January's Morons of the Month

In my last video, I already went after some of the bigger idiots and monsters we've seen in the first month of 2011 -- like Sarah Palin, The Tea Party, Fox News, and of course Jared Loughner. In this entry, I'm going to go on a bit about the other pissants and buffoons.

The mainstream Republican Party, for using an anti-abortion bill to REDEFINE RAPE. I'm completely serious. Of course, the so-called Pro-Life Robots are all kissing the GOP's boots for this bill, either not knowing or not caring that if you're underage or drugged and get abused, it sucks to be you (according to The Righteous Right _tm).

The Toronto Sun (and various conservative pundits/trolls) for telling Canadians who actually care about freedom, to get over what happened at the Toronto G20 summit. Isn't that a little like telling the survivors of 9/11 or The Holocaust to get over their pain? I don't care if police brutality is worse in other parts of the world, the fact is that 1,000 Canadians were essentially assaulted and kidnapped, for no reason whatsoever -- THAT'S FUCKING ILLEGAL, YOU MORONS. Furthermore, I'd love to know how the Sun reporters who were also wrongly arrested, feel about their co-workers and employers basically throwing them under the bus for doing their jobs.

Emperor Stephen Harper and his supporters, because they attack the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois for stoking the flames of an election, AFTER the CRAP Party unleashes its attack ads. And before anyone brings up the Liberal attack ads, I do flag all of them as spam when I see them, but I should also point out that at least the Liberal ads are attacking Harper's POLICIES, whereas the CRAP ads are attacking Michael Ignatieff PERSONALLY (and generally not telling a single bit of truth). The fact that people still expect me to think that a guy who spent MULTIPLE BILLIONS of Canadian tax dollars on projects that do no good whatsoever for Canada, and lets our industries be sold out from under us, is IN ANY WAY GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY, is outrageous. That's like saying that The Flat Earth Society should be in charge of the Smithsonian Institute, or the Aryan Brotherhood in charge of Amnesty International.

That's it for now -- give them hell.

Toronto's Pooched

So last night,Rob Ford apparently made good on his deal with Lucifer, because he is now the mayor of Toronto. That's right, a racist, sexist, homophobic, alcoholic, violent loudmouth, who hasn't done ANYTHING in his many years on city council, managed to become the head of Canada's largest and most powerful city. As if it wasn't already hypocritical that a guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth, is bitching about downtown elites, now we have a clown in high office, who openly admits that the "plan" he ran on, to balance Toronto's budget, won't work.

So I repeat my statement from "Local Constipation": either Toronto's spending won't be significantly changed in the next four years, or he'll gut so much funding that he didn't dare reveal during the election, that the city will become a festering cesspool (which he already sees T.O. as anyway). It's also very likely that a man as self-absorbed, immature, and boorish as Rob Ford, will suddenly grow to like those perks of the mayor's office after all, and change his mind about getting rid of them. In any case, anyone who seriously think this guy is going to clean up Toronto, is in for a huge shock.

Not only that, but in the face of constantly-visible brutality, deceit, and oppression from Toronto's police force, Rob Ford -- a man with a fairly lengthy criminal record himself -- actually had the nerve to say that the police were too soft on G20 protesters in June. To be honest, for this reason alone I don't want to go to Toronto AT ALL if I can avoid it, and would advise everyone else reading this to do the same. I for one, don't want to go near a city, whose mayor apparently thinks that the only thing wrong with the cops is that they aren't allowed to shoot jaywalkers.

In the meantime, the best case scenario I can see -- barring Hell freezing over, and Ford suddenly changing his attitude -- is that the new city council will hate his guts so much that they'll obstruct everything he puts forward, and nothing will get done (which, no doubt, he'll run on in his next election, if he doesn't have David Miller's integrity and remove himself from that race). More likely, this clown will just do to Toronto, what Stephen Harper's been doing to Canada in the last year alone: turn the city into a global joke, run it into the ground, and leave it to some other sucker to bury the corpse.

Local Constipation

Speak Out, Canada!

G20 Inquiries -- Kinda Sorta

So after much howling, some investigating is taking place, over the G20 policing. The Toronto Police Association is supposedly looking into its own actions (because the truth ALWAYS comes out, when someone investigates him or herself), and the Ontario Ombudsman -- a frequent thorn in Premier Dalton McGuinty's side -- is looking into the secretly approved rules that allowed some of the arrests near the fence. Too bad that the majority of the outrage is focused on the federally-controlled Integrated Security Unit (or ISU) rounding up, beating, and jailing peaceful protesters and journalists for 30+ hours, without charges or access to a lawyer. Not to mention, the many allegations that prisoners were not only jailed in barbaric conditions, but threatened with rape and further assault. Not to mention, that no one has been totally forthcoming on who told the cops they could search and arrest people who have committed no crime, in places that were not only far from the security zone, but were supposedly guaranteed free speech zones. Not to mention, that this does not address the question of why the Black Bloc was allowed to rampage in the first place (the rambler asked rhetorically).

Much bellyaching has been done by our politicians, about how the ISU did very well under extreme circumstances (even though they allowed a small riot to take place, and then "compensated" with behaviour that ranges from unprofessional to illegal). Most of the media either turns a blind eye to this police state that appeared in Canada's largest city (eg. Global National inserting a clip from a totally unrelated riot, to make the protesters look bad), or flat out attacks anyone who has a problem with it (eg. The Toronto Sun and National Post, who are competing to be Canadian print's version of Fox News). This is particularly strange, given that every news organization on the ground during the protest -- including the Post and Sun -- had people who were arrested and beaten, just for doing their jobs. Even in my hometown of Hamilton, there are polls suggesting that most of my neighbours don't think we need a public inquiry, into this $1 billion exercise in fascism. Even the political opposition, aside from some token outrage -- if that -- has done nothing.

No one seems to mind, that our rights were arbitrarily, secretly, and unnecessarily suspended by people who have no right whatsoever to make those decisions. No one seems to mind, that we have been repeatedly lied to and abused by our leaders and watchdogs. No one seems to mind, that the exact kind of threats and violence we see from corrupt dictatorships, is happening right now, in North America. No one seems to mind, that Canadian leaders and police think that simply speaking out, warrants being kidnapped, assaulted, and being regarded as a terrorist.

Across this country, and around the world -- in graves and battlefields, past and present -- our veterans are weeping. The sacrifices they have made, and continue to make, for our freedoms, have just been rendered in vain.

G20 Aftermath

Toronto the Police State

FanExpo FAIL

Gay Pride vs. Facist Ottawa

Last week was definitely not a good one for Emperor Harper and his Neo-Conservative government. Not only did he repeatedly embarrass himself at an international conference -- particularly by getting caught in a lie about Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff -- but here at home his cohorts have gotten in a snit over Tourism grants being given to the Toronto Gay Pride Parade. Evidently, some Conservative backbenchers -- who, apart from Saskatchewan's Brad Trost, didn't have the balls to want to be named -- took great offence to Tourism Minister Diane Ablonczy not only giving a cheque to the parade's organizers, but being photographed alongside drag queens while doing so. I guess it's official -- the Tories don't care about even trying to look tolerant anymore, they're just going to rule by prejudice.

Now look, I know that Gay Pride Parades are touchy in some places, but leave the family values crap be for a minute and pay attention. The whole point of the Tourism Events Program is to promote annual events that attract major tourism and attention to Canadian cities -- and Toronto's Pride events fit that to a T. Also, spare me the complaints about barely-clothed gays and lesbians strutting through the streets and acting kind of raunchy -- for one thing, given that most of that complaining is brought up by right-wing special interest groups who barely think gays are human, my bet is that they're exaggerating to at least some extent. For another thing, in terms of risque behaviour, you can say the same thing about virtually ANY large party in the summer -- Caribanna being a fairly good example -- yet that doesn't cause an uproar. Neither does any other large event, where -- let's be honest -- there's probably some violence, drug abuse, and sex taking place where people generally aren't looking.

In any case, the Tories have flat out stated that their problem with Ms. Ablonczy was that "The TV shots of her with transvestites inflamed some people." Do these really sound like the sort of people you'd WANT to impress? I sure as hell don't want them in charge of my life and liberty, either. Those who support this decision often cry that some so-called gay agenda is being forced down their throats at these parades -- well, personally, whenever I've done the radical thing and actually talked to gays and lesbians, I've never had any political position even talked about, never mind shoved in my face. In fact, if one is really uncomfortable with gay pride events, there's a very easy solution: don't go to them.

Unfortunately, as the new movie Bruno makes very clear, the reason why these sort of complaints are taken seriously is because putting down gays is one of the last socially accepted bigotries that we have anymore. If there was this same outcry over Black Pride, Women's Pride, Indian Pride, French-Canadian Pride, or any other sort of group, then the Tories would get thrown out of office -- and knowing some of their members, probably arrested too. Then again, if it were White Straight Conservative Christian Pride, I bet you that they would not only be welcomed openly, but that Tourism fund would give them a blank cheque. Let's face it, North America is nowhere near as welcome and tolerant as it pretends to be. You just need to be a visible minority in a big city, or in... shall we say, more rural areas... to find that out. That's it for me.

Epic Security Fail!

Air travel has been a fairly routine part of our lives for about fifty years, so we all know about the extensive security we see at airports, and certainly after 9/11 and numerous bombings we're aware of the risks that make us need the security. There's just one problem: it isn't there as much as we might think. This is yet another thing in a long list of complaints I've made that might get me on a watchlist some day, but apparently some Canadian airports are about as secure as a screen door on a submarine.

Recently, Transport Minister John Baird and Liberal Senator Colin Kenny went undercover through the country's busiest airport, Pearson International in Toronto. They were monitored from a distance by police officers, as they repeatedly went through restricted areas, including the tarmac and within reach of several aircraft. So suffice it to say, if someone wanted to put a bomb on a plane in Toronto, it would evidently not be very hard. To make matters worse, the same sort of thing is known or suspected to take place at several other airports across North America alone.

This has already royally pissed off a lot of people, and with good reason. Travellers and taxpayers pay through the nose for security measures at these airports, and we put up with tedious things like undoing belt buckles and taking off our shoes in certain areas because we're led to believe it will help prevent another terrorist attack. But the whole thing is kind of pointless, if no one working at the airport can be bothered to lock a goddamn door.

Naturally, the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, which runs security at Pearson, is not only denying that there's a security leak, but is punishing the on-site police officers who monitored the operation. Excuse me fellas, but that's not reassuring the public, that's covering your asses. The cops involved were doing their jobs, as well as answering to a higher government authority than you -- so your punishing them is called "retaliation" in legal and labour circles, good luck getting out of that one. Also, if a couple of guys in ballcaps and jackets -- with no ID -- can just waltz up to an airplane with no questions asked, you don't need to be a genius to know that that's a security breach. Enough said.

Canadian Police State

I read in the news this morning, about people having had the brakes of their cars cut, and their homes vandalized, because of who their supporting in an election. This sounds like the sort of thing that you'd hear about in South America, or Zimbabwe... but guess where it actually happened: Mid-town Toronto. The people attacked, were all Liberal supporters. So to anyone who's called me paranoid, when I said Canada is heading for a dictatorship, take a look around!

Apparently this happened last night, to about 14 homes that had Liberal signs set up in their yards. Some of their cars also had key marks scratched into them, and their homes painted with slogans attacking Liberal politicians.

Incidentally, I'm not exagerrating when I say that this is the sort of thing you hear about in foreign police states. Back in the late 80's, when Manuel Noriega was being voted out of power in Panama, he had soldiers roam around the country to arrest, torture, murder, and terrorize anyone supporting his opponent. They were called dignity battalions.

I'm not directly saying the the Conservatives are responsible for this, but as I've said before their supporters are so aggressive and intolerant that I wouldn't put it past them. Besides, the slogans said things like "Bob Rae lies", so this doesn't seem like the sort of thing a stoned teenager would do.

Whoever is responsible for this terrorism, they cannot be allowed to win. To anyone in Canada reading this, do not let anyone bully you, or threaten you, for what you believe is right. This country is above that. And to those cowards who are responsible for this, go take a dive into the St. Lawrence river, this country is a lot better off without you. Enough said.