test blog #10

The ongoing protest at New York City's financial district is receiving a huge boost from labour unions. The Transit Workers Union voted unanimously to support Occupy Wall Street and the United Auto Workers is expected to do so soon. In addition, two professors with the City University of New York (CUNY) led a march to protest the abuse of protesters by police. Michael Moore is doing a local book signing , with royalties to support Occupy Wall Street . Coverage: Slate: Unions Set to Join "Occupy Wall Street" Protests Village Voice: Transport Workers Union Votes Unanimously to Support Occupy Wall Street Crains New York Business: Veteran agitators flock to Occupy Wall Street Teamster Nation : We quickly checked a few other cities and found Occupy Chicago protesters had camped out for seven days in front of the Federal Reserve Bank as of Thursday. Occupy San Francisco appears to be growing from the handful of occupiers in the city's Financial District. Occupy Seattle ...

There's an excellent new democratic voting tool designed to show us what the upcoming Ontario election would look like under different voting systems. Although we can reconfigure actual election results using different electoral systems, those "what might have been" scenarios are never fully accurate, as people might vote differently under a different system. Strategic voting, for example, might not feel necessary to many voters. On the other hand, the pitfall here is that people who favour FPTP may not use this tool. Still, it's a useful exercise and the results may be enlightening. Three Ontario Votes allows you to vote in the upcoming Ontario election under three different systems: first past the post, proportional representation, and the alternative vote. There's information about each system, descriptions of the voting system in Canada, Australia and the Netherlands, and a short questionnaire. If you live in Ontario, please visit Ontario Three Votes . Vote t...

We now have an answer to the burning question: can a baseball team that wins seven games in September play in the postseason? The Red Sox walked the razor's edge all week. Last night, a night of incredible baseball tension, we clung to hope, following two games at once. The Sox held a slim lead. The Yankees - we had to root for them this week, a grim reality - had a commanding 7-run lead over Tampa. In five minutes , it was all over. The answer is no. [Huge sad face emoticon here.] * * * * So. Movies. Got any? A bunch we never got to last season are still on the list, as always, including Made in Dagenham, The King's Speech and Barney's Version. For series, we're starting Sherlock and BBC's Planet Earth. People keep telling me to see The Bridesmaids, so perhaps my instincts are wrong and I'll put it on the list. If you've seen anything good in the last six months, fire away.

When we visited the Haliburton Wolf Centre in March - our second time there, to see the wolves in their winter coats - the alpha female was pregnant. In April, four healthy pups were born: two males (one black, one gray) and two females (one black, one gray). By June they were out of the den and coming into public view. My wolf-loving friend J and I went to see them in July. Once again, we were patient, waiting through many waves of visitors as the wolves relaxed in the sun. And once again we were rewarded. In the winter, we saw the wolves being fed; this time we saw the adult alpha pair join the pups, the whole pack nuzzling, vocalizing and playing. All these photos are by J. I usually post only a sample of photos, but this time I've posted the whole lot: Flickr set here (all photos by J). Older wolf visits: First visit to Haliburton Wolf Centre, July 2009 , some photos here . Haliburton wolves in winter, March 2011 . Wolf pups at Jungle Cat World , more photos here . Jungle Cat...

This morning CBC News reports that WikiLeaks has exposed that a Canadian is being held at the notorious Bagram prison , the US-run torture camp and holding tank for Afghans who were either trying to defend their country from foreign invaders or were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man, Khaled Samy Abdallah Ismail, is mentally ill. A citizen of both Canada and Egypt, he has been imprisoned in Bagram for 18 months. There is no evidence against him. Omar Khadr, then, is not the only Canadian being held in deplorable indefinite detention. And the name Ismail gets added to the long and growing list of Canadian citizens that the Harper government has abandoned . As David Eaves says: If you have the wrong colour skin, the wrong beliefs, if you do something that the Canadian government decides it doesn't approve of, or if you are simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time... you are on your own. Read the CBC story on Ismail here. See the Council of Canadians summary of ...

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been forced to back away from some of his more egregious - and completely unnecessary - threatened budget cuts, claiming that library branches will not be closed . But let's not forget, in his mayoral campaign, Ford said he'd make no service cuts at all. So why should we believe him now? What's more, Ford has only backed down on cuts to the Toronto Public Library because of public outcry . Meaning: protest works. If you can be in the GTA tomorrow, join a mass protest to defend public services and good jobs in our communities, outside the City Council meeting where the budget will be decided. Even if you (like me) don't live in the City of Toronto, this should matter to you. If the mayor of Canada's largest city gets away with mass privatization and service cuts, it will be open season on public services in every city in the country. WHEN: Monday, September 26, 5:30 pm WHERE: Toronto City Hall, Nathan Phillips Square More information on Fa...

The occupation of Wall Street turned ugly yesterday when police moved on protesters, complete with pepper spray, kettling, random brutality, and mass arrests. Reading about this, it occured to me that I've neglected to blog about it at all. So here's what's happening: OccupyWallStreet . Here's how you can help: New York General Assembly donation page . And here's why: war for profit, human-made famine, mass home forclosures, malnutrition, hunger and homelessness in the wealthiest societies on earth, death from lack of health care, poisoned air, water and earth for private profit, tar sands, mountaintop removal, white phosphorous, multi-million dollar bonuses... and so much more. In short, capitalism leaves out 99% of us and is destroying the planet. OccupyWallStreet is about the 99%. See also: We Are the 99 Percent. See also: the original call in AdBusters . Yesterday's New York Times : 80 Arrested as Financial District Protest Moves North

Vancouver, a war criminal will be in your midst tomorrow, promoting his book. Join the welcoming committee. If you live elsewhere and don't see the evil man himself, you might see his book in a bookstore. Re-shelve for resistance! It's nice to see this movement making headlines. Although the ruling class will always protect and defend itself, we can still remind each other that war criminals and mass murderers shouldn't be allowed to walk freely amongst us. Prosecute Dick Cheney for torture, human-rights group tells Ottawa A human rights group is urging the federal government to bring criminal charges against former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney, accusing him of playing a role in the torture of detainees during the years of the Bush administration. Mr. Cheney will be in Vancouver on Monday to promote his book, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, which outlines his views of the war on terror and other events during the administration of president George W. Bush. ...

Way to go, London, Ontario. Two days ago, most people outside Canada didn't know there was another London. Now everyone has heard of the one in Ontario, first from an ugly, racist incident during a hockey game, and then from an equally ugly - but far more typical - police tasering. Students in London, Ontario, are angry, with good reason. They've had a painful lesson in what "serve and protect" too often means: abuse of power. With no verbal warning, a London police officer broke up a fight between two teens with a taser shot to the ear. The incident was captured on cell phone video. CBC: Chris Tremblay, a youth who says he witnessed the incident, told CBC News he saw the fight and was surprised by the police response. "He didn't even yell, 'Stop' and then he just Tasered the kid — like, just came up and Tasered him in the ear, and the kid was not all right," Tremblay said. "He was lying on the ground. He was not all right." . . . Polic...

For those of you following... First, and most importantly, Tala. She is doing really well! After our last trip to Guelph, we added on a second medication, one designed to specifically target nerve pain. We had to give that several weeks to kick in, with Tala confined to her pen except to relieve herself. After a few weeks, we increased her activity a tiny bit - and the pain and lameness returned almost immediately. I was very discouraged, but the vet said we were on the low end of the dosages, and could safely increase. Et voila , that did the trick. With the increased medication, we've been able to step up Tala's on-leash walking time a tiny bit each week, and she's doing great. We're up to ten minutes, three times daily. When I say she's doing well, of course that's in context of her overall condition. No off-leash play, no stairs, no squirrel-chasing. But given all that, this is a big improvement. She's in good spirits, except for those sad moments when...

Unless there is a last-minute stay, the US state of Georgia will murder a man tomorrow, even though there is significant doubt that he has committed any crime. That's what passes for justice in TGNOTFOTE. Clemency for Troy Davis has been denied. Please join with hundreds of thousands of other people who rage and despair at this injustice. Click here to appeal to justice and reason in an attempt to save the life of Troy Davis. From Amnesty International USA: Georgia's State Board of Pardons and Paroles has recently rejected Troy Davis' clemency petition. Davis continues to face execution on Wed., Sept. 21 at 7 pm EDT. We demand that the Board reconsider its decision and demand that Chatham County (Savannah) District Attorney Larry Chisolm seek a withdrawal of the death warrant and support clemency himself. Troy Davis was convicted on the basis of witness testimony – seven of the nine original witnesses have since recanted or changed their testimony. He has survived three p...

Everyone reading this should know that conditions for working people at Walmart - the largest employer in the United States - are nothing short of criminal. We should also know that the only way working conditions at Walmart will ever improve is by workers organizing. And they are doing just that. This video from Walmart Watch takes a look at their efforts. Meanwhile, a major study by the Center for Labor Research and Education at University of California Berkeley shows that Walmart "could easily pay its workers $12.00 an hour" . Even if Walmart passed 100% of the wage increase onto its customers - hardly necessary for a company with $6.7 billion in annual profits - it would only increase the average Walmart shopping by 46 cents. Read more here.

New York City through the lens of Elliot Erwitt (and a few others) You... can dress in pink and blue just like a child In a yellow taxi turn to me and smile We'll be there in just a while...

I managed to squeeze in one more book, a few last precious moments of reading, before the must-reads of the fall term descend on me. It was a goodie. I read mostly nonfiction these days, and seem to find very few novels that rise to my standards - which, I grant, may be ridiculously high. Every so often, I think maybe I just don't like contemporary fiction anymore. Then I read something by Roddy Doyle, or A. L. Kennedy, or William Trevor, or Toni Morrison - among others, there are definitely others - and my marvel at great fiction is restored. Russell Banks is one such writer. I've just finished one of his early novels, Continental Drift . It tells the stories of two people from totally different cultures and parts of the earth - the working poor of small-town America, and the grinding poverty and repression of Haiti. Each are groping and questing, trying to find a way out. The reader assumes the two stories will intersect at some point, but nothing unfolds in predictable ways...

Today, September 18, 2011, is the second anniversary of the day Rodney Watson went into sanctuary in the First United Church of Vancouver. Rodney, after serving his tour in Iraq, knew that he could no longer continue to participate in the immoral, illegal occupation of that country. He chose to come to Canada, where he applied for asylum and was denied. You can read more about Rodney's experience and his decision to desert here: "Why a resister chose Canada over the war in Iraq" , published on Christmas Eve, 2009. In September 2009, the Canadian government - against the will of Parliament and the wishes of the majority of the Canadian people - was about to deport Rodney to the US, where he would have been court martialed, imprisoned and likely given a dishonourable discharge, the equivalent of a felony offense that would restrict his life opportunities forever. Reverend Ric Matthews of the First United Church of Vancouver offered Rodney sanctuary, and he accepted. He'...

If you're interested in the issue of war resistance and the history of war resisters in both Canada and the US, you'll want to be at the Steelworkers Hall in Toronto next weekend, September 23 and 24. A major conference is taking place, organized by Historians Against War, and endorsed by some dozen peace, social justice and labour organizations . People (although sadly, not me!) will be coming from all over Canada and the US to attend. I'm sure it will be a fascinating and energizing weekend. If you're in the area, you can stop by for any length of time, just to hear a presentation or two. The program listing is here. For more information here: Looking Back, Moving Forward: War Resisters in North America .

The Humane Society International/Canada announced this morning that it assisted in the rescue of more than 400 dogs and puppies from a huge commercial breeding facility - that is, a large-scale puppy mill - in Outaouais, Québec. After multiple investigations revealed the dogs were not receiving even basic care, HSI Canada worked with the Ministère de l'Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l'Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ) and local law enforcement to seize and remove hundreds of golden retrievers, chow chows, Chihuahuas and many other breeds from what HSI Executive Director Rebecca Aldworth called "some of the most inhumane conditions I've seen." "By far, this was the largest commercial breeding facility, involving some of the most inhumane conditions, that our Animal Rescue Team has ever encountered in Canada," said Lauren Scott of HSI Canada. "Hundreds of dogs were denied their most basic needs and proper care and lacked adequate socialization." T...

Yesterday I purchased something from a small, independently-owned store near where I live in Mississauga. I was the only customer there; the only person working was the owner, a brown-skinned man who spoke thickly accented English. A business card on the counter displayed his long, multi-syllabic last name: Mr. K. While he was helping me, Mr. K got a phone call which made him angry. He had hired the person on the phone to do a job, and it had been done improperly, and he was trying to withhold payment until the job was re-done. Every once in a while Mr. K would say, "I have a customer here, I'll talk to you later," then continue arguing. I waited until Mr. K finished his angry conversation and hung up. We completed our transaction, I wished him a nice day, and was about to leave when he began his rant. "Do you see what is happening to this country?" Mr. K. yelled. "Anyone can come here, the government does not even know who these people are!" I looked ...

If Stephen Harper has his way, mandatory, warrantless, universal internet surveillance will be the norm in Canada. Once upon a time, I would have thought that statement was hyperbole; now it is the simple truth. If you already know about this, please sign this petition and share it widely . If not, read on. From OpenMedia.ca: The government is trying to ram through an anti-Internet set of electronic surveillance laws that will invade your privacy and cost you money. The plan is to force every phone and Internet provider to surrender our personal information to "authorities" without a warrant. This bizarre legislation will create Internet surveillance that is: * Warrantless: A range of "authorities" will have the ability to invade the private lives of law-abiding Canadians and our families using wired Internet and mobile devices, without a warrant or any justification. * Invasive and Dangerous: The laws leave our personal and financial information less secure and m...

The winners of the My Library Matters to Me contest - offering a walking tour and lunch with the likes of Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and other prominent Toronto authors - have been posted: You can read them here . The organizers received more than 500 submissions - and they certainly would have received one from me, had I been eligible. The contest wasn't open to all members of the Toronto Public Library, but to all Toronto residents. Boo! You may have heard that library branch closures are off the table. Don't be fooled: the public library is still at risk for reduced services, user fees and, down the road a bit, closure of smaller branches. We must continue to speak out, loudly and often, opposing the unnecessary slashing and privatizing of our public services. For now, check out Melissa Cederqvist's prize-winning video, sure to be an internet favourite. And please listen to the great British novelist Zadie Smith, on the importance of libraries in her life, and th...

In case you missed it last week, my post on advertising and propaganda is running on Straight Goods . I hope you'll give it a read. Comments are best posted on the original thread .

My classes resume today, my third year of four, fifth term of eight. I've been dreading this for weeks, but for the past few days, the dread has been overwhelming. I'm halfway done with the program, but for some reason, the start of this school year feels particularly awful. Making me feel even worse, the only course on the schedule that I needed this year is only being offered on Wednesday night - when I'm usually at war resisters meetings. So I have to take off from the Campaign until December. I can do some work for the Campaign by email, but the only way to stay updated and connected is to attend meetings. Also, meetings are a large part of my social life - and during school, meetings are my social life. So it's a real drag to miss three and a half months of something I love for a required course I don't even want to take. Whine, whine, whine. Thirteen weeks to go... starting now.

Landmark Civil Rights Act Made Racism Slightly Less Overt (Season 1: Ep 3 on IFC)

My opposition to the death penalty is absolute. I have always opposed capital punishment, but reading Helen Prejean 's Dead Man Walking moved me from an opposition with certain conditional exceptions to an absolute position. The more I learned about capital punishment, the more I was moved to the position that no state, no government, no authority, has the right to execute any human being. The more I learned, the more the exceptions and conditions faded away. The more I learned, the more the simple fact of the state's authority to kill appeared bizarre, barbaric, inhumane and unjust. For this reason, I highly recommend Prejean's excellent book. Over a wide range of opinions on capital punishment, most of us agree that a person who has not committed the crime of which he or she is accused should not be executed! Most reasonable people agree that if there are serious doubts about someone's guilt, we must err on the side of doubt. That seems pretty clear. Yet for many peo...

Honeyboy Edwards died two weeks ago, just shy of his 96th birthday. He was the last survivor of the first generation of Delta bluesmen. Born David Edwards to parents who were sharecroppers on a cotton plantation, for nearly 80 years Honeyboy played his "intricate fingerpicking and slashing bottleneck-slide guitar" with a long list of blues greats, including Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, and earlier, the legendary Delta bluesmen Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. Edwards was the last known link to Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues, and is said to have been present at Johnson's death. Edwards was recorded by Alan Lomax in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1942; those Library of Congress recordings are the only record of his earlier work. In 2008, Edwards was still playing 100 shows a year, and on August 29, 2011, the day he died, was scheduled to perform in Chicago. A very nice obituary from The New York Times is here .

Ten years on. Ten years of Islamophobia, endless war, the open rationalization of torture and massacre. Ten years of surveillance, insidiously creeping police state, witch hunts, shredding of personal freedoms. Nine years of torture, medical experiments, indefinite, illegal detention, and massive human rights abuses in the US-run concentration camp known as Guantanamo Bay. Ten years of the escalation of a brutal sleight of hand that advances western corporate interests above the basic human rights of millions while pretending to be a force for world peace and security, known as the War on Terror. I'm not reading one single reflection, not watching one commemoration, not answering one "where were you" question, and certainly not listening to anyone else's boring, inconsequential story of where they were when they heard the news. It makes me want to shout: Go away! Go the fuck away! All of you fixating on this one event , the whole world expected to stand in hushed sil...

This story is disturbing on so many levels! Why are health records of some Canadians being given to the US Department of Homeland Security??? Read it here: Canadians with mental illnesses denied U.S. entry . In this story, Stanley Stylianos, program manager for the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office, says Canadians should be outraged that people’s mental health information is shared across the border. Yes. We should be. I am. I hope you are. I have a vague memory of an unrelated story that tangentially mentioned a database of people who use anti-depressant medication. If anybody remembers that story, please leave a comment or email me.

Unlike many of my peers, I truly do respect and in many ways admire Oprah Winfrey. She's used her massive popularity and celebrity to raise awareness of difficult issues, not just feel-good reunions or uncontroversial medical research, but issues of equality and justice, especially for women and girls. Sure, her show is thickly padded with celebrity fluff and nonsense tearjerkers, but if it wasn't, she wouldn't reach half as many eyes and ears. Speaking to mainstream audiences about subjects they'd rather not face, while giving people hope and optimism about their ability to create change, is a worthwhile enterprise. Throw in a nationally televised reading group, and there's a lot for me to like. That's why when I read that Oprah was running ads on her network for the astroturf tar sands shills EthicalOil.org - and that the ads conflated tar sands oil with global women's rights - I felt so disappointed. I tried to write a post that conveyed just how wronghe...

In case you missed it, this past Monday, September 5, Canadian author Naomi Klein became one of the more than 1,200 people to be arrested at the White House this summer, as part of the ongoing protest of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. You may be surprised to learn it was Naomi Klein's first arrest. Although she has given people's movements so much, from what I gather, Klein has has seen her role as a educator, researcher, commenter, writer - but not as a public demonstrator. This time, she was moved to put her body on the line. “I wasn’t planning to get arrested,” Klein told the Star minutes after she was sprung. “It was a last-minute decision. I was sitting there with several indigenous leaders from Canada. And when it became clear they intended to stay where they were and expose themselves to arrest, well . . .” She did the same. For Klein, it was a first-ever arrest. “I write. And I’m an activist. But I’m not a chanter, not a marcher. I’ve never been arrested b...

Things you can to do save public services in Toronto: 1. Watch this amazing video!* 2. Share the video with everyone you know. 3. If you live in the GTA, come to City Hall on Monday, September 26, 2011 for the Rally to Save Toronto. Rally begins at 5:30, outside the city council meeting that will decide the quality of life in Toronto for years to come. More information on Facebook: Rally for Respect: Demand a Toronto for Everyone . * Several friends of mine were involved in the making of this video. I think it's a masterpiece! As a big fan of Bob Dylan, I especially love the Dylan/Ginsberg homage. The opening sequence is also an allusion.

You all know how I feel about advertising. Usually it's not the ads themselves that drive me nuts, but their massive proliferation: that everything in our field of vision and seemingly every moment of our time is filled with corporate logos and catch-phrases and exhortations to buy, buy, buy, more, more, more. Sometimes, though, it is the ads themselves I hate. Two years ago, I wrote " you can't find inner peace in a bottle (of iced tea) ," about the co-opting of the language of people's movements and of spirituality in advertising. These days, a certain fast-food chain (owned by a corporation with $11 billion in global sales ) exhorts us to "join the revolution" by eating a crappy burrito instead of a crappy burger. The ads I hate most, however, aren't trying to sell us anything - make that "any thing". They're selling ideas. Associations. Lies. These ads are politely called public relations, but more properly called propaganda. Only ...

What happens to a child who is hungry? And here's what I learned: being hungry makes me slow, stupid, and clumsy. It took me about four or five days of not being able to get enough solid food down my throat to come up with the glaringly obvious idea of getting some liquid meal replacements. I read more slowly than usual, made more typos than usual, and often lost my place when proofreading. I spilled things on myself about three times as frequently, so that at any given time I'd have a wet spot or a stain on my shirt. I walked more slowly than usual. I got more easily distracted and frustrated by co-workers in other cubicles having ordinary conversations. I'd sometimes forget myself and scratch or pick my nose while in my cube or walking down the street where other people could see me. Basically, I turned into one of the dumb kids in school. Not just the ones who got bad marks, but the ones who were slow and loud and messy and didn't follow instructions well and didn...

The Council of Canadians has an update on the mega-quarry that the Highland Companies (owned by a US hedge fund) tried to sneak into Ontario's Melancthon Township. You'll recall that this company posed as a potato farming operation in order to quietly buy thousands of acres of land from local farmers. After purchasing a huge plot of farmland, they suddenly revealed their intention to convert the land into a massive limestone quarry, deep enough to threaten the region's ground water system in the region. In response to public outcry, Ontario Minister of the Environment John Wilkinson has announced that the proposed mega-quarry will be subject to an environmental assessment. This doesn't mean the battle is over, but it's a crucial step. From the Council of Canadians: The proposed mega-quarry would border the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO Biosphere reserve, be deeper than Niagara Falls and destroy more than 2,316 acres of prized Honeywood Silt Loam, a rare type of so...

Just another story of more undeserving immigrants trying to sneak into the promised land. This one is a particularly sneaky ploy. Here's how you do it. First, emigrate to Canada, a process that takes a minimum of two years, often twice that or longer. Then, live in Canada long enough to become a citizen, a minimum of three years. Then have a car accident in order to become quadriplegic. Yay, free health care! That was easy! Next, find two family members willing to uproot their lives and start over in a foreign country in order to be serve as your full-time caregivers. Can't you just see them high-fiving? "Whoo-hoo, we're scamming the system, taking care of our quadriplegic cousin!" I suck at this satire stuff. Al Weisel , a/k/a Jon Swift , is sorely missed. All I can say is: Really, Jason Kenney? Really? A Toronto woman paralyzed from the chest down is worried she will be forced back into a nursing home if immigration officials go ahead with plans to deport her co...