Your first act of youthful anarchic aggression was tossing Pablum, a Canadian invention, into your mom’s face, or jamming a spoonful up your nose.
Your second act of youthful aggression was jamming twelve D-batteries into the portable stereo permanently attached to your arm so you could shut your parents out and impress your stoner friends with your ability to take 120db straight into your brain without bleeding or caring that in ten years you’d be stone-cold deaf and wearing a hearing aid the size of a small car just so you could listen to a plane takeoff.
And that completely inalienable right to force my musical tastes, no matter how insanely vile, into the brains of “adults”, and to look and act like a complete fucking idiot while doing it was introduced to the world by the portable electronic device. And the man who made that portable device possible was Lewis Frederick Urry, a Canadian chemical engineer and inventor.
Thanks to Urry, while I was in high school my friends and I would walk from the school down the main street of our little village, to the chip stand and back with my 36″ long and 10″ high portable radio blasting Anti Pasti, Charged GBH, Bunchofuckingoofs or some song aboot giving headbutts to random people.
That’s right, you can thank him.
In 1959, while working for Eveready, a division of Union Carbide — and later known as Energizer — Urry invented the alkaline battery and, later, the lithium battery. Forty-eight years later at least 80 percent of the dry-cell batteries in the world are based on Urry‘s work.
Born in Pontypool, Ontario, Urry earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Toronto after serving in the Canadian armed forces. By the time Urry retired he held 51 patents including several for lithium batteries, the energy source for most cell phones and cameras.
In a bizarre and almost certainly unintentional piece of irony Urry’s first alkaline battery was later enshrined close to Thomas Edison’s light bulb in the Smithsonian Institution Museum of American History. There are a lot of people who believe Edison invented the light bulb (he didn’t, Canadian James Woodward invented and patented the first light bulb, then sold the patent to Edison) and the batteries we use today (he didn’t). Urry’s designs and patents allowed electronic communication devices and… ahem… ‘other’ devices to become portable and handheld.
Previous batteries were massive, clunky and lasted for a few hours — at most — under the least stressful conditions. According to a 1999 article by the Associated Press “the typical U.S. household includes 18 devices that use [alkaline] batteries. Americans used an estimated four billion [alkaline] batteries in 1998.”
When I was a kid I was going through aboot twelve “D” batteries a month and now my digital camera is eating up aboot eight “AA” every six weeks (mostly because I forget to turn it off).
The Convenience Revolution of the 1950’s had left people limited to the length of their extension cords, but Urry’s invention unleashed the Mobile Gadget Revolution we have today. Lewis Urry died at the age of 77, after a short illness, on October 19, 2004.
“You Look Good To Me”;
‘Oscar Peterson: And the Bassists [Live In Montreux]’ (1977)
Ten Lost Years 1929-1939:
Memories of Canadians Who Survived The Depression
Barry Broadfoot (1973): In 1972, Broadfoot, a Canadian reporter working for the Vancouver Sun, quit his job and drove across Canada finding people who had lived through the Great Depression.
‘Ten LostYears‘ is an historical compilation of hundreds of heart wrenching first-person stories of starvation, murder and astonishing stories of survival told by farmers, widows, waitresses, hoboes and desperate families willing to do almost anything just to live another day.
Each single one of the hundreds of stories is simply overwhelming on their own, but one after the other they create an awe-inspiring testimony to the strength and absolute willpower these people had to have in order to survive what has to be the greatest series of natural disasters human beings have had to cope with, maybe only comparable to The Black Plague, HIV/AIDS and The Spanish Flu. ‘Ten Long Years’ sold 300,000 copies — a remarkable number in Canada — and spawned a successful stage play that ran for several years.
Broadfoot was a man who just got up one afternoon in 1972 and walked out of a successful seventeen year career as a daily reporter to travel across this massive country in a shit-box Volkswagen with his typewriter and tape recorder. He conducted hundreds and hundreds of interviews with the survivors, mostly in bars over glasses of beer or in family kitchens. The Canadians he spoke with had lived through The Spanish Flu, the “Dirty Thirties”, the First World War, the Second World War and the Korean War without ever really talking about their experiences with anyone.
“I said “the hell with it,”” he later said in an interview with his former paper. “I put 17 years of inter-office memos into a shoebox, liberated the typewriter and walked out.”
Ten Lost Years was his first book, he went on to write eight more: “Six War Years” (1975), “The Pioneer Years” (1976), “Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame” (1977), “My Own Years” (1983), “The Veterans’ Years” (1985), “The Immigrant Years” (1986), “Next-Year Country” (1988) and “Ordinary Russians” 1989. Through all of his book Broadfoot gave ordinary Canadians a voice in our own history.
Broadfoot was the recipient of numerous awards and honours including the Order of Canada, which is the highest award Canada has to offer to our citizens. In 1998 Broadfoot suffered a stroke which left him blind and impaired his memory. He passed away in 2003 in Nanaimo, British Columbia.
Excerpt One “The Killing Of A Hobo”: (page 138) “I saw one man kill another man one night in a jungle at Kamloops in British Columbia. It wasn’t about food or money either, let me tell you.
“One fellow said Roosevelt was president of the United States and another said no, it was Mr. Coolidge. One thing led to another, they always do. The Roosevelt man grabbed the other fellow and threw him and he fell over and his head hit the iron arrangement we had to keep our pots over the fire. It appeared to me the iron point end went into his ear. Well anyway, it killed him. Or so we thought. Certainly ‘peared dead to me.
“The Roosevelt man took him up to the tracks and soon a freight came along and squished his head to nothing, so where was your evidence? I reckon 50 men saw that killing, if no one saw it. It happened all the time and I never heard of anyone getting hanged for that. I’ll freely grant you that, mister.”
Excerpt Two “We Ate Not Too Bad”: (page 217) “You ask me why I worked in a filling station for $5.50 a week, working 55 to 60 hours a week? Simple.
“That was 10 cents an hour. With 10 cents my mother could buy more than a pound of hamburger. A quart of milk. About three pounds of dried beans or nearly two pounds of rice or two loaves of bread. A pound of peanut butter for 20 cents, good stuff with real peanuts in it.
“I know these costs. They are burned into my brain.
“That $5.50 kept my mother and sister and me from starving. We didn’t do too well in the other departments, medicine and movies and clothes, but we ate not too bad.”
Excerpt Three “Because They Could Live Off The Land”: (page 299) “About 1931 when the federal government pushed through emergency assistance payments, the city family got $15 a month and the country family got $10 a month because they’d likely have a cow and a pig and a big garden — and the Indian family got $5 a month because they could live off the land.
“Indians haven’t lived off the land since the days of Custer, but you couldn’t tell the bastards in Ottawa that. I honestly think they didn’t consider Indians as people.”
Excerpt Four “Farmers Did Funny Things”: (page 42) “Dust would cover up the fence posts and the farmers would come along with a wagon load of more poles and string another fence, on top of the first. I could never figure out why they did this because there were no cattle wandering at large, they had all been slaughtered long ago or taken to the community pastures. Farmers did funny things in those days. They still do, but everybody was just a little bit loco in that country then.”
1) American Base Attacked: Six American soldiers were killed in Iraq today, two of the soldiers were killed “in a rare direct attack” against an American base north of Baghdad. A suicide bomber attacked a fuel tanker truck outside the base, insurgents then attacked the base. Seventeen American soldiers were also wounded in the attack, while three more were killed over the weekend. More than forty civilians were killed in and around Baghdad in separate attacks, more than sixty Iraqi civilians were killed in attacks on Sunday. Another American soldier was killed in Eastern Afghanistan today. The American military has been warning, for a few weeks, that there’s a “spring offensive planned” by the Taliban. NATO Commander, Dutch Maj.-Gen. Ton Van Loon, has said in recent days that NATO will not be sitting around waiting for the Taliban to regroup, but will be sending troops — and they will mostly be Canadians — into the mountains to attack the Taliban before they can prepare. French and German soldiers will continue to make coffee and perform laundry duty from somewhere deep inside their Kabul bunker network… vive le Resistance. In an effort to stem some of the paramilitary movement across the Afghan-Pakistan border a security barrier is being built by Pakistan. Pakistani officials have been complaining lately about not having their “sacrifices” acknowledged.
2) Train Bombed In India: At least sixty-six people were killed in India when the “Friendship Express”, a heavily armoured train supplying service between India and Pakistan, was attacked with bombs and Molotov cocktails. Many of the deaths occurred because the train’s doors were locked and windows barred shut in an effort to protect the travelers from attacks. Most of the dead and injured are Pakistani. There have been no claims of responsibility, but both Indian and Pakistani governments condemned the attacks. Last July nearly 200 people died in a similar attack. A lack of communication between the two countries left relatives and emergency personnel waiting in Pakistan for five hours before the train arrived. No one had informed the Pakistani relatives that the wounded and dead had been left in India.
3) Mideast Talks Resume: American Secretary of State stopped by on the way back from Iraq to see how Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Palestinian Authority’s President, Mahmoud Abbas, were doing. Apparently everything’s going great, cause Rice was there for aboot twenty minutes and left smiling. One weird thing, there’s always a handshake for the camera’s going into these events, and one for the camera’s coming out. But when it came time to gather in front of the camera’s afterwards Rice was on her own. Hamas were too busy helping Iran develop a cure for AIDS to attend the meeting.
1) Canned Tuna Controversy: Apparently a specific type of tuna contains a higher level of mercury than is currently thought safe for eating. In a CBC study involving sixty cans from nine different stores, 13 per cent of Albacore tuna was found to have mercury levels higher than the .5ppm allowed by Health Canada. Another 10 per cent were just under the limit. Some random guy from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency agreed that compliance with regulations should improve, but could never be 100 per cent. Apparently some countries, including a few American states, have health warnings on packaging and Health websites regarding Albacore tuna and, dammit, why isn’t Canada doing the same? Well, we are now. Health agencies around the world write up guidelines concerning the amount of food that is safe to eat at any one time. These guidelines are then ignored by all of their citizens. So, according to Health Canada yesterday, it was safe to eat a whole lot of tuna (Omega-3 and all that health crap) everyday. And now, today, if you’re pregnant you’re allowed one can of tuna per week, and if you’re a child a quarter can per week is okay. According to the reporter, because Rhode Island has more stringent guidelines, the Government of Canada is therefore happy to see people poisoned by mercury. But, hey, apparently it’s still okay to allow mercury laden fish into the system.
2) Air India Inquiry Threatened: On June 22, 1985, Air India Flight 182 was blown up just off the coast of Ireland, killing 329 people, including 280 Canadians. Ever since it’s been one fuck up after another in trying to find out what went wrong and who knew what when. And now the Judge in charge of the “Air India Inquiry”, former Supreme Court Justice John Major, is threatening to shut the process down because the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Department of Foreign Affairs are withholding information critical to the proceedings. CSIS, who had the presumed-bombers under surveilance for months, and might have even known about the plot weeks in advance, burned and erased days worth of audio tapes after the bombing. The Canadian Government, for a decade, never really cared enough aboot the tragedy — most of the victims were born in India or of Indian descent — and didn’t even start a proper investigation for years. It wasn’t until 15 (Fifteen) years later that the first charges were laid. The only convictions have been for minor offences. No one has ever been held to account for what happened.
So last year, finally, the Conservative government launched a Public Inquiry into the events leading up to the explosions, what happened afterwards, and why government agencies have been Totally Fucking Up Any Chance For Truth In This Matter. Justice Major, in an effort to get a peek at more than 15,000 pages of blacked out pages from CSIC and the RCMP, has shut the inquiry down for two weeks. Prime Minister Harper has assigned his National Security Advisor to get the process back on track.
3) Political Ads Pulled: Only the CBC would consider this a story. The Conservative Party of Canada, the current governing party, has been running ads that — very mildly — attack the newly elected head of The Liberal Party of Canada (the Official Opposition). Some of these ads, the ones playing in Quebec, are being pulled because Quebec is heading into a provincial election next week, and the ads might be seen as supporting the current Quebec government. So, of course, the CBC reports the event as though the attack ads were being pulled because the Conservatives had done something wrong and were now admitting their bad behaviour.
1) New Political Poll: Newly elected Liberal Party of Canada leader, Stephane Dion, has lost any momentum from the leadership race and convention, and has dropped eight points in a new poll (just keep in mind there are four political parties in Parliament currently — the New Democrats (NDP), the Liberals, the Bloq Quebecois and the Conservatives). 53% of Canadians surveyed believe current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, “is a more decisive leader” 19% say Dion is decisive 33% say they “identify with Harper” 34% say they would vote for the Conservatives 29% say they’d vote for the Liberals (down 8% from just a month ago)
The strangest part of the Poll was the environment question. The Conservatives have been (unfairly) tagged as having wrecked Canada’s Kyoto agreements, even though the Liberals signed the agreement then did nothing for thirteen years. But after a year of Liberals attacking the Conservatives for not having a Kyoto strategy, Canadians apparently think all — or none — of the parties are capable of having a plan for fighting Climate Change:
Liberals: 23% Conservatives: 20%
NDP: 21% According to the poll, which was conducted between Feb. 15-18 by The Strategic Counsel for CTV News and The Globe and Mail (the largest national daily in Canada), Dion might not have been the right pick for the Liberals. Many members of his own party have come out in front of cameras and said too much emphasis was being placed on environmental issues, and that the current strategy of promising to meet the Kyoto targets within two years are simply insane. Meanwhile, Dion seems to have disappeared and left the defence to others in his caucus.
2) Ontario Puts Deadbeat Dads Online: The Government of Ontario is putting ‘mug shots’ and information on a website intended to shame “deadbeat dads” into paying their court ordered spousal and child support. In Ontario alone there are 190,000 outstanding complaints. $500 million was collected last year in support payments, with $1.3 billion remaining to be collected. Alberta already has one of these websites, which are popular in the United States. Alberta’s site has resulted in a 56% success rate in collections. As the child of a Fuck who never paid one fucking cent to my mother — who had to save for two months to afford a $5 haircut — I’d really like to see this retroactive to aboot 1978. You can see the people the Goverment has decided should be shamed into paying their support payments here: www.goodparentspay.com.
3) Air India Inquiry: Pretty much the same report as CBC, so I’ll give some more of the background… until the early 1980’s Canada had one agency in charge of both federal (and some provincial) policing responsibility and national spying. If you know aboot the American federal security system, pre-Patriot Act, the RCMP were our equivalent of the ATF, FBI, Secret Service, DEA and US Marshal Service, with Anti-Terrorism Response tossed in. By the early 80’s it had become pretty clear that having one agency responsible for so much was inherently dangerous. By then the RCMP had active files on over a million Canadians, this in a population of less than 22 million. So the government broke the RCMP up into smaller parts. One of these parts was the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which had a mandate to keep track of “dangerous” people living in this country (Canada has no international spy force, we do have a monitoring service called the Canadian Security Exchange, which spies on American communications… seriously.). So. In 1985 Canada had a new spy agency called CSIS, which — instead of working with the RCMP, they saw themselves as in competition with the RCMP (“we don’t report to you fuckers”). So when CSIS found out aboot a plan to blow up a plane over Ireland, they didn’t tell anyone. They kept it a secret, which is what they thought they were supposed to do. Then, after the Big Bang, they suddenly decided it would be a really, really smart idea to clean out some of their tape collection.
1) US Plans For Bombing Iran: I’m not entirely sure why people are surprised that the Americans would have a few plans for pacifying an enemy lying around. Lets not forget, the animosity in this relationship goes back aboot thirty years. For crying out loud, the Americans were willing to overlook the insanities of Saddam Hussein for ten years because he was willing to toss a few hundred thousand members of his Unwilling-but-Volunteered Force at Iran. Iran has spent thirty years arming Hezbolla, taking care of Hamas, sending weapons into Iraq to arm Shiites against their Sunni oppressors. America treats Israel like a 51st State, Iran would like very much to use Israeli’s for the Iranian “Shoot A Jew Into The Sun” missile program. Of course there are plans. Fuck, there are plans for an American invasion of Canada… possibly as a result of our unleashing Celine onto their unsuspecting elderly. I’m sure there are even plans in the New Hampshire Legislature for an invasion of Vermont. This is what militaries do in their spare time. What, you thought they just ran in place until war was declared?
2) Train Bombing In India: Not much different from the other reports. The reporter did get into some dangerously unsourced areas by saying something like “underneath their friendly exterior some Indian authorities believe Pakistan may not be completely innocent in this incident.” If you’re going to say something like that, have a better source than “Maybe”, “Possibly” and “Some Guy”. I could make an outsourced unsourced joke here… but I’m too tired.
3) Militants Attack UN In Kosovo: Three United Nations cars were damaged in a fairly minor attack near Kosovo’s capital Pristina. Kosovo has been run by the UN since 1999 when “NATO” (re: America, Canada and Great Britain) stopped an insane war of ethnic cleansing. There have been ongoing negotiations and votes regarding creating a new ethnically-Albanian country from breaking Kosovo away from Serbia. I’m sure, with the UN firmly in control, there will be no further problems.
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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.
Your first act of youthful anarchic aggression was taking a bowl of this stuff and dumping it on your head, in your mom’s lap, throwing it across the room, spitting it into your fathers face, covering yourself in it like it was peanut butter and you were chocolate, jamming it aboot two inches straight up your nose for no other reason than it made you feel good.
“Pablum” was the world’s first commercially available pre-cooked dried food created specifically for infants (just add water to create the mush).
In 1930 three Canadian doctors — Frederick Tisdall, Theodore Drake and Alan Brown — working at Toronto’s Hospital For Sick Children created the pre-cooked, vitamin-enriched, easily digestible cereal that has since saved millions of babies around the world from starvation and vitamin deficiencies. The ingredients included vitamins A, B1 and B2, D and E, and was “produced from a mixture of wheat, oats, corn, and bone meal plus wheat germ, dried brewer’s yeast, and alfalfa.
This was all then ground, mixed, dried, and pre-cooked.” Pablum is credited for greatly reducing the incidence of — among others — “rickets“, a crippling childhood disease.
The ease of preparing Pablum, and the longevity of the product in its packaged form, made the cereal a critical part of easing childhood malnutrition in the early part of the 20th century in America, Europe and Canada, and has also been used for the same reasons in developing nations.
The royalties from early sales of Pablum went to the Hospital For Sick Children and funded paediatric research at the hospital for 25 years. The mushy, bland, easily thrown cereal is still sold around the world today.
Spelled with a lowercase “p”, ‘pablum’ is defined as: “indicating something bland or oversimplified, especially a work of literature or speech. This usage predates the invention of the cereal.”
1) Canadians Love Pirate(d) Movies: American movies premiere in Canada on the same day they do in the US. Everyone else (you) has to wait. Then Americans have to wait aboot six to twelve months before they can see their favourite movie at home, while in Canada the DVD’s of those movies go on sale the day after the premiere. According to Twentieth Century Fox and the MPAA, Canada is responsible for 50% of the worlds movie piracy.
Considering the size of my brothers DVD collection, and the shit quality of the cover art, I’d almost have to agree with the 20th Fox people. I’ve walked through Chinatown in Toronto and found DVD’s of movie’s that haven’t even been in full release yet (6 DVD’s for $20). The sound and video quality of these pirated DVD’s sucks of course, because the movies are being filmed by kids hopped up on Red Bull and PopRocks using tiny-toy cameras that come in cereal boxes. But, then again, most of the actual Hollywood movies suck pretty huge regardless. Hollywood has been testing out new distribution methods over the past year, including at least one movie that was available for download, as well as on DVD the same day it was released in theatres.
As a result of the “Canadians are mass media pirates” thing there have been some vague threats aboot delaying releasing movies in Canada, so that we’d get them when Europe got them. Ouch. I’ll bet that’ll be enough of a deterrent to stop those underage kids and their cameras — that mom and dad bought them — from accepting hundreds of dollars to watch movies. Of course the MPAA are almost completely full of shit.
One of the worlds foremost experts on all things Internet and Technology, Michael Geist, debunked the MPAA “study” a long time ago. Canada does produce a lot of the worlds camcorder reproductions, but nowhere near the numbers produced by Hollywood. There have been instances in the past, notably the whole music downloading brouhaha, where American lawyers have taken random and wild swipes at Canada, only later to be debunked. There was also that whole “the 9-11 hijackers were from Canada” bullshit urban myth started and maintained by American Senators who, you’d think, would have at least one fucking clue to have made it that far in their careers.
2) Celebrating The Canadian Movie Community: The Canadian Movie Awards were held this week. At least that’s what Section B, Page Three, of the second largest Canadian National Newspaper says.
The National Post celebrated “The Genie Awards” by turning an entire two columns — eight inches each including headline and subhead — over to the event. The entire front page of the “Arts & Life” section was dedicated to a 2.5 star review of “Music and Lyrics”, a RomCom starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.
The biggest “Genie” winner was “The Rocket”, a bio-picture aboot Maurice “The Rocket” Richard. Richard (ReeShard) was a hockey legend, and a French-Canadian hero (#9: Sainte Maurice). People I know who have seen the movie say it was aboot a 3 star thing… Richard had this insane Death Glare while playing, and from what I saw of the movie the actor did a reasonable job being Richard, but his death glare was just silly-laughable.
Way back in the day Richard literally attacked Boston Bruin Hal Laycoe with his hockey stick and got into a minor wrestling match with referee Cliff Thompson and was suspended for the playoffs. The NHL Commissioner then attended the next Montreal Canadiens game, which started a riot in the arena. The riot spread into downtown Montreal. There are a lot of people, myself included, who believe this riot was the official start of The Quebec Revolution, which saw French-Quebecers eventually become full citizens in Canada.
The “Best Motion Picture” Award went to “Bon Cop, Bad Cop”. This would be like giving the Academy Award to “Lethal Weapon.” BC-BC sucked donkey cock, but it made some cash for some people, and everything was in focus… it was also selected as the “Golden Reel Award Winner” which, I think, means the donkey got off.
3) Sundance & Canada: “Padre Nuestro”, a Canadian movie directed by Christopher Zalla aboot an illegal immigrant’s search for his father in America, won the Grand Jury Prize at The 2007 Sundance Film Festival for best drama. Tamara Podemski, a Canadian actor, won the Special Jury Prize for Acting for her role as an American Indian in “Four Sheets to the Wind”. Podemski, who starred in Bruce MacDonalds “Dance Me Outside“, has always been one of my favourite actors (she’s also a major hottie). She was one of the only reasons to watch “Indian Summer: The Oka Crisis”… Gary Farmer and Alex Rice were the other two. Most “Native American” roles in American movies are played by Natives From Canada. If you’re ever in New York City you can ask Adam Beachaboot it.
4) The Academy & Canadian Movies: Paul Haggis has been nominated for a 2007 Academy Award for his work on the screenplay for “Letters From Iwo Jima”. Haggis has won the ‘Best Screenplay’ award twice already for “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash”. The stunning movie, “Water”, directed by Deepa Mehta, is nominated in the Best Foreign Film category. “Water is set in 1930s India against Mahatma Gandhi’s rise to power, and describes the appalling treatment of Hindu widows.” Ryan Gosling was nominated for ‘Best Actor’ for his role in “Half Nelson”. And the [Canadian] National Film Board (NFB) was nominated for ‘Best Animated Short Film’ for “The Danish Poet.” The NFB has been an animation and documentary powerhouse for decades, and has been nominated for 69 Academy Awards over five decades. They’ve won eleven.
5) Canadians Invented Hollywood: Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Canadians invented Hollywood. Mary Pickford, who starred in 248 movies and co-founded United Artists Studios, was a Canadian. So were Jack Warner, who founded Warner Brothers Studio and Louis B. Mayer who, along with his brother (also a Canadian), founded MGM Studios. Funny how no one offers this as proof that Canadians rule the world… or… maybe we do?
1) Iran Responds To American Accusations: Diplomats from the United States and Great Britain have been complaining for years aboot Iranian involvement in Iraq. Over the weekend American intelligence and military officials showed off declassified proof of recently built Iranian weapons found in Iraq. Today Diane Sawyer, a correspondent from ABC News perpetually on the verge of tears, had an exclusive interview with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Clips of the interview were played on BBC, ABC and CBC, in it Ahmadinejad never denies sending weapons into Iraq, but he does a pretty decent job of saying ‘the Americans are stretched to their limit so, no, we don’t fear an attack’ (loose translation of the English translation). There was a BBC reporter in Tehran who reported that Ahmadinejad, in the ABC report, made a veiled threat of intensive suicide bombings against American interests around the world. Ahmadinejad has mentioned in the past that Iran has a Suicide Bomber Unit of aboot 30,000 to 50,000 volunteers called the Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison.
In the past few months Iran has announced a weapons system upgrade for their air defence, which they’ve purchased from the Russian government, and they’ve had a ‘war games’ were they claim to have tested super-fast torpedoes. The Americans, meanwhile, have sent a second Aircraft Carrier Battle Group to the region, which is a much bigger deal than it sounds because one Battle Group has more nuclear weapons than any other country on earth except Russia and — maybe — Great Britain, and more air power than any other country on earth including Russia.
2) North Korea Agreement Rumoured: after spending so much time on Iran the BBC went into “Brief Mode”… apparently the “Six Party Talks” (not nearly as fun as the name suggests) have entered the final phase… at least the final phase not involving nuking North Korea. There have been concessions regarding the amount of food and fuel North Korea will receive for not blowing up South Korea and/or Japan.
3) Clashes Over Israeli Construction Site: Putting shovels into the ground anywhere in or around Jerusalem is a good way of starting a fight. This one’s aboot a bridge that may or may not collapse without some repairs. It just so happens the bridge is pretty close to the Al Aksa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site… seriously, how many fucking holy sites do religions need? There should be a two-site limit, everything after that gets ranked as a “Curiosity”. So there were enough protesters that the cops needed to be called, then a couple of people got arrested. All-in-all it was probably the calmest, most civilized religious confrontation in the region in a decade.
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(6.30pm) ABC: World News Tonight
With Charles Gibson
1) North Korea Agreement: “Sign Of Hope”. Four months after North Korea performed an underground nuclear test, and tried to launch a couple of medium-range rockets, the Six Party People (the United States, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea) have agreed to give North Korea 2million pounds of Fuel, and 2million Kilowatts of power. In return North Korea will shut down its reactors, however there will be no timetable or deadline for dismantling any nuclear weapons already built. Apparently the deal almost collapsed over the weekend but a 16 hour marathon negotiating session yesterday (Sunday) sealed the deal. Most of the fuel and power will be coming from South Korea.
This is very similar to the deal former President Bill Clinton signed off on aboot ten years ago. North Korea broke that deal virtually as it was being signed.
2) Obama & Clinton: Until it becomes clear, after another sixteen months of campaigning, which of these two is going to secure the nomination for the Democrats, they’re going to be compared and contrasted Every. Single. Freaking. Day. Without discounting John Edwards, who will probably win the Iowa Primary, it’s going to be Clinton-Obama versus McCain-Giuliani in 2008. There’s this weird movement on right now in American politics… there are a lot of black-Americans who believe that Obama doesn’t qualify as an “African-American” because his heritage doesn’t go back to the slave days. Basically, Obama isn’t African-American because his father was borne in Africa (Kenya). And this isn’t some fringe thing, a lot of black-American scholars are writing articles aboot this. Right now only 20% of black-Americans plan to vote for Obama. Hillary, on the other hand, is actually attracting female voters, a voting segment that have traditionally never voted for a female candidate.
Then Australian Prime Minister John Howard, on Australian TV, said that al Qaeda would be circling November on their 2008 calendars and praying “several times a day” for an Obama victory. Obama responds by calling Howard Bush’s monkey. Or something. Then Obama refers to the deaths of the 3000+ American soldiers who have died in Iraq as “wasted”, which is not cool if you want to be president and many, many parents of those soldiers happen to believe their sons and daughters died saving lives and, you know, important stuff. Whoops.
3) Golden Mosque Anniversary: This was the one-year Anniversary of the bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra, Iraq. The 2006 bombing of the ‘Golden Mosque’ is now considered to be the event which turned the Shiite and Sunni militia’s attention away from the “Coalition” and onto each other. On the Anniversary 88 people were killed and over 250 injured as a result of suicide attacks in Baghdad. The largest explosion occurred while Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was holding a press conference, the explosion could be clearly heard while al-Maliki was speaking but no one seemed to notice. Attacks over the last two months have actually decreased substantially in number, but have increased in ferocity. Instead of a single truck bomb, now it seems as though two or three suicide bombers are being assigned to the same target with larger bombs. The market attack on the Anniversary involved three truck bombs, including one in a parking garage. There was also a short report attached at the end concerning the “troop surge”. The American goal is to have 90,000 mixed Iraqi/American troops in Baghdad, up from 50,000 currently, but it won’t be fully realized until at least the end of the summer.
1) Baghdad Suicide Bombings: More footage of dead Iraqi’s. The report was from Independent Television News (ITV). The market that was blown up was the last remaining open market in Baghdad. One of the shops was a tailor so maniken torsos were strewn all over and mixed with the dead, human, bodies. The pools of blood were deep and everywhere. The ITV reporter made a point of mentioning al-Maliki’s non-response to the noise of the explosion.
2) Saddam’s VP To Hang: PBS does a news-in-brief segment that lasts aboot ten minutes, then they have four fifteen minute segments on the top stories of the day. The second story during the brief-segment was aboot Saddam’s former Vice President Yassin Ramadan. Ramadan had originally been sentenced to life in prison, but an appeals court has decided that he gets to hang as well. He was convicted for the killing of 148 Shiites in the 1980s.
3) Iran Denies American Claims: Pretty much the same report as ABC, they use some ABC footage of Diane Sawyer interviewing Ahmadinejad, but PBS brings up the fact today (Monday) is the 28th Anniversary of the “Iranian Hostage Crisis” where Iranian Revolutionary Students took over the American embassy in Iran. There was also some talk aboot possible American plans to bomb nuclear and military sites in Iran, but this was dismissed by Presidential Spokesman Tony Snow as “speculation by Democrats being politicians” (or something close to that). Also, the point was made that for the past twenty years Iran has been supplying Iraqi Shiites with money and weapons, so this is really nothing new.
1) StatsCan Census Controversy: There have been… “problems” with the latest Census in Canada. Enumerators haven’t been paid, or have been paid up to five months late, and were apparently told to fabricate ‘non-crucial’ information. It’s not really a top story, at least it probably wouldn’t be a top story in any other country, but the CBC does like stories involving government screw ups.
2) Heart Attack Risk Cut By Napping: A study released today from Harvard University shows that people who managed to get “good, quality sleep”, including daily napping, lowered their risk of heart disease by 37%. The study ran over six years and involved 26,000 people. The effects were most noticeable in “working men”, but the reporter said this was probably due to the number of men versus women in the study. The effects should be seen equally across both genders. The report then showed a Canadian company, Intuit Canada, which has several nap rooms available for their employees. They didn’t mention anything aboot bedhead emergencies.
3) Day 80 Of Canadian Prisoners Hunger Strike: After the attacks on September 11th the Government of Canada, then led by The Liberal Party of Canada, wrote up a bunch of new laws kind of similar to the American Patriot Act. The Justice Minister of the time, Anne McLellen, actually said that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not guarantee any of the Rights and Freedoms listed in the Charter. Yes. Really. The way it currently works is the government can hold people it considers to be a grave risk to the security of Canada or Canadians by issuing a “Security Certificate”. These people can be held for as long as the government wishes (up to aboot six years at a time) without showing the evidence to anyone, including the lawyers or the defendants… because they’re not really defendants because they haven’t really been charged with any crime. So… there are three men, Mahmoud Jaballah (2001), Mohammad Mahjoub (2003) and Hassan Almrei (2001), they are all Muslim and all from “Elsewhere” before they got to Canada. The government claims to have evidence tying them to al Qaeda. They are being held in a special facility in Kingston, Ontario, and they have been held without charge. Under the security-certificate process, the government can detain foreign nationals believed to pose a national-security threat and withhold “sensitive evidence” from their lawyers.
So the three men are actually free to leave at any time, as long as they travel back to their “country of origin”, which means Egypt and Syria. The three men claim if they return there they will be arrested and tortured. So… the hunger strike… it’s into it’s 80th day now — the men are surviving on water and juice only — isn’t aboot getting out and not facing any court, but aboot getting access to medical treatment and some exercise time inside the prison. Each of the men has lost an average of 45lbs. Millhaven has been referred to as “Gitmo North.” But, honestly, not by that many people.
1) Students Cyber-Bully Principal: A school in Ontario banned cellphones from classrooms so nineteen students started a website specifically to leave messages aboot the school principal. Several of the messages were borderline pornographic and attacks on his character, even leaving his phone number. When the site was discovered the students were suspended by the school board for a few days. The students, being morons, were surprised this could happen because, like, it’s free speech man, like, there are laws, you know, that allow citizens to, you know, express their opinions. Fucking tools. There was one interesting question: “Where does the school jurisdiction end?” asked Kevin S*ltana, a tool. Apparently the jurisdiction can and does extend to defending school employees from slanderous punks like Kevin Sult*na. According to the Media Awareness Group, 1 in 4 Canadian students are, or have been, digitally harassed by slanderous punks like that fucking moron, Kevin Sulta*a and his eighteen punk friends. Fucking idiots.
2) Karla Homulka/Teale Has Child: Karla Homulka/Teale is Canada’s third most notorious killer, after Clifford Olsen who murdered a whole lot of children, and Paul Bernardo, Karla’s ex-husband. Paul will be in jail for the rest of his life. Due to a severely broken Ontario Justice System, Karla was released after only twelve years in prison despite having killed at least three girls — including her own younger sister — in a series of bizarre and truly Evil sexually based attacks. And now she has a child of her own. Yippee. At least one nurse refused to take part in the birth. The lawyer for the victim’s families said “she should never have been in a position to have a child.” In response to the nurse refusing to assist, a medical ethicist said “nurses and doctors are not Priests, their role is not to judge their patients.” The baby could not be reached for comment.
3) US Shooting Sprees Leave Six Dead: Crazy people, including one fuck up in a trench coat, shot and killed a lot of people who didn’t deserve to die or to have tragedy in their lives. At least one of the crazy people killed themselves, I think the other was shot dead by police. Which, if true, was probably for the best.
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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.
0_o
cultural sn:afu 