunted attributes as a species is our resilience. Our ability to recover from trauma, tragedy and setbacks is the stuff of legend. People devastated by wildfires rebuild; parents who lose a child to disease, accident or mayhem have another child; widows and widowers carry on with their lives; even crippling injury and maiming is not enough to stop us from looking forward to a better day.

Sometimes, however, that resilience and adaptability can work against us. I believe that is what is occurring under the presidency of Donald Trump. The Orange Ogre seems to have redefined what is acceptable or, at the very least, tolerable, in public life. Forget his serial philandering, his outright and ongoing mendacity, and his manifest unfitness for office, all of which, in an earlier time, would have provoked strong reaction and demands for remediation. Perhaps because Trump came from reality programming, and the United States, now more than ever in its history, subsists on a diet of illusion and false promise, it appears that widespread condemnation over what he does or does not do is largely absent, a 'perk of office' that his predecessor, Obama, did not enjoy.

Consider the following report, which begins at the 7:52 mark, and then ask yourself this question: If times were normal, what logical conclusion would most draw about Donald Trump vis-à-vis Russia?

The Grand Plan of Obfuscation: A Guest Post

In response to Saturday's post about the increasing momentum of the neoliberal creep evident in the Trudeau government, frequent commentator BM offered his detailed take on this sorry situation:

It's all part of the Grand Plan of Obfuscation.

Put in a haphazard system of Pharmacare, so that no citizen knows what is covered and by whom. Allow the private sector like Morneau Sheppell to set up systems to track every citizen to make sure they're covered by the eclectic mix of public and private schemes for pills, because it's so complicated, and thus skim off management fees for their "services".

Big Pharma rejoices. Not having a national scheme means nobody is going to bargain for cheap pill prices on a national scale. So drug prices stay high, and the financial corporatists skim off the cream for services rendered tracking all the mush with ZERO value-added for anyone but themselves. All the public has to do is pay over the odds for all the shenanigans, while the politicians issue glib statements as to how they've helped everyone. It'll all cost more overall than what we have now, you can be sure.

Then, at Bay Street banquets, the corporatists will toast each other as to how well they sold the citizenry that piece of goods. The talking will of course be in business code and jargon, the obfuscation of our age. Financial mags will feature glowing articles on how some "genius" spotted a service "missing" from the "market", and worked out a scheme to profit from it. All hail a new "business" Titan! And if you believe all that guff, you'll believe the BS from corporate media on war reporting too.

These business people strike me as the lowest of human life forms, sucking and siphoning money into their pockets from the masses, while maintaining what they have helped society out, but in reality being parasites on the body politic. There is no shame left for those people. They believe their own lies, and act all patrician like Morneau, a man so apparently ill-informed and dim-witted, he'd never heard of business divestiture for holding public office, or if he had, regarded himself as so honest, ethics policies simply didn't apply to him.

Does anyone trust Bell and their ripoff cell phone and cable/internet plans? How about the banks? - Nah, they don't try and flog useless services to little old ladies over the phone, do they? Upstanding corporate citizens, the lot of 'em. The execs claim the moral high ground - "That's not our company policy!" Meanwhile, they incentivize middle management with bonuses to get more and more business, and leave that rapacious class to work out the details on the QT, while issuing highly moral company "policy", and tut-tutting their lowest-ranked employees' behaviour. Then doing bugger all to change things. It's all utter and complete bollocks from beginning to end.

Is anyone honest these days? I find precious little evidence of it. Everyone is trying to rip off everyone else just to make a living. It didn't use to be so obviously bent. But big business with the federal government in their pockets seem intent on ruining the ethics of the average citizen by lying, innuendo and complex ripoff schemes like National Pharma, and allowing it to be just obvious enough that we all turn into scheming thieves ourselves because it's the norm. You can't trust anyone these days - we're all stealthily trained to be greedy. Everyone is out for their own advantage.

A population ruined like this has no empathy, couldn't care less about anyone else, and if you expect them to really care about the environment, well good luck. Thus the brain dead cheer lower "taxes" as if it were some sort of universal truism, and society gradually turns into sh*t, with no hope of altruism whatsoever.

Star Readers Are Not Impressed

Star readers can spot a corrupt policy process when they see one, an acuity they make known as they opine on Bill Morneau's pharmacare plans:

Morneau’s unwise decision to backtrack pharmacare, Walkom, March 2

Every parent knows this: If you aren’t really going to take your kids to the zoo, don’t mention it at all.

When we heard details included in the Liberal’s budget this week, we were delighted. That evening’s conversation around our dining-room table with our adult children was animated and optimistic. One of the most exciting elements in the budget was the announcement of the government’s commitment to pharmacare.

Then, came Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s near-immediate dialing back: not a “plan” exactly, more of a “strategy,” and other weasely sounding words. What a colossal disappointment.

I reluctantly excused the Liberal’s backtrack from their promise to reform our electoral system. Please don’t let the pharmacare “promise” go the same way. We need to hear their clarification and recommitment — and soon. Just be straight with us. Are we going to the zoo or aren’t we?

Jeannie Mackintosh, St. Catherines, Ont.

I was even encouraged by the enlistment of former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins, whose provincial government recently implemented a long-overdue pharmacare program, albeit one only covering residents under age 25. It was a start and I hoped that coverage would increase eventually to provide coverage for all.

My feelings of elation and hope were soon dashed when Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced it wouldn’t be universal but would amount to a patchwork of coverage, with some people included in the government plan and others not.

This is unacceptable. We don’t need some mish-mash of a program. Let’s do it right and make a universal plan and, as the research indicated, the overall cost to health care should see a reduction. Perhaps Australia’s government could advise how best to meet this goal.

Norah Downey, Midland, Ont.

Drug-policy experts were stunned. Canada is the only advanced country with a medicare system that lacks pharmacare. Canadians spend so much on drugs because we don’t have a pharmacare program: drug prices are too high and too many intermediaries like insurance companies and benefit consultants drain money from the system.

Morneau’s approach would leave all that waste in place. The obstacle is that every dollar wasted is somebody’s income and the affected industries — drug manufacturers, drug insurers and drug benefits managers — fight back.

The minister effectively pointed to a potential conflict of interest and then restricted the mandate of the advisory council. I hope the minister will step back and let the council do its work.

Kim Jarvi, Toronto

The Neoliberal Creep - An Update

I'm not sure what I find more offensive. Is it the fact that Bill Morneau, despite all that he has said about his limited vision regarding pharmacare, is apparently lying when he now says he is open to all ideas regarding a national drug-coverage program? Or is it that he holds the Canadian people in such contempt that he thinks we are either too stupid or too inattentive to see through his dissembling?

Finance Minister Bill Morneau now says he’s “agnostic” on proposals for a pharmacare plan after criticism that he was trying to dial back ambitions for a new program to ensure Canadians get the prescription drugs they need.

Morneau said Friday that he’s not seeking to prejudge the outcome of a newly created advisory council that will be looking at the idea or dampen the scope of their recommendations.

“What’s really clear to us is we need to get expert advice on how to do this best,” Morneau said during a visit to Montreal to discuss the budget measures.

What might account for his faux 'come to Jesus' reversal? Could it be that he has outraged influential groups?

... the Canadian Federation of Nurses, Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Labour Congress [have written] an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding Morneau be removed from the file.

They said Morneau has already decided it will not be a universal “plan” that covers all workers — to the detriment of Canadians, and the benefit of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and, they suggested, Morneau Shepell.

They said it contradicts “overwhelming evidence” on the need for a universal program and undermines the work of Hoskins’ council before it begins.

“It is our hope that insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry interests will not play a role in the implementation of universal public pharmacare,” the letter to Trudeau stated.

Some will say we should not prejudge the process, and that we must give Morneau and his team a chance to get things right. To take such a position, in my view, would be to harbor a political naivete that I am incapable of.

More realistic, to me, is to see the truth of this entire charade, the truth made known when Mr. Morneau, in a moment of carelessness, let his mask slip, revealing what lies beneath - a living, breathing, neoliberal creep.

The Neoliberal Creep

The above title epitomizes both the direction of the entire Trudeau government and the character of specific high-profile individuals within it, most notably Finance Minister Bill Morneau and International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau. The latter two are using their offices, not to promote the public good, but to do the bidding of their corporate masters.



Let's start with Morneau and what has to be one of the most rapid turnarounds/reversals I have ever witnessed in politics. On Monday, I was delighted to learn that Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins had resigned his post to head an Ottawa study into pharmacare, a universal program covering drug costs for all, a feature of all countries with universal health care save Canada. Then, less than two days later, Morneau 'clarified' his intention (doubtless after hearing from the pharmaceutical and private insurance companies) that

a new national pharmacare program will be "fiscally responsible" and designed to fill in gaps, not provide prescription drugs for Canadians already covered by existing plans.

Why the walkback/misdirection? Well, part of the allure of real pharmacare is the fact that bulk-buying of drugs means massive savings. This, however, does not sit well with the powerful pharmaceutical industry.

Traditionally, they have threatened to stop manufacturing drugs in jurisdictions that engage aggressively in bulk buying.

Consequently, Morneau is now facing conflict of interest accusations on the pharmacare file.

The Canadian Federation of Nurses, Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Labour Congress wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding Morneau be removed from the file.

They said he has already decided it will not be a universal “plan” that covers all workers, merely a “strategy” to fill in the gaps for those who currently don’t have coverage — to the detriment of Canadians, and the benefit of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and, they suggested, Morneau Shepell.

They said it contradicts “overwhelming evidence” on the need for a universal program and undermines the work of Hoskins’ council before it begins.


“It is our hope that insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry interests will not play a role in the implementation of universal public pharmacare,” the letter to Trudeau states.

Moneau's cowardice has earned the scorn of The Toronto Star:

...the projected savings that have made comprehensive drug coverage such a popular proposal in policy circles depend in large part upon the program’s universality. Most of the savings created by a pharmacare program would be achieved through the bulk-buying of drugs and the elimination of bureaucracies – potential benefits at least partly forgone by the sort of means-tested approach that Morneau is hinting at.

Morneau doesn’t really mean “fiscally responsible.” He means politically palatable. With no plan to return to a balanced budget, the finance minister wants nothing to do with the inevitable initial costs of such a project, even if avoiding these means forgoing enormous long-term savings.

Increasingly, the Trudeau government is proving itself to be a massive disappointment to progressives in Canada who, unlike some, demand substance, not just the vapid photo-ops that are coming to define this government.

In Part 2, I will look at International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau's plans to cut the private sector in for a piece of the foreign aid action.

Ezra Schemes And Dreams

I would say that Ezra Levant should be careful about the company he keeps, but I doubt that there is more that can bring down his reputation other than simply being Ezra.

The merchant of malice and division, repugnant to the morally sane, has launched a new scheme to keep his rapidly-sinking Rebel Media afloat, a suspect retirement savings fund.

After struggling through rocky times in 2017, Levant is apparently now looking to diversify Rebel Media’s revenue streams, teaming up with an Alberta-based wealth management firm to offer Levant’s aging viewers the opportunity to stash their nest eggs in an alt-right website.

“The fund is directed at investors seeking to save for retirement or in retirement that desire modest, regular, steady income,” reads an information sheet promoting the fund. The sheet also notes the Rebel Freedom Fund is a match made in heaven for those looking for “both a financial and ideologically based investment.”

For those of sufficiently-strong constitution, here is a promotional video for the fund, led by Dale Wells:


Interesting the company that Ezra keeps. Consider Mr. Wells himself.

On the firm’s website, Wells says “we don’t invest traditionally,” explaining the firm focuses on “one-on-one” investments like financing movies and mortgages instead of mutual funds because the markets are “manipulated” – “I don’t want to say corruption,” Wells cautions, even though “I might feel that.”

“There’s no standard of acceptable practices or accounting or anything that you could follow along anymore because it’s all manipulated,” he adds.

That Mr. Wells believes that there is "no standard of acceptable practices or accounting" is evidenced by his own checkered past.

According to Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada records, Wells was disciplined by the regulators in 2011 for “business conduct unbecoming to the public interest” when he “acted in the role of an advisor without being registered as one.”

Specifically, the panel found that Mr. Wells committed a violation by entering into an arrangement to supply a financial services company with his own computer-generated research that recommended buy and sell opportunities related to mutual funds in return for a fee, and that this information was used regularly by that firm to make trades in an investment fund. In doing so, Mr. Wells acted as an advisor within the meaning of the Alberta Securities Act without being registered as such, contrary to IIROC Rule 29.1.

In its decision, the panel reviewed the requirements to be registered as an advisor under Alberta Securities law, and concluded "the evidence clearly established that the Respondent [Mr. Wells] held none of these qualifications."

As a consequence, Wells was levied a $25,000 fine and received

a three (3) year prohibition from conducting securities related business in any capacity while in the employ of, or associated with any Member of the MFDA, effective from August 1, 2014 to July 31, 2017.

Newly-freed from that ban, it appears that Wells may be up to his old habits, given his pairing up with that malevolent trickster Levant.

That the benighted might wish to risk some of their cash on this scheme is of no consequence or concern to me. What this episode does serve to illustrate, however, is the demographic that is being targeted, the same one, of course, that supports Levant's reactionary rants, mistruths, and distortions: the stupid, the gullible, and the sorely ill-educated.

It is almost enough to make this retired teacher despair at education's obvious failings.

Who Speaks For The People?

The NRA's Dana Loesch?



Or Parkland student Delaney Tarr?



You decide.

A Dying Cause

As a reasonably rational individual, I no longer look upon the ongoing cascade of gun massacres in the United States with either horror or sadness; the only real emotion I have left for that country is profound disgust. How else can it be viewed when it puts some mythically-infused Second Amendment rights above the safety and lives of its children?

Despite its hubristic clamour about being "the greatest country on earth," in my mind the U.S. is but an abjectly failed nation.

Even the latest tragedy, which saw 17 children and teachers murdered in Parkland, Florida, has left the NRA unbowed.

The head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, leveled a searing indictment on Thursday against liberal Democrats, the news media and political opportunists he said were joined together in a socialist plot to “eradicate all individual freedoms.”

Wayne LaPierre can rail all he wants about elites who don't care about American schools. What is important, however, is that finally, real pushback is being exercised. There is, of course, the valiant and passionate efforts of American students who are all too often the victims of NRA-induced gun madness. But add to that the fact that many national business are starting to take something of a stand, which I would call a good but modest start, against the NRA.

It began with a Twitter announcement by First National Bank of Omaha:

Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA. As a result, First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to issue the NRA Visa Card.

That was followed by

car rental company Enterprise (which also owns Alamo and National) announc[ing] they would no longer be offering discounts to NRA members.

The pressure and the momentum are building:

These companies have partnerships with the NRA. Demand they #RejectTheNRA. #BoycottNRA pic.twitter.com/EyrltUEHgq

— CAP Action (@CAPAction) February 23, 2018

Subsequently, more companies have severed their ties with the merchants of death:

Both Allied Van Lines and North American Van Lines, moving companies operated by the same parent company, offered unspecified discounts for NRA members. On Friday, the parent company announced those benefits would be ending.

That has been followed by Insurer Chubb Ltd, Avis and Hertz car rentals and Symantec. As well, both Delta and United Airlines are ending their discounts to the annual gun-toters' convention. The Best Western hotel chain has done the same. I'm sure more will follow.

However, given the deeply-ingrained nature of American gun madness, it would be simplistic to think that success in bringing about even a modicum of sanity to gun laws is assured. Consider the NRA's reaction to this corporate hand-washing:

In a statement released Saturday afternoon, the group accused companies of “a shameful display of political and civic cowardice.”

“Let it be absolutely clear. The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission to stand and defend the individual freedoms that have always made America the greatest nation in the world.”

Fanaticism has always been a force difficult to tame, let alone defeat. It will take more than passionate students and corporations that have recently grown a conscience. It will take the collective goodwill and rationality that I'm sure still resides in parts of the Unted States.

The question remains to be answered, however, is whether even all of these forces combined will be enough to defeat the powers of darkness epitomized by the National Rifle Association.

Crowdsourcing, Anyone?

Like millions of people around the world, I have been deeply impressed and moved by the passionate conviction with which young people, spearheaded by the survivors of the horrific shootings in Parkland, Florida, are organizing and demonstrating to bring some sanity to the gun laws of the United States. Their biggest obstacle, of course, are the politicians bought and paid for by the NRA.

Today's Star has a flurry of letters about the national obsession that has resulted in far too many unnecessary deaths. To my mind, the best suggestion for remediation comes from Scott Heaslip, of Stouffville, who writes:

I have a suggestion for the young people concerned that their elected officials refuse to support effective gun control measures. They should crowd source a fund to hire a team of lawyers and private investigators to look into the backgrounds and business activities of those elected officials who are more interested in the continued support of the National Rifle Association than protecting the lives of their fellow citizens. These officials may then develop the backbone to do the right thing.

That is the kind of campaign many, many people, I'm certain, would be happy to get behind.

Conspiracy, Anyone?

Probably because I am in possession of a reasonably well-functioning brain and had the benefit of a good education, conspiracy theories have never held any particular allure for me. You know the kind I mean, the ones about faked moon landings, undersea ufo bases, and the machinations of the Illuminati who are plotting to achieve a new world order, thereby subverting all that is good and holy.

Yet such enjoy great currency, thanks largely, I suspect, to the Internet.

Now, in the wake of the Parkland school shooting tragedy, the conspiracy machine has a new target: a survivor of the shooting who is turning out to be a passionate and eloquent spokesman for gun control, David Hogg. The Toronto Star reports the following:

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students, David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, are among those targeted by conspiracy theories about the Feb. 14 shooting that killed 17 people.

Similar hoaxes were spread online following other mass shootings, including the 2012 assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

In Florida, an aide to a state representative on Tuesday emailed a Tampa Bay Times reporter a screenshot of them being interviewed on CNN and said, “Both kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis [sic] when they happen.”

Broward County Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie called the remarks “outrageous and disrespectful.”

Runcie called such attacks “part of what’s wrong with the narrative in this country. If someone just has a different type of opinion, it seems that we want to somehow demonize them or colour them as being somehow illegitimate instead of listening. We’ll never get beyond that if, as soon as you show up, you’re demonized.”

You can learn more about this from this NBC report:



The other day, I posted about Russian infiltration of American social media, their goal being to sow division and discord. Seems to me that Americans need little outside help in that regard.

Time To Be Atwitter?

I couldn't help but think of this story concerning trolls spreading fake news about Black Panther-related violence when I saw this:



Do I detect a pattern developing?