Quotulatiousness

November 8, 2019

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Feds to tackle Quebec’s ongoing repression against minorities

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley on the situation in Quebec, where first-class citizenship is only available to those who speak French and don’t expect their religious beliefs to be respected:

One of the fascinating things about Quebec politics is that it’s often impossible to predict which absurdities will become controversial and which will be accepted as reasonable. The province’s linguistic and more recently cultural debates operate in an atmosphere so divorced from normal reality that it’s impossible to know how any new idea or event might react to its unique and volatile mixture of gases.

The classic example is Pastagate: An inspector from the Office québécois de la langue française found an Italian restaurant’s menu was riddled with Italian — calamari, antipasti — and issued the appropriate cease-and-desist notice. At no point did anyone suggest he had misinterpreted the law. Despite universal scorn and worldwide mockery, at no point did anyone successfully explain why this inspector’s actions were obviously ultra vires, while the OQLF’s other insane diktats — say, forcing a bilingual community newspaper to segregate English-language and French-language content such that English-only advertising will never appear on the same page as a French-language article — were reasonable.

As a result, Quebec politics is like a festival of trial balloons. Most recently we saw languages minister Simon Jolin-Barrette float the idea of banning merchants from greeting customers with “bonjour-hi” — a Downtown Montreal-ism that turns language hawks crimson with rage — only to have Premier François Legault shoot it down a couple of days later amidst widespread ridicule.

By contrast, we’re supposed to think it’s totally reasonable that the National Assembly voted merely to request that merchants use state-sanctioned greetings. Unanimously. Twice.

Ban religious symbols for all civil servants, or only those “in a position of authority”? Which civil servants are “in a position of authority”? Should currently employed civil servants affected by Bill 21 be grandfathered in or not? You can poll all you like, but until any given idea goes through Quebec’s intense media ringer, no one knows how it’ll shake out. With fundamental rights at stake, the majoritarian randomness of it all is truly alarming.

November 7, 2019

Replacing “dead, white male” writers with contemporary First Nations writers

Filed under: Books, Cancon, Education, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Barbara Kay, as you would expect is not a fan of this move by this school board in the Windsor area:

Some years ago, the late, great writer George Jonas asked me about my intellectual influences. Who did I remember as especially formative? Oh, George Orwell, of course. I read Animal Farm in my mid-teens, 1984 a little later, and most of his other writings over the course of my salad years. It would be hard to overstate his effect on my understanding of concepts like “freedom,” “power” and “decency.”

Since Orwell has never been “owned” by the right or the left, both admiring his prose as a model for clarity and coherence, he is the one English-language writer I would consider indispensable for any high school literature curriculum.

Up to now, most educators have concurred. But the Windsor, Ont.-area Greater Essex County District School Board has announced that, in accordance with the spirit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Orwell and other canon favourites in the Grade 11 literature curriculum, including Shakespeare, will be set aside in favour of a course wholly devoted to Indigenous writing. Eight of the district’s 15 schools have already replaced former standards with such books as Indian Horse, In This Together and Seven Fallen Feathers under the rubric of Understanding Contemporary First Nations, Métis and Inuit Voices.

“This decision wasn’t made lightly,” said Tina DeCastro, a teacher consultant with the school board’s Indigenous Education Team. The decision arose from a motion passed by the school board’s trustees as a response to TRC calls for action. Eastern Cherokee Sandra Muse Isaacs, Professor of Indigenous Literature at the University of Windsor, defends the radical change as necessary on the grounds that Indigenous stories have been ignored in the past. “Our stories predate Canada. It’s as simple as that.”

Is it really that simple?

I don’t think there is a sentient Canadian today who isn’t aware that Indigenous voices have been neglected in the past, and who would not wholeheartedly support the addition of Indigenous writing to contemporary literature curricula. But an entire year devoted to Indigenous literature that supplants revered works by great writers from the civilization that produced Canada as a nation-state, in order to redress the offence of historical inattention to Indigenous people, is to rob the majority of Canadian students of their cultural patrimony.

November 4, 2019

Canadian Army TAPV – Tactical Armoured Patrol Vehicle

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Matsimus
Published 1 Jun 2018

The Textron TAPV (Tactical Armoured Patrol Vehicle) is an armoured car currently in use by the Canadian Army. It is based on the M1117 Armoured Security Vehicle, developed for use by the military police of the US Armed Forces.

The Tactical Armoured Patrol Vehicle (TAPV) program began in 2009, and in 2012 the contract was awarded to Textron Systems, Inc. On August 16, 2016, Textron systems delivered the first Tactical Armoured Patrol Vehicle (TAPV) to the Canadian Army. An eventual 500 vehicles will be purchased, with the option to order an additional 100.

Sorry for the re-upload, thanks to those who want to make my life more difficult.

Hope you enjoy!!

Want to support my channel? Check out my Patreon Donation page! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3081754

DISCORD IS BACK! Come hang out!
https://discord.gg/Hsg9gtS

I have Twitter…..sadly:
https://twitter.com/MatsimusGaming

The Ross in the Great War: The Mk III (and MkIIIB)

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 1 Nov 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

While the MkII (1905) iteration of the Ross rifle had resolved most of the major mechanical problems from the MkI, it retained a number of characteristics that the Canadian (and British) military was not fond of. In particular, it was not suited to the use of stripper clips. Starting with experimentation on sporting rifles, Ross substantially redesigned the action for the final 1910 pattern – aka the MkIII.

The MkIII used a rotating bolt as before, but with six locking lugs in two rows of three, instead of two large lugs as the MkI and II. The magazine was replaced by a conventional single-stack design, with a stripper clip guide built into the receiver, and with a nicely adjustable rear aperture sight. This would be the model to equip the Canadian infantry who went to Europe to fight in 1914 and 1915 – and it is there that a new set of problems would begin to plague the Ross.

In keeping with its sporting legacy and reputation for outstanding accuracy, the MkIII Ross was made with a rather tight chamber, optimized for the excellent-quality Canadian production .303 ammunition. Britain had been forced to massively increase ammunition supply as the war lengthened, and British standards had widened to accept ammunition that was really of rather questionable quality. The SMLE rifles used by British forces had chambers made to accommodate this, but the Rosses did not. Canadian ammunition was supposed to follow the Canadian troops, but it was usually diverted to other services because of its high quality, and the Canadians left with ammo that was difficult to chamber or extract in the Ross.

This led to men having to beat open rifle bolts, which led to damage to locking lugs, in a viscous circle of escalating problems. By the time of the German gas attack at Ypres, Canadians were ditching their Rosses for Lee Enfields by the thousands, despite specific orders to the contrary. General Haig finally had enough of the issues, and ordered the Ross removed from combat in 1916, to be replaced by the SMLE (which was finally available in sufficient numbers to arm the Canadian troops).

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85704

November 3, 2019

Alberta and the Liberals

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Coyne summarizes the deep-seated anger in Alberta toward the federal Liberals … and the rest of Canada:

The point sometimes arrives in politics when a complex of different issues coalesce into one; when people stop listening to the arguments in favour of or against each, and instead allow their emotions to dictate a single response to the lot. We are at such a point in Alberta.

Pipelines, carbon taxes, equalization, the Canada Pension Plan — to which familiar litany we can now add the departure of Encana’s headquarters from Calgary — have become, not so much issues in themselves, but arguments in another, grander meta-controversy. All of the questions raised by each (is there a problem? if so, how is it to be solved? who pays? etc) have been pureed into a single narrative: of a Liberal government that is at best indifferent and at worst hostile to Alberta, whose re-election confirms the rest of Canada is as well.

There is, it should be said, some truth in this. Whether the Liberals have failed to win more than a handful of seats in Alberta in over a half a century because of their historic disdain for the province, or whether the causation runs the other way, the chicken is as malignant as the egg. There’s no doubt some people in some parts of the country would cheerfully shut down the oilsands tomorrow, nor is it impossible to detect a strain of anti-Albertanism in some of the rhetoric on the subject.

Albertans, for their part, are not just in a fight to defend their major industry today, but have been for decades. It is inconceivable, to take the most obvious example, that the National Energy Program, that vast attempt to expropriate Alberta’s oil wealth for the benefit of central-Canadian oil consumers, would have been visited upon either Ontario or Quebec, were the situations reversed.

Ross MkII: Sorry, We’ll Get it Right This Time

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 30 Oct 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

The many significant problems with the Model 1903 / MkI Ross rifle had quickly led to the development of the improved MkII design. This strengthened many parts, including the sights, nosecap, bolt latch, and more. The receiver was made thicker, and an extra set of cams added to make the bolt throw smoother. Primary extraction was added by way of angling the locking lugs. Mk II rifles began to come off the Ross Rifle Company production line in December of 1905.

Between its introduction and its replacement by the MkIII in 1912, the MkII Ross would undergo 5 changes in type, mostly involving different rear sights. However, a distinct “long” pattern was also made, designated the MkII**. This model had a longer barrel and some mechanical changes, and was also fitted with a rear aperture sight and stripper clip guide. These would be very successful in competition shooting at the time, and helped salvage the reputation of the Ross after the problems of the MkI.

Overall, 13,700 “long” MkII Rosses were made along with 124,000 of the “short” type. They did see use in World War One, as armament for Canadian artillery units. They were also used as training rifles by the military, and the US government also purchased 20,000 of the MkII3* pattern for use training the multitudes of new US soldiers joining up to fight in Europe.

Many thanks to the private collectors who allowed me access to their rifles to make this video!

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85704

November 2, 2019

Sir Charles Ross was a Jerk: The Martello Tower

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 29 Oct 2019

Note: These towers were built by the British, not the French. Sorry!

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

Sir Charles Ross was really a jerk sometimes. Not the sort of guy you would want to go into business with.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85704

Here are the Wikipedia pages on Sir Charles Ross, Bart. and Martello towers.

November 1, 2019

The “Wokescreen” protecting the Prime Racist

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Justin “Blackface” Trudeau has been completely exonerated for any racist acts he committed, thanks to what Julie Burchill calls “the Wokescreen”:

Justin Trudeau with dark makeup on his face, neck and hands at a 2001 “Arabian Nights”-themed party at the West Point Grey Academy, the private school where he taught.
Photo from the West Point Grey Academy yearbook, via Time

Justin Trudeau seems as compulsively drawn to blacking up as his mother was to hanging around pop groups; after the third example of him doing so was revealed this year, he admitted that he had actually lost count of the number of times he’d done it. Nevertheless, he was defended by minority spokesmen and liberal commentators. This contrasts strikingly with the fate of Atlantic Records UK president Ben Cook, who was forced to resign earlier this month after old photographs of him in blackface emerged. As Cook is responsible for launching the career of Ed Sheeran, some might say he had it coming. But it’s weird how Trudeau, an ostentatiously woke politician, has survived and thrived, while Cook has limped away in disgrace. You’d think the former had betrayed both his beliefs and his followers far more.

[…]

So how come Trudeau got away with it? It’s part of a broader dodge – what the commentator Daniel Norris calls the Wokescreen. From behind this magical canopy, cliques can rob women of their hard-won private spaces (transgender activists) and enjoy the brutish thrill of racism (Corbynite anti-Semites) and because they’ve ticked the box which says Brotherhood Of Man it doesn’t make them bad people! Those people over there are the bad ones – like Jacob Rees-Mogg’s 12-year-old son.

It’s a mystery. But an even bigger one is why blackface is quite rightly unacceptable while drag gets bigger by the day. You’d have to be living in an Amish community not to have heard of RuPaul’s Drag Race, while Channel 5’s Drag Kids follows a process which we squares call “grooming”. Yet no one turns a hair. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if the Black and White Minstrels are insulting and reactionary, why aren’t drag queens? If someone can explain to me why race-based parody is bad and sex-based parody “a bit of fun”, I’d love to know. Woke me up and tell me why!

Ross MkI: Canada’s First Battle Rifle

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 28 Oct 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

Sir Charles Ross was heir to a very wealthy Scottish family, and was a talented if temperamental engineer. He took an interest in firearms and their design, and worked with American and English connections to produce a line of his own straight-pull sporting rifles. Upon returning from the Boer War he looked to expand into the military market.

At this same time, the Canadian government was looking to replenish its arms supplies after the war, and requested Enfield rifles form the British. The request was turned down, as Britain did not have enough supply to spare any for the Canadians. The Canadians were expected to construct their own factory to make rifles of he standard British pattern. Well, the Canadian government was not eager to invest that sort of capital into the project. They investigated buying arms elsewhere, but the consensus was that Canada’s armaments should come from either Britain or from within Canada itself. No good solution was apparent until Sir Charles Ross stepped in.

Ross offered to fund the construction of a factory himself, and use Canadian labor and industry to manufacture Ross rifles for the military. This seemed like an excellent solution — for zero initial cash outlay, the Canadian government would get rifles both designed and produced domestically! The rifles would be chambered for the standard .303 British cartridge, thus handling the British objections about arms compatibility (Ross pointed out that the British themselves used something like 7 different patterns of rifle at the time).

In 1902, Ross and the Canadian government signed a contract for 12,000 rifles to be made in 1903 and 10,000 per year thereafter, at the price of $25 each. In addition to the Canadian military, the Royal North West Mounted Police also adopted the new Ross rifle. Deliveries did not actually begin until 1905, and when they did plenty of disturbing problems arose. The rifles proved fragile and unreliable — and a weak bolt latch periodically allowed the bolt to fall completely out of the rifle on parade drill — not a good start!

Only 10,000 of the Mark I Ross rifles were made, and an improved Mark II pattern would follow as quickly as Ross could make it a reality.

Many thanks to the private collectors who allowed me access to their rifles to make this video!

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85704

October 21, 2019

“On Monday Canadians will have a choice between five left-of-centre social-democratic parties”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Except for Maxime Bernier’s invisible-to-the-mainstream-media PPC, the other parties contesting today’s election are all remarkably similar except for the colour of their signs and the mediocrity of their leaders:

As Mrs Thatcher used to say, first you win the argument, then you win the vote. So not engaging in any serious argument has certain consequences. John Robson puts it this way:

    As Canada’s worst election ever staggers toward the finish line, a theme has finally emerged. Despite the best efforts of the party leaders to say nothing coherent or true at any point, we know what it’s about. Everyone is running against the Tories. Including the Tories. Makes you wonder what they’re so afraid of.

On Monday Canadians will have a choice between five left-of-centre social-democratic parties: the crony left (Liberals), the hard left (NDP), the eco-left (Greens), the secessionist left (Bloc) and the squish left (Conservatives). The only alternative to the crony-hard-eco-secessionist-squish social-justice statism on offer is a disaffected Tory, Maxime Bernier. John Robson again:

    Bernier may be an imperfect human being and a flawed politician. It happens. But whatever his blemishes, his party exists because the Tories abandoned their beliefs and their base long before 2017 on every important conservative issue from free markets to traditional social values to strong national defence.

A billboard in Toronto, showing Maxime Bernier and an official-looking PPC message.
Photo from The Province – https://theprovince.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-berniers-legitimate-position-on-immigration-taken-down-by-spineless-billboard-company/wcm/ecab071c-b57d-4d93-b78c-274de524434c

M Bernier would like to rethink immigration policy, but that makes him a racist so he shouldn’t be allowed in the debates because, per John Tory, while he’s free to rent the Scotiabank Arena, public buildings such as the CBC studios have a “higher responsibility”.

It’s a good thing for the other guys that Bernier was snuck in to a couple of debates because otherwise they’d be running against an entirely mythical beast — a red-meat conservative behemoth stomping the land for which there’s less corroborating evidence than of Justin in blackface but which is nevertheless mysteriously threatening to steamroller your social-justice utopia into the asphalt. Ah, if only that were true: I hope voters in the Beauce will return Max, and I hope our small band of readers in Longueuil-Saint Hubert will persuade their neighbours to turn out for our pal Ellen Comeau; but this is not shaping up as a breakthrough night for the People’s Party.

Nevertheless, sans Max, what’s left? Virtue-Dancing With The Stars: Elizabeth May says Trudeau wants to eliminate CO2 completely, but not until 2030! Justin Trudeau says that Scheer didn’t believe in gay marriage before 2005! Jagmeet Singh says that May’s selling out to the billionaires by promising to balance the budget by 2047, whereas he won’t balance the budget ever! Yves-François Blanchet says Singh’s ten-point plan to eliminate bovine flatulence by last Tuesday is too little too late compared to the Bloc’s plan to reduce Canada’s carbon footprint by declaring Quebec independent … oh, wait, sorry, that was almost an intrusion of something real: I meant “by declaring Quebec fully sovereign when it comes to jurisdiction over selecting its own pronouns for the door of the transgender bathroom: je, moi, mon …”

And at that point in the debate Lisa LaFlamme moves on to the next urgent concern of Canadian voters: Are politicians’ aboriginal land acknowledgments too perfunctory? Should they take up more time at the beginning of each debate? Say, the first hour or two?

John Robson argues that all five candidates are running against proposals that no one’s proposing because deep down inside they know that lurking somewhere out there is not a mythical right-wing Bigfoot but mere prosaic Reality, which sooner or later will assert itself. I’m not so sure. I think it’s more an enforcing of the ground rules, a true land acknowledgment that public debate can only take place within the bounds of this ever shriveling bit of barren sod. Those who want to fight on broader turf – such as M Bernier – cannot be permitted to do so.

October 20, 2019

The conspiracy theorists appear to have been right about this one – “Project Cactus”

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

Maxime Bernier and the PPC would have had a tough time getting much attention in this election campaign anyway, but the Laurentian Elite were apparently scared enough to sponsor underhanded actions to keep him and his party out of the debates and on the defensive on social media:

Warren Kinsella’s Daisy Group consulting firm was behind a social media campaign to put the People’s Party of Canada on the defensive and keep leader Maxime Bernier out of the federal leaders’ debates, according to documents provided to CBC News.

The documents outline the work done by several employees of Daisy on behalf of an unnamed client. A source with knowledge of the project told CBC News that client was the Conservative Party of Canada.

The plan was first reported Friday night by the Globe and Mail.

According to a source with knowledge of the project, who spoke to CBC News on condition they not be named, the objective of the plan, dubbed “Project Cactus,” was to make the Conservative Party look more attractive to voters by highlighting PPC candidates’ and supporters’ xenophobic statements on social media.

The source added that Daisy employed four full-time staffers on Project Cactus at one time.

Kinsella is a lawyer, anti-racism activist and former Liberal strategist who has been a vocal critic of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.

[…]

In a statement to CBC News on Friday, the executive director of the PPC said “It hardly comes as a surprise that the Conservative Party of Canada would be behind such disgraceful and cowardly tactics.”

“As our Leader Maxime Bernier stated when he left the CPC and repeated on numerous occasions since then, they are ‘morally and intellectually corrupt.’ And today, this story proves it without a doubt,” Johanne Mennie said in an email.

October 18, 2019

Colonel Daniel Stepaniuk’s one-man campaign to wipe out (some) religious observance in the Militia

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Christie Blatchford on the oddly partial actions of the officer in charge of more than a dozen Ontario militia regiments as far as religion is concerned:

The Lorne Scots (Peel, Dufferin and Halton Regiment) on parade in Brampton, Ontario on 24 September, 2016.
Photo by Nicholas Russon.

An army brigade commander has told the 14 Ontario reserve regiments under his charge that they must cancel any “church parade” they have planned.

Despite a lack of complaints about the parades, which see soldiers march to their regimental church, Col. Daniel Stepaniuk urged his commanding officers to stop participating in “any event where the primary purpose is liturgical, spiritual or religious … even if the service is non-denominational.”

A custom in the Canadian Army since the time of Confederation, the parades aren’t as common as they once were, though many units still have at least one a year, often tied to Remembrance Day ceremonies.

[…]

First of all, there is the glaring contradiction with Stepaniuk’s harsh stand on church parades and a parade that happened in Toronto last April.

A group of soldiers — I counted between 15 and 20 — were issued weapons, allowed to march in their military uniforms and were escorted by an armoured vehicle in the annual Khalsa parade for Canada’s Sikh community. It is considered a holy day.

The soldiers were from the Lorne Scots, one of Stepaniuk’s reserve units based in Brampton. The CO of the unit said at the time that he signed off on the weapons only after his commander (that would presumably be Stepaniuk, or perhaps the brigadier-general above him) approved the soldiers’ participation.

So weapons worn at a Khalsa Day parade good, though against the rules (The Canadian Armed Forces Manual of Drill and Ceremonial), according to army spokeswoman Karla Gimby.

But soldiers going anywhere near a church, bad, and against rules five years old that no one cared to enforce until now.

But most of all, in such small incremental strikes, does Canadian history and tradition lose strength.

October 15, 2019

Looking past October 21st

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Jay Currie has already wasted his vote at the advanced polls (the same way I’m going to waste mine come election day), and now he’s considering what our parliament will look like on October 22nd (here’s a hint … we both know our guy isn’t going to be PM):

On October 22 we’re going to wake up to a politically very different Canada assuming that JT is unable to win a majority. The first thing which will change is Trudeau’s position. He could be Mr. Dressup with a majority but in a minority position – assuming he can form a government at all – his Teflon coating will have worn off. It is just possible that the bought and paid for Canadian media will rouse itself from its slumber and begin to ask slightly harder questions.

The second thing which will change is that third, fourth and even fifth parties will matter. For Trudeau to form a government he will need at least the NDP’s support and, perhaps, the Greens. To get that he is going to have to buy into a lot of nonsense which will be extremely bad for the country. The Liberals have plenty of idiotic policy but they don’t hold a candle to either the NDP or the Greens for economically useless virtue signalling.

Scheer would have an easier time of it in a minority position. His only possible ally would be the Bloc and while the Bloc wants to break up Canada they are financially sound and not nearly as eager as the NDP or the Greens for open borders and looney carbon taxes.

The key thing to remember is that regardless of who forms the government, that government is not going to last very long. In a sense, this election is about the next, more decisive, election. If Trudeau loses as big as he looks to be doing the Liberal Party will be looking for another leader. If Scheer ekes out a workable minority he will be looking to call an early election (in the face of the idiotic Fixed Terms act we have saddled ourselves with) to crush that new leader.

For Singh, especially if he picks up seats as well as popular vote, the election will cement his place as the NDP leader and silence the people who are talking about his unelectability. Lizzie May will be hailed as an emerging force in Canadian politics if she manages to pick up a couple more seats on Vancouver Island and, I suspect, that is exactly what she is going to do. (Old, white, retired, rich people just love a party committed to never changing anything.)

And what about Max? Obviously, he needs to hold his own seat. Which may be tough but I think he will pull through. I very much doubt he will win any other seats for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with Max or his policies. New parties take a while to gain traction. For Max, the biggest issue is how he does in the popular vote. Sitting at 1% is not going to cut it, but pop up over 4% and the table changes. Anything beyond that and Max will be the election night story.

October 13, 2019

Modern journalism encompasses “activism,” “advocacy,” “partisanship,” “satire,” “hoaxing,” “unbearable self-promotional bluster,” “pranks,” “torquing of facts,” “invective,” “demagoguery” and “stunts”

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

I’ve always been pretty cynical about the media, so it was no surprise to me when the federal government decided to start explicitly subsidising the rest of the media (they already fund the CBC), and part of the fun was deciding who qualifies for those juicy subsidies. I mean, “journalism” today is a pretty broad category that covers a lot more than the traditional TV, radio, magazine, and newspaper formats. I’m sure everyone is shocked — Shocked! — to discover that the government is playing favourites among the many media outlets over not just who gets subsidies, but even who gets accredited to cover political events.

Jack Layton, leader of the federal New Democratic Party of Canada, on January 2, 2006 in a media scrum outside a campaign rally at the Kent Street legion in Ottawa, Canada.
Photo by Thorfinn Stainforth via Wikimedia Commons.

As we’re in the late stages of a federal election campaign, the question of who is considered to be a “journalist” merits closer attention, as Colby Cosh explains:

Two media outlets of a right-wing character, Rebel Media and the True North Centre for Public Policy, have been denied accreditation for post-debate press appearances at the last minute. The Parliamentary Press Gallery, acting on behalf of the federal Leaders’ Debates Commission, has somehow decided that their delegates are advocates rather than journalists. Oh-ho.

Here, an agent of the state seems to have pushed the “So who’s a journalist?” question really to the forefront, and introduced a distinction between journalism and activism that may not be tenable. The history and practice of journalism, even at the highest levels of public and professional esteem, includes entities and activities that fall into all of the following categories: “activism,” “advocacy,” “partisanship,” “satire,” “hoaxing,” “unbearable self-promotional bluster,” “pranks,” “torquing of facts,” “invective,” “demagoguery” and “stunts.”

If we must march toward state licensing of journalism in double-quick time, and this seems to be happening whether I like it or not, arguments about the definition of journalism will have to recognize these realities. But, of course, the word “journalism” as used from day to day is mostly just a status marker (really, a label concocted for academic use). “Journalism” will resist any historically aware attempt to bound it with a list of scientific-type taxonomic criteria.

This, of course, does not rule out an ignorant or fanciful attempt to set criteria. But most of the concepts in the list I made above, a list of things some people would like to exclude from journalism, are themselves ideas founded on fuzzy judgments of value, or of mere taste.

The media outlaws who found the debate gates shut in their faces got together and sought an injunction requiring the commission to allow them to appear in the magic chamber of questions after the debate. No one had really explained the decision to exclude them; no one could point to a solid pre-existing definition of journalism that they did not meet (surprise!), or to a relevant formal policy of the commission. It really gets the attention of a judge when the state behaves in an arbitrary way, and this proved to be the case, foreseeably, at the oral hearing for the injunction. Which was granted.

But an injunction is a temporary emergency remedy that does not require a full hearing of the facts — only the possibility of immediate incorrigible harm. The question haunting the Dominion — the question of who is a journalist — remains athwart our path.

October 11, 2019

The National Basketball Appeasement Association

Filed under: Business, Cancon, China, History, Liberty, Politics, Sports, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Colby Cosh discusses the moral squalor, cowardice, avarice, and reflex appeasement gesturing of the NBA and finds a Canadian angle to the whole mess:

The National Basketball Association has spent the week trying to control the effects of a tweet by Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, who jeopardized his job on Friday when he told readers “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” The tweet winked out of existence quickly, but it had prodded a sore spot. Morey faced immediate criticism from the Rockets’ owner and from the Chinese consul in Houston. Steps were taken within China to declare the Rockets personae non gratae and to cancel some NBA broadcasts.

[…]

Which leads to us to the true Canadian angle, copyright Colby J. Cosh 2019 (all rights reserved). Daryl Morey’s tweet was the 21st century’s “Vive le Quebec libre.”

All right, Morey isn’t a statesman, as de Gaulle was — but the NBA itself wants us to believe that it is a force for international harmony, and Morey is a prominent figure in the NBA. There is an amusing subplot here in that Morey has traditionally been regarded as an outsider in the league, a computer nerd who barged his way in by using technical analytics to improve team performance both on the court and at the gate. The natural assumption of a person who went to university in the 1990s is that he would be perfectly free as a matter of course to blurt out a political opinion — one that is in no way remotely controversial in the free world — on Twitter. Well, we are all learning to revise such assumptions.

When General de Gaulle uttered the 1967 version of an ill-advised, impulsive tweet, it created a small spasm of anger in English Canada, as Morey’s endorsement of an increasingly separatist protest movement in Hong Kong has. (Chinese sovereignty in Hong Kong is supposed to be as much an accepted fact as Canadian sovereignty in Quebec, and from the Party point of view, the Hong Kong protests are internal civil disorder. The same, of course, would go for China’s re-education camps full of Uyghurs, who represent the fate that pro-democracy Hong Kongers are trying to avert.)

But it was the Canadian political establishment that de Gaulle really provoked to rage with his sly, ambivalent remark. It was seen as an offence against hospitality. Canada’s mandarins — pardon the inadvertent pun — knew that de Gaulle’s resounding “liiibre” would give, above all, moral impetus to the enemies of Confederation. This proved to be the case, as far as history can tell. Et donc — vive Hong Kong! Vive Hong Kong libre!

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress