Harper steps up attacks on HIV/AIDS solutions while preaching "unity of purpose"

Vaccine facility mystery deeps by the day
Silence from Quebec ramps up rumour mill

There comes a point, and that point is now, when rumours can be accepted as fact. There is no mystery. Advancing HIV/AIDS awareness, education, prevention, treatment and now hope for a vaccine is not part of the PM's conservative idea of a caring social agenda.

Since becoming Prime Minister, Stephen Harper has tried to shut, by every means possible, the door of Insite, Vancouver's globally lauded safe injection facility for drug addicts in the Downtown Eastside. If successful, and he won't be because the law is against him, the closure of Insite would have negative and devasting implications to the spread of HIV.

I march, therefore I am. We post: we are

If you're wondering why Stephen Harper didn't jump to Jack Layton's rather lame call to "unlock these doors" of parliament, it's very simple. Firstly, the Prime Minister of Canada isn't like a church custodian with a key-ring. More importantly, nobody was arrested. Note that I wrote arrested not interested.

That's the answer. Nobody was dragged off by police in handcuffs. Not one, not nearly enough to grab the Prime Minister's attention.

On Saturday (1/23/10), my friend and colleague with The Globe and Mail British Columbia bureau, the ever-musing Rod Mickleburgh and I were texting - as I marched and tweeted, and he did whatever it was he was doing. We agreed that demonstrations just aren't what they used to be. And they used to be something.

Today in the land of right-wing neo-con evangelical geezers

The day (01-13-10) began with a headline in The Globe and Mail reporting on crackpot criticism from an odd assortment of interest groups, other than filmgoers, towards James Cameron's blockbuster Avatar. One denouncement came from the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Its film reviewer complained the movie's story about the planet Pandora - where its tall, blue, nature-loving Na'vi species is set-upon by resource-marauding humans:

“gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature... (and) cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium.”

As a student with a major in Religious Studies, I would argue that an environmental "pseudo-doctrine" is better suited to today's planet-in-peril than one that is interpreted by an out-of-touch Pope who, the day before, called gay marriage an "attack on creation." Well, your Holiness, fundamental Catholic creationism is an attack on reason and common sense.

The day ended with alarming nonsense from a pair of notorious US blowhards weighing-in with deplorable comments on Haiti's heartbreak. Evanglical Pat Robertson teamed-up with right-wing radio heavyweight Rush Limbaugh to show how conservative-Christian morality stands in shocking contrast to the respect and thoughtfulness of the liberal-minded. According to Robertson, the Christian mouthpiece, and Limbaugh, the Republican loud-mouth, light-skinned and dark-skinned Haitians made a deal with the Devil.

What is more devilish is that evangelicals and Catholics, alike, are among the Christian missionaries who volunteer for aid agencies in impoverished countries, like Haiti. When disaster strikes, wealthier nation governments, such as Canada, through branches such as the Canadian International Development Agency, channel emergency aid through these faith-based NGOs so they can buy poor, uneducated converts for their fundamentalist religious agenda.

See you in church.

Stephen Harper's economic panic attack

Yesterday (01/11/10), Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared himself Canada's economic saviour, telling BNN that by proroguing parliament, he brings stabiliy to the financial markets. By day's end, slumping commodity prices, not Mr. Harper's preposterous claim, drove the S&P/TSX composite index to its first triple-digit loss of the new year and the dollar fell half-a-cent.

Today, the PM and his finance minister are being lectured by Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin page on Canada's structural deficit, saying the government hasn't produced any analysis showing the country's deficit is not "permanent and it won't go away."