Dawg's Blawg

Faux News supports the troops

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:17:19 PDT

Shorter Ralph Peters, Faux News military analyst: "Take no prisoners. I am directing my remarks, of course, to the Taliban." This man's view of the media, by the way, is...interesting, although the sentiment is hardly original: "Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media." Umm...been there, done...

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Annals of white supremacy

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:36:29 PDT

Score 3-0 for the good guys over the past few days: Toronto resident Francisco Lafreniere is behind bars, after allegedly threatening neighbours in his condo and impersonating a police officer. A search of his place revealed a stash of weapons and Holocaust-denial literature. He was found to be in possession of "a real deputy sheriff’s badge, which has been traced to a small town in Texas....

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Suaad Hagi Mohamud: DFAIT responds

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:21:24 PDT

The lawyer for marooned Canadian Suaad Hagi Mohamud will be back before the Federal Court tomorrow in a last-ditch attempt to repatriate her before she faces a Kenyan court on Friday. Yesterday Raoul Boulakia filed six affidavits from friends and family attesting to her identity. He has concerns with the official handling of this case: and so do I. Why, he asks, has the Canadian High Commission...

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Abousfian Abdelrazik: "You want we should take care of him, Boss?"

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:25:15 PDT

Abousfian Abdelrazik is back in Canada. But new revelations about the government's dubious handling of his case have been unearthed by the Globe & Mail's indefatigable Paul Koring. Briefly, the Sudanese government was considering "disappearing" Abdelrazik in 2006--and Canadian diplomats in Khartoum were ordered to take no action. The Sudanese, having apprehended Abdelrazik on the say-so of...

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Suaad Hagi Mohamud case heating up

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:13:09 PDT

Raoul Boulakia, a lawyer acting for exiled Canadian Suaad Hagi Mohamud, will be appearing in Federal Court this morning to force the Harper government to issue her an emergency passport. He is also seeking a declaration that the government has "acted in bad faith by arbitrarily denying the applicant's citizenship, and by delaying resolution of confirming her citizenship." Mohamud has been...

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The Four Horsemen: charges pending?

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:21:17 PDT

An intriguing article in today's Globe and Mail suggests that the Crown's hasty decision not to prosecute the four RCMP officers implicated in the death of Robert Dziekanski may be reversed. There has already been slow but certain progress in this direction. Now Janusz Kochanowski, a senior Polish ombudsman, is calling for criminal charges to be laid. “New facts call for a reassessment of the...

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Sunday doctr'uns

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 13:14:32 PDT

UnCatholic potlucks In spring 2008, I played at a “World Day of Prayer” event at St. Mary’s in Ottawa. They had a “pot luck” beforehand, then we went upstairs and the they had a prayer service with music, and showed a slide show of Haiti, then did a collection. I remember thinking that the crowd was not in agreement with Catholic moral teaching. They had a collection for “Haiti”. There was an...

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The spirit of capitalism

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 06:51:42 PDT

Cadillac Fairview, wholly owned by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (now, there are some wheels within wheels for you), has fired every one of its unionized employees at the TD Centre in Toronto, after locking them out for a month, and replaced them with scab labour. Here's the relevant clause in the Ontario Labour Relations Act: Employers not to interfere with employees’ rights 72. No...

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Congratulations, Damian

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 07:06:04 PDT

...and to your spouse. Not being much of a Facebooker, I missed mention of this blessed event a few days ago. Everyone please welcome Brendan William Penny, born Wednesday, July 8, at 1:07 am. He weighed 8 pounds, 14 ounces. "Mother and child are doing very well," says Damian, "except for the lack of sleep between 11PM and 5AM. " Ditto the father. The kid may grow up to be a blogger, says...

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Palin resigns the Presidency

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:45:25 PDT

Heh. [H/t Zerb]

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The in-house blog, in basic English

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:27:04 PDT

I owe my readers a sincere apology. I was wrong. Kathy English, the "public editor" of the Toronto Star, really is as ploddingly earnest as she sounded a week ago. Today she's got another column up, on the "new media." She seems to know as much about that subject as I do about Feynman diagrams. She begins with a long defensive whine about the drubbing she received in the blogosphere: I...

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I got nothing

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:42:21 PDT

Good God. And not a word about this in the mainstream media. What the hell is happening in our country? Our government maroons countless Canadians in foreign lands because they have the wrong colour and the wrong religion. Racism of all kinds is alive and kicking. Aboriginals are still out in the cold. But clearly there's only one form of bigotry that really counts. Only one that merits a...

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It's alive!

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:28:26 PDT

Ick. This could awaken old nightmares for the good folks of Downingtown, Pennsylvania. [H/t Dr. Prole]

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Kafka, redux

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:28:31 PDT

The Toronto Star's John Goddard is turning into another Paul Koring, staying on the Suaad Hagi Mohamud case like a limpet. It's been more than a week since Mohamud's fingerprints--taken at her own insistence--have been in the possession of Canadian consular officials in Nairobi. To become a Canadian citizen, she was fingerprinted several years ago. The High Commission in Kenya is still refusing...

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Defamation

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 05:32:05 PDT

Once again the odious "shlemazl" has called me an anti-Semite. Genug, shoyn. I would appreciate it if anyone with information as to the identity of this individual would email me.

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Meat Sock-puppetry at the CJC

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:57:38 PDT

In an on-going vendetta against Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias, a summer student at the Canadian Jewish Congress named Ben Singer has been more than earning his salary--he's been doing the work of at least three people. Ben's IP address is 69.77.176.174. That also happens to be the address of commenter "Karen"--and, surprisingly perhaps, commenter "Marty," who left a suggestion here that Kathy...

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The spirit of capitalism

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:11:07 PDT

Isotope crisis. Dying cancer patients in dire need of bone scans. What a great time for profit-taking. Covidien Ltd., fresh from jacking up its prices by 50%, is set to add another 40% to its take. The Dublin-based company raked in a mere $10 billion in revenues last year. As reported: The price increases are forcing hospitals to absorb additional unforeseen costs at a time when they are under...

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"I would like for them to bring my mom back"

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:56:29 PDT

It's nearly a week now since our fellow-citizen Suaad Hagi Mohamud was fingerprinted at the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi, in a desperate attempt to prove that she's Suaad Hagi Mohamud. Her fingerprints are already on file from her original citizenship application. She's been marooned in Kenya for eight weeks. On May 28, the High Commission voided her passport, claiming that she is an...

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Not extinct enough!

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:50:04 PDT

A new low for the Blogging Tories, now apparently in freefall. Stephen Taylor, who maintains the blogroll, has always seemed like a reasonable fellow to me--does he simply lack any notion of decency?

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Shakeup at CSIS?

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:50:07 PDT

There was the murky role played by CSIS, Canada's secret police, in the case of Canadian exile Abousfian Abdelrazik. The then-head of CSIS, Jim Judd, indignantly demanded an inquiry of his agency, protesting its innocence--and promptly resigned. Since, there have been revelations that CSIS had deliberately withheld evidence in two high-profile court cases. And now the almost toothless watchdog...

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The Zerb vs. Kathy English: are we being had?

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:46:51 PDT

OK: we're all familiar at this point with the sickeningly prissy, obsequious, condescending tone of the now-infamous column by the Toronto Star's "public editor," Kathy English. And on both sides of the blogospheric aisle, we've blasted considerable scorn in her direction. Now I'm scratching my head. Indeed, that head-scratching began last evening over wings and beer with my co-blogger. Are...

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Jason Kenney's anti-Roma roots?

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:14:27 PDT

On Foreign Affairs Minister Jason Kenney's desk is a picture of a convicted pro-Nazi war criminal, Cardinal Aloysius Stepanic, whom he considers one of his heroes. During World War II, Stepanic collaborated with Ante Pavelic, the head of a pro-Nazi puppet state called the "Independent State of Croatia," run by a murderous gang called the Ustaša. They set up the notorious Jasenovac...

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The Queen is senile

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:24:47 PDT

This proves it. Honours for an autocrat whose career was marked by venality, scandal, coverup, assault and the crushing of dissent. Not the award I would have chosen for this dreadful little man.

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Your daily bureaucrat

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:46:49 PDT

This could cost me my final ethics clearance for some interviews I have to do to complete my thesis. But I can't resist. I have received conditional clearance for my project. Amongst other niggles large and small, I was rapped on the knuckles for not using my university email account when communicating with the university ethics board. I expressed a little surprise, given that I was, in effect,...

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Starving the little woman

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:40:06 PDT

Remember that rape law (to be more precise, the law legalizing marital rape) that Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai tried to pass earlier this year? It's been amended. But most of the media haven't delved beyond that. The Independent, however, which broke the original story, has done so. Husbands may no longer rape their wives. Instead, they may now starve them into sexual submission. The ethicists...

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