Contact The CRTC Do Not let Dean Blundell & 102.1 The Edge get away with homophobia!!!
102.1 The Edge is a radio station I listen to frequently because I love rock music. However, I am very disappointed to hear 102.1 The Edge Dean Blundell show is so homophobic. In the past, I listened to Blundell’s show for a few minutes but then I realized how sexist and immature the program is. Blundell is a wannabe Howard Stern.
Recently, Blundell made some disgusting anti gay jokes calling gay men “man whores”, negative comments about anal sex calling it “butt love”.
The worst part about this incident is, 102.1 The Edge probably LOVES the free publicity the Dean Blundell show is getting. 102.1 The Edge will claim that Blundell’s show is just comedy, but as I said before comedy has a subtext.
Shock jock radio hosts and comedians always say their humour is just for jokes. However, sometimes jokes are not funny and the humour is a mask for bigotry.
The homophobia that Dean Blundell and 102.1 The Edge is spreading is abhorrent. Now imagine, if 102.1 The Edge made racist comments on the air, would the Canadian public accept this? Of course not! So why is homophobia against gay men acceptable? Is it palatable in Canada for a radio station in Toronto to broadcast anti gay hate? The CRTC needs to do something about 102.1 The Edge.
The producer for 102.1 The Edge, Derek Welsman was actually a foreman in he jury in a case involving a HIV positive gay man who was convicted of sexually assaulting other gay men at the Spa Excess bathhouse. Welsman actually talked about he case ON THE AIR, even though he was instructed by the judge not to.
This anti gay crap at 102.1 The Edge, must be challenged and must not be ignored. I urge the readers of my blog to contact the CRTC and file a complaint against 102.1 The Edge.
LINK TO TORONTO STAR ARTICLE ABOUT 102.1 THE EDGE HOMOPHOBIA
LINK: FORM TO FILE COMPLAINT WITH CRTC AGAINST 102.1 THE EDGE.
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/rapidsccm/register.asp?lang=e
Sign Petition To Have Toronto Police Officer James Forcillo Charged With Murder For Killing Sammy Yatim!!!!
Please sign the petition police officer James Forcillo should be charged with murder! Over 30,000 people have already signed the petition let your voices be heard spread the word!
Toronto Police Officers believe they are ABOVE THE LAW they can just go around shooting and killing people and getting away with it!
Police brutality is swept under the rug in Toronto due to the Toronto media ignoring the racism and the prejudice of the police force! I saw the video Sammy Yatim was brutally murdered he was shot nine times! Why? Why did James Forcillo shoot Sammy Yatim nine times? It was excessive force! Do not let the Toronto Police force get away with murder and police brutality! Sign the petition people spread the word!!!
Disappointing News: Gawker Editor Says Somali Drug Dealers Worried About Being Stereotyped & Rob Ford Crack Video Is Gone.
John Cook Today 5:43pm
Before the Rob
Ford
Crackstarter—our crowdfunding effort to purchase and publish a video of Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine—reached its $200,000 goal last month, we let everyone know that we had lost contact with the people who have custody of the video. At the end of last week, after a long silence, the video’s owner reached out to the intermediary we have been dealing with. He told him the video is “gone.”
Related
(Update) We Are Raising $200,000 to Buy and Publish the Rob Ford Crack Tape
As you may have heard, Rob
Ford
, the mayor of Toronto, smokes crack cocaine. We’ve seen a video of him smoking crack cocaine, and the people who … Read…
For Sale: A Video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Smoking Crack Cocaine
Rob Ford, Toronto’s conservative mayor, is a wild lunatic given to making bizarre racist pronouncements and randomly slapping refrigerator… Read…
What does that mean? We don’t really know. A few days after we posted our story about having viewed the video in a car in a parking lot in Toronto, the owner went silent. Two Toronto Star reporters had quickly followed our report, claiming to have seen the same video. Both Gawker and the Star reporters were introduced to the owner of the video by the same intermediary.
The attention surrounding the breaking of the story had two important consequences: First, the owner of the video became angry at us, and at the intermediary. The owner was trying to sell the video, but he apparently didn’t want or anticipate the media circus that erupted after the story broke. We decided to break it, with the consent of the intermediary, after a CNN reporter called one of Ford’s ex-staffers about the video and word started to get out. The CNN reporter had learned about the video after we confidentially reached out to the network in an effort to partner in purchasing it.
Our decision to publish was informed by 1) a desire to get ahead of any rival stories that the gossip mill might generate and 2) a fear that, once Ford was privately alerted to the existence of the video, he would start trying to track it down. That decision lit a match on this story that made it much more difficult—and maybe impossible—to get a deal done and bring the video to the light of day.
Complicating matters was the fact that the Star’s coverage contained several details—including the rough location where its reporters viewed the video, the rough location where it was purportedly recorded, a description of the intermediary’s line of work, the ethnicity of the intermediary and the owner, and physical details about the video owner’s appearance—that may have been helpful in identifying and locating the owner. Indeed, according to the Star and other outlets, Ford himself told his staff that the video could be found at a Toronto address—320 Dixon Rd.—near the location where the Star reporters wrote that they viewed it. (Whether he deduced that location—which may or may not be where the video was actually stored—from the Star’s coverage or would have known anyway, we can’t say.)
The second consequence was that Toronto’s tight-knit Somali ethnic community became angry. The Canadian media seized on the Star’s repeated description of the owners as “Somali men involved in the drug trade.” The story quickly became about Rob Ford and his “Somali crack dealers,” and the Star’s public editor subsequently criticized the paper for “going overboard” on the references to the Somali community. We don’t know for certain the citizenship or immigration status of the video’s owner, but shortly after the story broke, the intermediary told me: “We’re all Canadians.”
According to the intermediary, these two factors—a fear of being identified, and a strong desire from the Somali community to make the whole thing go away—led the owner of the video to go to ground and soured the owner’s relationship with the intermediary. I frankly find it difficult to believe that a crack dealer would be more responsive to the desires of his ethnic community than to a $200,000 bounty. But I have heard independently from others familiar with the goings-on in Toronto that leaders in its Somali community have determined who the owner is and brought intense pressure to bear on him and his family. Toronto’s “Little Mogadishu” neighborhood is located in the ward Rob Ford represented when he was a city councillor; though he is a conservative and a racist buffoon, I am told he has long-standing connections to Somali power brokers there.
Which brings us to this past Friday, when the intermediary called to tell me that he had finally heard from the owner. And his message was: “It’s gone. Leave me alone.” It was, the intermediary told me, a short conversation.
“It’s gone” could mean many things. It might mean that the video has been destroyed. It might mean that it has been handed over to Ford or his allies. It might mean that he intends to sell or give it to a Canadian media outlet. It might mean that the Toronto Police Department has seized it and plans to use it as evidence in a criminal investigation. It might mean that it has been transferred to the custody of Somali community leaders for safekeeping. It might be a lie. The intermediary doesn’t know. Neither do I.
I do know that Gawker is currently sitting on $184,689.81 collected via our Rob Ford Crackstarter. (That’s $201,254 raised in total, less $8,365.23 in fees extracted by PayPal, $8,043.96 taken by Indiegogo, and $155 in contributions raised that we have yet to receive.) It is obviously our hope that someone steps up to claim this money and provides us the video.
The intermediary has claimed that a copy of the video was made and taken outside Toronto for safekeeping. We don’t know if that’s true, or if it is, whether that copy is also “gone.” We can still imagine any number of scenarios in which this video comes to light. If you are reading this, and you have access to the video, and you like money, please email me at john@gawker.com.
If this doesn’t happen soon, we will—as we initially promised when we launched the campaign—select a Canadian nonprofit that addresses substance abuse issues to receive the money.
Don’t do crack.
Globe & Mail Article: Toronto Ombudsman Finds Mayor Rob Ford Is A Racist Tried To Rig Civic Appointments!!
The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Sep. 27 2012, 12:57 PM EDT
Last updated Thursday, Sep. 27 2012, 3:43 PM EDT
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is disputing the findings of a new report from the city’s ombudsman that alleges his office interfered in the civic appointments process, including asking bureaucrats to remove a line from newspaper advertisements seeking “diverse” candidates.
The report describes how unnamed employees of the mayor’s office meddled in the way the municipal government selects ordinary citizens to sit on some 120 boards, including the boards of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, the Toronto Parking Authority, the Toronto Police Services Board and the Toronto Public Library Board.
The mayor’s office first asked for post-election recruitment to be postponed, then demanded it be condensed into such a short time-frame that candidates could not be screened properly, according to the report from Toronto ombudsman Fiona Crean.
“It will look to cynics as if the fix is already in for appointments and the process is just for show,” an unnamed bureaucrat wrote to the city manager in a June 9, 2011 e-mail, expressing concerns about the tight timeline.
“We now have a governance process that is no longer based on any recognizable principles.”
Mr. Ford said Thursday that he “didn’t interfere in any process.”
“I’ve actually cleaned up the process that we had before. It’s a very clean and above board transparent process and it went very well,” the mayor told reporters after a ground-breaking ceremony for a new aquatics centre in Scarborough.
The report also found that the mayor’s office directed that recruitment ads not be placed in the Toronto Star, a newspaper with which the mayor and his councillor brother Doug Ford have a long-running feud.
“The [City manager’s office] informed my investigator that when they raised this with the Mayor’s staff, they were told that ‘we do not like the Star,’” the report says.
The mayor’s office denies it asked that the ad be kept out of the Star, according to the report.
In the end, recruitment advertisements appeared only in the National Post, Toronto Sun and Metro.
One of the goals of the city’s appointments policy is to fill boards with qualified citizens of different genders and racial and ethnic backgrounds, a subject on which the municipal government keeps careful statistics.
The report suggests the mayor’s office tried to undermine that goal.
“[City Manager’s Office] staff informed my investigator that they were asked by the Mayor’s Office to remove the statement in the advertisement that encouraged applicants from the City’s diverse population to apply. Staff refused to do so,” according to the report.
Mr. Ford said that was not true. “No, that’s not what happened,” he said, adding it was city staff, not his political staff that did not “reach out in terms of diversity.”
Asked if he was against diversity, Mr. Ford laughed. “That’s a ridiculous question,” he said.
According to a “diversity summary” of public appointments, 70 per cent of the citizens selected for boards under the Ford administration were white — the same percentage as in the second term of his predecessor, David Miller.
More men were tapped under Mr. Ford (70 per cent) than during Mr. Miller’s second term (53 per cent).
However, more applications actually flooded in under Mr. Ford than under Mr. Miller. The city received 1,927 applications for 167 positions in 2011-2012, up from 1,316 applications for 125 posts in 2007-2010.
At least one candidate with a serious conflict-of-interest nearly slipped through the laxer-than-usual process, Ms. Crean wrote.
In that case, the report describes an acrimonious closed-door meeting of the civic appointments committee at which an unnamed councillor pointed at staff and said, “I’m going to get you,” and added that bureaucrats had other councillors fooled, but not him.
“Some staff described the panel chair’s manner as ‘threatening.’ One staff described the process as ‘gruelling’ and ‘humiliating,’” according to the report.
The trouble apparently began when someone pointed out at a Nov. 16, 2011 meeting that a candidate who had previously been marked as qualified actually had a conflict-of-interest – he was an agent who appeared frequently before the adjudicative committee on which he was seeking a seat.
When the issue was raised, the same unnamed male councillor who allegedly threatened staff asked for those concerns to be put in writing. But a letter never surfaced.
The alleged threats from the councillor – who was also the panel nominating chair – came at the next meeting of the civic appointments committee, which was Jan. 16, 2012, although that date is not specified in the report.
Only one board was dealt with at both the Nov. 16 and Jan. 16 meetings: The Sign Variance Committee, whose nominating panel was chaired by Ford ally Giorgio Mammoliti.
Mr. Mammoliti said Thursday that he asked for such a letter at the Nov. 16 meeting, but he said he did not know if he was the councillor identified in the report.
He “unequivocally” denied threatening staff at the meeting. “Never in my 23 years in politics have I used that kind of language,” Mr. Mammoliti said in an interview Thursday.
The chair of the civics appointment committee, Frances Nunziata, said she did not recall any member of the committee upbraiding staff as described in the report.
Ms. Nunziata, the council speaker and a Ford supporter, said the mayor’s office did not tamper with her committee’s choices.
“Every decision that was made was done at the committee … I’m not aware of any interference or direction from the mayor’s office,” she said.
The ombudsman’s finding prompted harsh criticism from the councillors who chaired the civic appointments committee in Mr. Miller’s second term.
Councillor Adam Vaughan, a staunch critic of the mayor, said members of the current committee should be fired at mid-term and replaced with a new slate of councillors.
“I just don’t think they’ve done their jobs,” said Mr. Vaughan, chair of the committee in the second half of Mr.Miller’s last term.
Councillor Janet Davis, who chaired the committee in the first half of the same term, said Mr. Miller and his staff stayed out of the process. She called the alleged meddling by Mr. Ford’s staff “unprecedented and inappropriate.”
“The interference from the mayor’s office so compromised this process that we need to make sure that there are new guidelines and practices to stop it in future,” she said.
Ms. Crean and two of the city’s four accountability officers — the integrity commissioner and the lobbyist registrar — are locked in a battle with budget chief Mike Del Grande, an ally of Mr. Ford.
Citing their need to remain independent from city council, they have refused to provide a line-by-line accounting of their budget requests for 2013, according to Mr. Del Grande.
“The three of them, led by the ombudsman, are very, very concerned about their independence. I pointed out to them that it really doesn’t have anything to do with their independence per se, it’s reviewing their numbers,”he said.
Ms. Crean was ill and not available for interviews Thursday.
With a report from Elizabeth Church.
Global News: Violence In The City Of Toronto Is A Serious Problem Yet Strained Race Relations Between Black Community & Police Force Ignored.
Toronto’s black community has a serious problem with gang crime. There is no need to lie about it because the recent shootings in Scarborough this summer where two innocent young people died was pernicious. In addition, the shocking shooting at Eaton Centre in June is terrifying because violence can occur anywhere in the city of Toronto.
There too many young black who are so apathetic to the concerns of others. My question is, why are young black men getting involved with crime? What has happened to these young black men that they don’t value life or care about the well beings of others? Now, I know these young black males who get involved in crime have parents, families, siblings. So what happened to this generation? What went wrong?
Now, essentialists are going to make racist assumptions that it has to do with the “essence” within black males which causes some to commit crimes. The other possible explanations are poverty, unhappiness, despair, lack of education and employment opportunities leads young men to crime.
However, the white Canadian media never look beneath these surface explanations. Perhaps it is time for Toronto’s black community to not be so reticent and acknowledge there is a serious problem here?
There are programs for at risk youth, basketball camps, after school programs to assist children that are in danger of entering into crime. I believe these programs are important but are also band aid solutions to a deeper, more subliminal problem.
I can understand why some black people are irritated and annoyed by the media whenever gun violence occurs. Why should black people who are hard working and good citizens care about the bad behaviour of others? Why should the actions of a few tarnish the reputation of an entire race? It is ludicrous that people of colour are generalized in this manner.
Are white men generalized as psycho murderers like James Holmes shoots up a theatre in Aurora Colorado? Are young white men demonized in newspapers are psychopaths and killers?
Recently, a white supremacist murdered innocent people in Michigan at a Sikh temple. Are the media pathologizing young white men as being violent? Is there an essence to these young white males whiteness which causes them to go psycho and shoot and kill innocent people?
There questions are never asked in the mainstream white media because we live in a white society.
White privilege allows whites to generalize the actions of some in the black community yet the mirror image is never reflected at the majority.
Remember, white people control the Canadian media, the news which is broadcast on television, in the newspapers, and on the internet is based on white privilege. An editor decides in an editorial meeting what is the news. What sells more papers? What gets people talking? The media has a critical role in how race is shaped and constructed in Toronto.
In the classic 1988 essay, Peggy McIntosh a white feminist wrote an article called White Privilege The Invisible Knapsack. McIntosh’s article was groundbreaking because she is a white woman and she acknowledges the privileges she has simply because she was born white. According to McIntosh, whites are conditioned by the media and white society to ignore their privilege. Just like men ignore our male privilege and the freedom we have to walk freely in society, white people don’t have to think critically about race. A white person can live his or her’s own life in North America and not think about how race affects their lives.
People of colour we don’t have the luxury of not having to think about race. Race is in our face every single day of our lives whether we want to admit it or not.
It is understandable that some in the black community are angered that when crime occurs suddenly the entire race is to blame for some idiots dangerous actions.
Why are blacks generalized for the actions of a few? Why should I personally care if a black man shoots someone just because we are the same race? I don’t shoot anybody, I’m a citizen minding my own damn business.
The counter argument is, the white press in Toronto claim that black people need to become more vigilant and just trust the police force. The quandary is, a lot of black people in Toronto do not trust the police due to strained race relations.
Another point to consider is, some black people are terrified and afraid they don’t want to be the next statistic and get shot. It is a vicious circle that seems to be getting worse in the city of Toronto. There is a lot of bad feelings, anger, resentment.
It is disconcerting to see young black men shooting and killing innocent people. I think something has happened to the minds of these young black males who get involved in crimes.
Frantz Fanon the black psychiatrist and author of the book Black Skins, White Masks argues in chapter five called The Lived Experience of the Black man that the psyche of black males are shattered due to racism.
The black man sees himself in the third person he does not see himself as a three dimensional human being because the white man has the power to control the images and representations of the black man.
Now some people might argue that the city of Toronto is a multicultural paradise where racial harmony exists.
The danger of multiculturalism which the Toronto media engenders is it ignores racism and pushes it beneath the surface. Racism is a serious problem in Toronto yet Canadians like to pretend it does not exist.
The power structure in Toronto is still based on white privilege. For instance, Toronto has an idiot white mayor Rob Ford he’ is obnoxious, pathetic, unprofessional, and abhorrent. However, Ford is praised by the white right wing media in Toronto. The mayors of Toronto and all the police chiefs are white people. Even though, the city of Toronto has a very large non white population the people in power are still white.
The Toronto police force is also a problem there aren’t enough black officers on the force in positions of power. Real change needs to occur inside the police force in order for racism and barriers of indifference to break down. Why would a black person suddenly trust a white police officer in crime ridden neighbourhoods? The so called anti racism policies are a farce. The question still remains, why do people still not trust the police to inform them about criminal activity? Why are people so afraid to speak out?
The media is also to blame because the real subliminal problems that are not visible are not discussed in the public sphere. Serious and hard questions about inequality, racism, and discrimination, are not brought to the surface. Canadians still have an apathetic attitude towards race which is disconcerting.
In America, despite the race relation problems between blacks and whites they are more honest about racism. In the United States, people are not afraid to discuss race.
CNN, ABC, Fox News, NBC, and the major American media outlets constantly discuss racism in the public sphere. Americans are aware of racism in their country they don’t hide and pretend it doesn’t exist. By contrast, Canadians believe in the illusion of multiculturalism which is dangerous.
In order for Canada to progress, people need to stop being afraid to discuss race, inequality, white privilege, and other social problems in the public realm.
Toronto Star Slams Arrogant Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Says He Is A Disgrace & Should Be Thrown Out Of Office!!!
Rob Ford has made a fool of his supporters
What is there left to say about Rob Ford, a man so befuddled be can make good deeds look bad?
The mayor’s performance in court this week was a personal humiliation for him, a disgrace for the city.
What emerged was a portrait of man whose only defence is his own self-professed ignorance.
Whether Ford is as profoundly unaware of the world as he lets on is something the judge will have to decide, but faced with potentially career-ending conflict-of-interest charges, the mayor either had nothing to say or couldn’t remember.
Indeed, it has become frighteningly clear that the man elected to run the largest city in Canada has the attention span of a gnat, and even less curiosity.
He has no apparent understanding of something as basic as the law, let alone conflict of interest. In his mind, good intentions, as long as they are his own, are enough.
That’s why Rob Ford must go. Even if Justice Charles Hackland of the Ontario Superior Court were to dismiss the charges, the mayor has squandered the moral authority needed to run and represent the city.
Ford, who has made no secret of his contempt for process, can no longer continue as mayor.
Though Hackland won’t have to worry about a pattern of behaviour that goes back to the beginning of Ford’s career, the public will be more nuanced in its conclusions.
Ford has made a fool of his supporters, as much as himself. His indifference to rules of conduct comes out of his indifference to the larger political system — democracy itself, which he seems to assume means being popular.
Some worry that the judge ought not to interfere in something as sacred as democratic values, but that’s precisely why he must.
Ignorance itself isn’t illegal, of course, but when it’s so willful and brazen, it cannot go unchallenged. We have no choice but to question the chief magistrate’s decision to remain in a state of intellectual darkness when it affects his ability to fulfill his duties.
On the other hand, this is no MFP scandal. This case isn’t about greed or corruption. In fact, no one has ever accused Ford of being corrupt: He isn’t and doesn’t need to be.
As laudable as his motives might have been, however, his methods were anything but. Hitting up city hall lobbyists for one’s personal charity is obviously unacceptable — not to mention stupid — even if the reason was to “save kids’ lives.”
Ford then ignored repeated requests from Toronto’s integrity commissioner to repay the money, and spoke and voted at the council meeting debating the issue
The mayor’s largely legalistic defence has skirted the real issue — Ford’s unwillingness and/or inability to play by the rules.
But that’s why his supporters love him; he’s the anti-politician come in from the cold to rewrite the game. Guilty or not, he can’t lose. In their eyes, he’s forever innocent.
Ford’s fans forget that he is a politician, and after 12 years on council, a veteran, a careerist, son of a politician and brother to another.
Hackland’s judgment won’t be handed down for weeks; in the meantime, Ford has been rendered impotent, his mayoralty irrelevant. City council long ago wrested control of the agenda from his office, so his absence, real or political, will have little impact.
On the other hand, Ford’s unprecedented crassness has left city hall in a place it’s never been before.
Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca
Shocking News: Two Women Sexually Assaulted At York University Near Vari Hall & Colonnade!!
TORONTO – Two female members of the York community reported incidents of sexual assault on Thurs. July 5, 2012, near Vari Hall and the Colonnade.
York Security is assisting Toronto Police Service (TPS) in the investigation of the incidents.
In the first incident, at 3:40pm, two men approached a female who was walking in the Common area, heading toward Vari Hall. One of the men attempted to block her way and speak to her, before touching her twice.
In the second incident, at 3:43 pm, a female was exiting the Colonnade when she was approached by an unknown male who attempted to speak with her and touched her on two occasions.
The suspect in both of the incidents is described as:
–Male, black, 21-23 years old, 6’3” in height, with a skinny build, scruffy beard, wearing a white baseball cap, green shirt, and baggy jeans.
The second suspect who approached the woman in the incident near Vari Hall, is described as:
–Male, black, 21 to 23 yars old, 5’8”, heavyset, wearing a black baseball cap, green shirt and jeans.
Should you have any information about either incident you are asked to contact Toronto Police Service directly at 416.808.2222. York Security responds to all community calls at 416.736.5333.
York Community members are reminded to always exercise personal safety by:
- Being aware of your surroundings and the people around you
- Report any suspicious persons or behaviour to York Security Services
York University provides the following campus security services:
- 24/7/365 campus security patrols
- goSAFE foot patrols
- Transportation – Campus Shuttle
- 24/7/365 Monitored CCTV coverage
- Network of Emergency “Blue Light” Telephones
Gayblackcanada 