Forget Rob Ford for a couple minutes...

I think we all need a break from the Rob Ford election here in Toronto. Even those of you out there that don't know about the wild tax cutting guy we elected as our Mayor last night will appreciate this lovely and very romantic sign language message on youtube....



Now don't you feel better, I sure do!

Save our net and your rights to stuff you buy...

How many of you are confused over copyright, intellectual property rights and the Internet.  As you may be aware there have been some regressive steps being taken by government and corporations to seize control over the Internet and its content.  The idea is to charge us all for its content, prevent us from even moving our music from a CD to a flash drive etc.  Don't even try to move your I-tunes from your desktop to your laptop or the reverse....

First the primer.  This is the best Copyright 101 I have ever come across.  Its long and in cartoon format.  It is very much worth the read.  Have a look here.

Next have a look at this petition. 

After years of searching, the SaveOurNet Coalition has found someone who could be an open Internet hero: the powerful *Wizard Clement!  But Clement seems reluctant to protect the Internet. SaveOurNet fears that he may be under the spell of the evil monopolies, or worse – he could just not care.

This Halloween we need a benevolent force to ensure Wizard Clement uses his powers for good. We need citizens across the land of Canada to join that force by sending a letter to Wizard Clement: 

*Wizard Clement - thats Tony folks, just in case you missed that part

Rob Smitherman or George Ford - Not for me Toronto

Today is election day in Ontario.  Municipalities across the province are voting.  In Toronto, we do have some great races and choices for councillors, we however it seems have come down to two front runners for the Mayor's chair.  The Mayor is really not all that powerful unless they also have 23 of 44 votes from council.  Without that they are in fact lame ducks.

The two front runners leave a great deal to be desired.  Both have checkered pasts.  Both are political bullies.  Both have lied about the state of our city.  They have gotten away with it because our current Mayor has failed to communicate the real situation well enough. 

The candidate running to be the progressive voice has not done well.  I can only hope he has a secret weapon today, alas I am not really expecting it to be there.  The race is between Rob Smitherman and George Ford.  They both promise to slash, cut taxes and "fix" Toronto. 

Toronto does not need fixing.   We have a great city that has made great progress over the last seven years. 

The Liberal bastions out there, the Liberal Party of Canada, has done what they generally do at election time.  Vote for us because that nasty right wing Tory will win if you don't.  The worst of it is the LPC folks don't even ask it in an apologetic manner.  It is like it is their born right to expect you and me to abandon our principals for this election. 

Quite frankly it is time to take a stand.  To say no to LPC blackmail.  I know the election is going to Rob Ford right now.  I also know that over 50% of George Smitherman's support right now is from people that just want to stop Rob Ford.  The LPC blackmail means we have many thousands of people in Toronto voting today for someone they don't believe in.  Imagine if they voted for someone they did believe in.

I will vote in the my interests, for who I think would be the best Mayor of Toronto.  It is neither Rob Ford nor George Smitherman. 

Vote for Joe today if you want a better Toronto down the road.  We will survive the likelihood of a Ford or Smitherman as Mayor for four years.  Especially if we act on our conscious today rather than allow ourselves to be blackmailed into something we like as little as the alternative.

Panty Thefts missed - Fetishist label wrongly used.

“It’s very Silence of the Lambs, all this fuss about the cross-dressing. We’re somehow equating cross-dressing with rape even though there’s no direct relationship between a fetish that’s common to a lot of people and a criminal act." - Rosie DiManno Toronto Star

For some reason the police in Tweed and in Ottawa missed a disturbing number of break-ins in one area of Ottawa and in sleepy Tweed.  The break-ins involved the stealing of underwear that belonged to girls and women.  How did they miss the connections is a good question.  You might agree that connecting the Ottawa break-ins with Tweed would have been a stretch, but missing them within their own jurisdictions seems strange to me.

Did the Police look at these break-ins of underwear as a pranks, or minor because they did not involve something of significance like a big screen TV or a wallet full of cash?

What the person did in the break-ins was intimidate and humiliate the women and girls whose privacy and space he invaded.  He made these girls and women feel very vulnerable and I expect scared.  Some did not report the break-ins because they felt so humiliated.

The Fifth Estate has looked at the break-ins and have provided a map.  Here is the map...

Many of the break-ins happened to be in or near the nieghbourhood of Col Russell Williams.  Now at the time they wouldn't know it was Williams but they could have seen the close proximity of the break-ins and 1) watched the area, 2) warned the community and 3) maybe set up a sting.

The Fifth Estate created a similar map for Orleans.  Again, Russell Williams' home is spack dab in the middle of the break-ins.

You will find much more at The Fifth Estate on this aspect of the investigation.

Today Antonia Zerbisias also goes at this pointing out that established investigative work states that these break-ins are anything but petty.  They point police to someone who may well end up being a serial killer.  These are photos of page 53in the book:  Killing for Sport: Inside the Minds of Serial Killers,

Antonia goes on to point out that the connection to the significance of the underwear theft break-ins was not made until The Chief of Police in Bellville started investigating the sexual assault and murder of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau.

What most of us should know by now is that this is not a case of a fetish taking over someone.  Here is part of a post I pointed many too in an earlier post on the differences beteen a Fetishist and a Predator...

A fetishist isn't generally interested in controlling a person; s/he is content to play with an object or collection of objects, and obtains sexual gratification that way. This activity usually doesn't escalate. 

A predator collects human victims as trophies, rendering them into objects to be controlled. When he grows tired of taking easy, inanimate trophies--stolen jewelry, underwear or other personal effects--he begins to entertain the notion of taking humans themselves as his trophies. He escalates his violations over time, in both frequency and intensity, as an addict will increase his dose of drugs when he becomes habituated.

Fetishists are rarely violent. Many are quite odd, but this is beside the point; their oddity generally harms no one. They tend to respect the dignity of others.
Predators are increasingly violent. Often they do not stand out as odd on first glance; their cultivated façade of normality IS the point. It enables them to escalate their crimes until they die or are caught, whichever comes first.

So, we can see that a fetishist ≠ a predator. If anything, they are diametrically opposed. - Sabina Becker - News of the Restless

 I would like to add its even disturbing that we would need to point this stuff out and I fear some will feel at liberty to continue to equate the Russell Williams horrific crimes as those of a fetishist gone mad.  If they do we will continue to see vulnerable people and women the subject of more gruesome crimes.  In Ontario a woman is raped every 17 minutes.  That's more than seventy in the course of a day.

We are safe from Russell Williams.  He will never be released.  Next time you hear about a woman's home being broken in, think about this case.

Election Graffiti - Toronto

Some graffiti is just too much...

Isn't there a 24 hour rule in this city to remove offensive stuff

courtesy Twitter user

Toronto progressives might settle for second best

The Smitherman campaign for Mayor of the best city in Canada is losing some traction. In recent debates Smitherman has lost his cool, ie shouting back at people in the audience during the debate on the John Tory show, telling AIDS activists he disagrees with them on harm reduction, in fact Smitherman has taken the same position as Stephen Harper. Harper and the Conservatives have tried to end the federal permit allowing the Vancouver Safer Injection site to operate.

At the LGBT debate in which Smitherman appeared to be making a guest appearance, (it lasted only 30 minutes because he scheduled an endorsement from Montreal MP Justin Trudeau for 8pm.) he called safer injection sites shooting galleries. For the former Minister of Health to suggest such a thing is reprehensible. That is the language you expect to hear from candidate for US Senate, Christine O'Donnell and Rob Ford or Vic Toews.

At the same debate Smitherman was asked about funding HIV/AIDS prevention programs at the city. Smitherman said he would protect the funding envelope but refused to say if the funding envelope would be smaller. Pantalone suggested that neither Ford nor Smitherman could promise to protect much of anything in public services when you take into account their promises to cut and freeze taxes and eliminate some taxes all together. Pantalone went on to say he would at the very least increase funding by the rate of inflation.

It seemed to be that Smitherman had decided he did not want a debate on queer issues if Rob Ford was not there. Again, he was "forced" to be there or he would have been confirmed as a hypocrite. With Ford there, Smitherman could point to Ford's homophobic politics hiding the shallow politics of his own.

The other problem for Smitherman at the queer debate was Pantalone's record. He has been there for the queer communities from the beginning. He has supported our issues at city council and has called on the Ontario government to add to Toronto's efforts. Imagine the nightmare for Smitherman, in his own neighbourhood facing a straight man who has quietly done as much or more for our queer communities. No wonder Smitherman dashed off to pay homage to Canada's political royal family.

And as the Toronto Star pointed out recently, one half of Smitherman's support comes from people who are voting for him because they don't want Rob Ford. Hardly a ringing endorsement. I know some who have done this in early voting and more that will do so on October 25, hold their nose and vote for Smiatherman.

I won't be holding my nose, I won't be happy with the election for Mayor outcome. I will however feel good about my vote. I know I and thousands of others will have our job cut out for us trying to save what we can from the budget slashing to come.

Russell Williams was a Predator - He killed, it wasn't the underwear

Elizabeth Pickett at Rabble writes about the media's attempt to cover the Russell Williams trial. The lurid fixation toward wearing women's underwear means they are largely ignoring Williams sexual desire in having power over these girls and women.

I have noted in recent days that Williams may have had a fetish for women's undergarments, it was not this interest that made him break into the homes of girls and women, to sexually assault them and finally to murder two of them. Read Elizabeth Pickett's article for a well written assessment of the media's failure...

Wearing women's underwear doesn't lead to raping and murdering women. Predatory behaviour leads to rape and murder. The desire for power and control over women leads to predatory behaviour.

To break into the house, the bedroom, the dresser drawer of a girl or woman, try on her underwear and spend hours taking pictures of yourself wearing it while masturbating isn't a fetish, it's a violation of the personal space and the sexualized belongings of the girl or woman. It made Williams feel powerful and in control -- feelings he was clearly very fond of. To masturbate all over a woman's bedroom is a violation. To tie her up and take pictures of her while masturbating and taking pictures of yourself is a violation. To do the same and then kill her is a violation. This is escalating predatory behaviour in the service of power and control, not fetishism.

See more here:  The horrific Williams murders were about power not personal fetishes

Gordon Pinsent reads Justin Bieber's new memoirs.

Canadian Icon, Gordon Pinsent reads his favourite quotes from Justin Bieber's new memoirs. This is of course from Canada's premier news program, This Hour Has 22 Minutes.



I thought it was funny, and you know you have made it when you become the subject of satire.