Feb 18

Terry MilewskiTerry Milewski

Politics

Online surveillance bill opens door for Big Brother - Politics - CBC News.

"Essentially, [this law] says that government agents may enter an ISP when they wish, without a warrant, and demand to see absolutely everything — including all data anywhere on the network — and to copy it all. If that seems hard to believe, let's walk through it."

Feb 15

Fast-moving news today about the new internet surveillance law, bill C-30.

Vic Toews, Canadian Public Safety Minister, has pulled the GW Bush card in the war against privacy: "You either stand with us, or you stand with the child pornographers."

He denies saying this, but here's the video:

In response, the anonymous Twitter user Vikileaks30 has launched a campaign of revealing private details of Toews' own divorce case.

I won't repeat any of those tweets here, since I can't vouch for their truth.

Today, House of Commons staff handed out the "wrong" version of the new law allowing warrantless surveillance of internet traffic.  The error revealed the guts of Conservative communications strategy: accuse defenders of privacy of supporting child predators.

"The short title is listed as "Lawful Access Act." An hour later, House of Commons staff withdraw it and replace it with the identical bill, save a new short title. It's now the "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.""

It's a strategy that backfired on then-opposition-leader, now Prime Minister, Harper when he accused PM Paul Martin of defending child molesters in the 2004 election.  Now that Harper has a majority government, it might be more useful for battering down the scattered opposition.

Open Media.ca has a petition against the new law, bill C-30. The law grants unprecedented powers to police, and forces ISP's to pay for surveillance technology.

Feb 15

Stop Online Spying | OpenMedia.caStop Online Spying | OpenMedia.ca.

Please circulate and sign this petition.

The government is about to push through a set of electronic surveillance laws that will invade your privacy and cost you money. The plan is to force every phone and Internet provider to allow "authorities" to collect the private information of any Canadian, at any time, without a warrant.

This bizarre legislation will create Internet surveillance that is:

  • Warrantless: A range of "authorities" will have the ability to access the private information of law-abiding Canadians and our families using wired Internet and mobile devices, without justification.
  • Invasive: The laws leave our personal and financial information less secure and more susceptible to cybercrime.
  • Costly: Internet services providers may be forced to install millions of dollars worth of spying technology and the cost will be passed down to YOU.
Feb 7

"...While talent is an undeniable part of the mix, nurturing has a lot to do with the result. And the Quebec film industry’s success is due in no small part to Radio-Canada’s role as an incubator."

Hébert is one of Canada's most astute political writers.  Today she does a really good analysis of how arts funding, including public broadcast funding, lead indirectly to impact around the world and commercial box-office success. Read the rest of this entry »

Jan 29

So without much more than a crashed Macbook to slow us down, Something Collective's first presentation of "Signal Out" went off great.   Liz Solo and the Black Bag Media Collective presented Flick Harrison's films in St John's, Newfoundland while we showed Liz's music-video and machinima work here at our studio at Moberly Cultural Centre.

After the screenings, we did live Skype chats so the audience could Q & A.  I spoke a lot about Final Cut Pro vs Adobe software and the future of independent video editing. Liz, for her part, talked about Second Life and the combination of joy and horror she feels in that phantasmagoric shopping mall.

Liz got to bed VERY late - the time difference is 4.5 hours - and a good time was had by all, at both ends of this giant country.

 

Jan 28

“We are talking about a throwaway population that adults think are too far gone,” Sohn says later. “We’re talking about kids that people have given up on over and over and over again. They don’t feel like anyone is there for them. They may have parents who love them, but they’ve been falling back on themselves for so long that if you come in front of their faces talking, and not backing it up with action, you just become another one of the people who have disappointed them.”

After ‘The Wire’ ended, actress Sonja Sohn couldn’t leave Baltimore’s troubled streets behind - The Washington Post.

Jan 14

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult | Truthout.

"It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant."

Dec 2

Seems like Exclaim liked our video too!!

Rodney DeCroo - "War Torn Man" (video) • Click Hear • exclaim.ca.

Nov 30

This is my new music video for Rodney Decroo!

A good review in the Georgia Straight:

"Let’s hope this collaboration between acclaimed (but not acclaimed enough) singer-songwriter Rodney DeCroo and filmmaker Flick Harrison isn’t the last. "

When I first heard this song, I thought it was a fictional story about Iraq. But it's actually the true story of Rodney's dad after the Vietnam war.

I used the Collateral Murder video as my model for this, and I suppose I was thinking of the video for Brothers In Arms by the Dire Straits as well.

 

    War Torn Man - YouTube.

 

Jul 2

Final Cut Pro X means Apple has abandoned professional artists

by Flick Harrison

Guy Debord said that the main function of our society is now the production of spectacle. The spectacle alienates us from life and each other. Facebook, for instance, transforms our relationships into images of those relationships, mediated by Facebook's own hidden desires.

Fifteen years of engagement with the Final-Cut-Pro-using professional class is, at best, a good self-funding, street-cred foundation for the new consumer version of FCP, called FCP-X.  It could be compared to the free itunes app of yesteryear which slowly led us to the Itunes Store and thence to the app store, iphone and ipad.

Read the rest of this entry »

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