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Let Them Eat Cake: To Have or Have Not

n a beautiful sunny Tuesday in Beverly Hills, California, a young woman alights from her white gull-winged Lamborghini Countach and hands the keys to the young Valet. "Be careful - I just got it waxed", she says to the boy. He is dressed impeccably in a white uniform almost matching the car in its tones but lacking its lustre and its shine; he is only a worker, not an elite. As he carefully parks the machine in a row of other impressive machines along a street lined with palm trees stretching high above, she walks towards the boutiques with a stride and confidence becoming a queen. The sun gleams off her car in the lane and off of her designer sunglasses as she struts, and it's just another Tuesday for Marie, but today is a shopping day, and she always loves a good shopping day. Partly because she loves things, but mostly because she is very, very good at it. When Marie goes shopping, she always tells her socialite friends, she goes shopping.

Canada's Bill C-51: Shredding The Charter of Rights and Freedoms Before Your Eyes

anada set the tone for their new anti-terrorism bill over the course of the past few years by carefully exploiting isolated incidents such as the shooting at Parliament Hill in October of 2014. Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed the nation on that eve, and with stern conviction told us that we are in danger of losing our way of life and freedom because of the threat of terrorism, becasue of this one isolated act. This rhetoric sounded all too familiar, and I couldn't help but feel dread as I listened; that this was going to be used as another tool to chip away at our remaining freedom and bully us into accepting new and unwanted policy. Since 9/11, the West has moved towards more surveillance of its population, less freedom of speech, and broader powers of spy agencies to pry and detain and act without warrants or just cause.

The World Is Too Dangerous For Anything But Truth

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance. - Socrates

fter Socrates completed his service in the war, he devoted himself to his love of pursuing truth, and he soon came to be regarded as one of the wisest man in Athens. In fact, the Oracle of Delphi revealed to one of his friends that he was in fact the wisest of all men. Rather than revel in this and boast, Socrates set out to try to prove the Oracle wrong. He thought that if he could find a man who knew what was most important in life, then that man would surely be wiser than himself. He questioned anyone who would speak to him about this, and discovered that they all pretended to know things he did not. After some time, Socrates thought that maybe the Oracle was actually correct in his assessment, because he alone seemed to posses the knowledge that he did not know the answers at all, and he alone was prepared to admit his ignorance. It's too bad that Socrates is not here to refresh our memories in these modern times, for this is not how our modern-day thinkers and leaders act and operate today. They are arrogant in their assumptions.

How To Conquer The Mainstream Media & Other Life-Saving Tips

ost reasonably intelligent people know that the mainstream media outlets are generally full of crap. Disinformation, manipulative advertising, Hollywood propaganda, so-called reality TV, unparalleled news bias, the list goes on and on. But it's just too easy and so much fun to point this out that I would be remiss if I didn't begin by illuminating this reality of modern life with a few juicy examples. To begin, let's take a look at one of my favourites, the fact that, according to this study by Fairleigh Dickinson University, FOX News viewers are actually less informed than people who watch no news at all.

Cryptocurrency vs. The HSBC

Ah, the world's banking institutions, where to begin? Perhaps as good a place as any to start would be this: the HSBC money laundering scandal whereby this giant multinational bank admitted to laundering billions of dollars for illegal drug cartels. Yes, that happened. Couple that with the horrible policy missteps before and after the crash of 2008 and you've got some woefully unethical business practices, committed by institutions that are were trusted by billions and that billions rely on. In fact, the corruption displayed by the world's largest financial institutions has been unparalleled, and  it reveals that there is in fact a two-tier legal system, one in which the banks are above the law. These institutions govern and impact our day-to-day lives more than anything else in our society, and yet they're just another indication that the systems in place don't remotely serve our interests, the 99 percent. It seems safe to assume that when our daily lives are so intertwined with the policy and decisions of these institutions that there should be not only some form of regulation (there is very little left after deregulation became the new way of doing business), but also accountability, and it has become clear that there is none. 

Snowden, The NSA and You: Part II

n Part I of this article, we discussed the moral and ethical issues surrounding our implicit acceptance of total population surveillance by the NSA and others. In Part II, we'll take a look at what actions and techniques we can all employ and what we need to understand to defend ourselves against this threat to our human rights.

The threat to our freedom of expressing ourselves without fear of our government labeling us a terrorist is growing larger every day. Despite the efforts of Snowden, Manning and others, the powers-that-be continue to spy on our every email, text message, phone call and internet search. Their budgets are mind-boggling (enough to eradicate poverty and injustice worldwide many, many times over) and their clandestine, back-room, illicit deals with the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook, Skype and a slew of others is akin to a novel about some dystopian future where things have gone terribly wrong. But there is good news: the power to take back the Internet and your communication with your colleagues and loved-ones freely and openly is within your reach. There are free tools (some developed by the NSA ironically) that can empower you to search the Internet freely, send email that cannot be read by someone other than the intended recipient and communicate your thoughts and ideas without fear of recourse from the government and its ever-growing militarized police force. The beauty of all of this is that it's very much a David & Goliath story, where we win against the massive forces of government surveillance and we effectively render their giant surveillance machine powerless with a few simple steps.

Snowden, The NSA and You: Part I

The means of defense against a foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. - James Madison

d Snowden states in the first few minutes of his meeting with Linda Poitras in the film CITIZENFOUR, that he prefers to go by Ed. I find it interesting that, for some peculiar reason we all still insist on referring to him as Edward in the cultural lexicon, and I sometimes wonder if this triviality might annoy him. If I were ever afforded the opportunity to pick this heroic man's brain, I would be tempted to ask him this question, but I probably wouldn't. A figure like this deserves our deepest gratitude and respect. For the purposes of this posting, however, I will refer to him simply as Mr. Snowden for this reason, but I digress. When Mr. Snowden decided, with a deliberate conscience, that he needed to expose the over-reach of authority that the NSA and it's affiliates and counterparts were exercising throughout the world, he did so because of his ideals and because he wanted to make the world a better place for all people (to make such personal sacrifice for the betterment of all, is this not in fact the very definition of heroic?). There is no question about his motivation to do what he did, in fact he's been quite frank about that, and (except for those that can only win their arguments through the manipulation of language and meaning) we can all understand this.

Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance. Media is of course where this form of tyranny is most obvious. - Albert Maysles

United We Stand

efined as the despotic abuse of authority, tyranny is everywhere in our society today, in our governments, in our media and in our consciousness. Examples are everywhere of the rampant abuses of power, of secretive agendas, the corruption of politicians and of manipulative media outlets, all commonly sharing a total disregard for any of our best interests. Instead of performing their sacred duty of defending our liberty and our humanity, they serve the elite. That the system is broken and simply cannot be saved from within needs to be the cornerstone of lasting solutions to these problems. The hour is late, and the time for change is now.