Chuckles McVety want to give you a wedgie

Read this story on the rise of the religious right in Canada and don't get scared, get angry. Then get busy and stop this tiny minority from seizing control of the political agenda in Canada with the same kind of wedge tactics they have used in the United States.
The whole introduction of abortion into the national political agenda has been driven by the tiny religious right in Canada -- in poll after poll Canadians have been shown to favor the status quo on abortion and want to keep it legal, safe and broadly available.
The Reverend Doctor Chuckles McVety (whose credentials are as valid as my own) and his merry little gang of socially regressive theocrats will do their very best to try to push people's buttons and play to their fear, prejudices and worst, darkest sides to push their agenda of having their narrowminded view of morality dominate public policy.
To do this they will try to raise cultural wedge issues. How? Simple - they pick an issue where the state has endorsed a progressive position that may be slightly ahead of the social development curve and use an extreme example and negative stereotypes that might make some in the mushy middle ground on the issue uncomfortable and then claim that it is going to become the standard to scare that middle ground into picking a side.  The transformation of our society to a more open-minded, more progressive one is a slow journey and not everyone travels the road in the direction of progress at the same speed or travels the same distance, so if the religious right and other social regressives can pick off the stragglers and build their numbers, over time they gain enough political clout to throw up roadblock to everyone else's journey and drag more and more people back to the dark ages with them.
The strategy is to divide and conquer, the tactic is to use coded language, innuendo, suggestion and disinformation.
For example: Some people, especially older folks raised in a less open time, are still a bit leery of  open homosexuality - a mindset that is fading with each passing year as Canadians get less religious and the  laws granting equal rights become more broadly accepted and enforced. (Note:  I'm using broad generalizations here, so please, spare me the lecture about how you aren't a homophobe or how everyone is a homophobe or whatever - as far as I'm concerned, if you want to have sex with another consenting adult, do so - it is no one else's business. The public fight over equal rights for homosexuals is merely a convenient example to draw on, the same argument can be made on the fight over fair treatment of people accused of terrorism, women's rights, financial regulation - you name it). The religious right will condemn through various forums - speeches, complaints to government panels, press releases - the most excessive behaviour in the gay community and try to convince Mr. and Mrs. On-the-fence mushy-middle, "we don't know any gay people and we'd rather not talk about sex anyways" that all gays are perverts and degenerates diesel dyke bikers or the guy in the Gay Pride Parade in full make-up wearing nothing a feather boa and assless chaps (not, as the saying goes, that there is anything wrong with that - like I said, they use stereotypes) and claim that they are trying to force everyone to submit to accept gay sex. They will take this conclusion a step further and insist that by trying to inform people, especially young people, of issues of sexuality and sexual preference - for example telling kids that being attracted to someone of their own sex doesn't make them a bad person - is a form of seducing" "recruiting" those young people. Then they make an oh-so-very-brave declaration that just because the world is going to hell in handbasket doesn't mean that they will put up with  pedophiles molesting their children openly gay teachers our in our once proud schools. They will claim gay teachers and "activists" are "trying to cram the homosexual agenda down our throats" and the more extreme elements will make wild baseless claims and equate homosexuality with everything from disease and abuse to child-rape and cannibalism in an effort to drag the Overton window of what is acceptable in discourse back in their direction.
Then they drive the wedge by pushing a false choice that fits with their simplistic black-and-white view of the world: You are either in favor of child-rape and cannibalism or you are against homosexuality. A lot of it has to do with framing the question using loaded language about family or morality or even religiosity, but the goal is to force the subject to make an us-and-them distinction and side with the team conducting the campaign.
The strategy is a tough one to counter, especially if the side using it is willing to be blatantly dishonest in repeating the Big Lie until people start to believe it and has lots of money to spend on advertising, publishing books, magazines, newsletters, websites, building an infrastructure of institutions and networks of people who will back each other up and help mainstream the language and ideas of the extremists. (see Dave Neiwert's excellent The Eliminationists for more on this idea of mainstreaming extremist rhetoric).
Almost any social movement uses this strategy. It worked very well for the African-American civil rights movement and the women's suffrage movement and even the abolitionists. For all I know, early man used it to convince other early men to use fire and tools and move out of the caves - "remember how we found the cave bear in that one cave and it ate Ugg? Unless we leave the cave, the bears will eat us all!"
peckerwoods, they managed to achieve a massive lasting change in society.
Before I am accused of the crime of high Broderism for saying "both sides do it" let me point out some key differences in how and why both sides do it. Both sides want to present their goals in the most favorable light, but one side is using this strategy to oppress people and the other is doing it to achieve equality of treatment, opportunity or status. The aim of the strategy is important and goals are not value-neutral or equally valid -- ending slavery is a good and noble goal, filling you own pockets or keeping your boot on the neck of others is not.
I am not saying the end justifies the means either, because there are important differences in the tactics used to pursue this strategy. Klan lynch mobs and violent rednecks existed, you could see them attacking the civil rights marchers on television. Condemning lynch mobs and complaining about the mistreatment of African Americans in the Jim Crow South was telling the truth. Complaining that abortion leads to breast cancer, teen promiscuity and moral degradation is a Big Lie. Complaining that allowing gay marriage somehow damages heterosexual marriages or undermines families is a Big Lie. Complaining that increasing taxes on the top 2% of income earners back up to where they were 20 years ago or enforcing the existing rules governing financial fraud is socialism/communism/fascism or whatever other idiotic idea the teabaggers are misspelling on their signs this week is a Big Lie.
These are important differences - they are the difference between good and evil.

(crossposted from the Woodshed)

A new, improved face-plant . . .

They said dude hit the back of the truck at about 120mph.

The Geist in the machine . . .

MICHAEL GEIST HAS SOME DISTURBING NEWS: "PMO Issues The Order: Canadian DMCA Bill Within Six Weeks".

Months of public debate over the future of Canadian copyright law were quietly decided earlier this week, when sources say the Prime Minister's Office reached a verdict over the direction of the next copyright bill. The PMO was forced to make the call after Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement were unable to reach consensus on the broad framework of a new bill. As I reported last week, Moore has argued for a virtual repeat of Bill C-61, with strong digital locks provisions similar to those found in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and a rejection of a flexible fair dealing approach.

First, the bill represents a stunning reversal from the government's seeming shift away from C-61 and its commitment to a bill based on the national copyright consultation. Instead, the consultation appears to have been little more than theatre, with the PMO and Moore choosing to dismiss public opinion. Second, after adopting distinctly pro-consumer positions on other issues, Moore has abandoned that approach with support for what may become the most anti-consumer copyright bill in Canadian history. Third, the bill will immediately impact the Canadian position at the ACTA and CETA negotiations, where the bill's provisions on anti-circumvention and ISP liability will effectively become the Canadian delegation position.

For those wondering what can be done, my only answer is to speak out now. Write a paper letter to your Member of Parliament and send copies to the Prime Minister, Moore, Clement and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. No stamp is required - be sure to include your home address and send it to the House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6. Once that is done, join the Facebook group and the Facebook page and be sure to ask others do the same. You may spoken out before, but your voice is needed yet again.

What a can of worms.

Canadian reporters banned from Gitmo

Skdadl reports that Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, Steven Edwards of Canwest, Paul Koring of the Globe & Mail, and Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald have been banned by the US Dept. of Defense from covering any future trials at Gitmo because they divulged the names of two interrogator/witnesses at Omar Khadr's kangaroo pretrial.

Well it's a wee bit late for that, isn't it? Michelle Shephard already published the names and part of an interview with one of those witnesses in The Star nearly two years ago :

"Sgt. Joshua Claus was a slight, blond soldier with little experience and lots of responsibility when he became Khadr's interrogator in the cavernous U.S. prison in Bagram detainees nicknamed "The Barn."

Claus would later be convicted for his role in the death of another detainee at Bagram – an innocent Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar. Claus pleaded guilty to maltreatment and assault in return for a five-month jail sentence in 2005.

During the only interview Claus has granted, he told the Toronto Star any allegations of Khadr's mistreatment were false. "They're trying to imply I'm beating or torturing everybody I ever talked to," Claus said.

This ban means that the very reporters who've been providing such excellent coverage on Omar Khadr for years - Shephard has written a book on it - will not be able to report on his show trial when it finally gets underway.

Skdadl's source at Empty Wheel sums it up :

"So DOD is basically saying that once a reporter agrees to go to Gitmo, they lose the ability to report on stuff they have already reported on."

A week ago the military judge ordered reporters and spectators out of this same Gitmo courtroom while 'classified' video of an interview with Khadr was shown. The reporters adjourned to the media room and watched it on youtube instead.

Truth imitates fiction...

or maybe there is no fiction.

Where I come from this is a hurricane.








To the stock market.... this is a glitch









Yeah. I know. Orangutans are not hominids.

Dr. Dawg and the vengeful nature of the Harper-cons

This week's guest John Baglow aka Dr. Dawg (left) with returned Canadian exile Abousfian Abdelrazik

Darwin, like it is . . .

OLIVIA JUDSON IS A NEW YORK TIMES columnist that I adore: she is so smart. Her bio paragraph states: "Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist, writes every Wednesday about the influence of science and biology on modern life. She is the author of “Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex.” Ms. Judson has been a reporter for The Economist and has written for a number of other publications, including Nature, The Financial Times, The Atlantic and Natural History. She is a research fellow in biology at Imperial College London.

Works for me. Anyway, she has a review of a show by Baba Brinkman. The show's called “The Rap Guide to Evolution”. Who's Baba Brinkman? According to Olivia,

Brinkman, a burly Canadian from Vancouver, is a latter-day wandering minstrel, a self-styled “rap troubadour,” with a master’s degree in English and a history of tree-planting (according to his Web site, he has personally planted more than one million trees). 

And this was her reaction:

The lights go down. The room fills with music — a pulsating hip-hop rhythm. And then, over the music, you hear the voice of Richard Dawkins reading a passage from “On the Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin: “Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction. For only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.”

So begins one of the most astonishing, and brilliant, lectures on evolution I’ve ever seen: “The Rap Guide to Evolution,” by Baba Brinkman.

SCIENCE MAGAZINE was impressed, too.

With lyrics that were sometimes sly, often hilarious, and always smart and thought-provoking, Brinkman married the fast, complex, literate delivery of Eminem with the evolutionary expertise and confrontational manner of Dawkins. His raps and rhymes intelligently covered altruism, group selection, and sexual selection; one on the latter noted peacock tails and that “the reason for some structures must be seduction.” And like Lebo, the artist spoke with eloquence about confronting fundamentalist relatives.

Tell it like it is . . .

APRIL WINCHELL is a bright young woman. Her site has a wonderful piece, "Barack Obama is tired of your motherfucking shit". No shit, so to speak — and that's the heart of the matter. April explains:

If you’ve ever read President Obama’s Dreams From My Father, good for you. I couldn’t get past the foreword.

I wish I had. Because today I discovered that there’s a fairly juicy little subplot in the book, involving one of Obama’s high school friends.

Ray, a fellow classmate of Obama’s, was also bi-racial, and also trying to define himself. But what set him apart was his colorful manner of self-expression. Ray cursed like a motherfucker.

This would all be snickerworthy enough, but it turns out that Obama actually read the audiobook version of Dreams From My Father.

And that means he read Ray’s quotes.

Go visit April's site to listen.

Growing pains . . .

THE NEW YORK TIMES has a report, "Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds", by William Neuman and Andrew Pollack, that details the emergence of "superweeds", weeds that are resistant to Roundup weed-killer. This could affect the price of food in the years to come. A lot of farmers use the Monsanto product, along with Monsanto genetically-altered crops that are resistant to Roundup.

That threatens to reverse one of the agricultural advances bolstered by the Roundup revolution: minimum-till farming. By combining Roundup and Roundup Ready crops, farmers did not have to plow under the weeds to control them. That reduced erosion, the runoff of chemicals into waterways and the use of fuel for tractors.

If frequent plowing becomes necessary again, “that is certainly a major concern for our environment,” Ken Smith, a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas, said. In addition, some critics of genetically engineered crops say that the use of extra herbicides, including some old ones that are less environmentally tolerable than Roundup, belies the claims made by the biotechnology industry that its crops would be better for the environment.

“The biotech industry is taking us into a more pesticide-dependent agriculture when they’ve always promised, and we need to be going in, the opposite direction,” said Bill Freese, a science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety in Washington.

At the going down of the Sun...

With condolences and respect to the family and friends of Canadian naval Petty Officer Second Class Craig Blake, Fleet Diving Unit (Atlantic). Killed due to enemy action.

Ready, Aye, Ready

Strength in depth

1910 to 2010... and still counting

There are probably a lot of topics involving the Canadian Navy that I could go into this morning. But not today.
Today it's white gaiters and Number Ones.

Today, from St. John's to Victoria, the members of the the Canadian Navy will step off in column of route to mark the 100th anniversary of its birth as a Canadian service. The streets of Victoria and Halifax will echo with the cadence of ships' companies marching with the freedom granted by both those cities. And you will hear this as they march past.



If you are there, give them a cheer and a wave. And if you think of it whisper Bravo Zulu and give a "Well Done!" to the matelots who have been engaged in the Canadian Naval Service, the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Navy since the 4th of May, 1910.

Happy birthday Navy!

A wise old senator....

Brings the focus not on herself but on her words.

“We’ve got five weeks or whatever left until G-8 starts. Shut the f--- up on this issue,”

Coming from a Harper sycophant this would be typical conservative authoritarianism.

But Senator Nancy Ruth isn't really a Harper sycophant. In fact, she may be telling everyone that the Harper agenda includes that hidden one the conservative flapping lips keep telling us does not exist. Nancy Ruth is sending a message and it sounds like a warning we might have heard out of Kurt Konrad or Jan Slavik in 1938.

“If you push it, there will be more backlash,” said Ruth, who fears that outrage will push her boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to take further measures against abortion and family planning – abroad, or maybe even in Canada. “This is now a political football. This is not about women’s health in this country.”

Really, Nancy? Tell us more. Do a Ludendorff and give us what you know.

I'm with JJ. Nancy knows where Harper plans to go and it ain't pretty.

So, Nancy, feed the dragon. It's vituperate enough to take it any way you want to spell it out.

It's already a disaster...

It's now on it's way to becoming something a thousand times worse.

The weather.

At the time of writing this was the surface analysis provided by the Ocean Prediction Center.


That stationary cold front is going to cause south east winds to persist into the night and perhaps well into tomorrow when they are expected to shift to the south and diminish somewhat. That is blowing directly onto the US Gulf coast.

The forecast out of NOAA for the offshore Gulf of Mexico is fairly consistent.

THIS AFTERNOON...E OF 92W SE TO S WINDS 20 TO 25 KT. SEAS 8 TO 11 FT. ELSEWHERE E OF FRONT S TO SW WINDS 10 TO 15 KT. SEAS 6 TO
8 FT. W OF THE FRONT NW TO N WINDS 10 TO 15 KT. SEAS 5 TO 7 FT.
SCATTERED SHOWERS AND TSTMS PRIMARILY E OF FRONT.
.TONIGHT...E OF FRONT SE TO S WINDS 15 TO 20 KT DIMINISHING TO
10 TO 15 KT LATE. SEAS SUBSIDING TO 7 TO 8 FT. W OF FRONT NE TO
E WINDS 10 TO 15 KT SHIFTING SE WITHIN 60 NM OF COAST LATE. SEAS
SUBSIDING TO 5 TO 7 FT IN SE SWELL. SCATTERED SHOWERS ALONG FRONT.

That would suggest that things are improving. At least from a surface weather point of view. The oceanographic picture is a little less promising.

You can click on the image to enlarge it and if you'd like to see an animation go here.

That is the Caribbean Loop Current and if the oil gets transported into that, (and given the amounts of oil spewing out that is extremely likely), at worst it can move out into the Atlantic; at best, it will likely get into one of the counter-currents along the coast and deposit crude all along the Gulf coast. In short, the Bahamas could end up wearing a good part of this thing if the flow of oil isn't stopped quickly. (There is a possibility that if the spill was contained now, dispersal, evaporation and oxidization might prevent a spread into the Atlantic. However, as Boris pointed out, that is highly optimistic.) As the winds ease and shift to the southwest the surface transport will deflect further to the right, not to mention that the deeper one goes the further clockwise the transport. Any submerged oil is going to be pushed out into the current.

Mixing.
Crude oil and water don't mix particularly well if you simply lay the oil on the water. However, take the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, crude oil, rough weather and wind, and you start to develop a goo referred to as "mousse". The stuff is extremely sticky as a result of water trapped in balls of crude oil. Once it comes ashore it is a nightmare to clean up.

Hurricane season is just around the corner.
Granted, it's only the start of the season and the probability of a significant tropical revolving storm is fairly low. However, if, as has been stated, it takes months to staunch the flow of oil, that adds to the disaster picture.

Are you followin' me camera guy?

A reddit contributor asks an interesting question.



And while the idea of using Vince's rag may seem a bit far fetched when it comes to cleaning up oil spills, one might want to look back. Way back.

The Canadian Navy was on top of the problem of oil spills decades ago. It was called an Oilevator and it was invented by Richard Sewell at the Defence Research Establishment in Esquimalt, British Columbia. Even the Americans noticed. In fact, it drew some attention because its ability to deal with moderate ocean conditions.

Unfortunately, the conditions in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Gulf Coast are not as forgiving as is needed to make a slick-licker effective. Oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is already slopping over the containment booms.

That makes watching weather and oceanographic conditions critical. Later today, if I get an opportunity, I put up some information.

Omar Khadr's show trial

Skdadl reminds us that Harper sent a wee tepid request to the US government asking that the Khadr kangaroo show trial :

"not use as evidence in legal proceedings there any evidence collected at GTMO by Canadian agents and representatives, which the Supreme Court of Canada has said (2008) was collected in violation of Omar Khadr's rights."

Steve to Obama : nudge, nudge, wink, wink
What to do ... what to do...

McClatchy :

"Earlier Saturday, officers cleared reporters and observers from the hearing to screen a 2003 interrogation video that they said was classified, though it was made public by Canada's Supreme Court two years ago and is available on YouTube.

The video shows the Toronto-born teen weeping in a Guantanamo interrogation booth and pleading for help from his Canadian interrogator.

Reporters locked out of that portion of the hearing watched the video on YouTube in a media center in a crude abandoned airport hangar below the hilltop tribunal chamber."

The other bizarre incident of the day was testimony from the Army Special Forces officer, an assistant police chief in civilian life, who initially reported that the person who threw the grenade at Army Sgt Speer died in the firefight. This is the crime Khadr is charged with; if the grenade thrower died, then it wasn't Khadr.

Defense lawyers discovered this report had later been altered to say that Khadr may have survived - what they termed "manufactured evidence" - but that turns out to have been just an honest mistake :

"W said he didn't realize that he got the report wrong until some investigators preparing for Khadr's trial visited him “a few years later.” So he opened it up on his computer and fixed it."

A few years later. Even though, according to Paul Koring , "he had known within days of the original firefight that Mr. Khadr had survived. "

Well alrighty then. It seems to me there have been hundreds if not thousands of people 'not in uniform' in Afghanistan who could be charged with throwing grenades at the US troops occupying their country. Where's their show trials?

Freddie sings one for Steve

Yeah.

That fits.

Home, Sweet Home . . . .

THE BBC SITE has a distressing article about the Irish financial debacle as it applies to home ownership, and the information is grim:

There are 621 ghost estates across Ireland now, a legacy of those hopeful years. One in five Irish homes is unoccupied.

If the country immediately used them to house every person on the social housing list, there would still be hundreds of thousands left over.

"Everyone took the property drug at the same time", he says, "everyone was up at the same time, everyone was buzzing.

"Now we are all in the middle of this huge comedown. And people are looking around and saying - 'what happened? Was that us?' And then we look at our bank statements and we realise - 'yes, it was'".

I know what Stevie doesn't want anyone to know...

So does the Chief of Defence Staff.

H/T James

Harper Hillbillies . . .

BRAD FRASER has a Facebook Wall picture he'd like to share with you, and of which he says:

Ladies and gentleman, I give you the true image of our current government. Featuring Stephen Harper as Jed, Jason Kenney as Miss Jane, Ramir Jaffer as Mr Drysdale, Vic Toews as Granny, John Baird as Jethro and Helena Guergis as Ellie May. Conceived by me and put together by the brilliant DC Hillier. Please distribute this image far and wide. Let it become the photo that defines Harper's Hillbillies.

John Baird as Jethro? Sure, now we have Jethro Baird. Works for me.

Sweetness and light . . .

THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT has an interesting review by Bee Wilson of "SUGAR A bittersweet history" by Elizabeth Abbott. It details the sad history from its beginnings to today's industry.

Starting in 1791, Toussaint L’Ouverture led a successful slave revolt against French rule in Saint-Domingue, the French colony which at that time produced 40 per cent of the world’s sugar; the result was the independent state of Haiti, which seemed to promise a new life for its inhabitants.

Today, hundreds of thousands of black Haitians work the cane fields of the Dominican Republic in conditions not unlike those suffered by their ancestors before Toussaint’s revolt. Abbott travels to the Dominican Republic, where she finds that Haitian workers – some of them adolescents, most illegal immigrants – are not supplied with arm or shin guards “and their flesh bears the scars and gouges of their dangerous profession”. Their pay is US$1.20 per ton of sugar and they live “in shared shanties without water, toilets, or cooking facilities”. She hints at similar injustice in sugar production in El Salvador and Brazil and writes too of how sugar cane has trashed the environment, causing, according to the World Wildlife Fund, “a greater loss of biodiversity on the planet than any other single crop, due to its destruction of habitat to make way for plantations, its intensive use of water for irrigation, its heavy use of agricultural chemicals and the polluted waste-water that is routinely discharged during the sugar production process”.

I love Bee's conclusion:

The sweet-toothed among us would like to hear whether a life spent in those high lonely grasses of the cane fields has ever been bearable; whether our cravings for muscovado and demerara can ever be justified; or whether we should all switch to maple syrup, tapped by happy Canadians.