The Black Rod

Taking a page out of the Putin playbook, the Manitoba NDP government is frantically rewriting history to justify its racially-oriented takeover of the long-running women's shelter Osborne House. Through a series of strategic leaks to reporters at the Winnipeg Free Press, the NDP has created a false narrative akin to Putin's explanation of how Russia had to --- just had to --- seize Crimea from Ukraine because of all the injustices the evil Ukrainians were imposing on Russians who lived there. NDP deputy premier Eric Robinson's racist slurs against white Manitobans, which preceeded the takeover of Osborne House, have been carefully whitewashed to turn them into an 'unfortunate choice of words', rather than a deliberate racial bias.  " Robinson later apologized ," writes the Free Press, ignoring the fact he was forced by the Premier to issue a lawyered statement after telling APTN he meant exactly what he said and he woul...

What is racism? Apparently that's the question on everybody's lips. You can't pick up a newspaper without reading somebody's opinion of what racism is.   That's funny because for more than 50 years nobody has had any doubt about what racism is. Children and adults, men and women knew without question that racism was prejudice against someone because of the colour of their skin.    See?  Simple. But now that we've discovered that Eric Robinson, the Deputy Premier of Manitoba, is a racist by that definition, journalists, academics, ethicists, commentators of all descriptions are racing to the ramparts to say it isn't so .     That we've been using the wrong definition of racism for more than half a century.  That the true definition is a Marxist interpretation of class and power relationships, not skin colour after all. That Indians--oops, natives --- oops, aboriginals, have reason to be prejudiced against whi...

Manitoba Deputy Premier Eric Robinson is hiding behind the skirts of dead women to keep his job. Ever since his racist views about white people were revealed last week, Robinson has been under pressure to resign or be removed by Premier Greg Selinger. Selinger, instead, has tried to protect his racist cabinet minister, but he only has one arrow in his bow---that Robinson has lobbied on the race-specific issue of "missing and murdered aboriginal women". Tuesday, Selinger raised the ante to claim that Robinson was nothing short of a Canadian hero, that he had single-handedly forced police across the country to start investigating the murders of aboriginal women because, he implied, the lazy, incompetent, racist fuzz hadn't been doing their job. WE'RE NOT MAKING THIS UP.  It's what he said in the Legislature. Selinger dismissed Robinson's racist remarks ("the ignorance of do good white people") as something he said ...

Idle No More has joined the fray into racist remarks made by Manitoba's Deputy Premier , and, guess what? Apparently his comment attacking the "ignorance of do good white people" is not racist, it's describing "an attitude."  Sort of like the term' drunk Indian' is a comment on sobriety and public intoxication, and not a racist slur. Tanya Kappo, one of the claimants to originating Idle No More by inventing the hashtag for the movement, couldn't help but jump into the controversy this weekend through her Twitter account. "Smarten up," she lectured Osborne House executive director Barbara Judt, the target of Robinson's racist comments.  "You're the one who is blatantly lying."  Nothing like civil discourse from a would-be lawyer ( ptui ).  " Ignorance of do good white people " is describing an attitude, not racist, declared Kappo. Uh, sweetie, once you bring somebody's ra...