Canada – Page 2 – Prog Gold

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Published on October 8, 2007

“YO! MS Raps!” Remember when 45 whole k of memory was like woah, dude? Happy days. Here’s a very silly rapping Microsoft training video for the MS-Dos 5.0 upgrade.

“Gimme 5.0!” Watch it and cringe.

McDonald’s Worker Wins Hoax Strip-Search Suit

US produce is being left to rot in the fields because of the right-wing immigration backlash. Prison labour is being used to make up the shortfall. Expect price rises and shortages.

Guidebook issued for Muslims in space Which way is Mecca when there’s no compass?

Even a cuckoo clock needs love…

Thinking about a kitchen update? You can keep your Corian and your hand-hewn granite: this interactive LED-loaded worktop is what I want in my kitchen.

Are you against the Iraq War? Hate Bushco? Nonviolent protestor? Hoping you’re going to escape to Canada if it all goes to shit? Well, think again:

FBI Puts Antiwar Protesters on Criminal Database; Canada Uses It To Ban Protesters From Entry

“The FBI’s placing of peace activists on an international criminal database is blatant political intimidation of US citizens opposed to Bush administration policies,” says Colonel Wright, who was also Deputy US Ambassador in four countries. “The Canadian government should certainly not accept this FBI database”

Awwwww. A stray 6-week-old calico kitten accidentally traveled from New Jersey to New Hampshire in a spare-tire compartment.

US corporations are getting into international diplomacy, via lobby group Business for Diplomatic Action :

“Our mission is to enlist the U.S. business community in actions to improve the standing of America in the world with the goal of once again, seeing America admired as a global leader and respected as a courier of progress and prosperity for all people.”

What’s their solution for the US’ dire international diplomatic position? Kick out Bush perhaps, stop being such gungho assholes maybe, possibly change the system? Of course not, don’t be silly. It’s not what they do that’s the problem, it’s how we perceive it… so they’re going to rebrand America. Yes, seriously. They’ve got a real job on their hands.

Double awww: “Mom, is that you? Orphaned kitten is nursed by local dog ”

Wahahahahahaha. AP has the lowdown on the greedy, hypocritical life of slimy evangelist Oral Roberts and his spawn, whose fundy ‘university’ is being sued for wrongful dismissal.

Twenty years ago, televangelist Oral Roberts said he was reading a spy novel when God appeared to him and told him to raise $8 million for Roberts’ university, or else he would be “called home.”

Now, his son, Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors’ expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter’s senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as “underage males.”

What kind of parent names a kid Oral, anyway? You’ve got to wonder.

UPDATE: For perplexed UKians, Sara Robinson has a good overview of the Robertses, Oral and offspring, here.

No. 1 On My “Wanting To Take A Running Punch At” List

Published on September 9, 2007

~~Pop star~~ talentless nonentity with money Avril Lavigne, as quoted in The Superficial:

On her generosity:

“I am a very giving person. When the hurricane thing happened, I went to my closet, filled six boxes of stuff and said to my assistant, ‘Take it to Katrina!’ I also like to give stuff to people who are my ‘workers,’ especially if they don’t make much money.”

[…]

BE GRATEFUL.
It’s important to be thankful, even if you’re poor. I mean, come on, we all have clean water — well, ok, not people in the developing world.

I’m sure young Avril’s ‘workers’ (what, are they just pretending to be workers or something?) are delighted with her castoffs: it’ll make the lack of food on their kids’ plates so much more bearable somehow.

But hey, never mind, she’ll get hers – looks don’t last and money gets spent, there are plenty of other talentless blondes desperate for fame and it really is just a very short step from stardom to Starbucks.Karma can be a right bitch, as Lavigne seems to be finding out.

I await the media feeding frenzy, the panning of her next album, the scandalous, expensive divorce, the drugs, the public meltdown, the failed rehab and the bankruptcy to come with interest.

Then I’ll have a shot of hazelnut in that latte, madam, and be quick about it.

Do They Think We’re Stupid? (That Was A Rhetorical Question)

Published on August 25, 20072 Comments

Although it keeps getting taken down from Youtube for unspecified terms of use violation, here’s footage of peaceful protesters stopping police provocateurs from starting a riot at the Stop the SPP protests in Montebello Quebec. CEP President Dave Coles confronts men armed with rocks and sticks:

Black bloc my ass.

The police say they know nothing and have launched an internal investigation and that the police officer was given the rock by a protester. Ho hum.

It’s good to see the bastards shown up for what they are for once but this sort of thing makes me begin to seriously doubt the efficacy of set-piece protests. The Heathrow Climate Camp, for instance, may have generated lots of publicity and I’m sure it was invaluable for networking and movement building – but I bet it was also one of the best intelligence-gathering events that Special Branch (or whatever the latest euphemism is) has had in a long time.

Protests are now like dissident window shopping for the police; anyone who protests in public these days is permanently recorded as having done so – do it more than once and you’re a potential terrorist. “I’ve got a little list…”

On the other hand protest is useful agitprop: they do security theatre, we do protest theatre. It’s all circus and gets media attention, provided there are no missing white girls to occupy their airtime.

But circus was most useful in the nineties when it was a new tactic-we’re now in the time of the ‘war on terror’ and as this incident and those at the recent G8 in Germany show even sleepy provincial PC plods now ape the tactics of their US peers and treat even peaceful, legitimate protesters as terrorists.

Daily Mail hysteria notwithstanding, protest isn’t a cushy option for hippy middle-class gap year students stick-on dreads or benefit scroungers with piercings, tatoos and mysterious habits; these days it takes guts to protest. But terrorists?

When you protest publicly, however legitimate your grievance, you are automically presumed to be a criminal. You’ll have a record, although you’re a perfectly law-abiding person. For speaking your mind in public you’ll be followed, CCTV’d, videoed and/or arrested, so that as much info about you as possible can go into an intelligence dossier (spooks have performance targets too). Subsequent to this you may well find your own communications and that of your colleagues, associates and friends monitored. You may even find yourself banned from all UK airports and environs merely for having a subscription to a conservation charity.

That’s quite a lot to ask of people, however noble and peaceful the cause, particularly in times when anyone can be arrested and held incognito and without charge for months on end, without anyone knowing where you are or what happened.

The left arned that the ‘war on terror’ would be used to label protest as terrorism. That the police and intelligence services act as agents provocateurs is nothing new: these suspiciously well-dressed ‘anarchists’ (those bandannas still have shop-bought creases) turn up at every antiglobalisation event, bent on disruption and aggression, the general idea being to get a spurious “attack” on police onto news footage, so that legitimate protest can then be described as violent riot and protestors as terrorists, so peaceful protesters can be attacked with impunity by armed riot police.

Protest isn’t all pink tutus, dogs on strings and rainbow flags: it can be fatal. Remember Carlo Giuliani, shot in the face, his head split like a melon by the wheel of a police landrover at Genoa? That’s what our democratic police are capable of when governments and elected representatives won’t listen and citizens feel forced to take to the streets to exercise their right to protest. The Canadian cops in the video above were particularly inept, but it still took a lot of courage for Dave Coles to face them down.

As I’ve said before, I’m becoming more and more enamoured of entryism as a practical political tactic as time goes on and state repression against all forms of democratic expression other than those officially approved by the state gets even heavier. “Is discretion the better part of political valour? Discuss.”

Nevertheless, despite the increase of international surveillance and repression of peaceful dissidence the fact that political change is happening is undeniable; political positions that we anticapitalists took and were derided for holding only five years ago are now so ingrained in the public conciousness as to be thought common wisdom – fast food bad, Bush BAD, sustainability good, slavery bad, climate change BAD… we’ve always thought that way haven’t we?

O, Canada….

Published on July 19, 2007

What do Canada’s best military brains do all day? Google for USB nuclear triggers, obviously.

Idling through the stat counter the other day, as one does, I noticed we’d had a hit from the Canadian Defence Research Establishment via Google:

Click for larger image

Being a nosy person, I looked to see what the search term was : ‘usb, videolink’. You’d think that defence boffins would know all about those, wouldn’t you, but apparently they google like the rest of us and this is what they found…..

Nuclear War launcher (and USB hub) heads West

By Tony Smith

28th July 2006 14:57 GMT

Fortunately, the silly gagdet, which comes complete with flashing lights, sound effects and authentic (apparently) power switches and arming key, can be shipped to Europe, according to GeekStuff4U’s website, for a modest ?23/$25.40 (?16) charge. You’ll find full details at the company’s website.

Still it’s nice to know Canada’s defence is in such safe hands.

Oooh, Matron: Comedy Double, Bumper Sex Ed Edition

Published on June 1, 2007

Today’s comedy double is all about sex education The first group is a collection of public service safe sex and condom ads from all over the world, and because they’re ads they’re pretty much worksafe, depending on how tightassed your boss is – or you are, if you’re working from home. But then if you’re such a tightass, what on earth are you doing here?

The bonus clips are longer and much more graphic, though equally funny. Probably not safe for any workplace though. The cats had to go and hide in the bathroom at one point, poor sensitive loves.

On with the motley then.

I love condom ads; unwritten boundaries of sexual taste and decency vary so widely from country to country, testing the transgressive creativity of ad-makers to the benefit of us viewers. So to soften you up for the condomfest to come here’s a sex-ed ad from Canada and oh god, we’ve all been at this school event or something very like it:

An ad like this next one, also from Canada, might prove more effective in its aim. Works for me.

First the stick, then the carrot, hur hur; from South Africa comes a condom ad that does it with subtlety, style, humour and ooh, eyecandy:

Then there’s the typically idiosyncratic Dutch approach. I’ve never seen them do this on KLM, though I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they did:
.

But some people really do need the message hammered home, if you see what I mean and I think you do.

If you’re male and at all sensitive about the family jewels, I’d suggest you don’t watch this next one, or maybe you could watch it from safely behind your chair. How not to test a condom:

Right, now that we’ve got our condoms and know how to use them, it might be wise to use them responsibly. This one’s from France on the side-effects of easily available contraception:

It’s funny, but I’m not sure exactly what they’re saying there – that contraception makes women bad mothers?

Now for the bonus clips: they’re quite long, so you might want to save them for your lunch break or at home. First, Family Guy on abstinence ed:

Abstinence, schmabstinence. You might as well ask a cat not to lick its itching nads as to ask a teenager to be sexually abstinent. But they tried, and still do: here’s a mashup of American ’50s sex-ed films:

I dunno though, sometimes understanding parents can be worse. Much worse….

That is one of the most cringe-worthy things I’ve seen in a very long time.

Far from hymning abstinence or trumpeting fake understanding, this next ad takes humourous acceptance of sexual diversity to whole new levels. I don’t think they’ll be seeing this one in Kansas, do you? What a great ad though:

The last bonus clip is an animated short which I think may be Czech: it’s pretty sexually graphic so definitely not safe for work, but what an excellent safe sex video, funny and touching with great animation.

Now my work here is done, mwahahaha. I’m off to sit in the garden in the sun for a while, at least until disturbed by local cat politics in action.