test blog #10

One type of TV show that I enjoy are detective murder mysteries. I don't watch them all - that would be nearly impossible, Netflix carries so many - but I'm always looking for detective shows that I find absorbing. " Inspector Lewis " is probably my favourite. I loved " Prime Suspect ", Helen Mirren's tour de force. I'm in the middle of " Wallander ", recommended by a few wmtc readers, although I'm watching the BBC version with Kenneth Branagh, not the original Swedish show . " Case Histories ", featuring Jason Isaacs as private investigator Jackson Brodie, is another one I enjoy. And I've sampled many more - Inspector Morse, Midsomer Murders, Cadfael, and so on. On my to-watch list are The Killing and The Fall. As much as I enjoy this genre, I often end up annoyed when we learn "whodunit". Because, too often, you know who done it? A woman. In TV detective shows, there are an enormous number of women murderers. W...

Today, fast-food workers all over the United States are standing up for their rights, demanding a living wage, demanding to be free from harassment and intimidation. From New York to Seattle, from Maine to Texas, from Los Angeles to Chicago to Raleigh, low-wage workers are on strike. Please show your support by signing their open letter to McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Papa John’s. These corporate giants netted $7.35 billions in profit last year alone, yet they pay their workers poverty wages.  Help them demand more!

Let me be clear. The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. - Secretary of State John Kerry The slaughter of innocent civilians is a moral obscenity? I'm betting the people of Iraq and Afghanistan* agree. Or is only the slaughter of civilians by chemical weapons obscene? Is slaughter by bombs - by house raids and checkpoints, by torture and endless imprisonment - merely ordinary and banal? Does white phosphorous , the US's chemical weapon of choice , constitute moral obscenity? How about imprisoning for 35 years  someone who brought to light the killing of innocent civilians, then granting absolute immunity  to the people who ordered those killing? That obscene enough for you? Yet again we are told that to punish a dictator for killing his own people, we must kill more of those people. And we will be told this again and again, onward through the years, until we shut down this...

If you are a fast-food worker, go here for more information on the national strike to say: Low Pay Is Not OK . For the rest of us, on August 29, visit a picket line , send an email , sign a petition . In New York City, join rallying low-wage workers at Union Square at 2:30 . All our communities will be stronger we all earn a living wage!

Abby Zimet reports on Common Dreams: Days before Bradley - now Chelsea - Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for helping expose U.S. war crimes in Iraq, the Obama Department of Justice filed a petition in federal court arguing that the perpetrators of those crimes - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al - enjoy “absolute immunity” against criminal charges or civil liability. The filing came in a suit brought by Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, who alleges that the planning and waging of the Iraq war under false pretenses constituted a "crime of aggression" under a law used in the Nuremberg trials. Meanwhile, after the revolution...

My adventures with VPNs, wireless VPNs, and other fun IP-address changes just keep getting better all the time. My new favourite addition is called HideMyAss  - a stupid name, but a terrific service. When I last updated you on our awesome wireless VPN + Roku experience , we were using two separate routers - one for wireless VPN, and one for everything else. This was necessary because MLB.TV - through which we watch baseball on our TV, via Roku - didn't get along with the wireless VPN router. The feed would continually stop for buffering, making it impossible to follow a game. To watch baseball, we would use our regular router, with our normal Canadian IP address. To watch US Netflix, we'd use the router with the non-Canadian IP address. Flipping routers, as we call it, was no big deal. But recently, anytime I was using the wireless VPN router, my internet connection would slow to a crawl. Plus the selection of IP addresses offered by Acevpn was getting less and less reliable. ...

A few months ago, I wrote about my idol, Joni Mitchell , and posted a number of links to in-depth, lengthy interviews with her. I wasn't able to listen to them at the time. Today I am relaxing on the patio, drinking iced coffee, listening to Joni talk about her life, her art, and life, and art. Podcast of Jian Gomeshi (CBC) one hour in Joni's home. At around 17:30 she talks about what it was like to be a pregnant, destitute teenager in 1965, and the erroneous claim that she surrendered her child for adoption in order to further her career. She also demolishes several cultural myths, such as "the greatest generation," and looks at the conversion of the hippie generation into a generation of consumers. She ends by saying, "I have a tremendous will to live, and also a tremendous joie de vivre ." Video of Jon Pareles (New York Times) in conversation with Joni Mitchell and Brian Blade, one hour thirty-five minutes, at the Luminato Festival in Toronto; the inter...

Today, Americans will march on Washington in commemoration of the most famous March on Washington: August 28, 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his now-famous "I Have A Dream" speech. The meaning of that speech, like the man who delivered it, has been purposefully misremembered, and so, is constantly misunderstood. Here's the fully researched version of a theme I am always talking about , adapted from the book The Speech: The Story Behind Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream , by Gary Younge. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took the podium on August 28, 1963, the Department of Justice was watching. Fearing that someone might hijack the microphone to make inflammatory statements, the Kennedy DOJ came up with a plan to silence the speaker, just in case. In such an eventuality, an official was seated next to the sound system, holding a recording of Mahalia Jackson singing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” which he planned to play to placate the crowd.  Half ...

Some of you may remember when wmtc was obsessed with the War Resisters Support Campaign , a fact that was noticed in some very interesting places.  ( Hi CIC! Are you still reading? ) I joined the Campaign in 2007, then in 2009, I began school for my Master of Information degree. I managed to stay active in the Campaign during my first two years of school, but by fall of 2011, night classes plus my library page job on top of my regular paid employment forced me to take a back seat. I thought I'd reactivate immediately after graduation... then over the summer... and now I'm aiming for mid-September. But although I have only attended Campaign meetings sporadically for some time, I'm still involved in the fight to keep US war resisters safe in Canada, and to support war resisters who have returned to the US. War resistance in general, and specifically Iraq War resisters in Canada, are still the most passionate and pressing concerns in my mind and my heart. Because of that, I...

Here are two important things you can do to help support Chelsea Manning. 1. Do whatever you can to work for her pardon. You can sign the petition to President Obama here. You have to create an account, but that only takes a few moments, and the form accepts Canadian postal codes. Please sign and share widely. 2. Write her. According to her support team, she's looking forward to being able to correspond with her supporters for the first time. The mailing address will say Bradley Manning, as that's the only name the military will recognize. But you can and should use her chosen name out of simple courtesy and respect. Bradley E. Manning 89289 1300 N. Warehouse Road Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304 USA Here's a good short piece by John Cassidy in The New Yorker : History Will Pardon Manning, Even if Obama Doesn't .

A while back, I saw a blog post angrily asking why everyone referred to Bradley Manning as a man when it is "known" that he is trans. The answer is simple: out of respect. That's how Manning was identifying. Period. Anything else was rumour. Now that Manning's court martial (fake trial) is over, she has come out as a transwoman. So now we can refer to Chelsea Manning with the same respect. From Chase Madar , in The Nation : Update, 8/22/2013: Yesterday, Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Today, Chelsea Elizabeth Manning announced through her lawyer that she will live the rest of her life as a woman, and we have amended our comment from yesterday in conformity with who she is. Chelsea Manning will most likely be imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, which like all other US military prisons and many civilian ones, does not provide hormone therapy or gender transition surgery to transgender prisoners. These policies should be reversed immediately. The best ...

In case you haven't seen it, this  link at Democracy Now! has the transcript of Bradley Manning's statement, read by his lawyer David Coombs, after Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life. I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanist...

My thoughts on the Bradley Manning verdict at Socialist.ca: here .

If this doesn't tug at your heartstrings, better call 911. You might be dead. Many thanks to Stephanie for helping me stay afloat.

I am always astonished to see stories such as these. A tree-dwelling animal with a teddy-bear-like face and rust-coloured fur has become the newest mammal species discovered by scientists. The olinguito, the smallest known member of the raccoon family, lives in the cloud forests high in the Andes Mountains of Colombia and Ecuador, reported a team of scientists from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., which described it in the journal ZooKeys Thursday. The animal has actually been displayed in museums and zoos over the past 100 years, but was mistakenly identified as a different, known species among its close relatives, the olingo. "It's been kind of hiding in plain sight for a long time," Kristofer Helgen, curator of mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and lead author of the new report, told The Associated Press. And this. Giant Maya Carvings Found in Guatemala Archaeologist Anya Shetler cleans an inscription below an ancient...

Once upon a time in the state of Indiana... Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, one of the country’s most widely read history books, died on January 27, 2010. Shortly after, then-Governor of Indiana Mitch Daniels got on his computer and fired off an email to the state’s top education officials: “This terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away.” But Gov. Daniels, now president of Purdue University, was not content merely to celebrate Howard Zinn’s passing. He demanded that Zinn’s work be hunted down in Indiana schools and suppressed: “The obits and commentaries mentioned his book ‘A People’s History of the United States’ is the ‘textbook of choice in high schools and colleges around the country.’ It is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page. Can someone assure me that is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally...

Earlier this week, Bradley Manning's defense ended its case in Manning's sentencing hearing. Manning made a statement to the military court: an apology. Reading it, I thought of 1984 , when Winston faces the terror of being eaten alive by rats, and he tells his tormentors what they want to hear. I read the apology and I thought,  They have crushed him. Manning has been tortured - physically and mentally. He has been through an ordeal that few of us can possibly imagine. No matter how much we admire him, no matter how we stand with him in spirit or in thought or by donating to his defense, no matter how many of us say "I Am Bradley Manning," only Bradley Manning is Bradley Manning. And he is alone. Manning said: First, your honour, I want to start off with an apology. I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I'm sorry I hurt the United States. At the time of my decisions, as you know, I was dealing with a lot of issues, issues that are ongoing and continuing to affe...

I have written a bit about the use of professional sports as a vehicle for war propaganda and militarism, such as when the Harper Government used the Olympic torch relay  to promote its war in Afghanistan. My partner Allan has covered this ground more consistently, since he writes a sports blog. See, for example, his " Thoughts Prompted By The Red Sox Foundation's Association With "Run To Home Base" " and " The National Anthem And The Idea Of Respect ", among others. These are mostly from a US perspective, since that's mostly where Major League Baseball is played. Whether it's endless rounds of "God Bless America," (nationalism being the first stop on the road to war), the honouring of veterans who are always deemed "heroes," or in one case, a plan to distribute dog-tags to kids attending a game ( dropped after protests ), the continuing militarization of sports is a disturbing - yet largely uncontested - trend. When milit...

When I read Stephen Fry's open letter to the IOC , and the continued calls to boycott or move the Sochi Games because of the horrendous and institutionalized homophobic violence within Russia, I couldn't help but think of the Beijing Games. I absolutely understand the uproar over Russia's anti-gay laws, and I agree, of course. But did the same people make so much as a peep when the Olympics were in Beijing? China is one of the worst human rights offenders on the planet, but all I heard during the Beijing Olympics was "Go Canada". I personally boycotted the Beijing Games ( here's why ), then soon discovered that I was done with the Olympics altogether . And certainly everyone who feels disgusted and offended at the homphobia emanating from Russia should personall boycott the games if that's what feels right to them. But Sochi is hosting, and that's not going to change. What can the people who'll be there do? Rosie DiManno has the right idea. DiManno...

Earlier this year, I re-watched the original "Star Trek" series end-to-end on Netflix - a thoroughly entertaining experience - then decided to watch  "Star Trek: The Next Generation" for the first time. It wasn't long before I was completely hooked. The show has a lot to recommend it: compelling story lines, mostly good writing, progressive politics, and the brilliant acting of Patrick Stewart meshed with the commanding character of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. I especially appreciate how Star Trek TNG improved on the worldview of Star Trek TOS. I remember reading about this when the show premiered in the late 1980s, especially how the role and status of women had been updated, but I didn't realize how far it went. The show is actually anti-sexist. That's why the absence of any gay or lesbian characters, or any same-sex relationships whatsoever, is such a glaring omission. A quick search online revealed that this topic has been well-discussed. (No surprise ...

Roku has added an app for PBS! This means we watch music clips from Austin City Limits , and in the winter we'll binge on American Experience history documentaries and American Masters biographies. These documentaries are consistently worth watching, and often truly excellent. On American Masters, we've recently seen "There But For Fortune," about Phil Ochs, and will eventually see bios of Philip Roth, J. D. Salinger, Johnny Carson, Mel Brooks, Rosetta Tharpe, and James Baldwin. American Experience has a spate of docs we haven't seen, including "The Abolitionists," and films on the building of the Panama Canal and the Hoover Dam. Roku has also added an app for the National Film Board of Canada ! The choices there are overwhelming, so if you've got NFB recommendations, please post them here. The appearance of these two apps is good news for streaming in general and for Roku in particular. Now that all my TV and movie viewing is on-demand, and I ha...

Finally, some peace and quiet. This is the first time since the sewage flood on July 8 that our home is quiet . This lovely state of affairs exists because we filed a complaint with the Landlord Tenant Board, requesting our Landlord be ordered to stop renovations on the basement until after we move out. The complaint has not even been processed yet, but the Landlord backed down. Another lesson in Know Your Rights ! (I would like to create a new tag/category for wmtc called "know your rights," but I feel like it would apply to half my posts.) With a plan for Tala's rehab , and the construction crew banished, we can finally breathe around here. Or at least I can. Allan is coping with deadline pressure, but at least now he has a quiet space to work - albeit it's the kitchen table. On my days off, I've been working on sorting our photos from our trip to Spain and putting them online... and I'm finally finished. There are more photos than anyone wants to look at,*...

I last wrote about Clarence Darrow in early 2012 , after reading a piece by one of my favourite New Yorker writers, Jill Lepore. Two new biographies of Darrow had been published, and Lepore wrote a tribute to the great defender , and mused on the state of North American labour movement. Lucky for me, Allan found a copy of one of those books - brand new, in hardcover - on one of his used-book jaunts. I'm more than halfway through John A. Farrell's Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned and still haven't gotten to Darrow's most famous triumph. As I wrote earlier , throughout my life and my self-education, all the way back through childhood, I kept stumbling on Clarence Darrow. And the more I learned of him, the more I loved and admired him. Is it any wonder? Darrow was: an outspoken atheist, a radical death-penalty abolitionist, the greatest defender of organized labour and the rights of working people the US has ever seen, and an anti-racist in a time when segregatio...

This Revolutionary Thought of the Day brought to you by my abiding hero, Clarence Darrow. Darrow dismissed many of the remedial bandages that he and the labor movement had battled for: eight-hour-day laws, women's suffrage, child labor legislation. "We are busy patching and tinkering, and doing a poor job patching and tinkering at that." The working class must seize the earth's natural resources and the means of production, he said. "There can never be any proper distribution of wealth in the world while a few own the earth - a few men own the mines, the railroads, the forests, while the great mass of men are bound to compete with each other for a chance to toil," Darrow told them. "There will never be a solution until all men are capitalists and all men workingmen.. . . . There can be no peace without it." From Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell

Tala is not doing well. You may recall, she has a chronic and degenerative spine condition . After a long rest and rehab process, she has been doing wonderfully - truly better than I ever expected. But this week she took a downturn. She was suddenly not able to sit. She can only stand or lie down. When she tries to sit, she is in obvious pain. She tries repeatedly, then gives up and lies down. We are taking her to the vet tomorrow, but my heart is already breaking. * * * * This spring, everything was going our way. We had so much good news, I kept thinking of the phrase "an embarrassment of riches". I finished my Master's degree. Allan got a book contract. I got my first librarian position. We had a great trip to Spain, London, and Paris. I'm still loving my new job, and Allan is working hard to meet the September 1 deadline for his manuscript. Then: my broken foot . The sewage flood . We have to move, and everything that entails. We're having successive conflict...