Two weeks ago Toronto City Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam tweeted out a picture of a hate-filled letter that was mailed to her office at City Hall. The envelope was postmarked on April 10th. It’s unknown when …
[Note: Do you like my work and want to help me cover the costs and encourage more articles? If so. would you consider making a donation? You can find my PayPal account here, or consider …
[Note: Do you like my work and want to help me cover the costs and encourage more articles, would you consider making a donation? You can find my PayPal account here, or consider a monthly …
[UPDATE: Christopher Wilson interviewed protesters at the woman’s march in Vancouver who indicated they travelled to the march because it was “free”. Who paid for it then?] The Women’s March On Washington appears to have …
Previous
Next
OCAP Anarchist Mark Brill with Sid Ryan in the background…
There’s a labour dispute erupting at Porter Airlines. Porter staff who are responsible for refuelling the planes joined COPE (Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union) last August- since then, negotiations haven’t gone well. Porter offered its staff a 25% increase in their minimum hourly wage from $12.50 to $14.50. On January 10th Porter refuellers walked off the job. Porter had trained other staff and managers how to refuel the plane- according to their press statement, their training was the equivalent of what they teach new-hires. No flights were delayed.
Back in the days when people trusted their union executives, and felt genuine solidarity for their fellow workers the solution to this problem would have been easy. All they’d have to do is make a call for workers to show up and barricade the airport. If not enough workers showed, or they felt the need to be particularly forceful, the union executives would call-in their friends in the Mafia.
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: http://www.genuinewitty.com/2013/03/03/how-the-unions-are-using-the-anarchist-thugs-to-muscle-porter-airlines-feat-sid-ryan-tony-depaulo-ken-lewenza/
Sisters in Spirit gathering in 2011 (One year after funding was cut)
Back in 2005, under Prime Minister Paul Martin’s Liberal government, an agency called Status of Women Canada gave a $10 million grant to the Native Women’s Association of Canada. The money was earmarked for the NWAC’s Sisters in Spirit Initiative with the intention of building a national database of missing indigenous women & girls.
The project was very successful at raising awareness- right to the point where their rallying cry of 600 missing and murdered women was announced on the floor of parliament. Unfortunately, it appears there are significant questions about the integrity of their database- arguably the most important part of the project.
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: http://www.genuinewitty.com/2013/02/26/sisters-in-spirit-the-native-womens-association-of-canadas-forgotten-missing-feat-status-of-women-canada-10-million/
Ken Stone: “No Justice, No Peace”
Yesterday CBC Hamilton put out a story on their website about a local activist who has a surprise visit from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). The article painted a picture of an innocent man being ‘threatened’ by CSIS agents for simply writing an article titled Harper Is Wrong Demonizing Iran. It sounds scary, doesn’t it?
Reading this story one is likely to think it’s about a dissident in China, Iran, or Turkmenistan- not Hamilton. But, are things really that scary in Canada or is there more to the story? In this case, there’s much more- in fact, the CBC’s article misses so much of the story that readers are left to wonder if it was intentional…
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: http://www.genuinewitty.com/2013/02/22/mediawatch-ken-stone-csis-the-cbc-presstv-iran-and-shameless-propaganda/
Last November marked the launch of a project to feed the poor that’s innovative as it is controversial. Mark Brand, the owner of Vancouver’s Save-On-Meats began selling sandwich tokens for the poor. People buy the tokens from Save-On, they can then hand them out to people in need, and each token can be exchanged for a hot sandwich from Save-On’s take-out window. I’ve eaten one of their sandwiches- mine was a greasy heart-attack inducing egg and meat based concoction, not so healthy, but still rather satisfying.
People who back the use of food tokens tell us that they will encourage people who wouldn’t usually give money to the poor to change their habits. Those who worry the money would be used for drugs, alcohol, or other ‘unacceptable’ purposes can rest-assured their gift will be used for food.
Those who are against tokens rightly say that they could be viewed as patronizing and undignified. Equally, they worry there’s too-much profit motive on behalf of the restaurants who issue them, and the schemes aren’t as charitable as they appear on the surface…
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: http://www.genuinewitty.com/2013/02/20/homeless-food-tokens-are-coming-to-toronto-are-they-really-a-good-idea/
Sisters in Spirit gathering in 2011 (1 year after funding was cut)
A report came out on Saturday on CBC Radio’s The House that called to question the actual number of missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada. The current (mostly) accepted number, approximately 600, is based on a report created in 2010 by the Native Women’s Association of Canada. The NWAC was commissioned and funded to create the report by the federal government’s Status of Women Canada.
When CBC reporters contacted the RCMP and asked them for comment they were met with a few big surprises. First, the NWAC claimed there were 580 missing women- not the commonly used 600. Even more surprising is that the RCMP claims that the NWAC’s Sisters In Spirit (SIS) campaign only provided them with a list of 118 alleged victims. Next, the discrepancy gets worse- the RCMP claims that 54 of the NWAC’s 118 submitted victims are not listed in police databases as missing or murdered.
So, what’s going on here, whose numbers are right- the RCMP’s or the SIS report? My inner technical architect tells me it’s very likely that the RCMP have an incomplete list of victims- Canada has numerous municipal, provincial and federal law enforcement agencies, it can be hard to keep and update data from so many sources. But, after some quick investigation, it appears there are also some glaring discrepancies in the NWAC’s work.
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: http://www.genuinewitty.com/2013/02/18/sisters-in-spirit-are-there-really-600-missing-native-women-feat-libby-davies-david-eby-iran/
Load more
