For once I’m not going to involve Rob Ford in this except to mention that it’s his office that’s involved in the situation. I’m not blaming the man personally, though if you were to tell me that it was his doing then it wouldn’t seem at all out of place.

This all has to do with various Municipal Freedom of Information Act requests to City Hall — Rob Ford’s office, to be specific — that are being basically ignored. The law states that Ford’s office has 30 days to comply, or give reasons for a delay, but the Star is noting that some of their requests are more than a month past-due without so much as a peep from Ford’s office.

This isn’t terribly out of place with today’s increasingly authoritarian, secretive, and oppressive model of government; Canada being no exception. More than one professional journalist group has raised the alarm about this as they discovered the same tactics being used by all the various levels of government.

For the common Joe, it can quickly become prohibitive to keep paying for the little bits and pieces of information (or more likely appeals), that the government deems that he’s worthy to know. That’s because the government has few, if any obligations to Joe.

Instead, almost all of the obligations, requirements, rules, stipulations, demands, laws, by-laws, regulations, and penalties fall on the head of common Joe. The rights, expectations, protections, aegises, mandates, wills, and general declarations of “this is what we can and will do to you” are exclusive to governments and big corpo.

Take the Municipal Freedom of Information Act, as a contextual example. There are a couple of sections in there mentioning your rights, hardly any mention of what happens when your rights under these terms have been violated, and the vast majority of the document describes how you can and will be refused FOIA requests as well as all the ways in which your privacy will not be protected. Within the “Offenses” section, a maximum $5,000 fine is specified as a penalty for six items, one of which potentially punishes a government employee for sharing personal information, and five of which punish you for a broad variety of things. For example, the government implicitly retains the right to lie and mislead you while specifically stipulating that it’s against the law for you to do so to them.

On the flip side of the same coin, while most corporations will break the law and then pass the financial penalty (if any) onto their beholden customers, some large and established organizations are emboldened enough to publicly demand that they are not, and should not be legally required to tell the truth in things like contracts and advertising claims.

Legalese is carefully crafted and such things don’t happen by accident. Most laws and regulations are squarely aimed at the everyday citizen and designed to exclude government and large corporations. This is cold hard reality, publicly expounded and codified.

This is also why it seems that these same groups seem to be getting away with breaking the law. That law, if applied to you or me would see a swift and decisive response before you could bat an eyelash in protest. Not so much if you’re part of a government gang or elite corpo clique. And even if it turns out that they had actually broken a law, that law is just retroactively changed by them or their buddies to make it all good and legal — now it’s even more in line with what the law was intended for!

Even something as trivially simple as taxes reveals this disparity: if you pay late, they will come after you no questions asked and charge you interest for the privilege. If they mess up and send you a rebate cheque late, or for the wrong amount, would any court seriously entertain an interest charge in your favour? In fact, who do you complain to?

Keep in mind that this isn’t the free market and so we don’t just up and over to a new government. A waxy dead-eyed new figurehead, yeah, but that’s hardly the same thing.

Unchecked, I think it’d obvious where this is headed. However, I also console myself with the fact that some people are cynical about all things corpo-government. In my experience, they don’t really care much for laws that seek only to oppress and control them. Some people don’t need to be told by some pinhead with a lofty title what’s right and what’s wrong. When these same people are in the majority, it doesn’t much matter how much that pinhead insists that he is the moral authority. And no matter how much that pinhead insists that without his laws society would just crumble into a depraved orgy of destruction and death, we know otherwise.

The problem is that right now there is a great deal of complacency, fear, and childish distraction among Canadians. The laws being erected against us are turning into real, physical systems. At the same time, Canadians are unwittingly being chemically lobotomized and mentally damaged while subsisting on a diet of numbing drugs and chemical-laced water, all while consuming mindless media that promotes violence and vulgarity. This confluence of factors may be nothing more than coincidence, but it doesn’t change the facts.

Politicians and money men have been called scoundrels (and much worse), since time immemorial, probably owing to the fact that it’s a perfectly true statement. What we’re just beginning to experience now, however, is what happens when those scoundrels are allowed, encouraged even, to rule over us through fear, violence, and deception.

In addition to his numerous flashes of brilliance, one of Giorgio Mammoliti’s ideas included sticking a huge flagpole in a spritely section of town called Emery Village. Business owners in the area were to be mafia-style-“convinced” to support Mammoliti’s tourist-magnet concept of Canadian majesty.

“Emery village is not a tourist area. You put a giant flag at city hall or the Eaton Centre. It’s an industrial area here.” – Walter Berton, owner of Berton Seeds on Weston Road

Sadly, it seems that Giorgio’s brainchild may not be coming to fruition. The thing was supposed to have been erected at some point in 2011 and the winning idea has been hanging limp since.

It seems that Mammoliti’s bluster exceeded his capacity to carry it out. Even the concept flag in the scale model sitting outside of his office has been purloined.

This comes at the same time as Mammoliti’s buddy and everyone’s number one guy, Rob Ford, is being bitch-slapped by the Toronto Star about his economic claims. Some of the more interesting revelations on the 11-item list include:

1. “I said from Day 1: the city has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. I have proved my statement to be correct.”

For a mayor that claims that the city doesn’t have a revenue problem, Rob has spent a lot of time trying to come up with various revenue tools for city projects.

2. “Before I took office, any annual surplus was used to fill holes in bloated operating budgets. Guaranteed, this will not happen while I’m mayor. We have put an end to the unsustainable budget practices of the last administration. It is over.”

This is a Rob Ford “guarantee”, so that tag alone should be indicative how how true this statement is. In addition, the Star points to three specific instances where surpluses or “unsustainable budget practices” were used to fill budget holes under Robbie’s reign.

3. “As many of you know, I came from the private sector before I got into politics. Very, very fortunate to run my dad’s company that he started 50 years ago.”

Apparently, Rob never ran his dad’s company, he only worked for it. If his current schedule is evocative of his earlier attendance at Deco Labels and Tags, however, to say that he “worked” there would be a further stretching of the truth.

Amidst all of this looms the end of summer, spelling the end of easy season down at City Hall as everyone comes back from vacation; plus, we’re just over a year away from the next election … not a good confluence for Ford Nation.

Even if you don’t smoke pot yourself, chances are pretty good that you know someone who does. As a result, you’ll probably also have experienced what marijuana does to people, and you’ve probably noticed that it lacks the nasty side-effects of other, legal medications.

It’s interesting to note, in fact, that it’s been primarily governments and scientists who have been spreading many of the lies and misinformation about the topic, with police eager to support these well known perjuries in order to bump up their drug enforcement budgets.

It’s not surprising to learn that the “authorities” openly lie and deceive the public like this, so I can’t help but wonder what changed behind the scenes that so many politicians are now coming forward and admitting to the occasional puff or two.

It started with Justin Trudeau and Kathleen Wynne, both of who gave the standard “I tried it a long time ago and didn’t like it” response. Rob Ford, stunningly and especially considering the whole crack thing, went way beyond this and admitted to blazing “a lot”.

In the meantime, tea-totaling Stephen Harper openly lied to millions of Canadians by claiming that, because Trudeau admitted to smoking pot, he was promoting it to children. Of course, this is not even close to the truth. Harper has embraced misleading the public in pretty much the same way that his cadre of underlings have done … even down to the same bullshit invocation of children.

Harper claimed that Justin’s “actions speak for themselves”. True. Harper’s actions also speak for themselves, and they describe a horrific, lying, slandering, murdering sociopath who should be behind bars. The man is a criminal and he proves it a little more every time he opens his mouth.

Our social media buddy Zach Bussey is making a name for himself with his project to live life off of $12,000 in savings and whatever freebies his online presence get him.

He described his idea to us, just a few weeks old at the time, when we partied it up at the Bud Light event earlier this year, and I have to give him kudos for sticking with it as long as he has, not to mention taking it to the national news level.

In the latest development, a condo owner has decided to put Zach up in an empty condo for a week in exchange for blogging about the property. It’s one of the bigger perks in an otherwise tough year — food, clothes, and even a bed, have at times turned out to be luxuries.

I suspect I’ll bump into Zach at some event or another before this is all through, and I’ll definitely grill him on whether or not it was worth it. But if the purpose of this was to get exposure for potential future projects, which I suspect it was, the man has already found success.

I visited London a little while ago. That London. I only got to be a tourist for about four hours at the end of the local work day (and I had to skip the pub!) Here’s what I saw, including the occasional double image or ghostly figure:

Sweets and Tea at Harrods

Harrods Egyptian Room

Harrods Seafood Lounge

Somerset House after dark

Memorial Gates at Green Park

Battersea Power Station on the Thames

Legally required London photo booth shot

Near Trafalgar Square somewhere

Piccadilly Circus. Note the lack of clowns, elephants, tent, etc.

Along Piccadilly

Still along Piccadilly

The Red Lion at Derby Gate. Beer!

A Drury Lane pub. More beer!

A bit o’ the old symbolism near the Eye

The Eye and a mysterious London moon. West from Waterloo Bridge.

The mysterious London financial district. East from Waterloo Bridge.

At one time, my mentions that we are being illegally tracked by our government/corporate owners were derided as conspiracy gibberish, along with the verbatim “tinfoil hat” comments that all such enlightened contrarians regurgitate, despite the reams of independent, corroborative evidence I would trot out.

Then, with the news of NSA spying scandal came confirmation that, yes indeed, this is exactly what’s happening and if anything I didn’t go far enough in my descriptions.

None of it is news to the informed, to be sure, and there is enough independent verification going back many years from the best sources one could find — there’s absolutely no doubt that we are being spied on constantly, and that our government is forcing this on us at the behest of private, for-profit, and for-control interests. Even if you believe the highly incredulous claims that CSEC, Canada’s version of the NSA, is not spying on Canadians, there’s no doubt that our neighbours are only more than willing to do so and to share that information with CSEC:

CSEC relies on its closest foreign intelligence allies, the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand to share the collection burden and the resulting intelligence yield. Canada is a substantial beneficiary of the collaborative effort within the partnership to collect and report on foreign communications.

The issue of why the government is doing this usually pops up at this point. The naive assumption is typically that this is being done for the protection of citizens (terrorism!) and that even if our data is temporarily stored and analyzed, ultimately no one is interested in harvesting all of your innermost secrets.

Of course, I’ve already mentioned that the government is imposing these measures on behalf of power-hungry organizations seeking global domination (is that sufficient motive?), which also sounds like a conspiratorial rambling — if only it weren’t for the fact that CSEC directly states this on their website:

The IT Security Program has earned highly valued global respect and a reputation of technical excellence. It now extends its expertise past its traditional technical clients to those within the Government of Canada who are responsible for the formulation and implementation of policy and program managers. This approach encourages harmonization between Government of Canada’s operational IT security requirements with its business needs and processes.

The IT Security Program will aid the Government of Canada’s effort to make cyber security a business enabler.

It’s fair to say that protecting profits, whether government or corporate, isn’t CSEC’s only job:

During the Cold War, the Establishment’s primary client for signals intelligence was National Defence, and its focus was the military operations of the then Soviet Union. Since the end of the Cold War, Government of Canada requirements have evolved to include a wide variety of political, defence, and security issues of interest to a much broader range of client departments.

While these continue to be key intelligence priorities for Government of Canada decision-makers, increasing focus on protecting the safety of Canadians is prompting greater interest in intelligence on transnational issues, including terrorism.

Here CSEC, under the reliable guise of “terrorism”, is openly promoting surveillance and spying. Note how there’s no mention of protecting citizens from predatory governments or other large organizations with the means and proven willingness to do real harm.

The agency, unsurprisingly, works hard at convincing everyone that with every new power they’re granted they’re being extra cautious and rigorous, but such words are hollow and meaningless when cut short by insistence that actual details are top secret and therefore you can’t know about them.

I’m not the only person to point this out, but what is clearly apparent is that the government and all of its shadowy organizations are focused on protecting corporate and government interests while either ignoring are actively eroding individual rights and freedoms. Their words are loud enough by themselves, but their actions practically scream their intent.

This is not only enshrined in both the despicable mandates and lack of any accountability underlying CSEC, CSIS, and other such groups, but we see real-world examples of what is truly important to their operations. Between destroying potentially incriminating evidence, allowing international spying to happen under their noses, being watched over by fraudsters, and championing horrific laws, it’s really hard to see any of them as the cheerful, helpful, protective entities they claim they are.

You can go even further to prove this for yourself by calling any government agency, whether it’s the Canada Revenue Agency or the Public Safety Ministry, and ask the person on the other end the simple and blunt question: does the government work for the people or do the people work for the government? The answer should only be, “but of course the government works for its people!”, and part of that work should include being able to answer this question; however, it’s highly unlikely that this is the response you’ll receive. In fact, you should take a moment to relish the derision and/or idiocy you’ll receive as a response from the people who you’re paying to force you to jump through hoops for — then you’ll be clear about who is expected to bow to who.

This seems so juvenile and simple that few people would bother actually picking up the phone and learning the disturbing truth for themselves. Instead, they will wrap themselves up in yet another layer of delusion and will, by corollary, have answered their own subsequent questions about how governments and corporations are able to get away with this, how people could be so blind and blasé as to allow it to happen, etc.

The question, for those of us who can add two and two, is not whether we’re being tracked and surveilled, it’s what we can do about it. The idiotic claim that, because we’ve done nothing wrong we have nothing to hide can be re-stated equally as simply as because we’ve done nothing wrong you have no right to watch us. In fact, if these agencies are so squeaky clean, why do they obstinately refuse any oversight or inspection? If they didn’t do anything wrong, why do they refuse to answer any questions?

Because it’s one standard for us, the reprehensible child-molesting rabble who should count themselves lucky to be protected from all those nefarious terrorist plots, and another standard for our historically benign and loving government/corporate owners. And when we complain about this inconsistency, we’re reminded in less-than-gentle ways that their 24% support represents a “majority” and if we don’t like it we need to shut the hell up and wait until the next “fair” election.

When we see corporate-backed governments collaboratively going after those standing up for truth, honesty, openness, and justice, even when those people have not broken any laws, while the governments themselves, at the highest levels, are openly breaking law after law and engaging in open fraud and deception, it’s obvious what side of the moral/ethical/legal debate the “authorities” stand on, and moreover, who their number one enemy are.

The sad thing is that the willfully ignorant still expect tanks to roll through the streets in order to recognize the action as a coup, never once thinking that guns and bombs don’t need to be used when gullible fools like them unwittingly and gladly hand over everything to their criminal overlords.

At this point in time I’ve pretty much used up almost my entire vocabulary of expletives and colourful adjectives for Rob Ford so I’m not gonna go down that road.

Nope.

Let me just say that I find Ford latest behaviour extremely disappointing.

I’m referring to the latest news that has Robbie calling a special rush-rush meeting to decide what to do about his unfilled Deputy Mayor seat.

The meeting, in and of itself, is sensible considering the recent departure of Doug Holyday for provincial pastures. Hard to find fault with that. But, as usual, that’s only about five percent of the story.

The fact that Holyday would be running, and that the Deputy Mayor seat could be vacated was hardly a secret, so this meeting that Rob is calling probably didn’t have to be so last minute.

But so what? Aren’t meetings part and parcel of Council’s job?

Yes, but it sucks hard to be told that you need to cut short your vacation time because Fordo couldn’t see past his limited imagination a few weeks into the future and instead waited until the ball was already in the net.

This is especially egregious considering how Rob Ford skipped out of a Council meeting not more than a month ago, so that he could take off early for … guess what? … a vacation!

And let’s not forget how Rob Ford famously skirted his responsibilities as ambassador to this city (more than once), for the Pride event that draws millions of people from all over the world, in order to go for … guess what? … a vacation!

In between vacations, Robbie seemingly has an overabundance of free time, which makes the whole thing extra slap-in-the-face-y. Yet Ford seems to be so disconnected from reality that apparently this doesn’t bother him in the least. This is evidenced by the additional facts that he’s seriously considering getting back into coaching football, despite all the trouble that his obsession has led to, and despite the fact that his last coaching gig ended up with a lot of pissed-off people.

I mean, that’s Robbie right? The same man who’s administration is internally so unstable that it continues to bleed staff (another “personal assistant” this time), like it’s going out of style.

My adjectives dwindle with every passing day.

How many of us grew up on The Kids in the Hall? How many of us have wished for a fish dinner with Paul Bellini, the mysterious and ephemeral fifth Kid, at a convenient airport hotel?

Well, believe it or not, Bellini hosts a more-or-less regular show over at the Flying Beaver Pubaret which is, mind-blowingly, cover-free! Yeah, you can actually just waltz in off of Parliament Street (near Carlton), order a beverage, and rub naked or clothed elbows (your choice) with the one and only Paul Bellini.

The Flying Beaver is a delightfully intimate venue with room for maybe 80 to 100 people if everyone stood shoulder to shoulder, and has not ceased to amaze me with some of the personalities it has managed to attract. I’m sure owners Maggie and Heather‘s seemingly endless connections to Canadian comedy, the best form of comedy, help a lot.

What I’m trying to get at is, basically, that The Flying Beaver is an incredible Toronto-gem-hosting Toronto gem that has thus far managed to stay brow-furrowingly audience free. Even during its bigger shows, Sarah and I have never had a problem getting a table. To me, this must be simply because most of Toronto has not yet been made aware of the wonders of the Flying Beaver, meaning you still have an opportunity to experience it, and its incredible personalities, very much in the flesh.

It’s been very quiet around these parts lately.

I mean, there’s the idiotic anti-graffiti campaign that Robbie is attempting to resurrect, a “war” that the overweight fool will never win. There’s also Ford’s ill-advised yet completely expected nose-sticking into provincial politics in the now-successful campaign of Doug Holyday, which leaves Ford without an underling should something happen to him.

And that possibility is looking more likely now with the un-quieting news that Mohamed Siad, the guy who originally showed Gawker the Rob Ford crack video and was subsequently arrested in the massive June raid on the Dixon Road apartments, has offered it up to the cops in exchange for a plea deal.

To devout Fordites this will probably still all come across as pure fiction, despite the fact that well-known Toronto lawyer Warren Kinsella has weighed in, claiming that he’s certain that the video is most definitely real, has been seen by many people, and is now floating around between the courts and lawyers.

To quote:

Here’s what I know:

• Siad possessed the video.
• The police got the video when they arrested him, using a search warrant.
• The Crown office was then given the video.
• The Crown disclosed the video to lawyer Brown. He has it.

… the video is in the hands of many people, now. And it has been seen by many more. And it shows Rob Ford smoking what appears to be crack cocaine.

Keep in mind that Warren is a lawyer, and a well-known one at that, so he has a lot to lose by making knowingly false statements. Besides, how many people have now publicly, and to much flack and derision from Fordites, stated that yes, the video is real, and yes, that sure as hell looks and sounds like Ford smoking what looks like crack?

Even staunch Ford supporters like the Sun are no longer calling into question the existence of the crack “tape” and are now switching to the “but how do you know it’s crack?” deflections. That’s not unlike demanding that the recent shooting of Sammy Yatim by the cops is fiction because you weren’t there to witness it. It’s a good thing that the court system operates around evidence.

Let’s be clear: the Ford crack video is real, no doubt about that. It’s very certain that it is in fact Rob Ford smoking whatever substance he’s seen to be smoking in that video. And that substance, based on everything we know about Ford, is very likely crack cocaine.

The only question that remains is, will justice ever be done?

I get the feeling that even the Toronto Sun kinda gets that the latest vote on transit funding isn’t exactly the shining moment that Ford is making it out to be.

Rather than celebrate Ford’s victory, the Sun took the opportunity to attack Karen Stintz, claiming that Ontario Transportation Minister Glen Murray called her a “roadblock” in the process of getting shit done. She says that it won’t be possible to move forward on any less than $1.8 billion, Murray says $1.4 billion is all that’s coming.

This comes after Ford revived the whole subways debate on a wing and a prayer with none of the funding “guarantees” he’s so fond of. It’s critical to note the $8.2 billion in transit funding under the Transit City project that Ford summarily, and probably illegally, dismissed as his very first act of destruction at City Hall (but only after voting in favour of it first, of course).

If Stintz is a “roadblock” simply for saying that the city will need more funding, what does that make Rob Ford?

Not that it’ll matter much in the long run, because the results of the various votes on the issue leave even more room for the whole thing to fail. Essentially, Council voted to keep any new taxes out of the equation; even Ford’s latest in a series of attempts at raising taxes was rebuffed. They also voted to make the whole thing hang on the $1.8 billion number that Stintz put forward (I guess that makes them all, including the Fords, “roadblocks”).

So those goals are a bit lofty for starters. But then Council voted on having a funding commitment by September 30th, so far with no business case or any real proposals beyond this (which I tiefed from the National Post):

As you can see, the proposed subway has less than half the stops of the LRT plan with a not-so-small distance between stops on the underground route which would be subject to the same problems that the system has thus far experienced and will continue to be a victim to.

It’s not realistic to believe that the sections of the city where subways will be built won’t be shut down for safety reasons, so in terms of inconvenience, they wouldn’t be any better for pedestrians or commuters. And that will be the situation for about 5 years with the LRT, compared to an optimistic 10 years for subways.

Once built, the LRT will be within walking distance of roughly twice as many people as the nearest subway stop. Yes, there are some perks, such as a larger overall passenger capacity of the subway over light rail, but that won’t become an issue for some time; both systems are expected to be running, at peak times, half to less-than-half empty by 2031.

So no, subways are not the best option given what we know (and have known for some time).

Not that it really matters —  neither the LRT or subways may ever see the light of day. There was, at one time, a viable and ready-to-go plan called Transit City, but before anyone had a chance to stick a shovel in the ground, Rob Ford summarily cancelled it and started in on this insane death spiral that the TTC is now in.

The numbers aren’t adding up, the only plan thus far has consisted of publicly blubbering rhetoric about partnerships, and now we have these extra conditions that imperil even the tenuous and ephemeral concept of subways. And all this just for Scarborough … no discussions about upgrading or maintaining the rest of the system which by 2031, is believed will require passengers to fight to the death for a seat on severely overcrowded and, thanks to Ford, extra pricey trains.