The Black Rod

It was like a blow to the solar plexus. It was the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech and the newscasts across North America were all carrying stories.  They can't broadcast the entire speech because it is copywrited, so they ran small excerpts.  We were flipping channels when we landed on this clip from the speech: I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! It felt as if the air was sucked out of the room.  There was the stark realization that the NDP have taken Manitoba 50 years into the past--- to a time when racism was accepted practice by governments, when racist speech was not condemned, when racists openly held public office.  Welcome to Greg Selinger's Brave New World. Manitoba Premier Selinger let slip in the Legislature yesterday t

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

The two groups that thought they had control over the content within the Canadian Museum for Human Rights have been shocked to learn that they don't.  One is fighting mad and the other is scared and confused on how to respond. You've heard how one arm of Manitoba's Indian Chiefs insists that the CMHR label Canada's treatment of its aboriginal people as "genocide."  You  haven't heard how a segment of Winnipeg's Jewish community is shaken by concerns that the Palestinian viewpoint of Israel's creation will be allowed to be advanced within the museum. The divisiveness and hatred the CMHR will stir up was evident when the first reports reached the public Monday of a letter sent to Stu Murray, CEO of the human rights museum, by perennial protester Grand Chief Murray Clearsky, of the Southern Chiefs Organization. The mainstream media has given you a sanitized synopsis of the letter. You've got to read the original to