NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO@RAPTORS

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) April 30, 2016

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But nothing is what they’ve been doing for more than a year. A year. 

Next week is going to be interesting. They  may not like it. 

Statement by the Minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada on the distribution of Your Ward News by Canada Post

For immediate release

OTTAWA, Ontario, April 28, 2016 – I have reviewed some of the material published in the tabloid Your Ward News, and find it highly offensive and well outside the norm of Canadian values. Many residents of the Greater Toronto Area have raised significant objections with the distribution of the tabloid in their region by Canada Post. As Minister responsible for Canada Post, I have asked its Board of Directors to review and consider appropriate measures within their authority to address the distribution of this material.

Contact: Annie Trépanier
Office of the Honourable Judy M. Foote 819-997-5421

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PUNTA NIZUC, MEXICO – A wall.

Donald Trump, the bilious billionaire who is edging ever-closer to the Oval Office, wants to build a great big wall between this country and the United States. He says he is going to get Mexicans to pay for it.

The reason? Mexicans are “rapists,” he says. “Murderers,” too.

Now, like everyone else, Mexicans have been transfixed by the ongoing psychodrama that is Donald Trump. They’ve watched, for months, as a horrified Republican establishment – and then a perplexed and/or concerned Democrat establishment – have tried to come to grips with Trump’s undeniable momentum.

They’re not big fans. Former Mexican president Vincente Fox called Trump “racist and ignorant” for what he said about Mexico. He said Trump’s anti-Mexican insults – which the short-fingered vulgarian has repeated over and over – were “disgraceful and highly offensive.”

“He thinks building the ‘Trump Wall’ will right every wrong in the United States,” Fox said. “Indeed, he’s built a huge mental wall around himself already, which doesn’t allow him to see the greatness of our people.”

And Mexico is indeed great. It was the place where five complex civilizations came into being some 13,000 years ago – and several centuries before pink-skinned (or, in Trump’s case, orange-skinned) Europeans arrived. The Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Toltec, and Aztec indigenous peoples were innovating in architecture, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and theology while Donald Trump’s ancestors were still dragging their hirsute knuckles around in what would later become Rhineland Germany.

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Michael Hale will recall this is like my now-legendary Yukon grizzly bear stunt.

That’s me in the Mexican water, on the left. That’s a red flag, indicating sharks in the water, on the right. 
I live on the edge, baby.

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It’s 4 a.m. At the airport on the way to Miami. But even my sleep-deprived noggin knows this: Clinton or Trump – that’s the choice. The others are irrelevant, now. 

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Sing along with SFH’s song about The Donald!

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On April 15, an historic event: the reunion of the original Hot Nasties – Ras Pierre Schenk, Rockin’ Al, Nuclear Age and Ed Tomwards – in studio! Dixie Fried and the CJSW folks kindly offered their impressive studio space for the Calgary punks to get together on Canadian soil for the first time in more than 35 years! Stop the presses!

From that fun get-together, a few clips.  First off, the loveable punkster mop tops doing a pre-show warmup with Get Away From Me, with several bonus false starts!

Then: I teach the Calgary boys how to play the three-chord Barney Rubble Is My Double again.  Chaos ensues!

Thus prepared, the Dixie Fried Show commences with the Hot Nasties reunion!  We kick off with Teenage Lament (we were a happy bunch of kids, yes) – but, before that, Democratic presidential candidate joins us for the show!  Seriously!

Then, Daughter’s fave Nasties ditty (and she much prefers the Nasties to SFH, by the by) – our tuneful denunciation of the local scene circa 1980, Fashion Show:

A bit into the hour-long Event, we are asked about the history of the Hot Nasties and the beginnings of punk in our hometown.  Listen in:

Want more? We got more! We were (and are) confused teenagers – and, accordingly, here is I Am A Confused Teenager!

Then Bernie Sanders returns to talk chicken noodle soup!

There’s more – lots more! – but I’m willing to bet you need to do something more important, like extract lint from your belly button.  So, here’s our shambolic closer, and the Palma Violets’ fave, The Invasion of the Tribbles!  Thanks CJSW!

 

 

 

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Canada Post and the government of Canada have been named in a complaint under the Canadian Human Right act for distributing a monthly Toronto tabloid newspaper that is allegedly laced with hate propaganda.

Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman, who has a track record of successful actions before human rights commissions, claims in a four-page complaint that Your Ward News is “misogynist, racist, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and homophobic hate propaganda.”

“The government of Canada has the legal obligation to stop the dissemination of hate propaganda, not profit from its distribution through Canada Post.”

…Warman also received support from a anti-racist coalition that includes such prominent voices as Judy Csillag of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, Liberal political consultant and lawyer Warren Kinsella, and former Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber.

“Richard Warman is one of the most successful human rights litigants in Canadian history,” said Farber, now executive director of the Mosaic Institute. “He has won a dozen human rights cases he brought against various neo-Nazis, white supremacists and hate groups. We are very confident that Richard will be successful when this complaint is heard.”

“It is outrageous that Canada Post and those responsible in government have turned a blind eye to the hatred that is found on every page of Your Ward News,” said Kinsella, a resident of the Beach who wrote the book Web of Hate. “We have tried repeatedly to get them to act, but they have refused. We are hopeful that Richard’s formal human rights complaint will help change that.”

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The media advisory slipped silently into email inboxes on Wednesday afternoon.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would be in New York from Wednesday to Friday to sign the Paris Agreement on climate change.  While there, he would be speaking to some NYU students, and answering their questions.

Oh, and this: “The Prime Minister will train at Gleason’s Gym.”

“Media should arrive no later than 1:00 p.m. for accreditation,” it said.  “Photo opportunity only.”

Gleason’s Gym used to be located in the lower Bronx, and it’s been around for nearly 80 years. Jake (The Bronx Bull) LaMotta, Mike Belloise, Phil Terranova and Jimmy Carter trained there. So did Carlos Ortiz, Roberto Duran, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, and a guy named Cassius Clay, who would become Muhammad Ali, readying himself to take on Sonny Liston.  Movie stars go there, too, getting in shape to play boxers in the movies: Robert DeNiro, Wesley Snipes, Hilary Swank.  It’s a famous place, and big names train there.

Justin Trudeau now, too.  They’ll put his framed picture up on the walls along with the other notables after he heads back home, no doubt.

If you’re a boxer, and if you’re in New York, you’d want to train at Gleason’s Gym.  It’s the St. Peter’s Basilca of the fighter’s game, pretty much.  Hopes and dreams and fears, played out on about 400 square feet of canvas.  A chess game, using fists.

Anyway. Apologies. Writers get carried away with boxing, yes, because it’s such a perfect metaphor for everything else, especially politics.

Justin Trudeau is keenly aware of that, of course.  That’s why he called around for days, casting about for someone to fight with him back in March 2012.  The match was supposed to be a fundraiser for a cause that – I wager – very few folks can remember.  But, Holy God, they remember that fight.

That fight is what transformed Justin Trudeau.  It transformed him from a relatively inoffensive backbencher, representing the third party in a remote perch in the House of Commons – and it made him into a Prime Minister.  The 2015 general election was a mere formality, after that.

The night of the fight, I was at the now-departed Sun News.  I couldn’t watch it, because Trudeau was still a friend, then, and I was scared shitless he was going to get beaten up, and his political career would be over.  I could see it on the faces of the Sun News stars like Ezra Levant, who were on hand to broadcast every minute of that fight. They wanted to see Trudeau, who they hated, humiliated.  They wanted to see him ground into the canvas, a smear of blood and sweat.

But he won.  He won.  And, for the first time, I saw alarm – and something approaching fear – on the faces of the Sun News folks.  They knew the Canadian politics changed, that night, and not in a way that favoured their side of the debate.

So, yes.  Boxing helped Justin Trudeau win.  And Gleason’s Gym is where winners go to box. Got it.

But here was the highest office in the land, issuing an official-looking media statement beneath the Great Seal of Canada, no less, that  “The Prime Minister will train at Gleason’s Gym.”  No questions, just be there to take his picture.  Don’t be late.

Some of us, sitting in the cheap seats outside the ring, have written about Justin Trudeau’s sheer mastery of image.  In my view, there is no politician alive who is as adept at visuals. Words equal information, but pictures equal power, and Justin Trudeau – grinning out at us on the cover of GQ, this week – knows that better than anyone.

But.

But are you starting to feel, like me, that this stuff is getting pushed a bit too far? That there is a danger, here, that he is dancing too close to the klieg lights, and is about to fall into the orchestra pit?

I was unsure, so I asked my barber, Bruno.  I haven’t seen him for a while, because he’s been in Italy.

Bruno has been cutting hair in and around Union Station for a half-century or so, you see. He’s as Liberal as it gets. He bleeds Liberal red.  And there he was, trimming away, his brow furrowed.  “So, your friend,” he said, but I didn’t correct him.  “Your friend did well in the election.”

“Yes, he did,” I said.

“But the pictures, the…what do you call them?”

“The selfies?”

“Yes, the selfies,” he said.  “They make him look too young.  Not serious.”

Not serious.

The Gleason’s Gym press release hadn’t gone out, yet.  But if it had, I might have quoted to Bruno – who has barbered the heads of many a hockey and basketball player, and not a few boxers, too – the following, from the Italian-American writer, Brian D’Amrosio.  Here’s what D’Ambrosio said:

“Boxing begins in illusion and ends in real blood and tears. That’s what makes it so beautiful.”

Justin Trudeau, Master of Illusion, take note.

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https://vine.co/v/iUUTvLpWTA2

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