Vox Newman
Jian Ghomeshi, Rape Culture and the Road to Peace.
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I don’t know you Jian Ghomeshi but I now regret the enjoyment I had listening to your show. You and your ilk fill me with more than regret: I become burdened with a profound feeling that there is something terribly wrong with people. I don’t like that. I hate that. I want to like people: I want life to be enjoyed by all. But then people like you come along, people who support you come along, people worse than you come along: all those people come along and create and prolong pain for others.
Screw libel, screw defamation: I don’t know you, and I probably don’t know anyone who knows you; that means I don’t know anyone who’s been raped or abused by you, and yet, I’m going to call you a rapist, a predator and an abuser of women. And I certainly look forward to you finding my little corner of the internet and suing me.
But: blood from a stone buddy. I probably wouldn’t even bother showing up to court for that. Unfortunately, I doubt I have enough clout to ever be discovered by you. That’s a shame really, because if you’re not going to listen to all the other voices defaming you, you should at least read what I have to write. I wish I had the hits to climb out of the darkness into your computer, but I just have a humorous blog, that no one reads and I write novels that no one reads. Add to that, a newscaster sucks up six pages of Google when searching my name and I know I’ll never get through to you. I think it’s a shame, because I think you could benefit from what I have to say.
What I have to say is this:
Tags: abuse, apologize, CBC, consent, forgiveness, guilty, injustice, Jian Ghomeshi, justice, predator, rape, salvation, victim
Out With the New, In With the Old
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I was just thinking about reform as it applies to politics and democracy. I’ll point out now that I’m not sure how this thought applies to early modern democracies (i.e. Republics where voting was granted to only those with a certain level of wealth, meaning that suffrage wasn’t universal: it was granted with property ownership). I make the distinction because I’m not familiar with reform movements prior to universal suffrage.
I suspect that the idea I am about to express may be something unique to the masses having the vote, but this may not be the case and I may just believe that because I perceive the general public as more susceptible to these movements; whether my assumption is correct or not is not really related to my main point, but if one is inclined to, they should go research that notion.
Word Up
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I’m fascinated by words, maybe beyond fascinated: I like how they look on a ‘page’ and how they form a coherent picture when they combine. But, more to the point, I love how they take shape in my mind and how they feel, coming out of my mouth (this may have contributed to my need to share my words with everyone).
I guess you could say that is why I write.
Even more than this basic emotional response, I am also driven by a rational deconsruction of the words that I present and those that are presented to me. Mostly, I favour the efficiency of words, meaning that my preference is to use the smallest most common word that represents the concept I am thinking of. This began when I turned against the idea that a larger vocabulary suggests more knowledge: to be more precise it was in opposition to those who think that big words and/or words that went unused by the ‘commoners’ show that the person knows what they’re talking about.
Tags: Athenians, big words, Celtic, communication, English, etymology, faranji, Fey Girl, Frank, frankly, Franks, French, Gaelic, Gaul, German, Greek, history, India, Italian, knowledge, language, Latin, lingua franca, low-brow, Old English, perception, philosophers, pidgin, Roman Empire, Romans, Rome, Sanskrit, scientists, semiotics, society, speak frankly, speech, vocabulary, Western Europeans, words, writing
The Myth of Lower Taxes
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When Canadians go to the polls this May, many of them will be hoodwinked: the reason many of them will vote for Harper is because they grossly misunderstand what Harper means when he says that he’ll keep taxes low or even lower them further. They seem to think this means that they’ll be saving money. This isn’t true.
What Harper means is that he intends (and always has) to keep taxes low for the wealthiest individuals and companies. This group pays the bulk majority of the taxes, i.e. the money the Government uses to conduct business, but it’s not technically their fair share because they hold on to so much more wealth in proportion to the majority of Canadians.
Technically, what a just society would do is have the wealthiest participants turn over more of their wealth to the state so that the middle class and society’s less fortunate can benefit. This would be a fair exchange since the wealthy rely on our support and participation in the economy to generate their wealth.
Tags: advice, canada, conservatives, election, government, harper, lies, lying, newman logic, politics, services, tax, taxes
Emperor Harper
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It’s the day after the English language leaders’ debate for the Canadian federal election. What I wonder is if the issue that should be paramount in voters’ minds is getting the traction it needs. The issue I’m talking about is tied to how the Harper government failed, triggering an election. The minority government of Stephen Harper’s Conservative party was defeated by an unprecedented parliamentary motion. What happened needs restating: the Harper government was not only dissolved by a vote of non-confidence, it was also found in contempt of Parliament. This is the first time a sitting Prime Minister’s government has been found in contempt of Parliament. 
Is this serious? Yes. And is it something that should be an election issue? Harper doesn’t seem to think so but then again he likes to mislead Canadians anyway.
“Whoa! What does that mean?†you ask.
And my answer is that Harper fabricated a myth when he first faced the wrath of the opposition parties in the winter of 2008/09. I remember, during that time-period speaking with a friend who had voted for the Conservative party in the previous election. She was very concerned that the Liberals and NDP were acting illegally. I was extremely confused by her reaction because up until that moment I was under the impression that the workings of our Parliamentary system were common knowledge at least as far as minority governments were concerned. Of course, what happened to Joe Clark has been separated by 30 years of relatively stable majority federal governments, but I had assumed up until that point that the meat of the tale were still part of our national zeitgeist.
It turns out that I was wrong.
Tags: AECL, afghan detainees, bloc quebecois, canada, canadian, chalk river, chernobyl, CNSC, coalition, community, compromise, conservatives, contempt of parliament, election, emperor, F-35, fukushima, government, harper, joe clark, liberals, lies, lying, medical isotopes, ndp, nero, nuclear reactor, palpatine, parliament, politics, prorogue, red light: green light, seperatists
