The heart of darkness

The Globe and Mail has five stories about the terrible, awful, no good, very bad few hours on Friday when Rogers phones weren't working:

“It came at such a horrible time for me. I needed to pick up my younger sister, and when I went to go get her I didn’t know when to go. So I called and texted and it didn’t work, so I left early and I had to waste an extra 20 minutes to get her home. She was freaking out because she couldn’t contact me, call or text. She was blaming her phone and she was scared, worried and upset. Then when I told her it was the system, she kind of calmed down.”

The horror! The horror!

Sports maps

Slate has published a map of sports in the United States:


And now a Deadspin commenter has published a Canadian version:

It missed curling, but at least it shows our Riders!

#Oct7Proclaim

Idle No More is idle no more.
Tomorrow is a day of action around the world, using the hashtag #Oct7Proclaim.

October 7, 1763, marked the signing of the British Royal Proclamation, an historic document that legally mandated Canada to recognize Indigenous land rights. 250 years later, on October 7, 2013... Idle No More calls on all peoples to raise (y)our voices and take action in support of: -- Our Land -- Our Water -- Our Bodies -- Our Stories -- Our Future -- Indigenous Sovereignty! Oct 7 is also the day that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Professor James Anaya, will begin an official visit to Canada to examine the human rights situation of the indigenous peoples of the country. Proclaim the importance of Indigenous Sovereignty! Stand up and be heard this October 7, 2013!

Bada boom bada bing

Day by day, as more and more gets reported, Toronto is realizing it may have elected Tony Soprano as mayor.
The latest is the arrest of Ford's friend Alexander Lisi on various trafficking and criminal offences. In spite of the attempt to portray him as only an "occasional driver" of the mayor, it sounds like it was a little closer relationship than that:

... she often saw the mayor park his black Escalade in front of Lisi’s home on Madill Street in Etobicoke and make a quick phone call. Lisi would then come out of the house and lean in to the driver’s side window for a few minutes.
“There’s a side door on the Lisi residence and Lisi comes out, walks across, leans in and back he goes,” Peck, 75, told the Star.
“I’m out a lot walking on the street so you see a lot. You know, how often do you see one of these trucks, these Escalades? I hate to tell you, you can’t miss Rob Ford. The truck and him go hand-in-hand.”....

The Toronto Star also reports Rob Ford's reaction:

At a press conference at a gas station near his home later in the day, the mayor expressed surprise that Lisi had been arrested and charged with marijuana trafficking.
“He’s a good guy,” Ford said. “I don’t throw my friends under the bus.”

This was followed by brother Doug Ford throwing Lisi under the bus.

“I have no comment. I’ve never met this person. I don’t know him, never talked to him in my life, so I can’t comment.”

The story also reports:

Lisi has a lengthy record of interaction with police, including convictions for threatening and assaulting women. He has acted as an occasional driver and security guard for the mayor, showing up the morning the crack video scandal broke and shadowing the mayor as reporters sought comment.
He also drove the mayor to and from the Garrison Ball, an event where Ford was asked to leave because he appeared impaired.

And who holds a press conference at a gas station?

The new normal

When you see what is going on now in the United States -- another debt ceiling fiasco, the Obamacare implementation, and the Republicans going insane and taking the country with them -- it makes Canadian politics seem just so normal.
All we have going on now are the usual craziness -- election scandals, cheques to mobsters and deliberately subverting the FOIA -- while Dear Leader makes empty threats to the United States and writes a book about hockey instead of actually, you know, running the country.
Just business as usual, really ....

And you thought the drivers were crazy

Here's some idiotic (Russian) pedestrians

Do you think alcohol might have been a factor?
But here's some others, too:

No joy in Mudville

Last-second field goal gives Lions victory over Roughriders
That makes three losses in a row for our boys. Ouch!
And two of our field goal attempts hit the post.
Two!

The Pope says something sensible and kind

Yeah, I couldn't believe it either, but its true, he did:

Six months into his papacy, Pope Francis sent shock waves through the Roman Catholic church on Thursday with the publication of his remarks that the church had grown “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception, and that he had chosen not to talk about those issues despite recriminations from critics
.... “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.
“We have to find a new balance,” the pope continued, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”
The pope’s interview did not change church doctrine or policies, but it instantly changed its tone.

Wow.
 And what are the chances he will withstand the absolute shitstorm about to rain down from the pearl clutchers and moral scolds?

Giving

▶ ทรูมูฟ เอช " การให้ คือการสื่อสารที่ดีที่สุด " Giving - YouTube:

Saturday morning cartoon

There's a new Simon's Cat posted: Mirror Mirror - Simon's Cat - YouTube: ""

And an oldie but a goodie:

I'm shocked, SHOCKED!

"Y-O-U-N-G at UBC, we like 'em young, Y is for your sister, O is for oh so tight, U is for underage, N is for no consent, G is for go to jail."

So now the media finds out that teenagers at UBC are using the exact same Frosh Week chant as the St. Mary's students on the other side of the country.  Maybe they're all doing it.
What?  Teenagers saying stuff that is offensive to grown-ups?  And not just saying it, but shouting it at the top of their lungs?  
Maybe the media should stop clutching its pearls and we should all remember being 18 and how much fun it was to say something shocking.
Kids today have it harder because there's not much these days that will shock adults.
When I was 18, all I had to do was tell my parents I wanted to take a class at Berkley.

Sending a message

Daily Kos: And away we go:


I wonder if Obama backed off a unilateral strike against Syria at least partly because the usual gang of idiots jumped out of the blocks to support it?
So now he's taking the problem to Congress, and the right-wing is in a tizzy -- they don't want to support Obama but they don't want to say no to John McCain and Bill Kristol, either.
Oh well, they just found a photo of Kerry having dinner with Assad four years ago, so they can chatter about that for a while.
Juan Cole sums it up:

...by Friday, Obama had painted himself into a box with repeated statements that he had to attack Syria because of the gas attack. But as he looked behind him, the troops he was leading had thinned out faster than Custer’s at the Little Bighorn....
Obama made a clever political calculation. The Tea Party and the GOP in general had been demanding that he submit the Syria file to them. So he obliged them. If they say ‘no,’ as the British parliament did, then Obama is off the hook. If they say ‘yes,’ then they are full partners in any failures that result. Either way, the issue is taken off the agenda of the 2016 election and Democrats are held harmless....
It is remarkable how important the Iraq experience has been in the debates on Syria, and how decisive. Even if the US goes ahead with the strike, it is likely to attempt to keep the action narrow and symbolic, and to avoid troops on the ground, and indeed, generally to stay out of the conflict thereafter as long as no more chemical attacks are launched. Whether it is possible to bomb Syria and then walk away like that isn’t clear; but it is the maximal Obama plan. The minimal one is to be able to blame the Tea Party for isolationism and cold disregard of the regime’s violation of international law.

I'm not sure whether you could call such a result "win-win", but perhaps its not "lose-lose" either.

He's baaaak!

So first I read this headline:
Ottawa looking ‘very carefully’ at marijuana-ticket proposal, PM says
and I thought, WHAAT? Our Stevie? Actually considering doing something that everybody except his base wants the government to do? I must be living in Bizarro World!
Then I read this headline:
Stephen Harper says Justin Trudeau encouraging drug use
and the world snapped back into focus. There's the ridiculous hyperbolic smear of the Harper we all know and love.

Breaking Bad Canada-style

Breaking Bad is a Different Story With Universal Healthcare - Cheezburger:

Using sarin gas to show rebels who is the boss

Whenever I wonder about what has been going on in the middle east, I check Juan Cole for the definitive word, and today is no exception:
Rush to Western Strike on Syria slows, but does not Stall | Informed Comment

US intelligence agencies released an intercept on Wednesday showing that after the attack, a ministry of defense official made outraged inquiries from a local commander as to what in the world he had done.
The intercept would be consistent with local Baath chem warfare units routinely mixing a little deadly sarin gas into crowd control gas, killing small numbers of rebels with each deployment, but in this case making an error and getting the mix wrong. Thus, around a thousand were killed instead of dozens. British intelligence seems to have come to a similar conclusion
Apparently there are new, Jordanian-trained, guerrilla forces in Rif Dimashq near the capital that account for the local commanders’ panic and desire to forcefully push them back.
The intercept does not prove that Bashar al-Assad knew about or ordered the chemical weapons attack. It does not, however, disprove that the Baath regime has a systematic policy of low level use of chemical weapons.
It does put paid to the crackpot conspiracy theory, advanced by the regime and the Russians, that the rebels gassed themselves.

So if Syria has been using Sarin gas routinely on its rebels, and then inadvertently used too much, then this is behaviour which the world needs to condemn.
Exactly how is still the question, of course, but the rationale is clearer now.
Oh, and Juan also says that there is not yet international support for missile strikes.   But it was news to me that Syria has been "routinely mixing a little deadline sarin gas into crowd control gas" -- and that's a war crime that demands some response
Or else everyone will start doing this.