The Interview

I just can't let it go:

Too Good Not to Share

I admit it; I am taking great delight in the mockery of the Harper regime:

UPDATED: A Most Visible Sign Of Contempt

It is well-known among those who follow politics that governments frequently show contempt for the people that they 'serve.' However, rarely is that contempt telegraphed in advance of an election. Jerry Bance, who is running for the federal Conservatives in the Toronto riding of Scarborough Rouge Park, owns and operates XPress Appliance Service, an appliance repair company in the Greater Toronto Area. As you will see in the following video, he sets a new depth for disdain that I suspect few will want to emulate.

"I deeply regret my actions on that day. I take great pride in my work and the footage from that day does not reflect who I am as a professional or a person," Bance said when contacted by CBC News for comment.'

Response to the story on social media sites was nearly instantaneous. The hashtag "peegate" was soon trending on Twitter, as Twitter buzzed with disparaging jokes, comments and bad puns targeting Bance and the Conservative Party.

Bance's Dear Leader will be campaigning today in Toronto.

A media advisory from the Conservative campaign names two candidates who will join him, but does not mention Bance.

Happy Labour Day, everyone (excluding Jerry Bance, of course).

UPDATE: The errant Mr. Bance is no longer a Conservative candidate, a loss, to be sure. As Thomas Mulcair puckishly observed, “This must be someone who’s adept at Stephen Harper’s trickle down theory of economics.”

An Arboreal Barometer

Some of them are mute witnesses to over three thousand years of history. Towering and majestic, some as tall as the Statue of Liberty, the giant sequoia, native to a limited area of the western Sierra Nevada, California, is now under severe stress due to California's deep and protracted drought.

As the following report makes clear, although they have withstood millennia of insect infestations and droughts and will likely survive this current crisis, they are being challenged in ways that perhaps they have never been in their long history. And while they may continue to stand, lesser trees around them are dying at unprecedented rates. Just one more reminder of what we continue to do to the earth by our collective indifference to climate change.

Lying: The Pillar Of Politics

This timely message is brought to you by the folks at Operation Maple:

Exactly How Does Facebook Define Community Standards?

Living in a democratic society, of course, entails the promotion, encouragement and defense of a diversity of views. With that I obviously have no quarrel. But, as the saying goes, with that freedom comes responsibility. it is the second part of this equation that some people refuse to accept.

When, for example, does freedom of expression cross the line into the promotion of hatred? I have a specific reason for asking that question, which I shall get to in a moment.

I have had a Facebook account for about seven years now; the reason that I joined goes back to our first visit to Costa Rica in 2009, where we met a group of hospitality students staying at the resort and joined them for a day's excursion. All of us were taking a lot of pictures, and when I inquired how I could see theirs online when they got home, they told me to join FB, where they would be posting them. Thus my social media experience began.

Nowadays I use it primarily to share political stories, people's blog posts, etc., as well as to receive various feeds from newspapers and political groups that interest me.

Because the following subject is one I find profoundly distasteful, I thought long and hard before writing this post, as I have no desire to give any kind of publicity or wider exposure to a group of xenophobes and racists, yet I am interested in getting feedback from readers. Yesterday the following appeared in my timeline:



Accompanying this were a variety of comments, a few of which I am reproducing here. Some of it is pretty vile.

... you crack me up. Sure there are Muslims who work. There are exceptions to every race. Believe it or not I've met a chinaman who doesn't like rice and black man who prefers heavy metal to rap music and doesn't play basketball. But the stereotypes exist for a reason. The fact of the matter is these Muslim refugees ARE costing us money for them to be here. We don't want them here, as a tax payer I have the right to not want to waste it on them. I'd rather use it to build a new park or maybe feed our homeless and let them have housing instead of these pieces of shit taking it all while our people starve on the streets.

... We as in WE THE PEOPLE. And of course they are refugees? But the wars and problems the middle East have is all a product of their own choice to follow such an evil ideology. Christian founded countries are the ones that have a greater quality of life and now they wanna come and take what we have after they ruined their own country. And yeah I would rather have a park over a Muslim parasite mooching 1 cent off our tax dollars. I'm happy that little boy drowned. Maybe the money Canada saves from not having to pay for them will be used to re-pave a street instead? And in case you didn't noticed WCAI is worldwide as in Worldwide Coalition Against Islam. We are just one person.


Well fortunately for me I live in a free Democratic country that isn't run by evil Islamic ideologies. It reminds me of 2 brothers that inherited a million dollars each. One brother invested his money right and is reaping the benefits while the other brother blew his money by making poor choices and is now trying to mooch off the other brother. This is no different. You reap what you sew.

...But all people of the islamic ideology are behind an evil ideology that promotes anti-semitism, rape, child molestation, beastiality, persecution, ridiculous law suits and wearing bed sheets and curtains for clothing. And if you think about it the similarities of the Islamic and Nazism ideologies are uncanny. The only difference is Hitler never bothered disguising the holocaust as a "peaceful religion"

In my mind, this is racism thinly disguised by 'economic concerns'. Interested in making a complaint about the group, I checked Facebook's reporting criteria. Under Encouraging Respectful Behaviour, this is what I found:

Hate Speech

Facebook removes hate speech, which includes content that directly attacks people based on their:

Race,
Ethnicity,
National origin,
Religious affiliation,
Sexual orientation,
Sex, gender, or gender identity, or
Serious disabilities or diseases.

Organizations and people dedicated to promoting hatred against these protected groups are not allowed a presence on Facebook. As with all of our standards, we rely on our community to report this content to us.

Feeling I was on pretty solid ground, I lodged a complaint. About two hours later I received this reply:

Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community Standards. Reports like yours are an important part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment. We reviewed the photo you reported for containing hate speech or symbols and found it doesn't violate our Community Standards.

I am disappointed in Facebook's response, and it appears there was no effort made to read the comments accompanying the illustration.

So I am left with the question which is my post's title: Exactly how does Facebook define community standards?

I welcome, as always, your comments.

UPDATED:A Shameful Indifference

By now we have all seen the terrible image of the drowned three-year-old Syrian refugee on the shores near a Turkish resort. The juxtaposition couldn't be any more telling of desperation confronting world indifference.

What perhaps isn't as widely known is the fact that the boy, Aylan, and his bother and mother, Galip and Rehan Kurdin who also drowned, were rejected for emigration to Canada:

Canadian legislator Fin Donnelly told The Canadian Press that he had submitted a request on behalf on the boys’ aunt, Teema Kurdi, who had wanted to bring the family to Canada, but her request was turned down by Canadian immigration officials. Teema Kurdi, based in the Vancouver area, is the sister of the drowned boys’ father Abdullah, who survived.

Fin Donnelly, who is running for re-election in Port Moody-Coquitlam said he delivered a letter on behalf of Teema Kurdi, Abdullah’s sister, to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander in March but that the sponsorship request was not approved.

Exactly what is our responsibility in an humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions?

In today's Star, Tony Burman ponders that very question, and asks why so little is being said about it during our current election campaign:

In recent weeks, the approach by Canada’s political class, led by its major political parties, seems to be based on a 21st-century notion about this country — that this worldwide refugee crisis really doesn’t involve Canada directly, and really doesn’t matter to Canadians.

With the crisis worsening by the day, it is time for this to end. We need to increase pressure on our politicians in this election campaign to push this issue aggressively to the fore.

Burman reminds us that historically, indifference has not been the Canadian way:

In recent decades, Canada’s doors were wide open to thousands of refugees. Since the 1970s, 6,000 Ugandan Asians fleeing Idi Amin’s regime, 13,000 Chilean refugees escaping the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, 20,000 Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union, as well as 18,000 Iraqis, 3,300 Haitians and many, many others were all welcomed to Canada.

There was also, of course, the dramatic response by Canadians in 1979-80 to the flood of refugees trying to escape communist Vietnam.

The government’s initial commitment was to settle 500 Vietnamese, but through the actions of private sponsors, community and civic groups, that number eventually grew to more than 60,000.

Contrast that with our current regime:

In spite of promises to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next three years, the Canadian government has been criticized by refugee groups as being laggard in what it actually delivers. In the past three years, only 1,300 Syrian refugees have been admitted. According to the UN, Canada has dropped from the fifth-highest refugee recipient in 2000 to the ranking of 15th last year.

Defending and spinning the indefensible has become the only remaining skill-set of the once promising Chris Alexander, our Citizenship and Immigration minister, who, during his appearance on Power and Politics yesterday, was effectively eviscerated by host Rosie Barton, especially near the end of the panel:



If you don't have time to watch the video, BuzzFeed has a summary of the dustup.

It is easy, and perhaps only human nature, to regard this crisis as something occurring 'over there.' Many of us may find it difficult to get emotionally involved in the plight of people we do not know or do not identify with. But that's ultimately beside the point. Whether we acknowledge in our hearts or only in our minds, there is but one conclusion to be drawn: each country, including ours, has a moral and ethical responsibility to help these unfortunate people who, by virtue of the birth lottery, were not born into the advantages that we enjoy but have in no way earned.

UPDATE: it appears that Chris Alexander has entered into damage-control mode:

Immigration Minister Chris Alexander dropped campaign plans Thursday to rush to Ottawa and deal with the fallout of Canada’s rejection of a request to take in the Syrian family whose mother and two young sons drowned this week trying to get to Europe.

“I am meeting with officials to ascertain both the facts of the case of the Kurdi family and to receive an update on the migrant crisis,” Alexander said in an emailed statement.

Too little, too late, some might say.