It's time to Boycott Wal-Mart

I grew up or, at least came of age, in an era of passionate boycotting. The earliest I recall was the Delano grape boycott and vivid images of the great Cesar Chavez marching on Sacramento. It was distant news and I don't recall ever passing up a nice grape no matter its provenance. But this was merely the signs of things yet to come as the 1960s writhed with all varieties of social protest, of which boycotting was but one.

Now, of course, the world did not begin with me on a sullen gray evening 61 years ago to this very day (shameless hint that, yes, this is the anniversary of my hatching and any good wishes and gifts you wanna send along, do so, except if they are from Wal-Mart the matter of which I am getting to, trust me). The word, boycott, derives from one Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, a land agent for John Crichton, the 3rd Earl of Erne. Poor Charlie was caught somewhat in the middle. Having defended his employer against angry tenants, he became their target and was so successfully ostracized that he hightailed it out of the Emerald Isle and, unwittingly into the dictionary.

Since those etymologically fateful days of the 1880s, boycotts have become legion. Some we can look back on admiringly, as for example, the courageous bus boycotts in old Dixie in the early 60s, the miscellaneous determined anti-apartheid boycotts - I can still remember snubbing Paarl Roodeberg one night during a period when I snubbed very little of the alcoholic beverage family. And there were infamous boycotts as well, most notoriously, the Nazi ones against the Jews.

Overall, however one hears less about boycotting these days but it is long overdue now to direct one at the great Satan of Bentonville, Arkansas, Sam Walton whose Wal-Marts have become one the primary causes of the de-industrialization of most of the western world. In the process, Wal-Mart has led the way in enabling an even greater nemesis, the Peoples Republic of China to use economic judo on America and its allies, turning the force of our insatiable appetites for cheap crap into our undoing. I am tellling you nothing you don't already know, to say that there are very few goods we buy today which have not been manufactured in China. But the role that Western greed and cupidity has played in not allowing but forcing this to happen is too often forgotten as we race into one of the always proliferating Peoples' Republic factory outlet stores, AKA so-called "dollar stores" or to the very nucleus of the problem, Wal-Mart.

Along the way to reeking macro-economic havoc, Wal-Mart has not neglected the micro-level, making sure that it decimates older down-towns and at the same time brutally fights off any attempts by its workers to unionize. the latest development in this and indeed the impetus for this grousingly call for a boycott is the adjudicated finale exonerating the Wal-Mart bullies for their blatant tactics of intimidation. The setting is Jonquiere a small city on the Saguenay in Quebec. In 2004 the Jonquiere Wal-Mart was unionized by United Food and Commercial Works (UFCW). Within a few months, Wal-Mart Canada made a press release to the effect that the Jonquiere store was not "meetings its business plan." Indeed! The very presence of a union that can offer some modest counterbalance to Wal-Mart's despotic intolerance of the slightest uppitiness of employees, is certainly not part of old Sam or his descendant's "plan." To the contrary in its own stores and in the massive infrastructure of Chinese suppliers, worker democracy is verboten.

So it came as no surprise that a mere six months after unionization, Wal-Mart pulled the plug at Jonquiere. Uncharacteristically for the corporation -- which has used cut and run punitive tactics before when the spectre of unionization loomed, the locals fought back. Two former clerks Gaeten Plourde and Johanne Desbiens led an ultimately quixotic legal tilt at the giant claiming that not only had the closure violated Quebec's labour laws but, that since joining a union was a basic right, Wal-Mart had violated the charter.

In a split decision on Friday, the majority of our highest court chose to affirm 21st century serfdom. Largely disregarding the charter rights issue, the majority of 6 over 3, came to the brilliant conclusion that since Wal-Mart had, for whatever reasons it saw fit, closed the plant, naturally it permanently laid off its workforce in Jonquiere. That the closure was a direct attack on a sanctioned right and, indeed a very much planned threat to any employees in Canada and beyond, was disregarded in this trivialization of the matter by our learned lead justices. There is some solace to be taken in the minority opinion, written by Madam Justice Rosalie Abella who, in an unusually candid statement, opined that the majority decision was a ""a marked and arbitrary departure from the philosophical underpinnings, objectives and general scope of the labour code."

Two things emerge with painful clarity here: Wal-Mart can and will continue to throw its behemoth weight around in all aspects of its business (a similar union busting closure hit Wal-Mart's tire and lube outlet at Gatineau, Quebec, just last year) and the highest court of the land cannot be counted upon to challenge these robber barons. It is just for such a case that the valiant precedent of the good but poor tenants of Erne in 19th century Ireland should be followed. The extraordinary social and also economic costs of supporting Wal-Mart with your consumer loonie are crystal-clear. Each time you check out so much as a chocolate bar at one of the many outposts of these thugs, you are shoring up their dismal vision of self-aggrandizement and tyranny over all.

Googling the phrase "Boycott Wal-Mart" already turns up about 300,000 hits (though I have to admit that such sums are only to be expected, since googling damn near anything turns up crazily high numbers) but I believe sifting through all the usual internet chaff to find legitimate and potentially effective movements against us all having to live in Sam's dreams, is important enough that in coming blogs, you'll be seeing a kind of "field guide' to the options. Meanwhile, as Christmas comes on: please, please think about this question before you get sucked into one of those smiley-faced emporia of social repression: just whose job or community are you helping to wreck today?!

Finishing the Job in Afghanistan

News Flash! Peace Nobelist Obama has just finished protracted deliberations with his brightest and best, with a Bush-y style one liner about finishing the job, to wit, being able to show that America's going-on-ten-year Afghan police action has amounted to something more than a hill, nay, a mountain of corpses.


The likelihood of such an achievement is severely diminished by vagueness as to what success would even look like. All those years ago when the American led alliance was cutting through the Taliban and Al-Qaeda traditional forces like the proverbial hot knife through butter, the objective was to eradicate Muslim terrorism's cancerous core.
Then, totally predictably, the enemy just slipped into the hills, adopting and adapting the same successful guerrilla tactics that have worked all over the world for dedicated indigenes to confront vastly superior foreign military forces.

Over the years the relevance has become inescapable of historical precedents wherein world-class imperial forces were humbled in the rugged terrain of the Afghans. Alexander the Great was one of the earliest and, in fact, most successful of would-be overlords there. Yet having driven his way inexorably and rapidly all the way from Greece to the Orient, it then took three years to reach a semblance of control over the land then known as Bactria. Accordingly, he is said to have whined immodestly to his momma, "I am involved in the land of a leonine and brave people, where every foot of the ground is like a wall of steel, confronting my soldiers. You have brought only one son into the world, but everyone in this land can be called an Alexander." Multitudinous latter-day Afghan Alexanders re-appeared over the ages to play havoc with the British Raj and, more recently, the mighty USSR, which is now the former USSR, a fact not entirely unrelated to the ruinous war in Afghanistan from 1979 to1989.

This history means, that to "finish the job", as Monty Python might say, it's time for something entirely different, tactics that shall not win Amnesty International's seal of approval for playing nice with killers. And that does not mean pouring in thousands more troops but devising a strategy that will get a killing force right into the strongholds and refuges of the enemy. Of course, far more likely, will be proliferating political junk talk to make the continuing stalemate (or worse) smell like victory. Had I farm to bet on what things are gonna look like, say, in 2020, it would be that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda or some even worse Muslim extremist entity, will have retaken full control over the country, as we retreat under the spray of machine-gun-fast cover laid down in a second term of Obama's verbiage.

Not the least reason for this, other than all those latter-day Alexanders scurrying about in their rugged highland refugia, is well shown back home in one of the countries that has been sacrificing the most lives over there, Canada. Nationally, we have taken our eye of the ball, just, as at long last, Obama seems on the verge of doing something decisive, however questionable.

Our Afghan policy attention these days is almost entirely focused on the treatment of detainees. Cross-Canada hand-wringing predominates as we all feign shock at learning that Taliban and Al-Qaeda captured by Canadian troops get manhandled when turned over to an army composed largely of those who suffered under Taliban rule.

Duh.


Allegedly, those who serve the high masters of terror and fatwa, are getting what many would say they had coming to them: treatment almost as brutal as what the same young minions and their masters dished out to their captives -- remembering for example, Daniel Pearl, but, more broadly, countless, nameless women murdered or maimed in the name of Sharia law. Figure out for yourself whether the adjacent picture illustrates compliance with UN conventions.

Now, at a time when the uncaptured buddies of these detainees are still blowing up Canadian and other soldiers - not, to my knowledge humanely or in accordance with any rules except their own - we are glued to the media watching the debate over how much our military and political leaders knew about the likelihood of torturing the bad guys. On principle, I do have respect for Richard Colvin and any whistle blower who socks it to the craven bureaucrats and pols of Ottawa, but in this case, really: there are so many more injustices in this world we ought to be attending to before losing sleep over pay back to the Taliban and Al Qaeda bully-boys. And unless we stop fretting over international laws of war -- ones that no winning side has ever given a sweet shit about -- and get literally bloody-minded about the strategies used to dig the perps out of their mountain lairs, there will be no real "finishing the job" in any meaningful sense. We can just pack up, go home, and wait for the bad guys to return to power and start cloning the terrorists, who'll kill us and our children -- without concern for the Geneva or any other convention espoused by "decent" societies.

And Bless You More, Bobby Orr!

From the category of I-told-you-so's: The Bobby Orr was in the Grouse's current smelly domicile. i.e. Prince George, BC, this week as part of the local version of the Chevy Safe and Fun hockey camps. Naturally the presence of one of Canada's most deservedly famous sports celebrities led our daily garbage liner's reporter down to the coliseum for an interview, during which the question was popped: who is the greatest hockey player of all time?

"Orr takes little time in answering...--and it's not Gretzky, Beliveau or Lemieux. 'Gordie,' Orr answers with no hesitation...He could do everything."

Hey: who you gonna believe?

Bless You, Cathy Haag!

I am pleased to announce to the night-shifters, sleepless, early risers and the like that CBC has at long last trashed its long-irritating overnight programming, something which I had badgered them about for years (although I am not delusional enough to think they were paying me much attention). For those readers so fortunate as to spend the time between midnight and 5 am in the tender arms of Morpheus, you will have the added good fortune to have had, I presume, minimal if any knowledge of the indigestible smorgasbord our national broadcaster had been dishing out nightly.

The "feast" so to speak, began not too badly, in fact, with an hour long and often quite entertainingly newsy show from Radio Netherland. Thereafter, came Radio Sweden for a half hour, often featuring some deservedly unknown Swedish pop music. Then a taste of the BBC, a program called Outlook which now is sensibly at a better time on the new CBC Overnight. Thereafter half hour blurts followed one after another. For a while the absolutely dreadful Russian show, often an apologia for Putin's latest violations, would ensue; a ho-hum Czech or Romanian newscast that would probably not even interest its own nationals, and then in the darkest hour before dawn, we would be set up by a reasonable 30 minute piece from Germany followed by what was the crown jewel of dreadfullness that CBC Overnight would spring on the early-risers or utter insomniacs, Radio Polonia.

Canadians may have some sympathy to the mentality of Poland which like ourselves resides next to famous or, if you prefer infamous giant world powers. Always living in that shadow can lead to a collective inferiority complex and, springing from that motivation no doubt, Radio Polonia devoted almost every show to hyperbolic claims for the superiority of all things Polish - some backwater that produced the indisputably best pigfoot pies in the world or the "little known fact" (as Cheers's Cliffie used to say) that Einstein's theory of relativity had already been articulated though never written down by a late 19th century dockworker from Gdansk. It was truly the most dreadful programming I have heard on CBC or anywhere else.

Not one to leave such transgressions alone, some time ago I Googled up CBC Overnight and encountered the veritable last straw pushing me to abandon my characteristic reserve and register objections: There for all to see -- and none to readily dispute -- was the preposterous claim "CBC RADIO OVERNIGHT has become a huge success among listeners."

Huh? By what measure? And, more importantly, in comparison to what alternatives that the sleepless have such as listening to the wavering signal from a Los Angeles sports call-in show or a Wichita evangelist?

Now, I should say that writing and bitching to the CBC about anything - I do mean anything - evokes almost as surely as summer follows spring a boiler-plate response along these lines: "Dear Mr. Dale - Thank you for your interest in (name of program). We are always glad to hear from our listeners. We appreciate your concern about (slight paraphrasing of whatever I complained of). However, you should know that we get just as many listeners who like (whatever the hell I took umbrage at)... This happens so often that I now include in my initial crank letters a preemptive warning that I am not interested in hearing the standard insubstantial and un-substantiatable drivel about all the people who have spontaneously written countervailing feedback.

And so I wrote, suggesting, just for the fun of it, that not only was the programming bad, period, but that it was - O the horror of it! - Eurocentric. Where, I asked, were the rest of the continents, the Asian, the African the South American, that is, those who are not white?

The reply I received was, of course, along the aforementioned predictable vein, but went on to lament the extraordinary difficulty of getting such programming -- this, in an era when a few taps of the mouse and you can listen to radio stations from every nook and cranny of creation. The show host, Cathy Haag, then gave me a quick lesson in global economics, explaining that "Only rich nations can produce and broadcast external programs in English." A rather odd claim I thought for two reasons:

a) many of those less well off nations have English as a major second if not primary language (e.g. India, Nigeria, South Africa)

b) that some of the European Nations that were part of the current CBC Overnight stable are hardly "rich", by any standards: e.g. Romania!

Then, finding her groove, no doubt, Ms. Haag, ended her letter by telling me, and I quote, "If you do not enjoy Overnight, you do not have to listen to it." Oh the rapier repartee well honed from years of telling us who she is and that we're listening to CBC Overnight a dozen times a night! Of course I really was not confused about my basic freedom to shut her mixed but primarily trashy program off. But as I advised Ms. Haag in reply, alas, I have no such choice of whether my tax dollars subsidize such crap.

I think we had a few more vituperative little exchanges including her kindly providing me with a more senior locus to direct my nasties to. Then, our newfound relationship in tatters, life returned to normal, her telling us who she is over and over nightly, me suffering from frequent insomnia and the jingoistic early morning proclamations of Polish cultural hegemony.

But then several weeks ago, with the sudden joyous relief that remission of toothache can bring, Radio Polonia and the rest of the aural dog-breakfast vanished without even a magical "poof". Although they have yet to change the information on their website, the CBC Overnight show now begins with a redux of As It Happens between 12 and 1; some - omigod! - US programming from their National Public Radio, twixt 1 and 2; two hours of an excellent show from Radio Canada International, The Link, which is for "connecting new immigrants to Canada and Canada to the World"; and finally in the immediate pre-dawn two fine BBC shows, Outlook (which used to come on at 2:30 a.m.) and The Strand, a global trot around intriguing vanguard cultural art happenings.

Always one to show appreciation, your humble Grouse wrote again to Miss Haag, who still announces program transitions and herself throughout the night, and complemented her and her colleagues for having, midst this literal darkness, at last seen the light. Nothing back so far, but I am sure she's having to do a lot of thank you cards up for the all the night-crawlers who, like me, are singing "Hallelujah!"

Of Symbolism

Not to harp on things – nay, never in this blog! – I am moved to add a few more lines about the monarchy and its symbolism, prompted by the attention, so to speak, His Majesty’s visit has brought forth.

In particular, I have just finished listening to and trying – unsuccessfully as usual; - to get through to respond, to BC Almanac, guest hosted by Gloria Macarneko this week. There was a good back -and forth on the deliberately provocative either-or choice that Ms. Macarenko used to lure call-ins. The question was – “Are you keen about the visit or would you rather do away with the monarchy?” Like most exercises in political legerdemain, a logical fallacy -- the false dichotomy of choosing between two extremes -- was amply employed.

A pro-monarchist guest more than held his own against the usual bevy of pseudo-nationalists who equate being a good Canadian with snuffing out all connections to Britain. There was also a surprising number of what I would deem sensible souls (because they agree with me) who, among other good points, spoke of what bad manners it was, with Charles and Camilla in BC at this time, to even be making this a discussion item. After all, if you have a house-guest, perhaps it’s best to defer debates about whether you want them as long-term friends (which, really, is what the British monarch is for Canada) until they’ve headed home.

I was struck by the anti-monarchists several times bringing up the “symbolism” issue, as in “what does it say about a country that isn’t mature enough to have its own native head-of-state”!? – Most of them seemed intelligent enough to be able to grasp that Queen Elizabeth II has about as much power over the conduct of Canadian governance as the wee dachshund sleeping across the room from me does. But it’s the symbol, get it?

Well, if we are going to get excited about symbols, perhaps we should think harder about how so many of these same astute Canadians are queuing up to see an endless array of nobodies run about the country with a lighted stick in their hands in tribute to the gathering of an elitist small array of wintery nations in a city whose jingoist residents are always telling everybody else that they do not even “get winter” (a fabrication, of course, perpetrated by Vancouverites' feigned looks of shock when every year they do get snow). This glorious little flame that we’re hoisting around like excited tots is, like the British Monarchy, a tradition, something which droves of Canucks seem to think connects us and our costly little two week skiing party with the glory that was Greece.


Well, that was where this particular silly flambeau was lit all right, but the custom is far less ancient. The torch relay appeared for the first time at another Olympiad when the host nation was also out to make an international impression for itself: Berlin 1936 where the ceremony fit nicely in with Hitler’s intent to establish the superiority of what he deemed to be his Aryan race. Oh yes, let’s not also forget as we bandy about symbolism, that when this monster’s quest for supremacy culminated in the ferocious bombing of London, our future King’s grandfather was standing upright with the Queen Mother amidst the ruins, a symbol of resistance for all their subjects, including Canadians.

Audrey-Lea Dawson - 1950-1989

Twenty years ago today my ex-wife, Audrey-Lea Dawson died by her own hands and wishes. Earlier this fall I marked the 40th anniversary of my first meeting her and what would have been our 37th wedding anniversary too. Ah, unforgiving numbers. Lea and I separated in '85 and a couple of years later formalized a divorce by which time the lustrous friendship we had had in earliest days had rekindled. She had come out as a lesbian well before that and it was with her primarily lesbian friends that I gathered for a vigil, wake, what is, I think too euphemistically termed " a celebration of the life" a few nights after November, 5th, 1989. They were good people and they comforted me with little stories of Lea and affirmations that she had always spoken well of her "ex".

Now, two decades later there is pretty well no one I see much anymore who knew "Lea and Norman" as a never-all-that-happy but deeply attached and loyal couple. And so to this dubiously read blog I must turn to mark this moment, to repeat how much I admired Lea's courage in the face of inner demons that arose from a markedly unhappy childhood, and, possibly from sublimated abuses she was only just beginning to explore at the time of her death. Most of all I want to say how I loved her in a way that went beyond the fragility of romance.

In the days immediately after she chose to leave us I wrote this sonnet which, obviously, is to and for her.


THE PATHS OF LOVE

To know someone as well as I knew you
Was to walk down the same path every day
For years on years, until, so known the way,
That not a twig would snap as we passed through.

And so this quiet between us was a sign
Of closeness that no marriage could divide.
I could look forward to the change in tide
to times when, in a new way, you were "mine."

But without you, I wander through a place
Of which I have no knowledge and less hope.
This land is now an unfamiliar face
That scowls. I ask the question: can I cope?

With thirty - perhaps more - years apart from you
And from those well worn paths of love we knew.

Happy Birthday King Charles III !

I probably have always had a soft spot in my heart or head for Prince Charles who is now embarked on a what at least CBC I determined to feature as an under-whelmingly received Royal Visit to Canada. Charles and I grew up together. At least in a fashion – he was born 13 days before me in 1948. Thus as my own little life story unfolded with its statutory milestones – turning 13, 16, 21, 30, 40 etc. – I could bask parasitically in the limelight of my more famous, regal cohort-mate.

Like anyone else, I noticed the ears and – admitting hastily all that stuff about people in glass houses and stone throwing – that he was no matinee idol, his lack of beauty somewhat exaggerated by the formal demeanour and puffed-up accent of his coddled upbringing. When others rather obviously spotted the young Prince’s resemblance to the Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Newman, I confess to having chuckled agreement.

Then came Diana – a choice of wife with which I immediately disagreed, as my phony-spotting antennae were immediately aroused by this moderately pretty and much younger minor -ruling class booby. The future King and his handlers may have thought that he would benefit from Lady Dianna’s appeal and I suppose he did until his sensible but long-unrevealed lack of romantic interest in this foppish Barbie doll, combined with her inbred nuttiness and penchant for hyper-rich playboys, to place the marriage among the most infamous British disasters since Dunkirk.

Flash forward decades to a time when both Britain and her once predominant British inhabited former dominions have become multi-cultural kaleidoscopes with ever-growing numbers of new citizens who, for quite sensible reasons bear no allegiance to the monarchy, especially since a goodly proportion of them are descended from the “subjects”, i.e. subalterns of the Empire on which the sun used never to set. I can live with the outcome for our political system, the seeming inevitability that at some point not too long from now, in another of its petty demos of selfhood, Canada will devolve into a nation with not a constitutional trace of fealty to the Windsors, the pomp and circumstance they once commanded. We will show a real lack of class as a nation if we even talk about doing this before Elizabeth II joins her ancestors at Westminster.

Now – and this along with the current Royal Visit is what prompts this entry - I learn that it is not only peabrains on FaceBook who create silly polls but purportedly respectable professionals. Apparently lacking for anything else sale-able to poll us about, CP/Harris Decima asked 1000 of us if we think Charles should step aside for his son, Willy. Go look and see for yourself the results – I don’t want to add to the already overly scurrilous nature of my blog by bothering with the responses to this useless question. It is rather by way of lament that I must reveal that the majority of the 1000 poll-ees gave an opinion at all rather than telling the pollster to get a life and hanging up.

One of the many good things about our Constitutional Monarchy is that, unlike democratic elections it is not a popularity contest. For the sake of both brevity and persuasion, just turn on CPAC’s House of Commons stream and see where we get when Canadians go to the polls en masse. Watch the truly small-and-mean minded Prime Minister and his minions equivocate about H1N1 vaccination which now Minister Aglukkaq is promising us as a Christmas present; watch the amazing shrinking Leader of the Opposition as he demonstrates ever more each day with appropriate academic rigour his inability do what should be a no-brainer and send Harper packing off back to the corporate world that he has never really left, in spirit.

Then, if you can find it, try to tune in on the never-that-popular Prince of Wales and ask yourself whether our exercising our democratic mandate does any better than this gracious and thoughtful prospective king, indeed, whether our Canadian ability at making leadership choices makes it worth having some Harris Decima butt-pain disrupt the rightful enjoyment of the World Series.

So then an early Happy 61st King Charles, on the 14th of this month (which if you’ve read this carefully should enable your adroit calculation of your humble grouse’s upcoming natal day and thereby your advance planning of appropriate celebrations).

Polling and Trolling

It was surprising indeed that Obama allowed (or perhaps even directed) his communications beagle, Anita Dunn, to get down and dirty with Fox News. Could this network have wanted anything more than a dirt-slinging confrontation with the dubiously premature Peace Nobelist to get even moderate Americans flipping on their channel to see what the fuss is all about?

There is more than enough fresh verbiage sprouting up in conventional and online news commentaries (a good balanced but critical example being Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus) that I do not have to wade in here other than to echo advice I had on a wall poster many a year ago: "Never mud wrestle with a pig: you'll both get dirty but the pig will love it!"

What I will comment on, however, is a poll that popped up on FaceBook today. Here is what it looks like (click on image to enlarge).



Adroit readers would need only a glance at this -- and particularly at the nigh incoherent and pathetically biased drivel the author placed above the three choices - to know that this poll and whoever mounted it on FaceBook seem not worth taking seriously. Alas, in addition to several of my FaceBook Friends - people I greatly respect - having taken this survey, the stats suggest that no fewer than 36,841 benighted souls have played along, no doubt to the orgasmic glee of the semi-illiterate perpetrator!

It is obvious, but I'll say it anyway for the record, that the survey is irremediably flawed. Of course, its purpose was what is called trolling: it's not meant to evoke reflection on the Obama-Fox conflagration but to stir up emotions and, if possible, legitimize the underlying ridiculous presumption that the Prez would even contemplate such a move.

I am sure logicians have complicated names for the erroneous thinking therein but for simplicity, think of it this way. Down the street lives a pleasant mild-mannered young man and his mother. With a few clicks I can set up a poll asking FaceBookers whether the fellow should murder his mum. Please choose Yes? No? or It's Illegal.

Proportionate Response a la UN Human Rights Council

This morning the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), with a predictability not exceeded by forecasting solar eclipses, endorsed Justice Richard Goldstone's report on civilian abuse during the 2008 Gaza war. Whatever the merits and content of the report itself, this was a foregone conclusion, in part because the same Council commissioned the inquiry but more so because of this dubious body's track record of Israel-bashing.

Isn't this in the same world where Sudan encourages the ongoing massive butchery in Darfur? Wherein Mugabe has destroyed civil life and innumerable opponents? Where North Korea and Iran continue to suppress, jail and disappear even mild critics? Where the tyrants of Burma silence and stomp Nobel peace laureates? And where the People's Republic of China continually murders off ethnic and other opposition? But in this world, there is one Nation that has garnered 6 times the number of UNHRC condemnatory resolutions than any other: yup, Israel.

Here's a screen-shot that compiles the number of such resolutions between 2003 and 2009.



(apologies for the small image size but the scaling of the bar graph is thrown off by the preponderance of resolutions directed at Israel! - if you click on it, some magnification happens)

The Report talks about Israel's disproportionate military response but might one also think about "disproportion" in the way that that nation itself is assaulted by the luminaries of Human Rights of the UN?

No surprise here that Goldstone's findings would be music to the largish ears of this "impartial" agglomeration of UNHRC kangaroos. The report certainly is extensive and delves scrupulously into what, in an earlier less enlightened era, would have been the expected outcomes of an invasion into an unavoidably densely populated area - a place where the quarry quite intentionally attempts to hide and blend in.

Figuring out what specific abuses the Israeli forces perpetrated versus inadvertent and unavoidable casualties - given Hamas's conscious strategy to embed among its own vulnerable civilians - was a task of enormous complexity. In order to appear a little balanced the Goldstone report rapped Hamas's knuckles too but failed anywhere to point out just how easy that claque of terrorists qua elected government made the learned investigation: for they were indiscriminately attacking Israeli civilians on a daily basis long before open military action began. In simple terms, had they heeded multiple warnings to put a stop to the daily barrage of missiles peppering its communities, Israel would have no reason or justification for the horrors that followed.

It is somewhat to Goldstone's credit that his panel documents the Palestinians' atrocities but, of course, in keeping with the culture of the institution who commissioned this analysis, and now endorse it, the lion's share of blame continues to rain down on Israel - you know, the side that was being attacked first.

Stumbling into a low place

I used to live in a huge U.S. city: relatives would tell me to be careful because sometimes you can be a perfectly okay neighbourhood and then just make one wrong turn and end up in some dangerous scuzz-hole. I mainly ignored their warnings, obviously, survived my recklessness, and, as a result, saw extraordinary places I would not have otherwise.

But the Internet is a wholly different place. Of course, sexual pornography is never further than around the next clicked corner, as are batteries of white supremacists, Islamic polemicists and the like. But this week I happened into a fetid not-so-little backwater whose existence I would have preferred never to even know about much less have witnessed.

While helping my daughter work on a presentation about wolverines and checking out what YouTube had for footage of this rare, cagey and fearsome species, I happened across one harmless enough clip wherein the wolverine was chasing a much bigger bear up a tree. That seemed kind of amusing so I opened it, and... as frequent YouTubers know, when you view one video, others ostensibly related to it appear in a side bar. Suddenly, involuntarily, I was in a screwy netherworld rife with crude footage of deadly confrontations between various wild and domestic creatures which, for the most part, would never encounter each other in nature. Tigers were pitted against black bears and lions, lynxes versus cougars, pit-bulls against wolves, poisonous snakes against birds of prey, and crocodiles taking on damn near every kind of adversary.

Just as troubling as the content of this repulsive stuff is the copious dialogue - if such it can be called - of ostensible humans e-blabbering their commentary underneath each video. With more vehemence than beery hockey fans, anonymous rooters with nicknames like Panikmaker and Hickman13 triumphantly proclaim the superiority of their "home team" predator and, inevitably - though it hardly seems possible - stoop lower and lower in their mutual recriminations. "A tiger could own your f---ing polar bear you dumb motherf-----" etc. etc.

One has the distinct impression of overhearing lunatics who can get their ya-ya's off only vicariously through violence among wildlife they wish they were like... a pervert's version of the animal daemons in the Golden Compass.

But, it seems, these aren't just a few twisted odd ducks: YouTube tracks the number of viewings and for most of these videos there have been 100s of thousands of visits recorded. One clip of a tiger/lion encounter has been watched over 5 million times! Moreover, I soon discovered as I pressed with morbid fascination into deeper recesses that this manly preoccupation has been institutionalized in a wide array of websites including ones with such telling titles as wildanimalfightclub.com and mancouch.com [Note: I am not providing direct links (a) because it is ugly stuff that you should search out only if you enjoy excrement; and (b) putting in links makes the crap all the more likely to turn up when kids do searches about wild animals on engines such as Google].

Naturally, because I am who I am, I left a scattering of mocking and contemptuous remarks, just to stir up the dim-wit sadists. I argued that a ruffed grouse would lay waste to their tigers and black mambas and referred to non-existent scientific literature on the inherent violence of gallinaceous birds. This seems to have found its mark, as a flurry of hate-mail soon landed in the box of the email address that I keep especially for such people and occasions. Most amounted to slightly less sophisticated versions of primary school "sez-yous" but with added epithets advising me to undertake various anatomically impossible maneuvers.

Any way, my latest windmill to tilt at involves tracking down whomever makes these videos, finding out whether the footage is real, and, as appropriate, bringing this sordid preoccupation to the attention of animal welfare bodies. I shall advise later on outcomes.

One More and, I hope, Last Shot at the Whiner

So intriguing that until the details of his league-record - there he goes again! - salary , there was no mention much less criticism of the Grating One in all the chicaneries swirling about the hapless Phoenix Coyotes. The ill fate of this perennial loser of the desert, was attributed to everything from a poorly located stadium to an intrinsic lack of fan base to global warming with never a mention of the G-man and his ill-matched insatiable monetary hunger and mediocre (at best) coaching skills.

Usually when any professional team comes up with middling to poor seasons year after year, muttering about the man behind the bench starts up and grows in volume until general management kicks the bum out. Of course, when the bum in question happens to have a financial and management interest in the failing team, it's a tad more difficult. And so, despite four years of missing the playoffs and utter silence - forget about trying to help in any way - about the various controversies over the team's fate amidst the Basillie-Bettman battle, Gretzky is heard from only and about when there's a chance that he won't get the full $8.5 million he's been patiently waiting for at the nigh-empty Phoenix trough. Now there's news that matters.

The hesitation one sees on sports pages to even now call a spade a spade and the Wayner a whiner, makes me wonder if the writers there are still semi-consciously afraid that even a fair, well-researched verbal "body-check" on Gretzky might summon forth the ghost of the one of the bully-boys, like Dave Semenko, who, shall we say, facilitated those record-setting years on the Oilers.

Okay if Wayne will now promise to do something useful with his remaining years - such as fishing off the dock at his cottage - and stay far from hockey in every way, I shall commit to him and my faithful readers, that I have spake his name for the last time.

Taking off the Tight Shoe

My late mother used to speak metaphorically of a man so deprived that his only pleasure was wearing shoes a size too small so he could feel the relief of taking them off once a day.
This strikes me as the the kind of feeling that those who bore witness to Stephen Harper's musical performance at the National Arts Centre must have been going through. Undoubtedly well-coached by his usual faceless handlers, the Prime Minister touched down among presumptive mortal enemies within the very bastion of cultured folks whose values and livelihoods his government has so long demeaned. With Yo-Yo Ma backing him up, it's hard to imagine anybody being so churlish as to not give Harper rousing cheers for his pluck if not, nay, definitely not for his talent.

Fair enough, but, as might be expected, the NeoCon pundits were at the ready: Charles Adler, arguably the new Right's fair haired boy du jour, went a little out of control, reading into the culture crowd's reaction, a lighting strike realization that Stephen wasn't really "scary" after all.

I prefer the theory of the tight shoe. Having had this mean-spirited minority Prime Minister for an unthinkable four years of culture-trashing, it probably seemed, if only for a moment, a pleasurable relief to see him acting as if he was really not so bad. Adler, seized the occasion to make the rather mundane observation that Harper was the kind of guy you just might bump into at the Canadian Tire store on a Saturday morning -- an unprofound criterion, since uncaught serial killers and, even more evil in Adler's world, Michael Ignatieff, might also need lock de-icer some frosty weekend and turn up along the CT aisles.

To such as Adler, let me reassure you: no one was fooled; the relief was momentary, and the reaction you saw, merely the classy graciousness that the despised "Downtowners"(Adler's term for what a couple of generations ago, his like-minded predecessor Spiro Agnew would have called an"effete corps of impudent snobs") are good at.

Learn something, Chuckie.

Hello Sister!

Begging the pardons of the countless disheartened grouse fans who have wondered, after my last post on long ago Gordie Howe day, as to whether perhaps some blood-in-his-eye Gretzky-ite had found and done me in, worry no more. By popular demand, the grouse has once again risen more gloriously than even a phoenix and shall again enlighten!

This brief first post is dedicated to my sister, Dr. Ari Dale who has been another hero of mine and for even longer than the Gord. When I was a mere tadpole, yea, these many decades passed, I had the misfortune of stumbling into two especially malicious boy twins who lived in the same neighbourhood and they were in the process of considering a primitive form of Foucaultian deconstruction of this young grouse-let when onto the scene arrived my sister, viciously pinwheeling a substantial toy rifle. As my beloved uncle, late bard of Cherry valley, George Douglas Irving and witness from afar to the incident, opined, had she ever connected those boys would have had their heads taken "clean off." I guess fortunately, they instead turned heel and fled, a response to my sister that has been oft repeated in the ensuing half century.

So to her, this reincarnation is a tribute and also a warning to the chap who sent me the recent nasty response to my judicious reflections on the Great Whiner (AKA Gretzky): mess with me and you can expect a visit from the same dear sibling quite possibly with a real version of what once was toy.

Mr. Hockey is 78 Today!

A long, long time ago – to be precise 78 years to this day - in Floral, Saskatchewan there was born unto a humble immigrant farm couple, a son. Hard work and some of the most incredible gifts any athlete, anywhere ever possessed led young Gordon to the National Hockey League in 1946 and the beginning of a career unlike any other in modern sports history.

I grew up on the South Shore of Montreal and cheering stridently at the old Montreal Forum for Howe and the Red Wings was one of the earliest manifestations of my contrarian disposition – for at that time in the late 1950s, the era of Detroit being at least a strong contender for the mighty Canadiens was pretty well over. Les Habs rolled to five consecutive Stanley Cups and the fact of Detroit having finished first in the league (the Prince of Wales Trophy) was largely eclipsed by Montreal’s achievements. All the more reason for a sawed-off little Anglo curmudgeon-in-training to be bellowing out “Go Gordie Go” amidst the din in the very spiritual core of Quebecois pride (the same epicentre, not long before, of the infamous riots over the suspension of Rocket Richard).

Once a year, just about this time when Detroit would be visiting, I’d take my saved up allowance and blow it on a card and a box of Laura Secord chocolates, then wait excitedly outside the visitor dressing-room at the Forum and pass it to me hero. In return I got my hand shook, my hair tussled and a card of thanks with the Gord’s autograph sometime within the ensuing week.

During the many years I followed Howe’s exploits, I was convinced that he was, as an corny song of the time by Big Bob and the Dollars rang out, “the greatest of them all” (for full lyrics scroll down on this page). Not that there were no other plausible claimants back in that era – Maurice Richard of course comes to mind but also the graceful and gentlemanly Jean Beliveau and the raw
power hawg, Bobby Hull. later, along came Bobby Orr the only player who to this day is the only guy who ever so slightly shook my confidence in Gordie’s primacy although honourable mention in the pantheon of aspirants must also go to the recently departed Mario Lemieux and the now-almost-utterly-forgotten player, Gilbert Perrault.

I have successfully gone several paragraphs without the W-word – Wayne, that is and I am sure the clamouring horde of readers, especially those who have detected in earlier postings a certain antipathy on my part towards Gretzky – are waiting for that skate to drop. Alas, it is not possible, given the ubiquitous oodles of stats and records and the mighty publicity machine that has worked for the past quarter century around this ill-clept “Great One”, to avoid saying precisely why and how Howe was his better, by far.

By way of sliding into this rant, allow me to relate a moment of revelation that came to me while listening to some colour commentator on Hockey Night in Canada. Some player who’d been scoring at a hectic pace at the time was the topic and the frenetic announcer said “Hey, he’s getting the goals and that’s the name of the game.”

No, I spake aloud, goals is not the name of the game: hockey is. This utterly unprofound observation got me to thinking more deeply about the exaltation of individual players on the sole attribute of scoring and how that had become the basis for what today is the seemingly unchallenged mantra about Gretzky being the greatest ever hockey player, i.e. because of his lion’s share of NHL scoring records.

I saw Gretzky play on several occasions in the flesh and, of course, many times on the tube. Seen live, his strategy of avoiding the nitty-gritty work in the corners - the jousting and elbowing and scrambling needed to gain possession of the puck, was pitifully clear. When the play was in his team’s end of the ice, Gretzky would be slowly circling around outside his team’s blueline waiting for a pass from far better all-around players like Messier and Coffey. Once he had the puck, a career-long unwritten but universally understood proscription against so much as brushing up against him would go into effect, enforced, of course, by Sather's stable of oversized brutes.

Indeed it was only when Gretzky came along that the notion so common today arose that superstars were untouchable. Gordie Howe - and the Rocket and the Golden Jet – didn’t get picked on a lot either but it was because they – not otherwise talentless bully-boys – were quite able and willing to demonstrate the consequences of undue aggression that might otherwise inhibit their brilliant play. One need only call to mind what happened to the NHL’s to-that-point lead brawler, Lou Fontinato when he decided to tangle with Howe. That now legendary encounter on February 1,1959 ended with “Leapin’ Louie” in reconstructive facial surgery. The rough and tumble whether in drop-your-gloves donnybrooks, dubiously legal infighting or just darn good clean hard body-checks was something that Howe excelled at in addition to scoring prowess and which Gretzky nimbly avoided for his entire career.

Indeed, it was not only his drooling henchmen and Coach Sather who bought Wayne a lifetime free pass, but complicit referees and their superiors to the highest levels of the NHL. “Aha! A conspiracy theory”, says you, the League allowing, even condoning strong-arm tactics that gave the indisputably offensively talented Gretzky free rein to run up incredible scoring records.

Tripe, you say? Not quite so fast there, my friend. Consider if you will a moment what the benefits were for the NHL to manufacture the myth of Gretzky and the fabrication of so seemingly dominant icon. At a time when the obvious dilution of talent by rapacious expansion would otherwise have been emptying the arenas, the feats of the well-cosseted young Gretzky were the made-to-order remedy. Motive and opportunity there were aplenty to provide the regulatory environment for a seemingly superlative performance. Thus Gretzky’s natural scoring prowess was hugely inflated by the ubiquitous tolerance of his teammates intimidation of opposing players. Gord did his own intimidation which, like it or not, is part of the armoury of the complete player, something Gretzky was never close to being.

Howe was a nonpareil class act off ice as well. His teams missed play-offs and the last thing he would have ever dreamed of was the kind of disgraceful display we saw with Gretzky who dissed his entire team in L.A. in early 1996. Seemed that Wayne felt he deserved a better career ending than with the lowly Kings. Unlike past superstars who quickly figured out that if your team’s not playing well you should lead them out of it, not blubber about being traded. But Gretzky whined until he was indeed traded off to St. Louis (who to my consummate pleasure bombed out of the playoff contention pretty quickly that year, shortly after which Gretzky fittingly got himself traded again into the glitz of Broadway for his discordant swan song).

This sense of entitlement, spurred on no doubt by the self-serving league and press was not some late-career peccadillo but something seen right from day one when Gretzky picked out 99 for his sweater as a rookie. For those who recall the numerology of the original six NHL the message he wanted to send was unmistakable. 9 had been Howe’s number also Maurice Richard’s and, in the final years of his career, Bobby Hull’s. Other original six teams tended to give nine to their highest scorer like Andy Bathgate on the Rangers and Johnny Bucyck on the Bruins. Doubling it up, and choosing a number that could not easily be exceeded across a player’s back was the Whiner's early assertion of being the top dog ever sent out before he even laced up the skates for his pro debut.

Despite this arrogance, so foreign to the famously modest Gord, in the final days in 1994 of this cossetted egotist’s inevitable overtaking of Howe’s scoring record, the Greatest once again showed what a class act he was by following Wayne about good-naturedly to be there to salute the man who’d beat his record whenever and wherever it happened. As difficult as it is to imagine anyone anytime soon approaching Gretzky’s well-oiled scoring records, it’s that much harder to think of the alleged Great One displaying any such magnanimity (just think of how he cut young Crosbie from this year's Olympic squad a thinly veiled and ultimately backfiring strategy to keep the spotlight on himself).

Hockey greatness is not just about racking up points when your bully-boys are there to give you a free pass around perfectly legal body-checking: it’s about doing the whole game well and being an exemplar off the ice in your humility and generosity. Only Orr and possibly Jean Beliveau are contenders of Howe’s in this regard. So HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. HOCKEY!

The Greatest Canadian Hogwash

Following close on the heels of my recent and far from yet finished dissing of Gretzky and his purported greatness, this post may get some of you thinking that I am stuck on the theme of undeserved adulation – a kind of “Let us now flay famous men”! Perhaps. But the more immediate precipitant of the rave here is the sudden spotlight on the late and (I don’t think all that) great Tommy Douglas both on CBC’s Ideas series this week, on an upcoming biopic, Prairie Giant and, worst, in the as-usual inane ads preceding every CBC radio newscast by that ridiculous persona, Promo Girl. (I shall reserve for later a few lyrical lines for that twit and the dumbing down of Canada’s public broadcaster that she reflects and so adds to).

Here I have larger quarry. Idiot Girl’s clips, built entirely on the quivering foundation of the “Greatest Canadian” series CBC ran in 2004, blithely announce Douglas’s alleged status without any explanation for the uninitiated as to where that soubriquet comes from, and then goes on to proclaim that he had “ushered Canada into the modern age”. Oh the swine of our fair land have never been so spotless after hourly dousing with this utter hogwash!

First, let’s have a quick look at that spurious contest itself. Suffice to say that if some banana republic ever picked their leader with anything like the selection methodology CBC stole from BBC , it would be a laughing stock for anyone with a modicum of democratic concern and understanding. Why? At least four reasons:

(a) Nous semblons oublier un petit coin du Canada – the race was not run at all on the sister network, Société Radio-Canada and thus categorically disenfranchised about 25 % of the population, indeed the portion of our citizenry that most avidly listens to either arm of the CBC.

(b) The high-tech version of old-fashioned vote stuffing – there was no real control over who could vote or how many times (given that a determined multiple vote caster can fix himself up with 10 email addresses in about 15 minutes). At least three of the eventual top 50 got there with CBC’s explicit knowledge of this and, no doubt, many others probably did so below the radar screen of the public broadcaster’s lax monitoring.

(c) Unrepresentative “sampling” – or just who is watching/listening any way? Of the less than 50% of English Canadians who regularly listen to the radio, only 1 in 10 chooses CBC and there is a very strong bias within this listenership for university-educated types. Talk of elitism, so contrary to what Douglas himself publicly espoused with his second hand parables of mouseland! As for CBC TV --where the top candidates were formally nominated and profiled at length – and even smaller fraction tuned in on the English network – 7.5% or about 1 in 15 households in 2000-2001 according to the Parliamentary Committee Report, Our Cultural Sovereignty: The Second Century of Canadian Broadcasting.

(d) Last but not least, one must, with admittedly delicious tatutological reasoning, look no further than the outcome to see how biased and, in many a case dog-dumb this Greatest Canadian travesty was: No women in the top 10? Stomping Tom Connors at 13th ? And the coup de grace, Don Cherry up in the number 7 position!?

As for Tommy Douglas and his ushering in of Canada’s modern age, indeed even his much vaunted paternal status vis-à-vis national medicare, today’s electors cum celebrants seem to have forgotten that the man never led a party to more than 17% of the popular vote in Canada, never had the kind of say-so over major advances (if such they be called) in our nation’s society that would merit such claims, in short, was never Prime Minister or even close to.

I well recall (and wish I could locate a copy of) an editorial cartoon by the late Duncan MacPherson of the Toronto Star on the eve of a federal leaders debate. It portrayed the goal of electoral victory as an apple on a boy’s head a la William Tell (the boy stood for the bemused Canadian voter). Lester Pearson and John Diefenbaker were very nervously lining up their shots while, dressed appropriately as a jester, Douglas was merrily aiming wildly between his legs while looking in another direction from the fearful boy. MacPherson’s well-taken point was that canny Tommy, fully knowing the zero possibility of hitting the target of a winning mandate could do and say anything he wished – which is precisely what he (and the long string of successor NDP leaders) always did. He had the luxury of promising and promoting whatever sounded most progressive and admirable because the truly hard work of legislating and implementing anything was never going to fall in his lap.

Even in what is supposed to be his halcyon achievement - universal free medical care in Saskatchewan – the predominance of his role is open to question or, at least, moderation. The concept sprung into existence in – of all places – Alberta in the formative convention of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Universal health insurance was a plank in its inaugural manifesto germinating from the real grassroots of prairie farmers rather than then-youthful Tommy's eye twinkles.

Almost completely unsung - lost indeed in the glitzy acclamation of Douglas as medicare's originator - no doubt now much abetted by the even greater acting achievements by and tributes from his grandson, Kiefer Sutherland - were the tireless, politically unrewarded, efforts of the likes of Norwegian immigrant dirt farmer, Matthew Anderson who successfully pushed Regina legislators to enable local government sponsored health insurance plans. After his earlier and significant pioneering work, Anderson went back to the farm and into undeserved obscurity, all the more so due to the blaring overstatement of Douglas's role.

Douglas became the first CCF leader to win electoral victory in Saskatchewan in 1944. Despite Tommy’s five successive majorities in that province, it was not until 1962, 18 years later and after Douglas left the increasingly hot kitchen of Saskie medicare battles in the hands of his successor, Woodrow Lloyd, for his foray in national politics, that the dream of fully free hospital care for all that province’s citizens was realized. Indeed, it was that now mostly forgotten successor who held the line in the face of mobs of irate and striking physicians in the summer of ’62. If Douglas was “father” of at least Saskatchewan medicare, no doubt mightily enjoying the act of procreation and the kudos when the prodigal child reached fame, it was poor forgotten Lloyd who went through the labour, birthing and struggling infancy, while dead-beat “Dad” took off for Ottawa.

By 1967, vociferously applauded but hardly led by Douglas, the Liberal Government passed national medicare. Unquestionably the former Saskatchewan Premier’s commitment to universalize medical care back in Regina, two decades before, was powerfully influential. But to exalt Douglas’s supporting role to the top podium and thereby overlook others' central roles -- John Diefenbaker whose Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act started cost shared medical insurance across Canada, Justice Emmett Hall whose powerful Royal Commission detailed the need and mechanisms for medicare and Lester Pearson and Paul Martin sr. who enacted the 1966 Medical Care Act that made it happen -- is grossly unfair.

To attribute to Douglas, as Idiot Girl’s clips do, the advances, such as they were, on human rights, multiculturalism and, of course, medicare that unfolded in Ottawa during the time that he led the third or fourth ranking party in Parliament, is a distortion of history that those of us actually alive and aware at the time would find purely laughable – were it not for the insufferable burst of adulation, including the ominously looming biopic (A CBC-funded which a cynic might say may help to explain the glorious excretia of the also CBC-produced Greatest Canadian series), that we are now having to abide.

How easily does historical fact blur to vague rememberings and thence to utter myth. We older Canadians had no fewer than four chances to decide just how great Douglas was, not in some ill-conceived, poorly managed and elitist popularity contest but in the national elections of 1962, 1963, 1965 and 1968 when we gave the "Prairie Giant" a consistent and resounding thumbs down.

Go, Gretzky, Go...Away

This I suppose is further to the post several days back when I took exception to the storylines developed by Canadian media covering the Winter Olympics insofar as the heartening "mouse that roared" victory of the Swiss over Team Canada. The script that played out in the ensuing 24 hours was tediously predictable. As in 2002, Wayne Gretzky stepped forward in mock Churchillian fashion, to rally the troops, doing so - again as he did in 2002 - not with the team iustelf as the primary audience but to the whole world. He went on, this time, on the theme of "boys (should) just wanna have fun" but restating the obvious that a few more goals would be desirable. This, as I say, was not rocket science since the lads had just gone 6 scoreless period.

In the utterly meaningless game (insofar as making the medal round was concerned) that followed, Canada banged home 3 first period goals, looking like they would be chasing the Czechs off the ice. The story didn't roll out quite as Gretzky and the hapless fans back home might have wanted: the Czechs game back and made it awfully close. Watching the third period, one might well have had a feeling that the team was not quite back on the path to glory that ist exalted executive director had hoped. No matter - the Canadian press lapped it up just as Wayne had intended and gave him the headlines over any of the worker bees who'd actually been out there on the ice. Right on cue, exactly as Wayne intended, the media got sucked in by this fakery. Here are the leading heavy-breathing lines of our zealous public broadcasting system's story on the win over the Czech Republic:

Wayne Gretzky, the most prolific scorer in hockey history, wanted more goals and commitment. And what Gretzky wants, he usually gets.Team Canada responded to Gretzky's edict with its most determined effort of the Torino Olympics, a 3-2 victory over the Czech Republic on Tuesday before a lively crowd of 9,126 at Turin's Palasport Olimpico."Every game is a stepping stone in getting better and getting to the final game," Gretzky told CBC Sports. I thought our guys played really hard and got our feet wet with a nice win. It's do or die now."

One had to read down in this over-boiled tripe for quite a ways before a word was said about who scored and when. It was all about Gretzky.

Well the "Great One" was spot on in what he said about do or die: for soon we saw the dying - to the huge amusement and even satisfaction of some of us less patriotic types. A couple of days later Team Canada found its 0-2 groove again and our ancient adversaries, the Russians, sent Bertuzzi, Heatley and the lesser felons packing for home. In vain, I watched for Wayne (hey there's a poem wants out there!) as the post game interviews unfolded. One can recall back in the halycon golden moments of 2002 how the many time Lady Byng winner, uncharacteristically elbowed his way to the front of the line moments after the victory over the USA. It was his characteristic (and this case quite apt) "aw shucks, I didn't do nuttin'" kind of performance. But the press lapped up the false modesty, crediting Wayne's inspirational burst of paranoia (remember: everyone is against us and wants us to lose) rather than the apparently trivial on-ice activities of the likes of Mario Lemieux, Paul Kariya and Steve Yzerman.
Listen to this typical crap from 2002: "If you're looking for the main reason Canadian hockey players heard an Olympic crowd serenade them with Oh Canada for the final minute of their 5-2 win over the U.S.A., one reason 23 hockey heroes are coming home with gold medals around their necks, you've got to go to Gretzky."

To make matters even worse, when Gretzky got up to explain Canada's two hockey triumphs in 2002 - including the women's who have mercifully spared his ministrations, did he talk about stellar performances of any of the team? No, instead he chortled on about a loonie that had been secretly embedded in the Salt Lake City ice, turning an occasion where praise was warranted into buffoonery that only accomplished, once again, keeping his foolishly grinning visage as the main focus of media attention.


In 2006, sweating for another big fix of the drug he can never have enough us - everyone's worshipful attention - Gretzky was - we were all told - given the prime responsibility of picking the team. I hope our media is as lavish in giving him the credit for the pitiful results of his selections as they were back in 2002. In particular, they may wish to reflect on the startling omission of a brilliant young player who had captivated all of the NHL's strike-bewearied fans, Sidney Crosby. Was the old "great one" responsible for this petty snubbing of the game's most promising young star and, if so, might that have been because the new "great one" threatened to share if not take over the limelight Wayne has so craved and skilfully held on to these many hockey years, even well past the time when he was doing much at all on the ice?

I suppose one could say, if looking superficially, that it is to the credit of the beleaguered and we hope,soon to permanently EX executive director, mouthed his apologies after the Russian loss. Still, it was all about Wayne, "I'll take all.. the responsibility for not winning. That's the position I'm in, and the responsibility I have. It's nobody else's fault." As in 2002, it's as if the real players, their strengths and shortcomings during the big game, don't matter a whit. Let us now honour Wayne with this excerpt from "the first realist":

A jellyfish swam in a tropical sea
and he said: "This world it consists of me,
Since there's nothing above and there's nothing below
that a jellyfish ever could possibly know...

Just then a shark who was happening by
Gulped the jellyfish down in the wink of an eye
and he died with one convulsive twist:
but somehow the universe still exists.

There they go again, those Zionists and Crusaders!

Everyone has heard about the grievous transgressions of the West, the sacrilege of some backwater Danish newspaper portraying the Prophet. And the world of Islam, not at all recovered from these insults, no doubt somehow traceable to the Zionists and latter-day Crusaders -, now staggers amidst the rubble of one the Shia Muslims' most holy places, the Askariya Shrine in Samarra.

The obvious culprits - aside from those ubiquitously conniving Jews who many in the Arab world also are still certain are the perps behind the World Trade Center attacks - are Sunnis violently embittered by their loss of power when the US et al brought down Saddam's regime. Here, one cannot but be struck by what religious respect means among the Believers versus we, the Infidels. Let us travel back to early June 1967 when, as part of their rapid rout of their belligerent neighbours, Israeli forces entered Jerusalem and fought hand-to-hand to retake this ancient prime city of their faith at the spiritual centre of which was the site of Temple. On this holiest of site for Judaism, a mighty mosque had been built- Al-Aksa or "The Dome of the Rock". Much vaunted as Islam's third holiest site, some very good questions can be asked about just how revered the site was for Islam prior to 1967 and the Six Days War. Notwithstanding, invading/returning Israelis in 1967 were under the strictest military orders to forego the use of heavy artillery in the vicinity of the Dome as they pushed back Jordanian soldiers. As a result, that bloody, if short, battle resulted in no significant damage to the Mosque, probably at the cost of extra Israeli caualties sustained by virtue of their mandated reticence and respect in the vicinity of this Muslim holy place.

In the years that followed, quite understandably, devout Jews pushed hard to take down the Dome and rebuild the great Temple for whom more than a millenium of mixed Muslim and Christian authority in Jerusalem had shown no respect. Today, Muslim commentators ridiculously assert that Israel never allowed this to happen because of its fear of "retribution from the Muslim World": yeah, that's pretty credible - the Israeli government's 1969 ban on any practice of Jewish religious ceremonies beside the Dome(let alone razing the Dome)came came two short years after little Israel had kicked ass of its far more populous Muslim "neighbours."

What we saw then, what we see now, is a fundamental distinction between what is deemed to be sacred and inviolable - even among one's enemy's icons - between western democracies (including Israel therein) and the practiced radicalism of Islam.

Shalom...Salaam