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."