Apparently it depresses a lot of people. 

I’m not going to dispute the findings. It looks like serious people doing serious work. But, for the demographic particle that is me, it doesn’t add up.

I’m obviously an early adopter to this Internet thing and the Internet’s bastard children – Facebook, Twitter, blah blah blah. This here web site, which existed before the word “blog” did, has been around for 15 years and attracts 3.5 million visitors a year. I’m maxxed out on Facebook friends, and I’ve got 21,000+ Twitter pals. And so on. 

Those figures don’t indicate that I have anything particularly novel or revelatory to say, of course. They simply suggest I’ve just been doing his stuff for a long time, and I’m a known quantity. I’m not a human being, I like to tell my family, I’m a web site. 

My Internet doings have gotten me business, lost me business, and gotten me in trouble.  There was the “baking cookies” incident of a decade ago, there was the barbecued cat incident of 2009, and there was the “segregationist?” thing in 2014. (I’m always intrigued that two of the Big Three concerned food. Food is political, I’ve decided.)

Those gaffes aside, nobody has ever successfully sued me over the web site. There’s a Law Society complaint against me by Andre Marin and his cabal, but I haven’t lost a minute of sleep over that one. I usually get the last word on stuff like that, and I reach more eyeballs than most newspaper columnists in Canada. Marin and his chums are about to learn that the hard way. 

Anyway. I’ve reached this observation, in a typically long-winded fashion: for me, this Internet stuff has worked out okay. It has been good, even. It’s been good because I’ve gotten to meet folks like you. Sounds corny, but it’s true. 

Case in point: a few days ago, the misses and me were at the wonderful Salad King on Yonge. We were going to Canadian Tire to get stuff to clean the deck at Daisy. (Daughter Two was going to scrub it for us, you see, in anticipation of the big Daisy tenth anniversay party on June 7. She earned her pay.)

So, there we were, and a group of young guys came up to us. One asked me if I was Warren Kinsella. 

I usually say: “That depends. Do you work at Revenue Canada?” 

I didn’t this time. I stuck out my hand. “Yep. That’s me.”

He shook it and introduced himself. “I have all your books and read your stuff online every day,” he said. 

I said what I always say: “Well, you shouldn’t do that.” Gets a laugh, usually. 

We talked a bit more and the young guy and his friends moved on. We returned to our spring rolls. 

Anyway. Here’s the point: if it wasn’t for the web site, if it wasn’t for social media, I would have never met that young guy. I would’ve never talked to him. I was grateful, therefore, that he considered my musings had some value, and that he said he enjoyed reading them. I was happy we’d met. 

Another example: my new friend Mohamed Elibiary. We got together for the first time a few days ago. Mohamed is a Texan, a Republican, a proud Muslim, and an expert in de-radicalizing Muslin youth. We met on Twitter and hit it off. He is an amazing and fascinating guy (who despairs of Trump, by the way). 

But for social media, but for the Web, we likely would have never met. We would never have become pals. Just like the kid at the Salad King, and tons of others. Tons. 

That – for this Internet participant, at least – isn’t depressing. It’s good. It’s positive. And, I think, it’s made my world bigger. 

Not smaller. 

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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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