Month: May 2015

shychemist: #GirlsWithToys hashtag – part 44What is this…





















shychemist:

#GirlsWithToys hashtag - part 44

What is this hashtag about? In short: the hashtag was born out of casual sexism by a male scientist. To read more about what spurred this response, read Kate Clancy’s (creator of the hashtag) article below:

Girls With Toys: This is what real scientists look like.

View my other posts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15, part 16, part 17, part 18, part 19, part 20, part 21, part 22, part 23, part 24, part 25, part 26, part 27, part 28, part 29, part 30, part 31, part 32, part 33, part 34, part 35, part 36, part 37, part 38, part 39, part 40, part 41, part 42 and part 43.

shychemist: #GirlsWithToys hashtag – part 44What is this…





















shychemist:

#GirlsWithToys hashtag - part 44

What is this hashtag about? In short: the hashtag was born out of casual sexism by a male scientist. To read more about what spurred this response, read Kate Clancy’s (creator of the hashtag) article below:

Girls With Toys: This is what real scientists look like.

View my other posts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15, part 16, part 17, part 18, part 19, part 20, part 21, part 22, part 23, part 24, part 25, part 26, part 27, part 28, part 29, part 30, part 31, part 32, part 33, part 34, part 35, part 36, part 37, part 38, part 39, part 40, part 41, part 42 and part 43.

Happy Victoria Day

Victoria's Family

As you celebrate Canada’s Victoria Day weekend (which we go to great pains to prevent from celebrating on the actual weekend of the 24th of May ~ her birthday) be thankful you don’t have 9 kids. (This painting only shows the first five of the nine children Victoria and Albert had.) And be careful with those fireworks!

Happy Victoria Day!

Franz_Xaver_Winterhalter’s painting “The Family of Queen Victoria” is well into the Public Domain.


Canadian Political Housecleaning

The Canadian Bill of Rights after Bill C-51

When I still had hopes some MPs in our Federal Parliament might find it difficult or impossible to vote for Bill C-51, the Harper Government draft legislation that effectively shreds the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights, I did everything possible to spread the word, including reblogging political articles here.  Clearly I was wrong; neither Liberal or Conservative Parliamentarians had the spine to stand up for Canadian civil rights, and our unfair electoral system gave them the power to do so.

The Harper Government dispensed with proper scrutiny or debate and so the fast-tracked Bill C-51 has passed third reading in the House of Commons.  It’s still before the Senate, and will also need Royal Assent, but so far the Senate and the Governor general have proved themselves nothing more than Rubber Stamps, so my hopes are not high.

If you wish to keep an eye on it, Bill C-51 Legisinfo will let you know how far along Bill C-51 is in the process.

Now it’s time for me to return to my day job, and the first order of the day is to clean up the political debris cluttering up my Free Culture blog.  Since it’s poor netiquette  to delete material one has published, I can’t just delete my reposts without making them available, so here is the the list of political articles I reblogged (and now deleted).

But you don’t have to take our word for it… ask the experts:

Law Professors Craig Forcese and Kent Roach (at the University of Ottawa and the University of Toronto respectively) have been raising the alarm in articles like“Bill C-51: the Good, the Bad . . . and the Truly Ugly” which outline many of the very disturbing elements of Bill C-51.  They’ve created a website where they have shared their findings about Bill C-51 in detail http://www.antiterrorlaw.ca/

Possibly the single most disturbing element for me is something Mr. Forcese says in one of his information videos:

…the whole thing is covert.

We just have never seen anything like this in Canada before. Personally I would expect judges to consider all this unconstitutional and they could never let CSIS breach the constitution. But you and I may never know because, as I’ve said, this legal question would likely be decided as part of secret proceedings.

— Craig Forcese, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law

Bill C-51 ignores the rule of law and the protections Canadians enjoy under our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is serious enough to worry Canadians across the political spectrum.

You know its a non-partisan problem when legal scholars and ex-judges the legal profession and Rex Murphy and Conrad Black andJean Chrétien and Paul Martin and Joe Clark and John Turner andElizabeth May and Thomas Mulcair and the Communist Party andFirst Nations and a growing number of ordinary citizens are in agreement about how bad Bill C-51 is.

If that hasn’t given you enough to chew on, check out these videos:

Michael Harris at the Registry Theatre

Fair Vote Guelph: The Robocall Scandal ~ Town Hall

Stop Bill C-51 #Privacy matters #HumanRights #Canada YouTube Playlist

My own Bill C-51 YouTube Playlist

Any additional blogs I make will appear on my Whoa!Canada blog.

a horizontal border of red graphic maple leaves


allthecanadianpolitics: If any 3 people have the power to…



allthecanadianpolitics:

If any 3 people have the power to persuade the public to distrust the Harper Government, it is this trio.

Image 1: Rachel Notley. This woman is the future premier of Alberta. The NDP, a left of centre party swept Harper’s home province with a majority government win and ended 44 years of Progressive Conservative Rule. Alberta is also the province with the strongest federal support for the Conservative Party.

Image 2: Omar Khadr. The Harper government’s appeal of Omar Khadr’s bail failed, and he was finally released (on bail). Stephen Harper and his government continue to paint him as a as an unrepentant murderer and a terrorist, despite the fact that in a recent interview he came across as friendly, happy and polite. Khadr was imprisoned and tortured for 13 years in Guantanamo and other prisons, and was coerced to plead guilty to crimes (which the only proof they have is his coerced confessions). He was captured at 15 years old; a child soldier.

Image 3: Mike Duffy. Mike Duffy is at the centre of a massive spending scandal in the senate in which the senator was bribed by a top member of the Prime Ministers’ Office to quietly pay off his overspending bills. Harper claims he wasn’t aware of this going on. Which is a bit hard to believe considering how much of a control freak the PM is. Information coming out of his trial continue to paint Harper’s government in a bad light.

allthecanadianpolitics: If any 3 people have the power to…



allthecanadianpolitics:

If any 3 people have the power to persuade the public to distrust the Harper Government, it is this trio.

Image 1: Rachel Notley. This woman is the future premier of Alberta. The NDP, a left of centre party swept Harper’s home province with a majority government win and ended 44 years of Progressive Conservative Rule. Alberta is also the province with the strongest federal support for the Conservative Party.

Image 2: Omar Khadr. The Harper government’s appeal of Omar Khadr’s bail failed, and he was finally released (on bail). Stephen Harper and his government continue to paint him as a as an unrepentant murderer and a terrorist, despite the fact that in a recent interview he came across as friendly, happy and polite. Khadr was imprisoned and tortured for 13 years in Guantanamo and other prisons, and was coerced to plead guilty to crimes (which the only proof they have is his coerced confessions). He was captured at 15 years old; a child soldier.

Image 3: Mike Duffy. Mike Duffy is at the centre of a massive spending scandal in the senate in which the senator was bribed by a top member of the Prime Ministers’ Office to quietly pay off his overspending bills. Harper claims he wasn’t aware of this going on. Which is a bit hard to believe considering how much of a control freak the PM is. Information coming out of his trial continue to paint Harper’s government in a bad light.

Stop Bill C-51

STOP BILL C-51
Sauron Says Stop Bill C-51
Yesterday I reblogged 33 other bloggers posts here, even though they are probably not free culture.  Although I try to keep Canadian politics in the  Whoa! Canada blog, limiting political articles on this blog to issues around copyright and free culture, Bill C-51 has crossed the line.  This law the Harper Government is planning to pass, (maybe today, probably this week) in the face of strong opposition from a clear majority of Canadians, will certainly have a devastating effect on Canadian Culture.  The removal of free speech protections will cause a massive chilling effect ~ self censorship ~ on all Canadian culture.

Some brave souls will continue to publish their art, just as the stubborn ones did in the early days of the Third Reich.  I realize many of you will think this hyperbole, but the parallels between then and now are striking.  I can tell you that I am not a brave soul, that’s why I am doing everything I can to stop this now.  I don’t want to see Canadian civil rights undermined to the point of meaninglessness, not just for myself, but for my family, and all the generations that will come after.

But if my little voice, in concert with all the other Canadian voices goes unheeded, although it will surely break my heart, I will continue to do as I always have; I will continue to follow the law.

But it isn’t law yet, so today I will share and reshare as much as I can manage.   Because I care.  Because it matters.

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