On The Right Honourable Brian Mulroney: An Open Letter to Pierre Poilievre

Dear Pierre,

Out of respect, I waited to write this until after the funeral of the late Right Honourable Brian Mulroney.

Respect. It's something that Brian Mulroney showed to everyone he interacted with, whether he agreed with them or not. That was one of the things I respected and admired about him. I disagreed with almost all of his policies at the time, but I knew that this was someone who was able to agree to disagree without making it personal. I knew that given the opportunity to discuss issues with him, he would listen to me with respect even if he disagreed with everything I said.

Even in his most fiery political oratory he always showed respect towards his opponents. One example that stands out in my mind is that iconic moment when he pointed a finger at his opponent, looked him in the eye and said “You had an option, sir.”

"Sir." Merriam Webster defines it as "a title of respect used in addressing a man without using his name." Brian Mulroney used that respectful form of address many times in that debate, as he did throughout his political career - whether addressing political friend or foe, and he did it without diminishing by one iota the force of his oratory or his ability to get his point across. No matter how politically aggressive he might have been or how vigorously he attacked his opponents' ideas or positions, he never ever made it personal.

Things like that made "the right honourable" more than just an official title for Brian Mulroney; for him, it is an accurate description as well. He was truly "the right honourable" in the same sense that some Canadians might say today that there has been only one truly right honourable Prime Minister Trudeau - the one who showed that same sense of respect and ability to agree to disagree without ever making it personal.

When I compare today's party leaders with your respective right honourable predecessors, I do not see anything even remotely resembling those qualities. Every public interaction between you comes off like a playground scrap, replete with insults and personal attacks. This Hour Has 22 Minutes was not too far off from reality in their depiction last fall of debate between you in the House of Commons as an 'air punch' match from across the aisle.

Pierre, you might want to ask yourself what sort of character legacy (i.e. how you are remembered for your personal qualities) you want to leave. Do you want to be remembered as someone who focused on substance and left the personal attacks to those less mature, or would you really prefer to be remembered as one of those less mature playground scrappers?

To put it another way, if you do get elected Prime Minister, do you want "the right honourable" to be nothing more than a formal title, or an accurate description as well?

Sincerely,

A Canadian looking for a grown-up in the room.

A Message For The NRA

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast

Text of a voice message left for the NRA on February 15, 2018. (You can leave a message for them at 1-800-672-3888, then choose options 6, 2, 3)

I would just like to congratulate you - score another 17 for your side. 17 fewer mouths to feed, 17 fewer spaces taking up tax dollars in public education, 17 fewer future voters for gun control.

Every one of you who works there, and every one of your members, can take credit for this - you must be so proud. I can only hope that those of you with children in school, from elementary right up to grad school, get to wake up every morning wondering if today will be the day that you get to experience the joy of your child proudly making the ultimate sacrifice to protect the right of civilians to maximum firepower.

You stand tall, firm, and proud of what you have wrought in your great nation - something no other developed nation can boast about. You stick to your guns, literally and figuratively, and keep insisting on an absolutist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Never compromise on that. Stand firm in your belief that the only choices are a 2nd Amendment with no reasonable safeguards or limits, or no 2nd Amendment at all.

"...it could have been perfect."

There is no excuse for this. Everybody who was involved should be shot. And drawn & quartered, whatever that is. And made to watch it over and over until their heads explode.

For the almost 30 years since I first read it, it has been one of my favourite books. Ever. When I first heard talk of a movie, I waited anxiously for further news. And waited. And waited.

While I was waiting, I came up with a fantasy cast - Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas (because I don't like him, so he would have been perfect for the role), Patrick Swayze (he was alive then), Antonio Banderas, Courtney Love (as the train wreck), William Shatner, John Cryer, and more (I had the whole cast lined up) and yeah, Brad Pitt, because everybody knows who he is.

Then, while I was waiting some more. I used the characters in my greatest (and as yet unpublished) scambait ever, replacing my fantasy cast with pictures of the cast of one of the best t.v. shows ever. (I still cry at the final scene of the series finale, but that's another story, which I just told.)

While I was still waiting, I googled a bit and discovered that it had been in development hell pretty much since the book was published, various attempts to bring it to the big screen (and the small one) having failed for one spurious reason or another, such as Fred Silverman or the Time-Warner merger. But the dream lived on, and now there was talk of Angelina Jolie and, yeah, Brad Pitt. And then there was no more talk, again.

Then I got busy with brown-eyed girls and such, and forgot all about it for a while, until sometime last winter, I heard or read or imagined that the first part had been released, largely unnoticed by anyone, by which I mean me. Eventually, I got around to googling, and found out that not only was it true, but the second part had also been released. Then I forgot about it again.

Until a couple of weeks ago, when I was looking for something to pick up at the local video store, and thought to enquire about it, which they didn't have, nor ever heard of. Then, earlier this evening, after finally getting around to watching Black Snake Moan (because Kim Richards was in it) online, I thought to look for it.

I found it. I wish I hadn't. I could have lived the rest of my life imagining what a great movie it would have been with my fantasy cast, or even my substitute cast. To paraphrase Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing, "It they don't make it, there's always the possibility it could have been perfect."

But they did make it. Well, two-thirds of it, anyways. And I found it. And I started watching it. And I decided that it was the worst casting ever. The actors weren't all that bad, but they were playing the wrong roles, as if they were matched by picking names out of a hat. And then I stopped watching it, because the script was almost as bad as the casting.

While I was waiting to eventually decide if I would watch it or not, I IMDBed it and discovered something truly bizarre, even for Hollywood. Parts one and two have entirely different casts. And by "entirely" I mean "entirely". And then I discovered that the cast for part three, which is slated for release next year, has yet to be announced, which seems to imply that its cast will be entirely different again.

Seriously? Really? WTF? Are you f-ing kidding me? [Your favourite internet cliche signifying incredulity]? But really, and seriously, they made seven Harry Potter movies (including one in two parts) and managed to keep all the same people playing all the same characters throughout (except for Dumbledore, but that's understandable under the circumstances).

But this, it's like they watched a few episodes of 'Til Death and said, "That's cool what they did with the daughter, let's do that with all the characters." Because, of course, what works for an irreverent sitcom should work for a movie based on a book that didn't have a single funny line. And much like everything else in the universe, I doubt that the author, god rest her soul, would find anything funny about this.

At least I now understand why every previous attempt to make this movie (and/or miniseries) failed, and why they failed for relatively unrelated reasons like a new network whiz kid, a corporate merger, or an actress getting pregnant. It was the universe saying "Don't. Just don't." Now the universe is saying "I told you so."

At least I have one-up on all of the professional critics who unanimously panned this travesty - I didn't have to suffer through the whole thing to know how bad it is. I might yet watch it someday, if I get drunk enough to not remember any of it the next day so as not to ruin the book for me, More likely, I'll just pretend it never happened and go with what Art said.

An open letter to Carmen Ortiz

An open letter to Carmen Ortiz, US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. (A hard copy has been mailed to her office.)

Carmen Ortiz
US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts

January 14, 2013

Ms.Ortiz:

I do not know what kind of person you are in your private life, nor whether you have had any trouble sleeping at night lately.

I only know what I have read about your professional life and actions, the most predominant of which is now your prosecution of a young man and his subsequent death; a prosecution to which the alleged victim of the supposed crime was opposed. I am sure you are aware of the relevant ruling of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. What I am not sure of is why you chose not only to ignore that ruling, but also to neglect to ask for a review of that ruling by the Supreme Court.

The only reason I can think of is that the ruling was inconvenient to your purposes, and a potential confirmation of it that would have been binding in your state would have been even more inconvenient. It seems clear from all that I have read about this case that your purpose was gaining a conviction, not administering justice.

You are not directly responsible for the death of that young man; suicide is a tragedy that has its roots in the psyche of the victim and his or her incapacity to cope with the challenges that life sometimes poses. But I would not sleep well knowing that I had imposed some of those challenges on another human being unjustly, for the sake of my own ambition.

I do not know what kind of person you are in your private life, nor whether you have had any trouble sleeping at night lately. I do know that from what I have read about your professional life and actions, you are the most despicable kind of lawyer - the one that seeks to make a name for herself whatever the cost, justice be damned.

Congratulations Ms. Ortiz, you have succeeded in making a name for yourself. Too bad it will forever be linked to that of Aaron Swartz.

Legacy

Amanda Todd

But one thing is certain, and it’s that I’m a jerk for making this site. Oh well. Someone had to do it eventually...

Mark Zuckerberg was referring to Facebook's predecessor, Facemash, but he might as well have been talking about the multi-billion dollar corporation that has become the largest stalking mechanism in human history. And both components of his statement are probably true - that he is a jerk, and that someone would have done it anyways.

The rest, as they say, is history (and if you don't know it, google it or watch the damn movie), so let's fast-forward to last Wednesday, October 10, 2012, the day a British Columbia teen named Amanda Todd committed suicide, a month and a few days after she posted a video on YouTube to tell her story, along with a comment that ended, ironically, with "...you just gotta pull through. I'm still here aren't I ?"

So what does Amanda's death have to do with Mark's creation? According to the wiki article, "Amanda Michelle Todd... was a 15-year-old Canadian teenager who committed suicide attributed to cyber-bullying through the social networking website Facebook." Yes, teens made innocent mistakes before the internet. Yes, bullying existed before the internet. Yes, teens committed suicide before the internet. But this particular tragedy had its roots on the internet, and the bottom line is that Amanda Todd is dead because of something that started and grew on the internet.

The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand...

Eric Schmidt's words might be the understatement of the century. When the social side of the internet first became a significant part of my life as I knew it a few years ago, I marvelled at its potential. The free exchange of information, the unifying effect on the global village, the ability to bare my soul behind the shield of anonymity, all of these showed me that the internet could be, and indeed was, so much more than a convenient way to conduct financial transactions, communicate with clients, and buy stuff.

Now it's starting to scare the hell out of me.

Exactly one week before Amanda Todd ended her life over the fallout from a picture of her breasts on Facebook, someone very close to me woke up to find that his ex-wife had posted topless pictures of their 16-year-old daughter on, yep, Facebook. The girl had taken the pictures of herself in private and saved them on her mother's computer with a reasonable expectation of privacy. Eventually, her mother came across the pictures. Suffice it to say that the mother is not well, and there you have it.

The police were called and an officer was dispatched to take the complaint and collect the evidence in the form of screenshots and page downloads, but father and daughter were informed that local police had no way to contact Facebook directly to have the photos removed, and were advised to flag the images to Facebook themselves. They did so, along with a few close friends who had already seen the page, and prayed that the photos wouldn't spread too far during the 48 hours within which Facebook would do its best to review them.

Fortunately, the photos were removed by the end of the school day (and so far there is no evidence to suggest that they went anywhere further, but you can never be completely sure on the internet), but not by Facebook. According to the information on the Support Dashboards of those who flagged the images, the photos were removed by the mother (or someone with access to her account) before being reviewed.

Had this not been the case, it's anybody's guess how long it might have taken for Facebook to remove them (or even if they would have done so), how far they might have spread in the interim, and consequently, how much harm this might have caused to the young lady in question. Kinda makes you wonder not if, but when, we will hear about the next Amanda Todd.

It could also make you wonder how many more Amanda Todds we will hear about before Facebook takes steps to protect a huge segment of its users - children. Google+ (which appeals to a more mature market) has a Child Safety section in its content policy that stipulates: Do not distribute content that exploits children, such as child pornography (including cartoon child porn) or content that presents children in a sexual manner (which, presumably, would include topless photos). Facebook has nothing of the sort.

In fact, Facebook took several weeks to remove a page titled "Pedophiles are people too," having first simply tagged it with a "controversial humour" flag, citing freedom of expression, and finally taking it down (coincidentally) the day after Amanda Todd's suicide. (The page had prompted several pages critical of Facebook's initial decision, some of which where themselves taken down first, and at least one parody aimed at Zuckerberg.)

It is important to note that Facebook is not responsible for what bullies did to Amanda Todd, nor is it their fault a sick individual posted semi-nude photos of her daughter on Facebook. That said, it is incomprehensible that this multi-billion dollar corporation refuses to commit any but the most minimal of resources to dealing with these situations when they fester on its platform, and Facebook has come under increasing criticism for its head-in-the-sand approach to the online safety of its young users.

Can Facebook afford to hire more people in order to process abuse reports more quickly? Yes. Can Facebook afford to set up hotlines available to local law enforcement 24/7? Yes. Can Facebook afford to work with school systems to promote internet safety awareness among children? Yes. Is Facebook legally obligated to do any of these things? No, nor should they be. Should that stop the world's largest social network from assuming these social responsibilities?

Mark Zuckerberg did not kill Amanda Todd  He did nothing to hurt the young lady with the sick mother. But he also did nothing to help either one of them, as CEO of a corporation whose current policies can and do contribute to tragedies like Amanda's, and to the nightmares of a father who may have been spared such a tragedy by a stroke of good luck, no thanks to Facebook.

Is Mark Zuckeberg a good man? I have no idea, but if he is, he might start paying attention to what's happening on his creation, as well as to the words of Edmund Burke:

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.

So long, Jack

I campaigned for Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP) as a teenager, in the riding then held by Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Our big breakthrough was getting slightly more than 2% of the vote.

Over the years, my political orientation shifted to the right, but I always had a special place in my heart for the party whose members once sported buttons that said "My heart is on the left." Earlier this year, I even voted for them for the first time in 27 years, and I did so primarily because of the party's charismatic leader, Jack Layton. Hell, I didn't even know the name of the local candidate until I saw it on the ballot, and promptly forgot it until she was declared elected.

Jack Layton accomplished two things in that election that nobody expected. The party that had been struggling for a breakthrough in Quebec for decades took 59 of 75 parliamentary seats in the province, sending the separatist Bloc Quebecois, which had dominated federal politics in Quebec for two decades, to oblivion.

Largely because of that accomplishment, the NDP became the Official Opposition for the first time in its history. The future was brighter than it had ever been for the NDP and the man who had become the most popular politician in Canada.

Then, earlier this summer, he confidently told Canadians that he would be back when he stepped down from the party's leadership to battle cancer (which he had beaten once before), and few doubted that he would be.

Jack Layton died this morning.

As far as I can see, Jack may have been the last of his kind in Canadian politics; that is, leaders who are in it not for the money or the prestige or the favours they can hand out, but for what they believe in and the hope of achieving a brighter future. In my lifetime, I can think of only three others who merit membership in this club: Pierre Trudeau, Rene Levesque, and the NDP's own Ed Broadbent.

Today, my condolences go out not only to Jack's family and friends, but to all Canadians - regardless of our political leanings, we have all lost a national treasure today.

So long, Jack. We will miss you.

Two days before his death, Jack Layton wrote this letter to Canadians.

Going Postal - Canadian Style

For those who haven't noticed, there is no mail in Canada. It is not a strike, but a lockout. That's right, the post office closed itself down. For those who wonder how this could happen, I should point out that Canada Post does not use the slogan "Neither rain nor sleet..." or whatever it is. In fact, if Canada Post had a slogan, it would be, "What do you expect for 59 cents?" But I digress.

They are fighting over the usual suspects - wages, working conditions, benefits, and history. History, because the company wants to roll all of those back to the days of the early industrial revolution. I should point out here that I am not generally pro-union; I applauded WalMart when they closed their first ever store to have been unionized. However, these are exceptional times that call for exceptional opinions.

The union, in a rare stroke of brilliant strategy, started with rotating strikes, wherein various urban centres would lose mail delivery for one day at a time. This had the double benefit of not terribly inconveniencing the mail-receiving public at the same time as causing Canada Post major administrative headaches.

This (a public service union going after its employer without holding the public hostage) would not do, of course. So Canada Post did the only thing it could (other than actually taking steps to reach a negotiated settlement) - it attempted to provoke a full strike by announcing that mail would only be delivered three days a week.

When the union didn't bite, the company complained that its reduced service was costing it too much in lost revenue, so it did the logical thing and shut down altogether, because no revenue is better than some revenue, apparently.

In any case, the point of all of this has become clear to me. The current government has hinted at its desire to privatize the post office, an idea that has generally been met with a mix of raised eyebrows and instinctive disdain. By running itself into the ground, Canada Post will become a drain on the public purse, and thus a fair target to be a sacrificial lamb in some future round of budget cuts - the public will be less likely to oppose the sale of a money-losing crown corporation.

As a side-effect, this situation may turn out to be the best thing that little Stevie Harper has ever done for the environment - the vast majority of folks who will now use the internet to get around the lockout (for example, switching to online billing and payments) will not come back to snail mail, and this permanent drop in Canada Post's market will save countless forests.

My favourite part of the whole mess, though, has been the laughs, like the one I had when the company's CEO announced the lockout/shutdown at the same time as telling employees that he hopes they will come back to work soon. You can't pay for that kind of slapstick.

Oh wait, I guess we are paying for it.