BRITISH TO THE BONO

We've got snow! The vibrant (pop.45) village of Dwight, Ontario, proved itself yet again one of the world's great natural wonders, with actual snow in winter in Northern Canada. If that's a stunning surprise, as opposed to a stultifying one, and this being the season of giving, I have another one for you. Oh, joy! Can it be true? Does this great humanitarian do nothing but give? Oh that there were more like he, forsooth. Why did you say forsooth? Because I'm a sooth-sayer.

The other seasonal surprise is that one of the world's most famous and richest Irishmen has accepted an honourary knighthood from Britain. He, too, is a great humanitarian, a beacon for all those who cry out for social justice, equality, and an end to Aids in Africa. But it turns out that Bono has suddenly forgotten his Irish heritage and embarked on a voyage of cynicism and hypocrisy. This hurts.

U2's version of "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" is perhaps the most furious and rightful condemnation ever of the British massacre of 13 unarmed civil rights marchers in Londonderry in 1982.

Clearly Paul Hewson (that's his real name) has conveniently forgotten all that protest nonsense and the valourous men and women of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Republican Army who died to free Ireland from five centuries of murder and starvation by the Protestant British. Clearly Sir Saint Bono has chosen to forget that the reason he and the Irish Republic are the greatest success stories in European Union precisely because the IRA drove the Brits out and allowed him and his country to develop into unfettered economic giants.

In the parlance of the time,only a Quisling would have accepted an honorary knighthood from the King Billy's Boys of the British Government. And where did that King William of Orange inflict a mighty defeat over the wretched Catholics of Derry? At a river called the Boyne. But don't we have a River Boyne here in Dwight? Ooops! It runs right through my backyard. Hmm. Better keep that one very quiet. Still, may be Sir Bono will bring U2 to Dwight now that he is a knight and pay homage to the dead of the Boyne. Yeah, right..

Pity Bono's ego couldn't resist the ride.
Ironic, too, his best-known hit is called"Pride."

P.S. I tried to email this panegyric to Sir Bono but I hit a snag. To log in as a member of the U2 club you first have to pay $US40.

WHO'S A SILLY BOY?

Steve, Steve, Steve. You cannot go round saying things like that! People might think you are not quite sane. But let's give you the benefit of the doubt. A drunken reveller must have belted you on the head with a brick and caused severe brain damage. If you were a deer up here, in Dwight, Ontario, there are plenty of good Samaritans with plenty of guns who would do the proper thing and put you down. But you are not a deer, dear, so your skin is safe and apparently still very thick.

Talking of thick, Steve, in case that brick to the head has caused amnesia, let me remind you that you are our dear, deer leader. Our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. So you can't accuse just any old folks of genocide, even Arabs! Steve, you numb skull, look at the figures before you accuse Hamas and Hezbollah of genocide. If you are going to throw the word around you might want to reconsider your target.

In last five years, the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, the numbers killed are:
Israelis. 1113 (including over a hundred children).
Palestinians. 4209 (including nearly a thousand children).

Oh, you didn't know that, Steve? Wouldn't make any difference anyhow? It must be great to have a friend like you, Steve.

MADD AS HELL

Every Saturday, I walk down to the tiny, one-room Dwight Post Office, near Huntsville, Ontario, to collect my junk mail...that's about all I ever get, apart from nasty-looking envelopes stamped "Revenue Canada" and six bills in six separate envelopes from Bell Canada; having paid for a "bundle," that's what we get. Jammed into the miniscule box ("would you like me to push it out for you?" the helpful relief manager asked as I tugged and tore at the stack of mail from the other side) were the usual suspects; invaluable volumes of Canadian Tire, Zellers ,Circuit City and a dozen other fliers that go straight into the recycling bin .

But hang on! What's this? An envelope with the bold red letters, MADD Canada, clearly appealing for more money. This was just yesterday. I thought they had stopped all fund-raising until Andrew Murie, the CEO, can explain why a mere 19 cents of every dollar collected goes to the actual charity, the rest being pocketed by MADD staff and a team of telemarketers.

This is a good cause founded by broken hearts, grieving families and tireless volunteers. Now they have been deceived and insulted, as have we all, by the hubris and outrageous behaviour of a board that refuses to give any information about where the rest of the money went or even how much workers at MADD headquarters get paid. Why won't they admit the truth? Because the answer must be hugely embarrassing, and my guess is that it would reveal profligacy, largesse and that MADD has been turned into a profit- driven business, not a charity.

Experts in charity work reckon that if less that at least 60% of a dollar does not go directly to where it is needed, the organisation should be avoided because it is being ran badly and probably for the benefit of the administrators, not the needy. This makes MADD's 19% all the more grotesque and tragic. Let us hope that for once, just once, someone gets his or her just rewards for scamming the public in such a shameless way.

TAKE THE A STRAIN

With the windchill at -17, I flagged down a cab the other night in Toronto's West End. The driver barged his way to the kerb and screeched to a stop. Nothing unusual so far. As I got in he was laughing his head off.
"Oh, dear," I thought, "I've got me a nutbar."
"Yonge and Wellesley, please."
"Ok, mister,"he giggled.
Was my fly undone? Nope.
"Mister, I've had the funiest passenger, right before you. This guy was singing all the way. Singing his head off. Kind of pop stuff but he told me they were all his own compositions. He said he wanted to make a CD. I've got this little recording device here so I got him to sing a few bars into it. Listen."
I couldn't hear much, apart from static from the recording device and a faint noise in the background I guessed was the new Josh Groban.
"Was he any good?" I asked the driver."
"Well to be honest, mister, he's not nearly good enough to record a CD. But you know what? He told me he had a fulltime singing job. I couldn't believe it! This guy has a fulltime gig! So I asked him where he sang."
Outside Sherbourne subway station.


HIS PANTS ARE ON FIRE?
The compilers of dictionaries must be going nuts trying to solve a new conundrum. What do you call a person who lies, changes his mind and lies again and has a curious obsession with expensive leather riding boots?I know! how about: adj or v :zachardelli, as in; He was a bigger zachardelli than Pinocchio. Or he zachardelli-ed (past form) his way into a 36-year pension after a Canadian was tortured in Syria. (Origin: from name of former head of Royal Canadian Mounted Police accused of perjury; shed tears for himself as a great and honourable man.)

MURDERED OLD FOLKS.WHO GIVES A DAMN?

They had a miraculous, if horrific, scam. Until 1999, a family of Seventh Day Adventists, trawled the streets of Toronto, Canada, looking for derelict and homeless victims to fill their sordid, crowded, filthy retirement homes they owned up north near the town of Huntsville. They took control of the seniors' old age pension cheques, cashed them in and kept the money. But it did not stop there. The pensioners started to go missing but their cheques kept being cashed. One senior escaped and blew the whistle.

The owners were arrested for fraud and four seniors were declared "missing believed murdered." One of the owners, Katherine Laan, already had a long criminal record for theft and extortion. In fact her most recent job was treasurer at a local Christian school that she bilked out of $25,000.

Yet at their fraud trial two years ago, only money was mentioned. Not murder. Incredibly, the local police could find no evidence of foul play and they could not find the bodies, so they gave up. Imagine the national outcry if four teenagers from the local high school had been declared,"missing believed murdered." But these were old folks, so who really gave a damn.

Well a few brave, local souls did, and earlier this year spoke out on 360 Vision, the national current affairs programme of Vision TV. They spoke of police indifference, of seeing blood in Katherine Laan's car and they pointed the finger not only at her but also at her brothers Walter, Paul and David. But . The rest of the God-fearers in this community suddenly developed a case of mass laryngitis every time a reporter spoke to them, with neary a word coming from their quivering lips. Their sullen eyes though were saying: we don't like strangers prying into things around here, even if it is about murder. It's local and it stays that way. A couple whispered to us that they would be killed if they said anything. One man said he knew who killed the seniors and some told 360 Vision, anonymously, where the seniors are buried. The 360 team checked all of these calls and found some to be hoaxes, other clumsy attempts to get on TV. With alarming hostility, Ontario Provincial Police Headquarters refused to say one word about this shameful case or to assist 360 Vision in any way. One can only surmise they are either hiding something or are incompetent.
Not long after the fraud case, that levied fines and ordered restitution, the oldest brother. Walter, went on a rampage of vicious home invasions, brutally attacking old folks he knew in the area. For this, at least, he got 12 years in jail.

360 Vision later found Katherine Laan, a convicted felon, running a private Aventist school with her sister who blurted out to the reporter on the phone "at least she hasn't killed anyone here."
The very next day after the one-hour documentary aired, Seventh Day authorities closed the school down.

And the four old folks? Still missing believed murdered. They are conveniently forgotten now, except by the killer or killers and those up here who know who did it and how but lack the courage to come forward. They may wish to pause and ponder the following quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr:
"Our lives begin to end
the day we become silent
about things that matter."

Note: The documentary,"Mystery In Muskoka," helped 360 Vision win its prestigous 2006 "Gemini" nomination for the best current affairs programme in Canada.

HOW NOT TO HELP THE POOR

It appears on page B10 of the Huntsville Forester, Ontario, Canada, a full page "thank you" to local businesses from 17 Christian ladies (their word) for donations to a cause grandiosely branded "Nicaragua 2006." They spent a whole ten days smiling at small children (none of the women speaks Spanish),their fundraising guaranteed one food centre would continue to feed poor kids three times a week , gave out second-hand clothes , distributed medicines, did such good works that the seventeen lives changed "in ways not even we fully comprehend...but our prayer is that the lives we touched will understand just a bit better about the love of Jesus, so freely given." And, oh yeah, they thanked the donors for help in building a church, get this, on a rubbish dump.Wonder what happens when it rains?

So these women feel good about what they have done. So, I guess, do the dozens of local companies who gave money and material. Unfortunately what they have all done is guarantee Nicaragua will remain the region's poorest country.Their patronising, their condescension and the ignorance are breathtaking.

A recent study done by an expert in Honduras, himself a longtime Christian missionary dismissed these short-term missions by well-intentioned insouciant "evangelical tourists" as meaningless and damaging. If you want to help, first learn the language, then commit to spending at least two years in the country, and do not assume you know more than the poor themselves. Listen to them, hear what they want, and working side by side as equals..

The seventeen ladies and their donors could have gone a much easier and infinitely more effective route. They could have simply sent the money to various responsible NGOs that are helping 300,000 Nicaraguans whose lives have disintegrated after the crash of world coffee prices, the main cause of the continuing poverty. They could petition our local Muskoka MP, Cottager Clement, to hound the International Monetary Fund into giving coffee growers in Central America cheap loans without punitive conditions.

If you really want to help Nicaraguans, don't give them Jesus, used clothes and Canadian values. Give them back their coffee trade.

Booze Hoo

This Sunday in the sparse, grey village of Dwight, Ontario, Canada, is remarkable for two things:freckles of snow and a liqour store that opens from 1pm to 4pm.It doesn't get much better than this.
Down the road a few klicks in the town of Hunstville, they've been conned again by the Christmas shoebox campaign, One Christmas Child. It's a warm and cuddly thought sending shoeboxes full of our trinkets to kids in poverty stricken countries so they, too, can have a good Christmas. Canada will send about 100,000 boxes this year.What no one is told is that the campaign is run by Samaritan's Purse whose sole aim is not to provide poor third world kids with any happiness but to convert them and their parents to Christianity.Once the shoe boxes reach their destination, Christian literature is handed over as well. Who is behind Samaritan's Purse? Son of Billy, Franklin Graham who has condemned Islam as evil and has called for its overthrow.The British Guardian newspaper has described Graham's evangelical form of Christianity as "particularly toxic."Perhaps clean water, education and shelter might do a bit more than odious, patronising religious zealots trafficking in trinkets for souls.