Hey, Lone Pine Resources Inc. — sue this

NAFTA challenge launched over Quebec fracking ban - The Globe and Mail: "Energy firm Lone Pine Resources Inc. is taking on Quebec’s fracking moratorium, saying it violates the firm’s rights under the North American free-trade agreement and demanding more than $250-million in compensation."

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Y'see, that's the great thing about "free trade." We get sued for "lost profits" when we try to protect our drinking water.

And the Chinese deal Harper's pushing? Shhh. It's a secret. Everything about it is a secret. Even Diane Francis is shitting on it, for Chrissakes.

Guy's not only letting foreign corporations fuck us over, he's handing out souvenir bags at the door.

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it.

Related posts:

• The Ethical Oil Spokespuppet Smear
• Electro-Motive: Foreign corporation takes Canadian tax dollars, fucks over Canadian workers | #cdnpoli
• Lawrence Martin on Harper's proto-fascism | #cdnpoli

Facts About The “Nazi” Salute and a Double Standard « Sister Sage's Musings

Facts About The “Nazi” Salute and a Double Standard « Sister Sage's Musings:

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Sister Sage has the most comprehensive smackdown yet to the pearl-clutchers of the B'nai Brith getting their gutkes in a twist over Montreal demonstrators Sieg Heiling the cops.

Fascism is fascism, boychiks. The folks getting their heads beaten in get to call it as they see it, whether it offends you or not. Quit fardraying us a kopf.

Related posts:

• We have witnessed extraordinary ongoing police violence and abuse of authority in Quebec during the past few weeks ...
• When a government has abused its powers as regularly and as grotesquely as this one, it forfeits the benefit of the doubt.
• Violence and red squares – Artists outraged by minister St-Pierre (Le Devoir)
• My trip to jail for reading 1984 on the metro (First-Hand Account)

Sure. Private-sector involvement in police work. | #areyououtofyourfuckingminds

Via a helpful reader, one of the most disturbing things I've seen this week:

I don't know Joe Couto, and I'm sure he's a perfectly decent guy in real life, but this is on behalf of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police.

How many ways do you want this to be a bad idea? Policing priorities determined, not by public need or democratic process, but by shareholders' demands for profit? Policing decisions made in accordance with the desires of the folks holding the purse strings? Policing operations influenced by (horrors!) ... class biases?

If you filled a trial balloon with swamp gas instead of helium, this is what it would smell like.

Related posts:

• Police accountability in Toronto | #G20
• Fiscal demonization of @OccupyTO continues on CTV | #classwarfare
• SIU Concludes Reopened #G20 Nobody Investigation | #policebrutality
• The Sean Salvati #G20 video: Abu Ghraib comes to Toronto
• Toronto Police: Unaccountable, uncaring, unbelievable

Saskboy and Jymn rub The Globe's nose in #RoboCon | #cdnpoli

RoboCon: Journalism Failure at the Globe – UPDATED | Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff:

"And what’s the reason that John Ibbitson, a professional journalist for a national newspaper, treats Giorno with so much respect and kid-gloves that he talks him up as some sort of non-lying politician, while a nobody blogger in Regina has quickly demonstrated the exact opposite, using evidence?

And in closing:

They should know by now that breaking the rules can land a party in a world of hurt, no matter who did it, or why.

Yes, they might get another $52,000 fine for overspending by $1.3M on a campaign that wins them the Prime Minister’s Office. Ouuuch."

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See also: John Ibbitson shames himself in the Conservative daily Globe & Mail, but if you've got delicate digestion, you might not want to look directly at the screen.

It bears repeating: sometimes the blogosphere, for all its tripwires and potholes, shows up the corporate media despite the imbalance in reach and resources. Antonia Zerbisias, bless her, is way out in front in acknowledging that.

Update: At PAID, Lorne weighs in as well.

Related posts: 

• Harper and the electoral fraud scandal | #cdnpoli
• Meme for the week: Harper – too dangerous to govern
• Liberals, NDP, whoever. I don't care what we call them | #cdnpoli
• Lawrence Martin on Harper's proto-fascism | #cdnpoli

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

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
• The Sun's effect on our national conversation is obvious, but what about the Globe?
• BCL catches @SueAnnLevy rewriting history, smearing brave firefighters
• #SunMedia and journalistic ethics: another juxtaposition
• Kate's royal ass cheek: #sunmedia triumphs again, @davidakin makes sure we all know about it

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

... 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:

• Liberals, NDP, whoever. I don't care what we call them | #cdnpoli
• Oh, and while we're busy demonizing the #Occupy movement ... | #classwarfare #cdnpoli
• Lawrence Martin on Harper's proto-fascism | #cdnpoli

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

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."

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From Murray Dobbin in The Tyee.

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

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

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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.

Fiscal demonization of @OccupyTO continues on CTV | #classwarfare

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.

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

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

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

@GeorgeMonbiot takes down the corporate media

George Monbiot – Unmasking the Press:

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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.

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

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:

• Little Eichmann of the Day
• Authoritarian whacking material: the Stacy Bonds video
• Hey, RCMP? How's that kicky, tasery, shooty thing workin' out for ya?

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

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. )

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The corporate media's class-based agenda

I thought about a stronger title for this post, but that might have required a nasty loaded word like, oh ... "bias."

Anyhow, this isn't intended to be a factual statement, but off the top of your heads, can anyone recall a story about the NDP over the past week that wasn't all about Ruth Ellen Brosseau? This is the Official Opposition, with more than 100 Members of Parliament, mind.

Now contrast that with the time and space devoted to the inner mechanics, machinations, skullduggery and drama associated with the Liberal Party's attempts to select a new leader – as if a new face is all that's needed. This is a third party, just in case anyone's forgotten.

Election, final week: All right, all right. A small measure of hope

Leavened, as always, by a heapin' helpin' of caution.

The polls, to the extent that they can be relied upon, continue to show a surge in the support for the NDP, to the consternation of both the traditional parties. Bay Street, apparently, is shitting its drawers. And the gutter press is all but disappearing up its own ass in a desperate attempt to make a smear stick.

Economic, ethical and ecological collapse, according to Chris Hedges

Very sobering piece from Chris Hedges (author of American Fascists, among other things) about what happens when empires go sclerotic.