Is this just a test to see if the Canadian population has become sufficiently docile and compliant?If so, it's working. No outraged crowds in the streets. Little or no media coverage.Once, we stood for the rule of law. Now we cower as those sworn to uphold the law mock it, in spirit, word and deed.First they came for the anarchists...[H/t pogge]UPDATE: (October 25) As anyone with wit suspected when this news first trickled out, the new charge is utterly bogus. Not one but two Crown attorneys claim that Hundert tried to intimidate them while he was in court last week. The poor babies were …
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Put yourself in Omar Khadr's spot.You have been told by your family that it is God's will that you fight in a foreign land. At the age of 10, your family takes you to live in Osama bin Laden's compound in Afghanistan. When you are 15, you are captured by US forces in a firefight.*You are grievously wounded. The enemy doesn't consider you entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions. You are tortured and threatened with gang rape unless you confess to whatever it is they want you to confess to.You spend almost a decade in a cage. You will not be tried by a regular court, but by members …
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In which life imitates art. Or they imitate each other, or they're all one thing. (Was Pat Robertson mentored by Christine O'Donnell?)More, coming soon to a theatre near you.PS: Commenters using the well-known rhyming expression about this bird will be permanently banned.[NSFW? Who knows anymore?] …
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...a feminist category in the Canadian Blog Awards.Consider this a shout-out to the successful lobbyists, somewhat less of one to the various contest organizers who had to be pushed and prodded, literally for years, to do the right thing.Now get over there and vote. …
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Larry O'Brien is the Mayor of Ottawa for two more days. That's two days too many.O'Brien is a vulgar, classless swaggerer, an uncultured nouveau riche who has demeaned his office for nearly four years.We all know his track record--comparing homeless people to pigeons, making fantastic promises about city taxes, playing the alpha male with the bus drivers with catastrophic results, costing the ratepayers a fortune by scrapping light rail.More recently, true to his boorish nature, he has revealed a schoolboy sexism that must be embarrassing even to some of his ditto-heads. His rival Jim Watson, …
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One of my favourite culture-jammers has published a photo-essay (no on-line link) that compares Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto--and it's not the first time that this comparison has been made.I think the following letter, sent by email, makes my own feelings plain. I urge others, should they so desire, to send their own notes to Adbusters. Let's stay classy, folks. Not everything we oppose is reducible to Hitler.The Editor,Adbusters.Dear Sir or Madam: I am writing to let you know that your photo-essay on Gaza, in your November-December issue, does not sit well with me--to put it mildly. I am …
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The Iraq files are out.Remember these slap-happy guys? Seems this wasn't their first killing spree: previously they gunned down two insurgents who were attempting to surrender. Torture? Mass killing of civilians? All there.You gotta love this:Condemning this fresh leak... the Pentagon said: "This security breach could very well get our troops and those they are fighting with killed. Our enemies will mine this information looking for insights into how we operate, cultivate sources and react in combat situations, even the capability of our equipment."Should have thought of that before you …
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A cancelled speech by Steyn or Coulter.I hasten to add that I mean, from the conservative agitprop perspective. For the record, I have no difficulty with either of them speaking, so long as they abide by Canadian law. But the coverage these characters get expands exponentially if they are "forced" to abort their missions.Meanwhile, over at Jay Currie's, the hypocrisy of the Speech Warriors™ is once again exposed. When Coulter and Steyn are allegedly prevented from speaking, that's a free speech issue. When George Galloway and Zijad Delic are actually prevented from speaking, that somehow …
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Today's Globe & Mail brings us a story about billboard surveillance. Those pesky visual pollutants aren't just telling you to knock back a Dr. Pepper or wear GAP fashions anymore. They're watching you.In fact they know you, these ads. And soon they'll want to know you better.Created by the electronics company NEC, they use sophisticated facial-recognition technology to tailor the ad message based on the appearance of the passerby and the surrounding environment.How long before the One Big Database™ will combine government and private knowledge of your every belief and desire, not to …
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It appears, from the pages and pages of media coverage of the trial of Col.* Russell Williams, that everyone feels the need to talk. So do I, but not for long.1. No one knows or is likely to know why Williams did what he did. Not even Williams. That is fundamentally horrifying and destabilizing in itself. Hence the frantic search for explanations, to shore up our belief--a necessary one, perhaps--in an orderly universe, a world of logic, of cause-and-effect.2. When reading the endless media reports and commentary, I have been struck by the utter failure of language to meet the circumstances. …
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Christiane Ouimet, Canada's Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, has taken early retirement. Not a moment too soon, apparently: Sheila Fraser, the Auditor General, is in the midst of an investigation of her office.Ouimet's job was to protect public service whistleblowers, and investigate complaints of wrongdoing. But she found no evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever in any of the 170 complaints her office handled since Stephen Harper appointed her in 2007. It was all "nothing to see here, move along" from the get-go.Guess who one of the complainants was? Sean Bruyea. Name ring a bell?Ouimet …
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It's a recurring meme in journalism: "experts say," meaning that established Truth is being forwarded to us from on high to frame some event or other. Those interested in philosophy will observe the unbroken line between Plato's philosopher-kings and these present day experts.But this isn't going to be an anti-intellectual post, I promise. Experts are so called because they have studied and specialized in some discipline or sub-discipline. Much as we take a car to a mechanic rather than trying to fix the problem ourselves with a hammer, we do, rightly, defer to genuine expertise--unless …
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...of her country's shabby post-war history of racism."Multikulti" isn't working, she asserts. Time for the foreigners to assimilate, she says--learn German, adopt Christian values. Needless to say, the "yellow peril" types like Margaret Wente would like us to follow Germany's lead--regardless of where such thinking once took that country.I'm no apologist for official multiculturalism. It's a bureaucratic approach that essentializes "culture" and builds as many walls as bridges. But the word has become right-wing code for "letting them furriners in." If integration is demanded, in any case, it …
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I'm referring to Ottawa East, where I live.A stone's throw from my house (although I have not physically tested this as yet) is a residence for the Oblates, a Catholic order. Behind them to the south is another residence (photograph), and a park, which they own: adjacent to them is St. Paul's University, which they run.Besides offering a sometime haven for accused and convicted priestly pedophiles, the Oblates have of late shown nothing but contempt for the community in which they live. They are selling the property, but have steadfastly refused to meet with the Ottawa East Community …
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A few random jottings during a pleasant sunny Monday in Ottawa:Officer Bubbles' Statement of Claim. Just suck it up, princess. [H/t Antonia Z., via Alison]Who says students these days are apathetic robots-in-waiting, unwilling to challenge the status quo? Erin Larson stands up. (And ageing Librocon Lloyd Axworthy wimps out.)Criticize the Department of Veterans Affairs? Are you nuts?Loose end: the death of Junior Alexander Manon. Where are the autopsy results? What happened to the SIU investigation? Why the media silence?Another loose end: whatever became of HUAC North's final report?G20 and …
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I'm not a libertarian, but I've discovered a sneaking fondness for some of them--the ones who reject neo-con Iron Heel approaches to problems, and want nothing to do with so-con statism, racism, homophobia and sexism.I'll never buy the outmoded libertarian notion of the bounded, atomic subject, nor the libertarian fetishizing of private property. The fact that laissez-faire capitalism has its defenders in 2010 is, at least to me, proof of the longevity of myth. But what accompanies these ideological positions is a morality congruent in many places with the morality of the left.These …
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Eight weeks after the G20.Watch the whole thing. Wonder where our rights have gone, and how they vanished so quickly.[H/t Mike Brock] …
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Constable Adam Josephs was not--not by a long shot--the worst of the G20 police officers who ran amok this summer in Toronto. He didn't, at least so far as we know, grope women prisoners or threaten them with rape. He didn't arrest a TTC worker for going to work in his TTC uniform, or loudly mock mental patients, or seize reporters and shoppers off the street, or beat anyone bloody. He didn't tear off a man's artificial leg and order him to hop to a nearby paddy wagon.He is just a common-or-garden police bully, a person who proudly stated in his now-defunct Facebook page that he was a …
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Between a rock and a hard place, he really has very little choice.Khadr stated the obvious last July: "How can I ask for justice from a process that doesn’t have it?"The presiding officer at his kangaroo-court "trial," Col. Patrick Parrish, has indicated shocking bias from the beginning, as I've observed before. There is no justice to be had when doctored evidence is blithely introduced by the prosecution with a wink and a nod from this "judge." Had Khadr been convicted, which was almost inevitable with the judicial cards stacked so obviously against him, he would, almost certainly, have …
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Once again, Israel is willing to give up peace for a little more land.Meanwhile, within Israel proper, the destruction of Bedouin villages and the displacement of its inhabitants continues, in this case to make way for a reforestation project sponsored by the Jewish National Fund.Warning: the use of terms such as "ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid" is to be avoided, as they are considered to be examples of "the new anti-Semitism™." Please employ "urban renewal" and "reclamation initiative," respectively.UPDATE: (October 16) Just another day on the West Bank. Might I suggest the term …
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...is emanating once again from Toronto. But it's getting more intense, and the smell should stink in the nostrils of every citizen of Canada.Alex Hundert, an anarchist arrested for G20 actions before a single demonstrator was even on the street, is back in jail. As many readers will know, he was out on bail when he was re-arrested by seven police officers for speaking on a university panel. Allegedly this was a breach of previous bail conditions that forbade his attendance at political demonstrations. An evidently brain-dead justice of the peace--no legal training is required for these …
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...as the world pulled together and freed 33 trapped Chilean miners.Go ahead, say you weren't moved today, even to tears. I dare you. …
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Stephen Harper's campaign for a Security Council seat, lost with a little help from his friends, is now dust. But let's let the Schadenfreude wear off. This is no gloating matter.Harper has succeeded in making Canada look ridiculous in the eyes of the world, not least by petulantly blaming a domestic Opposition leader for his defeat, rather than the self-evident failings of his foreign "policy." But we should be angry about it, not merely gratified by his abject humiliation. He represented us to the world, after all: and now we Canadians are all wearing the mantle of his international …
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...to laughingstock.Way to go, Cowboy Steve. You've made your country proud. …
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"On August 28, when Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and anywhere from 300,000-700,000 whites publicly sucked up to racist blacks, black critics claimed to hear an “echo” of Jim Crow and slavery."[H/t: who else?] …
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Sakineh Mohammed Ashtiani isn't out of the woods yet.She's the person condemned to be stoned to death by the mad mullahs currently running Iran. While the sentence has been on hold (not commuted), and some believe that the authorities will show Iranian mercy by merely hanging her, the rule of what remains of law in that country has suffered another setback.In Iran Solidarity's words:Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s son, Sajjad Ghaderzadeh, and lawyer, Houtan Kian, were arrested along with a German journalist and photographer in Tabriz on 10 October 2010 at 1900 hours local time. The security …
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In a letter to the Ottawa Citizen, French ambassador François Delattre tries to put a happy-face mask on his country's neo-Vichyist policy of racial purification--the rounding up and deporting of Roma. Much of his letter is protesting Ujjal Dosanjh's statement of the obvious (the newest Nobel laureate in literature, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, has some choice words on the same subject) but this paragraph in particular deserves our attention:France has been at the forefront to raise awareness of the plight and the suffering of the Roma in Europe by bringing this issue on the European Union's agenda. …
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But personally, I wish he'd just go back to the teleprompter.UPDATE: No wonder terrified Republicans are calling for his death.[H/t Enormous Thriving Plants] …
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To all my friends from Toronto: really, I'm just indulging in a little synecdoche. I love your fair city, honestly I do. But an evil spirit has descended.The latest outrage is sending Alex Hundert back to jail for allegedly violating his bail conditions--by speaking on a panel at a university event. (How does one become a Justice of the Peace these days? Passing Grade Six? Joining the Conservative Party? Working on the Rob Ford campaign?)Free speech in Toronto is dead. No doubt we'll be hearing from this guy any minute now. On second thought, don't hold your breath.A bit of grim reading for …
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Terrified passengers on a London-bound flight froze in their seats as a crazed man ran through the aisle of the Qantas jet screaming: 'You will all die!'Praying and yelling in a foreign language, the man threatened to kill himself and the passengers on the fully-laden jet several hours after it took off from Melbourne to fly to London via Hong Kong. Wait, hang on a second:'He was praying in what was believed to be Hebrew and yelling out that he was going to kill himself and all the passengers would die,' said Helen, who had been sitting in Premium Economy. Hebrew?Ah. Back to regular …
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So much for parliamentary privilege supremacy.*The Conservative government stonewalls; the Liberals go along; and Speaker Peter Milliken's historic ruling on the ancient right of Parliament to send for documents and records is tossed into the dustbin of history.Here's NDP MP Bill Siksay's motion. Here's Kady O'Malley's liveblog of what the Liberals did to it.This extract, in which the star character is that serviceable trained seal Wayne Easter, is my favourite:The real question, as far as Easter is concerned, is where the committee goes from here: back to the House to have the speaker rule, …
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Racism? Check."Regardless of reality, the issue of race must not be ignored or discounted." [That sentence is a keeper, isn't it? --ed.]Bully? Check.Peter Kormos, a Southern Ontario MPP and a frequent critic of Commissioner Fantino, said yesterday the province's top police officer should resign after making "threatening, inflammatory" comments to a native leader during the standoff, according to the provincial NDP.He says Commissioner Fantino contravened the spirit of the Ipperwash report when he told [activist Shawn] Brant he would do "everything I can within your community and …
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I've been following for some time the on-going persecution of a Chinese-Canadian storekeeper in Toronto by the serve-and-protect guys and a prosecutor with too much time on his hands. It's like reading a cautionary tale in which everything we know as normal is inverted.Toronto is a city of sophisticates presently demonstrating their stubborn commitment to equality by supporting a boorish lackwit to head up their city council. It's a place where cops can arrest and imprison hundreds of innocent citizens at a time with seeming impunity, and be defended wholeheartedly by a Liberal premier and an …
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1. Reward your friends.2. Punish--well, just about everyone. …
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(DawgNews, Ottawa, October 6.) DawgNews has learned that literally millions of people allegedly expressed various concerns about the Harper Conservative government in 2008--but the documentary evidence has been destroyed.In a shocking admission, an official of Elections Canada, who spoke under a guarantee of anonymity, stated: "We don't keep the paper. Once all is said and done, we record only the tallies."A government official, who spoke under a similar guarantee, pooh-poohed the suggestion that there was wide dissatisfaction with the Harper administration, then or now. "We haven't received …
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Vic Toews, our Minister of Public Safety (sorry, wrong link), is quoted in the Globe & Mail today as saying:[I]t's so very important that we have cooperation from the groups where these individuals are coming out of so that our security authorities can better assess the situation and protect Canadians.He was referring specifically to the case of three Muslim students who have gone missing. There is suspicion, and only suspicion at this point, that the three are training somewhere in Jihadistan and planning to come back to Canada as fully-trained terrorists.The Globe article continues:The …
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Tiger Woods: Rise and Fall is airing now on TV. (I'm watching Nikita.)If a world-class physicist fooled around on his/her spouse, would the scientific community stop taking that person's papers seriously? …
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...and the Speech Warriors™ crash and burn.Peter MacKay, Minister of Defence, has shut down a scheduled speech by Imam Zijad Delic, a Muslim originally from Bosnia, because someone else from somewhere else made some unacceptable remarks on a little-known television program six years ago.Delic, currently the Executive Director of the Canadian Islamic Congress, was in the news not long ago for signing a fatwa opposing violence and in favour of gender equality. That's nothing new for him: as early as 2003 he denounced inflammatory comments by Ottawa Imam Gamal Solaiman, and in 2005 he …
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This is a story about political and moral corruption, contempt of Parliament, asbestos, human rights and our declining democracy. It's nothing but loose ends. I can't help it. That's all I have, at least for the moment.The tale, or at least part of it, begins in August. Here's John Baird, refusing to disclose emails from one Sebastien Togneri (ministerial aide to asbestos shill Christian Paradis) to the Commons committee on access to information, privacy and ethics:"By long-standing convention, such communications are protected from disclosure," Mr. Baird wrote. "Ministers are responsible to …
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The Globe & Mail has screened out its last remaining dissident columnist, Rick Salutin. Everything from now on will be various shades of Jeffrey Simpson.Congratulations, Grey Lady. Porridge for breakfast, lunch and supper. Yum.UPDATE: Needless to say, the Usual Suspects are ecstatic. Why not write to John Stackhouse to let him know what you think of the purge? (It's not as though the aforementioned nutcases read the Globe anyway. Too many big words.)UPPERDATE: (September 30) Salutin's last words, h/t reader sassy.UPPESTDATE: An excellent article about the steady decline of the corporate …
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