In from the cold -- refugees walking to Canada UPDATED

Canada now is accepting the tired, the poor, the wretched refuse, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. And isn’t it great that we can do this.
I know there are inevitably some Canadians who will be “outraged” about the refugee stories we are now hearing about along the world’s longest undefended border.  I’m so glad we elected the Trudeau Liberals 15 months ago; I hope public safety minister Ralph Goodale will continue to stand firm on Canada’s right to continue to treat refugees fairly.
These photos are from a CBC story yesterday on refugees crossing illegally from the United States.  They show RCMP helping the family of nine Sudanese people across a snowbank at the border, after running from US border guards.

As the CBC story notes, asylum seekers who cross illegally are arrested but they can remain in Canada while their refugee claim is assessed.  If  they try to claim refugee status at a regular border crossing, the so-called Safe Third Party agreement between Canada and the US means they are turned back immediately into the United States.
And in the United States, their future is now bleak.
I know I am probably quoting too much from this story, but it is just so great:

Eight asylum-seekers, including four children, barely made it across the Canadian border on Friday as a U.S. border patrol officer tried to stop them and a Reuters photographer captured the scene.
As a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer seized their passports and questioned a man in the front passenger seat of a taxi that had pulled up to the border in Champlain, N.Y., four adults and four young children fled the cab and ran to Royal Canadian Mounted Police on the other side.
One by one they scrambled across the snowy gully separating the two countries. RCMP officers watching from the other side helped them up, lifting the younger children and asking a woman, who leaned on her fellow passenger as she walked, if she needed medical care.
The children looked back from where they had come as the U.S. officer held the first man, saying his papers needed to be verified. The man turned to a pile of belongings and heaved pieces of luggage two at a time into the gully — enormous wheeled suitcases, plastic shopping bags, a black backpack.
"Nobody cares about us," he told journalists.
…
The man then appeared to grab their passports from the U.S. officer before making a run for the border.
The officer yelled and gave chase but stopped at the border marker. Canadian police took hold of the man's arm as he crossed.
The border patrol officer told his counterpart that the man was in the United States illegally and that he would have detained him. Officers on both sides momentarily eyed the luggage strewn in the snow before the U.S. officer took it, and a walker left on the road, to the border line.
The RCMP carried the articles to their vehicles, and the people piled in to be driven to a nearby border office to be interviewed by police and to make a refugee claim

Another story in the Montreal Gazette today tells the story of a Yemen family and explains why Muslim refugee claimants are running to Canada:

[Montreal immigration lawyer] Taillefer says there are many practical reasons refugees are choosing to come to Canada instead of staying in the U.S.
For one, they are entitled to legal aid in Canada and welfare while they wait for a hearing, which is supposed to happen within 45 days of their arrival.
When they first come to Montreal, the YMCA provides food and shelter, but also help accessing social services, as well as finding an apartment and work.
In comparison, refugee claimants can wait two or three years for a hearing in the U.S., and their legal costs can reach as high as $15,000. In the meantime, they can’t get a work visa, and welfare is all but non-existent south of the border, Taillefer added.
“I had clients who said they were living off soup kitchens and when they saw that their files would be treated in 45 days and they could get legal aid in Canada it made a big difference,” Taillefer said.
Those factors may have contributed to the massive increase last year in the number of refugee claims made at land borders in Canada, despite the Safe Third Country Agreement — up more than 60 per cent across the country, from 4,316 in 2015 to 7,021 in 2016.
Then there’s Trump — and the state of the world.
“Since November we’ve heard more and more about Trump’s politics but also of the attitude of Americans in general toward refugees (during the election campaign),” Taillefer said.
People who had legal status as refugee claimants or students started to say that even if they were accepted by the authorities the population would still see them in a negative light, he said.

Please also read the great diary by Kelly Macias from Friday  www.dailykos.com/…
And here is a recent CBC report — reporter Nick Purden interviewed a Somali man in Winnipeg who had crossed in November after 12 hours walking, and had gained refugee status.  Then Purden drove to the border that night, February 12, and found another Somali refugee who had walked for 21 hours to cross the border.  The man didn’t realize he had already made it to Canada, and he needed repeated reassurance that the RCMP constable who arrested him was not an American border guard.

x

Also posted at Daily Kos

UPDATE:  So some federal Conservative politicians are against the new refugees and want RCMP to turn them back to the States.

Michelle Rempel and Tony Clement have tweeted that illegal crossings are unsafe and place a burden on local law enforcement.

Yeah, like the RCMP in southern Manitoba and Quebec would be chasing down international drug traffickers if they didn't have to rescue a few dozen refugees.
Not to say this isn't going to develop into a significant problem pretty rapidly.  But of course the answer is to suspend the Safe Third-Party agreement so that these desperate people can ask for refugee status at regular border crossings instead of having to cross illegally.  Canada should do this right away, before Trump's new executive order is promulgated.
And before someone freezes to death.

Cartoon of the day

Again from Daily Kos

Great post of the day

Trump's problems summarized in a comment thread at Daily Kos:
First, a commenter quoted this from a Guardian article by Richard Wolfe:

There are three pillars to the temple that Trump has so carefully built around his most precious possession: himself. One is brand marketing, another is the masquerade of management expertise, and the third is the legal knowhow that props up the other two.
After just two weeks in the Oval Office, Trump has contrived to destroy his reputation on all three.

Then in response to that, another commenter said:

He has also erected three pillars to the temple of the GOP —
Bannon for the white supremacists.
Pence for the religious right.
Priebus for the Tea Party.
As far as I can tell, those three pillars are holding strong.
And the fourth pillar--Wall Street— is reflected in his Cabinet. It's also holding, but may be the weakest link.

Both very insightful, I thought.

Quebec City Massacre: solidarity in the face of horror

The Montreal Gazette editorial:

Regardless of what they may have thought they were doing, in firing on innocent worshippers the gunmen were firing at all of us. And therefore it is incumbent on all to show solidarity in the face of this horror. In due course, the accused gunmen will have to answer in court for their actions. In the meantime, the unity of our condemnation must be the only response to these repugnant actions.

Trudeau immediately called it a terrorist attack -- there was no dithering about this at all.  Initial reports blamed two shooters, one of whom was apparently Muslim.   Right wingers seem to think it couldn't really be terrorism if a shooter was Muslim -- I read many right-wing tweets about this, which I will not embed here.  Montreal Simon is rounding up the appalling right-wing reaction to the Quebec City Massacre.
But the news now is saying that there was just one shooter, a right-wing white man.  I expect silence will now descend on right-wing twitter....

Canada needs to step up

It is just tragic what is happening in the United States today.

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it's all right, it's all right
We've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we're traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what went wrong

Canada needs to step up to the plate and accept the refugees, US green card holders, dual passport holders, prospective immigrants and everyone else that the United States is now turning away.

Buh-bye 2016

Sorry Frank, but I'm glad to see the last of 2016.

Great post of the day

From GQ: The Least Influential People Of 2016 - everyone from Anthony Weiner to Ryan Lochte, from Hillary Clinton to A Rod....

And don't miss DB Wong's chicken wing instructional video at the end.

Merry Christmas

And from the oddest Christmas special of all time:

According to co-writer Ian Fraser, Bowie balked at singing "Little Drummer Boy": "I hate this song. Is there something else I could sing?", Fraser recalls Bowie telling him. Fraser, along with songwriter Larry Grossman and the special's scriptwriter, Buz Kohan, then wrote "Peace on Earth" as a counterpoint to "Little Drummer Boy". Crosby performed "Little Drummer Boy", while Bowie sang the new tune "Peace on Earth", which they reportedly performed after less than an hour of rehearsal

And I missed the fall, too

Well, I thought at the end of August that I was recovering but instead I just kept on getting sicker and sicker. Finally I went into hospital the third week of September, followed by immediate surgery to begin to deal with an obstructed bowel, followed by a seven-week hospital recovery. Barely eating for three months resulted in a complete depletion of the protein in my body so following the surgery I could barely stand up, much less walk or do stairs -- and we live in a four-level split. So I needed extensive physio and lots and lots of nutrition before I could come home. I finally managed to get home last week. Provided nothing else goes wrong, I am looking toward likely two more surgeries in the next year, before this trouble is behind me (so to speak!)
All in all, I would sum it up as a miserable experience, mitigated only by the love of my family -- they all faithfully visited almost every day, in spite of the cost of hospital parking!
And they brought me Tim Hortons.
One other silver lining -- I lost 70 pounds! Maybe I could write a book on how to lose weight. It would be a short one: 1. Get seriously ill 2. Don't eat for three months. 3. Lose weight! -- however, somehow I don't think it will be a best seller!
So hopefully, I will be able to get back to blogging now. And given the Trump election (gag!) I have a feeling that there will be lots to blog about over the next while.

The year without a summer

So I got sick in early July, and I am finally just recovering now -- just the flu, originally, but then I couldn't eat anything, then got diverticulosis -- awful -- and I'm finally just coming out of it now.  I'm still not eating normally, but I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

But basically I missed summer this year.  I hope we have a really long, nice fall!

I'm back!

Sorry for the lack of posts -- I had too much going on in "real" life, for a change.

I'm a patriot too

What is the matter with these people? In spite of all the positive talk at the Conservative convention, the Conservatives haven't changed a bit.
Harper isn't at their head anymore, but he's still their leader in their hearts.
Today, the CPC is doing whatever it can to obstruct a dying MP from making a picayune, sensible and long-overdue change to our national anthem:

Time is of the essence for the MP {Mauril  Belanger], who was diagnosed with ALS last fall and whose health has deteriorated over the past few weeks. But his determination to see Bill C-210 pass is inspiring people from inside and outside his party to support him.
After question period Thursday, government whip Andrew Leslie sought the unanimous consent of MPs to allow the bill — which would change the line "in all thy sons command" to "in all of us command," making it gender-neutral — to proceed under the whip's name to take some of the pressure off Bélanger.
Enough Tory MPs shouted their objection to deny unanimous consent for Leslie's motion.

Oooh -- changing "in all thy sons command" to "in all of us command" obviously demands  nation-wide hearings, according to CPC.
Personally, I've always hated that wording in the national anthem, it was a minor but definite insult to every woman in the country.
And there is nothing particularly sacred about the English version of O Canada.  The song was originally written in French in 1880, and it was more than 25 years before several versions of English lyrics were written. The line used to read "thou dost in us command". The "all thy sons command" version was introduced in 1914 -- likely with the idea of supporting the troops in WWI.
But "True patriot love in all of us command" is the way O Canada should always have been translated, so I'm glad Belanger wants to change it. And its the kind of change that would never happen except as someone's dying wish, because in the larger scheme of things, it is just so supremely unimportant that it would never rise to the top of any government agenda.
I'm glad its getting done at last.

On this historic night

BREAKING: @AP finds Clinton reached the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination for president pic.twitter.com/e473F0G4vX

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 7, 2016

I am woman, hear me roar in numbers to great to ignore


This is my fight song


Sail on Silver Girl...your time has come to shine.

Endorsing Trump is like tying a rotting fish around your neck

I loved this comment at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Endorsing Trump is like tying an already “whiffy” dead fish around your neck – it’s already going off, and it will just smell worse and worse, until, finally , people are disgusted to be around you. And then you have to answer the inevitable questions – Why would you tie a dead fish around your neck? Didn’t you know it would smell? Don’t you know fish goes off? Do you like the smell of rotting fish? Do you believe in wearing rotting fish? What’s wrong with you…..? But the worst thing is after weeks, you personally will no longer be able to smell the fish – it will be normal to you – and people will have to yell at you, “you smell of rotting fish! You’re disgusting!”
And finally when you want to take it off – “yech, you still smell of rotting fish … get out of here.” And once you remove the fish, you’ll start to smell it again, in your clothes, your furniture, your car – and you’ll be mortified. And before anyone will let you back into polite company you’ll have to burn your entire wardrobe, disinfect or reupholster the remaining furniture, and you’ll always have to deal with people worried about your taste for the smell of rotting fish.

That's exactly what the Republicans are now finding out.
Even Harper wasn't as bad, and that's saying something.

The difference between Trump and Clinton

Eric Alterman writes about How False Equivalence Is Distorting the 2016 Election Coverage | The Nation and sums up the basic difference between Trump and Clinton:

 Journalistic abdications of responsibility are always harmful to democracy, but reporters and pundits covering the 2016 campaign will be doing the public a particularly grave disservice if they continue to draw from the “both sides” playbook in the months leading up to the November election. Now that Donald Trump has emerged as the presumptive Republican nominee for president, some simple facts about him and his campaign should be stated clearly and repeatedly, not obfuscated or explained away or leavened into click bait. Trump is a pathological liar and conspiracy theorist, a racist, misogynist, and demagogic bully with a phantasmagoric policy platform and dangerously authoritarian instincts. Hillary Clinton’s flaws and failures are many, and they should not be discounted, either. But they are of an entirely different order. Love her or hate her, at least we don’t have to wonder whether she believes in democracy. When it comes to sane and even semi-sensible policy proposals for America’s future in the 2016 presidential election, there is only one side.

Emphasis mine.