It is heartening to see a community respond to racism in this way, and especially to see the school board and principal realize and publicly admit they made a mistake in bowing to racist bullies in the first place. Good for them!And I hope Steve "racist douche bag" Blair gets the old-fashioned Amish-style shunning by the community that he deserves. If ever anyone deserved the liberal, secular equivalent of a cross burning (would that be an involuntary subscription to Mother Jones and The Nation?), it would be him.Hat tip to Driftglass for the catching the epilogue after we left the theatre …
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Or are people there just being taught to be racist dingbats?Apparently an elementary school in Prescott, Az., allowed the students to vote on what kind of mural they would like to decorate the school with and the kids chose a painting of themselves. Professional artists were called in and worked with the kids to create a mural on the exterior of the school that portrayed the students attending the institution. The problem, apparently, is that some of the students have the temerity to not be white! And so local knuckledraggers, encouraged by (surprise, surprise, surprise!) a local radio talk …
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That's what I feel for Dimitri Soudas and apparently what he feels for the Canadian Parliament and the centuries-old rules of the Westminster Parliamentary system in which it has long been established that the supreme authority rests with Parliament and not with the Prime Minister. Since he has now dodged a formal summons to appear before a Parliamentary committee and insulted Parliament, I cannot see a single good reason for the House of Commons not to proceed with a charge of Contempt of Parliament against this arrogant little shit and have him tossed in jail. And perhaps his boss and a few …
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RossK of the Gazetteer joins me on the Maple Syrup Revolution to explain the intricacies of the BC Rail scandal and explore the world of the BC media and blogosphere. You might want to take notes. …
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As mentioned below, the Canadian government is spending over a billion dollars on security for the upcoming Group of Eight and Group of Twenty summit dog-and-pony shows. This is more than five times the original estimate and dwarfs the amounts spent on similar summits in London (April 2009 $30 million) and Pittsburgh (Sept. 2009 -$18 million) both of which dealt with more protesters than can probably be expected in "Toronto the Good" Some of the money has gone on shiny new toys for the RCMP, OPP and Toronto Police riot squads, crowd control units and motorcade cops as well as the usual …
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One of the advantages of being a conservative seems to be a willingness to engage in the most shameless of behaviours without the faintest scintilla of embarrassment or self-consciousness.Exhibit A"The whole concept of prison should be terminated, except for violent criminals and chronic non-violent recidivists, and replaced by closely supervised pro bono or subsistence-paid work by bonded convicts in the fields of their specialty. Swindlers and embezzlers, hackers and sleazy telemarketers are capable people and they should serve their sentences by contributing honest work to …
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History professor and former soldier Andrew Bacevich, a self-declared "conservative Catholic" who served in Vietnam and the Gulf War, discusses the American Memorial Day holiday in light of the death of  death of his son three years ago in Iraq and the United States' history of imperialistic military adventures. As pointed out by Thers, Bacevich says things one no longer expects to see in the mainstream media: The fallen gave their lives so we might enjoy freedom: However comforting, this commonplace assertion qualifies at best as a half-truth. Who can doubt that the soldier killed in …
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I mentioned in an earlier post that for the amount of money being spent on the G8/G20 meetings just for security, the government could build a money wall around the main venue for the G8 summit.I ran a few more numbers. $1.1 billion dollars would allow the government to pay 150,000 security officers $100 per hour for the entire 72 hours and still have $20 million left to buy crullers and large double-doubles from Tim Horton's for the massive security detail.It would take a better mathematician than I am to figure out the all the numbers, but I'm also confident that for $1.1 billion they could …
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The latest edition of the Maple Syrup Revolution - in which Canadian Cynic's Lindsay Stewart returns to discuss copyright, lying Conservative Party of Canada MPs, the Harper government's fear of open government and the insane amount of money being spent on security for the G8 and G20 summits -- is ready for your listening pleasure.Just for fun, I ran some numbers and the 1.1 billion dollars the Canadian government is spending on security for the G8 and G20 summits would build a wall of $10 bills about 3 meters high, 10 centimeters thick and 767 meters long--probably long enough to surround the …
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For years, we've known that Stephen Harper is a control freak who insists that every utterance of everyone speaking for the government be vetted through the PMO, but methinks he has now gone a bit too far.  First, it was gagging backbenchers so that the ignorant, knuckledragging rednecks let's be kind and say the "less sophisticated, less media-savy" among his Reform Alliance colleagues didn't start ranting about racial minorities and commies under the bed "get off message" and embarass  the "New Government of Canada." Then, after he realized he a had a few of these loose …
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The latest edition of the Maple Syrup Revolution, in which Boris and the Rev.Paperboy discuss the Afghan detainee issue, is ready now for your listening endurance forebearance pleasure. …
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a very very short podcast, in which the Rev.Paperboy and the Not Ready For Real Life Players address Arizona's new Juan Crow law. …
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The Divine Ms. Z has a great piece in today's Toronto Star - an interview with Marci McDonald, author of the just-released The Armageddon Factor: the Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, about which I blogged the other day. She points out the release of the book come on the very day that Canadian politicians are taking part in what has become a staple in U.S. politics - the prayer breakfast. These meeting of the pious and the political have been an annual event in Canada for 45 years, but have never had the prominence or the political import of similar events in the U.S.These prayer …
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Most of the news out of Afghanistan is depressing and occasionally enraging, but when I see Seymour Hersh's byline attached to a story, I make sure to read it even though I know it will probably be both depressing and enraging. This story is no exception. It seems "the good guys" are now executing prisoners on the battlefield, or at least that is the story that has been relayed to Hersh by U.S. troops.I won't argue that Hersh is infallible -- no one is -- but he is one of the best reporters working today and his track record from My Lai to Abu Ghraib is pretty impressive.This isn't a story, at …
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Read this story on the rise of the religious right in Canada and don't get scared, get angry. Then get busy and stop this tiny minority from seizing control of the political agenda in Canada with the same kind of wedge tactics they have used in the United States.The whole introduction of abortion into the national political agenda has been driven by the tiny religious right in Canada -- in poll after poll Canadians have been shown to favor the status quo on abortion and want to keep it legal, safe and broadly available.The Reverend Doctor Chuckles McVety (whose credentials are as valid as my …
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This week's guest John Baglow aka Dr. Dawg (left) with returned Canadian exile Abousfian Abdelrazik …
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Taaaa Daaaaaaa! The Maple Syrup Revolution is ON!  Step right up and listen to our all-new, all-Canadian, 100% handmade, all-natural, organic, executive version, deluxe PODCAST - Satisfation guaranteed or triple your money back! You can get the podcast here, at the Canadian iTunes store or at the Maple Syrup Revolution blog.  P.S. All credit for the name goes to Skdadl at POGGE, who coined the phrase. …
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In trying to defend the indefensible, a common neocon tactic is to go on the offensive with ad homenin attacks on the media carrying the story or on the source of the story. Sometimes this means villifying the victim, as the government of Canada has done with Abousfian Abdelrazik and Omar Khadr, sometimes this means trying to destroy the messenger as with the "revelation" that the investigator who uncovered the evidence that gives weight to the accusations against Helena Geurgis (whatever they are) has huge debts.As dishonest a tactic as this is, it is generally accepted that it is part of the …
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Oh! You mean these documents? Chrolavicius sensed something was amiss when she independently obtained records related to Benatta's case through the Access to Information Act that had not come out through the court process.Still, the government said in a submission to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice that additional documents and information "simply do not exist."It said the allegation that the Crown's search for documents had been deficient was based largely on speculation, intuition, guesswork and erroneous assumption.In December, the court ordered the government to come up with a …
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As much as I dislike Ann Coulter, I do respect her right to say just about any stupid thing that comes into the space between her ears. I don't think the University of Ottawa should have invited her in the first place, but I'm not sure how I feel about her speech having to be cancelled due to "security concerns."I'd rather have seen her be allowed to speak, and then roundly booed and mocked by those in attendance.One thing is for certain though, and that is that she, and Ezra Levant and the rest of the para-fascist shriekosphere will be milking this for all it is worth.I'm puzzled as to how …
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In light of this, I think that it is undeniable that there must be a fully public, non-partisan inquest, preferrably by a provincial coroner or similar authority that is more than arm's length away from the federal government. From the CBC: Federal government documents on Afghan detainees suggest that Canadian officials intended some prisoners to be tortured in order to gather intelligence, according to a legal expert.If the allegation is true, such actions would constitute a war crime, said University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran, who has been digging deep into the issue and told …
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You might be forgiven for thinking you'd fallen through a wormhole into Mississippi circa 1961 reading this. We Canadians sometimes get a bit smug watching the racial problems in the U.S. and forget that we have ignorant, knuckle-dragging, racist shitbirds of our own. If you want to hear seven minutes of radio that will infuriate and inspire you, check here (the interview is in part 1 of the program). The "victim" doesn't sound like she's taking having a cross burned on her front lawn in stride exactly, but sticks up for the larger community and doesn't sound like …
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Pennsylvania's Lower Merion School Board's efforts to give every one of its high school students a laptop computer are doubleplusgood!A Lower Merion family has set off a furor among students, parents, and civil liberties groups by alleging that Harriton High School officials used a webcam on a school-issued laptop to spy on their 15-year-old son at home.In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, the family said the school's assistant principal had confronted their son, told him he had "engaged in improper behavior in [his] home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in …
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In the neatest bit of spin since some PR hack coined the term "collateral damage" for dead and wounded civilian bystanders, NATO now appears to be trying to convince us that murdering civilians is something for which no one is responsible - and most in the press seem to lazy to call them on it.Exhibit A from AFP (emphasis mine):Five Afghan civilians accidentally killed in airstrike: NATO(AFP) – 20 hours agoKABUL — Five Afghan civilians were accidentally killed and two others injured in an airstrike in southern Afghanistan, NATO said Monday, in an incident unrelated to a major US-led …
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Burning stick! Burning stick!U.S. citizen Wayne Gretzky lit the torch and we television viewers were treated to a couple of hours of modern dance and extremely impressive stage effects to mark the opening of the Vancouver games. Nicely done, though neither of my kids would believe kd Lange is a woman at first. I liked Shane Koyczan's poem, but he should have started working on his beard a little earlier or shaved. And apparently Canada was settled by tattooed fiddling Celtic barbarians - who knew?Burning stupid! Burning stupid!And here's a newsflash for "Blayze" the masked protestor who speaks …
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"When we grew up and went to school, there were certain teachers who would hurt the children any way they could"So many authoritarian nitwits, so little time to blog. This kid is probably lucky they didn't taser her when she started crying. Almost as disturbing is the reaction of America's least favorite conservative law professor and box-wine sommelier (as noted by Pandagon). Obviously, the teacher cannot ignore a student writing on their desk and must instill respect for the property of others blah blah blah, but I think handcuffing and arresting a12-year-old teaches another lesson - fear …
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