I knew Homeland Security Had to be good for something

It really must have been a slow day.

Alberta RCMP Enlist Help of U.S. Homeland Security to nab Pepperoni thiefs (SIC)

Later in the day, they arrested two teenagers in a wooded area with the help of an American aircraft with an infrared camera.

The RCMP probably could have used their help tracking down a trailer load of Moosehead Beer headed for Mexico back in 2004

Another Great Moment in Censorship

All because two paragraphs show depict something that people find "uncomfortable".
This is almost as bad as the time a teacher was fired for showing a puppet version of Faust in a music class.

As poignant as it is painful, "Kaffir Boy" reached the top of the Washington Post best-seller list and No. 3 in the New York Times list. It earned the 1987 Christopher Award for literature, "affirming the highest values of the human spirit." And it was a finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Award for books representing "concern for the poor and the powerless.

Burlingame Schools pull 8th Grade Book From Class

Hell Hath No Fury

Like a Man with a Graphics Package

Minnesota Man Sentenced for Printing Lewd Stickers

The Epitome of Bad Taste

Just when you thought OJ would go away, after his publication of his book "If I did it" and the television interview was cancelled due to public outrage, the rights for the cursed thing are going up for auction next week.

What is worse is that the family of Ron Goldman really want it to be published. Why? For the money, of course!

Estate of Nicole Brown Simpson Doesn't want the OJ Book Published

Winning their Hearts and Minds

Canada offers forum for lecturer barred from U.S.

In short: A highly regarded Iraqi epidemiologist who wants to tell Americans about an alarming rise in cancer levels among Iraqi children will come to Canada instead because he couldn't get a visa to the United States.

Cancer and birth defects are rising in epdemic proportions among Iraqi children since the first Gulf War. the University of Washington wanted Dr. Riyadh Lafta to speak there, but his requests for a visa went ignored. So, he was invited to speak at Simon Fraser.

Spent uranium coating, among other things, are the causes. There is nothing left in Iraq to use such weaponry against, yet still it is being used. And in Afghanistan too. In the years to come it will effect not only the children, but the vetrans of this war as well.

This is just another thing that Bush's propoganda machine does not wish Americans to know about. The effects of this poisoning will likely be felt years from now, just like agent orange, and likely denied, just like agent orange.

Heard on the news this morning

I will post a link to it as soon as I can find one.

Here it is:

Former soldier in Dalhousie pushes for native-only regiment

The gist of it is someone has come up with the idea of having an all "First nations and Inuiit" regiment within the Canadian Armed Forces.

The logic behind this "brilliant" idea for this is:

"anyone who is not white and anglophone finds it very difficult to be in the Armed Forces."

Okay, point taken, it is hard, but exactly how will segregation solve this problem?

Dead Heroes

Last week at work, we brought up the least of who was considered to be the greatest Canadian, and on that list was Terry Fox, who, about 28 years ago, began his "Marathon of Hope" - a run across Canada to raise awareness and funds for Cancer research. Terry didn't make it: his run came to a halt near Thunder Bay when his own cancer returned. While Terry began a great thing, and he is a hero. However, I brought up a name that none had ever heard before:

Steve Fonyo.

Remember him? I have found that not many do.

He too lost a leg to cancer, and Terry Fox's heroic doomed effort to run across Canada inspired Steve to complete the run that Terry could not. The first part of his "Marathon for Lives" lived in Terry's shadow, and there were many accusations of being a "copy cat". But Steve perservered, and in doing so, raised 13 million for cancer research. If you look carefully, you can still see a couple of streets named in his honour. But Steve did the unforgivable - he was human and he lived.

Terry and Steve came from very different backgrounds: Terry was well educated, middle class and articulate. Steve came from an immigrant family, neither he nor his family were well educated, articulate speakers. Steve was a young man, certainly ill-equipped to deal with the pressure that came with his short lived fame. His father had a talent for rubbing the people the wrong way, and he was ill-used by some very shady publicists. The cost of Steve's run bankrupted his family, ruined their health and the media, to their eternal shame, slaughtered them: making fun of Steve Fonyo's father's accent, and his attempt to start a business that made perogies. Steve was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1987, however that was bittersweet, as his father died of lung cancer that same year. Steve dropped from sight after that, and began a downward spiral of addiction, depression, trouble with the law and was at times nearly suicidal.


I have been unable to find any mention of any help being offered to the Fonyo Family. Perhaps saddest of all, I have also been unable to locate any record of the Fox Family so much as raising a finger to speak out against this injustice. One would think that they, of all people, could afford to be gracious to someone who honoured their son in his own way. However, it seems that the "Terry Fox Foundation" founded and run by the Fox family, guards Terry's "legacy" very jealously. I wonder whether Terry, if he was 1/2 the person that people hold him to be, would have approved of this.

That Terry Fox accomplished a great thing is not in question. He was an inspiration to many, not only Steve Fonyo, but to others such as Rick Hansen as well. But Terry Fox is frozen forever in time; he will never stumble and fall from the pedestal where he now stands, his humanity will never betray him. I guess that is why our greatest heroes are dead.