Another Sun reader speaks

Res ipsa loquitur.

Link here. Isn't it inspiring, the way Rob Ford brings out the best in people?

Little Eichmann of the Day

I'm proposing a new feature for the progressive Canadian blogosphere: Little Eichmann of the Day, awarded to the functionary / cog in the apparatus of repression whose actions best combine bureaucratic compliance with an utter lack of any moral sense.

Just to be clear: you don't need to be wearing swastikas, goose-stepping, or perpetrating genocide to exhibit these qualities, and I'm not saying these people are Nazis.

Today's nominee: the B.C. Attorney-General's Office.

Alison has posted this horrifying story about Betty Krawczyk at the Galloping Beaver and at Creekside; I urge you to read it. She is a grandmother in her 80s. While she has never harmed another human being, nor has she even damaged a single piece of logging or construction equipment, she has been hit with eight jail sentences. Now the Crown wants to argue that she suffers from a personality disorder or mental illness and use that as an excuse to lock her up for the rest of her life.

The money passage (link here): 

Her real crime in the eyes of the courts is that she challenges the legitimacy of the judicial system to criminalize dissent, to punish protesting:

"I won’t do community service should that be part of my sentence. I have done community service all of my life and I have done it for love. I refuse to have community service imposed on me as a punishment. And I won’t pay a fine or allow anyone else to pay a fine for me. I won’t accept any part of electronic monitoring as I would consider that an enforced internalization of a guilt I don’t feel and don’t accept and I refuse to internalize this court’s opinion of me by policing myself."

Back to jail for Betty K.
After serving out her last sentence in full, Betty appealed it on the grounds that the squelching of protest inconvenient to corporations and governments is an illegitimate use of the legal system.

The Attorney General's response to her appeal has been to recommend the court re-sentence her under the rules of "accumulated convictions", designate her a chronic offender, and lock her up for life!

I'm sure Michael Brundrett is just following orders.

Update: Cliff at Rusty Idols has beaten me to it, as has Chet Scoville, but yes, it's the old Soviet model: redefine dissent and opposition to the State as a form of mental illness and then you can incarcerate people indefinitely. For their own good, of course. 

Where we're headed, if we're not careful

A sobering snapshot of an America in decline from a blogger I've been following.

What a delightful bit of serendipity. Just a short time ago I was writing about the damage resulting from thirty years of right-wing bullshit, and along comes DownWithTyranny, laying this at Ronald Reagan's doorstep. Simplistic, get-something-for-nothing nostrums wrapped in soothing images and syrupy clichés, all calculated to appeal to frightened, insecure and confused people who don't want to deal with reality and its messy complications.



In other words, simple-minded pablum aimed at children. That's pretty well all the right-wing howler monkeys have to offer. False narratives that appeal to emotion and gut reaction rather than straightforward analysis. Hazy references to mythically simpler and more prosperous times, coupled with implicit or even overt scapegoating of some sinister Other – immigrants, feminists, environmentalists, organized labour, or whoever happens to be a convenient target.

Once again: this is not conservatism. Conservatism is a noble, principled and time-honoured philosophical tradition. This is simple-minded atavistic bullshit.

Of course, no one up here is working from that playbook ...

Margaret Atwood schools the Sun hacks

Link here.

Once again, she shows why she's a national treasure.

Clear, straightforward and witty. Bet it'll go right over the heads of most Sun readers, though. Nuance, shades of meaning and facts that depart from the narrative the rag feeds them aren't something they're used to.

In fact, that goes for pretty well anything that requires actual thought. It's a paper written by morons for morons. They'd have trouble debating Margaret's turnip, and then they'd start shrieking about what a condescending elitist root vegetable it was. It lives in the Annex, for chrissakes.

Update: Linky dinky ... 

This is what integrity looks like

It's really not that complicated. Bet she wouldn't have to wait for someone to threaten legal action, either.

Taking notes, Ezra? We can repeat this for you later if you're in shul ...

Sorry to be a buzz kill

But there are worse people in Canada than Ezra Levant.

No, really.

The foot-soldiers of the corporate/state security apparatus have, once again, put their jackboots to one of the prisoners of conscience in the wake of the G20 clusterfuck. Alex Hundert, arrested last night by seven cops, stands accused of violating his bail conditions for participating in a panel discussion.

At a university.

Yep. That's how badly free speech in this country is threatened now.

Using a combination of pre-emptive night-time raids, ridiculously restrictive bail conditions, and of course good old police brutality, the corporate errand boys are slowly but surely criminalizing dissent and intimidating citizens into staying home and keeping their mouths shut.

Yeah, well. Not gonna work, little Eichmanns. Fuck you and the horses you rode us down with.

Update: A little more required reading from the best mayor Toronto's had in the last half-century.

A little kosher wine with that crow, Ezra?

I hear it's a tough bird. Probably trayfe, too.

Oh, I'm sorry, it's Yom Kippur. You'll have to wait till this evening. Maybe you can give some thought to, oh, I dunno .... atoning for your sins today while you're davening?

Schmuck.

H/t Alheli Picazo, who did a masterful job of deconstructing and debunking Levant's revolting smear job on Soros. She also gets the prize for this:

Alheli? Promise me you'll take pictures.

Update: This ain't no mere karmic pile-on. What we've got here is a schadenfreude mosh pit. Linky dinky dinky dinky doo ...