Free Hugs in KOREA

Watch for the toddler!

Free Hugs Campaign. (music by Sick Puppies.net album out)

Australia

Quote This!

On Sept. 24, Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University where the school's head, Lee Bollinger introduced the visitor:



"Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator."

Right on, my Brotha!

Desperately Seeking BostonBootGirl

Imagine my chagrin when I found out that BostonBootGirl is no longer "on the air."

I last posted an article found on BootGirl's blog on September 23, 2007. It turns out my boot loving fellow blogger, who has written some great posts, is no longer writing. So, in the parlance of the times, this is a shout-out and a hail to BootGirl: Come out, come out, wherever you are!

signed,

Zap

Staying The Course

Article from the "In My Opinion" section of the Miami Herald by writer Leonard Pitts Jr. Mr. Pitts is a Pulitzer Prize winner. I believe the original date of article is October 30, 2006. I found the article on Bostonbootgirl's site from where I have lifted this article with only a few changes in this introduction.

A New Course on 'Staying the Course'

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.

lpitts@MiamiHerald.com

'The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -- if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. `Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' '' -- from 1984 by George Orwell

''I'm here to tell you we're going to stay the course.'' -- George W. Bush, Nov. 28, 2003

``. . . We've got to stay the course, and we will stay the course . . .'' -- George W. Bush, April 5, 2004

''The United States of America will stay the course . . .'' -- George W. Bush, Nov. 21, 2004

''We will stay the course; we will complete the job in Iraq.'' -- George W. Bush, Aug. 4, 2005

''We will stay the course; we will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed.'' -- George W. Bush, Aug. 31, 2006

``Listen, we've never been stay the course . . .'' -- George W. Bush, Oct. 22, 2006

Ahem.

''Orwellian'' is a word you toss out to prove you stayed awake in freshman English. Often, it is used to evoke a world in which all people are always under surveillance, as was the case in the totalitarian state George Orwell depicted in 1984, his 1949 masterpiece. But as you know if you read the book, surveillance wasn't the most chilling aspect of the world Orwell foresaw.

No, the thing about that world that made your skin creep on your bones was the shameless intellectual dishonesty of its leaders, the brazen way they savaged objective truth and dared anyone to call them on it. Nobody did. The people simply accepted what they were told.

In the world Orwell invented, words had no objective meaning beyond that assigned to them by the Party, whose slogans, not incidentally, were, ''War is Peace,'' ''Freedom is Slavery'' and ''Ignorance is Strength.'' In that world, there was no past -- or rather, the past was what the leaders said it was, and it was a waste of time to check for yourself, because all books, newspapers and other records were constantly being updated to reflect whatever the new reality was.

Thus, ''Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia.'' Much as we now learn that the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq has ''never been stay the course.'' And never mind that the president and his henchmen have spent three years pounding that phrase like nails into the public consciousness.

''Stay the course'' doesn't work anymore, not with most of the nation united against the war, so the White House announced last week that the phrase would no longer be used. That's their prerogative. But it's quite a leap from won't be used to never has been used.

So did we dream these last three years? Is ''stay the course'' just something we mumbled in our collective sleep as we twisted in our collective sheets? Or do we learn something here about the administration's level of respect for our collective intelligence?

It is not, by now, surprising that the president and his surrogates rewrite the past. We've seen that before, after all. Seen it with John Kerry the war hero ''traitor,'' with John Murtha the Marine ''coward.'' Saw it with WMD, which, it turned out, were not the reason we invaded Iraq. (Where'd we ever get that idea?) What's painful, though, is that we see it so quietly, see it, as the citizens of 1984 did, with apparent acceptance.

The truth is being stolen right before our eyes. Yet there are no mass demonstrations at the executive mansion. There are not a million headlines saying, ``Wait Just A Bleeping Minute!''

''We've never been stay the course,'' he says. Oh, we say.

To which I can only add that war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. And Orwell was off by only 22 years.

What I Just Finished Reading

"Writing his first novel from the point of view of an autistic 15-year-old, Mark Haddon takes the reader into the chaos of autism and creates a character of such empathy that many readers will begin to feel for the first time what it is like to live a life in which there are no filters to eliminate or order the millions of pieces of information that come to us through our senses every instant of the day."

Listened to this book in my car. What a great read, funny, poignant and insightfully written. Read the rest of the above quoted review here

What I'm Reading

Just started Vali Nasr's much touted book on the main fracture in Islam, namely, the Shia-Sunni divide. Find reviews on this book at amazon.ca

Source: Slate

The Darfur Denial

Here's an article by Eric Reeves published September 14, 2007 on the New Republic's website about the ongoing slaughter of people in Darfur, Sudan.

Meanwhile, back at the U.N.: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging Sudan to stick by its agreements to help to stop renewed violence against the people of Darfur. To quote the International Herald Tribune:

Ban told a news conference that he was "very much concerned" at the recurrence of violence in Darfur.

In a statement Monday (September 17, 2007), Ban said he was "alarmed" that the reported attacks took place after the Sudanese government said in a joint communique during his recent visit that it was committed to a ceasefire in the run-up to the new negotiations.

That this is a pattern for the Sudanese government...negotiate, stall, deny, negotiate, agree to take actions and then reneg on promises made, is clear to even the blindest of observers.

Retired Canadian army Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, a former commander for the U.N. in Rwanda has written a letter to the newly appointed Commander of the U.N. forces in Darfur. In the letter Dallaire writes,

"You can anticipate being let down by everyone on whom you depend for support, be that troops, funding, logistics or political engagement....Only by shining a spotlight on those failures in every possible way can you mobilise the attention necessary to get the action you need. Bear in mind that whoever fails you will, in the end, be the most active in blaming you for whatever goes wrong."

On Ryszard Kapuscinski

Found a great and lengthy article (It is seldom possible to find an article long enough to warrant sitting down and reading it on a Sunday morning over breakfast) on Kapuscinski and, I think, a review of his final book, "Travels With Herodotus."

The article, as with most reviews, is not only about the book in question but about some of the most discussed issues swirling around the late author's oeuvre: Was he a journalist with some taint of the fictional in his work? Was he a communist spy? Were his works allegories meant to hoodwink his communist benefactors? And on and on. In the end, who cares? The man could write and who doesn't fictionalize even in their daily interactions with friends and colleagues?

Thank God for publications like the The Nation which allow editorial space for articles worthy of the the title. Publications which treat the written word as worthy of being printed and not just as 'gray space' which can only be alleviated by the use of shiny graphics to give its readers a break from the labour of reading.

Tarah at Aunty Lesley's Wedding

For Claude R.

Here's an interesting excerpt from a column written by Heather Mallick for the CBC website. In the article, Mallick discusses the recent outing of Idaho's Senator Larry Craig.

Craig has spent his career vilifying homosexuals. I wonder why.

An embarrassing 1996 study (thanks, Toronto Star) suggests there may be a reason for this. The study, which measured men's sexual arousal, showed that homophobic males were aroused by explicit homosexual images, while non-homophobic men were not. Which suggests that men who are unhappy with their own homosexual urges go into a full-throttle flaps-down denial by persecuting men who are like them.

LETTERMAN 'TOP TEN GEORGE W. BUSH MOMENTS'

...And The Wonder...Oh, The Wonder!

Next time you see a certain short or long creature: Moving forward or sideways, climbing over rocks or on trees, swimming on water and under, with no visible means of locomotion - no flippers or fins, nor arms and no legs, no teeth to gnash and no ears to hear. Stop and marvel for a moment at the endless diversity of life on Earth. Stop in awe, not fear, and admire the snake.

Hey Pam M Look Here!

Pam! Are you there?

Still Overweight? Why Not Journeylite?

If you’ve spent a lot of physical time and psychic energy trying to overcome your weight problem. If you have been on the diet roller-coaster than this site could be for you. The company, appropriately named Journeylite, applies a concrete solution to what can become a psychologically and physically draining.

What could possibly help, when diets and will power have failed? Jounerlite specializes inweight loss surgery. That’s right, tie your stomach off and be done with it! You can find testimonials on Journeylite’s website.

Round Up

I am back at work with new enthusiasm since my attempt to jump into a new orbit at work. My client load is at exactly 20 clients and the pace is a almost (but not quite) fast.

Accompanied a client to the local Ontario Works (welfare) office yesterday. I picked her up at 1 p.m. because her appointment was for 1:30 p.m. When we got there we were told the intake worker would see my client at 2 p.m. Okay, no problem. We stepped out for a cup of coffee.

We came back at 2 p.m. and finally left the OW offices at 3:30 p.m.!! Yep, one-and-a-half hours to re-instate my client into the system. Ah, to be a government clerk is to know a different kind of joy.

On the home front: We are getting back into the routines which will see us through the winter months. To bed after dark and out of bed before the light. Not looking forward to winter. Tarah and Seth continue to say and do amazing things and some not so amazing but just annoying things. But there is no greater joy than lying couch and cuddling with the little twerps.

Went shopping across the border on Tuesday with my niece. Didn't really find much but it was a nice getaway and I actually loved the food at the Olive Garden. Went into all these stores: Hollister, Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, American Eagle, JCrew and some others and ALL, I mean ALL these stores had exactly the same damn clothes! And Everyone at the malls was wearing the exact same type of clothes - yes, including me. For a culture that prides itself on individualism there sure seems to be little enough of it around.

The Parable Of The Spoons

A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said, "Lord, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like." The Lord led the holy man to two doors.
He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in. In the middle of the room was a large round table. In the middle of the table was a large pot of stew which smelled delicious and made the holy man's mouth water.

The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handle
was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths. The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. The Lord said, "You have seen Hell."

They went to the next room and opened the door. It was exactly the same as the first one. There was the large round table with the large pot of stew which made the holy man's mouth water. The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The holy man said, "I don't understand."

It is simple" said the Lord, "it requires but one skill. You see, they have learned to feed each other. While the greedy think only of themselves."

The Scoop On Poop

Gleaned from Dung Corps PR material written by Sgt. Pratap Singh Tatiwala:

"The Dung Corps aims to go to the heart of the hygienic problem on the streets and by-ways of India. In lieu of public toiletting facilities, we men of the Dung Corps strive to go where no man (90% true) has gone before. You dump, we bring!
**

Whether in your khana or alley, rail station or foot path, your shit is gold to us. You poop, we stoop and scoop! Whether individually or in group, it does not matter. What matters is that every bowel is followed with our trowel.
**

They say the oldest profession is prostitution! I dare say it is the vocation of the dung collector which came first. What man or woman can say that given the urgent urge to defacate, they would much rather abate peristalsis and simply procreate. Although abhorred by the majority, the profession of the Dung Corps has a illustrious and fragrant history."
**