Categories for Musings

…and it also is not a vegetable.

Comments (3)

Here are just a few images taken from recent issues of this homophobic, racist, misogynistic, Holocaust-denying hate sheet, now being distributed to half of Toronto by Judy Foote’s Canada Post. If you want to get involved in our effort to stop it – and to shame Canada Post and Foote and Toronto police into finally taking action – please let me know.

And apologies in advance for what you will see here.

Images from Your Ward News: racism, Holocaust denial, tributes to National Socialism, homophobia, promotions of rape, columns by former Heritage Front members.  It goes on and on.

Comments (5)

SFH despise him too!

So sing along. It might make you feel better. It did us. 

Comments (13)

From my column in next week’s Hill Times, Troy Media, etc. You asked what I think, here’s what I think.

“…But the Senate of Canada is still – after all of Justin Trudeau’s efforts to affix lipstick to it – a pig. It is a disgrace. It is an anti-democratic abomination, and it should be abolished, not maintained. Kill it, now.

All of us have heard the arguments for the Senate. That it is a chamber of sober second thought. That it improves legislation emanating in the House. That its reports and resolutions are unsullied by politics.

But we don’t care. WE DON’T CARE. If the Senate of Canada were stuffed to its ermine walls with cloned replicas of Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Plato, Nelson Mandela, Mozart, Kahlil Gibran, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Socrates, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks – and, on civic holidays, apparitions of the Buddha, Moses, Mohamed and Christ – it would still be this: a body of unelected persons, however eminent, wielding real power.

It would therefore be illegitimate. It would be illicit. In a supposedly modern democracy, it would be unlawful, even.

Most of us, out here in the real world, don’t have expense allowances and living allowances and “travel points.” We aren’t guaranteed a job until age 75. We therefore don’t give a sweet damn about how impressive are the CVs of those who won the Mother of All Lotteries on Friday.

We don’t give a shit, actually.”

Comments (42)

Laura Miller is back.

Back in her job, that is, as executive director of the BC Liberals. It was just announced in Victoria, I believe. And – she’s a great friend, and I’m biased, true – that’s a good and right decision.

Ten reasons why:

1. Innocent until proven guilty: It gets forgotten, too often – and particularly when political people are the target – but she is guilty of nothing. Nothing has been proven.
2. The charges are bogus, reason (a): The much-discussed emails aren’t gone. They’re still on the government servers in Guelph. Nothing was erased.
3. The charges are bogus, reason (b): You don’t buy brand new computers for new staffers. You clean off the previous employee’s emailed spaghetti recipes and kitten photos, and you have the new person use that computer. That’s not a crime. That’s what everyone does, the OPP included.
4. The charges are bogus, reason (c): The OPP is out of control – see how they were an actual sponsor of the PC’s Ottawa conference, a couple weeks ago? – and they were out for vengeance. Laura caught them perjuring themselves, she complained, and now they’re going after her for it. They’re rogue.
5. Hysteria and histrionics lead always to bad law. Remember how those dozens of Senators were all corrupt? Remember how they were all going to jail? How Trudeau expelled them from his caucus? It was front page news everywhere. Well, guess what, folks – yesterday we found out that the RCMP aren’t going to investigate any of those Senators. Not one. A quiet admission that the whole thing had been, well, overblown. That is yet another reason why we need to be wary about political witchhunts, always.
6. I know Laura. I have known her for many years. She is one of the most honest and decent people I’ve ever met, inside or outside politics. She didn’t do anything wrong. She simply did her job, in fact.
7. “Misuse of a computer system to cause mischief”? Seriously? That’s one of the big charges she’s facing? It isn’t even in the Criminal Code, as far as I can see. How could she have caused “mischief” when (a) she explicitly had the authority to do what she did and (b) nothing harmful was done – to the computers themselves, or the information that was on them?
8. Try this simple test. Drop your iPhone in the toilet. Or run over your Blackberry with your car. Now, go find a computer. Log on to Hotmail or Gmail or whatever. All your emails are still there, aren’t they? Yep. The “deleted” Queen’s Park emails are still there, too.
9. Should she have left her post in the first place? She left to organize her defence, she’s done that, and now she’s back.  As she should be.
10. Did I mention innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt? Well, I mention it again. It’s the law, after all.

Comments (12)

I'm Irish, but Guinness tastes like poop. There, I said it. Excommunicate me or whatever. I don't care anymore.

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) March 17, 2016

Comments (8)

So, St. Patrick’s Day.

As teenagers, and as charter members of the Non-Conformist News Agency, we always had a slightly different take on today.  One of my best friends at Calgary’s Bishop Carroll was Jim Keelaghan, and the two us – who were Irish all the way back, on both sides – held the view that St. Patrick hadn’t expelled every snake from Ireland.  We’d wear black armbands on this day. (What can I say: we were young.)

Anyhow, punk came along in April 1976 and changed everything (for me, not Jim, who is now an international folk music star).  Irish punk wisely steered clear of The Troubles: the Undertones wrote songs about chocolate and girls, and the Outcasts sang about being a self-conscious teenager.  The Clash went to Belfast, to be sure, but they said precious little about that subject when they were there.

Stiff Little Fingers (who, bizarrely, took their name from a Vibrators song) chose a different course: they (bravely) confronted The Troubles head-on – and (even more bravely) they condemned both sides.

I loved them for that; I adored them.  I thought they were what the Clash was supposed to be, before the Clash became a wannabe rockabilly act in 1979.  I bought Suspect Device on a trip to Vancouver to see the Clash, and it so electrified me, I persuaded the Hot Nasties to cover it.  We played the song when we opened for 999 at the U of C on St. Patrick’s Day in 1980, and it nearly caused a riot (it also led to my decades-long involvement in anti-racism, but that’s a story for another day).

Suspect Device was angry and political. It was extraordinary and anthemic. But the SLF song that would send me, us, over the edge was Alternative Ulster.  It was about being a bored teenager, it was about the future and hope. We’d hear Jake Burns play those opening chords, and we’d just go nuts.  Two dozen leather-jacketed boys, leaping about, crashing into each other.  Good times.

Here, then – after a very long and nostalgic introduction, apologies – is Alternative Ulster, played back when we were all young and acned and skinny, and when we didn’t think we’d make it to 20.  It is perfect, and perfect for this day.

Nothin’ for us in Belfast
The Pound so old it’s a pity
OK, there’s the Trident in Bangor
Then walk back to the city
We ain’t got nothin’ but they don’t really care
They don’t even know you know
They just want money
They can take it or leave it
What we need is

(Chorus)
An Alternative Ulster
Grab it, change it, it’s yours
Get an Alternative Ulster
Ignore the bores and their laws
Get an Alternative Ulster
Be an anti-security force
Alter your native Ulster
Alter your native land

Take a look where you’re livin’
You got the Army on the street
And the RUC dog of repression
Is barking at your feet
Is this the kind of place you wanna live?
Is this were you wanna be?
Is this the only life we’re gonna have?
What we need is

(Chorus)

They say they’re a part of you
But that’s not true you know
They say they’ve got control of you
And that’s a lie you know
They say you will never be

Free free free

Alternative Ulster
Alternative Ulster
Alternative Ulster

Pull it together now.

Comments (3)

Quote:

“Kinsella, who is skewered in the latest edition of Your Ward News, has previously pushed to stop the publication. 

 “My main concern is it’s racist, it’s homophobic, it’s misogynistic, it denies the Holocaust, it’s anti-Semitic,” Kinsella said. “It’s all of these terrible things and it’s landing in people’s mailboxes. And the people who are receiving it are not paying for it.”

Want to help fight it? Email me.

Comments (4)

Man, @realDonaldTrump sure has the right-wing loons busy commenting on my web site, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Anyone else experiencing same?

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) March 16, 2016

Comments (2)

Comments (1)