Preoccupied With The Occupation Of Occupy Wall Street

Let me say this first: the Occupy movement has already failed.

In the first handful of days at the Occupy Wall Street event, there was something interesting going on – there was a hopefulness that a message could be made loud enough to catch the much-derided 1%’s attention at the top of the capital food chain.

It seemed like a situation that could spark to a sort of Arab Spring uprising that would force changes.

But… the message was quickly lost as everyone (and their dog) who had ever had a grievance with the system of capitalism showed up with a cardboard sign.

Immediately, the movement became a hodgepodge… a cohesive mess of the needy that lacked any sort of focus.

Just as quickly as the Occupy movement spread to other cities, this terminal protest disease spread out to the new locations… and nobody seemed to notice or was willing to do what was necessary to heal the organized group organism.

Instead of a single, collective voice calling on the rich to change their ways, the Occupy movement mutated into something that required not just the ears of bankers and investment brokers, but the attention of every sort of executive that had ever been in contact with money: bankers, investors, insurance agents, HMOs, Hollywood types, retirement fund operators, school board trustees, mayors, execs at restaurant chains, dental surgeons, toy makers, taxi operators, and the list goes on almost indefinitely.

In a few quick and easy steps, the Occupy movement had gone from relevant (good) to super relevance (bad).

To have an effective message, it has to be concise and to the point… something that can be carried by the masses with a unified voice.

The Arab Spring protests succeeded in overthrowing the governments of countries like Egypt because every person who picked up a stone to throw at the government’s forces in the streets wanted the same thing:  they wanted the ruling party and it’s corruption gone – end of story.

It’s a model that could have made the Occupy movement truly revolutionary and the Western world would be on it’s way to change.

But, instead, the Occupiers maintain an incredibly fractured front with nearly every person at these protests wanting a different form of change… and it’s that kind of behavior that those in power can effective ignore pretty much forever.

It’s sort of like someone on Facebook creating a group that sets out to draw attention to one thing that would seem very important – let’s say the abuse of raccoon dogs in China – and then proceeds to flood the group with links about Nike sweatshops in Thailand, the amounts of trans-fats in KFC chicken, and the failures of the American political system.

That Facebook user meant well, but is left wondering why he or she doesn’t have anyone joining their online cause and it’s simply because they couldn’t stay on message.

It’s the same in politics: the politician who’s most likely to win is the one who has a set number of priorities and then hammers away at them on the anvil of the public stage  - instead of jumping around from issue to issue as each voter mentions a problem during the campaign.

In fact, in the brief history of the Occupy movement, there’s only been one time that protesters got to the verge of getting some concessions made.

Several days ago, a group of Occupiers from the Los Angeles movement managed to shut down one of the United State’s most important ports by sealing off the entrance: trucks that would normally have picked up goods made in China and hauled them away to Walmarts across the nation couldn’t get in or out due to the mass of protesters standing in their way.

This ‘stand in’ lasted for about 4 hours before the Occupiers drifted away to their usual encampments… which is quite unfortunate.

Four hours may not seem like a long time, but when you take into account the amount of freight that goes in and out of the Port Of Los Angeles, even seconds of inefficiency cost shippers and receivers millions of dollars in lost revenue because those lost seconds propagate forward through time and can eventually turn into minutes and then hours.

So, when you make a four-hour stand, the collective sphincters of shipping magnates and the companies like Walmart or Target – who depend on their goods being delivered on time – clamp shut hard and then those execs start sweating as they start seeing the money they normally make slow down.

If those Occupiers had maintained their presence at the Los Angeles docks, and then got protesters from movements in other port cities to do the same, the very people who the Occupy movement is supposed to be targeting would become very uncomfortable – and would start thinking of ways to assuage the angry mobs.

Of course, that would depend entirely on the commitment of the people in the Occupy movement since those billionaire executives would put pressure on elected officials (that most assuredly received campaign contributions from companies controlled by said execs) to crack down on these protesters via legal means through the deployment of riot squads or military personnel.

If the Occupiers are willing to be arrested, pepper sprayed, tased, shot with high-speed bean bags, hit with sound cannons, bombarded with tear gas canisters, and beaten with billy clubs – all in sufficient numbers to completely overwhelm the legal mechanisms that were deployed on behalf of the 1% – then they could indeed successfully create change.

Governments that are freely and democratically elected have no stomach for bloodshed in the streets, especially at the behest of billion dollar corporations that could afford to lose some money if it meant that people’s lives would get better.

But, no.

The Occupy movement lacks that focus… that honest desire to change things.

The extensive camps across North America have become love-ins for the economically disenfranchised… meccas for every hipster, Gen X slacker, unemployed teacher, and general malcontent that doesn’t have anything better to do.

For these people, the message is the act… instead of the message leading to an act – which is why Occupy will eventually fail.

Media outlets focus on the Occupy movement mostly because it’s become a sideshow, but also because it provides some political drama as various city councils try to cope with the public disruptions.

In fact, the media are the only people honestly paying attention to the Occupy movement since the 1% have decided the Occupiers present no threat to themselves and their money-making empires.

So let me say this to you, Occupiers of the world: change your strategy or go home.

If you’re not actually interfering with the 1% by removing money from their pockets, you’re of no real consequence.

Gather up… firm up your resolve… solidify your message… and declare war on the 1%.

Block access to major ports.

Physically prevent people from shopping at major retailers.

Stop buying Starbucks coffee on your way to the Occupy camps.

Take your money out of the major banks and commit to a local credit union.

Honestly threaten the 1% by taking away their money… instead of being a bunch of dirty hippies standing around clapping each other on the back for a job well-done when you actually haven’t accomplished a single thing.

In the words of my progenitors: shit or get off the pot.

Or… in modern vernacular: get real or fuck off.

The Frayed Ends Of The Nuclear Cord

For all it’s faults (byproducts that have to be sequestered for half a million years, for instance), nuclear energy is amongst the best ways to generate electricity known to mankind at this time – discounting any future advances in fusion or solar power generation.

Nuclear doesn’t generate the greenhouse gases that spew forth from coal and natural gas power plants… isn’t effected by cloudy days or winter seasons like solar… has no problems when the air is still and fails to turn the windmills… and it doesn’t reroute entire aquatic ecosystems like hydroelectric dams.

But yes… there is that need to protect humankind and all our friends in the wild kingdom from the nuclear waste on scales of time that are longer than civilization has existed on the face of the planet.

Regardless, nuclear energy’s benefits are vast and every facility constructed to harness the power of the atom is a boon to society as it generally means there are less coal-burning plants toxifying the air we breath.

The problems with nuclear energy fall into two categories: environmental, which I’ve touched on above… and political, which I’m going to talk about below.

Nuclear reactors can be harnessed for electricity generation, yes… but they also can be used to create fissile material like plutonium or enriched uraniums that are necessary to create an atomic weapon.

Generally speaking, the technology required to build a nuclear power station is only affordable to nations that are more or less responsible enough to be trusted with any nuclear weapons that they might create – countries with governments that subscribe to the reality that deploying such weapons in anger would not be in their best interest.

Even the two most volatile neighbor countries that have nuclear weapons – India and Pakistan – realize that exchanging atomic potshots at each other would never be a small, localized engagement… that other nuclear powers greater than their own would most likely intervene with punishments of either military or political varieties.

With India being aligned with the Western superpowers like the United States, Great Britain, and France (don’t laugh… nukes can be dispatched from Parisian bunkers), a marginal country like Pakistan – who’s alliances aren’t clearly defined – would likely be struck with thermonuclear warheads carried by ICBMs or cruise missiles fired by New Delhi’s friends in the event Pakistan somehow came out on top.

The biggest check in the nuclear weapons business is that both the United States of America and Russia have enough nuclear weapons to end human civilization as we know it (or possibly altogether), with China, Great Britain, and France following behind them… and this is clearly enough to discourage smaller countries from developing any sort or atomic weapon.

There would assuredly be dire consequences for launching any sort of nuclear attack – no matter how much you hate the guy you’re pointing them at.

However, reality isn’t a universal concept in some corners of the globe.

There are a few governments that are so removed from society that they have become pariah states – the ones that nobody ever invites to the New Year’s celebrations at the United Nations, and ones that are perfectly happy with their status.

In the context of this discussion on smashing atoms, I’m focusing purely on the communist nation of North Korea and the middle eastern country of Iran.

Both countries eschew the global community (and the realities embraced by it) and have created unto themselves their own version of reality… one that generally places themselves at the center of the universe and deludes the ruling parties into thinking they’re untouchable/invincible.

In the case of North Korea, Kim Jong Il and his buddies (I use ‘buddies’ loosely since there isn’t a person in the country he wouldn’t shoot – including family members) rule the land in an almost empirical manner that really hasn’t been seen since the great dynasties of history: it’s taught to every North Korean child that Kim Jong Il is in fact a God.

In fact, North Korea barely qualifies as a communist state, and it can be argued – I’d imagine quite successfully – that it’s more in line with the leadership of Egypt’s pharaohs… just without the bountiful empire: North Korean citizens are probably the poorest out of any of the developed nations.

Kim Jong Il is so crazy that even his biggest (read: only) supporter at the United Nations, China, keeps him at arm’s length… and even then, they barely touch Pyongyang with their fingertips while wearing eight gloves on each hand.

The fact that this nutbar has access to nuclear weapons is entirely indigestible – and quite hard to fathom when you take into account that North Korea has no real money to speak of to pay for any sort of research program… but I suppose you can afford just about anything when you don’t actually have to pay the people who work for you.

Kim Jong Il is a god, remember? Don’t do what he wants and he’ll smite your ass… and probably your entire family while he’s at it.

If there’s any consolation, it’s that his atomic weapons are very basic and shoddily constructed: when testing them, they have a tendency to fizzle – more of a runaway nuclear chain reaction than an actual detonation.

These North Korean atomic bombs are barely in the same class as those deployed by the United States against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II… and nowhere near as advanced as even Pakistan’s.

But even the most rudimentary nuclear weapons are devastating… either through their explosive force (see photo below) or through the mass radioactive contamination of the target area.

Click Me

In  terms of instability, North Korea is like the guy who was arrested for killing his neighbor because he though the neighbor was telepathically raping his wife.

Nothing said by Kim Jong Ill or his government makes any sense, and North Korea has no qualms about threatening anyone with total and complete destruction… promising a war that will end Western civilization – despite lacking any way to follow through on these threats, even when including the estimated 5 to 8 nuclear weapons that Pyongyang possesses.

The North Korean military may have one of the largest standing armies on the world when compared to it’s national population, but the equipment they are outfitted with is barely any more advanced than it was during the Korean War in the 1950s – at best, it’s equivalent to Soviet designs from the mid to late 70s.

This irrationality is alarming for two reasons:

1) Technically, North and South Korea are still in a defacto state of war since the Korean War ended in a cease-fire treaty – a truce that’s been in place ever since… if only barely on some occasions – and that war could pick up at any time, and that becomes more and more likely as North Korea becomes more and more impoverished.

2) Pyongyang has made no secret of it’s willingness to help political entities that have similar designs to destroy the West… and has routinely shipped weapons and military equipment to those ideological comrades, and it’s not a stretch of the imagination that North Korea would share nuclear weapons technology – or even a finished atomic bomb – with those same comrades.

The only silver lining in the North Korean situation is that ships leaving North Korean waters are some of the most scrutinized vessels afloat: any tub that can carry anything bigger than a refrigerator is fair game for random inspections by South Korean and American naval assets – which makes shipping nuclear weapons, fissile material, or technology to create either of those things by water not really a winning strategy.

This of course doesn’t rule out shipping illicit weapons by land or air…. but similar searches are carried out against trucks leaving North Korea by Chinese and Russian agencies (how effectively, nobody in the West can say for certain), and all air cargo from North Korea is thoroughly screened at airports abroad.

There is only one destination outside of North Korea that North Korean ships and aircraft are welcome – and it also happens to be the other rogue nation with nuclear ambitions: Iran.

I’m sorry, Tehran… were you hoping I’d forgotten you?

Nope.

In many ways, you’re worse than those nutjobs in Pyongyang – mainly because, even though you’re batshit crazy, you’re also very focused on the destruction of those you hold in ill regard.

In Iran’s case, that’s most notably Israel.

There isn’t a day that goes by that Iran’s puppet government and it’s religious masters don’t call for the total destruction of the Jewish state, and it works on a daily basis towards that goal by funding terrorist organizations that operate in Palestinian territories.

If that wasn’t problematic enough, the Ayatollah also sends money to terrorist outfits – including Al Qaeda – that attack other Western nations that are allied with Israel.

And while the Ayatollah isn’t necessarily as committed to destroying the West as Osama bin Laden was, his plans call for weakening the resolve of Israel’s allies by hopefully making it more bother than it’s worth to the United States, Britain, and others.

It’s this fanatical devotion to destroying every single Jew in the Middle East (and everywhere else in due time) that makes Iran more dangerous.

While North Korea is more reactive – as in it puffs itself up and makes threats when it perceives itself to be threatened - and can be calmed down with offers of candy (financial and food aid), Iran is completely proactive in it’s plans… spending nearly all it’s money on weaponry and armed forces.

It should be noted than Iran has a lot of money to use for it’s own military and the funding of terrorism around the globe, and that money comes from the export of oil to the countries that need it – both the export of Iran’s own oil assets, and money from neighboring countries’ oil sales who are agreeable to the Iranian way of things… primarily certain factions inside Saudi Arabia.

While Western nations don’t conduct a lot of oil business with Iran, countries like Russia and China don’t make that distinction and gladly take any oil Iran can send their way to fuel their own economies.

Russian and Chinese weapons technologies have also readily been made available to the Iranian government, and this is why the Iranian military possesses weaponry that’s equal to the West’s technology of the late 1980s to mid-1990s.

You may not think weapons circa 1989 to 1995 would be all that dangerous to Western targets using weapons made in this millennium… but keep in mind, those Iranian weapons are equivalent to what the U.S. defeated Saddam Hussein with in the first Gulf War – so they aren’t to be ignored by the wise.

With all that oil money, Iran has been able to afford a fairly modern nuclear energy program – one that Tehran insists is for purely peaceful purposes and that they’re not at all interested in making fissile material for making atomic weapons.

You know what? Put a kid in a room with both a dart gun and a target to shoot at, he’s going to shoot those darts at the target the second you turn your back – no matter how much you tell him not to, and how much he denies his intention to do so.

The fact of the matter is that Iran has far more centrifuge units required to enrich uranium than are needed for the modest civilian-purposed nuclear reactor that Tehran claims is the only beneficiary – and these enrichment facilities are spread far and wide throughout the country, with some of them located underground in hardened facilities that would be problematic to destroy.

If you’re producing far more enriched uranium than you could possibly use in your nuclear electricity generation reactor(s), then that surplus uranium has to go someplace… and the two options that come to mind aren’t acceptable: a covert weapons program, or for export to other political entities that also have covert nuclear ambitions – Al Qaeda, for example.

The nuclear situation in Iran puts Israel – and by extension it’s Western allies – in a bind: while Iran potentially acquiring nuclear weapons capability is completely unacceptable, unilaterally attacking Iran in a pre-emptive strike would be heavy-handed and most likely to ignite a war that would spread like wildfire across the entire Middle East – and the forces of the Western allies are already exhausted from a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Which leaves Israel to act on its own – and one must also keep in mind that Israel has an arsenal of nuclear weapons of it’s own if the situation got out of hand.

However, while Israel might have enough thermonuclear devices to level Tehran and a few other Iranian cities, the fact is that Iran is the 2nd largest country in the region… and Israel is the smallest, and therefore extremely susceptible to being destroyed in a single nuclear strike.

There’s also the small matter of delivering those nuclear weapons to Iran as – as far as anyone in the West knows – all of Israel’s nuclear devices are in the form of gravity bombs and not mounted on long-range missiles, meaning that Israeli attack planes would have to fly through potentially hostile Lebanese, Syrian, Turkish, or Iraqi airspace before even getting to Iran.

The same holds out for any non-nuclear intervention raid Israel might want to stage against Iran in hopes of derailing the Iranian nuclear program like they did when they pounded Saddam Hussein’s atomic facilities into dust back in the 1980s – there’s just too much territory to cover from Israeli airfields to targets in Iran unless those Israeli pilots commit to a one-way suicide mission… and I wouldn’t put that past the Israeli people as they know the value of sacrifice and are a hardened people after decades of being under attack from all sides.

And yet… all the logistics of attacking Iran pale in comparison to the destructive potential of either the Islamic Republic Of Iran Army, The Army Of The Guardians Of The Islamic Revolution (the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard), or any other Iranian military body – or any paramilitary body the Ayatollah deems satisfactory enough to share with – possessing nuclear weapons when they are ideologically tuned towards destroying Israel and the Western world.

The situation is untenable and will need to be resolved prior to Iran developing nuclear weapons technology – and that time isn’t all that far into the future.

Am I being an alarmist?

No.

Everything I’ve said here is absolutely true and cannot be argued by anyone outside North Korea and Iran.

The world has been under the illusion up until now that only the big players could afford nuclear weapons, and to be honest, global opinions should have changed once India and Pakistan developed the Bomb.

But we’ve fooled ourselves into complacency again… that we can send strongly worded letters to Tehran and Pyongyang and they will simply throw up their hands with a smile, saying “Well…  it was worth a try, right?” before packing their whole nuclear infrastructure up in crates and shipping it to Russia for disposal.

Without total regime changes in North Korea and Iran, localized or global nuclear attacks aren’t just probable – they’re an almost forgone conclusion because both countries stand today as spiteful (in Pyongyang’s case), hateful (Tehran), and wholly irrational states.

Kim Jong Il and his son to follow him will continue to develop their primitive atom bombs into more effective hydrogen bombs by working their researchers to death at gunpoint while the citizens throughout North Korea – who depend on the government – starve to death in the streets (while Pyongyang’s resident god drinks Hennessy and collects expensive toys).

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his boss, the Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will continue on their path to nuclear weapons while they continue to hate on the Jewish people and deny the Holocaust – which was the reason the state of Israel was formed in the first place from land ‘donated’ from the surrounding Arab states – in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

To me, that’s the sure sign of Tehran’s insanity and the reason they can’t be trusted: to completely deny the Holocaust when it was thoroughly documented by both the Allies when the camps were liberated, and by the Nazis themselves with their meticulous records of the methodical extermination of the Jews who they deemed as sub-human… and the continued existence of facilities like Auschwitz  and Dachau to remind humanity that the Holocaust was real.

It’s the equivalent of Ahmadinejad looking up and telling the world that the sky is in fact purple and that we’ve been duped by the Jews into thinking it’s blue… which I’m pretty sure he’s already claimed once or twice in his hateful stand-up comedy routines at the United Nations headquarters.

Folks… these are people who can not EVER be trusted with the nuclear genie.

You should be alarmed… you should feel a sense of panic.

These people aren’t going anywhere and won’t change their ways unless we make them.

And believe me… they’re not going to blink when we send them angry emails from the United Nations’ Gmail account.

.

The Straight Goods On Homosexuality

I’m straight, and probably you’re straight… and chances are your neighbor is straight, too.

This makes you, your neighbor, and I middle of the road – the sexually commanding majority that has existed since the dawn of time (one has to make the assumption that the first two humanoids on Earth weren’t gay… or else that would have been a very short story indeed).

Our individual straightness may have a few interesting quirks (Kinsey noted that a lot of straight women dig pornography of two or more gay men together), or we may be the most boring heterosexual homo sapiens that ever lived in the history of the world (which probably makes you either Jahova Witnesses or Mormons… zing!).

Regardless of the gender who’s orifices you prefer, the sexuality of another human being has very little effect on you.

A straight man standing at a public urinal next to a gay man in the same washroom isn’t suddenly going to go find the nearest gay bar and suck twenty dicks as soon as he’s done draining his dragon.

Homosexuality is not a communicable disease that you can avoid by wearing one of those CDC full-body condoms like you see in just about every movie that’s been about some new contagion.

You are either born straight, born bisexual, born homosexual, or born asexual (that is completely uninterested in sex of any kind – which must be such a boring life) – and you can’t be converted to another sexuality through exposure to someone who’s sexual orientation is different than yours.

The ignorant members of the human population would stand up and call BULLSHIT on that previous paragraph simply because there are many cases of men and women suddenly switching their sexual allegiances at fairly late stages in their lives – well into their 20s or 30s, or even at 88 years old.

Make no mistake: these aren’t cases of switching sexuality.

Those are cases of people realizing they’ve been fulfilling the gender roles that society has foisted on them through media and peer observations, and not what’s been wired into their genetic code from the beginning.

Everywhere we go in life, heterosexuality is promoted in about 5 million different ways: straight people on TV, straight people in movies, straight people hosting radio shows, straight people in magazines, books about straight people, music made by straight people, etc. etc.

We are even led to believe that our civic leaders – either political or religious – are the perfect paradigms of heterosexuality… at least until Senator Bruce was caught at a motel with a male campaign staffer, or Father Probert had been found to be playing tonsil hockey with altar boys.

So, it’s no small wonder that everybody feels the pressure to be straight – even when they’re not entirely certain that’s what they’re interested in when they look inside themselves: straight people are the ones with families, good jobs, homes with white picket fences, and all the things that society says they should have when people grow up.

After a lifetime of self-doubt or self-loathing, Steve may realize that he’d be happier sticking his penis inside another man’s arse than he has been while politely going through the motions of putting it in his wife’s vagina.

Carol-Anne has been sleeping with every guy on the high-school football team in hopes of quashing the daydreams she has about tasting her best friend Jenny because her social structure insists she have a wealthy husband and six children someday.

Gender confusion has been a leading cause of suicide amongst young people for a very long time because they’ve never felt like they could belong… that they would be a monumental disappointment to their parents… that all their friends would abandon them if they came out of the closet.

Even in today’s ‘enlightened’ society where we’re told it’s okay to be gay, kids are bullied into ending their lives just because they like persons with the same genital configuration as they have.

But why?

What does being gay have to do with you if you’re straight?

How can you be threatened by that so clearly that you feel the necessity to lash out?

There aren’t many – if any at all – ways that homosexuality could be dangerous to the truly heterosexual people in your town or city, and to fear some vague notion that there is can only be pinned on mass hysteria.

Are you afraid that the queer folk are gonna snap up all the fabulous clothes at the mall?

That they will drink up every last drop of cafe au lait at Starbucks?

Or that gay men and women will suddenly, en masse, raid every adult novelty store in the country and buy up the world’s supply of dildos?

C’mon now! Give your friggin’ head a shake!

The only way a gay, lesbian, or bisexual person could really change your sexual outlook is by forcing you to realize that you are one of them and have been since the day your mother gave birth to you – at the bare minimum, you come around to the fact that you’re bisexual or omnisexual (attracted to all genders and sexual orientations depending on your mood – gay one day, straight the next, and fapping to tranny grandfathers the week after).

But I suppose that’s where the fear is: the uncertainty of uprooting your carefully constructed heterosexual image and not knowing how to be successfully homo- or bisexual… and I can understand how scary a concept that might be.

Change is terrifying for the majority of humankind.

However, it’s absolutely no excuse to single out, shame, bully, harass, or make fun of someone who doesn’t share your ideals.

I can’t remember any incidents of gay/lesbian/bi people beating up on a hetero male simply because he likes getting head from his girlfriend Stacy – and there’s a single reason for this: LGBT (Rainbow Coalition) people are self-aware enough to accept everyone for who they are and not what they’re supposed to be.

Gay or lesbian members of society don’t judge you on your sexual orientation or gender identification – they judge you on whether or not you’re a douchebag i.e. if you’re a decent human being who is worth knowing.

Even straight people aren’t homogeneous in their sexuality.

Myself, I have a thing for chubby or fat women… and most of my peers would prefer fantasizing about stick-thin bimbos with gigantic fake tits because that’s what’s pushed in beer ads and the issues of Hustler they purchased at 7-11.

Some straight guys like dressing up in women’s clothing… or getting spanked by their girlfriends… or dressing up together in leather fetishwear.

At the end of the day, sexuality can never been clearly defined in black and white – there is always room for shades of grey when it comes to what floats your personal boat.

Let me finish this blog with a question – call it The Human Decency Test.

One day, out of the blue, your son or daughter comes home from middle school and tells you they’re gay.

Do you still love them?

How you answer that question defines you… not who you like to fuck.

.

Tim Who ‘Dat?

Ontarians – from border to border, and from Hudson Bay to the Great lakes – are on the verge of going to the polls again.

How and who they vote for will shape the government of Ontario for the next 4-5 years, and that is no inconsequential responsibility: North America is pretty much three inches and a market fart away from falling back into an economic recession that will no doubt put further pressure on the unemployment safety net as thousands of workers are let go.

The province of Ontario is a very complex machine… and when a machine breaks down, you want the right tools in your hands to fix it, right?

Unfortunately, Tim Hudak is just a tool (in the most derogatory sense).

During the 2011 election campaign, Mr. Hudak has tried to paint himself with Mike Harris’ left over cans of Tremclad Rustoleum in the supposedly trendy colour of ChangeBlue™… but he’s failed to realize that colour has been out of style for more than a decade.

While LiberalRed™ is still the preferred colour of the Ontario electorate, they’ve also developed a hankering for Andrea Horwath’s truckload of LaytonOrange™ – at least in small doses.

Tim Hudak may be good at mugging for the cameras,  but he’s been overly terrible at public policy ideas – a failing that’s always terminal in a politicians’s case, and one that can make you a laughing-stock at what’s supposed to be your defining moment.

At the start of the campaign, everything was coming up roses for Timmy and his merry band of Harris leftovers because Ontarians thought that change would be nice after 8 years of Premiere Dad – and that’s bound to happen, no matter who’s been holding on to the province’s keys: people like change now and then.

Instead of always getting the pepperoni pizza, sometimes you go out on a limb and get the Hawaiian with extra pineapple.

After a week or so of glad handing voters around the province, Hudak firmly took his campaign off the rails by repeatedly saying the word “foreigners” – and in a province that only grows with the importing of landed immigrants from other countries around the world (because the Canadian birth rate is abysmal), that was just the wrong thing to focus on.

Suddenly, Tim Hudak was all about white guys – despite him looking out over Toronto sidewalks that skewed a bit more towards yellow and brown.

On top of that, the Progressive Conservative party – that’s led by Mr. Hudak – has always been the champion of big business.

So… Tim Hudak is all about rich white guys.

And yes… I’m using white guys on purpose since the PC party has never really been on board the women’s rights train – paying lip service to it when necessary, but always mumbling quietly about finding ways to outlaw abortions.

The funny thing about the “Foreigner” debacle is that, by and large, the immigrant population are the people most likely to agree with the PC platform since most of them have come from moderately- to radically conservative countries… which makes them more likely to drink the HarriBerry Blue™ Kool-Aid.

The idiocy of Hudak’s derailment is based on one glaring fact: they have no serious issues to grab the undecided voter’s attention.

Television advertisements paid for by the PC party have only harped on about taxes: Dalton McGuinty and his Fiberals are supposedly raising taxes every other week and twice on Christmas.

While it is true that taxes have gone up in Ontario, they’re not disproportionate to the rate of inflation… and there’s been a concrete need for any taxes implemented by the Liberal government over their past two mandates.

Evil Tax Number One a.k.a. The Health Care Premium: Do you have any idea how much money is needed to care for the rapidly aging Baby Boom generation?  To care for the existing senior citizens?  To battle health concerns like SARS and swine flu?  Billions of dollars… billions of dollars that can’t be completely extracted from the amount of money brought into public coffers through various levels of personal and retail taxation – so the government needed a way to continue paying for our universal health care without digging itself further into debt.

Evil Tax Number Two a.k.a. The Eco-Tax: More than a million metric tons of used electronics used to go into landfills across the province before the turn of the century, and many still do… but that’s changing under the auspices of the Ontario Stewardship (a program that was itself set in motion by the previous PC government as a way to boost their environmental credentials) – and the money that’s required to start complex recycling programs province-wide has to come from somewhere… and where better to get that money than at the point of sale for the widescreen LCD television that you will discard in the next 5 years? That way, you’ve already paid for it’s recycling long before it’s necessary… instead of the government having to dip into it’s already strained and tattered pocketbook.

Evil Tax Number Three a.k.a. The HST: I’ve already explained why the HST is a necessary evil in previous blogs, so there’s not much I can add here. At the end of the day, Ontario needed to have the HST so it’s businesses could compete with other business entities around the world in our Global Economy because other jurisdictions in Europe, Asia, the U.S., Mexico, and South America already had in place single-point or so-called “value added” tax systems that made paying corporate taxes easier and more streamlined… and therefore cheaper over the long run.

With that Evil Tax Trifecta, surely Hudak could have made a better case for lowering taxes for the masses, right?

No… he couldn’t – and didn’t.

The HST couldn’t be revoked without activating a ‘poison pill’ scenario that was inserted by Hudak’s Conservative cousins in the federal government: if the province of Ontario were to revoke the HST, it would have to pay back $4 billion dollars in equalization money that’s already been sent to majority of Ontario citizens by those four special cheques you found in your mailbox over the past year – which would immediately be added to the province’s debt load and sinking the S.S. Ontario further into the Sea Of Red Ink… and would necessitate a rise in income taxes.

The best Hudak could promise on the HST front (and to be fair, Horwath has said the same things) was a modification of items that were included on the list of items taxable under HST – mainly removing the federal portion of the taxes on heating oil and electricity bills.

I suppose that would be nice, but hardly practical since it would cause a headache for the taxation department – a department that would eventually find a way to make up the difference from some other way of taxing you.

Onto the Health Care Premium.

Has Mr. Hudak said he would do away with those?

Nope. In fact, he’s said – very quietly and far away from voters waving little blue flags – that he will keep those in place because they do what I said they did a few paragraphs upwards from this one.

At the end of the day, the only one of those three Evil Taxes that Mr. Hudak and the PCs could tamper with in any meaningful way – and the meaning wouldn’t be necessarily good – would be the Eco-Tax.

However, as I hopefully made it clear up above, that would simply be a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul – letting you off the hook at the point of purchase and then raising your personal taxes to maintain funding for the recycling facilities for your disposable iPods, Blackberries, flat screen televisions, and laptops… and to also pay for the water purification plants that remove the chemicals you put down the drain every day.

Outside of he Evil Tax Trifecta, Hudak doesn’t have a platform.

Healthcare? It can be argued that Ontario’s health care system is in the best shape it’s ever been in.

Yes… there are still crowded emergency rooms at hospitals across the province, but the wait times are getting better on the whole – especially for surgeries that can change people’s lives… or let them continue their lives as whole persons.

A few years ago, I was in serious bicycle accident and I snapped my leg in three places – something that would have been seriously debilitating in decades and centuries past…. even so bad that amputation would have been considered in more primitive times.

Guess what? The accident happened just after 1 o’clock in the afternoon… and I was in surgery to have a titanium rod permanently inserted down the middle of my tibia with attending screws and other hardware required to regain structural integrity – allowing me to walk on it again within several months – at 6 o’clock in the evening on the very same day.

So, I went from mangled to mostly fixed in five hours… and I didn’t have to pay a single cent – not even for the ambulance ride.

No… our healthcare system may not be perfect, but it’s still pretty damn amazing when you consider how much it has to struggle when it comes to finances.

The Progressive Conservatives, during their last stint as the province’s controls had taken a slash n’ burn approach to healthcare – firing doctors and nurses, and closing nearly twenty hospitals across the province… which caused such systemic damage that Ontario’s healthcare system was amongst the worst in the country, and it’s only now (2011) that it’s gotten back to the top.

Hudak & Pals don’t have any where to go with education, either.

The Liberals under Dalton McGuinty have made some radical improvements to public education in Ontario.

More students are sticking it out all the way through high school, graduating with marks that they can be proud of.

Smaller class sizes have helped students get the attention they need from their teachers, which means they get the help they need if they need it – either in that same classroom, or in more specialized learning environments.

The biggest change, of course, was the implementation of full-day kindergarten for all youngsters – which had two effects: the first being that children started experiencing a constructive learning environment sooner than most other children in North America… and it eased the financial burdens of working families that would have otherwise had to pay for daycare or babysitting services.

There’s very little to complain about when it comes to Ontario’s public schools.

In fact, there’s very little for Ontarians to complain about on the whole as the province simply works.

Compared to the Mike Harris years – an era where nearly every public sector union in Ontario was on strike – that Tim Hudak clearly yearns for deeply, Ontario is firmly planted in the Garden Of Prosperity.

Yes… there are many people across the province who are out of work because of the current global financial climate that isn’t particular to Ontario.

However, there are many people who’ve either regained or retained their employment because of programs that the current Liberal government forced into being with their majority… programs that cost many billions of dollars, but had very clear and tangible results.

Sure – the bailing out of General Motors and Chrysler (now owned by Fiat) was a popularly unpopular move… but it kept those two massive companies who employed thousands of Ontarians (either directly or through companies G.M. and Chrysler depended on to build their cars and trucks) alive.

The manufacturing sector in Ontario – and the world at large – has taken a beating as money becomes tight for consumers.

Companies that face certain peril if they don’t downsize their workforce have no choice to let employees go… and this is not the fault of the Ontario government.

It’s the fault of American banks and financial institutions who squandered and pissed away more than a trillion dollars in crooked investments and other equally worthless endeavors – actions that had a ripple effect across the entire world of stock exchanges and investment banking from New York to Tokyo.

The current hard financial times facing Ontario are not something that was caused in Ontario, and is most definitely not the fault of the McGuinty Liberals.

However, Tim Hudak has done his best to blame Dalton McGuinty for it… and in the end, the blame hasn’t stuck.

Maybe because the average Ontario voter is smarter than that… and I would really hope that’s the case.

However, I think the Ontarian electorate is sticking with the Liberals because Ontario is in a better place than a lot of jurisdictions in North America – and even the world.

Dalton McGuinty goes on television and shows you all the  good things the Liberals have done over the time they’ve been in charge – most of which I’ve discussed here.

…And Tim Hudak challenges McGuinty and Horwath to a BBQ cook-off.

If that wasn’t a sign of non-existent political platform, I really don’t know what is.

…

No, Timmy.

No you can’t.

A Decade After The Fall: 9/11/11

Bright and early tomorrow, New Yorkers will have a new destination to fill their idle time.

Monday September 12th, 2011 marks the opening of the WTC/September 11th Memorial that takes up roughly half the 16 hallowed acres that formerly – 10 short years (okay… long years if you’ve been doing a lot of air travel) ago – housed the previous incarnation of the World Trade Center for 10 hours of that fateful Tuesday before being turned into a pile of smoking wreckage.

Up until now, the public at large hasn’t had any access to the WTC site – unable to stand on the ground where 2,500+ normal, everyday people were killed in an orgy of violence and death set in motion by hateful, bearded men half a world away in a country that for the most part was ignored by everyone except the Russians in the 1980s.

Monday morning, New Yorkers have the opportunity to obtain some closure as they can physically travel to the footprints of the North and South towers – looking deep into the pits where they once stood – that are now the world’s largest man-made waterfalls.

But more than just a water feature, the square tower imprints are bordered by bronze rails inscribed with the names of every soul lost to 9/11: both those perishing in the towers, and those killed at the Pentagon and in that barren field outside Shanksville, PA… which, like the Vietnam Wall in D.C., gives a place to mourn those souls – a great number of which simply vanished into thin air as their bodies were torn, crushed, and incinerated.

These bronze rails give those families who never received any remains of their loved ones a place to visit… something tangible where nothingness and abstract concepts have shadowed their daily lives for a decade.

Yet… the cynic deep inside me (maybe not that deep) wonders how long it will be until some asshat kid spray-paints a graffiti tag onto some part of the memorial? I fear it’s only a matter of time… whether it be on the bronze name rails, or on the side of the waterfalls, or on a tree – maybe the ‘Survivor Tree’ that was the last living thing pulled from the WTC wreckage?

Perhaps 9/11 is a tragedy that will transcend the disrespect that the 4chan generation has honed – the types of kids who video themselves urinating on other monuments to fallen heroes.

But I digress…

The memorial plaza will also host a museum, but that won’t be open to the public for another year – but will be very much worth the wait: all manners of debris and relics retrieved from ‘The Pile’ will be on display for people to see and emotionally connect with, including smashed firetrucks, ambulances, police cars, twisted ‘impact steel’ (portions of the WTC tower’s iron outer shell that the two hijacked planes collided with), recovered uniforms of fallen first responders.

However, the two defining features of the museum will be both iconic and immense: two of the recovered steel tridents that were an architectural flourish in the design of the WTC towers, and the naked retaining wall that held back the Hudson river from flooding the Trade Center’s lower levels and adjoining subway station – still covered in the nubs of structural supports that held the towers to the bedrock.

I’m not going to go on about the various politics of 9/11 as I’ve done that previously in this blog on another anniversary of the murders, and that topic has also been covered to death by those much more learned that myself – so what could I possibly add now?

9/11 is a defining moment that will stain and reverberate through history – and personal human conscience for the 90 years or so until the last survivors and victim’s family members have gone on to whatever is after this life – like Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, and the Challenger explosion… all of these events are something that you can look back and say with certainty where you were when you heard the news.

We, as a civilized and caring society, feel the pain of those affected by 9/11… even when the vast majority of us had nothing directly invested in the tragedy – having not lost a son, daughter, mother, father, aunt, uncle, or grandparent.

To not feel the collective grief is something one should be alarmed by… and something to admit with a great deal of shame.

But that is the way of the world: hatred consumes and burns inside many people… even in ways that aren’t quite so obvious, or not directly related to terrorism.

The myriad of conspiracy theories that surround 9/11 is a glaring example of that sort of hatred.

Groups of people who have – for the lack of a better term – hijacked the events and memories of 9/11 to suit their own biases and hatreds toward parties and persons of all political stripes… and generating fantastical, improbable, highly insane plots as to why all those people were really murdered.

By doing this… by creating these conspiracies… these people deny the simple truths of 9/11 and do a great disservice to the victims who gave their lives for nothing more than being in the wrong place and the wrong time.

Disrespect for those murdered is something I can’t tolerate, and isn’t something you should abide either.

So, in that spirit, I present here a video that comes completely without any message or leaning other than what is communicated visually – you can even turn off the audio to mute the music I chose.

You, yourself can be the judge of what happened 10 years ago today since you were blessed with two eyes and a brain capable of making independent conclusions.

Of course… many of you won’t do that, and will continue to think what someone else has told you to think – and I will feel a great swell of pity for you.

The Popularity Of Hatred

Has anyone noticed that since the interwebs became the primary communication tool for the human species that, as a society, we’ve all taken a turn towards the mean side of things?

And I’m not talking about the cyber-bullying swarms out there, but more about how quickly we jump on a bandwagon that’s draped with a banner proclaiming WE HATE ________________.

How is it that we’ve gone from a culture of the individual to a culture of joiners?

Where did we stop thinking for ourselves and switch to the blithely ignorant masses?

I present to you three cases of group hating:

1) Everybody hates Nickelback.

2) Everybody hates AVATAR.

3) Everybody hates Uwe Boll.

But when you boil everything down with facts, only one of the above bares out to be true.

Let’s start with the first item… about how everybody on the planet hates Nickelback according to the sentiment of the internet.

Fact: According to Pollstar, Nickelback is 6th on the list of touring bands last year.

Fact: Nickelback sells an average of 6 million albums per release.

And yet everybody online claims that they’re worse than the Black Plague – which makes no bloody sense when you take into account the cash they rake in since obviously a lot of people are buying their CDs, going to their concerts, and snapping up their merchandise.

Their Facebook page has 3,753,664 fans – nearly as many as Jay-Z.

If the internet hatred mills was correct, Nickelback would have a hard time booking third rate bars in nowhere towns like Buttfuck, Idaho – and that simply isn’t the case.

Alright, now on to the second item: the universal hatred for James Cameron’s AVATAR.

Despite being relatively new to the cultural awareness,  AVATAR still racks up the kind of seething hate that Nickelback does when you tour around the web’s various message boards, site forums, and self-styled movie review depots.

They poke fun at the CGI… say the story was ripped off from other movies… call Sam Worthington wooden, etc.

Ready for the facts?

FACT: Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all time.

FACT: Avatar won a number of Oscars.

FACT: Despite the potentially enormous cost, 20th Century Fox has said okay to 2 more sequels to what is apparently the most hated movie ever.

Finally… on to the lats group.

Everybody hates Uwe Boll.

No… really… everybody does.

Uwe Boll is a movie “director” based out of Germany who buys up movie properties and then proceeds to destroy that property with completely inept, incompetent, idiotic, moronic, senseless movies that could be written and directed by drunken raccoons who had figured out how to turn on a camcorder someone left outside.

Boll’s reign of cinematic terror was enabled for a long while by a peculiar tax benefit that guaranteed any movie production to – at the bare minimum – break even so that no money was lost by any party involved… which meant that no matter how shitty your movie was, you’d still make your money back.

Needless to say, this removed Uwe Boll from the end consequences of his playing movie director – there was no danger to him or the people he bilked into investing – which would normally be something along the lines of being banned for life from anything resembling a video camera.

Five of his “films” are on the list of 100 worst movies ever over at RottenTomatoes.com
—

So… the internet loves to rage – and really, that’s no surprise to anyone who reads the comments on any randomly selected YouTube video.

The problem with “Haters” (those people who hate certain things for no discernible or logical reason) is they skew the internet society’s view of things and issues  – preventing someone new to the scene from trying something that they might actually enjoy by making that person feel they’ll be somehow unpopular by doing so.

Now… before anyone who’s a regular reader of this blog says “but you hate a lot of things!“, let me remind you that I always explain my particular dislikes – mainly because I don’t want to be seen as a Hater.

In the end, I think the problem of Haters is due to the “quick hit” mentality of the Internet Generation where people what the information they’re seeking fast – a deterioration in the type of objective thought that would have normally been engaged when confronted with a supposed fact… but that would take too much time in the Google age.

It’s surprising how an entire school of thought (or lack thereof) has spread from the redneck population to more than 1/6th of the world – and will continue to saturate the internet consciousness for the foreseeable future… or at least until it becomes cool again to think.

Wait… nevermind.

It’s never been cool to be smart.

The Canadian Crossroads

So… here we are in 2011, and us Canadians are faced with a dilemma that couldn’t have been foreseen even 3 months ago.

Great swaths of Liberal voters – who had never even thought it possible – are heading to the polls in the early summer heat of May… ready to vote for more Stephen Harper.

How the hell did this happen?

Where did the Liberal party go so wrong that those who had vowed to die fighting the Blue Meanies would willingly put an ‘X’ next to the name of their local Conservative candidate – desperately trying not to vomit while doing so?

In a word? Iggy.

Michael Ignatieff has turned out to be a blunder of almost Biblical proportions… a goddamn Greek tragedy in motion.

You see… the Liberal body of voters (especially the card-carrying party members that attended the last Grit leadership convention) were duped into thinking Iggy was the next Great White Hope – someone who could embody the intellect and flare of great Prime Ministers of times past, and to be more specific, Pierre Trudeau.

On paper, Ignatieff had a lot going for him: international experience, academic fortitude, and lots of time doing public speaking engagements – which are all good ingredients when you want to promote yourself as being the central figure of Canadian politics.

However, the Iggy Experiment has failed.

Despite endless opportunities provided by the Harper Regime, and chances to interact directly with the Canadian people through much ballyhooed Liberal Express road trips, Michael Ignatieff has never come across as anything other than a stiff, awkward presence that seemed more apt to be a university professor than a man who would be king.

Worst of all to the Liberal faithful – and much to the delight of Conservative election engineers – Iggy has settled into a routine filled with arbitrary whining, pompous airbaggery, and snide opportunism… none of which are pleasant to behold and all are contrary to endearing yourself to a Canadian public who are just getting used to more prominent place in the global community after years of mismanagement by previous Harper rosters.

As much as the recent recession sucked for the world’s citizens on the whole, the economic meltdown played exactly to the Conservative’s business acumen: spend yourself out of it wisely (by surging money to public infrastructure projects that both put people to work and took financial stresses off municipalities), and then make Canada a very attractive place to set up your business by lowering corporate taxes to a rate that’s extremely appetizing when compared to other jurisdictions.

Also, the governmental officials that were responsible made sure they kept their hands firmly on the rudder… steering our economy in the opposite direction of many of our G8 neighbors who ended up drowning in boiling red ink.

The final part of the public’s redefinition of Conservative cronies is that Harper & Co. have been much more reactive to the concerns of the electorate: intervening in headline-making business deals like the Potash debacle… enabling Canadians to have more choice in the cellphone market by allowing Wind Mobile to set up shop in spite of questionable ownership… and taking the CRTC on directly over the ‘usage based billing’ decision that would have drastically altered the Canadian internet experience for the worse.

All of these things look very good for Harper & Co. when you string them together… portraying them as people who care about Canadian national identity issues, and what we feel like as citizens that are being raped at every juncture by money-hungry corporations that could honestly not care less about us.

Yes, it’s true that the Conservative Party Of Canada feels entitled to do whatever the hell it likes – regardless of rules, regulations, and political mandates.

If the Harper government doesn’t fall on the 2011 Budget text alone, it definitely will fall on the current Contempt Of Parliament issue that it can not shake… because, honestly, the opposition parties are practically foaming at the mouth in their hurry to throw an election party – even as non-governmental polling suggests that the Conservatives could possibly squeak by into majority-rule territory.

Why Iggy and Layton are so eager to get egg in the face is beyond me.

Well, maybe I can understand Jack Layton’s view: the floundering Liberals could mean a bolstering of NDP seats come the May election since they could position themselves as the least whiny alternative – providing that Layton can shake his socialist image (and it wouldn’t take the greatest Photoshop artist to manipulate Layton’s head back and forth with Lenin’s).

Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois never really need a reason to support a federal election as they’re Canada’s more civilized answer to the IRA (minus the bombings of course – at least not in 30 or 40 years) and whose sole function is to break apart federalism at the seams so Quebec can go it’s own way to whatever future they’re deluded into thinking exists.

But… this all rolls back to Iggy.

He’s the one who aches to be the guy standing before the world leaders gathered at the United Nations… to be the Prime Minister who puts the gallery to sleep by finding 1,000 ways to iterate how civilized Canadians are (it’s true – not saying otherwise), and how we disagree with violence and want to give half our clothes to strangers on the streets.

Sure, Iggy, those are all nice things to say about us… and we wish somebody who had actual lectern presence could get up and reaffirm our place in the world… but that’s not and never will be you.

We’ve all had time to watch you flop around, flailing at just about any issue you think you might be able to get some traction on – going on long-winded diatribes about things that, in all honesty, aren’t on the average Canadian citizen’s radar.

In fact, the biggest issue that Michael Ignatieff has been able to attach himself to is the future purchase of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – which is somewhat an issue due to the $16,000,000,000 – $30,000,000,000 price tag – to replace our 30-year-old batch of CF-18 fighters that are starting to fall out of the sky for no particular reason other than they’re quickly reaching their Best Before dates.

To counter any argument that the Liberals might make on the F-35 purchase program, let me put forward two things:

1. The F-35 Lightning II is the most technologically advanced fighter available to the open market i.e. not limited to purchase by the U.S. military like the F-22 Raptor – and is designed for multiple roles in the combat and patrol missions that our Armed Forces take on (please see current mission over Libya, or semi-frequent intercepts of Russian bombers that test our defenses periodically).

2. The last time the Liberals canceled a military aviation purchase, it took nearly 20 years to find another suitable aircraft: in fact, the replacement of  50-year-old Sea King helicopters aboard our navy ships is still ongoing – leaving Canadian sailor-aviators at the mercy of 700 worn-thin spare parts flying in unison. WE DO NOT HAVE 20 YEARS TO REPLACE THE CF-18.

In the end, the Liberal election platform is going to be based on the notion that we’re sick and tired of paying so much money to the government in taxes when Big Business pays so little.

It would be a good platform in the 80′s or 90′s – maybe even in the 2000′s – but this is more and more a society that deals with information in a point-blank fashion: the internet and other forms of media has made the average Canadian more insightful (you’re reading a blog after all) as to what is working and not working from coast to coast.

And, right now, we’re all very aware of basic facts: our dollar is strong enough to top the mighty U.S. greenback… our banking system is the healthiest among all G8 (maybe even G20) nations… our employers are healthy enough to generate jobs at a rate higher than our southern neighbors… and however cynical it may be by design, our federal government seems to be interested in helping us in the face of Big Business.

Those things are all tangible indications of progress (but not of progressiveness, naturally – they are Conservatives) that has made our lives a bit better when compared to peoples in other countries, and even to ourselves when compared to a few years ago.

I fear that we as Canadians have no other option than to give Harper & Co. another mandate since they are doing what’s in our overall best interests… while overlooking their institutional inclination to be dicks.

The best we can hope for is another minority government that will be held in check by the Opposition – an Opposition that will finally wise up and take care of their Iggy problem after a trouncing.

So… sit back for the next 45 days or so and watch the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP duke it out over our airwaves in endless TV attack ads and televised debates.

It should at least be entertaining.

Me?

I might actually vote Green… as I can’t stand the local Conservative candidate.

And now… a word on Usage Based Billing.

Let’s get something out of the way first, shall we?

Internet service is NOT like a utility service such as electricity or natural gas – and therefore can not be billed in the same fashion, nor should it be.

When your local utility service provider runs a meter on your electricity consumption or how much natural gas you use to heat your home, they do that for a very specific reason: it’s costs money to generate that electricity via power dams, windmill farms, solar power arrays, etcetera… and it costs money to develop that natural gas from the sources deep in the earth – you have to pay people to run the drills, process the elements, sail the natural gas tankers, or build the pipelines.

Now… I’m not saying that it doesn’t cost money to string wires and buy network switches – but in no way, shape, or form does it cost anything near what it costs to develop utility services.

In Canada, the largest internet service providers are trying to implement a “usage based billing” scheme upon their subscribers in the same way that you’d be billed for leaving your lights on at home all the time – except with the difference being that you’d have a flat rate up to a certain gigabyte level that you’ve agreed to in a package deal… and then, when you’ve passed that level – let’s say 60 gigabytes, you’d have to pay a steep overage charge of between $1 and $5 per GB.

The things that you should keep in mind going forward is that – according to network specialists that don’t represent Bell, Rogers, or Shaw – it costs anywhere between 0.0013 and 1.15 cents to send one gigabyte of data through Canada’s internet infrastructure – which is nowhere near the 100% to 500% markup that the large ISPs are demanding.

These ISPs had hoodwinked the Canadian Radio And Telecommunications Commission (the equivalent of the F.C.C. in the United States Of America) into agreeing to allowing these companies to charge their own customers these exorbitant fees PLUS forcing independent internet service providers (who purchase their internet backbone access wholesale from Bell Canada et al) to pass on UBB charges to their own customers as of the beginning of March 2011.

This would, in effect, remove all of the unlimited internet use packages available to subscribers of the smaller ISPs – which was, and has always been their major advantage in attracting internet customers away from the major ISPs who tend to offer firmly defined data caps (60GB, 125GB, 200GB, etc.).

By forcing the little guys to bill the same way that the big guys do, the CRTC had completely leveled the playing field – save for those few independent ISPs who had their own internet equipment that did not rely on Bell.

In Bell’s own words as they appeared before the government panel investigating UBB on February 10th, 2011: “…it (UBB) prevents them (independent ISPs) from differentiating their offers from our own.”

Gone would be the all you can eat internet buffet for $50… which an independent ISP could offer to attract new customers, which I’m sure pissed Bell Canada and it’s corporate allies off to no end because their corporate culture was based around screwing their customers any way they could through oppressive overage schemes.

In today’s world of ever-growing data bandwidth, a gigabyte doesn’t go as far as it did in days gone by… even in as little as five years ago.

In 2011, internet users have so many choices available to them online that are fairly data intensive: YouTube, Flickr, streaming Quicktime, Steam, and services like Netflix.

Even those people who like to haunt Facebook and Twitter are pulling down large chunks of data when playing Farmville or watching videos of their nephew’s little league game.

Bell Canada, Rogers Communications, Shaw Media, and the other large ISPs are entitled to make money… nobody is suggesting that they should give away internet service for free.

What has caused nearly half a million people to sign a petition, and what most people would agree to when asked on the street, is that the large ISPs should collect fees that reflect the actual costs of doing business – to have their billing practices be strongly rooted in reality.

Yes… there are an increasing number of Canadians using more than 200GB a month, but the problem is that Bell Canada and it’s friends don’t want to spend the money necessary to bolster their national infrastructure to accommodate this rising tide – and instead of doing the logical thing (building new and better data transmission networks), they want to stifle those 200GB+ users though harsh tariffs.

This is purely greed – nothing else.

The UBB pressure is aimed at maximizing profit.

Profit is good, yes… but obscene amounts of profit is simply evil – and the Canadian public is beginning to rise up against this unparalleled cash grab that isn’t replicated anywhere else in the world.

In a word, it’s uncompetitive – but that makes it too simple.

There are so many businesses in the Canadian marketplace that depend on a reliable, uninterrupted, and unlimited internet for everyone.

Do you think that places like internet cafes could remain in business if they’re forced to pay for their customer’s overages? I mean… I’m sure that you can’t offer internet to everybody who walks through the door and not blaze past 200GB in a month with little effort.

How about your local municipal library? Quite a few of them offer free internet access to their patrons… but would that concept still be viable when the library is being charged $5 for every gigabyte?

Don’t kid yourself: city hall would put a quick stop to that in very short order.

However, the biggest problem with UBB from an internet business standpoint – at least for those businesses that aren’t Bell & Co. – is that the UBB policy unfairly discriminates against companies like Netflix and YouTube that rely on their customers/visitors to be able to consume all the data they can put in front of their eyeballs.

This comes in direct competition to Bell & Co.’s own Media On Demand services – which generally have less content available than Netflix-type services – and results in lost revenue for the large ISPs.

So, again, instead of spending money to bolster their Media On Demand services, they want to quash those of you out their who would go to Netflix as a superior alternative by raping your wallets and bank accounts – forcing you to consume their paltry wares instead.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen such a clear-cut conflict of interest… such a blatant anti-competitive attack on consumers who dare to use anyone but the large ISPs and their various media holdings (CTV, Global Television, etc.).

Interestingly, the UBB provisions that the CRTC gave the okay to, are now in limbo as the federal government had told the CRTC to reconsider or be overruled point blank at the legislative level.

I say interesting because the Conservative Party Of Canada – the current party in power – is very, very friendly with Big Business.

To take a stand against the Big ISP lobby is contrary to party beliefs, and can only be interpreted as being responsive to public uproar – and a deft move to head off the opposition parties from gaining a political foothold that’s rooted in popular unrest.

Yes… it may be snide electioneering, but for the time being, the Government Of Canada is on the side of their electorate instead of giving away everything to Big Business.

How long this lasts is anyone’s guess… but I’d wager it will last as long as the Conservatives winning the next federal election – which is going to be sooner than later, after which time they won’t feel as threatened by the average Canadian citizen who uses the internet.

So, for now, do your part in trying to prevent Big ISPs from getting away with murder.

How?

Write a letter to your local MP… write a letter to your local newspaper’s editor… make a video about your views and post it on YouTube… call into a local radio show and tell them – and all the listeners – how you feel about the large ISPs trying to sodomize your cash flow.

Or… simply visit www.openmedia.ca and take advantage of their resources.

But, don’t take my word for it.

Go online – while you can afford it – and see what the average Canadian internet user thinks of UBB.

Newsflash: You’re Fat Because…

…you’ve made certain choices in your life.

Now, before I go on here, I’m going to exclude all those of you out there who have legitimate medical reasons for being overweight from the following discussion – there’s no reason to feel bad about your body if there’s nothing you could/can do to stop your [insert malfunctioning body part here] from making you extra-large.

Everyone else… well, you’re exactly who I’m talking to.

When you wake up every morning and look yourself in the mirror, do you loathe what you see because your body is statistically extra-large?

Guess what got you there?

You don’t know? Or, do you think you do know?

As a blogger that is always trying to be helpful, I will explain to you why you’re fat in terms that I hope you understand – but it’s going to take a very healthy dose of reality checking and honesty with yourself.

Also, this blog is somewhat aimed also at the Sally DoGooders who live in the proverbial land of milk and honey – the United States Of America – who are taking it upon themselves to sue every purveyor of delicious food in the public retail spaces of malls, plazas, and corner shops all across the land.

First, let me get straight to the facts of the matter… the complete and total truth, no matter who might want to argue:

1. McDonald’s hasn’t made one single human on this planet fat.

2. Burger King isn’t responsible for making your neighbor chubby.

3. Wendy’s had no part making that guy at work rotund around his middle section.

4. Hostess – the maker of the venerable Twinkie – can not be held accountable for shut-in video gamers being so big that they have to wear a muumuu around the house.

5. Little Debbie is not at fault for your Type II diabetes.

6. Neither Coca-Cola or Pepsi (and their Frito Lay snacks division) is on the hook for your massive stored energy deposits.

7. Hershey’s is not answerable for your pudgy fingers.

8. And finally, the local movie theater is not to blame for your adding a melted stick of butter to your popcorn.

Wait… how can that be?

You hear every day on the news that So And So is suing these companies for making people fat… so surely there is some merit to what they’re paying public interest law firms to make a case for… right?

No.

Not a single claim by these people can be born out in a court of law without the court itself being corrupted by social shortsightedness.

See this guy here?

Not a single corporate employee or company policy is responsible for him being a fat tub of lard – and let’s be honest: he most likely doesn’t have a thyroid issue.

Nope… he’s fat because of what he’s doing in the photo i.e. stuffing his face with food that has very little (or completely zero) nutritional benefit.

As much as society would seek an easy scapegoat for it’s rising number of obesity cases, there is not a single person to blame but himself.

Look at that photo very carefully.

Do you see anybody forcing him to chow down on that massive burger? Is there a representative from The Burger Shack holding his family at gunpoint, promising him that they’ll be released without harm as soon as he consumes all those fats and carbs?

No.

Chubby McFatass there is using his own, God-given free will to consume that sandwich.

So tell me – please – why The Burger Shack, McDonald’s, or Little Debbie should be held accountable for the choices that YOU make?

Yes… the retailers make products that you feel compelled to eat – either for their taste or their affordability or both – whenever hunger strikes you, but in no way are you mandated by law to consume their wares.

You, the consumer, have every bit as much power to consume a bowl of fruit salad as you do eat a box of Chicken McNuggets and a side of delicious McDonald’s french fries.

The fact that you opt for the Mickey’s fare is completely on you.

Television advertising makes you eat it? Hmmm…. okay – let’s look at that.

Pundits would say that the commercials you see on TV up to 100x a day have brainwashed you into being constantly wanting fast food or the kind of junk offerings you find at the neighborhood convenience store.

I suppose this could be held out to be true… if there wasn’t a whole lot of other crap on TV that’s being marketed directly to you that you blissfully ignore: how many of you out there order everything you see in infomercials?

Raise your hand if you’ve compulsively ordered the Snuggie For Pets? C’mon… it’s only $9.99! Who can resist that kind of deal?

Or… how many of you ran out and bought that Head On headache reliever? You know… the stuff you apply directly to the forehead?

I’m going to wager not a lot of you did either of those things because you were smart enough to realize the products were pure crap – choosing not to waste money and hurt your pocketbook by being stupid.

Yet… you CHOOSE to eat vast amounts of fast food that you know are pure crap and are going to hurt your body in the long run.

Why is there such a disconnect between choice and result?

There is nothing simpler than what’s going on here: it’s cause and effect – one of the most basic scientific concepts.

You do one thing and you get the predicted effect – in this case, you stuff an entire 12-inch pizza in your face in a single sitting which causes the effect of you gaining a few pounds.

Of course, this is assuming you’re not a professional athlete like Michael Phelps that consumes massive amounts of calories to fuel their workout routine.

Which is the backside to this issue: your buttocks take up two seats on the airplane because you refuse to do to the physical exercise required to burn off all of those calories you consume.

You’re choosing in your life to eat a Double Big Mac, large fries, large Coke, and two apple pies – without also choosing to engage in the physical exertion necessary to scrub all of those calories and saturated fats out of your system… which leaves your body no choice at all but to store those things as fat around your middle/butt/legs/arms/neck/chin.

Sure, there are pharmaceutical alternatives to exercise… substances that will make your body burn calories at an accelerated rate, but they are no substitute for using your own muscles to naturally do what that pill does nowhere as efficiently.

And yes… there are radical surgical procedures to physically limit how much food you can eat.

But why?

Why take these pills? Why go under the surgeon’s knife?

When you can simply CHOOSE to not eat these things in such great amounts that you become the size of a small Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon?

Society needs to give it’s collective head a shake and stop trying to blame others for our choices in life.

You can not sue Burger King for your own laziness.

The fat guy you see mowing his lawn – wearing shorts and a wife beater tank top – can’t seek damages from Dairy Queen because he can’t be bothered to get on an exercise bike.

In closing, let me make this abundantly clear, in case you are still confused:

Nobody other than you can blamed.

So stop trying to take kid’s Happy Meal toys away because you think they’re what cause childhood obesity – it’s the parent’s choice to buy them the little box of fats and carbs and then let the child sit around the house all day playing video games instead of running around outside for 20 minutes.

Take some fucking responsibility for your actions in life, and leave people alone who are trying to make an honest buck.

Tech Blog: The Only ‘Approved’ Use Of An iPhone 4

….And by ‘approved‘, I mean ‘Stormcastle Approved‘.

Natch.

Bonus points for recycling!

An Open Letter To Kristen Stewart

Stormcastle

Peterborough, Ontario

Canada

Ms. Kristen Stewart

Hollywood, California

U.S.A.

Dear Ms. Stewart:

I was saddened today to hear about your feeling like you were being raped by your fans and the media while you’re out and about in public.

How terrible it must feel to put up with photographers,  media journalists, and fans wanting to have your attention after the public was nice enough to line your pockets with millions of dollars for simply being yourself on movie and TV screens around the globe – well, maybe not EXACTLY like yourself since movie directors tend to make you express your default angst and lip biting on command instead of when you’re being naturally emo.

My heart goes out to you for having to deal with a public that has made you from a nobody bit player in the background of better actors’ scenes to a worldwide anti-crush for tween girls and cougar moms who would gladly kill you to share the limelight with Robert Pattison.

$26,000,000 (twenty-six million dollars in case you have problems with numbers) from the Twilight saga movie tickets – not including box office percentage points in your contract – does not in any way entitle society to be curious about you – to know what kind of person you are!

I find it incredibly ignorant and unimaginable that the general public doesn’t simply forget that you exist once the end credits roll.

I mean, seriously now… you’re not in this business for the money and fame.

In fact, I’m fairly certain that you’re being held captive in Los Angeles somewhere… being forced to go in front of the cameras time and time again – when you would really prefer to be working at a Taco Bell restaurant in Seattle.

The key to determining your slave status is that you simply refuse to act – which is a very clever tactic from someone who is serving her slave masters under what is surely the threat of being shot – in any movie these cruel and heartless movie pimps set you up in.

It’s easy to tell that this is your strategy when you compare your output in films like Twilight and Adventureland with footage of you in real life – there is absolutely no discernible difference!

Ms. Stewart, I really implore you to work harder at getting out the message to people that you want out of the Hollywood business.

Maybe you could learn Morse code and then blink your eyes in an S.O.S. pattern while on camera as Kristen Stewart Bella?

Someone out there in a movie theater will surely catch on and come to your rescue – escorting you to that job mopping floors at Taco Bell and allowing you to stew in your own angst privately.

But until then, the movie watching public will suffer – as you surely do – through the movies your agent/pimp makes you work in.

Yours sincerely,

Stormcastle

p.s. Could you please send me your millions of dollars since you don’t want them? I feel terrible that you’d be constantly antagonized by the fruits of your slave labor.

What Is The Cost?

Hey, you!

Yeah… you over there in the automobile.

How you doing?

You’re good?

That’s cool. Can I ask you a question?

Yes? You sure you don’t mind?

Okay, great.

Here it goes…

Just who the hell do you think you are?

What right do you have to cause this:

What’s that?

You didn’t cause the mess in that photo?

I, sir/madame, sincerely beg to differ.

That machine you’re sitting in now lives on the petroleum that’s covering them there waves.

In fact, so do the 1,074,355,233.333 other cars on the planet – which I’m sure are not all as gas-sipping as your SUV is.

I wonder how many times you’ve hopped into that beast – driven a distance that would have taken you all of 5 minutes to walk – only to grab something that you could have easily carried home… a carton of milk, maybe?

I’ll tell you: probably 500 times, and I’m being very lenient with that estimate.

Why do you do this?

Because you feel entitled.

You feel that it’s your God-given right to drive that motorized monstrosity wherever you damn well feel like.

Well, it may be your right by the laws of your city/province/state/country – but that right doesn’t supersede the entire freakin’ planet!

No… you didn’t have a direct hand in blowing up that oil rig.

No… you didn’t have a direct role in the shoddy design of the well head that’s leaking 5,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf Of Mexico every day since the accident happened – and will continue most likely for several more months until British Petroleum can get a new drilling rig on site and bore a relief well to suck up the oil that’s bursting forth from the ocean floor.

But yes, you are responsible!

How?

Because of that God damned entitlement you think you have to drive around a parking lot for 10 minutes looking for a parking space!

B.P., Exxon, Shell, Petro-Canada, and all of the other ‘big oil’ companies drill holes in the planet so they can harvest crude oil that they will process and sell to you and all the other miserable car driving assholes like you in the form of rediculously-marked up gasoline at your nearest gas station.

And because there are so many of you who abuse your right to drive so often that you burn twice or three times the amount of fuel than you really need, Big Oil has to make more and more of those holes in the earth’s crust to get at that precious Black Gold – and a lot of those wells are drilled in places that are ecologically sensitive.

This oil spill is already larger than the U.S. state of Rhode Island.

If emergency crews can not get the leaking under control inside the next month, the oil will span an amount of ocean equal to the state of California.

Think of all the wildlife that will die so you can pick up your kids from school when they could easily walk home in under 10 minutes.

God forbid little Suzie and her brother Jimmy burn off the calories from all the McDonald’s food you buy them.

Think of the sea turtles that are going to die in vast numbers just so you can use your bank’s drive through.

All of the ocean birds that are getting coated in the thick, viscous oil slurry created when the waves and crude oil mix together – making it impossible for them to fly.

Imagine all the coastal wetlands along the Gulf Coast that are now being inundated with oil, killing everything from frogs to alligators that live in those areas where fresh water meets salt water.

Think of all the fish that are breathing this crap into their bodies with every movement of their gills – and some of these fish are the ones you depend on being caught for food.

No.

You won’t think of any of those things because you honestly don’t give a shit.

Some talking head will list all the damages on the nightly news and you’ll shake your head at the images on your TV screen – but as soon as the news has moved on to the latest celebrity cheating scandal, you’ll have forgotten the environmental apocalypse that you’ve had a hand in.

You’ll probably get up and go out to your SUV so you can drive down to the corner store and buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.

You know what?

Fuck you.

Tech Blog: The Only ‘Approved’ Use Of An iPad

….And by ‘approved‘, I mean ‘Stormcastle Approved‘.

Natch.

Bonus points for recycling!

How The Canadian Population Just Got Raped

…And we’re not even allowed to feel dirty about it.

The Canadian Radio and Television Commission today ruled against the tax paying public in favor of the Canada’s two privately-held national broadcasters.

Assuming that the Federal Court of Appeals doesn’t rule against the CRTC in the coming  months, each and every Canadian citizen that has to subscribe to a cable or satellite television service will now have to pay the long discussed ‘TV Tax’ come 2011.

Why does that matter?

$10 may not seem like a lot of money when it’s going to support Canadian networks – but it really is when you consider most Canadians already pay approx. $80 a month for their service – meaning they’ll be paying $90 come January.

In Ontario, this is doubly worrisome.

Come July 2010, all of Ontario’s cable/satellite subscribers will have  to pay an additional 8% on their subscription bills due to the blended HST kicking in – bringing that bill closer to $97 in January.

Getting back to the ‘TV Tax’, some of you are saying it’s okay because that $10 per person is going to go towards more local and Canadian content.

Nope.

On the same day as announcing the TV Tax, the CRTC also dropped the minimum requirement for Canadian Content hours to zero and mandating that the total CanCon percentage drop from 60% to 55% – meaning your local TV station can carry 5% more episodes of C.S.I.

The only good thing – and I say ‘good’ loosely – is that the CRTC declared that CanWest Global and CTVGlobemedia (CTV) must spend 30% of the money they take in on Canadian produced material such as news programs, public interest programming, etcetera.

An additional 5% of the network revenue must be spent on programs of ‘national interest’ – which translates to Canadian-based dramas, telefilms, and documentaries.

So in some ways, Canadians have made gains in the things they watch, but are being penalized for that privilege.

The glaring issue here is that the CRTC has once again sided with Big Canadian Media without at all listening to Little Canadian Taxpayer – which is a hallmark of the party currently controlling the CRTC’s strings: the Stephen Harper Conservatives (and I made that distinction on purpose).

Steve Harper and the assorted cronies that he’s put in charge of the plethora of Canadian governmental institutions have all come from business backgrounds and are more than happy to sell the country out to private interests.

Never in the history of Canada has Big Business had such an advantage over Small Taxpayer – especially in the media sector.

From the signing on to ACTA behind closed blast doors, to letting the networks rape our pocketbooks – there is no company or industry’s ‘special interest’ lobbyist that Harper won’t invite into the Prime Minister’s Office in that most vaunted of buildings in Ottawa.

With Harper seeing that the Liberals are polling neck and neck with the Conservatives, Steve has to know that the next election – which is going to be sooner than later – is probably not gonna work out for him and his associates.

Which means that now is the time that he needs to sell out the country before it’s too late

It’s a FIRE SALE, folks!

Everything must go!

…Must go to the country’s billionaires, that is.

What can you do, John Q. Public – other than vote the bastards out of office next election?

Nothing, really.

You know… other than bend over, grab your ankles, and let Big Canadian Media sodomize you without the courtesy of lubricating first.

Did you really expect anything else from this guy?

Dear Bell Canada: We Hate You

All of us across Canada have been taking part in a mass experiment for the past 17 days or so.

This experiment was called The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Why is that an experiment and what does it have to do with Bell Canada?

Dear reader, I will tell you ‘cuz that’s just what kind of blogger I am – always looking out for those who don’t know.

For those of you out there who live in countries that are not named Canada, a little background is needed here.

The official Canadian network of the 2010 Olympic Games was CTV – one of only 3 national Canadian networks – and was the only Canadian source of Olympics broadcast over it’s hydra-esque collection of stations: CTV, TSN (The Sports Network), MuchMusic (the Canadian alternative to MTV), and MTV Canada (the Canadianized MTV).

CTV was formerly owned wholly by Bell Canada (now about 20%), and now you’re up to speed.

(UPDATE: Bell Canada has repurchased the entirety of CTV as of September 10th, 2010)

On the whole, the CTV broadcast of the Olympics was completely and totally shit – I’m not gonna mince words here.

The fact that the Canadian-origin Olympic broadcasts were shit is endemic of Bell Canada’s general attitude towards the Canadian public and none of us should have been really surprised at the epic failure of the endeavor.

The technologies employed for the Olympics broadcasts were seriously lacking when compared to the station most Canadians turned to when comparable programming was on offer: NBC.

Why is that?

The answer – to put it simply – is competition.

In the United States of America, NBC had the sole rights for broadcasting the Olympic games to the entire country – but they had to deal with new shows or counter programming from their two rivals, namely ABC and CBS.

NBC was in a position where they had to use absolute top notch video, audio, and graphical technology to make the Olympics palatable to the average American to ensure good Nielsen ratings performance against shows like CSI and LOST.

I give a tip of my metaphorical hat to Mr. Zucker, the president of NBC, for making these strong decisions and reaping the benefits.

However, the corporate masters at CTV didn’t really see the need to go all out on the technical standards because they had the Canadian viewers by the balls – so to speak.

Why?

Two things.

Patriotism and lack of choices.

If a Canadian wanted to watch the games, they (at least in the heads of CTV masters) would have no other option than to watch the CTV family coverage.

And what Canadian DIDN’T want to watch the Olympics hosted in Vancouver, British Columbia – which happens to be in CANADA?

What Canadian citizen didn’t want to watch our Canadian Olympians win more gold medals than any other country in the history of the Games?

There was simply no choice for a lot of Canadians out there across our great land (2nd largest country in the world, by the way) who only got two or three channels on their televisions due to lack of cable or satellite service.

You see, CTV’s corporate masters give it lots of money to spend on licensing of the lion’s share of top rated American shows – meaning that even if you wanted to watch American Idol or other supershows instead of the Olympics, and you didn’t have cable, you were stuck watching the Olympics because your feeble rabbit ear & coat hanger setup can’t pull in an American network.

These are the facts of the previously mentioned experiment.

I’m not really aware of the total ratings breakdown of the CTV broadcasts, but from what I gather, it was a resounding success for the big wigs at Bell Canada’s broadcast division.

Which only serves to reinforce the way that Bell Canada operates throughout our vast country.

You see, Bell Canada used to be a complete and total monopoly of the Canadian telephone system – that is up until the past fifteen years or so where the CRTC (the Canadian telecommunications authority) opened up the phone market to other companies.

Bell had to deal with outside companies all of a sudden competing with them for the Canadian telecom dollar.

American companies came in and tried to run services for a while – specifically Sprint and AT&T (both of which eventually folded their Canuck operations into the Canadian telecom company Rogers).

With the fear of losing massive monopoly sized profits, Bell Canada decided to buy CTV and it’s associated networks to shore up it’s bottom line through the often mystical art of television tradecraft.

For the average Canadian, nothing really changed on television – save for the inclusion of Bell’s corporate logo at the bottom of CTV’s original local programming credits.

And in the years since the CTV takeover, nothing has really changed either – aside from some graphical makeup applied to the CTV brand.

Why?

Bell Canada loathes Canadians – or, at the very least, holds Canadians in total and utter contempt.

For all the water that has passed under the bridge since the monopoly breakup, Bell Canada still operates as a monopoly.

An alarmingly large amount of Canada’s telecom assets are still owned and operated by Bell Canada – including (and the most troubling of all) the entire Canadian internet backbone system.

Bell Canada owns the Canadian internet – despite not having a monopoly on how people subscribe to internet services.

Independent internet service providers have to buy their backbone access through Bell’s infrastructure wholesale.

A Canadian citizen might get their internet through a local company, but that internet is ultimately controlled by Bell.

To borrow something from the Matrix movies, Bell Canada guards all the doors and they hold all the keys – at least as far as the internet is concerned.

That local ISP may not have restrictive content filters that would slow down internet applications like BitTorrent or other P2P programs – but your data traffic cultivated by those apps will still suffer speed delays because Bell Canada does filter.

So in the end, no matter who you’re signed up with, Bell Canada still controls what you do on the internet.

Also, your internet is going to suck when compared to other developed nations.

According to a recent study by eggheads at Harvard University, Canada is 18th on a list of internet service quality.

Why eighteenth?

Because Bell still operates as if it’s a monopoly – and it is the one true  internet God in the realm of Canada’s cyberspaces.

In countries like Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Sweden, or the United States (among many other countries ahead of Canada on the afore-mentioned list), internet services improve over time due to market forces in a wide open internet marketplace.

Let’s use the United States as a working example, shall we?

In the U.S. there is a plethora of companies offering internet access via their own, wholly owned data networks that are in direct competition which each other for American customer dollars.

In hopes of attracting new customers, American networks are constantly upgrading themselves to offer bigger and better products.

Case in point, Verizon has wired large portions of America with a fiber optic transmission network so they can offer blazing data speeds when compared to their competition (AT&T, Sprint, etc.) who are still relying on century-old metal wire network technology.

Competition is the heart of progress in all systems on the planet – both technological and biological.

For something to become better, it has to have incentive to do so – and as it is, Bell Canada has ZERO incentive to improve itself.

I’m sure that somewhere in Bell Canada’s executive building(s), there’s a large brass plaque that reads in bold letters WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?

Until the CRTC grows some balls and forces Bell to divest itself of the Canadian internet backbone, Bell Canada will not invest one measly dime in network upgrades than it has to – and believe me, it doesn’t spend one penny that it isn’t forced to.

Except…

Except for internet service via cellphone.

The cellphone service sector is wide open in Canada with many competitors vying for 34 million Canadian’s hard earned cash.

Rogers, Telus, Koodo, Virgin, Wind Mobile – all nipping at Bell’s subscriber base, which forced the company to innovate and try to offer a technological edge to it’s customers that wouldn’t be available to other services.

If there weren’t other cellphone service providers in the Canadian market, Canadians would not have access to 3G or the oncoming 4G.

Bell users now have the opportunity to use the vaunted iPhone (gag me with a spoon) because Bell was forced to upgrade it’s network to compete with Rogers who was already offering iPhones.

That’s the process of competitive evolution in action.

The dinosaurs went through this hundreds of millions of years ago in our planet’s distant past, but the dinosaur that is Bell Canada simply refuses to evolve because there isn’t another corporate beastie big enough to take a bite out of it’s gnarled hide.

For this, we Canadians are in the technological third-world – which really, really sucks.

As much as we love to brag to our quarrelsome American neighbors about how we have superior, free healthcare and how we mopped the floor with them in the 2010 Olympic gold medal count, we must continuously hide our shame in regards to how friggin’ slow our internet speeds are.

I sit here in envy of whichever American cities get selected for Google’s internet service experiments that promises speeds of 1GB per second: yes, one gigabyte per second compared to my 300 kilobytes per second as I write this blog.

No, 300kbps isn’t a national average in Canada.

The average data speed in high-speed enabled communities throughout Canada is 10 megabytes per second via DSL service, 12Mbps via cable internet service – and I’ve enjoyed connection speeds of up to 5Mbps via DSL in the past, but those were anomalous and based on living in the right areas where Bell spent some extra money on their wiring .

Yes… I could subscribe to my cable company’s (Cogeco) internet service and get that 12Mbps, but there’s a gigantic catch to that blissful speed: a solid 60 gigabyte data cap – which is fairly standard amongst North American cable companies.

60GB isn’t enough by far for my demanding usage as I regularly move 200GB or so a month via gaming, uploading to social media sites like YouTube and Flickr, and downloading music/TV shows/movies.

So I’m stuck on this crappy Bell-supplied architecture.

And we, as Canadians, were stuck with the crappy, Bell-managed CTV Olympics coverage when we couldn’t turn to NBC for the same event – which was sporadic at best since NBC’s coverage was very focused on American Olympians and would skip events where the U.S. wasn’t competing, and completely blanked the Canadian cultural portion of the Closing Ceremonies.

AARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH! @$#%&!

Seriously, Bell Canada… what the hell?

The next time I stop to use a pay-phone, I hope you choke to death on the two quarters.

.

.

.

.

Oh… and that experiment and it’s purpose?

To figure out how much shit we as Canadians are willing to put up with.

And by the looks of it, Bell Canada will continue to use the Canadian market as it’s own personal outhouse.

Apple Sucks. I’m Sorry If You’re Offended.

Ask any Apple product user out there in the wilds of the internet or – gasp! – in the real world what made them buy their Mac/iPod/iPhone, and you’ll almost invariably get the same answer: they’re innovative.

I suppose this could be held out to be true if you were a technological neophyte who knew little about the technology that’s inside their purchase.

The problem with that is this: there is a very large number of people in this world who actually know what the parts and software that comprises an Apple product does – thusly knowing the inherent limitations of the device.

This creates a problem for Steve Jobs, and it’s the number one reason why he moves heaven and earth in attempts to make Apple products look cool – to make them fashionable status symbols.

If it’s white & shiny, or black & shiny, people are more likely to gloss over (hahahah… so punny!) the nagging problems that they encounter over the lifetime of the product – which isn’t going to be more than 2 years in reality due to Apple releasing a newer version of the flashy technojewelery that they paid a ridiculously large sum of money for.

What’s that? The product was worth all the extra cash?

Again: technojewelry.

You buy these things to look fashionable, and not based on technological superiority.

Want to know something interesting? The average uncut diamond is worth about $10 when you factor in rarity and the processing of rock to extract it.

$10.

Now, yes, that’s in its uncut state and cutting is where the art is – and where most jewelers will justify the 2000% markup.

Does this sound familiar?

Have you ever done comparative shopping between a Mac and a PC?

Technologically, the systems aren’t any different – yet the prices are excessively separate.

Side by side, the two machines might be different in appearances, but they’re essentially the same under the hood.

All the parts involved are mostly made in the same factories by the same manufacturers to roughly the same standards – though the Mac parts might be lower powered when compared to the same PC part.

The internal guts of these two computers might be arranged slightly different – but let’s be honest: a lot of PC makers arrange their parts in different configurations while trying to get a leg up, yet they all run Windows.

However, when we go to look at the price tags on each machine, you have to do a double/triple/quadruple/quintuple look!

The PC will be priced at $799.

The Mac will be priced at $2,799 (or more: see here)

I’m sorry.

Say what?

You want me to pay $2,000 dollars extra for what is essentially the same machine?

Are you out of your freakin’ mind?

What’s that, Mr. Jobs? You want to make the same kind of money that HP, Dell, and Acer do in their PC divisions?

But you only have 5% of the world’s personal computer market! That’s madness!

Oh… wait… I see what you’re doing!

Jack up the price on every computer so that it LOOKS like you’re selling 3.5 units every time a single computer is purchased!

Genius!

Your accountants must love you!

When Apple is making 3.5 times the money per computer, it really looks like they command 17.5% of the computer market when you boil it down to dollars and cents (cents, not sense)…

…when the truth is nowhere near that.

I have to give Mr. Jobs credit, though.

It takes huge, gigantic brass balls to make a money play like that.

The fact that he gets $5 for every $100 spent on personal computing is really an accomplishment – but it’s nowhere enough for a publicly traded company that has shareholders looking for money to put in their pockets.

What was Mr. Jobs to do? How could he make more money for the people who had invested their hard-earned dollars in Apple stock?

Why… take the technojewelry concept to the next level!

Jewelry isn’t very practical if you can’t wear it on your body, is it?

Thus came the Apple iPod.

Contrary to what Apple would want you to believe, the iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player on the market, despite it’s current cultural ubiquitousness.

All Mr. Jobs did was pair together function (which was being done already by other companies) with form – which was something relatively revolutionary at the time.

People could walk around enjoying their music while feeling good about how swell the iPod looked and accessorized their lifestyle.

Apple even cared enough about their customers to make a web store to sell music directly to iPod users – because, honestly, buying a CD in a physical/real world music store was just too hard with all the track ripping and what not.

They’re even generous enough to only keep 35 cents of every 99 cents (the rest goes to the music industry), only leaving them $475,000 a day in profits!

But… that wasn’t enough money.

Shareholders screamed MOAR!

They money hungry stock owners saw that the MP3 player market was saturated with products that did everything the iPod did and more!

The Microsoft Zune plays HD video and the current generation iPod doesn’t.

Sansa players have voice recorders.

So on and so on.

Apple needed to up their game to find new revenue streams.

Steve Jobs said add a phone to the iPod and give it a touchscreen.

And behold, it was good.

Let’s add downloadable applications, he said.

And the Apple devotees rejoiced – spending $2.4 billion dollars a year on apps.

And things were good for a month or so – before competitors released phones that did everything an iPhone did plus a lot more.

Hell… the only thing the iPhone really brought to the cellphone market was the touchscreen – and that was very easily duplicated.

The iPhone was seriously lacking in certain areas as well, missing functions that other cell owners took for granted.

But… it was black & shiny! OMFG! More technojewelry!

Shareholders screamed MOAR!

They money hungry stock owners saw that the smartphone market was saturated with products that did everything the iPhone did and more!

So here we are now in the era of the iPad – and I won’t make a stale joke about feminine hygiene products.

In it’s most basic sense, the iPad is just a jumbo iPhone/iPod Touch – which as usual isn’t upgradeable, and the early adopters will curse it’s lack of Flash and/or Silverlight, among it’s dozen or so shortcomings.

It doesn’t bring anything new to the market, and I’m sure the stock owners are a bit puzzled since it will be VERY easy for a competitor to top the iPad with very little to no research & development costs.

Sure, there’s the App Store and another potential for $2.4 billion dollars in revenue a year – and maybe that’s enough for stock owners.

However, they really have to be glancing over in Google’s direction with a little bit of nervousness – and not just because of the price difference in stocks (at the time of my writing this blog, Apple was at $200 USD a share vs. Google’s $543), but because Google seems to be hell-bent on taking on both Microsoft AND Apple.

Have you ever seen a Google phone? One that either runs on Google software or is marketed directly to the masses by Google themselves?

Prime example is the Nexus One cellphone.

It does everything the iPhone does and more – and usually for less!

Wow. Do you have any idea how tedious it’s getting to write statements like that? Do you?

Anyway…

In the end, as hopefully you can see by now, is that Apple doesn’t offer the world anything that’s better than the competitors.

So why oh why do the Apple fanboy/fangirls of the world continue to scream at the tops of the lungs that ‘Apple is the best EVAR!’?

What is it that inspires such blind and almost unequivocal (see Linux fanboys) devotion?

Have I mentioned the white/black & shiny?

The technojewelry?

Oh… I have?

That’s the sum of it.

If that’s so, why is Justin Long still on TV poking fun of John Hodgman’s PC after what seems like 20 years?

Apple still feels insecure, that’s why.

And it’s a justified insecurity because someone in the Apple hierarchy has a level head on their shoulders and sees the truth of the matter i.e. that ultimately, Apple products are inferior.

Why that person hasn’t been fired personally by Steve Jobs is an incredulous miracle, but I think it has a lot to do with those stock holders.

Apple Computer nearly died a long slow death not very long ago, and shareholders would really rather that not happen again – thus the reality checker at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.

As far as Apple’s computer line is considered, the fans will shout words like the afore-mentioned innovation, as well as words and concepts  like ‘easy to use’, and ‘virus free’.

Easy to use?

I suppose they are when you take into consideration that using OS X and its various iterations is sort of like taking the Windows experience, making it prettier (though Windows 7 is pretty gorgeous) and then dumbing it down so a kindergarten student can use it.

What’s that, Infuriated Mac Fanboy?

Windows Vista/7 ripped off OS X?

Truth of the matter is that Microsoft had been working on a visual update for Windows long before OS X hit the market, and there is reams of data to back that up readily available from the U.S. Justice Department if you know where to ask (data related to investigations into Microsoft’s anti-competitiveness).

However, I’ll let David Pogue deal with the Vista vs. OS X battle over here.

Finally, let’s address the ‘virus free’ banner that Mac fanboys/fangirls like to wrap themselves up in before facing the world.

Yes, there are very few viruses out on the interwebs that are specifically coded for Macintosh computers.

Is it because Apple computers are inherently bulletproof when it comes to malware written in someone’s basement by their no-good, Cheetos-eating, Red Bull-drinking miscreant of an offspring?

No.

Is it because it’s easier to write anti-virus code for a Mac?

Nope.

Is it because Steve Jobs flies around the internet and eats all the potential Mac virus bombs before they can be delivered!

Yes!

Oh wait… no… that’s not it at all.

The reason Mac users go their entire Apple product using lives without encountering a nasty virus that wants to corrupt their data or hijack their internet connections is this: 5%.

Five measly percentage points.

Why would virus writers – who depend on vast numbers of computers to distribute their ill-meaning wares to other vast numbers of computers – bother writing a virus that would only effect 5% of the computer ecosystem?

There’s no money or no glory in 5% of the world.

If you were walking down an alley and you saw a dollar with 5 pennies on top of it, which would you pick up? The dollar or the pennies?

I dunno about you, but I’m sure as hell taking the dollar – and that’s exactly the way virus writers see the internet…

…and that’s the exact reason why Macs are virus free.

They’re not popular enough.

If you’re a Mac user and reading this blog, take great comfort in your binary isolation.

But beware, Mac User: if Microsoft, Google, and Linux all suddenly disappear like you wish every night before falling asleep, guess who’s gonna be the most disease-ridden girl at the Internet Prom?

It sure as hell ain’t gonna be Sun Mircrosystems.

Hello, My Name Is Stormcastle…

… and I’m a recovered and well-adjusted ex-Mormon.

To tell you exactly how it is, I will reiterate something I said on my facebook account:

Okay, people… listen up: I’m no longer a Mormon. I don’t want to be a Mormon. Not interested in regaining my Mormon sheepdom again – EVER. I don’t want to believe in magic underpants, make believe prophets who ripped off the Bible, in certain people being better than other people, sexual inequality, and institutionalized hypocrisy.

My apologies to family members who enjoy the Morg church, but I do not stand with you in the ways of theology. I’m happy for you that the Mormon church makes you feel better. However, I’ve lead a perfectly happy life without LDS tampering for more than a decade, and plan to remain this way to the end of my days.

Yes, I believe in a great many things that give order to the universe.

However, I do NOT believe in Mormonism.

I still love all my Mormon family members – that has not changed. Whether that’s a two-way street is yet to be determined, LOL.

Thank you and have a great day!

I think I should take this a bit further…

**Follow up: What made me stop being a Mormon 11 or so years ago?**

Because I decided that I was blessed with a brain and that it would be a sin not to use it – and that is PRECISELY what Mormonism is: something to believe in so you don’t have to think for yourself.

The Mormon hierarchy tells you what you can do, what you can think, who you should associate with – hell, it even dictates what you should eat!

Why would God give you a brain capable of processing vast amounts of information, and the ability to make choices for yourself if you’re supposedly not supposed to do those very things?

I’m not an anarchist – I live my life according to the laws of the land.

Am I perfect person? Hell no.

The question is am I better person having been away from Mormon tampering and thought manipulation? Yes… yes I am.

I’m free to pursue all things – free to make my own choices and not have them made for me by some geriatric gas bag in Utah who wouldn’t know fun if it kicked them in their magic underwear.

I’m free to experience EVERYTHING this world has to offer without feeling one single iota of guilt.

Can any of you Mormons who still are blindly following like sheep say that?

Am I apostate? Sure, why not.

Should I be excommunicated? Bring it on if I don’t finish my paperwork to get removed from the church membership rolls first.

Am I afraid of Mormon Disciplinary Councils? Not overly – they have zero legal ramifications and are only a way of church drones masturbating their officiality i.e. reaffirming their belief that they are masters of the universe.

Want to send missionaries, visiting home teachers, or church publications to me? I’ll take them on – as long as they are willing to have legitimate, reality based discussions without the use of magical thinking or the ramblings of church apologists (Mormons have that down to an art).

Tell you what, those Mormons who are shaking their head while reading this: I’ll make you one hell of a deal! Give me one shred of legitimate, non-Mormon peer reviewed evidence that anything in the Book Of Mormon happened and I’ll be front row and center at the next dreadfully boring General Conference.

What’s that? The apologists are saying that The Book Of Mormon is more metaphor than historical account now?

Hmmm… if I want metaphors, I’ll stick to Star Trek – much more entertaining.

For all my non-Mormon friends out there who think this is overly dramatic, I shall provide you with the Mormon Handbook if you ask nice – the secret book only handed out to the Mormon poobahs like bishops. It’s chock o’ block full or some of the most ridiculous shit ever put to paper.

Alright… end of rant.

I still love my Mormon family members – but they should try really hard to accept my choices in life without trying to change me, or else we have very little to say – which is pretty much the status quo anyway.

- Fin.