Time for the opposition to face reality

(A)n opposition in a minority Parliament looking for an election must be united on both the timing and the method in order to bring down a sitting government.

Seriously guys (guys being those elected to opposition), harper has shown us that all oppositions parties can't afford the luxury of individually deciding and waiting for when the best time is to take down this harper government.

harper has shown us all over and over that his word means nothing, that he has contempt- absolute contempt - for parties that actually back off and negotiate with him.  Anyone with an IQ over 60 (and isn't a rabid wingnut-which is pretty much the same thing) knows that fat boy steve will say anything, promise anything to get re-elected.

He will then demand that everyone else play by the rules while he dodges the Courts, lies, stalls so that he can re-shape the rules to suit him.  
You also must realize by now that any deal he agrees to with you is geared to give him an edge to gaining more power.

harper is something we've never seen in Canada:  a politician who believes absolutely in his innate greatness and that belief, linked to a lack of moral consequence and responsibility - allows him to justify to himself and those who blindly follow him that any means, no matter how corrupt, undemocratic, and unethical justify the end.  And the end is his unshakable certainty that he knows better than the collective electorate what is good for Canada.

Add to that the harper truth that what's good for Canada is his own warped vision of a country where profits to a few far outweighs individual rights, equal access to basic needs, free speech, women's rights, children's rights, and the rights of minorities and you have an inflexible, power hungry megalomaniac whipping any elected opposition into submission because they just don't get what they are dealing with.

Elizabeth May has been saying that voting for the lesser evil (voting harper out) is not what Canadians should be reduced to.  Survival changes the rules, Beth.  In a healthy democracy where all parties respect legislation, voters, human rights and the law, then sure, you don't vote for the lesser evil, you campaign for the best rep.

But when that evil threatens not only this generation but others to come by undermining democracy, education, free press, free speech, then wake the fuck up and realize that those words will mean nothing because they encourage the very divisive attitude that harper counts on.  The left is badly divided, and this keeps the malignant narcissist in power.  And all of you in opposition let him play on your quest for more seats while trading off the rights of Canadians in the hopes that a better time for an election will come along and you will gain just a few more ridings.

Meanwhile, the malignant narcissist chuckles away as he changes the rules, stacking them in his favour.

harper and the harpercons are a new beast.  They don't follow what's good for the herd.  They don't respect what the herd wants.  With lions, when you get such a pack leader, the pack combines its forces and gets rid of the bastard before anything else.  They understand on whatever level their species is capable of such understanding, that there will be no pack left if they allow an insane alpha to rule them.  Then they go back to the ways of the pack and select a new alpha.

harper is the rogue lion more focused on his fucked-up vision and blind thirst for power than he is on survival of the pack.  Get rid of the rogue, then you can go back to what's good for Canada based on decades of carefully constructed legislation.


So set aside your own differences and ambitions and those of your parties and oust the dysfunctional rogue.

Then we can all work at making the lives of Canadians better through the laws and legislation that exist and the opportunity to freely challenge such legislation.

Coalition, informal agreement, cease-fire among the opposition...I don't care.  But for all our sakes, get rid of the creature who has such contempt for us that he has the audacity to rename our government after himself.

Rally for Democracy in Canada- March 19th

A group of concerned Canadians will be gathering on Parliament Hill and other locations in Canada on March 19th to illustrate to our political leaders that we are paying attention to the actions and behaviour of our elected officials.

We want our government to act in a democratic manner. Our government is supposed to be by the people for the people.

Anyone who would like to join us is invited. The people are here and ready to participate!

Malicebot says - JOIN US!... On Facebook Before it's too late!

We are the Government of Canada We are the Government of Canada and we do care that our name is being changed by one man to reflect his personal and political goals.

In Canada, the Prime Minister is not the government. nor is the government his personal stage on which he is producer, director, scriptwriter, filmatographer and the only actor of importance.

The Government of Canada is the people’s government where the people send those they elect in their ridings to speak and act in their best interests.

That’s how it is supposed to be, but one man does not agree. Harper believes that by naming our government after himself, he will undermine and change our understanding of the Government of Canada and the power that a true democracy gives the people through their elected representatives.

Harper seems to think few Canadians care that he has renamed our government after himself. Show him you do care. Show him it is your government. Join this group and invite others to do the same.

Use your voice. Use your rights. Or risk losing both.

Malicebot says - HARPERanada! The new great northern! Isn't it Da coolest?

Saturday Cartoon "Black Wolf, the rise of Harper"

The Harper Dictatorship's upcoming Blasphemy Law?

Great.  Government trolls
h/t Sister Sage

Does anyone really think that the Harper Dictatroship trolls will “correct misinformation?”

We were here first.  We know allllllllllllll about trolls.



Sister Sage brings up a more serious concern than dealing with the dumb:

I wonder if and when he gets his coveted majority, will he have Rob Nicholson make slamming Stevie and the Harpercons punishable by law? I mean, a crime that would warrant being sent to one of Stevie’s big-assed prisons?

The idea isn’t so far fetched, given how peaceful protesters and even by-standers as well as media people were arrested at the fateful Toronto G20; the largest mass arrest in Canadian history; all charged for daring to criticize the Harpercons.

I’m sure steve will find a way to make criticizing him a crime.  Call it...the Blaspheny Law.

Meet Steve-no-fucking-class-harper

There's a word for people who act this way.

Yes, there will be attack ads

Thomas Walkom suggests that if we have an election this spring, it will not be about the budget.  It will be about Harper.

In Canada, where we do not vote for the leader but for MPs by constituency, this should not be the case.  The Government of Canada should reflect the will of the people, and all elected MPs should be accountable to those they represent.  Everyone of them should be able to craft their own messages, consider their own ridings and the needs of their constituents all the while making sure that they are looking at how all ridings connect to form a whole country.

That doesn’t mean that MPs of the ruling party should ignore what their leader says, but they have a responsibility to speak for themselves and address the wishes of their constituents.

Opposition MPs must also have the opportunity to speak and to have the weight of their voices and votes in the House protected by the legislation that stops our government from undermining democracy.

In Canada, the Prime Minister is not the government. nor is the government his personal stage on which he is producer, director, scriptwriter, filmatographer and the only actor of importance.  The Government of Canada is the people’s government where the people send those they elect in their ridings to speak and act in their best interests.

That’s how it is supposed to be, but one man does not agree.  One megalomaniac who has managed to become and remain Prime Minister by backstabbing and lying to his own party, by bullying and ruling in fear, by silencing any dissent even in his own ranks, doesn’t believe in a government of the people.

Harper believes that the only voice that should have any say is his, and damn anyone who interferes with his self-appointed authority over the entire elected government, federal public service, independent agencies, and private citizens exercising their right to protest.

So Walkom is probably right.  The next election will most likely be about harper because he has shown us all over and over that his words and actions override those of everyone else - elected members, private citizens, journalists, oversight agencies, the Courts, legislation, the GG, the military.

Cappe, president of the Institute for Research in Public Policy in Montreal may think that only 600 people or so in Canada care about harper highjacking the name of the people’s government and claiming it for his own (I think even an informal, hastily thrown together petition online would prove him wrong), but he rightly says that’s not the issue.  He is concerned about the erosion of our understanding of our institutions and how that will affect credibility and respect for those institutions.

I see it as far more dangerous.  It undermines our democracy and our individual voices by making us come to accept a change in power structure, a change that was made without our consent or understanding, a take over by subterfuge.

Harper - the only election issue

When the leader of the country rebrands even the government of the people with his own name, when that leader repeatedly highjacks institution after institution by linking his name and image to them (stealing the military salute meant for the GG, creating his own Governor General Awards, acting and posing like Commander-in-chief of the military, then that leader makes any election about himself because we know that he will do as he damn well pleases regardless of what anyone else says.

We call such leaders of other countries dictators.

A person so controlling and hungry for absolute power will lie, induce fear, muzzle all dissent and opposition, destroy the reputation of his opponents, wear cuddly sweaters and trade them in the blink of an eye for military gear to obtain and hold onto power.

Harper has made any upcoming election about himself.  His current ads reflect that.   

Constantly drawing attention to himself as the Big Daddy of...everything reflects that.

Re-naming the government of the people after himself insists on that.

We need to keep examining issues and criticizing them as needed.  But since harper has aggressively tried to convince us that everything is about him, of him, by him, then we need to examine the man, expose what concerns us about him, and attack in him what we believe threatens our democracy and rights.

By re-naming the government of Canada after himself, harper has placed himself in a position where he cannot distance himself for the lies, corruption, legal violations, and blunders of his members of Parliament.  He cannot distance himself from any unfavourable or unpopular fallout that occurs as a result of decision made by the current government.

Harper is the Word, and the Word is harper.

That is what must be attacked in the upcoming election.  Linked to issues, over and over, the man who would be absolute ruler must be aggressively attacked.

Being Steve Harper

I’ve seen a world that no man should see



Harper.  Harper harper harper...harper.

Imagine.

Perfect Strategy

The Department of Harper Heritage releases the greatest poem evah!!!!

The Harper Government is pleased to announce the Harper collection of the Harper form of poetry, henceforth to be known as harperetry.

 (Book cover by Malicebot Steve Harper)

Tithes Donations go to the Harper King for Life fund.
Located in the Harper building at the corner of Harper st. and Harper ave.

Song of Myself

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,

The distillation would intoxicate me also,

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,

Do you take it I would astonish?

Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering

through the woods?

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity

goes to the fourth-remov'd,

I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel'd with

doctors and calculated close,

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

I know I am august,

I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,

I exist as I am, that is enough,

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am

touch'd from,

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,

This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of

my own body, or any part of it,

Writing and talk do not prove me,

I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,

With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

Disclaimer:  any resemblance this work bears to, say, anything written by anyone other than Steve Harper is a Liberal plot hatched by Justin Trudeau who is really bald under that thick, wavy wig.  ADSCAM!!!

Friday nite ode to some damn good music

Malicebot got the jump on me and decided the ode should involve the invisible sky thing.

So here, the haunting Robert Johnson singing about his own personal devil. Legend has it that Johnson made a deal with the Devil, trading his soul at a crossroads for mastery of the guitar.  He died at the age of 27, reportedly of strychnine poisoning, murdered by a jealous husband.

Friday nite ode to invisible sky monsters healing people

Jim Travers

How many times have we linked to this man's articles?  When he stated something as a fact, you could trust he had done his research.  Whether you agreed with his opinion or not, it was always argued with intelligence and insight.  He was not afraid to give us all hell for our complacency from time to time, reminding us that we are the fire powering the engine, but we must act.

Condolences to friends and family.  Thank you for sharing him with us.

When Ivison of the Nat-Post talks about CON spin...

...you know the reality is as obvious as an industrial washing machine so out of control even brain-fried druggies passed out in the laundromat sit up and take notice.

The Conservatives will spend $10-billion less in the coming year than they did in 2010-11 — the first time in a decade any Canadian government has planned to reduce expenditure, according to Stockwell Day.
 
...What Mr. Day neglected to say is that as much as $7-billion of the planned savings come from the sun setting on stimulus spending. A further $8-billion comes from reduced spending on things like public debt charges ($3.4-billion down because of lower interest rates), Employment Insurance (down $2.6-billion as the economy recovers), and harmonized sales tax compensation.  The real question for the Conservatives, is why aren’t they planning to spend billions of fewer taxpayers’ dollars in the next financial year?

Well, because harper has: increased his cabinet by creating positions to reward blind loyalty, resulting in the largest cabinet in Canadian history; has spent more on tax payer funded partisan promo ads than any other government in Canadian history; has spent more on polls, more on personal security, more on bribing ridings...

He also plans on building prisons we don't need, sole-sourcing the F-35s, building a luxurious spy training centre, building a glass dome on the Hill, building a Harper bunker where he can play Morgan Freeman playing Col. Abraham Curtis...

He intends to increase budgets for security and public safety ,  Correctional Services ,Canadian Border Services Agency , the RCMP,  and Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.

There will be some cuts.  Guess where.  Come on!  You can do it!  Here's a hint: he won an award for it in 2010, the Collossal Fossil Award.

That's right!  He will cut Environment and resource based programs with 2/3rds of the cuts coming from programs related to climate change!

harper plans on cutting 1 billion from NR programs including the Clean Energy Agenda, the Pulp and Paper Green Transformational program and the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund.

Dorky Day did not waste a chance to show his junior-high enthusiasm and maturity by insulting our intelligence and making a joke of a very serious announcement.

The announcement was made in an Ottawa fitness club called Lean and Fit — apparently an attempt to persuade us that this is a government with six-pack abs and no fat left to trim.

riiiiight....

So, brief summary of the Main Estimates:  money goes to agencies whose employees can legally kill human beings now and in the future, and money is cut from those agencies trying to make a safe, sustainable environment for us and for generations to come.

Seriously.  Anyone who still thinks CONs are fiscally conservative need to go find their surgeon and ask for their lobotomized chunk of brain back.

Beowulf Award: Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer and Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti

As Canadians drowse, generally complacent about the increasing attacks by the harper government on free speech in our country, the muzzling of public servants, and the needless censorship of documents,  two Pakistinian politicians who fought against such heavy handed control in their country were brutally murdered because they would not stop their fight for human rights.

Both were killed because they strongly opposed the blasphemy law which remains a capital offence.

Politicians who serve the people who elect them, politicians willing to risk their lives for the rights and freedoms of others...

And here in Canada...we should be deeply ashamed.

So the Beowulf Award goes to  Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti

Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer

"Taseer showed himself to be a rare politician, willing to risk his life in espousing an unambiguous position against discrimination and abuse," said Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.





 







Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti
 
Shahbaz, recently, had stated publicly, "I was told that if I was to continue the campaign against the blasphemy law, I will be assassinated. I will be beheaded. But forces of violence, forces of extremism cannot harass me, cannot threaten me."

Adventures in Mandatory poilievre

Mandatory Poilievre

Pirate Fish says:  Listen to Dominic!

“They'll have to tear up their talking points because they've just been demolished,” Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc said Tuesday.

That would be these talking points:

Poilievre: Mr. Speaker, this is a five-year-old accounting dispute.  Fortunately, the Federal Court has ruled in favour of the Conservative Party and against Elections Canada.  (Hansard, Feb. 28, 2011)

and it would be due to this:

A civil court victory the Conservative Party has touted as vindication against charges of election wrongdoing has been unanimously overturned by the Federal Court of Appeal. The ruling confirms Elections Canada's interpretation of electoral spending laws and says it was reasonable for the electoral watchdog to reject the way the Conservative Party reported national advertising expenses for the 2006 election.

I predict the next CON approach to answering charges by not answering will be to shift their attack from Elections Canada and attack those damn, interfering courts Kenney is always going on about.  There they go doing their job again, damn legal eagles.  They are such sticklers for law and order, getting tough on illegal activities.

Another worse-than-useless Harper appointee

Stalling hearings, abusing staff, keeping serious caes on hold...

No, it's not Ouimet, it's not Rights and Democracy, and it's not Elliott. This is yet another person appointed by harper to pretend something is being done, but whose real job is to collect a substantial pay check while doing nothing on a serious case(except abuse staff) for TWO YEARS.

The embattled Canadian Human Rights Tribunal was publicly rebuked Monday for a two-year delay in dealing with a case involving the welfare of First Nations children.

oh...that explains some of it. First Nations case.

"It's not simply about money or financial damages," said lawyer Paul Champ, "it's about vulnerable children who are being denied the equal right to stay in their homes and communities. It's no exaggeration to say that more children are harmed every month that passes without this complaint being resolved." Champ said planned hearings at the tribunal were cancelled for no apparent reason. Langtry agreed with Champ that the delays are harming children.

Wait long enough, those kids will be all grown up, problem solved, right?  If any of them suffer as a result, some future government can issue an apology, maybe erect a nice plaque, do a token native dance at some summit or international event we host, saying how we value the rich heritage of “our” First Nations.

So what’s been keeping the Tribunal so busy?

According to the Public Service Alliance, five employees -roughly a quarter of the staff -have filed harassment-related complaints against tribunal chair Shirish Chotalia, the Calgary lawyer appointed in 2009 by the Harper government.  More than half of the staff have left for other public service jobs or been sidelined by stress since she took over.

Harper sure can pick ‘em.  And Canadians keep voting him back in.

I don't believe dinosaurs walked the earth with humans...

But there are certainly Neanderthals walking among us today.

 "The integrity of decisions made by my department is being questioned too often without sufficient justification." Jason Kenney on the Federal Court.

Gee, maybe that’s because of this:

   Under the Harper government, acceptance of refugee claims from applicants already in Canada has fallen sharply, from nearly 16,000 in 2006 to just more than 9,000 last year. The number of successful applicants on compassionate and humanitarian grounds, which had been averaging between 10,000 and 11,000 a year, fell to 8,848 in 2010.

And maybe it’s because your party and those who support it  tend to think women ask for the violence they receive.

And maybe the Federal Court, which can really look closely at legal issues and is therefore given authority to override CIC decisions took note of the increasing number of gender-related persecution cases being turned down by Kenney’s department.

(In) 1993, Canada became the first country in the world to establish formal guidelines for refugee claims by women facing gender-related persecution.

Not all countries protect women and children from brutal domestic violence, and in many cases, even when protection laws exist, they aren’t enforced.  Just like the bad old days in Canada when such abuse was considered a private matter.

If Kenney doesn’t want the Federal Court to legally override his decisions, he should really shed his caveman attitudes, examine the laws relating to women, recognize that women all over the world still have to fight - at great risk - for the simple right to safety, and start treating women the same way he would treat his bestest, white, rich, christian buddies.

Storm isn't coming our way...

...it's already here.

My personal role models at ACR show support -

and invite us to do the same.

"[Collective bargaining] has been in this state for a long time, and not having that, there are a lot of unknowns," Leonard said. "When you lose something, it's like a nice comfortable blanket. You take that away, and you think: are we just going to be left out in the cold? How will we be treated from here on out? Benefits are one thing but rights are something else. And that's what we're fighting about."

Harper has been engaging in a similar assault on the rights of unions to bargain, using the incremental approach that allows him to fool some Canadians into thinking he's centrist.

“The Conservative government bullied Parliament into passing flawed legislation that undermines workers' right to free collective bargaining and women's right to equal pay for work of equal value,” says John Gordon, PSAC's National President. “This represents a clear attack on public sector workers and it endangers the rights of all Canadian workers to free collective bargaining.”

Take note of those words:  endangers the rights of all Canadian workers to free collective bargaining.  These attacks on public service unions and the collective rights of public servants is a way of stomping on the necks of all workers, public and private.  Rather than improve the work situation, the benefits, and the rights of private sector workers, our government constantly points the finger at public servants as being pampered and over paid.

Sources of the attacks other than Harper himself make clear the motivation behind this vitriolic rhetoric.

"What a surprise!" Brown wrote. "Another mean spirited and economically illiterate attack on the public sector, one in a series from the CFIB, this time an attack on the pension plans of public sector employees."


CFIB has been relentless in attacking public services wages, benefits and pensions as pressure increases to provide decent pensions and benefits in the private sector, something Catherine Swift of CFIB would rather not address.  So instead, she seeks to take away from the public service in order to be able to point and say, see?  The gap between public and private benefits and pensions isn't that big!

That Harper is on board with Swift is clear in that she actually met with Day to discuss public servant wages and pensions despite being a rep for the private sector.

So what is going on in Wisconsin is our fight as we face the same push to undermine rights here in Canada.

This is more of the boot stomping down on the face of citizens, more of the violations of rights which occurred at the G20, more Montebello, more whistleblowers threatened and muzzled.

This is another attack on the freedom and rights of two countries which have fought so hard for the rights to protest, to bargain, to speak out without fear.

The Stooopid virus on the move

Sure.  Why not?

Who needs invaders on the shores when this asshole could actually become US president?

Because I'm a clumsy therapist of sorts...

Justice Dewar got me thinking...

I could go out and kill a few goths and emos.  Because I sense death and depression in the air.  And because they dress like they want to die.  So that must be what they want.  Even if they say no and beg for life.

Maybe this is more a matter for Industry Canada than Justice

Seems women’s clothing doesn’t come with proper warning labels.

Justice Robert Dewar let a rapist walk excusing him saying the victim gave out signs that "sex was in the air" through her suggestive attire and flirtatious conduct on the night of the attack.

So Industry Canada better get right on that, run tests on what type of female clothing overrides women’s brains so that no doesn’t mean no, and test male reaction to such clothing to determine which styles carry an implicit message that the woman wants to be forced into sex even if she says no over and over.

Because you know, women don’t really know what they want, and some guys just can’t understand the subtlety of NO!!!!!!!!!!!  STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Dewar) called Rhodes a "clumsy Don Juan" who may have misunderstood what the woman wanted when he forced intercourse along a darkened highway outside Thompson, Man., in 2006.

Poor dudes walking around out there, don’t know how to romance chicks...Dewar is telling you just go for it if you (and even if it’s you alone) believe sex is in the air.

After all, NO is such a difficult word to understand.

How the hell is this creature a judge?  No means no except when it doesn’t?  No means no except when some cave troll who can’t relate to women in a normal fashion wants to use her body despite her protests?

This had better be overthrown and Dewar should be disciplined, never allowed to preside over any cases involving women or children as victims.           

A month of Harper

Been sick for a month and there was just too much to cover, so here are some headlines from February, 2011 -

How about getting tough on these crimes?

Remember the video of a woman tossing unwanted puppies into a river?    People all over the world were outraged.  You just don’t do that to puppies, people said.  They are living creatures. 

Have you read last week’s high profile article on how bones found near Vimy Ridge in 2003 were identified last month by a research team in Thunder Bay, ON, and now Pte. Thomas Lawless of Calgary, killed at the Ridge in 1917 can receive a proper burial, with honours?  Relatives who never met him have been notified by Veterans Affairs and they will attend the service.

Did you read an article published February 17, 2011 about what are likely hundreds of children’s bodies lying unidentified in unmarked graves?  You may not have seen it.  It appeared in section H of the Winnipeg Free Press. 

It is not a new story but it never seems to catch the attention that you would think the mass murder of children would.

You would also think that if researchers in Thunder Bay could use genetic testing to identify a man who died at Vimy Ridge in 1917, they could identify many of these bodies of children who still have living relatives who knew them.  You think they would make it a priority.

But it seems that aboriginal children are like those unwanted dogs drowned in a river.  Just a nuisance.  Worse, even, because being human on paper at least, the deaths have to be covered up, hidden.  And our oh so enlightened society has to relegate the knowledge of such murders and unmarked graves of children to the barest, faintest reaches of our peripheral thoughts.  Things of nightmare, to be sure.  Don’t look, don’t talk about it, and for god’s sake (and here I use the name of that mythical deity intentionally), don’t stir up the dirt that hides the horrors.

No one knows how many children died in residential schools. No one knows how many graves were dug for them.

Chilling.  Horrible.  So where are the cries of outrage?  The demand for justice?  The kindly, compassionate folk who understand that living relatives of these murdered children deserve to know what happened and should have the chance to bury their dead?

Research at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is underway to get a grip on the approximate number of missing children and unmarked graves at residential schools in Canada, including on the Prairies.

There is no doubt that many of these children died from neglect, and little doubt that more than a few were murdered.  In any event, when dealing with so many bodies lying in unmarked graves, and knowing that many of those responsible for the deaths are walking free right now, these deaths should be investigated as any other deaths would, not handled as an historical dig managed by a Commission that so far has had little support and no authority to enforce.

But hey, it’s not like they’re white kids, right?

"We are, quite frankly, not going to be able to say how many children died in the schools or say where they are all buried, and what happened to them after they died," Sinclair said recently at the commission's downtown Winnipeg offices.   Nevertheless, he said it's essential to tackle the issue as part of the residential schools legacy.

Part of the legacy?  How about tackling it for what it is - brutal crimes of neglect, rape, and murder of numerous children taken by force from their families?

While residential school deaths may have been reported, there are few death certificates attached to student files in old archives. Finding out what happened to each child would involve matching church and government records to Vital Statistics files.

This tells us a lot about how governments and churches of those decades considered aboriginals to be less entitled to rights than non-natives.  That those same churches and governments are treating this matter as a historical event that may eventually require some sort of resolution tells us that little has changed.

The commission hopes to have enough information to suggest further research and ways to commemorate the graves.

A nice plaque or two providing a lovely photo op for some bastard politician to appear somewhat human.

"We've heard stories from survivors that babies were born in the schools to mothers who'd been impregnated by teachers and by priests. They say their babies were taken away. They think their babies were killed," Sinclair said. "We don't know the extent to which that occurred, if at all."

OK.  Stop.  Enough with the euphemisms.  Impregnated?  No, these were children.  That makes it rape, every damn time.

Teachers and priests.  Well, wingnuts, at least they didn’t let the children have abortions, right?  They rape the kids, take away the living, crying baby that resulted from their rape crime, and...murder it.

Teachers and priests.  God-fearin’ folk to want to take the savage out of The Savage.  Drive out the heathen beliefs and insert the holy ghost.  You know, civilize them, teach them the good ways of the white, enlightened society, and have them embrace that loving god while following the teachings of christianity.

I realize that atheists also commit child rape and murder, but they are held accountable for their crimes, and they don’t have an entire sheltered religion enabling further crimes and covering up past ones for them.

In a YouTube broadcast posted this month, Favel, now an elderly woman, describes her hard life as a child in residential school. She recalls the day she saw school staff carry a newborn baby wrapped in pink through the kitchen and into the adjacent furnace room.

..."They took that baby into the... furnace room and burned it alive. You could smell the flesh cooking," Favel says, her voice soft but clear.

Gotta protect those priests.  Have to protect the name of their god.  Can’t have people thinking badly of them because, you know, religion does a lot of good, right?  Like bring enlightenment and christianity to aboriginals?

In 1944, a priest levelled the rest of the cemetery, removing all traces of it, according to an elder interviewed by the working group who had attended the school as a child in the 1940s.

That’s the christian way, isn’t it?  Just remove all traces of past crimes, move on, and preach to others on morality.

Crimes were committed.  That doesn’t suggest we should reconcile a damn thing.  It demands we investigate aggressively and hold those responsible for the rapes, deaths, murders, and cover-ups accountable in courts of law.

And all efforts should be made to identify every single child’s remains, determine how that child died, notify families, and provide support for a proper burial which family can attend.  Just like was done for Pte. Thomas Lawless of Calgary.

Friday nite Ode to scummy scum scum

Baby Stew

I've been thinking about Vic Toews. (Well, doesn't everyone...??) and well, I've been trying to figure out why he is soooo animate about getting tough on crime with ye young babes. Late last night I think I got it. I was reading my niece an old story about a wicked woman who lived in a gingerbread house in the woods and tried to snatch up little kids to eat. Well, I think dear old Vicky is this old woman's spawn and wants to follow in her footsteps by taking the gingerbread house into the 21st century by upgrading to prisons. Fatten up the little bastards, boil em, grind em, stick em in a stew.

Makes the most sense to me. How bout you?

Friday nite ode to my retreating virus

Picked up a stray on the road

thought I'd give it a home.

Malicebot...clever, quick, dangerously creative, nasty bite, probably evil.

Good thing, too, since I've been sick on and off, so it will post here occasionally.

I'm back tomorrow, but for now, over to the stray.

That’s some magic spell

Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can’t explain why the tide goes in.”  - Bill O’Reilly, while declaring that such unexplained, magical events are the basis for his belief in an invisible sky monster.
                           
O’Reilly isn’t alone in his avoidance of reality in favour of grasping at sorcery to spoon feed him answers to everything.

Pope Benedict has asked Catholic priests to do a better job preparing people for marriage, saying that no one has an automatic right to wed.

But a bunch of old guys who have never been married are the best people to decide who is fit to marry, and who isn’t.

Because they have their magic book, their spells, and a direct line of communication with the invisible sky monster.  You know, the one who uses magic to make tides go in and tides go out.

That’s some spell they cast over people like O’Reilly who trip over themselves to bow at the feet of these old bachelors in their wizard robes.  Despite ongoing reports of child rape committed by the men in funny clothes, some people still hand the most important decisions of their lives over to them.

How can any sane person believe that leaders of a group which claims to have taken vows of celibacy and has no experience of the day to day struggles that married couples face trust such out of touch people to decide whether or not they should marry?

How can they even consider the words of people who preach celibacy as a virtue but rape and shelter rapists in their own group?

That is far more difficult to explain that why tides go in and tides go out.

We are an amazing species, capable of manipulating our environment, able to do long-term planning, capable of spatial/time thinking.  We wake up each day knowing we are free to make choices and decisions that will shape our day, our future, yet some of us cheerily hand over this freedom to those old guys in dresses who can’t even follow their own doctrines and laws.

I’ve heard many people try to excuse religion by saying that it gives people strength.  I don’t agree.  It allows them to avoid making difficult decisions.  It stops them from learning how strong and capable they are by facing challenges without a belief in magic.  It helps them avoid consequences to their actions.

Religion belittles what we are by giving credit for our strengths to some myth handed down through generations by ancestors who did not have the tools and understanding to explain the world around them and came up instead with explanations based on magical beings and supernatural events.

Now we can explain how tides go in and tides go out, but some of us choose not to.  We can also decide on our own whether we are fit to marry.  Some societies have fought dearly for that freedom, yet some people still choose to consider the dictates of the old, unmarried pretenders who claim to have some special, magically conveyed wisdom that the rest of us lack.

Benny the Rat does say one thing that carries some truth -

On Friday, Benedict said that public officials must set a good moral example for society.

He was referring obliquely to Premier Silvio Berlusconi and his escapades, feeling the spirit of the ghost bird no doubt inspiring him as to what is moral for a married man, but really, before looking to what married men do what their dicks, he should look to his own group of sorcerers and lecture them on setting good examples.

You know, little things like don’t go around raping kids, and don’t help members of your group cover up such rapes.   

"I wish my country were a little better."

So do I.  So does any Canadian who sees: the growing divide between rich and poor; the undermining of what once were independent oversight agencies put in place to protect public interests; the biggest deficit our country has ever had; decline in education; aboriginal rights still sorely trounced; growing reports of police brutality; access to information increasingly denied; failure to address poverty; a Parliament that ignores policy for politics; a Parliament that engages in vicious, personal attacks rather than intelligent debate; a country being fed the propaganda of fear more and more; a paranoid government that constantly seeks ways to invade our privacy and limit our right to protest...

It's a good thing for a leader to point out his or her country could use some improvement, and quite another to bash it as harper did for the entertainment of American businessmen, stating as fact that "Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it," and that "(i)n terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance." 

The title of this blog is a quote by Ignatieff, inserted into harper's latest attack ads in which stevie is trying to say that Ignatieff does not support his country.

The latest harper attack ads (but remember, these can't possibly be election ads because stevie says he's not in election mode) are nothing more than a worn out ensemble of the same old garbage harper has been saying for the past two years.

But lying sociopath that harper and his idiot servants are, they really missfire with this latest batch of immature nose-thumbing.

I want a leader who aspires to making our country better than it is.  I want a Prime Minister who can publicly acknowledge that not all is perfect and that change is needed, sometimes unpopular measures as well.

Most reasonalbe Canadians know that tax money is needed to provide services, security, government, education health care, and most know that if you cut taxes, some of those things will have to be cut.  Honestly addressing the reality of taxes despite how unpopular that topic may be is showing respect for voters.

The harper attacks ads tell us more about harper than about Ignatieff, Layton, or Duceppe.  Not only do they show stevie to be unimaginative and prone to adolescent taunts, they show he has little grasp of what a leader should be by attacking some of those very qualities in other leaders.

Something else I think really fails the CPC in these ads: the graphics.  Ignatieff actually looks pretty good - warm, friendly, human.  And the very bizarre choice of background, the hazy images heavily toned in red...I can only specualte as to why stevie approved that - supposed to represent hell-fire?  It sure isn't Liberal red, but maybe that's what they were aiming for.  It's more of a burgundy which is pleasant to the eye.

And predictably, not a thing from harper in any of the ads on what he will do to make Canada better.

Headline from the twilight zone

CRTC may ease ban on broadcasting false or misleading news

Really.  You see a title like that and you just have to read on, thinking it must surely be an extremely poorly worded title.  What "independent public organization that regulates and supervises the Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications systems" would not fight to enforce nothing but the most reliable news delivered with absolute journalistic integrity?

We would assume that being an independent, public organization, such an agency would want to make sure it shields itself from corporate and political influence.  The public needs to be protected from the constant barrage of paid for ads full of false and misleading statements meant to sell us ideas or goods that we would never consider embracing should we be told the truths behind them.

Unfortunately, the title to this article is not misleading.

Current regulations contain a blanket prohibition on broadcasting “any false or misleading news.”  The (CRTC) wants to considerably narrow the scope of that prohibition.  It is proposing a ban on the broadcast of “any news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”
 
Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor specializing in communications issues, says the proposed prohibition is far too limited.  “If we're setting a high standard that you've got to actually endanger someone's life, health or safety, frankly almost anything that's false or misleading that's obviously outside of that fairly narrow scope would be fair game,” Geist said in an interview.  For instance, he said false news that caused financial harm would not be covered by the more limited prohibition.

Nor would such a limited prohibition prevent intentionally false news that could ruin someone's career, family life, or reputation.  It would not protect companies under attack by ones intent on destroying their public image.

It would create a new battleground for vicious attacks against political opponents, special interest groups, minorities, or anyone that gets in the way of people with enough money and power to buy or bully their way on the airwaves.

That the new rules would disallow lies which endanger lives, health, and safety of the public is no protection at all since it is often difficult to prove in a court of law that certain words provoked a certain outcome.  The same violent rhetoric can be repeated over and over, working its influence on those so full of anger and frustration they only need a small nudge to act, but as we have seen in the recent Arizona killings, the rhetorical trigger was pulled at a safe enough distance in the eyes of the law that those who promote violence and hatred through their lies can continue to do so without personal repercussions.

Orwell's Bastard has a link where you can reach a site and tell CRTC what you think of this dangerous change.  As OB says, they may not listen, but we should voice our opposition anyway. 

Can't even remember her original name

On December 23, 2010, The Evil Puppy moved in.  On December 25th, she decided my christmas tree had to come down all at once.  Probably because she has no soul.  On December 26th, she figured I should toss out my favourite boots.

The Evil Puppy thinks that two hours of unbroken sleep is too much for me.

She thinks the plants have too much soil in the pots, and she thinks I probably get bored at work and need to pick up shredded toys when I get home.  The Evil Puppy thinks the rescue cats should be un-rescued.

Worst of all, The Evil Puppy seems to know she's cute as hell.

Saturday nite ode to Stupidity

Censoring Dire Straits?  Mark fucking Twain?

Mentarch gets it right.  We should demand the bible be censored, in that case.  Slavery, incest, genocide, child rape...

Uncensored Dire Straits - 

Meet the creepy cuckoo bird.

Oh...you already know him.

The cuckoo bird places one of its eggs in the nest of another bird species.  The egg hatches and the chick takes over, tricking the mother into feeding it even when the chick outsizes her and runs her ragged.  The cuckoo chick will also push out all of the mother's own eggs so that it doesn't have to compete with anyone else and gets everything  - food, shelter, protection for itself alone.

Judged by human standards, the cuckoo is not a nice bird.  It wants it all and doesn't give a damn who gets hurt.

Steve reminds me of the cuckoo bird.  Dons a blue sweater vest to try and trick us into thinking he's warm and fuzzy, cuddles stunned looking kittens in photos that only make him look creepy, steals policy ideas from other parties, plagiarizes speeches, engages in photo-op after photo-op in an attempt to suck off some of the goodwill reserved for the main subject of the photo, commandeers the ideas and efforts of others, such as red shirt day, usurps parliamentary and traditional roles as when he gos ahead of the GG to take the military salute due that office...

He hopes the things that Canadians warm to will rub off on the superficial image he presents, tricking us into warming to him.

Most of us are smarter than the mother birds of other species that the cuckoo seeks to trick, and this latest nauseating attempt to steal what isn't his in a bid to pretend he is oh so wonderful won't work either.

In fact, it may bring him trouble.

Eight days ago, in Welland, Ont., Stephen Harper made an apparently innocuous announcement that’s a harbinger of much more to come: He unveiled the creation of the Prime Minister’s Volunteer Awards to recognize 17 people each year from non-profit organizations across Canada.

The GG already has volunteer awards, and they are non-partisan awards.  With Baird co-ordinating this new PR stunt, you can bet the list of volunteers given awards will face an entirely different set of criteria.  It's marketing, folks.

But this is the Harper government, controlling all as none before it, eager to find political advantage in everything the government does. Thus it’s a logical extension of this controlling urge to want the Prime Minister to be associated with the awards and the honours in the minds of the recipients. And so it’s logical, with this objective in mind, to have Mr. Baird, the über-partisan cabinet minister, provide guidance for the internal review.

It’s creepy, if you think about it, that any prime minister would even think about meddling with the non-partisan honours and awards system just so he and his office (and party) might be more closely associated with it.

Creepy indeed.  And sleezy. 

Shocked but not surprised

As U.S. Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords lies in critical condition with a gun shot wound -  delivered at close range - to her head, and six others, including a 9 year old girl are dead, we can hardly claim to be surprised that such a horror occurred.

(Pima County Sheriff Clarence) Dupnik did not state a motive for the assassination attempt against the Democratic congresswoman. But he suggested that "vitriolic rhetoric" in political debates could have deadly consequences.

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government, the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this county is getting to be outrageous."

Vitriolic rhetoric does stir up the crazies, even more so when it is given sanction by political figures.

Readers may remember this little bit of American conservative eliminationism, from Sarah Palin’s PAC site. She invited Americans to “take aim” at twenty members of Congress who had supported Barack Obama’s health care legislation.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was one of three incumbents targeted in Arizona.

Dr. Dawg refers to this, and accompanying text   -

image thanks to Orwell’s Bastard

When high profile political figures use words like “take aim,” graphics showing someone in the cross hairs of a rifle, or blithely recommend the assassination of people who are inconvenient (we all remember Flanagan’s statement that Assange should be assassinated), then such rhetoric gives murder for politics and ideology a certain legitimacy in the minds of some. 

They aren’t murderers, they are freedom fighters!  They are defenders of democracy!  They are protecting their country from those who would destroy it!  They are, taking a stand!  They will go down in history as heroes!

In their own sick minds, that is.

Gun imagery used in politics - targeting a political opponent in the cross hairs, for example, makes for a more dangerous environment especially when there is such a push for the right for everyone, regardless of mental state of mind, to carry a fire arm in a country where guns are just the coolest thing evah and so linked to what it is to be a true, red blooded male.

(Jared Lee Loughner’s) rambling videos had already caused him trouble at school, scaring his community college into suspending him in September.  In early October, he agreed to withdraw from school.  By November, Loughner had bought a Glock, purchased legally from a Sportsman's Warehouse in Tucson, the Associated Press and Washington Post reported.

A nutcase suspended for scaring his college manages to legally acquire a semi-automatic weapon a month later and uses it to kill nine people when he shows up armed at a function where issues have already incited violence.

Giffords, 40, is a moderate Democrat who narrowly won re-election in November against a tea party candidate who sought to throw her from office over her support of the health care law. Anger over her position became violent at times, with her Tucson office vandalized after the House passed the overhaul last March and someone showing up at a recent gathering with a weapon.

You politicians want to reduce crime?  Curb your own vitriolic rhetoric and toughen up gun laws.

I hardly think giving Loughner - if he is found guilty - a very tough sentence will deter other crazies who think they are on some kind of heroic mission to enlighten us all to their madness.

Change you can believe in!!!!!!!!!!!!

The issues remain the same, but look!  What a difference a few words make (emphasis mine)-

A new phrase has insinuated itself into Conservative talking points -- it tripped lightly from the lips of new junior finance minister Ted Menzies this week -- and will no doubt soon be adopted by the larger political culture: job creators.  As in: goodbye corporate fat cats, hello job creators.


Levant...has helped popularize the argument that oil-sands petroleum is ethically superior to petroleum produced by countries such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran – all nations that also sell crude to the U.S. market or Asian markets. It’s an attempt to beat back efforts by U.S. politicians and activists who want a boycott of Canada’s oil sands owing to its greenhouse-gas-heavy extraction methods and ensuing environmental damage. - hence, ethical oil.

Think of the money the government saves.  No action needed, just re-label problems as benefits.

The sacrificial lamb has a name.

Michelle D'Auray, public servant.

The Harper government claims a senior bureaucrat gave it the go-ahead to avoid rules governing the look and feel of its Economic Action Plan website.

Right.  Like I said before, harper & Co. can't get rid of all public servants.  They need a few to kick around and blame for their own stupidity and corrupt actions.

Of course harper and Hang-'em-high family man Vic have nothing to back that claim.  In fact, the paper-trail clearly shows that the TB public servant team leader advised against it.

As current president of TB, Stockie Day is trying to justify Toews and harper's actions, claiming Michelle D'Auray, secretary to TB recommended that the exemption be granted.

But guess what?

Day’s office and the Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to requests to produce the d’Auray document.

This blame the public servant is just the latest in harper's half-assed attempt to brush away criticism over violating very clear TB rules that forbid using federal government sites and resources for partisan purposes.   Earlier on, in committee, they tried to say things like the use of Google Map hampered their ability to maintain a common look and feel.

Wow.  Odd how inserting a Google Map function can throw off an entire design, create a new one, and add in a youtube clip of harper playing the piano.

Some people may not think that this particular abuse of tax dollars, and politicizing what is supposed to be a non-partisan public service is no big deal, but it is far from an isolated incident.  We've been paying for many such CPC/harper promotions, and our federal public service has been used as harper's personal marketing team since he took power: oversized checks carrying the CPC logo, public service websites linking to that tiresome piano playing video, unrelated sites linking to federal budgets, the economic action plan, harper's photo popping up all over the place, public servants used to push the economic action plan ad signs, partisan statements on public service sites...

Where is the clout to enforce accountability on politicians who brazenly thumb their noses at the public while stealing their money to do so?

Every time we do nothing more than shake our heads and say, well, it sucks, but that's politics, we give these corrupt actions our stamp of approval through our simple silence.

For all the griping about taxes, you would think more Canadians would be royally miffed at having any political party dip into our pockets to pay for their own marketing needs - and using those tax dollars to misrepresent their deeds, as well.

Pete Postlethwaite

Pete Postlethwaite
7 February 1946 – 2 January 2011        

I think Flaherty shops here

As PZ Myers points out, this article appeared as a front page headline on the Wall Street Journal and offers no criticism or reservations. h/t Pharyngula

Why are we there again?

Afghan President Hamid Karzai refused to remove a former warlord from atop the energy and water ministry despite U.S. pressure to oust the minister because Washington considered him corrupt and ineffective. Secret diplomatic records showed the minister -- privately termed "the worst" by U.S. officials -- kept his perch at an agency that controls $2 billion in U.S. and allied projects.

The refusal to remove the official despite threats to end U.S. aid highlights how little influence the U.S. has over the Afghan leader on pressing issues such as corruption.

"How little influence the U.S. has..."

As Karzai and his corrupt personal appointees laugh in our faces and take our money, we keep sending our troops to face death and keep this scum in power.  But somehow, it's all for the women and children, right?  We'll bring all our soldiers home in 2014 and Karzai will run a democracy that will be fair to all, right?   

Happy New Year

I hope the new year brings renewed energy and happiness to all of you fine folks out there.