Toronto Votes 2010 - Report from John Campbell's Election Party - Ward 4

An item I did for Toronto Observer Radio on Ward 4 candidate John Campbell. (Oct 25th, 2010)

Ward 4 - Etobicoke Centre

            Etobicoke Centre is situated in the west end of the city, bordering Dixon Road to the north, the Humber River to the east and Kipling Avenue to the west. Measuring in at 17 square kilometers, Ward 4 is home to 53,275 residents, with a higher than average 20 percent over the age of 65, compared to Toronto as a whole.

English is the mother tongue of a majority (51.9%) of the residents, with Italian (7.5%) and Ukrainian (4.5%) following behind it. The average household income ($115,920) is approximately $35,000 higher than the average of Toronto.  

            Gloria Lindsay Luby is in her fourth term as councillor, having received 69% of the vote in 2006. Her opponents in this election are former Toronto District School Board Chair John Campbell and Daniel Bertolini. Luby is the favourite to win this year.

            Some major issues for residents of Ward 4 include the rise in property taxes, support for senior citizens and construction of bike lanes.

Facebook’s Privacy Status

(Originally published May 30 2010)

In December of 2009, the world’s largest social networking site drastically changed its stance on privacy. Facebook, once the most closed site on the web, has now come under attack for exposing its user’s personal information (name, location, relationship status, occupation, etc.)

Over the past month, the debate over user security and information has spiraled out of control. Most articles on the subject have attacked Facebook, and especially its founder Mark Zuckerberg personally, over the changes the site has made (and will continue to make). (To visualize the changes Facebook has made, please check out http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/)

Those opposed to the changes, which make a user’s personal information available to the public by default, claim that the user’s safety and security is at risk as well as their privacy invaded. Most of the controversy surrounds Facebook’s newly implemented “Instant Personalization” program. This program enables users to visit certain sites (such as Yelp!, docs.com and Pandora) and have their interests, such as favorite musicians and restaurants, automatically synced with these sites. “The partner can use your public Facebook information, which includes your name, profile picture, gender, and networks”

The uproar over this program concerns how users are automatically opted-in to it, without any notifications. Should users not want to participate in the program, they must search through Facebook’s FAQ’s to find this site and opt-out.

Zuckerberg believes that the web should become more open, not closed. Facebook is effectively an extension of the real world, which itself is becoming more transparent. By sharing your Facebook information with third-party partners, Zuckerberg claims that they will be able to suit your needs more precisely.

Image by jdlasica via Flickr

Most of this comes down to one simple question: if you are willing to post your name, birthday, gender, location, interests, photos, status updates etc. onto the Internet freely, can you really complain if that information is used by the company (yes, Facebook is a company) in whatever way they choose?

According to a recent study, 60% of Facebook users are considering leaving the social network. This number seems awfully high, however it raises an important issue. Those opposed to the changes say that they freely entered an agreement with Facebook to provide them with their information under the assumption that this information would be kept private.

On a personal note, I automatically assume that all information I provide to Facebook will be used in any way they may choose. I have no problem with that. If I truly wanted to protect myself, I would leave the site. The only way to protect myself and still utilize the site, I can only do one thing: be careful of what I put on the Internet. It’s as simple as that.

At the time of this writing, the “Instant Personalization” program still requires opting-out and Facebook has streamlined and simplified their privacy settings. Users are able to hide their interests and friends lists, and a lot of their information is still public by default.

The changes are being rolled out over the next few weeks; so if you have not quit Facebook already, check your privacy settings to satisfy your needs.

One of These Things Is Just Like The Others

(Originally published May 9 2010)

2001 may have been the year most closely associated with the word “terrorism” (Word of the Year for 2001 was “9/11”). However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that 2010 is about to take its place.

Hundreds of  terrorist acts have been committed around the world, seemingly on a daily basis, and the United States has itself been the target (and in some cases the perpetrator) numerous times. For the most part, these acts occur on foreign soil. 9/11 was itself such a shocking event because Americans were not used to these horrendous acts being committed on home soil. That was 2001.

It is now 2010 and not since the days of the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh have American citizens been the ones coined the “terrorists”.

The first major “terrorism” incident ensuing on American soil this year dates back to February. Had one been watching the mainstream media (CNN, NBC, FOX etc.) covering this event, the word “terrorist” or “terrorism” probably was not mentioned once. On February 18^th, Andrew Joseph Stack III, after setting his home ablaze, hopped into his Piper Dakota plane and flew it into Echelon I, a building dedicated primarily to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The ensuing explosion killed Stack and one employee, Vernon Hunter, instantly.

Despite the obvious correlations to the 9/11 attacks (piloting an aircraft into an American institution), the use of the word “terrorist” was minimal at best, if even uttered, by the mainstream media. Is it the few deaths that resulted in this? Or was it that he was a white, middle class American? The latter wins this round.

Another story emerged in late March. Nine people were arrested for taking part in an alleged plot to kill police officers in Michigan and then bomb the funeral procession using bombs a la improvised explosive devices in Iraq. The accused were part of a militia group called the Hutaree (a word created by its leader meaning Christian warrior). The attacks were to spark an uprising against the U.S. government, the militia’s enemy.

So we have an insurgent group, attacking American law enforcement with IED’s, to spark an uprising against the U.S government. Surely, this is terrorism. Try again, folks. Despite the arrests being coordinated by the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force, those arrested were labeled “warriors”, “freedom-fighters” and the like. Only until more details emerged about the “insidious plan”, as spoken by Attorney General Eric Holder, did the MSM start to catch on.

The “captured warriors” (as coined by FOX News) were all white, middle, to low class Americans. They were plotting to kill American citizens, yet calling them “terrorists” was off-limits.

Fast-forward to last week. Faisal Shahzad has been pulled from his Dubai-bound jet minutes before it was to take-off and news anchors have already hurled the term “terrorist” at him. Shahzad is charged with attempting to attack New York’s Times Square with a car bomb. On May 1^st, an observant street vendor noticed smoke pouring out of a parked Nissan Pathfinder and alerted the authorities. Inside the vehicle was a “Rube-Goldberg” contraption of fireworks, alarm clocks, gasoline and propane. Times Square was evacuated and an explosion thankfully never occurred.

Attorney General Holder called it a “terrorist act”. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, “I would say that was intended to terrorize, absolutely.”

What has changed in this scenario that has sanctioned the use of the word “terrorism”? It cannot be that there has been death or destruction. There was none in this case (there was in the IRS attack). Maybe it was that it was replicating tactics used by overseas terrorists, in the vein of the militia in Michigan. It cannot be that either, they were “warriors” not “terrorists”.

The only condition that has been adjusted is that the accused is of Middle Eastern descent. Shahzad is a Pakistani-American. Yes, Shahzad is a terrorist. But we forget that yes, he is an American citizen, like the other accused mentioned above.

If Faisal Shahzad is a terrorist, then so is Andrew Joseph Stack III and so are the nine accused in the Hutaree militia. Color of one’s skin does not exclude that word from their narrative, especially if that narrative is being recorded for their criminal record.

Photos courtesy of the Examiner.com, and Reuters

South Park and The “M” Word

(Originally published April 26, 2010)

A monumental event occurred on April 14^th of this year. The first public showing of Edison’s kinetoscope, the moving picture ‘machine’ (1894)?

No, that was not monumental enough.

How about the anniversary of the shooting of President Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth?

Close, but sorry Lincoln, this one trumps it. On April 14^th, 2010, free speech got on its knees and surrendered to fear and intimidation. It perished at the hands of Comedy Central.

That day marked the 200^th episode of one of televisions most controversial shows, South Park. Created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone in 1997, South Park has had a reputation for pushing the boundary of what may be said on TV and who can be poked fun at. One episode features the word “sh*t” 162 times (and includes a counter at the corner of the screen for those counting along at home). In fact, a season 11 episode entitled “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson” used the n-word 43 times, uncensored.

Many may think this would lead to an outcry against the creators (who are white). However, the NAACP applauded South Park. Kovon and Jill Flowers, who started the NAACP-supported group “Abolish the N-Word”, defended the show. “This show, in its own comedic way, is helping people to educate the power of this word, and how it can feel to have hate language directed at you.”

There’s no doubt that South Park continues to be the pest of the politically correct. For the 200^th episode, all the celebrities and international figures who they had made fun of over the past 14 seasons (from Tom Cruise to Barbara Streisand, to Mel Gibson and Paris Hilton) returned to exact revenge against the fictional town of South Park, Colorado.

To summarize, Tom Cruise is tired of being made fun of, so he wants to get the only person in the world who is invincible to ridicule: the Prophet Muhammad. He threatens to sue South Park unless they bring him Muhammad. The town is reluctant to bring in Muhammad out of fear of being bombed.

Now, I must mention that in a season five episode, Muhammad was shown, in cartoon form. However, this occurred long before the Danish cartoon controversy. So for this episode, a blacked out box represented Mohammed with “CENSORED” written across it. The other religious figures of the episode (Jesus Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu and Joseph Smith) are shown in full form.

The main characters of South Park ask this group of “Super Best Friends” to let them bring Muhammad to their town so they wont get sued by Tom Cruise. Buddha replies, “We simply cannot risk any violence from the Muslim people.” They agree on one solution. They will put Muhammad into a U-Haul truck, so as to not let anyone see him and still prove he is there, wearing a bear costume.

This episode ends with a cliffhanger. Muhammad is about to step out of the bear costume and show himself.

All this ridiculousness is par for the course for South Park. However, an ugly turn is taken for the conclusion of the episode. In the week following the first part, a radical Islamic website called Revolution Muslim posted a note claiming that Parker and Stone “will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh for airing this show”. Van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker who was shot and stabbed to death in 2004 for a film he created that was critical of Islam. “This is not a threat but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”

Sounds like a threat to me.

Due in part to this response, Comedy Central replaced every mention of the word “Muhammad” with a bleep. Since when did Muhammad become a taboo word? For a show that had no problem in saying “sh*t” hundreds of times, bleeping “Muhammad” is mind-boggling. Comedy Central responded claiming that it was to protect the safety of its employees, which is a rational response.

But what most media is not covering when reporting on this story is what else Comedy Central censored out.

At the end of the episode, one character makes a speech, which according to Parker and Stone, was concerning “intimidation and fear”. Comedy Central bleeped out every single word of the 16-second monologue! Not only did this word not contain the word “Muhammad”, it also did not contain any of the usual bleeped out words: curse words.

For Comedy Central to not show Muhammad (despite doing so previously) is low. To bleep the word “Muhammad”, bowing to threats from a radical group, is lower. To censor a speech, about intimidation and fear, after doing the previous acts, is not only immoral and unconstitutional, it is painfully ironic.

Free speech must be protected. If Revolution Muslim can threaten (yes, it was a threat, no matter what they may claim) the creators and then stand behind the Second Amendment, then it should be no problem for those very same creators to say what they please. At least in their case, there is no potential for harm.

At one point during the show, a citizen of South Park stands up and says, “Maybe enough time has passed that now its ok to show Muhammad.”

Guess not.

Collateral (and Unnecessary) Murder

(Originally published April 7, 2010)
 
In journalist circles, it is clear that the use of Wikipedia (and other ‘Wiki’ sites such as Wiktionary, Wikiquotes etc.) is taboo. The “facts” are unreliable, inaccurate and biased. Wiki’s (user generated, user submitted, user-edited sites) are an attack on journalistic integrity and professionalism.

There is, however, a Wiki site that has caught the eye of governments worldwide. And the governments are scared.

According to the New York Times, the Pentagon has added Wikileaks.org, a site (run by the not-for-profit organization Sunshine Press) that publishes secret and sometimes incriminating documents, to a long list of enemies of the United States.

On March 26^th, 2010, WikiLeaks released a confidential CIA report detailing how the French and German governments may be able to manipulate their citizens in order to gain support for the war in Afghanistan. The report contains section titles such as “Public Apathy Enables Leaders To Ignore Voters”, “Tailoring Messaging Could Forestall or At Least Contain Backlash” and “Appeals by President Obama and Afghan Women Might Gain Traction”.

Despite the horrendous details of this report, no major news establishment has decided that it be deemed the ever-changing description of “news-worthy.” As a developing journalist, it sickens me to see the front pages of sites belonging to CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS et al. pushing the press conference of a sex-addicted golfer and the ratings of a reality show over stories such as the one mentioned above. I never thought I would see that day, until April 5^th, 2010.

On that date, Wikileaks, as promised, released a highly confidential and disturbing video depicting the killing of approximately 12 Iraqi civilians including 2 Reuters photojournalists by the United States military. The video, taken from an Apache helicopter and dated July 12^th, 2007, shows about 15 men in the courtyard of an area of Iraq that had been known to harbour insurgents. The soldiers incorrectly accuse them of possessing Ak-47’s and RPG’s [“Have five to six individuals with AK47s” “Is that an RPG?”].  These “weapons” were in fact cameras, arguably identifiable on the video (which can be seen at www.collateralmurder.org).

The American forces then fire upon the group, killing all but one of them in the barrage. [“Yeah, we got one guy crawling around down there, but, uh, you know, we got, definitely got something.” “Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards.”] The one wounded man “crawling around” was Saeed Chmagh, a driver and assistant for Reuters.

Before troops arrive at the scene, a mini-van enters, noticing the wounded man. Inside the van are two children. This horrific story becomes even worse. The forces in the air beg Saeed to pick up a weapon; for under the rules of engagement, it would allow them to fire upon him once again. [“Come on, buddy. All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.”] A man then exits the vehicle, attempting to help the wounded man, unaware of the danger hovering above. The soldiers are giddy; begging their commanding officers to let them fire. [“Come on, let us shoot!”]

After receiving authority, the van is fired upon (with children still inside). After the attack, troops arrive on the scene to take account of the damage and casualties. Once all is said and done, 12 Iraqis are dead, and the two children are wounded.

If there was one thing that disgusted me the most while watching this devastating murder on tape, it was what a soldier said when he learned of the wounded children. “Well it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.”

For anyone who has watched this video, it is painfully obvious that there was no battle here. A battle involves two sides attacking each other. This was a one sided brutal murder, based purely on the hypothetical and misinformation. A camera lens mistaken for a rocket propelled grenade and a Good Samaritan mistaken for an insurgent.

These deaths were horrific, unnecessary and most importantly avoidable. Had the American government had their way, this video would never have surfaced, and those who access the Wikileaks website would be charged with a criminal offence.

It is democracy at its best, being kept under wraps and out of the attention of the public.

Family Vuvox Slideshow

Quick Vuvox Slideshow