She fought with the guys. She was killed by their side. But when they brought Trooper Karine Blais home today, they treated her differently. Canada's chief of defence staff issued an apology Thursday for the decision to make a stopover in Ottawa to drop off troops from the plane that was bringing their slain comrade back to Canada from Afghanistan. Blah.Blah.Blah. The General can say what he wants. But that was HER flight..... HER last flight home. And they treated her like freight. Shame on those idiot Brass heads, and good for this soldier. A "very upset" member of the Canadian Forces sent an email to the CBC complaining about the stopover on the flight from Kandahar Airfield to CFB Trenton, in Ontario.
The person said Trooper Blais "did not get the respect she deserved" and that the 116 other Canadian soldiers who have died in Afghanistan have first landed in Trenton.
Oh boy. It really makes you wonder how badly our army is broken. Why couldn't we properly honour that brave woman. Why couldn't we protect this one?
When Kandahar is supposed to be OUR turf.
And BTW what exactly are we teaching our Afghan police trainees?
Swarms of angry men shouting epithets and hurling stones confronted hundreds of Afghan women who staged a rare public protest yesterday against a law that allows husbands to demand sex from their wives.
Some of the policemen assigned to keep the two groups apart joined the protest, shouting threats at the women.
And since we're talking about the Afghan police... how is that boy rape investigation going?
Then there’s that weekly ritual I observed at forward operating base Wilson in the summer of 2007, where young boys selected by Afghanistan police officers were brought inside the base for what disgusted Canadian soldiers told me was “man love Thursday”. This weekly ritual of child sexual abuse may continue even now, although Canadian soldiers have been told to practice zero tolerance against it and a military investigation has been launched.
Because I really want to know what kind of values we are propping up in the barbarous Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Because they sure aren't mine or Canadian eh? But of course the extension of this mission had nothing to do with human rights.And everything to do with Stephen Harper's attempt to exploit divisions in the Liberal Party. And pose as a strong leader.
And now we're all paying for his criminal folly. Especially our soldiers who are fighting and dying in a moral SWAMP.
Oh yeah...that reminds me. As I said the other day.
No matter how crazy this mission may be..
No matter how shabbily they treated her.
Like all the other soldiers who died. Trooper Blais is still a hero...
P.S. I am a finalist in the F-Word Blogging Awards in the Support Bro category. I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me. As I said before I'm just honoured to have been nominated. But don't forget to vote for all the other finalists...and my excellent Support Brothers. The cause is a great one. And even if I come in last...as I richly deserve to...my granny would be proud of me...
Now I know it's really Spring. The crocuses are pushing their way out of the earth. While Stephen Harper is burrowing his way into the earth. And looking and smelling like manure.
Asked which party they would support if an election were held tomorrow, 36.7 opted for the Liberals while 30.2 per cent chose the Conservatives. About 15.5 per cent supported the NDP, while the Green party was the choice of 8.1 per cent and the Bloc Québécois was backed by 9.4 per cent.
EKOS pollster Frank Graves said the latest numbers, accompanied by regional breakdowns showing the Conservatives' level of support well below that of the Liberals in the key battleground provinces of Ontario and Quebec, suggest that "even the question of repeating a minority is an iffy proposition" for Harper's party.
I leave it up to others to pore over the numbers. (PDF)
But I can't help but point out this: "Harper's approval rating is in the 90s for Conservative supporters," Graves said. "There's a vivid gap between the Conservative base, who are very happy with the general direction of the country, and everyone else." Excellent. The Con sheep are so in love with Great Loser Leader they don't even realize he's leading them to the SLAUGHTERHOUSE. BAAAAAAAAAAAAA !!!!!
But wait. Do you think it will hurt a lot when the sheep finally realize where they are going? Golly I hope so. Because that would be a BONUS. Oh boy. What more can I ask for eh? The filthiest government in Canadian history is dying. Canada is almost SAVED. And Spring is finally here....
And with that came the first punch – straight to the nose. I barely had time to realize what was happening when a second strike hit the side of my temple. Several more punches followed, all while I kept shouting a steady pulse of “fuck off”s and “get the fuck away from me's. "
Something about this story bothers me. Not just the speed with which insane hatred explodes into violence. Because I've seen it with my own eyes. Or the cowards that fight in packs. Because I had to fight others like them for YEARS. In fact, when Sébastien first bumped into me, in a bar not far from where this guy was attacked, I was beating a bully bloody with a pool cue. So I know all about senseless violence. And the part about the good samaritan didn't bother me either.
I was thankful this person came by, and I turned to her, if only to find comfort in a pair of sympathetic eyes. She looked at me, and in a pathetic act of consolation, motioned in the direction of the assailants and said, “Don’t worry, those guys are just faggots.”
Because sadly it's so TYPICAL. And just another sign of the problem. So I guess it must be this that bothers me:
It took me a long time to compose myself. I was furious. I refused police intervention, medical attention, and even consolation from friends. I thought I was fine. I thought I could just shake it off. In hindsight, I wish I had realized that, yes, that’s blood coming out of your nose. Yes, that’s a piece of your tooth you just spat out. No, you are not okay.
Because where did David ever get the idea he should just shake it off? Why didn't he get the police involved? Doesn't he realize that a crime that isn't reported is like a crime that never happened?
So the guilty won't be punished, and the violence will go on and on.
But who can blame him? Being attacked suddenly....just for who you are.... is shocking and traumatizing.
You know it's easy to say that gay kids should take martial arts and learn to fight like I did. But why should gentle people have to become as violent their enemies? Because David did get one thing REALLY right: Fuck those guys. Fuck their views on life. Fuck the way they express themselves. I do not have a problem. I am not at fault. I will continue to eat my pizza and wear the tightest pants I fucking want. Because nobody should have to apologize for being gay. Or for wearing tight pants. Or be attacked just for who they are.
Golly. It looks as if the redneck, racist Republicons have failed to ignite a nation-wide revolt against Black Hitler and his Communist plans to steal their guns....and read their minds. But at least it was a good K... K... Klown show. The day of "tea parties" pushed by Republican operatives and partisan advocacy groups such as FreedomWorks, that sought to protest the Obama government's tax and stimulus policies by encouraging people to 'wave tea bags' brought about only a few hundred "tea-baggers" in most parts of the U.S., despite relentless promotion by Fox News TV hosts.
Oh no. They set out to wave their bags and ended up biting them? Ouch. And don't you LOVE this?
A 68-year-old woman at the Sunbury Pennsylvania protest had to be rescued by police from the Susquehanna River when she inadvertently fell in while trying to dump tea bags in it.
Caramba. I hope she wasn't rescued by a black man. And then there's this dumbassitude:
According to reports, organizers of the D.C. event were told by National Park Service officials that the "million tea bags" they had hauled in on the back of a pickup would have to be taken away, rather than be dumped as planned. They reportedly complied with the request after realizing they didn't have the correct protest permit.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a local think tank, offered to provide its 12th floor board room as an alternate venue to dump the tea bags.
That'll teach them to get dumb rednecks to fill up a pickup AND fill out a permit. And what the fuck is the Competitive Enterprise Institute? Oh right.
Which just about tells you all you need to know about this so-called "grass roots protest."
Together with this ugly photograph...
In short: A bunch of white old people and rednecks got together and tried to start a revolution...to drive the Fascist/Communist nigger out of the White House. And stop the fags from stealing their children etc etc...
And were used like dish rags by a bunch of rich people and companies that don't want to pay taxes.
But since the RepubliCons are now just a rump, and their failed Bush policies are rotting in the recession graveyard, nobody really cares what these tea-baggers do or say. So all they ended up doing was making us LAUGH. And proving that you can't talk and tea bag. Today it's the RepubliCons, tomorrow it will be Stephen Harper's ReformCons...the last of the Bush stooges. The Cons may make excellent K....K....Klowns. But with enemies as dumb and as krazy as that.... How can we LOSE?
I've long believed that our military mission in Afghanistan is doomed. I think it's the wrong way to fight terrorism and religious extremism. I believe it's making Canada a more dangerous place rather than a safer one. But that doesn't stop me from paying tribute to this brave Canadian soldier.
Because however misguided this mission is.... to me she is a HERO. For showing the brutish Taliban, and the poor oppressed women of Afghanistan, what a liberated Canadian woman looks like. And for showing the little girls of Canada that they can be WHATEVER they want to be. Even a frontline soldier. Which doesn't mean that I don't share the feelings of this relative: "I think she did this for absolutely nothing... I ask myself what Canada is doing. We were blue berets, now we're fighters. "I don't think it's our place at all, at all, at all. We should be leading peacekeeping missions, not combat missions like we're doing." Or that I wouldn't give the same answer her family gave her, when she asked if they were proud of her. "To answer your question, yes, we are always proud of you, despite the sadness that has enveloped us..." Too bad she had to die in a country where one side murders women. And the other side treats them like animals.
Mohseni said that women and men are not equal in Afghanistan and shouldn't be treated as equals, arguing that men are the breadwinners and that rural women are illiterate, making it difficult for them to provide financial support to the family. "It is not possible for all women to pay the same amount of money as men are paying. For all these expenses, can't we at least give the right to a husband to demand sex from his wife after four nights?"
And nothing we can do will change those Medieval attitudes.
Karine Blais from Les Mechins, Quebec, showed those barbarous men what the future will look like. She IS a hero. I wish I could just think of that. But all I feel is sadness...
Glenn Beck is the latest darling of the krazy klown Republicon right. A Fox News host who makes the freaky fatso Rush Limbaugh look almost sane. The kind of guy who calls Obama a fascist AND a socialist. And likes to pour fake gasoline over his studio guests to show what the black man is doing to America. So yesterday he had a poor professor from Columbia as his guest. And Beck's craziness proved a little too much....
As you may know right-wingers in the United States are planning a series of so-called tea parties.
But Alice and the March Hare aren't invited.
These guys are....
So naturally the Department of Homeland Security is slightly concerned. (PDF)
Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use.
Anti-Semitic extremists attribute these losses to a deliberate conspiracy conducted by a cabal of Jewish “financial elites.” These “accusatory” tactics are employed to draw new recruits into rightwing extremist groups and further radicalize those already subscribing to extremist beliefs.
And I don't blame the DHS.
Because these Cons aren't just krazy.....they're DANGEROUS.
Fight them now or fight them later.
The sooner these Con krazies are taken to a concentration camp....or a secure mental health facility.
Well I gotta hand it to these Con porkers. They got a NERVE. First they tried to bribe Quebec and got slapped in the face. Then they tried to bribe Ontario and got kicked in their porky nuts.
Now they're trying to bribe British Columbia by piggy backing on the provincial election...and calling it a stimulus package.
When of course all they're trying to do is shamelessly stimulate THEMSELVES... to try to save their bacon.
Although I wouldn't be surprised if the good people of B.C. took their money...and then bit off their heads. Because a funny thing has been happening on the way to the Pork Sausage Factory. Instead of rewarding the Cons for trying to bribe them....or seduce them. *Shudder*
As the Conservative government continues its relentless campaign to woo voters with their own money and many press releases, recent opinion polls suggest increasing numbers of ungrateful Canadians are instead giving Prime Minister Stephen Harper the cold shoulder.
And the future promises to be even colder...
Unfortunately for Harper, the situation is likely to get even worse.
Other than the PM and a few of his loyal pompom shakers, few Canadians in the know continue to pretend the economy is going to reverse its current death spiral anytime soon.
As Harper looks at what lies ahead this Easter, he may be wishing he could hippity-hop down the bunny trail and right out of Dodge.
Or waddle down the piggy trail...... oinking and squealing.... and right out of Canadian history. You know when I hear the word "Cons" and I hear the word "pork." And I smell the moral corruption and the DESPAIR.
I can't help but think of a nice, big, fat, roast piggy...with an apple in its mouth. The Cons are going down hard.
OMG. Where's Barney when you need him? Look who's heading the Con peace , begging mission to Beijing.
No less than Stockwell "Doris" Day himself. Trade Minister Stockwell Day, long a critic of Beijing, and particularly its restrictions on religious freedom, arrived in China yesterday for an eight-day, seven-city tour aimed at invigorating a commercial relationship that has suffered while the two sides traded barbs over Chinese rights abuses and Canadian support for the Dalai Lama. Praise the Lord and pass the bong.... or the barf bag.
So let me get this straight. After giving China the cold shoulder because Stephen Harper's church HATES the Chinese government..... for not letting missionaries crawl all over them like they once did.
And so do all the theocons crawling all over the PMO. Now we're sending a Christianist fanatic.... who believes the same thing.... to try to mend fences with the Chinese? Because we need their business. Desperately.
Oh boy. Won't that be a lovely sight ? Doris on his knees begging the Chinese to forgive us...while begging his Lord to forgive him. CHEEEEEESUS. Something tells me this is going to end BADLY.
When it could have been so GREAT.
Thanks to this guy....
Norman Bethune. The great Canadian doctor, writer, artist, and fascist fighter. Who the Chinese have made the best known and most popular Canadian in history.
Thanks to him we could have had a privileged relationship with China, that could have helped our economy BIG TIME.
But the Cons put their religious beliefs before the interests of our country, so now we're forced to GROVEL for whatever contracts they will give us. Nice eh?
Gawd. Get those paper bags ready people...
Will the SHAME never end?
When can we send Doris back to the dinosaurs in Alberta?
Now that the pirate hostage drama off the coast of Somalia has ended in bloodshed.
And the American navy is patting itself on the back...for using a missile destroyer to bring down four men in a lifeboat.
Maybe it's time to remind you of the pirate story I told you the other day. And of the other lies they told us.
In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."
You know if I was a poor Somali fisherman I'd probably be a pirate too.
And as for those other pirates....
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century".
They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy." This is why they were romantic heroes, despite being unproductive thieves.
If I had lived back then..... I KNOW I would have joined them.
Although sometimes I think I have...
Here's to the poor and the oppressed of the world.
