Open letter to Trump voters:

Voting for Donald Trump was an act of contempt for the people he will hurt.

"I was just voting against Clinton!" Fuck you, there's no box on the ballot that says 'Against Clinton'.

You voted for a narcissistic sociopath, and you did it because he promised to stick it to brown people.

You bought him, you own him.

Demographics will swing things back, no matter how much gerrymandering and voter suppression a Republican Supreme Court lets the GOP get away with, short of physically blocking non whites from the polls this wire thin win cannot overcome the reality that the electorate is 2% less white, every election.

Your kids will be sent to war again. The people around Trump know he's a one term president who will massively damage the Republican brand and will be looking for a 'bad guy' to distract you with. Probably not Russia though, since the White House is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Putin oligarchy.

There were credible reports before the election that Trump was honey trapped and compromised during a visit to Moscow. Considering some of the accusations against him (Guess that child rape trial is off now) we probably don't want to see the photos spread across Putin's desk right now.

But we will, it's inevitable.

In four years half the people who voted Trump last night will be pretending they never heard of him.

The rest of the world will neither forgive, nor forget

The Honest Pro-Lifer

An American right wing pro-life columnist named Kevin Williamson has done us  the good service of taking the pro-life 'Abortion is murder' rhetoric to it's logically consistent extreme:

Over the weekend, a presumably bored National Review writer, Kevin Williamson, became the subject of much derision and shock across the political Internets when he tweeted his argument that ”the law should treat abortion like any other homicide.” My colleague Elias Isquith highlighted Williamson’s clearest descent into pure trolling — responding to a question about whether women who have abortions should get life without parole with the line, “I have hanging more in mind.”

As the Salon piece points out, all Williamson has done is strip away any soft soap gloss from the extreme radicalism of the Pro-Life position.  He has openly articulated the end game of the Pro-Life movement in a way most Pro-Lifers get uncomfortable and mumbly about when pressed, as this video shows.

 Of course the real world expression of this viewpoint is already affecting women's lives as many US states have started criminalizing miscarriages and attacking personal bodily autonomy based on junk science about the effect of maternal drug use on fetuses.

Should Canada start considering EVERY American woman eligible for Refugee status?

Government mandated rape with medical instruments, laws mandating that women be forced to explain to their boss why they are using birth control pills, laws mandating that even if pregnancy will KILL the mother she be forced to carry a pregnancy to term - even if the fetus itself is dead.

At what point should any American woman seeking refuge in Canada start being considered a political refugee?

This week the Georgia State Legislature debated a bill in the House, that would make it necessary for some women to carry stillborn or dying fetuses until they 'naturally' go into labor. In arguing for this bill Representative Terry England described his empathy for pregnant cows and pigs in the same situation.


I have a question for Terry England, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and too many others: I have three daughters, two of them twins. If one of my twins had been stillborn would you have made me carry her to term, thereby endangering both the other twin and me? Or, would you have insisted that the state order a mandatory fetal extraction of the living twin fetus from my womb so that I could continue to carry the stillborn one to term and possibly die myself? My family is curious and since you believe my uterus is your public property, I am, too.

Mr. England, unlike the calves and pigs for which you expressed so much empathy, I am not a beast of burden. I am a woman and I have these human rights:

The right to life.

The right to privacy.

The right to freedom.

The right to bodily integrity.

The right to decide when and how I reproduce.

Mr. England, you and your friends do not get to trade these rights, while "dog and hog hunting," in return for a young man's chickens.

My human rights outweigh any you or the state corruptly and cynically seek to assign to a mass of dividing cells that will eventually turn into a 'natural' person. Personhood-for-zygote based bills and related legislation, like Georgia's and hundreds of others, bills and laws that criminalize pregnancy and abortion and penalize women for being women, violate my human rights.

Just because you cannot get pregnant does not mean I cannot think clearly, ethically, morally, rationally about my body, human life or the consequences of my actions. Just because you cannot get pregnant does not mean that I do not have rights when I am pregnant. I have responsibility but am powerless. You have power but are irresponsible with my rights.

By not trusting me, you force me to trust you. And YOU are not trustworthy.

I gestate humans, you do not. I know how it feels to be pregnant. You do not. I know what happens to a fetus in a womb. You do not. I have carried three fetuses to term. You have not. What I experience when I am pregnant is not empathy. It is permeability. The fetus is me. And the state is you, apparently. But, no matter what you say or do I have fundamental human rights. What makes you think that you, who cannot have this fully human experience, can tell me anything about gestation or how I experience it? Especially when you compare my existence and experience to that of brutish animals.

The rest of the civilized world thinks this country has lost its mind.

Paul Krugman is 100% right

The Right have gone mad with rage at Paul Krugman's 9/11 post.  It's far too honest.

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

The most specious complaint is the disrespect card, like Krugman I would argue its far more disrespectful to those who died that day and in the Neo-con wars of choice since to perpetuate the mythology that allowed them.

I have no time for the 9/11 'Truthers'.  I believe 9/11 happened because 19 pissed off Muslims with x-acto knives made it happen, where we agree is that the Neo-con regime in the White House did leap on the terrible events of that day to perpetuate their own ideological agenda at the expense of hundreds of thousands of lives since that day.

9/11 was used to perpetuate lies and death and torture and vanished freedoms.  It baffles me that there can even be any argument about any of this.

NDP blasts Harper's Domestic Spying plans

Its been so long since we had an opposition that actually opposes the government on principle rather than purely political expediency while sharing most of the same agenda, its still jaw dropping to see.

TIMMINS, ON – If the Conservatives get their way, police will be soon be able to track every e-mail sent, every website visited and every comment left on Facebook - all without warrants or judicial review.

“Canadians do all manner of business and personal pursuits on their cell phones and online,” said New Democrat Privacy and Digital Affairs Critic Charlie Angus. “These provisions would force local phone and internet providers to spy on Canadians.”

Conservatives have indicated that "lawful access" provisions will be included in their omnibus crime legislation this fall. Experts warn this would legalize widespread snooping on average citizens – all without a warrant. Telecom providers would also be forced to install surveillance software giving police the ability to track internet and mobile phone activity.

“The Conservatives' ‘lawful access’ proposal essentially means it’s open season on the privacy rights of Canadian citizens,” said Angus. “The real question here is why are the Conservatives pushing for such widespread changes and starting such a full out attack on personal privacy and liberty in Canada?”

Angus said New Democrats support modernizing policing powers to deal with digital issues, but pointed out that removing the requirement for warrants altogether opens the door to all manner of abuse by security officials.

“Without oversight or limits, the question isn’t if abuse will occur, it’s how extreme will the abuse be,” said Angus.

The so called 'Libertarian' Harper government has always been very concerned about the freedom of capital to move jobs, resources and money at will with no concern or consideration given to the best interests of Canadian workers or consumers because such considerations are intolerable restrictions on the freedoms of the rich and powerful.  The freedom of people is less important and indeed can get in the way of the 'liberties' of the legal 'persons' that corporations have become. 

The wholesale abandonment of the social contract by the rich and powerful has reached the limit of what can be achieved through the democratic process.  The Canadian people can be conned into thinking that our taxes - that is to say the taxes of the rich and powerful - can keep getting cut forever with no ill effect but then when that blatant lie is exposed by the constant drum beat to abandon healthcare or the whole social safety net in general we dig in our heels. 

Someday soon the elites will lose patience with that refusal and our 'immature and unserious' insistence on maintaining a basic level of publicly owned and administered care for all and that's where the spying powers Harper is trying to ram through and all those new prisons come in.

Before and After

The current state of Canada's prostitution laws until 30 days from now:

• It's legal to exchange sex for money. No really, it is, and has been for years.
• It's illegal to say the words 'Would you like to exchange some sex for some money?' in a public place. This is known as Communication for the Purpose of Prostitution.
• It is illegal to have a safe place off the dangerous streets where you can say the words 'Would you like to exchange some sex for some money?' in private. This is known as Keeping a Common Bawdy House.
  
• If you do exchange sex for money, which remember, is legal, it's illegal to pay rent or buy food with the money you have exchanged sex for. This is known as Living on the Avails of Prostitution. Theoretically this is only supposed to be used against pimps, but has also been used against the prostitutes themselves.
  

When you look at this literally Kafkaesque patchwork of oppressive, vaguely defined prohibitions you can see why their enforcement is infamous for being inconsistent, capricious and frequently abusive. If you were trying to design a structure with the maximum amount of danger, abandonment, lack of recourse to the law and state sponsored contempt for the women living in the margins of the sex trade, you couldn't have created a better system.

It's priggishly justified, brutally enforced and organized, state sanctioned cruelty on a massive scale against the most vulnerable among us.

Bleating about human trafficking and sex slavery is contemptible hypocrisy if you also support a legal structure of such orchestrated disenfranchisement and victimization that the things you are decrying are virtually guaranteed to happen. If we KNOW that other systems, systems that bring prostitutes under the umbrella of legal person-hood drastically reduce the power of pimps, the spread of disease and the abuse and murder of vulnerable women, then the justifications for maintaining the current system crumble to bitter sand.

What we've been doing doesn't work. The current system has deformed, ruined, and ended lives.

Time to try something new.

Taking Count

Just to expand on a reply I gave to a post of at Dawg's place on the subject:

The surface reason among the right in both the US and Canada for opposing the census is crazy, the subsurface one is evil.

The surface stuff is all Glenn Beck paranoia about the evil alien entity 'the government' trying to pry into people's lives so it can pollute their precious bodily fluids. The subsurface reason that the hard headed backroom right wingers who never let ideology or conspiracy theory get in the way of the power impulse worry about, is about keeping a proper count of the population from being done to try to remove the pressure to spend money and attention on communities that aren't part of the right wing coalition.

Spending money on the poor and the non-white is what they're in power to stop. Hard numbers that prove the need of these communities make it harder to neglect them.

There is a direct linkage between detailed counts with detailed questions and representation and spending in and by our government. Think about how precarious a hold the Conservatives have on power and think about why they would oppose a detailed count of Canadians that might result in pressure for boundary changes, reapportioning of electoral seats and increased spending in places they'd rather pretend don't exist at all.

Big Brother doesn't want you watching him back

In three US states it is now illegal to film or record police abuse:

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where "no expectation of privacy exists" (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.

Liberty in the UK

Regular readers can probably guess that were I a citizen of the UK I would identify as a Labour supporter. I am, essentially a Social Democrat after all. But that's on the economic/social safety net axis of the political compass. On the political axis I'm basically a lefty libertarian and that part of my political make up stood up and cheered at some of the reforms proposed by the Tory/Lib Dem coalition yesterday:

The Britain of today is watched constantly by CCTV cameras, is preparing for a national ID card, slaps a "crown copyright" on most government data, and can now censor websites and eventually boot people off the Internet.

According to the new Liberal Democrat/Tory coalition government, that's all about to change. The coalition today released its unified policy statement (PDF), and for techies and privacy advocates, there's lots to like.

• We will scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports.
• We will outlaw the fingerprinting of children at school without parental permission.
• We will adopt the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
• We will review libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
• We will further regulate CCTV.
• We will end the storage of internet and e-mail records without good reason.
• We will create a level playing field for open-source software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components.
• We will create a new "right to data" so that government-held datasets can be requested and used by the public, and then published on a regular basis.
• We will introduce measures to ensure the rapid roll-out of superfast broadband across the country. We will ensure that BT and other infrastructure providers allow the use of their assets to deliver such broadband, and we will seek to introduce superfast broadband in remote areas at the same time as in more populated areas. If necessary, we will consider using the part of the TV license fee that is supporting the digital switchover to fund broadband in areas that the market alone will not reach.

In the few hundred yards around the home of 1984 author George Orwell, there are literally hundreds of CCTV cameras both public and private. Private citizens in the UK can be compelled to provide DNA samples without criminal charges brought against them, teens who get into any kind of trouble can be slapped with ASBOs, antisocial behavior orders, basically a juvenile equivalent of dangerous offender status and lose big chunks of their civil rights.

The authoritarian, borderline totalitarian impulses in New Labour, combined with calculated, pandering appeals to people's worst fears, class suspicions and harsh reactionary criminal justice views have led to some seriously disturbing excesses. I'll applaud anybody, even the mixed bag of neoliberals in the Lib Dem/Tory coalition, who reverse some of them.

What they didn't want you to see

Hundreds of pages of government documents and emails about the banning of George Galloway that the government accidentally released and then tried to seize back and censor have now been released by Rabble. You can find them here.

Among other things they show that when Jason Kenney said his office was not involved in the banning of Galloway it was in fact intimately involved. Including a possible serious breach of privacy law as the British press found out about Galloway's banning before he did.

These are serious allegations of extremely illegal behavior by agents of the government, illuminated by an accidental application of the kind of freedom of information this government has steadfastly tried avoid at any cost. Seeing the evidence they tried to suppress in this case gives a hint of the cynicism and disregard for legal norms that lurk behind massive redaction on the documents they release willingly.

Rabble invites readers to crowd source the document dump here. I know what I'm doing tonight.

Google to China: More in Sorrow than Anger

Google has released an extraordinary statement in response to apparent cyber-warfare by the Chinese government against Google and other Internet companies. Combined with the ever tightening grip of censorship over the net, Google has begun to fundamentally reassess their relationship with China.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

From Wired:

The source said that Google was able to determine definitively that the attack originated in China, and that the attack was sophisticated in a way that Google does not generally experience.

“[Google is] under attack all the time, primarily via unsophisticated channels,” the source said. “I can’t go into detail to demonstrate the level of sophistication, but [the company] doesn’t use that term lightly, and it is quite deliberate.”

The source added that the implications of the attack are “extremely dark and extremely disturbing.”

“This is truly, truly beyond the pale,” he said. “The political nature of this and the attempt to monitor activists, not only in China but out of it, is chilling.”

In a separate investigation, the company said it discovered that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights advocates in the United States, China and Europe were accessed by third parties. These breaches, however, appeared to be the result of phishing attacks targeted at the users with the aim of stealing their account login credentials.

The company said it’s made changes to its architecture to enhance the security of accounts, but also advised users to take precautions to protect themselves, such as being cautious when clicking on links in e-mails and instant messages.

Google launched its Chinese-language search engine, Google.cn, in January 2006. The company said at the time that it did so in the belief that a search engine would help open access to information for Chinese residents. To obtain permission to operate in China, however, the company had agreed to censor search results that the Chinese government deemed objectionable. Google was harshly criticized by civil liberties groups for its concession to Chinese authorities.

The company now appears to be regretting that decision.

The Chinese government must be in shock. They're used to western politicians and CEOs who mumble approvingly about free speech and human rights - but won't let morals get in the way of profits.

Beijing-based media expert Jeremy Goldkorn, said: “It’s quite remarkable. It is unprecedented for a foreign company with significant operations in China to publicly state such things with such evident hostility. It will be interesting to see what the fallout would be.”

In a sign that not all Chinese fall into line with some angry web comments that web users would manage just fine without Google, some people had been delivering bouquets of flowers to the company’s Beijing office.

One wrote: “Google: a real man.”

Prominent, and outspoken, Chinese blogger Wen Yunchao said: “This attack from China really targets some democracy activists and for Google this is a challenge to their morals and their legal bottom line. Google has fired an arrow and they know they can't take it back.”

He added: “The Chinese government cannot allow Google to operate without censorship. Of course, we hope that following its economic development, China could have more self-confidence and could be a little more open and globalised. The pity is that since 2008, things have been going backwards with the internet.”

The authorities have so far kept silent on the statement from Google.

Keep Watching the Skies

Aircraft and vaguely defined 'technological solutions' company Sierra Nevada Corporation can't see what the fuss in Sarnia is all about. Just because they're floating a high tech surveillance balloon over the St. Clair River testing technology they hope to sell to the US government for border patrol and urban surveillance.

And it certainly shouldn't concern anyone that they're also experimenting with things like solar powered drones that could go up and stay up for months or years and a panoramic view aerial observation technology with the reassuring name 'The Gorgon's Stare' to be used against insurgents in Afghanistan.

Nor should anyone be unduly disturbed Sierra Nevada is testing aircraft that look exactly like 'Rover' the robotic border guards in the dystopian paranoid TV fantasy, 'The Prisoner'.

Seriously, this is like a James Bond super-villain's front company. Does their CEO go drinking with the head of Blackwater?

Welcome to the net neutrality party

The Liberals provide a pleasant surprise by responding to the Conservative's Orwellian Internet legislation by citing principal and taking a firm policy position.

The one the NDP has held all along.

Hours later, the scene shifted to question period, where Liberal Industry critic Marc Garneau surprised Internet watchers by emphasizing the importance of an open Internet and declaring that the Liberal party now firmly supports net neutrality. The party has adopted a position opposing the management of Internet traffic that infringes privacy and targets specific websites, users and legitimate business applications.

The move represents an unexpected shift in policy direction just weeks before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is scheduled to conduct hearings on network management practices. For months, the NDP has stood virtually alone among the major Canadian political parties in its support for web neutrality.

With the Liberals onside, the door is open for a bipartisan effort this fall to enshrine net neutrality principles into law.

Short term tactical thinking setting up a juicy confidence vote? Longer term strategic thinking about demographics and engaged youth? The liberal economic appeal of keeping a major economic sector as unregulated as possible?

Whatever it was, I'll take it. Welcome aboard Libs.

You'll forgive me if I haven't forgotten Bill C-74, I'll be watching closely to see what exactly the new Liberal enthusiasm for net neutrality means when it comes to proposing legislation rather than just opposing it.

Greenwald on FISA

He's been battling it now for what seems like years. The deliberately false consensus on wiretapping of America's policy elite. With his latest coldly furious evisceration of yet another parrot like defender of executive lawbreaking it all comes to a kind of ragingly precise crescendo that is a joy to read.

Our Congress, with the political and media elite cheering, is about to violate every one of these principles. They are taking away from the judiciary the power to adjudicate allegations of lawbreaking. They are creating a two-tiered system of justice in which our most powerful corporations can break the law with impunity and government officials remain immune from consequences. And they are, in unity, spewing rank propaganda to the commoners -- who continue to be subjected to the harsh punishment for violations of the law and one of the world's most merciless justice systems -- in order to convince them that granting license to our political and corporate elites to break the law is necessary for their own Good and for their Safety.

Google VS Privacy

It seemed the ideal solution; rather than spend more than a million dollars replacing their antiquated and unstable computer system Lakehead University in Thunder Bay simply adopted Google's pack of online tools for free. But there was a downside.

U.S.-based Google spotlighted the university as one of the first to adopt its software model of the future, and today Mr. Pawlowski boasts the move was the right thing for Lakehead, saving it hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual operating costs. But he notes one trade-off: The faculty was told not to transmit any private data over the system, including student marks.
The U.S. Patriot Act, passed in the weeks after the September, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, gives authorities the means to secretly view personal data held by U.S. organizations. It is at odds with Canada's privacy laws, which require organizations to protect private information and inform individuals when their data has been shared.

As well as violating privacy law the Google deal also violates the university's labour contract with their faculty staff requiring the institution protect it's employee's privacy. The matter is currently in arbitration.

Privacy and freedom watch

Privacy International has released their 2007 International Privacy ranking. The US has been downgraded from an extensive surveillance society to an endemic surveillance society. This puts them in the same ranking as China, Russia and Malaysia.

Don't be too smug though, Canada dropped two rankings in one year. We are now in the 'Some Safeguards but weakened protection' category.

Looking south, we can see where this gradualist decay leads, the only question remains if we want to go there - or is it that we're being driven there?

Here comes the crass partisanship: The NDP are legitimately the most libertarian mainstream political party in Canada. Left wing libertarianism that believes its more important to make people free than capital.

The Greens? The Greens are now a political adjunct to the Liberal Party. Their political allegiance and ideology - such as there ever was - are now in service to the political destiny of Stephane Dion.

Who's Liberal Party was in power and was himself in cabinet when Maher Arar was kidnapped and tortured. When Security certificates, preventative detention and compelled testimony became law. Yes the Liberals opposed extending the most egregious elements past their sunset date - does anybody believe they would have done so if they had been in power rather than in opposition?

And as for the Conservatives, they fought to keep the provisions past their sunset period and have flirted with the religious war terminology of their ideological soul-mates south of the border. They've responded to important and substantive queries about human rights protection in Afghanistan with hysterical and borderline eliminationist rhetoric about 'Taliban sympathizers'.

Privacy and freedom along with the environment, pocketbook issues and Afghanistan will be the election issues - shall we say late spring? None of them will reflect well on either the Conservatives or the Liberals.

First thing we do...

Let's kill all the advertising executives.

New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman’s voice right in her ear asking, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then the voice said, “It’s not your imagination.”
That’s right — some bunch of fuckheads have invented street ads that beam their vocal pitch right into your goddamn head:
The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an “audio spotlight” from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium.

Facebook: Privacy rights are double plus ungood

After intense criticism, Facebook publicly claimed they would allow opting out of their controversial Beacon system to sell web surfing information to advertisers, but Internet experts discover that the system still tracks users movements even when Facebook is off line.

Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.
...
"It can happen completely without their knowledge, unless they are examining their network traffic at a very low level," Berteau said.