Angry in the Great White North

This is one my meandering posts.  I just start somewhere and explore.  You can come for the ride if you like.

The original Scandalpedia is gone.  I suppose it never really made a splash.  Like most of these websites created by political parties, the bulk of the visitors are party partisans, which does little to increase vote count.

The question of what server now serves up scandalpedia.ca is a bit more confusing.  The IP address for this domain is now 199.85.4.61, but a reverse IP lookup of liberal.ca (66.46.213.211) shows that the main Liberal Party server still lists scandalpedia.ca as a domain it serves up.  I think that is a mistake on the Liberal Party server -- it seems clear that scandalpedia.ca has moved on to a new server.

So who grabbed scandalpedia.ca?  Derek Seabrooke is computer programmer with a Bachelor's Degree in Applied Computer Science from Ryerson.  Apparently, he's also a budding cosmologist!

He also plans to soon publish a paper on cosmology that proposes a new theory that explains the known universe's imbalance of matter and anti-matter, dark matter and other mysteries.

This dude rocks!  A new theory on the imbalance of matter and anti-matter?  James Cronin and Val Fitch won the Nobel Prize in 1980 for their discovery of the CP violation.  I guess the Nobel committee ought to take note of this new theory of baryogenesis (and solutions to other mysteries too!)

OK, Derek is a sounds like a pretty intense guy.  As a Liberal supporter, he has made it mission to buy up the domains once owned by Conservative politicians and redirect them to RegressiveConservative.ca, a site that alleges that the Conservative Party is a faith-based party, and pushes strategic voting as a means of defeating the Conservatives.  Of course, all this was from the last election, and it didn't work out.

[I should point out that Derek has altered some of the redirects.  For example, the website for former Conservative candidate Rondo Thomas once went to RegressiveConservative.ca, but now redirects to a classic landing page for an advertising links site, served up by GoDaddy.  Clearly Derek is going for cash instead of political points -- but more on that later.]

Derek figures he's safe using other peoples' names:

Actually I am the kid that bought the names. I *have* recieved [sic] cease and desist letters but I just ignore them and nothing happens. I know the law. You can only make a successful claim on a domain name based on the *registered* trademark and most political campaigns use the candidates given name. Given names are not trademarkable. Anyone could have the name and they are therefore not protected in law beyond their registration. There is no legal basis for suing for libel, nusaince [sic] or anything else. As public figures, they cannot sue for slander either. In fact I dare someone to sue so that I can sit back and enjoy a large settlement from the countersuit. Just thought I'd give an update to the curious.

Indeed, Derek wanted to get on the board of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority for the sole purpose of making it difficult for people to protect the use of their names on the Internet.

And before leaving this site, I have to say that the design of the page is circa 1985.  This is the quality of work you get from a graduate of Ryerson?  I'm not impressed.  Dude, no one lays out a webpage using tables anymore.  Really.  It's embarrassing.

Anyhoo, Derek's anti-religious views are rather broad:

If you want to be conned then join a religion. I have met many pastors and priests and if you want a con artist they are the ones you should be looking for.

His views extend to Jews as well.  Derek was very upset that Liberal Party candidate Lesley Hughes was turfed as a candidate, insisting that she was unfairly labelled as an anti-Semite for promoting the theory that the Jews knew about 9/11 and escaped the attack in the World Trade Center:

Many official sources are claiming to have warned the American intelligence community, which spends $30 billion a year gathering information, about the attacks on the twin towers on that heartbreaking day.

German Intelligence (BND) claims to have warned the U.S. last June, the Israeli Mossad and Russian Intelligence in August. Israeli businesses, which had offices in the Towers, vacated the premises a week before the attacks, breaking their lease to do it. About 3000 Americans working there were not so lucky.

See, those last two sentences are written from the point of view that she actually believes this to be true.  Still, Derek thinks she should not have been removed as a candidate:

Thank you for writing an article on conflating antisemitism. It unfortunately starting to look bad for Hughes in the sense that she did legitimately exaggerate the exodus (pun intended) from the WTC prior to the attack. This means she's not going to get much sympathy from many people as a whole despite the 73 percent that believe Dion was over-zealous (pun intended) in firing her ass!

I'm not sure where he got the number of 73% but frankly, I don't care.  His posting is on the blog run by Paul S Graham, a 9/11 Truther.

Derek's own view Jews and 9/11 is unclear, but in this post, he makes it quite clear about his view of religion in another context -- Jewish circumcision:

I am one of a small but growing number of Canadian that questions the ethic of neonatal male circumcision, a procedure currently not recommended by the Canadian Paediatric Association and others. I believe that it is a human rights abuse and cannot be justified as a religious practice.

Furthermore, I am one of the few people that have questioned how the religious importance of circumcision in Western culture via Judaism, Islam and Christianity has influenced its history of medicalization and general cultural acceptability!

The Canadian Paediatric Society doesn't recommend circumcision, but it doesn't consider it abusive either:

• There is evidence that circumcision results in an approximately 12-fold reduction in the incidence of UTI during infancy. The overall incidence of UTI in male infants appears to be 1% to 2%.
• The incidence rate of the complications of circumcision reported in published articles varies, but it is generally in the order of 0.2% to 2%. Most complications are minor, but occasionally serious complications occur. There is a need for good epidemiological data on the incidence of the surgical complications of circumcision, of the later complications of circumcision and of problems associated with lack of circumcision.
• Evaluation of alternative methods of preventing UTI in infancy is required.
• More information on the effect of simple hygienic interventions is needed.
• Information is required on the incidence of circumcision that is truly needed in later childhood.
• There is evidence that circumcision results in a reduction in the incidence of penile cancer and of HIV transmission. However, there is inadequate information to recommend circumcision as a public health measure to prevent these diseases.
• When circumcision is performed, appropriate attention needs to be paid to pain relief.
• The overall evidence of the benefits and harms of circumcision is so evenly balanced that it does not support recommending circumcision as a routine procedure for newborns. There is therefore no indication that the position taken by the CPS in 1982 should be changed.
• When parents are making a decision about circumcision, they should be advised of the present state of medical knowledge about its benefits and harms. Their decision may ultimately be based on personal, religious or cultural factors.

Bottom line -- no reason, medically speaking, to recommend it, or recommend against it.

Hey, Derek has his opinion.  He seems to have it in for any sort of traditional religious expression, as shown in his really crappy website.  That's fine.  But what is creepy is that he's offered up his opinion to proud parents.  Here, mom is Jewish, so mom and dad had their son (their seventh child) circumcised:

Last Tuesday night just around midnight my wife and I made our way to Saint Anthony Hospital, on Chicago's west side, where Sylvia delivered a very healthy, good looking and awesome baby boy-our biggest one yet-baby Jonatan Israel Amador. Our 2009 model. With zero miles.

Mazel tov!  Everyone who posted on the blog expressed their happiness at the joyous news, except for Derek Seabrooke:

You should not had got your son circumcised. It does more harm than good. You had no right to make that decision for him!

What an ass!  But then the proud dad is a pastor, and thus a con artist by definition, so he probably had it coming, right Derek?  Maybe you can make a crappy web site about the Amador family too.

So this is Derek Seabrooke, pro-Liberal programmer, 9-11 Truther sympathizer, activist looking to ban the religious observance of circumcision, and general all-round anti-religion in-your-face kind of guy.

Just wanted to paint a picture for you.

Which brings us back to scandalpedia.ca, now owned by Derek.  Does he send visitors to scandalpdia.ca to his anti-religion anti-Conservative website?  Nope.  For his Liberal friends hoping to re-read some of the troubles that had hit the Conservatives, they get to go to SnapDollars:

1.  You're gonna' pay me to read e-mails?

You bet!- and it's so easy! Every day you'll receive e-mail advertisements from us. Open the e-mail, and inside you'll find a link to the advertiser. Clicking on the link will confirm you have read the e-mail, and you will receive your credit immediately while being taken to the advertiser's web site. Typically, you can expect 1 to 20 cents for every e-mail that you read. It's that simple!

2.  Wait a minute- what does SnapDollars charge for this?

Zip. Zero. You heard us- not a single thing. We're so excited to offer you this free Account that we'll instantly credit you with 5 free dollars just for joining. Yes, we'll PAY YOU to join- what are you waiting for?

Oh yeah.  Sounds legit -- not!  And there's a $5 referral fee for every sign-up, so redirecting visitors from a formerly legitimate political website to SnapDollars might have seemed like a good idea.  Except for that scamming thing.

Really, the Liberal Party, and for that matter, all political parties, ought to seriously consider retaining all domain names they create, in perpetuity.  Heck, maybe a non-partisan non-profit company can be formed to hold these sites in common, and redirect them to the Government of Canada home page or something.  Anything, but just to keep the domains out of the hands of Derek Seabrooke and people like him. 

Of course, if he takes notice of this post, I'll have to make certain I never let my domain name lapse.

Sad Derek:  Derek's current circumstances, as of this August, are not good:

Well here's the run down guys. My computer consulting business dried up do [sic] to the bad economy. My credit is run out. I live with my parents. I cannot and never had been able to afford a home and I can't even afford to rent a lousy apartment. I can't even afford to go to Canadian Tire to replace a broken light in the room I'm in now. Looks like my only recourse is to return to doing door-to-door sales for Universal Energy. Believe me, I would not ever consider this unless it was a life or death situation but I'm 30 years old and have a University degree and am over $40K in debt. My parents are elderly and cannot support me. Once they die I'm on my own. So what do you home owners that are so pissed off think that I should do? I really want to know!

I guess he makes a pittance from the referral fees from SnapDollars. Even less from those former candidate websites (which now redirect to advertising landing pages instead of this anti-religion anti-Conservative website -- clearly he's going for the money here).  If he wanted to make some cash, he might consider selling back all those domain names.  Just a thought.

Hey, if anyone is reading this and thinks Derek might be a good fit for your business, or thinks they can throw some work his way, you should contact him.  It sounds like he could use a hand up, and some legitimate work.

Here's an idea: That non-partisan non-profit company that would park all those old names?  Why not pay Derek to run it?  He owns so many of the domains already, and he needs a job.  And who knows?   Maybe working with people from all political parties might take the edge off this guy.  Plus he'd get coverage for his anti-depressants.