Scenes From Newfoundland

While I am not one to foist vacation photos on others, I thought I would break that rule to share a few highlights of our recent trip to Newfoundland to see our son and daughter-in-law. Our second visit to the province reinforced the notion, as my wife expressed it, that life seems to be conducted on a more human scale than here at home. And given the bleak, perilous future the world faces, I have a feeling that our most eastern province will fare better than other jurisdictions.

One of the highlights of our visit was a whale-watching tour, in which we were very fortunate to see humpback whales. I wonder how much longer they will be with us, given how quickly we are destroying their environment and their food supply.

The following video was shot by my son:

Another highlight was meeting this young man, who was filming a scene for his series close to where we were staying and graciously allowed me to take his picture.

As I said, life seems to be on a more human scale in Newfoundland.

Not to suggest, however, that citizens are insular and shy away from the larger world:

                                                                                            

And last but not least, the craft brewing industry is alive and well in Newfoundland. 

And the winner is Come from Away, produced at YellowbellyBrewery and restaurant, our favourite eatery on Water Street.

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Death

One likely doesn't have to read about it to realize that GB News is 'right-leaning.'

Ben Phillips

@benphillips76

A clip from Don’t Look Up, and then a real TV interview that just happened.

 

According to BBC News, it is the first channel set up with an explicit political orientation in the United Kingdom.^[86] The channel is described as right-leaning,^{[3][4][5][6][7]} having been forecast to be so by the Financial Times,^[87] and by The Guardian and City A.M. to be similar to Fox News.^[84][13] In The New York Times, Neil was quoted as saying "In terms of formatting and style, I think MSNBC and Fox are the two templates we're following".^[88] He also told the Evening Standard that Fox News was "an easy, inaccurate shorthand for what we are trying to do. In terms of format we are like Fox but we won't be like Fox in that they come from a hard right disinformation fake news conspiracy agenda. I have worked too long and hard to build up a journalistic reputation to consider going down that route."^[89] BBC media editor Amol Rajan said that "it is not the first channel to be set up in Britain with a strong worldview ... But GB News is the first to be set up with an explicit political leaning".^[21] Rajan also stated that "the validity of [the Fox News] comparison is limited".^[21] GB News has not explicitly indicated a political allegiance, and UK news broadcasters are required by Ofcom to maintain "due impartiality".^[90][22]

In a March 2021 episode of BBC Radio 4's The Media Show, Neil stated that his nightly news programme would contain segments such as "Wokewatch" and "Mediawatch".^[91][92] The channel's breakfast show, The Great British Breakfast, initially had three co-anchors, in a similar style to Fox News' Fox & Friends,^[33] but the format changed to two co-anchors from the second week of broadcasting. Free Speech Nation, a current affairs show hosted by Andrew Doyle, airs once a week.^[30]

 

To State The Obvious

 ... in a way only Theo Moudakis can.

A Bit Of A Holiday

We are currently on a trip to Newfoundland, where our son and daughter-in-law moved in the fall, after living and working in Alberta for several years. It is our first trip since Covid, and the first time we have seen them in about two-and-a-half years. I probably won't be posting much, except perhaps for a few pictures. 

From our Airbnb, I took the trail up to St. John's Signal Hill yesterday, and it was a more arduous than I had anticipated, but I made it to the top. Guess I didn't do too badly for an old guy, eh? 

Here is a picture of me and Chief, an eight-year-old Newfoundland dog who is kind of a fixture on Signal Hill. I met him three years ago when we were attending our son's wedding in St. John's, and he appears to be still going strong but apparently is battling illness.

Below is a picture of some houses nestled alongside St. John's Harbour, where I began my ascent to Signal Hill.

That's all for now, folks.

It's A Great Time To Be Bad People

A friend of mine sent me this, and it is spot-on and self-explanatory.

UPDATED: This Left Me Feeling Queasy

I confess, making it to the 3:27 mark was a real effort, one fortified by a pre-dinner libation(s) last evening. However, eventually I steeled myself to watch the remaining minute, the entire video experience leaving me feeling a tad bruised.

The following production is unbelievably cheesy but at the same time somewhat unsettling. For example, Pierre Poilievre's opening in which he lovingly fondles wood inevitably leads one into all kinds of Freudian speculations, but I'll leave those to more learned minds. However, as you will see, his very strained wood metaphor(?) eventually leads into a revisionist, completely false, history of the signing of Magna Carta.

The Great Charter was 

agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215.^[b] First drafted by Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, to make peace between the unpopular king and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. 

To hear unlucky Pierre's version, the commoners forced King John to sign the Great Charter, thereby reclaiming their freedom, the central theme and fiction of this risible production. And if you have the intestinal wherewithal to watch the entire video, you will likely note that this historical falsehood is consistent with the false narrative he draws about the awful Liberals, who, he claims, want to take away our few remaining freedoms in a fruitless quest for a socialist utopia.  He astutely reminds his listeners that utopia means no place.

No doubt some will be impressed by Poilievre's apparent respect for the intelligence of his followers and would-be acolytes. By using an extended and laboured metaphor, by seeming to be referring to historical fact, he is trying to flatter their intellectual vanity, while at the same time shamelessly and ruthlessly exploiting their credulity.

But of course, that really is what propaganda is all about, isn't it?

In times of war, it is said that truth is the first casualty. Obviously, the same is true of CPC leadership battles.

UPDATE:  I see I am not the only one who noticed Pierre's relationship with wood. Heather Mallick writes,

Do you like wood? Sure. I like wood as much as the next guy. But not as much as Conservative Party leadership hopeful Pierre Poilievre, who has dropped another unhinged video and it’s all about wood because wood is what this strange man really likes.

Plaid-shirted Poilievre greets us inside his wooden house caressing a vertical exposed wooden beam with his fingertips and enthusing, with theatrical pauses and little bursts.

 Is that erotic? Someone thinks it is.

Twitter certainly did. “Find someone who looks at you the way Pierre Poilievre looks at an antivaxxer or a piece of wood,” it advised. “Poilievre seems to be trying to take a piece of wood on a date.”

She goes on, but I think you get the picture. The unsavoury picture, that is.

 

Freedom's Cost

Americans are a strange and contradictory lot, to put it mildly. They claim (not unlike a certain candidate running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada) to love freedom, yet that love of freedom clearly has its limits. For example, many of them exult in the recent decision of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, claiming a victory for the unborn and the sanctity of life. Yet that same reverence for life apparently ends at birth, if you consider even one of several metrics, not the least being the fact that they have the highest incarceration rate in the world. If that isn't an indictment of an uncaring society, I don't know what is. And don't get me started about gun rights vs. the killing of school children.

But instances of their hypocrisy/contradictions abound. Another is the the crazed right-wing, of which America seems to have an unusual concentration, and its hatred of regulations or, as they view it, government intrusion in their lives (see the above for a glaring exception). The latest example is reflected in the Supreme Court decision to neuter the Environmental Protection Agency.

... the court released a ruling in West Virginia v EPA limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants, in a major environmental case with far-reaching impacts. This has been classified a “devastating” outcome by environmental lawyers, climate scientists and activists alike. One with far-reaching implications for the future of the country, and world.

Despite Americans' professed reverence for life, this ruling will have the opposite effect:

“At this point, for those in positions of high power to deny the urgency and the stakes of the climate crisis is to condemn everyone alive today and generations to come to life in a sick and impoverished world,” said Ginger Cassady, executive director of Rainforest Action Network.

Distilled to its essence, the Court decision removes much of the EPA's regulatory power to limit pollution, the argument being that only Congress has such power. Given the partisan dysfunction of Congress, this means a major brake on greenhouse gas emissions has been removed. leaving it up to states to determine their own rules. It would therefore appear that any national climate goals Joe Biden has are now impossible to achieve.

Regulating emissions from power plants is a vital piece of climate mitigation, as the power sector is the second largest planet-warming polluter in the US, making up about 25% of national emissions. 

In the meantime, experts noted the domino effect of not rapidly eliminating national greenhouse-gas emissions will disproportionately fall to Black, brown and Indigenous communities, as worsening climate crisis deepens racial and social divides.

“There are so many paths to climate justice still, but what we’re seeing is a supreme court that is, I would call them ‘Supreme Climate Deniers’, that are trying to put themselves in a decision-making position,” said US Climate Action Network’s executive director, Keya Chatterjee. “That sends a signal that they will want to make it hard for the federal government to protect people in communities where right now the fossil fuel industry is running the show.”

“Decisions like WV v EPA make it clear just how much the system is rigged against us. A supreme court that sides with the fossil fuel industry over the health and safety of its people is anti-life and illegitimate,” wrote the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate organization.

I sometimes think that the Ugly American would be far more tolerable were they to cast aside their cloak of self-righteousness, false piety, hubris, over-the-top patriotism and jingoism and admit to themselves and the world exactly what they really are.

But a capacity for self-reflection and honesty really isn't the American way, is it?

 

 

Happy Canada Day

 As factious as we can be, I hope most of us can at least agree on this:

H/t Theo Moudakis

The Power To Shock

I readily admit that most days, almost nothing fazes me, having come to the same conclusion as George Carlin that we are going away. Looking at all of the existential threats we face, it is clear they have one thing in common: a deeply flawed humanity with no prospect of remediation. 

Despite that,  I am not so disengaged from the world that I look upon events with Buddha-like serenity. The stupidity of people, the rise of the ignorant right and their passionate intensity, still has the power to offend me. And sometimes I even have the capacity to feel shocked.

Which was how I felt while reading Edward Keenan's column on the consequences of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade. The part that shocked me I will get to in a moment, but first, a little bit about his article, which discusses the fallout of the abortion decision: a growing distrust in government and its institutions as evidenced by the ongoing demonstrations of those vehemently opposed to the that decision:

The overwhelmingly pro-choice crowd chanted “Abortion is health care!” and many demonstrators carried signs reading things like “Her body, her choice” and “Keep your laws out of my uterus.” But among them were a prominent number of signs with a less issue-specific sentiment: “F— SCOTUS,” for example, and “Abort the Court.”

These sentiments that didn’t just object to a decision but crudely questioned the legitimacy of the court itself were in line with a growing strain of opinion in the U.S. in which trust and support for the court are at all-time lows, and its decisions are seen more widely as based not in law, but in naked political partisanship.

The polls show that 59% of Americans are opposed to the decision, but confidence in the Court itself has dropped to an all-time low of 25%. And when institutions that play a vital role in people's lives take such a hit, you can be sure of trouble ahead:

“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in December when the court was hearing oral arguments in the abortion case it ruled on this month. 

It is hard to see the Court in any other way. The increasingly emboldened pack of politically-appointed hacks is clearly just getting started.

On Monday, the court threw out the long-standing “Lemon test” of church-state separation in a case involving school prayer; a week ago, it similarly ruled a state might be compelled to fund religious private schools; in a New York gun control case last week, the court ruled the 110-year-old requirements for permits to carry handguns did not align with history enough to be an allowable restriction of the right to bear arms.

Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving hack, has suggested much more is in store; the part I have italicized and bolded is the part that shocked me:

...in his own concurring opinion in the abortion case, Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly said the court should revisit the cases that protected access to birth control, legalized same-sex intimacy, and allowed for same-sex marriages.

Many may not remember the sodomy laws that once held sway in the United States and still exist in some jurisdictions, making homosexual activity between consenting adults illegal and punishable by prison terms. Indeed, there are still many countries that prescribe the death penalty for such activity. That these kinds of retrograde laws may return to the U.S. would have been unthinkable not too long ago.

Life today has become increasingly bleak, the aura of the dystopian nightmare undeniably pervasive. An outsize part of that nightmare is the fact that America is unquestionably being remade into a theocracy, of the same ilk and infamy as those who rule Iran and Afghanistan. It seems very unlikely that its democracy can survive. 

There are elements in the U.S. that want to bring back 'the good old days." Go back far enough and those days included the burning of witches at the stake and putting people in stocks, both of which I have little doubt still hold strong appeal for some of our southern neigbours. A significant portion, in fact, the majority, on the other hand, finds returning to a 'simpler time' both horrifying and abhorrent. 

How to reconcile the two polarities? Without the institutions of government to mediate and moderate and be the voice of the people, there is no resolution other than civil war, something many argue has already begun, its bloody conclusion somewhere off in a future that will be anything but rosy.

 

Pick Your Friends Wisely

Clearly, Pierre Poilievre is making a calculated decision here in who and what he associates himself with.

H/t Theo Moudakis

Too Good Not To Share

 

H/t Mary McCasey Kearney

Truly, He Is A Man Of The People

I have a friend, subversive in his own way, who joined the Conservative Party for $15. He is entitled to thus vote in the September leadership election. I'm think he bought the membership in support of Pierre Poilievre, a man we both agree is not fit for such a position; it is sobering to be reminded, according to his rhetoric, that he is running to become "your next prime minister."

While Pierre no longer extols Bitcoin as a bulwark against inflation and government control, he is currently casting himself as a real 'man of the people,' something the following video amply illustrates. Note how easily and pseudo-empathetically his moves amongst them.

BTW, it is four-minute long; for the constitutionally delicate, one-minute of his propaganda should suffice to get his 'message.'

This is unbelievable.

People are lining up for a passport at 3AM. They wait 7 hours, or longer. Some are just turned away and told to come back tomorrow.

What’s taking so long?

This is the waiting nation.

We are asked to wait for everything, as sleepy bureaucrats and government gatekeepers stand in the way of you getting the basic services to which you are entitled.

Sound familiar?

Watch and share my new video:

BTW, his propaganda is clearly reaching some. If you want to read the adoring comments he has elicited from true believers, click here.

A Trip Back In Time

That must be what it feels like to visit the United States these days, with the Supreme Court okaying the open-carry of guns and overturning Roe v. Wade.

The Real Faces Of 'Freedom'

I probably spend more time on Twitter than is healthy, but given that I follow a number of people who are either political writers or activists, that time is not entirely wasted. Two that I regularly check in on are TizzyEnt, an American filmmaker and justice-seeker, and Caryma Sa'd, a Toronto lawyer and satirist, much-hated by the Freedumb crowd for merely showing, via her videos, their inanity and unhinged natures. 

Last week, while riding her scooter in Toronto, Sa'd was assaulted and her scooter stolen. The following video tells the story and identifies one of the suspects, Emanuel Tamburrini.

The Time Is Out Of Joint

 

I spend a fair bit of time in this blog discussing my aversion to the United States. Widely populated by benighted souls, it is a country I now shun and have no intention of ever again visiting.

However, my smug convictions about the superiority of Canadians relative to our American counterparts has been shaken, for reasons that will quickly become apparent.

Martin Regg Cohn offers this disheartening news:

One in three adults in Canada believe Microsoft founder Bill Gates is either monitoring people with vax chips, or they think it’s possible, or they’re just not sure — but can’t rule it out. That leaves just 66 per cent of Canadians who reject that particular conspiracy theory outright.

According to new public opinion research by Abacus Data, it’s not just the Gates microchip, but a host of hoaxes and top secret cabals that are on the minds of Canadians — and causing them to lose their minds. A few more to blow your mind:

• Elections, recessions and wars are controlled by small groups secretly working against us: 44 per cent agree;

• COVID vaccines have killed many people, but there’s a coverup: 44 per cent say it’s definitely/probably/possibly true, or they’re still unsure;

• COVID was caused by the rollout of 5G wireless technology: 26 per cent can’t rule it out.

While it would be comforting to lay the blame for these results on the way the Abacus poll was framed, a quick check reveals that respondents were simply presented with statements with which they could agree or disagree which, I believe, as polling techniques go, seems fairly innocuous. (I stand to be corrected here by those who know more about such things,)

But it has long been a quintessentially Canadian conceit that we are a more judicious and less suspicious nation, not so easily manipulated and corrupted. Not quite.

“As pollsters we often get asked, ‘Is Canada different, is Canada immune, are we somehow exceptional to our neighbours to the south?’” Abacus CEO David Coletto said in an interview.

“We felt the answer is No,” which is why his polling firm tested out these questions with a representative sample of 1,500 Canadian adults. “We’re still human beings and still susceptible to the same information at a time when we’re feeling anxious … I think we’ve come to this place.”

While I think we are all aware, thanks to the stridency of the anti-vaxxers and the Freedom Convoy occupation in Ottawa, that we have people who subscribe to destabilizing fictions, we have sometimes chosen to ignore other signs, one of which Regg Cohn reminds us:

When a trickle of “irregular” migrants started crossing our border from Vermont and upstate New York, the clamour to batten down the hatches kept rising; when a couple of boatloads of ethnic Tamil refugee claimants from Sri Lanka arrived off the coast of B.C. in 2010, a Toronto mayoral candidate named Rob Ford complained publicly that Canada didn’t need more migrants.

...an Angus Reid poll later showed a remarkable 55 per cent of Ontarians wanted those Tamil passengers deported even if found to be legitimate refugees (as most were). 

If any comfort is to be found in the Abacus poll, it comes from the fact that the support for fringe ideas

is higher among supporters of the People’s Party, those who self-identify on the right of the spectrum, those who have not received any COVID-19 shots, and those who think media and official government accounts of events can’t be trusted. Those who feel Pierre Poilievre is the Conservative leadership candidate closest to their values and ideas are more likely to believe these theories when compared to those who feel more aligned with Jean Charest.

You can see the full breakdown of that support here. 

While it is true that only a minority of Canadians hold beliefs or leanings that run counter to the goal of living in a rational and ordered society, the size of that minority is disturbing, and its implications a cause for concern, especially if the fracturing spreads. 

As Abraham Lincoln famously said, borrowing from the Bible, "A house divided from itself cannot stand."

Let's hope it never gets to that in Canada.

P.S. If you have the time and inclination, check out M.P. Charlie Angus's take on all of this.

  

 

Hell No, I Won't Go!

In the days of my youth, the above was an anthem of resistance, shouted in defiance of the American draft sending young men to fight and to die in Vietnam. As a Canadian, I watched from the sidelines but nonetheless admired them for their conviction and willingness to go to jail for their beliefs.

Unfortunately, applied in a different context, that declaration is a badge of dishonour.

Those who have read some of my recent blog entries will know that I feel nothing but contempt for the majority of citizens in Ontario who refused to go to the polls in our recent election, one that saw a minority responsible for a second Doug Ford majority government. And while many insist that our first-past-the post system is responsible for such a victory, I lay the blame entirely upon those who could not rouse themselves from their couch torpor to exercise a foundational element of democracy.

And I see I am not alone in this sentiment. Martin Regg Cohn warns us not to fall into the trap that has ensnared the Americans by claiming that our results are illegitimate.

The emerging narrative is that the Tories somehow won a tainted election, diminished by a dreadful electoral turnout. It goes something like this:

Doug Ford’s Tories won 83 seats? True, but it’s not a true majority, the critics counter.

They imply that Progressive Conservative victory came thanks to a record low turnout — 43.5 per cent of Ontario’s 10.7 million eligible voters cast ballots in this election. As if this low percentage is the top-line number that matters most.

As if people staying at home — in their armchairs — exercise a veto from a distance that somehow invalidates, disenfranchises or delegitimizes those of us who bothered to cast ballots in a free and fair election. As if abstention trumps participation.

Rewriting recent history to favour one's ideological leanings doesn't work, according to Regg Cohn.

The unspoken implication is that not voting must be counted as a vote of non-confidence in the winning party, losing parties, or the electoral system. That is a remarkably presumptuous attempt to read the minds of all eligible voters.

Do we dare assume that people who are entirely apathetic have a hidden preference, as opposed to simply being uninterested? Do we have grounds to presume that a significant proportion of non-voters would vote if only we changed the electoral system by bringing in proportional representation, as its advocates claim?

A 2007 Ontario referendum put paid to the notion that PR is the panacea; it was rejected, a result that many of its supporters refuse to accept ... on the grounds that there was a low turnout.

One can clearly see the problem here. 

Ultimately, in my view and in my personal philosophy, it is time for people to grow up and accept the bitter truth of their own apathy instead of the sweet lie that they abstained from voting out of some kind of principled position. In other words, they need to take a good look in the mirror and see what it really reflects.

 

This Deserves To Be Viewed

It's less than three minutes, but is filled with truth one seldom hears on Fox.

Fox News is, to put it mildly, not known for indulging progressive politics – but the rightwing news channel gave it a go on Monday, when Bernie Sanders appeared in a debate on the network’s sister channel, Fox Nation.

Sanders, the Vermont senator, democratic socialist and two-time presidential candidate, took on Lindsey Graham, his Republican Senate colleague from South Carolina.

Sanders gave an unfettered breakdown of Medicare for all, or a national public healthcare system, a living wage, and increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

For Fox viewers it was a rare opportunity to hear a different perspective on policies which are regularly demonized by rightwingers Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, Fox News’ two most watched hosts.

For Sanders, it was a chance to reach a new audience, and he wasted no time before diving into a signature issue – universal healthcare.