Russian Leader Flashcards: one not dead, one totally dead. Collect ’em all!

 

                                                                            Not dead at all.                                      Quite dead, actually.

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Because mistaking living Russians for dead ones probably trumps what happened to you on your 1979 world tour, big guy.

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Very sad.  A great and brilliant champion of human rights.

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Apparently the Conservatives and the Liberals are both courting Chief Kettler. I think that’s nuts.

How come?

• Here’s the pro-police Toronto Sun editorial board, no less, calling him “a scrambling man spinning stories. It makes us think he’s hiding something.”
• Torontoist called his defence of racial profiling “shameful,” and declared that Blair was dishonest about police brutality – and “complicit” in it – at the G20.
• The Toronto Star editorial board said “he doesn’t get it” when it comes to civil liberties – and that Blair needed to explain, or resign, why he permitted his police force to take “actions during the G20 were [that] unreasonable, unnecessary and unlawful. That includes boxing in hundreds of people who had done nothing wrong behind riot-clad police lines; using excessive force during the largest mass arrests in Canadian history; arbitrarily searching young people who happened to be wearing backpacks; and locking up more than 1,100 people in gulag-like conditions that contravened Canadian law and police policy.”

And that’s just what I could find in a quick five-minute Google search.  There’s plenty more.

Bill Blair oversaw the biggest curtailment of civil liberties in this country’s recent history.  He needs to be called to account for that – not rewarded for it with seat in Parliament.

If he becomes a candidate, I personally plan to ensure that every bit of his history is better-known – and particularly his appalling record during the G20. Who’s with me?

John Pruyn had his prosthetic leg ripped off by Blair’s men. 

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So, that court decision, here.

The decision is basically incoherent. Fair comment is supposed to be comment, not a statement of fact masquerading as comment, as was the case here. John Baglow, a.k.a. Dr. Dawg, was called a vocal “Taliban supporter.” I’m pretty sure it wasn’t qualified with “in my opinion” or “I think” or anything like that. It was stated as fact.

I want stress, here, that I have no skin in this game. I think the defendant Fourniers are far-Right lunatics, and they associate with neo-Nazis/white supremacists like Paul Fromm and Marc Lemire, among others. Their lawyer proudly represented Ernst Zundel and the like, which should tell you plenty.

I’m also no pal of the plaintiff “Dr. Dawg.” His politics (with the exception of his stance on Israel) are probably closer to mine, but I don’t have anything to do with him, either.

Why? Well, after 15 years of doing this web site, you see, I just find the whole gang of them – Amazingly Fat Cur, Five Feet of Hate, Brain Dead Animal – just really, really predictable. They’ve all been saying the same things, over and over, year after year, to a dwindling number of readers, and they’ve lost the plot.

The lot of them remind me, in fact, of that third season Star Trek episode, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, with two combatants fighting with each other for eternity, over something no one can even remember anymore.

Like the mainstream media, blogs don’t command the audience that they used to. Readers have moved on to other things, mainly on social media. There are a variety of reasons for that, but for this gaggle of bloggers, there’s this indisputable reason, too:

They’re really boring.

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I’m sure it makes sense to someone, this “basket of political goods” thing, but it sure doesn’t make sense to me. Anyone else? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

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I thought it was outrageous then, and I think it’s even more outrageous now.

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There I am down at the bottom, below the dead caribou (aren’t we always?). Photo by Lala, column name by Kate Malloy.

“The War Room,” by the by, isn’t just the name of this here bestselling book. It will also be the name of a soon-to-be revealed podcast and TV show kind of thing. Stay tuned, as they say, and stay warm.

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[This is an update of a previous entry. It’s needed.]

Dear Liberals:

In the past couple years, whenever Justin Trudeau has made a bad joke or an ill-considered remark – about Ukrainian protestors, about Chinese dictatorships, about the Boston bombings and root causes, about “whipping out” CF-18s, and so on – folks will weigh in on this web site. The majority of commenters will pop by and say: enough with the bad jokes, Justin. Or think twice before you speak. That sort of thing.

But not all commenters are like that. Some will fanatically defend what Trudeau has said, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. I won’t name names, but to those commenters, I again say: you are starting to resemble the Conbots you used to (rightly) condemn. You have fallen in love with the meat, as I sometimes indelicately put it, and that is a bad, bad thing.

Here’s what you owe Justin Trudeau, or any politician you work for/with: YOUR JUDGMENT. You owe them your view, honestly and clearly expressed. Not ass-kissing bullshit.

You want to know one of the principal reasons Conservatives turned off many Canadians? Because they treated every bit of dissent as treason. Because they never tolerated any disagreement, no matter how reasonably expressed. Because, intellectually, they recalled lemmings.

Don’t be a lemming: tell the truth. And when your leader screws up – and they all do, sooner or later – tell him or her the truth.

Don’t kiss their ass.

Sincerely,

Warren

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The Globe scored a bit of coup, and got former Barack Obama (and former Dalton McGuinty!) advisor David Axelrod to talk to them over the weekend.  He provided some fascinating insights, among them:

“We turned him into kind of an announcer for the government rather than a narrator of where we, as a country, were going. I think we wore him down as a communicator and we wore out his effectiveness, to some degree, by overusing him.

Ronald Reagan, when he addressed the nation, 70 million people would watch. We were all essentially watching a few networks. Now, there are infinite choices. And you almost, around every issue, have to assemble your pulpit piece by piece, going out and reaching for those voters or constituencies who are motivated by particular issues.

Understanding where the people are that you need to reach, and then the tactics required to reach them, is going to be a mission for every leader here and elsewhere.”

Ask yourself: which Canadian federal leader is the best narrator for where we are going, or should be going? Who is best at reaching out to segmented audiences in an environment where the media atom has been blown to smithereens? Which leader best knows who their audience is, and how to reach same?

I think all three leaders have some of the attributes that Axelrod describes. What do you think, dear reader?

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