Every billionaire is a policy failure. Nearly every millionaire is a policy failure (selling a million books is not a policy failure). Every casino industry millionaire, though?
Definitely a policy failure.
Take Rodney Baker, who made $10.6m in 2019 as the CEO of the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation, a national racetrack and casino operator. Baker resigned on Sunday, because he did something despicable even by the standards of the casino industry.
Baker and his wife, the actor Ekaterina Baker, chartered a small plane and flew to Beaver Creek, a tiny First Nations community, where they defrauded their way into getting covid vaccinations intended for elders in the White River First Nation.
The Bakers did not quarantine on arrival. Rather, they presented themselves at the remote Yukon community - a community whose isolation has offered some protection from the pandemic - as workers at a local motel. In so doing, they recklessly endangered the whole community.
Then they asked for a ride to the airport, which tipped off clinic workers. Officials caught them in Whitehorse and charged them under the Yukon’s Civil Emergency Measures Act. They were fined $1150 each.
The White River First Nation has asked Yukon authorities to “pursue a more just punishment” (the Act provides for prison sentences of up to six months for violations); they fear that without meaningful penalties, other wealthy sociopaths will follow the Bakers’ example.
I’ve been thinking about this all day, looking for a bright side. There is none. These millionaires will not go to jail. They won’t face social sanction. They’ll be invited to private islands and exclusive parties, wooed by charities and flattered by university fundraisers.
They are part of a long Canadian tradition of depraved, inhuman conduct towards First Nations people. The nation’s money is slathered in pictures of people who did far worse, after all.
These evil, irredeemable people were just upholding a long Canadian tradition.
Canada doesn’t have to be like this.
Vote. But don’t vote “strategically” for what someone else wants.
Vote for what you want.
What I want is Proportional Representation. People think this isn’t a “sexy” thing to be concerned about. I disagree. It will be the change that allows real Real Change to happen.
Greens are the only party I trust to bring it about. And they have policy I can get behind.
And Greens have the best policy on every issue I care about…
Universal Guaranteed Livable Income.
Universal Pharmacare and Healthcare above the neck.
An end to student debt and Post Secondary Education for every student who wants it Gratis.
An end to homelessness and affordable housing for all.
Repudiation of the racist Doctrine of Discovery and decolonization.
And of course the best Climate Action plan.
Because I think this all is necessary, I don’t just vote, I work to help get candidates I want elected. You can too.
Because the voting system Mr Trudeau promised to replace with a system that makes votes count never happened. Mr Trudeau chose the status quo that gave him majority power with a minority of the vote.
Which means the system is still stacked against fairness. So we have to work harder. I’m sick to death of terrible problems like this that will never change if we keep empowering the status quo by alternately giving Liberals and Conservatives a blank cheque.
The pandemic has left many people with time on their hands. This is s great chance to find out what we could do and do it.
Don’t take my word for who to vote for— find out about the different political parties so you can at least cast an informed vote. And did you know: more eligible Canadian voters don’t vote than vote for our faux majority governments?
Decide for yourself how to vote.
Then do it. Vote for what *you* want.
Because things can change. But only if we make it happen.
On this day, 28 January 1942, Australian troops armed with machine guns, rifles and bayonets attacked striking Chinese sailors in Fremantle.
Around 500 Chinese sailors on six ships had gone on strike and sat down on deck, demanding equal pay with white Australians, as well as better conditions and a guarantee that they would not be sent back to Japanese-occupied China.
On January 28, the 5th Garrison Battalion attacked the workers, killing Tong Youn Tong, 44, with a bayonet and shooting Ping Sang Hsu, 22, in the back. One of the workers managed to grab a rifle and shoot back, injuring one of the sailors, before eventually the workers surrendered. The strikers were then arrested, sent to a concentration camp and then most were drafted to the Chinese Labour Corps and used as forced labour for the Allies fighting against Japan in northern China. The Australian press described the workers as “of a cunning, ruthless type never before seen in Australia”.
Around the same time, a Chinese crew aboard a Norwegian ship tried to disembark, and several were then shot by Norwegian guards. Elsewhere, after a Chinese ship fireman complained that an Australian had kicked him in the mouth, the whole crew walked off the ship in sympathy.
Chinese sailors’ struggles continued and in 1944 a new agreement was reached in which Chinese workers’ wages were increased to be 80% of whites’.
Pictured: Two of the workers, one of them aged just 12 https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1639950002856810/?type=3
Now the story of @thefishermansfavour
is getting good and Flirty TM, I wanted to dive (no) into the folklore
that led me to write a chaotic bi fisherman and a gay merrow: mermaid
romances
Spoiler alert, most of them aren’t really romantic.
They
basically all begin the same way: a young fisherman is out fishing and
finds a mermaid in his net. What he chooses to do next determines what
kind of story it’s going to be:
In most Dutch and Flemish
stories the mermaid gets dragged ashore, to be kept as a wife, maid or
even just a curiosity, sometimes magically acquiring legs in the
process. But she almost always curses the people who took her from the sea by warning
them that the waves will roll inland as far as they take her. Soon enough a
storm comes and the sea rises to reclaim the mermaid, flooding
the fisherman’s village and destroying the mermaid’s new ‘home’.
Sometimes
the man is kinder. One tale tells how a Dutch captain catches a mermaid and
takes her home, but sees that she wilts on land, so when he sets off on
his next journey he brings her back to the sea. In return she swims along with his
ship and calls out to him whenever there is a whale nearby for him to
catch.
In many stories of Celtic origin the fisherman bargains with the
mermaid and she exchanges her freedom for some sort of gift. My
favourite Scottish story of this kind is one where the mermaid gives the
fisherman a ring that she promises him will help him “win his true
love” (The Fisherlad and the Mermaid’s Ring) and it does just that, except not at all how he expected it to.
Then there
are of course all the stories that follow the “siren” theme, where the
mermaid is a beautiful creature that lures a fisherman or sailor into
the waves with her. A nice mix of these themes is “Lutey and the Mermaid”
from Cornwall:
Speaking of resources for learning about folk songs’ historical context: May I introduce you to Jon Boden’s 2010-11 ‘A Folk Song A Day’ project?
As the title suggests, the blog has 365 folk songs recorded by Jon Boden & supplied with introductions by Simon Holland. The comments are also excellent.
And if you’re wondering what ‘Mudcat’ and ‘Mainly Norfolk’ are - they’re two more excellent resources to start researching (British/English-language) folk music. Both record variations, artists who recorded the song in question, print editions of songs, and whether the song in question appears in one of the major song indexes (Roud, Child Ballads, etc.). Then there’sOxford Broadside Ballads Online, and Wikipedia isn’t the worst place to start to look up individual songs, either.
Speaking of resources for learning about folk songs’ historical context: May I introduce you to Jon Boden’s 2010-11 ‘A Folk Song A Day’ project?
As the title suggests, the blog has 365 folk songs recorded by Jon Boden & supplied with introductions by Simon Holland. The comments are also excellent.
And if you’re wondering what ‘Mudcat’ and ‘Mainly Norfolk’ are - they’re two more excellent resources to start researching (British/English-language) folk music. Both record variations, artists who recorded the song in question, print editions of songs, and whether the song in question appears in one of the major song indexes (Roud, Child Ballads, etc.). Then there’sOxford Broadside Ballads Online, and Wikipedia isn’t the worst place to start to look up individual songs, either.
