2:59

I absolutely love stories like this, when something from current affairs headlines has some tertiary facet that Punknews can jump on. I wasn’t even paying attention to the fact that someone leaked the government’s climate change plan. The news that there was a leak at all was overshadowed by the fact that the plan’s an embarrassment. Who cares that there was a leak anyways? If anything suffered for it, it’s the initial impact of the Environment Minister’s press conference. In the grand scheme of things, big deal.

(Granted, I agree that from a bureaucratic and organizational standpoint confidentiality is important and professional. It should also be pointed out that “leaking” information that was going to be public anyways seems like a pretty pointless way to throw away a career. It’s not quite whistle blowing — it’s gun jumping).

What makes this a Punknews story? The accused, one Jeff Monaghan, drums for an Ottawa punk band called the Suicide Pilots. They’ve got the mid-80s political hardcore imagery down, and of course due to that they’re entirely boring and a few decades away from making music that more than a couple dozen crusties are going to care about. There’s a pretty shameless Jello Biafra impression a few minutes into their Godwin’s Law shattering “Harper Youth” tune that pretty much cements that.

To top it all off, the poor guy’s part of an anarchist book store collective. Reporters could be heard asking him if he was an “anarchist” during the media scrum. * You could tell that they were looking for either the stereotypical Exploited cartoon anarchy or the dangerous radical “I dwell in a shack in the woods with my arsenal” anarchy. Both of those are far more interesting than the likely “bearded leftist hemp-soap using student / AKPress sales affiliate” anarchism.

As for Punknews, this is the type of story where we need not actively cover it or give it more than an article or two with the salient points. It’s just remarkably fun to make the focus the band, throw up a picture of him in a Social Distortion shirt and say “hey kids! check out their MySpace page!”

* I think I heard him answer “I don’t identify politically,” which is pretty a boneheaded thing to claim when you’re in a band with a song titled “Harper Youth.”