I hate it when the Star’s editorial line shoves its ignorant nose in affairs it is barely equipped to understand or comment on. Actually I hate most of the Star, but since it is the country’s most widely-circulated newspaper it bears some scrutiny.

Here I’m going to do a quick dissection of gringo-jr’s editorial on the going-ons in Mexico.

Mexico’s shaken faith
Aug. 9, 2006. 01:00 AM

Weeks of political turmoil after Mexico’s photo-finish presidential election in early July has had its effect. The public’s faith has been shaken in the integrity of the electoral system.

And Mexico’s respected Federal Electoral Tribunal fed that concern Saturday when it ordered a partial recount beginning today at 12,000 of 130,000 polling stations, agreeing that complaints of error and fraud warrant a fresh look.

Shaken faith? When did this happen!? Weeks after? Dear me!
Go read Narco News, morons, they’ve been saying it since day one. Oh but of course, they’re actually out on the street reporting shit rather than sitting in some bureau office in Mexico City.

And the Tribunal is respected? By whom? Your corporate paymasters? And yet they “fed” that concern — fed, like you’d feed a dog or a donkey.

The conservative National Action party candidate, Felipe Calderon, a protégé of outgoing President Vicente Fox, beat leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the July 2 election by 244,000 votes of the 41 million cast, or 0.6 per cent. The partial recount is unlikely to reverse the result. But if it gives Lopez Obrador more votes, pressure will grow for a complete recount or a new election.

“Beat”? What the hell is wrong with you? You just pointed out that there’s clear, frickin’ clear evidence of fraud and error going on that warrants reconsideration — then you say he “beat” him? What was it, a boxing match? You win elections, you don’t “beat” your opponent. The guy loses the election. Having said that, it’s nice to make it seem like Obrador and Calderon got in a ring and, you know, Calderon might have done a couple of nasty things but nevertheless beat him. LIKE A MAN. Great imagery. Morons.

Meanwhile, chaos builds.

Calderon has been accusing Lopez Obrador of leading a shabby “sore loser” campaign of “anti-democrats, anarchists and intolerance” to overturn an election most observers deemed clean and transparent.

So Calderon made that accusation — of anti-democrats, anarachists and intolerant nits — and what did the Star do? All but confirm it — because CHAOS naturally stems from ANARCHISTS — those dogs and donkeys referred to earlier, who have been let out in the streets. Really, A causes B. Most observers deemd the election clean and transparent, but most observers probably didn’t venture far from some Northern voting sites and Mexico City because they like UNAM so much. (Actually I don’t know what the observers did, but whatever it was they missed the crap going down at 12,000 polling stations.

Lopez Obrador, claiming to “defend democracy,” has sent his Democratic Revolution party supporters into the streets complaining that the election was rigged by the ruling party. They call Fox a “traitor to democracy,” election officials “criminals,” and threaten to besiege Congress and the courts.

Thus begins anarchy, and Mexicans are understandably worried.

Notice the subtle difference of quotation marks here. For Calderon’s accusations all go in the same phrase, for Obrador’s accusations they are all separated to make them seem less credible. Because, Obrador is only “claiming” to defend demcoracy, whereas Calderon of course — by refusing repeatedly over and over the past while to submit to any kind of recount — was actually defending it. If Obrador hadn’t made a big fuss of it, wouldn’t this shit have gone unnoticed? Yes, it would’ve, because those E.U. Observers were obviously not doing their frickin’ job properly.

Also, Obrador “sent” his supporters out there. Like, he actually told all hundreds of thousands, or even millions of them, to go out there. And they did. Because they like him, personally, that much. They’re not defending a democratic principle, they’re just there because they’re his lapdogs.

And THAT’s when anarchy began — no, not when some elitist dickwads stole the election — but when the people poured into the streets to reclaim it. That’s when anarchy starts, when the dogs and donkeys start making noise; not when the vultures suck the blood dry.

Who’s worried and why, anyway?

Although many Mexicans recoil from Lopez Obrador’s nakedly self-serving tactics, a third are convinced the election was rigged. More to the point, half now support his call for a “vote by vote” recount at all 130,000 polls, for the sake of social peace. Their view cannot be ignored.

Mexicans were split along north-south lines in this vote, and across social classes. Healing cannot begin until most accept the result.

Okay, so let’s get this. Many Mexicans recoil, we don’t know how many, but we obviously know it’s the upper classes (voting split across social classes) who voted for the frickin’ Conservatives. Hence, those braying donkeys and barking dogs implicated earlier are the ones who — as above — are going to “besiege” the courts and Congress. The uneducated vulgar anarchistic poor and the dark indigenous moronic southies — like those Chiapan Zapatistas who just can’t shut the hell up and bend over to neoliberal NAFTAism. Which is what’s got those upper class Mexicans worried, of course, is their interests being threatened. And what’s got the lower ones worried? Well, the fate of their democracy. Duh.

Okay, so half the country wants a vote-by-vote recount now — obviously their “faith” has been shaken. But they’ve been calling for it for a month, you morons. Where were you then?

If the partial recount turns up serious irregularities in the next few days, a full recount should be held.

The courts must dispel any doubt about the fairness of this crucial election, only the second truly credible ballot in 77 years.

Mexico’s democratic future and social stability ride on it.

Good one. Dumbasses. What, did Torstar invest in Calderon or something? Does it own a maquiladora up in the North that it’s so threatened by Obrador and actual democracy? Polls pegged this guy as the frontrunner months in advance, and all of a sudden some chump ass hand-picked by Fox (as if that’s supposed to give the whole charade legitimacy) beat him?

Besides, I don’t think Mexico’s democratic future lies in this one election, it lies in millions of people, and their right to sovereignty that isn’t impeded upon by NAFTA and other shit like that. It depends on them being able to exercise their otherwise marginalized voices. Democracy, morons, depends on the people; not on rigged elections that have to go your way or the highway (like Hamas).

Gringo media gets paid not to understand, and here’s gringo-jr. to lend a hand.

Just came across this comment piece by Greg Palast. He should stick to writing articles about vote fraud in the States and taking pictures in Venezuela, the guy comes across as an idiot when talking about the Middle East — and he admits it himself. There are things in this article that have merit, but the rest of it is utterly simplified and stupid. He ends up denying not just the Palestinians, but the Shi’ite Lebanese and the Israelis as well of agency and ignores the myriad motivations and distills everything down to oil (the chemical irony of this statement just hit me). Too tired to comment fully on it all.

The Transformers movie is coming out next July. It’s great to see all these cartoons of my boyhood come to the big screen. Next, I suppose, is G.I.JOE where, of course, the racially diverse and morally upright American soldiers triumph over irrationally evil terrorists (who hate peace and freedom) from the al-Coibra organization. Perfect.

And in an intelligence breakthrough in America’s War on Terror, al-Coibra’s dreaded Cobra Commander’s secret identity was recently revealed:

(I actually do have a life, I just spend most of my time trying to avoid it.)

The editor of the Varsity got back to me and said he’d like to publish the comic strip. It’ll appear in the Varsity beginning Monday, I think.

It’s interesting and rather coincidental that in the same week as Rosa Parks died and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad called for Israel to be wiped off the map, the “Kashechewan problem” blew up in the Canadian government’s face.

While the mainstream media was quick to point out Ahmedinejad’s racism and Rosa Parks’s contribution against it, there was no mention of the “r word” when it came to Kashechewan.

The fact that Natives have been brutally oppressed, have had their culture and identity stolen from them, and have been overall mistreated for several generations apparently has nothing to do with the “r word.”

As inane and remarkably stupid as Ahmedinejad’s comments are, at least he’s honest. He doesn’t like Israel.

The Jim Crow laws were bluntly racist and didn’t mask their discrimination with flowery words.

In Canada, though, the governments speak of “prioritizing the Indian issue” and moving ahead and this and that and that and this, but they do jack. They talk a good game but their actions are racist to the core.

The problems that face Kashechewan and countless other communities like it right across the country are nothing less than products of racism.

It’s about time someone owned up to that.

one of the most common ways for a person to express his or herself on the internet is to go to blogspot, sign up, and thanks to the people over at blogger, instantly start blogging

unless you live in saudi arabia

what might have blacklisted all of blogspot is the site of “the religious policeman”

this is a western-educated saudi fellow who, via satellite internet (which cannot be censored), has taken the courageous step of posting his experiences, thoughts, observations, and outright criticisms of the way saudi arabia works

of course, the thought of any mode of expression which cannot be regulated is a severely distressing thought for those in power anywhere

at york university, it’s megaphones

there are ways to by-pass the censorship, however

go on google, type up “muttawa,” the first page that appears is the one in question
now clicking on the link itself will lead to the above-displayed, superbly designed “blocked!” notice, so click, instead, on the underlined “cached” under the description of the page — and enjoy

as for the blocking of blogspot itself, other services such as livejournal, though it sucks, are still available
again, a simple google search will bring out a great list of blogging and journal-keeping sites

can’t keep on censoring things forever

irshad manji’s book — the trouble with islam — arrived in the mail today, along with a media package containing several articles about irshad manji (and one by her)

manji, whose site was last updated october 7, hasn’t yet responded to my request for an interview — but at least i got the book

i’ve started reading it, i already found a spelling mistake (boo hoo)

the complete review will be in the varsity newspaper … eventually

i just sent off an e-mail to random house canada requesting a review copy of irshad manji’s book
i am now waiting for a response

i figure an affiliation with a newspaper is a convenient way to get free copies of books (if, indeed, this works) — all i have to do is write a critique of the book after i read it and voil� — free book!

i wonder how many books i can get through

but anyway, no response from manji herself yet

she’s in ottawa or something

(strange her book tour doesn’t seem to take her anywhere in toronto … or the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO where she wrote her book and blocked out all student publications — that makes me more sour than anything else…)

yaser and i visited the varsity office, accompanied by sanjeyan
there we pitched our idea to the editor of the varsity to interview irshad manji and write a review of her new book (the trouble with islam da da da)
the editor was very receptive to the idea (he didn’t even ask us for our writing credentials)

so we went over the hart house, where manji was writer-in-residence until recently, to try and obtain some contact information

let me say it feels really cool to say, “i’m with the varsity” and so on so forth

at any rate, we got a very obvious e-mail address from hart house, one that would take around … eight seconds to guess

manji slighted all the student media at the UofT, none of them were invited to her book-launch — even though she made use of UofT’s resources as writer-in-residence at hart house

i don’t like that

anyway, i sent off an e-mail to her requesting a copy of the book for review and requesting an interview for the varsity

let’s see how it goes

asianavenue pages are shit piles

they violate every rule of web design ever
— frames — gay little animated graphics all over the place — cramming a huge amount of information in as little a space as possible — among other common sense bullshitteries

not to mention pages upon pages full of pictures of dipshit entertainers — what good is that going to do?
look, i have rows and rows of pictures of puff daddy and biggie and mase and eminem (oh and let’s not forget the megagantic image of tupac) staring at me under the banner of SwT_AzN_MoRon_99273501 — who thinks she’s a hip hop head but has probably never heard of mobb deep

and none of them
not one of them
can spell in proper english and has to type like an anal retentive from grade four

l00k, Me KuHn Taaa-EEp LaK UH BuMMMMMMM

hell i know FOBs right off the boat, two days fresh, who can type better than the whole lot

the only thing that impresses me about AA is the fact that a whole bunch of dumbasses got together and figured out how to disable right click
well done