Just in time for the Christmas shopping season

Shopping season being upon us, we here at the Woodshed are making our list and checking it twice. Kids are often difficult to buy for, as toy trends come and go and today's cool, must-have gadget is tomorrow's obsolete paperweight. Bearing that in mind, we bring you this indispensible  list of the five best toys of all time and a list of runners-up. As a father of two and a big kid at heart I can attest to the accuracy of these lists. I have played with all the toys listed at one time or another and all of them have been a huge hit with both my kids and virtually every kid I know.
Found via Twitter (see, it is too useful for something other than filling time waiting for the bus)

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When $90 million isn't really $90 million

Before you go opening your piehole about how "those Indians get a free ride" and are just "spending all our tax money on booze, big screen TVs and new snowmobiles"  or some such bullshit, let me suggest you go and read the facts on Attawapiskatt.

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Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward men...

...Unless they happen to be Iranian or North Korean or Syrian or Mexican or Jordanian or Nicaraguan or Cuban or Russian or French or Chinese or Australian or Kenyan or Swiss or anyone else who may not have applauded loudly enough when the United States of America raised an eyebrow. At least that is the policy I would expect if a certain presidential candidate get a chance to keep a promise he made today.
If, like me, you though Stephen Harper's appointment of John "Shouty McLoudmouth" Baird as minister of foreign affairs was a bizarre choice for a position that requires delicate diplomacy and a nuanced approach to dealing with difficult situations, boy oh boy, are you gonna love this.
Republican flavour-of-the-week and frontrunner Newt Gingrich has promised that, if elected president, he will appoint former never-confirmed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Yosamite Sam impersonator John Bolton as U.S. Secretary of State.

One can only assume this would mean that Turkey/Sharia conspiracy theorist Pamela "Atlas Juggs" Geller would be named Undersecretary-in-charge-of-bombing-anyone-who-so-much-as-expresses-a-dislike-of -bagels-or-Jackie-Mason-nevermind-looks-sideways-at-Israel-god-forbid.

Thankfully Newt, like Herman Cain, Sarah Palin and Christine "Not a Witch" O'Donnell before him, isn't really running for president. He's running for his own TV show on FOX and multimillion-dollar book contract.

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Another casualty in the war on the poor

I'm sure the message many of the one percent will draw from this is that handguns are too inexpensive.

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I'd like to give the whole world a big hug...

Shamelessly stolen from PZ over at Pharyngula, music by Jonathan Colton, whose work you really, really need to become more familiar with.

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This looks promising

It is kind of Thunderbirds meets the Prisoner via Monty Python, the Batman TV series and a really low budget Japanese sci-fi series.
This is just the trailer, the series started last week and can be found here.




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the Constitution doesn't mention GPS tracking

My suggestion if you find one of these on your vehicle would be to either drive to a truckstop and stick it on a tractor-trailer with out-of-state plates, or box it up and mail it to the White House (I would suggest using the local police station or FBI office as a return address to avoid having the Secret Service kick in your door) Tweet

the return of Friday music!

A couple of tunes for what appears to have become the second largest national holiday in the U.S. and rapidly in Canada, too. Why celebrate Easter, Diwali or Labour Day when you can embrace rampant consumerism and materialism, and maybe get trampled to death to save $50 on a new flatscreen, purse or gadget?



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Headline of the week, maybe of the year

Thank you Toronto Star , for making the headline suit the story

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We spent a billion dollars for this?

Note that most of these people were arrested in pre-dawn raids BEFORE the G20 demonstrations began, thanks to the use of infiltrators and police spies and agents provocateurs. And it cost taxpayers about a billion dollars, not including the fake lake and Tony Clement's gazebo.

obviously these 17 people posed an serious existential threat to country and civilization and it was worth every cent of that billion dollars to lock them up for the last year and to arrest over 1,000 people, only about 100 of which still face charges.
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1,000 word post

 Shamelessly stolen from Montreal Simon, whose excellent blog should be regular reading
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the other kind of beat poets

Former Poet Laureate of the United States and UC Berkley professor Robert Hass didn't want to believe that the police were needlessly beating students at Occupy Berkley, so he went down to the demonstration to see what was happening and lo and behold, he and his wife got their fair share of abuse.

My wife bounced nimbly to her feet. I tripped and almost fell over her trying to help her up, and at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines. NONE of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning. We couldn’t have dispersed if we’d wanted to because the crowd behind us was pushing forward to see what was going on.

I suspect that people will only take this for so long before there is considerable pushback against the police. The more sons and daughters of the middle class that get teargassed, peppersprayed and beaten, the fewer fans the police will have among the populace, and the more they will be viewed as the enemy rather than the protectors of the populace.
When that tipping point is reached, there is going to be real and lasting damage to the fabric of society.

Somebody please explain to me how UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike is one of the "good guys" and not a criminal. He's the one you see at the start of this video pepperspraying a group of seated, non-threatening, clearly non-violent protestors.



What makes him any better than the small time gangbanger, Hells' Angel thug or mob enforcer? This kind of action will not always be met with chants. When the general populace start to see the police as the enemy instead of those who serve and protect, it is a bell you can't unring.
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Fetch the smelling salts, someone said "Fuck" on the internet

As I write this, the number one story under Canada on Google news is the report by the privacy commissioner about the government collecting too much information about us, especially at airports. The number two story is about a carpenter from Winnipeg saying "fuck you" someone (who was definitely asking to be told) on the Internet.
Normally this would not be a story, but the carpenter in question is NDP Member of Parliament Pat Martin, who first expressed his anger over the government swiftly closing debate on the budget bill.

"This is a fucking disgrace... closure again. And on the Budget! There's not a democracy in the world that would tolerate this jackboot shit,”

followed by

For gods sake. In these uncertain economic times, don't you think our parliament should be debating our federal budget? Some due diligence?

These drew a series of tweets in response. Many of them, including my own, agreeing that, yes it is a fucking disgrace that the Harper government considers Parliament an inconvenience at best and that its passing of major pieces of legislation with little or no debate has the whiff of autocratic fascism. It also drew the predictable pearl-clutching trollery of the usual crowd of ignorant twerps who are more worried about the use of naughty words than they are about the government abusing its power.the one that broke the camel's back being from some hardcore Catholic fundamentalist anti-gay anti-choice dingbat who goes by the moniker of Lettingsmokeout

@PatMartinMP Sad how a foul mouth socialist capitalizes "Budget" but not "god" #ndp #cdnpoli

That was the first of several tweets by Lettingsmokeout condemning "socialism" (apparently the Pope doesn't care for socialism and since he is god's official spokesman, he couldn't possibly be wrong)  which led Martin to respond with an annoyed "Fuck you" -- to which I would only add "and the altar boys you and the pope rode in on."

Such people don't deserve to be given the time of day. Before you accuse me of anti-Catholic bigotry let me say I've nothing against Catholics that I don't have against adherents of any other major religion. Most are fine people, its the few that get carried away that spoil it all. Religion is like whisky -  it's a comfort, but those who start letting it run their life get annoying fast.

Having gotten what he wanted, the mook in question makes sure the jackals at SUN-TV are notified and seeing a shiny object, the pile-on begins with much hand-wringing and pearl-clutching about decorum in politics and those awful, awful socialists.

Well, fuck that noise.

Pat Martin is entirely correct to be as mad as hell and the language he used was entirely appropriate to the situation and the medium.

In the 46 days that Parliament has been sitting it has closed debate at least five time, ending debate on the omnibus crime bill and the gutting of the Canadian Wheat Board among other issues. This is the most times that closure has been used in such a short span and by the end of the session will likely be the most it has ever been used. That is what happens when you have a majority government that cares more about its narrow ideological agenda than about democracy.

No one was talking or writing about the number of times the government has shut down debate and pushed through legislation without allowing the opposition to examine and debate the bills., it has happened so often it isn't considered a story anymore.

But thanks to Pat Martin and a few well chosen words, that story is now at least being mentioned in passing, even if only as the reason the Winnipeg-Centre MP got angry.

Guys like Pat Martin are exactly what politics in this country need. We can no longer afford to have the opposition "go along to get along" - we can't afford to play nice while the other side is engaged in scorched-earth take-no-prisoners endless campaigning. We need an opposition that will dig in its heels and scream bloody murder every single time the Harper government tries to pull a fast one, every time it puts corporate profits ahead of public  good, every time it puts cementing its own power ahead of good public policy and fair play.

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the original Lord of the Rings

(and this explains the label)

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What they fought and died for

While I dislike the thought of politicizing Remembrance Day any more than it already has become politicized, neither can I stomach the idea of the leaving it to the flag-draped yahoos who are so busy venerating the holy troops that they forget what exactly those people who made the supreme sacrifice and those who survived were fighting for and against in World War Two.

Not everyone who signed up volunteered, and not everyone who volunteered went for some high moral reason. Some of them signed up because they needed a job, because they were ashamed not to join up, because all their friends were going. Many were conscripted. That doesn't matter. What they thought they were fighting for, whether it was "king and country" or as I once heard it put "keeping India British," isn't as important as what they fought for in terms of practical effect. Nobody joined the army to stop the Holocaust, they didn't even know it was going on at the time, but the practical effect of fighting the Nazis was to put a stop to their efforts to kill all the Jews.

They were fighting for your right to disagree with others, even to disagree with wearing poppies on Nov. 11. They were fighting for your right to speak out against authority - even if it means squatting in the park or public square. They were fighting for your right to be free from being asked for your papers any time a cop didn't like your looks. They were fighting for the rule of law, for equality of strong and weak, rich and poor. They were fighting against racial and religious discrimination.

They were fighting against fascism.

Fascism isn't just Nazis or the style of government under Mussolini. It rather emphatically is not what existed in Russia under Stalin or China under Mao, though it shares their bloodthirsty totalitarianism. Fascism didn't begin or end with the Second World War. There were plenty in England, Canada and the United States that were open fascists and many more that thought it was swell that Mr. Mussolini was able to make the trains run on time or that Mr. Hitler had done great things for Germany.

Fascism took a serious beating from 1939 to 1945, but it wasn't stamped out. Spain stayed fascist. Indonesia was pretty much a fascist state under Sukarno and Suharto and it has raised its ugly violent head numerous times and places in Latin America.

Fascism is not dead, it just smells bad. So bad that people who espouse it don't use that name anymore, don't even realize for the most part that what they are espousing is fascism. But calling it "chocolate freedom liberty dessert" doesn't make it smell any less like the shit it has always been.

I won't point any fingers at any groups or individuals here. You can figure out who they are for yourself. There are a few handy checklists or definitions at the usual place, but I'll provide you with two I think are the most complete. As you might expect, there is a great deal of overlap, and oddly enough, both come up with 14 identifying characteristics.

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forgo civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Umberto Eco put together a similar list in his excellent 1995 essay Eternal Fascism,  saying that fascist movements share these traits (I'm paraphrasing his longer essay)

  1.The cult of Tradition. The idea that all knowledge exists and must simply be interpreted. The combining of often contradictory cultural notions to find the same enduring truths ("America's government comes from the Bible!")

2. A rejection of modernism. While fascism may embrace technology, it rejects the ideas of the Enlightenment and generally thinks the Age of Reason was the beginning of civilization's moral decline.

3.The cult of action for  action's sake. Doing is good, thinking is bad. Thinking is for the effete intellectuals "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." Fascism is profoundly anti-intellectual.

4.Disagreement is treason. Science uses disagreement to further knowledge, but if people disagree how can we be sure who is right? Being right is very very important. Disagreement and making distinctions is immoral modernism.

5.Hatred of diversity. Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders.

6.Feeds on frustration, especially economic frustration that individuals are not doing as well as their perceived social inferiors i.e. "Where's  my  Cadillac/smart phone/big screen TV? All those welfare bums have one!"

7.Appeals to those who feel deprived of a clear societal identity by telling them they are special by virtue of being born in the same country. (I am Canadian! I am an Englishman! I'm an American) American exceptionalism, the master race notion of the Nazis all fit in here. "Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside."

8.Fascism is both the victim of and the key to victory over an overwhelming enemy, i.e. We are the downtrodden salt of the earth and they control everything, but we will still beat them by virtue of our inherent superiority because they are weak and effete (yeah, I know its completely self contradictory, a lot of fascist 'thinking' is, see #1)

9.Permanent war of one kind or another."There is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare."

10.Total contempt for the weak, for example cheering for allowing people without health insurance to die.

11. Every one of us is a hero and ready to make the supreme sacrifice. The motto of the Spanish falangists was "Long Live Death" - this urge to show how you are a hero by dying a glorious heroic death tends to be problematic so it often gets rechannelled into other forms, such as #12

12. "Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise." Or sometimes you just buy a really big truck and watch a lot of football.

13.Fascism is based on a selective populism. The party reflects the will of The People as interpreted by the leader. The fascist leader will say 'The government you elected doesn't understand you, it is rotten. Only I and the party really understand the Will of the People, the Silent Majority.' The fascist will insist they are "not a politician" and will inevitably campaign against "the government" as if "the government" suddenly fell from the sky or was imposed by outsiders. "There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People." (I'm looking at YOU blogosphere!)

14.Fascism uses Newspeak. In everything from framing issues  strictly Manichean terms ("You are either with us or with the terrorists") to the widespread use of euphemistic shorthand and so called dog whistle  (notice anything some people don't like is the result of 'political correctness') Fascism uses a small vocabulary to limit distinctions and control chains of reasoning through semantic limits.  ( you can't call Dick Cheney a babykiller on TV, you can't even call Newt Gingrich a liar or Pat Buchanan a fascist, you can't even call Glenn Beck a jackass)

 I would further add a few items to both lists. These are not necessarily items that are not included or implied in the above lists, they are more a manifestation of combinations of the ideas outlined in the other lists. 

 1. Fascism is driven by an urge to control. Somebody has to be in charge. The boss must show they are dominant. You must obey authority. 

2. Fascism requires an enemy. If there is no handy enemy, one must be created. This enforces unity, puts everything on a "war footing" and plays to the Manichean mindset and enforced simplicity that goes hand in hand with anti-intellectualism. People are a lot easier to control when they are scared of something. 

3. Fascism constantly looks to the usually imaginary past as golden era that must be reclaimed. Fascists are all about seeing the country "reborn" and seeing us get back to the "good old day" before smarty pants effete intellectuals and decadent bohemians ruined the country. "We want our country back." 

4.Fascism is violent. Either in the imagery they employ, the eliminationist language or in the actual physical act, fascists love the notion of taking direct action rather than thinking. "Lock them all up and throw away the key!" "All the politicians do is talk talk talk, why don't they DO something!" See the movie "Joe" or read any blogging tory for all the examples you could want. 

5.Fascism worships strength and simplicity. Whenever someone starts talking about the need to demonstrate "strong leadership" and "common sense" whether its through bombing someone or imposing a flat tax, you are getting a whiff of fascism. Ditto for all the fascination with anyone in a uniform that gets to do 'heroic' stuff like soldiers and police. They want action heroes. They want the guy who hangs drug dealers, not the guy who comes up with a way to successfully treat addiction or reform drug dealers. 

6. Fascism is aristocratic. For all its populist talk, fascists worship power and that means worshipping people who are perceived to have power and use it to take decisive action, whether it is the grand exalted leader, the titan of industry, the general or the university football coach. The rank and file think that the powerful person is a hero and they aspire to be like them. Their heroes are not Nobel winning scientists, great artists or philosophers or humanitarians. 

 So the next time you hear someone sounding off about how we are "losing our country because of multiculturalism and we have DO something about it" or how "the muslims"  or  "the gays" or the "liberals" are wrecking everything or how such and such is a strong leader because at least he takes action instead of endlessly debating what to do, you can be sure you are smelling fascism. And it isn't limited to the right wing either.

  

 

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How long?

This week at Berkely.

How much more will the wealthy's bought and paid for politicians rob from the poor to give to the rich?
How much more will people allow their economic and social mobility to be restricted?
How much longer are audiences going to tune in while those in the political media bubble continue to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted?
How many more homeless are going to freeze to death?
How many more people are going to lose their homes?
How much more will education and social welfare spending be cut to pay for 'law and order'?
How many more tear gassings?
How many more taserings?
How many more pepper sprayings?
How many more kettlings?
How much more unprovoked brutality are people going to put up with before nonviolent demonstrations and civil disobedience turn into a rain of paving stones and molotov cocktails when the riot police arrive? How long before people start sharpening their pitchforks and lighting their torches?
Tick...tick...tick...
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Things go better with Koch!

 

The Koch brothers (not exactly as pictured above) would like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, or at least the world's billionaires anyway. Unfortunately, the song they want to teach them appears to be the Horst Wessel Song. Class warfare - it's the real thing!

So here is a little tune from us to them:

Bonus link: Alison over at Creekside has more on the Koch brothers oil pipeline machinations.

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Nail injured in clash with hammer

As a journalist I understand the need to use value neutral terminology in describing events much of the time, but sometimes my colleagues and I  go a bit overboard. I spent a few moments yelling at my radio over one such incident last night.
In their coverage of the events surrounding the call for a general strike in Oakland, California, last night, the CBC mentioned that strike had been called by the Occupy Oakland group after demonstrators there clashed with police last week.
I don't mean to single out the CBC as a quick look around shows many other media outlets used the same terminology.  "Clashed" is a word used in newswriting when you know there was a fight, but you aren't sure who started it. "Clashed" suggests each side gave as good as they got. What happened in Oakland on Wednesday night may or may not have been "clashes" between police and protestors, but the event that lead to Wednesday's call for a general strike was not a "clash," it was an unprovoked, carefully coordinated attack by police on peaceful protestors who were guilty of little more than loitering in a public space and littering.

Riot police stormed the Occupy Oakland camp around 5 am on Oct. firing baton rounds and tear gas and arresting 85 of about 170 protesters who had been camping in the downtown park for about two weeks.There was no suggestion that the protestors were violent or even unruly. Many were asleep when the hundreds of riot cops moved in and detroyed the encampment. That isn't a "clash," that's a "raid" or "an attack" or a "police riot."



The police even threw a flash-bang grenade at people trying to help a man who was nearly killed after his head "clashed" with a baton-round fired by riot cops.


Scott Olson, the man shot in the head with the baton-round, (essentially a either a hockey puck fired from a grenade launcher or a cloth bag full of birdshot fired from a shot gun) remains in hospital with a fractured skull. He survived two tours of duty with the marines in Iraq before coming home to be shot while fighting for freedom.

I think its pretty clear who the police in this case are serving and protecting, and it ain't the 99%
 

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Rick Perry is not as think as you stoned he is!

Here are the "high"lights of soon-to-be-former-presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry's recent speech in New Hampshire. If you want to sit through the entire addled trainwreck you can watch it here.



He doesn't look sleepy and he isn't slurring his speech enough for it to be booze and he isn't jumpy and hyper enough for it to be cocaine and his teeth are too nice for it to be meth. He's a bit too animated for it to be weed (though it really reminded me of this), so I'm guessing some kind of hallucinogen, but he's not trying to hug anyone so it probably isn't X and he doesn't have the manic grin or unblinking laser eyes of someone on LSD, so it must be something a bit more obscure - I'm guessing ibogaine.

After all, he wouldn't be the first candidate to get derailed by ibogaine.




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there is a reason that many newspaper websites don't allow comments

And that reason is this: People who comment at newspaper websites are stupid, as are many people who complain to newspapers, as are many people who work for newspapers.

 Pour yourself a drink, I feel a screed a-comin'

Not offense to the fine people that employ me, and my opinions are my own and not intended to represent or reflect theirs or anybody else's.

Simply put, the newspaper story linked to above is a monument to stupidity on all fronts. In a nutshell, two teachers at a public school decided not to have their junior kindergarten students take part in the school's Halloween events and some Sun-TV viewing parent has decided somehow or other that this is political correctness run amok and destroying Canada.

Stupid like this happens all the time.

But in this case the parent has obviously run to the local newspaper and the editor there hasn't been wise or assertive enough to get rid of them and has instead given them a platform for their incoherent objection to the teacher's possibly ill-considered but totally harmless decision. The reporter assigned to the story wasn't smart or assertive enough to either refuse such a stupid assignment or simply come back and tell the editor "there's no story there boss, just some idiot who needs to stop watching Michael Coren and reading the Toronto Sun.." It's either that or the editor and reporter, tired of being harrassed by this dumbell decided to shine a light under this woman's rock in the hopes that she would scurry away rather than embarass her family.

This kind of stupid "let's you and him fight" process of stirring up a false controversy to provide front-page fodder has a long and mostly ignoble history dating back to the yellow journalism of the Hearst papers ginning up the Spanish American War and continuing to the work of Glenn Beck and hate radio. Given the track record of the paper in question, I suspect it is less a case of ginning up a story or stirring the pot for fun and profict and more a case of not being able to tell the Mom "thanks for your call, but we aren't interested. Go peddle crazy someplace else." And not getting a comment - or more likely a "no comment" - from school's principal or the teachers involved is unforgiveable.If they declined to speak and referred the reporter to the board spokesperson, fine, but say so in the story.

And last, but hardly least in the parade of stupid, we have the usual assembly of commenters who take time out of their busy schedule of eating paint chips and masterbating to Rush Limbagh to pen little screeds about how the liberals and immigrants from Whoknowswhereistan are ruining perfectly nice white Christian holidays like Halloween.

The teacher's decision was taken partly, I suspect, to keep the four- and five-year-olds from having the crap scared out of them by the older kids' more gruesome costumes, partly to spare themselves from the risk of Mormon or born-again Christian parents accusing them of teaching Satanism to toddlers and partly to keep from having a bunch of overexcited, overstimulated, candy-jonesing four- and five-year-olds on their hands for the day. Instead, they are doing a nature-themed black-and-orange day for the little ones.

It isn't a decision I would have made. I often scare small children, sometimes even on purpose. I'm absolutely in favour of baiting fundementalist whack jobs ("Think of it as lesson on Comparative Religion, Deacon and Mrs. Smith, I'm sure little Caleb and Faith won't try to have a human sacrifice at home and will save their ritual cannibalism for communion on Sunday") and I would have thought that filling the little bugger full of sugar and then sending them home would have been fitting revenge on their parents for any of a myriad number of sins real or imagined committed against the teachers. But then again, I'm not tough enough to be teaching junior kindergarten.

And you can be sure revenge in some form will be taken against the blameless kid involved. Their file will have "this kid's mom is a nut who will call the media anytime the mood strikes her" stamped all over it and teachers will from now on treat the poor child like a beaker of nitroglycerine, meaning that anything off the beaten track in terms of educational experiences or source material will be strictly verboten.

The concerned mom, worried that her little treasure won't get to have the bejezzus scared out of him or her or get to show off the $10 princess trollop jr.or mega-macho action-man costume from Value Village to her classmates, thus denying mommy the chance to compete with other mommies, even raises the spectre of the War on Christmas.

 “We’re losing Canada — in Canada,” (name removed in hopes of avoiding annoying lawyery emails) said Friday, stressing schools celebrated Halloween as a slightly ghoulish but fun unofficial holiday when she was a child, but are increasingly turning away from this. “They’re taking away my choice as a parent. This is my culture. I’m from Canada.”...(snip)...
“I don’t want it to be a black-and-orange day,” (name removed in hopes of avoiding annoying lawyery emails) countered, saying she’s now anxious about whether celebrating other traditions may be nixed, including Christmas.
“How much more of Canadian culture are we going to lose?”

She carries on as if the teachers are serving beaver curry and have cut up the flag to make a turban for the her daughter to wear to the human sacrifice and Constitution bonfire. Granted, I've been out of the country for a few years, but when did trick-or-treat day join hockey, the RCMP, maple syrup and complaining about the damn French/Les maudit Anglais as the cornerstone of our national identity?

She's Canadian, we get it. That and $5 will get her a double-double and an apple fritter at Tim's - so what? I can only assume from her insistence on asserting her Canadianess that she thinks denying her little one a chance to participate in the Halloween festivities is somehow the work of nefarious non-Canadian forces.

That is certainly the message the trolls who came out from under their bridges in the comments at the site seized on.I'm not sure what foreign culture they think is being catered to since no one outside of North America pays any attention to Halloween and the only cultural group in North America that objects to it are the Mormons and Christian Taliban who think its a celebration of witchcraft that will turn their kids into cross-dressing Satanic gay readers of Harry Potter novels or some such nonsense.

I don't recall ever seeing troops of Turks, Italians, Brazillians or Chinese out demonstrating against Halloween. I haven't seen any anti-Halloween rallies organized by Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews or Rastafarians. Who exactly do these dimwitted commenters think is destroying their culture?

The so-called politically correct crowd don't have anything against Halloween. It has long been the holiday of choice for those pursing lifestyle choices that don't meet with conservative approval. A chance to dress up and act out? A pagan festival when everyone is a weirdo? Giving away stuff to kids? Going all out to freak out the squares? Getting free stuff from property owners? How much more of a rainbow-freak-flag counterculture approved event can you get?
These xenophobic idiots see some kind of nefarious conspiracy to steal their cultural identity every time they hear someone say 'happy holidays' - I just wish they would get it over with, send Bill O'Reilly or Pat Robertson their life savings, go Galt once and for all and leave the rest of us alone.

So, to sum up; Stupid teachers, stupid mom, stupid or lazy newspaper people and stupid, stupid, stupid with bigot-sauce commentors.

Happy Halloween!


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