Damn you the_siobhan and your YouTube surfing!

My favourite play is showing at the Shaw Festival this year. Squee!

Thunderbird 3.0-compatible Enigmail.

Guh.

What's this thing? Cold. Fridge. Why am I looking in the fridge?

Uh.

Uh.

Because I want coffee.

Wait. Coffee doesn't come from the fridge. Where does coffee come from?

Uh.

Uh.

Oh, I should close the fridge.

Kettle! I use the kettle to get coffee.

Which one is the kettle?

No, that's the fridge.

Someone has included my (personal) email address in spam for a new "Outraged TTC Patrons"™ group. Basically, there's a new site called TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) Riders. If I had to guess, some of the organizers of this new group are involved in some of the other activisms I'm connected to, but I don't have much information about who included my email address in their spam group (I tend to give different email addresses for different purposes; my standard "friends" address is the one being used, here)

Their peeve seems to be that the TTC is hiking fares. They make comments about the underfunding of the TTC ("No other major transit system in North America expects its riders to pay for over 70% of the system's cost.") These are arguments that I'm sympathetic to. I think that one of the legacies of Fucking Mike Fucking Harris Fucker Fuck is that the TTC has been uber-screwed.

I like the TTC. I get a Metropass every month, and I subway into work most days. I've always made living in TTC-accessible areas a priority. Which is not to say that they don't piss me off periodically. Some of their policies and behaviours (like their pricing strategy for the Metropass) are dumb dumb dumb.

I believe in the various improvements that the current city council have been making to the TTC. I like the dedicated streetcar lanes. I like the new kneeling buses and stop announcement systems. I believe that the TTC is an important service and should be well supported by the municipal and provincial governments. So I feel like I should fit right in with this new group of Outraged TTC Patrons™.

But I find myself immediately turned off by the group. Primarily because they come off seeming like exactly the kind of people who don't give a shit about how badly funded the TTC is until there's either a TTC strike or a rate increase. And I realize that's petty of me, but I have difficulty respecting people who act like they can't distinguish between something that's broken and something that's a new inconvenience.

I think that these graphs are kinda interesting.

(The blog appears to be a fairly conservative economics blog, but I'm just a nerd about data).

What we do these days in Ottawa is keep score. Everyone does it. Nobody seems able to stop. The first question, in the overheated office buildings around Parliament Hill, isn't whether something is true or false, a good idea or bad: it's whether it will help the Conservatives or the opposition. And if this week's problem isn't enough to knock the Harper Conservatives off their pedestal, then everyone — the entire capital hive-mind, Conservatives, Liberals, on-air analysts, swiftly scribbling scribes — moves on.

I prefer to believe there are a lot of Canadians who care more whether they’re governed well or poorly than whether by Conservatives or Liberals. The incessant scorekeeping of Hill denizens is profoundly off topic. And never more so than when Richard Colvin testified about his attempts in 2006 and 2007 to alert the government about allegations that Afghan prisoners handed over to Afghan authorities by Canadian Forces had been tortured.

Colvin is a career diplomat who is trusted enough, today, by this Conservative government to serve as head of intelligence at the Canadian Embassy in Washington. When Glyn Berry, a Canadian diplomat assigned to the Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar, was killed by a car bomb in 2006, it was Colvin who volunteered to replace him. This guy has literally risked his life for his country. Of course he’s fallible like any of us. But I think he has earned a certain amount of respect.

But first, political Ottawa had to do to Colvin’s testimony what political Ottawa does, which is to keep score. I was on a TV panel a few minutes after he spoke, and all around me, friends and colleagues were trying to figure out whether Colvin’s testimony would help the Liberals in the polls. Or whether "ordinary Canadians" could spare any sympathy for a bunch of strangers with weird names in a desert somewhere who just happened to get carted off to the wrong stinking hell pit. Hours later at a birthday party, one of the hot topics of conversation was how long it would be before Michael Ignatieff's complex writings on torture would be used against him. (Answer: three days. The only surprise was that it was Janine Krieber, a disgruntled Liberal political spouse, who did it, instead of somebody from another party.)

— "Torture: all about scoring points", Paul Wells.

I think today is a "make gumbo" day.

What? The? Frack?

Seen via Shakesville.

The political party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide will be barred from legislative elections scheduled for February 28, Haitian elections officials said on Wednesday.

[...]

"The Lavalas Family party will not be allowed to participate in the next election because the electoral council's legal counsel said the party did not meet all legal requirements," electoral council president Gaillot Dorsainvil told local radio stations.

He did not specify which requirements the party failed to meet.

Ninety-eight of the 99 seats in the legislature's Chamber of Deputies will be at stake in the February election, along with one-third of the 30-member Senate. The vote for the remaining lower house seat will be held at a later date.

[...]

In a rare interview, Aristide confirmed on local Radio Solidarity on Wednesday that he had given authority to Narcisse to register the party, and questioned whether Haitian officials wanted to hold fair and democratic elections.

"That will depend on whether the electoral council wants to organize an election or to make a selection," Aristide said by phone from South Africa. "If they want to organize elections, I encourage them. But if they want to make a selection I urge them not to take that path because it will not serve the country's interests."

— Reuters

Last spring, Lavalas was also banned from Senate elections.

It's such a strange thing: the official narrative (of, say, the Bush administration or the Martin government) is that Aristide lost the support of the people and the people rose up against him (and the US helped give him a ride out of the country for his own protection). One would think that, with that kind of environment, Lavalas would have no chance of winning an election. But it seems clear that there are forces trying to keep Lavalas out of elections. And it's so freakin' transparent.

Anyone going to see a movie tonight? Can I glom on to your outing?

I forgot how much I enjoy working in ink wash.

I rememeber.

I'm interested in this call to boycott Feministing. Certainly the problems with discussions about trans issues have been apparent.

sabotabby says stuff about Remembrance Day that certainly resonates with me.

piranha also linked to this poem, which I like.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.

— "We Shall Keep the Faith", Moina Michael

I've mentioned Kevin Pina on my journal, before. I have a great deal of respect for him and the work he does for Haiti. I've had the opportunity to see his excellent film, Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits six or seven times. He's lived in Haiti, been arrested for reporting on the atrocities of the Haitian National Police, and literally knows everyone involved in Haitian social justice work.

Last March, the Haiti activism group I belong to had Pina in Toronto to introduce his film. Afterward, he joined us for dinner, and I had some opportunity to chat with him. One of the things that he encouraged me to do was to visit Sopudep school in Petyonvil. "Tell them I sent you," he said, "and they'll be happy to show you the school." He's not the first person to tell me about Sopudep: I've met a large number of activists who've talked approvingly about the school.

There's a lot to admire about Sopudep. It's a good school, with an effective programme, run by Haitians (something I favour over schools run by foreign charity groups -- often churches). Their founder/leader, Rea Dol, is a grassroots activist who also works in adult literacy and women's economic empowerment.

There's also a symbolic story about the building where the Sopudep school is located: the building was once the home of one of the Tonton Makout. I think there's something very poignant about taking a building with that kind of legacy and transforming it into a school.

The main reason I'm posting this is that Sopudep school has recently issued an urgent appeal for funds to cover their operating expenses over the next three months. This appeal has reached me through the activist communities that I'm connected with. Unfortunately, this is, I think, the fourth emergency appeal I've seen in those communities in the last coupl'a months, and my fear is that the activist communities are tapped out. So I'm asking for your help.

Sopudep does a great deal with very modest amounts of money. The average annual salary of a Sopudep teacher is USD $500. That's less than $50 a month. They have a hot lunch programme to ensure that kids get meals: this is one of the most tangible consequences of the 2004 coup. When Aristide was president, the food programme received govenment funding. That funding ceased after the coup. More recently, they've been working on a housing programme for street kids.

The school is trying to raise USD $6,000 to cover three months of operating expenses. Some US and Canadian groups have helped make it easy to give. You can send money though PayPal. There are also options for Canadians or Americans to get tax receipts for any donations (information available at the same link).

So: I'm asking you. Can you spare $20 or $40 or anything? I believe in this school because people I trust believe in this school.

There's a cool saying that was quoted to me by a Haitian politician, at one of the first Haiti social justice events I attended:

If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed.
If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree.
If you are thinking one hundred years ahead, educate the people.

I've always liked that saying.

I was Googling Malcolm X bio stuff today, and that got me in a mood to re-watch Lee's Malcolm X. I bought a copy several years ago, but I think I've only seen it once.

Coincidentally, I recently bought and watched a copy of Inside Man, one of my favourite heist films. Also by Lee. There's a scene in each film that's almost identical.

In Inside Man, Denzel Washington plays Detective Keith Frazier, who is the lead detective on a bank robbery. Frazier figures out that the robbery isn't a normal robbery, and he pushes and cajoles the head robber. Finally, to prove that the thieves mean business, they kill one of the hostages. Frazier suddenly becomes consumed. There's a shot: Frazier exits the police command vehicle, and we see him centred in the camera frame, walking forward. In fact, the actor is on a dolly with the camera, and the camera is dollying backward. The effect is that although the main character appears to be moving forward, at the same time there's a complete stillness about him. He's not walking; he's gliding. The effect makes him look intense. Single-minded.

Tonight, I noticed that Lee used the same kind of shot in Malcolm X. Malcolm, on his way to the church where he'll ultimately become assassinated, seems... I dunno. On automatic pilot. The same device is used. Washington, this time playing Malcolm X, moved down the sidewalk. As in Inside Man, the actor is on a dolly, and he's gliding. The distance between the camera and the actor remains constant. The background falls into the distance. Same intense, single-minded look.

I find it really interesting to see such clear examples of directorial devices.

What's the niftiest iPhone app you've played with?

If you're in trouble or hurt or need -- go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help -- the only ones.

— The Grapes of Wrath