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Showing posts with label CAFE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CAFE. Show all posts

Saturday, December 30, 2017

Etobicoke Park Stairs, Niki Ashton, Jagmeet Singh & more -- 2017 on The Left Chapter in review

2017 saw over 300 posts of various kinds on The Left Chapter. We also saw record numbers of hits and readers including the top piece in The Left Chapter's history.

It also saw the launch of new pages and features such as the Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project.

Consistently popular as well were our vintage postcard and photography posts such as Leningrad During the Days of the War and in Peacetime -- A Photographic Exposition of Resistance, Victory and Reconstruction, Vintage Vegas 1958 - A Colour Postcard Folder of the Classic Hotels and Toronto Working Class and Immigrant Life 1910 - A Photographic Exposition. 

I want to thank all of our readers and contributors very much for their feedback, support, criticisms and engagement.

The year had many posts that came very, very close to making this list including posts like John Horgan lets the facade drop with cynical, ugly comments after green-lighting Site C, In the shadow of October -- Reflecting on the USSR and Soviet power, If there is no left, there is no left -- A short note on the politics of appeasement and socialist ideology and Omar Khadr is 'innocent' even if he is 'guilty'. 

We also had contributions from other writers that were widely read and shared and included Scotty Hertz's trenchant and brilliantly titled The Constant Image Gardeners, Marko Velimir Kobak's The Meaning of October on its Centenary looking at the Russian Revolution's legacy, and Ammario Reza's Polling Success or Electoral Flop? Religious Neutrality Laws that asks if bills like Quebec's C-61 are really as popular as people think they are.

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed this year and I look forward to seeing what interesting viewpoints and arguments we see next year!

(Remember that if you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share or if you want to share a petition/appeal or upcoming event you can send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!)

Here, without further ado, are the top ten posts (in terms of hits) on The Left Chapter in 2017:

1) Etobicoke "park stairs" story is a perfect example of the crass, reactionary, anti-regulatory nonsense that led to the Grenfell disaster

 By now almost everyone in  Toronto would have heard the story of newly minted Etobicoke folk hero  Adi Astl and how he built stairs quickly in a park for only $500 when city officials said building the stairs would cost $65,000 or more.

 Read more!

 See also: John Tory's austerity regime triumphs in latest Toronto budget

2) James Di Fiore's hatchet job on Niki Ashton deserves nothing but contempt

No doubt many have seen the inane hatchet job James Di Fiore wrote on the Huffington Post attacking Niki Ashton in deeply sexist, reactionary and over-the-top terms that lead to his absurd assertion from the title on that her "Obsession With Identity Politics Could Destroy The NDP".

 Read more!

 See also: The backlash against Niki Ashton from anti-Black Lives Matter commentators is what is really off base

See also: The sexist insults about Catherine McKenna are not acceptable because sexism is not acceptable

3) Don't be fooled -- The campaign against so-called small business tax reform is class warfare by the wealthy

Census data released today from 2016, according to Andrew Jackson of the Broadbent Institute, confirms "rising income inequality" in Canada.




In the two weeks since Jagmeet Singh was elected leader of the federal NDP in a first ballot landslide where nearly half of party members did not even bother to vote at all, the dust has settled to reveal a party that neither wanted nor embraced any serious change of course or path of introspection after the catastrophe of 2015.




Have you heard the news?

The "left" is "out of touch" with the pulse of what is going on in the United States and North America more broadly because insert left academic or commentator/insert left publication says this must be true due to Trump's victory in the US Presidential race.




Guest Editorial by Robert McCarthy

My name is Robert McCarthy from Sudbury, Ontario and I am supporting Niki Ashton to become the next leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. Like myself, Niki is a proud Democratic Socialist. She is the candidate that I most identify with. Her vision includes free tuition and student debt forgiveness, opposing pipelines where they infringe on Indigenous rights and endanger the environment, and the expansion of public healthcare to include dental care, pharmacare and access to mental health services for all Canadians. These policies are perfectly in line with what I believe.




The sins of the mother or father, grandmother or grandfather, should never be held against the child...unless they then appear to lie about and celebrate those sins.




What a difference a night and an imperial missile strike makes. Especially to those who jockey for position within the shadow of an empire.




To ring in the New Year The Walrus magazine decided to run a rather long, and very odd piece about the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) and the attempts by its leader, Justin Trottier, to allegedly mainstream men's rights activism (MRA) in Canada.




Given the truly inspiring turn of events within the Labour Party in the UK under Corbyn over the last couple of years it is not at all surprising that leftists in Canada are hoping that perhaps these conditions can be recreated here and within the country's mainstream social democratic party the NDP.



Have a happy and safe New Year! See you all in 2018. 
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Wednesday, February 1, 2017

CAFE, Molson Coors Boycott, Road Tolls & more -- December and January on The Left Chapter in review

December and January saw 47 posts published on The Left Chapter. In terms of hits this period saw the highest number, again, for any two month period in our history. This is the fourth consecutive two month period to set a record!

While all of the posts on this list were widely shared, a post from July that was re-shared after Pride Toronto made the correct and courageous decision to bar police floats in future parades -- a central demand of Black Lives Matter Toronto protesters -- went on over the last couple of weeks to become one of our most widely shared pieces ever and would have been number one on the round-up.

This was You cannot 'discriminate' against the police. They are agents of discrimination.

As always, thanks so much to all our readers and contributors.

Without any further ado the top six posts from the two months, in terms of hits, are:

1) Call it men's rights extremism because that is what it is -- What The Walrus got wrong in their article about CAFE

To ring in the New Year The Walrus magazine decided to run a rather long, and very odd piece about the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) and the attempts by its leader, Justin Trottier, to allegedly mainstream men's rights activism (MRA) in Canada.



320 Molson Coors workers at the Carlingview Drive brewery in Toronto are on strike. The company is calling for significant concessions from workers in terms of wages, pensions and benefits to offset an apparent, and likely temporary, downturn in sales.



While this trope has been around for a while, with the rather facile lines of debate that have arisen of late given Toronto Mayor John Tory's road toll plan, the bizarre and reactionary notion that Toronto is somehow a city comprised of latte drinking academics, intellectuals, and pompous elitists sneering at the rest of the province has reared its head again among lefties in Ontario.



As 2017 began New Democrats in New Brunswick awoke to discover that their leader, Dominic Cardy, had resigned. He did so in a profoundly graceless and petty fashion, entirely befitting the man, by releasing a long statement essentially denouncing the party he had led as being ideologically backward, riven by internal divisions and not actually interested in taking power.



by: Jesse M. Zimmerman

“Western leftists know almost nothing about Syria, it’s society, it’s regime, it’s people, it’s political economy, it’s contemporary information…They do not see us; it is not about us at all.” 

–Yassin Al Haj Saleh



As 2016 draws to a close, I think it is safe to say that we are seeing a genuine catastrophe unfolding in Ontario.

Seldom has a province had a government so singularly ineffective, seemingly corrupt, and astoundingly tone deaf and hypocritical. It is almost as if Kathleen Wynne and her cabal are actually intent on handing the reigns of office over to the deeply odious Patrick Brown.


The top food related post for the period was Lamb Keema with Onions


Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share?


Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!



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Saturday, January 7, 2017

Call it men's rights extremism because that is what it is -- What The Walrus got wrong in their article about CAFE

To ring in the New Year The Walrus magazine decided to run a rather long, and very odd piece about the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) and the attempts by its leader, Justin Trottier, to allegedly mainstream men's rights activism (MRA) in Canada.


CAFE, for those unfamiliar with it, and as I have written about several times before, is the Canadian front group for the broader MRA movement generally. While for years now CAFE has tried to portray itself as a benign, charitable organization that is supposedly attempting to help men and boys in crisis, it has overt and clear ties to anti-feminist extremists and to their ideological aims, a point to which we will return. 

The article -- which was penned by no less than The Walrus' editor Jonathan Kay and one of its editorial fellows Lauren Heuser -- portrays Trottier as somehow in juxtaposition to the extremists and as in some kind of struggle against them for the soul of the movement in Canada while acknowledging that, for all his words to the contrary, Trottier seems to not be doing a very good job of this. 

The article highlights this by pointing to some of the speakers at CAFE's recent 2016 conference in Ottawa that Kay and Heuser admit as 'problematic' (another point to which we will return) and by also acknowledging that some of the MRA's most "strident online supporters are directly involved with CAFE."

It ends on a somewhat critical note by stating: 
As rational-seeming and pleasant as Trottier may be, he risks forever being overshadowed by the noisier and more extreme MRA advocates who ally themselves with his cause—some of whom are even given speaking roles at his events. Until the haters get shown the door, the men’s rights movement will never truly come of age.
Given that the article was titled "Don't Call It Men's Rights" this is all very contradictory and strange. It is also inherently, despite the relatively mild criticism on the part of Kay and Heuser, fundamentally a whitewash of what CAFE is actually all about and a bit of a weird decision to dedicate so much space to on the part of what has traditionally been seen as a progressive magazine.

The closing sentence "Until the haters get shown the door, the men’s rights movement will never truly come of age" implies that it is a movement that could possibly be meaningful (and come of age) without the "haters" when, in fact, they are intrinsic to the movement and its worldview. It is akin to saying that a White Rights movement could "come of age" by showing the "haters" the door, i.e. it is absurd and misses totally what the MRA is and what its aims are. Without the haters the men's rights movement would cease to exist.

Much of this ground I have covered before. From CAFE's misleading claims and its campus recruitment tactics to its overt ties with extremists like Dan Perrins to their association with the American hate site A Voice for Men.

In the Kay and Heuser article they mention that at CAFE's conference two of the speakers were Karen Straughan and Janice Fiamengo and while calling them "prominent MRAs" they barely scratch the surface (which could have easily been done with a Google search) of what these two are about. Straughan has a long history as a "contributing editor" with the A Voice for Men hate website and with making outrageous and offensive statements about women. Fiamengo, meanwhile, has written articles on Islamaphobic and extreme right websites and has even appeared on white nationalist radio programs to attack feminism, among the other highlights of her illustrious crusade.

The fact that these two spoke at the CAFE conference says all one really needs to know about any supposed desire to become more "moderate".

Never mind CAFE's attempts to hold an "Equality Day" concert (as if it is men who need equality!) in Toronto a couple years back that was cancelled when many of those involved discovered what CAFE was about or the bizarre interview with NOW Magazine that occurred in its wake.

CAFE and other men's rights groups also actually erase the very real oppression related to class, racism and bigotry, and homophobia that many men face by derailing nonsense about men being oppressed as men or by the mythical concept of 'misandry'.

The fundamental issue with the very notion of the need for a group like CAFE or of the Men's Rights Movement generally really comes through in the The Walrus article when Trottier says "We put aside the question of who has it worst in our society, men or women. That kind of polarizing debate doesn’t help in assisting individual people and families.”

The problem with this is that putting aside the notion "of who has it worst in our society, men or women" means ignoring the existence of systemic sexism and misogyny and amounts to a fundamental denial of the historic and continuing inequality of women, never mind the shocking prevalence of male violence both against women and generally, and the reality of rape culture. There is absolutely no doubt "who has it worst in our society" and it is inherently reactionary and misogynist to imply that there is even a question about this of any kind on a societal level. Doing so is both dangerous and harmful to countless "individual people and families" most especially women and children.

It is incredibly important not to put this reality aside in any discussion of "equality" and it is only polarizing to those who oppose the very need for a feminist movement or for a continued fight for women's rights.

It is through this type of obfuscation and pretend "moderation" that Trottier and CAFE continue to both be totally entwined with the extremists while peddling what amount to thinly veiled denials of the actual reality of our male supremacist society and the ongoing struggle for women's equality.

Further Reading:

 Lies our fathers told us: The men's rights movement and campus-based misogyny

A Voice for Men's new Canadian misogynist campaign, CAFE and Ryerson University

Dan Perrins, CAFE & Canada's Men's Rights movement

Mainstreaming misogyny: Canada's new charitable hate movement, CAFE

Guess what's coming to U of T: The Men's Rights Movement, Janice Fiamengo and Paul Elam

Diminishing legitimate 'male' issues: Gary Mason, the Men's Rights Movement and the myth of misandry

Anti-MRA Links & Resources
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Monday, June 1, 2015

May: Bill C-51, the "Men's Rights Movement", taxes & more -- The month on The Left Chapter in review

From: Tom Mulcair, the NDP & Bill C-51: Committed to a full repeal!
May was another busy month with 40 posts of various kinds on The Left Chapter.

Here are the top five posts, in terms of hits, for the month of May. For the first time so far, it includes a tie with two posts having an exactly equal number of hits as of 2 p.m. today. There was also an unusual circumstance, where one post from March would have made the top five, so we have included a link to it as well!

1) Tom Mulcair, the NDP & Bill C-51: Committed to a full repeal!

To date the story of Bill C-51 and the NDP has been one of somewhat contradictory messaging around the issue of whether or not, if elected, they would amend the bill or repeal it entirely. While some MPs said one thing to the party faithful in a variety of contexts, the leader of the party said something quite different on Global Television and these contradictions were never, until yesterday, publicly reconciled.

Read More!

2) Dan Perrins, CAFE & Canada's Men's Rights movement

A sticker has been appearing on lampposts and mailboxes in my west-end Toronto neighbourhood of Etobicoke (and, presumably, in other neighbourhoods as well). On it a website called antimisandry.com is listed below the claim that "Almost 80% of all suicides are men" and above the slogan "Men Matter".

Read More!

3) Trudeau outmaneuvers Mulcair on taxing the wealthy

Back when Linda McQuaig was running for the NDP in a federal by-election, NDP leader Tom Mulcair could not have been more clear that he opposed personal tax increases of any kind and on anyone -- from me to Conrad Black and all points in between!

Read More!

4) "Men's Rights" group CAFE is trying to march in Pride Toronto: You can help stop them!

The Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE), Canada's most prominent "men's rights" group is trying, again, to march in Toronto's annual Pride parade.

Read More!

5) Tie: Love in the time of Bill C-51 Submitted by Aidan Monis

 Last night, as part of our weekly tradition, my Dad and I yelled at each other about politics. The topic at hand was Bill C-51, the recent legislation put forward by Stephen Harper in an effort to “combat terrorism,” which you surely recognize as a euphemism for “destroying freedom of expression and human dignity.” Canadians of all political stripes (including many with whom I mightily disagree on other issues) have expressed their intense distaste for the bill. The arguments for opposing the bill have been well-documented elsewhere, so I won’t really speak here about the nuts and bolts of C-51. In the spirit of the oh-so-clever title of this piece, I would rather say a few words about its emotional impact.

Read More!

5) Tie: Update: The NDP and Bill C-51 -- Amend or repeal?

So after an epic period of rhetorical equivocation it does appear that the NDP understands, despite some odd claims to the contrary, that there is actually a difference between amending Bill C-51 and repealing it.

Read More!

Although it was written and posted in March, the piece Is NDP MP Randall Garrison right that Tom Mulcair will repeal Bill C-51? suddenly began getting a high enough number of hits that it would have been the second place piece overall this month had it been written in May! This stopped as soon as Tom Mulcair announced that the NDP would, indeed, repeal the bill.

The top food blog for the month was Natalie Lochwin's uncovering of Stephen Harper's Mom's Bran Muffin Recipe from 1979.

Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share?

 Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

Check out our review for the month of April!: April: "Fred Checkers", Elizabeth May, Vintage Toronto & more -- The month on The Left Chapter in review

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Thursday, May 28, 2015

"Men's Rights" group CAFE is trying to march in Pride Toronto: You can help stop them!

UPDATE:  From the Daily Extra: "In a decision released June 10, Paul Bent, an arbitrator appointed by Pride Toronto, wrote that after reviewing numerous complaints regarding the Canadian Association for Equality’s (CAFE) intention to participate in the parade, he had decided to revoke CAFE’s permit...

 ...In a written statement, Pride Toronto says that it takes all complaints very seriously and respects the result of the dispute resolution process. “This decision, based on a thorough reflection of all views, will prevent CAFE from participating in the 2015 Pride parade and all future parades and events organized by Pride Toronto.”


The Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE), Canada's most prominent "men's rights" group is trying, again, to march in Toronto's annual Pride parade.

CAFE, as I noted just a few days ago in Dan Perrins, CAFE & Canada's Men's Rights movement, despite its attempts to claim otherwise, is rather openly associated with extremists like Perrins and the American misogynist hate site, A Voice for Men.

Natalie Lochwin and I, among many others, have written about CAFE, the Canadian Men's Rights Movement and A Voice for Men repeatedly in the past. Here are links to some of those articles:

Lies our fathers told us: The men's rights movement and campus-based misogyny

Diminishing legitimate 'male' issues: Gary Mason, the Men's Rights Movement and the myth of misandry

Mainstreaming misogyny: Canada’s new charitable hate movement, CAFE

Guess what's coming to U of T: The Men's Rights Movement, Janice Fiamengo and Paul Elam

A Voice for Men's new Canadian misogynist campaign, CAFE and Ryerson University

A wide variety of other links can be found on the website here: Anti-MRA Links & Resources

Last year, entirely justly, CAFE was barred from marching in World Pride, though they disrespectfully then tried to anyway.

Pride Toronto executive director Mathieu Chantelois stated that “I’m not too familiar with the work that [CAFE does], but obviously if there is some concern by anybody in the community we will take them extremely seriously.”

Which is fair enough -- so now it is time to make him familiar!

You can contact Pride Toronto by phone at  416-927-7433 or email at office@pridetoronto.com to find out how to "make a confidential complaint through Pride Toronto’s dispute resolution process."

UPDATE: Pride Toronto has issued the following statement:
"Pride Toronto has received numerous complaints about the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) regarding their application to march in this year’s Pride Parade and we would like to thank everyone for providing their feedback and concerns.

Pride Toronto takes these complaints very seriously and our Dispute Resolution Process has now been activated to look into this matter thoroughly and promptly. To respect the impartiality of this process, Pride Toronto will not be making any comments until the arbitrator makes a decision shortly.


The Board and the staff are confident in our Dispute Resolution Process, and, as an organization, we are committed to remain fair while treating everyone with respect."

http://www.pridetoronto.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2015-Pride-Toronto-Dispute-Resolution-Process.pdf



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Saturday, May 23, 2015

Dan Perrins, CAFE & Canada's Men's Rights movement

A sticker has been appearing on lampposts and mailboxes in my west-end Toronto neighbourhood of Etobicoke (and, presumably, in other neighbourhoods as well). On it a website called antimisandry.com is listed below the claim that "Almost 80% of all suicides are men" and above the slogan "Men Matter".

"Misandry" is the fictitious invention of the toxic Men's Rights hate movement, and its appearance here as a term indicates quickly what this sticker is all about.

I have written extensively in the past about the Men's Rights movement in Canada, including about its false or misleading claims and premises, its rape apologism, its disturbing campus based activities, its dubious choices of speakers, as well as to why the idea of misandry itself is an absurd myth, so there is no real need to cover that ground again.

While the "Men Matter" slogan is a profoundly offensive allusion to other recent slogans of actual civil rights movements, it is also on its own premises completely asinine, especially given how white the movement's leadership is.

No group of people have ever mattered more than white men do! Their entitlement being the very basis of patriarchy and systemic misogyny.

I have also in the past touched on the statistic the sticker uses, which is close to true in a technical sense (it is actually 75%) and seems striking, but actually is, as is usual with the Men's Rights movement, also misleading. According to Statistics Canada, while men are three times more likely to succeed when attempting suicide:
Deaths by suicide, it should be noted, reflect only a small percentage of suicide attempts. It is estimated that for every completed suicide there are as many as 20 attempts. Although males are more likely to die from suicide, females are three to four times more likely to attempt it.  Furthermore, females are hospitalized for attempted suicide 1.5 times more frequently than males.
This discrepancy may be due to the fact that females tend to use less fatal methods, such as poisoning—the most common cause of self-harm hospital admissions—whereas males tend to use more violent methods such as hanging and firearms.
While certain men's rights groups -- especially the pretend "moderate" face of the movement in Canada, the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE), a group to which we will return -- will use statistics like these or men's workplace accidents as another example, devoid of the full context, to try to hook people in with notions that they are simply trying help men who are suffering or are men's health advocates, once you get to the sites themselves a totally different agenda often emerges.

antimisandry.com is certainly no exception.

From the website's very masthead:


To its long opening diatribe about misandry and against feminism, to charming and truly farcical memes such as this one:


It quickly becomes abundantly clear that the real agenda is to attack, misrepresent and oppose feminism. 

Especially as the site seems closely associated with the vitriolic and rather extreme Canadian men's rights "activist" Dan Perrins who is also a supporter of, has written for, and has been praised by, the American hate site A Voice for Men.

Perrins recently went on rather short-lived and facile "hunger strike" at the Ontario Legislature that blogger David Futrelle looked at at some length. As Futrelle also notes in the piece, Perrins has engaged in some notoriously vicious behaviour towards a Canadian feminist activist who was the target of a prolonged and very disturbing campaign by the movement.

Now all of this would be little more than the deluded ranting and ravings of yet another MRA were not for the fact that Perrins is also associated with the above-mentioned CAFE, which is, astonishingly, a registered Canadian charity! 

Despite Perrins' past actions and writings, CAFE allowed Perrins to go on a fundraising march for it and its newly opened men's centre, and posted his press release about it to their website.

They also gave seemingly daily updates on this trek of Perrins' and posted his statement ending his hunger strike, in which he somewhat humorously attempts to portray it as a "real breakthrough"! 

Justin Trottier, one of CAFE's leaders, also gave a long interview on the hunger strike on You Tube which he opens by saying "we have been involved in supporting Dan from before there was a hunger strike". 

Keep in mind, CAFE is a registered charity, meaning donations to it are tax deductible! 

Natalie Lochwin and I, in a piece on Feminist Current, showed how this situation amounts to an almost government endorsed mainstreaming of misogyny. The piece centred around a concert that the newly charitable CAFE attempted to hold on Toronto Island -- a concert that fell apart after the publication of the piece as sponsors and acts discovered what this charity was actually about. 

Men's Rights activists and organizations, given what a distorted and ugly worldview their movement flows out of, are truly incapable of hiding for very long what they really represent. CAFE's association with and encouragement of Dan Perrins speaks loudly and clearly to this.

It is time the Government of Canada and Revenue Canada took notice. 

RELATED: "Men's Rights" group CAFE is trying to march in Pride Toronto: You can help stop them!

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