i hate christmas 2010

"The Profit," by Mr. Fish, used with his kind permission.

Friend of wmtc Joe Grav sent me the official Fuck Christmas rant, taunting me with the notion that my annual "i hate christmas" post cannot compete. He's right, of course, so I won't even try.*

Instead, enjoy this excellent video, finally available online for Canadians.

I'm actually expecting a brilliant December 25 and 26 this year, involving humour from The Larry Sanders Show, food from President's Choice, beverages from grapes, and company from my favourite person. Plus - an extreme rarity in our home - paid time off. And if that particular magic can only be conjured through an ahistorical mashup of ancient pagan rites and hollow Christianity and out-of-control capitalism, then so be it.




* Although I still need the mall for one thank-you gift. I reserve the right to rant if necessary.

we like lists: list #4: you've just won the lottery. now what?

We did ordinary joys, and ordinary irritations. Now we move to the stuff of fantasy.

You hit lotto. It's a huge jackpot, enough to afford anything money can buy for the rest of your life. What do you do? Top 10.

1. Travel. Go everywhere. Travel for three or four months a year.

2. Fully fund the War Resisters Support Campaign so we never have to fundraise again. (If this no longer applies, fully fund other grassroots military-resistance/peace organizations.)

3. Fully fund pit bull education, advocacy and rescue programs, like this one.

4. Create a foundation to support progressive grassroots activism. Hire great administrators to give the money away.

5. Give a ton of money to the National Network of Abortion Funds.

6. Adopt a whole bunch of dogs. This appears to clash with travel, but I'll figure it out.

7. Drop money on various friends and family who need a mortgage or school loans paid off.

8. Buy a small house on a lake, to live in quiet semi-solitude when not traveling. Nothing huge, just a comfortable, rustic-style house with a deck, a view and two fireplaces. Fill it with pottery, rugs and art from native peoples of the Americas.

9. Write. Set up a luxurious writing discipline to frame the rest of my life.

10. Travel.

And you?

jack todd: don cherry is nothing but a phoney

Jack Todd, a sports columnist in Montreal whose book I wrote about here, has some thoughts on Don Cherry.

When Cherry dives in to right-wing politics with both feet firmly in his mouth, he is over the line - the line that separates commentary on hockey from such complex issues as public transit, health care and the war in Afghanistan.

Shameless to the core, Cherry has even devoted one entire segment of Coach's Corner to his own self-aggrandizement as Canada's self-appointed No. 1 soldier. But Cherry the soldier is as phoney as Cherry the bluecollar guy. I know someone who has held the same bluecollar job for at least the past 15 years. Cherry has walked past this person on a regular basis for all those years - and never once said hello.

Still, Cherry wants us to believe that he is blue-collar, while guys like me are the elite, bicycle-riding columnists.

You want a tough, blue-collar guy, Don? A real one, not a phoney? Well, I grew up with one. A father who was a combat veteran of the First World War. An ex-boxer with his hands all smashed up, his nose broken, his brain addled after 70 pro fights as a light-heavyweight and more amateur bouts than he could count. A guy who would drive a spike with his bare fist, then lick the blood off his knuckles.

My father had just about every fault in the book, but he was real. He voted solid Democrat. He stood up for the working man and the little guy. When he had almost nothing, he would give part of what he did have to a family that had nothing at all.

And he would have spotted a phoney like Cherry a mile off.

Read his great column here.

In case you missed it, Cherry recently finagled some media attention by doing his shtick at Toronto City Hall. Toronto was not impressed.

Thanks to The Galloping Beaver.

in which i successfully clear another hurdle

Another term down! That's three down, five to go - or six of 16 classes completed. I just submitted a totally rockin' final paper. I am tired but happy!

Winter break begins right now. Last year I had four weeks of break, but this year only three. On the other hand, Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year's Day all fall on the weekend, so it will be a true vacation.

There's the possibility of some very well-paid overtime from my weekend job during my break. We really need the money, so if I'm offered it, I must say yes. But I dread the thought of spending any of my precious time-off working. I'm both hoping I get called and hoping I don't.

wmtc is canadian weblog award top-five finalist

Well, this is a surprise. Wmtc is a top-five finalist in the 2010 Canadian Weblog Awards, in two categories: Political and LGBTQ.

Schmutzie, who coordinates this effort, uses some kind of jury system, not an online vote. Details here.

It's nice to see blogs listed that aren't the usual suspects. However - with much respect to my friend Tornwordo, whose excellent blog Sticky Crows also made the top five - for my money, the best Canadian LGBTQ blog can only be Slap Upside The Head.

In any case, many thanks to Schmutzie and company for the honours.

nixon, war resisters, and anti-semitism both real and imagined

Students of US political history know that Richard Nixon was a virulent racist and antisemite. Nixon famously hated a lot of people, but there was a special place in Nixonian Hell for Blacks and Jews. But who knew there'd be a war resister connection mixed in the bigotry?

New tapes released this week by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum show that one reason Nixon vehemently opposed any sort of amnesty for Vietnam War resisters was because so many of them were Jewish.

Nixon also strongly hinted that his reluctance to even consider amnesty for young Americans who went to Canada to avoid being drafted during the Vietnam War was because, he told Mr. Colson, so many of them were Jewish.

"I didn't notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists; I don't know how the hell they avoid it," he said, adding: "If you look at the Canadian-Swedish contingent, they were very disproportionately Jewish. The deserters."

If you're wondering where these tapes came from, they came from Nixon himself. Nixon had a secret recording system installed in the White House. It now provides a fascinating and rare window into the paranoid, obsessive, megalomaniac White House of a pre-digital era. Here's another nice bit.

An indication of Nixon’s complex relationship with Jews came the afternoon Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, came to visit on March 1, 1973. The tapes capture Meir offering warm and effusive thanks to Nixon for the way he had treated her and Israel.

But moments after she left, Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.” [Ed. note: Kissinger suggested using nuclear weapons in Southeast Asia. Apparently there were some things worth blowing up the world for!]

In his discussion with Ms. Woods, Nixon laid down clear rules about who would be permitted to attend the state dinner for Meir — he called it “the Jewish dinner” — after learning that the White House was being besieged with requests to attend.

“I don’t want any Jew at that dinner who didn’t support us in that campaign,” he said. “Is that clear? No Jew who did not support us.”

Nixon didn't hate all Jews: Israeli Jews were okay, American Jews were not. He might even have praised today's Jewish bigots from the "who is a Jew" crowd. They believe anyone who criticizes Israeli government policies cannot be considered Jewish. Antisemitism, jingoism... they actually have a lot in common with Nixon.

rosie dimanno agrees with us redux: thoughts on strange bedfellows

Can hell freeze over twice in one week? Again, I thank conservative Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno. First DiManno called for Chief of Police Bill Blair's resignation over G20 police abuse. Now she announces that a newly acquired video corroborates key portions of Adam Nobody's account of his beating by plainclothes police officers - after he had been assaulted by uniformed cops.

DiManno's balanced column weighs the available evidence and acknowledges the possibility of doubt. But she is clearly inclined to believe Nobody's story.

Those images — a handcuffed Nobody being led out of camera range by uniformed officers, in the process of being arrested last June 26, not a drop of blood on him — support the 27-year-old’s formal complaint that he was immediately afterwards subjected to another vicious beating by a couple of plainclothes detectives behind two parked police vans.

After this second purported assault, Nobody's face was left bloodied, he says, his cheekbone shattered.

Within a week, he would undergo surgery to repair the damage.

Over the 31 hours that Nobody spent in custody — including about 13 hours when officers accompanied him to Toronto East General Hospital, where he underwent a CAT scan while still bound at the wrists and ankles — he was never out of police sight. He was their responsibility.

. . . .

In an interview with the Star last night, Nobody was sticking to his original accusations about the plainclothes officers.

"My cheek was already swelling when they got me. But they definitely put the boot to me."

Actually, he believes they were wearing running shoes. And they became angry when, after demanding he give his name, he obliged and said: "Nobody."

"The one guy, the blond guy, threw me down. He was grinding my face into the ground. He was holding me down with his foot on the back of my head, while the other one went through my backpack. Then he started kicking me too.

"I was in handcuffs already and they kept kicking me in the head, harder and harder.

"It wasn't until they put me in the van that I even realized my eye was bleeding."

Not one beating but two.

And no charges.

About a month after the G20, I hailed Conservative MPP Randy Hillier for speaking out against G20 police violence. One progressive blogger and a few of my Facebook contacts ripped me for this: how could I support this man, a bigot, a homophobe, a redneck?

First of all, I don't support Randy Hillier (or Rosie DiManno) in any larger sense. But if someone breaks out of conservative knee-jerk thinking and publicly takes a stand contrary to the party line and in support of justice, I think it is only logical and just that we praise them for doing the right thing.

In most activism I've been involved with, there are natural allies, and there are "strange bedfellow" allies. Natural allies are your base, your core support. You can't form a movement without them. But those allies that join your cause less naturally - the ones you win over from the other side, or who, for whatever reason, see the issue differently than most of their colleagues and are willing to say so - are equally valuable. Without them, your movement will never have mainstream traction. It will never move beyond "the left" or "the fringe" or however your opposition characterizes you.

If you put your supporters to a litmus test, you'll forever be shouting in the wilderness, speaking only to the converted. As redsock pointed out in that earlier post, a conservative columnist or representative speaking out accomplishes something most of us cannot: they reach people normally opposed or even hostile to our point of view.

Hillier's fans are not going to read our blogs and they are not going to subscribe to Socialist Worker. They will not attend our rallies and listen to speeches. But they listen to Hillier -- and in this case, he has done our work for us (and then some).

Maybe 95% of the people who pay attention to him ignored it outright, but I'll bet some of those other 5% got a seed planted in their brain. They might be more open to hearing about establishment abuses the next time they happen.

So thanks, Rosie DiManno, for doing the right thing, and also for inspiring this post.

tuesday december 14: morning vigil for war resister dean walcott

If you're in Toronto on Tuesday morning, please join supporters of peace and conscience in a show of support for US Iraq War resister Dean Walcott. Details below.

Dean has served two tours of duty in Iraq, but it wasn't until he was stationed at a US military hospital in Germany that he saw the true cost of war.

Dean joined the United States Marine Corps in 2000, a few weeks shy of his 18th birthday, hoping to get a college education and some structure in his life. Dean knew if the US went to war, he would be expected to fight, and he fully accepted that risk. In 2003, he was involved in the United States' invasion of Iraq, and was deployed to Iraq a second time in 2005.

Between those two deployments, Dean was stationed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a US military hospital in Stuttgart, Germany. There, families of mortally wounded US soldiers are flown in to see their loved one for the last time.

Alarmed by the high suicide rate among Landstuhl patients, military brass assigned soldiers to act as liaisons for both patients and visiting families. Dean, who had no training in either health care or counselling, was charged with that duty.

He was totally unprepared for what he saw – US soldiers, as well as Iraqi civilians, blown to bits, but somehow still clinging to life, burn victims dying in unimaginable agony.

"That was the only time I ever saw Marines drop the tough-guy act," says Dean. "I would hold someone in my arms – a mother, father, son or daughter – who was losing a person they loved, and we would cry together."

Dean began having nightmares and became severely depressed. He eventually came to feel that "if people are going to suffer this much, there has to be a better reason than 'because the president said so'."

Back in the US, Dean found his disgust at the futility of the Iraq War didn't go away. The Marines obstructed his efforts to get help for his depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms, but there was no legal way for him to leave the military.

Frustrated, trapped and heartsick, in December 2006, he walked away from his base in North Carolina and boarded a Greyhound bus for Toronto.

Since that time, Dean has built a life in Canada. He now lives in the Peterborough area with his partner and their children, and continues to speak out on behalf of peace.

On Tuesday, December 14, the Federal Court will hear Dean's appeal of the negative decisions on his Pre-Removal Risk Assessment and his request to be allowed to stay in Canada on Humanitarian and Compassionate grounds.

Canadians have spoken out overwhelmingly in support of Iraq war resisters being allowed to stay in Canada. These young men and women made a difficult decision to not participate in the illegal and immoral war in Iraq. They have shown tremendous courage, leaving behind their homes, their family, friends and careers.

Yet Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney - who both wanted Canada to participate in the Iraq War - continue to deport Iraq war resisters. War resisters Robin Long and Cliff Cornell were sentenced to long prison terms in US military prisons because the Harper government refused to respect two House of Commons motions (passed June 3, 2008 and March 30, 2009) to stop deporting war resisters and to let them stay. Many war resisters are living under the threat of deportation.

Join a vigil to support Dean and to demand that the Harper government respect Canadian democracy and the will of the Canadian people. It is time to let the war resisters stay!

WHEN: Tuesday, December 14, 2010, 8:00 - 9:00 a.m.

WHERE: Federal Court Building, 180 Queen Street West, Toronto west of University Ave, Osgoode subway)

WHY: Let Them Stay!

is the path to peace paved with tax resistance?

In celebration of International Human Rights Day, the Toronto Friends House is holding a banquet and fundraiser tonight in support of Iraq War resisters in Canada (details below*).

We attended this dinner last year. It was a wonderful evening, and among other joys, I learned about Conscience Canada, a war tax resistance group. For more on what members of Conscience Canada do and what they work for, I encourage you to read this older post.

Shortly after that, I found that wmtc post linked on the website of a US tax resister. David Gross, who writes The Picket Line combines tax resistance with a more general resistance to consumerism, acquisitiveness and capitalism at large. He has withdrawn his support for the military-industrial killing machine by deliberately living below the threshold for paying taxes.

Like most Amer­i­cans, I sup­ported the gov­ern­ment and its wars — I can look at an old W2 form to see just how much. I didn't want to sup­port the gov­ern­ment, but my op­po­si­tion was only an opin­ion while my sup­port was in dol­lars and cents.

Finally I decided that re­fus­ing moral sup­port isn't enough. To fol­low my con­cience I have to put my money where my mouth is.

When the in­va­sion of Iraq began, I stopped pay­ing fed­eral in­come tax and started work­ing for my val­ues instead of against them. I quit my job and de­lib­er­ately reduced my in­come to the point where I no longer owe fed­eral in­come tax. I transformed my life, con­cen­trat­ing on what really mat­ters, so that I can live well and se­curely on a lower in­come. (I ac­tu­ally found that my lower-in­come life­style was more fun, ful­fill­ing, and in­ter­est­ing than the one I had been lead­ing before.)

I have such tremendous admiration for this. It's something I've always wondered about and been attracted to, but don't know if I could ever do.

Compared to the dominant culture surrounding me, I'm not very materialistic. I don't shop for recreation, I don't buy more than I can use, I don't buy for the sake of buying. I don't want a big home or an expensive care. Beyond what's necessary, I couldn't care less about 95% of the consumer goods that are constantly pushed in our faces.

On the other hand, I like a comfortable living space, with separate work areas for me and my partner. I like filling our home with books and music and movies. I want to be able to take care of our health - whether that be expensive supplements or higher quality food - and I have a commitment to the health of our animals. And of course, I want to travel. I hesitate over that word "want," as travel feels more like a deep need.

In my 20s, when I was struggling to create a life that would allow me time to write, I wondered why I couldn't live closer to the bone. If I could be satisfied with earning less, I could have more time to write. I knew people who did that, and I admired them, but I didn't follow their path. On the other hand, I didn't choose a path of potentially much higher earning which would have precluded writing, such as law school. Eventually I stopped beating myself up about it. I realized that I had a basic comfort level, below which I wouldn't be happy, and that being unhappy wouldn't make me a better writer.

So I made peace with it. But I still wonder about a simplified life, and I still envy people who are able to strip down their life to the basics.

One of those people, David Gross, has written an excellent How To on tax resistance and an faq about his own brand of tax resistance. There's also a best-of that's well worth reading.

Our tax resistance took the form of leaving the US. It is one of the great joys and accomplishments of my life that I no longer financially support US imperialism. Of course, I know my taxes in Canada support the war in Afghanistan, and it galls me, and it's my duty to help bring an end to that.

But my taxes also support health care, and libraries, and social housing, and day care, and so on - although not enough of any of those. I'm not opposed to paying taxes. If we all paid our share - including the very rich, the banks, and the corporations - think of what an excellent society we could create.

------
* International Human Rights Day banquet with music and a silent auction
Benefit for U.S. war resisters Jeremy Hinzman and Kim Rivera
When: Friday, December 10, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Friends House, 60 Lowther, Toronto, 416.596.7328
Admission: $20 to $50 donation

one year ago today: whatever happened to the afghanistan torture documents?

James Travers, Toronto Star:

It will be twelve months ago Friday that the Commons passed a motion demanding the government release documents revealing what ministers and generals knew about Afghanistan prisoner abuse. Since then, an ugly fight that included the padlocking of Parliament and a celebrated ruling by Speaker Peter Milliken fizzled into a hapless skirmish, leaving Canadians none the wiser.

For the Prime Minister, the triumph is now as complete as it was once improbable. Memory struggles for a better example of a minority leader so successfully beating the odds in sweeping aside public interest to escape a crisis.

Harper’s position last December was precarious. Diplomat Richard Colvin’s compelling testimony and Chief of Defense Staff Walt Natynczyk’s sudden reversal had blown gaping holes in the always suspect, never sustainable argument that official Ottawa was alone in never hearing a discouraging word about mistreatment and torture.

Worse, Conservatives were caught in a cover-up. In hurriedly correcting the record by confirming Afghans abused a Canadian prisoner, Natynczyk also drew attention to a misleading May, 2007 press release.

Massaged — some say dictated — by Sandra Buckler, then Harper’s communications director, the statement released by Natynczyk ignored readily available evidence to claim there had been no specific prisoner complaints. Three days earlier Steven Noonan, the senior officer responsible for Canadian expeditionary forces, filed an affidavit in a high-profile court case detailing the incident that eventually forced Natynczyk’s reversal as well as another where a Canadian prisoner had to be rescued to prevent murder.

Conservative prospects were so bleak last December that Harper prorogued Parliament — thinly claiming the government needed time to recalibrate its agenda — rather than disclose documents widely believed to be damning. But oh what a difference a year makes. Today Conservatives are climbing opinion polls, pressure for an inquiry is below zero and Liberals along with the Bloc are mired in a glacial process that has yet to make a single document public.

Read it here.

women against rape: "a long tradition of the use of rape for political agendas"

Further to my recent post, "thoughts on rape charges against julian assange", please read this excellent letter by Katrin Axelsson, of Women Against Rape, published in The Guardian.

Many women in both Sweden and Britain will wonder at the unusual zeal with which Julian Assange is being pursued for rape allegations (Report, 8 December). Women in Sweden don't fare better than we do in Britain when it comes to rape. Though Sweden has the highest per capita number of reported rapes in Europe and these have quadrupled in the last 20 years, conviction rates have decreased. On 23 April 2010 Carina Hägg and Nalin Pekgul (respectively MP and chairwoman of Social Democratic Women in Sweden) wrote in the Göteborgs-Posten that "up to 90% of all reported rapes never get to court. In 2006 six people were convicted of rape though almost 4,000 people were reported". They endorsed Amnesty International's call for an independent inquiry to examine the rape cases that had been closed and the quality of the original investigations.

Assange, who it seems has no criminal convictions, was refused bail in England despite sureties of more than £120,000. Yet bail following rape allegations is routine. For two years we have been supporting a woman who suffered rape and domestic violence from a man previously convicted after attempting to murder an ex-partner and her children – he was granted bail while police investigated.

There is a long tradition of the use of rape and sexual assault for political agendas that have nothing to do with women's safety. In the south of the US, the lynching of black men was often justified on grounds that they had raped or even looked at a white woman. Women don't take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst.

Katrin Axelsson
Women Against Rape

Many thanks to reader Eric for posting this in comments.

memo to easydns: i'm proud to support you. please continue to host wikileaks.ch.

I've just learned that the company that hosts my domain - wmtc.ca - is involved with WikiLeaks. It sounds like they're struggling to do the right thing in an extremely challenging situation. I received this email, which is also available on their blog.

It is not very often we send out an all-member email blast, so when we do, it's usually pretty important.

First and foremost, everything is ok. Please read the information that follows carefully but understand that we would never do anything that we thought put our members at risk.

The Basic Background:

On Friday, Dec 6th, easyDNS was mistakenly identified in various online channels as the DNS provider who revoked DNS Services for the controversial website Wikileaks, and a large internet backlash ensued against us.

In fact, the Wikileaks DNS provider was a free DNS provider in New Hampshire called "EveryDNS.net". At some point this was mistakenly reported as "easyDNS", and it gathered momentum from there. The problem was compounded on Saturday, Dec 7th when the New York Times picked up the story, also incorrectly identifying us as the party who "unplugged" Wikileaks. The U.K based Guardian did the same thing again on Tuesday, December 7th.

A timeline of events has been posted here.

And our original rebuttal to the misinformation was posted here.

easyDNS Added To WikiLeaks.ch:

On Sunday, Dec 5th, we were approached by a group acting on behalf of Wikileaks and asked to provide DNS for their fallback domain WikiLeaks.ch.

We agreed to this on several conditions.

We did not take this decision lightly, and whichever side of the fence you fall regarding what Wikileaks is doing, after being falsely accused of unplugging Wikileaks and taking an enormous amount of backlash for doing so, we felt we did not have much choice in the matter but to forge ahead and take on this challenge.

We actually consider this part of the situation to be well in hand.

Tonight the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail ran a story about this bizarre sequence of events and we expect it to run in the print edition (possibly as the cover story) on Thursday, Dec 10.

That story is here.

However, and this is large part of the motivation for this email, the Globe story concluded with the following quotation, which we feel sends the wrong message, as I misspoke when I said the following:

"Our lawyers have basically told us that if they want to shut us down they'll show up with an injunction and we'll have to follow it and then try and have it overturned later,"

This may connote that we think we, as a company, may be shut down. We do NOT think this is going to happen at all.

What I meant to convey in the quote is:

"If they want US (easyDNS) to shut THEM (WikiLeaks) down, they'll show up with an injunction, and we'll have to follow it," etc etc.

And if that happened, we would be terminating service to wikileaks alone.

Further information about this clarification is here.

We wanted to let you know as an easyDNS member, that we are taking every measure to ensure that this situation does not disrupt the continuity of your domain services at all.

In conclusion, we believe we have taken the course of action that fits who we are as a company.

If you've been dealing with us for any amount of time then hopefully you know what kind of company that is. I also hope you agree that, regardless of your opinion of Wikileaks itself, we are playing the hand we've been dealt in accordance with who we are as a company.

In short, we think this is the right thing to do, and that is why we're doing it.

easyDNS blog

easyDNS on Twitter

wikileaks petition: support freedom of information

From Avaaz:

The massive campaign of intimidation against WikiLeaks is sending a chill through free press advocates everywhere.

Legal experts say WikiLeaks has likely broken no laws. Yet top US politicians have called it a terrorist group and commentators have urged assassination of its staff. The organization has come under massive government and corporate attack, but WikiLeaks is only publishing information provided by a whistleblower. And it has partnered with the world's leading newspapers (NYT, Guardian, Spiegel etc) to carefully vet the information it publishes.

The massive extra-judicial intimidation of WikiLeaks is an attack on democracy. We urgently need a public outcry for freedom of the press and expression. Sign the petition to stop the crackdown and forward this email to everyone -- let's get to 1 million voices and take out full page ads in US newspapers this week!

WikiLeaks isn't acting alone -- it's partnered with the top newspapers in the world (New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, etc) to carefully review 250,000 US diplomatic cables and remove any information that it is irresponsible to publish. Only 800 cables have been published so far. Past WikiLeaks publications have exposed government-backed torture, the murder of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and corporate corruption.

The US government is currently pursuing all legal avenues to stop WikiLeaks from publishing more cables, but the laws of democracies protect freedom of the press. The US and other governments may not like the laws that protect our freedom of expression, but that's exactly why it's so important that we have them, and why only a democratic process can change them.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether WikiLeaks and the leading newspapers it's partnered with are releasing more information than the public should see. Whether the releases undermine diplomatic confidentiality and whether that's a good thing. Whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has the personal character of a hero or a villain. But none of this justifies a vicious campaign of intimidation to silence a legal media outlet by governments and corporations. Click below to join the call to stop the crackdown:

Sign the Petition here.

Sources: [from Avaaz]

Law experts say WikiLeaks in the clear (ABC)

WikiLeaks are a bunch of terrorists, says leading U.S. congressman (Mail Online)

Cyber guerrillas can help US (Financial Times)

Amazon drops WikiLeaks under political pressure (Yahoo)

WikiLeaks avenged by hacktivists (PC World)

US Gov shows true control over Internet with WikiLeaks containment (Tippett.org)

US embassy cables culprit should be executed, says Mike Huckabee (The Guardian)

WikiLeaks ditched by MasterCard, Visa. Who's next? (The Christian Science Monitor)

Assange's Interpol Warrant Is for Having Sex Without a Condom (The Slatest)

Sign the petition here.

thoughts on rape charges against julian assange

It need not be said - but I will say it anyway - that I stand in solidarity with victims of rape and sexual assault, everywhere, always.

But somehow, it must also be said that not all accusations of rape are valid and true.

Historically, women who reported rape were easily dismissed, or rape went largely unreported, because the victim and assailant knew each other, or had had consensual sex on other occasions, or the victim was sexually active, or any number of dangerous myths used to control women's behaviour. This has changed - although not entirely - in North America, because of the influence of feminist activism, but is still the case in many parts of the world.

Also historically, rape has been used as a weapon against powerless men. In the US South, African-American men were routinely accused of rape before they were lynched and murdered. These accused men had not adequately displayed their submissive status, whether intentionally, as an act of resistance, or in the imagination of their cowardly white oppressors. Black men would be accused of rape, hauled off into the woods, tortured, often castrated, then murdered. Their transgression may have been as simple as looking a white person in the eye.

When a man who has exposed the crimes of the rich and powerful on an unprecedented global scale is accused of an unrelated crime, hunted internationally and held without bail, we must give serious pause to the validity of the accusation.

Some people react to any accusation of sexual abuse and assault as if women routinely lie about rape to get attention or to get revenge. That's beyond preposterous. It's disgusting and it's dangerous and it's wrong. We must speak out about it at every opportunity.

But other people react to those same incidents as if every single accusation must necessarily be valid. As if, in the history of the world, no one has ever accused a man of rape in order to silence him, or no woman has ever lied about being raped. That's not possible.

It's also inadvertently unfair to women. Women are people. Like all people, women can lie, cheat, steal, murder, support fascism, and any other despicable act you can name. Women are capable of the entire spectrum of human action and emotion, because women are people. One female stereotype is the lying bitch who agrees to sex then blackmails the man with rape charges. The flipside stereotype is the angelic creature on a pedestal who can do no wrong. Neither cartoon helps us achieve true equality.

Women are raped. Men are raped, too. Rape is real, and we must speak out about it.

But defending Julian Assange and WikiLeaks is not defending rape. This morning Naomi Klein posted this on Facebook: "Rape is being used in the Assange prosecution in the same way that women's freedom was used to invade Afghanistan."

police complaint update: it's now an investigation

I met with the police again yesterday, and was so dissatisfied that I chose the third option for the complaint: I escalated it to an investigation. I don't think what happened to me warrants an investigation, but no other option was acceptable to me.

Background:

Part I: What happened.

Part II: My complaint is "withdrawn".

Part III: The OIPRD calls me.

The day after I received the call from the OIPRD, the complaint coordinator - the female detective who misinformed me - called. She was shocked - shocked! - to hear that I was withdrawing my withdrawal. In all her years in her position, this was the first time such a thing had ever happened. I told her if that's true, perhaps it's because most complainants don't discover the truth.

I related to her what I was told: that a "withdrawn" complaint is indeed withdrawn, and never intersects with the officer's performance evaluations or personnel file in any way.

I told her I believe she intentionally misled me, which gave me serious concerns, not for my complaint, but for what this might mean for the Toronto Police. How many complainants are being steered towards withdrawing complaints, believing they are doing something very different? How many legitimate complaints get buried this way?

She denied this, and denied the OIPRD's explanation of a withdrawn complaint. We set up an appointment for me to come in for another interview. I did this yesterday.

The detective was again very cordial and professional. She reiterated her version of what a "withdrawal" means - that it's the wrong word, that it does stay on the officer's file for two years, that the officer's supervisor will see it, that it is an accountability mechanism.

I reiterated what I was told by the OIPRD: that a withdrawn complaint is marked as "withdrawn" in the database of all complaints, and nothing happens after that - it is simply noted as withdrawn. I told her that if the OIPRD is correct, then I was intentionally misled.

She asked, "But why? Why would I do that?"

I felt like saying, "Isn't it obvious?" Omitting that, I said, "To reduce the number of complaints against the Toronto Police Service. To make complaints go away, to make the police force look better."

She said, "If you do that, it will only come back to bite you in the ass anyway. And besides, I have to look at myself in the mirror. I could not do my job that way."

We agreed it was strange and confusing, as both versions - hers and the OIPRD's - could not be true. She said she wouldn't speculate on the OIPRD representative's motive or how they do their job, but clearly and flatly denied that interpretation of a withdrawn complaint.

We left it at that, and then discussed my other options. The OIPRD representative thought that the informal resolution process might work for me. (Everyone is very careful to say, "I'm not telling you what to do, it's up to you, but this might be what you want...") The detective said I could do that if I want, but this complaint is not really resolved, as the officer believes her actions were justified. But meanwhile, I'm thinking that the third, higher option - investigation - seemed so unwarranted. I didn't have serious injuries, wasn't beaten up or illegally detained. It was a minor incident, I simply wanted it documented and the officer to be accountable.

I was all set to do the informal resolution process, when I asked about the other officer that was on the scene. Would it be possible to find out who that was? The detective shuffled through the papers in my file, and only then did I realize there were statements from all the officers who were present that evening.

The detective read from the male officer's statement. I heard that I darted out into the street (I did not), that the female cop "escorted" me back behind the barricades (interesting word choice!), that I yelled and cursed at the female cop, saying something like "Get your hands off me! Get the hell away from me!"

All lies. I said, "That's it, I've heard enough. We'll do the investigation."

We all know that police officers lie to protect each other. That's a well-known fact. But hearing my own story re-written in such a way just made my blood boil. I never physically attempted to walk in the street - I was arguing with the production assistant, but not getting past her. The cop did not "escort" me behind the barricade - she ran at me with both arms extended, pushed me hard against the barricades, leaned into me and yelled in my face. And I did not resist in any way. The officer seemed so angry and out of control, I was afraid that even looking at her might escalate the situation. While she yelled at me, I froze, and looked down and away from her. I did or said nothing until she released me. My hurt and surprise at my own inaction caused me to write this: "in which i learn the lasting effects of the g20 police brutality".

[An aside: the male officer on the scene noted that in an all-day film shoot, where thousands of people were similarly prevented from crossing the intersection, "the complainant" - yours truly - was the only person who caused a problem by attempting to cross the street. And it was the first time a withdrawn complaint had ever been un-withdrawn. And the first time a Heys Luggage backpack had developed rips in the mesh pockets. I'm the first writer to ever question the terms of a magazine's contracts. I'm the first support-staff employee to ask for a raise; everyone else is completely satisfied. Yes, my complaint is always the first. But I'm no trailblazer. Your complaint will probably be the first, too. It's a kind of indirect peer pressure: no one else is doing it, maybe you shouldn't do it either. Funny, my replacement backpack developed the same rips in only three weeks. What a coincidence.]

I asked the detective if she needed any more information from me. She asked if I would be willing to make a short, taped statement. I told the story into a tape recorder, she asked me a few follow-up questions, and I was on my way. I'll next hear from them in January. After a decision is made, if I am not satisfied, I can appeal to the OIPRD; the next decision of the OIPRD is final. I don't expect anything to come of this, as I didn't sustain serious injuries and I have no witnesses on my side. But at least it will be documented.

As I've said in my previous posts, what happened to me was not very serious. I know this and have acknowledged it from the outset. But if this officer was so aggressive and out-of-control over someone verbally arguing about crossing a blocked intersection, how will she react in a high-pressure situation? If her first response is to grab, shove and yell, what will she do if someone actually does yell back? She said in her statement that she was protecting me from imminent danger. Maybe my little complaint will help protect someone else from danger.

rosie dimanno calls for toronto police chief's resignation

Imagine how bad, how blatant, how incontrovertible, the evidence must be: Rosie DiManno agrees with us.

Sorry chief — truly I am — but sorry just isn’t good enough.

A man of integrity, which Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair is, would at least offer to resign.

And a police services board that has the authority to hire and fire this city’s top cop — no one else can do that — should think seriously about terminating Blair’s renewed contract.

Some professionals, because of the power they wield and all the moral heft they carry in our society, don’t have the luxury of being so profoundly wrong or misguided.

It is not simply about taking the blame for the misdeeds of others — officers who answer ultimately to their chief through the chain of command — because the buck stops in that brass-and-braid invested office.

It’s about acknowledging one’s own misjudgments, statements and actions (or inactions) that have brought law enforcement into disrepute, from the top down.

Blair is neither a private citizen nor a talk-radio loudmouth, a defence lawyer who can stand on the courthouse steps and spew nonsense or a bloviating politician. He’s our No. 1 cop. His is the face of law, order and probity.

And the chief is far too polished a public persona to have just sloppily put his foot in it when vehemently condemning the independent Special Investigations Unit last week.

Blair knew very well what he was saying and the impact it would have coming from so virtuous a source when he lashed out at the SIU on a radio show, slamming the agency for relying on a YouTube video as corroboration for allegations of brutality against a cop during the G20 Summit protests in June, accusing it of “guesswork and speculation.”

SIU director Ian Scott called Blair’s bluff, announcing the watchdog had reopened the investigation into custody injuries sustained by Adam Nobody — broken nose and shattered cheek — during his arrest. Further, Scott revealed that a sworn affidavit had been obtained from the man who shot the 26-second video. John Bridge has declared he turned the camera off for only a few moments, fearing he too would have to run from police, before flicking it back on and capturing the rest of the incident.

What was Blair thinking when he teed-up on the SIU? That kind of stuff is expected from the obstreperous police union. It was shocking and, frankly, insupportable coming from the police chief.

So Friday Blair took it back, in a manner of speaking, a thrust-reversal in which the chief simultaneously managed to cut himself a whole lot of slack.

“In an effort to demonstrate the potential significance of the missing audio and video, I said police were attempting to arrest an armed criminal and that the missing video images might have shed light on the reasons force was used,” said Blair in a released statement.

“This statement created a false impression that I wish to clarify. I have no evidence that he was armed or violent and all charges against the injured man have been withdrawn. I regret the false impression that my comments may have created and apologize to Mr. Nobody.”

Well, that’s all right then. It was only the police chief, after all, running off at the mouth, insinuating, accusing; perplexing even his most ardent acolytes.

But should “Tapegate” be allowed to end there, on a self-justifying grace note, without any stern consequences?

Blair impugned the trustworthiness — insofar that it had much — of the SIU. At minimum, he trashed their investigative competence, implying the damning YouTube video had been edited, “tampered” with, and then ineptly scrutinized by SIU analysts so that the potentially exculpating unseen was, unfairly, never taken into consideration.

He bullied by proxy a couple of civilians by essentially calling them fabricators of evidence.

Wind the tape back further: Blair misled about the applicability of that wrongfully exploited five-metre fence law used to pick off G20 protesters.

On his watch, a scary seizure — chainsaw, crossbow and fuel-tipped arrows — was proferred by police as weapons-porn, a sly bit of theatre to pre-emptively rationalize formidable use of force, although those items were not taken off demonstrators.

And he’s been unable to exercise the muscular sanctions of his office so that cops who whaled on harmless citizens — doesn’t matter if they’re annoying or provocative — can be identified and charged.

If cops remove their badges or change the numbers so that their identity can never be traced — despite the face recognition imagery and other high-tech gadgetry available to police investigators — they are not merely a small pack of lone wolves, rogues unfit to wear the uniform. Somewhere in the back of their minds, I dare say, lay a conviction that such conduct would be acceptable on the front line of heated police-public collision.

And that culture of entitlement does not exist in a vacuum. Those anonymous cops must surely know who’s watching their backs: other cops.

How can Blair ever again admonish witnesses to shootings and assaults who adhere to the street-level code of silence? That see-no-evil covenant has now — though hardly for the first time, where police are concerned — been consecrated by cops themselves.

About 100 officers caught on camera without their identification tags during the G20 protests will face a one-day suspension without pay — hardly an onerous penalty. Yet a half-dozen believed to have caused actual injuries are in the wind, the SIU unable to lay criminal charges because they can’t put a name to a shielded face. And Blair is purportedly unable to flex either command or moral suasion against colleagues protecting them.

bona fides of a long and meritorious career record. No fool he — far from that — Blair also enjoys political clout, having successfully manoeuvred the thickets of Toronto’s policing hierarchy and civilian oversight. He has friends in high places and that is of inestimable value in a political culture averse to challenging police brass.

Collectively, however, Blair has diminished himself.

It’s been a sorry display indeed. [Ed note: links added.]

The video in question is here.

Last Thursday, it was announced that no criminal charges will be laid in connection with any of the incidents under investigation. What a surprise.

If you haven't seen this excellent video yet, a summary of recent police violence against protestors in Canada, please watch: Police State Canada.

daniel ellsberg calls for boycott of amazon over wikileaks

Daniel Ellsberg:

Open letter to Amazon.com Customer Service:

December 2, 2010

I’m disgusted by Amazon’s cowardice and servility in abruptly terminating today its hosting of the Wikileaks website, in the face of threats from Senator Joe Lieberman and other Congressional right-wingers. I want no further association with any company that encourages legislative and executive officials to aspire to China’s control of information and deterrence of whistle-blowing.

For the last several years, I’ve been spending over $100 a month on new and used books from Amazon. That’s over. I ask Amazon to terminate immediately my membership in Amazon Prime and my Amazon credit card and account, to delete my contact and credit information from their files and to send me no more notices.

I understand that many other regular customers feel as I do and are responding the same way. Good: the broader and more immediate the boycott, the better. I hope that these others encourage their contact lists to do likewise and to let Amazon know exactly why they’re shifting their business. I’ve asked friends today to suggest alternatives, and I’ll be exploring service from Powell’s Books, Half-Price Books, Biblio and others.

So far Amazon has spared itself the further embarrassment of trying to explain its action openly. This would be a good time for Amazon insiders who know and perhaps can document the political pressures that were brought to bear – and the details of the hasty kowtowing by their bosses – to leak that information. They can send it to Wikileaks (now on servers outside the US), to mainstream journalists or bloggers, or perhaps to sites like antiwar.com that have now appropriately ended their book-purchasing association with Amazon.

Yours (no longer),
Daniel Ellsberg

Powell's, by the way, is an excellent bookseller. The company supports progressive causes and their employees are unionized.

in which the words "principled" and "ignatieff" appear in the same sentence: opposition to defeat c-49

Newsflash: Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party of Canada are about to do the right thing! They will oppose Bill C-49, the anti-refugee and anti-human-rights bill disguised as anti-human-smuggling bill.

This is a terrible piece of legislation that seeks to score political points by jailing the most vulnerable people, in defiance of all international and Canadian laws.

Here's an excellent editorial from the Toronto Star: "Playing politics with refugees"

Also at the Star: "Refugee bill: Ignatieff’s principled stand".

My previous posts on C-49: here and here.

I'm assuming Ignatieff has calculated that the Liberals will win more support for opposing this bill than supporting it. Whatever the reason, I'm grateful that he's finally found a working calculator.

pew research: "the decline of marriage and rise of new families"

Via Andrew Sullivan, Chart Of The Day: What is a family?, from the Pew Research Center.

A majority of respondents don't consider my family a family. Although I actually don't care, because I know we are a family. (Which may make you wonder why I posted this.)

Even more interesting, 18% of respondents judged an unmarried male-female couple with children as not a family. And 12% thought a single parent with children is not a family! How do we wrap our heads around that one? It may be bigotry, but it also may be a failure of the imagination. People cannot imagine a type of family other than the kind in which they were raised. Their minds are very small.

Another interesting chart: percentage of people who think the changes in marriage and family types are a good thing, a bad thing or neither.

The summary of the report is very interesting: here. I'd like to see future surveys include polyamorous, multiple-adult households - just to piss off the bigots.

underground art in nyc - literally

This amazing art project raises so many questions about the relationships among artists, audience, critics, commerce, community, and the nature of art itself. Its very existence and survival is an exciting piece of resistance and defiance.

A vast new exhibition space opened in New York City this summer, with a show 18 months in the making. On view are works by 103 street artists from around the world, mostly big murals painted directly onto the gallery’s walls.

It is one of the largest shows of such pieces ever mounted in one place, and many of the contributors are significant figures in both the street-art world and the commercial trade that now revolves around it. Its debut might have been expected to draw critics, art dealers and auction-house representatives, not to mention hordes of young fans. But none of them were invited.

In the weeks since, almost no one has seen the show. The gallery, whose existence has been a closely guarded secret, closed on the same night it opened.

Known to its creators and participating artists as the Underbelly Project, the space, where all the show’s artworks remain, defies every norm of the gallery scene. Collectors can’t buy the art. The public can’t see it. And the only people with a chance of stumbling across it are the urban explorers who prowl the city’s hidden infrastructure or employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

That’s because the exhibition has been mounted, illegally, in a long-abandoned subway station. The dank, cavernous hall feels a lot farther than it actually is from the bright white rooms of Chelsea’s gallery district. Which is more or less the point: This is an art exhibition that goes to extremes to avoid being part of the art world, and even the world in general.

The show’s curators, street artists themselves, unveiled the project for a single night, leading this reporter on a two-and-a-half hour tour. Determined to protect their secrecy, they offered the tour on condition that no details that might help identify the site be published, not even a description of the equipment they used to get in and out. And since they were (and remain) seriously concerned about the threat of prosecution, they agreed only to the use of street-artist pseudonyms.

Workhorse, in his late 30s, is a well-known street artist with gallery representation; PAC, younger by a decade, is less established but familiar (under a different name) to followers of urban-art blogs. The two came up with the idea for the Underbelly Project in 2008, a few years after PAC first saw the old station, led to it from a functioning one by an urban explorer acquaintance.

Abandoned stations like this — and there are a fair number of them in the city — are irresistible to those who search out hidden spaces in the city, despite or perhaps because of the fact that being there is illegal and potentially dangerous. PAC too found himself compelled after that first visit, and he began going back sporadically.

I wish I could see this! As much for the chance to walk through abandoned subway stops as anything else.

Some photos and videos here, from the above New York Times story.

The Underbelly Project: Art underground and what I saw from Vandalog - A Street Art Blog.

Dark, Damp & Dirty - The Underbelly Project from Wallkandy.

More photos from Web Urbanist.

The Underbelly Project website is nearly as mysterious as the project itself.

harper government's new citizenship test proves one more barrier to immigrants

Remember the Harper Government's new Citizenship Guide? It's working.

Massive failure rates follow new, tougher Canadian citizenship tests

Failure rates for immigrants writing citizenship tests have soared since the spring, when tougher questions and revamped rules made it harder for newcomers to become Canadian.

The new test, introduced March 15, was based on a bulked-up citizenship guide released a year ago to give immigrants a richer picture of Canada’s history, culture, law and politics.

The 63-page guide, Discover Canada, replaced a slimmer volume dating from 1995 that had fewer facts to memorize. The failure rate for the old citizenship test, with questions drawn from the smaller guide, ranged between four and eight per cent.

Failure rates for the new test, however, rocketed to about 30 per cent when it was first introduced — prompting officials to revise the rules to avoid clogging the system with thousands of would-be Canadians who, because they had flunked, often had to plead their cases before busy citizenship judges.

A reworked test introduced Oct. 14 is helping to cut the national failure rate to about 20 per cent, still far higher than historic levels and making the exam-hall experience much more nerve-wracking for newcomers.

People who are Canadian by accident of birth are required to do nothing but obey the law and pay taxes. Those who choose to become Canadian - people who uproot their lives and families, spend many thousands of dollars, often forced to start their educations and careers completely over, all for the privilege of living in Canada - are made to jump through hoops meant prove knowledge and loyalty.

Yet Canada cannot survive without immigrants. The country's non-immigrant population growth is less than zero. And once people are here, it should be as easy as possible to become citizens. Don't we want to encourage immigrants to have a full stake in the country? To put down roots, to build a future, to vote?

The idiots commenting on the news stories about this - themselves likely the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants - crow about Canada finally getting a grip, cracking down. About people "milking the system", the horror of hyphenated identity. Most sound like they can only dream of having the skills, resiliency and tenacity to emigrate to another country. Or for that matter, to brush their own teeth.

building a dream: living in the library to foster global literacy

Remember when you were in university, and exam time would roll around, and you felt like you lived in the library?

Or if you were a book-loving kid, as I was, and the library was your sanctuary? Did you ever wish you could live there?

In January, students at nine Canadian universities will be doing just that: living in the library. Through Live-in For Literacy, they'll be focusing attention and raising funds for a global literacy project, DREAM: Discover the Reality of Educating All Minds.

In university libraries from coast to coast, two students will camp out for one week - eating, sleeping and living in the library. For each hour they live in the library, the students earn five minutes of break time, which they can accumulate and use for washroom breaks. Other than that, they're there 24/7.

The current Live-in For Literacy takes place from January 27 to Feb 3, 2011, and will be broadcast by webcam.

Calvin Santiago is the coordinator of the University of Toronto initiative. Calvin writes:

As university students, we already have a deep, personal understanding of the challenges against access to education. Most of us are privileged to have grown up in Canada where access to primary and secondary education is relatively easy and hassle-free.

Upon entering post-secondary education however, many of us are suddenly faced with overwhelming financial barriers and sadly for many prospective students, these challenges prove to be insurmountable and they get left behind. While we understand that we as university students ourselves can’t solve everything, we also know that every little bit helps.

Now imagine living in a world where even access to primary education – arguably the most important stage in a child’s education – is faced with financial barriers. It has been shown time and time again that education is a strong social determinant of health where the higher the level of education you’ve attained equates to how healthy you are. Imagine again living in a community ravaged by poverty where the most basic of human needs of food, water and shelter are compromised. Similar to education, poverty is also a strong determinant of health where essentially the richer you are, the healthier you will be.

The DREAM project seeks to alleviate some of these harsh financial burdens in the communities of developing countries. Standing for "Discover the Reality of Educating All Minds," DREAM has focused on raising money to build educational facilities through its partner organization, Room to Read. Since its inception five years ago, we have raised over $70,000 to build new school libraries in Nepal and India as well as a computer lab in Cambodia. Since then we have expanded to seven university campus and our goal this year is to raise $20,000 for two purposes: to build another library in India and to support publishing of 10,000 children’s books by local authors.

I love this:

While we understand that we as university students ourselves can’t solve everything, we also know that every little bit helps.

It's the perfect activist attitude. And while many of us want to create a world without these gross inequalities and injustices, children right now, today, need access to education. Calvin:

Our first goal will target the problem of access to education by enriching a community with a library and allowing school children to explore and discover the world found within a few pages of a book. We are particularly excited about the latter goal as this will hopefully give a much needed economic boost to an impoverished community. Our hope is that this will have lingering beneficial effects on the community rather than a simple band-aid solution that is seen in so many other initiatives.

Besides people who want to live in the library, Live-in for Literacy needs local businesses to give in-kind donations or gift cards, used for raffle prizes.

Live-in for Literacy will take place on these Canadian campuses: Simon Fraser, McMaster, Memorial, Queen's, University of British Columbia, University of Ottawa, University of Toronto (Mississauga), University of Toronto (St. George), York, Concordia. For more information: Live-in For Literacy, Queen's DREAM, Room to Read.

we like lists: list # 3: pet peeves

Our last list celebrated the joy and wonder of life's many simple pleasures. This one is exactly the opposite: the irritation of life's little annoyances. The things that make you grit your teeth, rant to your partner, and mutter words not safe for work.

Let's be specific. "People who annoy me" is too general. And let's think small. "Social injustice" or "racism" are not pet peeves.

We'll make this one an even dozen. Some years back, I could have filled 12 spots just from annoyances related to the riding the subway: door-blockers, men sitting with their knees a meter apart taking up three seats, percussion groups extorting money from a captive audience. But that's all gone now. Here are my current top 12.

1. So much advertising during baseball games.

2. People walking without picking up their feet, causing a shushing, scraping noise.

3. People talking while yawning. (Stop talking for a moment, yawn, then finish your sentence!)

4. People who ask me for help then don't say thank you. (Please tell me in advance if you don't plan to thank me, so I can decline to help you.)

5. People who email me comments instead of leaving them on the blog - not because they want to tell me something personal offline, but regularly, as their method of commenting.

6. Whistling.

7. Salespeople - including those selling religion - ringing my doorbell.

8. People recounting extremely detailed stories of what they were doing on September 11, 2001, because I am from New York City. This is always someone who was nowhere near any of the incidents and has no personal connection to the events, telling me when they heard, who told them, how they felt, and so on.

9. People bragging about how cheap they are - i.e., what a great deal they got, how they saved money by not paying for parking, how they paid less than me for something, often by buying a lower-quality product.

10. Bad customer service.

11. Having to hear other people's cell phone conversations on above-ground public transit. (This has replaced subway annoyances, but is mitigated by an mp3 player.)

12. "Lite FM" background music in restaurants, offices, stores or public spaces.

Yours?

Update!! I can't believe I forgot this one. I meant to include it all along.

13-100. People who complain about privilege. When I was a nanny, my employer used to complain to me about her son's tuition - private school that cost $5,000 a year - for a 7-year-old - in the 1980s. And she would complain to me. Co-workers who complain about the travails of building their McMansions, the vicissitudes of finding the perfect couch. Acquaintances who complain about the traffic on the way to the cottage, one of two houses they own. These are not everyday complaints about everyday annoyances. It's the myopia of people who don't appreciate how good they have it. If you can't stand the traffic on the way to your second home, stay the hell at home!

world aids day

Today is World AIDS Day.

Reflect.

Remember.

End prejudice against HIV-positive people.

Give.

the age of involuntary transparency: forbes interview with wikileaks founder julian assange

Forbes Magazine has a lengthy interview with WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange.

Admire him or revile him, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is the prophet of a coming age of involuntary transparency, the leader of an organization devoted to divulging the world’s secrets using technology unimagined a generation ago. Over the last year his information insurgency has dumped 76,000 secret Afghan war documents and another trove of 392,000 files from the Iraq war into the public domain–the largest classified military security breaches in history. Sunday, WikiLeaks made the first of 250,000 classified U.S. State Department cables public, offering an unprecedented view of how America’s top diplomats view enemies and friends alike.

But, as Assange explained to me earlier this month, the Pentagon and State Department leaks are just the start.

Read it here.

more evidence of canada's shameful involvement in afghanistan: children transferred to authorities known to torture

How long will Canadians continue to believe that its military are the "good guys" of war?

How long will Canada be forced to continue its involvement in Afghanistan, despite the majority view that the war is wrong and must end?

How long will this minority government - aided by the so-called "leader" of the "opposition" - impose its views on the majority?

Look at this story: Canadian Forces have been handing over children to authorities known to use torture. Could anything be clearer?

And should there be any surprise, when one considers how Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen and once a child soldier, has been abandoned by this government?

Canada, get out of Afghanistan!

The Canadian Forces have for years arrested children suspected of working with the Taliban and handed them over to an Afghan security unit accused of torture, CBC News has learned.

Allegations that militants captured by Canada were transferred to Afghan forces and later tortured were hotly debated in Parliament last fall.

A document obtained by the CBC's investigative unit shows that Canadian soldiers captured children as well in the fight against the Taliban, and that many of them were transferred to the custody of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, or NDS.

The document, obtained under an Access to Information request and marked "secret," shows that Defence Minister Peter MacKay was briefed on the topic of juvenile detainees in Afghanistan March 30.

The "Canadian eyes only" note informs MacKay of how many children suspected of "participating in the insurgency" have been arrested by Canadian Forces and how many of them have been transferred into Afghan custody in the previous four years.

The note also shows that an undisclosed number of juvenile detainees were being kept in a Canadian transfer facility at Kandahar Air Field for "a significant period."

The numbers in all cases, however, were blacked out.

Human rights lawyer Paul Champ called the briefing note "troubling."

"Juveniles have been in Canadian Forces custody for a significant period of time," Champ said. "That's very troubling. I'm surprised by that.

"Are they talking about a week, or are they talking about two weeks or a month or longer? Kandahar Airfield is no place for children."

The briefing note alerts MacKay that the media could soon begin paying closer attention to the issue of juvenile detainees in Afghanistan once they got wind of a change in policy that called for the Canadian Forces to send captured children to a new facility, the Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre in Kandahar, instead of the Sarpoza prison.

"This may draw attention to the role of juveniles in the Afghan conflict," the minister was told.

And while the March 2010 briefing note suggests the government was "likely" to post information about the new facility on its website, that did not happen until Oct. 28, the same day the CBC received the briefing note through the Access to Information Act.

"International law is dead clear that when a person is under 18 and in the hands of the Canadian military, the Canadian military must seek to take that person out of the conflict," he said.

"You can't treat them like an insurgent. You have to treat them as a child who's been forced into war against their will."

CBC News has also learned that Canadian Forces policy dictates that juveniles — defined as all prisoners under the age of 18 — are to be routed through the NDS.

One international report after another has cited the NDS's rough treatment of children, including a United Nations report issued in April.

"The use of harsh interrogation techniques [on children] and forced confession of guilt by the Afghan National Police and the National Directorate of Security was documented," according to the UN report. The report is silent on which countries detained those children.

project maddie lives

Earlier this week I got the sad news that Project Maddie - the pet-food food bank that is the brainchild of my friend Kim Ford (a/k/a Dharma Seeker) - was forced to shut down. PM supporters were hoping it wasn't true, or would at least be a temporary situation.

Temporary it was. One great article in the Toronto Star, animal-lovers rising to the occasion, and Project Maddie lives to see another day. And hopefully, many days.

Wellesley St. E. apartment building fire in September that displaced more than 1,200 people has claimed another victim” a pet food bank that helped supply food to the building’s pets is closing.

Project Maddie — which delivered about 900 pounds of cat and dog food to the Wellesley Community Centre, which had been temporarily set up to help residents who had been forced out of their homes — cannot meet its operating funds, says director and founder Kimberley Ford, who lives in Oakville and works as an insurance company underwriter.

Supplying food to the pets of the Wellesley apartment residents wiped out the supplies in the food bank, said Ford, who did all the deliveries to Toronto in her 2000 Mazda Protégé. Most of the food was donated by a commercial retailer and consisted of food past its expiry date, which is still safe for consumption but cannot be sold.

Ford estimates that Project Maddie helped about 300 pets from the fire and another 200 since she started the organization last April. It helped people at risk of losing their pets due to short-term financial instability, as well as seniors and people living with disabilities on fixed incomes.

People would contact her through the website by sending emails or leaving phone messages asking for help.

Ford was able to replenish through more commercial donations of pet food and now has 300 pounds, but there is no money to pay operating costs to cover the cost of a postal box, run the website, www.projectmaddie.com or pay for gas to deliver food.

More here, plus click through for a great pic of Kim and two family members.

Many thanks to Star reporter Valerie Hauch, and to La Zerbisias for helping to make this happen.

thursday, december 2: double the fundraisers, double the fun

This week there are several events in support of Iraq War resisters in Canada. In Toronto, there are two on the same night!

In the west end, Jon Brooks will be performing at Lula Lounge. Our long-time supporter Antonia Zerbisias will say a few words, if her broken wrist permits. And war resister Jeremy Hinzman will introduce and emcee. Admission is a suggested donation of $20: details here.

In the east end, Mr. Rick and the Biscuits will perform at the "Support - Don't Deport" benefit jam, to benefit war resisters Phil McDowell and Jamine Aponte. Details here.

The music will be great, the cause even better. Join us for one or both.

If you're not in Toronto or can't attend, please consider donating through ChipIn.

vote on debate on afghanistan tonight: please make one more phone call

At 6:00 tonight, Parliament will vote on this motion submitted by the Bloc Québécois.

That this House condemn the government’s decision to unilaterally prolong the Canadian mission in Afghanistan to 2014, thus reneging on two promises made to the population – in the House on May 10, 2006 and reiterated in the Throne Speech of 2007 – to submit any military deployment to a Parliamentary vote, and the promise made January 6, 2010 to make the Afghanistan mission strictly a civilian mission after 2011, with no military presence other than the personnel required to protect the embassy.

If you agree, make your voice heard.

The virtual march on Ottawa has been a great success. Members of Parliament have been swamped with phone calls. Ten thousand postcards have been delivered; tens of thousands of signatures on petitions are being faxed to MPs offices right now.

Please take a moment to make one last call to your MP and the party leaders and demand they bring the troops home.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
613.992.4211

Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon
819.441.2510

Gilles Duceppe, Leader, Bloc Quebecois
613.992.6779

Michael Ignatieff, Leader, Liberal Party
613.995.9364

Jack Layton, Leader, New Democratic Party
613.995.7224

Your MP's email: here.

police complaint update: i was misled: withdrawn means withdrawn

You remember I had a brief but unpleasant run-in with a Toronto cop: here.

I filed a complaint, and when I went in for the interview, I was told I had three options: informal resolution, withdrawal and formal complaint. The detective took great pains to explain to me - several times - that "withdrawal" didn't actually mean withdrawal, that it's an incorrect term for that option. She specifically told me - several times - that a withdrawn complaint is an "accountability mechanism", because the complaint will stay on the officer's record for two years. The department can thus see if this was an isolated incident or if there is a pattern of similar behaviour.

The detective was clearly steering me in the direction of withdrawal. She said the first option, informal resolution, required a face-to-face meeting with the officer and was a route seldom taken. The third option, formal complaint, was a long, involved process involving an investigation and usually reserved for allegations of serious misconduct. The middle option, withdrawal, was presented as the "just right" solution to provide what I was looking for.

Given all this, I signed a withdrawal, but in the space for "reasons for withdrawal" I wrote: I understand that the details of this complaint will remain on the officer's record for two years, as an accountability mechanism. That is what I wanted, so the complaint can be withdrawn with that understanding.

Yesterday I received a phone call from someone at the OIPRD who files and tracks complaints. When she read my withdrawal form, she thought I had the wrong impression of the option I had chosen. And indeed I did.

Withdrawn means exactly what it says. The complaint is withdrawn. It remains in a police database of every complaint that is filed. The database shows the officer's name, complainant's name, place and date of incident; under resolution, it would read: "withdrawn". A withdrawn complaint does not go in the officer's personnel file. The officer's supervisor does not see it. It does not become part of their performance evaluation. Because it has been withdrawn.

The OIPRD person explained that the informal resolution process is often used in cases like this, and does provide the accountability I was seeking. Both complainant and officer are given an opportunity to explain their positions, and the details are recorded in the officer's personnel file, seen by her supervisor, and become part of her performance evaluation.

I do not see how this could have been a misunderstanding on my part. In the interview, the detective took great pains to explain, in detail, several times, that a "withdrawn" complaint remains on the officer's record for two years - in exactly the way it does not. I was deliberately misled.

Both detectives were so friendly, even jolly, as we chatted about the inconveniences of film shoots in Toronto. Perhaps cynically, I viewed that friendliness as good customer service practice. Now I see it as something more sinister.

The clerk who called is going to speak to her supervisor to see how a withdrawn complaint can be un-withdrawn and re-activated, so we can begin an informal resolution process.

How many complaints against Toronto police are withdrawn under these conditions?

george galloway: "à bientôt, canada. we will hold your crooked government to account."

George Galloway, on the close of his 12-city, ban-busting tour of Canada. He'll be back!

mom of canadian soldier in afghanistan protests extension of war

Canadian Press:

The mother of a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan picketed outside Liberal MP Bob Rae’s Toronto office on Saturday to urge the federal Conservative government to bring the troops home next year.

Josie Forcadilla is upset about the extension of a Canadian military presence in Afghanistan until 2014. The government announced this month that a contingent of troops will remain to train Afghan troops after the combat mission ends in July 2011.

“Whether the mission is combat or non-combat, the soldiers will still be at risk,” she said, noting some of the 153 Canadian soldiers who have died in support of the Afghan mission were trainers.

Forcadilla, 54, was among roughly a dozen people protesting outside Rae’s constituency office Saturday afternoon.

The Opposition Liberals have supported the idea of Canadian soldiers remaining in Afghanistan, provided it’s a non-combat role.

The group meant to bring Rae an anti-war petition with 10,000 signatures, but found his office closed.

Volunteers instead handed out postcards and encouraged passersby to write their MPs about ending the mission, rather than extending it.

“We’re going to make sure he still hears from his constituents,” said Sid Lacombe, coordinator for the Canadian Peace Alliance.

Ray Northcott, a Toronto resident, signed a postcard because he is “generally opposed to the war” and wants Canada to withdraw unconditionally from Afghanistan.

Forcadilla, whose son is scheduled to return from a six-month tour in December, says she’ll continue to protest against the war as long as there are Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

Josie Forcadilla in her own words.

highway fun, highway blues in pennsylvania

We always spend the last night of our US Thanksgiving trip at the home of my brother and sister-in-law in central New Jersey (near the city of New Brunswick, for those who know the state). We stay up late talking and drinking wine with some combination of friends - who happen to be siblings, nieces, nephews, and their respective partners - then wake up early to hit the road. The drive takes us through a part of New Jersey to Pennsylvania, through the Delaware Water Gap, up through the Poconos to New York State, then straight up through New York, emerging at the New York State Thruway at Syracuse.

We usually stop for a late breakfast near Scranton. (You may know the name from "The Office". It is indeed a real town in Pennsylvania.) But on this trip, we got horribly lost after leaving my brother's home - trying to correct a simple wrong turn just got worse and worse, and we wasted nearly two hours of drive-time. Because of this, we didn't want to take an hour for breakfast at a crowded Denny's, but we don't eat fast food. We especially gave up eating fast food on car trips many years ago. Driving around trying to find a supermarket would be more time-consuming than Denny's. On the way down, we stop at Whole Foods in Oakville for their amazing salad bar, but this is not an affluent area where we're likely to find one of those. What to do?

Through this dilemma, we discovered Sheetz, my new favourite pit-stop. Sheetz is a chain of gas stations and convenience stores in Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and northeastern Ohio. What makes it special is fresh, fast food made to order. You order by touch-screen from a menu that includes the usual less-than-healthy but yummy items like burgers, breakfast sandwiches, shakes and plenty of fried things, but also salads and wraps with a good variety of ingredients. Any fast-er food franchise where you control exactly what you order - such as Subway or Blimpie - is already a much healthier option.

I see how the touch-screen order system is designed to encourage you to order more food, as you see all kinds of options that you might not otherwise think of, from double meat or dressing to fried things on the side. But the choices are extensive, there are many healthy options, and it's very inexpensive. I was way impressed. Here's Sheetz in their own words, and here's a map of where you find them.

* * * *

Despite Sheetz, Allan and I will be in no hurry to drive through Pennsylvania again. Driving through the Poconos area on a winding two-lane highway, we were cruising along in the right lane, doing no more than five miles an hour over the speed limit. After discovering what two speeding tickets will do to your car insurance, we are determined to never get another speeding ticket again. It takes us a bit longer to get places, but we don't care: we don't speed. Thus imagine our surprise when a state trooper with lights flashing pulled up behind us.

The officer informed us that there is a law in Pennsylvania that requires motorists passing emergency vehicles to move to the left lane if possible. This trooper was parked in a turn-off with his lights flashing - although no emergency was taking place - waiting for cars to not pull over, so he could ticket them. And, we suspect, waiting specifically for cars with out of state plates.

We were doing 70 mph (the limit was 65) in the right lane, and when we saw him, slowed a bit. To our left, cars were zipping by at top speeds, on a road filled with curves. It was far safer to simply drive slowly without changing lanes - especially because we could see there was no actual emergency, merely a police car with lights flashing, no other vehicle present - than it would be to move into the faster lane. Of course we didn't argue with the state trooper, as that can only result in a greater fine.

When he went back to his car to check license and registration, I assumed we would be issued a warning. I was wrong. He ticketed us. He said the fine can range from $25 to $250, and he generously gave us the minimum. As we drove away, I read the citation. Twenty-five dollars? Not quite. The citation includes:
- Fine: $25
- EMS: $10
- Mcare: $30.00
- Costs: $34.50
- JCP/ATJ: $10

I had to look up that last one: it's the cost of checking your information via computer from the cop car. Grand total for the ticket: $109.50.

In the fine print, it says that in order to contest the ticket without cost, you must appear in person. If you plead not-guilty by mail, you are required to send the full amount of the ticket plus a $7.00 processing fee, to be held as "collateral". If you are found not guilty, the money will be returned.

I don't know if being found non-guilty comes before or after pigs fly and hell freezes over, but obviously out-of-state drivers are unlikely to be aware of this lane-changing law, and are probably unable to contest a ticket in person. So the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has state troopers faking an emergency, likely waiting for out-of-state plates to pass, in order to fund the state's EMS, Medicare and mobile toys. Do I even have to tell you we're not paying this?

As an additional irritant, the trooper asked us where we were coming from, why we were traveling, and where we were going. Why is a state trooper asking us those questions? He's not working for federal border control or customs. If we have a valid license and registration, and are using the highway in a lawful manner, what the hell business is it of Pennsylvania's where we are going and why? Yet if we had politely answered, "We are not required to tell you that," things would have gotten much worse. That is an abuse of power.