when the status quo frustrates.

Sicko

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

Owing to the wonders of P2P leakage, I, like many of you, saw Michael Moore’s Sicko. Like most popular political documentaries (and recent Moore documentaries in particular), it doesn’t contain a lot of new information for anyone already participating in the reality-based community. In my case (as is the case for almost all Canadians), it was preaching to the converted, but it’s still important to see.

We’re proud of our universal health care system up here, but that’s no reason to get complacent. Canadians who favour an American-style private health care system are in a definite minority, but they have a well-funded and loud propaganda machine. The Fraser Institute, for example, a far-right think tank that favours health care privatization, pulls in $6.9 million in revenue a year. Its board members have included David Asper, whose family owns CanWest, Canada’s largest media corporation, which frequently reports that our health care system is in crisis. Recently, Torontonians have seen billboards and bus ads springing up around the city clamouring for “heath care reform.” While a politician who proposed an outright switch to a for-profit system would be committing political suicide, we are always at risk for a death by a thousand cuts. Sicko is a reminder of why we need to fight tooth and nail, not only to keep what we already have, but to push harder for an even better, even more inclusive system (the French one is looking pretty good).

Right-wing critics will call Sicko biased, but there’s no moral argument that can be made for a for-profit health care system. The portrait Moore paints of the American system is staggeringly dystopic: a woman who watches her toddler die because her insurance company won’t cover treatment in a non-approved hospital, an uninsured man forced to choose which one of his fingers he can have reattached, a disoriented elderly woman who can’t pay her bills who is put in a cab, still wearing her hospital gown and slippers, and dumped in front of a homeless shelter. Up here, we know that the American system is bad, but it’s not until we see these real stories from real people that we can appreciate how truly bad it is.

Americans are currently bound to their employers or insurance companies, at the mercy of what amounts to a lottery: Will I get sick? If I do get sick, will my insurance company pay for it? A long and complicated illness can bankrupt you, whether you have coverage or not. If you’re too sick to work, you lose your coverage. And insurance companies are inherently nasty: You pay them a premium, and they profit when you don’t get your money back. Combine this with a profit motive for health care providers (prolonged treatment rakes in more money than a cure), and you have a giant clusterfuck where the economic incentives conflict with saving people’s lives.

There’s a utilitarian argument for a private system that Moore hints at, and it’s a chilling one: a cowed population is easier to control than a free population. But how do you get the majority of Americans to agree to that arrangement? Moore argues, as others have, that efforts to humanize health care in America have failed largely because of Americans’ fear of socialism. These fears are easy enough to debunk, usually in a few sentences.

Argument 1: It costs too much.
No it doesn’t. America already spends more than countries with universal health care programs. Preventative medicine saves money, for one thing, and how can you prevent illness when you can’t afford the fee for regular check-ups?

Argument 2: But we’ll be drowning in taxes!
We do pay more taxes than Americans. But very few Canadians, if any, end up in debt for the rest of their lives because they couldn’t pay their taxes. Compare to the number of Americans who end up in debt for the rest of their lives because they can’t pay their medical bills. Everyone pays a bit more in taxes so that no one pays a lot more for health care.

Argument 3: With universal health care, you don’t get the freedom to choose your own doctor.
I don’t know why people get so upset about this one. For one thing, it isn’t accurate: My doctor was annoyingly uptight about my lifestyle choices, and inconveniently located, so I got another doctor. This process took under an hour. But even if it were true, isn’t it better to see a doctor you didn’t choose than to not be able to see a doctor at all?

Argument 4: Wait times kill patients!
Wait times vary according to region, but in urban areas, they really aren’t that bad. And it’s still preferable to not being able to see a doctor at all.

Argument 5: But…but…that’s socialism!
Doesn’t it sound better than what you’ve got now?

21.06.2007 Health, Medicine, Movies 12 Comments

Supporting our missing/dead troops by f***ing over their wives

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

See soldier fight.
See soldier kidnapped.
See soldier’s wife denied a hardship green card and possibly deported.

“I can’t imagine a bigger injustice than that, to be deporting [the wife of] someone who is fighting and possibly dying for our country,” [attorney Matthew] Kolken told WBZ.

I guess they figure either Army Spec. Alex Jimenez is dead and thus won’t mind if his wife gets sent out of the country, or he’ll be so happy to be found alive that he won’t really mind we returned his beloved to sender.

Call me crazy for feeling like neither of those make much sense.

20.06.2007 Imperialism for Dummies, Rights? What rights? 3 Comments

Mission (almost, except for freaking Sudan) Accomplished!

Monday, June 18th, 2007

You said it couldn’t be done. You said he’d never make it happen, that Iraq would never make it to the top. And, yeah, it’s not there yet, but boy is it close:

Iraq has emerged as the world’s second most unstable country, behind Sudan, more than four years after President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, according to a survey released on Monday.

The 2007 Failed States Index, produced by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace, said Iraq suffered a third straight year of deterioration in 2006 with diminished results across a range of social, economic, political and military indicators. Iraq ranked fourth last year.

Can you believe he moved Iraq up 2 spots in just one year? And you know those are some of the toughest spots to climb over, what with all the bloodshed in Somalia and economic chaos in Zimbabwe. Well done, Mr. President!

And in case you doubt that this is exactly what he wants, check out what he said today about their progress:

President Bush had a nearly hour-long secure video teleconference with Iraqi leaders on Monday and came away impressed and reassured by the progress they’re making on political, security and economic reforms, the White House said.

See? He’s thrilled with the direction they’re going. He’s also thrilled about the recognition of his work, and in gratitude he sent the following letter to Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace:

Dear Eggheads,

Consistency. Like James Cameron on Titanic, we stayed the course. And just like him, we’re on a rocket ride to the top of the charts.

Because, if you think about it, James Cameron took naked photos of Kate Winslet; we took naked photos of our prisoners. James Cameron built one of the biggest sets of all time; we’re building the most fortified embassy of all time. And you didn’t hear this from me, but there was a rumor James Cameron used to rape up a few extras and ornery PAs, and you all know we’re beatin’ hard on Iraq with the rape stick!

When you envision yourself as a winner, like James Cameron, good things happen to you. All you smart people scoffed at me for trying to achieve my dream of a utopian Iraq, but look at it now — we got ourselves a genuine pleasure dome. You can kill two dozen innocent bystanders before lunch, or blow up anything that looks at you funny. The whole place is a real life Grand Theft Auto, and I made it happen!

My only complaint is with a sudan being ahead of us. I used to drive a Volvo sudan and there was nothing unstable or murderous about it. Please correct your clerical error.

Amen,
George

18.06.2007 Bush is a cock, Imperialism for Dummies 6 Comments

What I really want to know is whether they’ll refund your ticket

Monday, June 18th, 2007

Let’s say you’re a terrorist. You want to plan a terrorist attack on a civilian airline. It’s going to be bigger, better, and way more deadly than September 11th. And to top it off, you’re going to hit Canada.

With your terrorist cell assembled in a dark basement, you rub your hands together, cackle wickedly, twirl your mustache, and decide which of your dedicated would-be martyrs will carry out the attack. Do you pick:

Terrorist 1: A very experienced terrorist who the Canadian government knows is involved with Al Qaeda?

Terrorist 2: A recent convert with a previous conviction for assaulting a flight attendant during an air rage incident?

Terrorist 3: An ex-con with an extensive criminal record?

Terrorist 4: A guy with a totally clean record and no apparent links to terrorist or criminal activity.

The Passenger Protect Program, the Canadian government’s junior version of the American no-fly list that goes into effect today, seems to assume that Terrorists 1 through 3 are the likeliest hijackers. Check out their list criteria:

* An individual who is or has been involved in a terrorist group, and who, it can reasonably be suspected, will endanger the security of any aircraft or aerodrome or the safety of the public, passengers or crew members
* An individual who has been convicted of one or more serious and life-threatening crimes against aviation security
* An individual who has been convicted or one or more serious and life-threatening offences and who may attack or harm an air carrier, passengers or crew members.

Transport Canada is taking great pains to differentiate this no-fly list from the American one (which, as we know now, includes children, dead people, the President of Bolivia, and Ted Kennedy). This list, they assure us, is smaller (less than 1,000 names, versus 44,000). The list includes birthdays to prevent cases of mistaken identity. In short: We’re not like the Americans, who go too far with their abuses of civil liberties. We do things differently in Canada.

But our homegrown no-fly list isn’t different, just smaller (while leaving room for expansion and abuse). It relies on the same security theatre logic, providing the illusion of safety to some, striking fear into others, and failing to actually deter genuine threats. As one transport specialist put it: “What terrorist is going to travel with their own name and passport?”

In the meantime, just suck it up and remember that this is all for your own protection.

18.06.2007 Rights? What rights? 3 Comments

Tony Blair and the the WTF-ingest choice of all time

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

Really, truly, I have no idea how someone could live with themselves after making a decision like this:

Tony Blair agreed to commit British troops to battle in Iraq in the full knowledge that Washington had failed to make adequate preparations for the postwar reconstruction of the country.

How do you send your own people into what you genuinely believe will become a state of unmanageable chaos? More importantly, how do you help send an entire country into that state, knowing full well what it would mean for civilian violence and bloodshed?

Bush and his cronies bear the brunt of the blame for what’s happening in Iraq, but if Tony Blair knew this was coming and not only failed to openly protest but assisted in the pillaging anyway, then he belongs in a special circle of hell.

Apparently, he felt the best he could do was whine to a man he surely knew was too stuborn and ignorant to listen:

In a devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war, which comes as Blair enters his final full week in Downing Street, key No 10 aides and friends of Blair have revealed the Prime Minister repeatedly and unsuccessfully raised his concerns with the White House.

Blair was morally obligated to speak out against this war publicly once the Bush administration failed to heed his warnings. And again, I’m utterly lost as to how he wound up in cahoots, because Bush gave him an out:

He also agreed to commit troops to the conflict even though President George Bush had personally said Britain could help ‘some other way’.

He lied to his own people before the war by expressing confidence in the postwar planning. He killed his own people by agreeing to go along with the bully down the block. And worst of all, he failed to rally the international community against a war that looks to have a million-plus civilian casualties and counting — deaths he could see coming.

Today, Tony, the middle finger at the top of this blog is just for you.

17.06.2007 HUH!?, Imperialism for Dummies 4 Comments

Rainbow Girl needs you to show her cause some love

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

Rainbow Girl makes her debut in comic activism with

RAINBOW
GIRL

stars in SEXY WAR!

34 pages of feminism drawn in the same style (and lets face it, we all did it) of all your greatest college in-group comics. Team Rainbow, consisting of Rainbow Girl, her Rainbow Guy and a cast of zany friends, have to figure out why team member Solar E. Clips is too ill to debate the sexist cobags in her class. Meanwhile, a rogue vagina dentata is meting out fantasy feminist judgment left and right on rapists, pundits and politicians alike.

The comic is especially concerned with the relationship between sexism and war, with a special emphasis on who really benefits from endless, resource-sucking fighting.

At $6 (and all proceeds going to the African women’s village of Umoja Uaso) this comic is a must-have. It’s Rainbow Girl’s first attempt, so don’t expect Bechdel-level writing or pacing from her yet, but it does have some really cute characters (including a Spectrum Queen reminiscent of Synergy from Jem. Remember Jem? She was truly outrageous), some great, clear-cut examples of patriarchy all over the world, and quite the shout-out to the importance of feminist-minded men speaking out as well as a page of information on sexual assault and resources for men interested in taking an active role in fighting it, as well as a page on Umoja Uaso. As you might imagine, there is a lot going on in this book.

Quite frankly it’s worth $6 for the vagina dentata alone. That thing is adorable. It is a really cute comic raising money for a most excellent cause and in the future you’ll be glad you have one to show everyone else that you supported Rainbow Girl long before her hardcover graphic novels started getting so much shelf space at Borders.

Visit Rainbow Girl to get one.

Find out more about Umoja Uaso.

16.06.2007 Feminism, Something you can do, War HUH! What is it good for? 1 Comment

Schwarzenegger says “hasta la vista, baby” to Spanish media

Friday, June 15th, 2007


Yeah, it should really say “in mouth disease,” but they both make tiggers sad.

Nowadays, politicians can get away with making many kinds of offensive conservative statements; they don’t even have to dress them up. So for the love of God, if even in this climate of hate and fear you still feel the need to offer the following disclaimer, odds are you should zip it:

“I know this sounds odd and this is the politically incorrect thing to say and I’m going to get myself in trouble,” he said.

Has any conservative ever followed that statement with something that didn’t get them into trouble? It’s scary to me that these are the same people who fight so hard to keep guns in their homes. “I know I shouldn’t be sticking this in my mouth, especially with the safety off, but screw it, I feel invincible!”

(more…)

15.06.2007 Human Rights, Mutterings Of The Disturbed 5 Comments

Pornifying the penguins

Friday, June 15th, 2007

What is this?
lani_wtf.jpg

I don’t know about you, but it took me several long minutes of staring at this to realize it was supposed to be a penguin. A Gentoo Penguin, actually, from the movie’s official site. Which is, you’ll note, a rather plump, pear-shaped bird.

But we all know that we can’t have plump, pear-shaped female characters of any species on a large screen—it might give women and girls the undesirable idea that they can take up physical space. So we have the strangely deformed result: a sexy animated penguin with boobs. Small boobs—it’s a children’s film after all—but still boobs on something that isn’t a mammal. (Note that the, er, male penguin characters in the movie actually do look like penguins.)

The mind, she boggles.

15.06.2007 Film, HUH!?, What Patriarchy? 12 Comments

Iraq isn’t “Arabic for Vietnam.” Would you please stop saying that?

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

I recently read Max Elbaum’s Revolution in the Air, which is an incredibly detailed account of the post-1968 new Communist movement in the U.S. It’s a rich and fascinating book, worth reading even if you don’t identify as a Communist; it’s a key piece of history that tends to be left out in discussions of the 1960s protest movement, which is amazing when you consider that tens of thousands of people belonged to Leninist and Maoist organizations before those groups dwindled into the weird, ineffectual sectarian cliques we see today.

After I read it, the friend who’d loaned it to me asked why there’s not currently that same sort of groundswell of revolutionary fervor. Popular opinion in both the U.S. and Canada seems to largely be against the war on Iraq and the Bush administration. (To a lesser degree, Canadians are generally unhappy with our role in Afghanistan and the Harper government, but we tend to be far more passive about demanding change, as much as we might complain.) We went through the obvious ones: The draft during the Vietnam war spurred otherwise apolitical young people to resistance, the concentration of the corporate media has deeply brainwashed the working class to vote against its own interests, and the left, for its part, has no grassroots base.

The prevailing mythology of the 1960s left is that mass protests stopped the Vietnam war. It isn’t true, though it’s in some ways a useful bedtime story to tell young activists. “Yes,” we say. “You have a voice. You can make a difference.” It’s this desire to see history repeat itself—or rather, a fictionalized version of itself—that has been incredibly destructive to the budding anti-war movement today. The left remembers its own history as a sea of tie-dyed hippies flashing peace signs and apes the form rather than the content. Rather than study the American protest movement as an outgrowth from particular conditions of the time, it becomes the end rather than the means; imitate it, and the war will end. It’s magical thinking, but tempting, as it eliminates the sort of prolonged and difficult political work that Elbaum describes in his book.

Accordingly, we have people running around with t-shirts and placards that read, “Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam” (or the less-popular but no less tiresome “[Star of David = Swastika]“). Problematic, because an equal sign in politics is evidence of sloppy thinking, because it’s an easily debunked statement, and because it skirts the very sort of analysis that the left needs to make in order to be effective. We need to ask ourselves why one unjustified, illegal, and unpopular war is not like the other.

I don’t agree at all with the solution that Matt Taibbi proposes in The American Left’s Silly Victim Complex, which is that we should put away the giant puppets and start acting like responsible citizens, but he hits the nail on the head when it comes to identifying some of the problems:

Anyone who’s ever been to a lefty political meeting knows the deal – the problem is the “spirit of inclusiveness” stretched to the limits of absurdity. The post-sixties dogma that everyone’s viewpoint is legitimate, everyone‘s choice about anything (lifestyle, gender, ethnicity, even class) is valid, that’s now so totally ingrained that at every single meeting, every time some yutz gets up and starts rambling about anything, no matter how ridiculous, no one ever tells him to shut the fuck up. Next thing you know, you’ve got guys on stilts wearing mime makeup and Cat-in-the-Hat striped top-hats leading a half-million people at an anti-war rally. Why is that guy there? Because no one told him that war is a matter of life and death and that he should leave his fucking stilts at home.

The 2007 anti-war movement, as far as I can tell, is a mishmash of single-issue activists, fringe ideologues, 9-11 conspiracy theorists, and college students nostalgic for the “Good Sixties” half of the Good Sixties/Bad Sixties construction. I hate to say that the solution to this is actually, well, prolonged and difficult political work (as Wilde put it, “the trouble with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings”), but it is. It’s about understanding history rather than trying to copy it, and placing the Iraq war within its broader political and economic context. Doing so won’t end the war (an American military defeat will), but it might very well prevent the next one.

14.06.2007 Imperialism for Dummies, Soapbox, War HUH! What is it good for? 3 Comments

And the Longest Nose of the Week Award goes to… Girls Gone Wild lackey Michael Burke!

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

Tales don’t get any taller than this:

“Girls Gone Wild” crews don’t serve alcohol on their tour buses and ask women for identification to verify their age, Michael Burke, attorney for Francis’ Mantra Films Inc., told The News Herald.

13.06.2007 Asides 3 Comments

Celebrating 50 years of “femineering”

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

137056185_d7e2ae46cd
Ethel says women’s traditional role as family accountant/killjoy prevents her from spending $1000 on a camera more suitable for a photography major, especially if it’s just going to piss her off, which is why she’s not getting an SLR until you invite her to a focus group

Others already
jumped all over (and rightfully so!) this New York Times article that gapes in open-mouthed wonder at the interesting new trend! That one where companies realize that women! Control! Like a bunch of money! And make purchases! And you can sell them more shit! Just by giving them what they want! Zounds! Who knew? Just who fucking knew?

Eight months ago, Ms. Duarte, the 44-year-old chief executive of Duarte Design, bought an Apple MacBook. Soon she discovered just how useful her digital camera became when it conversed with her Mac’s iPhoto software, spilling her pictures on to the laptop’s screen with a single touch. A short time later, she said, she was making homemade DVDs with slideshows and videos, and beginning to notice that various manufacturers “make really cute bags now to carry around your laptop.”

This mysterious behavior is in marked contrast to that of men, who long ago grew resigned to the fact that they’d have to make DVDs and slideshows of pictures using FinalCutPro. I remember back when my roommate wanted to turn his precious memories into a slideshow – it took him hours just to learn when to cut and when to fade. But me, I was all “F-that! I’m waiting for someone to make a software suite that will come pre-installed with my computer and allow me to do those things that I never once have ever needed to do before. Then I will focus on accessorizing.”

Although I do like that I can now have a laptop bag that doesn’t scream “I CONTAIN A LAPTOP! GRAB ME AND RUN!” if it really took the influence of the mysterious woman before manufacturers saw the benefit of that, then they should really consider promoting more women. Then they can have insights like “maybe this shouldn’t be needlessly complicated or quite that hideous” right at the beginning of the design process, and we don’t have to waste valuable time every decade marveling over that special touch that women bring to a product, if only they’re asked.

So OK, what’s the take home lesson here? Women buy shit, then they buy more shit. Just like guys, they prefer to buy shit they like. Maybe someone should exploit this.

Ms. Duarte represents a growing number of women who are embracing consumer electronics just as the technologies are reaching out to embrace them. Behind this quiet revolution are engineers and designers who are bringing a more feminine sensibility to products historically shaped by masculine tastes, habits and requirements.

Yawn. Same old, same old. Sometimes I think industries do this on purpose. They make a toy by boys for boys and eventually, when the boys start playing somewhere else, it’s marketing’s cue to look around and find a ‘new’ market. And golly gee, what have we here! Women! Why shucks, where they here the whole time just ignoring our product because it never met their needs? Well we’ll just change that right now and doesn’t that just save this quarter’s revenue report! Despite the fact that women make an ungodly majority of purchase decisions, we’re like the junior varsity consumer team every damn time, and then we’re expected to clap our hands in delight and swoon when finally after eighteen-katrillion generations someone finally releases a version we’re willing to spend all that hard-budgeted money on.

And guess what, gals! They’re even starting to drop that pandering pink product nonsense! Isn’t that so modern! Don’t you want to give the executives at Nikon a big sloppy kiss for making the be-vaginaed SLR camera black and not shocking pink?
(more…)

12.06.2007 Brilliant Ideas, For the ladies, Technology 10 Comments

The sextuplet fetish

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007



We’ve all seen it, but it’s still funny.

As true as that caption is, it hasn’t stopped the national media from obsessing over every couple lucky(?) enough to have 5 or more babies at once. The latest birth-a-thon occurred in Phoenix, where sextuplets were born to Jenny and Bryan Masche:

As doctors in a Phoenix hospital pulled six healthy babies from his wife’s womb on Monday, Bryan Masche, 29, had an out-of-body experience he describes simply as “pretty amazing.”

I’m glad we all got clear on Bryan’s experience during this ordeal; it’s obviously the most important perspective. In fact, it’s so totally crucial I wanna hear more:

“It was a surreal moment,” Masche said during an exclusive live interview Tuesday on TODAY. “I really can’t put into words how I felt at the time. It was really incredible. Everyone moved like a symphony orchestra. I was really amazed. I almost felt like I was outside my body looking in on the entire thing.”

What an exhilarating experience! How’s his wife doing?

Jenny Masche, 32, remains in the intensive care unit at Banner Good Samaritan Hospital, but is doing well, despite having gone into acute heart failure following the C-section births of three boys and three girls beginning at 8:21 a.m. local time.

Intensive care after acute heart failure. Sure sounds “amazing” and “incredible.” I’m glad Bryan had a good time.

…okay, okay, maybe I’m being too hard on the guy, but I feel weird about this article and the woman’s husband glorifying what was clearly a traumatic birth experience by explaining how great the dad-to-be felt during it. If you’re gonna make a big deal out of the process, why not talk about the stress and endurance required for the mother to birth the kids instead of pretending it was like a jolly old tea party with a few surprise guests?

The persistent fascination with quint/sex/sep/octuplet births creeps me out. Maybe I’m just cranky this week, but these stories seem designed to celebrate having as many babies as possible. And we all know nothing keeps a gal in her place like 5 or more kids hanging all over her at once.

12.06.2007 Media hackery 12 Comments

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