Next steps for Gillian Rosenberg

When last we encountered "Gill" three weeks ago, she had begun building her brand by getting world wide media attention as the first foreign female fighter to join the Kurdish resistance.

That was a great start!

Mere weeks later, Gillian is rocking the headlines again!! This time she is the first foreign female fighter captured by ISIS!

Here's what she should do with this bountiful over-abundance of publicity;

1. Stage daring escape and/or rescue.
2. Hire PR agency.
3. Retain agent.
4. Negotiate movie deal.
5. Negotiate book deal.
6. Pump speakers' circuit for all it's worth...

Of course, that could all go for a shit in the event that her ISIS captors decide to feature her in their next be-heading video...

In which case she will at least have the satisfaction of knowing she died for a cause she truly believed in.

Ham and eggs and suicide

Back in the early eighties, a couple of guys named Bill Player and Len Rosenberg concocted a scheme to vastly enrich themselves at the expense of... well, it's hard to say.

What they did was buy a portfolio of apartment blocks from Cadillac Fairview, a major construction conglomerate at the time, and then flip those apartments a couple of times, with the final purchasers being a consortium of imaginary Saudi investors who were paying close to 50k per key for buildings that Player and Rosenberg had picked up months before for half that amount.

Those very buildings have been changing hands, 25 years later, at well over 100k per key, so I suppose that one way of looking at what was much ballyhooed as the greatest fraud in Canadian history, would be to say that time has exonerated Player and Rosenberg.

Alas, time has not exonerated me and Kipling.

We were broke dumbfucks 40 years ago, and we're still broke dumbfucks!

A couple of times a year I get together with Kipling at the Teviotdale Truck Stop to shoot the shit about who done good and who done gone etc.

Today was one of those days.

As it often does, conversation went round to who has managed to beat the system and who has not.

Since we are both of us getting on in years, a lot of our conversations go like this:

So whatever happened to what's his name?

Who?

You know, what's his name...

Do you remember his name?

No, I can see his face, but what was his name?

What's his name's name?

Ya, what's his name... What was his name?

Who?

You know, what's his name the wop who used to work in shipping at Kearney's.

Lotsa wops worked in shipping at Kearney's

Ya, I know but this guy, what's his name... what was his name?

Oh ya! What's his name. Fuck! What was his name? I remember the guy... always had a big smile on his face...

Ya! That's the guy! What was his name anyway? Tony? I wanna say Tony...

Nah, I think his name was Lew... like Luigi, I'm pretty sure it was Lewy... but ya, I think you're right, I think we're talking about the same guy. Big happy face all the time!

Ya, that's the guy! So whatever happened to him?

One thing that Kipling and I have noticed over the years is that little guys who rock the boat get fucked, and big dog shitbags who have political connections get to loot and plunder with impunity. Player and Rosenberg were little dogs with big ambitions.

So here we are in Teviotdale for breakfast again. Highly recommended. Nothing is great but everything is really good. The wait staff are mostly middle-aged local farm gals who never in their worst nightmares imagined themselves pouring coffee for me and Kipling in their middle age.

But they're not bitter about it. They intuitively sense we've suffered too.

When little dogs, interlopers, pretenders, get too big for their britches, the real big dogs, aka "the establishment," swings into action. One day Bill Player and Len Rosenberg are the toast of the town; up and coming wheeler-dealers in the finest tradition of capitalism's street of dreams...

Next day they're scum.

Happens all the time. You could ask Robert Campeau about it, or you could have a few years ago, but my understanding is that he's a few exits ahead of me on the Alzheimer highway these days, and there's no point in asking him anything.

Shit happens.

So what happened to what's his name? Used to have the big block 'Cuda?

You mean what's his name?

Ya, you know the guy... 'Cuda notch-back with a big block... a 68 or a 69...

Ya, I know who you mean... what was his name?

That was a 68 I think... fer fucks sakes, I don't think you could get a big-block 'Cuda in 69.

Fuckin' right you could, I had one!

What, that white one with the black stripes? The 440?..

Ya, that was a 68.

Fuck off! That was a 69!

Oh ya? So how come I saw you driving it in 68?

Oh fuck man, it was my car, I remember what I was driving. It was a 69.

So how come I saw you driving it in 68?

Oh for fucks sakes man, you can't remember 68 from 88.

Long pause...

Ya, you gotta point there... but the Dago, what was his name?

Ya, ya... I know the guy... I ran him a couple of times with my Super Duty! Whatever happened to him?

Suicide.

Oh for fucks sakes! He was such a happy guy! What happened.

Don't know man... lost his job, got into the hard drugs...

One thing that didn't happen when Len and Bill flipped those apartments was people losing their jobs. That happened later, when the government, acting in its capacity as enforcer for the big dogs in the real estate and banking industry, seized and liquidated their companies.

I'm having the breakfast special. Bacon, sausages, ham, three eggs, home fries, toast. Kipling tells the server he's fat enough already and will hold to a two-egg and ham special. We're gonna be outta there for under twenty bucks, at least if we don't tip those middle age farm gals. So we'll be outta there for thirty.

Seems that if you're a well-connected shitbag, all sorts of wonders may happen. How else to explain that Porter chappie, who was holding hands with Big Steve one day, and was on the lam, ducking multi-million dollar embezzlement charges the next?





But that's nothing. Back when Len and Bill and Robert were being tarred and feathered, well connected insiders were running amok. It was the heyday of deregulation. CN and CP were divesting their trucking operations, and within the space of a few years both companies had been looted into the ground, the assets stripped, the pension funds eviscerated, all by a coterie of hangers on of former PM Mr. Mulroney. The only people who were ever charged were a few hapless front men who took the fall for the big dogs operating behind the scenes.

The true story about who lost big and who won bigger in the dismemberment of CP Express and Transport, Interlink, and Route Canada has yet to be told. Oddly enough, it's very hard to find information on these topics, even now as the information age is supposedly at high tide.

Yes, it's fun to get together a couple of times a year and swap theories about who done what and why somebody might have off'd themselves.

I remember when things were winding down in the frigate program. I was a late hire and therefore one of the first to get a lay-off notice. Went back the next summer, hoping to hoist a few with the old mates. Had a few phone numbers. Got in touch with Buddy and other Buddy, but another Buddy was disconnected.

So we get together, me and Buddy and other Buddy, and I says, so what happened to Buddy? He ain't answering his phone no more.

Aye... Buddy got his lay-off...

Ya OK, I got mine too... so what?

He got his lay-off notice. Then his old lady says she's gonna leave.

What, the gal with the carpet-cleaning business? Jeez, I coulda seen that coming... she had dreams, that girl... wasn't gonna hang around with a guy had no job... Well, that sucks! So where's he at now?

He's nowhere man... he shot the old woman.

Then he shot himself.

Why ISIS fanatics think the West is decadent

Because we have nine year old super-models.

I gotta say, I'm with the towellers on this one. That's just not right.

On the other hand, while they may disapprove of nine year old super-models, they are apparently thumbs-up on marrying those nine year olds off to their freedom fighters.

That's just not right either.

Why can't nine year olds just be kids?

Cricket kills 2 in a week; it's time to end this cruel sport!

First Phillip Hughes, and now this!

How many more will have to give their lives before this "game," this game that represents everywhere the smouldering embers of Empire, is extinguished once and for all?

If these two deaths had occurred in Canada during ice hockey matches, you can bet there'd be a Royal Commission and oodles of experts opining on the demise of the sport, etc., and plenty of do-gooders calling for, if not the end of hockey, at least the elimination of fighting in hockey, the banning of body-checks, and the introduction of sponge rubber pucks.

Kendall Jenner does her bit to promote Christmas

Here she is as Santa's semi-dressed elf. A lot of the press around this photo refers to Santa's "naughty" elf, and if she were indeed planning to go out in public dressed like this, she might in some circles be considered "naughty," but most people would simply see her as semi-clad.



So really, it's the photographer who slipped into the change-room and violated Kendall's privacy who is being naughty.

Harper gang pranks Canadian vets with classic switcheroo!

Oh my, what a fun-loving gang of jokers that Harper crew is!

A week ago no less than three Harper cabinet ministers preened before the TV cameras while straight-facedly announcing $200 millions in new funding to address mental health issues among Canadian Forces veterans.

A few days later some reporters have read the fine print; that $200 million will be spread over 50 years!

Let's do some math; 200 million over 50 years is $4,000,000 per year.... divvy that up among the 40,000+ CF members who rotated through Afghanistan... That works out to less than a hundred bucks per veteran per year.

That's pathetic...

And playing it as a bold new initiative to take care of our veterans is ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING!

Goodluck Jonathan's luck running out

If recent polls are accurate, President Goodluck Jonathan's dreams of another term in the big chair are rapidly coming to naught.

As Fisayo Soyombo points out in this story, matters have gone only from bad to worse for the incumbent. The spectacle of a political debate over whether institutionalized corruption is really "corruption," which is really bad, or mere "common thievery," which is apparently not so bad, gives a sense of how out of touch the Jonathan administration has been.

The "Chibok girls" farce went from tragic to even worse last month with the much ballyhooed Boko Haram ceasefire proving to be little more than wishful thinking on the part of certain Jonathan underlings.

The news that Goodluck was paying some extra-smart white folks in Washington millions from the public purse to polish his halo leading up to the election has had rather the opposite effect, revealing him to be a shallow conniver who is concerned more with his image than with getting results for his people.

And if all of that is not enough of a gathering storm, the global petroleum markets are now conspiring against Mr. Goodluck Jonathan. Oil prices may be one thing he can justly claim no influence over, but if prices languish in the $60 range for long, Nigeria is doomed.

Or at least the Westernized elites are doomed. The impoverished masses have seen scant benefits from the oil boom, and will scarcely notice when it's over.

Pot-addled blogger beats the esteemed Dr. Paul Craig Roberts to his Ferguson analysis by three months

Paul Craig Roberts published an essay today decrying the common phenomenon of police using overwhelming force as their first and only tool in responding to any emergency.

We made the same point here more than three months ago.

Not that it's an original idea. Cop culture has morphed into something quite toxic over the past couple of decades; not that it didn't always have an undercurrent of toxicity.

What's happened is that undercurrent has become the mainstream in police culture. There are endless dissertations waiting to be written as to why that's happened.

But a particularly intriguing angle might be to look at the dialectic between popular culture and law enforcement. The "entertainment industry" has been instrumental in preparing the American psyche for the police state.

Ezra Levant victimized by anti-Semitic Canadian legal system

Poor Ezra.

Well, at least after this he'll be a little poorer than before.

Canada's wannabe answer to Fox News, the Postmedia Network, has been grooming the hapless Levant for years to become Bill O'North.

It just ain't been happening, and the reason it ain't been happening is that virtually nobody tunes in the obnoxious turd.

Hopefully nobody at Sun TV or the bankrupt parent company is foolish enough to fund an appeal, in which case we owe Khurram Awan a huge debt of gratitude for helping rid the public square of this anti-Arab, anti-Indian hate-monger.

FHRITP and the renaissance of Western masculinity

Oh dear! It's not a pretty thing, this renaissance.

Apparently the metro-sexuals are out, and the boorish yobs are in.

I'd heard nothing of this "trend" until I read CBC reporter Chris O'Neill-Yates' sad tale of being abused by an aficionado of the FHRITP fad.

Nice job boys!

You're reclaiming the ground you lost during the last 50 years of the feminist dictatorship that you blame for the fact that you still live in your parents' basement.

Keep it up, and you'll soon be as manly as those mobs of men in Kenya who rip the clothes off women they deem "inappropriately" attired.

Or those manly macho men in Egypt who like to molest women in those demonstrations for democracy.

You may even achieve the super-hero status of your boorish misogynist brethren in India, who are empowering themselves by gang-raping vulnerable women on public transit!

What a sad and despicable spectacle.

Ms. O'Neill-Yates' article has attracted over 1200 comments as I write this. What is truly disturbing is how many commenters seem to think the problem lies with her "over-reaction."

Relax folks; the "banksters" and the "super-rich" aren't going to kill themselves any time soon...

There's a lot of scary theories out and about these days.

The super-rich are going to collapse fiat currency.

Of course they are!

Because they want to lose their multi-million dollar homes in Zug and Manhattan and on the Bridle Path and in Mayfair.

Because every hedgie secretly wants to start over as a butcher or a shoe-maker in a barter economy.

I'm guessing once you get into the upper echelons of the big banks and brokerage houses pretty much everybody you talk to will be gung ho for the status quo.

Theories about collapsing the dollar economy will be as welcome as a fart in the confessional.

Bwana and the Darkies; Ottawa plays hardball with First Nations

Just about everything in this story grates.

The First Nations Financial Transparency Act was an odious bit of racist presumption that subjects Canada's First Nations to a far higher standard of conduct than Ottawa itself is subject to.

The intent was to humiliate First Nations by exposing their fiscal ineptitude, their avarice, and their propensity for corruption.

The Harperites hoped that their water-carriers in the right-wing media, scum like Ezra Levant, would be able to use the inevitable embarrassing revelations as fodder for anti-Indian hate-mongering in perpetuity.

The Act has had mixed results. Overall, the First Nations have been shown to have at least as much fiscal responsibility as what we find in the political machinery of the colonists. Yes, there have been a few scandals, but overall, not much to write home about.

So now we see this "hardball" headline in the Toronto Star. The implication is that these 80 nations that have not yet bowed to the dictates of the First Nations Transparency Act must obviously be the worst of the worst!

Therefore, it's now up to Massah to play "hardball."

What a disgusting display of abusive language; the people who have all the power threaten to play "hardball" with those who have none.

And this from a government that never tires of pointing fingers at various real and imagined human rights miscreants around the world.

Canada's Minister of Perpetual Indignation delivers stern scolding to Erdogan

The wily Erdogan, Turkish PM cum Pres, has been warned. While it may be tempting to dismiss the ever-condemnatory Baird as a lightweight on the world stage, it is a well known fact that the Canadians relentlessly talk above their weight.

The comments by Erdogan re: gender equality presumably drew the wrath of FM Baird because, as hundreds of DFA press releases bear witness, Canada is busier than busy saving women and girls all over the world, except of course on Canadian Indian reservations, but that's another story.

And Baird is obviously serious. Check this out;

“Canada notes with great concern the comments reportedly made today by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in which he appeared to call into question equality between women and men.

“Such remarks would run contrary to basic international human rights standards and international laws and conventions, as well as equality rights that are explicitly enshrined in, and protected by, the Turkish constitution.

Wow! Notice how Baird feints with "basic international rights standards," throws a couple of probing jabs with international rights and conventions, and then drives home the knock-out punch, hoisting Erdogan from the petard of his own constitution!

Brilliantly played, Mr. Baird! A truly stellar performance! Hopefully Erdogan will have many a sleepless night pondering the error of his ways.

But here's what I can't figure out; Baird likes to visit his pals in the Saudi royal family a couple of times a year, and NEVER do we hear a hint of opprobrium, a note of concern, or a stern scolding about their beheadings, their anti-queer culture, their anti-female laws, their generally repressive society that makes Turkey look like a hippie paradise... heck, even caveman Erdogan is OK with women driving cars!

As much as I admire Mr. Baird, I find his inconsistency disturbing.

You don't suppose this ten billion dollar defence contract between Canada and Saudi could be the cat that's got his tongue, do you?

What we're not watching while we're watching Ferguson in flames

There are no stats on how often white cops have shot down Black Americans.

Nobody knows...

Suffice to say, this is not the first time.

But it should make you wonder why this time, whether it's more or less than 1,756,342, it's getting this massive media attention.

To the think tank here at Falling Downs, it looks like a "public spectacle" that's been cooked up by various levels of government, with the full connivance of the usual social justice entrepreneurs like Reverend Al, et al.

And of course, the main stream media are all aboard, as they inevitably are in every government initiative designed to take your eye off the ball.

Here are just a few stories we're not seeing while we're focussed on this completely routine cop-killing that has mysteriously hogged the spotlight for months:

• looks like that Afghanistan war is not over after all!
• Israel just made apartheid official state policy
• the Iranian "enemy" is almost in from the cold
• Africa's biggest oil producer, biggest economy, most populous country, and biggest US ally, moves closer to being a failed state every day

Those are but four stories we're ignoring, and there are many more from Ukraine to Libya to the farthest reaches of the American Empire, that Americans ignore at their peril.

Did Darren Wilson invent systemic racism?

The anti-climatic conclusion to this grand jury drama that has played out in Missouri, is that officer Darren Wilson will not be indicted.

Well, he should have been.

On the other hand, that would be letting the bigger villains off the hook.

Why are cops today trained to use overwhelming force first?

Darren Wilson is a product of his training and his socialization. Darren Wilson did not invent systemic racism.

Both Michael Brown and Darren Wilson are products of that system of institutionalized systemic racism that saturates America 150 years after Lincoln allegedly freed the slaves.

Memo to Obama; get rid of Biden too!

It'll give you some breathing room.

Even though they may have done nothing other than push your agenda, this gives you a chance to start over.

And perhaps that's what you're in the middle of.

Re-setting the agenda.

Far be it for me to give the President advice, but while you're re-booting, maybe give some thought to fore-grounding (a big word I learned in sociology class) the interests of the American people.

As opposed to the interests of the lobbyists who have taken over Washington.

If you're ever going to give the people what they want and need, you'll have to shake off the health care lobby and give Americans single-payer universal health care. Stop hiding behind this bullshit about Americans wanting a choice between for-profit health-care providers who can only make their profits by denying health care to their policy-holders.

Americans want health care.

Americans want decent jobs.

Americans want peace.

Stop listening to lobbyists.

Start listening to the American people.

The price of post 9/11 vigilance

Better safe than sorry.

So the cops shot down a kid waving a toy gun around in a park.

Hey, it's easy to get all judgemental about cops who shoot down a twelve year old, but how are they supposed to know he wasn't a towel-head of terror?

When your entire society is in hysteria mode due to a deliberate campaign by the political classes to foment hysteria, you can't blame a cop on the street for his hysterical reaction.

Does anyone believe Kenya killed 100 militants?

Our favourites in the Dark Continent certainly know how to treat themselves well.

Apparently, Mr. Goodluck over there in Nigeria runs a government whose legislators are the best paid in the world!

And our dear buddy in Kenya, that Uhuru Kenyatta fellow who's been busy bobbing and weaving to avoid the long arm of the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges, comes in second!

Oddly enough, our two bestest besties in the Dark Continent are facing down "Islamic insurgencies."

Now a cynic might be inclined to suggest that the reason these countries are besieged by "insurgencies" is because they are cesspools of graft and corruption.

But no. We are informed day after day by the media Big Dogs that both Kenya and Nigeria are beset by Islamic radicals, and they must therefore be given a free pass for any minor abuses of civil rights, human rights, etc. that may come up in the course of "fighting terror."

Both the Boko Haram and Shabaab terror outfits just sprung up out of nowhere, and neither have anything to do with the endemic corruption that cripples meaningful development in both Nigeria and Kenya.

Kenya scored a PR coup of sorts with the news that they have killed 100 Shabaab militants since yesterday's Shabaab attack on a bus. That's made headlines throughout the Nations of Virtue.

That's a major win in the PR department.

In the real world, even if some of those killed were in fact "militants," that merely primes the pump for the next round of violence.

The reason that radical groups like BH and the Shabaab get traction in Africa is because the populace is more than fed up with the corrupt West-friendly stooges who have been looting their countries for years.

World news business patiently waits for riots to break out in Ferguson

Not only is Ferguson Mo. jam-packed with satellite trucks from every serious news organization in the world, but the new media and the citizen journalists are there in their multitudes too.

That's a lot of folks who will be very disappointed if there is no rioting in Ferguson after the grand jury decision is announced.

Which raises an interesting question; to what extent will the reaction to that announcement have been shaped by all that media attention?

It's the Heisenberg effect writ large.

It's also the last act in the transmogrification of a profound social justice issue into sheer media spectacle.

Or for lack of a better word; "entertainment."

Best liver 'n onions in town

I opened my menu at the Steeles Deli this afternoon and spied the liver 'n onion entrée right away. "Best liver and onions in town," the menu promised.

Closed up the menu.

Ya sure; they all say that, but since I'm a sucker for a good feed of liver 'n onion now and then, I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Now, it did strike me that what they may have meant was best liver and onions in the Town of Vaughan, which is, technically speaking, where you are when you're sitting in a strip-mall on the north side of Steeles. The reason the north side of Steeles is wall-to-wall strip malls is because commercial realty taxes are lower in the Town (now the "City," apparently) of Vaughan than in Toronto, which is where you are when you cross Steeles Ave.

So, low taxes were the gambit that allowed Vaughan to poach Toronto businesses, but was this going to be the best liver and onion in Vaughan, or the best liver and onion in Toronto?

Long story short, the Steeles Deli serves up some really really delectable.... oh, but before I get to that, a couple of other noteworthy items.

First of all, there is a school of thought that claims eating animal livers is bad for you, because after all, the liver is the organ that filters toxins out of your blood.

Well, that's true. But look at it this way; what are vaccines made of? Toxins! And the entire edifice of modern scientific medicine agrees that putting a few toxins in your system inoculates against all kinds of nasty stuff.

So while I don't go for the flu shot and all that quackery, I figure I'm good to go thanks to an occasional feast of liver and onions... and touch wood, it's worked out so far.

Second noteworthy item, the Steeles Deli exhibits a very inclusive multi-culti hiring policy. They even have black people and oriental people working there! That's not something you run into in every deli in Toronto.

But I digress. Back to the liver and onions.

The liver and onions were utterly divine! While I can't say they were the "best" I ever had, they were certainly tied for the best. And portion-wise, there was absolutely nothing to complain about.

Having said that, I have to remark on the somewhat less than stellar potatoes and vegetables that showed up on the same plate.

For God's sakes people, throw some butter into the friggin' mashed potatoes! While edible, the mashed potatoes (and by the way, that's the only kind of potatoes you need with L&O) just didn't do the divine liver and onions justice.

And please, I shouldn't have to order gravy as a side! Liver and onions comes with mashed potatoes AND GRAVY!

Period! No debate required!

The veggies weren't up to par either. Edible, yes, but a C- compared to the A+ of the main deal.

Our party of five got out of there for a hundred bucks, which represents excellent value for a meal in the big city. My table-mates all had motzoh ball soup and corned beef sandwiches which unanimously got the thumbs up, except the guy who got the reuben and, if you can believe such a thing, had no idea what sauerkraut was.

Mind you, they don't have booze, or it would have been a different story, and I have to admit the tip was a little on the light side.

Overall, highly recommended.

71 year old hottie rapes paramedic in ambulance

Memo to unpaid interns at PostMedia; don't be wishy-washy with your headlines. That "sex with elderly woman" stuff isn't going to get you on the payroll.

On the other hand, if you spin this story just a bit, you'll get the headline featured above. That's going to generate some page views, my dear working-for-free friends!

And especially when you're working for a bankrupt entity like PostMedia, those page views will make all the difference between getting a paycheck, or not.

News Flash: richest still getting richer!

A few days ago CBC treated Canadians to this feel-good story about how the gap was closing between the 1% and the rest of us.

Turns out that when you took a good look at the story, they're talking vague generalizations about households that bring in a combined $215,000 per year. That's a household in Cold Lake or Fort Mac where both breadwinners are working in the oil patch, and if they were to be laid off, they'd miss their next mortgage payment.

They may be one percenters, but they are not by any stretch of the imagination "rich."

So a couple of days later, the CBC comes out with the truth; the real rich are doing better than ever!

CBC labels these folks the "ultra-rich." They assign an arbitrary $30 million cut-off point. That's a little closer to reality than calling folks who bring $215k into their home "rich." These are folks who aren't going to have to skip a meal or a mortgage payment (because they generally don't have them) regardless of whether they are employed or not.

They're not ultra-rich, but they're comfortable. And while the CBC pegs their number at a mere 5,000 across the land, that seems modest indeed. I can name a few dozen who rose from DP obscurity to that kind of net worth just in the real estate and construction game in the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge-Guelph area in the great post-war boom.

And by the way, for the most part, they don't see themselves as "rich." But according to the CBC, they are the "ultra-rich," and they're getting richer.

Which pretty much erases that feel-good story the CBC had for us a few days ago.

Keeping Julien Blanc out of Canada

I just signed a petition to keep Julien Blanc out of Canada. Go to Change.org and you can sign it too.

Yet at the same time, I'm not sure keeping him out is the best course of action.

Blanc puts on seminars that purport to instruct sexually frustrated males on how to "get lucky."

From what little I know about Blanc, his secret to success is to sexually harass women until they yield to your charms.

Ya, that's beyond charming, ain't it?

Frankly, I'm concerned that there's actually an audience for this kind of stuff. Insofar as there is, it's not going away just because a petition keeps Asshole Number One out of the country.

I almost think it would be better to let him in, and then let the forces of feminist umbrage have their way with him at every seminar he tries to put on.

That would be great sport!

And it might be more educational for those would-be clients of his than just banning him from the country.

Why incompetent front office "pukes" like Brian Burke will always have jobs in pro sports

The illustrious Brian Burke waxed wise on the state of media relations in the NHL the other day. Apparently it shouldn't be part of Phil Kessel's job to talk to media pukes on a regular basis.

If you recall, the Kessel trade was one of Burke's key moves when he was "rebuilding" the Leafs. Burkie seems to think that just because Kessel has been the top scorer on a Leafs team that's missed the playoffs for 8 out of the last 9 years,  his "team-building" skills have been exonerated!

Not so fast, Burkie!

Most of your critics who think they could do a better GM job than you do are probably right. Keeping a mediocre team mediocre isn't really a mark of management genius, is it?

Hell, I could do that!

And everybody knows that Burke's one and only Stanley ring had next to nothing to do with Burke.

But here's why Burke will not only survive, but thrive in the front office; certainly not with one particular team, but in general.

First of all, those years as Bettman's bumboy back in the '90's cemented his cred as an old boy insider.

Secondly, but just as important, the NHL is an entertainment franchise, and entertainment franchises need villains!

As any grade 9 drama teacher can tell you, there's no drama without villains, and the NHL needs its share of villains, on the ice, behind the bench, and in the front office.

So, inept as he may be as a GM, Burkie is doing a good job in his villain role. That's why I'm writing about him, and that's why you're reading about him.

Keep up the good work, ya old puke!

Snopocalypse

So how do you like that "global warming" now?

The world will end not with a bang, but with a shiver...

We had a good three feet of the stuff in these parts - three hours to the south, around Buffalo, they're double that and climbing... climbing onto their roofs to shovel the stuff off, because the building code in New York State was not designed with six feet of snow in mind.

This is a matter of some urgency. If the weather forecasters - sorry, the meteorologists, are right, there'll be rain along in another day and a half or so. If you think those roof trusses are stressed now, just wait!

There's gonna be an epidemic of collapsed roofs all over the North East!

That will make for some scary headlines. When the roofs of major shopping malls go away, folks are gonna get hurt. But look on the bright side; the rebuilding work will give the economy a major shot in the arm!

How to recognize a true child of God

The blood was not yet scrubbed from the Kehilat Bnai Torah Synagogue and already the political opportunists from across the spectrum were braying for vengeance.

Netanyahu was first off the mark, promising a resumption of house demolitions and "many other steps."

Bennet tried to score a few cheap points by blaming the attack on Israel's lap dog, the toothless Mahmoud Abbas.

Canada's ever-outraged FM John Baird, forever angling to be seen as Israel's best friend, chimed in with a press release that featured his vocabulary of indignation in finest form; condemns, condemns, cowardly, cowardly, savage terrorist attack, despicable terrorist acts...

Yes, it was certainly a red-letter day for the eye-for-an-eye crowd...

Meanwhile, back in Har Nof, a JPost reporter found a radically different attitude. An attitude of quiet resignation that, while deeply wounded, nevertheless believes that vengeance and judgement are in the hands of God, not up to the politicians.

"We are not a vengeful people. We are not a culture of blood for blood," a congregant of Kehilat Bnai Torah told the paper. "Our answer to such events is to strengthen our faith and our religious practice."

If more people, from every side in every conflict, could leave vengeance and judgement to God, and focus instead on being a better child of God, the world would be at peace.

Putin the Pariah

The establishment lefties at Slate have Putin isolated, shunned, ignored, and more dangerous than ever.

Well, one thing he isn't is "ignored." You can't find a news site anywhere in the Nations of Virtue where Putin's name does not appear on the home page.

That leaves "isolated, shunned, and more dangerous than ever."

If Putin is now more dangerous than ever, one must enquire as to how dangerous he was before.

While the bold activists of Pussy Riot may disagree, having spent 18 months hard time in the gulag for defiling a church, (and being sprung prematurely by the great ogre himself) it is exceedingly difficult to find where Putin has been a danger to anyone.

There was the bloodless reclamation of Crimea, which has unsettled those aforementioned Nations of Virtue no end. This seems to have gone over rather swimmingly with the citizens of Crimea. They tend to see Putin as a saviour rather than a pariah.

As for isolated and shunned, the record speaks for itself. While there is certainly no question that the self-anointed "International Community," ie the US and the usual me-too states, have done their level best and then some to isolate and shun Putin, there is no evidence whatsoever that isolation and shunning has come to pass.

Not only does Putin enjoy approval rates in Russia that are totally unthinkable among the hapless dolts who are doing the shunning... Hollande, Harper, Obama, Cameron... but he has far more credibility in the world beyond NATO than any of his detractors.

Which seems to drive the animus of his detractors... when there is nothing to say, shout louder.

So much for the freedoms we celebrate on November 11

On November 11 we like to gather round and celebrate the veterans who risked their lives to preserve our freedoms. Not only do we celebrate the veterans who risked their lives, we celebrate those who gave their lives.

They gave their lives so that we can live in freedom.

Look what happened to a Canadian Legion Chaplain who dared use her freedom of speech to question the Harper gang's commitment to our veterans.

The Nazi's and the Communists used to send political operatives around to make sure the locals were adhering to the Party line.

How is that different from what is happening in Kenora today?

The myth of the one percenters

There's a great feel-good story on view at the CBC today claiming that the gap between rich and poor in Canada is closing up!

There is a massive flaw in the story. The "rich" are defined as the "1%."

Apparently the cut-off for being in the 1% in Canada is now a household income of $215 k/year.

Sorry, that ain't "rich" people. That's a high school principal who marries a high school teacher.

That's a welder in Cold Lake Alberta who marries another welder in Cold Lake Alberta.

That's two Toronto cops hooking up.

That's not rich people, and this article is complete bullshit.

We live in a country where the average home price just hit $420,000. The average household income languishes in the $40 k range. When the average home is not affordable to the average household, there's trouble brewing.

Bill Cosby and Ferguson Mo.

Let's talk about racism in America.

Bill Cosby always had more cred in white America than he had in black America.

That's probably true of a large number of black American icons. After all, it wasn't black America that made them icons, was it?

Black America would, by and large, be well outside the spheres of influence that determine who/what the next icon will be.

What's about to unfold in Ferguson could very well turn out to be iconic. We could be witnessing the genesis of 1,001 history lessons.

Then again, we could be about to witness nothing more than the most recent chapter of resistance being beaten into submission.

Ackman trousers $2.3 billions for "losing" battle for Botox

Pity Bill Ackman and his Pershing Square hedge fund.

He's been after Botox maker Allergan for months now. Sadly, he was outspent by Actavis, an American generics giant headquartered in Ireland to avoid US corporate taxes.

But don't feel too sad for Bill. Reuters has the hedgie pocketing a cool $2,300,000,000.00 for his six months effort to coral the Botox manufacturer.

Nice work if you can get it.

Acts of "pure" evil vs acts of not-so-bad evil

Once again, the Peace Prize President has staked out the moral high ground. The latest hostage beheading by Islamic State is pure evil.

This would be not-so-bad evil;



That guy leaking his bodily fluids onto the floor at Abu Ghraib may have other ideas about pure vs OK evil, but nobody asked him, so let's stick to the script, shall we!

When Israel shells entire neighbourhoods in Gaza into oblivion, the word "evil" never comes up.

The Nations of Virtue bombed the most progressive country on the African continent into anarchy and civil war because it was "evil," and therefore those bombs were virtuous.

Bombs and drones in Yemen and Pakistan kill and maim almost daily, but since we're doing the killing and maiming, that's OK too.

OK evil, if you will.

But the Islamic State lops off the head of an American hostage, and there's the Commander in Chief, declaring that's "pure evil."

America may be blind to its hypocrisies, but the rest of the world is not.

Just say NO to more Africa Band Aids

The very idea that fighting the scourge of disease and epidemic in Africa should fall to the most privileged in the colonist countries is fraught with multiple layers of irony.

Geldof and his celebrity pals may have good intentions, but they are exactly the wrong people to make into the poster boys and girls of the fight against ebola.

Geldof and company are the very people who most enjoy the privileges that come with being on the shiny end of the same stir stick that keeps stirring most of Africa deeper into the mud. Geldof and company come from the countries that have plundered Africa's gold and diamonds and oil for 500 years, all the while bemoaning Africa's "under-development" and throwing back a few crumbs of the booty as "aid."

The reason ebola can spread as it does in Africa, is because of the virtually non-existent health-care infrastructure in the continent. The reason there is virtually no health care infrastructure is because Africa's wealth gets exported to Europe and America instead of being re-invested in Africa.

And not only does the West steal Africa's natural resources, they cream off the human resources too. There are more African doctors practising in New York and Toronto than there are in all of Africa. So no wonder there is no viable health care infrastructure on the ground in Africa.

Nor will there be one after Bob Geldof and his celebrity pals raise a few millions in their do-gooder enterprise. This time round there's more visible resistance to this "aid" coming from Africans. It's about time.

The African continent has more than enough resources, human and natural, to achieve a standard of living and a standard of health care that could be the envy of the entire world. What's been holding them back is the institutionalized paternalism of the West, which loots with one hand and gives back "aid" with the other.

Enough!

Pussy Riot continue World Selfie Tour in London

Nadya and Masha, the Mick and Keith of what used to be a radical feminist collective, are making a splash in England these days.

According to the headlines in the Guardian, they're in the country to talk politics, prison reform, and punk. And to take lots and lots of selfies.

Unlike Mick and Keith, the gals have not actually sold any music, so there is rampant speculation about exactly what or who is paying their bills. Needless to say, their combination of reflexive anti-Putin hysteria and camera-friendly demeanour has certainly made them plenty of friends in high places in the West. Remember, these are anti-establishment activists who prefer to breakfast at McDonalds, so I don't think the corporate world has much to fear from them.

While there's no question the gals have no use for Putin, there's no telling what they actually stand for. The democratically elected Putin is rocking apparently legit approval ratings of over 80%, so obviously the Pussy Riot formula of manufacturing dissent has been ineffective, and one could speculate whether their pro-democracy bona-fides are as convincing as their anti-Putin bona-fides.

What we know for sure is that these two, who have taken it upon themselves to speak for their former collective, are expert self-promoters who may not stand for anything other than self promotion.

That's so po-mo, ain't it? Warhol would do their portraits in a minute...

At least if it was 1980.

Netanyahu reminds America that Christians and Jews are one big happy family!

And of course Muslims aren't a part of it, which must account for why they want to do us harm.

Netanyahu showed up on Face the Nation this morning, ostensibly to offer his insights into the latest Islamic State be-heading outrage. It took him all of 30 seconds to change the subject to Iran's nuclear weapons.

Unlike Israel's nuclear weapons, Iran's don't actually exist, but that's not something Bob Schieffer would bring up. That might cause an uncomfortable moment, and Bob saves those for Ron Paul. Instead, the greatest leader since Moses was basically given free rein to rant about the Islamic threat in general and the Iranian threat in particular.

He was also over-the-top in emphasising that Israel has no better friend than America, and America has no better friend than Israel, which is going to cause some pouting in Ottawa. That was just Netanyahu talking nice for the cameras... Mitt Romney came on next to set the record straight; Obama has practically sold the Promised Land down the river, and only a Republican administration can restore the trust that once allowed the triumphalist crazies of Likud to take American support totally for granted.

As for that "one big happy family" bit, I suppose he's right. When you get right down to it, Christianity is just a Jewish cult that went viral.

Canadian media chuffed over Harper's ultimatum to Putin

The Putin-haters are quite pleased with Canadian PM Harper's alleged snarky remark at the G20 in Brisbane.

As the story goes, Harper told Putin to get out of Ukraine, to which Putin supposedly replied "that would be impossible, since we're not in Ukraine."

The Toronto Star has the story as "Harper issued a blunt command to the Russian leader..."

The obvious retort to a blunt command from Harper would be, "or else what?" Or else Harper's gonna send the fabled Princess Pollyanna Regiment to Moscow to whup his ass?

Meanwhile over at the National Post, the flagship of the floundering Postmedia Network, unpaid intern Joe Brean begins his anti-Putin "analysis" with this howler, "Menace clouded the arrival of Russian President Vladimir Putin's arrival at the G20...", surely the most idiotic intro to a supposedly serious article since the moronic juvenilia that landed Cathal Kelly at the Globe and Mail.

Fact is, Putin is in the cross-hairs of the Beltway warmongers, and our mainstream media are doing what they can in the cheer-leading department. "News" be damned; we're in propaganda city with this stuff.

The US/NATO combine out-spends Russia on war toys by a factor of ten, but we are supposed to take seriously the assertion that it's the Russians who threaten world peace?

Harper's lapse of good manners in Brisbane paled in comparison to Obama's sanctimonious rant about a world in which big nations don't invade smaller ones. They don't? This comes from the President of the United States, a big country that has invaded or bombed at least a dozen smaller countries in the last twenty years or so. Russia's bloodless reclamation of Crimea can in no way be compared to the US/NATO campaigns of savagery unleashed on smaller countries from Libya to Afghanistan.

Yet, for some reason, Canadian journalists across the spectrum, from the left-leaning Star to the Thatcherite National Post, seem convinced that it is the West that holds the moral high ground.

Chinese aggression...

Ya, apparently it happens all the time.

There's lots of interesting stuff going on in the Pacific.

Australia is a treasure trove of raw materials, and not much else. Do you think evil-doers are standing by to nab Aussie scientists as soon as they become available?

Of course not! That's because everybody knows the Aussies have a doobie in one hand and a beer in the other even as they're filling out the forms to get landed immigrant status somewhere else!

But no matter... you've never heard about an Aussie not getting landed immigrant status...

Which means we can't even count on them to defend us from China...

Canada puts the run to Islamic State terrorists!

No, it's not me making that up.

It's not even Bullshittin' Baird or Big Steve making that up!

This is the real deal, straight from US Army top dog General Martin Dempsey!

And while he doesn't spell out the specifics, it's beyond obvious that what has turned the tide in the battle against the Islamic State is the fact that those Canadian CF-18s are now in on the action.

Think about it. All you've heard all summer is ISIS this and ISIL that and OMG Islamic State is taking over the world!

Then, two weeks ago, the Canadians, known world-wide for punching way above their weight, join the fray...

And not two weeks later we have General Dempsey declaring that those ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State baddies are on the run!

Coincidence?...

Sometimes you have to read between the lines.

Putin flees G20 summit in tears after Harper reprimand

Vlad "the Hammer" has had his way with many a world leader, but he was upstaged today by the steely resolve of Canada's PM "Big Steve" Harper.

Harper told the Russian leader in no uncertain terms to get out of Ukraine.

The Russian dictator, visibly shaken, retreated to his suite at the Brisbane Hilton, but moments later his entourage released a presser announcing that Putin was making an early return to Moscow.

Once again, Canada leads the way in showing the free world how to deal with bullies. Just stand up to them, and the glaring truths of your argument will make them cower in fear.

Good work, Stephen! The free world thanks you for keeping it free a little longer!

**********

Note to unpaid Postmedia interns; when you tackle this topic in a week or two, just throw in a bit of gratuitous anti-Putin rhetoric and you should have yourselves a payroll reference number in no time!

Pot-addled blogger beats Postmedia to Savile-Ghomeshi parallels by two weeks

Which is quite an achievement, considering the story is barely two weeks old!

The unpaid interns at Postmedia have this story floating around today. There are parallels between the Jimmy and Jian stories? Forsooth! Who knew?

The unpaid interns at Falling Downs had it nailed two weeks ago, that's who.

Pot-addled pinko blogger kicked off "Before it's News"

Yup, it's true. They haven't posted one of my stories for a week.

At some level, I suppose that's a sad thing. After all, I've been with them since before they had a million stories. They're now closing in on five million.

At some other level, I'm relieved. Before it's News is a dodgy operation at best. Those who appear regularly at Before it's News will no doubt be acquainted with the magical disappearing page count phenomenon.

That's where, after you write something that's getting a bit of traction, the page-view counts suddenly go backwards. Ten minutes after you push "publish" you've got 50 page views. Ten minutes after that you've got 200. Ten minutes later you're down to 47... happens all the time at Before it's News.

Meanwhile, some whacked story about aliens abducting Jesus has got 60,000 page views. As I've said in previous missives about Before it's News, there cannot possibly be enough stupid people in America, in spite of the decrepitude of the education system, to garner those numbers.

I was somewhat reluctant to sign on with B4. The fact that some yokel I exchanged e-mails with assured me that my totally unproven theory that Jimmy Hoffa's last ride was to a salami factory didn't in any way give them pause for thought, should have given me pause for thought.

At the time, they were a click-factory that published corporate pressers as a matter of course, just to get their numbers up.

Now that they pretend to have some actual standards, they kick me out? Hey, that hurts...

But I'm over it!

Canada leads world in CSR

What the hell is CSR, you ask?

Why, that would be "corporate social responsibility,"

Yup, we're leaders all right. In fact, we pretty much invented the concept, just like we invented R2P and saving women and girls etc.

CSR has been splashed around the Dept. of Foreign Affairs website a fair bit.

I'm suspicious.

I'm suspicious for multiple reasons. First of all, I'm suspicious because Baird's bailiwick is famous for just making shit up. Oh ya, there's been another Russian invasion of Ukraine this week, and so on.

Secondly, I'm suspicious because sometimes Canada's "leadership" isn't what it seems. Take the much ballyhooed leadership in saving women and girls for example. You can find dozens upon dozens of press releases on the DFA website wherein Baird and Co. pat themselves on the back for... saving women and girls worldwide.

Dig into the back-stories a bit, and you'll find they're talking about some "aid" program co-sponsored by some franken-food conglomerate that is providing franken-seeds and the accoutrements of "modern agriculture" to some less developed nation. It's not as if they're lying; franken-foods are indeed edible, and women and girls have to eat, but the way we frame our "aid" tends to be somewhat misleading at times...

OK! Pretty much all the time!

Thirdly, I can't help but think of Gwyn Morgan when I think of CSR. Gwyn talked a lot about CSR while he was Chair of the Board of Directors at SNC Lavalin. Even as he was talking about corporate social responsibility, his company was being exposed as a serial practitioner of bribes and kick-backs world-wide.

Fourthly, when you take a serious look at it, Canada's world-leading extractive industry is a world leader in defiling local environments, abusing local populations, and leaving a mess for future generations to clean up. Mining Watch is a good source of information on how Canada leads the world in ethical extractive practices.

Finally, I'm suspicious because of the very nomenclature of this latest good cause.

CSR. Corporate social responsibility. Think about it; that's ultimately an oxy-moron, isn't it?

More foolish talk from Ukraine PM

Ukraine PM "Yats" Yatsenyuk has a plan. Broke and beleaguered though the country may be, Yats figures the Ukrainian people should forget about the economy and focus instead on building up an army capable of stopping Russia.

Seems a little short-sighted. Among the many immediate problems facing Ukraine are massive unemployment, staggering debt, and the impending implementation of the austerity measures Yats and Poroshenko have agreed to in their quest to appease their EU betters.

Seems Ukraine's new leadership is as bankrupt of ideas as their treasury is of hyvnia.

IDF forms up new Lions of Jordan Battalion to protect biggest nature reserve in Israel

According to Col. Ofir Livius, the occupied Jordan Valley is no longer part of the occupied territories; it is instead, "the biggest undeclared nature reserve in the country."

Hmm... as far as I know this marks the first time a new battalion has been struck just to secure a nature reserve. Perhaps the IDF want to pre-empt the poaching of local wildlife by ISIS recruiters? The native species are very much in danger of extinction, as everyone knows, and this IDF commitment to their conservation will no doubt be welcomed by environmentalists everywhere!

Or perhaps Col. Livius' blast 'o bullshit obscures a more unsettling reality. Abdullah Too, Israel's partner for peace in the West Bank, is living on borrowed time. A year from now he could well be domiciled in Monaco or Miami, and his country, including its military, could be swearing allegiance to the Caliph of the Islamic State.

Best get those Lions of Jordan on the ground a year early rather than a year too late.

Democracy no big deal for only democracy in Middle East

That's the word from Sheldon Adelson, aka "Bibi's wallet."

The casino magnate, known for buying elections both in Israel and the US, doesn't lose any sleep over the oft repeated canard, "Israel will remain the Jewish state but cease to be a democracy, or Israel will remain a democracy and cease to be the Jewish state."

According to Adelson, when God presented the blue-print for the Jewish state right there in the Bible, He didn't say a word about democracy!

Good enough, then! Let's stop pretending...

Guess that leaves Gaza as the only democracy in the Middle East.

We can park a spaceship on a comet but we can't build a window-washer rig that doesn't fail?

That's gotta be a bit of a mind-fuck, eh?

Those guys hanging off the new World Trade One, advertising to the world what hapless dolts Americans are.

At the same moment, live from Darmstadt, a European consortium from mostly socialistic countries, ie virtual commies, was parking a spacecraft on a comet, a mere half a billion Kilometres away...

I'm pretty sure they did that on purpose, just to mock America.

So, just to remind the ingrates who's in charge, bombs away on Darmstadt!

Dr. M. Koohzad explains why the Kurds are people we can work with

When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation posted their hagiography of the plucky Israeli-Canadian woman now fighting for the Kurds, the story contained this interesting nugget;

Israel's NRG news site reported at the time that Rosenberg turned to crime after running short on money, that she was estranged from her parents and had tried in vain to join the Mossad spy service.

Israel has maintained discreet military, intelligence and business ties with the Kurds since the 1960s, seeing in the minority ethnic group a buffer against shared Arab adversaries.

Since the 1960's? That would explain a lot of Kurdish mischief-making, would it not? And would it not make perfect sense, in that the Kurds represent a viable fifth column within many of Israel's adversaries in the region? Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey?

Today Counterpunch has on view an essay by Dr. M. Koohzad, reminding Americans who to thank for the lowest gasoline prices they've seen in years... why, the Kurds of course!

Any serious person will immediately recognize that as a tail-wags-dog story. The collapse in petroleum prices has been engineered by the House of Saud, not by the Kurds, and their rationale has nothing to do with the happiness of American consumers and everything to do with driving a spike through the heart of America's fracking industry.

Nevertheless, Dr. Koozhad makes some telling points.

In the event that petroleum reserves in the Kurdish areas were to be fully exploited, Kurdistan could indeed emerge as a major player in the global petrol sweeps. And unlike those selfish anti-Americans in Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, and even, it seems, Saudi Arabia, the reader is assured that the leadership of an independent Kurdistan would pledge eternal fealty to the West in return for providing the guns and bombs required to make that independence possible.

Alas, there is also a hint of venality in Dr. Koohzad's thesis; as much as he is overtly sucking up to the US and Israel, he also lets slip that the biggest cash customers for Kurdish oil are in fact Turkey and Iran!

There you have it. We can work with the Kurds because they are the only democrats in the Middle East (outside of Israel, of course) and they can keep us in cheap oil for a long time. That combo of democratic values and cheap gas is an offer America cannot refuse.

Putin the "pariah" upstages Obama in China

You don't have to watch a lot of footage of the recent big-dog sniff-out in Beijing to figure out who's a pariah and who's not.

Putin is by far more popular and more respected in the so-called free world than the putative leader of the free world.

That's something for the Washington pundits to chew on...

Putin's global popularity by far outstrips that of Obama.

Fighting "terror" to empower women

The signal trope of the first barrage of bullshit intended to justify our unjustifiable onslaught on Afghanistan in 2001 went roughly like this; the Nations of Virtue are justified in this illegal war because we are liberating the women of Afghanistan. Yes, we are bringing light to the benighted and hope to over 50% of the population, so international law be damned; we've got the moral high ground.

In the 1990's my family sponsored an Afghan Muslim family into Canada as refugees. Both parents had once been university professors in Kabul. That was in the bad old days, the days when the shadow of the Evil Empire hung over Afghanistan, the dark days of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, when women voted and worked as university professors, a darkness which Washington spent some $40 billions to undermine and overthrow.

Our refugees were not fleeing the Najibullah regime; they were fleeing the US-installed Taliban. Yet when America and the gang of the virtuous displaced the Taliban... one of the main goals was to liberate Afghanistan's women!

Unfortunately, the warlords given the key to the country by the US invasion in 2001 were no more sympathetic to matters of women's rights than the Talibs. The golden age of women's empowerment in Afghanistan lived and died with the Democratic Republic.

But the trope lives on. Behind the scenes, the Nations of Virtue have at one time or another provisioned virtually every so-called terror group in the Middle East. The Iranian MEK was able to lobby its way off the terror list by paying vast sums to well-connected Washington insiders. Left-leaning Kurdish resistance groups were placed on the terror list due to Turkey paying vast sums to well-connected Washington lobbyists. In the rest of the world, this is called influence peddling. In America it's called lobbying, and it's as American as apple pie baked with genetically modified apples. (Which, by the way, are pretty much the only kind of apples you can find in America, thanks to the GMO lobby.)

Our Kurdish terrorists seem to be following the MEK out of the terror wilderness. Here's a compelling plea from a bona fide lefty begging for guns and money for those Kurds on our terror list. And just in time for Nov. 11, writer Ben Norton makes sure he throws the F word into the mix a few hundred times, just so you're clear on who the bad guys are.

Just like in 1939, we're fighting the Fascists, but even scarier Fascists than before!

We also have this timely story making the rounds; Israeli woman joins Kurds in fight against Islamic State. The Islamic State/ISIL/ISIS is only the most recent iteration of the evil other, created out of whole cloth by the Nations of Virtue, and now an existential threat to our very way of life.

The Gillian Rosenberg fable is the product of a lobbying campaign that has long stressed the egalitarian nature of Kurdish society. Among the vaunted Peshmerga fighters, the women punch above their weight. We rarely if ever run into a discussion of the tradition of FGM in Kurdish society, because that particular abomination is the sole province of the Islamic State evil-doers we're fighting.

We, the Nations of Virtue, are all about freedom and peace and the equality of women.

Therefore, if you care about the rights of women, you will whole-heartedly endorse the latest US war on Arabs who don't know enough to follow orders.

Kevin Vickers gets top Israeli award for shooting a Muslim

Yes, the accolades just keep pouring in for Kevin Vickers.

As soon as the Knesset heard he'd shot a Muslim, they unanimously nominated him for an award.

Well, it wasn't quite unanimous - those Muslim Israelis currently banned from the Knesset might have voted differently.

I think those Israeli parliamentarians might have taken a pause for thought had they realized exactly who our "Islamic terrorist" was that Kevin Vickers took down.

This "terrorist" was a white non-Arab French-Canadian, whose "Islamic" bona fides were sketchy at best. He was a disturbed young man allowed to fall through the cracks of Canada's precarious health care system.

Not to question the obvious heroism of Mr. Vickers, but when his heroism is so blatantly being turned into political capital, the honourable thing to do would be to decline the award.

Hezbollah issues new air-conditioned haz-mat uniform

The southerly suburbs of Beirut are rocking the new air-conditioned uniforms issued to the local militias by the Party of God.



Air-conditioning not only offers an extra level of protection in the event of an Israeli chemical attack, it provides a level of comfort deemed absolutely essential when summer temperatures hover in the 90 degree range for weeks on end.

Hopefully the new gear will put an end to scenes like the one seen in this photograph capturing the militants slipping into their summer gear just last year at a beach in south Beirut.

How building codes created the asthma epidemic

I was sitting around with the Farm Manager, and we were reminiscing about the good old days, when nobody had wall-to-wall carpet and everybody had drafty doors and windows.

And hardly anybody had asthma.

Now we've got super-efficient houses that are so air-tight we need air-exchangers, and every other kid is huffing steroids out of their puffer.

That's progress, brought to you by professionals who revise your local building code every few years to make housing more expensive and less occupant-friendly.

What real estate bubble?

From time to time me and the Farm Manager get to missing our children, who are, all five of them, living along the Toronto-Guelph axis. That's a two-three hour trip each way from our 100 acres of paradise here at Falling Downs.

A typical trip to visit with any of the children inevitably becomes a matter of five or six hours of driving for a two or three hour visit, so we don't visit as much as we'd like. And that's if there's no traffic complications, which, the closer you get to Toronto, are pretty much guaranteed to happen.

Then you can easily get into eight hours of driving for a two hour visit.

So from time to time we get to thinking about cashing in Falling Downs and moving a little closer.

Ha!

You're lucky to find a modest starter in Guelph for $300k.

In Toronto, you can pretty much double that for a modest starter.

Either way, that's a non-starter.

I remember humble bungalows put up by TT Skov in the early sixties that sold for 10 thousands when built. They're trading in the range of $400 thousand now. When Mr. Skov put those up, the average factory hand in Guelph could afford them. Needless to say, that doesn't happen any more.

A lot of this is driven by idiotically low interest rates. There's tons of folks being approved for half-million dollar mortgages who would be well and truly up a stump if interest rates went back to normal. Every other house on every street would be up for sale overnight.

You know what that would mean. All sellers and no buyers?...

A total collapse of the real estate market.

We're all niggers now

Back in the day, when I was a gas-pumper at John's Supertest on Wellington Road in Guelph, there was this guy who drove in a couple of times a week in a new Lincoln Mark III. Actually, there was a couple of guys who came in regularly with their new Mark III's. There was Harold Knight, who owned a local lumber yard, and there was Buddy who was a crane operator in the Operating Engineers, a construction union.

The construction unions are one of the few labour groups who have managed to more or less hold up the standard of living for their membership. The others are the cops, the teachers, and the nurses. What do they have in common?

What they have in common is that their work can't be out-sourced to Mexico or China.

You can't send a classroom of local kids to Mexico for the year to learn the three R's from dollar-a-day peons.

You can't out-source policing to Mexico or China either. And it goes without saying that your local health care providers are going to stay local. You might be able to medi-vac the local trauma patients to the nearest regional hospital by helicopter, but those helicopters won't make it to Shanghai.

Till now, the construction trades were safe too, but Big Steve's got a plan that's gonna change that.

One of the big "wins" for Canadian businesses under the pending CETA "free trade" agreement with the EU is enhanced labour mobility. Note that this is a "win" for Canadian business; not for Canadian workers. Buddy and his new Lincoln would never happen if Canada's construction work was thrown wide open to crane operators from Poland and Hungary and Estonia.

But it gets even better; at least for business owners, not workers. That hush-hush TPP trade agreement that Big Steve has been busy with is gonna throw open the door to crane operators from India and Bangladesh!

That's really gonna piss off the guys from Poland who just moved here to take away Canadian jobs that used to pay $50/hr by doing them for $20/hr. By the time the Bangladeshis settle in, a tower crane operator in Toronto is going to be working for five bucks an hour!

Around the time Buddy was pulling into John's Supertest, Pierre Vallieres was sitting in a cell in New York State penning a book called White Niggers of America.

Pierre was a bit ahead of his time. His provocative use of the "N" word was meant to draw attention to how Quebecois workers were exploited. Sadly, time has passed Pierre by...

We're all niggers now.

Netanyahu to get tough on Palestinians

Here are the words of the Greatest Leader since Moses, as reported in the Guardian;

"Israel is a nation of law. Whoever violates the law will be punished severely. We will not tolerate demonstrations in the heart of our cities in which the flags of Hamas and Isis are waved, where there are calls for the redemption of Palestine with blood and fire, basically calling for the destruction of Israel,” Netanyahu said. “The time has come to operate against these movements that want to destroy us.”

If the time has just now come to operate against these movements, one is left to wonder what all the death and destruction visited upon the Palestinians before now was about? The immediate cause of the most recent rioting was the shooting death of a Palestinian by an Israeli policeman, in "self-defence" of course, until video emerged to expose yet another calculated murder.

While Israel may indeed be a "nation of law," no serious person expects such a routine killing to have any consequences for the officer who pulled the trigger. There are laws, and then there are laws...

Hollywood's favourite charity

Quick!.. what do you suppose is Hollywood's favourite philanthropic cause?

Saving the rain forest? Fighting climate change? Feeding starving black babies?..

No, no, and no again... Hollywood's favourite cause is the Israeli Defence Forces!

That's right, the "most moral army in the world," charged with keeping Israel safe from stone-throwing Palestinian children, counts on the generosity of wealthy Americans to make ends meet. The $8 billions of official budget money doesn't go as far as it used to, while those Gaza rockets are going farther than ever before, so this infusion of philanthropic largesse could make all the difference...

By the way, does anyone really believe that Israel has been getting safer?

Obama now in it to win it

That didn't take long; with his new crew of patriotic Republican cheerleaders goading him on from the Senate, the Peace Prize President wasted no time doubling the number of boots on the ground in Iraq.

These are of course "non-combat" boots, dontcha know. They won't be fighting till he doubles their numbers again in a month or two, or doubles them again a month or two after that.

It's early days on the slippery slope, folks!

So if they're not actually combating the evil-doers, what will all those boots be doing on the ground? The usual stuff... like directing traffic at those busy border crossings. ISIS infiltrators in this lane; car-bombers in this lane, FSA defectors in this lane, and so on.

Oh, and training up the locals, of course. That one's always been a head-scratcher if you ask me. The very idea that the military that hasn't won one since Grenada is your best bet to train anything seems a little back-assward. And haven't they already trained up the locals to the tune of tens of billions of dollars?

And for what?

Why the shale oil industry plods gamely on in spite of plunging oil prices

Because the entirety of the shale gas/oil boom in recent years has been 49% hype, 49% stock market swindle, and 2% oil and gas. That's why, as an industry, it seems immune to market pressures that should theoretically stop it in its tracks.

With lift costs in the $80-$100/barrel range, the industry was always running on the thinnest of margins, even at the best of times. The stock-market capitalization of the fracking sector has ballooned exponentially beyond anything that could be justified by the underlying profits.

Putting the brakes on development would draw too much attention to the fact that the industry was fundamentally doomed by diminishing returns from the beginning. Investors would stampede the exits and billions in shareholder value would disappear overnight.

With a little luck, the stock-market gamers behind this success story can keep the balloon afloat a little longer...

Petro "Pinocchio" Poroshenko discovers another Russian invasion

Another month, another Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Does Poroshenko not realize that every time he announces yet another Russian invasion, invasions that have proven as ephemeral as the Ukrainian economy over which "the Chocolate King" presides, a little more of his credibility goes up in smoke?

In fact, Poroshenko has cried "wolf" so many times that he's down to an audience of one, and that would be Canada's one-man anti-Putin cold war, Foreign Minister John Baird.

Every time Poroshenko issues one of his fanciful invasion reports, John Baird immediately issues a blistering anti-Putin press release chock full 'o deep concern and strong condemnations! Except Baird doesn't believe this nonsense either!

Baird knows Ukraine is broke and broken, and that Russia is more than happy to have it be a drain on the West for the next generation, instead of a drain on Russia. But Baird writes those pressers for the home crowd. The Harper gang has to win an election next year, and there'll be over a million voters of Ukrainian descent voting, most of who's forbears fled the Soviet Union in the Stalin era.

Convincing those million voters that Putin = Stalin might just clinch the election for the Harper gang.

America's ultimate reality show; democracy

Mid-terms.

Who cares?

It's the great democracy show. Or at least the pre-amble.

No serious person imagines it makes one iota of difference if the Republicans take the Senate. There's not much farther right you can go when you're already up against the right-field fence.

This carnival of hyperbole and hypocrisy is just the warm up act to the Big Show, which is swinging into high gear just as these mindless and irrelevant mid-terms are playing themselves out.

The Presidential race is where the real fun begins, and that's seriously on as of now.

The ultimate American reality show.

Canada's youth employment strategy; "work for free!"

That tip for building your future came from Bank of Canada boss Stephen Poloz today.

Hey sure, why not? If Ma 'n Pa are kind enough to let you stay at their place, you kinda owe it too them anyway, don't you? You could get yourself a nice unpaid internship, especially if you're a comely female unemployed youth! Word is Jian Ghomeshi assisted many a young unemployed female into the workforce, and while it's too late to take advantage of his particular generosity, there are lots of other employers out there willing to take a chance on a desperate young person willing to work for free.

Meanwhile, us half-a-million a year bureaucrats want to remind you that your government owes you nothing. Nada. Dick. Sweet FA. As a matter of fact we're upping the legal immigration quota to a record 285,000 for next year, because if you lazy ingrates won't work for free, maybe they will! And we're also full steam ahead on bringing in another 300,000 or so foreign temps, just to keep Canadian workers even more flexible.

Hey, it's not our fault they've got skills that you don't; don't blame your government that there's no job training available for you. That's not our job. That would be interfering with the private sector, and in Harper's Canada, the private sector is the engine of growth.

So off you go then! Shut off the X-box and get off the couch! There must be some business in your neighbourhood willing to let you work for nothing, and if not in your neighbourhood, at least within a couple of hours commute by city bus.

If you can't find a job working for free, you've no one to blame but yourself.

The think tank here at Falling Downs sincerely hopes that this foolishness, coming from one of the top guardians of our economy, will blow a fresh wind into the sails of the Red Square folks and all other like-minded youth.