REDDIT: ALL YOUR SUBREDDITS ARE BELONG TO US….r/The_Donald has gone dark

May 20, 2017 — xanthippa
Reddit used to be a really, really fun place.  From r/aww and r/eyebleach, where people shared pictures and videos of puppies and kittens and all else adorable to just about every specific hobby, show or interest group there is.  Need to identify a bug?  r/whatsthisbug.  Want to improve your make up skills?  r/makeupaddictions.
No matter how funny or macabre or obscure – if you can think of it, there is probably a subreddit for it.  If you have a problem, there is probably a subreddit support group for it.
And, like most things that intersect technology with culture, it is predominantly populated with young-ish people.  As in, people who instead of receiving a well-rounded education have instead been through 12+ years of Cultural Marxist indoctrination.  (For a full understanding of just how deep the rabbit hole goes, pleas listen to ‘Explaining Postmodernism’.  A few hours long, but well worth the listen.)
And then the 2016 election came…
Just as it had polarized the US (and world) opinion into Trump fans and ‘NeverTrumpers’, so reddit has become increasingly polarized.
(Full admission:  as a libertarian, I was not a Trump fan because he is a mercantilist.  However, given the choice between a crook and a murderer, I’ll take the crook, thank you very much.  Thus, I am a reluctant Trump supporter – with both eyes wide open as to who and what  he is.)
Refocusing:  just like the rest of society, reddit became deeply polarized when it came to the topic of Trump.  On a site dominated by Cultural Marxists and SJWs (those not interested in politics may outnumber redditors (people contributing to reddit), but they are largely irrelevant in this debate) – especially among the people who run reddit who are wholly in-line with the oppressive political correctness and speech codes and safe spaces, were very few places where one could express an opinion favourable of Donald Tump…without getting outright banned.
The – by far the major – place to do this was a subreddit called r/The_Donald.
It was a place where meme were born and weaponized autism proved and disproved claims by digging up deeply buried evidence.
It was also one of the most positive places on reddit – where people were happy, supported each other and celebrated patriotism (no matter what country they were from) and battled against globalism and the destruction of individual cultures.  That is all cultures – not just the ones popular with SJWs….
And yes, Donald Trump’s team regularly monitored this subreddit to take the pulse of what his support base was thinking, wanting, criticizing, etc.  There are rumours that, at times, Donald Trump himself would scan the posts there to get a first-hand knowledge, to remain in touch with his supporters.
Reddit itself was not happy about that.  Not at all.
If you are not familiar with how reddit works – the more votes a post gets, the more likely it is to get on the front page of r/all (where posts from ALL subreddits are shown.  Except, that is, The_Donald.  The admin people, least by Steve Huffman (username u/spez) first altered the voting algorithms – making votes given to The_Donald worth 1/10th or 1/100th (sorry – the link is no longer accessible…which is the problem I am writing about) of a vote on any other subreddit.
Then they took to other, more technical measures.
Shadowbanning, randomly unsubscribing members, not showing new posts (with a message ‘there does not seem to be anything here’)  [sorry if my phrasing is not 100% accurate – angry and cannot access the older files to verify/check], not showing up on r/all…they tried just about everything they could to make The_Donald invisible on reddit.  Some other subreddits would even permanently ban you if you had ever posted or commented on anything on r/The_Donald – no matter what it was you said.  Even just subscibing to it was a bannable offense on some subreddits – really.
Which did not discourage members of The_Donald.  As the saying goes, if they are trying to censor you – you must be doing something right!!!
And indeed, the redditors at r/The_Donald took it all in stride and derived positive energy from the negativity and venom cast at us.  It really was a very fun and positive place to go – one where people were not censored, but where any racism or misogyny or other prejudice was met with derision and ridicule, while humour and positive feedback were greatly appreciated.
NO MORE!!!!
Alerted by a friend, I tried to check r/The_Donald, only to receive this message:

You must be invited to visit this community

r/The_Donald

At 8:41pm ET on 5/19/2017, Reddit Admins removed three The_Donald mods without warning. This was punishment for our refusal to comply to a special set of rules that were imposed only on this subreddit and prevented our members from fully enjoying reddit or our mods from defending users against harassment.

We’ve temporarily gone dark in a show of strength against these unfair restrictions. Check back at 9 PM EST tomorrow for an announcement.

The moderators of this subreddit have set it to private. You must be a moderator or approved submitter to visit.

This means no people subscribed to r/The_Donald can see the subreddit or access it, unless they have been specifically invited by the moderators.
Several related subreddits have also gone dark:
Ask_The_Donald
private r/Ask_The_Donald a community for 9 months
search within r/Ask_The_Donald
The_Donald_Mods
private r/The_Donald_Mods a community for 1 year
This is a subreddit for every moderator of The_Donald to discuss and ask questions if they need anything. — We will use this to update you all on recent happenings, so please check here every so often.
search within r/The_Donald_Mods
posts
24 hours is a huge deal on a fast paced place like r/The_Donald, which has helped analyze heaps of documents from WikiLeaks to the murder of Seth  Conrad Rich for having leaked the DNC emails.
Something very huge – site-threatening – must have happened to precipitate a reaction as severe as this.
At this time, it is pointless to speculate as to who will win this battle for r/The_Donald:  the Mods or the Admins.  Unlike Steve Huffman, I know Aaron Swartz would have been on the side of r/The_Donald – had he not been suicided…
Regardless of appearances, end well, this will not….
UPDATE:

ANNOUNCEMENT: The Future of r/The_DonaldHIGH ENERGY (self.The_Donald)

submitted 58 minutes ago * by TretesteΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ[M] – announcement

We have been closed for just over 12 hours. Look at /all. It’s covered in posts obsessing about us. The anti-Trump circle-jerk is stronger than ever, in a real 1984 type of way. We are the only place on Reddit that offers an alternative viewpoint. Even if you are against our president, you must see how valuable that is. Discourse is what makes this country great. We cannot cede all of Reddit to the bots spamming on one side of the conversation.

If you’re like me, you’re having withdrawals from the dankest place on the internet. We were planning to stay dark in protest longer but we’re opening back up early because Seth Rich’s killers are still not found. We are opening back up for him. No one is willing to talk about this, besides us.

As you all know, our top mod, u/ohsnapyougotserved, was banned and demodded by Reddit. We also lost two other fantastic mods. This will not deter us from chasing after our goal of equal treatment. That being said, we are NOT losing this community. That’s what leftists want.

Where do we go from here? We continue to support President Trump, create and promote the spiciest memes known to man, and trigger the fuck out of liberals. We fight the deep state.

It’s what we do best.

Posted in censorship, civil liberties, communication, freedoms, internet, oppression, politics, society, technology, war. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

A Weapon of Mass Destruction Constructed inside a Wallmart

July 22, 2016 — xanthippa

Words fail me:  it is so easy to make a WMD from source chemicals in most stores…

Yes, ‘inconvenient’ people have been charged (in the US) for possession of bomb-making material simply for having both bleach and ammonia in their homes, both legal and legitimate cleaning agents.

However, this one ‘takes the cake’:

 

How do I get off this planet?!?!?

 

Posted in Islamization, Sharia, society, technology, war. Tags: , , , , . 5 Comments »

Net Neutrality: How the FCC Could Kill Call of Duty – Learn Liberty

April 5, 2016 — xanthippa

Posted in censorship, civil liberties, communication, governance, internet, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Edward Snowden – Encryption and Liberty

March 14, 2016 — xanthippa

Posted in censorship, civil liberties, communication, internet, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Young girls is Europe fear going to the grocery store alone

January 22, 2016 — xanthippa

This is a very moving video.  Not translated by one in  our network (we can’t catch them all!) and thus the quality of the translation is not up to our usual standards, but, it does convey the greater point this 16-year-old German girl is making:

 

And what are the ‘Western feminists’ doing to protect these girls from being sexually harassed and even raped by these rapefugees?

By these fake refugees?

Because once they transit one safe country without applying for a refugee asylum, they are legally no longer ‘refugees’ – and the moment they enter the second safe country without applying for asylum they are criminals, according to currently valid international law.

So, in no uncertain terms, Europe is being overrun by criminals who are mostly young, able-bodied Muslim men who are Sharia Supremacists, with no desire to work (international statistics show that only about 20% of Muslims who migrated to Europe or are 2nd generation European Muslims even seek employment) who openly express the desire to kill European natives and rape Europena women.

And they do live up to their threats!

And why would they feel this entitled to take Western European monetary support without feeling obligated?  Because they believe that all European money is really Allah’s money and it is the duty of the Europeans to financially support all Muslims due to their religious superiority.

This is called Sharia supremacism.

Yet, not everyone is buying into it.  (Disclosure – I have done several of these translations.)

So, what are our feminazis doing about all this oppression of women and actual rape culture?

It turns out that they spend their time staring at Batman’s butt:

 

It makes me want to get off this planet!!!

Posted in censorship, civil liberties, communication, corruption, Europe, freedoms, governance, immigrants, oppression, politics, scientific fraud, Sharia, society, technology, war. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 7 Comments »

‘Betrayed!’ – a book by Connie Fournier

August 20, 2015 — xanthippa

“F” stands for “Free Dominion”.

That is what Dr. Michael Geist wrote in his ‘internet freedom countdown’.

“F” could just as easily could have stood for “Fournier” – as in Connie and Mark Fournier, who have done more for the freedom of speech and freedom on the Internet than any other Canadians.  And this time, I am not using hyperbole!

20 years to the day and in the very building I had signed my marriage license, I came to observe and blog about a court case involving Free Dominion:  Connie and Mark Fournier.  It was a civil case involving anonymity on the internet and both the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Dr. Geist’s Electronic Frontier Foundation were intervenors in the case.  Having heard of the latter two and considering any court case they both thought important enough to intervene in to definitely have a significant impact on my own internet and speech freedoms, I came to spectate.  (OK – I have to admit – I am a Geist ‘acolyte’.)

While following this particular case and many, many more, I came to deeply admire Connie and Mark.  Over the years, they have made significant impact on the evolution of our speech and internet rights, always from a deeply principled perspective.

Now, before you get the idea that I agree with Connie and Mark’s political views, let me stop you right there.  They are social conservatives who come from a Christian perspective.  I am a libertarian, just this side of turning into an-cap. And a militant ignostic as well as a registered Kopimist.

Despite the greatly different views we hold on a myriad of topics, I came to like and deeply respect the Fourniers.  Even when we discussed topics we disagreed on, they were respectful and principled and debating things with them has always been a pleasure.

Full disclosure:  the one principle both the Fourniers and I completely and totally agree on – and it is perhaps the most important principle of them all – is the importance of freedom of speech.

I came to understanding the true and essential need for freedom of speech as the cornerstone of our civilization and the internet as the vehicle through which it is anonymously and effectively delivered because I was not only born on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, I was also born the daughter of a political dissident.  Perhaps because of this, I learned early on that without the freedom to criticize and ridicule political and religious ideologies and figures, you lose the means of defending all your other rights and freedoms. And while I don’t know the route that brought Connie and Mark to the same conclusions, it is a demonstrated fact that they have not only lived by that principle, they have sacrificed all to preserve freedom of speech in Canada (and, by extension, all Magna Carta countries) and have put their financial and physical security – their very well being on the line to protect anonymous speech (in their case, on the internet), which is so very crucial in preventing the abrogation of free speech in public spaces.

OK – I have now sketched in the background so that you, my dear reader, are aware of what I know, think and whatever prejudices I may have regarding  my review of Connie Fournier’s new book:  ‘Betrayed!  Stephen Harper’s War on Principled Conservatism’.

One more thing before I start:  here is a most excellent review of the book by Jay Currie (and, no, I did not read his review before I had made my own mind up).  The comments are excellent!

The Review:

‘Betrayed!  Stephen Harper’s War on Principled Conservatism’ by Connie Fournier is a truly scary book.

Connie Fournier is both intelligent and eloquent and has the skill to line the little pearls up, one by one, till they form a brilliant necklace – or an effective noose…

Yes, I saw a part of the journey that Connie so accurately describes in her book – but I truly only saw a small part.  Yet, step by step, event by event, convoluted happening by convoluted happening, she lights the path and puts forward some very convincing evidence that points not just to the corruption of our ‘progressive’ leaning bureaucracy but also demonstrated how the Harper ‘iron fist’ is affecting things behind the scenes (whether through direct action or through carefully selective inaction).  Limited by the legal rulings still muzzling her, she succeeds in getting the important points across in a logical, accurate and believable manner.

This book has bought into focus the consistency with which the Harper government has sought to control, regulate and stifle internet communication.  The book stops before the Trans Pacific Trade Treaty  –  again, a Harper government ‘baby’, the leaks about which prove the veracity of everything else written in the book.

Yes, I would recommend it as a read – even though I disagree with Connie’s conclusion that the Green Party would be the natural place to cast a protest vote for.  No – I think the Pirate Party of Canada is a much better candidate, as their abid opposition to Bill C-51 is coupled with opposition to copyright consumer right abuses that the TPTT imposes as a supra-national law.  If there is no Pirate Party candidate in your riding, please, do consider running for them.  If my health were better, I most certainly would do my best to try to run for them!

But, again, I digress…

This is an important book to read for everyone who understands the crucial role freedom of speech plays and who would like help navigating the legal jungle of bills and attempts to deny it to us, the citizens – especially as it relates to the electronic medium.

Whether neo-Con or not, this book will open your eyes to the systematic process that is already in place to persecute political foes of the party in power and is written in such an accessible way that even non-techies will understand the implications of the proposed muzzling legislation coming from Harper’s ‘Conservative’ government.

Everyone of my relatives and friends will be getting a copy from me!

Posted in communication, corruption, freedoms, politics. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . 12 Comments »

Reddit, the Jesse Jackson ama, Victoria’s secret firing and the aftermath

July 4, 2015 — xanthippa

If you spend a lot of time on the interwebitudes, you will probably have across the name ‘reddit’ – even if you are not a frequent user of the site.

Personally, I love the place!

And, I freely admit that my blogging time has decreased when my reddit time increases.

If you spend even a little bit of time reading the news, you will probably have heard that reddit has had a little bit of a blow up.  In the figurative sense.  Being the sharing kind of person that I am, I thought I’d get some of the background and links here, in one place, for your convenience, my dear readers.

First thing to remember is that reddit is user-generated content and most of the moderators are volunteers, with a life outside of reddit (if such a thing is possible) and that only a fraction of the people responsible for making reddit the awesome community it has been are actually employees of the company.

Anyone (who registers) can create a post, a comment to a post, or even create a whole channel (called a subreddit).  If you have thought of it, chances are, there is a subreddit for it!

Here are just a few examples from my favourites:

And politics, world news, and so much, much more!

One of the most popular subreddits ever is AMA = Ask Me Anything.  When President Obama went on it, even the robust servers of reddit were overloaded.

This particular subreddit, AMA, had an employee named Victoria Taylor.  A very popular employee, whose job it was to verify that the people answering the AMA were the actual people named, not their assistants or PR flunkies.

And this was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back!

Everyone (the moderators and the redditors, that is) went into full rebel mode, either blacking out subreddits or freezing submissions for a specified symbolic time period or apologizing and stating reasons for why they remained open (this is mostly true for the support groups or the fluffier pages – even such ‘apolitical’ subreddits as WTF (what the fuck – on of my favourites) went dark (marked as ‘private’).

This blowup is popularly called AMAgeddon and is the reason why so many reddit alternatives (including its almost clone, Voat) are down because they just cannot handle the influx of reddit defectors.

And the petition calling for the interim CEO, aka Chairman Pao, to resign got over 160,000 signatures in just a few hours.

Of course there is a lot that lead up to this.

Drip, drip, drip…

Chairman Pao fired a popular dude – just because he got leukemia.  (OK, I lost the link to that twitter feed, but it’s true.  I’m sure if you do a little digging, you can find it.  Sorry – there is now such a glut of info…that Twitter thingy was one of the first things I saw, but now it is drowned out….apologies.)  First, reddit accommodated him, letting him work from his current home, then threatened to fire if he did not relocate to California.  Then, when he agreed to get them a letter from his MD saying it’s OK to relocate, one day later, Chairman Pao called him up and fired him anyways, citing his poor health as a reason.  Even though he had managed to do his job despite the illness just fine…

Drip, drip, drip…

Chairman Pao had made changes, attempting to turn reddit from free speech user generated content into a ‘safe space’.

In case you are not familiar with speech codes, ‘safe spaces’ is the ultra Political Correct speak for non-controvesrial and PC self censored to the point of irrelevance.  Yeah…

Drip, drip, drip…

And this policy started coming into place by trying to completely delete whole subreddits that were deemed ‘not safe spaces’.

Like a subreddit that made fun of fat people.

Now, don’t get me wrong:  I have the figure of a goddess!  A palelolithic fertility goddess, to be exact!

Yet I was deeply offended and seriously angered when I learned that reddit deleted the subreddit that made fun of fat people!  I’m a big girl (really, I am) and I don’t need someone – anyone – to protect me from people making fun of an aspect of what makes me me!  GRRRRRR!!!

So, it is in this atmosphere of people being very unhappy that censorship, politically correct censorship, was ruining reddit that the firing of Victoria Taylor came.

Perhaps even more importantly, in came on the heels of an AMA session with the notorious race hustler, Jesse Jackson, which (rather predictably) turned out to be not very pleasant for the ‘good reverend’.

One of the thing about the reddit community (redditors) is that they are difficult to easily place into any of the current political group.  OK, I am oversimplifying here, obviously, but if I were to describe the generic generalization caricature thingie of most redditors, I would say they are free speechers, socially progressive, strongly individualistic techies.  Live and let live – and say it like it is, without pretentious sillyness.

As in, we tend to live our social live on the internet, where a person’s gender and race are not visible and certainly not a factor in evaluation.  Only one’s opinions and online behaviour (history) are used by others to form opinions about one.

Because all other context is missing.

Striped away.

The internet is the most egalitarian of fora!

And, most of us find ‘speech codes’ to be beyond silly.

Yes, we can be hurtful – but we poke fun at our selves as much as at others.  And because our online presence is crafted to be whatever we choose it to be, we are not afraid to say what we actually think, regardless of our gender, colour, orientation, fat content or anything else!

Which is why the timing of Victoria Taylor’s termination at reddit is so important:  it came on the heels of an AMA session with Jesse Jackson.

An AMA session that, rather predictably, did not go so well for him.  Actually, reading it was really, really hilarious!!!!

Jesse Jackson seems to have complained that his nephew was ‘shut out’ from the opportunities in Silicon Valley because he is black….except that his nephew is a professor at MIT…..because ‘racism’.

It gets betted from there:  from people asking about his illegitimate son (whom he fathered while married) to, well, calling him a racist twat – to recommending he fire his publicist for ever letting him do a reddit AMA!

I highly recommend reading the whole thread – it is hilarious!  I was in pain from laughing!!!

Which, again, highlights the problem:  Jesse Jackson was hoisted on his own petard and raked over the coals for his prejudice, racism and divisiveness.  For profiting by stoking the racial flames rather than being a healer and making our society better.

Very predictable reaction from the reddit core audience.

But, the result was that Victoria, the employee responsible not for the mocking, but for lining up and verifying the guest, was fired by the PS-correct-driving CEO.  Who is trying to impose the hated, nay, reviled, ‘safe spaces’ agenda onto a free speecher, deeply individualistic community.

So, yeah.

Drip, drip, drip!!!

The proverbial bucket overfloweth!!!

Welcome to AMAgeddon!!!

Posted in freedoms, governance. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

CATO Institute: Net Neutrality, Obama and Oatmeal (Berin Szoka)

November 13, 2014 — xanthippa

Here is some food for thought:

What do you think?

Posted in debate, economy, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Who owns your body?

November 4, 2014 — xanthippa

Many people even today live under the yoke of very direct and brutal slavery.  We have recently heard the horror stories.

But this is not the only way slavery is happening.

No – this time, I will not go on a long rant about how coercive taxation is, in a very real sense, the state making an ownership claim over our bodies, but it hits close.

Different societies are built on different principles – and, depending on these foundational ‘truths’, the governance of the society evolves.  All societies evolve over time.  But, those societies which build their governance on things other than the principles they were founded on soon run into serious trouble;

After all, in order for a society to function in a healthy way, for the citizenry to be able to anticipate, understand and guide themselves by the rules of the society, it is important for every new law, for every rule that is enforced, to be grounded in this foundation.  I’m not sure if I am explaining this clearly, so, if I am making a mess of it, please, let me know and I’ll try to clarify.

What I mean by this is that in a very practical sense, for a new rule to ‘work’ in a society, one must be able to reason to it by starting with the foundational principles.

In other words, if laws are passed which are arbitrary – cannot be arrived at by reasoning from ‘first principles’, sooner or later, the governance will not form a seamless body but the laws and regulations will become a mess, some may even contradict each other and it will be upon the whim of the police and the judiciary as to which rules are enforced when…

Our politicians – in all levels of government – are busy passing laws and regulations.  If every citizen were to memorize every new law and regulation as they are passed, they would have little time to actually be productive…and the society would begin to stagnate.

If, however, each and every law and regulation passed could be reasoned out from ‘first principles’ (the ‘foundational truths’ on which the society is built), then the citizen needs not memorize every new rule and regulation:  these will simply be a natural extension of the foundations upon which the society is built.

One of the core – if not THE core – ‘foundational truths’ on which our society is built is the principle of self-ownership.

So far, so good – yes?

I own my body and you own yours.  You cannot sell your children into slavery or for body organs, because while a parent may be a child’s guardian, the parent does not own their child.  Each and every human being owns her or him self.

So, what are our bodies made up of?

Lots of stuff.

Some of our ‘stuff’ shares common things with other humans, some with all living things – and some of our ‘stuff’ is uniquely our own and defines us as an individual.

Let’s look at some examples of ‘stuff’ that makes us up – but which we share with some others.

Blood, for example.

We can, within certain defined parameters, switch blood from one person to another:  from one who has enough and chooses to share to the ones who need it.

Same with, say, kidneys and corneas and lots of other ‘stuff’.

Our brilliant scientists have, for example, found a way to take a pig’s heart, keep the ‘infrastructure’ but wash away the DNA containing tissues, graft a human being’s own personal stem cells over this pig’s hear infrastructure – and then implant it into that human!!!  Most brilliant, since all the DNA-bearing ‘stuff’ is that owner’s very own DNA, so the body recognizes it as part of itself and the immune system does not try to ‘kill this invader’:  something which, when using another human’s heart, had to be fought with anti-rejection drugs that had considerable and unpleasant side effects.

AWESOME!

Right?

And there’s all these new cancer treatments and chronic illness treatments based on gene therapies!  It’s enough to make one feel like we’re living in the science fiction future!

Makes sense that we will expect more and more gene-based therapies for our ills.

But, there is a problem with this.

The problem is that, in their wisdom, the bureaucrats who award patents have agreed with deep-pocketed corporaions to grant them patents on genes.  Both human and non-human…

Please, consider this very, very carefully.

For decades, the MD’s and medical researchers have warned that the greatest obstacle to more gene therapies being developed and used in the practice of medicine are – you guessed it – patents granted on genes.

Oh, it crept in gradually, like all the greatest villains in history.

First it was a human-modified gene in one creature or another which made it more suitable for medical studies – human-altered gene, it was argued, intellectual property rights…

Then it was ‘unraveling’ genes – doing the lab work to identify them and the role they played.  The corporations argued – quite truthfully – that they invested money up front to make this possible.  And they did, that is true.

But we must remember why patents were ‘brought about’:  it was a trade off. The ‘inventor/thinker’ would share the information with everyone else about all aspects in return for ‘exclusive rights’ on the item for a period of time that would let them make back their investment plus a modest profit. But, it was argued, one could only patent ‘products’ – not naturally occurring ‘stuff’.

So – how come patents were granted to companies on naturally-occurring ‘stuff’ like genes?

A bit of ignorance and a bit of corruption, I guess…

But, we now find ourselves in a situation where multinational corporations own the patents on certain human genes.

Aside:  this issue is explored very, very well in a most excellent Canadian Netflix show, ‘Orphan Black’.  Not only is the show brilliantly written and generally awesomely executed, it tackles this very question:  if a corporation ‘owns’ a ‘gene and all its derivatives’, and that gene is inside of you, do they ‘own’ you?  Do they have a legal claim on your children?  Your child is, after all, a derivative of your genes….

Please, indulge me in the following speculation.

A corporation owns a specific gene which is, say, introduced into asthma sufferers using a specific virus (as the genetic material carrier).  This engineered DNA (patented by, say, Corporation ‘C’) is successfully integrated into your cells, so that all the cells of your body have replaced the old, ‘faulty asthma-causing gene’ with the newly engineered ‘C’ gene.

Then you have kids.

Your children will have inherited the ‘C’ gene.

Do you have to seek permission to ‘create a derivative of the ‘ C’ gene through reproduction’ before you have said child?

Do you owe the Corporation ‘C’ royalties?

Do they have an ownership claim on your offspring?

As the laws stand, these questions have not been answered very well.

For example, courts have ruled that if a genetically modified pollen accidentally pollinates your non genetically modified crops, you DO owe the pollen’s patent holder royalties.

Really, do think about where this is heading….

After all, if somebody owns your gene – something which is in every cell of your body – do they not have an actual claim of ownership over you?

This is why I am so thrilled that CHEO (Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario) has initiated a lawsuit challenging the patenting of a specific gene-test.  OK – a baby step, but a very, very important one!!!

Let’s keep our eyes on this one!

Posted in corruption, economy, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , . 5 Comments »

So little time, so many cases…

October 3, 2014 — xanthippa

Many of you are aware of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) and their victimization at the hands of Prime Minister Harper’s spokesperson, Jason MacDonald, who so unkindly dismissed NCCM’s objection to the PM’s selection of a Rabbi, saying “We will not take seriously criticism from an organization with documented ties to a terrorist organization such as Hamas.”  .

NCCM (formerly known as CAIR-Can), of course, hotly disputes any such connection.

As such, NCCM announced on May 26th, 2014, their intention to lay a defamation suit.  Some more coverage on this is here and here.

So far so good.  I mean – bad.

‘Good’ in the sense as in these are agreed-upon, known things.

Yesterday morning, someone who’s been following my Dr. Baglow vs. Freedom of Speech reporting, had tipped me off that a Statement of Defense had been filed ‘in an Ottawa court’, and I, being from Ottawa and knowing the Court House, well, perhaps I could go and fetch it.

Quite exciting!

Yes, the case is exciting, but now, other bloggers turn to me for Ottawa court news!

(Plus the Municipal Taxpayers Action Group is going to court in Toronto on Monday, the 6th of October, 2014 and had asked if I’d be able to cover it…unfortunately not, but, if you are in Toronto, go and support them!  I’ll publish a press release from them as soon as possible about the proceedings on Monday.)

(OK – so it doesn’t take too much to amuse me…but I’ve never claimed it did!)

So, yesterday, instead of writing up Connie’s closing arguments for the Dr. Dawg defamation case (I am a very slow writer – my apologies, but I only have so much time…), I popped over to the Elgin St. Courthouse (Ontario court) because my experience with defamation lawsuits suggests that that is where they’re ‘duked-out’.

So, back to my old haunt I go.

Isn’t it interesting how quickly one becomes a ‘familiar stranger’ if one regularly shows up at even such a busy place as the Ottawa City Hall (best parking for the courthouse) and the Elgin St. courthouse itself.  I’ve been there for everyday of one week, then a few days the next week and then I showed up on Thursday of this week…yet, people remember me as a ‘familiar stranger’.  Not enough to sit and chat – but well enough to smile, say hi to and otherwise exhibit signs of recognition.

Now, I ought to be clear:  I may ‘stick out’ a bit more than some people…  Perhaps it’s my look (after all, I DO have the body of a goddess – an Upper Palaeolithic fertility goddess is still a goddess!!!), perhaps it’s my socially awkward demeanour or my silly grin…  Or, it may be my eccentric wardrobe (notice than in none of my ‘sartorial reports’ do I describe what it is I am wearing – there is a reason for that….many of my clothes are self-made and show it).  Whatever the reason, people do tend to remember me.

Still, whether it was visiting a relative in the hospital for a few weeks or now the courthouse, people tend to quickly begin to regard me as part of the ‘fittings’.  It usually starts very casually, but, pretty soon, it is clear that if I were to abuse the situation and ask for access to a restricted area ‘because I forgot my badge that day’, I’d be able to get to just about anywhere….because people naturally form communities and will extend great help to others they perceive as members of their community.  It’s one of the best things about people – without this, we would never have built a civilization.

But…when out communities get so large that we begin to extend membership status to people who are only ‘familiar strangers’ (as anthropologists like to put it), the security implications are troubling, at best…

As usual, I am off topic…  Refocusing!!!

Once I had irrevocably set my circuits to finding this paperwork, I set out for the Elgin St. court house to hunt them down.  But, from past experience, I knew that it was much easier to get public records on a case if I had the case number in hand.  So, before I did set out, I took some time to see what I could find online.

NOT MUCH!!!

I realized that something had to have been filed because I found this most impartial (LOL) report .

“I have no doubt that this punitive prime minister has added the NCCM to his long list of enemies and intends to crush them — if he can — in the courts. So Harper has retained Peter Downard, a top-flight defamation lawyer in Toronto, to carry a big, blunt legal stick for him while he’s busy posturing for another kind of fight with the real terrorists in Islamic State. (Downard is also representing MacDonald.)

Downard may have written his clients’ 22-page statement of defence, but every word of it oozes Harper’s noxious political modus operandi and his distinctly vengeful way with opponents.

…

Here’s the extent of Harper’s ‘evidence’: The NCCM was once called CAIR-CAN. That acronym was similar to a U.S.-based organization called CAIR. The two groups, NCCM insists, were and remain separate entities.

Not in Harper’s eyes. CAIR once appeared on a list of unindicted co-conspirators entered in a case involving another charity allegedly providing “material support” to Hamas. De facto: CAIR-CAN (now NCCM) and CAIR are one happy Hamas family. Talk about your legal Hail Marys.”

Yeah, riveting reading…but, there is no link (at least, not that I could find) to the actual Statement of Defense (is that not ‘standard’ for journalists?) and nowhere did I find the case number.

Still, having looked at the Notice of Libel (which I found via Atlas Shrugged’s ‘Litigation Jihad’ post, thank you), I wrote down the full names of the litigating parties and, as that was the best I could get, I headed downtown.

Hurry up and wait!

I hurried up to the civil division, took a number – and waited.

The nice bureaucrat at the wicket too a moment to listen to me – and shrugged that without a case number, there is nothing she can do to help.  Rather crestfallen, I showed her my notepad with the ‘Notice of Libel’ info jotted down on it hoping this might help….

No such luck.  If I wanted any filed document, I’d have to give her the case number.

By now, my lower lip was quivering as I inquired as to how might I proceed to find it…

With this, she could help me – over there, there is a public access terminal and I can go search their database from there to find out the case number.  Once I have it, I can come back and she’ll see if she can help me.

Having spent the better part of a decade on the Executive Board of Directors of an IM/IT professionals organization (now officially part of the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance), I thought I just might be able to handle a database search, right?

Well, not so much…

It seems that no matter what keyword I entered in what category, I could not find this particular case.

I could find all kinds of other things:  for example, case #CV08000410200000has Stephen Harper pitted against the Liberal Party of Canada and the Federal Liberal Agency of Canada.  Case #CV080004317100 pits Stephen Harper against the Ottawa Police Board Services et al and case#CV11000532100000 has Helena Geurgis battling Novak et al, including one Harper, Stephen.

But, though there are very many other cases involving ‘a Harper’, these were the only ones I could find involving ‘Stephen Harper’.

And there were absolutely 0 cases involving the National Coalition of Canadian Muslims – or NCCM.

Wondering if, perhaps, I was using the search engine poorly, I thought I’d do a test using some familiar names.  Plugging ‘Baglow’ into the search engine uncovered a few cases:  ‘Baglow, John v. MacNair, Adrian Raphael Alexander’ is case #CV090004648900SR, ‘Baglow, John v. Smith, Roger et al (that includes Fournier, Connie and Mark) ) is case #CV10000494620000, ‘Baglow, John v. Smith, Roger et al’ (including the same, plus Kelly, Stephen and CCLA is also listed as a participant) is case #CV10000498030000, ‘Baglow, John v. Pearse et al’ (Pearse, Gary; Baman, Gail; The Island Marble Corporation)’ is case #CV99CV0121570000, ‘Baglow, John v. Billings, Rosemary Graham’ is case #FC02FL0017630000 and ‘Baglow, John Sutton v. Barrymore’s Music Hall’ is case #SC08001042970000.

There is no way of knowing, without doing some legwork outside of the court house, if all these ‘Baglow, John’ people are, indeed, the same person.  But, having come up with this list made me fairly confident that I was indeed using the database search engine effectively.

Having drawn a blank, I went back to the wicket…  The nice bureaucrat who had helped me earlier was away for the moment, but a younger, prettier one took pity on me and heard me out.  Taking my notepad, she entered the names into the terminal in front of her and, in a few keystrokes, told me that they did not have any such case in this courthouse’s database.

No, it did not mean the case is not in front of the Superior Court of Ontario – just that it is not registered in this particular courthouse and thus it is not scheduled to be heard there.

No, she had no idea where else it might be heard, or how I could find out the case number.

Yes, she agreed, without knowing the case number, I am not likely to get far…

My time being up, I left rather crestfallen…

After some back-and-forth communications with my betters, I got only one suggestion:  try the Federal Court in the Thomas D’Arcy McGee building on Sparks St..

Yes – I was a bit skeptical – defamation is, in my experience, a provincial matter.  But, as this involves the current holder of the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada as well as Her Majesty the Queen of Canada, there could be some weird twist to this and not checking the Federal Court records would be a serious omission.

So, today, instead of writing up Connie’s closing argument – off to Sparks St. I go!

he nice people at the information desk of the Thomas D’Arcy McGee building directed me to the Federal Court’s registrar’s office and, as soon as I walked in, a nice (very good looking) young man in a green t-shirt and faded blue ‘skinny-jeans’ smiled at me in acknowledgement while he finished up a phone call, then came right over.  He took my info down cheerfully and started clicking away at his computer.

He clicked and he clicked and he clicked…

Every minute or so, I heard a ‘loud click’.  It took me a while to trace the sound – it was a little machine on the desk used for date/time stamping documents as they were submitted!  OK – now I knew the source and the reason for the sound.  Still, every time it ‘clicked’ in the hushed room, I just about ‘jumped out of my skin’! (Gosh – I hope that is not a ‘racist’ sentiment!!!)

As he was searching, the nice young man chatted with me a bit – not ‘polite small-talk’ but actually ‘down-to-the-point questions.  I explained my situation, and that if only I could find out the case#, I could probably ‘run with it’.  He smiled disarmingly – the case # is what THEY like to work with, too!

He truly did all he could to find the case # – but, he failed…

As of now, I am no closer to figuring this out..

Oh – I almost forgot:  this morning, I also called the PMO’s office in the morning to try and find the case #.  I phoned (613) 992-4211 – and the nice lady who answered the phone said I’d need to speak to ‘one of the aids’ about this.  She transferred me helpfully, and all I gt was an answering machine:  so, I left my name, contact info and that I am looking for any info about this case in general and the case # in particular.  As of now, I have not heard back…

If you, my dear reader, have any suggestions as to how I could follow up on this, I would greatly welcome your help!!!

 

 

 

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