An awful waste of domestic oil, and further, whether he had spent much time in Palestine, the world’s largest open air prison, which paradoxically lent much to the horror of the pilot’s demise. Read more…


I keep hearing it’s held to honour those who fell in battle to protect our democracy, our way of life. And then I hear of the extensive collateral damage, the loss of life, especially women and children. And I also continue to hear this remembering is to provide us with reason not to have to experience the destruction and loss again. But our memory fails us time and again, war and battle reoccur in spite of our hearing the trumpet horn the Last Post, and in the presence of the recitation of McCrae’s poppy poem, in spite of how many veterans recount their wartime experiences, in spite of how many assemblies are held, how many pulpits and politicians condemn war and all its horror, with their condescending emphases on “It’s not us, it’s them!” Read more…

Israeli Administration daily releases the total number of Hamas rockets that have fallen on the occupied lands they refer to as their own. The lands they have encroached upon over the decades in the face of world wide condemnation. On these lands are built settlements which are filled with those still eager to emigrate to that put upon country. These settlers often decide that they shall perform vigilante actions of harassment and destruction. Assassination of local Palestinian residents, the felling of their orchards, the killing of their livestock, the wounding of those who attend these minimal aspects of survival, the blowing up of sacred buildings, their defaming other religious sites. The building of a defence wall which quarters the area into what have been called bantustans. Given all this and the blockades and restrictions, the endless, deliberate humiliation members of the Gaza Strip suffer, not to mention long lists of restrictions which contain materials that would allow a rebuilding of what destruction the Israeli Armed forces has rendered. Read more…

Given that an election of a major for Brantford, Ontario is forthcoming, I thought that I should make a few observations for the candidates to respond to. Read more…

What are malls but assassination halls of culture and indigenous peoples. Why are the assassins but the corporate powerful and their political friends the greasers who facilitate the assassinations along with their clubs the police, the ones with batons and pepper spray and teargas canisters. They facilitate the movement of citizens from the proposed mall space so the bulldozers can begin to uproot the century old trees from the Taxim Gezi Park where this additional mall is to be built. Read more…

There aren’t but a few citizens in North America, if not the world, who don’t know the craziness of American gun laws, at the State and Federal level. For example the Stand and Deliver rule in Florida or the Right to Carry law in any number of states. Read more…

Robben Island, South Africa’s Alcatraz, had not suffered a loss for 27 years, until the S.A. government released its most notorious tenant according to what it had decreed. Life imprisonment was the unexpected verdict, but twenty-seven years was all that was served, the rest of the world deeming finally that the penalty was too harsh for a man who merely insisted that democracy was owing to all, no matter what his colour or race. How often were his hands blistered and bleeding and how often were his guardians addressed courteously and with dignity, how often did forgiveness underlie his greetings, responses, hellos? Read more…

There’s a cow and a bull outside the small five-house complex where I live and every now and then they talk to one another or to their owners to merely note that they’re still afield or fro that person to come and move the forage closer to where sac of them are pinioned to rope to a steel stake in the ground. The calls become more insistent as sunset nears, the cow particularly for she has to be milked. The bull? Probably he’s bedded where Bossie is, so when she leaves he goes too, or soon thereafter. Read more…

Recently Stanley Pivot had been listening to an AM radio station that plays clips of well known stand-up comic’s and the longer he listened the more he disliked what he heard. The laughter from the audience which was apparently there before the comic began to seem to Stanley to be nothing more than a laugh track stuck in behind the comic’s routine inappropriately, they didn’t match, what the artist said and the audience’s response. Much of what was said according to Stanley wasn’t laughable either. Thus he began to take considerable notice of the words and story line of what was presented. Thus Stanley started to evolve his standup routine which the more he prepared the more excited he became. Some conclusions he immediately drew. Read more…

He Said:
“The more I read the cables
[720,000 of them]
the more I came to the conclusion
that this type of information
should become public • • .
I thought that these cables
were a prime example
of the need for more open diplomacy” Read more…