My God, what a beautifully-written story this is, about something so extraordinarily sad.

Say a prayer for this man and his daughter.

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Here’s something to rouse you from your Yuletide slumber:

“The NDP and Bloc Québécois have lined up with the Liberals in staunch opposition to the government’s controversial new Human Smuggling refugee bill and—should Prime Minister Stephen Harper decide to declare the bill a confidence measure—the standoff could lead to a snap election call soon after Parliament’s six-week Christmas recess.

The Commons is expected to adjourn on Dec. 15, following the day’s routine House votes that day, and will resume on Jan. 31.

Several Liberal MPs told The Hill Times their caucus will vote against the bill even if Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) declares its defeat means the government has lost confidence of the House and an election is required. The move, if it occurred soon after the Commons resumes sitting and all three opposition parties maintain their positions, would allow Mr. Harper the opportunity to hold an election essentially on the timing he might want, prior to a bad-news budget in March.”

What do you think, dear readers?  I know it’s Monday morning and cold and all that, but this web site is nothing – nothing, I tell you! – if not a safe harbour for fact-free speculation and wild-eyed prognostication!  Step up to comments, and let ‘er rip!

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Was listening to NME Radio – From Britain! All the way across the ocean! – and Hockey’s ‘Too Fake’ came on.  Was on heavy rotation for us this Summer.  And check out his style. He’s got the spark.

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“Now, I know what you are thinking. It’s become fashionable to call for the WikiLeaks’ founder to be assassinated (Tom Flanagan), or charged with terrorism (Newt Gingrich), or hunted down like “al-Qaida leaders” (Sarah Palin on Facebook).

Right-wing types are reaching rhetorical heights in describing what they’d like to see done to Julian Assange. But, in the dark recesses of their tiny black hearts, a lot of conservative politicians love him.

Those “al-Qaida leaders” who somehow mysteriously eluded Palin’s party when it controlled the White House as well as the entire U.S. military and intelligence establishment for year after year? Well, maybe some enemies are more useful alive than dead.”

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I wonder what/whom these two sentences refers to?  Interesting.

“The present leader is surrounded only by leftovers of the past whose incompetence is rivalled only by their arrogance.  They have betrayed loyalties with their MPs and everyone who has laboured for the party over the years.”

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Tories Breaking Out Of Stalemate
Tories (39%) Open 10-Point Lead Over Grits (29%) Nationally, Improved Showing in Quebec from Earlier This Year

Toronto, ON – As we approach the end of a year which saw virtually no movement in the level of support for Canada’s federal political parties, a new Ipsos Reid poll has revealed that, after being stuck at roughly 35% support for the better part of the year, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are breaking out of the stalemate.

If an election were held tomorrow, the Conservatives led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper would receive 39% of the vote among decided voters, up 4 points from one month ago. The Conservatives haven’t been this high in the polls since the fall of both 2008 and 2009.

By comparison, Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party are trailing by 10 points and would receive 29% of vote support, unchanged from last month.

Jack Layton and the NDP would garner 12% of the vote (down 4 points), while 9% of Canadians would vote for Elizabeth May and the Green Party (down 2 points). The Bloc would receive 10% of the vote, nationally, and 6% of Canadians remain undecided.

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• They suck at gender balance
• They suck at controlling their own party
• They suck on energy
• They suck on health, and for their scummy relationship with Big Tobacco

…basically, they just suck.

Have a nice break, fellas.

(Because you are all, um, fellas.)

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The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has resulted in what some had foretold – a massive, global web-based attack on the web presence of corporations and governments. Here, in turn, is some of the newspaper reaction this morning:

“But the cyber war against these companies, in retaliation for cutting off WikiLeaks, takes the anti-social behaviour of these “hactivists” to another level. It also dramatically underscores how vulnerable the Internet is to attack by ruthless and unscrupulous criminals, and how the world urgently needs an enforceable cyber-security protocol. As retired Canadian diplomat Paul Meyer notes in the current issue of Policy Options, the UN has been talking about it for a decade without getting it done.”

And:

“Information security experts warn, however, that Canadian corporations and several government departments are not properly ensuring sensitive data aren’t stolen or lost. This is especially problematic because attacks by hackers are on the increase and are becoming more sophisticated. The experts warn that countries and terrorist organizations are increasingly relying on hacker techniques to wage war on their enemies.“

And:

“The New York Times, for example, was the Julian Assange of the Vietnam War era. When the matter came before the U.S. Supreme Court, here’s what the judges concluded: “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.” The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, had this to say about the WikiLeaks affair: “Powerful forces in America who thrive on secrecy are trying to stuff the genie back into the bottle.”

And that’s just in Canadian newspapers.  All around the globe, today, pundits are reacting with astonishment to the notion that an anarchic, anonymous coalition of computer-savvy people – kids, most of them – could actually bring big corporations and big governments to their proverbial knees for what has been done to one of their own, Julian Assange.

They shouldn’t be surprised.

That last quoted passage, above, is by my friend and Sun colleague Michael Harris, who always gets it.  As Michael says, you’re way too late, governments and corporations.  You can’t control the Internet, as much as you would now desperately like to.  It is now, truly, a World Wide Web, and the people who generate most of its content are real people.  And they’re real people who enjoy, quite frankly, seeing powerful interests being taught a painful lesson.

It all mirrors what is taking place in democracy everywhere – and we’ve certainly seen it Canada, in 2010, and particularly in municipal races in places like Toronto and Calgary.  There is a surging anti-establishment mood gripping lots and lots of people.  It isn’t ideological, and it isn’t partisan: it’s an equal-opportunity anger movement, and it’s preoccupied with smacking around whomever happens to be wielding power.

You see it whenever a Barefoot Bandit, or his equivalent, is at work: people cheer for him, because they secretly (and not-so-secretly) love to see powerful forces get embarrassed by someone who isn’t very powerful at all.  People love the underdog.  In 2010, they love underdogs a lot.

Getting big companies like PayPal and Amazon and Visa to hit WikiLeaks in the pocketbook is as idiotic as it is predictable.  So, too, threatening Assange with untold prosecutions on trumped-up charges – and even now prosecuting him in a case that looks, to many of us, highly coincidental and therefore suspect.  To me, what I see in the papers this morning are the institutions that people truly hate these days – banks, and huge corporations, and bellicose governments – doing what they always do: reacting stupidly, corporately, and way too late. They should all send a bunch of “secret” cables to each other about their plans. They do that a lot, apparently.

I tried to think of a metaphor that fits, to make my point.  I settled on a fight between a big, slow, dumb dinosaur – being besieged by an army of fast, smart, tiny mammals with really sharp teeth.

And we all know what happened to those big, slow and dumb dinosaurs, don’t we?

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The daughter and I were rocking out to this piece of genius this morning. Now you can, too.

The words are truer than you’d think.

I’m like a record player
I keep goin’ round with a needle in my arm, making someone else’s sound
And lately I’ve been dreaming of blue and empty skies
But nothing like that ever crosses red and weary eyes

I’ve been traveling with bottles, working close with cans
Sitting up for hours with my best friends in a van
Now they say that this ain’t living, but I don’t know what they mean
Cause I don’t feel dead, and baby you look alive to me
It’s the only game that I know how to play

The time, the time, to say goodbye
passed us long ago.
And I would say I’ve overstayed my welcome.
But you know, I don’t think I’m ever going home.

I don’t need a doctor, ’cause anyone can see
That I had all of these shots, and I am still sick as I can be.
I think I need to rest my eyes, so baby come with me
Lay down here beside me, keep me warm while I sleep.

There’s trouble on the way – Huh! You’d best believe, there always is, don’t worry
Sit and have a drink with me. When we go, all we got is these days that we made.
But I don’t wanna waste them, being wistful or afraid.

Without all of you I’d be even lower down.
You know what I want to say, but I can’t get it out.

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