Disqus - Latest Comments for Krantzstone

Re: Movies7 | Watch The Wheel of Time (2021) Online Free on movies7.to

Krantzstone — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 01:24:15 -0000

You should cry moar on the internet about it lol. I bathe in the salty tears of fascists and reactionaries.

Re: Movies7 | Watch The Wheel of Time (2021) Online Free on movies7.to

Krantzstone — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 01:20:11 -0000

In what way are The Wheel of Time novels in any way, shape or form, 'woke'?!

If anything, it's a Marty Stu fan fic of a world where a tall, red-headed white cis-het man is the saviour of the entire world (and possibly the universe/reality itself), while engaging in polygamy with three conventionally attractive women. Where there is a clear-cut sex and gender divide that is entirely unfounded by science but without which the One Power literally does not work. Where lipstick lesbianism is glorified but gay men are seemingly not worth Jordan's time to write about, and the closest Jordan gets to writing about a trans person is literally one of the Forsaken men who accidentally ends up reincarnated into a woman's body (so not analogous at all).

The Wheel of Time 'verse is a world envisioned where there may be some cultural bigotries after The Breaking, but one that 'doesn't see skin color' to avoid dealing with the very real issues of racism, despite in many other ways cribbing from real world myths, legends, religions, cultures, ethnicities, etc.

Robert Jordan gets points for portraying diverse ethnocultural groups in WoT (albeit remixed by his hand), but more often than not are simplistic and stereotypical portrayals, which is fine enough when trying to portray the Two Rivers folk as some kind of Appalachian rural white stereotype of a 'hick', but not so much when pretty much everyone they meet along the way is very much written as some stereotype, reinforcing those stereotypes rather than disabusing them of such notions.

There's nothing 'woke' about The Wheel of Time novels: whatever 'strong' women in the books are still sadly stereotypical and suffering from the 'male gaze' in the way they are described and would fail the Bechdel Test on any given page dedicated to interactions and discussions between the women characters in the books mooning over some clueless man while Tarmon Gai'don is at hand. Male channelers are ultimately written as being stronger in the One Power and largely end up being the heroes in any given scenario, despite the Dark One's taint.

The only reason anyone would mistake Robert Jordan for a feminist is because his contemporaries (and indeed, the many white cis-het male fantasy authors who came before him) are even worse at diversity and writing multifaceted, non-stereotypical portrayals of women, BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+ people, disabled people, working class people, et al., than he was, which says more about the sad state of the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre despite truly progressive and thought-provoking anarchist authors like Ursula K. LeGuin who wrote in the genre for decades.

Anyone who thinks the modern era is 'woke madness' is just a small-minded, backwards and privileged ignoramus who willfully ignores reality in favour of some fantasy world where anti-Black racism doesn't exist, where misogynistic incel terror attacks don't exist, where white supremacists didn't try to overthrow a democratically elected government, where trans people aren't murdered at a rate of more than 1 a day, where seniors, disabled people and others most vulnerable died and continue to die en masse to COVID-19, where working class people working for less than minimum wage as _essential workers_ continue to be exposed to terrible working conditions, few or even no benefits or job security, without proper protective equipment, while the richest 1% make bank on disaster capitalism even as far right reactionary populism takes a running leap at bringing back neo-fascism, without even the benefit of Hugo Boss uniforms.

And art and entertainment have _always_ been politicized, whether it's Renaissance painters needing rich patrons just to make a living (while those same paintings now fetch tens of millions of dollars), or women being banned from stage acting lest they be shamed and treated as almost as badly as sex workers because acting on stage was considered tantamount to being a 'slattern', and thus all the early women roles in Shakespeare's time were played by boys/young men in drag. 'Guernica' by Picasso depicting the atrocities and horrors of war, inspired by the bombing of Northern Spain by the Nazis and Fascist Italy during the Spanish Civil War. 'Entarte Kunst', an art show that Hitler put on to showcase what he considered 'degenerate art', art that he banned in the Third Reich, even as the Nazis pilfered and looted expensive, valuable works of art stolen from Jewish families during the Holocaust.

Re: Movies7 | Watch The Wheel of Time (2021) Online Free on movies7.to

Krantzstone — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 20:23:04 -0000

"Just because you're gay, we won't turn you away / If you stick around, I'm sure that we can find some common ground" - Billy Bragg, 'Sexuality'

Re: Movies7 | Watch The Wheel of Time (2021) Online Free on movies7.to

Krantzstone — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 20:21:34 -0000

LOL you do know a cis-het white man wrote the books, right? You should cry about it moar tho, because nothing says 'alpha male' like crying on the internet about 'feminism' in a fantasy series written by a man roflmao. #MasculinitySoFragile

Re: The Pain of Losing Your First Language

Krantzstone — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 05:47:04 -0000

This article hit me right in the feels. I need to learn more Japanese (again).
It also makes me realize how insidious white supremacy is that it can so easily indoctrinate even first generation immigrants to lose their own language (and even teach us to reject it), but also gives me such a tremendous amount of respect to the Indigenous peoples who continue to speak their own languages and maintain their own cultural traditions, belief systems, etc. despite centuries of white supremacy literally trying to beat it out of them, yet they are still here, still surviving and even thriving. It is also why I support the struggle of the Ainu people, the Okinawan people, and indeed, Indigenous peoples around the globe who continue to struggle to maintain their languages and cultures, to celebrate their backgrounds and share them with others.

Re: Movies7 | Watch The Wheel of Time (2021) Online Free on movies7.to

Krantzstone — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 23:55:12 -0000

The Eye of the World is the first book, although there is also a prequel
story that takes places prior to the first book, but it likely won't
make sense without having read at least the first few books so I'd just
start with The Eye of the World.

Re: Movies7 | Watch The Wheel of Time (2021) Online Free on movies7.to

Krantzstone — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 23:45:34 -0000

I'm going to give you an upvote, since I don't disagree with the main thrust of your argument, but the Wheel of Time books centered on characters who were all cis-het white men (and to a certain extent, women). Whether Robert Jordan really recognized and understood his own biases in how he created and developed the stories, characters, etc. I don't know, but the fact remains that casting the main cast of WoT exactly as in the books would have left little in the way of diverse representation of the main cast, which in this day and age would fail to reach the wider and more diverse audiences of the 2021 and rightly be criticized for it.

That's not to say that Robert Jordan's world-building wasn't diverse (and indeed was very much ahead of its time for diverse ethnic and cultural representation based on real world ethnicities, nationalities, cultures, at least compared to Jordan's fellow white cisgender male fantasy writer brethren), but that diversity, however well-represented in secondary characters and plots, likely would have been entirely glossed over in film/TV series which simply doesn't have the time to include all the detailed world-building that Jordan took pains to write into the Wheel of Time books.

Realistically, even just adapting the first book into a series and including every detail from that first book, would take too long that by the time the first book was adapted and filmed to its end, the actors playing Rand et al would be middle aged: it's just not feasible.

The only alternative was to change the casting of the main cast somewhat to have a more diverse main cast to make up for all the diverse world-building that will inevitably end up being left out due to time and budget constraints (although budget is less of an excuse in Amazon's case since Bezos supposedly gave them a blank cheque to adapt the series).

I agree that it would be better to have BIPOC writers, producers, showrunners, etc. be given the kind of representation and opportunity both in front of and behind the camera and in the writers' room, to create all-new original IP (and I very much support and want that), than token representation. But that would ensure that the Wheel of Time would never get made at all (and some critics here would seem to prefer that).

It would actually have been interesting to tell more diverse stories and diverse representation within the greater Wheel of Time 'verse that Jordan created, which would allow for straying from the books plot-wise without altering canon, and would have allowed for diversity in casting and telling new stories within the Wheel of Time 'verse without upsetting diehard fans of the books. Or even setting the series in the Age of Legends set _before_ the first book, because to be honest, the few hints and flashbacks about the Age of Legends revealed in the books imagines a world that is far more interesting than the world that exists after The Breaking, but frustratingly Jordan only gives us glimpses of that time, and that would have been the perfect gap to be filled by a modern show while also fulfilling the need for true diversity of representation and filling in the tantalizing blanks that Jordan left.

The Age of Legends also has more court intrigue and other facets of political machinations akin to shows like Game of Thrones, as well as the fascinating and wondrous cities and nations built using a combination of the One Power and technology based on it (technomancy?), unlike the rather dark, dreary and decided feudalistic world set after The Breaking. Also it would probably cost less to make because there would not be the necessity for having to deal with stables of horses and training actors to ride horses, etc. since the Age of Legends featured vehicles that ran on the One Power. Diversity of casting would be a given because prior to The Breaking, Aes Sedai had access to not just all kinds of technomagical modes of travel like vehicles (including flying ones), but also knowledge of One Power weaves that allowed instantaneous travel which was lost, meaning that people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds wouldn't have been limited to their geographic areas but be able to freely mingle and socialize with people from all ethnic backgrounds as they liked, rather than having to spend months travelling by boat or on horseback or risking travel via Waygates.

Re: How Free Should We Be To Speak Our Minds?

Krantzstone — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 15:46:54 -0000

The thing is, all those issues you mentioned are things that have been going on for decades, and that activists have been speaking about, protesting about, getting assaulted and arrested just to try and bring awareness to these issues. I would argue that if institutions of power (including media) had made the effort to put a spotlight on those issues much sooner, we wouldn't be here in 2021 having to deal with all these crises converging simultaneously.
And to be sure, all of these issues are linked, and it is a direct result of Canadians refusing to face up to not only the collective sins of the nation in the past, but present day injustices that continue to be ignored. It's not enough to make excuses for why Canadians have steadfastly refused to acknowledge these issues now in the time of COVID when it's been an ongoing problem since before Confederation, and it's still going on now. Canadians were willing to stay willfully ignorant even in the face of ongoing climate change protests, whether it's Abitibi-Témiscamingue and Clayoquot then, or Wet'suwet'en now.

And the onus should not be on the most marginalized people in society to have to do all the work in getting Canadians to pay attention to these current affairs issues: there has been plenty of coverage of all these issues even by corporate news media, that there are zero excuses for people to not know about them. All the major Canadian news sites, even conservative and right-leaning corporate sites, have reported on them.

Capitalism does keep the average worker grinding away at work with long hours and low pay in order to ensure that we are too accustomed to the status quo, too inured to a corrupt political system, too numb to care, and too tired to do anything about it even if we did care. But that doesn't excuse those with more privilege to make a modicum of effort to stay informed and to at least _say something_ publicly, whether it's online or to family, friends, neighbours, coworkers, and to take a firm position on these issues. One doesn't have to be a full time social justice warrior to make some meaningful difference in changing Canadian society for the better.

I just expect better from a station like TV Ontario, and a program like The Agenda, because these issues are important to Ontario residents, to Canadians, to the world at large, and it's disappointing to find such lack of representation of views on such an important topic like free expression, particularly in this day and age of 'fake news' and other propaganda disinformation campaigns, to have a panel 'discussion' that is bereft of the lived experiences and informed opinions of those most affected by free speech issues in Canada, in favour of panelists who have the privilege to be able to care more about some far right Islamophobe like Ann Coulter not getting to spread her Islamophobic hate at a paid gig at a Canadian university, than about the victims of such hate speech.

And again, this is not a new issue: when I was at Queen's in the early '90s, there was a student-organized protest bus to Montreal, to protest against Jean-Marie Le Pen (then-head of French fascist party the National Front (till 2011); father of current leader Marine Le Pen), who had been invited to speak. We were successful in deplatforming him at the time, but I never thought that decades later, I'd still be here having to protest against the same hateful kinds of people showing up in Canada to grift on spreading hate, but particularly the kinds of hate speech that emboldens violent fascists to commit violent and murderous acts of hate on Canadian soil, against Canadian citizens and residents. Fascists will ultimately always abuse liberal concepts of 'free speech' as an easy path to propagandizing a wider audience to fascist ideals, which is why fascists should never be given platforms, much less the legitimacy of an invitation to speak at a place of higher learning.

It's not an issue of students being 'precious snowflakes' who are too delicate to handle opposing views: it's that on certain issues, like say genocide, there is no opposing view that can be said to be legitimate, because that is to validate and legitimize committing genocide. There is no 'both sides' to the Holocaust. There are no 'good things' about chattel slavery, or the abuse and murder of Indigenous children. To even entertain such ideas is appalling, but to give them a massive audience and speaking fees, is unconscionable.

TV Ontario has a duty to make it clear that the spreading of hate speech, of fascist speech, of any form of bigotry against marginalized people, is absolutely the line which must not be crossed, because anything less is to engage in false balance, and to threaten the very freedoms that liberal democracy claims to uphold, by failing to understand Karl Popper's dire warnings about the Paradox of Tolerance: that if we are not prepared to defend, by any means necessary, against fascist speech, against hate speech, we will be doomed to repeat history where willfully ignorant people will once again become propagandized to the violent and genocidal ideals of fascism.

Re: How Free Should We Be To Speak Our Minds?

Krantzstone — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 14:53:51 -0000

That's good to know. I do know there is an issue on Disqus where trolls use fake accounts to mass report posts they don't like, causing those posts to be removed/hidden/deleted and marked as spam. Ironically, there's a Disqus discussion about this very issue on Disqus where people in the thread are having issues with this exact problem, some in that very thread (both that of trolls mass reporting and people whose posts mysteriously get marked as spam and are unable to post anything new without getting marked as spam.)

https://disqus.com/home/dis...

Re: Hack of Oath Keepers Militia Group Includes Names of Active NYPD Officers, De Blasio Launches Investigation

Krantzstone — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 20:42:43 -0000

Everything you posted in the thread is unproven.

Re: How Free Should We Be To Speak Our Minds?

Krantzstone — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 20:26:06 -0000

The irony of _someone_ reporting my non-spam reply on the topic of free speech in Canada as "This comment was marked as spam" just gives more credence to my assertion that leftist speech is far more likely to get censored, even online, than hate speech. Meanwhile, I could go on any social media site, including Disqus, and immediately find racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, ageist, classist comments that go uncensored and unmoderated despite repeated reporting attempts by multiple people.

Re: How Free Should We Be To Speak Our Minds?

Krantzstone — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 20:14:34 -0000

My issue was with the panelists on The Agenda acting like deplatforming hate speech is tantamount to an attack on free expression in Canada, which is hardly the case: freedom of speech isn't freedom of consequence of said speech. Whether it's Jordan B. Peterson (UofT) and his followers trying to platform transphobia in universities and colleges (the same Jordan Peterson who takes photos with and donations from known white supremacists and members of the domestic terrorist group The Proud Boys), or the late and unlamented J. Philippe Rushton attempting to bring back into vogue the thoroughly debunked (and racist) 'race science' at UWO in the '90s, the willfully ignorant opinions of racist, bigoted white men have never been silenced in Canada but instead, more often than not, lauded and rewarded. In that context, 'free speech' panelists to claim that student activists attempting to deplatform such hate speech is an erosion of freedom of speech and expression in Canada is simply untrue.

The fact is that hate speech adversely impacts the people at whom such speech is directed, not at privileged white people sitting pretty in their hallowed halls of academia where TV Ontario's The Agenda is a bully pulpit from which they pontificate on high about issues that do not impact them whatsoever. It's very easy for privileged white people to dismiss antifascist deplatforming of hateful people (eg. Nazis) as being some sort of attack on free expression in Canada, without considering that the very presence of Nazis and other domestic terrorists in Canada represent a clear and present danger to any and all marginalized and racialized people, whether Indigenous peoples, Canadian citizen, immigrant, or refugee. The fact that Nazis are even allowed to express their hate openly is not only an affront to the human rights and human dignity of the people targeted by such hate, but also has a chilling effect on the free expression rights of those of us who risk life and limb daily to protest racists, misogynists,homophobes, transphobes, ableists, classists, etc.

Police spend more time, energy and effort chumming around with (their fellow) neo-Nazis, giving Nazis safe spaces to proselytize their hate propaganda, protected by armed enforcers of the state who go out of their way to assault and batter those of us who oppose neo-Nazism. Despite the existence of hate speech laws (laws which were drastically weakened under Stephen Harper (who, during his early days at the Northern Foundation, used members of the neo-Nazi Heritage Front as security goons)), white supremacy and other forms of hate speech are de facto protected by armed agents of the state, even as the full force of the state is brought to bear on Indigenous Water and Land Protectors, on environmentalists, on peace activists, on antifascists. The fact that it took an attempted insurrection in the USA by white supremacists and other fascist ilk to get the Canadian government to put fascist groups like the Proud Boys on the terrorist list, despite the fact that neo-Nazism has a long history in Canada, shows how little the Canadian government (and by extension, Canadians in general) cared about far right white supremacist groups despite the fact that they have been attacking and even murdering people in Canada for decades.

Meanwhile, antifascists have been consistently silenced and even attacked by the RCMP, surveilled by CSIS, even at peaceful antifascist rallies, despite the fact that peaceful public assembly and protest are entrenched rights under the Charter. _That_ is free expression under attack in Canada, not whether some bigoted professor or hatemonger like Ann Coulter being paid to give a talk at a higher learning institution gets shouted down by students who are, themselves exercising their Charter right to free expression and are rightly upset that the student fees they have no choice but to pay to attend said institution, is going towards making racists and Islamophobes richer while giving hate speech a platform to spread even farther and wider, granted the veneer of legitimacy by what is supposed to be an institution of learning.

The Agenda was sorely remiss in only inviting privileged people to speak to issues of free speech in Canada, rather than a more diverse panel of people, but particularly people on the front lines of human and civil rights: Indigenous activists, antifascists, disability advocates, anti-poverty activists, 2SLGBTQIA+ activists. People for whom 'free speech' is not just some academic discussion, not some theoretical or hypothetical point of philosophy, but rather something that affects every aspect of our daily lives. Hate speech being given an air of legitimacy by panelists who confuse 'free speech' with giving cover and platforms for fascists to spread hate propaganda, isn't just an issue of law, or philosophy, or politics for those of us who spent decades fighting racist groups in Canada, and even in 2021, still face the daily existential threat of some white supremacist, some homophobe, some transphobe, some ableist, some misogynist, suddenly turning their hateful rhetoric into violent, murderous sprees, as so tragically and so recently been perpetrated in London, Ontario, in Quebec, and indeed, across Canada.

Re: Movies7 | Watch The Wheel of Time (2021) Online Free on movies7.to

Krantzstone — Sun, 19 Dec 2021 21:29:37 -0000

Wheel of Time was always diverse, albeit sometimes a little stereotypical in terms of the way certain ethnic backgrounds and sexualities were presented. Similarly, Robert Jordan wrote strong women characters into the Wheel of Time series, but sometimes in ways almost cartoonishly stereotypical ideas of what many men imagine women are like, and women were described in terms best described as 'heterosexual male gaze'.
The Amazon series portrays everyone as a bit more three dimensionally, at least as much as the format allows while maintaining the pace of the show.
There are problematic elements to the books, but generally not for a lack of trying on Robert Jordan's part in trying to build a complex world that portrayed far more than some limited, hackneyed rehashing of European tales (although there's plenty of representation of Anglo-European cultures, myths and legends represented in WoT as well).
Diversity and strong, positive representation of women are the core strengths of the books, and the series.

Re: Movies7 | Watch The Wheel of Time (2021) Online Free on movies7.to

Krantzstone — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 13:40:10 -0000

Just think of the show as another turn of the Wheel, not the same one as the ones portrayed in the books.

When you think about it, Jordan was alluding to the idea of a multiverse, and indeed touches upon it in other areas of his world/'verse-building: alien-like beings, alternate dimensions, a dream world that actually exists, a more advanced civilization existing prior to the present one (Age of Legends). People want to categorize this series as being primarily one of magic and myth, but Jordan was careful to ground everything he wrote in terms of creating a believable universe, where he took actual myth and history, remixing them in various combinations (albeit somewhat stereotypical in some cases) and imagining this alternate Earth where technology and magic merged, and Good and Evil were personified just as they are in many myths, legends, religions.

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass,
leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth
is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”

It's a different Turn, but it's the same 'verse.

Re: How Free Should We Be To Speak Our Minds?

Krantzstone — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 23:53:45 -0000

Oh noes, it's the Woke Police!!!

Oh wait, no it's just regular cops being violently racist as usual:

Elderly Montreal man says he was assaulted by police after asking officer to wear mask (msn.com)

Re: How Free Should We Be To Speak Our Minds?

Krantzstone — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 23:30:21 -0000

Or indeed, the very real fear of Muslim women teachers in Quebec of getting fired for exercising the fundamental right to freely choose what she chooses to wear based on her religious convictions, due to racist legislation like Bill 21, a 'secularism' bill enacted on the pretext of egalitarian ideals, yet clearly disproportionately and adversely affects religious and cultural minority women while not affecting the people who wrote and passed the bill, namely white men:

https://globalnews.ca/video...

How exactly a piece of cloth on a teacher's head is preventing her from being a wonderful elementary teacher, those who enacted and defend said racist and Islamophobic bill cannot say, but the end result is a beloved elementary school teacher losing her job simply for living in accordance with her religious convictions and cultural background.

In the very same province where not long ago, a Trump-supporting Islamophobic domestic terrorist murdered Mamadou Tanou Barry, Azzedine Soufiane, Abdelkrim
Hassane, Ibrahima Barry, Aboubaker Thabti and Khaled Belkacemi, and injured 5 others, yet somehow his sentence was reduced from 40 years to 25:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/can...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Re: How Free Should We Be To Speak Our Minds?

Krantzstone — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 21:51:46 -0000

A discussion about 'free speech' in Canada with 3 out of 4 panelists being white is a racial bias that fails to represent the opinions of people most harmed by hate speech promulgated in the guise of 'free speech'. As far as I know, there were no trans people represented in the discussion despite the fact that trans people are on the front lines of exactly where hate speech is being spread disingenuously on the pretext of 'free speech'. A lack of disabled people represented in the discussion despite a recent Quebec court decision that hateful, ableist expression in the guise of 'comedy' was protected speech.

Steve Paikin betrays his biases by repeatedly referring to university and college students as 'tender', 'sensitive' (a la 'snowflakes' to put it in Alt Reich terms). It's one thing to point out how the far right weaponizes sensitivity to social justice issues as some sort of weakness rather than a core strength of those on the left of the political spectrum, but another to keep using such Alt Reich terms to describe those who fundamentally understand that in a free society, reasonable restrictions can and must be placed on hate speech which assaults not only those within society most marginalized and oppressed on every conceivable social, political, economic level, but literally threatens their lives.

A 'free society' is not truly free so long as the most oppressed members of said society continue to be oppressed, and hate speech confirms, compounds, promulgates, entrenches, and reinforces the very biases of humans and contributes to the systemic oppressions that kill marginalized and oppressed people.
Paikin of all people should know that we do not live in a free society where he took a beating from fellow Canadians who were impromptu deputized to commit the worst mass civil rights violations in recent Canadian history (the Toronto G20): when even news press are assaulted by cops, military, unlicensed rent-a-cops, and a cis-het white man can be beaten for no other reason than being mistaken for a 'rioter', yet can still go on camera and blithely discuss whether freedom of expression in Canada is under attack is a massive joke.

The reality is that we live in a country where Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, their daughter Yumna Afzaal, 15, and Salman Afzaal's mother, Talat Afzaal, 74, were murdered by a neo-Nazi via vehicular homicide, leaving Fayez, 9, an orphan (no doubt inspired by neo-Nazi vehicular homicide of Industrial Workers of the World comrade Heather Heyer in Charlottesville's fascist rally in 2017).

We live in a country where we must commemorate every year the mass murders of Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student, Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student, Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student, Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student, Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student, Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student, Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique's finance department, Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student, Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student, Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student, Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student, Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student, Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student by a violent, murderous misogynist who couldn't handle women getting an education (the exact same reasoning Malala Yousafzai took a bullet to the head for).

Where Julie Berman, 51, a prominent trans woman in Toronto who fought for trans safety and trans rights, was brutally murdered in 2019.
We live in a society where ableism and ageism before and during a pandemic has resulted in countless disabled people and seniors in long-term care homes dying of COVID19, neglect and abuse despite hidden camera footage and families of the victims repeatedly attempting to save their own family members from abuse and neglect from the very people given the task to care for the most vulnerable people in our society.

We live in a society where Black people are beaten, abused, incarcerated on trumped up charges, and even murdered by law enforcement and fellow Canadians with few consequences for the perpetrators, where young innocent Indigenous kids like Colten Boushie can be murdered by a white man with zero legal consequences from an all-white jury.
Where mentally ill Canadians are murdered by cops and the SIU finds nothing wrong.

That is the ever-present context of 'free expression' in Canada where predominantly white cisgender abled people get television air time to bandy about intellectual 'discourse' about defending the Constitutionally-protected 'free speech' rights of white people, while the most marginalized, the most oppressed people in our society wake up every day, wondering if today is the day that some privileged, entitled, spoiled, self-centered violent and murderous Canadian decides that they're going to take out all their petty frustrations and disappointments about their lot in life on Asian Canadians, on Sikh Canadians, on Jewish Canadians, on Syrian refugees, on Afghan refugees, on immigrants, on disabled people, on trans people, on senior people, on children, on Indigenous peoples, on women.

Leftists, socialists, social justice advocates, communists, anarchists: we know all too well the limits of 'free expression' in Canada, where truly leftist news media press are small (the Toronto Star isn't even 'left-leaning' considering they chose to fire journalist Desmond Cole for rightly protesting the racist policing of the Toronto Police Service), have little in the way of funding, and few outlets of expression, yet are disproportionately targeted for censorship, even on supposed 'free speech' platforms on the internet and corporate social media in particular. While this is neither new nor hardly surprising, the fact that this is not even given mention in a TV Ontario discussion about 'free speech' in Canada, while panelists speak to 'deplatforming' without including the philosophical roots of antifascist no-platforming of fascist speech and expression, is a huge disservice to TV Ontario viewers who may be wholly ignorant of the work of Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance (the very basis for Anti-Racist Action's motto 'No Tolerance for Intolerance'). Considering The Agenda has interviewed Mark Bray (author of 'Antifa: the Antifascist Handbook') in the past, it is a particularly obvious omission.

All speech has consequences, which is the very reason why freedom of speech and free expression are considered so sacrosanct by (neo)liberal democracies in the first place. But to gloss over the systemic biases in society that have throughout history tilted society in favour of white, cis-het abled men, and against racialized people, marginalized people, against women, trans people, 2SLGBTQIA people, disabled people, unhoused people, children, refugees and immigrants, and other members of the working class, gives the false impression that fascists like Ann Coulter getting deplatformed is a bad thing, or that transphobes like Jordan Peterson should continue to be allowed to spread racist, anti-Indigenous, transphobic opinions from the safety of tenured in the hallowed halls of UofT.

It makes a mockery of the very idea of 'free expression' by elevating the free speech rights of those unaffected by hate speech, while mischaracterizing and condemning those who protest against hate speech as being anti-free speech, even though the right to protest is also a fundamental right of free expression which has been the only means left for leftists to protest the horrific social injustices meted out daily by a society that wears orange t-shirts and pays lip service to Truth and Reconciliation, while continuing to brutalize and incarcerate Indigenous Land and Water Defenders who wake up every day to fight to save a country, a planet that is being killed by the kinds of moneyed powers with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of white supremacist neoliberal capitalism which infests Canada, all the while pretending on the world stage like our country of Japanese-Canadian internment, of the anti-Chinese head tax, of the obliteration of Africville, of the thousands upon thousands of murdered Indigenous children and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, of our complicity in human rights atrocities both here and abroad that continue to this day, is some wonderful bastion of 'free speech' and human rights.

That's the kind of day it's been this December 9th, 2021 in so-called 'Canada'.

"Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
- Sir Karl Raimund Popper CH FRS FBA,
The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945

Re: Hack of Oath Keepers Militia Group Includes Names of Active NYPD Officers, De Blasio Launches Investigation

Krantzstone — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:52:23 -0000

You can just crosscheck references with the ADL or any of the numerous other antifascist groups that track white supremacist domestic terrorism.
Even the FBI have been tracking this since at least 2017.
But the Southern Poverty Law Center has been an invaluable resource for tracking modern hate movements in the USA for decades, and certainly was one of my go-to resources back in the early '90s as part of SHARP/Anti-Racist Action.

Re: Hack of Oath Keepers Militia Group Includes Names of Active NYPD Officers, De Blasio Launches Investigation

Krantzstone — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:49:22 -0000

True: they might be in the Three Percenters, or Patriot Prayer, or AtomWaffen, or any number of other far right paramilitary and neo-Nazi anti-government militias that are at least as bad, if not worse, than the Oath Keepers.

Or they could just be lone wolves.

Re: Hack of Oath Keepers Militia Group Includes Names of Active NYPD Officers, De Blasio Launches Investigation

Krantzstone — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:45:56 -0000

Strange how you cast aspersions on the Southern Poverty Law Center but you don't say why, nor do you post any proof.

Re: Hack of Oath Keepers Militia Group Includes Names of Active NYPD Officers, De Blasio Launches Investigation

Krantzstone — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:10:04 -0000

As an Anarchist-Gothamist, I feel _left_ out.

Re: Hack of Oath Keepers Militia Group Includes Names of Active NYPD Officers, De Blasio Launches Investigation

Krantzstone — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:07:30 -0000

Racist insurrectionists in uniform should be in prison. I'll bet they already have friends in there... and enemies in genpop.

Re: Raping Holograms in Star Trek Voyager

Krantzstone — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 05:40:09 -0000

Agreed: Janeway literally 'delete[d] the wife', so she clearly doesn't care. I think her views on holographic people changes over time as she starts to accept The Doctor as a person, rather than a program, but I'm not sure she ever totally gets over her prejudices in that regard, especially if she's able to compartmentalize her attitude towards The Doctor versus other EMHs/holographic persons.

Like the case of Terri Schiavo and so many people not seeing her as a person with rights, even without taking into account whether someone is 'sentient' or cognizant of what is happening to them (or might be but unable to express it), doesn't mean society should withdraw rights of personhood from that person, whether it's their right to die with dignity or to prolong their life by any means possible, what that person actually wants/wanted should matter, not the opinions of others (least of all politicians with an agenda).

And Riker shouldn't have turned Data off in 'Measure of a Man' just to make a legal point: he could have at least arranged it with Data first and asked his permission (which I do not think happened).

Re: Did Bill Nye err when discussing Monsanto, GMOs in new Netflix series?

Krantzstone — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 05:03:43 -0000

I wonder how many of the pro-Monsanto crowd in the comments section are cashing cheques written by Monsanto? Who am I kidding, I'm sure they used bearer bonds, or perhaps just a nice bank account in one of any number of offshore tax dodges. Well, it's probably all untraceable cryptocurrency these days for the tech-savvy set. Because that's an awful lot of shilling for corporate greed that murders people. Well, at least one person admits to actually having worked for them, how refreshingly honest of them. They were literally cashing cheques written by Monsanto, which I wouldn't want to be anyone who had to admit that in public today, what with all the concerted criminal effort of Monsanto to convince people that Roundup is harmless, when it clearly is dangerous to human health and the environment.

Re: Max Landis Makes His Comeback With New Feminist Film

Krantzstone — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 23:38:08 -0000

Because he's pretending to be a male feminist to use as a shield against very serious multiple r*pe and sexual assault allegations?

https://variety.com/2019/fi...