Murray Dobbin Nails It

The most excellent journalist, author and activist who should be in prairie dog more often--oh for a 40-page weekly magazine!--has a terrific big-picture look at Stephen Harper's malignant proroguerry up on his blog. It's recommended reading. Check it out.

We're Officially An International Embarrassment...

The Economist has caught wind of Stephen Harper's call to prorogue parliament, and thinks we're a bunch of suckers if we don't do anything about it.

(The Economist)

Our PM Problem

Dear Santa, can I have a new prime minister for Christmas?

Calling Stephen Harper a dangerous extremist who's ruining our country is a popular thing to do on Dog Blog for a couple of reasons: first, we naively think pointing out the man's problems might encourage Tory-loving Sask voters to take a closer look at him and second because the guy's actions and ideas scare the crap out of us.

Anyway, lest you perceive us as radicals, here are the strong words of accomplished journalist and columnist Haroon Siddiqui , who gave the Minifie lecture at the University of Regina a few years back:

Stephen Harper is centralizing power in the PMO on an unprecedented scale; defying Parliament (by refusing to comply with a Commons vote demanding the files on Afghan prisoner abuse); derailing public inquiries (by a parliamentary committee and the Military Police Complaints Commission); muzzling/firing civil servants; demonizing critics; and dragging the military into the line of partisan political fire.

"When you add up all that this government has done, it's truly scary," says Gar Pardy, former head of the foreign ministry's consular services. He's the one who organized the petition that defended diplomat Richard Colvin from Tory mudslinging, and which has been signed by 133 retired ambassadors.

You can read the whole column here. Please do--it's worth your time. Stephen Harper is baaad--and it's not just prairie dog saying that. (Toronto Star)

They found the Auschwitz Sign

For those of you like me who missed the news last night, police found the stolen sign from the entrence to the infamous Nazi death camp-turned holocaust memorial. It's bust into three bits but at least it's been recovered. Five alleged assholes have been arrested. More here. (Guardian)

Blarrrrrrgh!

I don't "do" Saturday mornings and I'm even iffy on afternoons but there's too much report to take the day COMPLETELY off, so here's your evening news links. All bad news, all things you need to know. Sorry about this. Better put a helmet on before you read further.

1 COPENHAGEN RUINED! RUINED! Global political leadership and capitalism fail utterly to sign a meaningful, binding deal to save our future civilization. What came out of Copenhagen is practically useless. It's the failingest failure that ever failed and I hate it and it sucks and we're all fucked. Epic. Fail. (Guardian, NPR, BBC, Guardian again, Globe And Mail (cartoon), Grist, CBC, Desmogblog, Green Party Of Canada/Elizabeth May, and one more from the Guardian--poor George Monbiot, who just calls it like it is.)

Thanks to sitting on our asses and sticking our heads in the ground (we're flexible!), and listening to lunatics like Sarah Palin, Lord Viscount Christopher Monckton Of Bugeye-Pompington, and Ian Plimer, the denial dude Rex Murphy has the contrarian crush on, our children's world is almost certainly going to be much, much worse than yours was. (How Stuff Works).

We can bail out banks. We can invade countries that never attacked us. We can't agree to save the climate. IF anyone's left to write a history of our species in a hundred years this disaster will be one of the biggest jokes going.

(steam blowing out ears)

The public has been misinformed and nakedly lied to, which works because we're all mostly decent people who aren't experts who tend to expect the best in others and when there's two groups arguing about something complicated, we assume they both have reasonable points. That's how the liars trick us into being polite when we should be freaking the fuck out en mass (and on their lying asses). Like prairie dog printed last edition: the climate liars fucked our future. Liars? We probably should've called them terrorists. Because they are. Madmen and terrorists and climate war criminals, defending indefensible economic interests.

(Top of head blows off like a raccoon in a geyser)

BUT: I refuse--refuse!--to believe that our species is incapable of acting in its collective interest of self-preservation. Unlikely to do so, yes. Sadly. Incapable? Absolutely not. I'll probably be alive for another 30-40 years and I'm really interested to see how this turns out. Maybe people will wake up, hold their leaders to account, organize, demonstrate, etc? Stranger things have happened.

Oh and Rex Myurphy? You're an awful man. (Globe And Mail)

IN OTHER NEWS...

2 AUSCHWITZ SIGN THEFT Holy motherfuckers, Batman. Maddest I've been about vandalism in, well, maybe ever. (CBC/Canadian Press)

3 AN AMERICAN COUP In a new book, the FBI is accused of abusing their power in a bid to jail Bill Clinton after Monicagate--by the former president's secret service guards. (New York Times) How come no one "abuses their power" to go after war criminals like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney? Oh, right. Fascism. I forgot. American fascism says blowjobs are an unforgiveable sin but it's okay to bomb countries under false pretences, spy on your own population, blow the cover of your own country's secret agents for political payback against whistleblowers, torture your enemies, shepard huge contracts to your business buds, cut taxes to the super wealthy while ordinary people laguish in poverty, deregulate everything until your country goes bankrupt, blah blah etc. blah. Fascism is fun!

4 IRAN ADMITS ELECTION PROTESTORS BEATEN TO DEATH IN PRISON The election-stealing country's judiciary says that's the facts Jack. Oopsie doodles! (MSNBC)

5 LAME, WATERED DOWN HEALTH CARE BILL HAS THE VOTES TO PASS, WELL, AT THE MOMENT ANYWAY So yippee for America, or something, I guess. Too bad about women who want to have abortions, but, whatever. Lots of American women don't really seem to care about their rights much anyway. (Washington Post)

6 POLL DANCING IGGY WANTS ANOTHER YEAR OF STEPHEN HARPER? A federal election in 2010? Nope, nope, nope, says Ignatieff. (Ottawa Citizen)

Anti-Abortion Religious Fascists Piss Me Off

So my sadistic, Whitworth-poking publisher handed me a press release from LifeCanada. The release was about a survey LifeCanada commissioned on Canadians' attitudes toward abortion.

According to LifeCanada, Canadians don't much like abortion. Surprise!

The headline reads "Poll: Canadians Favour Abortion Limits", and the press release opens thusly: "For the ninth year in a row a majority of Canadians have rejected the status quo on abortion. Over half say there should be legal protection for human life before birth and over two-thirds say abortions should only be paid for by taxpayers in medical emergencies or in cases of rape or incest."

Now, I'd be curious to hear what percentage of Canadians agree with LifeCanada's mission statement: "To promote the sanctity of all human life from fertilization to natural death through public education. To advocate for the preborn, the disabled, the infirm and the elderly who are all uniquely created by God."

The Toronto Star has a column on LifeCanada here.

You might think LifeCanada is a kooky extreme Christian group with little to no real power, but I say the thinking they represent is dangerous and becoming more popular. More and more Canadians--especially in Saskatchewan--are electing politicians to the governing Conservative party who share LifeCanada's desire to impose their pushy, old-fashioned religious garbage on the rest of us through laws and/or the sneaky and underhanded de-funding of services. For example, just within the last month, Conservative Saskatoon-Dumbolt MP Brad Trost helped organize a petition to defund Planned Parenthood International and Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott (Ass-katoon-Wanuskewin) praised the inadequate abortion services in his city.

This holy-rollers can't separate their extreme religious beliefs from their public jobs serving ALL Canadians, and have no business being in politics--but Canadians keep electing them.

This American-style right-wing garbage is moving from the fringes to the mainstream. It has to stop.

We're living in degenerating times. From tax-cut anarchists getting away with saying whatever stupid crap they want in public without being laughed off their podiums, to wanton enviroment destruction, to health care privatization to freedom of (AND FROM) religion, Canada is descending into ignorant and mean-spirited politics.

Yeah, we're all going to have to get a little more political to fight these shenanigans.

Things we can all do: donate to our favourite, non-Conservative political party and/or publicly active, non-profit advocacy group (Council Of Canadians, David Suzuki Foundation, Planned Parenthood, habitat for Humanity, etc.).

E-mail letters to newspapers magazines and other media. (Make your letters relevent to something they've published/broadcast recently, stick to the word limits and don't ramble: keep to one topic.)

Make it known to loudmouths and idiots around you that you have zero patience for the idea that their goofy personal religious views should be enshrined in law. When some jackass starts talking about saving babies or how immigration is ruining the country, don't just sit there and take it. Tell them they're a jerk and demand they shape up. We've got to get peer pressure working for us.

There's your Wednesday pep talk, fellow heroes. Now get to work. You and me, we've got to save this country from the hobgoblins who want to take hard-won rights away and drag us back to the 17th century.

And by the power of Greyskull, we're going to have fun doing it.

Grrrr!

Faces of Douche

Meet Monty.
Monty is a Mountie.
More specifically, Monty is one of the Mounties who killed Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver airport last March.
Apparently he also killed a guy while driving drunk. But he's not getting charged, because he pulled some bullshit prank.
Naturally. Why? Well, because he's a cop, of course, though naturally they'll put some sort of spin on it. Which we'll all believe. Because the police always tell the truth at all times, right?

Saturday Anger-Making News Bummers

A couple short updates before I plunge back into the editing maelstrom.

First, yesterday the Supreme Court ruled on a Wal-Mart labour controversy. Followers of the story will recall the corporate department store chain shut down a Jonquière, Quebec store in 2005 after its employees formed a union. The employees howled union-busting but Wal-Mart said pffft, the store just wasn't profitable. The case slithered up the legal food chain to the Supreme Court--and yesterday that court ruled with Wal-Mart. So much for activist judges. (Montreal Gazette)

Second, freedom of speech fans have a new one to get worked up about. On Wednesday night a U.S. journalist was harrassed at the border by Canadian guards who, according to the reporter, obsessively demanded to know if she was going to talk about the Olympics while in Canada. Amy Goodman, the host of the U.S. radio program Democracy Now was travelling to speak at well-known radical terrorist institution the Vancover Public Library to promote her new book, Breaking The Sound Barrier. The incident stinks. It sounds like border guards were paranoid about criticism of the Olympics and wanted to stifle it. This is crap and there need to be a full investigation. Canada is not a country that should be harrassing journalists. You can read the Globe and Mail story here, and here's the blog entry on the Democracy Now website.

UPDATE: And here's a link to Rabble's comprehensive coverage, which includes audio of Goodman.

Only Patriots For White Presidents

I've been dilly-dallying on posting a link to this terrifc article in last Saturday's Globe And Mail and here we are, almost a week later--so it's now or never. Writer Sonia Verma looks at the base, unthinking predjudice of Americans who are criticising their current president after eight goddamn years of sitting on their hands while their last leader--a white, warmongering, apparent good-ole-boy who was actually a well-connected millionaire--spent their country into ruin.

Americans' political double standards are mind-blowing.

Not Six In The Morning: Glenn Beck Edition

I just don't have time to post the usual morning news run-down today, so instead, here's a link to what is probably a good (I don't have time to read it!) feature on Fox News lunatic Glenn Beck. (Salon)

It's the best thing I have right now. Apologies.

More On That Jerk With The Rifle At The Obama Rally

Turns out his show of force was planned in advance--police had been notified and the "journalist" who interviewed him is apparently a friend and fellow libertarian wackjob. Here's the story on Talking Points Memo.

So, instead of this being a spontaneous event where a lone asshole shows up with a gun to intimidate people who disagree with him it's an organized, calculated show of force by an organized group of armed right-wingers and fringe media creeps. Phew! A group of heavily-armed, self-absorbed egomaniacs with axes to grind and a following is so much better than one loon with a machine gun. I feel so much better about America's prospects for the future now.

The gunman's name is supposedly "Chris B.". In the interview he attacks the public option in health care by saying, and I quote, ""We will forcefully resist people imposing their will on us through the strength of the majority with a vote." (I wonder how he feels about gay marriage.)

Naturally, this guy also says taxation is theft--one of my favourite psycho anarchist right-wing talking points.

Here's the charming little video where he says many pleasant things.





Of course this is all insane garbage. No one is talking about taking his "right" to private healthcare insurance away. But most Americans want a public system. They voted for it. They should get it.

These gun-toting maniacs really need their own country. Ideally on Mars. In the meantime, where, exactly, is the FBI? Yeah, yeah I know, probably spying on some neighbourhood anti-poverty organization somewhere. Snort.

Here's the Guardian's take on the whole thing, by the way.

Obama Joker Artist Interviewed

The scoundrel behind that portrait of Obama as the Joker has been found--and he's not the conservative you'd think he is. From the Los Angeles Times:

When cryptic posters portraying President Obama as the Joker from "Batman" began popping up around Los Angeles and other cities, the question many asked was, Who is behind the image? Was it an ultra-conservative grassroots group or a disgruntled street artist going against the grain? Nope, it turns out, just a 20-year-old college student from Chicago. Bored during his winter school break, Firas Alkhateeb, a senior history major at the University of Illinois, crafted the picture of Obama with the recognizable clown makeup using Adobe's Photoshop software. Alkhateeb had been tinkering with the program to improve the looks of photos he had taken on his clunky Kodak camera. The Joker project was his grandest undertaking yet. Using a tutorial he'd found online about how to "Jokerize" portraits, he downloaded the October 23 Time Magazine cover of Obama and began digitally painting over it. Four or five hours later, he happily had his product.

Full, very interesting story here.

The pictures, of course, have been used by right-wingnuts to attack Obama as a socialist. The artist's critism of the President, however, is that there "wasn't much substance to him".

As for the Conservative red-baiting? "To accuse him of being a socialist is really ... immature," Alkhateeb tells the Los Angeles Times. "First of all, who said being a socialist is evil?"

Man Shows Up At Obama Rally With Assault Rifle

photo swiped from Daily Kos.

Holy crap. From Talking Points Memo:

About 12 people were carrying guns, including at least one semi-automatic assault rifle, outside a building where President Obama was speaking today. No one was arrested outside the VFW National Convention in Phoenix, according to the Associated Press, where hundreds of people demonstrated both for and against health care reform. There are no reports that the 12 were part of an organized group. The man spotted carrying the assault rifle and a pistol, who gave his name only as "Chris", was asked why he was armed. "Because I can do it," he said. "In Arizona, I still have some freedoms."

So was the scary gun guy arrested by Homeland Security? Ha ha ha, of course not.

Two police officers kept close by. Carrying guns, including the AR-15 assault rifle, is legal under Arizona law. "If we need to intervene, we will intervene at that time," said Detective J. Oliver.

Full article here. (TPM)

Two points of my own.

One: what would've happened to any anti-war activist who showed up at a Bush or Cheney event with a weapon like that a year ago? Exactly. (Thanks Blaine.) Funny how America has different standards for peaceful liberal protestors than it does for armed conservatives. Where is this "liberal bias in the media" the Fox News pundits are always wailing about, again? This guy isn't even in a free speech cage.

Two: This man is clearly threatening political violence. He's intimidating health care supporters with the implicit promise of mass murder should they not back down.

Meet the face (well, the back of the head) of the anti-healthcare movement. They're fucking brownshirts, but better armed than those Nazis ever dreamed of. Next step: smashing windows, beating and killing political opponents, assassinating politicians, riots, misery etc. Welcome to real, honest to god fascism, America. At least it's not a white-only party.

The politicians always say you aren't supposed to negotiate with terrorists? Well, so be it, I say. This thug is a terrorist. He can't get his way through peaceful conversation. He can't get his way through democracy because his views (which I promise you are insane) don't have majority support.

He can only get his way if he frightens people into silence with his (legal!!!) assault rifle.

Most Americans want public health care (CBS.) The Democrats have to stop trying to build consensus with Republican saboteurs, they have to stop trying to appease the lunatics and they have to force this thing through. It's what Americans want. If the conservative lunatic fringe explodes into violence, I'm sorry but, well...they're going to anyway, sooner or later. Right? Deal with it now.

You can't stop working for a better world because the nuts have guns and are holding everyone hostage. Health care now, America.

Guess that's one way to silence your critics ...

I just wonder how long it's going to be until the Republicans call on Blackwater, or XE as they're now known, to overthrow the government of he United States. And what would the Pentagon do in such a crisis?

Read and watch this (The Disaffected Liberal via Countdown with Keith Olberman). And put money on the U.S. going into a civil war within 10 years.

Why am I losing respect for cops and the justice system?

Let me count the ways...

Twenty-one lousy days! And some sort of conditional suspended sentence at that? Are you friggin' serious?

If I went on this sort of a rampage, they'd be piping the sunshine in to me for many a long day, I feel quite certain of that. But apparently this asshat of a cop gets some sort of a special deal?

Let's recap, shall we?

He downs a couple dozen drinks. Commandeers a car, while lying about being a Vancouver cop. Threatens to "destroy" the driver -- who has since died, though the circumstances of that death are never explained in the article -- though based on this asshole's conduct I'm more than prepared to believe he killed the poor son of a bitch to keep him quiet.

Then he instructs the driver to take him to another nightclub, where he meets two other cops -- one of which is a "use of force" instructor at the local police academy, for the love of friggin' Mike.

Too drunk to control himself, he gets into a fight with a hapless friggin' newspaper seller that doesn't snap to quite quickly enough for this little nascent brownshirt -- so he and said instructor assault the newsie so savagely his doctor still won't clear him to drive months later? An assault, I should add, that a number of bystanders said was racially motivated?

And when the real on duty police show up, what do these three pricks do? Try to pin it on the victim, naturally.

Thus confirming what I've always known. That when it's called a police state, it's NEVER a good thing. Why didn't they just taser him already? Dead men don't talk, after all.

These pricks should remember that their ability to police ALWAYS depends on their perceived legitimacy.

The second the citizens they're purporting to defend start to believe they're just being preyed on... well, then it's a whole new violent bloody mess of a ball game.

After all, when they kick out your front door, how you gonna go? With your hands on your head or on the trigger of your gun?

Ronald Reagan Hated You

Further to item #1 in my Six In The Morning, please enjoy this vintage recording of Ronald Reagan attacking public health care on behalf of a powerful special-interest group called the American Medical Association.



(And here’s some context from the New York Times’ Paul Krugman.)

Crap like this is why I freak out when I hear even a whisper suggesting the Canadian Medical Association might support ANY degree of private health care. Whenever ANYONE uses the word “socialism” to scapegoat political opponents or frighten the public, I think of haters like Reagan, whose evil bullshit helped entrench the for-profit U.S. health care system. Which makes lots of money for the U.S. insurance industry while failing countless Americans. This stuff makes me extra-furious because thanks to America’s bad example, Canada’s beloved public system is always under the shadow of privatization.

You know, I’m just a (co-) small business owner who wants to make enough money to enjoy the one life I get and have a fun job with swell co-workers. And I’m smart enough to realize it’s usually the so-called “socialists” who bring forward the ideas that actually benefit lower-middle class me and my scruffy company. They’re the ones who talk about fair taxation, a strong public sector, protecting the environment, looking out for the vulnerable. etc. etc. All the sane stuff I support.

Unless you’re a multi-millionaire it’s in your interests to be on the “socialist” team, too. Best of all, you don’t actually have to BE a socialist. You'll just have to put up with name-calling by prostitute politicians who care more about their special interest group buddies than they do about you.

From Anger To Action?

For those of you like me who are staring at the U.S. in horror and fascination after a couple recent political shootings--the murder of a Kansas abortion doctor and the killing of a guard at a holocaust museum--here's a relevant article on Salon by Joan Walsh. Walsh explores the connection between the venom of Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of right-wing television's angry men and the murder of abortion doctors and attacks on holocaust museums.

Here's a longish excerpt:

And there's clearly been an uptick in rhetoric suggesting that white men are having their rights abridged by the Obama administration, especially since his pick of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. In a debate with Buchanan a couple of weeks ago, he told me that what was happening to white men was exactly what happened to black men — he didn't give me any examples of lynching — and that it was open season on white men. Wealthy Sen. Lindsay Graham suggested an average white guy like himself wouldn't get a fair shake from Sotomayor, and now even the new face of the GOP, Michael Steele, has said the same thing. If I were a marginal, unemployed, angry, racist white man right now, I'd be hearing a lot of mainstream conservative support for my point of view. Can that help create a climate for more violence? I don't know. I hope not, but I don't know.

Full story here. Good reading if you're interested in the ongoing psychosis of conservative, white, Christian America.

Oh Good, More Terrorism

You've probably already heard this but an elderly lunatic murdered a guard at a Holocaust museum in Washington this afternoon. The killer is believed to be a white-supremacist holocaust denier (update: and former Mensa member!) who once went to jail for attempting to kidnap members of the U.S. federal reserve.

Once again, unhappy individual + mental illness + racism, religion, guns and America = people get killed.

More here at the Washington Post. You might have to set up an account to read this, so if that sounds like a pain in the ass just go to the Guardian, here.

GEORGE VS. GEORGE

Kooky British MP George Galloway won't be coming to Canada. A federal judge has upheld the ban.

Last time I was ranting about this I said it was ridiculous to bar Galloway when we were welcoming George W. Bush, whose administration endorsed torture, flouted the Geneva convention, launched a massive domestic spy program, bombed and invaded Iraq (a country that has never attacked the U.S.), bankrupt the U.S., denied global warming, undermined science while pandering to faith-based psychopaths and, why not, probably killed and cooked goddamn kittens.

But why focus on Dubya? Surely we must've let other thugs into Canada.

Well of course we have. One such thug is the late, unlamented Indonesian dictator (oops, soory, leader sounds much respectable) Suharto, welcomed into Canada for the 1997 Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference. You might remember the event: RCMP pepper-sprayed protestors (and jouralists, including, famously a cameraman) who were quite reasonably miffed that their country let a (western-backed) tyrant implicated in genocide in east Timor in.

Remember? Then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien joked about pepper spray at a press conference. At the time I fully expected the government to fall. I was so silly and naive.

You can read more about Suharto, and the West's relationship with him, here (the Guardian).
You can revisit the CBC's coverage of APEC here.

So, to review:
Warmonger/torturer/idiot: that's okay.
Tyrant/genocidal dictator/good old-fashioned imperialist puppet: that's fine
Obnoxious, belligerant pacifist politician who criticizes Israel and sometimes pretends he's a kittycat: NOT ALLOWED IN CANADA!

Even the United States let Galloway in. This is ridiculous and unacceptable and unbelievably selective. And if it turns out Minister Kenny Vs. Spenny directed officials to restrict Galloway's entry, he'll need to resign.

At least the judge recognized there are problems with the prohibition on Galloway, which is sort of a partial victory, I guess.

But overall: not cool, Canada. Not cool.

Another Cat Video

Uhhh...



Full context here.

Okay, I'm not saying George Galloway isn't mental. I'm just saying he shouldn't be banned from speaking in Canada. A pussycat like Galloway clearly is no terrorist.