Headstones: Canadian
“Unsound”; ‘Teeth And Tissue‘ (1995)
Hugh Dillon Is Cooler Than You Are.
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The First Three News Stories On 03/26/07
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Page Jump: BBC, NBC, PBS,
CBC/CTV — Aboot The Quebec Election: Here
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(6pm) BBC World News:
1) Political Peace In Northern Ireland: And ‘The Book’ said “the crazed homicidal psychopath shall lay down his pride so that he may share power with the bloodthirsty rapist and killer of children and all shall be at Peace in Northern Ireland (re: the country which has raised itself from ashes to charred embers to some semblance of non-burned remains through willpower and a lack of ammunition).” Ian Paisley — as evil a fucking monster of an Evangelical Fundamentalist Christian there ever was — sat down in the same room as Gerry Adams — the proud leader of the political wing of a blood crazed Catholic terrorist organization which never had any qualms aboot killing unarmed citizens — and signed a piece of paper which had on it (written in the blood of many an Irish man woman and child) plans for the two to share power in an Irish Parliament. This only two months before a deadline imposed by the Blair Government. Way to go boys, Peace Cigars all the way around. Fifty years of blown up and assassinated Irish People celebrated by staying dead.
Four things aboot “that fuck” being in the same room as “the other fuck” to stop a civil war which had no purpose:
1) The last bomb set off by the (Real) IRA was in August, 2001, and injures seven people in West London. The last Irish Americans funding the IRA or The Real IRA stop their support for either side a month later, which happens to be September 11, 2001. 9-11, also made it impossible to keep pretending to rationalize, or pretending to believe the rationalizations, for that level of violence. The IRA finally agreed to a complete “decommissioning” in October, 2001. Funny how arguments stop when the two parties are exposed for being complete ignorant assholes.
2) Canada played a large enough, but behind the scenes, role in the Good Friday Accords and the decommishioning that we’ll probably get a footnote in the history books. In 1997 retired Canadian General John de Chastelaine was appointed as the chair of the body to oversee decommissioning.
3) These Accords and Peaceful things happened under Tony Blair’s Prime Ministership so he should get a few footnotes as well. But lets not forget the other side of Britain’s involvement.
4) Almost 4000 people were slaughtered and over 36,000 injured so these two “Proud Irishmen” could sit at a table and proclaim their dual victory and consequent taking over of the Irish Parliament. Awesome. Good job. Fanatical interpretations of religion once again saved us all from having to live peaceful lives without having shit blow up in our faces.
2) Aussie In Guantanamo Bay: An Australian man being held in Guantanamo Bay for trying to hook up with the Taliban. David Hicks, became the first person in over 60 years to face an American military tribunal. His lawyer was hilarious. The Americans have let several detainees go back to their country of “origin” so the lawyer listed almost every nationality to be sent “home”… he must have listed twenty countries. Then he said something like “what makes an Australian passport different so that an Australian can’t come home?” Thing was he didn’t mention Canada in that list… because there’s a Canadian in that same Jail who won’t be coming home anytime soon either. Hicks is one of only four detainees to actually be charged (to date), the Canadian is one of the others. The appearance was the first in what will be several… basically it was a pseudo voir dire. He did, however, plead guilty. Dave will probably be back in AussieLand in time for that holiday they have down there that involves getting drunk and beating up Dingoroo Bearawallies or whatever the fuck those things are called… I think the holiday is “TuesWedThursFriSatur Day”.
3) Britons Held In Tehran: Kamangir has got a lot of recent information regarding this from media reports in Iran and from Iranian bloggers working in secret from inside Iran. Basically Iran fucked up in a huge way. Britain’s navy has satellite images and GPS data proving its ships were well within Iraqi waters doing work for the United Nations. And now Iran is desperate to find a way out of this that doesn’t involve them looking like complete tools. The soldiers will not be harmed and will be released in a month or so, but Iran is falling apart. Russia has backed out of the nuclear reactor deal, the UN is getting serious with the sanctions, the American military has more nukes parked three minutes off the coast of Iran than Europe currently has in its arsenal, and now Iran kidnaps 15 British soldiers for reasons that remain mystifying which means Europe will be hard-pressed to support anything Iran does from here on, and the American Democrats have lost an incredible amount of leverage regarding troop redeployment in Iraq. Despite what a lot of people are saying, things are not going well for the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Iran. If you really want to know what’s happening on the ground in Iran read Kamangir‘s site daily.
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(6.30pm) NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams
1) Heart Stents Unnecessary: Ends up taking a few pills everyday for five years is better for you than having a piece of steel jammed into your artery. The New England Journal of Medicine has published the results of a study which claims non-emergency stents (a coiled piece of mesh put into your artery) do not work better than pills in keeping people alive. Also, the thing aboot the pills is you can eventually stop taking them while the stent is forever. They interviewed some Doctor Dude who claimed the study was so much bullshit, but he looked a little like David Lee Roth and probably needs the stent-operations to support his “rocker lifestyle”. Heart surgery, in America, is big business. So are medications.
2) Alberto Gonzales Interview: The President of the United States gets to decide who his Federal Prosecutors are, he fired eight of them for reasons which appear a little… juiced. But that pesky Constitution says that’s what he gets to do. The Congress, trying desperately to prove they still exist, are using this as a pretext to punish GWB a little. Alberto was on NBC trying to do some explaining… . In Canada the Prime Minister gets to chose judges from lists put together by provincial councils, but he can ignore them and just pick judges at whim. It’s a thing we’re working on fixing.
3) Pat Tillman Cover-Up: Nine American military officers misled and lied aboot how Army Ranger Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan, including four Generals. But there was no criminal negligence in Tillman’s death. Tillman, a former NFL crazy person, was killed by his own troops in a case of mistaken identity. At least that’s what today’s report concludes. There have been a lot of questions since Tillman was killed, mostly asked by his parents and mostly unanswered by the American military. The Americans were looking for heroes to pin their PR Battle on and they found two in Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. One was rescued by Special Forces in a scripted propaganda movie from the doctors who saved her life, and the other was shot dead by his fellow soldiers who thought he was firing on them. Who — the fuck — is in charge of this cluster fuck?
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(7pm) PBS: The News Hour With Jim Lehrer:
1) Sunni’s Turning On Insurgents: Violence in Baghdad is down 25% over the past two months from previous months. But it’s starting to spread outside of the capital. Apparently the American government is now in negotiations with Sunni “tribal leaders” aboot getting their support against insurgents, and the talks are going pretty well. The Americans are also starting to “negotiate” with other Arab States regarding the creation of a Palestinian State, which is unprecedented because the talks don’t involve Israel. This is a huge step, especially for this particular President. Five American soldiers died in Iraq over the weekend, four of them in a single attack
2) War Funding Veto Coming: The American Congress and Senate are finally getting the votes necessary to send War Funding Bills to the President which include set dates for withdrawals and troop redeployment, but not nearly enough votes to make them Veto Proof. So they will be vetoed. One random Republican Senator (Chuck Hegal), in an interview in Esquire Magazine, made a veiled threat aimed at the President: “veto and be impeached”. This was quickly followed by a message from the President: “know your fucking role.”
3) Britons Held In Tehran: Go see Kamangir. His site’s one of the very best for this stuff and he speaks the language… I’m just a dancing monkey. Albeit one whose blog recently won an award and whose blog hits have quadrupled in three weeks, but a monkey nonetheless. See? I just scratched myself in a rude place.
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(8-10pm) CBC Montreal’s Quebec Election Coverage
1) Quebec Election: Canada has fundamentally changed tonight because Quebec finally decided the quest for sovereignty is dead. Quebec has only had two political parties since the 1960’s when the Union Nationale had their spectacular flameout. Those two political parties had one issue: the Parti Quebecois (PQ) wanted to take Quebec out of Canada and create a new country while the Quebec Liberal Party didn’t. The PQ is, mostly, a Left of (Canadian) Centre party with financially conservative tendencies, while the Liberals are further Right with larger government tendencies. The problem has been that with only two parties and one issue Quebec has gone 45 years with no place to put their vote regarding social issues. If you were a federalist and disliked the Liberal spending sprees you held your nose, voted PQ and hoped they lost the referendum. But tonight that changed, and with that change the chances of Quebec separating anytime soon are zero, zilch and none.
2) Quebec Election: This is how it works… the hardcore supporters of Quebec As A Nation only add up to aboot 20% of the Quebec population. The PQ won Provincial elections because people didn’t like the policies of the Liberal Party, not because they wanted separation. The referendums we’ve had in Quebec were close only because the questions were so vague and the PQ lied to the voters aboot their intentions. So with a third party, The Action Democratique de Quebec (ADQ), all those non-separatist people who voted PQ because they never liked the Liberals have a place to put their vote now. And because the ADQ is a “right wing” (for Canada) party, this means it will be finally possible to have an actual honest-to-God Left Wing Party as its bookend. The Quebec Green Party made huge gains in Quebec, although not quite enough to get anyone elected. So now all of those Lefty Types who were voting PQ because the Liberals are too “right wing” (for a Canadian Lefty) now have an alternative on that end of the Political Spectrum. This leaves the PQ with their hardcore supporters, who will never again have a majority large enough to govern Quebec.
3) Quebec Election: This is unbelievably huge. Even the BBC covered it. Quebec is now a full-on member of Canada. Somewhere Charles DeGaulle can go fuck himself.
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(9-11.30pm) CTV Montreal’s Quebec Election Coverage
1) Quebec Election: So what does this mean for Canada? It means the Conservative Party of Canada did in a year what the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) couldn’t in thirty: create the conditions necessary to bring Quebec into the Constitution (the LPC is not directly related to the Quebec Liberal Party). The LPC, for thirty years, gave in to every demand made on them by the PQ and the separatist blackmail. The result? A 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty that the Good Guys won by less than 1%. We were within a few thousand votes of splitting apart. So the Conservative government, which has been governing with a minority for over a year now, did the opposite. Marginalize the separatists, prove to Quebec that Federalism works, support the Quebec Liberal Party but at the same time show Mario Dumont, the leader of the ADQ, some Love and give him some street cred.
2) Quebec Election: Not only has Stephen Harper, our Conservative Prime Minister, broken the back of the separatists, he has set himself up for huge gains among the Quebec Federal Electorate by showing that it’s okay for Quebecers — by voting for the ADQ — to vote “Other”… as in “Other Than The PQ Or Liberals”. It’s a brilliant piece of political maneuvering and a “seismic shift in Canadian politics”. Quebec is now comfortable within the Canadian framework and the Liberal Party of Canada has been exposed for having spent thirty years spreading fear among the Quebec and Canadian electorate for their own gain. Now there are no knives at the throat during any negotiations between Canada and Quebec. Fucking Amazing.
3) Lottery Fraud: Four per cent of lottery winnings over $50,000 have been going to Ontario Retailers (the people who sell and check the tickets), which is a statistical impossibility. A report came out today accusing the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Agency (run by the Ontario Government) of turning a blind eye and being complicit in $100 million in fraud. The government says it’s taking the report seriously.
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If you find a broken link, or the YouTube stuff isn’t loading
properly, let me know and I’ll find an alternative…
I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.
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0_o
cultural sn:afu 
Thanks for the link to Kamangir’s blog. Always was curious as to what really was happening in Iran.
‘(written in the blood of many an Irish man woman and child)’ … not just Irish, Gabriel.
The deaths are the ‘A’ side of the ‘bloody’ contract … the ‘B’ side are the lives that were ruined by this war … the torture, the mistrust, the ingrained prejudices carved into hearts over years of segregation, the manipulated loyalties, a country ravaged by fear and suspicion, and a people forcibly divided for generations.
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It’s all well and good saying that “this fuck” and “that fuck” sat in the same room or that the US pulled it’s funding but the bottom line is they have a parliament with a constitution that no longer condones segregation or discrimination.
That to me is something we should be really pleased about. The war over there is for now stopped.
As a Brit I am ashamed of the way my government handled the situation over there. As a half Irish Catholic I am ashamed at what certain sections of my heritage did in retaliation.
By simply saying “the US” pulled the plug completely disregards the work put in by NI herself and the people and voluntary sector organisations who have worked tirelessly and peacefully to try and bring both sides together.
I have friends who live, and grew up there, I’ve worked with kids over there.
If you had told me 15 years ago that Gerry and Ian would be sitting in the same room signing anything I would have laughed.
But the younger generation on both sides have seen what their parents bickering has got them.
The economy in NI was ruined by the war. Everyone became working class. In the end that’s what united them.
The dregs of fundamentalism that remain are more tied up in the poverty and who has control of drug culture on the big estates now.
They have a constitution and a parliament and two leaders who goaded and supported people to kill their neighbours. Ian and, to a lessor extent maybe, Gerry should be in jail for jointly screaming “Fire” in a crowded theatre then claiming the resulting deaths were the cause of something that happened 400 years ago. I understand the political necessity of having them sign a piece of paper in front of some cameras. And even of keeping them around as figureheads.
It wasn’t the “US” who stopped supporting the Real IRA or the Actual IRA, it was the Irish Americans living safely in America and, to a lessor degree, Canada who were donating money to The Cause back home on either side. Tens of millions of Canadian and American dollars were spent buying guns for both sides in Northern Ireland.
Basically it comes down to Gerry and Ian gave the speeches, Irish Americans gave the money, and the Irish gave their lives. After 9/11 the Irish Americans, who had already cut way back on the donations, cut them altogether which killed the Real IRA.
The Irish people couldn’t stop any of this from happening. They had no guns, they had no votes, the British Government turned Northern Ireland into a prison camp, the funding for the militants was out of civilian hands and the lunatics calling themselves “Patriots” were what the insurgents in Iraq are now: fanatics who wouldn’t stop murdering for their cause.
The people with the guns have finally been marginalized so Northern Ireland will recover, they’ll be fine. Ireland is humming with new business and new wealth. That will spread North.
But Gerry and Ian, the Fucks, must never be celebrated for orchestrating a peaceful end to a useless and meaningless war they or their organizations started. They and their organizations are not, and have never been, Northern Ireland. They and their organizations have done everything they could to kill anyone who disagreed with their fanaticism.