Quotulatiousness

August 9, 2015

Robert Conquest’s historical vindication

Filed under: Books, History, Politics, Quotations, Russia — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David Warren on the late Robert Conquest:

[Robert Conquest’s] grand works of historical investigation — The Great Terror (1968), documenting the incredible extent of Stalin’s purges; and, The Harvest of Sorrow (1986), surveying the catastrophic effects of his collectivization — were books of remarkable ambition; of bold conception and real consequence. Other writers had (often at the cost of their careers) reported upon Soviet failings. But they had done so in ways modest enough to be ignored, or dismissed by the fashionable Left as “biased.” The broad, massive, systematic nature of Conquest’s researches was something new. It cracked even the faith of many diehard Communists. The history he told fit together; it was all meticulously sourced; it was overwhelming. There was, as it rose on the horizon, too much to deny.

Yet others could still simply block it out. For people believe what they want to believe, and may resolutely look away from what they do not want to see, or even chute the cocksure laugh, in the face of the mounting tsunami of evidence that finally washes them away.

Conquest was also a light or minor poet, and verse translator, of skill, talent, and integrity. He moved, privately, more in literary than in political circles. His closest friends were such as Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin; another was Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

He was no ideologue, and judging by the way he burned through wives, not a moralist either. Outwardly, in the tiny glimpse I had of him, he was not passionate or irascible. Inwardly, he was surely “driven.” But I would count him as a detached artist, working in a rather unusual modern genre: the author of elaborately proven epics of debunkment.

It was not Conquest, incidentally, but Amis who proposed that the revision of The Great Terror, published after the Berlin Wall fell, should be re-entitled, I Told You So, You Fucking Fools. But Conquest was content with, A Reassessment. He presented his facts emotionlessly. This magnified his impact, as historian. When he had a provocation to offer, that he was entirely unable to resist, he would put it safely into verse form, so that it wouldn’t be noticed.

Toronto-area supermarkets of the past

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Food, History — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

At BlogTO, Chris Bateman digs up some old photos of some Toronto-area supermarket chains that have faded from the scene over the years:

Today, a trip to the supermarket in Toronto more than likely means shopping at a brand belonging to one of a small number of corporations. Loblaws owns No Frills, Valu-mart, and T&T; Metro owns Food Basics, while FreshCo, Sobeys, Price Chopper are part of the Canadian conglomerate Empire Company Limited.

In the mid 20th century, before the first of several major acquisitions and mergers, shoppers had more of a say where their grocery dollars ended up. In those days, independent chains like Power, Dominion, and Steinberg wowed customers with gleaming self-serve supermarkets, ample parking, and space age foods.

Here’s a look back at five supermarket chains that have vanished from Toronto.

My family moved to the Toronto area in 1968, but I didn’t know about some of the chains (but I recognized the distinctive architecture of this one):

Grand Union

Toronto Supermarkets-GrandUnion

Grand Union’s most famous Toronto store was at the Parkway Mall at Victoria Park and Ellesmere in Scarborough.

Toronto Supermarkets-GrandUnion-Ad

The U.S.-based company built the store with its distinctive arched roof in 1958, just five years after entering the Canadian market with the purchase of Carroll’s, a grocery chain based out of Hamilton.

Toronto Supermarkets-GrandUnion-Miracle

Just months after opening its flagship Scarborough location, Quebec-based Steinberg’s […] bought the company’s Canadian stores and rebranded the Parkway Mall location. It was later a Miracle Food Mart and a Dominion. Today, it’s a Metro. In 2009, the store became the first supermarket to be listed on the City of Toronto’s Inventory of Heritage Properties.

QotD: The distinctive scent of the Black Forest

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

There was one night when, tired out and far from town or village, we slept in a Black Forest farmhouse. The great charm about the Black Forest house is its sociability. The cows are in the next room, the horses are upstairs, the geese and ducks are in the kitchen, while the pigs, the children, and the chickens live all over the place.

You are dressing, when you hear a grunt behind you.

“Good-morning! Don’t happen to have any potato peelings in here? No, I see you haven’t; good-bye.”

Next there is a cackle, and you see the neck of an old hen stretched round the corner.

“Fine morning, isn’t it? You don’t mind my bringing this worm of mine in here, do you? It is so difficult in this house to find a room where one can enjoy one’s food with any quietness. From a chicken I have always been a slow eater, and when a dozen — there, I thought they wouldn’t leave me alone. Now they’ll all want a bit. You don’t mind my getting on the bed, do you? Perhaps here they won’t notice me.”

While you are dressing various shock heads peer in at the door; they evidently regard the room as a temporary menagerie. You cannot tell whether the heads belong to boys or girls; you can only hope they are all male. It is of no use shutting the door, because there is nothing to fasten it by, and the moment you are gone they push it open again. You breakfast as the Prodigal Son is generally represented feeding: a pig or two drop in to keep you company; a party of elderly geese criticise you from the door; you gather from their whispers, added to their shocked expression, that they are talking scandal about you. Maybe a cow will condescend to give a glance in.

This Noah’s Ark arrangement it is, I suppose, that gives to the Black Forest home its distinctive scent. It is not a scent you can liken to any one thing. It is as if you took roses and Limburger cheese and hair oil, some heather and onions, peaches and soapsuds, together with a dash of sea air and a corpse, and mixed them up together. You cannot define any particular odour, but you feel they are all there — all the odours that the world has yet discovered. People who live in these houses are fond of this mixture. They do not open the window and lose any of it; they keep it carefully bottled up. If you want any other scent, you can go outside and smell the wood violets and the pines; inside there is the house; and after a while, I am told, you get used to it, so that you miss it, and are unable to go to sleep in any other atmosphere.

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel, 1914.

August 8, 2015

Election issue – the Netflix tax, “much ado about nothing?”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Michael Geist looks at the major federal party leaders’ reactions to discussion of a “Netflix tax”:

As part of the digital strategy discussion, I stated that questions abound, including “are new regulations over services such as Netflix on the horizon?”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed that question yesterday with a video and tweet in which he pledged that the Conservatives will never tax digital streaming services like Netflix and Youtube. Harper added that the Liberals and NDP have left the door open to a Netflix tax, but that he is 100% opposed, “always has been, always will be.” Both opposition parties quickly responded with the NDP saying they have not proposed a Netflix tax and the Liberals saying they have never supported a Netflix tax and do not support a Netflix tax.

So is this much ado about nothing?

Not exactly. First, there are groups and provincial governments that support a Netflix tax or mandated contribution to fund the creation of Canadian content. These include the Ontario and Quebec governments along with many creator groups. Earlier this year, I obtained documents under the Ontario Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act that showed that the Ontario government spent months working toward a recommendation to expand the regulation of new media, including Canadian content requirements and increased regulation of foreign online video providers.

Second, while the Liberals and NDP have not proposed a Netflix tax, they have called for requirements that online video providers disclose revenues, Canadian content availability, and subscriber numbers to Canadian regulators. This is a very soft form of regulation that Netflix and Google have rejected as beyond the power of the Broadcasting Act. Providing information to allow for more informed regulatory analysis does not seem particularly unreasonable, but the companies unsurprisingly fear that that analysis could ultimately lead to calls for more regulation or payments.

Third, the real Netflix tax is the prospect of a levying sales taxes on digital products such as music downloads or online video services. It was the Conservatives that raised this possibility in the 2014 budget, launching a consultation on the issue that garnered supportive comments from companies such as Rogers, which noted that Canadian-based online video services such as Shomi operate at a disadvantage since they collect GST/HST, but Netflix does not. With many countries moving toward some form of digital taxation (as I noted in a January 2015 column on the issue, the real challenge lies in the cost of implementation), it seems inevitable that Canada will do the same in order to level the playing field and recoup a growing source of revenue. The Conservatives would presumably seek to differentiate between a generally applicable sales tax and a tax or fee targeting online streaming services, though many may feel it is a distinction without a difference.

Tom Kratman on “killer ‘bots”

Filed under: Military, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

SF author (and former US Army officer) Tom Kratman answers a few questions about drones, artificial intelligence, and the threat/promise of intelligent, self-directed weapon platforms in the near future:

Ordinarily, in this space, I try to give some answers. I’m going to try again, in an area in which I am, at least at a technological level, admittedly inexpert. Feel free to argue.

Question 1: Are unmanned aerial drones going to take over from manned combat aircraft?

I am assuming here that at some point in time the total situational awareness package of the drone operator will be sufficient for him to compete or even prevail against a manned aircraft in aerial combat. In other words, the drone operator is going to climb into a cockpit far below ground and the only way he’ll be able to tell he’s not in an aircraft is that he’ll feel no inertia beyond the bare minimum for a touch of realism, to improve his situational awareness, but with no chance of blacking out due to high G maneuvers..

Still, I think the answer to the question is “no,” at least as long as the drones remain under the control of an operator, usually far, far to the rear. Why not? Because to the extent the things are effective they will invite a proportional, or even more than proportional, response to defeat or at least mitigate their effectiveness. That’s just in the nature of war. This is exacerbated by there being at least three or four routes to attack the remote controlled drone. One is by attacking the operator or the base; if the drone is effective enough, it will justify the effort of making those attacks. Yes, he may be bunkered or hidden or both, but he has a signal and a signature, which can probably be found. To the extent the drone is similar in size and support needs to a manned aircraft, that runway and base will be obvious.

The second target of attack is the drone itself. Both of these targets, base/operator and aircraft, are replicated in the vulnerabilities of the manned aircraft, itself and its base. However, the remote controlled drone has an additional vulnerability: the linkage between itself and its operator. Yes, signals can be encrypted. But almost any signal, to include the encryption, can be captured, stored, delayed, amplified, and repeated, while there are practical limits on how frequently the codes can be changed. Almost anything can be jammed. To the extent the drone is dependent on one or another, or all, of the global positioning systems around the world, that signal, too, can be jammed or captured, stored, delayed, amplified and repeated. Moreover, EMP, electro-magnetic pulse, can be generated with devices well short of the nuclear. EMP may not bother people directly, but a purely electronic, remote controlled device will tend to be at least somewhat vulnerable, even if it’s been hardened,

Question 2: Will unmanned aircraft, flown by Artificial Intelligences, take over from manned combat aircraft?

The advantages of the unmanned combat aircraft, however, ranging from immunity to high G forces, to less airframe being required without the need for life support, or, alternatively, for a greater fuel or ordnance load, to expendability, because Unit 278-B356 is no one’s precious little darling, back home, to the same Unit’s invulnerability, so far as I can conceive, to torture-induced propaganda confessions, still argue for the eventual, at least partial, triumph of the self-directing, unmanned, aerial combat aircraft.

Even, so, I’m going to go out on a limb and go with my instincts and one reason. The reason is that I have never yet met an AI for a wargame I couldn’t beat the digital snot out of, while even fairly dumb human opponents can present problems. Coupled with that, my instincts tell me that that the better arrangement is going to be a mix of manned and unmanned, possibly with the manned retaining control of the unmanned until the last second before action.

This presupposes, of course, that we don’t come up with something – quite powerful lasers and/or renunciation of the ban on blinding lasers – to sweep all aircraft from the sky.

Top 11 Stupid Moves of Early World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR – Ranking

Filed under: Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 5 Aug 2015

As a last birthday surprise, we tried something new and present Indy’s ranking of the 11 most stupid moves of early World War 1. What do you think of our list and who would make it to the top of yours? Tell us in the comments below.

QotD: The Pacifist

Filed under: Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Nietzsche, in altering Schopenhauer’s will-to-live to will-to-power, probably fell into a capital error. The truth is that the thing the average man seeks in life is not primarily power, but peace; all his struggle is toward a state of tranquillity and equilibrium; what he always dreams of is a state in which he will have to do battle no longer. This dream plainly enters into his conception of Heaven; he thinks of himself, post mortem, browsing about the celestial meadows like a cow in a safe pasture. A few extraordinary men enjoy combat at all times, and all men are inclined toward it at orgiastic moments, but the race as a race craves peace, and man belongs among the more timorous, docile and unimaginative animals, along with the deer, the horse and the sheep. This craving for peace is vividly displayed in the ages-long conflict of the sexes. Every normal woman wants to be married, for the plain reason that marriage offers her security. And every normal man avoids marriage as long as possible, for the equally plain reason that marriage invades and threatens his security.

H.L. Mencken, “Types of Men 11: The Pacifist”, Prejudices, Third Series, 1922.

August 7, 2015

Warsaw Falls – The Fokker Scourge Begins I THE GREAT WAR Week 54

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Military, Russia, Technology, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Published on 6 Aug 2015

After the Russian defeats on the Eastern Front, Warsaw falls. The first time in over 100 years a foreign power occupies the city. The German onslaught in the East seems to be unstoppable. Also on the Western Front the Germans are causing havoc with the new Fokker-Eindecker planes which start the so called Fokker Scourge. The British pilots even start to call their airplanes Fokker-Fodder. At the same time, the battle in Gallipoli continues with ever more troops landing while neither the Ottomans nor the ANZAC troops can gain any advantage.

Looking back at April’s 7.8 earthquake in Nepal

Filed under: Asia, Science, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

At Ars Technica, Scott K. Johnson what has been learned about the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal earlier this year:

The mighty Himalayas have been driven up into the sky by the collision of Eurasia and India, which has migrated north like a tectonic rocket over the last 100 million years. The Indian plate is being crammed beneath the crumpled Himalayan rocks along a dangerous fault that ramps downward to the north.

Lots of GPS sensors and seismometers have been deployed in the area to help seismologists study earthquakes here. Combined with precise satellite measurements of surface elevation changes, researchers have the means to work out where the movement on the fault must have occurred.

The earthquake began about 80 kilometers northwest of Kathmandu and about 15 kilometers beneath the surface. Geologists like to talk about faults “unzipping,” which is a helpful way to visualize what’s going on. A small patch of the fault plane slips, and then expands outward along the fault. In this case, the patch unzipped about 140 kilometers to the east in under a minute, traveling horizontally along the fault plane. Within that patch, the rocks slipped as much as six meters past each other.

Although it’s the seismic energy released by that sudden motion that causes the damage, the surface changes are still eye-catching — some of the GPS stations ended up two meters south of where they had been before the earthquake.

As for that seismic shaking, the pattern of building damage in Kathmandu was partly the result of the geology beneath the city. It sits on a roughly 500-meter-thick stack of lake and river sediment filling a bedrock bowl. The reverberation of seismic waves in that bowl produced a resonance, building stronger waves with a period of 4 to 5 seconds. While fewer homes were actually damaged than expected, taller buildings — which can sway at about that same frequency — didn’t fare as well. (A similar thing happened in the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, when buildings between 6 and 15 stories bore the brunt.)

Hacking a Tesla Model S

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At The Register, John Leyden talks about the recent revelation that the Tesla Model S has known hacking vulnerabilities:

Security researchers have uncovered six fresh vulnerabilities with the Tesla S.

Kevin Mahaffey, CTO of mobile security firm Lookout, and Cloudflare’s principal security researcher Marc Rogers, discovered the flaws after physically examining a vehicle before working with Elon Musk’s firm to resolve security bugs in the electric automobile.

The vulnerabilities allowed the researchers to gain root (administrator) access to the Model S infotainment systems.

With access to these systems, they were able to remotely lock and unlock the car, control the radio and screens, display any content on the screens (changing map displays and the speedometer), open and close the trunk/boot, and turn off the car systems.

When turning off the car systems, Mahaffey and Rogers discovered that, if the car was below five miles per hour (8km/hr) or idling they were able to apply the emergency hand brake, a minor issue in practice.

If the car was going at any speed the technique could be used to cut power to the car while still allowing the driver to safely brake and steer. Consumer’s safety was still preserved even in cases, like the hand-brake issue, where the system ran foul of bugs.

Despite uncovering half a dozen security bugs the two researcher nonetheless came away impressed by Tesla’s infosec policies and procedures as well as its fail-safe engineering approach.

“Tesla takes a software-first approach to its cars, so it’s no surprise that it has key security features in place that minimised and contained the risk of the discovered vulnerabilities,” the researchers explain.

Canada to hold longest election campaign in living memory

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

For those of you not familiar with Canadian politics — and unless you’re a Canadian why would you be? — the longest election campaign since the 19th century kicked off on Sunday, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper went to the Governor General’s office to request that parliament be dissolved. This is going to be a long, long, gruelling political death-march. Eleven whole weeks of politicians bloviating, TV talking heads pretending to interpret every twitch in the polls, political candidates of all shades from light pink to deepest red popping up at every possible gathering of more than three people to beg for votes … it’s going to be awful.

Over at Gods of the Copybook Headings, Richard Anderson provides the early scorecard on the leaders of the major federal parties:

In his infinite cruelty the PM has imposed upon the Canadian people, who never did him any harm, a formal eleven week election campaign. The longest since 1872. Much of Canada still wasn’t part of Canada in 1872. After eleven weeks of politicking those regions might be thinking of leaving. British Columbia we will miss you dearly. Newfoundland much the same.

Lest we complain the status quo remains. As Ronald Reagan once observed status quo is Latin for the mess we’re in. Our particular mess has a dull and worthy quality befitting our national character. This brings us to the vital question: What is Election 2015 about?

Is it about Justin Trudeau’s fitness to rule the nation? No, because nobody in their right mind thinks the Dauphin is fit to rule. He’s a front man for those shrewder than himself. If current polls are to be trusted it appears that Canadians are not keen on a Gerald Butts government.

Perhaps it’s about Thomas Mulcair and his ability to lead. Can you, the good and sensible people of our fair Dominion, imagine yet another Quebec lawyer as ruler of all the Canadas? And if you can hold that mental picture, while still holding your lunch, have you thought carefully about who is part of Team Mulcair? However astute and moderate a PM Tommy might turn out to be he will need build a cabinet. Have you seen the timbers of the NDP caucus lately? […]

Canadians, it is understood, are creatures of habit. We likes what we likes. There is a tendency for the electorate to plunk for the bank manager candidate. The safe pair of hands who won’t screw things up too much. As a people we generally avoid Messiahs or Rabble Rousers. It offends our sense of proportion. We want someone clever enough to deal with basic problems but sensible enough not to wreck the place between elections. In our long national history we have deviated from this common sense approach just once. Way back in 1968 we took a wild and daring risk. The result was fifteen years of Pierre Trudeau.

Bill Davis, perhaps the most quintessential of Ontario politicians, famously attributed his success to a simple formula: Bland works. Stephen Harper is our bland candidate. Beneath the bad hair cut the enormous brain continues to plot. It plotted the Canadian Right out of the political wilderness. It plotted Canada away from the disaster of an Liberal-NDP-Bloc Coalition. Nimbly has it darted us through the shoals of the world economy. He ain’t great but he’s better than what else is on offer.

This October my fellow Canadians let us be boring. Let us be sensible. Let us be bland. It’s what we do best and why, whatever happens over the next eleven weeks, Stephen Harper will probably still be running the joint for years to come. All hail the new Mackenzie King.

QotD: Kids these days

Filed under: Quotations, Randomness, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Sometimes I despair for the kids these days, I really do.

I didn’t expect to feel this way at the tender age of 42. I was supposed to find them puzzling, with their Snapchatting and their Venmo and never looking up from their phones. I was supposed to think they were having too much sex or doing too many drugs and not listening to their wiser elders, gosh darn it. I was supposed to grouse that young people are always getting themselves into trouble.

Instead I’m worried that they aren’t getting themselves into enough trouble. They seem so fragile. They can’t read Ovid without a trigger warning and a pair of latex gloves, or go off to college without calling their parents to check in. Did no one ever take them aside and explain that college is for abandoning your parents, leaving them to worry about what you are doing with their money while you forget to call them for a month at a time ? There is something truly terrifying about a generation of younger people that craves more adult intervention into their lives. Yet, that’s what everyone from teachers to employers reports: a rising number of kids who seek to be tethered to their parents, and don’t seem to know what to do unless Mom or Dad is hovering nearby.

I know, I know. People have been worrying about The Kids These Days since time immemorial. And yet, older people I talk to — ones old enough to remember seeing the low-speed, low-stakes train wreck that was my own generation hurtling through college and into the workforce — confirm my impression that This Time Really Is Different. The upper stratum of the Trophy Kids really are going into college expecting to live in a sort of Nerf universe where nothing ever really hurts, and there’s always an adult to pick them up and put them back on track. And they’re coming out into the workforce expecting the same sort of personal concierge service from a world that, as I was myself dismayed to find 20 years ago, really doesn’t have time to care how they feel.

Not that I blame the kids for this. Their parents are the ones who did it to them, hovering over them every spare minute — and in those rare moments when they have some time off from the endless commute between soccer practice and enrichment activities, calling the cops on anyone who leaves an 11-year-old outside to play basketball for an hour, so that their parents will have to hover too.

Megan McArdle, “Helicopter Parents and the Kids Who Just Can’t”, Bloomberg View, 2015-07-07.

August 6, 2015

Jeb Bush shows his true colours: “I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues”

Filed under: Health, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ace explains why Jeb’s little mind fart is such a huge gift to the Democrats:

Talking about defunding Planned Parenthood Jeb Bush, the presumptive GOP nominee, went just a bit off message about the whole baby parts for sale in violation of federal law thing and mused….

    “The argument against this is … it is a war on women and you are attacking women’s health issues,” he said. “You could take dollar for dollar — although I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues — but if you took dollar for dollar, there are many extraordinarily fine organizations, community health organizations that exist.”

Emphasis mine and everyone elses.

DUDE. NO! BAD JEB! BAD!

So the GOP actually had a reasonable plan, this wasn’t about budget root canal and saving a few bucks, it was about not funding illegal and immoral acts, even indirectly. And hey, we’re going to send this money to decent and honest places that actually, you know, help improve women’s health.

Pretty solid for the GOP.

But instead, Jeb for some reason thought this would be a good time to toss out there the idea that he, and by extension the party he seeks to lead, really just want to stick it to poor women.

Fantastic work!

Well, he did issue a statement saying that’s not what he meant. I’m sure Hillary and every Democratic candidate will be sure to include that correction in the four million ads they’re going to run with the, “although I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues” sound bite. So no big whoop.

Your party has already been castigated — extensively — for the “War on Women” they’ve apparently been waging for years … so you just casually drop in an aside that totally justifies all the accusations? Man, that’s a serious day’s work in this election campaign! I’m not sure even his brother George could have malapropped his way quite so convincingly.

Michael Geist on the latest TPP leaks

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

As you’d expect from a set of negotiations — secret negotiations, at that — what the politicians say about it doesn’t necessarily have much to do with reality:

KEI this morning released the May 2015 draft of the copyright provisions in the Trans Pacific Partnership (copyright, ISP annex, enforcement). The leak appears to be the same version that was covered by the EFF and other media outlets earlier this summer. As such, the concerns remain the same: anti-circumvention rules that extend beyond the WIPO Internet treaties, additional criminal rules, the extension of copyright term, increased border measures, mandatory statutory damages, and expanding ISP liability rules, including the prospect of website blocking for Canada.

Beyond the substantive concerns highlighted below, there are two key takeaways. First, the amount of disagreement within the chapter is striking. As of just a few months ago, there were still many critical unresolved issues with widespread opposition to (predominantly) U.S. proposals. Government ministers may continue to claim that the TPP is nearly done, but the parties still have not resolved longstanding copyright issues.

Second, from a Canadian perspective, the TPP could require a significant overhaul of current Canadian law. If Canada caves on copyright, changes would include extending the term of copyright, implementing new criminal provisions, creating new restrictions on Internet retransmission, and adding the prospect of website blocking for Internet providers. There is also the possibility of further border measures requirements just months after Bill C-8 (the anti-counterfeiting bill) received royal assent.

Given the extensive debate on copyright during the 2012 reforms, the TPP upsets the balance the Canadian government struck, mandating reforms without public consultation or debate. The government has granted itself the power to continue to negotiate the TPP during the election period, but all the major parties should publicly declare where they stand on these issues.

Comedians and UKIP

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Published on 30 Jul 2015

“Progressive” bigotry – the respectable kind.

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