Obfuscated Thoughtlessness Inversed

Filmmaker Michael Moore said he disapproves of copyright laws. It’s a stance, he admits “I’m sure is different than that of Harvey and Bob,” referring to the Weinsteins, whose Weinstein film company is releasing the movie nationally June 29.

“I think the music industry’s response to Napster was misguided … and for me, it’s about getting people to see the movie and that’s what I want, so they will talk about it,” Moore said. -June 18, 2007 from Brandweek

You have to see this film. I recommend the theatre on opening night June 29, but I certainly couldn't wait that long. Given Michael Moore's high profile support for you downloading it, this might be time to up and do what he says.

You'll need a BitTorrent client like Azureus or BitTorrent and then to make a quick visit to a website like ThePirateBay.org. After you download it you will need to install an MPEG4 codec.

Caution, I am not suggesting you break your local copyright laws, I'll let Michael Moore do the suggesting there. However, as you are probably aware this activity is not illegal in Canada (where I reside) as you already pay a fee when you buy storage media.

“As a moviemaker … I created a work of art that is meant to be seen on a screen that is 40 by 20 feet. It’s a big-screen experience that is to be shared in a movie theater, where people love to boo and get mad.”

Moore added that the number of theaters the movie is distributed to is determined on the opening weekend, meaning that if too many people opt to download the movie instead of seeing it at the theater, it may not see as widespread a screening.

“That said, I would never want to prosecute anybody who would download it,” he added.

Sicko is available on a number of P2P sites for free download. One site, thepiratebay.org, lists at least roughly 2,000 downloads of the flick, and the Web site p2pnet.net, which tracks torrents, or P2P downloads, writes that the movie “is already thoroughly entrenched on the p2p networks.”

Labels: alternatives, health, leftist content creation, new media critique, opinion, pro-choice

With a speech from the throne and the crack of an enabling act, the BC Legislature is back. It only took three seasons, made up of the normal two month hiatus for winter, a four month "cancellation" because democracy makes the Liberals look bad often called autumn, and the regularly scheduled four months off for summer before that. Finally, we have a democratic legislature in session once again.

And, fancy that, it looks like Gordon Campbell has gone from being a drunk driver to a hybrid driver. No idling limousine outside for Campbell, I guess no one told the Lieutenant Governor about the contents of the speech she was about to read. She still idled her limo outside the legislature while she read it.

My favourite quote in response to the throne speech has to be:

"I'm pleased that the speech mentions climate change, but one has to wonder why the premier is suddenly embracing his Inner Eco-Warrior when his government has paid virtually no attention to this area," says CUPE BC president Barry O'Neill.

That comes from this press release. Here's another gem from the CUPE BC release and O'Neill:

"Once again, like last year, there are platitudes about 'unacceptable' homelessness, but no recognition that it's the government's own policies and cutbacks that have led to the crisis in Vancouver and other cities. They talk about 'sunshine legislation' for school district companies' business practices. Maybe they should consider 'sunshine legislation' for their own public-private partnership agenda, which is notorious for its secrecy."

Meanwhile, talk of the future of BC was the hot criticism of Campbell's hot air filled throne speech. After cutting $50 million from Child-Care the question had to be asked, why is Gordon Campbell seriously jeopardizing the future of BC by putting the lives of BC's youngest last on the priority list. Items like this from today's headlines really bring the point home: For today's family, time's not on their side [as] hectic schedules, longer work weeks contribute to less togetherness than in 80s and Canada mediocre about child welfare.

This BCGEU press release hammers the point home so many times you could have built it into a house:

"Gordon Campbell has done nothing to restore the cuts to child care let alone provide funds to improve the system," said George Heyman, BCGEU president. While the government talks about communities being caring places for children, the government says nothing about improving our child care system. They have the money to improve and expand child care. The premier’s own Progress Board, parents, and others have all said that the improvements are necessary."

Now, I don't want to hear any whining about how it was the federal Liberal government that didn't get re-elected that resulted in the $50 million not being available either. Dion had 10 years and his Liberal buddies had 3 more to deliver on the child-care promise they made in 1993. The money never arrived. period. end of story. You lost the election and you never delivered on the child-care promise. Let's refresh, in 1993 that promise was:

"Quality, accessible child care is an economic advantage for Canada...The objective of the Liberal policy on child care is to create genuine choices for parents. A Liberal government, working with the provinces, will implement a realistic and fiscally responsible program to increase the number of child care spaces in Canada." - from The Red Book, 1993 via Voices for child care Canada

And, when those same Red Book Liberals presided over the largest cuts to social programs in Canadian history the BC NDP government protected those same social programs by cutting elsewhere. The Campbell Liberals instead are running a surplus and cutting the $50 million.

So this leaves it up to the NDP to hold the government accountable and get results. It looks like they are up to the challenge:

“It’s clear that Gordon Campbell read the climate change plan put forward by B.C.’s New Democrats,” said James. “The question now for British Columbians is can they trust Gordon Campbell to deliver. Every year, Gordon Campbell picks a new priority for his Throne Speech and every year he fails to deliver. Last year, Gordon Campbell’s priority was health care, but 12 months later all B.C. saw was more cuts, longer ER waits, and hallway medicine.

Stay tuned to your local parliamentary channel, for the full response to the throne speech, by the NDP official opposition, later, today.

Labels: alternatives, bc ndp, bcmedia, democracy, environment, green isn't just a colour it's an imperative, health, leftist content creation, ndp, opinion, union

Aboriginal people are younger on average, their unemployment rates are higher and incomes lower; they are more likely to live in crowded conditions; they have higher residential mobility; and children are more likely to be members of a lone-parent family. They also have a lower level of education. - Statistics Canada

Today, the Assembly of First Nations announced that they will be filing a Human Rights Complaint against systemically discriminatory underfunding in Canadian indigenous child welfare; unless this funding imbalance is immediately corrected.

Canada is still apprehending children from their parents at an astounding rate. One in ten first children are in foster care. This compares to one in two hundred amongst the non-indigenous population of Canadian children. Our country's genocidal policies of generational theft have not been stopped. Thinking Canadians should take this opportunity to stand up to this on-going racism. The devastating consequences of chronic underfunding and an over-focus on apprehension will have repercussions for our collective future.

According to CBC, the Assembly says that, First Nations children serving agencies, are funded 22% less than those that deal with non-aboriginal children. The Assembly calculates that equalizing funding would only take $107 million.

The long-term consequences of a failure to act now, are far more than the $3.27 per Canadian that correcting this potentially genocidal and obviously systemic discrimination would cost.

"It's not because we have a Conservative government in power that has caused us to take this action. This has been building up over a number of years and successive governments," said Phil Fontaine, who has often been criticized as a closet federal Liberal. Mr. Fontaine was forced to deflect accusations that the timing of this announcement could have political overtones.

This criticism can easily be assuaged by pointing out that, a human rights complaint:

• will not be resolved within the electoral time-lines,
  
• is before a commission that can not force the government to act even if they find systemic discrimination, and
• is a political issue and only the election of a government the likes of which we have never seen in this country, will result in justice for first peoples, young and old.

Overall, the proportion of Aboriginal people among provincial/territorial sentenced custody admissions has remained stable at 21% since 2001/02. The proportion of Aboriginal people among sentenced admissions to federal facilities also remained stable at 18%. - Statistics Canada

Justice must be achieved now! Not against one youngster who steals... we must do justice as a country, even though Canada has never before shown it feels.

Labels: alternatives, anti-war, canada, copwatch, democracy, health, human rights abuse, leftist content creation, ndp, opinion, yay immigration

The end of hunger is nearby. Nearer than your fridge. Nearer than your country's continued obesity. It is right under your nose and above your chin. It is as simple as what you cram into your mouth.

Stop eating meat. I will even be happy with you eating one less meat centred meal a week. Or even spending some time reading about the impact of your meat addiction...

The livestock sector is by far the single largest anthropogenic user of land. The total area occupied by grazing is equivalent to 26 percent of the ice-free terrestrial surface of the planet.

The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport.

Livestock are also responsible for almost two-thirds (64 percent) of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems. - from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Livestock's Long Shadow (thanks Stolen Moments)

You make a choice about what you eat every day. For the sake of the more than 825,000,000 people who are undernourished make the right choice, today.

There are 209.5 million undernourished people in India and a further 153.7 million in China. These two nuclear powers alone account for an undernourished population more than ten times that of Canada's total population. A Diktat from our country criticizing their governments choice to fund nuclear weapons before completely establishing food security could be issued, but given our complicity in providing Candu Reactors that helped both China and India go nuclear it would be hard to expect that to lessen the anger of those without enough to eat. Instead, just try to stop eating meat.

Labels: alternatives, anti-war, canada, go veggie, green isn't just a colour it's an imperative, health, human rights abuse, nuclear waste, opinion, public power

The BC Government's on-going conversation on health continues to suck. Only 5,000 people, so far are talking to the provincial government about their plans for privatization of health care. The public appears to be wise enough to realize that anything they say to the Gordon Campbell Liberals will likely be used to justify a pre-determined course of action.

A petition, against health-care privatization, I ran a few years ago received nearly 40,000 responses on a near-zero budget. When you compare this with 5,000 participants on a multi-million dollar public relations fiasco (normally not even a slightly fair comparison but...) it is clear there is a massive credibility gap on the Conversation on Health. Oh yeah, it's true I am finally and publicly admitting that Alfred Young is a pseudonym for me. Take that privatization and no longer being afraid of recriminations!

The BC Health Conversation is another matter. This excellent subvertisement sponsored by the HEU is a great way to impact future health policy. Check it out.

The HEU also had their website voted into the 2007 Top 10 Labour websites as announced today by Labourstart. The LHMU, the union I spent much of last year working for in Melbourne, also made the list. Congratulations to them and the other 2007 winners.

Labels: canada, democracy, health, historical, hospitality, human rights abuse, link, online campaign

This site is still up. Fuckers. I haven't held office as Chairperson for the UVic Students' Society since 2000, but these anti-choicers are still suggesting you e-mail me and tell me how wrong-headed I am.

To top it all off, you guessed it, they are the ones who are wrong.

They lost a democratic vote of the membership to establish the policy, another in 1999 to protect it and apparently it was revisited for the third time recently and the idiots lost again.

The issue was simple. They thought the student society shouldn't have any control over itself and e-mail the The University President's Council to that effect. They also thought policy set by democratic meetings of over 500 people should exempt them for no reason.

Oh how my e-mail box used to whine under the barrage of their incessant insanity.

Happy Pro-Choice Blogging Day everybody!

May the anti-choicers shrivel and die soon... if not here is some Bill Hick's to live by:

"If you're really pro-life, here's what you do. Don't block med clinics. OK? Lock arms, and block cemeteries. Let's see how fucking committed you are to this premise!
'She can't come in.'
'She was 96, she got hit by a bus, what?'
'There's options.'
'What? stuff her? What're you talking about? She's dead!'
'We're pro-life; get her out of that casket! Get her out! We're pro-life, there will be no death!'
...look, a three-month old baby in a woman's belly is not a human being, OK? It's just a congregate of cells. You're not a human being, 'till you're in my phone book." - Bill Hicks

Yay for Roe v. Wade!

Labels: alternatives, bc blogs, canada, democracy, health, leftist content creation, link, online campaign, opinion, personal story, pro-choice

The announcement by the Journal Nature that a part of the brain known as the posterior superior temporal sulcus is responsible for altruistic feelings, makes you think.

Am I too altruistic? Do I have an over-sized sulcus?

Is George W. Bush a warmongering fuckwad because he has the wrong sized brain? Wrongly apportioned? Generally damaged?

The answer might be yes, however there will be no Eugenics on this blog.

George W. Bush is evil because of who holds his purse strings. Capital is the cause of war, not one man's brain function.

I have a large size posterior temporal because I grew up in a place that needed more altruism and community spirit. My education and upbringing grew my brain. I think we all need to get out there and build for collective gain.

And this study definitely doesn't refute that idea, nor am I refuting this study. We likely are extremely complex chemical machines with no choice and a chemical will. But, don't give in to your inner chagrin. Choose the life you want to lead. Lead the change you want to see. Definitely don't worry about your chemicality as we can all be free.

So, help your superior sulcus grow and do right for your community, bro.

Labels: alternatives, anti-war, green isn't just a colour it's an imperative, health

Chilean office workers told to shun neckties to ease air conditioning costs is an idea that is anything but the Oddity that the CBC has labeled this story as. The idea of forcing people to wear clothing appropriate for a British winter in the middle of a southern hemisphere summer is ridiculous. What is worse is then air conditioning to make up for it.

If we are forced to chose between planet earth and the fashion norms of the past I choose a future with creative new ideas free from global warming. Now if only we can give up coal, gas-fired and nuclear as power generation sources. Not in British Columbia. At least the NDP are calling Gordon Campbell on this insanity.

Labels: bcmedia, democracy, environment, green isn't just a colour it's an imperative, health, nuclear waste, opinion, public power

The idea is simple enough. Import your list of contacts from GMail / Yahoo / Hotmail / AOL into MySpace and see who is already a MySpace member.

Too bad it doesn't fucking work.

You give the man your password, wait a while and then boom, crash, down goes the system. 404 errors all over the place and links to who knows where.

Then there is the second and third try where it finally figures out that it should load your address book without sending you into the nethers of cyberspace. First few people are displayed you go to the next bunch and wait for 10 minutes while it moves like mummified molasses.

I'm all about overloading your server, but damn, I run on a free server at home, not a multi-billion dollar News Corp flagship.

Oh, and to top that off you get all these people you added to your addressbook in high school, and no new friends cause everyone you like is obsessed with Myspace as you and has found you already.

Stupid Address Book import....

BTW: The same function on Facebook works great! Now all I need is one to import my friendster "friends" into myspace, that list into hi5 and that into facebook and it will appear to those who are looking that I have friends again.

I have a real friend, she uses hyves.nl.

I don't want any friends at all on Digg.com, Technorati, Windows Live or anywhere else with a social networking component so you won't see me importing stuff there...

Ok, enough of this blogging, time to go drink with real people.. maybe they'll be my real friends and leave comments on this blog after they are good and drunk with me. Maybe I need a Second Life this one is cyber-lame.

Labels: alternatives, anti-microsoft, health, opinion, personal story, tools

The doctors say it works. The users use it. The scientists say it saves lives. Stephen Harper says it has to close in 2007.

Let's be honest, anyone who is willing to go here between 10 am and 4 pm to do drugs, should be supported. These people need the help and should not have their program canceled.

"Hey man I need a hit. Let's go down to the safe injection site, they got bright lights and little booths to do drugs in. Yeah man. That sounds like a great place to get high."

Come on! Vancouver's safe injection site should be replicated across Canada's urban centres not destroyed because of ideological angst about drug users.

What is Harper thinking?

Is this the wedge issue he plans on taking into the next election. The ultimate divide between rural solutions of the church and the urban constituency he doesn't have or want. Does he really think the constituents in the communities around the site, who have been collectively trying to deal with the problems of addiction and make a community solution work for the most vulnerable, should be undercut?

Maybe, he thinks if the users themselves had just made the right choices earlier in life they wouldn't be ill now. Maybe, he believes that the consequences of these decisions should be felt to discourage others from making the wrong choice?

"Look buddy, you just shouldn't have taken that first hit. I know you were fourteen, depressed and all your now dead, older and influential friends were doing it under that bridge. I know everyone, you knew was telling you it was the only way to be happy given the situation you were living in. But that was 8 years ago, that was the Liberal's fault that you had no access to school counseling because of social transfer payment cuts.. the deficit? yeah well I guess that was Mulroney, but let's stick to the point... Come on, heroine is bad for you buddy, sorry that's the way it is," opines the constituency assistant who not so gently is moving the 22 year old who now looks like she was born in 1959 towards the door.

"Oh you want treatment options? Look we know how to treat this, but, but, our government, it.. well how can I explain this to you so you'll understand.. We like cops and border guards and the military as our sort of long-term solutions. Yeah, the BC Government spent $1.2 million renovating the site but it only costs $500,000 a year to operate... but you know that doesn't fit in with our big plan to increase funding for weapons related solutions by billions of dollars and defund that program for safe injection sites. What about scientific outcomes you say.. Scientific outcomes? What do you know of scientific outcomes? ... You know about the x-ray machine.. oh well, yeah I guess that it is a pretty big scientific development that results in thousands of potentially life threatening injuries being properly cured with pieces of plaster and bed rest each year. Yeah, that safe injection site would have reduced the chance that you die from what once was a recreational habit, at less than the cost of one gently used MRI machine.. but we are ideologically wedded to canceling this program, Mr. Day said so at the last caucus meeting us constituency assistants were invited to."

The assistant is now closing the door in the constituents face, "But, look, Stephen Harper, (that's a picture of your MP and him at the last convention)" the assistant points to the dorky handshake shot over the door as a distraction. "Well Stephen just doesn't think science is a good way to make public policy. He thinks you should have individually solved this problem by yourself and every single other problem you have ever faced." Slam.. the lock clicks closed. The constituency assistant thinks to herself, wow I almost had to use the panic button on that one she was ugly.

Let's look at this from the perspective of actually trying to solve the problems associated with intravenous drug use. Collectively, we are on an Earth that, ignore it if you want to, is suffering from the effects of a serious humanity infection. If you knew someone else had the choice to continue to fund a project that was going to save your entire eco-system from destruction (be it urban or rural), wouldn't you be mad if they didn't?

How is this safe injection site different? For you the middle class blog-reader the effect of having many diseased people in a community is similar to having the ill effects of a polluted environment.

Lance the boil you say? ... force people to follow a strict moral code.. C'mon you won't find the solution to this problem, in Stockwell Day's bible. When that thing was written they hadn't invented a device for measuring time accurately. (How olds the earth Stocky? 6,000 years you say, really?) You also won't find the solution in Day's other book of magic, the Criminal Code, you can't easily dissuade addiction through threatening to put people in a place where the drugs are constant, there is a warm bed and a roof over your head.

What is the solution then?

Well we now know part of the answer to this question. We have known for a long-time that solutions to problems come from scientific discovery and the scientific method. Collectively, we just conducted an experiment on some of the most vulnerable people, in one of our most livable cities, to try and make it better. We did it to see if we could improve our community. To see if given a few tools we could improve the quality of life for everyone. Turns out, we do know how, when we hire nurses and use the science of basic hygiene, under the supervision of a doctor with a couple of social workers thrown in for good measure. When we make available some of the basics that most of us take for granted, to those that don't have them, basics like a well-lit numbered cubicle. We all get to see, amongst a particularly disadvantaged group of people, encouraging results.

If you knew, that decision makers were canceling the programs that provided proven results, that could improve your life expectancy through solutions that work for people in your community, wouldn't you be angry? Well get angry.

The safe injection site model can improve all of our lives. Aren't you angry that Harper has set a deadline of September 2007 for the permits for Insite to run out? I am pissed.

C'mon Harper. C'mon. Just try it this once. Just try a little science. [whispering] You'll be hooked on it for life. muahahahaha... [mirthful cackle]

PS: The minority conservative government can be beaten on this one. Our federal government has virtually no seats in our urban centres and safe injection sites are at this time essentially an urban solution. They have no mandate to cancel this program. A majority of our current Parliament should amend the relevant pieces of legislation to make safe injection sites legal. This solution would work within 2 hours travel by public transit of more than half this country's population. I don't mean just on an experimental basis either. We need these legislative changes introduced immediately, we will have to get on it to make sure they are in place, before the first safe injection site would otherwise have to close.

Labels: health, human rights abuse