Let's raise a glass to Michael Enright and a thousand Sunday mornings

A cynic might suggest that I'm just looking for an excuse to crack a beer before noon.

That cynic would be right.

But that's only a small corner of the carpet the dogs chew on every day. The Farm Manger has got the CBC on the radio, and the more I try to ignore it, the more I can't.

David Grossman?

Leonard Peltier?

Enright scratches the surface of a lot of highly combustible shit.

Unfortunately, at the CBC he'll never be allowed beyond the surface.

What exactly is our role, as Canadians, in Peltier's completely inhumane and politically motivated imprisonment?

That's not a question we seriously ask or seriously expect an answer to.

And every serious person knows that Grossman is just another pathetic self-hating Jew.


Be that as it may, it's always nice to know you're going to hear Michael again a week from now.

I personally am looking forward to the 2000th edition of the Sunday Edition.


Nice work, dude.

Democracy Canadian style; an exemplar for the world

Doug Saunders got a lot of column inches in the Globe and Mail opinion section today, mainly because Shribman and Kendzior weren't in it. That left some blank space to fill.

Doug was happy to fill it.

Since I've been bemoaning the presence of those Yankee interlopers for some time, you'd think I'd be happy about this.

I'm not.

Dear Doug devotes his three or four pages to lobbying for more Canadian interference in the electoral process in other countries. After all, that's what we used to do when we used to be great, at least according to Doug.

Doug cites our interference in Ukraine as an example of the good things that could happen when we interfere in other countries. He posits that as an example, and then leaves us hanging.

Maybe he lost his train of thought...

OK Doug; by what metric is Ukraine better off today than it was before we, the purveyors of democracy, pushed for the demise of the democratically elected government of Ukraine?


Sorry Doug, you're just peddling bullshit again.



Dear G&M management,

Please bring back Shribman and Kendzior and stop giving that idiot Saunders all those column inches.

Thanks!

When the sun sets for the last time

We're experiencing what's called a "cold snap" in these parts. As in, it's really f@cking cold outside.

According to research I've done on the Internet, it takes eight minutes and twenty seconds for the sun's energy to hit planet Earth.

What that means is that it'll take about eight minutes and twenty seconds after our sun goes out for us to notice.

Then we're done.

Not all of us at the same time of course.

Those of us who have the good fortune of having full fuel tanks could last another thirty days or so.

And the cave-dwellers world-wide who depend on geo-thermal heating could conceivably last a few more months.

But at the end of the day, when the sun goes out, we're all screwed.


If we're all going to be in the freeze-off together, why can't we all be in the keep-the-planet-going movement together?


In the meanwhile, as we await certain death by freezing, Fireplace Phil has found her niche here at Falling Downs. The new puppy will spend hours in front of the fireplace, mesmerised by the flames.

And half-way-up-the-hill Phil has dramatically abbreviated our morning walk.


Be that as it may, we're gonna keep going with what we know here at Falling Downs.


Happy 2018!

Plagiarism or not?

Here's a story that appeared in an Abu Dhabi newspaper and online in March 2012;

The Syrian schoolboys who sparked a revolution.

Here's a story from the Globe and Mail from December 2016;

The graffiti kids who sparked the Syrian war.

I briefly noted the similarities in a blog post at the time, Propornot, and then forgot about it.

Today on the back page of the front section of my Globe and Mail I noticed a full page congratulatory message from the Globe to itself. That story won Story of the Year from the Foreign Press Association! Here's what Globe editor-in-chief David Walmsley has to say; "This global win is a recognition of what happens when you ask a simple question - how did the Syrian war begin? - and allow a journalist to follow the thread through all its twists and turns."

Hmm...

So how did the Syrian war begin?

Answering that question would entail a close look at events in Daraa in February and March of 2011. About ten thousand of the twelve thousand words in the Globe story are given over to historical background, what's happened to the protagonists since, and editorializing about who the good guys and the bad guys might be.

 Insofar as the story is about the nuts and bolts of how the Syrian war actually began, the Globe's story is virtually identical to the story published in Abu Dhabi almost five years before.

What I find more than a little precious is that Mark Mackinnon, the writer of the Globe story, claims he spent six months getting to the bottom of the events of February and March, when all he had to do was read the Abu Dhabi story, which takes five minutes or less to find online.

Like I said; hmm...

Is "Gateway" an appropriate name for a retirement home?

The other day I found myself behind a hearse and a black Dodge van. They weren't in any hurry. They turned off at the Gateway Retirement Community.

I guess some bitter old sod bequeathed his loved ones one last Christmas present; he kicked the bucket on Christmas eve.

Gateway to what, I always wonder.

There's one in Lion's Head called Golden Dawn.

As in, there's gonna be a golden dawn when you cross over.

Ya right.

There's a place in Owen Sound called "Seasons."

If you're at all considering a move there you already know what season you're in. They're just calling it Seasons to rub it in.

We tried to interest The Bubbinator in considering it. She says, when I look out this window I see the hospital. When I look out the other window I see the hospice. I don't think I want to live here.

So she's in a place downtown where she can see the roof of the funeral home. Not sure how that's an improvement.

More crocodile tears for Haiti

Looks like aging snowflake Hugh Segal has had another thought. According to his opinion piece in the Globe and Mail this morning, "We should welcome Haitians facing US deportation."

I have no objections to this in principle. If we are determined to welcome 350,000 new arrivals next year, 60,000 of them may as well be Haitians "stranded" in the US. What disturbs me is the tone of smug condescension and moral superiority that permeates the article.

Those poor poor Haitians. What a bunch of sad sacks. Can't even take in their own. Tsk tsk...  Let's do them a generous favour...

Haiti was the first colony in the Western Hemisphere to break away from it's colonial masters in a slave rebellion over two hundred years ago. It's been the non-stop target of foreign interference ever since. That interference came first from its colonial masters in France and then from the Americans as well. For the past quarter-century Canada has been an obliging junior partner in the struggle to keep Haiti a subservient failed state.

That's why I literally gagged when I read this whopper;

Canada has a long history of trying to help Haiti. Canadian forces were part of stabilization efforts when the politics turned violent and military dictatorship was in place. Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide lived safely in exile in Canada under prime minister Brian Mulroney before democracy returned. 

Segal is referring to the 1991 US-backed military coup that unseated the democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The literature on the subject overwhelmingly shows that our so-called "stabilization efforts" were primarily concerned with rooting out Aristide's popular political movement, Fanmi Lavalas. The fact that Aristide spent a few weeks in Montreal after he was deposed was hardly a humanitarian gesture on our part.

Nor was that the end of Aristide. In 2000 he again won the presidency, only to be hooked off the stage yet again by the usual suspects four years later. Canada's enthusiastic connivance in the 2004 coup is well documented.

Here we are almost fifteen years later. We don't have to acknowledge our role in the continued immiseration of Haiti.

Nor will we ponder our role in depriving Haitians of their democracy. Instead, we have one of our leading public intellectuals prattling on about how Haitians at risk of deportation from the US "would make superb additions to the Canadian family."


Our hypocrisy is breathtaking.

At last! Hope for the Dark Continent!

And why is there hope for the Dark Continent?

Why, because African art has finally arrived on the big stage, dontcha know!

Yup, African art don't mean diddly till you find it going under the hammer at that "acclaimed auction house, Sothebys."

That's a bit rich too, ain't it? I mean, it's not that this claim to be "acclaimed" is untrue. It's just that you could just as easily write "indicted auction house," or "auction house convicted in a criminal conspiracy," and you would be equally correct.

Some of the artists are a little dodgy by my estimation. Is a German Jew an African artist just because she lived in South Africa?

Alas, that would take away from the overall thrust of the story, which is that African art has been legitimised because Sotheby's just had their first African art sale. Before this, African art was just a bunch of Africans with too much spare time producing folk art.

Thanks to Sotheby's, it is now "real" art, because it's been commodified into an investment vehicle that will hopefully appeal to rich folks who shop for artsy investments at Sotheby's.

Looks like a few lucky Africans have made it to the Big (auction) House!..  and the colonial narrative is a lot closer to alive and well than it is to dead and buried.