And Now, A Word From Tech Support

I do believe this says it all.
 

When Worlds Collide And Converge

 

While reading the early part of a recent column by Rosie DiManno, as a Canadian I couldn't help but feel a measure of smugness, but that sentiment quickly evaporated the further I got into her piece.

At a school board meeting last month in what I choose to call Bumf--k, Virginia, elected officials dropped all pretence of rational debate by outright calling for the immolation of books they deemed offensive because of sexual explicitness.

“I think we should throw those books in a fire,” declared one councilman. A marginally less combustible colleague chimed in about wanting to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

While both books, Call Me by Your Name and 33 Snowfish, are critically acclaimed, their respective themes of gay kids and exploited homeless teenagers were just too much for the officials. 

"Standard American reaction," I thought to myself. Next, however, DiManno turned her sights on Canada:.

Some titles in particular have drawn recurring wrath. To wit: “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Three years ago, the Peel District School Board issued a fiat declaring the literary classic by Harper Lee could only be taught “if instruction occurs through a critical, anti-oppression lens.” That followed a recommendation from a pedagogue, Poleen Grewal, associate director of instructional and equity support services.

That, in itself, is not alarming. I can't think of anyone, myself included, who would teach that novel in a historical or cultural vacuum. Indeed, I used to include a recording of Strange Fruit, as well as talk about the history of racism in the U.S. when exploring the novel.

But then things turned uncomfortable.

The Toronto school board got its knickers in a knot last month, rejecting an autobiography by renowned criminal defence lawyer Marie Henein for a book club event, essentially because she (successfully) defended Jian Ghomeshi in his sexual assault trial.

Hamilton’s public school board announced in November that it would be launching a review of all the books in its libraries — and those entering its collection — as part of an equity and learning strategy, blah-blah-blah. Because that’s all the rage now, part and parcel of a societal reckoning with our collective racist history, to hear tell. The upshot could be not just removing contentious books from the curriculum but from libraries, denying students access to books in which they might have an interest. Which surely is counterintuitive to promoting reading and independent critical inquiry.

Just down the road from Hamilton, a similar process is underway, vowing to cull books that don’t meet modern standards — “harmful to either staff or students” — by the Waterloo Region District School Board.

“As our consciousness around equity, on oppression work and anti-racist work has grown, we recognize some of the texts and collections that we have are not appropriate at this point,” Graham Shantz, the board’s co-ordinating superintendent of human resources and equity services, told trustees, as reported by the Waterloo Region Record.

From all of this, DiManno draws a lacerating and, in my view, accurate conclusion.

Where is all this equity lens forensic auditing of books leading? Answer: to an unholy alliance between the left and the right.

There’s nothing more intrinsically virtuous about censorship, whether it’s coming from reactionaries in a lather about sexual content — gender panic and trans rights the cri du jour — or activists on the progressive end of the ideology spectrum sifting for any hint of historical oppression and white or straight privilege.

The banning/burning of books has occurred in many eras, most notoriously that of Nazi Germany. The contemporary zeal for eliminating books that challenge or discomfit the reader has the same genesis and the same result: the narrowing of thought and capacity for critical thinking, no matter its official justification.

Perhaps Ray Bradbury captured this misguided messianic fervour best in his classic dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451: "It was a pleasure to burn."

 

 

 

If This Is A Recruiting Video

 ... Lorne from Bellville needs a major rewrite.

Johnny “Austin” Fondue

@EatsFood2

Freedom Fighter Lorne from Belleville gets some rapid antigen tests and is confused by the box… #belleville #antivaxxers

Truth

As I continue to fulminate about the benighted in our midst, this seems like an appropriate thought for a Wednesday morning.

Simply Monstrous

As parents, almost all of us want the best for our kids and would do anything to protect them from harm. In the following news report, you will meet a Canadian family divided over Covid-19 shots. That in itself is not news, but when you learn of the medical circumstances of the 11-year-old in the family, I think you might feel as I do that the father's refusal to get the shot is simply unnatural and monstrous. 

Please start at the 17 minute mark.

The Best Of Covid Karma

No words needed from me here.

                                      

                                 

And my personal favourite:

Utterly Toothless

Given the damning report by the auditor general that the Public Heath Agency of Canada did a profoundly incompetent job of tracking travellers assigned to quarantine hotels earlier this year, it is perhaps not surprising to learn about another abject failure by the same agency: meting out punishment for fake vaccine certificates presented at border crossings.

Border officials in both Canada and the U.S. are catching people they suspect of trying to cheat vaccine rules to cross the border by the hundreds — but far fewer are seeing fines.

Although hundreds of allegedly fake and misused vaccine cards and COVID-19 tests have been reported by Canada border officials, the Public Health Agency of Canada has only issued 17 fines related to these reports so far.

Given the public health stakes, the border transgressions are egregious and criminal. And they include presenting fake Covid-19 test results:

A number of cases are being investigated by PHAC, which issued seven fines for suspected falsified or fraudulent COVID-19 test results between Jan. 6 to Nov. 12, that agency said. PHAC said it also issued two fines for suspected falsified or fraudulent proof of vaccination credentials between July 6 and Nov. 12.

Because they have right of entry, Canadians who enter with fake COVID-19-related records are still allowed into the country, but border officials then pass on their information to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), which has ability to investigate and issue fines. Non-Canadians could be denied entry.

Because documents are easy to fake, enforcement and deterrence are sorely needed.

Shabnam Preet Kaur, a forensic document examiner with Toronto-based Docufraud Canada, said technology can easily allow people to create a falsified document.

"You just have to download these softwares, for example, Photoshop, and you can just do all the editing as per your convenience," she said.

"Whatever you need to change in a document, you can do it in less than five minutes."

Kaur said it is not difficult to manipulate PDF vaccine certificates.

"I would suggest [the] QR code method is really safer as compared to the PDF of certificates," she said. 

For Ontarians, there is one bright spot in this imbroglio. According to unnamed sources, on Friday the provincial government will announce that the vaccine certificate  currently in use will make way for a QR code as the only acceptable proof.

Perhaps the Public Health Agency of Canada can learn from this example. Their practices, as illustrated above, are essentially toothless. At the very least, it is time they acquired a good set of dentures (or perhaps another body part), in order to protect the public they are mandated to serve.