Harry Leslie Smith 1923-2018

For about a week, along with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, I have been keeping an online vigil for 95-year-old Harry Leslie Smith.

Harry had been battling pneumonia in a hospital in Belleville, Ontario.

He fought bravely, but early this morning that battle finally ended.



But what a life it was.

The Face of Hate and the Inspiring Message of Antoine Leiris

When I see how the tragedy in Paris has some of the bigots in this country crawling out of their holes, to spew ignorance and hatred. 

Like this ghastly joker. 

Half maniac, half beast.

Or I read the comments from those who are so afraid, they would deny desperate refugees safe haven in Canada. And by so doing play into the hands of the ISIS death cult.

I like to think of the message Antoine Leiris, who lost his wife at the Bataclan club, had for her killers: 

The Paris Massacre, the Children, and the Flowers

It's hard enough for an adult to understand the horror of the Paris massacre. Or how some people can be so cruel and vicious.

So imagine being a parent in that city, and having to try to explain that horror to children.

So I have to say I thought this dad did a really great job.

The Homophobe and the Homeless

You might think that a church might be a safe place for homeless people to sleep. 

Considering how hard their lives are, and how little they have, and everything Jesus said about that.

But not at this church in San Francisco. 

The Con Regime's Lethally Inadequate Response to the Ebola Epidemic

We are still awaiting our first case of Ebola.

And even though the risk of a major outbreak in Canada is almost negligible, in the emergency rooms of the nation, doctors, and nurses, are already struggling to contain an epidemic of fear.

Not just the irrational fears of their patients, but legitimate fears over their own safety. 

Linda Haslam-Stroud, president of the Ontario Nurse’s Association, said Tuesday that her organization is particularly concerned that nurses are not being offered all the equipment they might need to protect them from contracting the virus, as a Texas nurse did last week.

And as might have been expected, the response of the Harper regime has so far been woefully lacking. 

Scotland, Gaza, and the Shameful Silence of So Many Canadians

I spent my last day in Scotland in this beautiful highland forest with Sébastien and a group of friends, taking turns leaping into the icy waters of a deep gorge.

Celebrating life, trying to forget for a moment the nightmarish state of this world.

And for a while it worked.

But tonight I found myself writing about Gaza. Again. 

For how could I ignore that horror when so many in Canada have been so silent?

The Children of Gaza and the Bestiality of Stephen Harper

It was an act of unspeakable barbarity. One that has been condemned by governments all over the world. 

The US and UN have condemned the shelling of a school housing displaced civilians in Gaza. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the attack, which killed 16, was "outrageous".

"I condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms. It is outrageous. It is unjustifiable, and it demands accountability and justice. "Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children."

And defended only by those who carried it out, and by the monstrous beast Stephen Harper. 

The Horror of Gaza and the Shame of the Harper Regime

It's taken me a few days to summon up the strength to write something, anything, about the horror in Gaza.

I just couldn't bring myself to look at the images of this latest war. 

As rockets from Palestinian militants in Gaza continue to fly into Israel and Israel continues to strike hard at Gaza, the options for each side are hardening. Both sides are employing brinksmanship, carrying out their biggest raids yet this weekend and threatening much more to come.

Not when I'm still recovering from the images of the last one...

Luka Magnotta and My Lost Country

I can't imagine a worse way to end this horrible year in Harperland than having Luka Magnotta awarded the title of Newsmaker of the Year.

For not only is that cruel psychopath smirking in his jail cell tonight.

It also says so much about about the country we have become, and how low we have fallen.

Hurricane Sandy and the Twitter Troll

On Tuesday night, as New Yorkers struggled to cope with the fury of Hurricane Sandy.

A Twitter account with the handle ComfortablySmug tried to cause even more fear.

By sending out a series of alarming false messages.

The Apocalypse and the Monarch Tree

So I'm sitting on a bench down by the swan pond this evening, staring at the signs of The Apocalypse.

Two little trees that have surrendered to the Canadian winter. Already.

(click pic to enlarge)

And I'm screaming at them, in my mind. How could you do this to me? How could you leave so soon?

And wondering is it just me, or is the whole world going crazy?

When Assaulting the Homeless is Funny

I don't know whether this video of some loser apparently urinating on an unconscious homeless person is real.

The video that lasts 27-seconds shows a young man approaching a man sleeping on the sidewalk outside what appears to be Toronto's Eaton Centre. 

With his back to the camera he appears to urinate on the sleeping man while his friends can be heard laughing off-camera. The victim doesn't react and appears to remain asleep as his head and hair are soaked. 

Or a sick hoax.

Why Do So Many Canadians Hate the Occupiers?

I haven't been able to visit the Occupy Toronto campsite in the last two days. But I have spent quite a bit of time wondering why so many Canadians seem to hate the occupiers so much? And I mean HATE.

Because this isn't just manufactured bile, this is visceral.

A leaderless movement that initially attracted a disparate collection of well-meaning activists along with just plain folk was ultimately hijacked by a hoi polloi with questionable ambitions.

The rabble that rose each morning from their tents headed off to attend meetings intended to build the infrastructure of some kind of fairy-tale parallel society. Before our eyes, an anarchist collective was drafting a set of demands; the terms, apparently, of any kind of surrender.

Now the Occupy movement is dying. And not a lot of people seem to care

Krusty Blatchford and the Farting Dog

Oh.My.Doggy. I was hoping not to have to write anything about the way Christie Blatchford crapped on Jack Layton's memory, the day after he died.

Because as he so sadly showed, life is too short to worry about nasty things like that, when we've got a world to change. But since so much has been written about Blotch Belch Blatch.

And the harpie wingnut Barbara Kay is trying to outdo her by squeezing out this turd.

I thought I'd just ask the question: Why is everyone so surprised ? When Krusty has been in the Hall of Shame for YEARS.

And so has her writing.

Unfortunately, I must have used a too-loud voice, because I disturbed the dog, who reproached me with a sharp look and a disdainful pffftt or two from his rear quarters.
(13 May 2009)

How on earth did it come to this, that despair so perfumes the air? (14 February 2008)

Golly. I don't know. But how on earth could anyone write this?

Moi, je refuse: I shall cough into my cupped hands until I lose the slight dexterity that requires and then I shall hack unashamedly into the public air. By that time, I expect, I will be well into the public farting years anyway, so I figure I might as well cough too.

As I approach those years, I still have no idea why it is that as one gets older, one grows more flatulent, but I do recognize it as a curious truth...

Although I guess it does help explain why our boys in uniform don't love her quite as much as she loves them...

And why a soldier friend of mine once told me that given a choice between battling the Taliban, or riding in an APC with Blatchford, after she hadn't shaved for three days, he'd rather take his chances with the hairier ones.

Or why another friend once told me that he thinks her purple Afghan tales are better than gay porn. Because when she starts drooling about all those hunky guys, with their rippling muscles, their tattoos, and the sweat running down their brows navels, his member can't help springing to attention. ATTEN- SHUN !!!!

Even as his mind wanders.

Take that Molière...or Don Cherry.

And besides it's not like she hasn't been punished before eh? Like when the tiny terror bit Richard Colvin in the balls knee ankle. And even Paul Wells thought she was naughty.

In 20 years in journalism I have never seen anything resembling the systematic and sustained repudiation to which Christie Blatchford, the Globe and Mail‘s marquee columnist, is being subjected by her own newspaper. There is room in any good paper for disagreements among colleagues, and frankly there should, for a long time now, have been room for more of that at the Globe. But this goes further. This is breathtakingly methodical. And I believe it was needed.

But while any other self respecting Canadian journalist would have fled to a foreign country after that whupping, and assumed a new identity.

She didn't...

She just wrapped herself in bitterness, and crapped on Jack Layton.

Because he was right about Afghanistan, she was ridiculous.

And there's only one Krusty !!!!

But wait. What's this? Oh nooooooooooooooo !!!! Now even the Post is punishing her, by making her write about FIRE ALARMS !!!

Fire alarms? The great Christie Blatchford? Golly. Could this really be The End?

You know I had a horrible nightmare the day after I saw her squatting over Jack's memory. I dreamed it was ten years from now, and she was squatting over a rickety table in a dingy Legion Hall. Sucking up quarters and bottle tops like a hoover...or a CF-18. 

And then some old geezer in a wheelchair bumped into the table. It collapsed. She flew around the room, like a balloon with a hole in it. And I woke up SCREAMING.

Just like she's probably going to scream when she see this.

Krusty, Krusty we'll miss you. Pffftt.

We don't want to lose you.

But we think you ought to GO...

The Con Porkers and the Omar Khadr Farce

I'm not surprised that the Con porkers have decided to launch yet another appeal delaying tactic in the case of  Omar Khadr.

Because the only thing more piggy than what's happening in that ghastly gulag called Guantanamo, is what's happening right here in Canada. And these AmeriCons would eat their own excrement to satisfy their rabid base, or create another wedge issue.

But speaking of excrement I really can't let this steaming pile of pig poop go unanswered.

The case of terrorist poster boy Omar Khadr -- his only upside being the luck-of-the-draw of being born in Canada-- has reached another crescendo...

Khadr was 15 when he ended up in the American prison camp at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, and he is now almost 24. Boo-hoo. And la-dee-dah.

Boo-hoo yourself you racist bastard. Omar Khadr is not a luck-of-the-draw Canadian. He was born and lived in this country for years, and should have the same rights as any other Canadian citizen. 

He was also a child soldier according to the U.N. Protocols that we were the FIRST to sign. So he never should have been imprisoned and tortured.

We, unlike too many, remember terrorism is bred in the bone of Omar Khadr.

Wrong. Terrorism is not genetic you ignorant asshole. Omar was just a young boy when his crazy terrorist father dragged him off to the badlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was victimized by his own family, then by the Taliban, then by the Pentagon, and now by the Harper government.

And since when do we punish people because we don't like their family? What kind of a jungle society is Canada becoming?

And, oh yes, after allegedly tossing the grenade that landed him in Gitmo for killing a U.S. medic, Sgt. Christopher Speer.

When was the last time anyone cried for Speer?

Wrong again you idiot. Many tears have been shed for Sgt. Speer. But he was a special forces soldier, where unlike other units medics carry guns and kill people, and he knew what might happen to him.

And Omar Khadr couldn't possibly have thrown the fatal grenade because he had been badly wounded in a series of air attacks that happened as much as an hour BEFORE Speer was killed.

He was riddled with shrapnel, blinded in one eye, and was facing away from the action slumped against a bush, when he was shot twice in the back.














And the grenade was most probably thrown by another Taliban fighter who was still alive in the rubble.

The one the Pentagon tried to cover-up, because this whole case is nothing but a travesty of justice. The Sun editorialist may be too dumb and Con to recognize that. But Omar Khadr does.

Oh boy. As I've said before this is such a depressing story. Some of my gay friends still wonder why I am defending a Muslim extremist, who could be a homophobe.

So I tell them there is no evidence he is an extremist. His guards all say he is a decent young man, a model prisoner, who prefers Disney comic books to the Koran, and dreams of returning to Canada and becoming a graphic artist. Even though he's half blind.














But even if he WAS an extremist I'd still defend him because he WAS a child soldier. The way he has been treated is unforgivable. And demanding justice be done is the only right, decent, and Canadian thing to do.Period.

But still I admit it's discouraging to see how many Canadians, including some so-called progressives, are starting to think like Amerikans.

So it was really nice to receive this comment the other day from the guy who refused to shake Harper's hand.

 Hi Simon,

You are such an inspiration.
The case of Omar Khadr is one so completely overlooked by the majority of Canadians, and just another thing that makes me ashamed to be Canadian.
I've organized an Amnesty International group a few years ago, and have been involved with the organization ever since. The main focus of our group over the past few years has been that of Omar Khadr. Through having multiple campaigns, it has always exposed me to some pretty horrible ignorance, but it's when meeting people like you that I realize there is still hope. You give me hope, You give me strength.

Jeremy

Forget what Jeremy says about me because I'm not THAT great eh? But isn't it really great to see a young Canadian in Newfoundland doing all he can to fight this injustice? In a country that's starting to smell of pig shit.

Because the erosion of civil liberties in this country didn't start with the G20 or the Afghan detainees story. It started with the case of Omar Khadr. When a Canadian child was locked up and tortured, nobody cared, and justice became a FARCE.

So isn't it also great that Jeremy refused to shake Harper's hand? Because after what that hideous Con is doing to Omar and Canada, and what our country is becoming.

I wouldn't either...


















h/t Pogge.

Haiti: Are the Rescuers Afraid of the Victims?

In Haiti, another aftershock, even as the slow motion nightmare continues. Food and water and medical supplies at the airport. But not where they are desperately needed.

Is it just a logistical problem or is it something worse?

Are the rescuers afraid of the people they are supposed to save?

There has now solidified a consensus among aid organisations that the relief they are bringing is itself a liability; that distributing what Haitians are dying for – literally – will bring on a second nightmare. So, supplies pile up at the airport because, apparently, the Haitians need to be fed and watered at gunpoint. And there aren't enough men with guns to provide this totemic "security" and there aren't enough trucks to move the supplies around the country.

And is the media part of the problem?

Frei's reluctance to recognise the amazing self-control of these desperate people, and instead to amplify the hysteria about violence for which he has scant evidence, has brought him at times worryingly close to calling the Haitians savages.

When considering how much they are suffering the Haitians have been amazingly restrained. Staring at food on the other side of a fence that they can't have.

Is it because they're poor?

Furthermore, to the horror of many godfearing Americans, voodoo is an officially recognised religion in Haiti. And, perhaps above all, Haitians are poor and black. In the view of some Americans those two add up to ... murderous gangs.

Is it madness?

Or is it just racism rearing its ugly head again?

I hope not.

Because if that is the case, it will taint this rescue effort forever.

And all I can say is thank goodness for these heroes.

And the strength of the Haitian people.

Because the ugly truth is that when they needed us the most.

The world let them down...

The Horror of Gaza: One Year Later

It's been one year since shells and bombs started raining down on Gaza, and predictably both sides are claiming victory.

The Israeli hawks say it greatly reduced the number of rockets raining down on Israel. The Hamas hawks claim they won because they weren't eliminated.

But who in their right mind can call this victory?

When so many children were killed and so many are still suffering.

"Often they wake up in the night shouting," she said. "Every time they hear tanks on the Israeli side of the border, they think we are going to be attacked again. They feel they have no future."














"This is a traumatised nation....Young children in Gaza are surviving under extreme levels of stress, which will pose long-term dangers not only for their mental health, but for the future of the region."

So I'm going with this verdict.

Today it is more shameful to be an Israeli because the world, as opposed to Israelis, saw the scenes. It saw thousands of dead and injured taken in the trunks of cars to something between a clinic and a primitive hospital in an imprisoned and weakened region one hour from flourishing Tel Aviv, a region where the helpless had nowhere to run from Israel's arsenal. The world saw schools, hospitals, flour mills and small factories mercilessly bombed and blown up. It saw clouds of white-sulphur bombs billowing over population centers, and it saw burned children.

The world saw the Israeli Goliath strike mercilessly at the Palestinian David. It saw the balance of killing: one Israeli to every 100 Palestinians, and the Israel Defense Forces' new and terrifying doctrine by which almost everything goes if it prevents casualties on our side. The world knew that in this case a democracy was striking a region that does not enjoy self-determination, whose inhabitants lack basic human rights - refugees and the children of refugees living under siege. So the world responded with justifiable severity toward us; it refused to forgive and be silent.

And this brutal fact:

A year later, with $4.5 billion collected to rehabilitate Gaza lying in banks' basement vaults because Israel refuses to open Gaza's gates to let in supplies, the world is silent, leaving Gaza to its fate, to its ruins. But Gaza has not forgotten its wounds - it cannot forget them. The 325,000 people whose homes were destroyed, 1,300 bereaved families and thousands of injured and disabled, debilitated by anxiety and terror, remain in Gaza. Their suffering has not dissipated.

My hope is that one day Israelis and Palestinians will learn to live in peace with each other, and that in the words of Bradley Burston, who was like a beacon of decency in the darkness of the Gaza war, peace, justice and reason will finally prevail.

"Yehudim, Aravim - M'sarvim L'hiyot Oyavim" Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.

I want a word with the people - my people and theirs - Who treat land as sacred, and people not theirs, as dirt: My war with you is over. My enemy today is the word Never.

But for now the call of humanity is the same as it was a year ago. Stop the violence.

Open the borders. Save the children.

Let Gaza live...

When Rape is a Video game

I find a lot of video games too violent and ugly but this is the absolute limit.

A computer game in which players compete to rape women and get them to abort their babies has been pulled from sale on Amazon.com.

In the game, players begin stalking a mother on a subway station before violently raping her. They then move on to attack her two daughters, described as virgin schoolgirls.

Players are also allowed to enter "freeform mode" where they can rape any woman and get other male game characters to join the attacks.

I don't know what sick minds could dream up anything as disgusting as this foul "game."

This article says it has a lot to do with Japan's twisted attitudes to sex.

But I don't care.

Rape isn't sex it's VIOLENCE. And if it's available online then those who access it should be treated the same as those who access child pornography.

As for the designers and the makers...charge them, jail them, drive them out of business.

Because some things are TOO disgusting and evil.

And enough is enough...

The Brutal Killing of Michael Causer

They attacked him when he was sleeping. They punched and kicked him in the head. They burned him with a lighter. They dumped his bleeding body in the street.

Now one of the thugs who killed Michael Causer has been acquitted of murder.

According to evidence put before the jury, the trigger-point for the violence came when sexually explicit images of the trainee hairdresser were found on his mobile phone, prompting a “sustained and brutal” attack on his naked sleeping form and leaving him with a fractured skull and a swollen brain. Mr Causer was punched, kicked and finally battered around the head with a heavy history book so forcibly that the book’s spine broke, the court heard. It was alleged that Mr Alker, who had never met Mr Causer, screamed “You little queer faggot” adding, “He’s a little queer, he deserves it.” During the trial it was also claimed that a cigarette lighter was used to burn the hair on Mr Causer’s legs, and that threats were made to rip out his body piercings with a knife. But the jury accepted Mr Alker’s evidence that he had been acting in self-defence after he denied making homophobic comments, blaming the attack on O’Connor.

And a Liverpool councillor has a question for the people of Merseyside.

"The question has to be asked whether the 10-2 jury not-guilty verdict into Gavin Alker means Merseyside society thinks it's acceptable to beat up gay people?

Good question eh?

But good for his parents for fighting back.

“We won’t let Micky be pushed aside because he was gay, never in a million years...”

Poor gentle Michael would have been so proud of them.

The bullies will be BEATEN.

The struggle continues....

Men, War, Murder and Rape

I wish I hadn't read the following story. Not today. It's too horrible. But now I have it haunts me.

In August 1949, an army unit stationed at Nirim in the Negev shot an Arab man and captured a Bedouin girl with him. Her name and age remain unknown, but she was probably in her mid-teens.

In the following hours she was taken from the hut and forced to shower naked in full view of the soldiers. Three of the men then raped her.

After the Sabbath meal the platoon commander, identified by Ha'aretz as a man called Moshe who had served in the British army during the second world war, proposed a vote on what should be done with her.

One option was to put her to work in the outpost's kitchen.

Most of the 20 or so soldiers present voted for the alternative by chanting: "We want to fuck".The commander organised a rota for groups of his men to gang rape the girl over the next three days. Moshe and one of his sergeants went first, leaving the girl unconscious. Next morning, she complicated matters by protesting about her treatment. Moshe told one of his sergeants to kill her
.
When the girl realised what was about to happen she tried to run, but only made it a few paces before she was shot by a Sergeant Michael.

Her body was buried in a grave less than a foot deep. A few days later the battalion commander, Yehuda Drexler, asked Moshe if he had carried out an order to return the girl to her village.

"They killed her," replied Moshe. "It was a shame to waste the petrol."

When I finished I felt ill. I wanted to write something more or less thoughtful. Like how could Jews do that only four years after the end of the Holocaust? When they of all people should know that when you want to massacre a people ....first you have to dehumanize them. Or why Palestians call the events of 1948 the Al Nakba or Catastrophe.

But all I have the strength to say is some men are PIGS. War turns all men into animals.That's why so many of them like it so much. That's why guns and missiles look like dicks.

The poor little girl.

And when oh when will women rule the world?

Because it can't come soon enough....