I remember opining not long ago about what appears to be public theatre between police chief Blair and the Fords. As I recall, I speculated that it had something to do with propping each other up in the media, a backroom friendship publicly laid out for the media as animosity. The purpose is simply to boost each others’ profiles, something the Fords shamelessly pursue.

Now consider the most recent circumstances:

• Blair is retiring and not considering a run in politics. Even if this isn’t true, he’ll probably need to parlay his high profile into his next gig, whatever that happens to be. In other words: media attention=good.
• As late as yesterday, Blair and Doug were staring each other down over Doug’s slanderous comments. Despite extended threats of litigation and with no new developments in the intervening 16-ish hours, Blair does a 180 and says everything’s forgiven. Aww, shucks.
• Blair continues to look like a stalwart law-n-order guy, and the Fords continue to appear to be the poor, beaten-upon “common folks” to their seething, money-trumps-life supporters:

Against the backdrop of another big corporation taking the law into their own hands (where’s Blair big denouncement on corporate vigilantism?), we get the simultaneous news that one — yes, one 25-year-old person has been found guilty of “orchestrated” and “widespread” voter suppression (election fraud), by the Conservative party during the last election.

What did Harper have to say right after the scandal broke out? Oh yeah…

“Our party has no knowledge of these calls. It’s not part of our campaign,” Mr. Harper told reporters on Thursday. “Obviously, if there is anyone who has done anything wrong, we will expect that they will face the full consequences of the law.”

And that is, of course, why he immediately and deeply cut funding to Elections Canada (the people running the fraud investigation), and then introduced a new law making it harder for people to vote just like they’re doing in the US (because, of course, that was the problem).

You can be forgiven for forgetting the 2006 “money funneling” scam that Harper used to fraudulently take the previous election. Elections Canada investigator Ronald Lamothe described it at the time as, “entirely under the control of and at the direction of officials of the Conservative Fund Canada and/or the Conservative Party of Canada.” The Conservatives went so far as to admit guilt in that case — they eventually conceded to winning through fraud and blowing millions to first deny, then defend it all. 

No one was found guilty, the government paid itself a fine and announced a “big victory”, and we are told to believe that the Conservatives won a second majority, one so overwhelming that Harper is unopposed in government. Well, I guess there’s no problem then. Nothing to worry about!

The corpse of my last post hadn’t even begun to cool when this morning I heard the TTC telling me over the PA that if I “see something” I should “say something”.

In case you don’t recognize this phrase, it’s a verbatim import of the US’ Department of Homeland Security “Turn Everyone Into Snitches” program.

Yup, that is the official video. It may seem a bit ludicrous, but this morning’s commute message was along these lines. If I see any suspicious packages, I should run to the nearest authority type and shit myself.

It’s so widespread that it’s even being introduced to gentle Vancouverites.

That one almost makes you feel good about saying it, doesn’t it?

Except that it has thus far preceded the type of government paranoia that’s playing out in Ferguson, Missouri right now.

I recall getting a face-full of something similar not too long ago:

Oh I know I was pretty critical of the G20 protesters back then, and I still am.

Walking around with signs and screaming at cops / passers-by does nothing. Breaking stuff even less so. Ooh, you broke a window! Take that, corporations!

As I recall, I’d already had some run-ins with G20 cops (and government) about which I wasn’t altogether happy, so I wasn’t exactly rooting for them. But just as much as I’m not a fan of state violence, I’m also not a fan of non-consensual people violence (if people agree to beat each other up, fine by me).

The problem, as I see it, is the forced, one-sided renunciation of violence while guess who gets the monopoly rights…

Besides, I don’t appreciate that sort of jittery message with my morning coffee.

believe! (or else)

The ugly.

Harper’s propensities are a toward building a corporate-fascist tyranny in Canada.

It’s tough to find agreement on just how far Harper’s machinations have progressed, but both his actions and his words repeatedly reassure us that this is precisely what he’s gunning for.

Tyranny, according to the people who coined the word, means “one who rules without law, looks to his own advantage rather than that of his subjects, and uses extreme and cruel tactics—against his own people as well as others”.

The evidence of government tyranny can be found all over TCL — just flip through some old posts.

And fascism, according to both original and modern definitions, is generally defined as, “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

Or, if you prefer war-and-oppression-loving Benito Mussolini’s definition: “The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State–a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values–interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people … Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and economic sphere”.

Lawless and absolute control over economic and societal affairs?

In Canada?

Yes, and it’s obvious: the government is a monopoly that demands absolute obeisance to itself while keeping all of its citizens in debt-bondage to the state (a.k.a. taxes that you “owe” for your entire life and beyond). The vast majority of citizens never agreed to this or its administration; rather, they acquiesced after being threatened with seizure (theft) and jail (kidnapping and imprisonment). Of course, despite the fact that they overtly demand that these are crimes, government flatly rejects any definitions other than that of benevolent benefit when they engage in them. They have to; how could they undermine their own “authority”?

To be fair, Harper didn’t come up with the lie of calling Canada a “democracy” (which it’s simply not), or foisting the apparatus of the state to dominate and control. But he, like most other politicians, engages in stately depravity. He knows that after years of screwing over Canada he’ll be rewarded with a fat pension and lots of gifts from his international buddies for things like looking the other way to systemic human rights abuses. “Important Canadian values” my ass.

What about checks and balances?

Oh, you must be referring to the government-appointed juduciary (or a healthy smattering of corrupt, degenerate, ignorant and incompetent Justices of the Peace), or maybe the equally undemocratic Senate, or maybe the innumerable, undemocratic “authorities” that are imposed on us via the shell game of elections and self-appointed power of the moneyed ruling class.

So the term “fascist tyranny” is not a spurious, knee-jerk reaction or a flimsy propaganda label — it’s a sober definition based on overt deeds.

If it quacks like a duck, as they say.

Okay, so you still don’t like “corporate-fascist tyranny”? Too many memories of Nazi Germany? How exactly could Israel and Canada be such close partners given such strong overtones? How indeed, how indeed.

Very well. So if Harper himself called Canada a “dictatorship” and has been working hard to remove that “benign” prefix from the description, what exactly does that make him? And what does that make Canada?

The bad.

The awful arguments of moral relativism — “at least we’re not as bad as _______!” — imply that anything and everything goes as long as our government doesn’t behave like those animals in other countries.

This means that all that needs to happen is for continuing debasement and destruction of those countries (helped along, of course), for the argument to remain valid. They might behead you arbitrarily over there, so it’s okay for us to torture you here. When they get to doing unspeakable things to children, you being merely beaten and imprisoned for having adult opinions is perfectly acceptable … helluva lot better than what they’d do to you.

Price of freedom, buddy.

And … AND … terrorism!

Oh yeah…terrorism. Who’s responsible for that again? Surely we need our government to protect us from all those baddies! Okay, so some (unbelievably audacious and fundamentally illegal), abuses might happen, but surely those people will be held to account.

Yeah, surely.

Obviously.

The moral relativist is in most arguments in favour of a race to the bottom, to the very worst crimes and debauchery that humanity can think up — as long as those crimes are slightly better than the other guy’s. The concept of absolute, inhuman control by the fascist state is mirrored in its mindless apologists, along with all the overt lies about your “protection” and “safety” (Terrorism! Crime! Environment! Lefties! Traffic!)

Even if you don’t believe that we’ve arrived at this point, is this what we should be striving for?

Even if you believe that this is merely incompetence, is it logical to depend on the very same people who created and perpetuated these problems for decades/centuries to miraculously fix them?

Okay, I know I’m hammering this topic pretty hard, but only because I absolutely know that the time to take a solid stand is now. The march of corpo-fascism continues across North America and elsewhere, fully promulgated by our “democratically elected” leaders.

All tomorrows are too late.

The good.

The map above is from Norse Corporation’s IPViking Live site where you can see many of the world’s cyber attacks in realtime.

While a map of attacks in the ongoing “cyberwar” (a fear-based buzzword), may seem like utter devastation, it really only shows good old-fashion hack ‘n crack activity with the occasional DDOS attack (nothing more than the target being overwhelmed with too much intentional internet traffic — a very brute-force technique).

In fact, aside from a change in connectivity and some improvements in security, many of the underlying penetration techniques haven’t changed much since I was a pimply-faced, war-dialing teenager.

What the map reveals, however, is that Canada’s internet connection to the world is still somewhat open and unencumbered (net neutrality not withstanding), which is confirmed by the the renewed attention of the copyright goon squad.

Better still, the increasingly brave belief in privacy and anonymity (and moreover simply basic justice), are alive and well in Canada. It is increasingly Canadians who champion truth, justice, and democracy (in the truest sense), around the world.

Take, for example, Montreal’s Subgraph. They come right out of the gate with a firm declaration:

Subgraph is an open source security company.

This means that we believe that open source means the best possible assurance of security at a time when trust is increasingly challenging.

Subgraph takes its inspiration from the domain of cryptography where proprietary algorithms are never trusted, and extends this principle to software.

If a proprietary algorithm cannot be trusted, why trust proprietary, closed-source security software?

I like where they’re going with this. I also like that they’ve taken on the task of creating Subgraph OS and Mail, a much-needed alternative to Tails which is a fully self-contained operating system built around security, privacy, and anonymity that has recently received some skepticism.

Closer to home we find the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, a group dedicated more to threat analysis and neutralization rather than the creation of new products (though they sometimes make those too).

Citizen Lab is lead by Ron Deibert who Sarah informs me often carries himself (and is received as) a rockstar, probably because of stuff like this:

…he was sitting on a panel with John Adams, the former chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the National Security Agency’s little-known northern ally. Afterward, he recalls, the former spy chief approached and casually remarked that there were people in government who wanted Deibert arrested—and that he was one of them.

…

It’s a bit freaky to hear that,” Deibert said when he recalled the Calgary encounter in an interview with Ars. “When people ask, ‘are you worried about the Chinese or some other adversary out there,’ I say I’m always a bit more worried about my own government, because this is the kind of thing I hear occasionally.”

It’s Citizen Lab’s razor-edge stride between academic rigour, establishment paranoia, and charisma that make it both a formidable force as well as a model for what I think needs to happen, at least in the online world. Increasingly, I believe that Citizen Lab is an example of the type organization that freedom and truth-minded individuals will come to rely on — a group of enlightened individuals who know what time it is.

If you don’t go for these freewheeling hippie types, there are older and more established schools of thought that underscore this entire line of thinking; schools like the Rothbard Insitute, another academic but considerably stuffier organization espousing individual freedom through “radical” economic ideas, and the Mises Institute which runs along similar lines.

On the political front we find groups like the Pirate Party which, despite the malignancies heaped on the name by the corpo-state, is ultimately for individual rights and freedoms:

To describe the goal of the Pirate Party in a single word, I would use “empowerment”. The beauty of the Internet and information technology is the ability for a poor child to have the same opportunities to create change as a wealthy privileged adult. It is the goal of the Pirate Party to encourage that strength, and to promote values which will empower every Canadian.

And if Rothbard or Mises are too rigid for your enjoyment, there are many bright, well-spoken, informed individuals out there that help to bridge the gaps; everything from applicable advice to thought-provoking witticisms.

Complacency and continuing acquiescence are, of course, an option. Going along with or supporting the increasingly fascist state are another. We could also worship the flying spaghetti monster, believe that voting makes a difference, trust that government is working for our benefit, etc.

We have some good examples of how such beliefs work out … maybe it’s time for something different this time?

Thanks to the keen eyes of the interweb along with a little follow-up research I discovered today that Rob Ford’s nephew Michael Ford (currently running for mayor), recently changed his name from Michael Stirpe To Michael Ford (with the name Douglas A. Ford thrown in there for good measure).

Much like the Fords of yesteryear, it appears young Michael has adopted the Ford name to disassociate from a shady past acquired via his father Ennio (the Heroin addict who shot his mother in the face). Because the name Ford is so much better.

You ever get those existential pangs in your stomach? You know, the kind that make you question why you do things?

I look over at the side bar here on TCL and notice that I’ve been doing this, on and off, for almost six years now. At the beginning we were getting hits from all over the world, but now we’re seeing predominantly Canadian traffic. Just in time too.

As I’ve noted many times (and I’m not alone in this), most big-name media have little interest in really getting their hands dirty with really exposing what’s going on. When’s the last time you saw the front-page headline, “Government of Canada repeatedly violates the law and all of our Charter Rights“? — because it’s quite true. Or is the problem that this might cause people to start to ask too many uncomfortable questions? I can’t imagine that the government would allow such incendiary commentary about itself, no matter how true and urgent it is, so I suspect it’s a convoluted mix of pressures keeping media giants stupid and silent.

As with any large organization, of course it’s not true to say that everyone is in on keeping stark reality relegated to the OpEds, but by virtue of “I need that paycheque”, really, they kind of are.

Sometimes the media dissent is very public, as was the case at RT. While it’s absolutely true that RT — Russia Today– is deeply funded by, and works for Russia, it’s important to consider that this thinly-veiled propaganda network (as are all major news outlets, let’s be clear), is more free here than pretty much any western media outlet.

While RT is, understandably, free and open to criticize the west, we find that domestic big media openly rejects balanced discussion and trumpets western government propaganda while at the same time deriding critics and spreading even more misinformation and often just flat-out lies about their own country and rest of the world. Domestically, RT’s cousin is probably a lot like this too, so it’s not as if I’m saying that this sort of thing doesn’t happen elsewhere.

While it’s certainly reasonable if not accurate to say that a Russian-funded network is biased, it’s also true that it probably reports on way more, and in a far more balanced way than our so-called “balanced” domestic media. Even the word and subject of “propaganda”, most people are surprised to learn, was created by an American for the stated purpose of “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses” — for corporate/government benefit.

Most people are equally surprised to learn that many ghastly Nazi war criminals were repatriated and handsomely rewarded by the American government after the Second World War. America’s late entry into the conflict was hardly about liberating the world from the “Nazi menace”, protecting America, or even helping to protect people against the barbarity of things like the Concentration camps. In fact, American Capitalism directly contributed in many ways to the Jewish Holocaust and to Nazi Germany itself.

That war, like any other, was about one side’s dominance over another — one government cabal demanding that its subjects die en masse against another for their personal ideologies, which are typically not mass opinions, and which are often strikingly similar. The fact that no American president has answered for any of their obvious international war crimes at the ICC, the modern Nuremberg (or any court, for that matter), proves it was and is merely a mock court where the United States owns and operates a public podium to vilify the opposition.

The problem isn’t that the Nazis didn’t necessarily deserve it, it’s that similar and numerous international crimes have been perpetrated by world leaders since then, and to date only America’s enemies (and anyone standing in the way of their plans), have ever been brought before this ridiculous, contemptuous court of The Hague. The fact that America defends its crimes at the highest levels further demonstrates that these were never “crimes” in their eyes.

So to expect honesty, fairness, justice, balance, or even correct information from either government, mega-corporations, or behemoth media is an exercise in abject futility. That’s not what they’re about.

Consider, for example, how loudly new Bitcoin-related legislation is being trumpeted, one that affects all Canadians directly and is in everyone’s best interest to at least be aware of. Oh, you haven’t heard?

The news itself is misrepresented (“Bitcoin is now money in Canada!”), and I have yet to see even a passing mention of it in any of Canada’s main dailies. There is plenty of news on something that all Canadians are engaged in though: legalized prostitution.

Apparently, between your ability to legally fuck hookers and your ability to get timely, accurate government information, the hookers win pretty much exclusively.

Okay, so you don’t own any Bitcoin and couldn’t give a toss. Fair? So is it fair to say you frequent prostitutes way more, thereby making this news of greater importance? The media seems to think so.

More often than not, I find that I have to rely on non-Canadian news sources to discover what my own government is up to, and even then it takes a while to sort the wheat from the chaff. This assumes I can find any information at all — the government regularly violates its own citizens’ Charter rights to just be aware of what’s being done directly to them.

To make matters worse, information from agencies like the Canada Revenue Agency is unclear and unhelpful, ensuring that no matter how good and honest (and legal), your intentions may be, they (the government) will find some way to find you in violation of some law or another, and summarily destroy you five ways from Sunday before you’ve had a chance to blink.

For example, the CRA treats Bitcoin transactions as barter, and they completely fail to define this according to their official web page: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tp/it490/it490-e.html

Notice that this page is “archived” (is it even valid?), is over 30 years old (has it been updated since?), makes no mention of any related documents or information, and lists no useful information for any taxpayer. Stuff like this:

 In arm’s length transactions, where an amount must be brought into income or treated as proceeds of disposition of capital property, that amount is the price which the taxpayer would normally have charged a stranger for his services or would normally have sold his goods or property to a stranger.

So if I say I would’ve charged someone $0 for my services, is that acceptable? Apparently I’m left to my own devices when determining any such amount, the CRA doesn’t think it’s important to include any detail, but this is legally binding and will be used against me at their earliest opportunity.

Besides this, depending on who you speak to in the (at best) dysfunctional government, you will be provided with something resembling either the truth or truthy misinformation. What, you think it’s up to the government to provide you with accurate, honest, timely information?

In effect, the Canada Revenue Agency (and, really, all of government), often resort to citing documents like their “policies” to justify whatever overt crap they’re engaged in now. Policy is not law, has never been through what are claimed to be the rigours of the legislative process, and so on.

Some document that some agency drafted up as a public document is no more a valid law than anything I write on this blog. Of course, they won’t tell you this, and they will use whatever law-violating policies, sideways nods of approval, and sticky note directives to justify their actions. Regardless, the ultimate result is always that you obey now and you can take up your complaint with some dispassionate dick that works for them at some later time. Your objection will be noted and filed in a special bin along with discarded pizza boxes, rotting vegetables, and yesterday’s cigarette butts.

These are the same for government and the mega-corps who regularly make absurd, ridiculously illegal demands which are often simply accepted as the status quo. Unless some concerned citizen complains (and even then it may be swept aside), few in the government-corporate cabal even thinks to bat an eyelash. After all, when it comes to mass fraud or mass murder, they are entirely exempt from even a stern glance while it’s you and me who are forced at government gunpoint to pay for their crimes. Our tax money is even used to provide proxy support for human slavery. If it’s depraved, you can be sure that government and its corporate buddies are engaged in it.

Okay, I know, this is all disjointed — I can link to examples here or there, and I have plenty to back up my own situation — but does this theory accurately model what corpo-government is?

I say yes. In fact, this model accurately explains most if not all of government’s decisions, corporate maneuverings, and so on. Others have made similar observations.

That’s why your cell phone costs so much. That’s why your cable service costs so much. That’s why the state demands that you must go through a bank (at your loss / their profit), to deal with government and why they refuse to accept their own legal tender. In other words, they have no interest in putting their obvious activities to scrutiny, they want to maintain them; they have no accountability to you or me, they work for the rich and powerful.

Why does the government claim “banks are too big to fail”? See above.

Why does the government claim that some drug use is so illegal that you should be locked up for engaging in it, that seat belts are legally mandatory “for your own good” while at the same time happily continuing to allow the sale of cigarettes, a product that exists for no other purpose than to bring about your untimely death along with a slew of awful health problems, massive costs to the healthcare system, etc.? See above.

Whatever argument they make about “protecting public health”, or trying to keep down “systemic healthcare costs”, etc. are all horrendously ridiculous — they’re there to protect the big-money people: tobacco, drug cartels, police enforcement, etc. Through the wonders of taxes, we pay for this obvious hypocrisy while they work to maintain it. You and I will barely benefit from what they take from us.

This seems nonsensical, the result of a broken and dysfunctional system or ineptitude, but the fact that example after example shows benefits and rights predominantly skewed toward them proves that this is not the case. This is purposeful, planned, and prepared, often over the course of many years or even decades. As murder, it would be in the first degree.

It explains why Harper is able to be so openly hypocritical about things like China’s human rights record while importing those very same abuses directly into Canada under the tired old lie of “economic prosperity”. If he’s a bit of a sociopath who genuinely doesn’t give a toss about his fellow human beings, it explains why he’s able to lie so easily, be publicly hypocritical by claiming he’s doing it for your benefit (when in reality, it’s really not), and so on. As messed up as that may seem, it not only makes complete sense but fits as a model for much of what comes out of the corpo-government establishment. Seriously, take any emotion out of it and weigh all of the available facts dispassionately — I believe you’ll come to the same conclusions I have. Then you can get upset again.

This model also explains pretty much any other form of government, including why they all seem to resemble each other so much. Whether state power is some form of National Socialism, Communism, or Capitalism, the end result is always the same: human misery, suffering, death, slavery, destruction, and everything else dark and evil. Some hang in there in an idealized form longer than others, but eventually the badness creeps in. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it mostly government that wages war? Isn’t it government that incarcerates people? Isn’t it government that claims the exclusive right to violence? That government may not always be legitimate, but it’s in power so…

Along the way they always have little golden moments, examples of how it all might’ve worked if yet again we didn’t have a system that could be usurped by corruption and evil. The utopian ideals weren’t bad, it’s practical government that’s the main problem. If it weren’t susceptible to corruption, it would probably work okay (still probably way too inefficient though).

Government is also natural and, in my opinion, unavoidable. Some sort of government will just happen, because I really believe that this is our natural idealized state. If it only worked as well as we imagine.

People will naturally organize and, yes, it makes sense to cede some responsibility over some things to others. Those others should ideally be good at those things for which they’re responsible, and equally ideally be civic-minded — working for the people under their care, not their jurisdiction. A view of dominance or superiority over those people is the wrong attitude; seeking to extend centralized power rather than distribute individual power is the wrong approach.

Of course, there will always be people who assume the wrong attitude and take the wrong approach.

The idea that corruption will ever truly be distinguished is childish. The belief that power such as that wielded by governments, mega-corps, or any large institution won’t be attractive to said corruption is equally childish. The answer must therefore be to put a democratic and unassailable clampdown on any such organizations, providing near-instant checks and balances by and for the people, not more corruptible agencies and organizations. The moment that power or influence start to amass, they should receive extra scrutiny. If such collectivized power is truly good for its democracy, it will be directly supported by that very democracy. If not, it will be ejected.

The voting systems involved are something I discussed earlier, but the part about people being in the dark is something I haven’t touched on yet, at least not directly.

That introduction at the beginning of this post where I mention how long TCL’s been online, that isn’t to boast, it’s intended to demonstrate that focus and perseverance can make a difference. That Canadian traffic I mentioned is regularly in the four-digit, sometimes five-digit casual-visits-per-day range (not taking into account any external feeds), and I have to believe that among those visitors has to be one or two who are now aware of something they weren’t before.

What I’m trying to get at is that independent media — the blogs, the community newsletters, the guys on the street corners handing out pamphlets — these are the new gatekeepers of information. Much as my own experiences with the Canada Revenue Agency mean that I’m probably more knowledgeable in the ways of the agency than many tax lawyers, I’m finding more and more that true subject matter experts are those who took it upon themselves to educate themselves. Sure as shit isn’t some of the morons the media parades around whenever they need a talking head to fill up some space.

I share my insights and advice for free right here and elsewhere on the web; lawyers charge you an arm and a leg for access to laws and regulations that you are legally required to understand yourself. It’s perverse.

Yeah, I sometimes change my opinions; and what’s wrong with that? That means that I continue to weigh the available evidence and I’m not closed to new information. Sometimes that information tips my opinion in a different direction, which is exactly what one wants from reasoned discussions. But when those discussions are entirely absent, as they are in government, big media, and mega-corps, we are left with – at best – one very biased side of the story.

You’ve probably already guessed at where I’m heading with this — I really believe we all need to be our own producers and distributors, specialists in one field or two, focused, determined, passionate, willing to listen to detractors (sometimes they make some really good points!), and dedicated to sharing with each other. The freedoms of information that are under siege by corpo-government, freedoms that are often a matter of life and death, must be something that we have to undertake for ourselves. There are, of course, some things that really should be kept secret; but for the rest, what corpo-government won’t share, professionals and knowledgeable individuals can (and should).

Edward Snowden went somewhat above and beyond, but considering that to date no harm has been proven (glassy-eyed government supporters simply gobbing off via propagandized media is not proof), except to the trust and reputation of a government agency, it seems that we can entrust such decisions to individuals.

If they transgress, they should have the opportunity to be judged fairly by as wide a base of people as possible. I’m not expecting any waving of magic wands, but this is the direction we should be heading, not away from it.

That government often publicly proclaims the triumph of profits over human life is, to me, reason enough to stand in public opposition. I may be misguided, I may have it all wrong, someone might school me something fierce tomorrow, but I know that no matter what I was standing up for the right things for the right reasons. I’m willing to make such mistakes again because I know that they’re the signs of strength not weakness, adaptivity not rigidity, increased clarity not opacity, and a willingness to get at the truth — not reject it.

Some people say the truth is malleable, that it’s a matter of perspective, that it’s all about context.

This is not correct.

Truth is obscured by these things. It is very real and very much in existence beneath all the bullshit and lies and garbage. Government & friends seek to bury inconvenient truths beneath their “context” and it’s up to us to unearth it again for everyone. But even if political discourse isn’t for you, and even if you find that all you have to share is a really effective method of getting red wine out of white clothing, that’s the kind of thing that empowers individuals — so it’s a good thing!

That lowercase Greek letter at the beginning is “Eta” (capital is “Η”), and it might seem like a vacuous headline but some of my recent posts should provide sufficient contrast to mega-corps and government, both of whom view innovation as something to be avoided. Contrast again with something like Toronto’s AeroVelo, a project-based company started by a couple of former University of Toronto propeller-heads.

AeroVelo’s innovation consists of finally turning interesting mechanical concepts into reality. For example, a while back this guy named Leonardo imagined human-powered flying machines.

Humanity got screwed on that idea for a few hundred years or so, no doubt due to government regulations.

Although they didn’t exactly follow the original blueprint, AeroVelo managed to get Leo’s vision aloft:

Before that they did a flappy-style flying craft, also powered by nothing more than gumption (and a guy pedalling):

And now that they’ve conquered the skies, they’ve just passed their goal on KickStarter to build the world’s fastest human-powered bicycle named “Eta”, of course.

To be specific:

Our goal is to build the world’s fastest human-powered vehicle, capable of surpassing the current level-ground speed record of 133.8 km/hr (83.1 mph)! This represents a mind-blowing leap in aerodynamic efficiency and vehicle technology. If your car looked like this, you could drive across Canada on a quarter tank of gas!

I’m not sure if I’d want my car to be this cramped, but I still think it’s neat that true innovation is happening at the individual level, in more ways than one. What’s more, while this all still looks pretty experimental, it seems perfectly reasonable to expect that AeroVelo’s ideas will trickle into the mainstream in a way that will reasonably be accessible to most people. It is, after all, just a very fancy bike.

Publicly-funded government and mega-corp “innovation”,  on the other hand, is not so people-friendly (more anti-people, pro-tyranny, with hints of treason, really).

Now, I have to stress, this is totally just a theory. I have no evidence of any of this — it is a pure flight of fancy.

But let’s consider this: how come Rob Ford is still roaming the halls of City Hall, locking reporters out, and basically being good old RoFo again? And anyone have a pool going on when he officially (documented) hits the pipe again? How far off can it be?

But he does look slimmer, I’ll give him that. His stay in unbelievably picturesque Bracebridge must’ve been good. And not too cheap neither. Bracebridge is one of the jewels in what is basically the Canadian Hamptons.

In any event, and for whatever reason, the Fords are either intimidating to Chief Blair and many others, or they’re (Fords + Blair + others) working together. Whatever the case, the top cop refuses to touch Ford with so much as a fifty-foot pole wielded by a lackey who is on concurrent traffic duty. I’ve already established this point a couple of times.

So instead, Blair decides to shuffle the investigation over to various parties, thereby washing his hands of the situation. Enforcement won’t be involved.

The courts decide that, for perhaps the same whatever reason, they don’t want to deal with this either, so they hang it out to dry like the crusty laundry it is.

The complicit media behemoths provide watered-down analysis to ensure the public that everything and anything in God’s creation that could have been done was done. We’ll simply have to accept that our Mayor is a hard-drug-smoking, prostitute-cavorting, extortion-associating, gun-and-drug-running-related, murder-linked guy; he’s just a regular multi-millionaire like the rest of us except that he’s got a disease! So obviously it would be discriminatory to even suggest that he leave City Hall at this point.

And, of course, it’s completely coincidental that the Ontario Human Rights Commission declared that addiction is a disease just before RoFo made his ignominious return. Right?

Not to put too fine a point on it, imagine going to your office after hours wasted (on multiple occasions), harassing the security, and inviting “unknown persons” in for late night parties. Not only does this not get you fired, but you threaten to sue your boss for discriminating against you because of your “disease” – the criminal excuse du jour that ends up making legitimate addicts (who purposefully hurt no one but themselves), seem like degenerates. Rob Ford is using a real medical condition to legitimize his open criminality, lies, and ongoing scumbaggery. Pretty slimy thing to do, huh? Well, that’s Rob Ford for you!

The cops might be chicken shit for whatever reason, or they may be deferential for whatever reason. The courts may have equal whatever reasons. The end result in either case is that the law was not applied equally and neither was the investigation.

So could they be working together?

Wait, no, that’s no possible. Remember when Rob and Doug chewed the chief out?

Let me offer another theory.

What if there were some secret meetings that took place in which exactly this scenario would be hatched? Rob and Doug would publicly vilify the chief (easy) who would put on a stoic face (easy) and hand the matter off to a less improprietous body, which itself would turn around and just make the whole thing public (easy). Rob and Doug gain fans because they’re under such furious attack, Bill looks like the proper police chief, and the wise court gives the people what they really want — titillating, salacious details.

The whole matter: under the rug, RoFo & Co. are pleased (as are their masters), and everyone looks like they’re just doing they’re job. Except they’re really not.

When I mentioned that I’d be releasing the BreakOutBox source code, I didn’t expect that I’d also be able to figure out how to create a portable version of the application, but I did. :) This means that you don’t necessarily have to install it, as you would do with a standard application, so it can run off of a USB stick or possibly even a DVD.

In a nutshell, BreakOutBox detects any browsers you may have installed and opens them in “Tor mode” — ready and set up to communicate through the Tor network via the included Tor binary. This is likely not as secure as something like the Tor Browse Bundle, but it still makes it so that you’re fairly anonymously browsing the web, seemingly from a whole other part of the world.

The source code is not something that a novice will want to be looking into at the moment; it’s currently poorly commented, comes with no documentation, and really not much in the way of explanation. At least for now. And it’s pretty buggy.

But if you’re still willing and able, head on over to the new GitHub repo I’ve set up:

https://github.com/Patrick-Bay/BreakOutBox

You’ll notice a folder in the project called “BreakOutBox_standalone” which is the actual portable app, as compiled by FlashDevelop. It is bulkier than it needs to be but, as with the other pieces, I haven’t yet had much chance to trim down or edit the files. If you want to use the portable version, I recommend just grabbing the whole folder for the time being. Open up the “BreakOutBox.exe” file to run the desktop application from wherever you’ve copied the folder.

Although I’ve included them already, you may also want to check out the supporting libraries that are used in BreakOutBox:

SwAG: https://code.google.com/p/swag-as/
as3crypto: http://as3crypto.googlecode.com/
WRASE: https://code.google.com/p/wrase/
TorAS: https://code.google.com/p/toras/

These are necessary for BoB to operate correctly — SwAG takes care of communicating between the modules, as3crypto provides HTTPS support, WRASE allows the application to work with the Windows Registry, and TorAS makes Tor happen.

As I mentioned, these are already included in the GitHub code so they’re included here simply as a reference. Other than grabbing yourself a copy of the latest FlashDevelop (and the BreakOutBox source code, of course), you should be ready to play around with the software.

Please enjoy.

Though there’s still no indication of this on their website, The Grid TO’s last issue will be tomorrow:

What makes this sad news is what appears between the lines:

“The media landscape continues to be impossible for a start up,” he said, calling The Grid a victim of timing.

Launched on May 12, 2011, three years after the Great Recession, Turnbull said, “nobody anticipated how dramatically print and online revenue would continue to decline after 2009. We all thought it would be a gentle landing. Instead, it’s been violent.