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Category: Activism

Bang-Bang, You’re Arguement is Invalid

Post Views: 1,203 WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE, MATHEMATICS, AND CITED SOURCES AHEAD. This blog post may not be suitable for all readers. Reader discretion is advised. Some people are going to be reading this because came @me in a forum, or Facebook or on Twitter.  If you want to refute what I have to say, link me your blog post in the comments.  If you can’t be bothered putting this much effort into this discussion, please stop talking to me.  Seriously.  I’m done.  I don’t want to hear you. If you’re here because I posted this link to you, then go get your pen and calculator, because we’re going Grade 6 math here. Some folks are going to be here because Google or some other mechanism brought you here. …

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Re-Repaying A Debt To Society

Post Views: 630 So, let’s talk about Johnathin Doehanus. JD, in his youth, fell in with a rough crowd and did 5 years for weapons, drugs and violence. Probably not a nice guy, right? What if it is five years later, and he has kept his nose clean since he got out? What if he applies for a job?  He has got a record; if he says that on the appropriate place on the form and doesn’t get the job … does that mean that he is -still- paying his debt to society? One he has already served time for, supposedly? What if it is ten years later and he has a wife and two kids? What if it is fifteen years later and he is on the news…

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TLAM Math

Post Views: 6,594 Last night, as a response to Syria’s Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against its own civilian population, the United States of America hammered the launching airfield with a massive volley of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM)s. This was, in the words of the US government, a “proportional” response. Here is a bit of TLAM cruise-missile math for you. Each TLAM costs $1,600,000USD. The USA launched 59 from two warships. Let’s ignore the cost of the warships and the crew and the shore infrastructure required to get those two ships to launch position. Let’s focus on the cost of the missiles themselves. 59 x $1,600,000USD == $90,440,000 USD. Price of a plane ticket from Damascus to Seattle for 1 adult, economy class, $630 USD (Expedia).…

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About Bill C-23, “armed US border guards in Canada”

Post Views: 1,471 First, go read: https://openparliament.ca/bills/42-1/C-23/ … this process started with the CPC government. But even that doesn’t mean it’s automatically bad. If, as a Canadian, you have never travelled by air or train into the United States, the rhetoric around this bill about “armed American guards” on Canadian soil empowered to do “strip searches” can seem pretty outrageous. Here’s the thing … if you’ve ever flown out of Halifax, Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver on your way to the USA, you were already part of a similar set of rules. In fact, if you’ve ever traveled to the United States of America by car, you have voluntarily put yourself at the mercy of the exact same set of rules.  As soon as you set foot in US territory, you…

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PM Trudeau’s White Elephant

Post Views: 508 So, Keystone XL will be PM Trudeau’s White Elephant gift from the USA. We literally cannot afford to say no … but we cannot afford to agree to it, either. As a result of a decade of systemic decline in the Canadian economy of almost everything -except- resource extraction, the nation had no “airbag” to soak the impact of a collapsing global oil market. For example, the lower Canadian dollar would have been a boon to our manufacturing sector … save that the manufacturing sector had atrophied in the previous decade.  This, in turn, did remarkable damage to the over all fiscal liquidity of the nation. To fix house that hasn’t had repairs in ten years, you have to go to the bank and get…

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Red & White, Blue On Black

Post Views: 584 As a Canadian, with recent events in the USA, there is a tendency to view “Blue On Black” shootings as a unique issue to the USA’s “Jim Crow” heritage. It occurred to me that this isn’t terribly fair; Canada has is own MacBethian hand stains, as pertains to First Nations. So, I did some research. Canada does have its own list of people killed by law enforcement officers. 133 people have died in Canada — for whatever reason — as a result of the actions of police. But … for comparison to the USA … that number is since the year 1950. Total. That is about two a year. By comparison, in the the USA, as of yesterday it was 65 for 2016 alone. Now, there are…

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Stumbling Into The Next Genocide

Post Views: 191 gen·o·cide ˈjenəˌsīd noun the deliberate killing of a large group of people Stumbling Into The Next Genocide If someone tells you that climate change isn’t the #1 thing that humanity needs to worry about right now, you might wish to consider it attempted genocide. I know that sounds a bit bombastic, but if you keep the events in a place called Darfur in mind, you’ll see where I’m going. Firstly, lets talk about what we trust and know. According to the National Geographic Society, as of 2007 we know: Is It Happening? Yes. Earth is already showing many signs of worldwide climate change. • Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades,…

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