created the racist hashtag #IndianIgnorant for Neil Young. Then they deleted it when they realized their own racism. This is what we're up against.At The Albatross, Ishmael Daro asks
Is #IndianIgnorant supposed to be a comment about Neil Young being ignorant about issues facing First Nations in Canada, as a charitable reading might suggest? Or were they calling aboriginal opponents of the oilsands “ignorant Indians”?Supposedly the former, I guess, according to the group. But actually, its like Dawg says:
Vile racist hashtag of the year: #IndianIgnorant, from your friends at Ethical Oil. I see the oil, but where are those ethics? #cdnpoli
— Dr.Dawg (@DrDawg) January 24, 2014
the pack of wise-asses in Ottawa who dreamed up the idea have the attention span of a two year-old and the research acumen of a kindergarten class.
...So, as the 700 mHz spectrum is put up for bids today the Harper government will allow the same old companies to swallow up your property and charge it back to you for the same old rates with the same level of gouging.
Former Ontario solicitor general Bob Runciman is questioning why two activists who got to within an arm's-length of the prime minister this week were allowed to "walk away scot-free and smiling" — and he says he'll use his Senate seat to bring in new laws to deter similar future protests.Piffle.
"People who sneak into these kinds of events, using phony ID, impersonate others, or conspire with others to do the same, should face indictable offences with serious fines and/or imprisonment," said Senator Runciman in a written statement sent to the parliamentary press gallery.
Marcel Balfour, acting executive director with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, said it would be a missed opportunity if the inquest were not to address the role Mr. Sinclair’s race, social status and disability played in his treatment. Although Sinclair’s case is extreme, Balfour said the organization has heard similar complaints from other aboriginal people seeking medical care.Yes, exactly.
“That intersection of race, poverty and disability, I think, really needs to be examined,” he said.
Emily Hill, lawyer for Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, which has standing at the inquest, said numerous hospital employees have testified they worked 12-hour shifts in the emergency room but didn’t see Sinclair. She said the inquest needs to delve into why the double amputee, who was partially blocking an aisle in the emergency room, was so invisible.
The answer may lie in the negative stereotypes of aboriginal people that are “deeply rooted in Canadian society,” she said.
“As a result, there is discrimination,” Mr. Hill said.“What aboriginal people experience in the health-care system, in the justice system, in the education system — in all kinds of places where Canadian society is reflected — is that extension of systemic racism.”
. . . the temperature gap between the Arctic and the rest of the hemisphere gives rise to a band of steady winds called the jet stream that governs weather patterns across the region.Boy, that's for sure. And are we ever tired of the cold here this year.
Your location relative to the jet stream “says everything about the weather conditions that you’re experiencing,” Francis said.
As the Arctic warms, the temperature gap between north and south narrows. Francis’ research suggests this causes jet stream winds to slow down, and the path of the jet stream to meander.
That prompts weather in America and elsewhere to change less quickly. It becomes hung up, essentially, in extreme loops that can lead to unusually long periods of heat or cold, rain or drought.
I question Harper's intelligence at times but his competence is not up for debate. This is one of the least competent prime ministers Canada has ever endured.
... this Wednesday, Jan. 1, Colorado will become the first state in the nation, and one of the rare places in the world, where adults can freely purchase marijuana, no strings attached. You don't have to be sick. You don't need a prescription. You only need to be older than 21 and fork over the money....Exactly.
"I have a feeling we'll be visiting a lot more often in the future," I deadpanned to my mother, who smiled, happy at the thought of more visits. Legalizing pot is the sort of shift that encourages humor. We went to see "Monty Python's Spamalot" at the Boulder Dinner Theatre Friday night — first rate singing, dancing and serving, by the way — and the obligatory insert-a-topical-local-reference-in-the-show segment of course referred to Colorado legalizing pot. "Not that anyone will notice a difference," said King Arthur, or words to that effect.
I suppose there are all sorts of somber, valid, good-public-policy reasons to be concerned, but at this point it just seems humorous, to see society open its arms to what is basically a low-level, self-indulgent method to disengage your brain from the world for a while. Compared to the huge swath of death and destruction, illness and heartbreak carved by alcohol, I just can't see getting worked up at this point about sweet old Mary Jane. Like gay marriage, the surprising thing will someday be that it was ever illegal.
...demands by various councillors that Ford declare an emergency were politically motivated, lest Ford get any credit for being front and centre during the emergency.It mattered -- without leadership, the Toronto citizens could not get a straight story. Instead, they got wishful thinking.
On the other hand, Ford’s claim that declaring an emergency would cause people to panic was silly. One reason Ford didn’t want to declare an emergency was that he would lose his remaining mayoral powers to Kelly.
Toronto Hydro should have been more honest with the public from the start about the lengthy timelines it was facing for getting everyone who lost power back on the grid....Without leadership, problems were minimized and people couldn't get the information they needed:
Stating at the outset that it might be more than a week until all power was restored would have given people the opportunity to make realistic plans from the start for staying or leaving their homes.
Berardinetti said the city hadn’t set up enough warming centres in hard-hit Scarborough, and urged people who had a generator to spare to contact her office so that it could be borrowed for another local home.And apparently nobody at City Hall even got around to ordering door-to-door checks -- it took the Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to get these underway.
Gary Crawford, Southwest Scarborough’s other councillor, said Friday at least 12 streets in his ward still had significant outages, and many there felt forgotten.
“There’s a real sense of abandonment, that people just don’t care - which I don’t think is the case,” he said.
Some residents, isolated and elderly, stayed because they worried leaving would open their homes to thefts, said Crawford, while others hadn’t yet seen a Hydro truck nearby and just wanted information.
Paul Ainslie, a councillor for Scarborough East, counted three areas in his ward that were still dark.
“We’re not talking house by house, we’re talking streets,” he said, adding his distaste for an appearance Mayor Rob Ford had made at a local school.
The school had power and the mayor, Ainslie said, had for a “photo op” pulled a crew from Hydro Windsor away from their work reconnecting homes around it.
The only warming centre in his ward was at Toronto police’s 43 Division station, and its community room wasn’t big enough to sleep in, he said.
“I had a lot of low-income and elderly people who were freezing in their homes” because they couldn’t get to a centre where they could stay overnight, charged Ainslie.
Pope Francis, celebrating his first Christmas as Roman Catholic leader, on Wednesday called on atheists to unite with believers of all religions and work for “a homemade peace” that can spread across the world.
Speaking to about 70,000 people from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, the same spot where he emerged to the world as pope when he was elected on March 13, Francis also made another appeal for the environment to be saved from “human greed and rapacity”.
The leader of the 1.2 billion-member Church wove his first “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and world) message around the theme of peace.
“Peace is a daily commitment. It is a homemade peace,” he said.
He said that people of other religions were also praying for peace, and – departing from his prepared text – he urged atheists to join forces with believers.
“I invite even non-believers to desire peace. (Join us) with your desire, a desire that widens the heart. Let us all unite, either with prayer or with desire, but everyone, for peace,” he said, drawing sustained applause from the crowd.