The Canadian Civil Rights Movement

If there's one thing to protest (but there are many) let's make the abysmal betrayal of the First Nations and their treaty rights in this country.

Let's take on the imperialists and their knuckle-dragging racist allies.

Rob Ford's low-hanging fruit

It's easy to write a blog post when your target is so grotesquely stupid.

When he was first elected, Rob (coward) Ford announced that he was going to kill the long-delayed public transportation expansion "Transit City." In return for keeping his suffering suburbanite constituents waiting in the cold and the rain for late, crowded buses, Ford was prepared to pay anywhere from $50 to $150 million in cancellation fines.

Since Canadian politics isn't really designed to accomodate nazi-style government,* there's always a delay in the response to nitwitted bulldozing such as is engaged in by the likes of Rob Ford. Dalton (lying prick) McGuinty acquiesced and gave Ford a chance to grandstand over what is turning out to be a shitty deal for Toronto. Ford would get provincial money to bury the Eglinton Avenue light-rail service and he could find all the private sector money he wanted to expand the Shepard Subway line. Then, TTC Chair (and sometime Ford ally) Karen Stintz, realizing that Ford's plan was garbage tried to suggest a compromise. No deal. Then, Councillor Mihevic hired municipal lawyer Freya Kristjanson to comment on the legality of Ford's unilateral decision to kill transit city. According to Kristjanson, Rob Ford is not the King of Council and did not have the power to kill transit city.

So what's Ford's response?

“'I didn’t overstep my boundaries; I did what the taxpayers want,' he said."

Oh, really? Why is that Mayor Ford?

“I did what the taxpayers want. They want subways. That’s it.”

How do you respond to a complete shit-head like this? His legal argument for his power to unilaterally overturn past Council resolutions is: "The taxpayers want it"???

Then the moron starts yammering about subways. As if he thinks a light-rail system becomes a subway just because you spend $2 billion to bury it!!! As if his failure to find private-sector investors for the Shepard Subway is somehow delivering on the "taxpayers'" demands for subways!

Everything that comes out of this guy's mouth is a mistake. And there's no real debating with this human garbage. (Him and his fans.) You just scorn them. Insult them. Ignore them. Abuse them. Shame borderline people from voting for this drivel. Get the country back on track.

* Oh, but the left-wing on Toronto City Council are two steps to the left of Joseph Stalin, right?

If it was an "honour killing" ...

Shouldn't whoever did it acknowledge their deed fearlessly and suffer the consequences with pride?

Ezra Levant: An Enemy of Canada

Wingnut welfare recipient Ezra Levant has a new book coming out. It's called The Enemy Within. It's not an autobiography however. The slime-ball has decided to return once again to his masturbation fantasies about torturing young Muslim males. That's right. Levant's moved on from Maher Arar to Omar Khadr.

In case you're not familiar with the story (and given his book sales and his television ratings, you probably aren't) Ezra Levant will tell anyone who will listen that Maher Arar lied about having been tortured in Syria. Arar wasn't tortured in Syria! That would be ridiculous! He was just groundlessly identified as a terrorism suspect by some donut-munching desk-jockey at CSIS, and these groundless speculations were shared with the psychotic, paranoid and incompetent US intelligence agencies, and Arar was arrested at a US airport and, even though he was traveling with a Canadian passport, the US sent him to his home country of Syria, because, .... because .... well, it's a bit dodgy I guess.

You see, Canadian intelligence agents said that the USA wanted to let the Syrians "have their way with [Arar]" which would mean TORTURE HIM. But that can't be right, because Ezra says he wasn't tortured. In the war on Islamic terrorism, the USA sent Arar to Syria because it's closer than Canada. Wait. No it isn't. The USA sent Arar to Syria because they trust the Syrians more than they do the Canadians. No. That's not right either. The USA sent Arar to Syria because the Syrians have far better standards for evidence gathering and treatment of prisoners than does Canada. No. That's not right either.

Oh well. Anyway. Arar was lying about being tortured. The Syrian government is a torturing, mass-murdering dictatorship, but they didn't torture this Canadian citizen wrongly accused of being a terrorism suspect. Oh wait! Did I say "wrongly accused"? Ezra says that Arar wasn't "wrongly accused." Ezra says that Arar was most likely involved up to his eyeballs in terrorism!

Of course he didn't: he doesn't want to answer questions.
Arar the hustler -- and his lawyers-of-fortune -- will have to find a new target to shake down. Of course, they won't go after the Syrian government -- the Syrians know too much about him, and what really happened. He's already squeezed what he can out of Canada.

And, anyway, Omar Khadr said so! So, like, CSIS told the US-Americans about this terrorist see, and the US-Americans sent him to Syria for reasons unknown, and the Syrians didn't torture this terrorist, but they let him go instead, and then he lied about being tortured and then CSIS and Stockwell Day said that neither they nor the US-Americans had any evidence on him, and the Canadian government gave him $10 million because we're a bunch of chumps, because GET THIS: Confessed war criminal Omar Khadr says he saw Arar at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan in 2001!!!!!! Oh, wait:

Defence lawyer Walter Ruiz showed the commission a report written by Fuller right after his interrogation session with Khadr in Afghanistan, in which the agent wrote it took Khadr several minutes to identify the man in a photograph shown to him as Arar, the CBC's Bill Gillespie reported from Guantanamo Bay.

Ruiz also said Fuller's report is much more qualified than his testimony on Monday and only says that Khadr thought he saw Arar in an Arab safe house in Kabul.

Ruiz also pointed out that Fuller's report states Khadr said he thought he saw Arar in Afghanistan in September and October 2001, the CBC's Gillespie reported.

Ruiz suggested to the court that in September, Arar was in the United States, not Afghanistan, while the following month, he was under RCMP surveillance in Canada.

Oh well.

Gee. It's turning out that Ezra Levant is a babbling fool. An apologist for torture. A liar.

So, anyway, this lying piece of shit's new book is about Omar Khadr, and it's called The Enemy Within: Terror, Lies, and the Whitewashing of Omar Khadr. Given that Ezra the Rat's take on Maher Arar is insanely deluded, what could the ugly motherfucker possibly have to say about Omar Khadr?

This controversial new book will be published to coincide with Omar Khadr's return to Canada in late 2011. It will include shocking information about the Khadr family, Khadr's psychological assessment, and his trial that has often been ignored in the mainstream media. Challenging the conventional wisdom about the Khadr case, The Enemy Within is a provocative look at the definition of "child soldier," life at Guantanamo Bay, the media coverage of the case, a tainted plea bargain, and the Canadian government's plan for Omar Khadr's rehabilitation upon his return to Canada.

So, wonder-boy Ezra is going to blow the lid off of how crazy Khadr Senior was? It's already been done shit-head. Everyone knows all about it. "Khadr's psychological assessment"? For real Ezra? Who profiled him? The torturing thugs of the US military and their Mengele-like experts? You don't even know what a laughable, twisted fuck you are! How could you? His "trial"? With evidence based on torture? With a "confession" that is meaningless? You're talking about a kangaroo-court operated under a president who has said that they'll only try people when they're convinced they can get a guilty verdict. Everyone else will just rot in indefinite detention. And, if they bring someone into the kangaroo-court and fail to get a conviction, Obama says he'll lock them up forever regardless. So, by all means, you shit-head, write about Khadr's "trial." It will be the same sort of useless swill as your writing about Maher Arar.

It goes without saying that it's too much to expect a complete moron like Ezra Levant to answer any of the very simple questions I ask about Khadr. You know, ... why is throwing a hand-grenade in a fire-fight a "war crime"? Why have successive Canadian governments allowed this citizen's rights to be so grievously trampled? Why is a boy of 15 supposed to be punished for the sins of his father? How was a boy of 15, immersed in his father's world of terrorism, surrounded by his father's accomplices, supposed to have realized that his father was "evil" (and that the imperialists and murderers of the USA are simultaneously "good") and rebelled against his father and all of his beliefs? Finally, what is all this nonsense about there being strict criteria for "child soldiers"?

Let's deal with this one in isolation people: For a doughy, ugly, pimple-brained fuckwad like Ezra Levant, only some 15 year-olds qualify to be considered child soldiers. Presumably, the "bad" 15 year-olds (and younger) have no rights at all and can be tortured to the perverted sexual delight of monsters like Ezra Levant.

Levant is referring to Khadr as "the enemy within." But given Levant's penchant for torturing children, his shilling for foreign special interests with deep pockets, his desire to poison the country with the toxic sludge of the Tar Sands and resulting pipelines carrying the filth, his attacks on public health care (and therefore on the health and financial well-being of the majority of his fellow citizens) and, lastly, his support for the Conservative Party of Canada as led by stephen harper, we can clearly see that it is Ezra Levant who is an enemy of Canada.

You read that right. Am I just as bad as stephen harper by saying that? Isn't it the case that harper overreacts and says that people who disagree with him are enemies of Canada?

No.

harper believes that people concerned about global warming (the greatest man-made crisis that humanity has ever faced) and about the pollution of West Coast forests and ocean shorelines are enemies of Canada. Supposedly the few hundred Canadian jobs and the massive profits to mainly foreign-owned oil companies are far more important to Canada than the potentially massive environmental devastation that this project could cause.

Which is ludicrous.

Now, re-read why I think Ezra Levant is an enemy of Canada:

But given Levant's penchant for torturing children, his shilling for foreign special interests with deep pockets, his desire to poison the country with the toxic sludge of the Tar Sands and resulting pipelines carrying the filth, his attacks on public health care (and therefore on the health and financial well-being of the majority of his fellow citizens) and, lastly, his support for the Conservative Party of Canada as led by stephen harper, we can clearly see that it is Ezra Levant who is an enemy of Canada.

See the difference? Among other things, Ezra spits upon our Charter Rights and Freedoms, and our ability, as citizens, to access necessary health care. He shits upon our values, all of them, on a daily basis.

Ezra Levant is an enemy of Canada. Treat him as such.

harper's Standing in the Polls

Via "Northern Reflections" we get Susan Riley's "harper wins when voters snooze." She says some interesting things. She mentions harper's numerous fuck-ups, lies and demonstrations of hypocrisy, notes how none of these penetrate the thick skulls of his supporters and then:

What about everyone else? Many have given up - in cynicism or despair. They turn their back on politics, don't bother to vote, even imagine it is fashionable to remain aloof.

They claim all politicians are the same, but they aren't. They claim it doesn't matter which party holds power, but it does.

If Occupiers had simply voted en masse in May, we wouldn't have a majority Conservative government today.

The media aren't to blame. We hector from the sidelines (guilty!), or, more usefully, uncover hypocrisies and small scandals. Opposition MPs - notably Bob Rae, Charlie Angus, Elizabeth May; but others, too - advance persuasive arguments, based on evidence, de-bunking Conservative crime policy, and other initiatives.

Nothing seems to penetrate public indifference - to Harper's benefit.

The media is to blame to the extent that newspapers like Riley's own Ottawa Citizen and "Canada's National Newspaper" the Globe and Mail actually endorsed harper as if he hadn't initiated several constitutional crises and had dragged the tone of politics down into the gutter. As if every time the droning teleprompter reader Peter Mansbridge trumpets another "exclusive interview" with the lying sack of shit it doesn't make him look like a respectable politician.

harper successfully conned or pandered to 26% of the electorate where it counted. I agree with Riley that people who think they're too smart to vote have brought this on all of us. As did a lackluster opposition campaign.

We've failed as a country. All of us.

Long Day

I was going to type something offensive about Patrick Ross for shits n' giggles (as Austin Powers once put it) but I thought better of it. Then one thing led to another and I'm typing a post for the day at 11:44 pm.

I think I'll watch a documentary about telescopes instead.

Austerity and Waste

It is dogmatism. Cut taxes on corporations and the wealthiest for over a decade. Pretend not to notice the lack of a corresponding increase in investment in the economy. Cut public services and pretend not to notice the increase in homelessness and misery. Globalize and automate jobs away and pretend not to notice the rise in household debt. (When a frighteningly persistent recession appears, suddenly decide that debt-to-income overstates' the precariousness of Canadians' household finances.) The world over, elites are using austerity policies to break the back of democracy. But this is insane because capitalism requires consumption. Power is more important to the elites than is prosperity. But their power is based on prosperity. They are digging their own graves and they can't see it. In Canada alone, harper's "jobs policy" equals a relatively small number of jobs in the greatest carbon emitting project on the planet - destroying the future for oil industry profits today. While he refuses to build schools or adequate housing for the First Nations, he squanders billions on anti-democracy summits and tens of billions on new prisons and white elephant fighter jets. In Toronto, the "respect for taxpayers" mayor decides that streetcars constitute a "war on the car" and decides to blow an extra $2 billion burying a light-rail line, making it the stupidest light-rail line in the history of human civilization. At the same time that he's wasting a couple of billion dollars, he's slashing needed public services to avoid having to raise taxes on a city with relatively low tax rates. And his fans cheer mindlessly, because they are mindless.

Remember this at last: They are wrong about everything. They were wrong about WMDs. They were wrong about gravy trains at Toronto City Hall. They were wrong about tax-cuts. They're wrong about global warming. They're wrong about the Enbridge Pipeline debate. They're wrong about spending on First Nations reserves. They're wrong about sexuality. They're wrong about religion. They're wrong about torture. They're wrong about libraries. They're wrong about unions. They're wrong about poverty. They're wrong about protesters. They're wrong about Iran. They're wrong about deregulation. They're wrong about Greece. They're wrong about Hugo Chavez. They're wrong about Wall Street. They're wrong about human rights. They're wrong about contempt of Parliament.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Do not listen to them. Do not be polite to them. If they start up, tell them you don't have time for their stupid bullshit.