Stephen Harper marks 9/11 with racism

Emperor Harper has once again done something disgusting. With the ten year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks coming up, he has said in a CBC interview that the greatest threat to Canada is NOT the recession, or hatred, or oppressive government... but "Islamacism".

Of course, this is being gobbled up by the white supremacists on countless blogs and news sites, as they once again call for all Muslims to be wiped out of the world at large (or at least kicked out of North America, regardless of whether or not they've actually done anything wrong).

It's for reasons like this, that I'm seriously reluctant to mark 9/11 directly, on Bored on the Corner -- while the loss of life from the attacks themselves was certainly tragic, I'm much more upset by how a large number of us have used that as an excuse to wage war against anyone and anything that is not conservative, white, and Christian. 9/11 was more than just the statistically worst terrorist attack in North America. It was the rallying cry for a new breed of right-wingers to dominate our politics, and bring back a sheer hatred that blends the worst elements of McCarthyism and -- yes, I'm going there -- Nazism.

9/11 gave birth to a world where even supposedly enlightened Western states endorsed torturing random brown people, or locking up their countrymen for having a mind of their own. It gave birth to a world, where simply taking a photograph within a mile of an airport, is enough to have you branded as a terrorist. It gave birth to a world where we largely ignored the people who were really responsible for that mass murder, and instead paint bullseyes on Canadians and Europeans if they happen to tolerate Muslims and gay people.

It gave birth to a world where we were supposedly fighting radical Muslims to preserve our freedoms... yet we are accepting of radical Christians taking away our freedoms anyway.

Stephen Harper's stupid and horrible remarks are not the first instance of this, but they are the best example we've seen of it from a world leader. The fact that a lot of people are cheering him on, is what really makes me grieve.

In the worst corner of Hell, Osama bin Laden is laughing at us.

Burning the Qu'ran (reprise)

The Ground Zero Mosque

Security Soap Opera

Air Force Dumb/PR Fail

Ok, in case anyone thinks that I never go after the left wing in these blogs... apparently you haven't been reading for very long, but no matter. As we know by now, Barack Obama's publicity people had the bright idea last week, of staging a photo op to update their pics of Air Force One. Specifically their idea was to have the Presidential jet fly by the Statue of Liberty, close enough that you could spit on the torch... And do it for real. Hmph, and comedians were saying that Obama wouldn't give them anything to make fun of...

Honestly, how stupid could you possibly be, to think that this was even remotely a good idea? This is New York City -- Ground Zero -- and by now it just MIGHT be at the point, where seeing jetliners at all doesn't give the locals flashbacks. But what does someone want to do? Buzz the fucking shoreline with a 747, being chased by a fucking Harrier, no less! What do these idiots do for an encore, shoot off surprise fireworks at Columbine?!

Furthermore, coming from a video and filmmaking background, I have to ask: have these guys never heard of a thing called PHOTOSHOP? You know, that computer program that lets you stick people's faces onto animals for a joke? Trust me, if effects professionals can take Christopher Lee's head, put it on a 30 year old stuntman, and make him look like he's fighting Sonic the Hedgehog, it's not that hard to add an airplane to a shot of Liberty Island. I was able to do that in college, just to kill time between classes. These PR guys were presumably hired for their skills and creativity, so why did they show neither in a case as blatantly obvious as this? That's it for me.

Right Wing, Wrong Way

Change is slow. On top of that, the only people who completely embrace it are the ones who didn't like the status quo in the first place. I ought to keep that in mind, when I hear the latest right-wing garbage that attacks Barack Obama, liberals, gay rights, alleged terrorists, or any other conservative targets, but I'm only human. On top of that, I'm someone who was brought up to believe that people should be judged by their actions, rather than what colour their skin is, what church they go to, or who they're in love with. Plus, I place a very high value on not being called a traitor just because I don't like a particular leader. So change may be hard, but it is often necessary, especially when the status quo has failed as spectacularly as it has in the last few years.

Barack Obama recently marked the first 100 days of his presidency, and according to polls, most Americans are very happy with the job he's done so far. On top of that, America is gradually rebuilding its reputation as a diplomatic and innovative leader on the world stage, making amends with countries that previously wanted nothing to do with the U.S. But, if you lurk on political internet forums and blogs for about ten minutes, you'll find no shortage of people who are still utterly convinced that Obama is a Muslim terrorist, the Anti-Christ, a communist, or not even an American citizen. Honestly, this is so stupid and needless that the only good thing about it is its unpopularity.

Leaving aside that his birth in Hawaii is well documented -- at least to anyone actually interested in FACTS -- let's think about this for a minute: Obama was in the running for President for years, so doesn't it make sense that if there was any serious question about where he was born, it would have been caught long before he took office? As for the Muslim theory... leaving aside that Obama's Christian faith is also well documented, the Constitution does not disqualify non-Christians from becoming President. So in case it's not obvious, anyone using a mixed background to criticize Obama is just a bullshitting racist. Period. The Anti-Christ thing is just as stupid, especially since every world leader in recent memory has been compared to Satan at some time or another, and to my knowledge its accuracy rate has been exactly ZERO.

By the way, as long as the right wing is going out of its way to attack Obama as a so-called radical, I'd like to know what they think of the following people: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and John F. Kennedy. Not to mention recent conservative radicals like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, or the all-time conservative poster boy, Jesus -- though I mean the one actually written about in The Bible, not the one invented by the witch-burners and homophobes.

As for the communist thing, that only seems to be there at all because he's a socially progressive politician who wants to reign in extreme capitalism and not threaten to bomb every country in the world with brown people in it. Now look, I've gone on enough for one season about how America supposedly places a high value on social liberties, and anyone who can be bothered to read a non-American news source would see that Bush's Dr. Strangelove antics had made the U.S. into a sick joke on the world stage. As for trying to control capitalism... when the Great Depression hit, another sitting President did the same thing, to get the economy afloat again. His name Franklin Roosevelt, and it was called the New Deal -- guess what? It worked. The whole reason why the economy imploded in the last few years is because several other governments since then have decided to undo everything that FDR put in place. So going after Obama for trying to put it back, is kind of like someone getting a triple heart bypass, and then ordering the doctor to take it all out because he can't eat pork rinds anymore.

In other words, if the extreme right wants to shoot itself in the foot, it can be my guest. But it shouldn't take the rest of the world with it.

Another post-9/11 relic still lurking, is the controversy over Canadian terrorism suspect Omar Khadr. Last week, a Federal Court ordered Prime Minister Stephen Harper to bring Khadr back to Canada for a proper trial, on the grounds that he is not only being railroaded, but he is legally a child soldier and thus we are obligated by law to show some leniency towards him. Being the neo-con fearmongerer that he is, Harper is refusing to do this -- yet another sign that he doesn't give a horse's ass about Canadian law -- claiming, among other things, that Khadr was never a child soldier. Excuse me, Harpo, but the guy was 15 when he was captured -- how in the hell is he NOT a child soldier? And who the hell are you to disobey an order from a federal court, anyway? To those of us who've been keeping score, he thinks he can ignore the Canadian public, Parliament, our Constitution, the Governor General, the actual economy, and finally our Judicial system, whenever he doesn't hear them say, "Yes, Emperor Harper". When is this asshole going to get overthrown?

Finally, there's the kerfuffle caused by American Homeland Security, thanks to Secretary Janet Napolitano. She recently said in an interview on the CBC, that several 9/11 hijackers came to the U.S. from Canada. This has been a long-standing position of the right-wing, thanks to a former CIA director who refused to say what proof he had of that claim, and you know something? It's completely untrue. Sure enough, Napolitano took it back a few days later -- claiming that she misunderstood the question, of course -- but the damage had been done. So not only is the perception of Canada as a terrorism haven in the air again, but it's being supported by none other than former Presidential candidate John McCain.

Now, even if it were true, that the hijackers crossed over from Canada, it does beg the following question: either way, the last stop for the terrorists was the American mainland. The onus of stopping troublemakers at the border, lies with the country about to receive them -- so why did American security and immigration not stop these men from entering THEIR country?

What I'm about to close with, I basically said when I crowned Sarah Palin the Douchebag of 2008, but I'm going to re-use it, because apparently it's not sinking in. Look, you right-wing "freedom lovers" (please note my sarcasm), maybe you haven't noticed, but a lot of people don't like you right now. In fact, a lot of people think that conservatives are completely clueless and psychotic. With statements like what's been coming out of your camp lately, you're not exactly proving them wrong. So if you ever want to legimately get power again, the best thing you could do is dig your heads out of your asses, take a look at life outside of your caves, and get a grip on the real world. To be honest, you're looking more and more like Joe McCarthy all the time, and the only thing he's remembered for is being a paranoid idiot who ruined a lot of innocent lives and nearly tore a country apart. Enough said.

The Smell Test

This is going to be a combination of current commentary, and a revisit of an earlier rant. However, my thoughts on both are about the same thing: public appearances. I'm not talking about how people dress, because nine times out of ten I really couldn't care less about that. I'm talking about backing up what you say.

As we know, recently Israel and Palestine got into yet another shooting match, over the Gaza Strip. Until now, this is a topic that I've never commented on, not only because some people can be really jingoistic about it, but because to be honest I don't think either side is even close to being in the right. However, in this context I think that it is important to say something to the Israeli government and military: if you want people to stop calling you a psychopathic bully committing war crimes and genocide, it would probably be in your best interests to stop bombing schools, hospitals, UN relief missions, ambulances, houses, and even some of your allies. Just a thought. Yes, I know that Hamas and their ilk like to hide among civilians, which genuinely makes the job of wiping out terrorists hard -- fine -- but you're never going to look like the good guys, if you keep grabbing land that doesn't belong to you, or blast the hell out of women and children. HOWEVER, you might just create more terrorists, who now have a good reason to hate your guts. I'm just trying to help.

The other thing, is people's response to my rant last year, over conspiracy theories. Specifically, I'm getting criticized over the fact that I don't buy the theories on 9/11. I've since looked into this in more detail, but my position stands: the stories are overblown at best. Now, since the theme of this blog is appearances, let's give the conspiracy guys some credit by establishing why these theories are popular in the first place: the U.S. government not only contradicted itself in a lot of places, when the 9/11 attacks were being investigated, but it went to the trouble of keeping some critical information out of the public eye, supposedly for the sake of national security. As anyone familiar with the McCarthy Hearings knows, this can definitely be a load of bunk. However, some of the theories concocted to explain this, aren't much better.

For example, there are people who say that the World Trade Center was demolished by explosives, as opposed to destroyed by the plane crashes. I've already explained why I feel this is very unlikely -- namely, the fact that these buildings were hit by two fairly large jetliners, which tend to burst into huge fireballs on impact -- but some people weren't too pleased with this. So I looked into this, and sure enough the engineering community seems to be pretty divided on this issue: a lot of engineers say that it was a demolition, but at least as many say it was the plane crash. It doesn't help that eyewitnesses are split on this, as well. So personally, I think it's dangerous to make an absolute statement, on something that even a group of experts and the people who were there can't agree on.

Another popular theory is the idea that the Pentagon wasn't hit by a plane, despite forensic evidence that suggests otherwise -- including bodies and debris found at the scene -- and that Flights 77 and 93 never crashed at all. Their passengers, supposedly, were deplaned safely, and asked to go into hiding. Think about this for a minute -- there is considerable physical evidence that both of those planes went down, not to mention a lot of eyewitness testimony. On top of that, between this and the demolition theory, you would need tens of thousands of people involved, and staying quiet, to pull something like this off -- and we're talking about a country where people will talk about their farts in insanely casual detail. There's simply no way, that something that sensational would stay quiet for long, especially when there's a very captive audience.

While we're on the subject, I'd like to talk about why these sort of theories aren't taken seriously in the first place, besides being -- by definition -- highly implausible. For one thing, a lot of those who take conspiracy theories seriously, use a lot of circular arguments. This means that someone holds a position so strongly, that anything proving it wrong is shrugged off as a cover-up. For example, a radical left-wing magazine called Counterpunch hired an aerospace engineer to look into the official story of what happened to the World Trade Center. What he found was that the buildings were destroyed, because of crash damage from the planes -- and he wrote about it in very intricate detail. Popular Mechanics interviewed about 300 other experts and came to the same conclusions -- so the demolition theorists all said that these experts are in on the conspiracy.

Another problem is that if you look into it in any detail, the motives are hardly ever the same, from one theorist to another; some say that it was staged to start a New World Order, some say that it was to create an excuse to invade the Middle East -- like the U.S. ever needed one that extreme before -- some even say that it was an elaborate form of insurance fraud! Again, if these people can't even agree amongst themselves, as to why the government would stage a massive terrorist attack, how do they expect anyone else to take it seriously?

I don't really have any more to add to that, except to say that whenever you hear some really outlandish statement, you should always look into it. Yes, that does include everything I've ever said on this blog. In this case, great places to start are Popular Mechanics, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and any newspaper with decent global coverage. Don't take someone's word for it, just because you like what they say. It may really be that they're just saying what you want to hear. Enough said.

Conspiracies!!!

Now that the election nastiness is out of the way for the next little while, I'm going to try to lighten this blog up a bit, and go after some really weird and wacky things... like conspiracy theories. You know, those little madcap urban legends that every little thing that annoys us is being done by some secret organization that's usually bent on world domination. Now, I know I've had my moments of random paranoia in this blog (see "Remake Fatigue") but that was definitely not my best day. For instance, Hollywood favouring remakes over original work is more likely a matter of greed and laziness, rather than some kind of suppression. To be honest, I realized that pretty much as soon as I put that episode on-line. The point is, a lot of these so-called conspiracies can be unraveled either through a quick Google search, or by using this funny little thing called your brain.

What got me started on this was this thing that a friend sent me, which is a video by Hal Turner about the so-called Amero, which is supposed to be the currency of the North American Union that's secretly being formed by Canada, America, and Mexico. First of all, I wouldn't believe ANYTHING coming from a guy well known for denying that The Holocaust took place, as well as being stupid enough to threaten several public figures on the air. But, some people took notice when he posted a video showing an Amero coin that was supposedly minted by the U.S. Government. The problem is that even a quick check on Snopes -- you know, those guys who look into urban legends on the internet -- would have shown these people that the coins are collectibles, available since 2005, intended to create discussion on the North American Union. Not endorse it. Besides, it doesn't make sense for even the most right-wing politicians in these countries to support a merger that makes them LOSE money -- something that they're much more concerned about than anything else.

Getting even dumber are the 9/11 theories still going around today, like the whole thing being an inside job, and that the World Trade Center was destroyed by a controlled demolition. Really? As opposed to those two huge jetliners crashing into the middle of the towers, loaded with jet fuel and possibly explosives? Come on, I know that North America isn't exactly bursting with geniuses, but give us some credit. If you take out a support structure, like a wall and any beams behind it, then anything standing on it is going to fall. You don't need an engineering degree to figure that out; it's called "gravity". I don't doubt that the Bush Administration knew about it and did nothing, and I'm willing to entertain the idea that they saw a chance to take as much power as they could, but somehow the idea of them staging the thing seems like a bit of a stretch. After all, Dick Cheney couldn't even shoot a hunting partner without the press jumping all over it, do you really think he could stage a terrorist attack without someone noticing?

Finally, we get to some more current, wide-spread, and encouraged stupidity. Namely, the bullshit being spread about Barack Obama. You know what I'm talking about, those ones that say Obama isn't really a Christian -- even though he took some heat over things that his old PASTOR said. The ones that claim he isn't patriotic, just because he supposedly doesn't wear flag lapels or feature the American flag on his campaign jet, and therefore has some hidden Muslim agenda or whatever nonsense is being said about him this week. As I've said before, people who are so ignorant and racist as to infer that being a non-Christian would somehow make a man dangerous to America, are the last ones who deserve attention or credibility. That being said, let's look into this and more.

Part of the reason for the thing about Obama's supposed lack of patriotism is this photo that shows him not placing his hand over his heart, supposedly during the singing of the national anthem -- though the accuracy of that is vague. The problem is that the actual Flag Code states that persons are also expected to face the flag... and as you can see no one is facing the only flag in this picture. Actually, it's kind of hard to tell what any of them is supposedly facing. In any event, modern custom doesn't actually require the hand-over-the-heart thing, as far as I can tell. Moving on, take a look at this picture of Obama's plane, you know the one that supposedly doesn't have the stars and stripes on it. The tail pretty clearly shows a sun rising over a stylized flag. Furthermore, Presidential candidates have been using planes that didn't have the flag on them for at least ten years -- current contender John McCain being the most recent example -- and no one said a word over it. The same sort of thing goes for the vague and unfriendly association Obama had with former terrorist Bill Ayers -- drawing the conclusion that Obama is a terrorist just because of that is not only unconstitutional, but makes no sense. That's like saying I'm a psychotic Bible thumper, because of my ex-girlfriend being like that. One person's actions do not automatically relate to those of a stranger. Period. This just furthers my belief that if Obama were a white man, with a Christian-sounding name, we wouldn't even be hearing this crap. Heck, I already know that we wouldn't be hearing this nonsense about him being The Anti-Christ, because supposedly The Book of Revelation describes the Anti-Christ as a Muslim. This is complete crap, not only because Obama isn't a Muslim, but because Islam didn't even exist when any part of The Bible was written!

Even though I'm very much in favour of attacking authority and the status quo, a big difference between me and the sort of idiots who would spread conspiracy theories is that I actually check things out first. This is a big reason why even some conservatives respect my views -- I don't just take peoples' word for it. It's ironic that a lot of the wingnuts who make this stuff up say things like "Here's what they don't want you to know", because so many of their rants just fall apart if you think about it at all. Enough said.