Tag: Individual Rights

The Very Definition Of Thinkablewords

Today on Democracy Now’s broadcast, Ali Abuninah, “the co-founder of the Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse,” spoke a bunch of words which, frankly, made me sit back in my chair. Not because of what he said on its own, mind you, but the words he chose to say (below), in conjunction with the remarkable passion and clarity in which he shared them, was extremely powerful and impressive;

“[P]eople have tried to reach Gaza to break the siege by land. They have tried by sea. And they have lost their lives. They have given their lives in the cause of breaking this siege on Gaza. And we have to ask […] for what crime are 1.5 million people in Gaza being held prisoner? [W]hen will the Obama administration stop this outrageous complicity, this enabling, this acting as an accomplice with these crimes against people in Palestine and now against Americans, Turks, Greeks, Jordanians, Palestinians, Lebanese, Swedes, French people, German people, members of Parliament, doctors, retired people, trying to bring medicine to people in Gaza? That our government has not stood up and condemned this in the clearest possible terms is a sign that something is sick in the United States’ system when it comes to speaking about and dealing with Israel. There is a sickness that has to be addressed.”

I couldn’t agree more. You know things are bad when you are confident you can never be shocked by anything you hear on the news, yet one morning, yesterday morning in fact, you turn on the radio and hear something, such as this senseless massacre, and your only reaction is to want to roll over and cry…

Keep Your Eyes On This Creep

Speaking of dick-bag’s. For some context, I wrote about The Lunatic Dick-Bag Fringe (a.k.a. the extreme American Right-Wing — which isn’t all that “extreme” these days, it’s seeming more and more like the norm) near the start of this month. Then again, last week, following Rand Paul’s primary victory in Kentucky. What a piece of work this idiot is turning into. I’ll just cite what Mike Ervin, “a freelance journalist and a longtime activist with the disability rights groups ADAPT,” so curiously asked;

“Saying something like, ‘If you have a two-floor business and you hire someone that uses a wheelchair’—like me—’that the federal government would automatically come in and demand that you install a $100,000 elevator,’ is ridiculous […] So the kind of solution that he came up with, of giving somebody a first-floor office, would be exactly the kind of thing that the ADA would say that you should do, and it would be within the law. So, to go around making people think that the ADA is this big boogeyman that makes people—makes private businesses go through these huge changes, they’re going to bankrupt them just to accommodate someone in a wheelchair like me, is either ill-informed or purposely misleading […] [W]hat he’s saying is that every private business has the right to say, ‘We don’t want you in here. Get out of here. ‘And we’re getting back to the old lunch counter problem again. Yeah, I think that most people would disagree with him quite significantly on that, you know, that little steps, which are often all that is required—little steps should—no affirmative steps should have to be taken at all to make it possible for someone who uses a wheelchair or someone who uses a service animal. Should a private sort of person who owns a restaurant or a store be able to say to a blind person who needs a dog to get around, ‘Get out of here; no dogs allowed in my store or my restaurant,’ and thus tell the blind person they can’t come in? Are those the kinds of things that he’s talking about? Should the cab company that makes money operating in my city be able to say, ‘We don’t want to have any wheelchair-accessible vehicles, and we don’t care if you get around just like everybody else’? Is that really the kind of thing that he’s talking about?”

Keep your eyes on this creep, his shifty talk, and his curly hair. I just don’t trust people with curly hair…

No More Relevant and Utterly Frightening Words

I, personally, have never come across a bunch of more relevant and utterly frightening words than the sentence Will Potter wrote to open Arizona’s “Show Me Your Papers” Law is About More than Immigration;

“Historically, as nations have made the slow, steady creep toward fascism—the closing down of an open society—two groups have been among the first to feel the tightening: dissidents and immigrants…”

And feedback this week (pt3: Letters, and specifically the response to The Armageddon Factor: pt2 of May 11ths show) on CBC’s The Current this morning suggests that not every Canadian is concerned about our Governments ideological shift more towards the right. Where this sort of paranoia and, using the American agenda pushing needle-dicks as my prime example, disgusting segregation, seem to be common place. And even endorsed.

What amazing times we live in…

Precisely One Year Ago Today

Get a load of this, it would seem the RCMP is finally owning up to something, I’ve written about here a couple times previously (I believe). In fact, the last time I visited this story was precisely a year ago today (again, to the best of my recollection). That being the death of “of Polish visitor Robert Dziekanski, who died in October 2007 after RCMP subdued (read: murdered) him with a (read: more than a single) Taser (shock).”

With the facts being what they are, only one fact remains, in my eyes. Gary Bass, the RCMP deputy commissioner for the Pacific region, chose today, of all days, to “apologize.” While still keep themselves at a distance — stopping short of “acknowledging that the RCMP was to blame for Dzeikanzki’s death,” which calls into question what Bass was actually apologizing for, but… — the fact that today was chosen to offer Zofia Cisowski, Robert’s mother, a thinly veiled apology — and some cash — is much more than mere coincidence. Or, at least, that’s how I’m looking at it.

So with that said, I’ll just wish RCMP, and you, the happiest of April Fools Day’s, and leave it there…