Open letter to Trump voters:

Voting for Donald Trump was an act of contempt for the people he will hurt.

"I was just voting against Clinton!" Fuck you, there's no box on the ballot that says 'Against Clinton'.

You voted for a narcissistic sociopath, and you did it because he promised to stick it to brown people.

You bought him, you own him.

Demographics will swing things back, no matter how much gerrymandering and voter suppression a Republican Supreme Court lets the GOP get away with, short of physically blocking non whites from the polls this wire thin win cannot overcome the reality that the electorate is 2% less white, every election.

Your kids will be sent to war again. The people around Trump know he's a one term president who will massively damage the Republican brand and will be looking for a 'bad guy' to distract you with. Probably not Russia though, since the White House is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Putin oligarchy.

There were credible reports before the election that Trump was honey trapped and compromised during a visit to Moscow. Considering some of the accusations against him (Guess that child rape trial is off now) we probably don't want to see the photos spread across Putin's desk right now.

But we will, it's inevitable.

In four years half the people who voted Trump last night will be pretending they never heard of him.

The rest of the world will neither forgive, nor forget

Memories of the Apocalyse

The thing about contemporary American crime and thriller cinema, cop shows, serial killer horror movies, every piece of pop culture that assumes a huge level of violence in the world that requires a violent armed hero, is that it is documenting a period in America when a huge percentage of its population was suffering from chemical brain damage.

The huge crime rate spike in the US that started in the early 60's and then dropped just as precipitously in the early 90's exactly parallels the introduction of leaded gasoline in the 1920's and its replacement with unleaded in the early 1970's.  A generation suffering from lead poisoning which lowers intellect and degrades impulse control came of age at once and the poorer the neighborhood the worse the poisoning was due to lead paint, leaded windows and proximity to industrial activity.

Then a new generation came of age born after the introduction of the catalytic converter and the mass switch to unleaded gasoline with just enough less lead in their environment to miss the tipping point that causes major IQ impairment and violent impulse control issues.  Suddenly a massive police state apparatus built when sky high violent crime stats were assumed to be the new normal is using tactics designed for a far more violent population than they are dealing with.

So law, policing policy and pop culture in the US assumes a vastly more violent society than currently exists due to everyone involved in its formation and maintenance coming of age during a mass violent brain damage epidemic that for the most part ended decades ago.

Confronting Evil

Going forward Donald Trump should not be allowed to make a single appearance or speech without being interrupted by protesters.

This is not a traditional democracy respecting politician running a traditional liberal democracy political campaign. He does not deserve the respect and consideration of one and must not be given it.

This is a fascist dictator in the making running an explicitly white nationalist campaign of vilification and scapegoating and he must be confronted everywhere and any time he tries to present himself as just another politician engaging in the democratic process.

This is one of those moments that people may someday look back upon and say 'If only he had been stopped before....'

Astonishing, Infuriating and ultimately terrifying.

The Tyee's comprehensive document of indictment against the Conservative government is something every Canadian should read to be reminded in the aggregate of the many crimes and misdemenors of this corrupt and dangerous government.

Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have racked up dozens of serious abuses of power since forming government in 2006. From scams to smears, monkey-wrenching opponents to intimidating public servants like an Orwellian gorilla, some offences are criminal, others just offend human decency.

This is more Nixonian than Nixon, more Dick Cheney style malevolence than even the savage former Vice President would have ever dared to indulge himself in.  Stephen Harper makes Vladimer Putin look like a cuddly devotee to the rule of law.

Stephen Harper's government is an ongoing, organized criminal enterprise.

The Quintessential Conservative MP

The Shock Doctrine doesn't work if you wait until the shock has worn off

The 33% who say terrorism is the most important issue facing Canada are the bottom floor hardcore Conservative base plus a handful of weird neo-con Liberals.

C51 preaches exclusively to the choir.  As the details become more widely known even soft Tory swing voters are coming to hate it.  The Conservatives made the classic error that always trips up right wingers, of assuming everyone else will see and respond to events the way they do through what they assume is universal but is in fact an exclusively conservative lens. 

They thought they had one of Naomi Klein's shock treatment moments after a mentally ill man attacked parliament.  He was a drug addled paranoid who just as easily could have been commiting mayhem in the name of fighting alien invaders as jihad.

The Conservatives assumed their visceral response to the event would be shared by all Canadians and maybe it was... For a month or so.  The frustratingly long time line of pushing legislation through parliament even for a majority came up against the rebounding natural skepticism of Canadians who watched aghast as George Bush engaged in similar legislative fuckery after 9/11.

We may be watching what political historians will someday call one of the greatest political miscalculations in Canadian history.

The Honest Pro-Lifer

An American right wing pro-life columnist named Kevin Williamson has done us  the good service of taking the pro-life 'Abortion is murder' rhetoric to it's logically consistent extreme:

Over the weekend, a presumably bored National Review writer, Kevin Williamson, became the subject of much derision and shock across the political Internets when he tweeted his argument that ”the law should treat abortion like any other homicide.” My colleague Elias Isquith highlighted Williamson’s clearest descent into pure trolling — responding to a question about whether women who have abortions should get life without parole with the line, “I have hanging more in mind.”

As the Salon piece points out, all Williamson has done is strip away any soft soap gloss from the extreme radicalism of the Pro-Life position.  He has openly articulated the end game of the Pro-Life movement in a way most Pro-Lifers get uncomfortable and mumbly about when pressed, as this video shows.

 Of course the real world expression of this viewpoint is already affecting women's lives as many US states have started criminalizing miscarriages and attacking personal bodily autonomy based on junk science about the effect of maternal drug use on fetuses.

The Deliberate Ambiguity of Occupation

Israel has a policy of deliberate ambiguity about whether its control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is 'occupation'. Every other country on Earth including their closest ally the US says it is an occupation, Israel coyly argues it both is and isn't depending on which definition gives them the most flexibility under international law in any given scenario. 

In practice this leaves the Palestinians dispossessed, discriminated against and in the West Bank without recourse to the law when bands of violent, fanatical settlers descend from their hilltop bandit nests to attack Palestinian homes and crops and savagely assault any Palestinians who resist. 

 The Israeli police stand and watch.

It's time to stop coddling this sleazy little semantics game.

Le Monde diplomatique argues giving them three more years to the 50th Anniversary of the Occupation to once and for all define what they are doing as occupation or not. If its an occupation they are legally required to begin the process of withdrawal, if its not an occupation they are legally required to give full and equal legal citizenship rights to all the population under their control.

They have been allowed to be vague on this subject for almost FIFTY YEARS.

No longer.

The last time someone as paranoid and vindictive as Stephen Harper was thwarted...

The one entity, one independent power that has stymied Stephen Harper again and again, contradicted his agenda, limited his options and overturned his decisions MULTIPLE TIMES in just the last few months has been the Supreme Court of Canada.

Does Stephen Harper strike anyone as someone who responds well to independent oversight or any restrictions on the exercise of his power?  Can we really count on Harper placidly accepting such an infuriating limitation on his exercise of power - clearly his number one constant priority?

There is a precedent, for a similar powerful, suspicious, paranoid and dictatorial leader being challenged by the judicial branch and lashing out violently in defiance of constitutional norms.  Should Canadians be watchful for our own high court equivalent of the Saturday Night Massacre?

So the state of Oklahoma tortured a man to death last night...

[Clayton] Lockett, 38, received the first dose of the three-drug cocktail at 6:23 p.m.The drugs were midazolam, which causes unconsciousness; vecuronium bromide, which stops respiration; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. They are administered in that order. The state has said the procedure is meant to involve three doctors with hand-held syringes, injecting the drugs into IV lines in both the inmate’s arms.At 6:33 p.m., 10 minutes after the execution began, a doctor said Lockett was unconscious. But three minutes later, Lockett began to nod and mumble and writhe, witnesses said. [...]A spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections [...] confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that Lockett did not die immediately after the lethal injection was administered.“The director did say that it appears that a vein [in Lockett's body] blew up or exploded, it collapsed, and the drugs were not getting into the system like they were supposed to,” spokesman Jerry Massie said.Massie said that after the new injection was administered, the condemned man “was obviously showing some movement.”“After several minutes, five minutes, he was not unconscious,” Massie said. “They made a decision to halt the execution, but at 7:06 he suffered a massive heart attack and expired.”

They are incapable of Governing

At what point does the fact that the Conservative government is just not competent enough at the process of government to produce laws that don't violate our guaranteed Charter rights and are therefore stuck down by the courts constitute political malpractice?

Are they just deliberately batting foul balls to have something to shout about judicial activism to their mouth breathing base over?

The Conservative government’s tough-on-crime agenda has suffered another major blow at the Supreme Court of Canada. The court blocked the government’s attempt to stop judges from routinely giving extra credit to offenders for time served in jail before sentencing.
The 7-0 ruling continues the losing streak of the Harper government in major cases at the Supreme Court over the past month.

The unanimous ruling is even written by one of Harper's own appointees! They were repeatedly warned this would happen and deliberately pissed away MILLIONS of taxpayer dollars to pass a law that anyone with even a child's understanding of the charter and existing sentencing law could and did tell them would be overturned by the courts. This is incompetence and wastefulness on a truly breathtaking scale.

Frankly it disqualifies them for governance.

Keep Calm and Stay Strong

Muslims all over the world today woke up, read that the Marathon bombers had been tentatively identified as being from Chechnya, home of Russia's own simmering war with Islamist insurgents and thought some variation of 'aw, crap.'

Muslims are once going to be tarred with an ugly brush over this and an overwhelmingly loyal and law abiding American Muslim community is no doubt battening down the hatches and preparing themselves for a long national strip search.

 They will be accused of 'Not condemning terrorism' vociferously enough - were all white right wingers quizzed about their loyalty after Oklahoma City? Muslims from different regions, different ethnicities and different religious traditions will again find themselves conflated with the kind of extremists every faith produces and Jihad, a word with far ranging and subtly distinct definitions, primarily meaning to most Muslims a kind internal spiritual struggle to live up to the tenants of their faith will once again be bandied about as meaning nothing but terrorism and murder.

I'd like to believe Americans have been inoculated against the hate-mongers and divisive demagogues by the last decade - but I'm very much afraid that the terrorist goal of spreading division and fear and mistrust will be eagerly abetted by the same people who helped fan it last time.

 This week has kind of sucked.

They picked a new Godfather

The Catholic Church, where the least controversial candidate for the top job is the guy accused of collaborating with a military dictatorship that murdered 30,000 people.


UPDATE: As Dawg points out, Bergoglio recently angrily denounced a plan by Agentina's current leftist government to legalize gay marriage as 'the work of the devil'.  He said NOTHING while a right wing government was murdering 30,000 people, operating torture chambers around the clock with the active participation of priests and kidnapping leftist women and giving their children to loyal right wing supporters of the regime.

In his defense that he helped smuggle people out of the country, interceded for kidnapped dissident priests and tried to recover kidnapped children during the dictatorship he has revealed that he was unambiguously lying when he said he didn't know about these crimes of the regime until years later.

So legalizing loving relationships between people of the same gender is a secular leftist government doing the work of the devil.  Torture, kidnapping and murder by a right wing government that publicly presented itself as the defender of the faith merited no such condemnation.

Get him off the Street!

Despicable swaggering bully Const. Taylor Robinson, who shoved a disabled woman to the ground in an unprovoked assault still thinks he did nothing wrong.

"It's important to know the officer has never acknowledged really any wrongdoing in shoving Ms. Davidsen and has continually held to the unbelievable position that she was grabbing for his gun," Bernstein said Tuesday.
"The video shows her hands nowhere near his gun," he said of the June 2010 incident. "It really is unbelievable he can continue holding to this position, but that's what he's doing."

If he doesn't think he did anything wrong that's basically a 100% guarantee he will do it again or something even worse if he thinks he can get away with it.

Corporate Atrocity Enablers

When Iran wants to spy on its citizens international Telecommunications firm MTN helps them do it.  When Syria is about to roll tanks into a neighbourhood and blast it into rubble MTN helpfully shuts off their phone and Internet service first.

Tell MTN what you think of international corporate citizens helping dictatorships spy on and murder their citizens.

I Stand With Quebec Students

Poster by Molly Crabapple

Because we all hang together or we will all hang separately - and with this federal government are you 100% sure that is hyperbole?

Because this is something bigger, maybe even the start of a Canadian Spring.  Lead, follow or get out of the way.

Because whatever you think of the student's cause, Bill 78 is a breath-taking assault on freedom, Totalitarian by design, explicitly formulated to cripple dissent against the elites by intent.  This is a declaration of war.  The political class, frankly, need to be terrified by the social and political consequences into never trying such odious legislation in this country again. Shock and awe motherfuckers.

Because, as I've asked before, The question isn't why Quebec students are fighting back so fiercely against education being incrementally turned into a tiny gated community for the wealthy and the imposition of lifelong crippling debt for the rest of the population, the question is why aren't the rest of us?

Provocation and/or Police State?

There are only two options: Either the two undercover officers arrested at the G20 were engaging in illegal behaviour - they were provocateurs in other words - or this is an admission that you didn't have to break the law to be chained and jailed, just protest. Either one condemns the entire police operation:

TORONTO, ON (NEWS1130) - The watchdog that keeps an eye on the national police force has found that two people arrested during the G20 summit in Toronto in 2010 were plain-clothesed police officers.

"Are you now, or have you ever been, an Environmentalist?"

In yet another display of contempt for democracy, the environment and the Canadian people the Harper government has rejected calls from the Opposition to break up the budget bill into separate bills so that the unprecedented erosion of environmental protections and vindictive witch-hunting of environmentalists enshrined in it can receive the scrutiny and debate they deserve. 

The Stephen Harper 'Enemies List' is about to become the law of the land.

I've started to have a repetitive nightmare.

The light in the hearing room is bright, hot and pointed right at me. The heat is suffocating, and I am visibly sweaty, the senator leans over, taps his microphone and begins to read questions from a typed sheet.

"Mr. Fenton, Have you ever donated to or been a member of the Sierra Club of Canada?"

"Do you own a book or books written by Dr. David Suzuki?"

"Did you or did you not write blog posts that were critical of the oilsands?"
That's usually about the time I wake up, but instead of relief that my nightmare is over, I make the mistake of turning on the radio or picking up the paper to find my speculative fiction becoming more and more real.

Should Canada start considering EVERY American woman eligible for Refugee status?

Government mandated rape with medical instruments, laws mandating that women be forced to explain to their boss why they are using birth control pills, laws mandating that even if pregnancy will KILL the mother she be forced to carry a pregnancy to term - even if the fetus itself is dead.

At what point should any American woman seeking refuge in Canada start being considered a political refugee?

This week the Georgia State Legislature debated a bill in the House, that would make it necessary for some women to carry stillborn or dying fetuses until they 'naturally' go into labor. In arguing for this bill Representative Terry England described his empathy for pregnant cows and pigs in the same situation.


I have a question for Terry England, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and too many others: I have three daughters, two of them twins. If one of my twins had been stillborn would you have made me carry her to term, thereby endangering both the other twin and me? Or, would you have insisted that the state order a mandatory fetal extraction of the living twin fetus from my womb so that I could continue to carry the stillborn one to term and possibly die myself? My family is curious and since you believe my uterus is your public property, I am, too.

Mr. England, unlike the calves and pigs for which you expressed so much empathy, I am not a beast of burden. I am a woman and I have these human rights:

The right to life.

The right to privacy.

The right to freedom.

The right to bodily integrity.

The right to decide when and how I reproduce.

Mr. England, you and your friends do not get to trade these rights, while "dog and hog hunting," in return for a young man's chickens.

My human rights outweigh any you or the state corruptly and cynically seek to assign to a mass of dividing cells that will eventually turn into a 'natural' person. Personhood-for-zygote based bills and related legislation, like Georgia's and hundreds of others, bills and laws that criminalize pregnancy and abortion and penalize women for being women, violate my human rights.

Just because you cannot get pregnant does not mean I cannot think clearly, ethically, morally, rationally about my body, human life or the consequences of my actions. Just because you cannot get pregnant does not mean that I do not have rights when I am pregnant. I have responsibility but am powerless. You have power but are irresponsible with my rights.

By not trusting me, you force me to trust you. And YOU are not trustworthy.

I gestate humans, you do not. I know how it feels to be pregnant. You do not. I know what happens to a fetus in a womb. You do not. I have carried three fetuses to term. You have not. What I experience when I am pregnant is not empathy. It is permeability. The fetus is me. And the state is you, apparently. But, no matter what you say or do I have fundamental human rights. What makes you think that you, who cannot have this fully human experience, can tell me anything about gestation or how I experience it? Especially when you compare my existence and experience to that of brutish animals.

The rest of the civilized world thinks this country has lost its mind.

Delivering a Message

Explain to me the how the interests of public safety are served by a gang of black clad thugs showing up swaggering about and shoving people for a while, sucker punching one person and throwing another to the ground and then getting back in their cars and driving away?


Are the people holding the banner some kind of direct and proximate to safety or public order that I'm missing and if so why, after committing acts of intimidation and violence against these threats to public order, do the police suddenly drop everything and walk away and leave them still standing there holding their banner?

Is the perceived threat more an existential one?

Is this plain and simply about delivering a message?

The civic responses to the Occupy movement and by extension all economic protests as those against school fees definitely are, deliver a clear message. With their blatant and unambiguous coordination and collusion between media, politicians and police.  The 99% protests after all are explicitly and directly targeting powerful entrenched forces and their control over our society.  Did we think they would just roll over?

The 99% movement only accomplishes any of it's goals if support for it at least approaches a plurality of that 99%.  The monoculture construction we live in created and maintained by the economic power elite will defend itself and a majority of the population still believes there is no viable alternative.

But as the contradicitons become more blatant, as more and more people realize the system is increasingly stacked against them, as we watch Caterpillar continue the elite assault on the concept of the middle class, as corporate citizens annihilate the concept of informed democracy, as those who care about the environment are described as enemies of the state  and students are beaten for standing up for equal access to education the entire structure begins to display its structural weaknesses.

To everybody.

So yes, this kind of deliberately oppressive policing does in fact deliver a message, just not the one intended.  Intended to display power and authority it instead displays weakness.  It displays a huge stupid animal starting to notice pinpricks of opposition and retaliating stupidly and brutally against those threats. 

 First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.       -Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi

The Occupied Agenda

Ok MSM, you sneer that you can't get a coherant specific answer as to what the Occupy Wall Street crowds are protesting.  Here you go guys: