Although largely shut out of the public discussion on government budgets, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has released its alternative to the upcoming federal budget. While the Harper government is fixated on massive cuts that will only produce more unemployment, this budget contains some eminently practical ways to help
Continue readingAuthor: Lorne
Politics and its Discontents: The Courage of the Few, The Cowardice of the Many
This story of how a Syrian refugee risked his life to post and smuggle video of atrocities to the West should make us all feel just a bit ashamed as so many of us seem to treat our democracy so lightly. Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: More G20 Police Brutality Justice Pending
One of the Toronto police officers identified in the G20 beating of Adam Nobody has now been identified in another incident occurring the same weekend. Const. Oliver Simpson’s employer, the Toronto Police Services Board, is being sued by Nikos Kapetaneas and Caitlin Morgan for the injuries they sustained at the
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Hot Off The Presses!
I trust this needs no explanation. Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: An Epochal Moment in Toryland
While there has been a long and sustained objection to Canada’s planned purchase of F-35 jets, today marks the first time that the Harper regime has, even for a moment, taken its head out of the clouds. Associate Defence Minister Julian (the dour and humourless) Fantino has raised the possibility
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Tuesday Recommended Robocall Reading
Both Lawrence Martin and Linda McQuaig have columns well-worth reading today on government misdeeds both present and past. McQuaig suggests that it is only our national modesty that prevents us from likening the voter suppression crimes to Watergate, while Martin chronicles misdoings of the past and concludes that what the
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Toronto Too Frightening A Venue For War-Mongerer
Suggested twenty-first century update for that old grade-school primer: See Dick Run Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Toronto’s Voter Suppression Protest
If you live in southern Ontario, you know that yesterday was a gift, with sunny skies and temperatures reaching about 15 degrees Celsius, surpassing normal highs by about 11 degrees. A crowd of maybe 1000 gathered in Toronto’s Dundas Square to protest the threats against our democracy epitomized by the
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Latest On The F-35
While the militaristic Canadian Conservative regime, led by flyboy fan Steve and aggressively supported by his Defence Minister, the dishonourable member from Central Nova, continue to champion the acquisition of the F-35 as Canada’s next big toy, it is apparent to almost all who keep themselves informed that the plane
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Vaughan M.P. Has Some Splainin’ to Do.
My my my. It looks like Mr. Law-and-Order, the dour and humourless M.P. Julian Fantino, may not have been playing by the rules in the last election. Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: An Update On Canada’s Export Of Death (Asbestos)
While I have written many posts on Canada’s indefensible export of asbestos to third-world nations, I am pleased to report that the latest news seems to suggest that this hideous and immoral practice could soon be coming to an end. Despite the ardent and ongoing efforts of the Harper regime
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: What Did You Expect?
Our capacity as a species for delusional thinking and rationalization seems to have few limits, our sad record on climate change and our cheering on of oppressive and anti-democratic government measures when our convenience is at stake but two examples. In today’s Star, Heather Mallick, with whom I frequently lose
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Robogate: Another Explosive Revelation From The Star
As I noted in my last post, a pattern is emerging in the voter suppression crimes owing to the consistency of the telephone script received in upwards of 30 ridings in the last federal election. The Star has just made another startling discovery: Automated phone calls that directed people to
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Voter Suppression Crimes: A Pattern of Centralization Emerges
While the Harper regime has been busy casting aspersions on those who are claiming foul over their alleged tactics during the last federal election, a pattern is beginning to emerge that makes their protestations of outrage and innocence especially suspect. According to the latest news, voters in the Toronto-area riding
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Election Fraud Rally
For those living in or around the Toronto area, please consider attending Sunday’s rally to protest both the voter suppression crimes committed during the last federal election and the ‘strange’ unwillingness of the Harper government to support the search for the truth. It begins at 2:30 p.m., Yonge-Dundas Square. We
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Criminal Activity in Joe Oliver’s Campaign?
The Star is reporting that Natural Resources Minister Joe (‘radicals are threatening the tarsands’) Oliver’s riding of Eglinton-Lawrence may have been the scene of another electoral crime, this one involving the last-minute rush of previously unregistered voters who cast ballots in the last federal election. Veteran Liberal MP Joe Volpe
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Tale of Two Newspapers
The Globe and Mail and its sundry propagandists (excepting the principled Lawrence Martin, of course) continue their Sisyphean task of defending the indefensible by issuing almost daily dismissals both of the seriousness of the voter suppression crimes and of those who see those crimes as part of the pattern of
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: While The Globe and Mail Is Busy Doing PR for The PM …
…it appears that The Vancouver Observer is actually doing some journalism as it unearths the details of the campaign school that John Fryer wrote about last week in his letter to the Globe and Mail. As far as I know, the Globe did no followup of Fryer’s explosive allegations. Hardly
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Little More G20 Justice
In one of the more despicable acts of police brutality during the G20 Summit in Toronto in June of 2010, a paraplegic man, Gabriel Jacobs, was “dragged” from his motorized wheelchair, thrown into the back of a police cruiser and left on the floor of a temporary G20 detention centre
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Latest Drivel From John Ibbitson
But they went a long way to containing the damage when Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in the House, and the election campaign chair Guy Giorno, on television, declared emphatically that the central campaign did not authorize or know of any deceptions, including alleged harassing calls from people purporting to speak
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