They didn't have their papers so they weren't allowed to travel from their Bantustan

A Manitoba MP is crying discrimination after two aboriginal women were not allowed to board a plane with her, even though they had tickets.

Niki Ashton, who represents the Churchill riding for the NDP, said Gail and Joyce Nepinak were scheduled to fly to Ottawa from Winnipeg with her on Sunday evening.

The Nepinaks had been invited by the House of Commons to speak at the special committee on missing and murdered indigenous women on Monday.
It is the first time the committee will hear from families.

Gail and Joyce don't have driver's licences or any other government-issued ID, which is required by airlines for passengers to board.

 Air Canada would not accept the Nepinaks' health cards, bank cards, their electronic boarding passes, a House of Commons invitation, or even Ashton vouching for them.

I have flown with less ID than the Nepinaks carry.  I don't drive so I don't have a driver's license, but I have flown multiple times since 9/11 with no problem whatsoever.  The rules seem to be different depending on some unknown  *cough* racism *cough* factor.

This is what our country is now, this is what Canada has become, and we are letting it happen.

Judicial Kabuki

As anyone and everyone could have predicted, the Alberta Tories attempt to legislate George Orwell's most feverish nightmares into existence will be challenged in the courts.

And the Government knows that when the laws have finally wended their way through the court's system they will be struck down.  Not maybe.  Not probably.

Inevitably.

They know this and are transparently counting on the years-long time line of public workers and all Albertans having their freedom of speech expunged getting to a judicial remedy to allow them to distract from covering up foster-care deaths in the short term and shaft public workers in the medium term.

It is a blatantly, disgustingly cynical and irrefutably deliberate abuse of the system.

It's also directly out of the the long sordid history of past right wing legal Kabuki, laws to allow licensed marriage commissioners and pharmacists engage in religious discrimination in their government licensed roles.  Who cares if they will eventually be overturned and how much the legal costs will be if they give the radical base a tingle up the pant leg when you need to throw them some meat?

You don't get to call yourself fiscally responsible or morally upright if you willingly waste millions of taxpayer dollars undermining human rights for as long as you can get away with it to promote your own party's partisan gain.

You don't even get to call yourself a 'human rights lawyer' anymore.

When a crazy stalker goes after someone who see's her coming

Poor Rachel.  I almost feel sorry for her only not really.

"Rachel Marsden – Come on down.

So a couple weeks back I get followed by one @RachelMarsden - I briefly glanced at her profile and saw she appeared to be a National Security and Political commentator so I followed back. She almost instantaneously began to make aggressive sexual advances to me in Twitter Direct Messages while also insisting she knew my true identity."

Anon-blogger/Hacktivist Jester goes on to exhaustively detail clumsy manipulation, narcissistic, genuinely creepy courtship rituals and an extended grand mal one-sided conversational melt down as Marsden slowly begins to realize she has been exposed, her oh so clever attempts at blackmail and sexual conquest have failed and she's being ignored.



But she is For hundreds of increasingly deranged and threatening messages. 

If this wasn't someone with a long, unambiguous, documented history of glomming onto and then destroying men this would seem meaner than it does.  With Rachel Marsden, who followed through on her threat to attack him in print and reveal what she thought was his identity (Jester denies she found and exposed the real thing, judge for yourself, I'm agnostic.) it seems like a public, preemptive act of self defence.   Jester is no saint, basically this is the story of Rachel Marsden coming up against someone smarter than she is and even meaner.

How will she sustain her act now that anyone she sets her mind on getting and/or destroying can find all her moves with 30 seconds of googling?

Losing their religion

When even The Calgary Herald agrees that legislation has gone too far in attacking unions and free speech it means we are halfway to Orwell's 1984.

"The passing of Bills 45 and 46 on Wednesday night mark a dark chapter in Alberta history.

...

The contract the government wants to impose is zero per cent for the first two years and then one per cent in each of the next two years. The union and province reached an impasse and the union decided to wait for binding arbitration, where it believed its chances would be better. That right and historic arrangement has been shredded.
Even more disturbing however, is Bill 45. Under this bill, public sector workers, union leaders and even members of the general public can be fined thousands of dollars for just musing about or encouraging a strike. If this sounds Orwellian, it’s because it is.
The fundamental right to freedom of expression is being violated here and should concern all citizens who value our rights and freedoms.
This legislation will also impose $250,000 fines per day for any illegal strike and a $1-million fine per day that would go into a liability fund. Fines for illegal strikes are not unusual, though these ones are onerous.
Needless to say, making it illegal to just talk about striking is the kind of law one might expect in some banana republic or other oppressive totalitarian state.

...

That Premier Redford actually has the gall to claim that among unionized workers “there’s an appreciation for what we’re trying to do,” is laughable.
Nobody believes that and no one can believe that a so-called human rights lawyer would allow such an abomination to the most fundamental right of any free and democratic society — the right to speak and say things that the state might not agree with."

 And we must never forget that the other motive besides sticking it to public workers, is to distract Albertans from the scandal over covering up the deaths of scores of vulnerable, mostly aboriginal children in provincial foster care.  This government is so cartoonishly evil they should be twirling their moustaches as they tie children and workers to train rails!

Laws of Nature.

The sun will rise in the east. Winter will follow Autumn. Falling objects will obey the law of gravity. And Rob Anders will be a blithering, drooling, verbally incontinent half-wit.

It's comforting to know the world contains some certainties.

“I have previously provided my thoughts on Nelson Mandela.“I will let history be the judge.

Nice Day for it

When Conservatives get in trouble due to their scummy worst instincts, whether it be covering up the deaths of scores of foster children in Alberta or being caught being pigs in the trough in the Senate they look for an enemy to burn at the stake or hang from the tallest tree to distract their nutter base.

The Auto-da-fé target du jour both provincially and federally is working Canadians who commit the horrific sin of banding together to defend and promote their interests, those evil thugs who believe employers owe their employees the opportunity to have a decent middle class lifestyle. The barking mad Conservative base is never happier than when someone half-baked libertarianism and sheer seething hatred for anyone who thinks differently than they do is getting it in the neck and the politician's corporate honchos are happy with the ongoing plan to turn Canada into a low wage economy in a mad race to the bottom with the slave labour economies of the developing world.

Middle Class Canadians watch their middle class lifestyles recede in the rear view mirror but maybe enough will say 'fuck you Jack, at least I've got MINE' to give the Conservatives another one of those razor thin margins of 30% or 35% of the population they laughingly refer to as a mandate.

"Oh well its a nice day for it, bring the kiddies - Oooh look at his feet kick!"

Shhhh, don't actually talk about what he stood for!

I can certainly see why the political right wants to brand any comment about what Mandela really stood for and what he would have thought of the right wing politicians with kind but neutering words for his legacy now as 'inappropriate'. How convenient a blockade to any public commentary about what Mandela stood for in the context of today's policies. 

How helpful a taboo to block discussion of the long sordid history of the Canadian right wing and politicians alive and active today who defended Apartheid, demonized Mandela and the South African opposition and promote the kind of policies today that Mandela was imprisoned for opposing. To hell with your sensitivity to 'appropriateness'. Its just another con.

Alberta's Premier Alison Redford, in a breathtaking display of cynicism, opportunism and hypocrisy seeks now to wrap herself in Mandela's legacy, this just after she has savagely curtailed labour and free speech rights for Albertans with the despicable bills 45 and 46.  

Mandela was a proud and steadfast supporter of organized labour, free speech and the rights of workers.  Here's a speech in support of a General strike that today would get him arrested in the Orwellian new Alberta created by Alison Redford.

Stephen Harper joins nervous right wing politicians across the world offering anodyne and neutering compliments to Mandela the Statesman.  He certainly doesn't want to talk about Mandela the revolutionary, Mandela the freedom fighter - that would open the rancid can of worms that is the toxic history of Apartheid apologists in the Canadian right wing in general and Stephen Harper specifically.

They want to lull us into forgetting who and what they are.

Don't let them.