Idle No More

Despite (once again) crowning Stephen Harper the Douchebag of the Year, there was something I couldn't mention in the video, simply because of lack of time. It's not much of a secret that -- like most countries with an aboriginal population -- Canada treats its native peoples like third-class citizens. This is by no means unique to Harper; possibly the most shameful chapter in our history, involves the federal government pretty much abducting Indian children, from 1884 to 1948, and abusing them in boarding schools to try to wipe out their heritage. It's as close as we've ever come to ethnic cleansing -- and ironically, something that Harper once apologized for.

Beyond that, Harper's attitude towards the First Nations peoples of Canada has been.... to do pretty much nothing. At all. One of his first acts as prime minister, was scrapping a treaty that (theoretically anyway) would have done something to improve the Third World conditions of native reservations (including an almost total lack of education, infrastructure, clean water, adequate shelter, job opportunities, etc.). The only other thing that I can think of, that he's done, was effectively take over the administration of the Attawapiskat reserve... and charging the DIRT POOR VILLAGE thousands of dollars for that privilege.

Because of this -- among other things that I'm not qualified to comment on -- the reserve's Chief, Theresa Spence, has gone on a hunger strike. She's demanding a meeting with Harper, as well as Governor General David Johnson, to get to the bottom of the issues there. This has sparked SEVERAL protests nationwide, considerable media coverage, and INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION. So typically, Harper's response has been absolutely nothing.

Some Conservative lackies -- when they haven't been racist as hell -- have mocked Spence and asked that she stop the hunger strike. As many right-wingers do, they completely miss the point. This is on Harper and Johnson's heads, because they are effectively the leaders of this country -- and especially because the federal government has pretty much annexed Spence's village. Leaving aside the piss poor optics of REFUSING TO MEET WITH A LEADER ON A HUNGER STRIKE, this whole issue is Ottawa's responsibility (and these people say that liberals and natives are lazy -- pot calling kettle, anyone?), and it's not like Harper's got much going on during the holidays -- ONE MEETING is all that Spence is asking for. At this point, she might be happy with dropping in to wish her a happy new year.

It's a shame that Stephen Harper would never read this article, or personally respond to it, because here's a question I'd love to ask him, point blank: it's no secret that most Canadians hate your guts, and regardless of your rhetoric, Canada's reputation abroad is getting WORSE because of you. How do you think Canada and the world would react, if you become the only First World leader in ages -- if not EVER -- to be PERSONALLY responsible for the death of a peaceful protester?  And an Indian protester, to boot!

Probably the only thing that worries me at all, about the New Year, is how this might unfold, if Chief Spence starves to death, all because Harper can't be bothered to act like a human being. The people are angry right now, and the world is watching. You would think someone as power-hungry and politically savvy as Harper, would understand the dangers of creating a martyr -- if she dies, Harper may come to wish that he'd resigned a long time ago.

2012 Douchebag of the Year

THX-1138 (review)

What the heck is THX-1138, you might be asking? It's the feature directorial debut of one George Walton Lucas Jr., expanding on an avart-garde short film that he did in film school. It was produced by Francis Ford Coppola, as the first feature from their American Zoetrope independent studio... and pretty much buried it, just as fast. Warner Bros., the distributors and financiers, hated the finished movie so much that they re-cut it, gutted the marketing budget, and demanded back the money they'd given to Zoetrope for future projects.

What's it about? Well... that's a harder question, in a way. It's presented in a rather obtuse way, but the short version is that sometime in the future, society has become so sterile and commercialized, that pretty much all we live for is to buy things and do what authorities tell us to do. People are drugged into feeling no emotions whatsoever, religion only tells them to show up for work and keep buying things, and no one even has proper names; THX 1138 is the main character's name. His roommate/love interest is named LUH, and a foil for them is named SEN. Every one is shaved bald, and wearing what is basically a pair of white pajamas, there's almost no colour or detail in anything... pretty much the only good thing you can say about this society, is that there's no crime as we know it.

But it is a crime to have feelings. Or to have sex -- you're supposed to get it off with holograms and mechanical pumps (it's rather sad that THAT might have come true, more than anything else in the movie). THX and LUH do both, after she talks him into skipping their drugs, and when it causes accidents at THX's robot assembly job, they quickly find themselves in prison. They then decide they have to leave, once and for all.

I'm not sure how much that synopsis just made this thing sound like a thriller, but to be honest it's not a particularly exciting or intense movie. It's very much an expensive art movie -- in the sense that it is very cerebral, discusses intellectual issues in abstract ways, and makes very little literal sense. This is especially so during the middle section, addressing THX and LUH in prison. There's a semi-comical sequence where unseen doctors manage to make THX go into convulsions by pushing buttons... it's only when you see the movie again, that it would probably dawn on you that some device was presumably inserted into him, during a medical test preceding this. Just plain laughable, is how THX "escapes" from the prison itself -- HE JUST WALKS OUT THE FREAKING DOOR. There are guards everywhere, fully capable of subduing him, not to mention a total lack of architectural landmarks, and HE JUST WALKS AWAY! Accompanied by a a HOLOGRAM WHO'S BECOME REAL... yet we never find out HOW. Thematically, it works just fine, but if we're meant as an audience to believe that this is really happening, I'm sorry but my bullshit meter breaks really damn fast.

All of that being said, it is a rather unnerving movie overall, and it's actually quite well acted (with Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasance carrying much of the picture). The dialogue... well, good luck making sense of it. You see, the single-biggest problem with THX-1138 is that there is no proxy for the audience -- every single person is firmly a part of this future world, so there's no reason to explain anything (which Lucas is historically reluctant to do, anyway). I understand that the point was to be disorienting, and artistically they were running with the concept of this being "a movie shot on location in the future", but realistically that only works so well. To give Lucas some credit, he seemed to have learned his lesson by the time he did Star Wars, as that movie featured characters far enough out of the loop that there was excuse for a bit of exposition to help the audience get by. Hell, even the prequels had enough sense to do that!

With this being a George Lucas picture, it probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that he changed the thing at least twice, since it was originally released. The home video releases restored scenes that were cut by Warners' (the theatrical cut hasn't been seen since the early 70s), and more recently the DVD version used CGI to expand the locations and fill in some gaps in the story. Unlike the infamous Special Edition changes to the Star Wars movies, these were generally well received, and I don't have any huge problem with them (apart from the CGI sometimes drawing too much attention to itself). In fact, on occasion they help make certain scenes more clear. However, I do think that making every establishing shot look ten times bigger, was a thematic mistake -- we're meant to believe that this society is oppressive as hell (and in fact, it turns out that this whole civilization is underground), and personally I think that was more effectively conveyed with the more confined shots in the earlier releases.

(if you're wondering, the non-altered version isn't on DVD, but someone has digitized the VHS versions of those scenes and put up comparison videos on YouTube)

This movie is rather hard to find, even now, but if you can find a copy of this cheapy (or if you can find it online) I suggest giving it a look, if you like intellectual sci-fi movies. Just keep in mind that besides Lucas' handicaps with dialogue and discomfort with actors, maybe his biggest failing as a filmmaker is that he's a little too smart for his own good.

So Obama's Won Again...

I'm going to do my best to NOT make this a "bad winner" rant, but I already know that the Tea Party is throwing conniptions over Barack Obama winning re-election, so I'm going to try to spell this out in as non-partisan a way as possible.

Formally, America has been around for 236 years. In that time, it has survived a full-blown revolution, harsh weathers and hard summers, smallpox, polio, cholera, bird flu, e coli. and AIDS. It has survived the Civil War, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, and countless battles with Indian tribes (which I'll refrain from elaborating on, for these purposes). It has survived two World Wars (one of which nearly wiped out everyone outside of Germany), the Cold War, and various other conflicts of varying and debatable importance.

It has survived the Great Depression, and several other recessions that rivaled it. It has survived the 92 percent tax rate on the rich, it has survived Reagonomics, it has survived various labour crises and it has survived spikes in oil prices. It has survived 9/11, Pearl Harbour, Waco, Columbine, Virginia Tech, the Atlanta Olympic bombing, abortion clinic bombings, and more acts of domestic terrorism than I care to count. It has survived the divisions of the Vietnam War, talk radio, Fox News, and the sabotage of the economy for petty reasons.

It has survived Watergate, Zippergate, and multiple assassinations (don't get any ideas, though). It has survived the draft, the Patriot Act, the NDAA, Gitmo, and the TSA. It has survived the red and brown scares. It has survived Prohibition, legalized divorce, interracial marriage, interfaith marriage, and the War on Drugs. It has survived McCarthyism and the Monkey Trial. And it has survived the civil rights movement, the suffragette movement, the gay rights movement, and the so-called "Moral Majority".

Yet you guys are worried about one community organizer? Whose only "crime" is that he seems to genuinely care about everyone in America? And on top of that, it just seems to be because he's black, and his father was Arabic?
Are you serious?

America has already survived four years of Barack Obama, and will probably weather another four years just fine -- just because it's already survived MUCH worse. You don't have to agree with the guy, or like him personally, but if you honestly think that he's going to destroy the country, you REALLY need to see a psychiatrist -- and hey, it's more affordable now.

All sarcasm aside, the best advice I can give to the far-right is this: shut off the hateboxes, and step outside of your little corner of the country. See other points of view, and listen to the people around you, even if you'd otherwise disagree with them. Liberalism may not be the answer to all problems, but it's hardly the mental illness or capital crime that some of you think it is. At the very least, the more you learn to tolerate others' views, the better off you're going to be. Making the country -- or world -- a nicer place to live in, won't be easy work, but it's DEFINITELY something worth trying.

Do you have the nerve to?

Anti-Obama Paranoia Leads Man to Kill His Family

I'd like to start this, by expressing my very sincere condolences to the friends and family of the slain. This was a terrible tragedy, no matter your politics or creed.
It should also never have happened.

As it says in this article, a Virginia man named Albert Peterson -- a defense contractor with a history of mental illness -- was so paranoid about the prospect of Barack Obama winning the November election, that he not only killed himself, but his wife and two sons. I'm prepared to be wrong about this, but I can't recall ever hearing about this happening before, at least in North America.

Clearly the man was already unstable, but I can't help but wonder if his paranoia was fed to an extreme degree, by the sort of insane rhetoric that we see from Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and the Tea Party. On Blogspot ALONE there are bloggers who blather about Obama being a scary Muslim socialist, out to kill grandma and retarded babies, who has already driven people to suicide over the economy, and who will "rightly" be kicked out in the election -- despite not a single one of those statements being true to date (and HIGHLY unlikely to ever be true). It is also why I find it galling, that Google has been slow to take down an anti-Muslim hate film that played a direct part in a global crisis that has killed 50 people to date, why it took the FBI several weeks to arrest any of the people responsible, that various blog moderators refuse to penalize users that post inflammatory material, and that the Tea Party is almost never held accountable for its long history of violent threats.

How many people have to die? When is enough, enough?

If you're not a liberal, fine. If you would never vote Democrat, fine. But remember, when someone says "I'd rather die, than see _____ in the Oval Office!" it's not supposed to be taken literally. As much as I loathe Mitt Romney, Stephen Harper, Tim Hudak, etc. it would take a lot more than their usual antics, for me to consider killing myself over them. I'd much rather try to vote them out.

And please, to anyone reading this, who knows someone THIS upset over the election, GET THEM TO A HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW. I don't care if they rave about "socialized health care", or if you normally don't trust it yourself -- it's either that, or more of THIS bullshit happens.

It's LONG past time, America, for you to get your act together. Your people's lives are now quite literally depending on it. Enough said.

Conservative Standards

I can't help but notice, lately, just how low conservatives like to set the bar for themselves -- and their peers. In Canada, the Conservative Party is just fine with having its move to strike hate speech laws, applauded by skinheads. The Republican Party -- with some exceptions -- has been perfectly fine with being taken over by incompetent wingnuts who are so livid with a black man being the President of the United States, that they have flat out stated that their first priority is not fix America's sagging economy, but to get rid of him at all costs.

For that matter, they have little apparent problem with hitching their economic hopes to a presidential team that was respectively near-to-dead-last in job creation, and whose only economic idea is to raise taxes on the middle class while cutting upper-class taxes even more. This goes against any kind of financial sense, never mind the overwhelming view of the people the Republicans are trying to convince to vote for them.

For that matter, Republicans -- by and large -- seem to have no problem with being associated with people who wear their utter hatred of blacks, gays, and women on their sleeves... and yet are so stupid and juvenile that they will still insist they aren't bigots. This is despite campaigning on voter suppression that targets blacks, revoking most gay rights, banning women from military service, and forcing impregnated rape victims to carry the offspring of their attackers (and probably give them visitation rights, as is already the case in many states).

This is the company that conservatives today keep -- either by their direct support, or by their compliance. It's true that not all conservatives are like this... but it begs the question of where they were, when the extremists were given the keys to the car. It also begs the question of why so many of them are still counting themselves among the number of these people who are not just offensive and inept, but borderline terrorists. Was there truly nothing you could do to stop it? Is there nothing you can do now?

If I were a member of any political group that engineered or condoned open bigotry, sabotage of the country for no good reason, election tampering, violence against people who simply want to help others, or even assassination of an elected leader... not only would I be putting as much distance as possible between myself and them, but I would be publicly speaking out about it. It's admirable that there are groups calling themselves "Republicans for Obama" -- but if it were me I wouldn't even want to call myself a Republican.
I would be far too ashamed.

Chick fil-A =/= Free Speech

To the Christian Right and Teabaggers... Let me explain something.

Criticizing a little-known fast-food chain, because they decided to publicly smear gay Americans for wanting to be treated like human beings, is not attacking their free speech. Besides, it didn't stop your camp from attacking JC Penny, The Muppets, Ellen Degeneres, EA Games, etc. for being PRO-gay rights.

What the Chick-Fil-A CEO and Republicans are doing, is absolutely no different from what bigots in the 1960s and 70s were doing, to protest the end of segregation, and then interracial marriage. It's also no less wrong.

This isn't a free speech issue, this is a human rights issue. Especially since this is a company that has a history of endorsing laws that seek to murder homosexuals. It also has a long history of sexist and racist behaviour towards its own staff.

That is not right, no matter how you try to sweep it under the rug. America is supposed to stand for EVERYONE'S freedom. That's the very point of the Constitution. As soon as you start saying that only the "right" people deserve to be considered human beings, you're exactly the same as slave owners, religious fanatics, and the worst mass murderers in human history.

All that you have done, is show the world just how bigoted you really are. And maybe you haven't noticed, but it's not being accepted, as much as you think it is.