Election Fraud Rally

For those living in or around the Toronto area, please consider attending Sunday's rally to protest both the voter suppression crimes committed during the last federal election and the 'strange' unwillingness of the Harper government to support the search for the truth.

It begins at 2:30 p.m., Yonge-Dundas Square. We will then march to the cenotaph at Old City Hall on Queen Street at 3:30pm.

Criminal Activity in Joe Oliver's Campaign?

The Star is reporting that Natural Resources Minister Joe ('radicals are threatening the tarsands') Oliver's riding of Eglinton-Lawrence may have been the scene of another electoral crime, this one involving the last-minute rush of previously unregistered voters who cast ballots in the last federal election.

Veteran Liberal MP Joe Volpe lost the riding to Conservative Oliver by 4,062 votes, but the problems is that at least 2,700 applications for late registration to vote... failed to provide addresses or gave false or non-residential addresses. Nonetheless, contrary to Election Canada rules, they were allowed to vote.

With this latest evidence of well-organized electoral fraud, one wonders when the revelations will end, and if they can ever be successfully and definitively investigated and resolved.

A Tale of Two Newspapers

The Globe and Mail and its sundry propagandists (excepting the principled Lawrence Martin, of course) continue their Sisyphean task of defending the indefensible by issuing almost daily dismissals both of the seriousness of the voter suppression crimes and of those who see those crimes as part of the pattern of Harper malfeasance evident since dear leader assumed office.

By contrast, The Toronto Star has consistently displayed its journalistic integrity and independence through relentless coverage and commentary that doesn't insult the intelligence of its readers. The latest example is to be found in Bob Hepburn's piece entitled Brian Mulroney: I owe you an apology, in which the writer argues that many of the ills of our democracy are directly attributable to Stephen Harper, who has so lowered the level of Canadian politics through his crimes and misdemeanours that huge numbers of citizens have opted out of the political process entirely.

It is an article well-worth reading, as Hepburn demonstrates what happens when an individual and his party puts winning above all else, including the good of the country.

While The Globe and Mail Is Busy Doing PR for The PM ...

...it appears that The Vancouver Observer is actually doing some journalism as it unearths the details of the campaign school that John Fryer wrote about last week in his letter to the Globe and Mail.

As far as I know, the Globe did no followup of Fryer's explosive allegations. Hardly surprising for the self-proclaimed 'newspaper of record'.

H/t @yvonne4tn

A Little More G20 Justice

In one of the more despicable acts of police brutality during the G20 Summit in Toronto in June of 2010, a paraplegic man, Gabriel Jacobs, was “dragged” from his motorized wheelchair, thrown into the back of a police cruiser and left on the floor of a temporary G20 detention centre where he defecated on himself because guards refused to help him.

Jacobs, who had been seeking $100,000 for his mistreatment and humiliation from the Toronto police, has reached a settlement which, like so much else about that notorious weekend, must remain confidential. And of course the police are not about to shed any light:

When asked if the settlement could be seen as an admission of guilt by the police, Mark Pugash, the director of corporate communications for the Toronto police, said “settlements, by definition, do not involve any admission of any kind.”

So much for openness and transparency, eh, Chief Blair?

The Latest Drivel From John Ibbitson

But they went a long way to containing the damage when Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in the House, and the election campaign chair Guy Giorno, on television, declared emphatically that the central campaign did not authorize or know of any deceptions, including alleged harassing calls from people purporting to speak for the Liberal Party who were in fact Conservatives. Unless new evidence emerges to suggest they are not telling the truth, reasonable people will give them the benefit of the doubt.

I suspect the article, excerpted above from the Globe's most prolific robo-call apologist, John Ibbitson, would have been more aptly titled The Truth, According to Me and My Bosses.

Guess Who Doesn't Support Our Troops?

If you guessed Stephen Harper's Conservative Party, you are correct. While dear leader and company pull out all of the rhetorical stops about supporting the troops when it serves their ideological purpose, they are decidedly niggard when it comes to helping them when they are no longer fodder in distant lands.

The most recent insult to those brave men and women (I don't dispute their valour, only the cause that so many gave their lives for) comes from that national disgrace, Calgary West MP Rob Anders (yes the same Anders who embarrassed all of us when he voted against making Nelson Mandela an honorary citizen, decrying him as a communist and a terrorist) when he dozed off while vets were making a committee presentation on homeless vets. Caught in his act of somnolence, he lashed out at the vets, calling them “NDP hacks” and supporters of Vladmir Putin.

Just another of the many reasons Harper and his troops are unfit to govern.

You can read the entire sad tale about Conservative hypocrisy and demagoguery here.