Proposed: Let's kill the Sun brand

Lego ends advertising with Daily Mail after calls for companies to 'Stop Funding Hate' 

Toy company responds to campaigners by saying it is 'not planning any future promotional activity' with the right-wing paper  

In august of 2010 The Toronto Sun called for Canada's response to the Tamil refugee crisis to be mass murder. Ships full of desperate refugees? "Lock and load" demanded the Sun.

Ezra Levant forced the Sun Empire to apologize to the entire Roma community after a racist rant and to George Soros after falsely accusing him of complicity in the holocaust.

The Sun chain ran a cartoon of Olivia Chow in a Mao suit.

About the only places you could find enthusiastic agreement with Stephen Harper's xenophobic race baiting campaign or the PQ's a year before that in Quebec were in the Sun chain.

As bad or worse crap appears in Sun papers across Canada with a numbing regularity, with casual, constant racism as a particular theme. 

But with newspaper advertising already bottoming out the Post Media empire would be excruciatingly vulnerable to tactics such as those used against the Daily Mail in the UK putting a spotlight on and turning on the pressure. I propose this since wherever you live in Canada the odds are good that both your supposedly sober and serious broadsheet and the local sun tabloid rag are probably put together in the same Post Media office and rolled off the same presses. 

Both papers are written and edited by the same staff, have the same right wing slant with a greater or lesser degrees of genteel civility applied, promoting and protecting the interests of the same vulture hedge fund on Wall Street and simply written to different mental age levels.

Why not just make the hateful, lowest common denominator Sun brand and voice completely economically nonviable?

It's not suppressing a diversity of voices, there already is none, just brand identities and slightly different flavors of piss being poured into your ears. If, as a nation, we are prepared to allow the entire ownership of the Canadian newspaper and TV news in our country be a group that could fit comfortably in one small office then why allow the pretense of diversity in it's absence?

It would be very, very easy for a mass movement to burn the Sun brand to the ground and dance in its ashes.

Who's with me?

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

Elizabeth May's Cop Out

How come Elizabeth May isn't standing up for Canadians who disapprove of the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and abuses of Palestinian rights against the insulting and false accusation of antisemitism?

 Its a despicable slur, the definition of a blood libel.

She is deeply distressed that 'some people think' the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement is antisemitic. That's an opportunity to respect the democratic will of her members and use her public profile to educate people and push back against a despicable lying slander.  Instead she starts from the position of accepting the slur as fact and is clearly working behind the scenes to reverse the members votes in a way designed to keep them reversed.

BDS is a peaceful, legitimate attempt to hold a state that styles itself as a liberal democracy to the standards of behavior expected from a liberal democracy.

But she's more concerned with acting like a public drama queen and treating a democratic vote as somehow illegitimate because it gives her the sads.

The Green Party has always been a faux progressive joke, a way to blunt the power of the progressive vote and throw elections to the Liberals and with the panicked efforts to overturn a real progressive resolution by members who fell for the pose that just gets more blatant all the time.

The Alberta NDP outrageously refuse to stop governing just because it makes right wingers unhappy

The CFIB, a far right front group masquerading as a small business federation calls for the Alberta NDP to reverse all of the policies they were elected on because of the downturn.

If we were in a recovery the rationale would be 'cancel your policies so as not to risk the recovery.' If we were in good times their argument would be to 'Cancel all your policies to avoid causing a downturn.' There is NO CIRCUMSTANCE OR CONDITIONS under which they would ever support NDP policies - which mainstream economists would consider straightforward Keynesian stimulus and refusal to protect the well off at the expense of the weakest.

Their objections are not pragmatic, nonpartisan, reality based or any other variation of 'Just the facts ma'am.' that they pretend they are. They are ideological and based on economic theories strongly disputed by the majority of serious economists. The theories that opposed pensions, public health care, infrastructure spending, child labour laws, the very existence of minimum wages or basic labour and environmental standards as tyranny.

These are extreme radicals far outside of the Alberta mainstream being puffed up and supported by a right wing media controlled by corporate interests who benefit directly from such theories being implemented.

Like the angry extremists calling for Albertan's democratic will to be annulled because the election didn't turn out the way they had hoped, they are driven by a profoundly antidemocratic animus to the will of the people.

Falling for it

Somebody attacked a guy with a knife on the London subway.

Not scared enough about a piece of random street crime on the other side of the world yet?

Okay he also shouted scary Muslim stuff at the same time.

ZOMG! TERRORISM! THIS IS SO MUCH SCARIER NOW!

Congratulations, you just told angry, frustrated, egotistical potential maniacs all over the world that the best way to get noticed for once is to shout Muslim stuff when they do what they already would have done.

And gave the real terrorists what they want. Terror.

19 teenagers alone have been stabbed in London this year, there's been a surge in knife violence. But this one is getting worldwide news because the stabber had some dodgy Islamist pamphlets in his flat and shouted about Syria when he committed the crime.

Hook, line and sinker.

On the Value of Scorn

Of late we've been seeing a lot of bigots, kooks and reactionaries trying to adopt the language of victimization.

Gay rights advocates in the US are not being gracious in their victory over decent people who just wanted to go on treating a whole subset of humanity as second class citizens.  Now various laws designed in the last few years to attack, dehumanize and marginalize gay Americans  topple like dominos and they have the sads and gay rights supporters are being MEAN to them.

A conservative spokes clone accuses Bill Nye of being part of a vast conspiracy to bully people who believe that scientists must just be fibbing with this silly 99% of scientists believe global warming is real and human caused stuff. 

You big meanie!

Scorn is a useful social construct.  It exists for a reason.  In the marketplace of ideas scorn is the health department closure poster on a cafe door.

Some ideas and the people who promote them SHOULD be scorned.  Some positions should be career limiting and socially devastating. 

If you believe this nonsense you are wrong and you should feel bad.

That's how society evolves, less from the new ideas we adopt than from the ones we outgrow.

The Real Benghazi Scandal

For outside observers the spectacle of Republicans shrieking "Benghazi!" for the last few years has been so blatantly partisan propagandizing that you have to wonder how anyone falls for it.

There were more than a dozen attacks on US embassies and consulates under George W. Bush but despite that the Republican Party voted to slash $300 million from Embassy security over the strenuous objections of Obama and the Democrats.

Benghazi is a scandal. Its a Republican scandal.

The Sun: The official media chain of the campaign to destroy Canada

When you think about it, the Sun newspaper chain and Sun TV network being owned by an avowed separatist with the open and outspoken goal of destroying Canada is perhaps not that surprising; The Sun chain has always promoted discord, division, scapegoating and extreme ideology.  They have called for the abolition of things that bring us together as a country like the CBC, the Postal Service and the Canadian tradition of looking out for each other with a robust safety net, public healthcare and support for the weakest among us.  They have attacked workers and First Nations and immigrants and those demonstrating in the streets for a more responsive government.  They have imported a divisive and poisonous strain of political media from the US and the UK and appeared oblivious to the damage they inflict.

The owner of the Sun chain wants to break up Canada.  Is it perhaps time to wonder if he's been working towards that goal for YEARS?

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.

Kelly McParland resurrects a classic racist smear divorced from history and reality

"If the U.S. does go ahead with plans to intervene, it will be doing so despite overwhelming public weariness across the western world with problems in the Middle East and Arab countries, with limited support from other western governments, and with no real appetite from Americans themselves. The experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, the ongoing crisis in Egypt, the apparent lack of any progress in a region addicted to violence, have all been effective in diluting the West’s innate sympathy for the people of the region.  How often can you try to help people who don’t seem to want it and respond largely with anger and even more violence?"

Ahistorical, racist nonsense that deliberately ignores how often the West has intentionally stamped out any stirrings of real democracy in the region.

Wait, what?

Am I the only one weirded out by the reaction of Americans to the shooting of 19 people at the New Orleans Mother's Day Parade? 

"OhGodOhGodOhGod!!!....wait it's just drug and gang related? Whew! We were worried for a second..."

What?

"Public Sector unions are a blight on society"

 ...says convicted felon and well known douchebag.

Whining Corporate Welfare Bums

Quebecor, the owners of Sun News also own Videotron, a cable company serving almost two million subscribers in Quebec and Ontario.  They are before the CRTC right now demanding that Canadians subsidize their Sun News operation by being forced to have it added to all cable packages with an accompanying increase in cable bills.  They claim this is necessary because they aren't seen in enough households and they need this forced government subsidy to survive.

When asked why they don't automatically add Sun News to their own Videotron cable network with prominent channel placement as they have every right to do and are NOT doing now they had no answer.

Why should the Canadian people be forced to provide corporate welfare to a private TV channel that their own owner won't support and promote?

Don't say it!

Ethnic cleansing, forced re-settlement, less political and social rights based on religion or skin colour, laws demanding fealty to the state religion, laws restricting marriage rights between Jews and Arabs - now coerced government sterilization of a minority even if only temporary - but there's one historical comparison with these things you are never ever allowed to make no matter what.

Israel has admitted that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth control injections, according to a report in Haaretz. An Israeli investigative journalist also found that a majority of the women given these shots say they were administered without their knowledge or consent.

"Wow that sounds just like..." Don't finish that sentence you filthy antisemite!

Just a thought

Critics of Israel's actions in the Gaza are once again being tarred with the pro-terrorist, anti-Israel even anti-Semitic brush. Yes, during a prison riot the guards and the people living outside the prison have a right to defend themselves. It doesn't mean the reasons for the prison riot and the methods of quelling the riot AND the justification for the prison's existence in the first place aren't legitimate topics of discussion.

 Also it was just a few decades ago that critics within and without Israel were saying that seeking to undermine Yasser Arrafat and the PLO by promoting and supporting the Islamist opposition to the PLO was an immoral, short-sighted idea that would be bad for Israel in the long term. Hamas was essentially the creation of care and feeding by the Israeli government and people who opposed that creation were accused of being soft on terrorism, being anti-Israel even anti-Semitic.  Please note that the source link for that statement is that well known purveyor of lefty conspiracy theories The Wall street Journal.

 At some point, based on track record alone, maybe critics of Israel should be listened to rather than slurred.

If a Neo-Liberal tells you that there is no alternative...

... and you are being profoundly un-serious to even try to find one - they are plainly and simply lying to you.

Iceland proves that to recover economically you should listen carefully to what the wise, consensus neo-liberal gray eminences sternly tell you about how you must make the poorest pay for the excesses of the richest if you don't want to face complete disaster... and then do the exact opposite.

Iceland was the only European country that dared to default on the bankers. In February 2011 Iceland’s President Olafur R. Grimsson refused to sign a $5B bailout bill and told the bankers he was going to put the bill to a referendum. Although 44 of the 63 members of Parliament had passed the bill, Grimsson said he was responding to a popular demand for a plebiscite after more than 42K of Iceland’s 318K inhabitants signed a petition asking him to block it.

Icelanders absorbed some of the costs itself but forced foreign investors to take the biggest hit. Not deterred by horror stories about an “unthinkable economic demise” that have prevented countries like Greece and Portugal from defaulting, Iceland has proved that default was the best thing it could have done. As a result, not only has the economy not collapsed since last year, but its gross domestic product is expected to increase by 2.6% this year. Much of that growth is based on increased production, mainly in tourism and the fishing industry. In contrast, most other European economies are either stagnant or in decline. Even the Times article admitted that many economists say Iceland’s recovery was aided by the collapse of the banks.

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?

"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.

Damn Peasants!

The Globe and Mail sniffs in outraged offense at the peons daring to inconvenience or insult their betters.

Consider contacting the Globe and Mail and expressing how you feel about this display of patrician disdain.  Try to avoid any tempting four letter words.

Hat tip to Dawg

Alison Redford owes me an apology

Me and the millions of other Canadians and Albertans who care about the environment for suggesting that she has the right to go to Washington and lobby for the Keystone Pipeline but those who oppose the project shouldn't have the same right.

OTTAWA — Premier Alison Redford found herself Thursday embroiled in war of words with the federal NDP as she joined her federal Conservative counterparts slamming official Opposition MPs for travelling to Washington to speak to U.S. lawmakers against the Keystone XL pipeline.

In Ottawa, Redford made the comments the same day she sat down with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in their first official meeting to discuss federal-provincial relations.

The two Calgary politicians, who’ve known each other for almost three decades, spoke about issues such as health-care funding, immigration and a new Canadian energy strategy.

The premier, who arrived back in Alberta late Thursday night, had just returned from her own mission to New York and Washington earlier this week to promote Alberta and the province’s energy interests in the United States.

While the contentious issue of the proposed Keystone oil pipeline came up when she met with U.S. lawmakers, Redford said she did not actively lobby regarding it — unlike federal NDP environment critic Megan Leslie and natural resources critic Claude Gravelle.

“It is not appropriate for us to be providing advice to American decision-makers in that context and to be political activists,” Redford said about the NDP trip this week. “So I am not at all supportive of that and I’m disappointed about it.”

Redford maintained her role is clearly different from that of a federal MP, saying a provincial premier “has a certain set of economic interests, social interests and environmental interests.”

“Whereas what we see going on right now is members of Parliament who certainly represent their constituencies, but that’s the extent of their representation in terms of the Canadian perspective on this issue.”

Linda Duncan, the lone NDP member of Parliament from Alberta, said she was stunned the premier would say that elected officials travelling to Washington is inappropriate.

“I find that absolutely reprehensible,” Duncan said. “How dare they suggest that we don’t have a right to interact with officials from other trading nations. Absolutely appalling.”

How dare you Premier Redford?  How dare you?

Arguing that Canadians who have science on their side - both the science of climate and the science of economics - don't have the right to have their point of view represented while making an insultingly specious and lamely hypocritical argument that the rules are somehow different for her is so contemptuously despicable its frankly breathtaking.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.