Archive for: December 2006
December 21, 2006
 As we sit here in our nice comfortable and safe nation, complaining about what some bozo judge did to a Christmas tree, or about Christmas concerts in school getting renamed “winter festivals,” or people saying “happy holidays,” or any of the other gripes and groans that surface at this time of year, perhaps we should take just a minute or two to think about just how good we have it. There are plenty of people in the world who have one hell of a worse time of it than we do.
The Winterpeg Sun’s John Gleeson relates one such story today as he describes the plight of the oldest sect in Christendom, the one million Assyrian Christians currently living in Iraq:
 Christians thrown to the lions in Iraq
By JOHN GLEESON
While Canada’s self-appointed guardians of Christmas dig up new evidence of persecution — a tree moved down the hall, a greeting without “merry” dutifully attached — real persecution against Christians is going on daily and is being largely ignored.
Nowhere is the situation as grave as in Iraq.
Since the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq’s one million Assyrian Christians — the oldest sect in Christendom — have been the target of a campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing at the hands of Islamic extremists and Kurdish nationalists. Tens of thousands have fled the country for Syria, Jordan or Turkey.
This year has been the worst since the invasion. Church bombings, car bombings, kidnappings and killings have become commonplace.
In August, 13 Assyrian women in Baghdad were kidnapped and murdered. In October, a 14-year-old boy in Albasra was crucified and stabbed in the stomach in mockery of the death of Christ. Another 14-year-old boy in Baquba was decapitated in his workplace by veiled Muslims chanting “Allahu, Akbar! Allahu, Akbar!” Also that month, a priest was kidnapped, tortured and beheaded, supposedly over the Pope’s comments critical of Islam.
Indeed, in the wake of Benedict XVI’s September speech, extremists threatened to kill all Christians in Iraq unless the Pope apologized.
Except for a few Christian relief agencies and the Assyrians’ own news service, the bloodletting has been virtually unreported — lost in the sea of carnage that is today’s Iraq.
Assyrians themselves are calling on the western world to create a “safe zone” for Christians on the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq (the Canadian-based Council of Assyrian Research and Development has posted a petition at www.cardonline.org). The European Parliament passed a resolution to that effect in April, but so far nothing has been done.
Meanwhile, Christmas has understandably gone underground in Iraq.
Due to “the grave security situation in the country,” Iraq’s Chaldean patriarch Emmanuel Delly has “appealed on safety grounds to Christians … to refrain from any public celebrations for Christmas.”
Christians hide in their homes and pray in secret. Priests are afraid to appear in public in their clerical robes, lest they be indiscriminately attacked. Schoolgirls have been warned by Muslim extremists to wear the hijab, and boys to dress in a “sombre manner,” or face the consequences under sharia law.
Truly a sad fate for a Christian community that traces its foundation back to 33 AD and St. Thomas and where most of the people still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus and the Apostles.
It’s ironic, but not really surprising, that the American-led occupation under President George W. Bush would usher in an era of atrocities against Iraq’s Christian minority. They were an easy revenge target for the majority Muslims, who have only been emboldened by the U.S. government’s apparent disregard for the Assyrians’ plight.
With more important geopolitical alliances to forge with the warring Muslim factions and the Kurds, you could say the Americans have thrown the Christians to the lions.
And remember, the same calamity could befall Pakistan’s three million Christians, already a persecuted minority, if things were to get really ugly in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Persecution? We don’t know the half of it.
 Despite being Catholic, I have no real problem with the theory of evolution per se. It’s actually rather neat and tidy, when you think about it. Things that can survive, do. Things that aren’t properly equipped and adapted to the realities of the world in which they live, don’t. Sort of like nature’s way of keeping the traffic moving.
If you’re wondering why I’m babbling about evolution, it’s because yet another dinosaur is facing extinction: the City of London Board of Control:
The fate of London’s board of control is in the hands of a simple majority of city council.
Amendments to the Ontario Municipal Act approved yesterday at Queen’s Park reduces the required two-thirds majority vote of council to abolish board of control to a simple majority, or 10 of 19 council members.
And it removes the need for Ontario Municipal Board approval of any change.
Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best, who supports abolishing the board, said she expects the issue to be dealt with sooner rather than later.
Okay, so maybe Annie’s not a total writeoff, after all.
Just about everybody hopping into the ring in this little circus –regardless of what side of the issue they’re on– all seem to agree that nothing is going to get done on this until after the 2007 budget is dealt with. Fair enough; deal with things in order. But this sauntering sauropod has been lumbering across the London political landscape like a bull in a china shop for decades past its best-before date and it’s damn well high time that it was put out of our misery. London is the last city in Canada with a board of control. Just shoot the damn diplodocus and get on with business, already.
 Hm. Come to think of it, now that Joe “I campaigned against it before I ran for it” Swan is back in town again, I wonder how long it will take before he starts hooting about this?
December 19, 2006
I know, I know; it’s silly. But then, so is all the buffoonery in a certain courthouse lately…
 Since this site is on a blogroll that is family-friendly and their aggregator picks up the first 400 characters of each post, I’m going to have to be somewhat restrained for couple of paragraphs. But I am still TOTALLY [BLEEP]ed off, so here goes…
Well, now; isn’t THIS just a big [BLEEP]ing surprise to everyone? It seems that the [BLEEP]ing [BLEEP]heads down at [BLEEP]ing London City Hall, even if you lined them all up [BLEEP] to [BLEEP], couldn’t find mathematical common sense with both hands and a [BLEEP]ing map if you nailed it to the ends of their [BLEEP]s:
London city hall is sitting on another fat surplus this year and the fight over how to use it began last night.
City coffers will have an extra $8.1 million at year’s end, staff project, the third year in the row the city’s taken in more money than it has spent — more than $30 million over three years.
City finance boss Vic Cote wants to use most of the surplus to reduce debt and for spending initiatives.
Far down the priority pole is offering immediate relief to homeowners, who face a projected tax hike of between 3.5 and 4.5 per cent, including water and sewer charges.
 Yup, that’s right: as we wade into yet another term stuck with Anne Marie DeCicco-Clearly-Not-The-Best, we’re averaging $10 MILLION a year in surplus (for those of you who are wondering, that comes out to about thirty-one bucks a head for every man, woman and child in the city) and the Tax And Spend Squad are STILL cranking it to Joe and Jane Lunchbox.
Vic Cote came dangerously close to growing a brain when he was talking about using the surplus to pay down the municipal debt (something I’m always in favour of) but then he blew it by barfing up a hairball about “spending initiatives” and suggesting a paltry 600 grand for tax relief. Gee whiz, Vic; thanks there, buddy. Yer a real font of… well, you know. 
Somebody (I’m not sure who) tabled a motion to nix this bullshit last night but it died on the floor by one vote. The Freeps had how they voted:
Yes: Gina Barber, Bill Armstrong, Susan Eagle, David Winninger, Paul Van Meerbergen, Judy Bryant, Walter Lonc, Joni Baechler and Harold Usher.
No: Anne Marie DeCicco-Best, Tom Gosnell, Bud Polhill, Gord Hume, Steve Orser, Roger Caranci, Paul Hubert, Cheryl Miller, Nancy Branscombe and Bernie MacDonald.
And for the record: no, I don’t pay city taxes. Not directly, anyway; I rent. But I know plenty of folks that do, and every one of them are getting sick and God damned tired of having to take a screwing every year while City Hall counts up the extra quid every December. These people are pissed.
And I don’t blame ’em one bit.
December 18, 2006
 Well, this is… different. Not really sure what to make of it, to be honest with you. Could be good, could be bad; I really haven’t made up my mind yet.
As most of you have probably heard by now, the cops from Hamilton, Ontario have put up a vid on YouTube that shows footage from security cameras that police are hoping will help them in finding the killer or killers of 22-year-old Ryan Milner. Milner was stabbed to death at the corner of King William and Catharine Streets after attending a Sean Price concert at Club Seventy Seven on Nov. 16th.
I’m not sure if this is going to work or not. And to be completely honest with you, while I do support just about anything that gets murdering scumbags off the streets, I just can’t shake this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that keeps turning my thoughts to the topic of Big Brother… Gonna have to spend some more time thinking about this one, I guess.
The YouTube blurb is as follows:
Police are asking for the public’s assistance in identifying two men seen attending the Sean Price concert at Club 77, Hamilton Ontario on Nov. 17th, 2006. This video shows the two males arriving at 11:14p.m. and are described as 1) male white, wearing a white horizontal striped shirt and a black/white baseball hat with the word “JOKER” on the front and 2) male white, short hair, wearing a shirt with the word “ROCAWEAR” on the front and “99” on the back. Anyone with information please call Detective Sergeant Jorge Lasso at 905-546-2458 or Call Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.
December 15, 2006
“I am not alive, nor am I dead. I am undead — forever.”
– Strahd von Zarovich –
 It’s coming; everyone agrees on that. We aren’t likely to make it to Dominion Day without having to pinch our public proboscises and ponderously plod to the polls to put a plug in the pursuing pageant of platitudinous political punditry.
Don’t screw with me today; I have a thesaurus and I’m not afraid to use it.
So everybody and their pet beaver has figured out that — sometime in the none too distant future — we’re about to find ourselves up to our collective you-know-whats in a federal election campaign. Again. 🙄
 You’d think that after the Fiberals’ Extreme Makeover in Montreal this month, they’d be looking for something new to hammer Harper over the head with in the upcoming campaign, but did they? Hell, no! They grabbed the nearest shovel, made a beeline to the Grit Graveyard of Tired Canardsâ„¢ and dug up the moldiest, rankest character-assassination cadaver they could find: The Vast Right Wing NeoCon Conspiracy® Hidden Agenda…
Dion gave every indication during a news conference yesterday he will resurrect the theme in the next campaign, expected early next year.
And he shrugged off a suggestion the hidden right-wing agenda theme might sound a little stale if trotted out yet again.
“It’s less and less hidden,” Dion said of the Conservatives’ plan for the country.
Like we need this damned revenant shambling into our midst again. If anyone at all in the whole damn country was still itching away with some doubt or other about whether or not the HypoGrits were, indeed, just the “same old same old” that they’ve always been, those doubts should now be as dead as the “scary Conservative bogeyman under the national bed” tactic was thought to be.
I mean, come on now; let’s be serious for just one God damned minute, okay?? Seriously, even the Liberals (yes, those Liberals) can’t possibly be THAT fucking STOOPID! Can they? As of this writing, Stephen Harper has been Her Majesty’s Prime Minister of Canada for 312 days and, as everyone has seen, none of the following has happened yet:
- Neither Stephen Harper nor any members of his caucus have eaten any babies.
- Quebec has not separated from Canada.
- The sun has not burned out.
- Our health care system has not collapsed.
- Homosexuals have not been rounded up into camps in the high arctic.
- Women have not been forced to get pregnant in order to be denied access to abortions.
- We have not become of 51st state of US of A.
- We have not sent troops to Iraq, either.
- The Charter of Rights and Freedoms has not been scrapped.
- We have not withdrawn from the UN.
- The sky has not fallen.
- There have been no reliable reports (other than above) of the dead rising from their graves to feast upon the living.
- We have not declared war on puppies.
- Toronto has not been placed under martial law (although that might not be such a bad idea).
- The polar ice caps have not melted.
- The National Capital has not been moved to Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump.
- The economy has not collapsed.
- We still have no official State Religion; Christian, Satanic or otherwise.
- Fun has not been outlawed.
- No one has been executed for anything.
- Banjo lessons are not a compulsory component of our educational curriculum.
- No angels have tooted any trumpets, cracked any seals, or done anything else worrysome.
- etc, etc, ad nauseum…
The more I hear this bullshit, the more the HypoGrits remind me of a doomsday cult: They keep predicting the end of the world but when the appointed day comes and goes (over and over again), they just move the goalposts. “Next time, it’ll happen.”
Yeah. Sure it will. Whatever.
STFU, already.
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