A Sign Of The Times

This, from Chris Cowley on Twitter, is timely. Perhaps an Amber Alert is also in order?

Ontario schools are in turmoil and we can't find premier
@fordnation!

Please help us.

If you have any information on Mr. Ford's whereabouts, please encourage him to return to work immediately and give a fair deal to #CUPE education workers.

A Weapon Against Fake News

Living in an age when critical-thinking skills are increasingly hard to find, anything acting as a bulwark against the ignorance and stupidity that seems to inform public 'debate' is welcome. Natalie Turvey writes about a weapon that sounds promising.

While misinformation, memes, clickbait and outright lies proliferate across our online feeds, especially in this election season, Canadians are not powerless to fight back.

There’s no question it can be difficult to distinguish between fact-based real news and fake news and those who want to mislead and confuse us are becoming more sophisticated every day.Research shows that:

-90 per cent of Canadians admit to falling for fake news

-Fake news stories spread six times faster than the truth

-Only 33 per cent of Canadians regularly try to confirm if the news we see is real

-40 per cent of Canadians report finding it difficult to distinguish between truth and misinformation in the news

-More than half of respondents (53 per cent) have come across stories recently where they believe facts were twisted to push an agenda

Help in fighting these daunting numbers is now available:

The Canadian Journalism Foundation has launched a campaign called “Doubt it? Check it. Challenge it.” The campaign aims to give Canadians the skills and tools to combat fake news and information. We have built tools and tips to empower people and it all lives on DoubtIt.ca.

Having checked it out, I can attest that the site offers a wealth of resources to determine whether or not 'news' is genuine, some of which are common sense, and others are resources that many may be unaware of. There is even a fake news quiz. (I took it and scored 9/10)

Essentially, Doubtit.ca revolves some simple steps:

[F]irst, if a story doesn’t seem right, trust that instinct; second, check it out, look for other sources to verify; and third, if it is fake news, call it out.

Of the three steps, the first — Doubt it? — may be the most important. More than half of us have come across stories we think are fake. So, our Spidey senses are working. Often, we just need to take a breath before we repost something and ask ourselves “does this feel right?”

If it doesn’t, there are simple ways to “check it.” First, read beyond the headline. In today’s news, headlines don’t always match the content of the story. They can be much more provocative, to attract clicks, than the story that follows.

Next, take a look at what surrounds the story you’re reading. Do the other stories on the site seem far-fetched? Are they satirical, or all about conspiracies? If so, you’ve found your answer.

And finally, if you doubt a story’s claims, do a simple online search to see if anyone else is reporting it. If it’s true, those claims will be covered by other, reputable news sources. The same goes for images. You can search those online too, and you’ll quickly learn whether the image in that meme is real or fake.

The final responsibility we have, if we are at all active on social media, is to identify fake news when we find it. I have done that many times on Facebook (but I always like to frame it tactfully so as not to offend the poster).

As we enter the crunch point for our election, detecting and exposing fake news is paramount to the health of our democracy. If we remain silent, we give consent to lies, distortions and malicious manipulation. That is something none of us could ever be proud of.

Donald Trump, Exposed

I generally like to operate my blog with a certain level of decorum and language. However, there are exceptions to that principle, which you will see in the following.

I just discovered someone named Chip Franklin, an American who operates a website called Inside The Beltway, which is described thus:

Inside The Beltway is a collaboration of journalists, broadcasters, and assorted professionals, who have banded together to create a levee against the rising tide of lies and distortions that threaten our democracy and our sanity. That may sound dramatic, but how else do you characterize the willingness of the American public to believe in the most absurd narratives? For us, it’s an obligation to the truth. And if that sounds a little sanctimonious, that’s on you.

Be warned that the following contains profanity that may disturb some:

The Whistleblower from chip franklin on Vimeo.

Trump- Wizard of Odd from chip franklin on Vimeo.

Trump_ Just How Stupid_ from chip franklin on Vimeo.

“If You’re A Liberal, You’ve Got To Be Very Nervous”

So says pollster Nik Nanos, after a poll showing young people's support for Justin Trudeau dropping dramatically after his recent chat with Greta Thunberg during her visit to Canada.

Polling data from Nanos Research shows that the proportion of voters aged 18 to 29 who cite Trudeau as their preferred prime minister fell from nearly 35 per cent to a little more than 24 per cent within 24 hours.

The Liberal leader met with Thunberg on Friday while the prominent activist was in Montreal for a climate-change march that was attended by hundreds of thousands of people.

The 16-year-old Swede took Trudeau to task, telling him he wasn’t doing enough to fight climate change. Though that is her standard message for any world leader, Nanos said he still saw it as a risk for Trudeau to agree to the meeting.

The results seem to indicate a narrowing of the gap between Trudeau and Scheer (a climate-change denier in all but name), and a small uptick of support for the Green Party.

While those two parties appear to be battling to win the most seats on Oct. 21, another fight is underway further down in the polls.

The NDP are polling at 13.18 per cent and the Greens at 12.63 per cent, likely bringing the two parties into fierce competition.

“It’s like a double horse race … the horse race to win and the horse race to place third,” Nanos said.

The Greens have been hovering around 13 per cent for several days now – their highest level ever, and approximately double the support they were pulling during the early days of the campaign.

“The last week has been very good for the Green Party,” Nanos said.

While I am long past the stage of holding out much hope for our collective future, whatever sliver there is resides in the awakening consciousness of young people, who seem to see with a perspicacity denied to many who, blinded by ideology and past practices, keep voting the same way but hoping for different results.

And that, of course, is a mere variant of a famous definition:

"It Is Not Fair"

H/t Greg Perry

I suspect the following letter by a young person expresses the angst of an entire generation:

I had hoped my final years in high school would go smoothly. But instead of stressing over university applications, I worry if it is even worth it to go through all this trouble.

Why should I study more and look for future career options when the world will crumble soon? When I receive my diploma and prepare for interviews, my window’s view will be of dying trees and collapsed houses.

It is not fair that I am compelled to strike for my time on Earth. It is not fair that I cannot even dream of a future without images of a dying home. It is not fair that my parents had the chance to bring me to this Earth, only to say goodbye together in a few year's time. I do not want to strike continuously for some higher official to just acknowledge the problem. I want them to see it and fix it.

Give me a chance. A chance to live and dream, without vivid images of organisms dying. No more is school my priority. My priority is just to have a chance to live until I reach my final years in life. That is all I want and that is not fair.

Zainab Muneer, Ajax

Greta And Justin

H/t Graeme McKay

Given the massive turnout for yesterday's climate strike, one can perhaps be forgiven for questioning the motives of Justin Trudeau marching in the Montreal rally. While the pipeline purchaser continues to insist twinning the Trans Mountain conduit is vital to his plan for saving the planet, some are not so easily fooled.

Greta Thunberg is one of them:

The 16-year-old Swede met privately with the Canadian prime minister but later told a news conference with local indigenous leaders that he was “not doing enough” to curb greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

“My message to all the politicians around the world is the same. Just listen and act on the current best available science,” she said.

But Mr. Trudeau is nothing if not relentless in his rhetoric:

The prime minister said after meeting Thunberg and pledging to fund the planting of 2bn trees: “I agree with her entirely. We need to do more.”

Platitudes and posturing will not save the planet. Only earnest, sustained and concerted action hold out a modicum of hope.

Fat chance of that happening, eh?

Campaign 2019 - Where Is The Truth To Be Found?

It is perhaps to state the obvious that political campaigns are a kind of Rorschach Test. We respond to candidates' claims, promises and outright lies to a large extent through the filter of our values, our biases, our philosophy and our experiences. That is us just being human. Sadly, however, whatever intellectual capacities we may possess often are cast aside as we make impassioned choices based upon the above.

Critical thinking is the main casualty here.

A case in point is the carbon tax. All of the disinformation about the levy, from Doug Ford claiming it will lead to recession to Andrew Scheer averring it will make everyone poorer, often finds a ready, even Pavlovian, audience. The following brief news item from Global News attempts to set the record straight.



Our democracy demands that each person has the right to vote. There is nothing within our system that can make that vote an intelligent, informed one.