Henry Rollins worked with Charles Manson

That headline isn’t clickbait.  It’s the truth.

This revelation first came out about seven years ago, but I missed it.  In the wake of Manson’s (deserved, overdue) death, it has come out again: Henry Rollins produced an album with Charles Manson.

In the punk scene, there were always some idiots around who idolized murderers.  Sid Vicious, for example, stabbed his girlfriend to death, but he still has a big following.  The Subhumans’ Gerry Useless served time for being part of a gang that bombed people, but some punks think that’s a-okay.  And don’t get me started on the punks – like Johnny Rotten – who thought it was fine to wear swastikas, the very symbol of mass murder.

As the guy who first brought (pre-Rollins) Black Flag to Calgary, I cannot tell you how disappointed and revulsed I am by the news that Henry Rollins – someone I always considered thoughtful – would collaborate on anything with Charles Manson.  But he did.

As I always tell my kids: never have heroes.  They always fucking let you down.

 


BREAKING: neo-Nazi rag charged with promoting hate against women and Jews

BREAKING: James Sears and Leroy St. Germaine, the editor and publisher of the racist, homophobic, misogynistic, anti-Semitic rag Your Ward News, have been criminally charged – finally – for promoting hatred against women and Jews.  They were charged just a few minutes ago at 55 Division in our Beach neighbourhood.

Below you will find the press release our group of citizens have issued.  It’s taken a long time – too long – but we are relieved that this day has finally come.

Stay tuned for more details – and thanks to all who have offered their support.

The police just sent me this:

Between March 2015 and June 27, 2017, the Toronto Police Service and other GTA police services received numerous complaints regarding the content and distribution of a publication entitled “Your Ward News.”

These complaints were investigated by the TPS Intelligence Services Hate Crime Unit and the police services of the respective jurisdictions.

It is alleged that:

– two men published and disseminated a number of editions of “Your Ward News” that promoted hatred against members of the Jewish community and women

On Wednesday, November 15, 2017, James Nicholas Sears, 54, and Lawrence (Leroy) St. Germaine, 76, both of Toronto, were arrested.

They were each charged with:

1) Wilful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group, namely Jews,
2) Wilful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group, namely women

Toronto Police Service Corporate Communications will be publishing a News Release in relation to the arrests (http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/newsreleases/)

Thank you for your patience.

 


Tory Peaks

This ad is so bad, and so fundamentally weird, you half expect David Lynch to appear on one of the benches, holding an owl and a log.




The police, the Crown and the AG “have done nothing” about that Nazi rag

Your Ward News, to be precise. And the Toronto Police Service, and the Crown, and the Attorney-General, HAVE DONE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT THAT FOUL NAZI HATE RAG.

And many, many of us ARE SICK OF WAITING FOR ACTION.

AND WE ARE GOING TO MAKE THIS INTO AN ELECTION ISSUE, MUNICIPALLY AND PROVINCIALLY, IF SOMETHING DOESN’T HAPPEN DAMN SOON.

(Sorry for the all caps, folks, but I am so tired of waiting for these people to do their jobs.)

The CJN story is here:

“Hell just got a little more crowded,” author, lawyer and political consultant Warren Kinsella declared during a panel discussion on confronting Holocaust denial on Nov. 6.

Kinsella was referring to the death earlier this year of the infamous Holocaust denier, Ernst Zundel, who lived in Canada from 1958 to 2000 and founded a publishing house that issued neo-Nazi pamphlets with titles like, Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth At Last.

The talk, which was part of the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre’s Holocaust Education Week programming, was held at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Kinsella, whose 1994 book Web of Hate: Inside Canada’s Far Right Network is considered a seminal work on white supremacy in Canada, argued that the tactic of ignoring Zundel and his kind is dangerous.

“He wouldn’t and he didn’t go away,” Kinsella stressed, “and his foul legacy is still felt in this city and this country today.”

He showed the audience photocopied pages from the Toronto-area publication Your Ward News, which is known for publishing vitriolic content that attacks Jews, Muslims, women and other minority groups.

Kinsella and his wife have launched a private prosecution against the paper’s publisher and editor.

Pointing out pro-Hitler images in the publication, Kinsella said that, “This isn’t from Zundel’s presses. It’s happening right now … and the Toronto Police Service has done nothing about it.”


Baby, you’re a rich man

It’s hard to keep track of political revelations in the Trump era, true.  But back in August. you may recall that The New Yorker’s award-winning political writer, Ryan Lizza, published a big story about Donald Trump’s anti-Semitic, white supremacist muse, Steve Bannon:

Bannon has become friends with Gerald Butts, a longtime political adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. They met in New York during the transition and now talk regularly. Bannon sees Butts as a sort of left-wing version of himself. Last year, as the Prime Minister’s popularity was in decline, Trudeau pushed through a tax hike on the rich, and it helped him rebound.

Bannon wants to sell the idea politically by arguing that it would actually hit left-wing millionaires in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street, and in Hollywood. Bannon is one of the few Republicans in Washington actually to consider what has long been backed up by polling: many working-class voters who support Republicans are in favor of higher taxes on the rich. “There’s nothing better for a populist than a rich guy raising taxes on rich guys,” Butts told Bannon.

PMO never disavowed that story, and Butts didn’t tell The New Yorker’s fact-checkers what Lizza wrote was wrong.  So we can accept it as the truth.

The notion that Gerald would “become friends” with a known white supremacist and anti-Semite actually broke my heart, but that’s a story for another day.  The part that really interested me was that quote:  “There’s nothing better for a populist than a rich guy raising taxes on rich guys.”

Practice what you preach, goes the saying.  So, up here in The Great White North, of course, what Justin Trudeau’s top advisor was telling Donald Trump’s then-top-advisor to do was exactly what the Trudeau Liberals were doing – they were rich guys, raising taxes on other rich guys.

They said they’d do it in their platform, and in their budget, and on the hustings, they reminded us: rich guys were going to be targeted.

The Trudeau guys are not noted for their subtlety.  If they could get away with printing a budget on a pair of Star Wars socks, they’d do it, and then they’d put it up on Instagram.  So, to ensure we didn’t miss the arc of their narrative, Trudeau dressed up as Superman for Halloween, and Bill Morneau actually likened himself to Batman.  They were the millionaire superheroes, you see, saving the middle class from millionaires less philanthropic than them.

But the details got in the way, as they always do.  Morneau’s tax changes unfairly targeted small business, not big businesses like his.  Revenue Canada said it would start going after waitresses for their tips, and retail clerks for the clothes on their backs.  And then the whole thing ended in farce, with a secret French villa, set up to avoid the reach of tax collectors back here in the colonies.

The Conservatives, being led by a remarkably unremarkable fellow who also plays footsie with white supremacists and anti-Semites, shouldn’t be benefitting from all this.  He’s a dud, a nobody who has done nothing.  But, according to not a few pollsters, now, he’s competitive.  A Forum poll, this morning, says he’s been ahead of Justin Trudeau for months – right around the time that Bill Morneau started advocating against millionaires like him.

Voters will forgive lots of stuff.  But, to them, no sin is greater than hypocrisy.  As that pedophilic Republican Roy Moore is discovering the hard way, your personal life better reflect your public life, or else. Voters hate hypocrites.

That’s why Messrs. Trudeau and Morneau are in some trouble: they are rich guys who said they’d go after other rich guys.  But they went after the little guys instead.

There are a lot more votes on Main Street than Bay Street, as the smart progressive populists – Bill Clinton, Jean Chretien, Barack Obama – knew.  They always took care to be seen in Harvey’s and McDonald’s, and not the Ritz.

The Trudeau government is in some trouble.  It’s true.  And they’re in trouble not because they’re rich guys.  Politics is full of rich guys.

They’re in trouble because they didn’t, you know, hide it very well. And they’re in trouble because they said they’d do one thing – to Steve Bannon, no less! – and then they did precisely the opposite.

Can they recover? Sure.  But they need to smarten up.