Rose's Place

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Following his 30 hour journey back to Canada from Sudan on Saturday, Abousfian Abdelrazik did the last six hour journey from Pearson Airport to his home in Montreal by van because "federal officials barred him from the one-hour flight from Toronto". (h/t Dr.Dawg)A one hour flight entirely within Canadian airspace.CBC's The Current did not mention this in their segment on Abdelrazik this morning. However in their quest for fair and balanced reporting, they did follow up their interview with Abdelrazik's lawyer Yavar Hameed with one from media terrorism expert and torture advocate Neil Livingstone, … [Read more...]

A big part of the reason I haven’t been blogging lately has been that I’ve been feeling a lot of anger. While of course there are probably plenty of issues onto which I could vent my righteous indignation and make good productive use of said anger, I’ve come to realize that I’ve become extremely uncomfortable being really angry. At one point in my life (or maybe several, or maybe a very long section of line as opposed to a ‘point’) I would describe myself as having been a very angry person. Whether I had good reason or not is kind of irrelevant, because all I … [Read more...]

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"I’m very glad to come back home. I’m happy," Abdelrazik said."I want to say to my supporters from coast to coast, in every town, every city, every village, thank you very much for your supporting me and through your efforts, now I am here," he said."I’m proud to be a citizen of this famous nation. Thank you very much." . And thank you, Mr Jain. … [Read more...]

“Praise God! After months of tireless effort from American Life League and pro-life heroes in Boston and around the country to expose a potential scandal only days away from becoming a tragic betrayal of Catholicism’s unwavering commitment to the dignity of the human person, Cardinal Sean O’Malley has heard our voices and will end the joint venture with abortion-providing Centene Corp! Translation: After many late night phone calls and illeterate scribblings we have cowed the Cardinal into seeing things ‘our way’. Once again the church can get back to molesting children instead … [Read more...]

A Salvadoran judge personally invited by the government of Canada to a conference in Ottawa was detained for 24 hours at Pearson Airport by the Canada Border Services Agency because he is a member of the FMLN."They told me that because of my affiliation with the organization, they wouldn't let me into the country," Eugenio Chicas said from San Salvador."I told them that the war in El Salvador ended 17 years ago and the FMLN is now the governing party in El Salvador, but they told me that was the information they had available."Eventually Chicas was permitted to attend the meeting of inter-American … [Read more...]

Pillaged via PSA from pictures for sad children. … [Read more...]

Attorney at Law reports:Bank of America, which acquired the former Merrill Lynch and Co. last year, discriminated against female brokers by offering them lower retention benefits than their male colleagues and steering wealthier investors to brokers who were men, according to a newly filed lawsuit.The suit was filed today on behalf of Jaime Goodman, a Merrill broker since 1992 who joined Bank of America when the bank acquired Merrill on January 1, 2009. Goodman claims her new bosses demonstrated gender bias against her and other female employees.She is seeking class-action status for her suit, … [Read more...]

When I replaced my ancient stove with something slightly less antiquated, I phoned Dave our local garbage contractor to pick up the old one. Dave, you see, knows who best to pass it on to - whether that be a scrap metal joint, a dangerous appliance refurbishing business, or just someone looking to build stovehenge in their backyard.Dave knows this valuable info because he lives here. Somehow I suspect that the International Waste Management Consortium in Houston Texas is not as up on the day-to-day requirements of the local stove-stacking crowd, so it's a good thing that our local municipality … [Read more...]

I really do wish I was naive enough to suspect that this story was false – public health officials delay delivery of hand sanitizer for added protection against H1N1 to reserves in Manitoba because of the alcohol content. The point makes itself, really, but the highlight I want to add is that the article notes that several of the private homes affected don’t even have running water. No racism here, nope, none at all. … [Read more...]

Bill C-24 the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement received royal assent last week.By neatly avoiding the controversy that has temporarily stalled the Colombia-Canada FTA, Canadian mining companies in Peru now have the legal standing to challenge the few Peruvian laws standing between them and the 45 million hectares of the Amazon opened up to them by Peruvian President Alan Garcia.Council of Canadians Stewart Trew : "About 50% of resource extraction in Peru is carried out by Canadian companies."Earlier this month 30,000 indigenous protesters blocked roads, rivers and railways to force the repeal of … [Read more...]

In my inbox today:OCAP STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH TORONTO CITY WORKERS The members of CUPE 416 and 79 who work for the City of Torontoare now on strike. The business media has begun its inevitable campaign ofmisinformation to produce the greatest possible backlash against theseworkers. We are encouraged to focus on uncollected garbage and suspendedservices but not, of course, to give any regard to the rights of publicsector workers or to think as working people about what is at stake inthis strike. OCAP, as a matter of basic principle, stands in solidarity withworkers' struggles. We don't … [Read more...]

Yesterday, a mere three days after the government announced it will comply with the Federal Court decision ordering it to bring Abdelrazik home, the United Nations Security Council blacklist committee decided to publish their reasons for putting him on its 1267 blacklist back in 2006. The allegations mirror similar charges posted on the U.S. Treasury Board website three years ago. What impeccable timing.He is, they assure us, "associated with Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden or the Taliban" and "a key member of a Montreal terrorist cell". Their case :He attempted to go to Chechnya to fight against the … [Read more...]

A Theatre Project for those who experience life over 60:A staged reading of monologues, scense and stories that speak to the experience of sexuality after 60. Funny, fun, heartbreaking and real!On tour through Calgary's libraries this summer! Brought to you by Seniors a GOGO … [Read more...]

I'm aghast. And I'm also not, in that Doug Elniski was elected by conservative voters and supported by Stelmach. From the Calgary Herald: A Tory MLA is under fire for online comments in which he advises girls to smile to attract men, scolds them for seeking equality and alerts his Twitter followers to a bikini car wash where "girls look cold." . . . In an entry that began with reflections on junior high school graduations, Elniski posted this advice to girls: "Men are attracted to smiles, so smile and don't give me that 'treated equal' stuff, if you want equal it comes in little packages at Starbucks."He … [Read more...]

On Friday the government adjourned for three months because they have to get started on their barbie bunfests for next fall's election and hell there's not much going on in Canada right now anyway, right?Today we learn :"In a significant policy shift, the Canadian government now believes that telling the country's taxpayers the future cost of the war in Afghanistan would be a threat to national security.... Julie Jansen, the director of the military's access branch, cited "the defence of Canada or any state allied" with it, in justifying the withholding of the figures for the three next fiscal … [Read more...]

Puzzle me this: Why is it that the same people who bitch about workers sense of entitlement (you know, workers wanting decent treatment and wages) themselves feel entitled to free plastic bags? (It's true)I think its a marvelous success so far: Toronto's new 5 cent plastic bag law has reduced the use of plastic shopping bags by something like 75%.Red Jenny Home … [Read more...]

When Hadley Freeman wrote last week about how awful it was for her to be a vegetarian, I was puzzled. If it’s so awful for her, then the only thing keeping her from eating meat is that she finds it revolting. OK, I can sympathise with not wanting to be evangelical about it – having once been involved in evangelical religion, evangelical vegetarianism is not what I’d want to stand for either. Now that I think about it, what puzzled me the most was when she mentioned she had “crap hair” and somehow related that to her vegetarian diet. Crap hair can be the result of many … [Read more...]

Prior to researching a long paper I wrote for Veterinary Heritage on the history of antivivisectionism and the animal rights movement, the name Isaac Bashevis Singer barely registered for me. I was vaguely aware of his status as a renowned Yiddish storyteller, but I hadn’t read a single one of his stories, and in fact I thought he wrote only folklore that I imagined as being very similar to the Ukranian peasant tales I had read as a child. While I was researching the darkest period in the evolution of antivivisectionism/animal rights – the Cold War era, it was as if all the lights … [Read more...]