Not sure what else to say really. Unless someone comes up with an explanation involving the very clever disappearance of literally millions of ballots from several states, “it is what it is”.
At least in 2016 you could argue that the people didn’t know what they were getting with Trump. That’s just bullshit in 2024.
Funny that I have a very American anecdote to illustrate what this feels like, but it’s 100% true. When I moved to the USA in 1999 (Fairview NJ) a buddy of mine came along to help out and visit New York. The day after we unloaded we get out early to go to the city, and my neighbor introduced himself. Now we both had beards at the time, and the guy opened by asking us if we were “from the House of David”, which I didn’t get right away… not wanting to antagonize the guy who lived above me I mentioned we were heading to the city, he said “what do you want to go to the city for, it’s full of [n-word]s and [sp-word]s!” I froze a little bit and realized that I really, really wasn’t in Montreal anymore and that this was the kind of new reality. I don’t remember much of what went on after, besides my handling it in my socially-anxious way of being very polite and then just kind of leaving. I vaguely remember the k-word popping up at some point in the advice he gave us. It felt almost unreal TBH. The guy was very friendly to me — he saw me as a fellow white guy — but clearly our world views were divergent, to say the least.
Today I feel largely the same way about this election as I did about that introduction to my upstairs neighbor. I really wanted to think that Eddie (not his real name) was of another generation (IIRC he was in his mid-60s) and that this kind of shocking social attitudes would change over time, But judging from the campaign that we’ve seen from Trump, the vote tells us that no, there hasn’t been any progression. There has in fact been a huge regression. And it’s not “just” a racial thing either. It’s also a victory for misogyny, transphobia and hate in general.
It’s like if you visited a friend of the family you think you’ve known all your life, but then you find out that he was secretly a klan member the whole time.
Is there a silver lining to all this? There is for me, and it’s that I’m not an American. I know that the culture will cross borders like a metastasizing tumor, but at least I know that as of January 20th my life is not likely to change in a very direct way. If nothing else, I don’t have to look on my neighbors with suspicion, although that may well come here as well along with the culture.
It’s a pessimistic view, but a realistic view. But, what do I know? My take on things as expressed previously was so wrong it’s practically embarrassing (but I’m leaving it up).
Me too, Mulder. Me too.
I really wanted to believe that America was better than this.
Nothing brings out the rot in journalism like an election. Especially one with Donald “Felon” Trump, the Jason Voorhees of American politics. 2024 has been a banner year for journalism, in the way that 1865 was a banner year for Washington DC’s Ford Theatre.
First of all, Trump being the GOP nominee is nothing short of insane. The guy is literally a convicted felon out on bail, running for President. He has been adjudicated responsible for a rape and keeps boasting that he was able to stack the Supreme Court just enough (including by the appointment of a guy who was credibly accused of sexual assault — who only squeaked by because Trump literally interfered with the FBI investigation into the assault allegation). And somehow some women want to vote for him. Also he literally led an insurrection where participants raided the US Capitol in order to stop the official recognition of the 2020 election AND TRY TO PHYSICALLY SEIZE THE VICE-PRESIDENT IN ORDER TO HANG HIM. But somehow none of this disqualifies him from becoming President. You literally would not be allowed to volunteer to chaperone schoolchildren with a record like that, but apparently you could end up having the nuclear launch codes.
The question that’s been on my mind all year. This photo courtesy of the Whiskey River Soap Co. (not an affiliate link)
So that’s one factor. But, like a green teenager getting ready to watch his first horror film, let’s put the “unbelievableness” (to coin a phrase) of the situation aside and accept the Donald Trump candidacy as just what it is. Because to Americans it makes sense somehow.
And by “fetch” we mean understanding American politics. But we all still have to deal with it.
Seriously, I believe that “it is what is it” is the most sensical explanation we’re going to get for that.
What is harder to accept at this point in history is the treatment Trump has received this year in the American news media. It’s frankly been so startling that a new term has been invented specifically to describe it. Journalists have been sanewashing the Donald Trump candidacy.
What is “sanewashing”, you ask? Think of it this way, when a company tries to manufacture some ecological credentials for itself that it does not deserve, it’s known as “greenwashing”. When another goes through some performative display of putting a little LGBTQ+ flag on the front door but also supports anti-queer initiatives, that’s known as “rainbow-washing”. And when Donald Trump delivers a pointless, rambling series of non-sequiturs in front of an audience, for example telling us how he’d rather be electrocuted than eaten by sharks (literally he did that during a campaign rally), and the press completely fails to point out how utterly insane his speech was, that’s called “sanewashing”.
Sadly this term was invented too late to be included in Webster’s annual list of new words for 2024. But boy, did the American corporate news media ever make that new word necessary. Because Trump’s campaign appearances have steadily been growing in sheer madness. The shark vs battery story was probably the mildest example of insanity in Trump’s 2024 speeches. On one notable occasion he started talking about Hannibal Lecter from Manhunter/Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal (movie and TV). He now desperately tries to make people believe that it’s a reference to people who come into the USA, but the first time he brought it up what he was saying was “The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’s a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner… But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations. The late, great Hannibal Lecter.”
And how was that covered in the mainstream press? As much as they could the corporate press ignored that part of the speech. That Hannibal speech was on May 11th, and this was the headline of the New York Times article on that rally the next day: “Away From the Confines of a Courtroom, Trump Rallies Beachside at the Jersey Shore”.
Same here Mugatu. Same here.
Although this phenomenon can be seen happening throughout the corporate press in 2024, it must be noted that in the eyes of many the New York Times is the biggest offender when it comes to sanewashing. For some reason I cannot fathom, Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger has consistently been attempting to pick fights with the Democratic party in general this year, and really has done as much as it can to make Donald Trump look like a man who’s not in the throes of frontotemporal dementia. Or senility. Or tertiary syphilis. I mean, Trump still steadfastly refuses to provide his medical records so it’s really impossible to tell exactly what the fsck is wrong with him. Of course this also means that no condition can reasonably be excluded to explain his bizarre behavior.
The most egregious single example of sanewashing I’ve seen was after Trump’s speech on October 7th in which he literally said that immigrants were bringing bad genes to America. If you don’t know, that’s literally what the Nazis were saying in the 1930s. How did the New York Times cover it? “Trump’s Long Fascination With Genes and Bloodlines Gets New Scrutiny”. I sh*t you not. That being said, this headline was so wildly inappropriate to describe what had gone on at the rally that it started a wave of backlash against the sanewashing phenomenon. And it forced a lot of people to take a long, hard look at Trump’s performance at his rallies. Not coincidentally, Trump has visibly been declining steadily since that time. Even Republicans can’t entirely sidestep the question “wtf is wrong with Donald” anymore — except the MAGA cultists of course — and it’s leading to bizarre moments.
Like just a couple of days ago when, during a Q&A hosted by noted puppy murder enthusiast Kristi Noem (Governor of South Dakota), Donald decided that he no longer felt like answering questions, or giving a speech. So he had his sound guy play some tunes while he just stood there attempting to dance with moves that sometimes looked more like he was about to fall over. There were a couple of people in his audience who had heat-related emergencies, but Trump was just on stage “dancing” for almost FORTY MINUTES. And then he just left.
The New York Times headline? “Trump Bobs His Head to Music for 30 Minutes in Odd Town Hall Detour”. Yes, an “odd town hall detour”. That’s kinda like saying that the “meat” in Jeffrey Dahmer’s fridge “raised questions”. Or, to craft a headline going back to the Lincoln thing, “Showing of ‘Our American Cousin’ ends early due to commotion in the audience”.
I could go on and on about this, but chances are if you’re reading this you’re well aware of many examples already. The real question is, why is the press doing this? The answer may surprise you! (or not, it all depends).
I post at Bluesky, it’s been my go-to social network since Elon took Twitter in the direction of full Nazi. Skeeters (Bluesky users) have the not unreasonable view that media outlets engage in sanewashing because they like Donald Trump and want him to win.
Occam’s razor does seem to point to this conclusion
I think it’s not that simple, although I can see many of the arguments in favor of that opinion.
In my humble opinion, this is a byproduct of the corporate obsession with audience engagement.
Have you recently noticed how much Google search sucks nowadays compared with how it was about 10 years ago? You’re not alone. Journalist (and skeeter) Ed Zitron looked into what happened in the past few years at Google. According to him, the search experts were reaching a pretty extreme level of efficiency, which you would think is a good thing. But that’s because you’re not Google CEO Sundar Pichai. You see, Google’s actual money-maker is ads. So, if you’re a tech CEO with a serious case of consultant brain, you can only reach one conclusion — that if the user finds what they’re looking for on the first try, that’s a bad thing. There’s only one ad impression there. But if you have to make the user make several queries using increasing precision, then you’ve served 3, 4, 5 impressions. Isn’t that better? Let that sink in. This is Sundar Pichai’s legacy at Google — fscking up your search results so they can show you more ads and charge more to the companies that use Google ads. This is considered “greater engagement”. I am absolutely serious.
Remember when they warned you about social media: if you’re being offered something for free, then what you’re getting is not the end product. You are the end product. And you’re the one being sold by one party to another. That’s how social media companies make money.
Why am I bringing this up? Because media companies, including the news media, are doing the same thing. From a business point of view, they are using “engagement” to sell their brand to the public, and to sell ad impressions.
Ok you ask, how is that related to sanewashing Trump’s campaign? As with every election year in the USA, 2024 is seeing a huge boost in people watching news stations (OTA or on cable) and visiting news sites, many doing so several times a day, That’s great news for these outlets. They get to sell more ads, they get to keep their brands within viewers’ attention spans. But this only works as long as the Presidential race remains tight. Or, more realistically, as long as the Presidential race *appears* to remain tight. If one candidate is running away with the lead, the suspense disappears. People tune out of the news cycle. Engagement drops. Publishers are now unhappy. Revenues decline.
But given the premise of an improbably tight race, viewers will flock to their information sources, hit the refresh button like it owes them money, the brand remains uppermost in their minds, and lots of ad impressions are delivered. Publishers are now free to get back on the champagne while lighting large cigars with flaming Benjamins. And that’s why we’re being sold this idea of a an impossibly tight horse race. Sure, very rich owners (and upper management) of media companies probably stand to gain more in terms of tax cuts from a Trump presidency, but otherwise it’s really hard to make a case as to why media outlets somehow love Trump. The guy is talking about mobilizing troops against Americans just for disagreeing with him, and historically that eventually includes everyone who isn’t Donald Trump. Being in Donald’s good graces is something that’s as fleeting as an erection at a strip club when you’re really drunk. And while I was tempted to say that Trump is an entertaining character — a carnival barker in fact — and that journalists see coverage potential in that, the fact that they’re downplaying his “being entertaining” shows that they’re about as sick of it as the rest of us.
I think we’re being sold a lie. I don’t think the Presidential race is that close at all. I think that Harris will overwhelmingly win the popular vote, for a start, and that Trump will maybe get 40% of the vote. Certainly not significantly more than that. I believe that REAL polls — the private ones conducted for the political campaigns — reflect this, which is why Donald Trump is looking more like a corpse with every passing day. But American news organizations can’t tell us the truth at this time, because as with retailers at Christmas and pumpkin growers in October, news orgs rely on this time to make as much engagement as possible happen. There’s no chance of achieving that when the race is a blowout.
As a bonus, there is also a good and virtuous reason for the news media to make the race appear closer than it really is. In an election situation, if you feel that your side is winning big, you will simply not be motivated to go vote. After all, why bother with that when “your side” is going to win? However if the race is razor thin, which is what we’re being sold right now, there is an increased feeling that yes, one vote can make a difference, and it’s definitely worth taking time in your day to go to the polls. It’s certainly not a major motivation for news orgs, but it’s a silver lining to keep in mind as you keep looking at what has been a very frustrating year in news coverage for those of us in the reality-based community.
Anyway that was as close to a TED talk as I’m ever likely to give, if you’re still reading I trust y’all enjoyed that, and I hope you see the sense of what I’m saying.
If you are a regular vaper you may well have come across this problem. Many top-loading tanks, such as the SMOK TVF9 and the Aspire Naultilus 3, have issues with e-juice leaking from the tank out the airflow valve at the bottom of the tank and onto your hand, and that isn’t just dirty and unpleasant, but it’s downright dangerous as nicotine can be absorbed through your skin.
Fortunately there is a fix for this — you have to follow this little procedure every time you fill your tank. It takes a little longer but it’s well worth it.
Refilling your top-loading tank
Close the airflow valve of your tank.
Open the tank filling hole in the normal way (usually a twist or slide).
Fill the tank with liquid, making sure to not overfill it.
Close the fuel hole cover.
Flip the tank upside-down.
Open the airflow valve and set it to your preferred setting.
Return the tank to its normal orientation and enjoy a non-leaky tank.
Apparently doing this lets a little bit of a vacuum form in an internal structure of the tank. Or something like that. I don’t really understand how it works but in my experience it does.
What does a blogger and sex worker get for herself on her birthday? Aella organized a gangbang for herself, and her Substack provides a fascinating view into how a successful gangbang gets organized, how it goes, and the lessons the star at the middle of it has drawn from it. It’s probably NSFW — no images but it’s a honest article about organizing a gangbang so you know what to expect.
When a company is about to go through a hostile takeover, the stakeholders in the company have this strategy that’s available to them called a “poison pill”. The idea of the “poison pill” is that the shareholders, worried about the effects of the takeover on the long-term health of the company, will artificially depress the stock price of the company so as to make it unattractive for a takeover.
This is obvious *not* quite what’s taking place at Twitter right now.
@elonmusk‘s offer was so much over the realistic valuation of the company that the shareholders just saw $$$$ and went with it. However Twitter isn’t a traditional company. Twitter is a social network. Its technology stack is robust but it’s not particularly outstanding. It works, it doesn’t have a huge lot of features, but it can handle the traffic. Its real value is in the users and the connections it brings to the party. To remain at its baseline of “value” compared to before the takeover, it has to retain its userbase. If users leave, the site’s value is diminished. And this is something that @elonmusk doesn’t grok.
While he doesn’t get it, users do get it. And their response to Musk’s “comedy of errors” tenure ever since he took over the site is to look elsewhere for a new social network to spend time on, because it’s become clear that Musk wants to take this site and turn it into his personal sandbox. I wouldn’t pay $44 billion for a sandbox, but then I don’t have the sort of detachment from reality that being the world’s richest man engenders.
However for a couple of weeks now we’ve had a look at what @elonmusk considers entertainment for himself, and we’re all pretty much horrified, from Nazi imagery to petty personal fighting to non-stop lying by Musk himself. And that’s why, sadly, now is the time to ditch this platform. Because remaining a part of it at this point is to risk immeasurable personal reputational damage. Think the repercussions in your life if it came out that you were a user of “stormfront” (or whatever KKK-affiliated web site exists out there). This is what Twitter will turn into in the hands of a spoilt man-child with highly questionable morals and a reputation as a con man who has no board to answer to and in time is growing more and more embittered that he can’t just buy a positive image for himself. Or friends.
And if that sounds like I’m describing Donald Trump, it’s not a coincidence; both Trump and Musk are trust fund babies whose lives are led by their malignant narcissism.
So there’s an understandable urge to leave a platform that’s devolving into a giant cesspit of xenophobia in all its diseased forms, because users don’t want the taint of it.
It’s probably a bad idea to deactivate one’s account, however. All this will do is leave your handle open to a malignant actor taking it over and attempting impersonation. A much better approach is this: make sure you set multi-factor authentication on your account, and then log off. This way no one can use your handle, and you are protecting your reputation.
There are many alternate social networks out there that don’t belong to snake-oil-selling egomaniac billionaires, such as mastodon, counter.social and tribel. Check them out and give them your time and eyeballs instead of watching someone who should know better tank a platform to flatter his own malignant ego.
Today is September 11th 2022, the twenty-first anniversary of the attacks on New York City and Washington by a number of Al Qaeda associated terrorists. One of the questions asked on social networks today is, how do you mark this momentous day?
As someone who lived in the NYC area at the time and saw the towers collapse not on television but with my own eyes, I don’t mark the day in particular.
The trauma of the events, the heroism of the first responders, the sorrow of knowing how many lives were extinguished in the collapse, seeing people come together, neighbors helping neighbors… these are things that stay with me all the time. They don’t go away the other 364 days of the year.
But every year on the day I’m reminded of how the right-wing stole the day and used it as an excuse to start a war of choice in Iraq that’s completely destabilized the region and lead to millions of deaths as well as the establishment of a ultra-fascist state (ISIS) that no one has been able to fully eradicate, and ultimately the start of the downward spiral in which the United States finds itself now where it feels like 30% of the country have become radicalized white supremacists as a result of the power hunger of the Republican Party.
In a very real sense 9/11 was the beginning of the end of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and it should have been recognized as such. It was a desperate operation that was meant, in the planners’ minds, to “wake up America” and cause it to rebel against their leaders for their historical hubris, and resulted in the opposite. That’s the real goal of what are intended to be “revolutionary actions”. The only thing it showed is how much Al Qaeda’s leaders had their heads up their own asses. In America the right-wingers started the battle cry and the others followed in response to the trauma of the event. How people who had renounced any national alliance and instead chose to live in literal caves in Afghanistan thought that they knew how Americans thought would be pretty comical if it hadn’t lead to so much death.
Even in tactical terms I’m certain the operation was pretty much a failure. In the famous video that was issued shortly after this Osama bin Laden expressed that the event had been “more successful than had been hoped”, which is something he would say, but what he betrayed there was that things hadn’t gone to plan. We now know there was supposed to be a fifth plane but the prospective pilot of that plane had been in FBI custody for a while. One of the four planes was brought down in Pennsylvania as a result of the passengers storming the cockpit, and the attack on the Pentagon had not caused nearly as much damage as had been hoped.
Personally I have always believed that what the planners thought would happen as a result of the airplanes hitting the towers was that the momentum would cause the towers to topple over. That would have been an absolute catastrophe for lower Manhattan. The towers site is very close to Wall Street and the NYSE was only a few blocks away. Had the first plane had its intended effect the NYSE and everyone in the building at the time would have become history. As it were yes, the entirety of lower Manhattan was covered by asbestos-laden dust as a result of the attack, but the actual heavy debris zone was confined to a surprisingly small area, extending past the footprint of the WTC site only by about one NYC block. One can’t overestimate how important that detail is in retrospect. The NYSE reopened less than a week later, which is pretty remarkable.
The fact that the towers pretty much collapsed into their own footprints is something that (in my opinion) OBL didn’t expect and didn’t plan for. As was the low number of casualties. These were the two largest buildings in NYC, a place full of natural go-getters who really don’t think that showing up to work at 7am is unusual. The city itself put in an order for 50,000 body bags in the days following the attack and that did not really strike anyone as being excessive at the time. That ultimately less than 3000 died was pretty amazing. Ultimately the terrorists had a “symbolic victory” at the expense of losing pretty much everything they had.
What America did to itself and the world as a result of 9/11 is something much worse. I won’t go through it here because, well, it’s 21 years of nihilistic Republican hubris occasionally paused by Democrats desperately trying to fix things while dodging GOP knives aimed at their backs. It’s just too long to go through. I’m left with the overwhelming sense that the USA I knew and loved before that no longer exists, with the fault of that not being the attack but the rabid and ugly nationalism that followed it. And for all the posturing and chest-beating the USA has steadfastly refused to hold Saudi Arabia responsible in any way for their part in the plot — which was just an extension of the usual Saudi policy of remaining willingly blind to terrorist plots as long as they happen outside the Kingdom. Most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and many of them had their rents in America paid by the Saudi Crown while they lay in wait for the signal to strike. None of this is new, everything’s in the official 9/11 report. But oil money speaks louder than corpses in the rubble.
So, every year at this time, that’s what I consciously remember. America responding to the last dying spark of Al Qaeda, by slowly but surely destroying itself and making a mockery of its own so-called principles.
2018 is poised to be year when cryptocurrencies become mainstream. The original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has entered the common jargon of the modern world last year as its valuation hit record a record high of nearly 20k USD/BTC, and stayed in the news as its valuation dropped to more reasonable levels. Ethereum is also gaining recognition as it became the #2 cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization. In short, a little over 8 years since the creation of Bitcoin cryptocurrencies are gaining recognition and acceptance in the “real” world.
Cryptocurrencies are created as part of something called a blockchain. And more than cryptocurrencies, it is the blockchain idea which is expected to have a huge impact on the computing world, at least for the next couple of years. As such it is a good idea to learn what a blockchain is, at both a basic and more advanced level.
The Basics
At its core, a blockchain is a distributed ledger. Those with an accounting background will immediately recognize what a ledger is — it is a record of transactions. A blockchain is distributed, which means that entries in the ledger are written by many parties, as opposed to by one centralized authority.
Like an ordinary paper ledger, blockchains are write-once. Once a block has been verified and added to the blockchain it cannot be erased or modified. This insures that transactions cannot be taken back.
The Nodes
All these “parties” are actually computers running a node for the blockchain’s network on the internet. This involves executing software which contributes to the blockchain network. Depending on the network involved there may be several types of nodes in a blockchain; this will be explored in depth later.
The Blocks
Nodes compile a number of transactions into a block. How large the blocks are, and how often they are verified, varies widely between blockchains. For example, the Bitcoin blockchain generates a block every 10 minutes. The Ethereum blockchain, in comparison, generates a block in less than 20 seconds, and Bitshares blocks are generated every 3 seconds at most. A number of factors affect block time; if you’re not intimidated by math check out this article for more information.
The Chain
Blockchains are so named because each new block is appended to the previous block, effectively forming a chain. In fact one can always look at certain information in the latest block of any given blockchain and trace the blockchain’s history all the way back to its very first block.
Hashing
Since blocks are appended to the blockchain by several different nodes, there needs to be a way to ensure that only the block with the right data can be added at any given time. Otherwise there would be no way of ensuring the continuity of the blockchain from the genesis block to the most current one.
This is where hashing comes in. Hashing is a cryptographical technique that is used to generate a unique code that can be used to identify a set of data, rather like a fingerprint. The hash is generated from the transactions contained in the block and recorded as data in the block, which also includes the hash from the previous block. This is one of the mechanisms used to verify any new blocks. If the previous-block hash does not match the previous block’s recorded hash, then the current block is invalid and cannot be added to the chain.
The actual library used to generate the hashes depends on the blockchain. SHA256 is a popular one and is used by Bitcoin. Other libraries include scrypt, X11, Cryptonight and ETHash.
Hashing produces a completely different string if there is any change whatsoever to the original hashed content. The SHA256 library can produce a very large number of distinct values (3.4028237e+38) so arriving at the same value from two different pieces of content is extremely unlikely. By comparison, the chances of winning the Powerball lottery in the USA is 1 in 2.92e8. One could win this lottery 4 times and that would still be less likely than generating the same hash from 2 different sources. Thus the use of hash values makes blockchains virtually tamper-proof.
This was a very basic overview of blockchains. We’ve barely scratched the surface. In my next few articles I will be providing more in-depth coverage on subjects such as concensus algorithms, blockchain node types, the relationship between blockchains and cryptocurrencies, and how the blockchain can be used by businesses to streamline processes and reduce processing costs.
After a most momentous week in Canadian politics — namely, one in which a government with an absolute majority in both the House of Commons and the Senate was at least momentarily thwarted in its efforts to pass Bill C-30 — the @vikileaks30 twitter account has been retired. It simply no longer exists. However it has had one hell of an effect, and the way in which it was reported about should definitely raise a lot of eyebrows.
For those who don’t know about this story, @vikileaks30 was an anonymous account launched on Wednesday which broadcasted certain salacious details about Vic Toews, including parts of affidavits from his 2007 divorce — largely his ex-wife’s testimony — and many interesting details of expense claims by Mr. Toews as a government minister.
Soon after the novelty twitter account appeared on the scene Ottawa Citizen tech news reporter Vito Pilieci came up with an interesting plan to figure out who was posting on it and came up with the idea to send the twitterer a web site link which was unique for that particular user. There’s nothing wrong with that technique, I’ve used it myself a couple of times, and twitter’s use of URL shorteners makes that technique discoverable only with some difficulty. The IP address which was used to visit the link turned out to have been one connected with the Parliament buildings. That much can be reliably established.
What I find a little more difficult to understand is the way that the story was reported both by Pilieci himself and Postmedia flagship paper the National Post. Starting with the title, which was surely written by a higher-up: “Vikileaks Twitter account on Vic Toews linked to ‘pro-NDP’ address in House of Commons”. Indeed the original Ottawa Citizen story used the considerably less “inciteful” (if you will) “Vikileaks30 linked to House of Commons IP address”. But this is only the start of the smear. In the story itself we see this paragraph:
Aside from being used to administer the Vikileaks30 Twitter feed, the address has been used frequently to update Wikipedia articles — often giving them what appears to be a pro-NDP bias, actions that have attracted the attention of numerous Internet observers in recent months.
I’ve taken the liberty here to put in bold type the second instance of the smear. Note the use of “weasel language” here — the author (almost undoubtedly Pilieci himself) double-qualifies the statement so as to obviate the necessity of backing that statement with actual evidence, which he indeed does not provide.
So, that’s interesting. Without any more specifics this certainly looks like an attempt to smear the party that currently holds the position of Official Opposition in the House of Commons. Now why would someone do that and be this specific about it?
Well, the Ottawa Citizen, which currently employs Pilieci, is owned by the Postmedia Network, which is a group encompassing several newspapers, including my hometown’s The Gazette newspaper and Canada’s second national daily, the National Post (which should be no surprise to you as the link shown above goes to a NatPo story). The National Post, pretty much since its inception, is regularly accused of running a pro-Conservative slant on the political stories it covers, which clearly explains why they chose to edit Pilieci’s story  from the rather more neutral “Vikileaks Twitter account traced to House of Commons” (the title of the story on Thursday) to the, well, deliberately less equivocal title they chose to run on Friday. Am I supposed to think that this is just some kind of “oversight” or absent-minded error? Maybe others can think so, but I’m not that gullible. The smear is clear and deliberate.
OK, so maybe you think, this is a one-off thing… well, no. On Friday the Citizen ran this Stephen Maher editorial, this time with a neutral, toned-down title: “Maher: Toews made himself Twitter target with ‘pornographers’ crack” about how the @vikileaks30 story started. Read the story, though, and the ugly smear rears its head again in connection with the IP address:
That IP address also was linked to some Wikipedia pages where someone had written pro-NDP comments, which the Citizen reported.
Actually I do wish that Postmedia hired better editors because what Maher is saying now is not quite the same as what Pilieci was saying earlier, but this seems to me little but a barely-disguised attempt at repeating the smear. And then not content with doing it once, Maher pipes up again soon after:
It may be that that person is a secret NDP supporter, and enemy of Vic Toews, or it may be that there is some confusion over the IP address.
Does Maher think we’re all blind here?.. this is getting pretty blatant. Again, note the use of the weasel phrase “it may be”. Overall the article is pretty weak stuff by a national  Postmedia correspondent. In Canadian print journalism this is as senior as it gets without getting bumped up to a position involving more management duties, this isn’t the young guy who writes the computer column (that would be Pilieci, who is a staff member at the Ottawa Citizen and not really staff with the Postmedia “mothership”).
But that article isn’t what really rang a bell for me on the smear question — rather, what made me see the big picture was the follow-up by Pilieci following the @vikileaks30 poster’s announcement that the account was now retired. See if you can spot the difference from the (youthful?) exhuberance of his former column:
A further look into the IP address associated with Vikileaks30 found the address had been used in a range of online activities, including to edit several entries on the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia ranging on topics from the history of ice hockey to a biography of Whitney Houston, as well as to alter content on a variety of politically charged topics that span the political spectrum. It does not appear the poster was targeting any specific political party or affiliation.
This went to publishing after it was clear that the NDP slur had failed to gain any traction in the House of Commons or indeed with public sentiment. What a difference a day makes, I say.
It still remains a good question as to whether there was a concerted effort by the Tory-friendly Postmedia to deliberately steer hostility towards the NDP at a time when the Conservative Party was in a bit of a crisis. The coverage in the first story mentioned actually lead to quite a few angry words in the House of Commons, mostly coming (as the second story reports) from rather easily-influenced Tory attack dog John Baird:
“Not only have they stooped to the lowest of the lows, but they have been running this nasty Internet dirty-trick campaign with taxpayers’ money,” he said.
That’s the head of Canadian diplomacy shooting himself in the foot there, taking Pilieci’s story as gospel truth (his was the main story that included the smear). Oh dear.
I for one will be following further developments regarding this aspect of the C-30 story, and I certainly hope that others will start asking questions about the possibility of spin or even possible fabrications by the newspaper conglomerate that bills itself as “the largest publisher by circulation of paid English-language daily newspapers in Canada”.
Either that, or they need to take a serious look at who they keep on staff.
Note: in order to avoid any confusion if any of the three aforementioned stories should be edited or somehow deleted, I have taken screen captures of all 4:
Public Security Minister Vic Toews is planning to introduce his so-called “lawful access” bill to the House of Commons later today. So, how does it measure up?
According to Ottawa U Law professor Michael Geist, it’s going to create a panopticon society where online privacy essentially no longer exists and is replaced with a sort of Big Brother. Which is pretty funny when you consider that the Tories are also about to introduce their bill to scrap the long gun registry and proactively delete any and all data therein. Apparently guns don’t kill people, but the freedom to go about one’s own business does… that pretty much tells you what you need to know about Stephen Harper and his cronies.
And then there’s the issue of cost, which is entirely offloaded onto the ISPs themselves, who will now have to keep a record of everything you do online — well, everything you do online taking the direct route via your ISP, making it trivial to circumvent — for 90 days. I rather pity the ISPs who are going to be stuck storing all that data at their own expense. You can be certain that they’ll be glad to pass the savings onto you, of course.
So what’s the justification for this garbage? Mr. Toews, never one to shy away from stooping to scrape the bottom of the barrel, claims that either you are with him or you are siding with “the child pornographers”. Never mind that there have been a number of child porn busts recently which have not required any of the new police state powers Mr. Toews insists are absolutely crucial to fight that crime. Personally I’ve always thought that it was illegal, but apparently by senile old Vic’s reckoning it was impossible to fight this crime before! Of course it wasn’t. Mr. Toews is just pulling his Maud Flanders act, and it sells out very well out West, where evidently people ignorant or mad enough to vote for the insane old codger think “internet” is a kind of potato blight.
But why should we let Vic the impaler set the terms? I say, unless you are against this so-called “lawful access” bill, you are siding with the fascists. I guess the Conservative Party has yet another self-renaming in the works.
Like a rather large number of people I am following the legal proceedings to extradite Julian Assange to Sweden with very keen interest. It is a very unusual case indeed. The British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is currently attempting to extradite Mr. Assange, the head of Wikileaks, to Sweden for questioning regarding something which does not appear to be considered prosecutable in any way outside of Sweden. Of course there are additional facts which make this case particularly odd for the CPS to pursue — but pursue it it has, all the way to the UK’s highest court.
One does very well to wonder why. Mr. Assange has not been charged with any crime, in the UK, Sweden, or anywhere else. Mr. Assange has offered to submit himself to questioning at the Swedish embassy in the UK. There are strong questions of prosecutorial misconduct already surrounding the case, and rumours seem to abound to the effect that the “victim” in the affair has been coerced into declaring that there was wrongdoing at all by a particularly zealous and right-wing Swedish prosecutor.
So of course inquiries have been made as to why the CPS is taking on this case. I myself cannot think of a justification to pursue extradition proceedings against a person who is not under a criminal charge for anything. It just doesn’t make sense, unless of course the entire affair is political in nature, in which case there are strong implications that the CPS is being used by another organ of the British government for purposes which, on the outside at least, seem unethical at best and downright illegal at worst.
As I have already mentioned an inquiry was made to obtain information from the CPS as to why they are conducting this campaign, and the CPS’s response can now be published, as it has been here. The CPS is refusing to answer the question, but it’s the cited reasoning which is most interesting:
Information is exempt information under s. 27(1)(a) if its disclosure under the FOIA would, or would be likely to, prejudice relations between the United Kingdom and any other State.
Now, I’m no expert in diplomacy or foreign relations myself, but it seems that the CPS itself is admitting that it is, directly or indirectly, being pressured by a foreign government into proceeding forward with the extradition. That seems highly improper. The CPS is not, nor should it be, answerable to the Foreign Office, or indeed any other body than the Home Office. And what interest does the Home Office have seeking the extradition of a man who is not charged with a crime in the UK or abroad?
And since the response hints at foreign pressure, who is behind that? Sweden has not seen it fit to charge Mr. Assange with a crime. Which country could possibly have a vested interest in getting the head of Wikileaks out of a jurisdiction where he enjoys legal protection and into international territory where he is completely unprotected? Hmm, I wonder. Not to mention that Sweden, Â nice country though it may be, hardly has the clout to tell the Brits what to do. For that you have to look elsewhere. Surely it would have to be a more influential country, perhaps one which operates several military bases in the UK, to pick only one consideration out of a hat. As it is now no question can be answered as the CPS is keeping mum on the subject.
Of course one doesn’t have to spend too long reading between the lines to figure it out…
