Salute to Canadian Cynic

Canadian Cynic is taking a break from it all. Can't say that I blame him. I get the sense that he's a dude with a lot of marketable skills and recently I've been thinking that he's been getting bored with going into the fetid swamp of the "Blogging Tories" and reporting back on the idiocy he finds there.

I hope he blogs now and again with a more sustained, in-depth dissection of the utter brainless insanity that constitutes most of the Canadian "conservative" bowel movement. But I think he needed to put down the torch and see if someone else will pick it up.

It won't be me.

I'll conclude with this link to my earlier blog entry: "Canadian Cynic's Important Work"

I salute you comrade.

International Treaty on Poaching Health Care Workers

It's about time:

Last week, international health leaders meeting at the annual World Health Assembly in Geneva made history by endorsing new guidelines to prevent health-worker brain drain from developing countries.

What makes Canada's active theft of highly-skilled personnel from these countries is that we didn't allow them to practice. What a waste.

Lying Jason Kenney

I'm joining a whole bunch of other blogs to spread the video of the extremely fucked-up Jason Kenney lying through his stupid teeth. (How can his teeth be stupid?? Ask him.)




Kenney is lamely insisting that legislative oversight of the executive branch constitutes middle-aged partisan bullies making 25-year-old kids (with the girls in pig-tails and braces and the boys chewing bubble-gum and wearing beanie caps) break down into tears.

Interestingly enough, Kenney was a freckle-faced little brat of 29 when he first became an MP, as representative for the constituency of Oil-Money South in 1997.

You'd never know it by listening to these shit-assed buffoons, but this is serious stuff. Want to cover-up your complicity in torture? Why not block all efforts of Parliament to keep tabs on the executive? Want a completely unaccountable government? Just keep demonstrating your contempt for our parliamentary traditions. Then, one day soon, you'll find yourselves out of power and god help you then.

Thoughts on the Bryant/Sheppard Decision

I don't really talk about things like this, but I'd read about the death of cyclist Darcy Allen Sheppard during his encounter with former Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant last August. I read that Sheppard had been drinking, that he had anger-management issues, that he'd gotten in the face of other drivers in the weeks leading up to his fatal rendezvous with Bryant. But I'd also seen the videos of the event and heard the witness testimony. It seems it was possible that Bryant was being the obnoxious one in this story. From the videos we can see Bryant's car appearing to bump Sheppard's bicycle, knock it down, and then attempt to leave the scene and running over Sheppard's bike and almost Sheppard himself, before Sheppard (in what would be justifiable rage) approaches Bryant, whereupon it isn't clear whether Sheppard grabs Bryant's car or whether Bryant again attempts to speed away.

Bryant drove for a few moments, supposedly in a panic, but perhaps in a concerted effort to knock his adversary off of his car. Sheppard was either trying to punch Bryant's lights out, or, he was holding on for dear life. Following the tragedy, Bryant hired a big public relations firm that revoltingly dug-up a lot of dirt on Sheppard and then broadcast it to the world. Not too classy.

It all added up so that I was interested to find out how it would end. But I was sure there was going to be a trial. Like a HUGE number of people, I was surprised to hear that Bryant has been let go with all the charges dropped.

1. Sheppard was an obviously angry man who irresponsibly rode his bicycle while drunk. This is irrelevant if there is video evidence that shows that Bryant might have been the more irresponsible person in this case.

2. If you're going to accept the possibility that Bryant pulled strings because of who he was, you can't then deny it in the end because of the police report! If the whole legal system is compromised, then obviously the police on the street who wrote the reports are going to be compromised as well.

2.b) Which is not to say that the whole thing has been compromised. Just to remind people that saying it's possible that Bryant pulled strings but that the police reports exonerate Bryant is like saying that the New York Times' reporting about Saddam Hussein's WMDs exonerated Cheney.

3. If Rosie DiManno is taking Bryant's side, then I really have a hard time believing he was blameless. What with her being the journalistic equivalent of an old, used colostomy bag and all. (I realize this is not a legal argument, or even fair. It's just a statement about what a stupid fucking idiot Rosie DiManno is.)

4. Maybe Bryant really is a nice guy whose beautiful, alcohol-free, 12th anniversary date with his loving wife was horribly destroyed by a chance encounter with a drunken, obnoxious cyclist. If Bryant really was innocent, I think it would have been better for him to let this go to trial. Unless he's cool with having thousands of people think he got away with murder.

Scum-bag Mike Harris gets gift from FIRST NATIONS College

The news comes from the blog "Crazy Bitches are Us."

Screw This Bullshit

In the light of this latest example of the harpercons' utter contempt for Canada's system of parliamentary democracy, it seems pertinent to mention this:

Although they can send for certain persons, standing committees do not have the power to punish a failure to comply with their orders in this regard. Only the House of Commons has the disciplinary powers needed to deal with this type of offence.[151] If a witness refuses to appear, or does not appear, as ordered, the committee’s recourse is to report the matter to the House.[152] Once seized with the matter, the House takes the measures that it considers appropriate.[153]

What other response is there but an election? Which we should also have, but let's punish some anti-democratic vermin while we're at it.

Is "Democracy" a Winning Campaign Issue?

I was going to write something about capitalist imperialism, the Congo, Honduras, and the need for solidarity with the people of Greece.

But in response to Alison's post about the harpercons' recent assault on parliamentary oversight, I commented: "I guess the opposition doesn't think that democracy is a winning electoral issue. "

And it struck me that that's what this is really getting down to.

Sending Canadian soldiers to die defending an corrupt, fraudulently elected government of drug-dealers and pedophiles? That's difficult to attack without being accused of not "supporting the troops" apparently.

Canadian soldiers being forced to hand over prisoners (including innocent peasants) to a government that practices torture on a regular basis while our government covers it up? Apparently the "Tim Horton's crowd" aren't easy to fire-up on the issue of war crimes and human rights.

Harper abusing his powers to shut-down democracy and democratic oversight? B-o-o-r-ring!

Harper provoking yet another constitutional crisis (trying to overturn CENTURIES of democratic victories) to avoid being accountable for torture? Who could get excited about that?

Harper putting poison pills into the budget to destroy environmental assessments? How can Canadians be expected to care about that?

Harper follows up his attempted contempt for Parliament with a rule to make sure that Parliamentary Committees can't interview anyone? Obviously, there's nothing there.

Look Liberals, NDP, ... I know you're fresh from you political triumph of keeping the Auditor General from seeing the expenses you're frightened of letting her see. I know that Michael Ignatieff is an unpopular, neoliberal elitist with the charisma of a dead fish. I know that the NDP has a leader undergoing cancer treatment and that the party has become afraid of it's own shadow. But sooner or later, you have to realize that this government is a goddamned monstrosity and it has to be killed.

Do you really think that DEMOCRACY isn't an issue to campaign on? Do you really have so little faith in the Canadian electorate, your own convictions and your own ability to run on a platform of restoring respect for democracy?