Unconventional

Sunday I set the alarm for 6:30 am so I would make my way to the Lib14 convention, and arrive in time for the delegates' plenary session where a number of priority resolutions would be presented, possibly debated and then voted upon.

At the scheduled time, I was in the main hall, poised to follow the proceedings.

Resolutions 110:
A Resolution for Action for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
WHEREAS the effects of colonization, discrimination, stigmatization and remaining silent and inactive on the missing and murdered Indigenous women issue has contributed to the issue itself;
WHEREAS the missing and murdered Indigenous women issue has received international attention via United Nations, with a United nations Special Rapporteur spending nine days touring Canada and speaking with Indigenous individuals and organizations;
WHEREAS the Conservative Party of Canada has eliminated funding to the Sisters in Spirit Research Project and have dismissed calls from Premiers across Canada for a national inquiry on missing murdered and Indigenous women;
BE IT RESOLVED that the Liberal Party of Canada, within its first term as government, begin working with pertinent Indigenous advocacy organizations, Indigenous communities, and Indigenous families of those missing and murdered on the issue of the missing and murdered Indigenous women to allow the project to be relevant to the unique issues facing Indigenous women and girls;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Liberal Party of Canada reinstates research funding under the heading of Sisters in Spirit to allow appropriate documentation and analysis of this on-going human rights issue and support current Indigenous organizations research and documentation on missing and murdered Indigenous women;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Liberal Party of Canada support current Indigenous advocacy organizations to continue their work in advocating for the families and friends of the missing and murdered Indigenous women.

My friend Naomi Sayers applied her skills and her knowledge to the task of drafting a resolution that would include critical information, define the issue and provide specific redress.  The Yukon division of the LPC brought it forward.

That resolution was adopted unanimously by the plenary.

Naomi has a twitter account and she blogs.  This post summarizes her experiences, and how she feels about the challenges of aligning oneself with a political party.

We met for the first time in real life at the convention, after a year of retweeting each other, and forging online alliances.  She is just as fierce, committed and kick-ass as one senses she might be, from reading her.  And she wasn't too disappointed that I'm not as blonde or as dissolute as my Patsy Stone avatar.... I trust.

During the four days (really...? it felt like two weeks!) I took notes about myriad events and glimpses that I caught or that caught me... There may be a concluding wrap-up.

Who ya gonna call?

Super Nanny!

On Twitter just now:

Hey, d'you think SuperNanny would help us out with our mayor? Anyone have her contact details?

— Laura (@LauraCEStewart) February 25, 2014

I've actually seen Super Nanny. I don't have children, but the show is fascinating in a train-wreck kinda way.

Have a look at this audition, aka plea, from this family, called "When your child's the school bully."





Too bad Super Nanny wasn't around when the Fords were children.

Not that Diane (The Enabler In Chief) Ford would have called.

What's up with this?

This is odd.

The doctors who treat pregnant women are warning mothers-to-be against using “entertainment” ultrasounds solely to determine the sex of their fetuses.

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, along with the Canadian Association of Radiologists, put out a new joint policy statement this week calling for an end to ultrasounds offered by non-medical clinics.

Here's the joint statement.

An excerpt:

Fetal ultrasound is a valuable tool in modern obstetrical care. This imaging technique is useful in assessing a fetus for anomalies, ensuring fetal health, and assessing fetal growth and development if performed by properly trained individuals in a carefully monitored and medically supervised environment. It is also an important technology in education and research. This imaging technology uses high-frequency, low-energy sound waves; it does not use ionizing radiation. The availability of ultrasound machines for purchase and use for non-clinical purposes has led to a proliferation of “entertainment” ultrasound units throughout Canada. With recent media coverage of nonmedical clinics performing gender determination in the first trimester, the SOGC and CAR find it necessary to update their previous policy statements on this issue and to issue a new joint policy statement.

The key phrases here are "for non-clinical purposes" and "entertainment." Health Canada and US FDA have warned against them for years -- in the FDA's case, since 2004. And at least one US state, Connecticut, has banned them.

But the issue has been safety concerns posed by multiple, longer-exposure ultrasounds.

What's odd here is the insertion of the sex-selection canard.

Here is the National Post offering a a piece with a totally misleading headline yet not a scrap of evidence that "sex-based abortions" are occurring in Canada, let alone that there's a "rise" in them. Here's the headline:

Rise in sex-based abortions prompts doctors to call for end to ultrasounds that only determine gender of fetus

It refers to an editorial in the Canadian Medical Journal from 2012. That editorial was occasioned by a study of gender ratios downloadable here free without subscription.

Researchers looked at Ontario birth records for the period 2002 to 2007, correlated to the woman's country of birth.

It includes a table with the actual numbers of male/female births to women of various origins and for each birth (first, second and third) in turn. An abortion provider I know took a good look at these numbers and found that there were only two statistically significant differences in gender ratios.

One involved third births to women of Indian origin, and the other second births to women of Korean origin; in both groups there was a small disproportion of males.

Then, calculations were done to determine how many "extra" males were born.

There were 48,362 third births of females. If the usual ratio of 1.05 had applied, one would have expected 50,780 male births, when in fact there were 51,520.  It was as though 360 births that “should” have been female were male instead.  But this amounts to only 60 extra male births per year in Ontario, 360 out of the 6-year total of 766,688 births – at .05% not much of a demographic threat!

(These quotes come from private correspondence, but you can download the study and do the math yourself.)

As we have argued here many times, sex selection is a serious problem in societies where it is widely practiced. That one study shows only that it might have happened in Ontario with very little effect on the larger population.

In fact, there's good evidence that when the overall population is questioned on gender preference, girls win.

That's why we call sex-selective abortion a canard. Or in Mark Warawa's recent anti-abortion gambit, sheer, cynical posturing, aka Warawa's Wank.

And speaking of Warawa, NatPo's resident sob-sister Kelly McParland produces his usual disingenuous froth to claim that the joint statement vindicates Warawa's thwarted motion.

Which of course it doesn't. Warawa's Wank was simply yet another back-door attempt to reopen the abortion debate. And all sensible people recognized it as such immediately.

But the question remains. Why would the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada and Canadian Association of Radiologist link multiple, non-medical ultrasounds -- long frowned on by reputable experts -- to very sketchy evidence that sex-selective abortion is actually occurring in Canada?

Why now? What's going on?

We ever-vigilant proponents and protectors of women's rights in Canada should keep our eyes peeled for future moves and spin by fetus fetishists.

UPDATE: Dominionist-run website, We Need a Law, is revved in anticipation of a new bill.

THEM

It's the title of an early Joyce Carol Oates novel, possibly her best and deserving a place in the US literary canon.

_THEM_ depicts the chaotic lives of a family living in poverty in the Detroit slums, from the 1930s to the 1967 riots.  Oates draws a vivid portrait of a matriarch, from self-awakening as a naive young mother nagged by regrets at the age of sixteen, to a mature woman whose aspirations and struggles encompass the destinies of her children battling to survive in a perilous world fraught with violence. Poor white trash folks, before that epithet became a thing.

US against THEM is also a binary construct that imposes constraints and limits possibilities.

This imperative to separate people into opposite camps, assigned to one side or the other of an arbitrarily determined divide, is a facile reflex.  Though some sociobiologists would claim that every human brain is instinctually wired to respond in this manner because: survival strategy! I find their arguments oozing with smarminess and confirmation bias.

This polarizing framework is certainly omnipresent throughout history, across varied and numerous ideological and cultural settings.



Demonize, other-wize, isolate, target. 

Blue dot.

And thus, with regard to this ill-advised model that the Liberal Party of Canada is heavily promoting, today's JT speech announces what awaits Canadians in the 2015 election campaign, if THE MIDDLE-CLASS becomes its strategic meme (though it could morph into a much abused trope).

As someone who grew up in a rough-and-tumble mostly francophone area with many immigrants, working class (and working poor) in a town that's now part of Ottawa, I find this ploy repellent.

Though I may seem to be a member of this elusive and more likely, illusive demographic that the Liberal brain-trust is desperately trying to seduce into its camp, it does NOT speak to me. 

When I hear the expression "upward mobility" deployed in JT's speech as though it were an exalted entitlement, I retch.  Meaningful work, a decent salary, a social safety net: those are important elements that should not be available only to those who buy into the "upward mobility" scam, or more accurately, a form of fancy-schmancy Ponzi economic scheme beatified by the likes of Larry Summers and his sycophants.

I think of my daughter, who by virtue of her hard work and personal sacrifices, is now an accomplished physician who gives back to the communities she has pledged to serve and respect.  I really don't think this marketing gimmick will speak to her.

As I do, she may find it repugnant and exclusionary.

THEM is the group that I historically and emotionally identify with, that demographically disregarded and invalidated class that JT and his team discount when the focus becomes exclusively *THE MIDDLE-CLASS*.

THEM includes many many many people, and not only those who have fallen on hard times. We may not be the potential rich donors the PLC is wooing, but we can smell a deliberate shun.  And when we are angered, we vote.

You can't take that to the bank but you can count on it.

As an aside, is the NDP's best shot at challenging the credibility of JT's speech really this? 

Mulcair's communications flaks would do much better to query how much Summers charged the LPC for his tired dog-and-pony show at the convention.  Was the party billed his preferential Wall Street rate - for "friends"?

Just a hairy guy...

Like this?

A blast from the past.

All three male party leaders in the House of Commons are hairy guys, though Harper's helmet-head looks suspiciously synthetic, like the rest of him.

Once known (also envied and demonized) for his flowing locks, JT has left those behind, on his own counsel or perhaps at the urging of Team Justin.

Merely having a little fun, here.

Will resume serious political blogging soon.

Fair - that is non-fraudulent - elections

Yesterday this retweet in Nancy LeBlanc's twitter stream caught my attention.

Like all politically aware and engaged Canadians, the blogging team at DJ! has been observing the CONtemptuous CPC maneuvers to pass their Unfair Elections Act, which the smarmy Poilièvre titled, with considerable malevolent double-speak from PMSHithead's PMO, the "Fair Reform Act".

So I turned to resolution 31 in the LPC convention program.  It's a long one, and advances this: 

... A truly independent, properly resourced Parliamentary Budget Officer;

A more effective Access-to-Information regime with stronger safeguards against political interference;

An impartial system to identify and eliminate the waste of tax-dollars on partisan advertising; Careful limitations on secret Committee proceedings, Omnibus Bills and Prorogation to avoid their misuse for the short-term partisan convenience of the government;

Adequate funding, investigative powers and enforcement authority to ensure Elections Canada can root out electoral fraud; ...

In short, the Liberals bringing this resolution forward hope that it acknowledges the harm and damage Harper's CPC government has wrought upon Parliamentary process, address it with specific actions to redress Con malfeasance, and inscribe it within their own party's mandate.

It's a tall order.  I don't know if media folks and bloggers are allowed to attend the discussions that accompany the presentation of resolutions, but I will certainly be reporting on how this one is received and whether it passes.

Note in the twit pic the presence of Fair Vote Canada, a non-partisan organization.  May this augur well for a unified and cohesive cooperative strategy by all opposition parties to rid the country of Harper's greedy grifters, fatuous felons, corporate criminals and sleazy kleptocrats.

Conventional.

A message confirming that I could attend the Liberal Party of Canada convention as an accredited blogger arrived without fanfare in my email box a few weeks ago.

This is the program.

First, I was surprised; DAMMIT JANET! has published some very rude posts, justifiably critical of specific LPC actions.

Then ambivalent - did I want to spend four days or so in the febrile, adrenaline-charged environment of a political convention?  I had attended one at the provincial level when I lived in Québec; from my perch as an observer, I noted what ideological hothouses they are.

Which is inexorably, the point of these conventions: to gather the troops, get every one armed - from the grunts to the generals - and in a state of readiness do to battle AGAINST the other parties.

So, I took myself to Montréal, registered, got my media pass, settled into the media room with my spiffy new MacBook all charged up; a wise move since the dozens of yellow extension with NO power bars are somewhat artisanale et broche à foin.  

With one eye on the closed circuit monitor which would eventually transit the feed from Liberal Live, I checked the convention program and saw that Chrystia Freeland and Larry Summers were to have a little chit-chat to *warm* up the crowd for Justin Trudeau welcome speech.

WTF?  Yes, that Larry Summers.

There's much that he has done that is not admirable.

More information about Naomi's reference, and Larry Summers' role in facilitating white collar crime.

As Treasury Secretary under Clinton, Summers played an important role in convincing Congress in 1999 to pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed key portions of the Glass-Steagall Act and allowed commercial banks to get into the mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations game. The measure also created an oversight disaster, with supervision of banking conglomerates split among a host of different government agencies -- agencies that often failed to let each other know what they were doing and what they were uncovering. 

At the signing of the bill, Summers hailed it as "a major step forward to the 21st Century." 

Summers also backed Phil Gramm's other financial time bomb, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed financial derivatives to be traded without any oversight or regulation. So it was on his watch that the credit-default swaps warhead that has blown up our economy was launched. 

Indeed, during a 1998 Senate hearing, Summers testified against the regulation of the derivatives market on the grounds that we could trust Wall Street. "The parties to these kinds of contract," he said, "are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies and most of which are already subject to basic safety and soundness regulation under existing banking and securities laws." 

It would be hard to make assumptions that turned out to be more wrong than Summers' were.

But aside from his association with catastrophically WRONG economic strategies, Summers uttered his Lib14 convention platitudes as though they were the fruit of some arcane lojong that he had cut up into children's bite-sized pieces.  All with the insufferable arrogant delivery that has branded his toxic imprint upon institutions.

So, I voted with my feet and left Le Palais des congrès.

As for the rest of the convention, I've set up some Real Life meetings with women who have chosen the Liberal Party as the route they want to explore to engage politically. One of them is Naomi.  Another is Nancy LeBlanc, also known as the blogger impolitical. I am curious about the path that has brought them to this convention, and what their own personal hope might be.

There are others, too.  Stay tuned.

What's "neo" about "neoreactionaries"?

So there's this whole discussion that's been running around ALL the internets these past few months about the shocking propositions of people calling themselves "neoreactionaries" or "the" "Dark" "Enlightenment." To put a long story short, it's just about a bunch of attention-seekers (no criticism implied there, honest) running around telling the world that women really should get-back-in-the-kitchen-and-make-me-a-sandwich and-a-tribe-of-minions-while-you're-at-it and that we really should just let plutocrats run our societies because then we won't have to pay for other people's firefighters and that black people really do have a case of the stupids present time-orientation passed down by their stupid presently time-oriented ancestors. There's a refutation FAQ, and there's some other choice words over here.

But be that as it may, I fail to see what is "neo" about this "neoreaction". A motley collection of racists, misogynists, and wealth-worshippers suddenly discovering that woo-woo everything is connected woo-woo? It's not like they don't repeat that, oh, about seven times a generation. I mean, since when has a racist movement of any note not also been deeply misogynist? And wasn't Jim Crow deeply enmeshed in a quasi-feudal US-Southern social architecture? Pretty much all of zero of the arguments weren't being parroted on the intertoobs themselves back in the 90s!

Voldemort's got a viewpoint. OK, duly noted, time to move on.

About those CON-veeenient leaks...

Imagine it said in Preston Manning's voice.  CON-veeenient!

It's the only way to observe the onslaught of leaks and planted items that glutted the mainstream media this week.  If one were cynical, one might think that some were deliberately engineered to divert attention away from the MASSIVE Harper CPC attack on democracy — disingenuously called *Fair Reform Act* — by neutralizing and weakening the work Elections Canada does.  Some have called it the Conservative Amnesty Act since it will retroactively exculpate any election fraud engineered by the CPC.

Observe the 'who', the 'what', the 'how' and the 'when' of the following:

Exhibit A: It was predictable that the PMO would accommodate Harper's loathing for the LPC by devising a strategy to disrupt the Montreal convention with a range of smears and media-attention-grabbing tactics.

Exhibit B: Just one big, happy Regressive Conservative slash Reformatory family party! Well, except for Arthur Hamilton who is now living in the dog-house.

Exhibit C: Clearly, transparently and blatantly even, Harper Cons are exploiting publicly-funded Parliamentary resources to support their re-election bid. No accountability.

Exhibit D: As our blogging colleague Luna suggests, a critical backlash against the use of Laureen might be re-framed by the PMO, who would claim that she is being attacked, and then launch their own previously-crafted strategies to smear Catherine or Sophie, respectively Mulcair and Trudeau spouses.

Here is seasoned political journalist Susan Delacourt's take on the above leaks.

Exhibit E: This one may be gratuitous or part of an internal effort by Harper sycophants to discredit Jason Kenney who may be gunning for their leader's job.

Exhibit F: Glen McGregor presents the facts he has obtained, and raises questions about how and why this information has surfaced now.

Make of it what you will, but it seems to me that under Harper's direction, the PMO and the communications flunkies who crank out their Politburo propaganda are out to win. No prisoners taken. No mercy.  Just a craven need to crush their enemies, which includes Canadians who aren't onside with them.

UPDATE, February 17: It seems the Lt-Gen Leslie (retired) snowball packed around a sharp rock has become something of an avalanche. 

According to this news item, Con Minister Nicholson claims information about Leslie's $72,000 move costs was obtained through the Access to Information Act but CTV won't confirm that is correct.  Who's the more credible?