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?

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).

Sarah and I were invited to sip and discuss the somewhat misnomer-ed Canadian Club Whisky (it’s American-owned although it has deep roots here), at a promotional event hosted at her old alma mater.

There was the traditional tasting of some of CC’s star products, straight up…

…and mixed…

I find the CC version of a 12-year-old to be less smooth than a comparable Macallan, but comparing pricey Scotch and North American whisky probably isn’t fair.

Not that it really matters much; I wouldn’t classify myself as a CC drinker (or whisky, for that matter), but I could definitely see myself ordering a few of the tasty drinks we sampled. The food, consisting of nibbles supplied by Tundra, was also great.

But probably the best part of the event was the fact that the Canadian Club Chairman was walking around, mingling, and generally making himself available to the guests.

If you don’t recognize him, maybe this will help:

He’s not shy to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi…

…or to bring his son to events…

Sarah and I caught up in person with Toronto’s social media scenesters, drank till we were glowing, and made friends with the caterers (you never know!)

We were also pleased to see a number local businesses being supported as part of Canadian Club’s campaign. Both inside and outside the great hall, these locals rounded off the manly inspiration behind the CC campaign with things like men’s cuts, personal grooming products, and suits.

Many thanks to Canadian Club and Praxis PR for having us and for the generous swag bags we lugged home.

Cheers!

According to Bill McKibben, the environment has it in for us. All of us. Like, real bad.

I got the opportunity to hear him and Margaret Atwood chew the cud on the problem at the UofT Bookstore‘s Reading Series.  After all, the environment lurks mercilessly outside all of our homes, constantly waiting to pounce; needs a brainstormer, no doubt.

What I liked about Atwood was her willingness to delve into the causes of why the environment is being such a dick; let’s not be ignorant of the enemy. That and she brought up coffee and hemp as possible solutions. I like her. :)

So what did McKibben have to say? Basically that, at this point, the environment is already over the edge. Forget trying to slow it down — blast that motherfucker with everything we have!!

He goes into greater detail in his new book “Eaarth”, but wants to emphasize that it’s still, “all a long shot”.

Bill’s message isn’t terribly upbeat, even though he somehow is. Diplomacy, recycling, full-on frontal attack, we’ll need to do whatever it takes if we stand a chance against the environment.

From my regular viewing of public television, I know that small island nations like the Maldives are already under attack. They’re seriously looking into evacuation plans for whole countries, that’s how bad it’s getting. And unfortunately, publicity stunts don’t really seem to be getting the word out.

Bill had a big hand in 350.org, a site dedicated to disseminating information about the struggle. And a struggle it’ll be. According to what I’ve read there, it’s not a matter of if we’ll be attacked, but how severely. The best we can do now is to mitigate the damages. I’m definitely not getting that mortgage now.

… Continue Reading

No doubt about it, I’m going to copyright hell. Yes, I’ve once again raided the Toronto Archives (I highly recommend a search or two; lotsa fun stuff), and emerged with some gleaming gems. Should the Archives ever decide to sue my blatancy, I’ll no doubt be forced to hand over much of TCL’s total monetary earnings to date: $3.67. If I made them cry, emotional damages too. But I just can’t help it; they have way too much great stuff to hide behind a stuffy web interface.

This time around I went back to the mid-sixties in search of the very beginnings of computing in Toronto. Okay, yeah, I’ve been spending a lot of time online making sweet sweet love to the blogosphere. And programming. But the digital miracles I’m pulling out of my ass (and many of us are), these days would’ve been unimaginable forty-five years ago. In fact, even though I’m more closely familiar with most of the gizmos in these photos than the average person, even I’m at a loss to put name or function to everything there. But I’ll try.

Okay, so from my understanding, this is what computing looked like at the University of Toronto circa 1965ish:

Can you imagine what it would’ve taken to slap together a basic web page at that time? Like, look at the fellow in the photo above; picking out a frozen pizza because he knows he’s going to be a while.  It’s nice that they provided slushie machines for the programmers:

I guess he’s picking his flavour.

Oh, yeah, of course I’d be hideously remiss if I didn’t mention the sideburns. That was the requisite look in those days, from my understanding. For when you’d fall asleep on your desk on account of the speed of the computers. Sop up your drool ‘n all. (I know, gross, but hey, practical.)

So here’s Mr. Burns actually earning a living:

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…continued from previous part.

I would like to thank you for hanging in there, dear reader. I know that you’ve sat through quite enough self-indulgent tripe in this series and, thankfully, we’ve come to the end of it. There’s not much more left to achieving Ultimate Success® except this last bit:

Step 7 – [INSERT TITLE HERE]

As we finally leave the University of Toronto (I’m sure I mentioned it’s a big place), I’m reminded of my first impression of Canada. A little immigrant kid, no English, fresh off the plane at Pearson, stepping out into Toronto daylight for the first time. I’m not sure if I vocalized it, and I’m not certain if I used the word “shit”, but I recall gasping, “Holy shit! Look at the size of those cars! How big are these people?”

I won’t hesitate to call that wonder. Toronto was huge. And you know, I think it still is. If I recall correctly, by doing the speed limit on the 401 from the eastern border (“Welcome to the City of Toronto!”) to the western border (“Same to You, Jerkwad!”), you could drive across the city in about forty minutes. That’s about sixty-seven kilometers (forty-two miles). On the night of my high school graduation, drunk off my tits, I decided to walk home to Scarborough from Yonge and Bloor. I could be wrong, but I think it took me just a little over six hours. Possibly less if I hadn’t been wearing formal footwear.

I would probably add another two to three hours of walking to get to the eastern city limit, where it touches cootie-ridden Durham county. And I believe the city extends just as far west of Yonge too.

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…continued from previous part.

Sometimes fate provides the best illustrations of the topic at hand. Tonight, for example, as I was nearing my flat, I passed a regular panhandler seeking the usual “money for food, sir?” He probably could use food, truth be told; he’s skinny, has an unpleasant complexion, and wears early-eighties Bill Gates goggles replete with the chunkiest of lenses.

I have the “no” head-shake down so well now that I can even do it from behind. Which I did. Question stopped. Alas, it took Goggles less than half a second to shout to a compatriot across the street asking if he could get a “pipe for a dollar fifty?” I honestly have no idea if that’s in any way realistic. But that’s not the point.

What Goggles did was to demonstrate the importance of just doing something in order to kick-start the Ultimate Success® machine. The first attempt doesn’t have to be successful, as long as you’re focused on the near-term goal — research, planning, and organization will just flow naturally from there.

Goggles will get his pipe. You bet.

Step 6 – Do Stuff

On the outskirts of Taichung there were fields and fields of muddy, flooded rice paddies bordered by sloppily-paved embankments that farmers, and their vehicles, used to get around.

I’d been a regular in Taiwan for about two years before one day noticing that a car had just exited one of these paddy roads at the foothills near the place I was residing in (the island is mostly mountains). That meant that there had to be something on the other side!

I should point out that these weren’t really roads – the driver of the car I’d noticed advanced very carefully. He had about half a foot separating him and a hilarious dip into the short-grain Chinese staple on either side. And, although a car could barely fit, farmers insisted on taking farm vehicles on these embankments. Okay, the tractors and trucks were smaller than North American ones, but still bigger than a car. Serious business atop tarred and dilapidated concrete slabs, let me tell you.

I should mention that, although it’s probably since improved, traffic priority in the country was based on size and aggressiveness. On a motor scooter, you generally gave way to cars. Cars gave way to mini-trucks. Mini-trucks gave way to farm vehicles. So on. Red lights were a suggestion, sidewalks were simply another place to drive. Just about every cabby flashed a gloriously red Betel nut smile, usually while spitting joyfully red sludge on the sidewalk.

The floor-cleaner-tasting nut (of course I tried it!), created a short-lived intoxication not unlike alcohol. I believe a certain level of actual alcohol was considered to be a stimulant, but that could’ve been a y-guo myth (why-guo-ren: foreigner). Despite that story, the cabbies drove around at a very controlled level of intoxication, that much was certain, so I’m sure there was some acceptable limit. I’d often be offered Betel nut (with a courtesy spitting cup), and a can of beer when hitching a cab. Just requested to keep it low.

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…continued from previous part.

Thanks for hanging in there, dear reader. I know that this hasn’t been an easy journey; three parts and I haven’t even covered anything practical yet!

But don’t worry, we’re getting to that now that we’ve covered the prerequisites: inquisitiveness, hope and vision, but not too much — make a plan B!

But how, exactly, to go about doing that?

Glad you asked :)

Step 4 – The Road To Ultimate Success®

(big!)

First, survey the landscape before you. Look up, above the screen. What do you see?

Don’t cheat now!

Was that inspiring? Did you see something that makes you want to sit here and continue to look at that? If so, I just totally wasted your time. Carry on :) But if not, why not?

Because, you have to plan your escape, that’s why! Planning is so absolutely rudimentary to everything that I don’t really even feel a need to cover it. There are lots of books out there to help you organize your papers, your wallet, your love life, etc., but none of them lead to Ultimate Success®. That’s because Ultimate Success® hinges on a simple Point-A-to-Point-B system.

For this you need nothing more than a piece of paper and a pencil. Or pen. A drawing or writing instrument of any kind.

One one end of the paper, draw a circle. Do so now if you’re really participating here because the next sentence tells you what this is all about.

Okay, so that’s you.

If it’s a bit wobbly, you probably just need to stand up for yourself a little more.

Next, draw another circle on the other side of the paper. Again, the next line is the give, so do so now if you’re playing along.

Right. And this is that thing that you determined in Step 1. Okay? You have you on one end, your goal on the other. How do you get there? Simply connect the dots – draw a line from you to your future. Straight and narrow. Go ahead.

Great. And now cross that line out and scribble crap all over it. Go on. Just destroy it. Because that is just not going to happen. You’ll have to improvise in the field, so just try to be as prepared as possible: a good flashlight, some nutritious seed/nut/fruit bars (snacking on one right now – incisory goodness!), some cash, good coat, you know … stuff like that.

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…continued from previous part.

If I may be honest, dear reader, that last part kinda bummed me out. The beach is not a happy place on a late January night. I didn’t see a single person frolic. In fact, I saw only one guy and he walked by so briskly that I didn’t even get to see what he had under his arm. And then returning back from whence he came at exactly the same pace, minus the thing he had been carrying. Then a car left the parking lot.

At that point I decided it was starting to get late. Class dismissed.

Step 3 – Learning You Good!

Okay, so this is where it starts to pick up a little. Note the sunshine, for starters. That building is the entranceway to Ultimate Success University™.

Haha! Just joshin’ ya, that’s actually one of the neato buildings at the University of Toronto’s St. George campus.

U of T and Ryerson are both spread out over blocks, each a little sprawling mini-metropolis of their own. This is where people come to get edumacated.

Some of the university-educated folk I’ve had to interact with, oh, don’t get me started. Sorry your dreams are crushed, buddy, but my burger isn’t going to tray itself now, is it?

Haha! Well, I laugh like I have a University diploma or something. Only from the University of Xerox, if that institution is still relevant. Also, I went to Centennial College to study digital electronics for computers. That entire program was a 24/7 sausagefest. I recall a friend who had transferred classes telling me that he thought that, possibly, there were a couple of chicks in his class. But they sat w-a-y at the back. And looked like dudes.

I guess I’m lucky I didn’t get accepted to university in the end. I repeatedly hear about the crazy debt that university grads are saddled with right out the gate. Of course, I had my own, but Centennial led to a lot friendlier debt collectors.

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