Orwell's Bastard

One Town's War on Gay Teens | #uspoli #lgbt

2012-02-12T23:07:00.000-05:00

One Town's War on Gay Teens | Politics News | Rolling Stone:

"Asked on a radio program whether the anti-gay agenda of her ilk bore any responsibility for the bullying and suicides, Barb Anderson, co-author of the original "No Homo Promo," held fast to her principles, blaming pro-gay groups for the tragedies. She explained that such "child corruption" agencies allow "quote-unquote gay kids" to wrongly feel legitimized. "And then these kids are locked into a lifestyle with their choices limited, and many times this can be disastrous to them as they get into the behavior which leads to disease and death," Anderson said. She added that if LGBT kids weren't encouraged to come out of the closet in the first place, they wouldn't be in a position to be bullied."

'via Blog this'

This is from the fetid fever swamp otherwise known as Michele Bachmann's home district.

Why this tumorously stupid woman and her comrade-in-bigotry Rick Santorum aren't pelted with eggs, targeted with rotten fruit and/or tarred and feathered for daring to open their pieholes in public is beyond me, but hey -- it's not my country.

But can we please, for Christ's sake, stop confusing their ignorant, stupid, hateful superstition with Christianity? I mean, I don't claim to be a biblical scholar, but I can't remember anything about Jesus counselling his disciples to bully, harass and abuse LGBT kids to the point of suicide.

Have I reiterated the need to sandbag the border recently?

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The post-partisan plea: it's now or never | #lpc #ndp #cdnpoli

2012-01-29T15:51:00.001-05:00

Some weeks ago, I urged Canada's two main opposition parties to set aside their differences and work together for the greater good.

Perhaps "urged" isn't the right word.

But I'm moved to reiterate by recent events, including the internal machinations of both the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party in the wake of last year's electoral disaster. Yes, I'm using the word disaster deliberately. Not just because of the collapse of the Liberal Party, although I'm not too broken up over that. And notwithstanding the gains of the NDP and its ascent to Official Opposition status. You can guess why, because all you have to do is look at the composition of Parliament, coupled with its increasing irrelevance to the governance of our country.

It seems that almost every week, Stephen Harper is ready to inflict fresh indignities upon the Canadian narrative -- culturally, economically, and historically. The latest salvo is aimed at Canada's seniors, who are being told to prepare for a major revamp of the support systems they've paid into all their lives. Sorry, did we say 65? We meant 67.

Cue the supporting tsk-tsk chorus from the think tanks and their transmitters in the corporate and tabloid media. It's just not sustainable. Aging citizens are a drag on the system. Never mind the tax breaks to corporations or the expensive military shiny shiny. Demographic realities leave us with no choice. It's the same crap they're using to sell their austerity snake oil, and it's no more valid in this context than it is in that.

And if that doesn't take fast enough, we all know what's coming next: demonizing, accusations of greed and indolence, astroturfing, all manner of divisive and misleading messages designed to atomize us and set us against each other.

This isn't about that, however. Seniors are just the latest in a long list of targets drawn up by the most dangerous government in Canadian history. I remember reading somewhere recently that Stephen Harper has the potential to become the most transformational Prime Minister in generations; it's incumbent upon all of us to realize just how transformational he wants to be, and to take a long hard look at what he wants to transform Canada into.

For this, it's instructive to consider the observations of Dr. Dawg, which I'm citing at some length:

Employment in Canada is down, job quality is decreasing, and profits have taken a downturn as well. Prime Minister Stephen Harper declares his critics to be “enemies of the people of Canada.” His Minister of the Environment warns of dangerous “foreign influences.” Opposition MPs are called traitors. Public service workers are accused of sabotage ...

Canada will continue to export cancer-causing asbestos, while banning it at home ...

The Ministry of Science and Technology is a creationist. The Minister of Justice avows that policy will not be determined by statistics. The Minister of Industry announces that statistics will not be gathered. The Prime Minister declares that statistics will not be kept ...

Crime continues to decrease. Corrections Canada will increase its staffing levels to cope with an expected influx of new prisoners. The RCMP shields the Prime Minister from questions and throws opponents out of Conservative Party political rallies ...

Full parliamentary debate is no longer permitted. Committees are increasingly closed to journalists. Independent watchdogs are fired or hobbled. Appointees to sensitive positions are found to bully their staff and prevent their agencies from functioning ...

Warrantless internet surveillance. Reckless demonization of opponents. Silencing of critics.

We are rapidly approaching the point where we have little more than the form of democracy left. Indeed, there's a persuasive argument that we're already there. All the while, the Harper regime has worked stealthily, and then openly, to undermine its substance, as the Dawg soberingly details.

Not that any of this is unexpected. The toxic Harper effect was the subject of a post last spring:

... it's then that you realize just what a toxic, enervating and corrupting effect Stephen Harper's had upon our public sphere, our national conversation, our civil society, our body politic. Look at how he's lowered our standards for integrity, transparency and effective public policy. Look at how he's pissed away our international standing and embarrassed us before the entire world. A record of scandal, disdain and ineptitude like this should have us out in the streets with torches and pitchforks. Instead we futz around with the PVR and complain about the inconvenience of having to vote.
Ultimately, this is the overarching message we need to hammer on. Stephen Harper and his minions have poisoned us so thoroughly and profoundly that we've measurably reduced our expectations of our government, and by extension, of ourselves. Our sense of ourselves as citizens and as a community has been stripped of honour, of aspiration, of a social conscience, and of any notion that it's something worth working for.

Well, we're seeing the results of that now, without the constraints of functioning parliamentary accountability.

It's in this context that my plea to the opposition parties becomes more urgent than ever. I don't care about brands. I never have. I'm begging you: put your country before your party and work to defeat this agenda before it's too late. Talk openly about coalitions. Make no apologies for a commitment to the public sphere and the public good. Don't split the vote in winnable ridings. Don't let your historical enmities pave the way for the greater evil.

Stop triangulating, stop pussyfooting around, stop looking for ways to soften the message. It's not like the other side cares whether we like their brand or not. Only by confronting and exposing Harper's bullshit for what it is can we remove its power to obfuscate and mislead.

Sigh.

I've been told that I'm dreaming, that the Liberals and New Democrats are two very different parties, and there's no way they or their people will ever work together. I really hope that's wrong, because if they and we can't move past partisan party bullshit, we won't have a country left.

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Once again, time to play ... Let's hear from another Sun reader!

2012-01-28T11:03:00.000-05:00

Source here.

Strictly speaking, I have doubts about the authenticity, as this guy can actually spell.

Related posts:

Electro-Motive: Foreign corporation takes Canadian tax dollars, fucks over Canadian workers | #cdnpoli

2012-01-22T14:13:00.000-05:00

... while Harper's thumb stays firmly planted up his ass.

Montreal Simon and Owen Gray have already flagged this, so I can't really add much.

But hey, I could be wrong, so please -- let me know if I've left anything out.

Related posts:

Police accountability in Toronto | #G20

2012-01-21T22:04:00.000-05:00

From the Globe:

The Office of the Independent Police Review Director concluded constables Michael Adams, Babak Andalib-Goortani, David Donaldson, Geoffrey Fardell and Oliver Simpson used excessive force after tackling Mr. Nobody to the ground.

The report concludes that charges should be laid, too, but apparently because it's taken more than six months, the chief has to get permission from the Police Services Board. (Yeah, that's how criminal procedure works for everyone, isn't it.) From the Star:

Usually, charges must be laid within six months of the incident. In this case, the police services board would have to approve an extension before officers can be charged and a hearing ordered.A source told the Star Friday the board has granted Police Chief Bill Blair the right to lay charges.

Cue the whining from the poor misunderstood victims in all this:

"This is almost two years down the road getting to this and this has been very arduous for our members," Mike McCormack, head of the Toronto Police Association, told CBC News.

But we haven't even gotten to the fun part. You know, about the two assholes who kicked Adam Nobody in the face after he was arrested and cuffed.

Oh, and the story also talks about the investigator who identified these guys when hundreds of their buddies couldn't. According to the Globe account,

He went over videos of the incident frame-by-frame, cross-referencing them with photographs and police deployment sheets, which listed officers assigned to the area that day.In some cases, he picked out minor details to figure out who was who: Constable Adams, for instance, wore a distinctive carabiner on his belt; Constable Farrell wore long sleeves.

So in other words, this guy – acting Detective-Sergeant Chris Kirkpatrick – did some actual police work. When hundreds of other cops, who were there at the time and whom we pay to notice details like this, couldn't identify these guys. Please, Mike – tell us again how there's no Blue Wall.

They're gonna love Det.-Sgt. Kirkpatrick when he gets back to the office.

Well, I'm just bursting with confidence in the system now. I'm sure we'll see action on

the cowardly sacks of shit who beat the crap out of Lacy MacAuley
the scumbags who tore John Pruyn's prosthetic leg off
the sadistic pigs who got their jollies kicking Sean Salvati around in the interrogation room and then parading him around naked, in front of a female cop

any day now!

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Same-sex marriage blows up in Harper's face | #cdnpoli #lgbt

2012-01-12T19:11:00.003-05:00

Sweet, sweet irony.

Or is it poetic justice?

Don't care, really. Either way, there's a week's worth of schadenfreude watching Harper squirming on this.

Here's a guy who redefines the words "control freak." In fact, I believe I read somewhere on the intertoobz that his picture comes up when you google the expression.

And today, he gets caught looking while some nameless schmuck in the Justice Department argues that same-sex marriages aren't valid for some weaselly reason. With all the money they spend on message control, you'd think one of his spin doctors would have flagged that and kept it from happening. Too many dirty irons in the fire, maybe?

Guess you can only throw so many bones to the socons and fetus fetishists before they start expecting some real meat. A nod and a wink, then a lick and a promise, and then ... oh, shit.

I'll leave the last word to Dan Savage.

(Motherfucker. Heh heh heh.)

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Liberals, NDP, whoever. I don't care what we call them | #cdnpoli

2012-01-03T00:14:00.002-05:00

The Tyee – This Year, Put the Country Ahead of the Party:

" ... with the election of Stephen Harper, everything changed. No prime minister in Canadian history has come to power with such a ruthless determination to implement an agenda so at odds with the interests of the country and the values of its citizens. This involves not just a set of policies aimed at eliminating the social and economic role of the federal government. It includes, on a parallel course, a determination to change the political culture of the country to one that either supports or acquiesces to that policy agenda. (The Governor General's Christmas message was about volunteerism and philanthropy, Harper's long-term replacement for the state.) Working in tandem, these two political streams, if allowed to proceed for any length of time, could effectively change the country permanently -- or at least for all currently living generations. Harper aims for nothing less.
If the NDP and the Liberals continue to do politics as usual, as if Harper is just another political adversary in a normally-functioning system, Harper is almost certain to win again."

'via Blog this'

From Murray Dobbin in The Tyee.

I'm not a consultant or a partisan operator or a veteran of political trench wars, so I can't really talk about the mechanics. What concerns me, frankly, is the way the challenge before us is framed, and ensuring that the danger we face is properly appreciated.

h/t DrDawg

We're drowning in memes, overloaded with junk information, baffled with bullshit, and distracted by more Shiny Objects^TM than you can shake a Perry/Brand divorce at. So it's no surprise that our critical faculties are frequently close to being overwhelmed. If we are to preserve our country and our national character, we need to cut through all that. We cannot harbour any illusions about the nature of the threat.

Which brings us back to the question of labels. In the runup to last spring's federal election, I suggested that we needed to move beyond labels. Perhaps I wasn't making the case as clearly and coherently as I should, and some readers took me to task in the comments for it, but in truth, the basic argument hasn't changed. The fact that we're now faced with a Harper majority makes it more urgent than ever.

Murray Dobbin's article is a catalyst for this because of its persuasive contention that if the two main opposition parties continue to do politics as usual, we're doomed. I really don't care if the Liberals opt for Bob Rae or the New Democrats pick Thomas Mulcair or whoever. It can be Krusty the Clown for all the difference it's going to make in stopping Harper's assault on our country.

Can we possibly make this any more clear, my dear Liberal and NDP friends? I'll cop a mea culpa in this regard for my own sophomoric attempts to milk this for cheap laughs, but if ever there was a time for progressive, unHarperist elements to coalesce, set aside differences and implement an effective and coherent opposition strategy both in Ottawa and through extra-parliamentary channels, that time is now. As Dobbin points out, by the time the next election rolls around, it may be too late.

Sorry to be harsh, Liberal friends, but you're a rump. You're pouring your time and energy into the arcane internal processes of a third party, and it's just not relevant any more. Your party bears just as much responsibility for enabling the corporatist, continentalist, free-trade, SPP, NAFTA, FTAA, race-to-the-bottom agenda as do the Conservatives. If you want to continue being handmaidens to the 1% and the international investor class, then toss your John Manley T-shirts and go join the Conservative Party. If you want to defend Canada from that agenda, then let go of your partisan attachment to an obsolete institution. It's been eight months, for Chrissakes.

Dobbin slaps the NDP around too, by implication, for inward focus and obtuseness. Of the current leadership candidates, he writes,

... only Nathan Cullen seems to understand the new political dynamic in the country, telling the Georgia Straight newspaper that Harper is a "clear and present danger to this country" ... His belief that the NDP must put the country ahead of its potential seat count is an important contribution to the leadership debate and the political debate in general.

It's a nice thought, but given the still-extant dysfunctions of our decaying, maggot-ridden FPTP system and the way partisan operators usually work, it's hard to be sanguine about the likelihood of that.

I could spend more time piling on and berating the NDP for downplaying its ties to organized labour (comrades, the corporate media's going to crucify you for that no matter what, so you might as well embrace it and the attendant class-conflict implications) and trying to play the Ottawa game according to the rules set by the Villagers (news flash, comrades: you're wasting your time), but in this context, that's arguing over place settings. By the time you've figured which is the salad fork and which is the soup spoon, Charles McVety will be Minister of Public Morals and Ezra IrreLevant will be president of the CBC.

OK? Can we get it together before the whole notion of extra-parliamentary opposition is criminalized?

Related posts:

Oh, and while we're busy demonizing the #Occupy movement ... | #classwarfare #cdnpoli

2011-12-24T13:09:00.002-05:00

Daily Kos: I See What Occupy Vancouver Did There...And It's Brilliant:

'via Blog this'

At the Daily Kos, Ed Murray shines the light of reason on the corporate media's theme-O-the-week:

The media’s latest attempt to undercut the message of Occupy movements all across the globe is by touting the “cost” of these protests. Many sources are reporting that Occupy movements are costing cities hundreds of thousands of dollars in police overtime because apparently it takes an entire precinct to make sure that 50 people don't sleep through the night.

In the piece, he highlights Occupy Vancouver's response: point out the number of meals served to people who would otherwise have gone hungry, the number of beds provided to people who would otherwise have slept on the street, the public-health services offered to people with substance-abuse problems, and so on. As he argues:

These are only a few ways that these protests are actually picking up social and civic services and alleviating taxpayer burden by subsidizing some of the costs associated with running a city.

As someone once said, it's all about controlling the narrative. Is it worth engaging the apparatus of repression and its corporate mouthpieces in terms of dollars and cents? I don't have a quick answer, and given what I was arguing a couple of days ago, my initial response is to avoid talking about it in their terms, but I can't dismiss Murray's argument about adopting a variety of tactics out of hand.

Thoughts?

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Media culpa catches Wente being sloppy again | #journalism

2011-12-24T12:41:00.002-05:00

Media culpa: Margaret Wente, Math and Christianity: More factual/attribution errors?:

'via Blog this'

What's that? Wente being sloppy with numbers? Wente being shoddy and haphazard with attributions? I'm shocked. Shocked.

Maybe we should chill out a little, though. It's not as if she's writing about anything incendiary, like white people and brown people, or Christians and Muslims, or anything.

One really has to wonder what purpose the Globe thinks it's serving by running Wente's copy. It's certainly not serving the cause of accuracy or intelligent conversation.

Related posts:

Fiscal demonization of @OccupyTO continues on CTV | #classwarfare

How The Globe channels the 1 per cent | #Occupy #classwarfare

The Sun's effect on our national conversation is obvious, but what about the Globe?

"Find new ways to protect Parliament?" WTF?

Media culpa: George Monbiot’s unedited letter to the Globe and Mail

Fiscal demonization of @OccupyTO continues on CTV | #classwarfare

2011-12-23T23:50:00.001-05:00

Like clockwork, the corporate media are swinging into action. Or perhaps like robots.

Either way, the narrative is being reinforced and amplified. Just now on CTV a "news" report is pegging the cost of Occupy at something over $714,000. Police, EMS, landscaping, etc.

Cue the manufactured resentment and the divide-and-conquer rhetoric: dirty fucking hippies taking over a public space, with all the usual triggers:

rampant drug use
noise
filth
street people
nuisance
drumming

and the rest of it we can recite in our sleep: hostility, local residents and businesses intimidated by the menacing anarchists, and OMG people are afraid to walk their dogs ...

We all know where the conversation leads, of course: our tax dollars supporting a bunch of parasites, yargle bargle bleghhh.

Just in case the message isn't sufficiently clear, CTV follows that "story" with an item about last-minute shopping. (No shit -- people are still shopping two days before Christmas? Wow. Now there's a story that's never been told before. Someone's really working the imagination.)

And finally, a happy-holiday message from a guy in uniform. Because we have to Support the Troops, after all.

Aren't you forgetting something, CTV? Shouldn't there be a ritual incantation of loyalty to the Dear Leader or something?

Related posts:

How The Globe channels the 1 per cent | #Occupy #classwarfare

2011-12-22T23:47:00.000-05:00

Managing Occupy protest cost city $1-million, city says - The Globe and Mail:

'via Blog this'

It's masquerading as "objective" "news," but in fact it's anything but.

Note how Canada's National Fishwrap steers the discourse: the whole story is about how much money the city of Vancouver had to spend "managing" the protest. The implications are obvious, and the questions they're meant to raise are predictable -- as are the resentment and demonization they're sure to trigger. Goddamn hippies, taking up space, playing their drums and doing their drugs, and I'm paying more taxes to feed them and clean up after them ...

The effect is just as clear, as is the further debasement of the national conversation. Gee, I wonder whose interests that serves? I wonder whose agenda that's helping to advance?

For Chrissakes. If I wanted to read the Sun, I'd buy the Sun.

Let's just back this up for a second, and look at the underlying assumptions.

Since when do we evaluate the exercise of fundamental freedoms in terms of how much it costs to "manage" them? Are we using KPMG to decide whether freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are efficient or cost-effective now? Maybe we need to re-examine this whole voting thing. It costs money to run elections, you know. Should we really be in the business of delivering responsible government or guaranteeing basic rights?

Hello, Globe? They're called fundamental freedoms for a reason. They're there because they're part of the sine qua non for open and democratic societies. We don't assess them in terms of dollars and cents. Stick to your recipes, decor hints and eye-shadow videos and leave the serious conversation for the grownups.

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@GeorgeMonbiot takes down the corporate media

2011-12-18T17:28:00.003-05:00

George Monbiot – Unmasking the Press:

'via Blog this'

Too bad about Hitchens, but the best thing I've found about the corporate media this week comes from Monbiot. Everything you need to know, including the essential 99 percent versus 1 per cent dynamic, is in here.

The class-warfare element is fairly obvious, and set out fairly high in the piece. Monbiot takes no more than a couple of spare and elegant paragraphs to touch on how the conversation is manipulated in a way that mobilizes people against their own interests or redirects their attention in harmless or ineffectual ways.

What's especially useful, though, is the description of the technique of distraction:

... the corporate papers ask us to celebrate the lives of the economic elite. Saturday’s Telegraph devoted most of a page to a puff piece flogging the charming jumpers being sold by a Santa Sebag-Montefiore (nee Palmer-Tomkinson) from her “white stucco Kensington House”(9). She works – if that’s the right word for it – with someone she met at Klosters, where she and her family “ski with the Prince of Wales and Princes William and Harry.” So far they have managed to sell 40 of these jumpers, which somehow justifies an enormous photo and 1400 breathless words.I mention this sycophantic drivel not because it is exceptional but because it is typical. A friend who used to work as a freelance photographer for the Telegraph stopped when he discovered that most of those he was being sent to photograph were the well-heeled friends and relatives of people on the paper. Journalism is embedded in the world it should be challenging and confronting.

Of course, this is from a British context. There's absolutely nothing like that happening here, of course. (*cough Globe Life cough*)

Related posts:

Lawrence Martin on Harper's proto-fascism | #cdnpoli

2011-11-30T01:14:00.001-05:00

Under this PM, the state is everywhere - The Globe and Mail:

'via Blog this'

It doesn't make up for the fact that it still publishes Wente, but every now and then the Globe manages to do something worthwhile.

My only quibble with Martin, other than that he still hasn't appeared on the Tweeter, is that he doesn't quite go where he's obviously heading and use the F word. The propensity for control and domination is staring us right in the face.

Just take a look:

Fetishizing the military
A publicly funded propaganda machine, amplified by willingly braying transmitters at Stun Media
Disdain for democratic accountability
Obsessive message control
Warrantless citizen surveillance
Jails, jails and more jails
Demonizing and smearing of opposition

Really, are these the hallmarks of a government that has its citizens' welfare at heart? Haven't we seen this movie before?

Related posts:

Lt. John Pike, UC Davis Police: Little Eichmann of the Day

2011-11-20T22:24:00.001-05:00

Time to revive a dormant feature.

Here's the tough guy, pepper-spraying unarmed students. Can't help but notice the contrast: students sitting peacefully and silently get pepper-sprayed in the face. Students trashing their campus and destroying vehicles because a child-rapist football coach got fired get ... a stern frown?

Full story here. Why do I get the feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of this, both down there and up here?

Related posts:

The Sun's effect on our national conversation is obvious, but what about the Globe?

2011-11-15T09:57:00.001-05:00

It's a straightforward question: what are people talking about? What's capturing their attention and imaginations? Public conversation. Nothing gives you a better sense of a community or a society than gauging what people are talking about. (24/7 on Kim Kardashian? That's got to tell you something.)

It's been one of this little corner's favourite hobby horses for as long as I can remember. Public discourse. National conversation. Provincial. Municipal. Whatever. You want civic ambition, you need to look at the quality of the conversations people are having. (I'm focusing on civic ambition because in a recent piece, the Globe's ideologically reliable urban-affairs curmudgeon Marcus Gee was complaining about the lack thereof. More on that in a minute. )

It's easy, in an atmosphere like this, to focus on the braying tabloid press for the extent to which public discourse has become debased these days. Instead of calling Mayor Stupid on his bullshit, his enablers at the Sun defend him from the elitist bullies who've launched the War on Ford. Lies have become truth. Pointing out that they're lies and indicia of uncompetence is elitist condescension and the sign of sore losers. Up is down. Black is white. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Really, though, that's low-hanging fruit. It's like being in a room full of pinatas. Swing the stick, even blindly, and odds are you'll hit something. Not much of an accomplishment. Pointing out that Sun Media and Quebecor are contributing to the dumbing down of public discourse isn't exactly reaching. (Thanks, OB. Right beside your courageous and groundbreaking suggestion that we should all eat healthy and exercise regularly.) It's not hard to discern the techniques either: cultivation of stupidity, misdirection, demagoguery, shallow phony patriotism – anything that'll help take the focus off whatever they don't want you thinking about.

One could go on and on analyzing the Sun's agenda – anti-union, anti-regulation, demonizing the public sector, torquing phony culture wars and whipping up resentment of so-called elites – and pointing out how that agenda just happens to serve the interests of the dominant interests. The real owners, that is, not the spurious and artificially constructed elites it rails against. The 1 percent, if you like. So we know about the stupidifying effect of the Sun papers.

But let's talk about the Globe for a minute. The comparison isn't all that intuitive; the parallels may seem a little contrived at first glance, but both suffer from inherent contradictions. It's just that the Sun's internal contradictions are a lot easier to grasp. It poses as the voice of the hardworking lunch-bucket little guy, abused and sneered at by the condescending liberal elites, while in every editorial, every column, and every “news” story it chooses to torque, it just happens to be advancing the interests of the 1 percent who do more to fuck over the little lunch-bucket guy in a day than any tofu-eating latte-drinking downtown elitist will do in his or her entire life. Deconstructing that is relatively easy.

With the Globe, it's more difficult. Its pompous assumption of the moniker “Canada's National Newspaper” makes it an easy target for mockery based on exaggerated self-importance, but there's a danger in that: taking the easy shot obscures a number of truths that are both more subtle and more insidious.

And because the Globe carries all that gravitas, all that sobering and responsible legacy as The Newspaper of Record, discerning those truths means you have to dig a lot deeper. There's an element of class analysis, yes (really, OB? Well, duh ... ), but there's more to it than that.

Back to Marcus. In the context of a column pooh-poohing another survey showing that everyone hates Toronto, he complains about lack of civic ambition and loony antics at city hall. Sorry – loony antics at city hall? Really? Given Marcus's role in paving the way for Mayor Stupid, that's like an arsonist complaining about the smell of smoke.

As for civic ambition, well, it's not that we lack for it. The Fort York Bridge. Lofty and uplifting architectural themes. Inspiring thoughts from civic leaders not so long ago. Maturity. Confidence. Aspirational design on both a micro and macro level, in dozens of aspects, is all around us – you just have to look for it. And it needn't be all that abstract or complicated. Bike infrastructure, for instance. It's one of the signs of a mature and forward-thinking community. A civic commitment to it signifies a recognition that cities can't be built around private automobiles any more, and that sane and rational transportation policy has to embrace more efficient and environmentally friendly modes of transport.

But what have we got here? A ruling claque that, to this day, talks about inanities like the War on the Car. Something Marcus enabled, by the way, by helping to pave the way for Mayor Stupid.

But we didn't end up with Mayor Stupid by accident. Remember the megacity debate of the late 1990s? Why is it that municipal discourse is now dominated by people like Mammoliti, Denzil and Del Grande? It's hard to see how the quality of public conversation is improved by enabling people like this.

Once again, it requires a little more reflection and appreciation of history than you need when analyzing the Sun, but it's not that complicated. The Harris government needed to neutralize the old City of Toronto because it was a locus of resistance. How? By smooshing it together with "the suburbs" of North York, Scarborough, York, East York and Etobicoke. When you put five dogs in a room with one cat and tell them they can run things democratically, you can pretty much predict how they'll vote. Hence the lingering clusterfuck known as municipal amalgamation – which the Globe also cheered for, by the way, despite the clearly indicated wishes of the electorate.

Well, it was almost two decades ago. More recently, Marcus has taken his shots at Mayor Stupid, although it puts one in mind of the old saying about horses and barn doors. He's counselled caution and restraint on the Occupy Toronto question, although that's been coloured by a rather patronizing “let 'em freeze” tone that betrays a pretty sweeping dismissal of the Occupiers' motives and commitment. Again, though: does this elevate our understanding? Does it add to the discussion? Does it raise the tone of the conversation?

Whatever your answer to that might be, Marcus is only part of the pattern. Then there's the Life section. Never mind climate change, the growing inequality gap, the attendant class war, the disintegration of popular sovereignty, or the fundamental social and economic disfigurements imposed upon us by the last thirty years – am I eating at the right restaurants? How do I put on eye shadow? Where should I shop for expensive tchatchkes? Let's talk about next season's hot colours.

And then, let's talk about Margaret Wente. If you haven't bookmarked this marvellous site, you should do so right now. And then take a read through the most recent post on it, and the appended comments. In the Occupy movement, we have what's potentially the most fundamental challenge to the established social order and the truths we hold to be self-evident in more than half a century, and the best the Globe can do is ... Wente? Really, it's hard to discern anything constructive in anything she writes. She fashions an easy narrative, yes, but if it amounts to anything beyond smug condescension and the insularity that comes from a lifetime of privilege and no intellectual curiosity, it's difficult to see what that is.

The obvious question, then: how embarrassing does she have to get? The post referred to just now gives a detailed breakdown of just how egregious her journalistic misdeeds have been, but more generally, as one of the comments notes:

Margaret Wente is one of the most dangerous of people in society: a platform to disseminate opinions disguised as "facts" to an audience of people who haven't the time nor inclination to do their own thinking and research with apparently no rebuke from her employer. Is there any wonder why she could never identify with anyone in any of the Occupy movements?

Let's linger on that for a second: "no rebuke from her employer." Does the Globe believe that there's some purpose being served by letting Wente continue to get away with this? Shouldn't it at least be open with its readers about what that purpose might be?

So, no consequences. What are we to draw from this and the other incidents documented at Media Culpa? The fact that Canada's self-proclaimed National Newspaper continues not only to publish Wente's material, but to give her pride of place on the op-ed page, makes an unmistakeable statement about the Globe's intellectual probity and journalistic standards, and it ain't pretty.

Yes, the Sun's effect on the national discourse is pretty obvious. But the Globe's effect is just as damaging, and far harder to correct.

Related posts:

Detroit hate rally, via Arizona News ...

2011-11-13T10:34:00.001-05:00

Detroit prayer rally draws protests - Arizona News from USA Today:

'via Blog this'

Ignorant hateful superstition? Check.

Racism? Check.

Religious intolerance? Check.

Homophobia? Misogyny? Fundamentalist fetus fetishism? Yep. All there.

Sandbags along the border, people. The Sewer of Stupid^TMis backing up again ...

Related posts:

Thoughts for Remembrance Day, and Matt Taibbi figures out the Occupy movement

2011-11-11T19:14:00.002-05:00

It's a big man who can start a national column with an admission that he got it wrong.

This little corner's been relatively silent on the whole Occupy thing, but now that it's gotten the Masters of the Universe sufficiently rattled, they're cranking up the apparatus of repression. At encampments everywhere, the cops are moving in.

In Toronto, Mayor Stupid's opened his yap to talk about the calls he's getting from people who want the St. James camp shut down. Naturally, he's putting it in terms of standing up for businesses and taxpayers. Not citizens. Dumbass has a way of describing the voices in his head that way, regardless of what they're saying or how many of them there actually are.

(Incidentally, if he's truly listening to people, it might be worth a call to his office: 416-397-FORD (3673). Be nice to his staff, it's not their fault their boss is a moron.)

But nothing crystallizes the 99 percent versus 1 percent thing better than watching the violence inflicted on the Occupiers by police -- if not here (yet), then certainly in places like Oakland, where a former Marine and veteran of the conflict in Iraq was critically injured after taking a rubber bullet in the head:

Scott Olsen, 24, suffered a fractured skull Tuesday in a march with other protesters toward City Hall, said Dottie Guy, of the Iraq Veterans Against the War. Olsen’s family members said the Marine Corps corporal served two tours of duty in Iraq.

There's not enough room in this post to wonder why the whole criminal Bush/Cheney gang aren't under arrest, but if Remembrance Day is a time to mark the sacrifice of veterans, then perhaps we might spare a moment for guys like Scott Olsen. And remember how they're used for patriotic displays of chest-beating by the chickenhawks of the right-wing noise machine, and then discarded like used toilet paper after their tours are up. Lest we forget, the same sickening patterns are evident up here as well.

But back to Taibbi, who may just be the best political journalist in America today. In his way, he's also put his finger on the 99 percent versus the 1 percent thing:

One OWS protester steps in the wrong place, and she immediately has police roping her off like wayward cattle. But in the skyscrapers above the protests, anything goes. This is a profound statement about who law enforcement works for in this country. What happened on Wall Street over the past decade was an unparalleled crime wave. Yet at most, maybe 1,500 federal agents were policing that beat – and that little group of financial cops barely made any cases at all. Yet when thousands of ordinary people hit the streets with the express purpose of obeying the law and demonstrating their patriotism through peaceful protest, the police response is immediate and massive.

He doesn't come right out and use the word "class," but then he doesn't really have to. And that's something to keep in mind whenever Mayor Stupid (and his Salacious Crumbs in the Sun) opens his piehole: no matter how stupid, vulgar, and ignorant he sounds, let's never forget who he's working for. It ain't taxpayers, it ain't citizens, and it sure as shit ain't you or me.

Related posts:

Mayor Stupid makes @KeithOlbermann's list ... AGAIN (h/t @OccupyTO)

2011-10-31T21:45:00.001-04:00

Must be Halloween or something.

I have no words.

Update: the clip in all its glory.

@TOMayorFord puts Toronto on @KeithOlbermann 's map

2011-10-29T10:44:00.000-04:00

Oh look. Mayor Stupid's gotten some international recognition!

Worse than Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck.

When? When will this nightmare end?

Related posts:

The door's this way, Chief Blair

2011-10-03T09:38:00.000-04:00

So it seems Bill Blair isn't getting with Team Ford's austerity program.

Instead of being a good boy and implementing the 10-per-cent reduction the mayor's team is demanding of city managers, he's looking for a budgetary increase. Not a lot, mind, but the surrounding drama, already at a slow boil, has been cranked up even farther, and now there's speculation that his job's on the line.

The Star's quoting Councillor Michael Thompson to that effect:

"It flies in the face of all of the discussions we have been having with the chief up to this point ... If the chief is not capable of doing the job then it’s probably time for us to look at some other options and maybe have someone else doing the job."

Doesn't sound like the kind of unconditional, cops-are-tops cheerleading we'd expect from Team Ford. What's going on?

Let's consider: Blair got on well enough with David Miller. There are those who might suggest that that alone makes him suspect in the eyes of Team Ford.

He's been a proponent of "community policing," which is anathema to those who consider it akin to flipping burgers while the gunmen do their thing.

And he's been wearing the G20 "Kick Me" sign for more than a year now, even though he probably wasn't the only one responsible for turning it into such a giant clusterfuck. While this little corner hasn't cut him much slack for that – he mishandled it badly, and doubled down on the bad play – it's not hard to think that other players have been happily keeping their heads down while Blair takes the heat.

From there, it's not much of a leap to wonder whether he's been promised anything in return for being such a good soldier. Is it that hard to imagine Toronto's financial and political powerbrokers smoothing the way with a bag of cash and a few well-placed whispers?

We've been inundated for months with the prospect of hundreds of police layoffs and Toronto turning into Dodge City as a result. I could be wrong, but I'd like to think they've milked that particular storyline dry.

We've also seen the normally invertebrate police services board refusing to rubber-stamp promotions for officers who removed their name tags during the G20. Not quite the same as sending them to bed without dessert, but hey – baby steps.

In that context, is it possible that a standup guy like Blair might just take a nice juicy package, just to "set an example?" And thus clear the way for Team Ford to bring in a headcracker? Gotta be Tough on Crime, you know. God knows what'll happen otherwise. Graffiti. Bicycles. Maybe the DFHs might even take over Bay Street ...

Related posts:

@LornePW keeps the police accountability file up to date

2011-09-23T19:13:00.003-04:00

Big tip of the porkpie to Lorne over at Politics and its Discontents.

There are times when the sheer inertia and toxic, paranoid self-pity at the core of dysfunctional cop culture makes you want to just give up. Fortunately, Lorne's got the energy and determination to get past those times.

Three recent posts from him can attest to that:

Which reminds me: why haven't charges been laid against the assholes who:

Why are these lying, dickless, cowardly, sadistic pieces of shit still walking around freely, never mind carrying badges and guns?

Why haven't the so-called "good cops" arrested them yet?

When is the Crown planning to get its thumb out of its ass?

Why should we have any confidence in anything any cop says?

What the fuck are we waiting for?

Related posts:

So Mayor Stupid takes one in the nads on the waterfront ...

2011-09-21T21:51:00.002-04:00

So it appears that Mayor Stupid and Brother Dumbfuck underestimated the backlash they'd triggered by fucking around into the waterfront. A big tip of the chapeau to the folks behind CodeBlueTO, and everyone else who worked to stop them.

However, as Harvey Keitel might have said in Pulp Fiction:

It's worth remembering that while opposition might have coalesced around this particular trigger point, that opposition isn't even close to being solid or sustainable. There are still plenty of councillors in the "mushy middle" who are susceptible to flattery, bribery or bullying, and it's not as if the Ford gang doesn't have a detailed playbook.

Let's not underestimate this bunch. They may be clumsy, vulgar, overbearing opportunists, ready to sell us out at the first sign of a chance to turn a quick buck, but it would be a big mistake to think they won't learn from their mistakes. Might be worth keeping that in mind, as well as the fact that we've got more than three years to go before they have to face the voters again. That and the fact that while we've all been mesmerized by the waterfront, we don't know what else has been going on under the radar. They're probably counting on the fact that we can only keep track of so many things at once.

Related posts:

Why do I do this to myself?

2011-09-18T08:53:00.002-04:00

Just Couldn't Leave It Alone, could you.

So I followed JJ's link to the homophobic fruit bat and found:

I find myself unable to even leave the house anymore without worrying about what in tarnation we are going to encounter.

Tarnation.

Someone actually talks that way.

Just for the sake of context:

Bart: [incredulous] Barbershop? That ain't been popular since aught six, dagnab it.
Homer: [reproachfully] Bart, what did I tell you?
Bart: [abashed] No talking like a grizzled 1890s prospector...consarn it.

(Anyone finds this on YouTube, email me.)

Related posts:

The Sunday Survey of Stupid

2011-09-18T08:27:00.001-04:00

So much to choose from, and that's without any reference to the stream of stupid coming from Michele Bachman's piehole.

We'll start with another brief edition of What Pogge Said.

From the beginning these negotiations have been kept secret. Nothing was admitted publicly until they were well along in the process and had "supportive stakeholders" lined up to go to bat for them in the media.

I mean, given the Harpokons' record of openness and transparency, I just have such a warm squishy feeling knowing I can trust them on the deep integration file. Right?

Then there's this lovely little nugget from JJ about homophobia and ignorance:

Afraid to leave the house because of Teh Ghey.
I’m speechless.

And for just for a little amuse-bouche, this little book review from The General (h/t JJ for the link):

Unfortunately, I can't give Lord Cheney's book a full 5 stars. He fails to adequately provide the reader with the sense of joy He obviously derives from pain, turmoil, and murder. There are no tales of bathing in his enemies' blood or feasting on their hearts or livers.

(It doesn't matter what the context was! He still said it! I don't even think he's really Jewish!)

Carry on.

Related posts:

How do we help poor Sarah Grunfeld?

2011-09-16T07:28:00.001-04:00

In the spirit of charity, I was going to suggest we take up a collection to buy this poor misunderstood child a hearing aid. We're not here to judge, after all. We're here to help.

Then this:

Moron Student Who Accused Jewish Prof of Anti-Semitism: I Am The Victim Here:

'via Blog this'

Forget the hearing aid. Kid needs a gag. Or perhaps a brain. Maybe this guy can help.

Also from Gawker:

Sarah, if you try really really hard for the rest of the year, you may come out of college smarter than you went in. It's not a good bet at this point, though.

Related posts:

Oh, look: everything Team Ford touches turns to crap. Don't look so surprised

2011-09-10T00:36:00.003-04:00

I'm all for respectful dialogue and agreeing to disagree, but there's a point at which you just have to admit it: we are right and they are wrong and clinging to their illusions just makes them look even dumber.

For Christ's sakes. All those disgruntled Ford voters out there who are suddenly discovering that Mayor Stupid has no commitment to transparency and just loves him some tacky backroom waterfront deals with big developers – what the hell did you expect?

Where have you been? Have you not been paying any attention to this clown and his brother?

Were you so wrapped up in the anti-Miller, city-falling-apart, gravy-train bullshit that you couldn't be bothered to give things even five minutes of critical thought? Was it that much easier to blow off thinking things through and buy into the lazy, thoughtless let's-kick-some-ass-at-City-Hall gut-level resentment? Was it that difficult to see that whatever regular-guy cred these dickheads might once have had was a con job?

[Pssst ... those were rhetorical questions.]

Well, guess what, suckers? This is what happens when you vote for morons. You look like even bigger ones. And sadly, we're all stuck with the results of your stupidity. God knows how much damage we'll have to undo now. Nice work.

Related posts:

Thwap on "Islamicism"

2011-09-08T22:03:00.001-04:00

thwap's schoolyard: "Islamicism":

Every now and then I'll make an observation about Harper and his continuing stupidification of Canada, but really, when the thwapster brings his A game, no one does this better.

Heh. "Looking at them like they puked." Personally, whenever Harper opens his mouth, I look around to see whether someone's just shit his pants, but hey, that's just me.

'via Blog this'

Related posts:

How's that "building relations" thing going, @TorontoPolice Tweeter guy?

2011-09-04T09:42:00.001-04:00

Just checking in.

Any progress identifying / charging these cocksu – er, perps?

No, eh? Oh, well. Pretty hard when witnesses don't come forward, isn't it.

How about:

Arresting the two assholes who kicked Adam Nobody in the face after he was handcuffed?
Charging the cowardly sacks of shit who beat the crap out of Lacy MacAuley?
Or the scumbags who tore John Pruyn's prosthetic leg off?
Or the sadistic pigs who got their jollies kicking Sean Salvati around in the interrogation room and then parading him around naked, in front of a female cop?

No? Well, do keep us posted. I'm sure you meant it when you said this:

Related posts:

Why not just have the Americans write our legislation for us? - Peace, order and good government, eh?

2011-09-04T08:49:00.000-04:00

Why not just have the Americans write our legislation for us? - Peace, order and good government, eh?:

What pogge said.

If I might just throw one more word into the mix: Comprador. Because "whores" and "traitors" just seems a little ... vulgar.

'via Blog this'

Catholics and Protestants: The great schism, explained

2011-09-03T22:30:00.001-04:00

I suppose if I'm going to go on and on about church doctrine, it's only fair of me to put it in context.

What can I do? The power of Christ compels me.

Related posts:

All this Catholic-school business reminds me of a Mel Brooks moment

2011-09-03T22:18:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry, I just can't help it sometimes.

It's probably not the most famous or best-remembered scene from Blazing Saddles (and in truth, it's got a lot of competition), but in light of the Catholic school system's way of dealing with gay and lesbian students, it seemed apropos.

Related posts:

The Catholic school system needs to get its hands out of our pockets

2011-09-03T21:51:00.004-04:00

And that's just for starters.

The travesty that took place this week is common knowledge by now. Activist Leanne Iskander, who's got more courage in her little finger than most people have in their whole bodies, has been threatened with disciplinary action if she continues her advocacy for gay-straight alliances.

From Xtra:

Leanne Iskander has been blocked from starting an “LGBT support group” at her school and told that if she continues to advocate for gay-straight alliances she will face “disciplinary action.” Iskander, the founder of Catholic Students for GSAs (CS4GSA), and her parents were summoned for a meeting with St Joseph Catholic Secondary School principal Jeff Quenneville on Sept 1 to discuss her latest proposal for a GSA, Iskander says. The principal told her unequivocally that “an LGBT support group or GSA will never be permitted in any Catholic school because the bishops forbid them.”

And that's subsequent to a Wednesday-night meeting of the Toronto District Catholic School Board that apparently set a new low for bigotry, hatred and intolerance. It isn't enough that the board banned gay-straight alliances – apparently even that didn't go far enough for some parents, judging from the twitterstream below.

From Justin Beach:

This is a Church, mind you, that is against a woman’s right to a safe abortion, against the use of birth control, that tells people in Africa that condoms cause aids and that has never fully responded to what appears to be systemic child abuse within the Church. It is lead by a man who has been openly homophobic and who at various points in his career been deeply critical of other faiths. Although he has apologized for some of those remarks Benedict was once a member of the Hitler Youth. Intolerance, from him, seems not so much an occasional slip or misunderstanding, but rather part of a pattern. Again, this is where the anti-gay forces at the Toronto Catholic School Board feel that they should be getting direction from, rather than the government of Ontario or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

On those occasions when they lost a vote on any of this language the pro-hate supporters in attendance became livid, accusing the Board of being anti-Catholic and “communist”.

You'd think after more than two thousand years, they'd have had enough time to absorb Christ's message of love and redemption, but no. Apparently it's just fine with them if LGBT students are ostracized as sinners and bullied into committing suicide, because as homosexuals they're going to hell anyway.

I wonder where they shop for footwear? I'm no expert, but it seems to me that you can't wear the shoes of the fisherman when you've got a festering pile of hate where your soul is supposed to be.

Just so I understand this: where human rights conflict with denominational rights, it's the latter that rule, right? So these people are perfectly content to follow the diktats of an authoritarian medieval institution that's sanctioned torture, genocide and continental plunder. And covered up for and enabled widespread sexual abuse of children for decades.

All these Republican dickheads screaming about the threat of sharia law in the Sewer of Stupid^TMto the south might want to focus on a threat that's a little closer to home. Because if this is what Catholic doctrine is all about ...

But never mind the Republicans. We've got an election in Ontario coming up. Seems to me that the candidates should be pinned down on whether they're going to keep funding this nonsense with our tax dollars.

Related posts:

A monorail for Toronto? I'm late for this party, aren't I

2011-08-30T23:49:00.002-04:00

Sometimes the posts practically write themselves.

I'm sure all the obvious Simpsons references have already been made, although the giant Ferris wheel thing does put me in mind of that scene from The Third Man with Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.

Either Mayor Stupid's on vacation or Brother Stupider's gone off message again. Can never tell with these two, and more often than not, it doesn't really matter.

Related posts:

Let Freedom Rain: "National Necrophilia Week": Ezra Levant wears orange wig, drinks Orange Crush. Mocks Layton's passing.

2011-08-26T22:25:00.000-04:00

Let Freedom Rain: "National Necrophilia Week": Ezra Levant wears orange wig, drinks Orange Crush. Mocks Layton's passing.:

What Jymn said.

'via Blog this'

The Real Johnson: An Open Letter to Christie Blatchford

2011-08-25T13:53:00.000-04:00

The Real Johnson: An Open Letter to Christie Blatchford:

'via Blog this'

Jack's passing seems to have sparked a new competition

2011-08-24T19:24:00.001-04:00

I'm reminded at times of that aphorism (can't remember whether it was Mark Twain or Winston Churchill) about a lie getting halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its pants on.

It seems you could make a similar observation when you're comparing decency with meanness of spirit. The yargle-barglers may have speed on their side, but then that's because what they do consists of little more than running around, screeching, and scattering handfuls of loose stool as far as they can throw it.

Let 'em fill their boots. They can only drag us down to their level if we let them. One of the best tributes we could give to Jack is making them irrelevant and aspiring to follow his example instead.

Related posts:

Putting the Blatchfords of the world in the proper context

2011-08-24T10:28:00.002-04:00

Activist Communique: An open letter to Christie Blatchford by Alice Moran | rabble.ca

NOW Magazine // Daily // News // A vainglorious, partisan spectacle

Thing is, Blatchford and her enablers probably get off on this sort of thing and see it as validation. Sad, really.

Blatchford accomplishes the impossible

2011-08-23T17:08:00.001-04:00

She's found a way to make @SueAnnLevy look classy.

(Honorable mention to David Naylor for this.

Well done, all.)

@cityslikr lights @SueAnnLevy up like a pinball machine

2011-08-19T19:22:00.000-04:00

(With an apology to pinball machines everywhere.)

That @cityslikr fella can be wonderfully succinct sometimes. I retweeted this earlier, but it deserves a whole blog post.

Word. If you're ever curious about why so many of our fellow citizens seem ruled by fear, resentment, and ignorance, the Venomous Loser^TM and her hateful little screeds are a big part of the reason. Sun Media's toxic effect just wouldn't be as toxic without her.

Some years ago, a singer / songwriter / satirist by the name of Tom Lehrer was said to have summed up his musical career thus:

If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.

He was talking tongue in cheek, of course.

Related posts:

BCL catches @SueAnnLevy rewriting history, smearing brave firefighters

2011-08-17T19:05:00.006-04:00

BigCityLib Strikes Back: In Case You ARE Wondering

Don't know why BCL isn't on the Tweeter, but that's up to him.

In the meantime, seems the Venomous Loser^TMis perfectly happy to use Toronto's firefighters and their taxpayer-funded equipment as a campaign prop ...

Click to view at full size

But, well, you know ... that was then, and this is now.

... one wonders, is it unseemly to point out that the guy has to be there whether there's actually a fire or not, just in case? Just in the cause of raising the tone of civic discourse, instead of pandering to the lizard-brains and all that ...

As BCL writes:

So, no, Sue Ann, the union hasn't been keeping a file on you. Turns out you were keeping one on yourself. By the way, if you want to theorize on why Sue Ann has gone out of her way to trash T.O. firefighters, well, consider this: their union took her to the Ontario Press Council in 2007 and hosed her down.

Sue Ann? Time to stop digging, maybe.

Related posts:

@AntoniaZ, @SusannaKelley, @marcusbgee, and the Rob Ford ascendancy | #TOpoli

2011-08-14T16:06:00.002-04:00

Wonderful thing, the Tweeter. Keeps things lively, and keeps you on your toes.

So apparently there's some question over what I wrote about the Globe's ideologically reliable urban affairs curmudgeon and his role in helping propel Mayor Stupid into the Chief Magistrate's office. Over at ontarionewswatch.com, Editor-in-Chief and Ontario Bureau Chief @SusannaKelley apparently takes issue with a tweet from @AntoniaZ regarding a post from me yesterday morning.

(Antonia already knows I worship the ground she walks upon. And for the moment, I'm going to give Ms. Kelley the benefit of a whole lot of doubt. She describes herself as a democratic cog and as a Leaf fan, so she must know from suffering.)

Just so we're clear, Marcus was quite open, and has been all along, in pointing out that Ford's numbers didn't make any sense, and I've never accused him of letting Ford get away with pulling facts and numbers out of his ass. Where I take issue with him, and with a lot of other civic-affairs writers, is in the way they helped perpetuate the bullshit narrative of the Pissed-Off Taxpayer. Thanks to them, and to the craven opportunism of some of the other mayoral candidates, the election wasn't about the numbers at all. It was about uninformed, visceral resentment.

The dominant narrative last fall was that Toronto was bankrupt, falling apart, awash in gravy, racked by wasteful spending, going to hell, left in a shambles by David Miller, and that things were so irredeemably awful that the only possible course was to bust everything up and reduce the institutions of governance and the bonds of community to rubble. It was an easy, cynical narrative that didn't require any thought, reflection, or consideration; it spoke directly to the lazy, lizard-brain, gut-reaction crowd whose intellectual engagement could be reduced to lapel buttons, sound bites and bumper stickers. We're reaping the results of that now.

In that context, I'd argue, number crunching and sober analysis didn't matter. The conversation was all about rage, backlash and resentment. Marcus wasn't alone in helping to enable that, but he certainly did his part. We can disagree about whether and to what extent the "rage" meme eclipsed questions about Ford's numbers, but that's different from saying Marcus or anyone else never called him on it.

Related posts:

America overheats: The Sewer of Stupid is about to overflow | #USpoli

2011-08-14T11:20:00.000-04:00

Our Climate Of Extremes | ThinkProgress

Yep. They're in the middle of their worst drought ever, heat records are being broken every day, but they're going to deny the scientific evidence of climate change and schedule days of prayer for rain.

Seriously. Let's start sandbagging the border.

Related posts:

Retiring senior Toronto cop calls #G20 reaction overblown

2011-08-13T23:22:00.002-04:00

Toronto News: Retiring deputy chief calls G20 reaction overblown - thestar.com

You know where I'm going with this, so I'll just let thwap and Lorne carry the ball on this one. They say it better than I can anyway.

Hey, Tony? Don't go away mad. Just go away.

Update: Asshole.

Related posts:

@marcusbgee calls Ford on his bullshit, but who helped put him there? | #TOpoli

2011-08-13T10:00:00.000-04:00

So a few people – Thor and Nancy for starters – are linking to this piece from the Globe's ideologically reliable urban affairs curmudgeon, who's arguing, not without reason, that Mayor Stupid should have known all along that he couldn't guarantee that there wouldn't be any service cuts or layoffs.

One hesitates to accuse Mayor Stupid of lying, chiefly because it's obvious that he can't tell the difference between true and false. You know those people who are so out of touch that they don't even know what the facts are? The kind who pull facts and numbers out of their asses and know they'll never really have to account for it? The kind who just dispense with facts entirely and go with their gut because ... well ... just because. Shut up and fuck off.

And Marcus, in fairness, makes a good point in answer to the predictable response from cynics who just shrug and go "so what? Politicians lie all the time on the campaign trail." My friend @cityslikr had a trenchant and persuasive response to that a couple of weeks ago, when he argued that this just feeds the pattern of cynicism, disengagement and dysfunction, and suggested that it's an abandonment of one's civic responsibility.

But back to Marcus:

Mr. Ford ran for office claiming to be something different than the usual smooth-talking politician. He was the no-nonsense ordinary guy who would cut through the baloney and tell it like it is. As the whole city knows now – and should have known then – he was peddling a line of guff. The idea that he could cut spending, taxes and debt without cutting any services or putting a single person out of work was an obvious fantasy from the start.

Well, so much for Mayor Stupid's "authenticity." No surprise there either. We've talked about that previously, and in short, who gives a shit about it now? What's so great about being authentically full of shit? When did being unable or unwilling to think things through become a Good Thing? When did stupidity, selfishness, and inchoate rage get turned into civic virtues?

But let's not let Marcus off the hook here. Let's recall what the conversation last fall was all about: City Hall is awash in gravy, spending is out of control, and let's restore some respect for the Pissed-Off Taxpayer. That was the toxic wave of resentment that propelled Rob Ford into the mayor's office. That was the theme that virtually all the other candidates, except for Joe Pants, tried to adopt – running against David Miller and arguing that the city was broken, dysfunctional, bloated, and in need of the axe-and-sledgehammer approach. Naturally, not one of them was going to be able to out-Ford Ford, because no one else was going to be able combine stupidity, drooling incoherent rage, and obliviousness to reality so successfully.

And who helped make the conversation all about that? Step forward, Marcus Gee, and the drip-drip narrative of the Pissed-Off Taxpayer. In a column last fall – it's behind the Globe paywall now, sadly – Marcus set up an interview with Peter Robinson, cheesed-off ordinary guy:

And why is he cheesed off? Well, take a guess: he's exasperated with the drip-drip-drip of steadily rising taxes and fees. It seems like every time he turns around, he's paying more money. Which is why Rob Ford's idiotic "stop the city hall gravy train" slogan is resonating with him: "Maybe there needs to be four years of chaos and cost-cutting to restore a balance. Maybe, for all his faults, if he cuts and cuts we will somehow get started again." Marcus then sets out all manner of things that Peter Robinson is now paying more for: his tax bill, the fees at his local hockey rink, his car registration fee, swimming lessons for his kids, etc.

That was just one of a series of pieces Marcus wrote along that theme. In fairness, it's not as if he was the only one helping to perpetuate that narrative. But after spending months validating it, it's a little rich for him to turn around now and point out that it was bullshit all along.

Related posts:

Another day, another embarrassing eruption from Mt. Ford | #TOpoli

2011-08-12T21:45:00.002-04:00

Honestly, where do you begin?

First, Mayor Stupid's dismissing all the folks who spoke at last month's city hall all-nighter as left-wing, NDP, special-interest types trying to protect their free money. No surprise there, really. It's not as if the guy's got the intellectual wherewithal to comprehend the notion of "community" or anything.

No. In his sad, tiny, resentful worldview, any popular action in defence of the bonds that hold communities together is union-driven, ideological political theatre (although, on reflection, that's probably far too multisyllabic for him).

And then, adding another layer to the shit sundae, dumbass wants to force thousands of city staff to take buyouts or face layoffs because, he's decided, the municipal payroll is bloated. On the basis of what, I'm not exactly sure, because the recent KPMG exercise demonstrated that the city is already a decidedly lean and efficient operation.

Nothing new there, either. It's not as if the guy's shown any capacity for dealing with facts. No, apparently he just knows this because – wait for it – he saw a few city staffers having coffee in the cafeteria! The insolence of these people, being away from their desks and shooting the shit! Why, they might actually learn something from one another and maybe find better ways to do things!

Really, it's easy to mock and ridicule and take shots, but let's not lose sight of the very real danger here. We're in the hands of someone with no capacity for reflection or critical thought. This guy's ready to take an axe to something he clearly doesn't understand, something he approaches from a perspective of little more than shallow ideological hostility. Sure, let's slice municipal government and public institutions to ribbons. It's not like anyone's going to get hurt or anything.

No point in trying to reach him, but how many councillors just vote with him and hope to keep flying below the radar? Time to out some of them, I think.

More to come.

Related posts:

On that whole Nycole Turmel thing ...

2011-08-05T09:26:00.002-04:00

While we're on the subject of journalistic ethics, let me just cite pogge and thwap. They've already said it better than I can.

From pogge:

Every year or two I find a reason to point to Declan's post on the Media Failure Two-Step. (And actually I could find a reason much more often than that.) To review, the Two-Step looks like this:

Step 1) Cause something (bad) to happen through your reporting.
Step 2) Report on this (bad) thing from the perspective of an innocent bystander.
And then you just repeat indefinitely.

Our latest example? With the Globe and Mail leading the charge, since yesterday many in the media have been having a great old time implying that a Quebec politician who has previously been involved with the BQ is somehow unfit for her position as an interim leader for the NDP. That in turn would imply that about half the voters of Quebec are illegitimate participants in the democratic process until they somehow redeem themselves to the satisfaction of the Globe's editorial board. And in case it isn't obvious, deserting the BQ in droves to vote for the NDP isn't sufficient for the purpose.

And from thwap:

Whether the NDP has tossed a rope down to allow the Liberal Party of Canada to clamber back up out of the grave is something I'm not prepared to speculate upon, nor is it something I'm inclined to speculate upon.

I'll let the voters decide. And I can't predict that.

It does show that the Liberals are looking to knock the NDP off from its perch as the second party in Canada. For the issues of economic and foreign policy, I hope they fail. I hope, for reasons of foreign and economic policy, that the NDP hews closer to the principles of former BQ voters in Quebec. Because given the failure of mainstream (read: harpercon and Liberal) economic and foreign policies, the NDP might just find that adhering to Quebeckers values will resonate with more and more people in English Canada.

It's just this sort of stupidity from the Village that's brought us to the point we're at now. I'm not carrying water for anyone, but if the NDP chooses not to play this game by these rules, then I say good on them. The reaction from the political and media establishment will, of course, be furious – and predictable. That's up to them. Whether we allow it to matter is up to us.

Related posts:

#SunMedia and journalistic ethics: another juxtaposition

2011-08-05T08:54:00.000-04:00

Although I sometimes wonder: given the mockery that whole "commies in the media" thing inspired, are the trolls at Sun Media really thinking any attention is good attention?

Then again, maybe I'm overthinking. These are the people whose readers do happy dances at the news of Jack Layton's cancer, after all.

Related posts:

As far as @pogge411 is concerned, caribou are more important than people

2011-08-03T00:17:00.001-04:00

Typical bleeding-heart tree-hugger, getting all squishy about caribou and weeping into his tofu. Never mind the jobs involved in forestry and the Ethical Oil^TM Sands. And where's he getting his information? From the socialists at the CBC, of course.

Soft-headed lefties. You ever think that maybe, just maybe, the government knows something about the caribou that you don't?

Give us a break from the kumbayas, boys.

Related posts:

8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance | AlterNet #uspoli

2011-08-01T23:42:00.000-04:00

8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance | | AlterNet

#facepalm just isn't strong enough for this.

Democracy withers away: Europe’s wakeup call - Le Monde diplomatique | via @NaomiAKlein

2011-08-01T22:30:00.001-04:00

Serge Halimi: Europe’s wakeup call - Le Monde diplomatique - English edition

When the balance that keeps labour and capital in relative equilibrium gets trashed (or more likely in this context, sold off to private investors), the political and social consequences ought to be predictable.

Vast swathes of public policy have already been closed off and rendered inaccessible to conventional democratic processes. Anyone who's seen so-called "free trade" arrangements in operation can recognize that already in the multiple ways governments are shackled and constrained from acting in the public interest. The threat of penalties for failing to prioritize the interests of investors outweighs the public good in too many ways to enumerate.

The enervating effect on civic life is obvious: as more and more sectors of political and economic policy are rendered off limits to public control, politics itself becomes enfeebled, symbolic, and ultimately meaningless. As Halimi observes:

Honduras has established an enterprise zone, in which national sovereignty does not apply. Europe is currently establishing a debate zone for all the economic and social issues no longer discussed by the political parties because these areas have gone beyond their control. Inter-party competition now concentrates on social matters: the burqa, the legalisation of cannabis, radar on motorways, the angry gestures or foul language of a reckless politician or intoxicated artist. This confirms a trend already noticeable 20 years ago: real political power is shifting to areas where democracy carries no weight, until the day when indignation finally boils over. Which is where we are.

There's nothing new about the institutions of governance being colonized and bent to the service of powerful interests intent on enriching themselves at everyone else's expense. What's mystifying is why we continue to allow it.

Related posts:

Krugman: The President Surrenders on Debt Ceiling - NYTimes.com

2011-08-01T00:20:00.003-04:00

The President Surrenders on Debt Ceiling - NYTimes.com

OK, can we do a couple of things for starters?

1. Lose the illusion that Obama's got any balls, or that he's in any way "progressive," or that there's much substantive institutional and policy difference between Democrats and Republicans. All the drama coming from Washington is just so much kabuki theatre.

Seriously, isn't it time to consider the possibility that the reason he's so quick to "compromise" with the other side, or "capitulate," is because there isn't really any disagreement between the two? Both Democrats and Republicans are parties of the top 1 per cent, with no real interest in advancing or protecting the interests of the rest of the population. The implications for the long-term health of the body politic should be pretty obvious. (h/t JJ)

2. Disengage from the necrotic, brain-dead, decaying Imperium to the south, starting now, and back away slowly. No sudden movements.

Related posts:

Anti-Muslim Blogger: Slain Norwegian Teens Were ‘Hateful, Privileged Brats’ | Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center

2011-07-30T09:56:00.000-04:00

Anti-Muslim Blogger: Slain Norwegian Teens Were ‘Hateful, Privileged Brats’ | Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center

Another look at the far right in all its glory.

Giorgio Mammoliti: the pride of #TOcouncil | #TOpoli

2011-07-29T22:50:00.000-04:00

Someone suggested during yesterday's marathon that the Fords can't help being ignorant and stupid. They are what they are. But this guy, by contrast, does it on purpose.

Did I say he makes the Fords look good? This guy makes the cast of Jersey Shore look good.

Related posts:

David Olive (@TheGrtRecession), Team Ford, and that whole 'deserve' thing again

2011-07-26T23:12:00.003-04:00

With this blog post at the Star, David Olive goes on a bit of a roll, getting in some pretty good zingers at Mayor Stupid and Brother Stupider.

One can't argue with much of his take, in particular his characterization of the last election as a vote against David Miller even though he wasn't running. There's plenty of blame to go around for the success of that particular strategy, but we'll leave that alone for now. Plenty of other reasons for dismay:

the hopeless, bang-head-on-desk ignorance
the adolescent bullying
the name-calling
the incessant pulling of facts and numbers from their asses

Nothing we don't know already, of course, but it's tied together beautifully with a sad fatalism and a sense that we're just going to have to ride this thing out and hope our city is still standing at the end of it.

Except for one thing:

But we elected these morons. Which means we deserve them.

Umm ... David? Can we ... just ... Who is this "we" to whom you refer? I didn't vote for these clowns. From the tone of your piece, I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I suggest that you didn't either. So how do you figure we deserve them, exactly?

That word's been giving me trouble ever since Ed Keenan used it in a piece for The Grid a few weeks ago. We tweeted about it for a little while ...

and then a few days after that, revisited it again. I'm still uncomfortable with the idea that we "deserve" these two. As I argued at the time:

There are plenty of voters who did not buy into that bullshit. There are plenty of people who recognize that you can't get something for nothing, and that if you want decent public services, public infrastructure, a civil society and nice things, you have to pay your taxes and quit complaining. Do we really deserve to suffer while the city falls apart and our civic leaders aim lower and lower because other voters were stupid? Or couldn't even be bothered to show up?

(There are, of course, some uncomfortable implications to that line of argument, and I have to confess that I still haven't pursued it to its logical conclusion. Honesty demands, however, that I at least acknowledge them.)

Related posts:

The Harper regime targets @frankejames

2011-07-25T20:51:00.001-04:00

Franke James » Blog Archive » Canadian Government Tries to Silence Franke James

We can't really say we're surprised, now, can we. Subtle and not-so-subtle threats, putting the squeeze on NGOs and making sure anyone thinking of sponsoring the show knows there's a shit list just waiting for more names.

That's how determined this gang of pinch-faced thugs is to squelch disagreement and dissent. Anyone who wants to talk about climate change needs to know: this is what's going to land on you.

(H/t deBeauxOs, Jymn, Dr. Dawg, pogge, and Mr. Sinister, among others.)

Related posts:

Far-right hatred is a sickness, but it's a symptom, not the cause | #Norway

2011-07-25T01:54:00.002-04:00

Late-night submissions on a heavy Sunday night ...

I thought I'd seen, heard and read it all by now.

That worthless piece of shit used dum-dum bullets. The cherry on the shit sundae.

Another sick, cruel piece of shit says those kids all but deserved what they got because, apparently, they said some things that weren't abjectly devoted to Israel.

And a few other worthless yammering transmitters have been treating the facts as an inconvenient speed bump in their haste to continue repeating their revolting message of Islamophobia and demonization.

Perhaps it's not the best time to try putting this all in a larger context, or raising sententious questions like cui bono, and it may seem a little glib to try situating this within the wider dynamic of class warfare, but consider the narratives we're being fed – and the things we're not hearing or reading about.

I'm not a historian and I don't pretend to have a comprehensive knowledge of everything that's happened in the last few generations, but thwap's post a couple of weeks ago has stuck with me. It's a good description of how Western societies have evolved and then started to degenerate in the decades following the Second World War. A sample:

To a great degree, in the Western democracies, democracy was never stronger than after the war. The ordinary people, who felt deserving of a say after the shared sacrifices of the war, and all the hooting and hollering about "democracy" and "equality" from those leaders inspiring them to fight, made their demands very clear. And those demands were all about material concerns, and why not? Protection from the appalling insecurities of unemployment in an industrial capitalist economy. The right to unionize to deal with the collective of the industrial corporation or conglomerates with some degree of equality and dignity. The taxation of the super-rich to fund a more human way of life in the great cities. Access to education. Access to decent health care ...

Was it a perfect time? Of course not, and I don't know anyone who argues that it was. But I'm compelled to contrast it with what's been happening in the years since the Reagan-Thatcher era; behind all the syrup about America being back and the lady not being for turning, what we've been witnessing is a concerted effort to roll back the gains thwap describes. Tax cuts. Union busting. Social safety nets shredded. A massive reallocation of wealth and resources away from the middle and lower classes and toward the wealthy.

Fast-forward a few years. Listen to the transmitters in the corporate media go on about mobility and competitiveness and free trade and austerity and restructuring. Look at the diet of crap we're fed today; lies, distractions, manufactured scandals, celebrity gossip, lifestyle "journalism," terror alerts, and other Shiny Objects^TM – and don't forget to Support the Troops. All the while, citizenship itself is devalued, cynicism and disengagement are cultivated, and we reconcile ourselves to more and more authoritarian forms of governance because no one wants to be Soft on Crime. And while this is going on, more and more people are falling through the cracks while the people at the tops of the hierarchies amass more and more for themselves.

The backdrop to all this, of course, is what we're hearing, reading and seeing every day: that's the reality now, globalization is good and/or inevitable, free markets are the key to prosperity, labour and environmental protections have to be approached with more flexibility, and the result is that we have to work harder for less money, fewer benefits, a diminished public sphere, no pensions, and no security.

And again, we're back to the lack of critical thinking skills. Analysis? Deductive reasoning? The ability to see analogies, recognize patterns and draw conclusions? No. The interests who own the transmitters, frame the issues and shape public discourse don't want that. They've made sure people are tired, overworked and resentful, and they want to make sure people are distracted and misdirected as well.

Hence the simple narratives, slogans, thoughts that can fit on lapel buttons, and manufactured storylines that don't require any engagement at all (gravy trains, tough on crime, you should have stayed home ...). Oh, and way more than thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from. Goddamnit, I'm working my ass off and not getting ahead because my taxes are paying for ... [insert scapegoat of the week]:

Anarchists / demonstrators / dirty fucking hippies
Immigrants
Unions
Homosexuals
Environmentalists
Liberals
Atheists
Abortion
Revolving-door justice systems
Bike lanes
Feminists
The poor
The jobless
Rapidly breeding brown people
Muslims (you must have been wondering what the hell this has got to do with Norway ... )

Regardless of the target, the tactic is basically the same: divide and conquer, distract, and shift the blame and resentment onto some easily identifiable Other. And we can hear that tune playing on Fox News North, in the messages we're getting from the rest of the right-wing noise machine, and in that worthless violent loser's "manifesto."

None of this makes the overt racism, Islamophobia or violent and hateful rhetoric any less sickening, of course. And it's not as if this kind of pathology wasn't around well before the New Deal or the mythic post-war consensus. But as we work to resist, it might be worth pausing to draw the connections.

Related posts:

From the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg

2011-07-24T00:30:00.001-04:00

12 Holberg Suite op. 40 - Sarabande by Orwell's Bastard

Some hauntingly beautiful stuff from Grieg, who might be better known for Peer Gynt. If I recall correctly, though, the CBC used to use another passage from the Holberg Suite as the signature for one of its radio broadcasts.

When people google "Norway," I don't want them to see lies and poison from far-right hatemongers in their search results.

Related posts:

A word from the Norwegian Party

2011-07-23T23:53:00.002-04:00

As I said, not going to jump into that cesspool. Just trying to help make the Norway conversation about something else. Not like the assholes are going to change their minds or their narrative or anything.

Related posts:

Isn't it good, Norwegian wood ...

2011-07-23T23:42:00.002-04:00

It's all been said. Nothing to add.

How about we just ignore that hateful bald fuckhead?

Related posts:

Friday night | h/t @impolitical and @pogge411

2011-07-22T23:51:00.000-04:00

See what you've started?

Wish I'd been around for this gig.

@cityslikr on Team Ford's bullshit, and our complicity therein | #TOpoli

2011-07-21T23:24:00.002-04:00

Which Lie Do You Buy? « All Fired Up In The Big Smoke

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

– Winston Churchill

So over at his place, @cityslikr's on about the fact that politicians have an uneasy relationship with the truth, and the cynicism and disengagement that breeds.

The revelations of the past week – that Toronto is in fact run pretty efficiently, that City Hall is not awash in rivers of gravy, that the city does indeed have a revenue problem and not a spending problem – have put the lie to pretty well the entire platform that Mayor Stupid rode into office. Remember? That toxic waste dump of untruths, easy answers, idiot soundbites and resentment, all built on the moronic meme of the Pissed-off Taxpayer? As @cityslikr puts it,

Less than a year later, turns out much of that was — how to phrase it gently? – complete and utter shit.

And the worst part is, it doesn't seem to matter. These stupid fucks just carry right on pulling numbers and statements out of their asses, and then moving on to the next giant fucking lie.

One day Mayor Stupid's on AM radio claiming that salaries for city employees make up 80 per cent of the cost of running the city. It's nothing like that, of course, and that was clear to anyone who knows how to read before he even opened his fucking mouth. The next day Brother Stupider's wanking on about having more libraries in his hood than Tim Hortons outlets. Also a load of shite, never mind what it says about the boys and what they think about literacy.

I'm still having trouble making up my mind whether they even know they're lying or realize just how full of shit they are. And yet people take them seriously.

The extent to which candidates for public office stretch the truth depends in part on your perspective, and how morally culpable they are for it depends to a certain extent on the motivation for it. Perhaps this sounds like situational ethics, and that may be beyond the scope of a single blog post, but the tone of their pronouncements over the years suggests that Fordist bullshit is motivated more than anything else by an inchoate, ignorant hatred of government per se. I've written previously about the absence of any commitment to using public institutions to advance the public good, and the past few days have just provided further evidence. As far as these assholes are concerned, government just gets in the way of them doing whatever the fuck they want. Pesky regulations, labour legislation, environmental stewardship ... they're probably getting all hot and bothered over Grover Norquist's fantasies about drowning government in the bathtub (well, maybe there's a colouring-book version. Who knows?).

But that's not the most troubling thing raised by @cityslikr. It should be obvious by now how teabagging morons like Mayor Stupid and Brother Stupider view public institutions, and what kind of damage they're capable of doing. The most galling thing, and this is what makes his post worth the read, is how such things are used as excuses for disengagement, for empty moral posturing, and for sloughing off the duties of citizenship. It's so easy to just blow off the whole notion of civic engagement with a wave of the hand and a louche "oh, they all lie" pronouncement.

And thus is civic discourse diminished. This is how the whole notions of civil society, citizenship and healthy public debate are debased. This is how our expectations of government, and of ourselves, are steadily lowered. Because assholes like this just spout their bullshit and are allowed to get away with it. And lazy, apathetic dullards who can't be bothered to draw distinctions or think critically or embrace the responsibilities of adulthood are enabled, and responsible and democratic governance becomes that much harder to strive for, and the whole pattern becomes self-perpetuating.

I know, I know. There are those of us who've been struggling with how to reach out to our fellow citizens, and acknowledging that badgering them and insulting them may not be the best way. But there are limits. Citizenship needs to be valued, cultivated, and defended, or it ceases to count for much. It carries responsibilities, and active engagement is one of them. If you can't assume even that basic obligation, then you forfeit the right to any respect, and there's no point in pretending otherwise.

Related posts:

Critics accuse Mayor Ford of getting all Shock Doctrine-y | Ford Focus | torontolife.com

2011-07-20T08:50:00.000-04:00

Critics accuse Mayor Ford of getting all Shock Doctrine-y | Ford Focus | torontolife.com

Writing in Toronto Life, John Michael McGrath draws the comparison but then appears to soften it:

... but given that 96 per cent of Toronto’s services are impossible to cut, as those KPMG audits keep finding, Ford really isn’t going to be able to change people’s lives the way, say, a Latin American junta might. So it’s a mild shock, if it’s anything.

That may be, but the broader picture includes a looming provincial election which could see the return of the Harrisite slash-burn-and-pillage approach in the form of a Hudak government. When we consider that the municipal government is a creature of the province in that light, there's no telling what kind of services will continue to be mandated, and what kind of latitude Mayor Stupid is going to have to wield the axe.

Just something to keep in mind.

Related posts:

SIU Concludes Reopened #G20 Nobody Investigation | #policebrutality

2011-07-18T21:45:00.001-04:00

SIU Concludes Reopened G20 Nobody Investigation

... aaaaand, guess what? Can't find any way to charge anyone else.

Who could have foreseen such a thing?

Oh, well. Maybe the Toronto Police will actually come forward and out the other members of Team Curbstomp. Otherwise, the whining they do when witnesses don't step up and their nice words about acting to regain our trust might look ... hypocritical or something.

(Why, yes – as a matter of fact, that was a monkey flying out of my ass. What's your point?)

Related posts:

An Eye-Opener from @fernhilldammit | #onpoli

2011-07-16T17:34:00.000-04:00

DAMMIT JANET!: Eye-Opener

Nice reproductive freedom you got there. Be a shame if something was to happen to it.

Go read.

@cityslikr on Team Ford's Soprano wannabes. They wish | #TOpoli

2011-07-16T14:13:00.000-04:00

An Addendum « All Fired Up In The Big Smoke

Over at AFUITBS, @cityslikr describes the subtle art of politics as practiced by Team Ford.

Not.

Go read.

Some late-night thoughts on Mayor Stupid with @thekeenanwire and @UnionSt | #TOpoli

2011-07-16T14:11:00.000-04:00

Storify: great for aggregating tweets, but you can go blind putting them in order if you're dealing with more than a handful.

If only there were a sort function ...

Tips of the chapeau to @AureliaCotta and @timfalconer and @HiMYSYeD as well.

Team Ford's malignancy: It's not just the Jarvis bike lanes | #TOpoli #bikeTO

2011-07-13T21:31:00.002-04:00

By now so much has been written and blogged and tweeted about today's clusterfuck at Toronto Council that there's no point in rehashing it. Go read Matt Elliott's summary at Ford For Toronto if you want a recap.

For Christ's sakes. This isn't just about the lack of any coherent policy justification, or the Machiavellian political gamesmanship, or the schoolyard-bully dynamic evident on the council floor, or the Speaker's obvious bias and procedural cluelessness. It's about all of those, but something worse as well.

Here we are, moving into a world beyond peak oil, facing the need for a fundamental rethink of both the way we design our communities and the way we move people and things around so that we're not so dependent on the private automobile any more, and what does Team Ford do? It goes the exact opposite direction, and not on the basis of any well-thought-out rationale, but simply out of spite.

You want further evidence? Turning down funding for public-health nurses, on the basis of ... what, exactly? Anti-government ideology is too kind. Even the most destructive and reality-challenged ideology requires a consistent theoretical underpinning.

This isn't just stupid, spiteful and counterproductive. It's positively atavistic.

Related posts:

Core Services Review: Rob Ford is a hazard to Toronto's public health / #TOpoli

2011-07-12T11:22:00.001-04:00

I'm sorry, I had to give my head a shake.

Fluoridation?

Look, we've all seen the passage in Dr. Strangelove where General Ripper talks about what an insidious Communist plot it is, but the thing is, that's not just satire. Fluoridation of our drinking water has been a touchstone for conspiracy-minded whackjobs since the 1950s, but now Mayor Stupid wants to get rid of it under the guise of the "Core Services Review."

The notion of saving money and reducing the cost of government may seem a bit more prosaic on the surface, but let's not kid ourselves – what's going on here is motivated by a combination of ideology and stupidity that's just as far out to lunch as the tin-foil-hat crowd that thought Dwight Eisenhower was a Soviet agent.

In Torontoist, Hamutal Dotan cites fluoridation, along with waste diversion and cycling infrastructure, among some of the public-health programs that could face cuts or even elimination as part of Mayor Stupid's drive to ... well, what, exactly?

Just what is this gang of taxpayer-respecting, gravy-train-stopping, size-of-government-reducing, war-on-the-car-fighting buffoons trying to achieve, beyond their lapel-button slogans and sound bites?

Transparency? Accountability? Good governance?

If they have any notion of what the relationship between government and its citizens should look like, what is it? Do they have any thoughts at all about citizenship, about community, about the public good? Is there a vision? Have these questions even occurred to them?

I think we all know what the answer to that is. There's conservatism and then there's this. Blind, wilful dedication to the emasculation and crippling of government, not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. There's no acknowledgement that public institutions should advance the public interest. No notion of acting collectively for the greater good. No recognition that societies evolve because people can pool their efforts and act collectively to accomplish things they can't do on their own.

In his 1968 essay The Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin wrote about the conflict between society and individuals and the challenge in balancing those interests. As individuals, economic theory holds, we are all motivated to accumulate as many resources and benefits as we can, while externalizing costs and waste as much as possible. If you're a powerful industrial concern, for instance, you want to take advantage of as many public subsidies, tax breaks and legislative protections as possible while simultaneously making the waste, byproducts and contaminants associated with your production a matter of public concern. You keep the profits, society pays for the cleanup. Regulations? All that red tape gets in the way of your job-creating and wealth-generating. Nasty chemicals? Pour them down the sewer. Who cares?

Who benefits? Powerful interests. Who pays? Society at large. There's a whole industry devoted to that, and to selling the idea that reducing oversight and getting the heavy hand of the state off the backs of hard-working honest businessmen is the key to freedom and prosperity. Government isn't here to solve the problem, government is the problem. More freedom through less government.

You can see that in the war-on-the-car rhetoric. If you drive a car, you just want those goddamn cyclists, pedestrians and transit vehicles out of your way. And you want the goddamn socialist nanny-state to quit taking your hard-earned money with its taxes on gas, vehicle registration fees, and emission controls. I get to drive wherever I want. Air pollution? Smog? Premature deaths? Society's problem. And why isn't the government fixing these goddamn potholes?

Greed, selfishness, and the bullshit myth of rugged individualism are not civic virtues, folks. It's clear that this gang has no commitment to using public institutions to advance the public good. It's less clear just what they think government should be doing at all, unless it's using the apparatus of repression to keep the lower orders in their place. Mayor Stupid thinks the police were far too easy on G20 demonstrators, for instance.

Not much point in arguing with him. We're not going to sway the Fords, Harpers, Harrises and Hudaks of the world. But there are other members of city council, and it takes 23 of them to form a working majority. More on this to come ...

Related posts:

Kate's royal ass cheek: #sunmedia triumphs again, @davidakin makes sure we all know about it

2011-07-10T02:24:00.003-04:00

Sad, isn't it. When this is what occupies our imaginations and dominates public discourse, is it any wonder that so many people don't bother to take the responsibilities of citizenship seriously? Look at the energy it's consuming, for Chrissakes. (Yeah, I know. Mea culpa. Now piss off.)

This, incidentally, is Where We Juxtapose again. Kai Nagata's got some interesting things to say about the state of journalism and TV news, but that's for another post.

The worst part is, there's lots of worse shit going on under the radar – Michael Geist highlights some things about net neutrality and Canadian ISPs, for example, that should make us all very afraid – but crap like this diverts the focus away from it.

Related posts:

Friday night

2011-07-09T00:23:00.000-04:00

If the last Friday-night music post was something that aged well over four or five years, well ... give this a spin.

Garrett Styles - The Blue PR machine spins up again | #policeculture

2011-07-05T17:37:00.000-04:00

From teh Tumblr.

Lives on the line.

Sudden tragedy.

A sobering reminder.

Heroes in blue.

Gave his life in the performance of his duty.

Officers coming from all over to pay tribute to a fallen comrade.

It’s a mythology with a lot of miles on it. You can practically write this shit in your sleep.

Just one question: even if we allow for the sake of argument that this mindless fetishizing of men in uniform is a good thing, how come we don’t see this kind of blanket, wall-to-wall, 24/7 coverage whenever a Canadian soldier gets killed in Afghanistan?

Yeah, I know. I’m an insensitive bastard.

Related posts:

Evaluating Mammoliti, redux | #PrideTO #TOpoli

2011-07-03T10:50:00.000-04:00

But let's at least give the guy a chance to speak for himself.

Yo, Georgie? You want to tell us what you think your video proves?

Related posts:

On second thought, Rob, stay at the cottage | #PrideTO

2011-07-02T13:21:00.000-04:00

The whole idea of Mammoliti at the Dyke March just seems ... wrong.

View the story "Watching Mammoliti at #PrideTO: Ya know what, Rob? Stay at the cottage" on Storify]

The capacity for critical thought - how do we build it?

2011-06-30T23:43:00.002-04:00

Just as we wind down the first half of 2011 in preparation for Canada Day, three disparate blog posts are jumping out at me:

At Sixth Estate, Government of Canada Issues Statement Opposing the Alphabet
At Politics and its Discontents, Sun News Network – Full of Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing
At Porcupine Blog, The Hegemony of Authoritarian Ideology and the Vancouver Hockey Riot

All worthwhile reads, but there is, as you might gather from the title of this post, a common theme: the facility for critical thinking and its absence in far too many of our fellow citizens. This absence manifests itself in all kinds of tiresome and disturbing ways. A willingness to swallow the garbage peddled daily by the HarpoKKKon government and its mouthpieces in the braying tabloid press / crapaganda Fox News North channel betrays not just stupidity and intellectual laziness, but a fundamental lack of curiosity. And it's that lack of curiosity that makes people susceptible to manipulation and the cynical, divisive and despotic politics practiced by the Conbots.

It's especially worthwhile reading in the Porcupine post, which starts with a discussion of the online lynch mob that arose in response to the Vancouver hockey riot after the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup finals to Boston. A sample:

But for all the ordinary people who engaged in this blame fest, it only goes to show the hegemony of authoritarian ideology. Such hegemony means that most people are incapable of a structural or systemic analysis of an event. All they can do is conjure up demons, scapegoats and conspiracy theories.

Once again, the inability to think critically features prominently. George Carlin captured it perfectly with a terrific rant which I've blogged about previously. The essence of his argument was that the powers that be don't want educated citizens, they want obedient workers. Thus, they have a great deal invested in making sure schools don't teach people how to reason, how to see shades of meaning, and how to question the validity and evaluate the worth of everything they're told and everything they see, hear and read.

I know I go on about the G20 (chorus: No shit, OB. Really?), but I can't help but think that part of the motive for such orchestrated and sustained brutality was a demonstration of what happens to people who ask too many questions. Even if people were equipped to question what they're told in a systematic and structural way, they're less likely to speak up when they're worried about catching a police boot in the teeth.

So, fellow progressives, a challenge. Think of this as an attempt to crowdsource and kick-start a new strategy session: how can we bypass the intimidation and inculcate the faculty of critical thought within our fellow citizens? And how do we do it without insulting people, sounding condescending and / or opening ourselves up to the usual flying-monkey attacks?

Operators are standing by ...

Related posts:

#RCMP complaints body says it's playing ball with @cancivlib | #G20

2011-06-29T12:53:00.000-04:00

Something about the Tumblr / Tweeter interface is not working ... (mumbling obscenities under my breath ... )

I'm sorry, @TorontoPolice Tweeter guy - perhaps I'm being a little harsh | #G20redux

2011-06-28T22:52:00.001-04:00

On reflection, maybe I ought to cut you a little slack. Maybe you really are committed to fixing the organizational and occupational culture.

Maybe you really do want to fix the bridges between the police and the community they're sworn to serve and protect.

Maybe I really should take your words at face value when you say things like this:

So you want to earn our trust and respect? OK then.

I see, so we're supposed to look for daily actions and not just nice words. How about arresting the two assholes who kicked Adam Nobody in the face after he was handcuffed?

And then the next day, since we're supposed to be looking for daily actions, maybe you could charge the cowardly sacks of shit who beat the crap out of Lacy MacAuley?

And after that, you might want to have a word with the scumbags who tore John Pruyn's prosthetic leg off?

And then the day after that, maybe you could lay charges against the sadistic pigs who got their jollies kicking Sean Salvati around in the interrogation room and then parading him around naked, in front of a female cop? For starters?

That's ~~three~~ four days' worth of ways you could show us that you're not just blowing smoke up our asses. Admittedly, you might be stuck after that, because we all know incidents like this are isolated and confined, and the work of just a few bad apples. It's not as if shit like this happens every day to people who aren't white, educated and articulate.

It's not like you don't know who they are, or like you'd have any trouble finding them, right? After all, Mike McCormack says there's no such thing as the Blue Wall. Right, Tim?

What's that, Tim? The system's working, you say? That's a relief. So now that charges have been laid against Babak Andalib-Goortani and Glenn Weddell, everything that went wrong at the G20's been taken care of? Is that what you're saying?

No, I don't believe it. That would just kneecap everything you're saying about earning back our trust and respect.

Over to you, Sergeant.

Related posts:

@TorontoPolice Tweeter guy: Is this your idea of building relations? | #G20

2011-06-28T22:33:00.001-04:00

Don't know what this guy was doing ...

... but even if we grant for the moment that the apprehension was lawful and justified, can you explain why the Toronto Police officers effecting the arrest decided they had to grind his face into the concrete while one of them put a knee on his head? Right around the 40-second mark.

I know I'm just an uninformed civilian who doesn't understand policing, or appreciate how you guys put your lives on the line serving and protecting us day after day, but it sure looks like gratuitous and needless infliction of pain to me.

God knows, I wouldn't want you to think I'm being cynical or anything, so I won't assume that hundreds of violent and brutal arrests were made and people held for hours, even days, in revolting conditions for the simple purpose of showing us who was in charge. If I accepted that, then I'd also have to think that you were arresting people knowing that whatever charges you laid would never stand up in court, but that wasn't really the point in the first place.

As a matter of fact, I'm so anxious to avoid cynicism that I'm even willing to take you at your word when you say things like this:

So, back to my first question: is this how you're going to build relations?

Related posts:

@LacyMacAuley and my namesake: This is where we juxtapose, redux | #G20

2011-06-28T12:53:00.000-04:00

"Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you—that would be the real betrayal."
She thought it over. "They can't do that," she said finally. "It's the one thing they can't do. They can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you."
"No," he said a little more hopefully, "no; that's quite true. They can't get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them."

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Chapter 7

Related posts:

#G20 anniversary: Queen & Spadina, one year later

2011-06-27T21:04:00.000-04:00

Hundreds of citizens arrested on bullshit pretexts.

Detained arbitrarily in conditions that were gross violations of human rights.

Subjected to racist, sexist, misogynistic and homophobic slurs and harassment.

Assaulted indiscriminately.

Beaten, tear-gassed, shot with rubber bullets, and paraded naked.

And after all this time, no public inquiry, the Blue Wall endures and only two cops charged.

Tell us again how the system is working, @TorontoPolice Tweeter guy.

Creekside: G20 : Caught in the Act

2011-06-26T16:19:00.000-04:00

Creekside: G20 : Caught in the Act: "When police stick to phony script : the Miami Model"

Have I mentioned that Alison rocks today?

A whole year of this self-important bastard? Christ on a crutch ...

2011-06-26T15:59:00.001-04:00

Just realized: tomorrow marks exactly one year since the day OB jumped into the blogosphere. The inaugural post:

The G20 narrative: whose story is it?

Guess we're still struggling with that, but since you're all clamouring for a speech, I'll just keep it brief.

Shoutouts to Stephen Harper, Dalton McGuinty, Rob Ford, Julian Fantino, Bill Blair and, of course, Officer Bubbles and the Toronto Police. I wouldn't have done it without you ...

How to hold them accountable: let them embarrass themselves | #policeaccountability

2011-06-26T14:37:00.002-04:00

Because there isn't going to be any meaningful institutional response.

But this might be even more effective. Just show them being assholes, and then let public scorn do its work.

If they don't act like this, they won't have to worry about being embarrassed.

Of course, enough of these recordings and we may be facing something like this ...

(h/t policewatch.ca)

Related posts:

@SousLePave: Best tweet from yesterday's #G20rally

2011-06-26T13:28:00.001-04:00

Please tell me someone got a picture ...

Related posts:

#Brigette DePape rocks the rally at Queen's Park

2011-06-25T20:21:00.001-04:00

Guess it's good to have the occasional reminder. From Jason Kenney's favourite left-wing kook.

Related posts:

@TorontoPolice Tweeter guy weighs in | #G20

2011-06-25T11:38:00.001-04:00

... with a few nice words about accountability and regaining public trust.

Here are some suggestions for you.

Do something about the assholes who brutalized Lacy MacAuley.
Out the sons of bitches who kicked Adam Nobody in the face after he was cuffed and lying on the ground.
Press criminal charges against the pieces of shit who did what they did to Sean Salvati.

Let's see them charged, handcuffed and doing the perp walk for the cameras. You know goddamned well who they are. Talk to us when you're ready to do the right thing instead of letting them hide behind the Blue Wall.

Talk to us when you're ready to stop insulting our intelligence.

Talk to us when you're ready to abandon this whole self-pitying narrative about how misunderstood and unappreciated you are.

Talk to us when you're ready to overhaul your whole sickening dysfunctional organizational culture.

Until then ... spare us.

Related posts:

New poll finds ‘monumental shift’ in public perception of Toronto police because of G20 actions - thestar.com

2011-06-25T09:24:00.001-04:00

New poll finds ‘monumental shift’ in public perception of Toronto police because of G20 actions - thestar.com

I might just have to revise my opinion of the Star again. This is clearly adding to the pressure for a public inquiry, although I'm not getting my hopes up given the amount invested in stonewalling and resisting it.

Of course, I wouldn't be surprised to see the emergence of some astroturf group along the lines of Citizens for Police or something in response, amplified by the Sun torquing the shit out of a "grassroots" Cops are Tops campaign. Fuckheads.

The Sean Salvati #G20 video: Abu Ghraib comes to Toronto

2011-06-24T23:41:00.002-04:00

So apparently it takes three big strong police officers to manhandle one guy. Naked and handcuffed.

Don't know whether this is before or after they beat the shit out of him.

And please, spare us the pathetically transparent bullshit about security. There's absolutely no goddamned reason in the world for him to be stripped naked other than humiliation, psychological torture, debasement and power-tripping. The idea that people capable of treating another human being like this are walking around with guns and the legal right to use deadly force is mind-numbing. This isn't Baghdad, mind.

What's particularly awful about the video is how blasé they all are about it. Like it's normal.

Not one cop in the video seems the least bit troubled by it. I'll bet not one cop on the entire fucking force is even slightly uncomfortable with such a gross and disgusting scene. And these moral dishrags spend every spare moment whining to each other about how misunderstood and underappreciated they are.

The Toronto Police, ladies and gentlemen. Either they're pulling shit like this themselves or they're looking the other way while their buddies do it. It's crystal clear that there's no one with the stones to do anything about it.

Fuck you, officers.

(Update: h/t Lorne at PAID for flagging this.)

Related posts:

Mistakes were made, Bill Blair says | #G20

2011-06-24T10:16:00.009-04:00

So Bill Blair's had some time to reflect on last summer's G20 clusterfuck, and good and loyal servant he is, he's graced us with a report. Among other things, he praises his officers for "facing danger and extreme provocation."

Indeed. Takes a special kind of guts to stand your ground in the face of a small woman blowing soap bubbles.

Officers were caught off-guard and unprepared. Yeah, because we had the fucking G20 sprung on us without any notice.

Officers were overwhelmed. Poor lambs.

That's not the half of it. According to the Star, the report

does not explain why so many were arrested, nor does it directly address conditions at the G20 jail on Eastern Ave., which has been sharply criticized for overcrowding and inhumane treatment.

I haven't read it all the way through yet, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and wager that it doesn't explain why those poor overwhelmed unprepared cops

I'm going to take a detail from the last example, the story of Lacy MacAuley's arrest, just so we can get a better idea of how we're being served and protected:

Thug B then squeezed my throat with his right hand, digging his thumb deeply into my carotid artery area, on the right side of my throat. He held this for perhaps ten seconds, as Thug A stepped on me, re-adjusting himself overtop of me. I almost passed out at that point as the carotid artery is the chief artery that supplies blood to the brain. At some point during or before this strangulation, I wet myself. Urine seeped into and through my clothing. Darkness almost overtook me, but I held on and I did not lose consciousness.

During this whole time the thugs were calling me names such as: “cunt,” “bitch,” “whore,” and “street trash.” A constant barrage of their statements were phrases such as “Look at this street whore.” In addition, Thug A was making statements such as, “So you think you can smash up Toronto? Think again, you dirty bitch.”

When I did not lose consciousness from choking, Thug B punched the right side of my head with his left fist.

That's the Toronto Police, folks. Serving and protecting. (And let's not forget: Mayor Stupid thinks they were way too easy on us.)

And after all this time, only two officers have been charged. The rest of these sadistic, steroid-monkey, power-tripping, lying pieces of shit have been cowering behind their Blue Wall, whimpering to themselves about how underappreciated and misunderstood they are.

Bill? Fuck off, and take these bastards with you. Who's protecting us from you?

Related posts:

So Toronto cops think they're the #G20 whipping boys?

When cops go wilding

G20 asshole cops = schoolyard bullies

The Blue Wall is a threat to public safety

Toronto Police: Unaccountable, uncaring, unbelievable

What are we paying these people for?

So Toronto cops think they're the #G20 whipping boys?

2011-06-21T23:22:00.002-04:00

From ... guess which piece of birdshit-catcher. The usual "police morale is low" bullshit. A sample:

The situation has worsened with each new allegation of police brutality and little has been done to restore the faith in those sworn to serve and protect Toronto.
“It’s become embarrassing to say you’re a Toronto cop,” said one of several officers who recently spoke to the Toronto Sun on condition of anonymity.
He said it has become a daily concern and many cops are fed up with being “the whipping boys” for decisions they had no hand in making.
“Cops are leaving Toronto in droves,” he said, explaining many have either transferred to other forces, are in the process of doing so, or are getting out of policing.

Well, boo fucking hoo. Poor you, officers. Cry me a fucking river. You should be embarrassed at the way you acted. Leaving Toronto in droves? Really? Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

We should only be so lucky.

Jesus H. Christ, do we have to go through this again? You assholes went wilding on us last summer, remember?

Nobody made you do that.

You went on a rampage – beating the shit out of us, shooting us with rubber bullets, breaking our bones, smashing our glasses, threatening us with gang rape and then covering up for each other when we tried to hold your brutal asses accountable.

Nobody ordered you to do that either.

You're either sadistic, lying cowards or pathetic gormless ineffectual bystanders who didn't see or hear anything while your pals were having their fun. How many of you have stepped forward to out the brutal sadistic scumbags in your midst?

[crickets]

If nothing else, the G20 showed us all how you really feel about us.

And frankly, that's just about the only thing that's even remotely new about any of this, because the rest of the story we know: it's all part of that pathetic little narrative you tell yourselves about how misunderstood and underappreciated you are.

(Not to mention booking your vacation time during the summit and then lining up for major-event duty so you could ding us for double-time. How does that particular narrative go? Oh yeah – unionized thugs milking their culture of entitlement and screwing the poor taxpayers. How about putting a stop to this gravy train, Mayor Stupid?)

But back to the first narrative. You know, the one that's drilled into you from day one at the police academy, about how you're the thin blue line, putting your lives on the line to protect us from the evil hordes, yada yada yada. The one that encourages you to see yourselves as some kind of mystical brotherhood, with your isolating, pseudo-militaristic bonding rituals, and your patriarchal culture, and your swift ostracism of anyone who steps out of line. The sick and dysfunctional culture behind your paranoia, your tribal defensiveness, your instinctive circle-the-wagons reaction anytime someone talks about reform, and your willingness to smear and lash out at anyone who doesn't kiss your asses eagerly enough.

I have no doubt that there may be a yawning cultural gap between police management and the rank and file, but you know what? I really don't give a fuck. When I'm being tasered, tear-gassed and trampled, I don't pause to count how many stripes the pig doing it has on his or her sleeve.

But since the mythic narrative is so powerful and so impervious to facts – reinforced as it is by the shithead tabloid press which just happens to be advancing the interests of the managerial / ownership class while posturing as the voice of the little guy – here's another narrative for you, officers.

You're bullies, cowards, pigs and / or look-the-other-way enablers, and you've abused and destroyed whatever trust might once have existed between yourselves and the people you're supposed to serve and protect. Take your whiny, self-pitying thin-blue-line narrative and find somewhere warm and dark to put it. You've earned every bit of scorn and contempt you're feeling right now.

Related posts:

@cityslikr on the danger - and stupidity - of looking for false equivalencies

2011-06-21T14:11:00.000-04:00

An Open Letter To Councillor Josh Matlow « All Fired Up In The Big Smoke

There's nothing that says "balance" is sacrosanct. When one side of an argument is based on facts, reflection and careful consideration of evidence and the other side is based on sound bites, discredited ideologies and gut-instinct idiocy, there's no virtue in claiming that the truth lies somewhere in between.

Required reading.

'Respect for Taxpayers' is a load of crap

2011-06-19T23:57:00.003-04:00

True, I may be undermining weeks of arguing for engaging the people we disagree with in a spirit of openness and respect. And name-calling isn't going to help us show them how they're actually voting against their own interests, or reveal the corporatist / continentalist / ruling-class Divide-and-Conquer strategy. Class warfare's tricky that way.

Every now and then, though, you're confronted with evidence of such rancid stupidity that you've just got to name it for what it is. I don't know why, but this weekend it's the Pissed-Off Taxpayers meme and the whole bullshit "Respect for Taxpayers" narrative for which it serves as the foundation. It needs to be confronted head on.

Once again: Taxes are what buy us civilization. They're the reason we're not living in some Hobbesian nightmare. Taxes are how we pool our resources in order to act for the common good, working collectively to do what we can't accomplish on our own.

The Pissed-Off Taxpayers meme isn't some revealed wisdom or nugget of common sense. It's nothing but an embodiment of stupidity, self-delusion and immaturity. Pointing that out isn't an indicator of contempt or elitism. It's an attempt to talk to my fellow citizens like adults. You don't get something for nothing, and you don't get more for less.

(Don't listen to him! He's a sneering condescending effete urbanite! He drinks lattes and eats tofu and wears Birkenstocks because he's a DFH! He wants Canada to be a second-rate northern European socialist welfare state! And he hates the troops too!)

Sorry, for a moment there we were interrupted by a signal from Planet Sun. Back to regular programming ...

Related posts:

@marcusbgee is right about Bloor Street, but for the wrong reasons

2011-06-18T21:39:00.002-04:00

Ah, Marcus. The Globe's ideologically reliable municipal-affairs curmudgeon is kind of like a stopped clock that way.

Of course, the analogy only goes so far, because you don't have to ask a stopped clock why it's right twice a day, and that's a degree of frequency and predictability that ... well, let's just say it's not in the same postal code as Marcus.

However, credit where it's due and all. Marcus's pulse is quickening because according to him, the Nightmare on Bloor Street is over and now they've got these fancy-shmancy new granite widened sidewalks and there are planters and specially selected trees and benches and bike rings and everything. In the same spirit, he's praising the revitalization on Roncesvalles for giving a street that was looking a little tired

a fresh, new face. For all the pain they cause, projects like these are just what an ambitious city should be doing, seizing the chance to transform mediocre streetscapes into something better.

And the thing is, he's right, even though he doesn't address all the reasons why or consider the obvious implications of what he's saying. To the extent that he exhorts Toronto to be ambitious and to aspire to doing greater things, he's implicitly showing the moral and intellectual pygmies currently holding sway at City Hall for what they are.

Improving the quality of public space should be seen as a public good that merits the allocation of public resources. It's another manifestation of the discussion about "having nice things." You can debate thoroughly about how best to pursue that public good, but it shouldn't be left up to private associations or local BIAs.

The reasons for this should be pretty obvious. There's an obvious class dimension to this that Marcus never addresses (of course, given where he's writing, you can't really be surprised). Can anyone really envision this swanky new streetspace as someplace that welcomes the marginalized? Let's not kid ourselves. These projects, beneficial though they are, are not about enhancing the quality of urban life or public space. They're about enhancing the shopping experience for tourists and the well-heeled.

If you believe in community, if you believe in the inherent worth of civil society, if you believe in civic engagement and the notion that citizenship is worth something, then you embrace the notion of public space as an expression of the common good. Can't think of too many things more fundamental than that.

Related posts:

Friday night

2011-06-17T22:39:00.000-04:00

Following the example of my friends impolitical and pogge.

A few years old, but like a fine wine, it ages well ...

Raising Your Voice...Trying to Stop an Echo by hammockmusic

Raising Your Voice...Trying to Stop an Echo by hammockmusic

On the Canucks Riot, Protest, and Division : Politics, Re-Spun

2011-06-17T10:28:00.000-04:00

On the Canucks Riot, Protest, and Division : Politics, Re-Spun

And more.

Good lord, someone's actually pointing out the class dimension inherent in the Vancouver riot, and drawing the connection between that and the corporatist power structure's nasty little game of Divide-and-Conquer.

Not to mention the malignant influence of Don Cherry. You know, that guy who has a national platform on the "left-wing" CBC.

[drops teacup]

How unseemly.

The Sixth Estate » When You Don’t Know Your History, You’re Bound to Make Up S@@t

2011-06-17T10:21:00.000-04:00

The Sixth Estate » When You Don’t Know Your History, You’re Bound to Make Up S@@t

And again.

Either the Vancouver Police and the corporate media are taking stupid pills, or they're serving some agenda.

Now let's think about this: who benefits from mischaracterizing the riots as the work of anarchists and political activists?

Whose interests are served by the blanket demonization of activism per se?

Conversely, whose interests would be harmed by acknowledging the connections among NHL product, overwrought ersatz nationalism, unfettered testosterone, economic privation and too much cheap alcohol?

Hmmm ...

Porcupine blog: Explaining Conservative Support Among “Ordinary People”.

2011-06-17T09:47:00.000-04:00

Porcupine blog: Explaining Conservative Support Among “Ordinary People”.

I can't believe I haven't seen this until now.