Statistics Canada has released the latest figures on hate crimes in this country and the results are depressing.
Statistics Canada said hate crimes reported to police increased by 42 per cent, rising to more than four incidents a day from less than three a day in 2008.
Not just because they continue to rise, but also because although all hate crimes are hideous.
In 2009, three-quarters (74%) of incidents motivated by sexual orientation involved a violent offence, usually assault. In comparison, 39% of racially motivated incidents and 21% of religiously motivated incidents were classified by police as violent in nature.15
Victims of incidents motivated by sexual orientation were more likely than other victims of hate crime to suffer physical injuries. In 2009, 63% of victims of violent hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation were injured compared to 39% of victims of racially motivated incidents and 23% of victims of religiously motivated incidents.
But get so little attention. One brief mention in that Globe story, and ONE comment in more than six HUNDRED.
And then there is this chart that points to another problem...
We're not doing enough to fight bigotry in our schools. And sadly in some religious schools homophobia is still being encouraged.
Despite a ban on any rainbows at the St Joseph Catholic Secondary School anti-homophobia event June 3, the student organizers found a creative way to get their message across: hiding rainbows inside the cupcakes.
Oh boy. You've got to love those young bakers, but don't gay kids deserve better?
And why in more than five years have the Harper Cons done NOTHING to fight homophobia? Answer: because Great Godly Leader voted against making it a hate crime to attack gay people.
And like so many members of his rabid religious base, he believes they CHOOSE to be gay. So presumably if they changed they wouldn't be attacked.
Yup. As I've always said, we need to fight this government. We need to do more to fight bigotry in this country.
Religious schools should be abolished, before they hurt more children.
And I'm still waiting to see a video on Canadian TV.
Well I see the legend of Brigette DePape continues to grow, like a red rose of hope in the darkness of Harperland.
““I have been really inspired because there have been thousands of people who have sent messages or commented on the Internet. People know that hope for change is possible when we start taking action.”
Michael Moore thinks it's an iconic moment for Canada. Heather Mallick thinks she's the real thing.
And the right-wingers are in a foaming lather, howling this is not Egypt !!!!
Ms. DePape says Canada needs a local version of the “Arab Spring.” Perhaps she hasn’t noticed, but the Arab Spring is a revolt by oppressed individuals willing to risk their lives for the right to elect their own leaders. They are willing to die so they can make the same kind of democratic decision that Canada just made in electing Mr. Harper.
But I think they are missing the point. Canada is not Egypt, but nobody should underestimate the depth of popular anger in this country. And nobody is more responsible for DePape's popularity than Stephen Harper himself.
For five years he has governed like a political thug. He has pit Canadian against Canadian with one cheap wedge issue after the other. He has treated his opponents like The Enemy. He has shown his contempt for Parliament over and over again.
Now he has a mandate to govern. But with less than forty percent of the vote why should he be surprised that the other sixty percent don't believe he has a mandate to change this country beyond recognition?
Why should he be surprised if that majority decides to fight any moves to dismantle Canada by whatever non-violent means necessary, including civil disobedience?
Why should he be surprised after the way he has assaulted women's rights, that a young woman should step forward to challenge him?
“It is important to challenge the assumption that politics is the exclusive domain of politicians. It is really when ordinary people who voted against Harper take things into their own hands that we will hold him accountable.”
Why should he be surprised that her simple gesture should resonate with so many?
It seems so obvious to me. But what happens next is really up to Great Majority Leader. If he behaves himself, most progressives will spend the next four years preparing to defeat him in the next election.
If he doesn't, he can expect to confront the greatest peaceful, passionate, and creative protest movement this country has ever seen.
Hey. I love red roses of hope. I love freedom. I love Brigette and her message of resistance.
Stephen Harper knows his Bible like he knows his attack ads.
So he should know this one eh?
If you sow the wind, you shall reap the whirlwind....
One more reason not to wear a maple leaf on your back pack if you visit Europe.
Newly released government memos have exposed a secret war that Canada is waging in Europe to kill clean energy policies and ensure no market closes to the dirtiest crude in the world – the tar sands of Alberta.
Canada's foreign team has also been getting cozy with big oil corporations they call "like-minded allies". They've held numerous secret meetings with BP, Shell, Total and Norwegian Statoil to share "intelligence" and discuss joint initiatives. The plans run to the very top: Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper himself, met covertly with Total's CEO in Paris in June 2010, after a visit with French President Sarkozy. Total has since announced plans to pump $20bn into their Alberta projects by 2020.
Oh boy. They don't call them oil pimps for nothing eh?
First Big Oil destroys a country's industrial base, with the so-called Dutch Disease.
In 1972, Marlo Thomas, the American actress and social activist, released a children's book Free to Be...You and Me, which became an album and this made for television movie.
The project challenged gender stereotypes, it encouraged tolerance, and its basic message was that anyone, whether a boy or a girl, can achieve ANYTHING.
But now Thomas says that message doesn't mean anything anymore because too many children are being bullied to death.
There was a time when the words "Free to Be" embodied a hope that whatever a kid was, was good enough. But "freedom" doesn't describe the world of this generation. Or of their parents. One of those parents wrote to me on my Facebook page.
"Hi, Marlo," wrote Kevin Jacobsen of New York. "Our son Kameron was bullied relentlessly and committed suicide on January 18th. He was 14. In lieu of flowers, we asked for donations to go to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, my mom's favorite for decades. I know you're busy, but just wondering if you could take a look at our son. We have nothing else to lose."
For all the walls we thought we'd broken down with Free to Be -- and all the stereotypes we thought we'd shattered -- children today are not free to be anything they want to be, nor anything they are, and they are dying for it. And no beautiful lyric can fix that.
Which makes me think what part of bullied, or shattered, or dead, don't these religious bigots understand?
And thank goodness for decent straight people like Marlo Thomas.
And Ben Cohen...
I have to admit that Ben Cohen could probably convince me the earth was flat eh?
Let's hope he can work his magic on the bullies and the homophobes.
Because free to be should be the right of every child.
And the bullied children of this world need all the help they can get...
Oh no. Duck and cover. Where's the Red Baron when we need him? I KNEW it was a bad idea to make Peter Dumbo MacKay the Minister of Defence.
First he lost the PC Party, then he lost Belinda, then he lost Afghanistan, then he lost the secret base in the UAE. And now I fear he's losing hismind.
Canada is looking at setting up bases around the world to better position the military to participate in international missions, Defence Minister Peter MacKay confirmed Thursday.
OK. Let me get this straight. We're spending billions in Afghanistan. A disaster if ever there was one, no matter what Great Warrior Poseur Leader says.
We're about to spend billions on new stealth fighters. We're spending millions every week bombing Libya. And who knows how long we're going to be there.
And now we are looking to lease bases all over the world? So we can get involved in even more little warlets, when the U.S. is running in the other direction, because it can't afford them anymore?
Even though we're running a massive deficit, sitting on a personal debt balloon, on the razor edge of another brutal recession?
Oh boy. If we must build bases wouldn't it be better to build them in the north, so we can figure out who is splashing around in our territorial waters? And how about we declare war on poverty in Canada instead? Or launch an all-out assault on this shameful problem?
Dr. Robert Schroth, a specialist in pediatric dentistry at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, says he has seen aboriginal children from remote communities with 18 out of 20 of their baby teeth rotting away.
Because some wars are more important than others. And there is only so much money to go around. Especially since the Cons are cutting corporate taxes.
So you know where this one is going...
But what also bothers me is the grinding jingoism of these Cons. And their absurd delusions of grandeur...
"The focus of the planning, let's be clear, is our capability for expeditionary participation in international missions.... We are big players in NATO. We're a country that has become a go-to nation in response to situations like what we're seeing in Libya, what we saw in Haiti...
Because I can't imagine anything more embarrassing than seeing Canadians strutting around the world, beating their little chickenhawk breasts, bragging that we're the "go-to nation" that can't fight enough wars. Like a mouse that roared.
Dumbo, Dumbo, you loser. Who do you think we are?
The Duchy of Grand Fenwick ?
But at least the go-to nation of Grand Fenwick set out to lose. And won by mistake.
With these dangerous Cons setting out to conquer the world.
Well I watched most of the Throne Speech today, and all I want to say is that Disneyland would be lucky to be able to stage a show like that one. At least there were no nasty surprises.
So it could have been worse.
I'll never trust Stephen Harper, but I'll judge the man on his actions not his words.
If we're going to have an Office of Religious Freedom, could we please have an office to protect us from religious fanatics?
And in that regard, did the new Speaker play a hanging judge in the first Pirates of the Caribbean?
Because that's the best protest EVAH. And just what we all needed to cheer us up.
As for me, I will also look for new ways to protest, and stand up for the things I believe in. Which includes the rights of children not to be bullied, the equality of women and gay people. The struggle against bigotry and racism. The rights of seniors and the poor to live in dignity and respect. And the survival of the planet and our medicare system, our most precious legacies.
Everything else as far as I'm concerned is debatable, but not those things.
Which takes me to my final point.
And that is despite the horror of a Con majority, and all our other problems.
When a warm wind roars across the lake...
(click pic to enlarge)
I still can't help feeling that I'm living in the best country in the world.
Uh oh. More evidence that everything young isn't good. We've got the youngest Speaker of the House of Commons.
But he's an anti-choice fanatic, and a homophobe.
And how do I know this since the MSM won't tell me? Because he's got the Betty CrockerPopey Pancakes Campaign Life Seal of Approval.
Great eh? No doubt he'll rename Question Period the Magisterium Hour, sprinkle Biblical quotations into his rulings. And any opposition MP's who dare defy him will be commanded to say 15-hundred Hail Mary's, and flog themselves with a prickly cord.
Oh boy. It may well be that Stephen Harper is just tossing a symbolic bone at his rabid Christianist base. While preventing Scheer from voting to ban abortion, or jail gay people, or ban rock music, or kite flying on Sunday etc etc.
McCormack’s case is a sign of the true desperation of women in this country. She said she believed she was only 14 weeks along, although the examination of the remains concluded it was more likely 20-25. She is already a mother of more than one child, one still a toddler. But financially she was cut off from any choice she wanted to make about how many people she wanted in her family, unable to procure an abortion she couldn’t afford, and now facing criminal penalties for taking the only option left to her.
And I look at the never ending hateful war on gay people.
I hate to see ANY religious fanatic in ANY position of authority.
Because let's not kid ourselves, a version of what's happening in America COULD happen here. It's that big, that crazy, and that wacko dangerous.
Oh well. I'm prepared to give Scheer a chance to show that he knows the difference between a democracy and a theocracy. To show he totally understands that we need someone who puts his God's commands before the commands of the Canadian people, like we need a Pope, or another Jason Kenney.
But I'm warning him eh?
If I detect the slightest signs of satanic Con activities in the Temple of the People.
I'm calling in this guy...
Oh Great Polar Bear Monkey God of the Great White North. If only we could pull the plug on this nightmare that easily.
A religious fanatic presiding over a Canadian Parliament.
Well I see it was Glorious Majority Day at the Con caucus today.
A buoyant Prime Minister Stephen Harper, fresh off a majority election win, returned to Parliament Hill Wednesday declaring that the “Conservative party is Canada’s party.”
And there was Great Ugly Leader basking in the divine light of his godly 39.6 % majority. Exhorting the assembled sheep to be humble. Like Him.
Reflecting on his first day in the Commons, Harper said he found the chamber “inspiring and humbling at the same time.”
Which of course would have been more believable if he wasn't the first Prime Minister to be held in contempt of Parliament. He hadn't admitted that he can't stop repeating the word MAJORITY.
“I really don’t get tired of using that word,” Harper said, as he addressed his 166-member caucus.
Like a power hungry maniac. And the Con caucus wasn't a sheep hee haw show.
Harper kicked off the morning meeting like an announcer at a hockey game, as he recognized new members of the Conservative team, to the enthusiastic cheers of other caucus members.
Gawd. I'm surprised that Harper didn't ride in on a chuck wagon pulled by this woolly team.
But then if you believe that Harper is capable of being humble, you probably believe that the nasty gnome Jimbo Flaherty knows what he's doing. And that could be disastrous.
Canadian Auto Workers economist Jim Stanford said recent events clearly show Ottawa’s numbers are on the optimistic side.“Spending cuts can be a self-defeating strategy to reduce deficits if economic growth is harmed in the process. This has been proven in spades in Greece,” he said.
Yes. You heard right. GREECE. That's where these Cons are taking us. Into a brutal recession with no safety net.
Oh boy. If we're going to survive The Great Darkness we're going to have to remember three things.
Stephen Harper is just as crazy as he ever was, and incapable of being humble.
Jimbo Flaherty is no economist.
And the Con sheep are not who they pretend to be....
Yup. It's going to be a horror show. First they came for the artists and the scientists.
And then they'll come for the rest of us.
But at least our marching orders remain the same.
Resist those Con monsters by whatever legal means necessary.
Last, but certainly not least, Simon, I have always liked your blog, but I find myself at odds with you lately, like today. The passage below, I find particularly interesting.
But if they don’t see the errors of their ways, and keep on attacking the NDP instead of the Cons, I will have no choice.
Attacking the NDP instead of the Cons? Uh, excuse me, I don’t remember any protesting when the NDP starting putting out attack ads on Iggy and Iggy alone following the debates and basically leaving Stevie Spiteful alone, just as they had in previous election campaigns.
Because as far as I know I've always criticized BOTH sides. And who knew I was a friend of Stevie Spiteful. How frightful.
Another sign a merger will not happen? This rambling post by Montreal Simon is a good reason. Where's the co-operation everyone on that side has been talking about? All I see is arrogance and hubris.
Rambling ? Rambling? How rude. Or should I say how BLUNT. Gawd. I hate being called a partisan by other wildly partisan bloggers. WTF?
But of course I'm not surprised. At this point, almost a month into The Great Darkness, I suspect much of the progressive blogosphere, after wallowing in the pit of despair, has descended into a barely suppressed state of mutual loathing.
With both sides secretly cheering on their champions. In this corner CK in this corner Buckdog.
And it's far safer to be a partisan, because then only ONE side wants to kill you. Instead of BOTH of them.
But I just can't. It's not in my scientific nature. I reserve the right to criticize any progressive party. To speak truth to power the powerless.
Because at this point I don't give a damn what anybody says. All I'm interested in is seeing the two sides merge into a new party. I believe that's the only way we will beat the Cons.
And how do I know this? Because I can count to THREE.
Mr. Harper is doing the Liberals, NDP, and Greens a favour by cutting off their lolly. If he were as Machiavellian as his critics allege, he would keep the allowances in place, thus encouraging the centre-left parties to remain separate. Ending the allowances is in the long-term self-interest of these parties (or at least of their supporters), because it will drive them to co-operate in order to compete with the Conservative juggernaut.
Gawd. How galling. Having the Strangelove Machiavelli tell us that Great Machiavelli Leader isn't Machiavellian. But what if he's right about the LOLLY?
Oh well. The good news is that we've got four long years to find out eh? And fight each other. Before we lose the next election.
And in the meantime I've found something that we can ALL agree upon.
Nobody might notice eh? Except Duffy's favourite BBQ chicken and ribs place, But since the turkey coop is now controlled by the Cons, killing it would at least give us SOMETHING to celebrate.
I can just see it now. Great Turkey Leader.
Breaking the sad news to his Con flock...
Yes it's true. Da truth will set us free. Reality will force us to unite.
Rabid partisanship will eventually prove tiresome.
