An Outstanding Letter!

While I have always considered myself an able letter-to-the-editor writer, I have also developed ability over the years to recognize superior work when I see it. The following letter from Cathy Allen of Toronto is emblematic of such work. She inspires me, as a Canadian, by her vision of what our country could be:

When I was 18, I attended Expo 67 and voted for Justin Trudeau’s father. Now that I am a widowed senior and disabled and I can’t afford to pay my rent without my son’s help, I find that I am not as proud as I once was to be a Canadian.

When will I be proud to be a Canadian again?

When we build more geared-to-income housing and repair the ones we have so every Canadian can afford a roof over their heads that costs less than 50 per cent of their income.

When nursing homes are given more than $8 dollars and change for a daily food allowance and residents can have a bath when they want.

When no one in Canada is homeless and living on the street and we can afford to bring the minimum wage and pensions above the poverty line because we’ve closed the loopholes and made the corporations that do business in this country pay their fair share of taxes.

When we restore the environmental laws that protect our rivers and lakes and enforce them.

When we stop trampling on our indigenous peoples’ sacred sites and respect their culture and land rights and pay them the compensation due them so they can build decent housing and hospitals and recreation centres and libraries, or their children can move anywhere they want and no longer feel they are not part of our society.

When working-class women with children under the age of 3 are not forced to work but may, if they wish, because we have an affordable daycare system up and running.

And, finally, when we stop calling waging war “peacekeeping” and no longer ship tanks and guns and instead send aid.

That will be the day I will be proud to be a Canadian again. Right now, all I am is relieved that I am not an American.

A Moral Coward

Every so often, I happen upon a news item that, for want of a better word, inflames me; it is usually something so patently outrageous that my capacity for calm desserts me, and I launch into a semi-tirade. This morning was one of those moments.

Now some may say that because I am not black, I have no right to pass judgement on Senator Don Meredith, the reprobate who used his positions of power (as pastor of his church and as a Harper-appointed senator) to 'groom' an underage member of his congregation for a totally inappropriate and morally reprehensible sexual relationship. Anyone who reads my blog knows that injustice, especially the abuse of power, is something that offends me to the core, and a person's race or colour can never exempt him or her from condemnation.

Yet Don Meredith begs to differ. First of all, the coward is thus far refusing to resign, despite pressure from his senate colleagues to do so, instead opting to take a leave of absence "on the advice of his doctor".

Perhaps he is hoping for the storm to blow over? Meredith seems perplexed as to the calls for his resignation. In his mind, he has owned up to his 'mistake.'

"This is a moral failing on my part," a grim-faced Meredith said in a wide-ranging interview, with his wife Michelle quietly at his side. "As a human being, I made a grave error in judgment, in my interactions. For that I am deeply sorry."

Meredith, 52, repeatedly apologized to his wife, children, his fellow senators and "all Canadians" for the relationship that took place with the woman known only as Ms. M.

His wife and children have forgiven him, he said, and he asked for the same forgiveness from his Senate colleagues and Ms. M herself.

"I believe in the power of forgiveness and reconciliation," he said as his Toronto lawyer looked on. "We're humans, and humans make mistakes."

But neither his public mea culpa nor his refusal to resign are what set me off. It was this:

The senator said Wednesday he believes he has been the victim of racism since the allegations about his affair first surfaced in the summer of 2015. Where individuals of colour rise, he said, somehow they're taken down — whether it's "self-inflicted or orchestrated."

"Absolutely, racism has played a role in this," Meredith said. "This is nothing new to me. There is always a double standard that exists in this country."

Pieters said his client was being portrayed as a "sexual predator" because he is an imposing black man — but that clearly was not the case.

For Meredith to 'play the race card' not only compounds his moral cowardice, but also indirectly impugns all those who have been actual victims of racism. His claim, in my view, demonstrates not only his unfitness to hold public office, but also his ongoing position as executive director of the GTA Faith Alliance.

And I am hardly alone in my umbrage:



There is no question in my mind that if we are to have even a modicum of respect for the failing Senate, Don Meredith must go.

Amen

H/t Toronto Star

Absolutely Spellbinding

It is hardly an insight to state that we have largely wasted and abused the intelligence that evolution has conferred on us. Instead of nurturing and protecting our own species and all the others that abound in our world, our human story seems to be one of ruthless exploitation and degradation, a short-sighted philosophy that will likely end in collective destruction.

The latest iteration of that selfishness is evident, for example, in Donald Trump's intention to undo the advances made during the Obama administration on climate change mitigation. That such is ideological madness is evident in the latest report on massive Artic permafrost melting, which will ultimately serve to accelerate global warming.

But grim as our choices have been and still are, I always harbour a faint hope, despite all the contraindications, that we can still achieve some of our natural potential before it is entirely too late. As I have written in the past, I believe that nature documentaries hold the key if we are ever to overcome even a little of our innate selfishness. To see the larger and the smaller world around us, a world we give little thought to in our day-to-day lives ("So what if another species is going extinct? I'm never likely to see a Sumatran Tiger anyway."), is to be both humbled and infected with awe. This is especially true given the latest techniques in natural cinematography that can be described as little less than magical.

It is in this spirit that I urge you to see Planet Earth 11, which is currently being broadcast in free preview on BBC Earth in my neck of the woods. So far I have seen two episodes, one on islands and the other on deserts. Neither, as you will see if you watch, are static environments, but rather ones teeming with life and constant change.

Believe me, you will not be disappointed; I suspect you will come away from the experience a changed person.

More Reasons To Boycott U.S Travel

I have no regrets about my recent decision to boycott travel to the United States as long as the Trump regime, dominated as it is by paranoid exclusions and hate-mongering policies, continues in office. An item on last night's NBC News amply demonstrates that for some people, border crossings are becoming risks not worth taking.

Two American citizens encountered quite a bit of land turbulence upon returning from visits to Canada:

When Buffalo, New York couple Akram Shibly and Kelly McCormick returned to the U.S. from a trip to Toronto on Jan. 1, 2017, U.S. Customs & Border Protection officers held them for two hours, took their cellphones and demanded their passwords.

"It just felt like a gross violation of our rights," said Shibly, a 23-year-old filmmaker born and raised in New York. But he and McCormick complied, and their phones were searched.

But the story doesn't end there:

Three days later, they returned from another trip to Canada and were stopped again by CBP.

"One of the officers calls out to me and says, 'Hey, give me your phone,'" recalled Shibly. "And I said, 'No, because I already went through this.'"

The officer asked a second time..

Within seconds, he was surrounded: one man held his legs, another squeezed his throat from behind. A third reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone. McCormick watched her boyfriend's face turn red as the officer's chokehold tightened.

Then they asked McCormick for her phone.

"I was not about to get tackled," she said. She handed it over.

This kind of racial profiling and 'lawful' seizure of telephones should give all of us pause; any Canadians travelling to the U.S. are its potential victims, although clearly, if you are white and have a non-Arabic name, your chances of passing through unmolested are greater. But I come back to a fundamental question that prompted me to start my personal travel boycott: Do we really want to patronize a country that once welcomed foreigners but now stigmatizes, bullies and excludes them?

Finally, it is worth noting that Girl Guides of Canada has decided to cancel trips to the U.S.

"While the United States is a frequent destination for Guiding trips, the ability of all our members to equally enter this country is currently uncertain," international commissioner Sharron Callahan and director of provincial operations Holly Thompson wrote in a joint advisory issued Monday afternoon.

"This includes both trips that are over or under 72 hours and any travel that includes a connecting flight through an American airport," the advisory says.

The statement does not directly mention — but appears to be a reaction to — the executive orders U. S. President Donald Trump has signed restricting travel to the United States.

This decision comes amidst many other groups and Canadian school boards contemplating trip cancellations for the same reason.

The American love of money is well-known. It seems only logical that they should now learn via commercial interdiction the price to be paid for choosing a racist, paranoid demagogue as their president. Many of them may love the Trump message, but worldwide, far more do not.

Part Political Theatre and Part Schoolyard Bully

And probably the saddest thing is that far too many people take this kind of clown seriously:

Laughing At Absurdity

I believe that the older we get, the more important it is not only to recognize and acknowledge the tragedies of life, be they social, economic, political or environmental, but also the many absurdities that abound within those realms. Call it dark humour, whistling past the graveyard, or just being politically incorrect, seeing the absurd is a coping mechanism that allows for the release of at least a modicum of the despair that envelops us in the twenty-first century.

I therefore have little sympathy with those who are easily offended. Consider the following political cartoon that appeared recently in the Toronto Star:



As the heading suggests, it is the cartoonist's take on the fact that many are vying to become the next leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, one that looks headed for the Opposition benches after next year's election, in no small part due to the spectacularly unpopular Kathleen Wynne, our current premier.

Yet the cartoon was too much for at least one Star reader, who penned his outrage in the following missive:

Re: Cartoon, March 8

The Star cartoon by Theo Moudakis depicting a plot to assassinate Premier Wynne is obscene and unforgivable. What was the intention here by the Star to its readers?

Showing her cabinet attempting to hide, with knives, suggesting to do away with the premier, is not what you should be preaching to your readers. Truly, there must be another answer on matters of opinion.

Dennis Dineno, Oakville

I've known people like Dennis throughout my life. They are often quite good people, but overly earnest in their pursuit of justice and rectitude. There is little in their lives to leaven the oppression that life regularly metes out. They can be a trial for those around them. Indeed, just reading his umbrage tasks me.

So, from the perspective granted by my years, my advice is to embrace the oddly funny moments life has to offer. To rebuke them prevents what little light there is to shine through and keep us from total darkness.

Energy Democracy

Sure, many will dismiss this as a Utopian socialist dream, especially given the neoliberal tenor of the times, but are there any other viable alternatives to global degradation and destruction?

UPDATED: What The Racists Ignore

I realize that it is essentially pointless to try to argue against those Canadians who harbour fear or hatred of 'the other.' The latest iteration of that debased mental and moral condition is, of course, reflected in demonstrations and hate crimes against the Muslim community, with some pretty vile declarations being made suggesting that they should either die or 'go back to their own country.'

Were I so inclined and the opportunity arose, here is what I would say to those who live in fear that things like sharia law will soon be imposed on all of us, and that they are 'taking over our country.'

I would start with two anecdotes drawn from my teaching career. One, which involved a Christian, occurred many years ago, vivid still in my memory because it was a Parents' Night on the evening following the birth of my son. The other happened many years later, and involved a Muslim.

The Chrisian, who I shall refer to as Mrs. J., was the wife of a Baptist minister, and she came to the meeting in high dudgeon over the fact that her daughter was reading a novel by Robertson Davies entitled Fifth Business. The book was part of an independent reading project in which students made their selection from a wide range of titles. Mrs. J. told me her brother-in-law had given her the book as a gift, something, she said, he should have known better than to do since it dealt with what she felt was a disrespectful depiction of a Baptist's minister's wife.

What was that disrespectful treatment? At the novels's beginning, a boy who turns out to be the protagonist sets into motion a series of events when a snowball he throws hits the minister's wife, the shock of which affects her mentally and induces premature labour.

Mrs. J. then went on to declare that no students should be permitted to read such books, at which point I told her that while she had every right as a parent to request a change of book for her daughter, no one has the right to dictate what others may or may not read.

Fast forward many years to another school, and a phone call from an aggrieved parent. The book in question this time was Flowers For Algernon, upon which the movie Charly was based. There is one small part in the novel that has rather subtle sexual content. The same scenario played out, with a Muslim father objecting to his daughter reading the book (again, it was her own independent selection from a long list of titles). He went on, as had the Baptist Mrs. J.,to declare that no students should have access to such material, and I told him exactly the same thing I had told Mrs. J. all those years before.

What is my point here? In both cases, the children of these strict parents had no problem with the material they had selected. It was, I believe, largely the result of living in a healthy, dynamic, pluralistic society, a society that is bound to exert far more influence and moderation on next generation people than it does on an older generation with more entrenched and often inflexible notions. It is a fact that those who rail against newcomers either choose to ignore or whose profound ignorance prevents them from understanding.

So please spare me the hysteria. I have no patience with those who think of Canada as a society whose values (whatever they may be) and institutions will be overtaken by a particular group or ideology. It is that fear, of course, that propels political opportunists like Kellie Leitch to blow her dog whistle, and it is a fear that, when given voice, is an insult to all of us, whether native born or new Canadians.

UPDATE: In today's Star, Azeezah Kanji writes about people's unfounded fear of sharia law.

The Americans Had Their Wells Fargo Scandal ....

Now we have our own, thanks to TD Canada Trust's duplicitous practices:

Another Pending Betrayal

As we become increasingly disillusioned about the growing disparity between the Trudeau promise and its reality, another betrayal of that promise is pending. Like his neoliberal soul sister in Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, who insists that selling off 60% of the provincial crown jewel known as Hydro One is a no-brainer, Mr. Trudeau apparently thinks it is a keen idea to consider delivering our national airports over to profiteers, a.k.a. the private sector, to raise money for his 'national vision.' The upcoming federal budget looks to begin the process:

The budget is expected to signal the government’s interest in finding a way to tap the value of airports with a process, perhaps led by Transport Minister Marc Garneau, to more formally explore selling them off, the Star has learned.

The potential benefit for Ottawa is huge. One study done by the Vancouver airport authority estimated that the federal government could reap between $8.7 billion and $40.1 billion by selling off the country’s eight largest airports, including Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.

That may be good news for a government with a burgeoning deficit, but bad news for the rest of us:

Yet the privatization scheme is ringing alarm bells among airlines, airport operators and some municipalities who warn that handing over Canada’s airports to owners with a profit motive sets the stage for rising fees that will force travellers to pay more.

Vancouver airport has teamed with those in Ottawa and Calgary on a public information campaign to oppose privatization.

“We think it’s a bad idea,” Craig Richmond, the chief executive officer of the Vancouver Airport Authority, told the Star.

“This idea of a one-time payment, that’s like selling the family jewels and then regretting it forever,” he said in an interview.

The consequences of such a sale will be far-reaching and costly for those who fly:

... the authority concludes that privatization would add “hundreds of millions of extra costs” that would have to be recovered through cost-cutting, increased fees and reduced investment in airport infrastructure.

“It would be too costly for a for-profit buyer to acquire an airport such as YVR without reducing services and passing these costs on to airport users through higher fees and charges,” the report states.

So while the private sector may salivate over the prospect of windfall profits, as is the norm in the neoloiberal vision embraced by people like Trudeau and his fellow travellers, the rest of us, the mere peons in this 'grand' vision, will be left to pay the price.

How Must It Feel?

Since the installation of Donald Trump in the White House, I have wondered how it must feel to the average American who is neither unhinged nor incapable of critical thought to have a man so obviously deranged leading their country. This latest episode of Trump's paranoid demagoguery surely must be a source of deep consternation to such people:

A Stellar Analysis: Kellyanne Conway's Interview Tricks, Explained

Vox offers this deconstruction of the slippery and morally repugnant Kellyanne Conway.

A Coward, Pure And Simple

When I was young, we had a term for certain individuals. We called them "gutless wonders." It still seems like the most apt term today. Watch this video and you'll see why:

UPDATED: A Deluded Woman

That very strange lady, CPC leadership candidate Kellie Leitch, insists that the widespread 'popularity' of her online video is proof of the popularity of her platform against immigrants, She ignores the fact that the basis for its viral spread is mockery, not admiration, over its bizarre production values and patent insincerity. If you haven't yet seen it, the above link will take you to it.

Meanwhile, CTV's Don Martin has this incisive assessment of her efforts:



And as to her claim that her immigration stance is resonating with the public, well, Star readers have a different view, and are especially pained that her pandering to the extreme right has led her to advertise on Breitbart, about which I recently posted:

Re: Conservative MP Leitch runs ads on Breitbart site, Feb. 25

When conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch runs ads on the U.S. Breitbart News website, it is time to screen Leitch for her “Canadian values.”

The ultra-conservative and white supremacist views expressed and promoted by the Breitbart News organization bear no relation to and are not synonymous with “Canadian values.” Since “Canadian values” is what Leitch is claiming to protect, it is only fair — and possibly urgent — that her views be scrutinized, i.e. “screened.”

Peter Krysmanski, Oakville

I am so disgusted to see that Kellie Leitch has bought advertising on Breitbart News. What Canadian values does that organization represent? Absolutely none.

The alt-right is not my Canada and obviously does not represent the majority of Canadians given support for Justin Trudeau. Kellie has no place in my Canada.

Tom Byers, Cambridge, Ont.

The soul of a nation is not something to be trifled with, a fact that Kellie Leitch seems wholly incapable of appreciating.

UPDATE: Mark Critch of This Hour Has 22 Minutes clearly has Ms Leitch's number:

A Dangerous VOICE

First, please watch the following very brief video from The Independent. (If you have trouble playing it, simply click on the above link):



The Star's Daniel Dale, our Canadian journalist expert on all things Trump, writes today that the creation of VOICE is an alarming escalation in the Trump war against immigrants.

Claudia Koonz, a historian at Duke University, wrote a book about how the Nazis prepared Germans to accept genocide.

One of their tactics was portraying average Jews, who were overwhelmingly law-abiding, as a menace to society. In the 1930s, for example, a Nazi newspaper published a weekly list of Jews’ alleged crimes.

In January, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered his government to publish a weekly list of crimes committed by illegal immigrants, who are overwhelmingly law-abiding, in most of the country’s biggest cities.

Trump’s order also established a government office solely dedicated to helping victims of crimes committed by undocumented people. On Tuesday, he promoted the office — VOICE, for Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement — in a prime-time address to Congress.

Even though crime statistics show that illegal immigrants are less likely to engage in crime than legal residents, both the inflammatory rhetoric favoured by Trump and the above decisions serve to effectively demonize 'the other' and essentially institutionalize the Orange Ogre's racism.

Ruben G. Rumbaut, a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine, says,

“The function of this program will be, one, to further scapegoat immigrants and portray them as deadly threats, and, two, to use the perception of threat to rally and rile the ‘base’ for political gain, relying now the power and prestige of the presidency."

And as reported by The independent, the publication of a weekly list of crimes by 'aliens' echoes a prominent feature of Breitbart News, which has a section called

"black crime" ... which publishe[s] a list of offences committed by African-Americans.

Given the increasing incidents of hate crimes, including what appears to be the racially-motivated shooting last week in Kansas, I think we can all see where this is going. The question is, are there enough people of goodwill, both inside and outside of politics, to fight this rapidly escalating madness?

Bill Nye Attempts To School Tucker Carlson

... but finds he is not an apt student.

This Is Why Journalism Is Vital To Healthy Democracies

At a time when traditional journalism is weathering both economic and political storms, we should all take a moment to reflect on the vital role it plays in healthy democracies. The following story, about a joint investigation by The Toronto Star and The National Observer of FINTRAC, (Canada’s money laundering and terrorist financing enforcement agency), is illustrative of this truth.

As I previously wrote, FINTRAC chose to keep secret the identity of a bank that it penalized for failing to report a suspicious transaction and committing hundreds of other violations in its dealings with a controversial client. Thanks to journalism's dogged determination (which is not cheap, by the way), the mystery is over.

It took 10 months of media scrutiny and public outrage before Canadians learned Manulife Bank of Canada was the mysterious financial institution behind a $1.2-million fine for money-laundering violations.

The decision to confer anonymity upon this giant financial institution was puzzling, given that the same day in April, a handful of much smaller companies — facing far less severe fines — were publicly named by FINTRAC. This is all part of a pattern:

Over the past eight years, FINTRAC has named 40 companies for violating the law while keeping secret another 55.

Left unanswered is the reason for this double-standard, especially disturbing given the scope of Manulife's malfeasance:

-Manulife’s fine, which was reduced twice from an initial $1.8 million, was for five different types of violations of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing law, involving a failure to report transfers totalling at least $12.2 million.

-The bank failed to report one suspicious transaction to FINTRAC — labelled a “very serious” violation that experts say undermines Canada’s system to detect financial crimes and trace dirty money.

-Manulife also failed to report 1,174 outgoing international electronic transfers of $10,000 or more, 45 deposits of $10,000 or more in cash and four incoming international electronic transfers of $10,000 or more.

-The bank was also fined for failing to “develop and apply compliance policies and procedures.”

Curiously, for much less serious violations, FINTRAC showed no such penchant for secrecy. Those named and shamed included one whose misdeeds seem relatively minor:

Mahdi Al-Saady, CEO of Altaif Inc., an Ottawa-based money exchange and transfer company, was hit with a $42,600 FINTRAC fine — and publicly named — in 2014.

The violations for which Altaif was fined included failing to report the sending and receipt of money transfers of more than $10,000 — two of the same violations the unnamed bank was found to have committed.

The fact that Altaif was named is, of course, not the issue. The real question is why all who run afoul of FINTRAC are not treated the same, with the rules rigidly applied.

I have my own suspicions, but I leave it to informed readers to draw their own conclusions.

UPDATED:The Momentum Continues

The Trump resistance movement, about which I have previously written, is showing no signs of abatement. It surely is the bright spot in our increasingly dark times.

in today's paper, the Star's Daniel Dale writes that rank-and-file Democrats are giving no quarter to those in Congress intent on supporting the Orange Ogre's platform:

Their primary goal, for the moment, is to protect the Affordable Care Act, the threatened health-care overhaul the Tea Party tried to prevent from coming into existence. More broadly, they want to show lawmakers there will be consequences for supporting virtually any part of the president’s program — at the very least, being pestered at every turn when they come home from Washington.

One of the sharpest weapons they are wielding comes from an online manual called Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda.

Written by about 30 former Democratic congressional aides and posted on Google Docs in December, it provides step-by-step advice, based largely on Tea Party tactics, on how to get members of Congress to listen.

With at least two groups in every district, it

has racked up more than 16 million web views and spawned 5,300 Indivisible groups around the country.

And the protesters are making there voices heard:

In Utah, [Utah Rep. Jason] Chaffetz, chair of the House oversight committee, faced a raucous chorus of demands to investigate the president. In Iowa, a pig farmer in a baseball cap warned Sen. Chuck Grassley that he wouldn’t be able to afford insurance without Obamacare. In Arkansas, a woman told Sen. Tom Cotton, her voice raw, that Obamacare was the only option for her dying husband.

Some Congressmen are cancelling their town halls rather than face their constituents' wrath, while others have tried moving their gatherings to conservative areas of their state, to no avail. It didn't work for Brat, despite moving his meeting to

a conservative town of 3,500 where the mayor says people care more about NASCAR than politics. But he was greeted with a barrage of skeptical queries on health care, the environment, Social Security and Trump himself from constituents who drove up to two hours to dog him again.

When Brat said Obamacare was collapsing, they shouted: “No!” When he said he supports repealing and replacing the law, they shouted: “With what?” When he insisted that Obamacare hadn’t slowed the growth in health costs, they shouted: “You’re misinformed!” and “Fact check!”

None of this is lost on the politicians.

Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks said last week that the town halls might prevent Republicans like him who are against the Affordable Care Act from securing the votes for repeal.

“Because these folks who support Obamacare are very active, they’re putting pressure on congressmen, and there’s not a counter-effort to steel the spine of some of these congressmen in toss-up districts around the country,” Brooks told an Alabama radio station.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable aspects of this resistance movement is that many of those involved have never been politically active before. The installation of Trump in the White House has radicalized them, unleashing forces to be reckoned with.

"Power to the people," it would seem, is becoming much, much more than a mere cultural slogan from an earlier time.

UPDATE: In a NYT op-ed today, Paul Krugman writes that democracy itself is very much on the line, and an outraged populace may be our last defense.

The Company They Keep

Although I consider myself a hard-bitten cynic/realist, a report by Daniel Dale in today's Star has left me decidedly dispirited. Dale, our Canadian expert on Trump who has followed the Orange Ogre very closely since the primaries, asserts that what used to be called 'mainstream conservatism', is now falling into line with Trump's diseased worldview:

This year’s CPAC [Conservative Political Action Conference], which ended Saturday, was less an indication of a battle for the soul of conservatism than evidence that conservatism is now what President Donald Trump says it is. With a conspiracist openly hostile to Muslims running the world, the gap between the kooky fringe and the centre of the movement has vanished. And on issues from Islam to trade to Russia, the centre has shifted to fall in line with Trump’s worldview.

The demographic of attendees is one indicator:

Libertarians, seniors from liberal-leaning northern Virginia and suspiciously well-coiffed 20-year-olds seeking careers as Republican operatives make up a disproportionate percentage of the crowd.

Even there, there was no sign of a dissident movement. Trump had 15-per-cent support in the CPAC “straw poll” during the campaign last year. His approval rating in this year’s straw poll was 86 per cent.

People who were never invited to past CPACs, indeed, were shunned, are now on the main stage:

Seven Breitbart figures appeared on CPAC panels. Not including the Breitbart man who now serves as chief strategist to the president.

As Breitbart’s chief executive, Stephen Bannon used to antagonize the conference organizer, the American Conservative Union, by hosting a counter-event called “the Uninvited” for speakers deemed too incendiary on issues like Islamist extremism.

Consider some of the other invitees:

-Frank Gaffney, an anti-Muslim “security” advocate.

-Clare Lopez, who warned of a supposed Islamist plot to infiltrate Canada.

-Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-immigration U.K. Independence Party and Brexit engineer.

It is said we are judged by the company we keep. If this year's CPAC invitees are any indication, mainstream, traditional conservatism is hanging out with some 'very bad dudes,' to use a Trumpism.

Perhaps what we are really witnessing is a fire sale of the American soul.

All You Need To Know About Kellie Leitch

The picture below conveys all one needs to know about Kellie Leitch. In the right-hand corner is an ad placed by that very strange lady in Breitbart.

Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch is running advertisements on alt-right website Breitbart news.

The advertisements include calls to dismantle the CBC, oppose the carbon tax and to screen immigrants for “anti-Canadian values.”

“We’re running ads about screening for Canadian values and dismantling the CBC because Kellie’s been very clear that those are her policies, that when she’s prime minister she will implement,” said Michael Diamond, a spokesperson for Leitch’s campaign.

Thanks for providing such clarity, Kellie.

Trump's Bitter Harvest

This may not surprise us, but it should still horrify us.

In the middle of a crowded bar, Adam Purinton yelled at two Indian men to "get out of my country," witnesses said, then opened fire in an attack that killed one of the men and wounded the other, as well as a third man who tried to help.

Kevin O'Leary Laid Bare

I have never cared for that blowhard known as Kevin O'Leary. A shallow man intellectually, he appears to have only two reasons for seeking the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada: ego and a thirst for power, likely the same imperatives that impelled Trump to run for the U.S. presidency.

As Mark Cuban observes in the following, it is the latter motive that seems to most drive the failed Canadian/American businessman:

Growing Momentum

A short time ago I wrote about the resistance movement that has developed and grown since Donald Trump's installation in the White House. A natural question to ask is whether or not the initial enthusiastic momentum of such a movement can be sustained. So far, the signs are good:



Consider this lady's powerful rebuke of Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton:



The passions of the people can be a potent force for evil or for good. Let us all hope it is the latter that prevails.

This Says It All

Brian ("There's no whore like an old whore") Mulroney's shameless pandering to Trump the other night confirmed yet again the shallowness of his character.

This political cartoon captures his abject sycophancy.


H/t iPolitics

Oh, The Horror!

Lest We Forget: Bearing Witness

In my view, this next story has absolutely no redemptive value. Nothing good emerges from such a grievous, historic injustice. And there can be no redemptive value in a recantation rendered when approaching the end of life.

Yet despite, or perhaps because of, its ugliness, it is important for all of us to bear witness. Emmett Till was a person, one who had barely tasted life, when he fell victim to a monumental, monstrous hate crime. And the even greater evil is that he is but one of countless others who suffered such cruel fates owing to a system racism that is far from eradicated, even in the 21st century.



And if you have never heard it, give a listen to Billie Holiday's haunting and unforgettable Strange Fruit.

UPDATED: Chris Wallace Defends "The Enemy Of The American People"

When even elements of the right are spooked, you know things are getting very, very serious:



UPDATE: If you have a really strong stomach, you might be able to watch some of Reince Priebus's whorishness, which Chris Wallace had little patience for:

If You Can Name It, You Can Condemn It

It is bigotry, pure, simple and deeply ingrained:

Now This Is How To Conduct A Protest

This past Thursday, #DayWithoutImmigrants, these protests took place. Their simple elegance reverberates and reverberates.

As Canadians, This Should Profoundly Disgust All Of Us

All this over a motion, a mere House statement, that has no force in law.

The Liberal MP who tabled an anti-Islamophobia motion says she has been inundated with hate mail and death threats.

Mississauga, Ont. MP Iqra Khalid told the House of Commons Thursday she received more than 50,000 emails in response to M-103, many of them with overt discrimination or direct threats.

"'I'm not going to help them shoot you, I'm going to be there to film you on the ground crying. Yeah, I'll be there writing my story with a big fat smile on my face. Ha ha ha. The Member got shot by a Canadian patriot,'" she read, quoting from the video.

And that, she said, was just tip of the iceberg. Here are some other messages she received and read in the House:

"Kill her and be done with it. I agree she is here to kill us. She is sick and she needs to be deported."
"We will burn down your mosques, draper head Muslim."

"Why did Canadians let her in? Ship her back."

"Why don't you get out of my country? You're a disgusting piece of trash and you are definitely not wanted here by the majority of actual Canadians."

We all need to speak out forcefully againt those who propagate such palpable hatred. Remember, silence implies consent.

The Mad Hatter Holds A News Conference

This has to be seen to be believed. Mendacity AND an alternative universe: two for the price of one.

Bad News From The North

No matter how you parse it, this is extraordinarily bad news. That glacier melt is taking place at an alarming rate is bad enough, but the nature of that melt, as you will learn in the following report, should make all of us very, very nervous.





You can read more about the study here. Time is of the essence, despite people like Rona Ambrose calling Canada's pursuit of climate change mitigation measures "complete insanity" in light of the current madness in the White House.

My Head Is Starting To Spin

CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday humiliated Donald Trump’s claim that the barrage of negative news stories related to his administration are “conspiracy theories,” taking moment to explain to the president what differentiates a conspiracy theory from actual, real news.

An Ideological And Horticultural Taint

Although I am not a user of medical cannabis, the current scandal (and it can only be termed a scandal) regarding dangerous and forbidden pesticide use by companies with the Health Canada seal of approval is instructive.

First, a recap of the situation is in order:

After a string of recent recalls by Mettrum Ltd., OrganiGram Inc. and Aurora Cannabis Inc. because of the presence of myclobutanil – a banned pesticide that produces hydrogen cyanide when heated – a number of patients told The Globe and Mail they don’t see how Health Canada can assure them the product can be trusted. Revelations that the government isn’t testing regularly to prove all companies aren’t using harmful chemicals have left consumers concerned for their health.

The real villain of the piece is our current 'new and improved' government, which seems quite content to follow the same practices set out by the former, much-despised neoliberal Harper government.

In a background briefing with The Globe and Mail, a senior Health Canada official acknowledged that even though the government prohibits the use of potentially harmful chemicals such as myclobutanil, – which is known to emit hydrogen cyanide when heated –the department has not been testing cannabis growers to ensure the 38 federally licensed companies were, in fact, not using it.

Instead, the regulator has been leaving it up to the growers to police themselves on the use of potentially harmful chemicals.[emhpasis added]

The rather naive justification for this betrayal of the people using pot for therapeutic reasons is unconvincing:

... we have not required licensed producers [LPs] to test for any unauthorized pesticides, nor have we been testing all LPs, and it is because we expect their companies to be pro-actively watching and taking the appropriate measures to ensure non-authorized products aren’t used.

Perhaps the most damning aspect of all of this is that when a recall of tainted product took place in December, Health Canada refused to reveal the reason: the discovery of myclobutanil.

We will soon be a year-and-a-half into our 'new' government's tenure, more than sufficient time to set new directions for all government bodies, but just as Revenue Canada has shown no particular appetite for chasing down offshore tax evaders, despite the revelations of The Panama Papers, Health Canada and undoubtedly many federal regulators are still hewing to the much-vaunted neoliberal tenet of belief: industry self-regulation.

A damning indictment, to be sure, both of the medical marijuana industry and the Trudeau government, which clearly has not yet met a free-market policy it doesn't like.

A Pertinent Parable

A friend sent me the following. Enjoy!

While stitching a cut on the hand of a 75-year-old farmer, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Donald Trump and his role as President elect of the United States.

The old farmer said, " Well, as I see it, Donald Trump is like a 'Post Tortoise'.''
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'Post Tortoise' was.

The old farmer said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a tortoise balanced on top, that's a Post Tortoise."

The old farmer saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain.

"You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, he's elevated beyond his ability to function, and you just wonder what kind of dumb asses put him up there to begin with."

Trump Human Rights Tracker

In reading Penny Collenette's column, Trump has wakened the sleeping giant of law, this morning, I learned that that particular giant as a watchdog on extreme political authority in a democracy, is now fully awake and alert. One of the expressions of that alertness is found in the fact that

Columbia Law Human Rights Organizations have launched an online tool called the Trump Human Rights Tracker, which records and summarizes the human rights affected or violated by each of the president’s orders. It is already chilling reading.

Although in its early days, the site already has seven entries, all of which link to the executive orders the Trump/Bannon presidency has enacted, as well as the analyses of various human rights' groups and the United Nations. Reading the latter is a particularly constructive exercise.

Consider, for example, the executive order Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States. While Trump publicly insists that the removal of illegal aliens will be limited to 'criminals', the actual language of the order says something quite different; this excerpt illustrates some of those it applies to:

(a) Have been convicted of any criminal offense;

(b) Have been charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved;

(c) Have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense;

(d) Have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a governmental agency;

It is c and d that have therefore allowed heartbreaking scenes like this to occur:



In essence, anyone who has gained access to the U.S. illegally is now more vulnerable than ever under Trump's executive order, even someone like the above who poses no threat to security and has children who are, in fact, American citizens. While some will exult in such measures, those willing to look at the human dimensions and tragedy involved will not.

I have bookmarked the Human Rights Tracker, and intend to visit it regularly for further study and analysis. I hope you will too.

Scenes From The Apocalypse

Just another day in the life of our warming planet:

A Change of Pace

Perhaps I am in a bit of a mood, but I don't feel like writing about politics today. Instead, today's subject is death, which we all must confront at some point. But this post is not about quotidian deaths, you know, the kinds that come as a result of long illness or random violence. Rather, this is about demises that occur under, to say the least, unusual, even absurd, circumstances, circumstances that one can hardly anticipate.

While I probably have something of a macabre sense of humour, today's subject is prompted by a story I read this morning of a rather ignoble end:

Judith Permar drove to a clothing drop-off box at about 2 a.m. Sunday, her black Hummer shrouded in the darkness of the Natalie, Pa., night.

It doesn’t appear the 56-year-old was fueled by a late-night desire to help the poor, though. When she arrived at the box, she jumped out of her enormous SUV, leaving the engine running.

At that point, it seems that she pulled a stepladder up to the drop-off box. No one can say for sure — the next time anyone saw Permar, she was dead.

After allegedly removing several bags filled with clothes and shoes, she slipped as the stepladder collapsed, her arm catching in the door.

The fall broke her arms and wrists, which were trapped in the box. Her feet, meanwhile, didn’t quite touch the ground, leaving her hanging.

There she dangled until 8:30 the next morning, when she was finally found.

Permar was pronounced dead at the scene. The county coroner James F. Kelley listed the cause of death as blunt force trauma and hypothermia.

And while we are on this subject, allow me to share with you some of the opening sequences of one of my all-time favourite shows, Six Feet Under, an HBO series which dealt with the mortuary business.

Enjoy, or not, as your sensibilities permit.

Facebook's Community Standards

Some time ago, I wrote about my disappointing experience with Facebook after I complained about what was essentially hate speech by a FB group. The response I got was that the racist anti-Muslim group did not violate their community standards.

Since then, it would appear that little has changed.

Yesterday I happened upon a video by a FB group entitled Refugee Resettlement, below which was an invitation to learn more at Act For America, which describes itself as "the NRA of national security." Take a look if you want to get a flavour of their 'concerns.' I watched the group's video which, in my view, is an exercise in fear-mongering and anti-Muslim sentiment, and it does violate my standards, but apparently not those of Facebook. Here is the reply I got about my complaint:

Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community Standards. Reports like yours are an important part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment. We reviewed the video you reported for displaying hate speech and found it doesn't violate our Community Standards.

Please let us know if you see anything else that concerns you. We want to keep Facebook safe and welcoming for everyone.

Well, perhaps not everyone, as the video below makes clear: