First: There is an election fiasco happening in Canada called "robo-calls". Apparently people received calls the day of the election misdirecting them to the wrong polling stations. My local MP has been standing up for the PM in the house calling it a "smear campaign" again and again. I would have thought if they were innocent, they would have been outraged and promised to get to the bottom of it...
Second: The provincial government is taking aim at teachers and threatening to circumvent our collect bargaining rights.
Third: A local company is using tritium (radioactive hydrogen) to make glow-in-the-dark signs and the result is higher than normal tritium levels in local water, soil and APPLES! That news circuitously led me to attend a local OCCUPY general assembly. I have to say it was one of the nicest meetings I have been to in ages. They have managed to avoid the normal raised voices, interruptions, long-windedness and digressions through a set of simple hand signals. The result was a warm and welcoming group of "autonomous individuals" who although coming from diverse backgrounds and desires managed to make quite a few decisions with calm good humour. I'd like to introduce this to our local school board! Consensus making. What a concept!
Fourth: Anyway, feeling somewhat overwhelmed about the possiblity of actually doing anything, and noting the timing of Putin's election troubles and our own skirmish here in Canada, I decided to write to a program called "As It Happens" on our national radio service, CBC. This is the letter I sent.
Vladimir Putin wins?
Dean DelMastro sputters...
Dear Mr. Putin,
I am so sorry to hear about your election troubles. I only wish you had contacted us in Canada last week. We have experience in insuring the results you want without the potential mess of recounts, protests, or external election observers.
Our approach can take you right to the seat of government without the hassle of winning fair and square. The approach focusses on the high-tech "robo-call". It's simple to use and virtually impossible to trace. You hire a company from outside the country to make calls that will confuse and befuddle voters likely to oppose you, so they don't even get to the polls and so don't get to vote. Why mess around having your supporters stuffing ballot boxes and voting more than once when you can stop opposition voters from voting at all?
If you need help to get started, you can borrow my MP, Dean DelMastro. We don't know yet if he's good at the robo-call tactic but we do know that he has memorized the "smear campaign mantra" required if anything happens to surface down the road.
Heck, you can HAVE him.
Yours truly, etc.
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