Archive for the ‘ Pictures ’ Category

“advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel … the new face of anti-Semitism”

Posted on May 15th, 2015 Be the first to comment

France arrests

The Harper government is signalling its intention to use hate crime laws against Canadian advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel.

The government’s intention was made clear in a response to inquiries from CBC News about statements by federal ministers of a “zero tolerance” approach to groups participating in a loose coalition called Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS), which was begun in 2006 at the request of Palestinian non-governmental organizations.

Asked to explain what zero tolerance means, and what is being done to enforce it, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney replied, four days later, with a detailed list of Canada’s updated hate laws, noting that Canada has one of the most comprehensive sets of such laws “anywhere in the world.”

In January, Canada’s then foreign affairs minister, John Baird, signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Israeli authorities in Jerusalem, pledging to combat BDS.

It described the movement as “the new face of anti-Semitism.”

A few days later, at the UN, Canadian Public Security Minister Steven Blaney went much further.

He conflated boycotts of Israel with anti-Semitic hate speech and violence, including the deadly attacks that had just taken place in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket.

Blaney then said the government is taking a “zero tolerance” approach to BDS.

“We’ve asked our lawyers. What does that mean?” says CUPE president Paul Moist. “Is it now a criminal offence to walk around with a sign saying close all the settlements, Israel out of occupied territories?”

In France, the law has for years criminalized hate speech based on national origin, and authorities there have in recent years been using it to prosecute BDS advocates. To date, more than 20 have been convicted.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-cites-hate-crime-laws-when-asked-about-its-zero-tolerance-for-israel-boycotters-1.3067497

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

“he was 15 … Canadian agents interrogated him in Guantanamo Bay despite knowing he had been abused beforehand”

Posted on May 14th, 2015 Be the first to comment

Kill Team Afghanistan

Although he was 15 when his crimes occurred in Afghanistan in July 2002, the U.S. military commission made no distinction between juveniles and adults in sentencing him in 2010 to a further eight years behind bars.

While the government concedes the sentence for the most serious charge — the murder of an American special forces soldier — can only be considered a youth sentence, it argues the other four — including attempted murder — must be viewed as adult sentences.

No provisions exist for an inmate to serve both youth and adult sentences at the same time, so Ottawa classified him as an adult offender when he transferred to Canada from Guantanamo Bay in September 2012 under an international treaty to serve out his punishment.

The Supreme Court has twice before taken up Khadr’s case, both times siding with him.

In 2008, the court ruled Canadian officials had acted illegally by sharing intelligence information about him with his U.S. captors.

In 2010, the top court declared that Ottawa had violated his constitutional rights when Canadian agents interrogated him in Guantanamo Bay despite knowing he had been abused beforehand.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/05/14/child-or-adult-supreme-court-hears-omar-khadr-case-today.html

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

“the mayor, the Toronto Police Service and its board have clearly declared black communities collectively a public safety threat”

Posted on May 14th, 2015 Be the first to comment

Krakow ghetto

“We have yet to be provided evidence that carding impacts crime in any shape or fashion,” Rinaldo Walcott, an associate professor at U of T said at a press conference Wednesday. “We have yet to be provided evidence that the database developed from carding impacts crime and its resolution in any way or shape.

“We find this totally unacceptable in the age of information,” said Walcott. “We believe that by ignoring available evidence, that the mayor, the Toronto Police Service and its board have clearly declared black communities collectively a public safety threat.

“The only way to think of such a declaration is to call it anti-black racism.”

Walcott was joined by Anthony Morgan of the African Canadian Legal Clinic, Ryerson University professor Akua Benjamin, Pascale Diverlus who is vice-president of United Black Students Ryerson and a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto and academic Chris Williams, a vocal opponent of carding.

The group is asking for meetings with new police chief Mark Saunders, Mayor John Tory and Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Toronto police defend carding — during which people are stopped and documented in mostly non-criminal encounters — as an invaluable intelligence-gathering tool and say they police high crime areas of the city and not by race.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/13/group-questions-why-toronto-police-dont-have-stats-to-defend-carding.html

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

“If you do something against the law in the RCMP … they change the law”

Posted on May 14th, 2015 Be the first to comment

ENLIST TODAY

“I find this provision almost Orwellian,” said Fred Vallance-Jones, an associate professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax and an expert in access to information law.

“It seeks to rewrite history, to say that lawful access to records that existed before didn’t actually exist after all, and that if you exercised your quasi-constitutional right of access to those records, well too bad, you’re out of luck.”

The government is setting a precedent to move retroactively on any record it doesn’t want exposed, Vallance-Jones said.

“That to me is the deeper concern.”

Michel Drapeau, a lawyer, former military colonel and access-to-information author, noted there has never been a charge laid under the Access to Information Act, let alone a conviction.

He said the rationale of moving retroactively to prevent a possible prosecution is “a dangerous and unwelcome precedent” that should be as unwelcome to the RCMP and the administration of justice as to freedom-of-information wonks.

“The optics of it are not good: ‘Oh, so that’s the way it works now?’ If you do something against the law in the RCMP, you’ve got your friends in high places, they change the law,” said Drapeau.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/budget-bill-c-59-rewrites-access-law-to-protect-rcmp-on-gun-registry-cp-1.3072548

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

Dougie and the chief hug it out, plus a thoroughly scaped goat

Posted on August 14th, 2014 3 Comments

I remember opining not long ago about what appears to be public theatre between police chief Blair and the Fords. As I recall, I speculated that it had something to do with propping each other up in the media, a backroom friendship publicly laid out for the media as animosity. The purpose is simply to boost each others’ profiles, something the Fords shamelessly pursue.

Now consider the most recent circumstances:

  • Blair is retiring and not considering a run in politics. Even if this isn’t true, he’ll probably need to parlay his high profile into his next gig, whatever that happens to be. In other words: media attention=good.
  • As late as yesterday, Blair and Doug were staring each other down over Doug’s slanderous comments. Despite extended threats of litigation and with no new developments in the intervening 16-ish hours, Blair does a 180 and says everything’s forgiven. Aww, shucks.
  • Blair continues to look like a stalwart law-n-order guy, and the Fords continue to appear to be the poor, beaten-upon “common folks” to their seething, money-trumps-life supporters:ford_support

Against the backdrop of another big corporation taking the law into their own hands (where’s Blair big denouncement on corporate vigilantism?), we get the simultaneous news that one — yes, one 25-year-old person has been found guilty of “orchestrated” and “widespread” voter suppression (election fraud), by the Conservative party during the last election.

What did Harper have to say right after the scandal broke out? Oh yeah…

“Our party has no knowledge of these calls. It’s not part of our campaign,” Mr. Harper told reporters on Thursday. “Obviously, if there is anyone who has done anything wrong, we will expect that they will face the full consequences of the law.”

And that is, of course, why he immediately and deeply cut funding to Elections Canada (the people running the fraud investigation), and then introduced a new law making it harder for people to vote just like they’re doing in the US (because, of course, that was the problem).

You can be forgiven for forgetting the 2006 “money funneling” scam that Harper used to fraudulently take the previous election. Elections Canada investigator Ronald Lamothe described it at the time as, “entirely under the control of and at the direction of officials of the Conservative Fund Canada and/or the Conservative Party of Canada.” The Conservatives went so far as to admit guilt in that case — they eventually conceded to winning through fraud and blowing millions to first deny, then defend it all. 

No one was found guilty, the government paid itself a fine and announced a “big victory”, and we are told to believe that the Conservatives won a second majority, one so overwhelming that Harper is unopposed in governmentWell, I guess there’s no problem then. Nothing to worry about!

1925306_705372276159973_624104193_n

Filed under: B Sides, Patrick Bay, Pictures

See something say something

Posted on August 14th, 2014 Be the first to comment

The corpse of my last post hadn’t even begun to cool when this morning I heard the TTC telling me over the PA that if I “see something” I should “say something”.

In case you don’t recognize this phrase, it’s a verbatim import of the US’ Department of Homeland Security “Turn Everyone Into Snitches” program.

Yup, that is the official video. It may seem a bit ludicrous, but this morning’s commute message was along these lines. If I see any suspicious packages, I should run to the nearest authority type and shit myself.

It’s so widespread that it’s even being introduced to gentle Vancouverites.

That one almost makes you feel good about saying it, doesn’t it?

Except that it has thus far preceded the type of government paranoia that’s playing out in Ferguson, Missouri right now.

ferguson

I recall getting a face-full of something similar not too long ago:

ocap-protest-1-1024

Oh I know I was pretty critical of the G20 protesters back then, and I still am.

Walking around with signs and screaming at cops / passers-by does nothing. Breaking stuff even less so. Ooh, you broke a window! Take that, corporations!

As I recall, I’d already had some run-ins with G20 cops (and government) about which I wasn’t altogether happy, so I wasn’t exactly rooting for them. But just as much as I’m not a fan of state violence, I’m also not a fan of non-consensual people violence (if people agree to beat each other up, fine by me).

The problem, as I see it, is the forced, one-sided renunciation of violence while guess who gets the monopoly rights…

Besides, I don’t appreciate that sort of jittery message with my morning coffee.

suspicious_package

Filed under: B Sides, Patrick Bay, Pictures, Videos

Flying spaghetti monsters

Posted on August 5th, 2014 1 Comment
believe! (or else)

believe! (or else)

The ugly.

Harper’s propensities are a toward building a corporate-fascist tyranny in Canada.

It’s tough to find agreement on just how far Harper’s machinations have progressed, but both his actions and his words repeatedly reassure us that this is precisely what he’s gunning for.

Tyranny, according to the people who coined the word, means “one who rules without law, looks to his own advantage rather than that of his subjects, and uses extreme and cruel tactics—against his own people as well as others”.

The evidence of government tyranny can be found all over TCL — just flip through some old posts.

And fascism, according to both original and modern definitions, is generally defined as, “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

mussolini

Or, if you prefer war-and-oppression-loving Benito Mussolini’s definition: “The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State–a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values–interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people … Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and economic sphere”.

Lawless and absolute control over economic and societal affairs?

In Canada?

Yes, and it’s obvious: the government is a monopoly that demands absolute obeisance to itself while keeping all of its citizens in debt-bondage to the state (a.k.a. taxes that you “owe” for your entire life and beyond). The vast majority of citizens never agreed to this or its administration; rather, they acquiesced after being threatened with seizure (theft) and jail (kidnapping and imprisonment). Of course, despite the fact that they overtly demand that these are crimes, government flatly rejects any definitions other than that of benevolent benefit when they engage in them. They have to; how could they undermine their own “authority”?

thoughtpolice

To be fair, Harper didn’t come up with the lie of calling Canada a “democracy” (which it’s simply not), or foisting the apparatus of the state to dominate and control. But he, like most other politicians, engages in stately depravity. He knows that after years of screwing over Canada he’ll be rewarded with a fat pension and lots of gifts from his international buddies for things like looking the other way to systemic human rights abuses. “Important Canadian values” my ass.

What about checks and balances?

judgejudy

Oh, you must be referring to the government-appointed juduciary (or a healthy smattering of corrupt, degenerate, ignorant and incompetent Justices of the Peace), or maybe the equally undemocratic Senate, or maybe the innumerable, undemocratic “authorities” that are imposed on us via the shell game of elections and self-appointed power of the moneyed ruling class.

So the term “fascist tyranny” is not a spurious, knee-jerk reaction or a flimsy propaganda label — it’s a sober definition based on overt deeds.

If it quacks like a duck, as they say.

Okay, so you still don’t like “corporate-fascist tyranny”? Too many memories of Nazi Germany? How exactly could Israel and Canada be such close partners given such strong overtones? How indeedhow indeed.

Very well. So if Harper himself called Canada a “dictatorship” and has been working hard to remove that “benign” prefix from the description, what exactly does that make him? And what does that make Canada?

The bad.

The awful arguments of moral relativism — “at least we’re not as bad as _______!” — imply that anything and everything goes as long as our government doesn’t behave like those animals in other countries.

This means that all that needs to happen is for continuing debasement and destruction of those countries (helped along, of course), for the argument to remain valid. They might behead you arbitrarily over there, so it’s okay for us to torture you here. When they get to doing unspeakable things to children, you being merely beaten and imprisoned for having adult opinions is perfectly acceptable … helluva lot better than what they’d do to you.

Price of freedom, buddy.

hicongo-ntaganda

And … AND terrorism!

Oh yeah…terrorism. Who’s responsible for that again? Surely we need our government to protect us from all those baddies! Okay, so some (unbelievably audacious and fundamentally illegal), abuses might happen, but surely those people will be held to account.

Yeah, surely.

Obviously.

The moral relativist is in most arguments in favour of a race to the bottom, to the very worst crimes and debauchery that humanity can think up — as long as those crimes are slightly better than the other guy’s. The concept of absolute, inhuman control by the fascist state is mirrored in its mindless apologists, along with all the overt lies about your “protection” and “safety” (Terrorism! Crime! Environment! Lefties! Traffic!)

Even if you don’t believe that we’ve arrived at this point, is this what we should be striving for?

Even if you believe that this is merely incompetence, is it logical to depend on the very same people who created and perpetuated these problems for decades/centuries to miraculously fix them?

Okay, I know I’m hammering this topic pretty hard, but only because I absolutely know that the time to take a solid stand is now. The march of corpo-fascism continues across North America and elsewhere, fully promulgated by our “democratically elected” leaders.

All tomorrows are too late.

The good.

IPViking attack map

The map above is from Norse Corporation’s IPViking Live site where you can see many of the world’s cyber attacks in realtime.

While a map of attacks in the ongoing “cyberwar” (a fear-based buzzword), may seem like utter devastation, it really only shows good old-fashion hack ‘n crack activity with the occasional DDOS attack (nothing more than the target being overwhelmed with too much intentional internet traffic — a very brute-force technique).

In fact, aside from a change in connectivity and some improvements in security, many of the underlying penetration techniques haven’t changed much since I was a pimply-faced, war-dialing teenager.

war_games

What the map reveals, however, is that Canada’s internet connection to the world is still somewhat open and unencumbered (net neutrality not withstanding), which is confirmed by the the renewed attention of the copyright goon squad.

Better still, the increasingly brave belief in privacy and anonymity (and moreover simply basic justice), are alive and well in Canada. It is increasingly Canadians who champion truth, justice, and democracy (in the truest sense), around the world.

Take, for example, Montreal’s Subgraph. They come right out of the gate with a firm declaration:

Subgraph is an open source security company.

This means that we believe that open source means the best possible assurance of security at a time when trust is increasingly challenging.

Subgraph takes its inspiration from the domain of cryptography where proprietary algorithms are never trusted, and extends this principle to software.

If a proprietary algorithm cannot be trusted, why trust proprietary, closed-source security software?

I like where they’re going with this. I also like that they’ve taken on the task of creating Subgraph OS and Mail, a much-needed alternative to Tails which is a fully self-contained operating system built around security, privacy, and anonymity that has recently received some skepticism.

Closer to home we find the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, a group dedicated more to threat analysis and neutralization rather than the creation of new products (though they sometimes make those too).

Citizen Lab is lead by Ron Deibert who Sarah informs me often carries himself (and is received as) a rockstar, probably because of stuff like this:

…he was sitting on a panel with John Adams, the former chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the National Security Agency’s little-known northern ally. Afterward, he recalls, the former spy chief approached and casually remarked that there were people in government who wanted Deibert arrested—and that he was one of them.

It’s a bit freaky to hear that,” Deibert said when he recalled the Calgary encounter in an interview with Ars. “When people ask, ‘are you worried about the Chinese or some other adversary out there,’ I say I’m always a bit more worried about my own government, because this is the kind of thing I hear occasionally.”

It’s Citizen Lab’s razor-edge stride between academic rigour, establishment paranoia, and charisma that make it both a formidable force as well as a model for what I think needs to happen, at least in the online world. Increasingly, I believe that Citizen Lab is an example of the type organization that freedom and truth-minded individuals will come to rely on — a group of enlightened individuals who know what time it is.

flavaflav

If you don’t go for these freewheeling hippie types, there are older and more established schools of thought that underscore this entire line of thinking; schools like the Rothbard Insitute, another academic but considerably stuffier organization espousing individual freedom through “radical” economic ideas, and the Mises Institute which runs along similar lines.

On the political front we find groups like the Pirate Party which, despite the malignancies heaped on the name by the corpo-state, is ultimately for individual rights and freedoms:

To describe the goal of the Pirate Party in a single word, I would use “empowerment”. The beauty of the Internet and information technology is the ability for a poor child to have the same opportunities to create change as a wealthy privileged adult. It is the goal of the Pirate Party to encourage that strength, and to promote values which will empower every Canadian.

And if Rothbard or Mises are too rigid for your enjoyment, there are many bright, well-spoken, informed individuals out there that help to bridge the gaps; everything from applicable advice to thought-provoking witticisms.

magical democracy

Complacency and continuing acquiescence are, of course, an option. Going along with or supporting the increasingly fascist state are another. We could also worship the flying spaghetti monster, believe that voting makes a difference, trust that government is working for our benefit, etc.

We have some good examples of how such beliefs work out … maybe it’s time for something different this time?

Filed under: B Sides, Patrick Bay, Pictures

Skinworks

Posted on July 16th, 2014 Be the first to comment

Racy street advertising for Steamworks, Church Street

 

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

BreakOutBox open-sourced

Posted on July 2nd, 2014 1 Comment

BreakOutBox

When I mentioned that I’d be releasing the BreakOutBox source code, I didn’t expect that I’d also be able to figure out how to create a portable version of the application, but I did. :) This means that you don’t necessarily have to install it, as you would do with a standard application, so it can run off of a USB stick or possibly even a DVD.

In a nutshell, BreakOutBox detects any browsers you may have installed and opens them in “Tor mode” — ready and set up to communicate through the Tor network via the included Tor binary. This is likely not as secure as something like the Tor Browse Bundle, but it still makes it so that you’re fairly anonymously browsing the web, seemingly from a whole other part of the world.

Tor exit address

The source code is not something that a novice will want to be looking into at the moment; it’s currently poorly commented, comes with no documentation, and really not much in the way of explanation. At least for now. And it’s pretty buggy.

But if you’re still willing and able, head on over to the new GitHub repo I’ve set up:

https://github.com/Patrick-Bay/BreakOutBox

You’ll notice a folder in the project called “BreakOutBox_standalone” which is the actual portable app, as compiled by FlashDevelop. It is bulkier than it needs to be but, as with the other pieces, I haven’t yet had much chance to trim down or edit the files. If you want to use the portable version, I recommend just grabbing the whole folder for the time being. Open up the “BreakOutBox.exe” file to run the desktop application from wherever you’ve copied the folder.

Although I’ve included them already, you may also want to check out the supporting libraries that are used in BreakOutBox:

SwAG: https://code.google.com/p/swag-as/
as3crypto: http://as3crypto.googlecode.com/
WRASE: https://code.google.com/p/wrase/
TorAS: https://code.google.com/p/toras/

These are necessary for BoB to operate correctly — SwAG takes care of communicating between the modules, as3crypto provides HTTPS support, WRASE allows the application to work with the Windows Registry, and TorAS makes Tor happen.

As I mentioned, these are already included in the GitHub code so they’re included here simply as a reference. Other than grabbing yourself a copy of the latest FlashDevelop (and the BreakOutBox source code, of course), you should be ready to play around with the software.

Please enjoy.

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures

The Grid TO goes belly-up

Posted on July 2nd, 2014 Be the first to comment

Though there’s still no indication of this on their website, The Grid TO’s last issue will be tomorrow:

grid_closes

 

What makes this sad news is what appears between the lines:

“It’s a tough time, a really tough time,” Turnbull said in an interview.

“The media landscape continues to be impossible for a start up,” he said, calling The Grid a victim of timing.

Launched on May 12, 2011, three years after the Great Recession, Turnbull said, “nobody anticipated how dramatically print and online revenue would continue to decline after 2009. We all thought it would be a gentle landing. Instead, it’s been violent.

“If the Grid had launched eight years ago instead of three, there’s no question it would be a roaring success,” he said.

In other words, independent journalism (even when backed by a media giant like Torstar), is a real tough sell today (no small thanks, I’m sure, to when they’re dismissed or attacked by corrupt leaders).

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures