Some Low-Hanging Fruit

Or should I say pork? I have a bit of a busy morning, so I am taking the easy route for now by dedicating this photo to our 'friends' in the Red Chamber and their federal government enablers:

I Just Couldn't Resist This One

H/t Canadians Rallying to Unseat Stephen Harper

All Good Pets Deserve A Reward

Having owned a magnificent Landseer Newfoundland dog in the past (the most human pet I ever came into contact with), I am well-aware of the importance of rewarding good behaviour. For example, if you ask him/her to shake hands, you toss your pet a treat. Rolling over, 'speaking', etc. all call for positive reinforcement.

I awoke this morning wondering what would be a lovely gift for those pets in the Harper government who, throughout the last parliamentary session, spoke faithfully in their master's voice. While the list is long, and perhaps others will be the subject of future posts, I will highlight here only one of the many who merit the highest of accolades:

Kellie Leitch

This hippocratic oath-taker has, this year and since her election in 2011, given all to her party, even her medical integrity, refusing, as she did, to condemn the export of Canadian asbestos to developing nations despite its highly carcinogenic properties. She also walked and talked the party line over Harper cuts to refugee health care, describing the measures as 'fair and necessary.'

Perhaps Kellie's greatest achievement and irrefutable evidence of her fealty to her dark lord, Harper, is her ability to spin a variety of permutations on the very limited talking points (on average, two or three sentences) she is permitted whenever she appears on television to defend the indefensible. Her extolment of Mr. Harper is stellar, and I think you get the full measure of the lady within the first three minutes or so of this video, which may also suggest a cabinet post in her future for her unwavering loyalty:

Since it is not within my power to confer political reward to Ms Leitch, I offer this humble yet highly symbolic gift to her and others in her pack:

Apparently this particular choke chain comes in a variety of sizes, and is therefore suitable for widespread gifting, no matter what size pet vies for one in the Harper caucus.

Is Trudeau's Poll Lead Such A Good Thing?

The latest polls show the Trudeau-led Liberals leading the Harper Conservatives 36% to 29%, with the NDP at 23%. Coincidentally, this petition from Forest EthicsEthics suggests it is not necessarily an occasion for celebration:



WHOSE SIDE IS JUSTIN ON, ANYWAY?

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has been in office just a couple of short months and already he's making friends with folks on the wrong side of the tar sands issue. High-fiving Alberta Premier Alison Redford for spending billions to lobby for the tar sands industry and then slamming Prime Minister Harper for not doing enough to promote the Keystone XL pipeline... really? Really?!

Does Justin Trudeau stand behind Canada’s First Nations and Canadians from coast to coast who are saying no to pipelines and tankers, or does he stand behind Big Oil?

Send your message to Justin Trudeau using our handy email tool. Use the sample message or write your own. It's time we let Justin know we're watching his support for tar sands very closely.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s only been on the job for a couple months – and already he’s getting off on the wrong foot by sounding like he’s showing support for the tar sands industry by promoting the Keystone KXL pipeline.

As Canadians, we must let him know that he is wading into waters that we don't support by high-fiving Alberta Premier Alison Redford for spending billions lobbying for the oil industry. In the same breath he slammed Prime Minister Harper for not doing enough to promote the Keystone XL pipeline. As if billions in oil subsidies and massive cuts to countless environmental regulations weren’t enough?!

“We Are Sleepwalking To Disaster . . " *

Many in the blogosphere are doing a stellar job covering the climate-change beat, including The Disaffected Lib, who has had several recent thought-provoking posts on the subject. So I really have nothing new or insightful to add, other than to draw your attention to a story covered in today's Star, written by its environment reporter, Raveena Aulakh.

Writing her story around a new report released by the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization covering the world's climate from 2001-2010, Aulakh reports the following:

It was the warmest decade for both hemispheres.

There was a rapid decline in Arctic sea ice, and an accelerating loss of net mass from Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

Sea levels rose about 3 millimetres annually, twice the 20th-century rate.

Deaths from heatwaves increased dramatically to 136,000, compared with fewer than 6,000 deaths in the previous decade.

The average global temperature was 14.47 C, which is 0.21 degree warmer than 1991-2000.

Almost 94 per cent of countries logged their warmest 10 years on record.

Rising sea levels, acidification of oceans, and glacial melting at a rate far faster than had been anticipated in earlier models - it would seem that we have entered into a kind of recursive loop that will be very difficult, indeed, impossible to break, if all of our politicians continue to shy away from both the financial and political capital expenditures required, and we continue our personal complicity in that inaction.

My wife often opines that the human race is turning out to be a failed experiment. It is a perspective I have long resisted, but I am beginning to think she is correct. Our collective capacity to ignore the obvious and shy away from remediation, even while the world both burns and drowns, seems ample testament to our monumental failure as a species.



* John Smol, a researcher on environmental change at Queen’s University.

ZZZZZZZZZZZ.... While You Were Sleeping

I trust this needs no explanation.



H/t Canadians Rallying To Unseat Stephen Harper

Why Is A Free Press Important?

Watch this video of an interview with Glenn Greenwald for part of the answer:



H/t Popular Resistance

Linda McQuaig: Alberta And Climate Change

For me, one of the most disappointing aspects of the media coverage of the Alberta floods has been the relative dearth of commentary linking this monumental environmental disaster to climate change. To be sure, some prominent people have made that linkage, but by and large it has been omitted from mainstream coverage of what is probably Canada's worst flooding in our history. Television networks and major newspapers have seemed quite reticent about putting the two topics in the same story, for reasons I'll leave you to consider.

Always outside and beyond the mainstream, my newspaper of record, The Toronto Star, has Linda McQuaig's latest column in this morning's edition. In it, she draws a sharp contrast between the concerted action that was taken by the world in the 1970's to address the problem of ozone layer depletion with the inaction today on climate change. The reason for the difference?

The climate battle, launched in 1988 right after the signing of the Montreal Protocol, has been played out in a very different age — one dominated by the mantra “government bad, private sector good” when corporate power has been at its zenith, enjoying a virtual stranglehold on key public policy decisions.

McQuaig says that the footprint of corporate power and obstructionism is most profoundly evident in the United Nations which, she asserts, has been infiltrated and subverted:

With the new anti-government, pro-business paradigm, the UN was transformed from a body aimed at regulating and monitoring international corporate behaviour to one that “partners” with the corporate sector, note Sabrina Fernandes and Richard Girard in Corporations, Climate and the United Nations, a report published by the Ottawa-based Polaris Institute.

Taking full advantage of this change, the fossil fuel industry became deeply embedded in every aspect of the UN climate change process, using its inside role to effectively scuttle progress, like a fox setting up headquarters right inside the henhouse.

As always, Linda McQuaig has something very important to say. I hope you will take a few moments to check out her entire piece, which includes a couple of very interesting links that bolster her contentions.

Barriers

In my teaching career, one of the most powerful lessons for my students emerged from Atticus Finch, Scout's beloved father in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird. A lawyer with a deep sense of fairness and compassion, Finch taught his children a lesson that all of us should carry in life:

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Empathy, the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another, or, more simply put, putting yourself in another's place, I have always felt, should make it easier for us to react to injustices with at least some degree of outrage.

For me, the most effective route to empathy is a simple question: Would I want my son or daughter to be treated in an unjust way (apply your own particular scenario here)? Ask yourself that question as you watch this video:

Integrity And Dishonour On Display

If there were two people in a room, a politician and a private citizen, and you were told that one was deeply dishonourable and one very principled, you would naturally assume that the mantle of dishonour would be worn by the politician. In the following case, you would be completely wrong, as the video and the accompanying story, which you might want to read first, make abundantly clear:

On Canada Day

On this Canada Day, I could write about all of the reasons I am very thankful for having been born and raised in this country. Instead, I will ask whoever reads this to check out The Star's Tim Hapur, who has a very sound suggestion on how we can best honour and work to restore our great legacy.

Perhaps if enough of us act on his words, we can once more become the country of great promise we used to be.

I Don't Know About You ...

... but despite our many earth-bound problems, I find this sort of thing absolutely fascinating:

Contrasting Pictures

This post could perhaps more aptly be entitled A Tale of Two Centuries. The top picture, from yesterday's Dyke March in Toronto, represents some of the best of the twenty-first century as people increasingy accept and welcome the diversity that is humanity. It is hard not to feel a measure of pride in a country that, while still beset with a myriad of problems, has been one of the world's forerunners in promoting equality regardless of sexual orientation. Both the Dyke Parade and today's Pride Parade are ample testaments to that progressiveness.

The second picture, taken from yesterday's Pride Parade in St. Petersburg, could just as easily have been taken in the nineteenth century or earlier, as protesters clashed with paraders who were taking a brave stance in a city where it is illegal to demonstrate on behalf of equal rights for LGBT people; by publicly doing so, they broke a city bylaw that is about to become national law.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will soon sign into law a bill that bans “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations.”

Under Russia’s new law, people who promote homosexuality through any media, including online, can be charged up to $3,200. The fines are tenfold for organizations, which can also be shuttered for 90 days.

According to state-owned pollster Vtsiom, 88 per cent of Russians support the ban. A survey by independent pollster Levada last year found that half of Russians believe homosexuals should be forcibly given medical or psychological treatment.

Changing people's attitudes and perspectives is among the most difficult of challenges. The fact that such challenges can be met is epitomized in twenty-first century Toronto in particular and North America in general.

In a world beset by runaway climate change, choking pollution, government surveillance of its citizens and a relentless and unforgiving corporate agenda that gleefully exploits an increasingly desperate workforce, surely it is time to turn our attention to matters more important than who people spend their time and their lives with.

Oh So True

H/t Canadians Rallying To Unseat Stephen Harper

The Age of the Disposable Worker

On this blog I frequently lament the fact that we live in the age of the fungible worker, the one who is easily exchanged for another should his or her expectations of decent wages and working conditions threaten to impede the flow of easy profits accruing to corporate coffers. It is happening abroad, an example evident in the declining fortunes of China, which has seen wages rising, resulting in multi-nationals shifting their production to lower-wage regimes; we see it in North America, with manufacturers closing up shop to relocate in jurisdictions with more lax labour regulations, the Caterpillar closing being one of the more recent and egregious examples in Canada.

But as bad as corporate indifference to workers' fates may be, there is an entirely distinct class of workers for whom Canada as a nation shows little but withering contempt: the migrant worker, the people we import from places like Jamaica, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, to do the work we refuse to do - agriculture labour such as picking tobacco and fruit and vegetables. As bucolic as such endeavours may sound, they are often fraught with danger, but even when the unthinkable happens, workers and their loved ones are not extended the kinds of protections that Canadians enjoy, an example being the right to inquests into deaths that occur on the job.

Such was the case with Ned Peart, a Jamaican worker brought to Ontario through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, [who] died in 2002 after a tobacco bin fell and crushed him at a farm near Brantford. When the Office of the Chief Coroner refused to hold an inquest, Mr. Peart’s family lodged a human-rights complaint in the hopes of catalyzing broader legislative reforms.

Watch the video below and see if you can avoid the natural distaste that arises when such obvious injustice occurs:

For Those Who Don't Mind Gov't Surveillance Because They Have Nothing To Hide

You might want to take a moment to read Rick Salutin's thoughts on the implications of living in a country where environmentalists and others who oppose the government's corporate agenda are regarded as terrorists.

As well, this Canadian Dimension piece might also give you pause.

A Rare Moment of Praise For The U.S.

Despite being deeply cynical about Amercian poltics in general, and Barack Obama in particular, a rare opportunity to praise both has just arisen. Although relatively modest in scope, in response to the terriblly unsafe working conditions in Bangladesh that have cost so many workers their lives and maimed countless others, the U.S government has moved to suspend Bangladesh’s special trading privileges to force that country to improve the situation.

Although the greatest source of these dangerous conditions is the clothing industry, it will, unfortunately, be only minimally affected by the suspension, for reasons explained here. Nonetheless, it is hoped the move will put pressure on both Canada and the EU to take appropriate measures to further 'encourage' the Bangladeshi government to clean up its act:

Since the April disaster, Canadian labour activists have tried to convince Ottawa to use its tariff program to force Bangladesh to improve safety and establish workers’ rights.

The pressure is now on Canada, said Hassan Yussuff, secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress.

“I applaud the U.S. decision. I hope Canada and the EU follow,” Yussuff said from Ottawa.

Alas, such a hope, at least as it applies to Canada, appears to be a forlorn one. It would seen that Mr. Harper and his corporate handlers have never met a situation of desperate workers it has not tried to exploit, hence its fond embrace of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, its changes to E.I., its efforts to weaken unions domestically, etc. etc.


A finance ministry official told the Star that Canada is “concerned about working conditions in the global ready-made garment sector” and supports efforts to improve standards.

BUT

It does not appear Ottawa has any plans to follow the American lead, calling the move largely “symbolic” as it doesn’t apply to the garment industry.


No doubt Corporate Canada and Mr. Harper (separated at birth?) will soon unleash a torrent of rhetoric about constructive engagement through trade to improve the conditions of workers abroad. No doubt Galen Weston will continue with his sanctimonious rhetoric. And no doubt countless lives will continue to be lost in Bangladesh and elsewhere if no one else picks up where the Amertican example leaves off.

Duh

Who could have seen this coming?

Just Because ...

...he deserves all of the ridicule and contempt we can muster.

The Peripatetic Pamela

It would seem that the good Senator from somewhere, Pamela Wallin, is on the road so much that she has been denied health coverage in both Ontario and Saskatchewan, at least according to The Globe and Mail. This conflicts with a report in The Waterloo Record, which states that she has an Ontario health card, which is not necessarily such good news, given her senatorial claim of being a Sasatchewan resident.

What is a wily woman from Wadena (originally) to do? But then again, the question of health coverage may be the least of her problems.

But perhaps all of this pales in comparison to the problems her fellow provinceless Red Chamber mate, The Puffster, has caused for their common master, Mr. Harper, whose handling of the Senate imbroglio has left many decidedly unsatisfied.

On Corporate Welfare

David Lewis, the one-time head of the federal NDP and father of Stephen Lewis, used the phrase corporate welfare bums in his 1972 federal election campaign to describe the various subsidies handed out to the corporate world. It was a withering jab at the world of business, so proud to trumpet the merits of unfettered capitalism while not too proud to take every bit of free money that government has to offer it.

Today, that concept has never been more relevant. Probably the most egregious example of corporate welfare will become apparent in the coming months as the rest of Canada ponies up to pay for the environmental devastation wrought in Alberta that is, in my mind, the direct result of climate change, change which the corporate world continues to deny, evident in its ongoing concerted effort to oppose any measures that might ameliorate its most devastating effects. Corporate Canada will be asked for nothing by the Harper regime, which will continue to lower its tax rates as soon as the deficit is eliminated.

The futility of corporate welfare is, I think, very nicely addressed in the lead letter appearing in this morning's Star as Morgan Duchesney of Ottawa points out the folly of lowering corporate tax rates and getting nothing in return:

Re: The Great Recession still lingers, June 22

Stephen Poloz, the newly minted governor of the Bank of Canada, is working hard to distance himself from former governor Mark Carney’s “dead money” warnings to corporate Canada. Does that mean that Poloz also approves lowering tax rates for non-investing Canadian corporations that happily ship jobs to low-wage destinations like China?

As former CEO of Export Development Canada, Poloz is an expert proponent of corporate welfare. As corporate Canada continues to avoid research and development investment while stridently demanding lower taxes, the regime of public subsidy for private profit continues unabated under the Harper government’s well-advertised Economic Action Plan. Such behaviour exemplifies the eternal mythology of the so-called free market.

Private sector investment could reasonably be left to corporate Canada if our industrial titans were not so addicted to public subsidy. Ongoing multi-billion-dollar tax breaks and outright grants to the energy sector are good examples of this public-risk- for-private-profit model. In spite of the cost to working people, stiff corporate resistance to investment remains strong, although this hesitation is categorized as “thrift” by the generous Poloz. There is every indication that the Harper government plans to reward Canadian corporations with further tax cuts in spite of their continued reluctance to invest their profits in necessary research and development.

Of course, our political leadership has little desire to take a hard line on the business elite, who are, after all, their funding source and future employers. The tired excuse about not wanting to punish “job creators and innovators” is a bit threadbare in light of abysmal levels of corporate investment in Canada.
If Canadian corporations are operating overseas while shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions, exactly who is benefiting and just how “Canadian” are these companies if they employ foreigners and only benefit arms-length stockholders?

The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

Many years ago I read a novel by Jimmy Breslin called The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, which dealt with profound ineptitude within a certain New York mafia family. It would seem a worthwhile novel to revisit, now that there is a real-life gang operating in Ottawa that seems to have caught the incompetence bug. Once known as a tightly-focussed and disciplined cabal answering to a 'Mr. Big' at the top of the organization, the group has lately veered into a series of farcical errors that have substantially eroded its 'street-cred' and caused considerable restlessness amongst rank-and-file members.

You can read all about it via The Huffington Post and The National Post.



One wonders if a revival of the Ted Mack Amateur Hour can be far behind.

It's Never Enough, Is It?

Forget for the moment that McDonald's is one of the world's biggest corporations; forget for the moment that a steady diet of its food will likely shorten your life; forget for the moment that it is a minimum-wage employer whose workers make it possible for them to accrue their billions of dollars in annual profits.

Instead, just keep the following video and this story in mind the next time you stop by 'The Golden Arches'.



If you are sufficiently outraged by this egregious exploitation, please consider signing this petition.

Rather Apt, Don't You Think?

H/t The ChronicleHerald

Harper 'Stunned' By Magnitude of Alberta Flooding

I expect that climate-change denier Harper will be stunned with alarming regularity soon:

Shh! Don't Ask!

I have to confess to feeling a small measure of guilt each time I reproduce someone else's words with little editorializing on my part. Yet my ego is sufficiently robust to be able to acknowledge the fact that there are many others with views that merit space in this blog, views that are in many cases expressed more elequently and succinctly than mine.

Such is the following letter from today's Star by Judy Ward of Oshawa as she opines on CETA, about which I have written in the past. Ms Ward speaks for many as she strongly objects to the Harper cabal's obsession with keeping Canadians ignorant about a trade deal that could have devastating domestic effects:

Canada-EU trade deal is wishful thinking, Business June 20

We read day after day about our prime minister travelling about the world and talking free trade. Why doesn’t he talk to Canadians? He wants a free-trade pact with the EU. What is he planning to trade away in order to secure this agreement? Why doesn’t he let Canadians know what is on the table in these talks? We have a right to know.

It is rumoured that the EU wants to change our banking rules. Why? So we can end up like Spain or Greece or Portugal or Cyprus or even Ireland? It is also rumoured that if businesses didn’t like our rules they could sue us for loss of income.

But what frightens me is that our prime minister may be trading away our health care. We have a right to know what is on the table and health care should not in any way, shape or form be on the table. No hospitals, drugs or any aspect of health care should be bartered in the name of free trade.
The secrecy surrounding these talks is frightening. This information should be available to Canadians. We are the ones who have to live with the decisions made by the government. We have a right to know what its plans are. If the opposition parties know what is happening with these talks, then they should make it public.

This is the most secretive government I can ever recall. Tell us what is being bartered in these talks before an agreement is signed.

If Woodward And Bernstein Were Dead

.... I'm sure there would be reports of seismic activity in the vicinity of their graves over this question asked of Glenn Greenwald by Meet the Press host David Gregory about the propriety of his bringing Edward Snowden's story to the world:

He Certainly Has Mr. Harper's Number

It is always heartening to me, and I am sure to countless others, to see that some members of the Canadian electorate are not asleep at the proverbial wheel but instead busy exercising their critical-thinking skills. Peter Dick of Toronto is one such citizen. Not content to blithely and blindly accept the official mythology that the Conservative government is an able manager of the economy, Mr. Dick, in today's Star, offers the following trenchant observations about a naked emperor and his entourage:


Re: Parliamentary session over for summer, but scandals still remain, June 20

Government House Leader Peter Van Loan continues to spout the Stephen Harper party line in Thursday’s Star, saying: “We’ve been working hard to strengthen our economy, create jobs and support Canadian families.” If only repeating this, ad nauseam, made it true! People outside the 1 per cent know how bad things are. Economies suffer and degrade when people don’t spend money, and people don’t spend money when they are unemployed, in a precarious job or making less than a living wage.

As long as Harper continues to create and support policies that export Canadian jobs, put downward pressure on Canadian salaries, weaken unions and destroy any semblance of job security, he is sabotaging the economy for us all. Add to this the deliberate degradation, rather than bolstering, of the Canada Pension Plan and employment insurance benefits, and you ensure that fewer and fewer Canadians have disposable income to spend. How strange that an “economics guy” like Harper does not make the connection between a precarious, low-paid workforce and a tanked economy. Harper’s policies contradict everything that comes out of his mouth, and your wallet already knows this. Vote accordingly.

Perhaps Its Time To Stop Talking And Start Acting?

For obvious reasons.

Pam Sings The Blues

On this fine Friday evening, for those of you whose tastes tend toward the confessional genre, may I suggest this rendition of "Pam Sings The Blues"?

A critical caveat: Although the wailer from Wadena hits all of the right notes, her performance somehow leaves one with a vague but abiding dissatisfaction.

Government Would Never Abuse Its Authority, Would It?

You decide.

Let's All Be Good, Quiescent Citizens, Eh?

It is no secret that this country, under the 'leadership' of the Harper cabal, has suffered a significant loss of democratic freedoms reflected in the abuse of and contempt for parliamentary procedure, the subversion of senate inquiries, the muzzling of civil servants, and the extollment of opacity in place of transparency (anyone made a freedom of information request lately?) to name but four 'crimes' of the government. A new threat, of which I have already briefly written twice, is the new law, Bill C-309, which makes it a crime punishable by up to ten years in prison to wear a mask during a riot (cue the misdirection here) or an 'unlawful assembly'. It is the latter stipulation that should be of concern to all of us.

First, what constitutes an unlawful assembly? It would seem that it is in the eye of the beholder. The Criminal Code defines it this way:

"An unlawful assembly is an assembly of three or more persons who, with intent to carry out any common purpose, assemble in such a manner or so conduct themselves when they are assembled as to cause persons in the neighbourhood of the assembly to fear, on reasonable grounds, that they will disturb the peace tumultuously; or will by that assembly needlessly and without reasonable cause provoke other persons to disturb the peace tumultuously."

You can see that one of the problems here is the rather subjective nature of an unlawful assembly, the determination of which would ultimately fall to the authoriteis on site to make. For example, if a group of people, without a permit, assemble to loudly and very publically protest, for example, environmental degradation, and one of them, because he/she fears retaliation from an employer, dons a disguise, if the authorities call it an ulawfual assembly, that person is potentially facing a very protracted period of incarceration.

Are people who might be present at a current protest in Westover over Enbridge plans to pump tar sand crude to Montreal but don't want to run afoul of employers thereby deterred from this 'unlawful assembly'? Those who embrace the corporate agenda would doubless be hearted by such deterrence; those who can think beyond the bottom line, not so much.

While the author of the bill, Conservative M.P. Blake Richards has insisted that the law is necessary for dealing with protesters "pre-emptively,", Osgoode Hall Law School Professor James Stribopoulos [has] pointed to the possible "chilling effects" posed by making it unlawful to disguise one’s identity at a protest, say to prevent against reprisals from your boss or coworkers, or to avoid facial recognition software.

Given that existing law already makes it an offence to wear a mask during the commission of a crime, some are suggesting the new law will not withstand a constitutional challenge. Writes the Huffington Post's Marni Soupcoff:

The problem with the new law is that it threatens to chill the political and social activities of completely innocent people -- or to land them in jail for doing nothing more serious than trying to stay anonymous. What if a .... particularly creative environmentalist wanted to make a point at an anti-oil sands demonstration by wearing a handmade sludge-covered duck mask?

Can the government really get away with this level of intimidation, dampening, and punishment of public demonstrations... Not if the Charter's protections of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly mean anything. Which is why I hope the new law will be challenged in court -- and soon. It deserves more serious constitutional scrutiny than it has been afforded, and it deserves more outrage too. Canada should not feel comfortable joining the ranks of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia -- countries (none of them exactly known for their respect of civil liberties) that have ... recently banned Guy Fawkes masks.

So the choice becomes a very basic one: Will we play the role of the quiescent citizen that coroporate/governmental interests are so avidly casting for? Or do we think that democracy is something well-worth vigourously fighting for and defending?

I'm Sure It Is Just A Coincidence ...

...but if I were paranoid, I might see a connection between this and this.

Hope He Has A Restful Summer

Wondering if the rotund Senator from somewhere has made his annual pilgramage to P.E.I. yet. In any event, the Cavendish Cottager (as The Disaffected Lib refers to him) should not travel too far afield, as the RCMP may have some questions for him soon. As reported in The Ottawa Citizen, the federal force

...appears to have broadened its investigation into Senator Mike Duffy’s expense claims by obtaining campaign records from 11 Conservative candidates from the last election.

The exhibit report filed in court lists campaign returns and “expense claims and payment documents related to Mike Duffy from the following candidates.” It lists current Conservative MPs Gerald Keddy, Greg Kerr, John Carmichael, and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver. The list appears to be comprised of candidates who Duffy promoted during the 2011 election campaign, when he visited ridings across the country on behalf of Tory candidates.

One does not want to jump to the conclusion that The Puffster was double-dipping, claiming both per diems from the Senate and expenses from the canadidates; no, one definitely doesn't want to impute fraud on a man who apparently exists in a such a state of confusion that where he lives is one of life's more profound mysteries.

That would be cruel indeed.

A New Transparency For Harper?

Sometimes the truth can be ugly indeed.




H/t Canadians Rallying To Unseat Harper

Harper Government Finds Another Way To Stifle Dissent

Wearing a mask at an 'unlawful' assembly (example, spontaneous demonstration) now carries a maximum 10-year-prison term, thanks to Bill C-309, a private member's bill sponsored by Conservative MP Blake Richards which became law today.

No word yet on any bills making it unlawful for police to conceal their identities by removing badges while attending such events.

Delusional Or Just Cynical About The People He 'Represents'? Updated

Take a look at this and decide what is going on in the mind of Trevor Zinck, the disgraced MLA from Nova Scotia who pleaded guilty to embezzling money from the public purse through fraudulent claims but somehow thinks he should retain his seat.

Perhaps he has been looking to the Senate for his inspiration?

UPDATE: Seems like the lad just came to his senses.

Moral Bankruptcy And Strategic Errors

Like the morally bankrupt coward that he is, our Prime Prevaricator, Stephen Harper, recently made another ham-fisted attempt to discredit Justin Trudeau (a man, by the way, who does not especially impress me.) Given his general contempt for the intelligence of the majority of Canadians, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time to have his office 'leak' the story of a money-losing speaking engagement by Trudeau at Georgian College.

The information, offered on the condition that the PMO not be identified as the source, backfired on the increasingly desperate Conservatives, as you will see below. The Harper cabal's biggest miscalculation, it seems, is that it didn't count on a quality virtually non-existent within its own ranks, personal and professional integrity:

As usual, our national embarrassment, Harper, refused to answer questions about this tawdry affair while at The G8.

BTW, if you don't think that sheer moral bankruptcy is sufficient explanation for recent Tory ineptitude in its dirty tricks deployment, The Star's Susan Delacourt has an alternative view.

A Lesson in Democracy from Brazil - Updated

Although I do not condone violence in any form, if you read the accompanying story you will see what happens when the citizens of a country feel strongly about something, in this case their opposition to the £10 billion being spent in preparation for the World Cup next year in Brazil. Can you imagine how our politicians would respond to such widespread expressions of discontent?




And then there is this, by Carla Dauden:





UPDATE: Of course, confronting the abuse of authority always entails a price, doesn't it?

Police pepperspray lone bystander

An Alleged Con Speaks About A Con

Thanks to Alison at Creekside for this and, of course, her ever-growing Harper's Parade of Perps.

Resettlement Plan For Harper's Cronies

H/t The ChronicleHerald

What The Harper Oil Enthusiasts Don't Want You To Think About

This and this:

Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear Me

Lordy, I see young Tim Hudak is hurling those sticks and stones again. Won't that boy ever try acting like a grown man?