Mood:  suave

Harper: "What letter?" 

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Fantino stops speeder;

Question for the Globe and Mail.

Recently it was reported that some parliamentary
ethics might be called into question regarding
the Schreiber Commission after it became known
that a CBC reporter may have forwarded questions
to some MP's on the commission board.

(My question for the Globe and Mail is innocuous
but perhaps with a small twist.)

 UN-backed cartoon exhibit for human rights opens in Rome

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Now I have to change my topic heading to 'Entertainment' instead of 'News on News'.

Sigh. 

Posted by mach1231 at 2:43 PM PST

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I once had a letter I sent via email  published online on a message board forum for all to see. Without my expressed written permission and certainly without my approval.

Attached to it were my native tribal affiliation, my nationality and real first and last name.

So, I figure, why let someone else do the work for me?

I'll publish my own letters. Heres a copy of the letter I have sent to the newspapers in Canada about the so-called Schreiber Affair.

The Mulroney/Airbus/Schreiber Affair is exactly
what it is. A ménage à trois of corporate
business interests intermixed with private
ambitions pockmarked by deception,rivalry and
lies and conceits and an of course the dash of
politics to make the whole affair a troika of
competing tales.
Theres even secret meetings at hotels with cash
flowing into secret bank accounts.

At the top of the yet to be named scandal,
headlined in red ink (not!) are two companies one
which goes by the name Boeing and the other
Airbus, both at some point in time competing for
lucrative contracts in Canada.

Behind the seamy headlines, seemingly oblivious
to it all, two companies today quietly carry on
with their business.

Nowhere to be found in yesterdays shock inducing
stories including the bankrolling of Mulroneys'
takeover of the party from the Rt. Hon. Joe Clark
are the corollaries to this whole mess which are
the very catalyst for the events.

And nowhere in todays sensational headlines of
near lurid tales and phony affidavits are even
the slightest of references to what is happening
with Airbus Industries corporate daddy EADS over
in Europe as we roll over onto our pillows each
night.

I would like to give credit to most thinking
Canadians for our ability to read between the
lines.

Something the mainstream media with its own ties
to business,industry and government sometimes
finds itself in the untenable position of being
able to do.

A February election call timed with a public
inquiry? I guess by that time it will also be far
too late to just wish we had just not gone with
Boeing straight ahead and forward to increase our
focus on more important shock inducing headlines.

Posted by mach1231 at 10:42 AM PST

Updated: Friday, December 14, 2007 8:41 PM PST

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Mood:  caffeinated

German Christian Democrat Party Bankrolls Election of Brian Mulroney?

globeandmail.com: The real Schreiber outrage: How foreign money ..

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Mulroney changed the status quo in Parliament by allowing the terms Right Honourable to be applied to an individual, rather than just Prime Ministers, Deputy PM.s and Honourable Members.

He took wads of cash from a person who is now wanted in his home country for numerous charges. As a person with a long association with Mr Schrieber, indeed someone who helped put him into power who also has a long record of doing business with Airbus, a high profile "friend" with Airbus Industrie(Franz Josef Strauss), what does the former Prime Minister expect Canadians to hold as a picture of him?

Does he think he honestly deserves the title of Rt Honorable? 

 Barren piece of land was ripe with plots

Posted by mach1231 at 9:15 AM PST

Updated: Friday, December 14, 2007 9:02 PM PST

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FROM THE RCMP WEBSITE

Harassment is not:

• Someone sending you one email or instant message even if it contains obscene comments, pornographic photo attachments, or a virus though there may be separate criminal offence of corrupting morals section 163 of the Criminal Code of Canada or related sections which refer to child pornography.
  
• Comments made about you on a public forum (or on someone else's web site) unless the statements are libellous in which case the person or company that published them may be guilty of defamatory libel section 298 of the Criminal Code of Canada.
  
• A threat made against you or another family to cause death or bodily harm, to damage or destroy your personal property, or to poison kill or injure an animal that is the property of a person. This would be an offence under section 264.1 (1) of the Criminal Code of Canada - Uttering threats.
  
• Spam. If you're online, you have to learn to live with junk email from companies offering everything from herbal supplements and cheap web hosting, to discount dog food and get-rich-quick schemes. There is nothing criminal about sending advertising via email which is what Spam is, however, some of the products you may be offered are not available or may be illegal in Canada. There are things you can do to reduce the amount of spam you receive, but it will never go away completely. Please refer to the section on unsolicited email.

Posted by mach1231 at 3:21 AM PST

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Mood:  lazy

Poster named 'RYP' from Comebackalive dot com bb is supposedly supposed to be the author on a guido guidebook to the worlds most dangerous places.

And so there's word of a new film out called Rambo in which Sylvester Stallone, according to Wik, is asked by his former army commander:

"....to join him on a mission to Afghanistan to supply weapons including Stinger missiles to the Afghan freedom fighters, called the Mujahedeen, who are fighting the Russians. Rambo refuses the request."

Bear in mind this film is set in 1988 when most people not have the slightest inkling of where or whence such a country ever existed but only that if Rambo is in it: Afghanistan will do. Since Vietnam was the last one.

Nor that , bear in mind, word is that according to Wik :

"Ironically, members of the heroic Mujahedeen who fought against the Soviets on the side of Rambo in the film, would later form the basis of the terrorist group, Al-Qaeda, now infamous as the world's most elusive terrorist organisation responsible for multiple attacks on US targets. Osama bin Laden, now the world's most wanted terrorist was an ex-Mujahedeen freedom fighter."

 So our hero, the tall in the saddle gusto mustachioed RYP quips:

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Gee buddy and what are you doing  : convalescing while busy posting on your fan messageboard? Why didn't you submit a script for him in time to have his character join a private army in Iraq ? Or is that  not where a lone warrior feels most out of place?

I thought poster 'RYP' was the one always saying thats where all the fake action is.

But looks like Stallone is ahead of the curve  as usual. As if people haven't been fed up to their necks with news on terrorism, a Rambo film about what was leftover to be done in Afghanistan would do for the Rambo series what a sequel did for Saturday Night Fever.

Which, co-incidentally enough for the purposes of this blog entry: Sylvester Stallones brother sang the title track for.

Turning out films the critics can't touch like Rocky Balboa as producer writer director and now Rambo, Stallone is certainly showing old fans his career really is 'Far from Over'.  To the delight of legions of new ones as well.

Up to our ears in do doo from Iraq/Afghanistan, a pleasant vicarious distraction by way of Burma is just what the Dr ordered....

by going where too true few enemies go, Iraq a wet dream for wanna be rich wanna be heroes, Rambo is the quintesential lone warrior indeed. Im sure it will be a smashing box office success.

Posted by mach1231 at 8:59 PM PST

Updated: Monday, December 10, 2007 9:40 PM PST

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Mood:  a-ok

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcmh21/ 

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Posted by mach1231 at 8:18 PM PST

Updated: Monday, December 10, 2007 5:44 PM PST

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Mood:  surprised

Chip Reese, High-Stakes Card Champion, Is Dead at 56

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Floyd Mayweather: an enigmatic boxing genius

Oh yah right, what kind of genius do you need to let your opponent knock you senseless and give you permanent brain damage.

Serious stuff.  I betchya the Britster wins.

The concussion time bomb. New research suggests head injuries can trigger a descent into dementia, madness and maybe even murder..

The concussion time bomb | Macleans.ca - Science - Health

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"He has turned defensive boxing into a poetic art. Trouble is, nobody ever knocked anybody out with a poem"

Fighting talk: Boxing quotes

But if you cant sit ringside, or afford PPV, you can always catch that inspiring melodramatic flick.

Posted by mach1231 at 12:22 AM PST

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Mood:  a-ok

Great impromtu stlye free written breezy style post by  Mike "The Hack" @ the Black Flag Cafe.

Since another American mall style shooting can't bring the brunt of Flaggers to give pause for thought on the needless and senseless and moreover: violent... loss of life, in a serious way,...

seems like violent acts are what turns the waterwheel for what passes for conversation over there, without which, their meagre mainstay diets would have to satisfied with the few morsels coming out of Iraq or Afghanistan.

So now that the laughter from the jokes have died down they figure its time for seriousness...

Perhaps it's time we did the people of Omaha Nebraska a favor and indeed the world and worked towards a prescription for the ills of the world, perhaps as a starting and shooting off point, help eliminate the potential for the type of macabre commenting I had noted in my blog entry a day ago, by proscribing certain types of on-line behavior.

Shooter: dressed in camo (how surprising!),  previously medicated (of note are the number of times Flaggers have repeatedly referred to people and other posters as being: "off their meds") and of course as usual: young.

No one over there would seem to have enough sense to give pause for thought or reflect on the fact that five women seem to have died at the point of a gun in this mall massacre. Almost exactly to the day that we Canadians are all searching ourselves for that moment in time to try and commemorate the lives of 13 women gunned down so many years ago at a Montreal University. Memory may fade but its hard not to let this last incident serve as a shocking remnder.

So ye Flaggers you can joke and post your bathroom wall type humor all you want, not one word of your posts from thereon in deserve to be taken seriously. Mind you

Mike "the Hack" does seem to provide some much needed balance.

Each situation seems to be different when shooters are involved. One will waltz into a room of small school children and hold them hostage, one will barricade him self in a tower and sniper shoot from a distance, another will burst onto the scene through corridor doors and take rooms one by one advancing down a hallway, and yet another will take an elevator to the third floor, wait for the doors to open before announcing hes robbing the store before indiscriminately firing into crowds of workers, shoppers and on-lookers before killing himself. 

That we here in the virtual world of reality, mentally bonded to our locales in our own individual communities could only speculate on our own reactions is almost like a bit of a no-brainer. Its as difficult a choice to imagine as trying to pick out the next target or method of the next shooting incident.  But have you got your jokes handy and ready now?

The common denominator? Drugs? Youth? Ease of access to a weapon? There are a lot of kids like that.

I would say just plain crazy is more like it. And crazy with ease of access to guns purely dont make for a good combination and don't mix as lessons of the last shooting in America show.

But don't let anyone ever try and tell you that the BFC is a turnstile for idiots to yank comments from their joke arsenal to post. That fact would only seem to be self-evident.

 

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Posted by mach1231 at 3:38 PM PST

Updated: Saturday, December 22, 2007 8:32 PM PST

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Mood:  caffeinated

Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur both moved their airports in 1998 and the Athenians moved theirs in 2001. 

 Meanwhile this article states: after decades of aviation misery, campaigning and protest, it is time to face the truth and admit the problem: Heathrow is in the wrong place....

Problem: Heathrow's in the wrong
Times Online, UK - 23 Nov 2007

Ask Kit Malthouse. In life, as in like politics, you have to know when to stop digging. 

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Speaking of digging, when digging for answers and digging for the truth, always be careful, especially when it comes down to having to answer to male superiors. We've seen this before.

Ms. Turpel-Lafond, a Saskatchewan judge who took a leave from the bench to help rebuild B.C.'s troubled child-protection system has had her request for adequate funds denied. I take it the upbraiding she gave the government was taken 'that' type of , seriously.

 Child advocate's cash request denied

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I was surprised at the amount of discussion taking place over the airports problems. Whats stopping peoples from discussing these other things. Are they too far from home to matter?

Five Best Airport to City Rail Connections

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Heathrow Airport passengers could find themselves with a wider choice of options for travel to Europe in the future, with plans drawn up for a rail service. Heathrow to Paris @ 186 MPH?

Plans to link Heathrow to Paris

 Don't even think about it

Posted by mach1231 at 12:31 PM PST

Updated: Friday, December 7, 2007 12:48 PM PST

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Mood:  bright

Leading Canadian building owners, developers and design professionals know how to deliver large scale and permanent reductions in GreenHouseGas emissions.

Over the past five years, these professionals have designed, constructed and operated hundreds of green, energy-efficient buildings across Canada with the support of Natural Resources Canada’s Commercial Building Incentive Program (CBIP).

Recently-announced federal initiatives give no meaningful support to the building industry and cancel the CBIP funding that has helped improve energy performance of buildings since 1998.

“The government should build on the demonstrated success of CBIP rather than canceling it, and not putting anything new in its place,” .. “..we urge the government to entrench a stronger federal role in green building development and support the momentum of the Canadian building industry.”

http://www.cagbc.org

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"I think it is just foolish to try to exempt the big polluters from taking meaningful action" - John Baird, Canadas Environment Minister speaks 

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Greenhouse-gas reductions likely overestimated, panel says

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070921.wharperenvironment0922/BNStory/National/home/ 

OTTAWA — The Conservative government is overestimating the amount of greenhouse-gas reductions that will be achieved through its climate-change policies, a federally funded panel of business and environmental experts reports.

September 21, 2007

Posted by mach1231 at 2:34 PM PST

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