Well I still have sinusitis, albeit the end stages I hope. I am at least able to, for the most part, wear my glasses and read. Tonight is my last anti-biotic but I am still without a lot of energy. I have been resting a lot and drinking a lot . . . the hard stuff . . . H2O. I had physio on Wednesday which, despite being at a reduced intensity, tuckered me out. Thursday, I took my mother for her annual eye exam and then later in the evening attended my course (next week is the completion). Friday was more physio and then teaching. I was really tired by the end of yesterday but had a good night's sleep. So this long weekend is very low key, a gift I give to myself to hopefully build up some reserves. This Canadian long weekend celebrates Queen Victoria's birthday and is unofficially the start of the summer season, although summer does not really start until about 21 June. This is often the "first" camping weekend of the season, and, in many areas of Canada, flowers and vegetable gardens are not planted until after 24/05 because it is generally considered too cold. When I lived in northern BC, the last snowfall was usually around the end of May. Here in greater Vancouver, this is not the case as we have a more temperate climate. Hope you are having a relaxing weekend.
National Law Journal — In the alternate universe of John Banzhaf ("When the Rabble-Rousing Turns Criminal, There's A Civil Solution," The National Law Journal, March 28), protesters have taken over the streets and hijacked the political process. Police step back and do nothing. They "yield the streets," sometimes because they are "afraid to make arrests," sometimes because "there is sympathy with their cause." If arrests take place, protesters end up in court and "face only a token fine."
The real world of street protest bears no relation to what Banzhaf describes. In fact, the post-9/11 trend, of which his anti-protester screed is symptomatic, is of increasing hostility to street protest. In the crackdown on peaceful protesters, police show no "sympathy with their cause" and are entirely "[un]afraid to make arrests." As a consequence of the amped-up focus on security since 9/11, the "war on terror" has also become a war on dissent.
In my last post, I brought you a piece by law professor John Banzhaf. In it, Banzhaf argues that protesters who prevent others from hearing a speaker, specifically Trump in that case, are guilty of obstructing freedom of speech and assembly for those attending a Trump rally. He goes on to say that protesters face few penalties and that police are afraid to arrest protesters etc. I think you and I would for the most part disagree with Banzhaf on his police point having witnessed police actions in Ferguson, Missouri and other locales. Author Alan Levine, himself a practising civil rights and constitutional lawyer in NY, sees the current police attitude in general, as impinging upon the freedom of assembly and the freedom of speech. Have a look.
MSN — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, speaking from the floor of an institution that once enacted racist policies against large-scale immigration from Asia until the 1960s, apologized Wednesday for the 1914 Komagata Maru incident.
“Mr. Speaker, today I rise in this House to offer an apology on behalf of the government of Canada for our role in the Komagata Maru incident,” he said, triggering a standing ovation with MPs of all major parties applauding.
“More than a century ago a great injustice took place.”
Trudeau spoke in a chamber filled with MPs and Indo-Canadians from across the country, including a delegation of more than 100 from B.C. who were led by Premier Christy Clark.
Trudeau said Canada would have been richer if the 376 passengers – mostly Sikh along with a handful of Muslims and Hindus – had been allowed to disembark from that Japanese ship.
Many people, including many Canadians, are not aware of the Komagata Maru incident of 1914 in Vancouver. It is not a proud moment in Canadian history, but I am sure that it is something that Herr Drumpf in the US would endorse. This from Wikipedia:
The Komagata Maru incident involved a Japanese steamship, Komagata Maru, that sailed from Hong Kong, then a holding of the British Empire, through Shanghai, China, then on to Yokohama, Japan, and then finally to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1914, carrying 376 passengers from Punjab, British India. Of them 24 were admitted to Canada, but the other 352 passengers were not allowed to land in Canada, and the ship was forced to return to India.[1] The passengers comprised 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims, and 12 Hindus, all British subjects. This was one of several incidents in the history of early 20th century involving exclusion laws in both Canada and the United States designed to keep out immigrants of only Asian origin.
In the park where I walk, there is a memorial to the people of the Komagata Maru. I'd like to think that we have come a long way since 1914, and maybe we have, but there is still a long way to go before we become a totally inclusive society.
The Economist — He was for far too long underestimated. The same must not be said of the threat his egomania and pernicious nativism represents to America and the world. …
Yet if Mr Trump’s supporters like his message, many are also motivated by disdain for the party bosses who so haplessly opposed him. Exit polls in Indiana suggested half of Republican voters felt “betrayed” by their party. This is a harvest the party sowed in two ways. First, though it is a caricature to suggest, as Mr Trump and others have, that the Republicans have long made fools of distressed working-class whites by offering them God, the flag and tax cuts to the rich, it is a caricature with some truth to it. None of Mr Trump’s 16 rivals spoke convincingly to the concerns of wage-distressed workers; none had a thoughtful answer to them.
Second, years of partisan grandstanding in Congress have discredited America’s entire political process, and the Republicans—especially those of them thrust to power by the party’s previous populist insurgency, the Tea Party—are mainly responsible. The several recent crises Republican congressmen have engineered over the passage of the federal budget, which they sought to hold hostage to their unrealistic and unconstitutional demands of Mr Obama, have earned the voters’ disdain. In that sense, the Trumpian revolt is not a continuation of the false promise raised by the anti-government Tea Party, but its successor. With Mr Trump’s nomination almost assured, its fires, too, must now rage and burn out.
Fear trumps hope! There is no doubt in my mind that Republicans are finding themselves in a pickle. But Trump, as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is not backing down. In this article and another, Trump's articulated platform will lay waste to just about everything. To me, it seems that Trump is playing the "American exceptionalism" card. Has he forgotten that negotiation is not the same as dictating the terms?
CBC — WIL-bur-r-r-r-r-r
Actor-comedian Alan Young, who played the amiable straight man to a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom Mister Ed, has died, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Home said Friday. He was 96.
The English-born, Canadian-educated Young died Thursday, according to Jaime Larkin, spokeswoman for the retirement community where Young had lived for four years. His children were with him when he died peacefully of natural causes, she said.
Young was already a well-known radio and TV comedian, having starred in his own Emmy-winning variety show, when Mister Ed was being readied at comedian George Burns' production company. Burns is said to have told his staff: "Get Alan Young. He looks like the kind of guy a horse would talk to."
I am sure that many of you will remember Mr Ed, the talking horse. I used to delight in watching the programme and wondered how the horse learned and said his lines. I was young and naive . . . what can I say! Anyway, Alan Young, who played the "straightman" to the horse, passed away 19/05/2016. Bamboo Harvester, the original Mr Ed, died in 1970. Here is an episode of "Mr Ed" to take you back down memory lane.
And of course, the theme song for the programme is yet another earworm that Nameless mentions in his Friday post Friday Fun: A Coke – OR Koch – Earworm (In Memoriam) .
A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a horse of course
Unless the horse of course, is the famous Mr Ed.
My Universe —
7 Responses to “Squatch’s Open Thread 21/05/2016”
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NLJ – Just curious – is there anyone who writes for this Journal who DOES live in the real world?
MSN – I think i'll adapt a quote rom G. K. Chesterton, originally on Christianity, but true here as well – judging people by the content of their character, as opposed to the color of their skin or other external characteriestics, has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
Economist – I don't think Drumpf ever knew, and certainly still does not know, that there is anything to negotiation besides dictating the terms. Hence all those bankruptcies. Bankruptcies don't grow out of sound business practice.
CBC – And like the Coke song, the Mr. Ed theme has been parodied – my favorite is as a proposed "Walking Dead" theme (if it were a sitcom) –
A corpse is a corpse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a corpse, of course,
That is, of course, unless the corpse is the famous MR. DEAD!
Universe – Ummm – Would you say Simon is more easily amused than his cat?
Hope you continue to improve.
Totally unaware of the adult protocol, but I'm sure they would also view sinusitis as an abscess ("enclosed infection") – and abscesses generally require AT LEAST three weeks of Rx because enclosed infections are difficult for meds to penetrate.
MSN: Very tragic incident about the Komagata Maru. Yea, sadly…the GOP would embrace this kind of action.
Economist: What scares me, besides Das Fuhrer, are the people who support him. If I said half the garbage spewing from his mouth, I'd be picked up and sent to a holding cell. He nauseates me with his drivel.
CBC: Loved this! Got a lot of laughs watching this show. RIP, Mr. Young. Good one, Joanne re: TWD.
Here's another one: https://youtu.be/qq6Kgf6Tnus
My Universe: Of course a cat enjoys that. By mistake, I dropped a pair of socks that needed to be washed, and now my cat has adopted them. While I think that's odd…she enjoys playing/sniffing them. eww.
Glad to read that you are getting over your sinusitis. That's nasty stuff, which I haven't had a dose of, for a couple years now. Seems like you are relaxing, and taking it easy though.
Thanks, Lynn for post.
I hope your intense activity is not interfering with your healing, Happy Victoria day. Our Memorial Day (5/30 this year) is usually the first camping and planting weekend in the US too.
Through all my years of protest, brutality was the police response to the protestors. They stood nack and did nothing only when someone else was attacking us.
Kudos to Trudeau.
Very well said!
The difference between Mr. Ed and Rump Dump Trump is simply a matter of which end of the horse is talking.
Cat 1 – Human 0
MSN: Trudeau shows what a statesman looks like!
NLJ: I really know it not, but that may be a good thing!
The Economist: Trump is playing the fool/entertainer, and the American public, or too much of it, can not tell the difference between idiot TV and reality!
I hope your sinusitis is improved, that is a miserable thing to have.
National Law: What universe does this man inhabit? Not ours.
MSN: Could we please have Trudeau?
The Economist: Yes the Republicans are in a pickle, but so are the rest of us if this joke is elected.\
CBC: Loved that show, now I do have another earworm!
Love Simons cat.
Do take care not to take on too much before you've fully recovered from your sinusitis, Lynn. You don't want that to go into hiding and become chronic. You sound like you have a lot on your plate while your energy is low, so take good care of yourself and rest as much as possible.
NLJ: There was indeed little I could agree on in Banzhaf's article and I felt he expressed a very Republican, or even worse Drumpfian, opinion on protests. Alan Levine has a far more realistic perspective on the way peaceful demonstrations and demonstrators are handled by the police, but doesn't go beyond a perceived link between the "war on terror" and what he calls "a war on dissent." In my opinion it goes beyond the focus on security after 9/11, it is part of the general fear mongering by the right and the way they and the large corporations abuse it to suppress any dissent, any action that may endanger their interests. Key Stone XL activists have been treated like terrorists, states have dabbled with bills to prosecute animal activists as terrorists, GAG bills have silenced activists to protect factory farmers, the Black Lives Matter movement have been made out as terrorists by the GOP and it stuck…there are too many examples where the right has abused the fear they have instilled in the population to litteraly beat down dissent, mainly from the left. Fanatic religious, NRA's ammosexuals, white supremacists…their demonstrations are seldom met with the same police violence other demonstrators face.
MSN: All I can say is that the Dutch government should take a hard look at how it is done, as it, and all the governments before them, still refuses to apologize for the "misconduct" of the Dutch in their colonies and the war that ensued when the colonies fought for their independence. Perhaps they will do so after the last living victim has passed away and they no longer have to fear being sued for compensation.
Kudos to Trudeau for his apologies which make it very clear that this government will not allow this to happen to the refugees that now present themselves at the borders.
TE: Undoubtedly the GOP has failed it's voters miserably and so has it's stepchild, the Tea Party, and Drumpf has used this to his advantage. But what frightens me most is that these same voters are so enthusiastically following Drumpf while he doesn't really address any of these issues. He only tells them he's the greatest and he'll solve all their problems but never even hints at how he's going to do that, except for having Mexico build a wall to keep themselves out. People have been so dumbed down by Republicans they no longer think and act only on an emotional level to sound bites. They are the people who are all to easily influenced by populists like Drumpf and with a megalomaniac like him at the top, America could head for disaster.
CBC: Mr. Ed was popular in Europe too when I was young and I enjoyed watching it. In my mind Alan Young had passed away decades ago, laid to rest with childhood memories like these. So I was rather surprised to learn that he lived to this very ripe old age.
My Universe: More childhood memories. My brother had a race track like that and used to drive our cat absolutely mad with it. The cat killed one of the cars to revenge itself.