Feb 26

Sisters In Spirit: The Native Women’s Association of Canada’s Forgotten Missing (feat. Status of Women Canada & $10 million)

Sisters in Spirit gathering in 2011 (One year after funding was cut)

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.

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Feb 22

MediaWatch: Ken Stone, CSIS, The CBC, PressTV, Iran And Shameless Propaganda…

Ken Stone: "No Justice, No Peace"

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…

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Feb 20

[Updated] Homeless Food Tokens Are Coming To Toronto- Are They Really A Good Idea?

save-on-meats-tokens

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…

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Feb 18

Sisters In Spirit: Are There Really 600 Missing Native Women? (feat. Libby Davies, David Eby & Iran)

Sisters in Spirit gathering in 2011 (supposedly 1 year after funding was cut)

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.

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Feb 16

OCAP Gets Its Stupid On At City Hall! (feat. No One Is Illegal, Toronto School Board & Gaétan Héroux)

John Clarke from OCAP- I'm sure the glowing eyes are no coincidence...

John Clarke from OCAP (The glowing eyes are mere coincidence…)

Yesterday was a very interesting one for Toronto’s City Hall. Shortly after noon a group of people from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty setup camp in front of the mayor’s office to protest the city’s policy on shelters. It was a planned event, OCAP had booked space in the neighbouring Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity (a haven for Toronto’s anarchist groups) just an hour before.

Selecting the mayor’s office was a smart choice of a location. It’s not only high-profile, but most of the major news networks have access to pre-installed wiring to connect their cameras to live feeds. Unfortunately, being OCAP, they made some dumb choices too. The most significant one being their decision to try and slander me while talking to those news cameras. And, wow, did it ever backfire on them!

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Feb 13

[Updated] Kevin Annett, The Pope, The Media Co-Op, Anonymous, The CAW, Lies And Appropriation of Indigenous Voices…

International Socialist, and prominent con-artist, Kevin Annett (notice what it says on the banner)

Kevin Annett (on right) with NDP Socialist Caucus Founder Barry Weisleder

Kevin Annett was one of the worst disasters to hit Canada’s indigenous communities in the past 20 years. He’s a former United Church minister who was defrocked after losing his cool and refusing to meet with a church psychiatrist. Once he left the church he began his long-con- appropriating the voices of Indian Residential School survivors and using their stories to get naïve (or bad intentioned) people to support his crusade against the Pope, the Queen, and the governments of the world.

In 2011 Annett went to the Six Nations reserve in Brantford, Ontario and faked the discovery of a mass grave of residential school survivors. His fraud was exposed and he was publicly humiliated- even the Aboriginal People’s Television Network got involved, producing an in-depth report debunking him. Annett later lied about filing a court case against the Queen, the Pope, Harper & ‘Big Pharma’- he was quickly disproved.

How does one top faking a mass grave and a lawsuit against the Queen? Well, it seems that Annett has gone off the deep-end now, he announced yesterday that he was single-handedly responsible for the resignation of the Pope!

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Feb 10

Is Activist Violence A Plot Against Activism? (It may as well be…)

A Media Co-Op / Rabble fan in Montreal...

Niger bloc utilus idotus excors a Montrealensi…

It’s no secret now that Canadian activist movements have a problem with violence. Every major activist event in the past few years has been stained by violent acts- the 2010 Olympics, G20, the student fees protests in Quebec. Yet, despite the fact such violence very few activists have dared to speak-out. People who have, like peace activist Derrick O’Keefe, have ended-up being publically slaughtered. I can attest to that fact, having been on the receiving end of the abuse after standing-up against violence in the Occupy movement.

There are many leaders in activist communities who have been actively promoting the use of violent tactics. Some of the more prominent pro-violence activists I’ve written about include Harsha Walia (who O’Keefe and I were harshly attacked by), Alex Hundert, Julian Ichim, and Franklin Lopez. Pro-violence activists preach a gospel that it’s not only acceptable, but necessary to achieve societal change.

It’s hard to guess these people’s intentions, that should be left to the courts. But we can look at the results of previous activist violence and quickly realize it’s only had negative results. We can also ask the question of what would motivate people to promote such unproductive behaviour- are they simply unable to comprehend reality, or are some people intentionally leading activists down a path of self-destruction?

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Feb 10

Anarchists For Andrew Cash!

Feb 09

Chilling Effects: Andy Lehrer Continues His, Über Lame, Threats…

Andy Lehrer with a masked anarchist

Andy Lehrer with a masked anarchist

I received a very ominous threat back in January- it was posted in the comments section on my story criticising an article by Michael Laxer of the Socialist Party of Ontario. Laxer is a member of the SPO, and was a candidate in the last election. He also seems to have some serious problems with free speech– something that Ontario’s voters should be aware of.

The threat said that, because the person writing it had access to the voter rolls (including people’s addresses), I as an ‘enemy of the people’ could be tracked down to my home. I looked-up the IP address, noticed that it was at a nearby Internet cafe, and quickly made my way over. There I saw Andy Lehrer, a man who is registered with Elections Ontario as the head of the SPO. Ever since then he’s been trying to intimidate me to take down my story- unfortunately for Lehrer, I don’t scare so easily.

This morning Lehrer took another (equally pitiful) shot at me…

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Feb 08

One Penny Philanthropist: Why Is OPIRG York Fronting Donations For A Racist Hate Group?

Except those who disagree with NoII...

Except those who disagree with NoII…

I decided to try a little experiment yesterday, I’ll call it the One Penny Philanthropist. It all began when a generous reader decided to click the donate button (to your right) and graciously sent me a $50 donation. In the year and a quarter I’ve been running this site I’ve got $150, which has been just enough to cover the costs of keeping this site online.

So, with some money burning a hole in my e-pocket, I decided to engage in some mass philanthropy. Not having a lot of money I was unable to be very generous- I’m no George Soros. Instead, I sent out some ‘protest donations’ of one penny each to some organizations I find troubling. I’ve learned some fascinating things in the process, including a funding connection between the York University and No One Is Illegal- one of Canada’s most troubling pro-violence hate groups.

In the immortal word’s of Deep Throat, let’s “follow the money”…

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