“The National Enquirer for skinheads”
That’s the memorable (and accurate) description my colleague Andrew Tumilty – now cloistered in the Ontario budget lock-up – gave to Your Ward News. Here’s a link to his HuffPo piece, and a snippet of his thoughts, below:
Your Ward News is dangerous hate propaganda that, up until last year, was being delivered to the homes of people in Toronto and communities as far away as Niagara Falls. It used racist slurs on every page; included images meant to demean or intimidate women; its publisher has called for the legalization of rape; and, in a particularly disturbing piece of Photoshop work, Your Ward News has depicted opponents in Nazi gas chambers. Think of it as the National Enquirer for skinheads, and you have the right idea.
We live in a free society, people are able to hold whatever disgusting, indefensible opinions they see fit. Defenders of Your Ward News say this is a free-speech issue, and their rights are being denied. They are completely wrong on both counts.
First, it isn’t a free-speech issue. Hate speech is not protected as a free expression of ideas, nor should it be. Targeting any group with this sort of malicious hatred is dangerous because it can and does lead to violence in the real world. The reason you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theatre is that people can and will get hurt. Willfully cultivating hatred against specific groups has the same effect, and is not protected, either.
Second, no one’s free speech is being denied by Minister Foote’s decision. The publishers are free to post their malignant beliefs online, or print up copies of their filth and hand them out themselves — as they continue to do. The minister’s decision simply means that Canada Post will not be doing the distribution for them.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
IDEA: A constitutional amendment requiring that the last person Trump speaks to on any issue must be Justin Trudeau. https://t.co/7nqkzlSmvh
— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) April 27, 2017
Trump: I “was going to terminate NAFTA as of 2 or 3 days from now” but Trudeau/Peña Nieto asked “could you please renegotiate” & I like them pic.twitter.com/N447uS2IbV
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) April 27, 2017
O’Leary, Trudeau, alliterations and the obligatory Hill and Knowlton reference
From next week’s column. I’m rather enthusiastic about political alliterations, as Gerald Butts and Don Guy know too well:
But we’ll give you this much, Kev. You were uncharacteristically candid when you withdrew from the race at one of those clichéd hastily-called press conferences. You were honest. You had reflected, you said, and you and your advisors had concluded you just couldn’t beat Justin Trudeau. (Parenthetically, you should have reflected on the fact, too, that your top advisor was at a soulless, Satanic “consulting firm” that, inter alia, cooked up the fake incubator babies story to justify the Persian Gulf War. But we digress.)
And it was true: you weren’t going to ever, ever beat Justin Trudeau. He was going to put you – a bloviating blowhard, a misanthropic misogynist, a down-market Donald – through the political Cuisinart. He was going to shred you to pieces, and make soup out of you, Sharky.
Ten bands I have interviewed and one I haven’t
Screw Facebook. If I’m going to do this, I’m doing it in my house. With a twist.
- Sex Pistols
- The Clash
- The Ramones
- Ted Nugent
- The Police
- Pennywise
- Bad Religion
- KISS
- Green Day
- Blink 182
Coincidentally, no one has ever seen these two in the same room together
“Oral questions. The Honourable Mad Max.”
If true, this thing is over, no?
Bernier campaign tells me O’Leary is out of #CPCLdr, will endorse @MaximeBernier. Holy boom!
— David Akin (@davidakin) April 26, 2017
Where we were today
And we need your help! If you oppose hate showing up in your mailbox, get in touch!
Political consultant Warren Kinsella is one of the people complaining about the paper, which is edited and published by James Sears and Laurence St. Germaine.
“There’s the use of the n-word, there’s racism on every page, it is the most disgusting thing.”
To prove his point, Kinsella showed examples from old editions he photocopied. One image portrays a Jew as a dog; another shows an image of Jesus sexually assaulting a woman.
While the publication is based in the Toronto area, he says this review is important for all Canadians.
“We need to say Canada Post should not be distributing hatred; Canada Post should not be allowed to distribute racism.”
The BC NDP’s friend is the enemy of BC: the headlines
Here is this morning’s big news, from the Post’s Drew Hasselback, which will take bread off the table for 25,000 Canadian families, most of them in British Columbia:
Canada vows to fight ‘unfair and punitive duty’ as Trump slaps tariff on softwood lumber
And here is a headline from a short while ago, from the Star, about the BC NDP’s pals in Unifor:
Trump’s tough talk good news, says Canadian auto union
These big union fools specifically said they favoured Trump’s trade policies. That’s what they said. And now those selfsame policies are going to put thousands of British Columbians out of work.
The BC NDP has allied itself with big union bosses, which is their business. But when they ally themselves with the “president” who is killing Canadian jobs – and thousands of jobs in B.C. – it’s everybody’s business.
Leap of Faith
We thought you should all see how the Mighty Finn™ approaches the back yard.