The Tamil Protests and the Dead Kid

(click pic to enlarge)

Sometimes I'm glad to be able to get away from Toronto, because this week all anybody seems to be talking about is how the city has been taken over by the Tamils.

And it's driving me nuts. I've never heard such an avalanche of outrage over such a small peaceful protest. Nobody was hurt, a few drivers were delayed in traffic. In a city that can be as boring as batshit, it was the best show in years.

And in all the overheated ugly talk about these brown buggers , Tamil terrorists ungrateful immigrants, hardly anyone remembered that the Gardner Expressway had been blocked before by some dangerous looking white radicals.

So what's the problem eh? Not racism I hope.

And besides if people want to be outraged they should save it for this story.

That was buried by the story about the traffic tie-ups.

Because it's so sad. Witnesses said the kid was crying as his short life slipped away from him.

And unlike the Tamil protests that are just an inconvenience, and as far as I'm concerned a very small price to pay for the pleasure of living in a vibrant multicultural city.

What's happening to some mostly black kids in some neighbourhoods is a tragedy.

And a REAL problem...



Stop the bullets. Kill the gun.

Support our Tamil neighbours. Understand their pain and desperation.

Stop the racist nonsense.

Save our black children....

Religious Bigot James Dobson Surrenders

OMG. Start ringing the bells. The raving wingnut James Dobson has surrendered.

I want to tell you up front that we're not going to ask you to do anything, to make a phone call or to write a letter or anything.

There is nothing you can do at this time about what is taking place because there is simply no limit to what the left can do at this time. Anything they want, they get and so we can't stop them.

Golly. I liked that last paragraph so much...and read it sooooo many times. If only it was true. But I guess the recession finally caught up with them.

Although I notice that Dobson doesn't say don't write cheques, or don't sell your house before you lose it....and send half the money to me. And that he does invoke the mighty fundraising power of prayer.

And so what you can do is pray, pray for this great nation... As I see it, there is no other answer. There's no other answer, short term.

Which scares me almost as much as it does PZ Myers.

Oh, no…wait. They're going to start praying? Don't do that! When they've got the power of their almighty god behind them, they'll be unstoppable!

My reaction?

Thank God I don't believe in God.

If the recession kills off these Christianist bigots it'll almost be worth it.

And of course if PZ Myers, my Atheist Messiah, says GLOAT.

I say thanks a lot eh?

I think I will.....

Stephen Harper's Desperate Election Threat

Uh oh. I see Great Strategic Genius , Economist , Loser Leader is threatening to plunge the country into an election....over the question of Employment Insurance.

You know the coldhearted bastard who said this about the unemployed.

"We are not interested in making it lucrative to pay people not to work, it's not what this government is about, that's not what the taxpayers expect us to spend money on...not making Employment insurance more generous"

Stephen Harper December 19, 2008

Which should look as pretty on the Cons in an opposition campaign ad in the middle of a recession.....as Stephen Harper in his underwear.

But if you want to get the true measure of how DESPERATE these criminally incompetent Cons are, all you have to do is check out their ridiculous attack ads.

The one accusing Ignatieff of not being Canadian enough. When their Great Leader Stephen Harper once said this about Canada:

“Canada is a Northern Welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it.”

Which just shows how much he hates Canada and its values.

Or the one where they accuse Ignatieff of being a "tax and spend Liberal." Which only makes these Bush Cons sound like the Republicans they are.

And not very CANADIAN eh?

But what makes me laugh the most is how they are trying to portray Ignatieff as an aloof, vain, intellectual. When Great Ridiculous Leader is an aloof, policy wonk who apart from a short stint at Imperial Oil, has never had a real job in his life. Never been ANYWHERE.

And a man so pathetically vain he hired a personal makeup artist to try to make him look PRETTY.

And besides what kind of strategic genius idiot would launch attack ads against a leader who says he wants to "make Parliament work " and help suffering Canadians during a time of recession?

When we've seen them all before...



And all they'll do is remind Canadians what a crazy angry nerd Stephen Harper is and always has been. Which is a BONUS eh?

On the other hand if the Cons want a YouTube war, with Stephen Harper as the Ugly American Republican. The monster who would turn Canada into a neocon jungle in the middle of a brutal recession. And can't feel the pain of Canadians, because he isn't Canadian enough to share our values.

I say we give them one...

Canada and the Raped Boys of Afghanistan

I've been waiting to see what our military had to say about the Afghan troops who raped boys at one of our forward bases in Afghanistan.

And this isn't good enough.

"It was determined that the initial allegations concerning such incidents contained serious discrepancies, could not be corroborated, were not reported to the chain of command and ultimately were not substantiated," said a statement released Tuesday by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service.

Military police in Afghanistan did not receive sexual abuse complaints of Afghan male children, Tuesday's statement said, adding that the NIS has no jurisdiction over the Afghan National Army or locally contracted interpreters in Afghanistan.

I know we're fighting a war...and brutish customs.

But how can they suggest that it didn't happen when Canadian soldiers witnessed it?

How can we seriously expect raped kids to complain when rape victims and gay people are jailed?

How can we claim no jurisdiction over the Afghan National Army when we are TRAINING them...and it happened on OUR base.

We need an inquiry because this reeks of a cover-up. (PDF)

And if we don't do something about it, we'll lose more than just a war.

It's bad enough what women and girls have to endure in Afghanistan. But if we look the other way.

Who will protect the boys?

Swine Flu and the Pandemic of 1957

Well now we know what the new H1N1 flu virus is probably going resemble. Not the savage mass murderer of 1918. The far more gentle killer of 1957.

The swine flu strain that has sickened people in 30 countries rivals the severity of the 1957 “Asian flu” pandemic that killed 2 million people, scientists said.

But a killer nonetheless.

The virus is more contagious than seasonal flu, the Geneva-based WHO said yesterday. A “moderate” pandemic like the 1957 Asian flu could kill 14.2 million people and shave 2 percent from the global economy in the first year, the World Bank said in October.

Which makes what this Canadian doctor says ring a little hollow.

....The media must be more critical. How many pandemic false alarms do we need (remember "bird flu" -- the last great threat) before reporters start asking tough questions? How many times do the voices of catastrophe need to be wrong before we doubt their message?

Because a pandemic on the scale of 1957 in a more crowded world where more than a billion people go hungry, is nothing to sneeze at.

And what if the second wave of the pandemic is more deadly than the first ? And if you don't warn people about what might happen, how can you get them to change their behaviour?

Or prepare them for a worst case scenario...as scary as this one.

This is the scenario that has some scientists worried. The two viruses meet — possibly in Asia, where bird flu is endemic — and combine into a new bug that is both highly contagious and lethal and can spread around the world.

The good news is that when lethal viruses mutate to become more contagious they lose a lot of their killing power. The bad news is that even if this virus doesn't mutate into something deadly, it could still infect billions people so we can't underestimate what it might do.

"This H1N1 hasn't been overblown. It's a puppy, it's an infant, and it's growing....

This virus has got the whole human population in the world to breed in — it's just happened. What we have to do is to watch it, and it may become a wimp and disappear, or it may become nasty."

You know... no matter what that doctor says I think I'm going to keep washing my hands a lot. And opening doors with my elbows.

Because better too prepared than not prepared enough eh?

And besides ....I did a little research and found out that back in 1957 they were also hoping for the best. Wearing suits and ties to rock concerts.

But preparing for the worst.....

The New ReformCon Plan to Kill the CBC

Well I guess draining the life blood out of the CBC wasn't a quick enough death for Stephen Harper. Now he wants to cut off its head.

Even if it makes Heritage Minister James Moore look like a liar.

Moore said in response to a question from Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez on April 29 that the government would not be cutting the CBC.

But then as I've pointed out before, like all the other Con sheeple, Moore is just his monster's voice.

I don't know why any normal person would want to tear down a national institution, instead of building it up and making us proud of it. But I know why Stephen Harper hates it with a passion. Because with all its successes and failures it's a mirror of who we are...and so very CANADIAN.

And Harper hates Canada and its values so much he won't be satisfied, as The Amazing GritGirl has pointed out , until the CBC looks and sounds like this...


I on the other hand won't be satisfied until the foul Canada-hating Con channel goes off the air for good.

Won't that be the best show EVER?

Defeat them, crush them, turn them off....

Michael Ignatieff and the Moral Quagmire

I have tried to stay away from criticizing Michael Ignatieff, because he is the only political leader who can bring down Stephen Harper, whether we like it or not.

I was even prepared to cut him some slack for what he had to say today about the Coalition.

If the proposed coalition of opposition parties had come to power last year it would have deeply and enduringly divided Canadians, says Michael Ignatieff.

“I'm in politics to unify people, not to divide them...There was also a question concerning the legitimacy of the coalition that troubled me.”

Even though I don't agree with him. Legitimacy wasn't a problem. The country is as divided back then as it is today. And killing the Coalition that represented the views of most Canadians wasn't a grand unifying act. It was an act of supreme political cowardice.

A decision that condemned hundreds of thousands of unemployed Canadians to lives of misery because they don't qualify for E.I. And left the country, at a time of crisis, in the hands of a bunch of Con thugs who don't know what they're doing.

And because actions have consequences Omar Khadr is still in Guantanamo, and Abousfian Abdelrazik is still stranded in Khartoum. And so on and so on.

But whatever...it's no use crying about what might have been.

But how can Ignatieff and the Liberals justify their support for this wretched bill?

Under Canada's proposed new drug laws, an 18-year-old who shares a joint with a 17-year-old friend could end up in jail.

The Conservative government proposes to automatically jail dealers and growers at a time when several American states, most recently New York, have retreated from mandatory minimum sentences, saying they are a glaring symbol of the failed U.S. war on drugs.

I realize that Stephen Harper is playing cheap politics, but does that mean the Liberals have to jump into the moral quagmire and roll around with him?

Just because they are too AFRAID to do the right thing?

While the New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois have voiced strong opposition to Bill C-15, the Liberals have indicated they will support it when it comes back to the Commons for third reading.

Why? Not because they think it is sound policy; they acknowledge in private that it is not. Rather, the Liberals do not want to give the Conservatives an opening to accuse them of being "soft" on crime. This is craven politics at its worst.

Exactly.

I know politics is politics eh? But cowardice has consequences.

What kind of country makes its unemployed suffer, and would fill its jails with kids?

And when is enough ENOUGH ?

The Homeless Hero and Kylie Minogue

Of all the stories I read this week I think I liked this one the best.

How the homeless man became a hero, instead of just a guy who lives under a bridge.

And how the kid he saved went looking for him...... but couldn't find him.

And how it all ended happily today.

With some words of advice from one survivor to another.

"Stay in school. Don't become homeless," Hall told the teen, who has attended several schools and lived with several different relatives and a foster family.

Nice.

Which reminds me the week is over at last.

And it's time for some Kylie Minogue.



Why Kylie?

Because some people are luckier than others.

Heh heh heh..... Sorry Scott.

Have a great weekend everyone. !!!

Is This the End of the Free Internet?

Or the beginning of the end? Maybe. If Rupert Murdoch gets his way.

Rupert ­Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation's newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a ­"malfunctioning" business model.

"The current days of the internet will soon be over."

But only if his competitors do the same, and form some kind of news cartel.

Web users are naturally sceptical.

"As long as there is internet, there will be free content. And as long as there is free content, sites trying to grow on a paid-content business model are not going to survive. It is as simple as that,"

"Newspaper industry should just die and journalism should be democratized. We have blogs, forums, news aggregators... why should I pay for content that someone else can write just as well if not better than the biased reporter/editors at some giant media conglomerate?"

But others not so much.

"I would gladly pay for the service that reporters provide to me! I know it costs money to investigate and report the news and I don't want the news to be controlled by advertisers."

"Pay for news? We have to, unless we want to get our news from a bunch of people who think because they have a blog they are a journalist."

And what's the alternative?

"We have to look to a future of smaller journalistic staff and greater user participation..."

And is that what we want? More information than ever before, and fewer journalists to make sense of it?

Is that really all she wrote?

Maybe it’s because I’m staying at the Sunset Tower on Sunset Boulevard, but I keep thinking of newspapers as Norma Desmond.

Papers are still big. It’s the screens that got small.

As a disgusted Desmond asks from behind dark glasses: “And who have they got now? Some nobodies — a lot of pale little frogs croaking pish-posh.”

Oh boy. I'm not sure about the future of online news...and the internet as we know it.

But one way or the other we are going to pay for it....

Omar Khadr: The Crime and the Cover-Up

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by Stephen Harper's decision to appeal the Federal Court ruling that Omar Khadr should be brought home.

But it still disgusts me. Because the shame goes on and on.

You know when I learned that Canada was the FIRST country to sign the U.N. Protocol on Child Soldiers....the one that says they should be rehabilitated not punished.... I was extremely proud to be a Canadian. Because that's the kind of country I believe in.

So when I heard about the Khadr story I couldn't understand why he was being held at Guantanamo, because regardless of what he had done nobody could deny that he WAS a child soldier.

But then when I looked into the case I discovered something that makes the case even more horrible. Omar Khadr almost certainly did NOT kill that American soldier.

And not only that.... some evidence suggests that the soldier who died may have been killed by an American grenade thrown by one of his OWN soldiers. Instead of a Russian grenade used by the Taliban. In other words a death by so-called friendly fire.

Which suggests a possible COVER-UP... and that the only crime that occurred was what they did to Omar.

But of course, as I said before, it doesn't really matter. Because even if he had killed that Special Forces soldier, he was a child soldier.

Who should have been rehabilitated .....not imprisoned and tortured in terrible places like Guantanamo or Bagram.














But he was.

And two Canadian governments didn't lift a finger to help him. Even though according to his lawyers AND his guards Omar remains a decent gentle young man, who dreams of being an artist in Canada...even though he is half blind. A guy who has rejected the extremism of his family, and managed to avoid the clutches of the religious fanatics that surround him.

A guy who amazingly enough apparently still loves Canada, even though it abandoned him.

My only consolation is that the Federal Court decision is in my opinion rock solid...as well as a harsh indictment of the moral failure of two Canadian governments to do the right and decent thing. And I'm hoping the Appeal Court ruling upholding that decision will be even more BRUTAL.

So everybody in this country can understand what CANADIAN values really mean...for those who have forgotten.

So that Stephen Harper is condemned as a mean, miserable, cruel bastard.

So that Omar Khadr comes home at last.

And the shame is finally over...