GLOBE AND MAIL DISGRACE

The Canadian national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, ain't a bad rag. It employs classy editors and writers, astute reporters, trenchant critics and it is proud of its adherence to the highest journalistic ethics. Yes, it has started to lean precipitously towards mindless Zionism and yes, it vacillates absurdly on Iraq and Afghanistan. But overall, it's still a good newspaper. Or at least I thought so until I heard what the paper did to its brilliant theater critic, Kamal Al-Solaylee. Until a couple of weeks ago, he was a rising star who displayed a fine knowledge of the theatre, had great insight and wrote frankly and very well about the works he had seen. He should have know better in 2007.

Kamal Al-Solaylee dared to criticise some of the garbage staged by Toronto entrepreneurs, the Mirvish brothers... the same Mirvishes who flood the Globe and Mail with pages of garish show-biz advertising, and that means lots of money for the Globe. So much money, it empowered the Mirvishes to demand Solaylee's removal from the theater beat. And what did those fine defenders of the highest principles of journalistic ethics at the Globe do? They grovelled to the Mirvishes and dumped Solaylee.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking and sickening. It is also dooming us poor readers to more cynical manipulation by men and women with money as they crush the jellied spines of those we entrust to uphold truth and integrity. Second-hand car sellers do a better job.



NOW WHAT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!!!!!
Coming up, my new book:"Am I Dead Yet?" It'll be out in a couple of months. Here's what the publishers have written on the cover:

"He’s faced his own execution, been fingered as an assassin, and had guns jammed to his stomach and head. Author John Scully’s remarkable career as a renowned television journalist has taken him to seventy countries to create award-winning news stories and documentaries for such giants of international broadcasting, the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

In this extraordinary memoir, Scully agues with terrorists in the Middle East, dodges landmines in Africa, bribes the Vatican, and travels with Evangelical Christians on a bizarre mission to Jonestown. From Vietnam to Beirut to the present troubles in Iraq, Scully examines terrorism, its roots and its reasons as he tries to answer the question, who is a terrorist? But Scully digs deeper, exploring the disastrous effects of colonialism from the Russians in Chechnya to the British in India and the United States in Iraq.

Dramatic, deeply insightful, and often hilarious, Am I Dead Yet? A Journalists's Perspective on Terrorism, points out just how little Americans have learned from history."

COP THIS!

There he was, with his arm draped around the crooked lawyer who boasted no judge could touch him. This was before the lawyer was found guilty but Julie was there to show his support. Is this the kind of person you want to trust as your police chief? Julie Fantino is a cop with a troubling past filled with unpleasant accusations of racial and gender bias. He seems to believe cops can do no wrong, only us common as muck civilians are capable of breaking the law.Now he is the new head of the Ontario Provincial Police Force. I don't expect him to come intimidating us meek, cowering village folk of Dwight or stomp on other turf in rural Ontario...he'll leave that to others, But I must admit to being just a touch fearful of Julie who appears to have the humourless demeanour of a dyspeptic, cane-cracking Victorian schoolmaster.

But what brains! His first order was to change the colour of the OPP cars to black and white-far more police like than than namby pamby white cars with blue and gold stripes. This move will surely terrify every perp in Ontario into going straight

And talking of straight, there will be n0 more laughing at Sgt Cam Wolley's jokes! They are not funny! We are not funny!

No. You are ludicrous.

Perhaps, if we are lucky, the metaphorical Ides of March will come sooner than Julie expects.

I FEEL A SURGE COMING ON

"Surge" is the new in-word. I used to think it meant to thrust forward, as in:"So I put my foot on the gas, surged from 80kph to 140 and made it from Dwight, Ontario, Canada, to Huntsville, 23 ks away in five minutes. The cop car surged, too, and now this is coming to you from the local slammer."

But there's something coined in Washington called a "troop surge,"sending another 20,000 soldiers to Bagdhad immediately. The aim is to win the war. Perhaps in years, or even months to come the word "surge" will be defined as "catastrophic stupidity" or "how to become bogged down in the mother of all quagmires."

As a journalist, getting to that quagmire is dangerous, especially for the accountants. The latest rate for a ride from the airport to the Green Zone is $10,000. That's right, ten thousand dollars. And there are no discounts if your vehicle hits a landmine, or roadside bomb.

BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE --A QUARTER??

Great news for the new year. The minimum wage in Ontario, Canada, has soared 25 cents to a sizzling $8 an hour. Man, that extra 25 cents will send stampedes of over-paid cashiers, fast-food friers, dish-washers and students to the chic local galleries, golf clubs and gourmet gratification centres, revelling in their new-found wealth, enabling them to avoid forevermore the greed machine created by Jesus-and-money-loving Sam Walton. Even my own cramped, dowdy, now-friendly Dwight corner store could be transformed into a pleasure palace the likes of which have not been seen outside of the Arab Emirates.....unless you include that brown and down Muskoka structure that passes itself of as an upscale resort , Deerhurst. No doubt they are preparing to be swamped with bookings from the newly-wealthy minimum-wage earners of Ontario.In monetary terms,the percentage rise is just over three. And what did our heroes, members of the Provincial Parliament just give themselves? A raise of over 20%.. Of course it's fair. And I'm a ham sandwich.

...MINIMUM RAGE
...by the members of the board of US Home Depot who fired their CEO of one year because of his catastrophically inept performance.Severance package awarded to him by outraged board? $210 million dollars



COOL-HAND STEVE
Another note of new year comfort comes from Steve who shuffled his cabinet as opposed to his wonderfully co-ordinated feet, The great news here is that Steve, with his steel trap of a mind, read opnion polls that concluded Canadians care about climate. (I can see a very bare Hidden Valley ski run from where I'm typing and the only snow I've come across this week is a dubious brown heap near my driveway), So Steve's brilliant gesture to save the world and Dwight from Farenheit 451 was to fire the hapless Ms Rona Ambrose and replace her with an unspeakably loud-mouthed robot called John Baird. Word has it, Baird is not to help the environment, and therefore earn the wrath of big business, but to shout down all those pathetic tree-huggers and naysayers who worry when huge chunks of the Arctic break off and see no snow in winter.

ALZHEIMER'S + A PLUG
One of the local rags has a whole page devoted to the mind-bogling complexities of tax breaks for folks who look after Alzheimer's patients at home.I have read the thing three times and I still do not understand who gets what. It's as though the plan were designed by a bureaucrat who did not want to give these brave, unsung caregivers a hope in hell of collecting what seems to be a pittance, anyhow.
Now the self-serving bit about Alzheimer's.. Next month, 360 Vision, the Vision TV current affairs programme nominated for a prestigious Gemini Award as the best current affairs programme in Canada, will run a powerful, provocative 20-minute story on Alzheimer's.
360 Vision's new season starts on Wednesday,January 17, at 10pm, with an explosive investigative documentary that should scare the hell out of you, the cops and the churches. The following week, a gripping, vitally important story about women leading a revolt in Islam right here in Canada.It is a revolt with world-wide ramifications.
For more details: http://www.visiontv.ca/

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.