Mission Accomplished and the Fragments of War

Can it really be four years since the lowly chimp strutted his stuff on the deck of that aircraft carrier like a killer gorilla in the Planet of the Apes? And declared it was Mission Accomplished. It seems like so much longer.

So many people have died since then. So many have been injured, or had their lives ruined. And the horror goes on and on.

What can you say about a war that was constructed out of lies? Where those who knew the truth should have acted. But didn't.

.....if only he had spoken up, if he'd only been a James Bond-style spymaster instead of a timid, fawning bureaucrat. But of course, when it really mattered, at the critical juncture of his seven-year tenure as CIA chief, Tenet said nothing.

What can you say when it's all been said before? Everyone knows it was a crazy fraud... but still the war goes on.

Except put together three fragments of war and let them speak for themselves.....

The despairing words of a famous Baghdad blogger who, like so many Iraqis, has finally had enough.

On a personal note, we've finally decided to leave. I guess I've known we would be leaving for a while now.

We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare- stay and wait and try to survive.

There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what?

The angry words of an angry young man...



And the red white and blue words of a wouldbe country singer who supports the troops so much....she wants to hump them...

Yeah....I waited for the punchline too...but it never came. Like the glorious victory in Iraq. It just faded to black and stayed there.

Although after that classic line..."my girly parts are turning into deserts of their own..." what more COULD she say?

Besides the time for words is over. Now is the time for action. History will take care of the war criminals. And the idiots they fooled. Its verdict will be harsh.

But the only mission that counts anymore is to bring the troops home.

End this bloody nightmare. End this crazy war.

Bring them home now!

Prince Harry and the Road to Armadillo

Well they can't say I didn't warn them. I even wrote a letter to the Queen begging her to stop them from sending my beloved Prince Harry to Iraq. But nobody listened to me so now look what's happened.

He's damned if he doesn't go

These must be nervous days for the Queen but if Britain's monarchy still has any serious meaning left in it at all then Prince Harry should be despatched to Iraq. If he is barred from serving with his Blues and Royals regiment then there remains little point in holding on to the Royal Family.

And he's doomed if he does.

‘We are awaiting the arrival of the young handsome spoilt prince with bated breath and we confidently expect he will come out into the open on the battlefield. We will be generous with him. For we will return him to his grandmother but without ears.”

"If Harry were to go to Iraq, and be captured by one of the many armed factions openly after his blood and his name, he would be very lucky to lose only his ears. He would be much more likely to lose his head, horribly and publicly, on footage seen repeatedly all over the world, across the internet, after weeks or months of public humiliation and torture."

And of course, it could be even worse....Never mind his enormous ears or his enormous head..... As I told the Queen I'm worried about his enormous cock.

















Now that would be ugly....

So I'm glad they are sending all those soldiers there to protect him.......and the crown jewels.....and all the poor sods who have to fight on the same side as the Bullet Magnet. And really close to him. Their loved ones aren't too happy about that....

Why risk the lives of prince Harry and the people who are in the tank with him? If I [were] the wife of one of them I would push him down the stairs so he doesn't have to go.'

Although now I'm not sure those extra troops are really needed.

I just saw this video made by some British squaddies in Iraq.

And they seem to be having a jolly good time...



Well that changes everything. I think Prince Harry is going to fit in fine. In fact I'm quite optimistic.

I can see him playing a starring role in the remake of that video.

Except that this time when they fling open the door of the portable toilet there will be Harry....sitting on the throne as drunk as a skunk. A nazi helmet tilted rakishly on his head. His pants around his ankles. A cigarette dangling loosely from his lips. One hand on a beer. And the other hand on his enormous cock.

The way I see it....if that doesn't end Britain's involvement in Iraq, AND bring down the monarchy.

Nothing will....

John Baird and the Conservative Bulb Screwers

I spent the evening playing soccer in the rain and the mud, so when I got home and turned on the tv I thought I'd been hit by lightning. And didn't know it. What a shock!!

There was John Baird selling his phony clean air plan. Standing in front of a huge picture of two young people looking really happy. As if he was trying to save their future... instead of trying to kill it. Killing Kyoto and shaming us in the eyes of the world. Trying to look brilliant. But looking sooooo dum.

What a fucking loser..

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, seeking to keep an oil-driven economic expansion alive amid a U.S. slowdown, won't impose hard caps on greenhouse-gas emissions from oil companies and other industrial polluters.

What a fucking fraud

It's hard to imagine a sloppier piece of writing, filled with bulls--t in the true philosophic sense of the word.

A bullsh--ter, wrote Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt, "does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."

So of course I tuned it all out....

What I wanted to know was ......what about those fancy lightbulbs?

And of course....the obvious question....HOW MANY IDIOT CONS WOULD IT TAKE TO SCREW ONE IN?

Hmmm...let's see....

Two to steal the idea from Ontario AND Australia.

Six to decide whether to screw it right as hard as they can....or pretend to turn it left because it's politically convenient.

A committee of ten, chaired by the PM's Primper (and Psychic in Chief), to decide whether Great Girly Leader's makeup looks better with the new bulbs. Or worse.....












If that's possible....

A subcommittee of the makeup committee made up of the Primper, John Baird, and Mrs Harper. To decide whether Harper's eunuch can wear a glowing pink neon hat when taking out the PM's wife. Or whether it would be too provocative. And he should just get a smaller version and use it to brighten up his closet.

A committee of six religious wingnuts chaired by Stockwell Day. To decide whether the bulbs are just a gimmick, or could actually help the earth survive....and delay the End of the World and the Return of the Messiah. Which of course would be a Crime Against God.

A committee of one chaired by the Village Idiot Rona Ambrose to determine where to dump all those dangerous mercury filled bulbs.

If a CFL breaks, try not to inhale the remains, and keep children clear. Carefully sweep up the broken pieces (rather than vacuuming.) Put the broken pieces in a plastic bag and wipe down the area where the pieces fell with a damp towel. Then throw the towel in the bag and dispose of the bag as hazardous waste.

Before we all come down with Conamata Disease, and start shaking uncontrollably. And talking in tongues...

Oh I know Rona was a bust as Environment Minister. But all she's got to do is look for a big hole in rural Canada...so that shouldn't be too hard.

A military committee of two ( Great Fat but Pretty Chickenhawk Harper and General "Mad Dog" Hillier) to decide whether instead of just dumping the toxic bulbs. We can drop them on the Taliban... and save on ammunition.

A committee of two (Myron Thompson and the even dummer Peter Mackay) to man a War Room ...monitor John Baird and the bulbs 24/7....













And call the Fire Department.....if necessary. Or in Myron's case the Fag Police.

And finally, the Posse Commitatus of the Chosen One (Jason Kenney) To screw a bulb gently into Great Fat Leader's ass. So the rest of the Con Caucus can find their way to it in the dark more easily. And kiss his cheeks instead of his hole. Coz only the eunuch can do that......

Add it all up and what do we have? An entire Con Caucus needed to screw in a light bulb. And a whole neocon government determined to screw us...and the planet.

Yikes! It would be depressing....if I hadn't learned something REALLY useful today.

When those Cons start to splutter and smoke as they are now...and finally burnout. I'm going to do my green duty. Be a real goody goody.

Wrap them like mummies in biodegradable toilet paper.

And take them to the hazardous waste dump...

Afghanistan: Canada's Dirty Little War

There was an awesome memorial service at CFB Gagetown today. A fitting tribute to the eight soldiers killed in one bloody week in Afghanistan. And some comfort for those they left behind.

"They were deeply loved fathers and husbands, deeply loved sons and brothers. They were loyal friends and dedicated comrades. They were, and they remain, our truest heroes."

It was incredibly moving. But what made it even sadder for me was that even as we mourn the dead soldiers, we're also mourning for the honour of our army and our country.

Because let's not beat about the bush, or fudge the truth, or play cheap politics.

This is a national disgrace.

The Harper government knew from its own officials that prisoners held by Afghan security forces faced the possibility of torture, abuse and extrajudicial killing, The Globe and Mail has learned.

But the government has eradicated every single reference to torture and abuse in prison from a heavily blacked-out version of a report prepared by Canadian diplomats in Kabul.

They can run but they can't hide. If our government, and our top generals, and some of our soldiers in the field knew about the torturers in the Afghan security forces, and still handed prisoners over to them, they are guilty of war crimes.

And if they didn't know they are criminally incompetent. How soon they forget. Doesn't anyone remember the Somalia Affair... and the slow death of Shidane Arone?


















If you hand a prisoner over knowing he will be tortured or killed, you are just as guilty as if you do the dirty work yourself.

You know how I feel about the Taliban. As a gay person I don't have to explain that. As far as I'm concerned the more of those savage religious fanatics we can smoke the better.

And you know how I feel about our dead heroes. Every last one of them.

Back then I thought it was a jolly good show. Now I think it's a tragedy.

Because Canadian soldiers don't treat prisoners they take like that....we don't hand them over to be tortured. Like the war criminals of the Bush regime do.

"Torture and abuse consisted of pulling out fingernails and toenails, burning with hot oil, beatings, sexual humiliation, and sodomy."

If they have, or have looked away, or pretended not to see or know, they have turned this doomed mission into something even worse. They have smeared the once proud reputation of our army, and shamed us in the eyes of the world.

Now it's our Dirty Little War.

I was sure that Afghanistan would be the downfall of the monstrous primped up yankee loving chickenhawk Stephen Harper. And that seems to be happening.

I knew our dead soldiers could never save Afghanistan from itself. But I hoped they might save Canada from the ReformCons. So their sacrifice wouldn't be completely wasted.

I just didn't realize the price would be so high.

Oh yeah....mourn first for our dead soldiers.

And then mourn for our country....

What a Wagging Tail Can Tell you About Your Dog

I thought I was a pretty good judge of my dog's moods. I thought it was all in the tail. If it was up in the air he felt like the king of the jungle. When it's tucked between his legs he's scared like a mouse. When it hangs like a hook he's hungry. And when he wags it he's happy period.

But it turns out it's more complicated than that.

When dogs feel fundamentally positive about something or someone, their tails wag more to the right side of their rumps. When they have negative feelings, their tail wagging is biased to the left.

Isn't that amazing? And you know what I tested this theory....and it works!

Take this photo for example...













Here it's wagging to the left...because although he's happy, he's not that happy to find his bunny in the park.

So now I know exactly how he feels. When he's feeling like the king of the dogs, when he's sad, when he's hungry. When he's happy but not too happy.

Which is more than you can tell about humans.

No wonder I prefer dogs....



I mean....can cats communicate AND do stuff like that?

Wag. Wag. I don't think so....

Earth Day: The Post I Should Have Written

When I got back to the bunker this evening Sebastien said he'd read my last post about Earth Day, and wondered how I could be so cynical about the fate of the planet. When really I'm not.

He said I should have emphasized the positive, like the fact that thousands of people marched in Montreal. And that all over the country a lot of people, including a lot of kids, did what they could to show their love for our poor little blue globe...in small but good ways.

I was going to explain that a cynic is only a disappointed idealist, and that it isn't that bad in English as it would be in French, or that I'm living in the Neocon Republic of Kanada...the new home of the Big Lie. So what the fuck does he expect?

But I've tried them all before..... and with him they don't work.

So here's the post I should have written.

Or the picture I should have run....

















It's the first full view of our planet ever taken by a human.

And here's what the human who took it, Astronaut Bill Anders, had to say about that sight:

"It was the only color we could see in the universe. ... "We're living on a tiny little dust mote in left field on a rather insignificant galaxy. And basically this it for humans. It strikes me that it's a shame that we're squabbling over oil and borders."

And what some other astronauts had to say about our little blue marble.

"If people can see Earth from up here, see it without those borders, see it without any differences in race or religion, they would have a completely different perspective. Because when you see it from that angle, you cannot think of your home or your country. All you can see is one Earth...."

If everyone could see the Earth from outer space does anyone doubt that we wouldn't let greed, crazy profits, cheap politics, and oil stop us from doing everything we could to save it?

Or does anyone think that we won't win the battle to save our planet? Not because we say we want to ..... but because we have no choice. It's the only one we got...

I don't. You see I'm not a cynic. I'm an optimist....

Now all I've got to do is gather up enough courage to ask Sebastien.... I know you hated the post. But didn't you love the crazy video? Huh?

Wish me luck....

Earth Day in Canada: Fraud or Farce?

Earth Day 2007. The day when everyone gets sentimental about our beautiful planet. Tells it how much we love it, and how we must save it from ourselves.

How touching. I'm sure the planet would be moved to monsoon tears by all those warm feelings. Just like I am. If we hadn't been doing fuck all to save it. And it wasn't burning up.

Although ...for comic relief.... there's always Earth Day in Canada.

With Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government poised to set its own course to cut greenhouse gas emissions, thousands marched in Montreal with smaller crowds gathering across the country to demand the Conservatives honour the targets of the Kyoto treaty.

When very few do very little.....John Baird plants a tree, Stephane Dion makes another boring speech, and Jack takes a shower...

After taking a shower Sunday morning with water heated by solar power, NDP Leader Jack Layton — along with wife and fellow MP Olivia Chow — rode their bicycles on a sunny afternoon to join an estimated 250 people in the Toronto parade.

Wow! Now that's making a statement. Especially if ...since this is Canada.... they had to shower together to make sure the hot water didn't run out. I'm all in favour of that.

And I loved the idea of the bike rally too. I wanted to go but I couldn't get there because of all the cars ....













(Click to enlarge)

They closed down a nearby expressway so the filthy monsters swarmed my neighbourhood. I love biking more than almost anything else. I don't mind taking risks to have fun. But riding a bike through traffic like this....















Seems like suicide...

I hate cars in cities. I wish more could be done to keep them out of the downtown areas...like they do in some places in Europe. But Canadians seem to love their cars so much, and we're so dependent on the car industry, we're practically hooked on the dirty things.

If you don't believe me check out the official site of Earth Day in Canada.

Toyota Earth Day Scholarship Program.
Toyota Canada and Earth Day Canada would like to recognize dedicated student environmental leaders for their commitment to their schools and communities..

Isn't that great? The solution brought to you by the problem...

Which when you add it all up....and separate the fraud from the farce... means that those of us who believe in biking our way around where we live...and public transportation...are going to have to keep on dodging cars...














And hope we can get as good as these guys are....



And even if we do ....and it does look easy....hope that even as they kill the planet.

They don't kill medicare.....

Stephen Harper Girly Man and the Angel Whisperer

I always knew Stephen Harper was a big fat nerd. A ridiculous policy wonk who likes to think of himself as a warrior's warrior. As if you could blubber someone to death...and still look good in a gown.

Just as I thought it was hilarious that the Cons would try to portray him as a stronger leader than the thin nerd Dion. When in a nerdy contest the French squeaker could probably bitch slap him to death. Or roll him down a hill.

However, I must admit that even I had no idea that Great Fat Leader was such girly man. And that we, the taxpayers of Canada, are paying for his personal primper.

Harper has been travelling with his personal image adviser for major domestic and international events – most recently at ceremonies at Vimy Ridge in France last week. Muntean helps him perfect his look, including managing his wardrobe and general grooming.

A warm, bubbly personality, Muntean has now become a fixture in Harper's entourage and remains the only staff member he tolerates style advice from.

And not only style advice but spiritual advice as well.

Friends of Michelle Muntean, who maintains Harper's image when he travels, say she claims to commune with angels.

They say the angels relay messages from the dead, and the former TV makeup artist occasionally stuns people with the details.

I bet she does..... And that does explain why Harper is so desperate to have her move to Ottawa. So he can get his marching orders from God....or Leo Strauss.... every morning. While the primper puts his rouge on.

Although ....apparently every now and then..... she gets carried away talking to the dead and the living dead....and puts too much on.

Mr. Harper returned from the two-week Easter break with a bright red complexion that drew Question Period catcalls from opposition MPs and queries from reporters.

OMG. Is this a freak show....or a drag show...or what?

Now look I want to be fair. I realize that keeping nerds looking presentable is a high maintenance affair. We don't want to have our Prime Minister visit the Queen...with his pants hitched up to his breasts, yesterday's breakfast on his tie, a snow storm of dandruff swirling around his ears, and dribbles of spit EVERYWHERE.

But don't we have a right to know how much we're paying for Great Girly Leader's vanity...cosmetic products.,..face peels etc?

And besides..... isn't having the Angel Whisperer as his special adviser and primper going to make John Baird REALLY jealous....

You know...John Baird...the guy who takes out Harper's wife. When he isn't too busy screeching about Kyoto. Like some kind of rabid dog.

Which makes me wonder...if Robert Bourassa could have a hairdresser who was also his bodyguard and his valet, and if Baird is already Great Leader's favourite pitbull bitch and eunuch...why can't he do his makeup as well? And save us all a bundle of money.

But, of course. what this sordid affair does symbolize, is how madeup this Harper ReformCon government really is. All image and no substance. And that Great Leader is just a fraud.

The kind of fraud who can spit on our Charter of Rights one day. And masquerade as a champion of human rights. the next.

Even as he prepares to strip away the rights of gay and lesbian Canadians.

Fortunately many Canadians are starting to realize that Stephen Harper isn't who he appears to be. And that a fat girly man neocon chickenhawk who plasters makeup on every day, and who has a lint plucker with a brush and a dandruff hoover following him around the world, maybe isn't the kind of leader Canadians want to lead them into an endless war.

Or for that matter....lead them anywhere at all.....

And eventually I'm sure the Angel Whisperer will come to realize that too....if she doesn't go completely insane first. Realize that talking to Leo Strauss and Stephen Harper all the time can get really twisted, creepy and boring. And that no matter how hard you try...

You can't put lipstick on a nerd...

Media Massacres, and the Last Flight of the Bumble Bee

Another great day on Planet Earth....brought to you by our idiot media. Another day of wall to wall coverage of the latest campus massacre. Everything you wanted or needed to know and much much more.

There was enough mourn porn on the air to keep viewers moist all day. Billy Graham's son said it was the work of the devil. The crazy right wingers blamed the Muslims. One wacko expert followed the other on a conveyor belt of insanity.

At one point it got so bad I looked up to see Indian guru Deepak Chopra on CNN talking about.....er....something....

And as for NBC....I'm sure their executives had to be sedated with animal tranquilizers to keep them from jumping up and down with joy...after getting a chance to air the killer's last words.















Although they told other news organizations, who were probably green with murderous envy...that when they got the package they "recoiled with disgust."

Hmmm.....Recoiled? Really? Is that another word for dancing wildly, whooping loudly, and doing high fives? Or just a polite word for coming in your pants?

Oh yeah...so much mindless coverage of the college killings...even though thirty times as many kids die on American campuses every year. In another kind of campus massacre....that the media doesn't cover.

While shooting violence is worsening, it does not approach the toll of other violence on our college youth.About 1,100 students each and every year will commit suicide, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and four of every five young people who attempt suicide exhibit clear warning signs.

And so little coverage of this really bloody massacre. This "swimming pool of blood." But then they're just Iraqis so who gives a saddam?

Is that depressing or what?

But luckily the sun came out for the first time in days, so I was able to put it all in to some kind of wider perspective.

The way I see it....If half of humanity killed itself off tomorrow the planet would probably be a better place for the survivors to live on.

But if these little fellas go...then we're really fucked....

















And something really bad is happening to them.

Theories about why the bees are dying run the gamut from pesticides to poor weather and even radio waves from cell phone transmission towers.

And more worrisome is the unexplained disappearance of the adult bees.
It's as if the bees flew away and never came back...

Yikes! Let's hope it's just the freaky weather, or some parasite we can help them recover from. And not the cellphone towers. we need to be the yappy cell freaks we are.

The small study, led by Professor Jochen Kuhn of Landau University, suggests that radiation from widely used cellphones may mess up the bees' homing abilities by interfering with the neurological mechanisms that govern learning and memory.

It also appears to disrupt the insects' ability to communicate with each other.

It really does make you wonder....if all that radiation is frying the bees sense of direction.... so the amazing little creatures who can find a flower hidden in a forest....now can't even find their way home....

Could all that radiation also be frying OUR brains?

Making us forget that since bees pollinate 80 percent of the earth's crops if anything happens to them a lot of people are going to starve.

Or damaging brain cells so WE don't know where we're going anymore....and can't tell the difference between the merely tragic and the really important

The difference between mourn porn, the Sunni-Shiite War, Anna Nicole Smith's baby, and the last flight of the bumble bee.

The way I see it, the way things are going, if we can't get our priorities right in a hurry. And the media and the cell phones keep zapping our intelligence.

I fear that it won't be long, before we're too stupid to know what's happening to us.

And too crazy to care....

The Campus Killer and the Carnival of Death

I tried to avoid the story of the campus killer today. Not because it's so tragic, but because it's so predictable.

The shock, the grief. The victims. The missed signals. The arguments over gun control. And of course the million stories about how the killer was a loner. I've heard them all before.

Cho Seung-hui was revealed to be a troubled loner of South Korean descent who left behind a disturbing note of grievances against his university saying: "You caused me to do this."

As if happy well adjusted kids with lots of friends commit mass murder and then blow their faces off....

And when is a kid a loner or just a lonely kid?

.....he was removed from class and received individual tutoring from Prof Roy. He attended sessions with a hat pulled down over his face and wearing dark glasses. "He just seemed like the loneliest man I've ever known," she said last night.

The quiet stranger in the crowd.

“I would notice a lot of times, I would come in the room and he would kind of be sitting at his desk, just staring at nothing,”

The sick and angry one.

That disturbing play should have set off alarm bells. Not just about whether he was a threat to others but whether he was a threat to himself. If they had treated him in time so many other lives could have been saved.

And why does the media waste so much time wondering why it keeps happening in schools?

For a lucky few, school and college are where we first distinguish ourselves. But for the majority, they are the site of first humiliation, subjugation and injury. They are almost always our first introduction to brutal social hierarchies, as they may also sponsor our first romantic devastation. What better stage on which to act out primitive retribution?

Or go on and on about copy cats when their overblown coverage is only making more of them?

Every time one of these stories breaks, every time the pictures flash round the world, it increases the chances that another massacre will follow. In the main, all of these events are copycat crimes. Campus shootings are now a genre, much as, in literature, campus-shooting novels are a genre....

It's a Carnival of Death. Don't these mediocre media dumbos understand anything? Don't they understand that their mindless mythologizing turned Eric Harris into an Avenging Angel. The fucking God of Angry Kids.














Because he did to his schoolyard enemies and bullies what they would like to do. But don't dare.

Hey Mr Bully how would you like a hole in your head? Bang bang bang. Now you're dead. Oh you're not? Bang. Now you are. And so am I. Ha ha ha.

And because he shared their rage....

"I hate the fucking world."

"Kill mankind.' No one should survive."

Why do you think all these shootings happen in April just like Columbine did?

Our brutish media can fall over themselves trying to see how many idiot stories they can recycle over and over again. Politicians can beat their breasts and issue vacuous statements. People can mumble prayers until their lips fall off. But it won't change a thing.

Until young mentally disturbed angry kids are reached in time....and can't buy guns like they buy cigarettes....until schools become better, safer and more human places, until our glorification of violence and revenge is extinguished...the killing will go on and on... as sure as rage is rage and blood is blood...and Eric Harris is the God of Angry Kids.

And that's all there is to say about this sad but predictable tragedy.

Until the next one....

Campus Horror, Alan Johnston, and the Dark Days of Spring

I haven't felt like blogging recently. Normally at this time of the year I'm full of energy and ready to jump on my bike and head off for trail heaven...to see everything come alive. But this year I'm not. The weather has been so lousy. And the news has been so dark.

First there were all those deaths in Afghanistan. More good soldiers killed for a doomed mission going nowhere. Then June Callwood died. Then came the news that the brave and good BBC journalist Alan Johnston might have been murdered in Gaza.

I saw his Scottish dad on tv the other day demanding the immediate return of his son so his family wouldn't suffer so much. And it just about broke my heart.

"Hello Old Son, I don't know if you will see this but I just felt that I wanted you to know how distressed and sorry we all are that you were taken."

"Now you have not to worry about us. Your mum and Trini and I are hanging in there and trying to keep a stiff upper lip."

"Alan, all our heartfelt, warmest fondest love is sent to you from all your family and in the fervent hope that you will be released unharmed. Chin up my son".

Talk about Scottish...and sad. So the last thing I needed was this horror story to really get me down.
















To remind me of things in my past I'd rather forget. And other tragedies and mad killers.

What more can I say? Except that one.... it will probably happen again. The massive media overkill only makes that more likely.

Two.... that aren't we lucky that Montreal Police learned from their mistakes?

So the deaths of those 14 women and four teachers may at least have helped save other young lives.

And three.....that university fortresses and more guns are not the answer. No matter what the crazy right-wing nuts say.

Concealed weapons in school are the solution to school gun violence. That's what solved the issue in Israel and that's what's necessary in Canada and the United States.

What absolute bullshit. Guns are the PROBLEM. Believe me I know. The sooner we get rid of as many as we can.The safer we'll all be.

And that's all I'm going to say about that or anything else.....except that here's hoping that Alan Johnston is still alive.

And of course....that for me...

Spring can't come soon enough...

June Callwood: My Beautiful Canadian Queen

I see Quebecers don't like the idea of inviting the Queen to Quebec City's 400th birthday party.

And who can blame them? Why should we have English Queen? If we're going to have a Queen why can't we have a Canadian one?

But then until this sad morning, we actually did have a real but uncrowned Queen of Canada. And her name was June Callwood.













Callwood blazed trails for women's rights, gay rights and the rights of the underprivileged with a history of activism dating back to the 1960s.

The author of 30 books, she was also the founder of a breast-cancer support centre, Nellie's Hostel for abused women, Jessie's Centre for teenage mothers and the AIDS hospice Casey House.

June Callwood did a lot of amazing things in her awesome life. She helped a lot of people. She spoke out against injustice until the very last days.

“If you see an injustice being committed, you aren't an observer, you are a participant.” That didn't mean you had to intervene, she explained, but you couldn't pretend that you weren't a part of what was happening in front of you.

And having delivered her activist mantra, Ms. Callwood, breathing heavily because of cancer's inexorable devastation, left the stage for the final time....

She touched so many people, so many Canadians have so many reasons to be grateful. But as a gay guy what touched me the most was what she did for us. Supporting our struggle for equality...and of course founding Casey House.













The sad but beautiful place where so many gay men with AIDS spent the last days of their life. Free from discrimination at last.

Surrounded by the love many of them never had in their short lives.

Love for them and love and support for those who loved them...














I haven't had many brushes with greatness in my life. But June Callwood was one them. I only met her about three or four times through a friend who does work for the hospice. So I the last time I saw her I was amazed that she even remembered my name.

I had just dropped off my friend at some fundraising event when she came down to the drive way. She stared at my sputtering vintage motorbike with a look of mock horror, covered her ears and said "Simon, Simon,Simon, when are you going to get rid of that noisy old thing?"

I was afraid she might hate motorbikes because her son Casey was killed on one when he was only twenty. But then she started laughing, and asked me a lot of questions about it so I guess she didn't.

And besides I read today that she loved sporty cars, so I think that maybe she really liked my bike and I'm only sorry that I didn't offer to take her for a spin. Something tells me she would have enjoyed it. Although I suppose if she had I would have had to keep the old Triumph forever...

Anyway....so many other bloggers have written about June Callwood today and paid tribute to her amazing life..

So I just want to say that although she was a secular saint .......she was also a fun person. And although I'm very sad....and know she was an atheist just like I am....

I'm having fun thinking of her tonight somewhere in the spirit world sitting on the back of Casey's motorbike saying something like this:

"Casey my beloved long lost boy. Now that we can't be hurt anymore. Now that we can't suffer anymore. Now that we know we've done everything we possibly could to try to make the world a better place. Now that we're together again. Why don't you show me how fast this old bike can go?"

"Ok mum. Hang on! Here we go...Woohoo!

Vroom...Vroom ....Vroom....

Thank you June Callwood for a life well lived. For being so gentle and so strong. And for never giving up.

We gay boys who continue your fight against injustice and oppression will miss you terribly, but will never forget you.

My beautiful Canadian Queen.....

Paul Wolfowitz and the End of the Neo-Cons

I gotta admit that I almost got a woody watching the neo-con lizard Paul Wolfowitz apologizing for giving his girl friend a humongous pay hike. Although I don't blame her for asking for a lot of money to fuck him. I mean he was once caught on tape licking his comb. Vomit.

Now he's just a two-time loser licking his wounds.

World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz publicly apologized on Thursday for the "mistake" of personally orchestrating a high-paying job and guaranteed promotions for a bank employee with whom he is romantically involved, as new details of his role in the arrangement emerged and staff members angrily demanded his resignation.

Admitting he made a mistake, by putting his pussy on the payroll. But begging people not to blame him for the other big boo boo.

And all this happening .....as the author of Shock and Awe gets nailed by a madam!!!!!

A woman charged with running a prostitution ring in the nation's capital made good on her threat to identify high-profile clients, listing a military strategist known for his "shock and awe" combat theories....

Woohoo! Talk about the going down of the neocons.And what a shock and awesome twist. I thought their war crimes would be the downfall of those two cons. Who knew it would be their dicks?

But then that's what their dirty little made up war in Iraq was all about wasn't it? Just an attempt to show the world who had the biggest dick on the planet. And of course grab all that oil.The inadequate leading the ignorant into the New Neocon World.

But they ended up screwing themselves...and their country.They destroyed the Bush administration. They turned Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists. A place where nobody is safe.

A place where people are tortured with electric drills. Little children are blown to bits. And dead dogs are used to try to kill American soldiers....



OK so the last part of the video was a little confused. But so is the war in Iraq. It's so crazy that before you know it you find yourself wondering whether the poor old Iraqi street dog died of natural causes, was hit by a car, or was shot by the insurgents, before it was stuffed full of explosives, and then blown up by the Americans...

As if anybody cared what happened to a poor old dog in a hellish place like that..except me of course.

And then there are the wounded. The thousands and thousands of Iraqis who weren't killed by suicide bombers. Just scarred for life...... or mutilated.

Or the American soldiers....who come home to dirty hospitals...or are left to depend on their mummies.









Over and over, Reyes screams "Mom!" at the top of his lungs. He asks for milk, and he wears a diaper. He plays with plastic figurines of such characters as Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Undertaker from WWE. He's 25 years old and needs his mother now as much as he did as a young boy growing up on the Bronx streets, maybe more. She's begun to call him "Baby Bamm Bamm"—two years ago, his comrades called him Red Dog.

For him the war will never end. For Paul Wolfowitz it was just his last job. He probably still clings to the belief that the problem was the execution....rather than the idea. But even he can't deny that the neo-cons are running out of history.

"Their plan has fallen on hard times. There were flaws in the conception and horrendously bad execution. The neo-cons have been undone by their own ideas and the incompetence of the Bush administration."

"Neo-conservatism has gone for a generation, if in fact it ever returns....."

That's the good news. The only good news to come out of the horror that is Iraq. No matter what they say....no matter what they do.... history will record that the crazy neo-cons started an insane war.

And in the end it buried them... or drowned them in a sea of blood.

If I wasn't such a peaceful guy I'd almost think it was worth it.

Just don't tell Baby Bamm Bamm that.

He wouldn't understand...

Gwen Landolt and the Hoggy Homophobes

Uh oh. It looks like Gwen Landolt, the monstrous bigot from REAL Women, and her wacko religious extremists, think Canada should apologize to the world.

For being too tolerant. (PDF)

To the world's leaders and people:

We the people of Canada who support marriage solely as the union of a man and a woman, apologize to the people of the world for harm done through Canada's legalization of homosexual marriage.

Wow! Can you believe that? As if it wasn't bad enough having to listen to that porkers heavy grunting at home.

"We are not discriminating against them when we say their lifestyle is an unhealthy lifestyle and their conduct is affecting all of society - AIDS, STDs and now we have again, after many years, the return of syphilis which had been defeated. It has returned to our society because of the rampant homosexuality."

"Homosexuals are the front, the advance guard of humanism, secularism, materialism."

"We are fighting an evil and we must pronounce it as such..."

Now she's defaming Canada...... I was going to issue my own apology to the planet for not having had her locked up in an insane asylum...or a barn...or pig sty... years ago.

Especially since I heard she's planning a big trip. (PDF)

But then I realized she's only going to Poland. One of the stinkiest places in the world. Where they suck up anti-semitism and homophobia with their mamushka milk.

A leading human rights group warned Poland on Monday that a proposed law to ban what it calls "homosexual propaganda" in schools would promote discrimination and deny children lifesaving information about AIDS.

So the ugly sow should feel really at home there.....making gay kids suffer as she does here....and wallowing in the fascist mud. Oinka. Oinka.

As for Canadians .....we should just remember that if Stephen Harper gets a majority Landolt and her religious crazies will be telling us ALL what to do.

So before she stinks out the joint ....or defames this country anymore...we should probably do the sensible thing....

Or better still....since it's SUPPOSED to be Spring..... play this new Erasure video for her....

So the montrous bigot turd and her hoggy homophobes can understand that ALL love is beautiful.

And that love is for EVERYONE....

Belinda's Bye Bye and Citoyen Dion

I was sorry to see that Belinda Stronach after giving the Conservatives the finger, and dropping Peter McKay like a hot potato, has now decided to kiss the Liberal party goodbye. Although I'm not sure whether it was a smooch...or a smack.

Belinda Stronach is quitting politics, ending a brief but tumultuous fling that injected a lot of style - if not substance - into the staid Canadian political scene.

And who can blame her? Why go down with a sinking ship, if you can fly serenely over the wreck in your private jet?

I also see that her abrupt departure has, as predicted in the Book of Moron, sent the Blogging Tories into such a fevered state of misogyny and wankitude, they've turned into the Blogging Belindas.

Isn't that creepy.

But as for me I'm sorry to see her go. I thought she spoke out well for women's issues, and against the Boy's Club on the Hill. She was great on the gay marriage question. And above all she brought some badly needed excitement into a really boring place....a little life into the House of the Zombie Nerds.

And paid a heavy price...

Her romantic liaisons, her changing hair colour and her fashionable attire kept her in the spotlight almost as often as her political moves.

Just because she's a woman.

People tend to look the other way with men: "boys will be boys" or some such shit. Well, "girls just wanna have fun", eh? Not yet, I'm afraid.

So I was sorry to hear that Stephane Dion didn't take her seriously either. Didn't understand that he needed her way more than she needed him.

But then he doesn't understand a lot of things...











If politics is lonely at the top, Stephane Dion must be finding life downright desolate these days as he all but disappears into the basement of public opinion.

Dion and his dwindling band of supporters don't seem to understand that in Quebec they hate him because he stands for a centralized Canada, instead of a decentralized one. Or because he's seen as an English stooge.

But in large parts of English Canada they hate him just because he's French.

Maybe it's because since the last referendum many English Canadians have developed an almost pathological hatred of Quebec and Quebecers. Or maybe it's just because Dion is such a cartoon character of a snooty French professor.

But when the Tories go after him as Citoyen Dion, it has nothing to do with the citizenship he got from his wife, and everything to do with how he looks and talks. Just like it was for Belinda.

But the poor wacky professor probably doesn't understand that...and I bet nobody dares tell him. He thinks politics is all about ideas...when nowadays it's all about image. And these days in English Canada .....French is out.

If he hasn't learned that by now.

I'm afraid he's going to learn it the hard way.

Too bad for him.Too bad for Canada.....