Jason Kenney doesn’t have to steal your info (because he already has it)

When last we picked up the stench of the Jason “I don’t get caught up in the details” Kenney Campaign, we observed some very Nixon-esque debris flying from Alberta’s right-wing movement. Now it seems Kenney has gone on record to deny any involvement by claiming he doesn’t need to steal your data, because he already has it.

“Kenney also suggests he doesn’t need to steal anybody’s list, even if he wanted to, because “when I entered this I already had a database of 60,000 people who have contacted me over 20 years as a Member of Parliament’.”

Former Progressive Conservative Deputy Thomas Lukaszuk notes:

Kenney’s campaign quickly tweeted that when Kenney said he had the names of “60,000 people who have contacted” him over his years as an MP, he was talking about names collected from his personal website

But the fishy thing about that explanation is how that squares with another Kenney controversy from last week.

Conservative supporters had complained that they were receiving letters from Kenney’s PC leadership campaign, despite having never given their personal information to either Kenney or the PCs.

Meanwhile, the Dickweed Wildrose Party is overdue for a bit of flailing over their data breach.

To wit, the Journal reported: “A Wildrose source said caucus members were not briefed separately on the robbery, rather they received the same email sent to supporters.”

The break-in was not a robbery, of course, but a burglary and theft. Just the same, it is not clear yet how the break-in and the purloined party membership lists are related, if they are related at all. It’s quite possible the party lists got into Tory hands the old-fashioned way, via a disloyal member.

Regardless, Opposition Leader Brian Jean apparently just went ahead Sunday afternoon and emailed the now famous letter to Wildrose supporters outlining the startling developments. It remains murky when the break-in happened, when it was reported to the police, whether the police are still investigating, or why Mr. Jean chose the afternoon of the Grey Cup game to issue his startling statement.

…

Those halcyon days now appear to be over. A couple of weeks ago, the often fractious Derek Fildebrandt – the high-profile Wildrose finance critic Mr. Jean tried and failed to fire last spring for endorsing a homophobic Facebook comment about Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne – published what blogger Dave Cournoyer called “a 743-word treatise on his Facebook page decrying ‘hysterical political correctness.’”

At the time Mr. Jean tried to kick him out of caucus – enraging the Wildrose Party’s most rightward fringe – Mr. Fildebrandt promised to behave himself and curb his social media excesses.

But on Nov. 16, citing the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, Mr. Fildebrandt argued “that smug, condescending, political correctness will spark a backlash” – comments that seemed to be aimed directly at Mr. Jean, and to amount to Mr. Fildebrandt’s personal declaration of independence from his party’s leader.

I wrote about the incident in question back in May. Of course, Fildebrandt’s idea of “political correctness” is that Brian Jean is far too polite to minorities in Alberta, even as the platform promises to shit on us nonetheless. I won’t say I told you so, Albertan conservatives, but I totally fucking told you so. (emphasis added)

You need to soul search, because it’s rapidly starting to look like the fiscal-conservative-socially-progressive types aren’t going to have a party in the next election. Kenney is slated to win the PC leadership and he has been very, very open and forthright about his intention to absorb the Wildrose back into the fold. The problem is that it isn’t the respectables at the helm anymore. It’s the deplorables. The ones who are serious about being socially reactionary. The ones who think death and rape threats are a legitimate vehicle of criticism. The ones Brian Jean has been trying to contain like a beleaguered dog-owner pulling back on the chain of his rabid pup: You know, the ones making targets of the Premier, mocking victims of domestic violence and the assassination of labour-rights politicians, and publicly approving denigrating posts about gay politicians, because there’s apparently not enough policy to criticize?

That was 18 days before any of this came to light.

Notley must be popping the champagne.

-Shiv

Jason Kenney has a Richard Nixon-shaped hole in his campaign

Man, what the fuck is going on in Alberta? 

In an email to supporters sent late Sunday with the bland subject line, “A Wildrose Update,” Opposition Leader Brian Jean drops a bombshell with the revelation someone broke into the party’s Edmonton office several weeks ago, stole two laptop computers and tried unsuccessfully to walk off with the party’s server.

…

Mr. Jean starts a section of the email headed “I also want to update you on matters related to our party’s data security” with another startling revelation: “Some of you have been receiving unsolicited calls and letters from another political party.”

Mr. Jean doesn’t say whom in the email, or what the calls were about, but sources have confirmed, unsurprisingly, that the caller was the Progressive Conservative Party and the topic was the leadership campaign of Jason Kenney.

Uhhhhhhhhhhh

“A number of weeks ago, our party office in Edmonton was targeted in a break-in,” he said. (The party office is the only one in the building.) “Some laptops were stolen and an unsuccessful attempt was made to steal Wildrose’s computer server.”

Weeks ago? Why the fuck is Jean only making a statement weeks after the breach?

The timing stinks, friends. Of what, I’m not yet sure.

It would be libelous at this point to say with any certainty that this was orchestrated by Jason “I don’t get caught up in the details” Kenney. There’s not a lot of confirmed info right now, but holy canoly does it set the imagination alight. To, uh, put it lightly.

I’ll be retroactively posting some Kenney shenanigans, some of which was missed because US Election. But, Jesus Christ. It’s obvious Kenney plays dirty but Nixon dirty? If he has anything to do with the Wildrose breach I’ll be screaming his name from a soapbox. We do not need a Nixon.

-Shiv

The Vultures of False Equivalency Descend

I really shouldn’t be surprised that even the much beloved Humans of New York decided it was Trump supporters who needed to be humanized in the wake of at least ~700 hate crimes committed since Nov 8.

 

Okay, so, I have some thoughts.

Commentators rushed forth to declare that the working class had been unheard, and that this justified the package deal that came with Trump. The mistake is immediately apparent: “Class issues” has never and will never be separable from the minority’s struggle, as if the middle class somehow has a monopoly on “economic anxiety.”

Poverty manifests in discrimination and it’s minorities of all stripes who are disproportionately represented in the working class–the ungainful labour kind. Marxist analysis is critically useful here: No picture painted merely with the “economic anxiety” brush is complete unless it acknowledges that no member of the proletariat is immune to it, and no proletariat’s struggle is without this anxiety. That includes the weird proletariat.

Of course the proletariat has gone unheard. That’s what the bourgeoisie do, their entire raison d’etre, is to effortlessly coast through life on the backs of the silent. And when you start to smarten up about who is on the other end of the leash, they throw a juicy bone to their shock troops–the middle class, the still-proletariat-but-with-extra-bones–to distract us. Those men bring women with them. And so it goes.

The problem isn’t merely that we are in this position–it’s that the shock troops will accept their mistreatment at the hands of the handlers as long as they keep getting juicy bones, or at least more juicy bones than we do. So along comes someone like me, a Marxist, a feminist, a queer trans woman, and she says “your handler starves you to trick you into thinking its bones are generous.”

How many handlers will take that for an answer? Their juicy bones are at stake! Sure, I could point out that he has the supply of bones and us hounds could take them for ourselves, change the system so they are not given to us at the whim of our handlers. But that terribly inconveniences the handlers, so they wave a bone, point at me, and command “sic em!”

Two problems solved at once. The uppity Marxist is too preoccupied with the snarling in her face, and the hound who might’ve won some dangerous ideas is enticed by the bone in his immediacy. No vision or foresight to question from whence the bone comes.

There needn’t be any discussion of class struggle without minorities. They are inextricably linked. If this is truly your chief concern, however, you will need to abandon any benefits you receive to be the bourgeoisie’s shock troops. You’ll never be one of them, but they’ll tempt you by offering you superiority over someone else. The rest. The other. Enough of you will take that bait, dooming us all to try and survive the infighting while our handlers gorge themselves on fat and meat, chuckling as they prepare the next bones to throw to us. It means putting away the petty hatreds, the racisms and homophobias and transphobias. No, it’s not symmetrical. We weren’t ever the shock troops to begin with, at least not to any appreciable scale, because by definition as minorities we did not have enough bodies to fill out a legion.

This is what I referenced when I said reactionaries didn’t need to benefit from humanization. They’re the pup willing to take an extra bone to kill us. They’re willing shock troops for the bourgeoisie. Sure, some of them are insecure, or at least feel that way, and some may even try to feel bad about being told to attack you. But we would be making a mistake not to recognize the capacity for distraction in the systemic nature of discrimination the rich tolerate and perpetrate. This, in my experience, is the more common reaction. If you can corner a “not sexist/racist” Trump supporter and drill to the core of their issue, they’ll inevitably parrot out something about jobs. And what about jobs of the black in their midst? The gay, the queer, the non-Christian? Who will be awarded our jobs once discrimination is legalized by “religious freedom”–yet another bone for their shock troops?

Why do you accept this dilemma when it is our handlers that deprived us of the nourishment we need to begin with?

Why have you accepted the lie that there aren’t enough bones to go around, even though you can clearly see them stuffed in your handler’s pocket?

Have you no ambition?

-Shiv

Bathroom Bill Senator Don Plett back at it again

Don Plett is the genius behind the previous Canadian government’s attempt to legislate on trans rights–he proposed the amendment to Bill C-279, which specifically excluded public accommodations and housing protections. An otherwise perfectly good bill was gutted thanks to him, leaving trans women stranded in a veritable minefield yet again.

So, of course, we ought not to be surprised when Plett steps up to the plate to antagonize the 4th? attempt at codifying trans human rights. Check out his stunningly familiar rhetoric below:

Colleagues, last week Bill C-16, gender identity and gender expression, passed third reading in the other place without a recorded vote. This came on the heels of the Justice Committee refusing to hear from witnesses on this legislation. That’s right, colleagues, no public hearings.

Well golly gee, public opposition to trans rights is pretty fuckin’ high when you mention public accommodations, so yeah, no public debate. Probably because we’ve all heard the trans rapist trope a few too many times at this point? What new information could possibly be presented against us that we haven’t already heard?

We should be so confident in the legislation that we bring forward, and certainly in the legislation we pass, that we are willing to have it withstand a thorough and rigorous vetting process.

That’s a strange euphemism for your “fix” last time, Plett. Rigorous vetting process, you mean like the part where trans women are many times more likely to be a victim of violent crime than cis women are? Yet you trotted out tired arguments about women’s safety when you torpedoed the last bill. Is that the kind of thoroughness we can expect?

Political correctness authoritarians

Oh for fuck sake. This was in my government? We have a fucking sheep bleating about “political correctness” in government?! 

have narrowed the scope of acceptable thought and discourse in academia and, by extension, the general public.

YES, YOU ASSHOLE. TRANSPHOBIA IS NOT A RATIONAL RESPONSE.

However, we as legislators and public policy-makers should not be afraid of the difficult conversations.

Aww, Plett’s scared. Poor widdle muffin. Good thing you aren’t living in the constant fear of literal assault every time you pee, you might just melt like the snowflake you are.

Legislation that has serious implications on freedom of speech — and, for the first time in Canadian law, compelled speech — cannot be passed so flippantly without thorough public discourse, debate and consideration.

What? Where the fuck is this even coming from? The boundaries on Bill C-16 are clear! They state which sections of the Criminal Code are being amended: 1) Advocacy for genocide; 2) Public incitement of hatred. YOU’RE A GOD DAMN SENATOR YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS.

As University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson said recently on this issue

Oh fuck off already

Once we decide that we will not engage in manipulation of facts, regardless of the results, if it is based on telling the truth, that is always the best possible outcome.

Manipulation of facts, like this complete fucking fiction that Bill C-16 dictates pronoun use?

Are you terminally incapable of self-awareness??

I challenge my colleagues not to be silenced by the baseless character assassination, not to be silenced by those who want to throw out labels of bigotry and new phobias dreamt up every other week in social science departments in order to silence dissent.

OH MY GOD YOUR DISSENT IS NOT SILENT JESUS CHRIST MY BLOOD PRESSURE WOULD BE GREAT IF IT WERE

Those who find this legislation to have some merit but are afraid to speak in its favour because they find the topic “difficult,” and those who behind closed doors are vehemently opposed to this legislation but are not willing to speak to it publicly, please, by all means, let your voices be heard.

Yes, let those gullible idiots undemocratically appointed to torpedo democratic legislation make their ignorance clear at the expense of trans folk who will be condemned to live in between the lines until you fucking keel over and die already.

We are the chamber of sober second thought. We are legislators and policy-makers. It is our duty to look at fact, at science and at truth. A difficult and controversial topic with profound consequences should not generate less debate; it should generate more debate.

Great! Then I’ll see you when you sign the law! Unless this call for science is what you mean when you refer to Peterson as your “expert.” Is god damn Paul McHugh going to make an appearance? What is this “science” that makes you hesitate? Alice Dreger’s? Please spare me the fucking quackery. I’ll pop a god damn artery.

I want to ensure all of the outraged individuals who have emailed and called our office that the Senate will do a better job. When the House of Commons puts its electoral viability ahead of difficult conversations about policy, it has failed. Colleagues, let’s not fall into the same trap. Let’s have the difficult conversations. Let’s do our jobs. We owe it to Canadians.

Oh yes, I look forward to being publicly defamed as a rapist, again, during the “difficult conversation” you intend to start.

-Shiv

ARGH! That’s not what supporting trans people looks like!!

On today’s issue of “you’re doing it wrong,” WWE Superstar “Goldust” announces that their trans stepchild was attacked by young white men–and both his statements and the article covering them flip-flop back and forth on the pronouns! (emphasis mine)

Goldust is furious after three unidentified men attacked his transgender stepson on Friday night. The veteran WWE wrestler, however, has not disclosed as to where the incident took place or the nature of injuries sustained by his stepchild.

The 47-year-old wrestler (real name Dustin Runnels) issued a statement on Facebook and warned that if he was there, the perpetrators would be on “life support”

“My step son who is a transgender was attacked last night and I’m f*****g p****d. Grow the eff up and let people live their lives the way they choose. Stop all this hateful crap towards one another,” Goldust wrote.

“The three men who attacked and beat her up are still out there. You boys are three lucky individuals that I wasn’t there or you would [be] on life support,” he added.

After Goldust revealed the news, fans and followers of the wrestlers have reached out to him in support.

“I know I lost my temper when I read what happened, had a right to be angry but if someone is transgender so what love them for who they are if ya don’t walk the other way leave them alone there is no room for that kind of hate we are all different in are own way God loves everyone he created us every fd one believe that,” a fan of the wrestler wrote.

“There’s just too much hate, and the haters have become emboldened. I’m sending healing thoughts to your stepdaughter, and positive thoughts to your family. You are awesome for supporting her. Not everyone is so lucky,” another said

*twitch*

Listen: When trans people are literally attacked on the basis of our identity, the absolute last thing we want from supporters is to be figuratively attacked a second time on the basis of our identity by media coverage and relatives who can’t be fucking arsed to get our names and pronouns right. Invalidating our identities–the very thing targeted by this violence–is not support!

This is negligent, cissexist media coverage to the nth degree. I hope the kid is okay.

-Shiv

A few Canadian candids captured during the results of the US Election

I was tuned in to CBC while the results were rolling in and shortly before Clinton’s campaign manager came onto the stage to send everyone home, Mark Critch (right hand side) popped up on the TV screen wearing this expression:

Screencap from CBC

There’s not much to laugh at regarding this election, but Critch nonetheless got a room of giggles amidst speculation on which civil or human right would be the first to go.

-Shiv

Million-Woman March on Trump’s Inauguration

Washington, DC residents and folks who can get there, take note: There are some murmurings of a march on Trump’s inauguration in support of women’s rights, which the Republican platform is set to erode.

According to preliminary plans posted on Facebook, the march will take place on Saturday, January 21, the day after Trump is sworn in as America’s 45th president. The details of the event are not yet final, but organizers have launched individual Facebook groups in key states to help women make arrangements to be at the demonstration.

Over the past 24 hours, the organizers wrote that more than20,000 people have signed up to attend. “This is an INCLUSIVE march, and EVERYONE who supports women’s rights are welcome,” they added.

Connect with point people in your state here. And if you’re feeling furious, don’t boo—march. (Or do both. Doing both works, too.)

I’ll keep an eye out and signal boost the finer points when they’re settled.

USA, you’re going to need your #BlackMonday.

-Shiv

Catholic “charity” attaches strings to its transgender outreach

If you ever wonder why I am incensed at the entrenched Catholic government services in Alberta, here’s a wonderful demonstration of why. A Catholic charity has opened up in India purporting to offer “outreach” to the trans community, but there are some very, very hard to miss strings attached to this outreach: (emphasis mine)

Caritas India, a branch of Catholic social welfare organization Caritas Internationalis, announced the launch of a program earlier this month designed to fight discriminatory attitudes toward transgender people.

“Caritas is open to work with transgender people. I am even open to recruiting them,” Rev. Frederick D’Souza, executive director of Caritas India, said in a statement reported by Vatican Radio.

The group’s initiative aims to combat bias by conducting outreach to transgender communities as part of its development programs, but it reveals the church’s own internal bias in the process.

D’Souza said he hoped the initiative would mark the “beginning of a new school of thought,” in which Catholic leaders offer greater “attention and support” to those dealing with “sexual confusion in their body.”

In the same breath, D’Souza clarified that the outreach would only go so far. By “transgender,” he said, he was referring to a group he classified as “biological transgenders,” which to him denoted those who identify with a different sex but have not undergone surgery.

“We don’t want to confuse the two,” D’Souza said. “We have an opinion on those who undergo sex change, we are not in favor of that. We believe that the natural gender one is born with is what he/she is supposed to cherish and contribute to creation.”

Par for the course for the abusive Catholic institution, this charity claims to offer help to trans folk (in south Asia, sometimes called hijra) but exploits the opportunity to push psychiatric abuse on those who need its help.

In other words, they have no intentions of helping trans folk at all, since the condition on which the help is offered is that we must be willing to submit to something that the American Psychiatric Association–along with basically every credible mental health professional accreditation body in North America and Europe–recognizes as damaging.

Yet the Catholics proceed apace, ever increasing the amount of reality they’re willing to deny in the name of their holy fucking book.

-Shiv

 

A few days after this post was put on the schedule, another Catholic “charity” hit the news for turfing an employee over her belief that we shouldn’t be dicks to gay people. I guess Christmas is only for straights! (And my straight coworkers legitimately ask why I need to host/attend separate Queer Thanksgivings and Christmases and Easters.)

French Roman Catholics still beating a dead horse

We know that thanks to terrorist efforts, nationalist and fascist groups across the West are gaining momentum. We also know from history that nationalists have a tendency to draw arbitrary lines about what makes one a “true” countryman, and that the QUILTBAG community is always outside those lines. In fact the effect is so predictable that I debated investing stock in the baseball bat business, because we all know nationalists just love to beat dead horses.

So it can’t be a coincidence that French Roman Catholics are sensing a resurgency in homo-antagonism and so organized an anti gay-marriage rally despite the fact that the law passed three years ago.

Thousands of opponents of gay marriage took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to defend their vision of family values, hoping to revive the issue in political debates ahead of next year’s presidential election.

About 24,000 people took part in the demonstration, police said, far fewer than the several hundreds of thousands the group “Demo for All” mobilized in 2012 and 2013 in an unexpectedly strong show of opposition from conservatives, especially Roman Catholics.

The Socialist government legalized same-sex marriage, which it called “Marriage for All”, in 2013.

Police said 13 people were arrested after a scuffle at the protest, including six topless women from the activist group Femen. Some of them had words “Hate is not a family value” scrawled on their chests.

Organizers of Sunday’s protest aim to pressure politicians on the right, who face a presidential primary next month, to agree to repeal the law if they are elected president.

The protesters marched through prosperous western sections of Paris, waving French flags and the “Demo for All” movement’s blue and pink colors. Some held signs declaring “All together for the family” and “In 2017, I’ll vote for the family.”

Again, they seldom bother to explain how not shitting on Queer people somehow constitutes an assault on the family. Meanwhile QUILTBAG people wanting to, you know, start a family, still can’t thanks to the abusive Catholic lobby.

Let’s say I really like turkey sandwiches, so I go to a sub store to get a turkey sandwich. What the anti-gay lobbyists are doing is essentially shouting from the spot behind me in line that I shouldn’t be allowed to have a turkey sandwich because they prefer ham sandwiches. That the ham is still there for them to purchase seems to escape them.

I will never understand the rationale for this so-called “family values” rhetoric because they obviously are operating from a very twisted idea of what family is.

Needless to say, fuck off Christofascists. Those of us privy to history know better than to view you as anything but a menace.

-Shiv