test blog #10

I posted a comment at The Galloping Beaver that I realized belongs at wmtc, too. The progressive Canadian blogosphere is in a frenzy over revelations that the change to the film tax credit was engineered by an evangelical Christian group . Coming hard on the heels of the anti-choice bill currently before the House of Commons , this is indeed a frightening revelation. We need to take seriously. I hope progressive Canadians - that is, the mainstream of Canada - will do more than complain to each other. I hope bloggers will do more than sound the panic alarm and say I told you so. (That's not directed at anyone in particular. I've seen it at at least 10 blogs today.) Religious zealots are allowed to influence government. And so are we. We have to make sure we work harder than they do. Progressive, tolerant people are the majority in this country , and we have to make our voices known - not just in the blogosphere, but in Ottawa. I hope everyone reading this will do more than just...

When James sent me this link , I thought it was a spoof. After closer inspection, I realized this was a real toy . I think (but I'm not certain) it's only available in the US. Don't miss the tags and comments in the Amazon link. In strangely related news, 1 in 100 Americans are now incarcerated . A Pew Center report documents that the US keeps more of its citizens behind bars than any other nation, whether calculated per capita or in simple numbers. The so-called "correctional" industry is one of the few growth areas of the US economy: the rate of increase for prison spending was six times greater than spending for higher education . The Pew Center report is here ; the press release is here . The report makes it clear that Americans pay a very high price for all this "correction," but it doesn't make them any safer. As you may know, in many US states, a felony conviction permanently rescinds a citizen's right to vote. Some states have a "reh...

From Courage to Resist : For months, the anti-war women's group CodePink staged near-daily protests outside of a Marine recruiting station in downtown Berkeley, California. These gatherings became a part of the local landscape. However, vigil-as-usual ended when the Berkeley City Council voted to officially endorse these ongoing protests and to send a letter to the Marine recruiters asking them to leave town. Right-wing radio rallied their listeners to "punish" the city, and anti-military recruiting advocates rallied to defend the council's actions. National right-wing groups such as Move America Forward and their media outlets attacked the council vote. U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and five other Republican senators moved to introduce the "Semper Fi Act" that would cut off over $2 million in federal funds to Berkeley, including a public school lunch program. A Republican State Assemblyman pledged to try to deny Berkeley over $3 million in sta...

If this is true, it's very bad news. A well-known evangelical crusader is claiming credit for the federal government's move to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other offensive content. Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, said his lobbying efforts included discussions with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, and "numerous" meetings with officials in the Prime Minister's Office. "We're thankful that someone's finally listening," he said yesterday. "It's fitting with conservative values, and I think that's why Canadians voted for a Conservative government." Mr. McVety said films promoting homosexuality, graphic sex or violence should not receive tax dollars, and backbench Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers support his campaign. "There are a number of Conservative backbench members that do a lot of this wor...

Some of you young'uns out there may find this hard to imagine, but there was a time when rock music was not used in advertising. The advent of rock being used to induce us to buy non-rock-related products began in the mid-1980s. There were a few random instances before then, but around 1985 and 1986, there was a sea change in the kinds of music commonly heard in advertising. Before that time, ad music was mostly jingles, short songs written expressly for that product. But beginning around 1985, music that had been associated with counterculture - with social rebellion - was now used to sell anything from laundry detergent to cars to candy. Much ink was expended, many column inches filled (this was in the era of print, after all) about what this meant, why people were upset by it, and where it was heading. I wish so much I had those stories now. I'd love to quote them here, as well as remember what songs and ads were creating the controversies. People who care about music, and w...

For four days in March, members of the US military will speak to the public about what is really happening, day in and day out, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Winter Soldier is a four-day event, organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War . It will bring together both veterans and active service members, who will testify about their experiences and present video and photographic evidence. Also in attendance will be scholars, veterans, journalists, and others, who will give context to the testimony. As the event takes place in Washington, DC, groups all over the country will gather to watch the testimony via live feeds. US war resisters in Canada will be among those testifying. Winter Soldier will take place from Thursday, March 13 to Sunday, March 16, to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the US's invasion of Iraq. The name of the event evokes history. In 1971, a courageous group of veterans gathered in a hotel in Detroit , and began to expose the criminal nature of the Vietnam War....

Remember what Sarah Silverman was up to ? Jimmy Kimmel has been busy, too. I don't think Kimmel's is nearly as funny as Silverman's, but still. Enjoy. (Not safe for work!)

Leave it to The Onion to get the whole thing right. Thanks to the many people who sent this to me.

By Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice (2003-06), now Liberal MP, in today's Globe and Mail : For five years, Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, a "child" under the terms of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, has languished without trial in Guantanamo. Indeed, the Khadr case is a standing violation of international humanitarian law in general, and of the fundamental principles of the rule of law in particular. His will be the first trial of a child soldier in modern history, a trial prohibited under international humanitarian law. The law regards a child solider as a child victim to be rehabilitated, rather than a perpetrator to be prosecuted. As set forth in an amicus brief before the U.S. Military Commission, Omar Khadr should be presumed to have been recruited illegally and to have served involuntarily. Moreover, the trial of Omar Khadr constitutes a violation of the fundamental principles of the rule of law including: arbitrary and illegal detention; denial...

Last night I got a phone call alerting me to watch the show "Legal Briefs," simulcast on CP24 (a 24-hour news station) and CourtTV Canada. The subject would be the " Unborn Victims of Crime Act ," and activist Carolyn Egan would be debating Ken Epp, the Member of Parliament who introduced this private member's bill. I know Carolyn from the War Resisters Support Campaign , but she also is a stalwart of the women's movement. (As it happens, many Campaigners have been very involved in the pro-choice movement, which is wonderful for me on a personal level.) I had never seen "Legal Briefs" before, so I didn't know what to expect. The show is a full hour; the moderator, Lorne Honickman, is a lawyer, and seems very knowledgeable. People are given an opportunity to express their views, there's no screaming or people talking over each other, and in general it seemed very fair. (How Canadian!) Throughout the debate, Epp repeatedly claimed that this ...

The day after those award ceremonies I pay no attention to seems like a good time to highlight a dead medium's presentation of a dead genre: "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby", David Edgar's stage adaptation of Charles Dickens's comic novel. I was very fortunate to see the original Royal Shakespeare Production of "Nicholas Nickleby," an eight-hour marathon presented in two parts, when I was in university. I was an English major specializing in Victorian literature, a complete Dickens-head, and a huge lover of theatre (as I always have been). I went to school in Philadelphia. A friend and I took the bus up to New York - without telling our families, who would have wanted to see us - and got discount tickets, which still cost more than our food budgets for the month. That remains one of the greatest theatre experiences of my life. Two years later, the production was recreated for BBC and PBS television - not a film adaptation, but a filming of...

Check this out! Julie Christie's four-decade love affair with Canada has been tarnished by Stephen Harper, Christie told Sun Media yesterday. During a conversation about working in Canadian cinema as the British star of Sarah Polley's Away From Her, Christie went off on Harper. "I love Canada," Christie said. "But it is only just now that I am beginning to lose my pride in Canada because this guy who is your prime minister is allowing such terrible things to happen. One of the things I can't stand is that he doesn't take in ... some of these poor young men who have had to leave the (U.S.) army because they are so traumatized ... by what they have seen (in the Iraq War)." "Even so, when I was there (for Away From Her, which was filmed in Southern Ontario), Canada was still Canada and people were still doing all the best things they don't do anywhere else. It is a fine place!" Christie has always been a political firebrand, one of the re...

Thank you so much for making we move to canada the Best Activist Blog in the Canadian F-word Blog Awards! Wmtc was also runner-up in the Best Political Blog category. All in all, way cool. Here's the full list of winners and runners-up. I was sorry to see Idealistic Pragmatist didn't win Best Political Blog, but I will definitely check out Creekside , who did. Thanks to everyone who voted, and especially to godammitkitty for nominating wmtc in the Best Activist Blog category. A huge thank you to Pale and Prole of A Creative Revolution for organizing the whole thing. (Terrific video!) For me, this couldn't have come at a better time. I had a bad writerly rejection this week, and it's good to know I'm reaching someone, somewhere. Congratulations to every nominee and every winner. Keep on keepin' on.

In these earlier posts , I was searching for a blog post I had seen that debunked a recent poll showing a looming Conservative majority. A BCer in Toronto helps me out. A more recent poll shows the Grits and Tories in a statistical tie; these numbers corroborate yet a third poll . There's no good reason to fear an election. Not that I think the Liberals should let polls determine their policy. I'd prefer they grew spines instead. BCer in Toronto's post here. I'll also add this to comments on the earlier wmtc posts.

Howard Zinn is voting, but he reminds us that the real work is up to us. Yes, there are candidates who are somewhat better than others, and at certain times of national crisis (the Thirties, for instance, or right now) where even a slight difference between the two parties may be a matter of life and death. I'm talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes — the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth. But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice. Let's remem...

When I read about the increasing acceptance of waterboarding as a form of torture, I vividly recall how in 1968 members of the Memphis Police Department believed I could tell them information about civil rights insurgents arriving to create havoc. Forty years later I still hide my serrated scars. I was 14 years old and forgot I was a black boy living in racist America and heading for the devil's den of discrimination. Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" stimulated my raging hormones for truth, justice and the American way. Like the main character in his book, I stuck out my thumb for a ride from my home in Wisconsin. I was so excited when someone pulled over for me that I went in the wrong direction. After hitchhiking the rest of the way from Milwaukee to Memphis, Tenn., with no trouble, I put out my thumb for the last ride to my grandfather's place. I was sure he could take me to demonstrate alongside Martin Luther King Jr. to support his recently announced policy on p...

This makes me very sad. I've been reading about this, but haven't blogged about it. Twenty years of re-growth will be flushed away. Murdered. I love wolves. I'm fascinated by them, and dream of one day seeing a wolf in the wild. The closest I've come was when, walking in a dry stream bed in Alaska's Denali National Park, we spotted a huge paw print. (Was it still wet, or do I imagine that?) Just knowing a wolf had been there gave me chills. Park rangers told us they'd been at Denali for six winters without ever seeing a wolf. Wolves have only one natural predator, and they do their best to avoid him. Wolves are highly intelligent, highly social animals, and to my eyes, among the most beautiful creatures on the planet. Of course they are the ancestors of the animals I share my life with. It's no coincidence I favour dogs that most resemble the wolf. For amazing wolf photography, Jim Brandenburg's Brother Wolf (about the elusive timber wolves of Minnesota...

Non-Canadian readers may not have heard some big news that is ricocheting around Canada. The province of British Columbia has made Canadian history by focusing its new budget on the environment. The B.C. Liberal government is taking aim at global warming, announcing plans to cut current levels of greenhouse gas emissions by one-third by 2020. The environment was a clear priority in the speech from the throne, read in the legislature on Tuesday by Lt.-Gov. Iona Campagnolo. As a result, the government is doing something it did not do in its earlier climate change plan — setting specific targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The aim is to cut those emissions by 33 per cent by 2020. A climate change action team will advise the government on interim targets for 2012 and 2016. There will be a longer-term target for 2050. The aspect of the plan that has everyone talking is the carbon tax, the first of its kind in North America. It's based on a carrot-and-stick principle that will f...

Apparently Rick Hillier doesn't understand that, in a democracy, a military's job is to carry out policy, not to determine it. But who can blame the man for grandstanding? Every time he makes A Pronouncement, the media fawns all over him as if he's some kind of shadow Prime Minister. In the latest episode of this recurring travesty, Hillier warns Canada that the Taliban will see Canada is weak if the country continues to debate its presence in Afghanistan. So rather than actually be a fully functioning democracy - supposedly what Canada wants to see in Afghanistan - Canada should instead craft foreign policy based on how theocratic, militaristic dictators might perceive the country. And instead of having debate in Parliament - you know, that democracy thing again - Canada will allow the military to determine its policy. Like a dictatorship. To which one can only say: Rick Hillier, shut the hell up. As far as the democracy goes, there's really no need to have an electio...

Today and tomorrow - Friday, February 22, and Saturday, February 23 - you can vote for the blogs of your choice in the Canadian F-Word Blog Awards , the best of the Canadian feminist blogosphere. Wmtc is a finalist in three categories: Best Canadian Feminist Blog Best Activist Blog and Best Political Blog . In this category I am voting for Idealistic Pragmatist . You can vote once from any given IP address, and the organizers say they are checking. Thank you for getting wmtc to the finals! I'm honoured to be included. Good luck to all the finalists. Update. Some people haven't been able to vote through these links. (Many have, so give it a try.) If the links I've provided don't work for you, you can try going here , then clicking on each category on the right sidebar. If that doesn't work, I am out of ideas. Thanks for your persistence!

Like most of you reading this, I've made - and continue to make - changes in my daily habits that I hope will have a positive effect on the environment. As I do this, I notice that these changes prove useful in three distinct ways. One, there is the effect on the environment itself. We contribute less to landfill, we use less water, we emit less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We try to leave a smaller footprint on the earth. Two, we provide an example to others. Months ago, I saw someone coming out of the supermarket with a cart full of fabric shopping bags. We bought some, and now we use them all the time. Perhaps someone else will see me or Allan with our fabric bags, and decide to do the same. Perhaps one day people still using plastic bags will look and feel conspicuous, and change their habits. The third effect of these changes is raising our own awareness. Now that I bring my own mug for coffee on the way to work, anytime I don't have a mug with me and buy coffee wit...

Have you seen these ads? We saw these in Mississauga yesterday, two on bus shelters and one on the side of a bus. They're fake ads, for a product that doesn't exist. Possibly a comment on parents over-medicating children? That's just a guess. When Amy started thinking for herself, we had to nip it in the bud. Thanks, Obay! My son used to have his own hopes and aspirations. Now he has mine. Thanks, Obay! From the makers of WhyBecauseISaidSo. They've been noticed in Toronto and London, Ontario , too. Torontoist has done some research, but hasn't come up with anything definitive. So far nobody knows who is putting them out. There's no website on the ad, no organization name. They're very good. Let me know if you find anything. Update. See comments!

Paul Krugman, New York Times : "Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain." That was the opening of an article in Saturday's Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. So now we have another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America's record of failing to fight poverty. L. B. J. declared his "War on Poverty" 44 years ago. Contrary to cynical legend, there actually was a large reduction in poverty over the next few years, especially among children, who saw their poverty rate fall from 23 percent in 1963 to 14 percent in 1969. But progress stalled thereafter: American politics shifted to the right, attention shifted from the suffering of the poor to the alleged abuses of welfare queens driving Cadillacs, and the fight against poverty was largely abandoned. In 2006, 17.4 percent of children in America lived below the poverty line, substantially more than in 1969. And e...

I recently linked to Sara Robinson's excellent posts on Campaign for America's Future : Canadian Health Care Myths Debunked, Part One and Part Two . Discussions that follow these types of posts inevitably bring up some of the flaws in the Canadian health care system. These flaws should be addressed, and Canadians are constantly debating how to do that. But to an American, this alone is a wonderful thing. Sara notes: You are complaining about stopped drains , faulty wiring, and leaky roofs in front of people who are living full-time under an underpass because they have no hope of ever owning a house. Small wonder, then, that the US-to-Canada emigrants I know all think the system is brilliant. This includes people who use it for maintenance of chronic conditions, as I do, several people who have had surgery, a few emergency-rooms visits (yes, there was a wait! shock and horror! and in the States? no wait there?) - a range of services. I don't mean to deny anyone's negati...

How sexism works. If it weren't for James, I would never see a single comic on the web. Have you seen James's new puppy ?

So now the Liberals are making noises about passing the Conservative budget next week, yet again putting off an election. I had heard this through the grapevine for the past several weeks, but was hoping it wasn't true. Now it looks like it is. God, these Liberals makes me sick! Still doing nothing, still propping up this Tory government, all the while looking weaker and more foolish by the day. Stephen Harper must be thanking his lucky stars for his secret weapon: Stéphane Dion. The silver lining, for me, is that many people in the War Resisters Support Campaign believe it's better for us - that is, for the resisters - if we don't have an election yet. I don't completely agree, but if they're right, then this is welcome news. About the resisters, there isn't much I can report publicly. Our motion, our entire presence, has been pushed off the Parliamentary map by Afghanistan and election talk. We are working on ways to regain the momentum we had following the ...

By coincidence, as Kosovo declares its independence , I am reading about nationalist and separatist movements, in War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning , by Chris Hedges. Although this is a slim book, and the writing is very accessible, it's taking me quite a long time to read. I can't pick it up too often, or read too much at once. To really contemplate the brutality of war, and not just read along numbly, I can only absorb it in small doses. Hedges uses examples from all over the world and throughout history. One frequent touchstone is the former Yugoslavia. In the early 1990s, Hedges witnessed competing nationalist groups re-write history, in order to deny the pluralistic nature of the region. In Bosnia the Serbs, desperately trying to deny the Muslim character of Bosnia, dynamited or plowed over libraries, museums, universities, historic monuments, and cemeteries, but most of all mosques. The Serbs, like the Croats, also got rid of monuments built to honor their own Serb or ...

You folks are awesome. Wmtc is a finalist in all three categories for which it was nominated in the Canadian F-Word Blog Awards. The list of finalists is here. In the category of Best Political Blog, one of the two other finalists is none other than Idealistic Pragmatist . Our blog-friend IP is without a doubt the better political blogger - in fact, she's my favourite - plus her blog is solely political. So I hope you will vote for her in that category. I will. The award I would most like to win is Best Activist Blog. Of course you are welcome to vote for wmtc for Best Canadian Feminist Blog, although that seems kind of ridiculous. Voting is Friday, February 22, and Saturday, February 23. I'll remind you. Meanwhile, there are lots of terrific blogs on the finalist list . Click around, and maybe develop some new reads.

More excellent stuff from Sara Robinson. Go. Read. Learn.

Search string of the day: if you move to canada, can you live there forever? I found that kind of touching.

Today is Family Day in Ontario, a new holiday instituted to give Ontarians a long weekend in February. Manitobans are enjoying Louis Riel Day, and we can only hope the rest of the country catches on. As long as I've been looking into Canada, I've been hearing about how Canadians don't have a holiday between New Year's Day and Easter. An old wmtc commenter - perhaps the first person to find this blog on his own - used to talk about Chinese New Year becoming a stat holiday for this very purpose. So I hope Kyle from Ottawa is enjoying is day off. I wasn't even going to blog about this today. My impulse to not write about Family Day is some measure of the evolution of this blog. Once upon a time we move to canada was about moving to Canada, and leaving the US, and leaving New York City. Then it was about arriving in Canada, and making our new lives. It was always a political blog; after all, that's why I made the move. But it was more an inquiry into Canada and a su...

And frankly, I can't blame him. Lefties don't have a candidate. Like most hardcore liberals, I had planned to vote for Edwards. I'm a registered Democrat. I live in New York, a "closed primary" state. That left Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I studied the printed grid inside my mechanical voting machine, a steel beast from the 1950s. New York keeps threatening to replace the classic booths. I hope they keep them forever. Old-school machines have a feature I treasure: you flip a switch to make an "X" appear next to your choice. You're not committed until you pull the lever to open the curtain; you can flip the switch back and go with someone else instead. I moved the switch to Hillary, to see how it looked. Hillary. Ted Rall votes for Hillary. I asked myself my usual test question: If she won, and I watched her being sworn in next January, how would I feel? Bored. And slightly depressed. I thought about the experience issue, her biggest advantage. ...