Have you considered the Tory Omnibus Crime Bill? It’s not exactly light bedtime reading, but it’s worth knowing about. It is above and beyond all else a testament to absurdity. It is absurd yet delivered in such a fashion so as to seem sensible. It is irrational, illogical and yet is designed to seem appropriate. It succeeds because the intended audience is often so incredibly uncritical, of their actions inasmuch as those of government, that they will believe known falsehoods simply because it takes less mental effort than to formulate even a basic critical response…
Category: Politics
How Sweet it is: Canadians Reject Harper’s Big Fat Smear on Turmel
In politics smears have a tendency to work. That’s why attack ads and mudslinging are the norm down south, and a growing trend here. It doesn’t really matter if an accusation is true, studies have shown that people are far more likely to pay attention to the original, shocking, smear than to any subsequent correction. With the debut of Fox News North (aka Sun News) and the success of Stephen Harper’s cheap shot politics, it’s fair to wonder if our smug sense of superiority about the gullibility of our neighbors to the south is warranted. Sure…
AA+: The Debt Ceiling Revisited
The other day Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s credit rating for the first time in its history, knocking it down one level from AAA to AA+. The downgrade happened despite an eleventh hour deal between the Republican controlled House of Representatives and the Democrat controlled Senate to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, the deal was signed by President Barack Obama early last week. The deal brought an end to months of bickering by politicians over spending cuts and tax hikes. The battles that raged in Washington over that period of time came across as a battle of good and evil and not just differences of opinion…
Media rebels strike back at our broken system: Kai Nagata and the Young Turks
With the arrival of Sun News broadcasting in this country, our media seems to increasingly be aping that of our American neighbours to the south. The sensationalistic, overwrought, overhyped, hyper-partisan crap that most of us tend to get indirectly (this stuff can only be digested in small doses, evidently!) from watching the Daily Show satirize it every night, has ,unfortunately, penetrated this country’s media culture in any number of ways. The News Corp formula, if you will, is simple: replace facts and actual news with propaganda and right wing editorials, as much as possible. Sadly, this approach has spread to other news networks, due to the overwhelming ratings edge enjoyed by the Republican Party tools at Fox news (i.e. the O’Reilly factor)…
Corporate sponsored animal abuse for a good cause
“Rednecks are a dyin’ breed ya know,” a sweaty, fat man in a white cowboy hat called ‘Cousin’ explained to me, as he aggressively scrubbed the last of the bean sauce off of the bottom of a pot, “except here in Calgary, they flourish!” His entire body laughed. He knew I was a rookie.
Before the Stampede I hadn’t thought much about Calgary really. I knew what most native Montrealers know about the city. I knew it was where Steven Harper lived and that oil and gas money built the tallest buildings and greased the economy. I’d heard about the Stampede of course, people in South Africa have heard about the Stampede, but aside from casually tuning in to…
Religious moderation and Ghana’s quiet war
As fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims unite to attempt to “get rid of these people in the society,” a statement both ugly in composition and in sentiment, the small and mostly silent homosexual community in Ghana finds itself on the brink of persecution. It is for this reason, that while I still maintain that violence is not the property of any single group of people, I must admit that if religion is not a necessary cause for violence and oppression, it is at the very least a sufficient one…
Quebec Politics for Dummies: L’Affaire Turmel and the Media
No surprise that the Conservatives would pick up smearing the leader of the Official Opposition where they left off with Iggy. What appalls me, if it does not surprise me, is that the national media, with nary an exception, would gleefully follow them down the rabbit hole. They did so for two reasons: complete ignorance of Quebec and how our politics work, and a desperate flailing to cut down the NDP and their new leader for the egregious crime of being Socially Progressive while Popular (SPP)…
Shale gas industry shoots for social media revamp, critics not convinced
Canada’s shale gas industry is turning to social media for a cure to its tattered public image in Quebec, according to the Canadian Press. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) has contracted the services of social media company Parta Dialogue to create forumschiste.com, a website billed as a place to discuss issues and share information about shale gas. With the official launch of the website set for Tuesday, one of the industry’s most vocal critics, the Association Québecoise de Lutte Contre la Pollution Atmosphérique (AQLPA) is already calling into question the motives of the effort. “Is this looking at environmental questions or is this damage control?” said Kim Cornelissen of the AQLPA in a phone interview…
A Modest Proposal for the City of Toronto (VIDEO)
Sometimes, there’s a little bit of Jonathan Swift in all of us. Mary Hynes is no different. Last week, this feisty senior living in North York, Ontario had some modest suggestions for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and his plans to make serious budget cuts, affecting the city’s services, most notably the public library system. She got the opportunity to deliver her comments to the mayor in person at the Executive Committee’s Core Service Review panel…
Arts and politics: the power of the arts community to shape our politics…
Ever heard of the anti-Harper protest song “You have a choice?” Me neither. Shame really. I checked it out the other day on Youtube (produced by AAVAZ, the global non-profit organization) and apart from the music, which, as is so often the case with these well-intentioned but unwieldy artistic collaborations (e.g. We are the world) is rather confused – note to producers for future reference: bagpipe solos never make a good intro to a pop song! – the message on the threat of climate change deserves to be heard…