Yesterday, I posted about a man an one of Edmonton's LRT stations showing his Islamophobic/racist colours, as reported by CBC. I am happy to report that an arrest has been made:
Edmonton police have a suspect in custody in connection with a possible hate crime aimed at two hijab-wearing women.
Police thanked the public for helping the Hate Crimes Unit with the investigation.
Further details will be released when they become available, police said in a news release.
Meanwhile the Islamic community is speaking out about the incident.
"It's very unfortunate to say the least," said Arangzeb Qureshi, with the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council. "This is Islamophobia at its worst."
Qureshi credits technology with holding people who may be committing a hate crime to account.
"It's an advantage for people who are unfortunately going through this type of discrimination."
When these kinds of incidents occur, we have an obligation to intervene. To turn away from such hate crimes is to be complicit in them. End of discussion.
With conventional media fighting an ever-growing juggernaut of fake news, news that is either outright lie or gross distortion, two national journals have joined a growing chorus in refusing to use the euphemism alt-right: The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.
After much discussion and input, Kathy English, The Star's Public Editor, reports the following:
... several senior Star editors met to discuss this issue. In order to seek some measure of consistency, we decided to consult further with our main wire services – The Canadian Press and the U.S. based Associated Press.
This week, both services issued “style notes” on how to refer to the self-labeled alt-right....
The main points to guide Star journalists in writing and editing:
Avoid using alt-right generically.
“We should strive to be accurate and precise, and at least for now, the term ‘alt-right.’ is neither. Terms like ‘white nationalist’ or ‘white supremacist’ are known, accurate and much clearer to readers.”
If you use the term alt-right, define it.
“Phrasing like ‘the ‘alt-right,’ a white nationalist movement’ is appropriate.”
... the Associated Press provided a clear definition of the alt-right, telling us that it’s a name embraced by “some white supremacists and white nationalists to refer to themselves and their ideology, which emphasizes preserving and protecting the white race in the United States.”
And, it adds, “the movement criticizes ‘multiculturalism’ and more rights for non-whites, women, Jews, Muslims, gays, immigrants and other minorities. Its members reject the American democratic ideal that all should have equality under the law regardless of creed, gender, ethnic origin or race.”
With all that’s at stake here, journalists must not rely on euphemistic words that gloss over racism and hate. As the AP rightly tells us, be specific and call it straight: “We should not limit ourselves to letting such groups define themselves, and instead should report their actions, associations, history and positions to reveal their actual beliefs and philosophy, as well as how others see them.”
Language matters. It is our job as journalists to provide readers with accurate, clear and precise words that tell it like it is, not veil reality. We should not serve as unquestioning heralds for those who espouse ideology abhorrent to universal values of equality.
To be clear: the so-called alt-right stands for white supremacy. By any definition, that is racism.
In an abbreviated form, The Globe's Sylvia Stead says essentially the same thing.
While I regularly consult a number of alternative news sites, all of which enjoy sterling reputations, it would be foolish to suggest that the days of mainstream media are over. Now, more than ever, journalists toiling in conventional media may be our last highly visible bulwark against a rising tide of darkness, division, and devolution.
From Facebook: Three Racists attack innocent Black man while yelling "Get out of my country!" Is this what they mean when they say make America great?
UPDATE: That this happens in Canada makes me feel deeply ashamed for my country:
Police are looking for a man in connection with a possible hate crime at a south Edmonton LRT station.
The man approached two young women wearing hijabs at the University of Alberta station at 8:20 p.m. on Nov. 8, police say.
The man, believed to be in his 60s, pulled a rope from his pocket, tied a noose and said: "This is for you."
The man then proceeded to sing O Canada in front of the women, one of whom shot video of the performance.
Police are asking anyone who recognizes the man to call 780-423-4567 or #377 from a mobile phone. They can also call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or online at www.tipsubmit.com/start.htm.
Let us all hope this miscreant is brought to swift justice.
Apologies for my rather coarse title, but it seemed the only appropriate way to describe that Dorian-Gray-in-reverse-politician, Chris Alexander, who provided a conductorial complement to a rabid crowd in Edmonton offended by the very concept of taxation in general, and carbon taxes in particular.
At a rally in Edmonton hosted by perennial crank Ezra Levant and his self-described Rebel Media Group, as the erstwhile Immigration Minister played to the prejudices of the crowd, this happened:
You will note the zeal with which Alexander embraced the "Lock her up!" chants, seeming to enter a blissful zone accessible only to the extreme right-wing. However, perhaps realizing such a state of nirvana might not play well in all sectors of the Conservative Party he hopes to lead, and desperate to control the damage to 'his brand' that might have occurred, he issued this disclaimer, saying
he felt "uncomfortable" during a rally at the Alberta Legislature this weekend as the crowd chanted "lock her up" in response to his comments about Premier Rachel Notley's leadership.
In a video posted on Twitter by Rebel Media reporter Sheila Gunn Reid, Alexander is nodding and smiling in front of the crowd of about 1,000 as they chant "lock her up" in response to his comments about Notley's leadership.
At no point in the video does Alexander attempt to calm the crowd or denounce their chanting.
"I could clearly hear what they were saying and I was uncomfortable," Alexander told CBC News on Sunday.
"It was not something I initiated, it was not something I said at any point and it's not something I agree with. I was smiling because I was trying to think of a way to change the chant."
Yesterday, I wrote about a software plug-in, a b.s. dectector, to help ferret out fake news. I think it is safe to say no such software is needed to evaluate Chris Alexander's above disavowal.
People of a certain 'vintage' will well remember the above commercial, in which a family appears to take great delight in fooling dad about the spread he is using. All in all, a humorous and harmless deception, one with no lasting consequences. Today, however, we face challenges to truth that the people of that commercial's era could never have imagined, challenges that are not the least bit amusing: the proliferation of fake news, aided and abetted by the ubiquitous Internet.
What defences do we have against such manipulations? Actually, there are many, only one of which I shall address in today's post.
We live in a very rushed world, one in which people often do not take the time to properly assess the information they access. Now, thanks to an exciting software innovation, that task has been made easier. Daniel Sieradski has created a browser plug-in that, with an extensive data base, flashes a warning at the top of one's screen alerting users to the questionable provenance of any given site. Interviewed on CBC's As It Happens, he explained why he created it:
It was in response to Mark Zuckerberg's statement that Facebook couldn't really handle the problem of fake news without a massive effort requiring the development of an algorithm and all these other things. I was able to work out a solution in just about an hour that showed that that was nonsense and that this issue could be easily addressed, if they really wanted to invest their energy in it.
Its principle seems elegantly simple:
Basically, it scans a given web page for the presence of links and then checks the links against a database that has been compiled of fake news sites, satire sites, conspiracy theory sites and so on and then it inserts a warning label adjacent to the link letting the user know that it is not exactly a reliable source of information.
The beauty of this approach is that it censors nothing; it simply issues a warning of unreliable content, and it is then up to the readers as to what they do with that information.
I strongly recommend that readers give it a try. Compatible with the majority of web browsers, I installed it on Chrome, and then tested it by consulting a list of fake news sites. It worked flawlessly on the ones I went to.
If you are interested, here is the link to the software. A further explanation as to its operating basis is supplied there as well:
The list of domains powering the B.S. Detector was somewhat indiscriminately compiled from various sources around the web. We are actively reviewing this dataset, categorizing entries, and removing misidentified domains. We thus cannot guarantee complete accuracy of our data at the moment. You can view the complete list here.
Domain classifications include:
Fake News: Sources that fabricate stories out of whole cloth with the intent of pranking the public. Satire: Sources that provide humorous commentary on current events in the form of fake news. Extreme Bias: Sources that traffic in political propaganda and gross distortions of fact. Conspiracy Theory: Sources that are well-known promoters of kooky conspiracy theories. Rumor Mill: Sources that traffic in rumors, innuendo, and unverified claims. State News: Sources in repressive states operating under government sanction. Junk Science: Sources that promote scientifically dubious claims. Hate Group: Sources that actively promote racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination.
Incorporating the plug-in is one defence against the increasingly strong assaults on truth and accuracy being mounted by those who seek to impose their distorted and indefensible views on the world. In a future post, I shall discuss the hard work that is also required if this battle is ever to be won.
The propaganda machine of the extreme right has scored a double hit, it would seem. Not only do they and their racist brethren have Breibart-founder Steve Bannon warmly ensconced in the White House as chief strategist and Senior Counselor to Donald Trump (whether he will also be keeping the president's seat warm in the Oval office in what are certain to be frequent presidential absences is anyone's guess), but many in Congress now appear to be conduits for Breitbart propaganda.
The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, headed by Republican Lamar Smith, has a new weapon in its attack on climate science: Breibart 'science':
The content of this tweet is the same sort of thing you’d get if you fed a bull 20 kilos of Ex-Lax and stood behind it for a while. Global warming, of course, is real. The Breitbart article in question is written by James Delingpole, a flat-out climate change denier who has a history of writing grossly misleading articles about global warming. He gets this information from yet another climate change denier, David Rose, who wrote an article for the execrable Daily Mail claiming that global temperatures have dropped by an entire degree Celsius since this summer. Contrary to what the Daily Mail might have to say, global temperature is indeed increasing.
In a nutshell, Rose is guilty of extreme cherry-picking. He looked at a single temperature data set from a specific layer of the Earth’s atmosphere and only used measurements over land. And to make matters worse, he only used data going back to 1998, a big no-no: That year was unusually warm, so starting there falsely makes it look like temperatures haven’t risen much.
He also is chasing local fluctuations and ignoring the decadeslong trend. And that trend is up. The Earth is heating up. If you want more details, Tamino at Open Mind debunks Rose’s claims quite thoroughly.
Somehow, I doubt that the propaganda machine in Washington is going to alter too many people's thinking. The true believers of climate denialism will dismiss the critiques, and those who trust the scientific data will be unmoved by such blatant attempts at manipulation.
But what it does show is that the need for critical thinking is greater now than it ever was. In what I hope will be my next post, I will discuss some of the ways one can vet information for its veracity or falseness.
