When we look at the case of James Forcillo it is very difficult to not come to the conclusion that it could only have unfolded as it has because he is a police officer.
After the Toronto officer was found guilty by a jury of the "attempted murder" of Toronto teen Sammy Yatim who he had shot to death -- leaving many, myself included, still wondering if you can possibly conceive of anyone other than a cop being found guilty of that charge when the victim in the case was dead -- he was sentenced to six years in jail.
Yet he has been out on bail for all but one night since the conviction while awaiting an appeal. Despite the shocking brutality of the crime that was deemed "egregious" by a judge.
He was convicted last July, released on bail the next day, has had the bail extended already, just had it extended by the judge again yesterday and won't be back in court until October. And Forcillo will spend none of this time serving his sentence in a correctional facility of any kind!
In the Toronto Star we learn that Justice Eileen Gillese "ruled Forcillo’s incarceration pending appeal was not necessary for public confidence in the administration of justice" and that:
“Despite the seriousness of the offence for which the Appellant stands convicted,” she wrote, “in my view, fully informed members of the community will objectively understand and accept that it is not contrary to the public interest that he be released.”
I disagree.
Time and time and time again police officers in Toronto, Ontario and Canada have acted with violent impunity with little or no consequence for their actions no matter how egregious. For a police officer to even face internal departmental discipline of any seriousness is rare, let alone facing the kind of criminal charges that any other person would face for many of these acts.
Even when mass police abuse, violence and violation of civil rights occurs right in front of the media of both the country and the world, as happened during the G20 police riot in Toronto in 2012, the fallout was virtually non-existent with only one officer ever convicted of assault (and getting no jail time) and one senior officer getting a slap on the wrist for trampling on people's rights during a mass "kettling".
It is absolutely "necessary for public confidence in the administration of justice" for the public to believe that police officers are not above the law and that they are not treated totally differently by the courts, because right now that is certainly not how it seems!
In case after case we have seen just how far the system will go to ensure that police officers do not face the kind of justice anyone else would for criminal acts of violence or abuse.
As the Toronto Star noted of Forcillo's actions last year:
Nine bullets [were] fired from Const. James Forcillo’s gun, eight striking Yatim. The last six of those bullets — fired after a five-second pause, as Yatim lay paralyzed and dying from the first volley of shots — determined by a jury to be attempted murder, and called “egregious” by an Ontario judge in a scathing sentencing decision
Six shots fired into a teenager who lay paralyzed and helpless on the floor of a streetcar after already having been shot twice by Forcillo who was not even on the streetcar when he fired and despite Yatim not even having a gun! With video clearly showing Forcillo starting to fire even though Yatim was still on the streetcar (which was empty of passengers) neither a second-degree murder nor a manslaughter conviction could be obtained.
When Forcillo was first granted bail after a single night in jail Yatim's father said “He gets to go home. My son sleeps in an urn.”
With a violent act of such singular criminal brutality that finally resulted in the conviction of an officer-- regardless of whether the "attempted murder" conviction represented real justice -- it was time for the justice system to not just send a clear message to the police that the days of impunity are ending, but also one as well that justice will be done for people, families and communities that have suffered so terribly due to the acts of violent police officers.
Today we are going to take a look at making a delicious pork chop dish where you simmer the chops in a rich but simple onion gravy that they are then served with.
This is a perfect hearty winter dinner that is very easy to prepare. For this recipe we used 6 regular sized chops all of which were bone-in. This is an excellent way to use the affordable club or family packs of pork chops that one can pick up at larger groceries.
First you want to heat some olive oil over medium high heat in a large saucepan or a Dutch Oven. Season your chops on both sides liberally with salt and pepper and then brown the chops in the oil for around 3-4 minutes a side. Don't overcrowd the pan. Brown the chops in batches of 2 or 3.
When the chops are browned remove them from the pan and set them aside on a platter. Add 2 large diced onions to the saucepan and brown these for 3-4 minutes in the oil and any juices or bits left from the browning of the chops, stirring regularly.
Pour 4 cups of chicken broth into the pan with the onions and then add the following ingredients stirring everything together:
1 large packet of onion soup mix (you want the packets that call for 4 cups/1 litre of water, though we are replacing the water with chicken broth)
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon mustard powder
salt and pepper to taste
Add the pork chops back into the pan, cover the saucepan or Dutch Oven and reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
While the chops are simmering mix together 2 tablespoons of flour and 1/2 cup of milk in a bowl. After the chops have simmered remove the top from the pan and add the milk and flour stirring it in thoroughly while continuing to simmer for another 2-4 minutes until the gravy has thickened.
Serve the chops with spoonfuls of the onion gravy on top.
These chops go perfectly with a side of mashed potatoes drenched in the gravy as well!
Remember: If in doubt pork chops are done if they have reached 160 degrees internally at the centre.
Donald Trump has been President of the United States for barely two weeks and if you did not know any better it would seem as if the Great Republic was already in an existential crisis unprecedented in its history since at least the Civil War.
A surprising number of liberal and left types from Michael Moore to CNN say a "coup" is occurring while countless others see this as the advent of fascism or Nazism (which are not the same thing) and draw all sorts of grand specious allegedly historical analogies that fall flat rather quickly if one bothers to actually check out the history and conditions of countries like Italy in the early 20's or Germany in the early 30's. If you do you will find they bear scant resemblance at all to the United States of 2017.
Some have even compared Trump and his alleged puppet-master Stephen Bannon to Lenin due to apparent comments Bannon once made and their supposed desire to destabilize and destroy the state as Lenin did, as if all efforts towards destabilization or destruction of the state amount to the same thing! Neo-liberal politics has, in a certain sense, already been trying to destroy the state for 40 years since the ascendancy of Reagan and Thatcher.
Let us be clear -- Donald Trump is a despicable, narcissistic, authoritarian and very dangerous reactionary who does, absolutely, represent a threat to established democratic institutions and to the rights of women, the marginalized and racialized, the LGBT community, workers and people living in poverty. His ideas and the ideas of those who back him are deeply awful on issues from immigration to foreign policy to abortion and on and on.
There can be little doubt, also, that due to his populist and aggressively anti-democratic style and posturing (from implying the judiciary is illegitimate, to implying that the media is, to implying that even the election he won was!) he represents a somewhat new and especially heinous variety of lowest common denominator recent hard right wing politics.
This has lead to an incredible and unprecedented level of push back and fightback, for this early in a term, from remarkably diverse groups of people and also to legal challenges to attempt to stop his efforts to rule by executive order as if these are imperial fiats.
His disgraceful and established personal misogyny and his desire to work to set back the rights of women by decades also led to the largest single day of mass protest in American history thanks to our sisters in the feminist movement and to the willingness of women to mobilize generally against him.
I think it is clear that Trump, his closest advisers and the political class and pundits more broadly deeply underestimated the amount of resistance he would face right out of the gate and we on the left should feel really encouraged by this.
It is also true that we have a President who massively lost the popular vote and is the least popular President to be elected in a very long time (arguably ever) and this fact is not lost on anyone.
But none of this amounts to a coup and, more importantly, much of what Trump has epitomized or brought into focus is actually not at all new to the American political discourse or to American governance.
I am not entirely sure what people think a "coup" is, but it is not the (even aggressive) flexing of the muscles of office by a democratically elected government using what are entirely legal means (which is why these edicts can and now have in one case been blocked if they are deemed to be unconstitutional in the courts). Nor do "coup" governments back down or moderate their proposals if they get blow back as has happened with the Trump regime already as well (in the case of Green Card holders and the immigration ban and in the case of the floated 20% Mexican tariff idea.)
The nature and structure of the American state has not been altered at all as yet and the methods being used for what is happening are all methods granted by the laws as they are now.
The Trumpkins have phenomenal contempt for everything from bourgeois political norms to the idea of democracy to the left and progressives. But stop thinking this is Year Zero, as many pundits are calling the Trump regime. Their power grabs fit into a history of power grabs by presidents of both parties, going back to FDR. There are moments where some limits are placed, such as after Watergate, but then a new president undermines most controls and expands powers further. That is true, in different ways, of Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama.
Democratically elected governments can use, and have used, legal methods to profoundly undermine or even fundamentally destroy the very nature of bourgeois democratic governance, but that has not actually begun to happen yet (all hyperbole aside) and the United States is a long way from having its constitutional safeguards rendered meaningless and having a single figure or military junta who can rule by mere decree.
It is also like people have suddenly forgotten the Nixon, Reagan and post 9/11 Bush Jr. administrations whose contempt for democratic and constitutional norms went on for years.
That Trump is trying to delegitimize the mainstream press and undermine the public's confidence in institutions like the judiciary and is doing so in an unusually aggressive, dangerous and crass way is without question true. But it is also true that the American right and right wing American elected officials have been doing this in various ways for a long time now as have right wing leaders in other countries (Berlusconi in Italy most notably comes to mind).
Also, it is essential to remember that many of Trump's edicts are hardly a break from "mainstream" politics in the US and some of the ideas in them have won wide support from Democrats in the past.
The very first executive order made by Trump to reinstate the "Mexico Policy" on abortion brought back policy first introduced by Ronald Reagan and introduced again by George W. Bush when he became President. While odious and disgusting it is, sadly, nothing new.
The Democratic Party has actively participated or remained complicit in several of the policies and plans now being pushed by the Trump administration, despite their rhetoric conveying a blanket opposition.
He notes as a prime examples:
On January 27, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer called Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, “divisive and unnecessary.” But in 2006 Obama, Clinton, Biden, Schumer and 20 other Democrats in the Senate at the time voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act, which called for a physical barrier to be built along the U.S.-Mexico border. Bernie Sanders, who was a Representative in the House at the time, voted against the bill. The fence was never completed due to Congress failing to provide the necessary funding. President Trump’s recent executive order to build a physical wall along the U.S.-Mexico border cites that the order falls under the 2006 Secure Fence Act that Bush signed into law.
The same executive order expands the government’s deportation priorities, which President Obama helped set in motion by deporting more people than any other president—2.5 million between 2009 and 2015. Due to his record on immigration, immigrant activists have dubbed Obama the “deporter-in-chief.”
Trump has begun stripping sanctuary cities of federal funding if they fail to comply with his proposed immigration limitations. Many, like Boulder, Colorado, declared themselves “sanctuary cities” in protest to the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
His article deserves to be read in full.
But an ugly, reactionary hypocrisy around immigration issues on the part of Democrats goes back long before that. One need only listen again to President Clinton's shameful comments on "illegal aliens" from his 1995 State of the Union address to see just how much Democrats have enabled these narratives:
In fact, it is rather easy to forget just how broadly Clinton embraced right wing ideas to get to the Oval Office in 1992:
As you watch Clinton in front of all those cops supporting the death penalty remember that it is was but a few short years later that he collaborated with Republicans to institute sweeping and deeply racist "anti-crime" bills that were an horrific attack on people-of-colour and blacks in the United States and that led to staggeringly awful incarceration rates and levels among them.
While Trump is certainly very different from mainline Democrats in both the nature of the threat he poses and some of the ideas he supports, these facts, while inconvenient, are worth keeping in mind.
The speed at which a number of these proposals and orders are happening historically also reflects the predilection of relatively radical right wing governments to hit hard upfront and rapidly after being elected.
Governments like Mike Harris' "Common Sense Revolution" one in Ontario did that. They initiate a number of changes very quickly to:
- Thrill supporters who feel that the government is doing what was promised, is really shaking things up, taking on the vested interests, etc
- Front load the disruptions to disorient opponents and force them to fight on a number of fronts all at once. Who, for example, is talking about the anti-abortion executive order now? Far fewer than were a few days ago.
- Create a new normal and make it so that the future steps of the regime in some cases almost seem "moderate" after the impact of the initial waves of attack.
This is not a new strategy, it is just happening on a very big stage in this case and a very dangerous one.
Trump also reflects an anti-social nihilism that is manifesting itself on the right and in right wing populism and has been for quite some time. Rob Ford in Toronto was a very good example of that as well. I wrote about the parallels back in August 2015 when most still regarded Trump as a joke in a piece There is nothing funny about Donald Trump. And he is dangerous as hell:
It is a politics that takes broad themes of unfocused popular rage and attempts to embody them in an over-the-top, megalomania driven persona. In this politics it is the going ever further, the always "going too far" and forever resetting what "too far" means, that is the appeal and the draw. The audience watches as the reality show continues and they want the main character to get even more outrageous and to make those around him even more outraged.
I wrote in 2014 of how Rob Ford -- a fact that was mystifying to his opponents -- became Toronto's "entertainer-in-chief" echoing the antics of Nero centuries before who had been very popular with sections of the people while loathed by the elites. Trump takes this and elevates it to a bigger and far more dangerous stage....
When it comes to countering attacks on him from opponents, I noted at the time that his responses would be predictable:
...attacks on him play into his own persecution narrative. They allow him to portray himself as the victim of dark forces intent on stopping his quest for the people to "Make America Great Again", a slogan that is a perfect blend of banal grandiosity and vague meaninglessness.
In an era of terrible disaffection, when people feel genuinely disempowered and unrepresented by mainstream politicians, and where regardless of who gets elected the broad outlines of the way the economy functions changes very little -- if at all -- this type of political nihilism and lashing out by Trump will appeal strongly to a section of the electorate. We are likely to find that his supporters will be staggeringly and tenaciously loyal whatever he does or says.
I think it is important to understand this as we mobilize to try to counter Trump and the effects of his administration both for those doing so in the United States and those seeking to stop manifestations and ripples of it elsewhere.
His anti-social nihilism flows rather easily from three decades of neo-liberal political contempt for community, government, workers, the poor and whatever else did not fit the triumphalism of ultra-capitalism, deregulation and the dismantling of the welfare state that, while it began before it, came so catastrophically to a head in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But that leaves us with a question. How do you truly combat over the long haul a President who takes the very worst logical extensions of the reactionary and nationalist pandering of what we now see as "mainstream" bourgeois political ideas -- remember that Reagan was regarded as an insane extremist by many both inside and outside the Republican Party in the 1970s, and he was one -- and channels them through an authoritarian personality and rhetoric, without also confronting what led to him, despite how that will alienate liberals who find it easier to see Trump as some kind of fascist apocalypse that has fallen holus-bolus from the sky like a thunderbolt?
While that question is complex and not easy to answer, one thing that is certain is that you cannot do it by pretending that Trump represents a total break from recent American political narratives or something entirely new in American political discourse, or that he is a revolutionary departure from them like a far right Lenin or a new Mussolini.
Because he is not that. He is the chickens coming home to roost and while it may be easier for liberals and a certain stripe of conservative to insist otherwise they definitely helped build the coop.
If we are going to forge movements to stop the Trumps of our various national politics, we are going to have to also begin to tell real truths about the misdemeanors and crimes of the mainstream liberal and conservative governments and politics that have brought us here to this terrible place we are now.
This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.
This list covers the week of January 29 - February 5. It is in order of date of the article's release.
We’ve just witnessed the first full week of a Donald Trump presidency that has set the tone for what is to come. True to form, Mr. Trump’s arrival in the White House has been every bit as hateful, shameful and unconscionable, as we should’ve expected it to be based on his rhetoric during the election campaign. Read the full article.
Contrary to the claims of Donald Trump and his supporters, the real “threat to safety and security” has, once again, turned out to be white men. Read the full article.
So why wasn't the fake-news liberal mainstream media concentrating on that instead of portraying it as an anti-Muslim hate crime encouraged by President Trump's crackdown on Muslim immigrants? Maybe it was a Shia/Sunni thing: the sort of atrocity that takes place all the time in countries where ISIS operates. Maybe it was Muslim-on-Muslim terror Read the full article.
5) Don’t Give In To Coup Fantasies; Power is More Straightforward Arun Gupta, The Anarres Project
I am getting notes and articles forwarded from numerous people, smart people, that are full of paranoid speculation about coups, false flag operations, and military mobilizations.
STOP IT.
This is exactly what the Trumpkins want. They want you to be paranoid, to be consumed by fear and irrationality. The last thing they want you to be is thoughtful, careful, rational. They want you to overreact and succumb to lurid fantasies.
Their exercise of power thus far is muscular but also chaotic, banal, and largely symbolic. Read the full article.
A MASS SHOOTING at a Quebec City mosque last night left six people dead and eight wounded. The targeted mosque, the Cultural Islamic Center of Quebec, was the same one at which a severed pig’s head was left during Ramadan last June. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the episode a “terrorist attack on Muslims.” Read the full article.
Justin Trudeau's Liberal government is abandoning a commitment to reform the federal electoral system.
A new mandate letter issued to Minister of Democratic Institutions Karina Gould, released publicly on Wednesday, says "changing the electoral system will not be in your mandate."
Netanyahu built his career on the idea that only he can protect the Jewish people. Yet his silence in the face of Trump’s disregard for rising American anti-Semitism speaks volumes. Read the full article.
14) Easily-Triggered, Privileged People Have Turned Society Into Their Own Giant Safe Space Na’amen Gobert Tilahun, The Huffington Post
“Are you triggered?” white men sneer from every corner of Facebook, when confronted with political outrage or even mild disagreement. “Do you need to go to your safe space?” Rhetoric about “trigger warnings,” alerts to traumatized people that a book or film or article might exacerbate PTSD, has been twisted into a snide way of mocking people, a coded insult meant to imply someone is spoiled or coddled. Celebrities of all levels have commented: Neil Gaiman named a short story collection Trigger Warning as self-congratulation for its disturbing contents. Joe Rogan’s new Netflix comedy special is named Triggered, and Rogan said in an interview with Maxim that talking about triggers was the “anthem of the oversensitive crowd.” In the intro to her new book Buffered, YouTube personality Hannah Hart makes a specific point of saying there will be no trigger warnings because “life does not provide trigger warnings.” Even the University of Chicago has weighed in, making a point of telling incoming freshmen it didn’t support trigger warnings in classes — preferring, I suppose, to have students ambushed by trauma. Read the full article.
16) ‘Cuck’: a modern swear word that’s as dirty as the old ones Leah McLaren
Let’s talk about swearing. I love a grubby old curse word, don’t you? I’m an unapologetic user of the f-bomb and the s-bomb and even very occasionally – when the idiot home-office printer breaks again – the ever-controversial c-bomb. The guidelines for uttering profanity in my house are like the 1970s rules for spanking: Only grown-ups can do it, but not during a fight and never with intent to cause harm.
Which brings me to the brand-new new swear I recently discovered while visiting Twitter, that delightful bastion of conflict and insult. The word is “cuck.” And, in case you haven’t heard it, it’s bad. So bad I can hardly believe it’s printable in this newspaper. It probably won’t be after I explain what it means. Read the full article.
Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose spent her holiday on a billionaire’s yacht while her colleagues blasted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for vacationing on the Aga Khan’s private island -- although Ambrose cleared her trip with the ethics commissioner. Read the full article.
A longtime former Manitoba cabinet minister said Friday night he is leaving the provincial New Democrats and hoping to form a new political party to reflect the views of Indigenous people and people of colour. Read the full article.
22) Donald Trump plants the seeds of his demise Tony Burman, The Toronto Star
As the world sinks deeper into Donald Trump’s abyss, this was the most depressing of weeks — except for two extraordinary developments that should give us some inspiration. Read the full article.
It's an inconceivably scary thought that the Trump administration is simply winging it, breakneck, disrupting and detonating and taking America apart - and all of it without a plan. But here's the even scarier possibility - that there is, in fact, a plan.
JTA, Haaretz
In a proposal of a documentary on a purported Islamic plan to take over America, Steve Bannon, U.S. President Donald Trump’s top strategic adviser, described the “American Jewish community” as among unwitting “enablers” of Jihad. Read the full article.
Pablo Picasso is one of the most famous artists of the 20th Century who truly requires no introduction.
Picasso was also a Communist who joined the French party in 1944 and he remained a member of it until his death.
While some commentators have claimed that the Soviet government was not fond of his work there is little to back this up. Picasso was awarded a Stalin Prize and a Lenin Peace Prize by the USSR and there were numerous shows of his work in the Soviet Union. His art was also featured on Soviet postage stamps.
In fact the Soviets had a number of Picasso works in Soviet museums in part due to having expropriated the large art collection of wealthy Russian industrialist Sergei Shchukin after the revolution. Many of these were some of Picasso's earlier works.
In the 1970's a Soviet art publisher released a folder with large postcard style reproductions of some of the most notable works in the collection. These we share here today with the name and date of each work.
Picasso's art is unique. It admits of neither blind imitation nor rejection. The diversity, significance and often contradictory nature of his works are remindful -- despite their innate unity -- of a museum housing the works of many masters...I shall not attempt to predict how the works of Picasso will inspire future generations, but I am convinced that he will leave his impress on the development of art - Ilya Ehrenburg
A few months ago I came across a reference to a cookbook called Russian Delight: A Cookbook of the Soviet Peoples. The cookbook sounded interesting as, despite its misleading title, it is not solely a Russian cookbook at all but instead looks at the cuisine of fourteen separate regions that made up the former USSR.
After searching around a bit on the internet I picked up a copy of it and it is a really excellent and diverse book with recipes that are drawn from culinary traditions as disparate as those of the Estonian and the Uzbek people!
After an ongoing hiatus The Left Chapter's "Cookbook TBT" feature will be returning and we will take an in-depth look at Russian Delight in the near future, but today I am going to take a look at one of recipes in it that I have already made.
This is a dish from Georgia called Chakhokhbili which is a kind of spicy stew. Chakhokhbili can be made with lamb, beef or chicken, though the chicken variant is the most complicated and the best known of these. I really liked the look of the beef variant and after comparing the recipe in Russian Delight with others that I found online, I made my version of it that took into account the minor variations I saw.
Ingredients:
2 lb. beef chunks/cubes 4-5 medium to large onions, diced. 1 full head of garlic minced 1 large (796 ml.) can of diced tomatoes 3 tablespoons paprika or hot paprika or a combination to taste 2 tablespoons minced fresh basil or 1 tablespoon dried 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley or 1 tablespoon dried salt to taste 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons cayenne pepper only if you are using regular paprika. If you are using a hot paprika you can add cayenne pepper to taste depending on just how hot you want it!
To begin heat some olive oil over medium-high in a large saucepan. Add the beef cubes (salted to taste) and brown them, stirring constantly, for around 7-8 minutes. Add the diced onions and minced garlic to the pan and continue to saute the beef, garlic and onions for another 5-6 minutes or until the onions are golden.
Then add the can of diced tomatoes. Stir them in thoroughly, bring the liquid to a boil and quickly reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, for another 30 minutes.
With about five minutes to go in the cooking time add the paprika, basil, parsley, cayenne pepper (if using) and salt (to taste) and stir it in thoroughly.
This simple, rustic and spicy dish is hearty and delicious and perfect for a winter night. It is nice served with rice and fresh bread. Goes well as well with an Italian or Southern European table red wine or with a Bull's Blood red from Hungary.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
