Separatists on parade revisited: parade forgotten?

For a short time in December a new western separatist group emerged, though its rollout was marred by a series of missteps that I chronicled at the time (here). Several unsuitable characters were recruited for its council:

• its BC chair had to be removed over "incompatible philosophies" (here: apparently it had to do with his views on race war and political assassination)
  
• one policy chair resigned when problems with his claims about his experience emerged (here and here)
• the next policy chair claimed a degree from a diploma mill (here)

In the meantime, apparently its all gone stale. The webpage seems not to have been updated in months, no progress seems to have been reached in filling vacancies in the council, and their founding convention has been forgotten.

Here is their convention page as of this morning (here):

The date, of course, is noteworthy. The convention is supposed to start today. Given that as of this morning "prices and location are yet to be determined" one assumes that it did not happen.

Apparently it has been postponed or forgotten.

Other posts in this series:

• separatists on parade, 1: Erik Gregson
  
• separatists on parade, 2: WBTA claims to have ex-MPs
  
• Separatists on parade, 3: western separatists in the CPC
  
• Separatists on parade, 4: Erik Gregson to chair WBTA convention
  
• Separatists on parade, 5: Separatists bungle copy-and-paste
  
• Separatists on parade, 6: Erik Gregson comes out of the closet
• Separatists on parade, 7: WBTA BC Chair called for the execution of all Liberals
  
• Separatists on parade, 8: WBTA BC Chair comments on race war
• Separatists on parade, 9: Harper once supported separatist Erik Gregson
• Separatists on parade, 10: another separatist in the Conservative Party
  

Waiting lists grow in American clinics

The Washington Post has an interesting story on the effects of the recession on a clinic in North Carolina.

Just six months ago, the clinic delivered same-day care to most callers, the gold standard from a health perspective. But in October the delays crept to four days, then 19 in November and 25 in December. In January, HealthServe temporarily stopped accepting new patients, and almost immediately 380 people put their names on a waiting list for when the crunch eases.

The problem?

In the past two years, North Carolina's number of uninsured has climbed 22.5 percent, the biggest jump in the nation, according to an analysis by the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, a quasi-state agency. Nationwide, about 22 percent of adults do not have health insurance. Here in North Carolina, 25 percent of adults -- or 1.8 million people -- have no coverage. An additional 9 percent are underinsured.

For most Americans, health insurance and employment are linked. Every 1 percent increase in the jobless rate translates into 1.1 million people losing coverage nationally.

Canada's system, much pilloried by the fabulists of the right, doesn't look so bad now, does it?

I didn't realize this was political at the time...

... but in retrospect, every thing's clearer:

What to do with that extra easter egg

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

When the Easter message goes wrong…

(For the t/s)

Having a form of godliness…

And just when you thought that the odd mix of market capitalism and evangelical Christianity in North America couldn't get any stranger, some enterprising profit seeker has introduced a new religious service.

You Pay, Computer Prays For You

Information Age Prayer is a site that charges you a monthly fee to say prayers for you. A typical charge is $4.95 per month to say three prayers specified by you each day.

"We use state of the art text to speech synthesizers to voice each prayer at a volume and speed equivalent to typical person praying," the company states. "Each prayer is voiced individually, with the name of the subscriber displayed on screen."

... or are you just happy to see me?

Teenager paints 60ft phallus on roof of family home

A teenager got away with painting a 60ft phallus on the roof of his parents' home for a year before his parents found out.

Rory McInnes, 18, climbed on to the flat roof of his parents' home and daubed the symbol using a tin of white paint, after watching a programme about Google Earth.
Web surfers can view detailed images from satellites using the Google software, enabling them to zoom in on their homes to see them from above.

But parents Andy and Clare did not discover their son's rude artwork until a helicopter spotted it on top of their home near Hungerford, Berks. The pilot called The Sun newspaper, which then contacted Mr McInnes to tell him.

Mr McInnes, 54, a company director, thought the newspaper was having a joke. He said: "It's an April Fool's joke, right? There's no way there's a 60ft phallus on top of my house."

However, when he asked each of his four children if there was indeed the image of a phallus on their newly-completed roof, Rory owned up.

When Mr McInnes phoned his son, who is currently in Brazil on a gap year, the teenager said: "Oh, you've found it then!"

The boy's father appeared to take the prank in good humour. But he said: "When Rory gets home he will be given a scrubbing brush and white spirit and he can go and scrub it off."

Spelling matters

More Demotivational Posters

150 Jewish Canadians sign statement against suppression of criticism of Israel

Over 150 Jewish Canadians signed a statement expressing concern about recent atttepts to suppress criticism of Israel that is being carried on within Canada:

We are Jewish Canadians concerned about all expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and social injustice. We believe that the Holocaust legacy "Never again" means never again for all peoples. It is a tragic turn of history that the State of Israel, with its ideals of democracy and its dream of being a safe haven for Jewish people, causes immeasurable suffering and injustice to the Palestinian people.

You can see the rest of the statement here.

Heh

h/t

Don't try this at home.

No, seriously.  Don't try this at home:

I really hope this works

I know that this seems stupid, but ....

Five hours of stupidity

Blazing Cat Fur noticed a story this afternoon on an English website about the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Who's that? From wikipedia:

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is an international organisation with a permanent delegation to the United Nations. It groups 57 member states, from the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Caucasus, Balkans, Southeast Asia, South Asia and South America. The official languages of the organisation are Arabic, English and French.

For reasons that remain unlear our firey feline made a joke at the expense of Barbara Hall, the Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (or OHRC):

Paging Barbara Hall - Organisation of the Islamic Conference plans human rights commission within the OIC.

Did the hirsute fever confuse the OIC and OHRC? It sure looks like it. And not only him.

Over at Free Dominion, fourhorses quoted the story, but changed the headline to

Islamic Conference creates Islamic Human Rights Commission within the Ontario Human Rights Commission

In doing so, he replaced OIC in the headline with OHRC, and filled out the abbreviation.

And then we were off to the races. Over the next five hours:

• free_life2: “Danger, Will Robinson, DANGER!”
• Connie Fournier: "Where are we going? And why are we in this handbasket?"
• Fabulous Fred: "If we do nothing we know what to expect."
• J.B. Stone: "Gaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh...........!!!"
• Fabulous Fred: "It is time for as Christian Human Rights Commission within the OHRC. "
• Connie Fournier: "I'm slowing changing my opinion from 'we mustn't sink to their level' to 'we can only win through the doctrine of mutually assured destruction'".
• Edward Kennedy: "When you feel the hatred and anger, the bitterness and the rage, be thankful to your tormentors for they have given you the means that will be your ultimate victory over them, their tyranny, and their imposed bondage."

Etc., etc., for five hours. Until poster LittleCanuck noticed that the story has nothing to do with Ontario. Never did. OIC, not OHRC. But it took five hours before LittleCanuck from Calgary read the headline, read the story, and noticed they didn't go together.

Prehistoric Valentines message

(For the t-shirt, go here)

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

In Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria writes:

The legendary editor of The New Republic, Michael Kinsley, once held a "Boring Headline Contest" and decided that the winner was "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative." Twenty-two years later, the magazine was rescued from its economic troubles by a Canadian media company, which should have taught us Americans to be a bit more humble. Now there is even more striking evidence of Canada's virtues. Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it's Canada. In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada's banking system the healthiest in the world. America's ranked 40th, Britain's 44th.

So how come my bank stocks are sucking so much?

Read the rest here.

Two cases in point

Human Rights expert Richard Moon testified to a committee of the Ontario Legislature today. You can see more of Moon's testimony preliminary transcript at Kinsella:

There are a number of right-wing critics in Canada who, instead of offering serious and plausible criticism of the Human Rights Code regulations, engage in baseless personal attacks. Without compunction, they accuse the civil servants who are mandated to implement human rights legislation of corruption. They use the term “corruption” freely and very loosely, but always in a way that suggests a significant breach of public trust. The accusations have no substance; they are pieced together out of nothing. But what they achieve, what the commentators want them to achieve, is a general sense that there is a serious problem, even if the specifics of the problem are unknown.

Just what might Prof. Moon mean by "the accusations have no substance; they are pieced together out of nothing"? Two examples come to mind.

One of them was to accuse human rights activist Richard Warman of a nasty racist denunciation of Senator Anne Cools on a racist board in 2003, an accusation that was mindlessly repeated by many conservative bloggers. The problem? It was based on a tissue of half-truths, innuendos, and misunderstandings, as I have shown here and here and here and here, and Warman is suing for defamation.

Or, who can forget the crazy allegation that CHRC employee Dean Steacy had hacked the wifi of an Ottawa woman? Both the RCMP and the privacy commissioner investigated, but both quickly dropped the matter. Why? Because there was no clear evidence that any hacking had taken place (here and here).

My experience of investigating these allegations is that underlying them is a seemingly endless string of exaggerations or half-truths or outright lies.

As Prof. Moon testifies:

Over the last few years, these commentators have made a series of baseless accusations against the members and staff or the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and these claims have leaked into the mainstream media, into the National Post, and into the columns of the Globe and Mail. Believe none of it. As I said at the outset, there are some serious questions to be addressed, but I have come to the conclusion that certain individuals who have played a large role in the campaign against human rights laws and human rights commissions, particularly in the context of hate speech, have no interest in serious debate or in the truth.

And that, as we say, is that.

CHRC cleared of wifi hacking allegation: I told you so

From the privacy commissioner:

Technological experts have indicated that, most likely, but without certainty, the association of the complainant’s IP address to the CHRC was simply a mismatch on the part of a third party, which could have occurred in a variety of ways not involving the CHRC.

What is certain is that there is no evidence of the CHRC having ever collected or improperly used, disclosed or retained any personal information about the complainant.

Just as I told you here:

Why the RCMP dumped the CHRC wifi case (70.48.181.203)

Explored in detail here:

• The spy who didn't shag my wifi 1: background
  
• The spy who didn't shag my wifi 2: someone else notices Jadewarr
• The spy who didn't shag my wifi 3: when exactly did Steacy/jadewarr have 70.48.181.203?
  
• The spy who didn't shag my wifi 4: theoretical possibilities
  
• The spy who didn't shag my wifi 5: Lemire's motion for jadewarr's IP
  
• The spy who didn't shag my wifi 6: what did Lemire ask Black about jadewarr?
  
• The spy who didn't shag my wifi 7: the right IP on the wrong date
• The spy who didn't shag my wifi 8: the technician's testimony
• The spy who didn't shag my wifi 9: Black affidavit
• The spy who didn't shag my wifi 10: the software records posts not log-ins

Fun with telemarketers

Next time you get a call from a telemarketer, you might try this:

A conversation overheard in the math department

(For the t-shirt, go here)

Truth in advertising

Apparently the pro-life brand is now seen as toxic.  That seems to be the conclusion to be drawn from the recent name-change from BC Prolife to "The Signal Hill".  What's a movement supposed to do when its agenda becomes unpopular?  Hide it, apparently.