IT'S IN THE BAG! ONE HEAD TO GO, PLEASE.

Saudi judges should be flown to North America immediately. Especially the ones who say it’s okay to kill owners of satellite channels that broadcast offensive material. Imagine the packed arenas like New York’s Giants Stadium or San Francisco’s Candlestick Park or Toronto’s Rogers Centre jammed with TV viewers finally getting a chance to get back of ALL the weasels who run TV here.

If you broadcast another appalling, scripted “reality” series -instant beheading. Hear the roars! You turn mildly sane folks into money-hungry monsters on yet another moronic quiz show? A bullet through the head. Hear the roars! You dedicate most of your national TV newscast to a hurricane that might, might hit the US coastline but totally ignore the 300 dead killed in the same hurricane in Haiti? Another beheading! Hear the roars!

But come to think of it, this is a brilliant way to get even with a lot of hucksters, manipulators and gougers. We could slip the utterly incorruptible Saudi judiciary a few million rials –just take up a collection in the stands, no sweat-- they take credit cards, cash, treasury bills, pork belly futures (they have a dispensation during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan)--- then let the crowds decide who goes first. It would be the deadliest reality series ever but one that sure to get eyeballs bulging. If you want to circumvent the crowds, you can draw up you own list, send it to me and I will pass it on to the lads in white. However I must insist on going first.

At the top of my list of heads to be scythed down to size: All the North American oil companies; the geniuses who make it impossible to talk to a real person at your internet, TV or phone carrier--up here it’s the perfectly dreadful Bell and Rogers Cable. Thwack! Gone! Yes!; Sarah Palin and other scary Steptford witches including Hillary Clinton; George Bush and his coterie of self-aggrandising thugs and murderers;Stephen Harper and Stephane Dion, two of the most dreadful politicians to emerge in Canada since it was discovered by Richard Branson. Wait a minute there’s another one. Branson. A swift stroke of the scimitar will quickly wipe the perpetual grin off his face. Yes! Another head gone to where it belongs.

What a game. I could go on forever. Think I call Riyadh right now and tell them to sheikh their scimitars and get right on over. Millions can’t wait.

GROUP OF SEVEN---OR IS THAT 8,9, OR 10?

Cottagers and tourists can take a hike, not into nearby Algonquin Park where terrorists disguised as bears and moose will surely lurk, but back to their homes in the city. They won’t be welcome in this usually visitor-crazy Mecca called Muskoka. No, officials don’t fear an outbreak of bubonic plague, although locals may consider it to have happened, for in exactly two years’ time, this place will be swamped with 5000 media and as many security operatives, politicians and their hangers on. So stand by for the most vacuous, meaningless, most-heralded event of each year, the G8 summit. In 2010 it will be staged at the Deerhurst Resort -- Spa, Golf Course, Heated Pool-Cool Pool, Three Restaurants, Four Bars, Much Waiting, High Prices, Low Service-- and Country Club just up the road from me.

The advance guard for this retreat has booked up every hotel, motel, shed, barn and outhouse –in New Zealand they call outdoor lavatories, dunnies, why, I have no idea but the term is just as relevant as Summit –within a three hundred kilometre radius.

If you care – and I do, desperately, since I’m writing this gem – the G8 began in 1985 as the G7, the Group of Seven. No, no, no that Group of Seven great Canadian artists. The only artists in this group are of the b.s. kind. The G7 comprised the self-appointed world’s leading industrial nations. Today the snorefest has grown to nine. Nine? Count them: Canada (We’re number eight! We’re number eight! Yay!), the EU (as a collective body), France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. So why is it called the G8? Perhaps the members got tired of lugging their giant brains around and didn’t have the energy or mental capacity to add up to nine.

But, but, please, kind sirs, if you say you are the world’s eight, or nine, leading industrial countries, how come you’re not the G11 or 12 or 18? Ow! That hurt. But I must persist. Why are China, India and Korea absent from your fat, round table? And what about the very rich, industrious and far more powerful and influential oil producers like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Libya and Iran? Ow! Again! Will you stop doing that! Because it won’t stop me asking another question: why are there no countries from the Southern Hemisphere? Too colonial, still? The Aussies speak with a funny accent so that should keep them out. The Nigerians? Well, they’re, um. ah, you see, they are, how shall I put it? Black. And the Brazilians talk a funny language. Sounds a bit like that dreadful Portuguese, so they’re out. And that Venezuela is so hot-headed, unlike the calm Italians, the humble French and the demure U.S.A.

Despite the verbal beatings, on second thoughts, I’m fine with all of this. The fewer, the merrier. So I’ll have to get security clearance to go out and buy a toilet roll. I can do one of two things: hang on for dear life for three days; or offer it up to Deerhurst where it will be sorely needed.

This Blog will also be published on www.openbooktoronto.com

THE SURGE: A GIFT TO THESE BOYS

The surge is a pullulating, throbbing, testosterone-exploding success. That’s the verdict of the U.S. military and mandarin minds who have declared that the temporary addition of thousands of troops to the battle in Iraq has got the enemy on the run. The same dreamboats, or nightmare carriers, attribute the surge to the drops in coalition deaths and violent incidents in Baghdad in particular, and other parts of Iraq. Why, even the nascent golden boy of U.S. politics, the new keeper of the keys to Camelot – or should that be shamalot? —Barack Obama changed his mind, so impressed was he with the surge. If ever you want a reason to doubt his intelligence, using both definitions of the word, this is the issue with which to challenge him and anyone else who is convinced the tactic worked. I would argue it was a dreadful, myopic failure. They are the same thinking and tactics that nailed shut the coffin of U.S. policies in Vietnam.

Incredibly, the combined brains of all of the above, perhaps addled by a few bongs of O they all publicly despise, have refused to learn from history. They cannot to see the reality sign staring at them straight between their Catherine wheel eyes.

Forces fighting the coalition have joined the Taliban and in this theatre, have got the coalition on the run, or at the very least, sprinting very hard on the spot. The insurgents in Iraq knew how and when to pick their fights. Using classic guerrilla methodologies, they chose not to engage a more powerful enemy on its terms. They had read the text book--unlike the lad and ladies in the U.S.and other forces -- and simply moved from an area where they might be threatened to a battleground far more to their liking at the moment –Afghanistan.

Military experts (me) look with amazement at the coalition’s utter bankruptcy in fighting a guerrilla war using conventional methods like air power, tanks, and infantry on search and destroy missions. It’s as though the operation is being run by kids on their first day in training camp, not, in reality, by twenty-five star generals and fifteen-piece suit politicians who should, but manifestly don’t, know any better.

As for Afghanistan, it has sucked the blood and will power from invading armies for centuries, and will continue to do so, because the people of Afghanistan want it that way.

And Obama? Not looking quite the same now, is he?

As I am their Writer In Residence for August,this blog will also appear on www.openbooktoronto.com

NOBODY KNOWS THE BROCCOLI HE’S SEEN.

The broccoli on his plate almost reached the ceiling. Stir- fried, not shaken. Behind the mountain of greenery was a unique Canadian character, successful multi-media artist– as in paint, pen and song, not Internet, iTunes and iPods--and
political shit-disturber, Menedelson Joe, aged 65. We met for lunch at the China House, one of Huntsville (pop. 20,000), Ontario’s two ethnic restaurants, both Chinese, both very north-of-Toronto, Canadian.


Joe shovelled in the broccoli by the bucket-load because, nearly twenty years ago, he self-diagnosed diabetes-- that and the knowledge that George Bush hates it -- convinced Joe that this was the way to some good health.

It must work because Joe appears to be not only of sound body and of sound mind, but way ahead of the researchers and scientists who, that very morning, issued an amazing statement – amazing to everyone but Joe. He could have told them years ago.

There on the BBC Website, sat not one, but three stories of medical “breakthroughs” as journalists played chicken (stir-fried with soya sauce) with the truth and scientists played premature, underdone Peking-- duck! before the drug companies cut off our funding.
The first dish on the BBC’s hot, hot buffet of half-cooked facts exclaimed:
“Vitamin C 'slows cancer growth”
Notice those quotes around the phrase:” slows cancer growth.” They’re meant to tell you that all is not quite what is says, but, damn! it looks great in a headline. You have to wade through another twelve paragraphs of scientific claims and evidence until you are told the real and only true fact in the entire story:

Dr Alison Ross, from Cancer Research UK said that much more work would have to be done to see if vitamin C could be a viable treatment. "This is encouraging work but it's at a very early stage because it involves cells grown in the lab and mice.”

Hmm. A little less definitive that headline:” Vitamin C Slows Cancer Growth.”
The second story was an equally misleading piece about a new AIDS vaccine.

Joe was chomping through his second mountain of broccoli when I mentioned the BBC’s next story:


Broccoli may undo diabetes damage:
.
A University of Warwick team believe the key is a compound found in the vegetable, called sulforaphane.

Then nine paragraphs later came this revealing aside:

Dr Iain Frame, director of research at the charity Diabetes UK, stressed that research carried out on cells in the lab was a long way from the real life situation.

Joe had heard of neither sulforaphane nor of the probably good Dr. Frame. But if the latter wanted to accelerate his research and get closer to that real life situation, I know a Chinese restaurant in Huntsville, Ontario, that should visit. Then, we’ll all be spared the guessing game of hypothetical medical “breakthroughs.” All he has to do is ask – and watch Joe eat.

This blog will also appear at www.openbooktoronto.com

THE COTTAGER’S REVENGE

The Internet has won! Newspapers are dead!! (AP. July 24, 2008-U.S.Regional and national newspaper publishers, already staggering with a drop in ad revenue more severe than the industry has seen since the Great Depression, say the second half of 2008 may be even worse )Well, it’s not over quite yet. Sure, the Net has forced fading newspapers to make many changes, few of them good – major lay-offs, less foreign coverage, less analysis, more fears, more tears, more “fluff. But there is one space desperately pressured editors dare not touch. And it’s a surprising one in the era of chat rooms, text messaging and Facebook -- Letters to the Editor.
From the portentous national dailies to the rambling, often silly local rags, Letters to the Editor continue to dominate even the most threatened opinion pages.

I was reminded of their still-stinging power and the shallowness of the skin of some of their targets when I engaged in a skirmish with (take a deep breath) the Federal Minister of Health and and the Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, the very right, Honourable Tony Clement, who’s also my MP in the riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka.

It’s a little-known fact that Clement is world parachute- jumping champion having been dropped into more ridings than Britain’s infamous 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, or “One Para” to the cognescenti.
Clement’s latest leap was executed in 2006, just in time for the federal election, that he and the other Conservatives won. Clement does have a cottage in this Muskoka playground that he now conveniently calls his permanent home.

Clement has provend to be an assiduous writer to the Hunstville Forester extolling the virtues of newcomers—him—to the district. I took issue with his claims, some what irrevererently, and always referred to him as Cottager Clement.

A few of warm, summer, mosquito-slapping evenings ago, I bumped in to my neighbour, Jack, who had a rather large bone to gnaw with me:
”So you don’t like Conservatives?”he grunted.
“Not really. I don’t like their Bush-league politics”
Jack took this as another attack on his beloved Conservative Party and the erectile hairs on the back of his neck suffered no dysfunction. We both knew we were talking about the Cottager.
“Well, you should know how hard he works. Just the other day, he personally signed four thousand letters to his constituents.”
“And one of them went straight to me.”
“Huh?”

The Cottager had had enough of my silly, human jibes in the Huntsville Forester each week as he wrote more of his self-aggrandising missives.The last jibe was the last straw. The skin of the lion of Parry Sound-Muskoka could take no more slings and arrows of an outrageous journalist:



Hello John:

For someone with such a cosmopolitan background, and one who obviously
aspires to sophistication in your commentary on world affairs, why do you engage in such sarcastic, mean-spirited and xenophobic criticism of me?

Tony Clement, MP
PORT SYDNEY .
My response was to offer the Cottager tea at twenty paces. He said he would get back to mw. Yeah, right. But Jack had another surprise. He would be meeting the Cottager that night. In fact Jack would be driving him around since minister knew his own riding so well. Jack would see to it that the Cottager and I would sip tea together. That was two weeks ago. Haven’t heard anything since. May be the Cottager is slathering himself with pest repellent and giving it time to sink into is shallow skin before we meet.

Yeah, that’s gotta be it.

COMMENT:
Lily said...
LOL that's so silly! it sounds like something out of Air Farce.
JOHN SCULLY REPLIED; No,Lily. Air farce ain't that good.


Blog first published www.openbooktoronto.com

DON'T BE FOOLED BY THEIR GOOD LOOKS -- OR THE BBC

Want to know if the media is in a healthy, rigorous state? Can you trust the news you are consuming? The surest way to find out if journalism’s pulse is beating strongly is by going to, of all places, the health pages or Websites. And a warning: if you believe what you see on TV, especially in those dreadful “Your Health” segments, then I’ve got a million bucks in a Nigerian bank that’s all yours.

The TV segments are designed simply to grab your attention and hold it for a maximum of two minutes. In than time, flashing by are headlines, impossibly short clips from researchers, doctors and patients and a sign-off from a T’nT (go figure) blond with about as much expertise in medicine as I do in astrophysics. In depth, it ain’t. But is it true? Not often.

If coverage of the latest “breakthroughs” is any example, then journalism is on life-support. Across the TV and radio networks, in bold headlines in national dailies around the world, and across the Web – even the usually reliable BBC failed miserably – the three huge stories of the week centred on the “discoveries” of new drug treatments for Alzheimer’s and new ways to treat dementia and memory loss. I’ll concentrate on one of those stories, the so-called new treatment for dementia. A study published in the journal, Neurology, announced that taking cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins may, may --and I’m going to repeat it for a third time since the little word is often pronounced dead on arrival by irresponsible journalist who won’t let it ruin a good story –may cut the risk of dementia by half.
Even the British Alzheimer’s Research Trust called the results “encouraging.”

But hang on just one life-threatening minute. For a start, any journalist with a quarter of a brain and an ounce of honesty knows that a medical story with that little three- letter word is not a story at all. At best, you can use it as a guide as to what direction certain research is going; at worst, burying it is a lie that offers false hope to millions.

But it gets worse. Even the shallowest whip around authoratatice sites on the Web will tell you that statins such as Lipitor and Crestor can have a number of devastating side effects--including depression, memory loss and dementia. So they are probably useless for treating Alzheimer’s and other related illnesses. Why wasn’t that in any of the coverage? The truth often kills not only the messenger but also the message. And there’s an even more worrying reason – it appears that journalists around the world were too lazy to look beneath the surface. That’s usually where the real story sits.

And so, as a journalist, I feel shame and despair. You as a consumer should feel betrayal and outrage. What can you do ? Write to your newspaper or TV station and tell them what you think. Doing nothing will get you more “breakthroughs” and more severe cases of may-in-hiding.

First published at www.openbooktoronto.c0m

UGLY BOBBY; A MESSAGE FROM THE FRONT

It’s a powerful piece of writing from the splendid South African newspaper, the Mail and Guardian. In a savage attack on Robert Mugabe, of Zimbabwe, it makes these disturbing, yet brutally true observations:

“This is the lesson of Zimbabwe: if you are the incumbent and it looks like you are on your way out, for God's sake do not panic, just hang in there; beat the living daylights out of some of your people, just because you can, and the poorer they are the better; imprison those who would dare to oppose you, torture them, and if they are women, throw in a little spot of rape; kill them in horrible ways and burn their bodies and dump them in shallow graves, or no graves, as you please; in a word, intimidate your way back to power and, bingo, the African Union will very nicely ask you to accommodate your opponents in a government of national unity.”

The last statement is a reference not only to the AU, but also to the European Union whose contradictory position on Zimbabwe is remarkable for its cowardice. At the same time as announcing sanctions against Mugabe’s regime, the temporary head of the EU, France’s flighty President Sarkozy blithely praised the shameful Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, for his “bold and courageous” intervention. Say what?

This is the same Mbeki, considered Africa’s senior (he’s 66) statesman. Only one part of that description is correct and it’s not “statesman.” This is the same Mbeki who has done nothing but drape his fawning arms around the genocidal maniac who has dealt with the opposing and apparently victorious MDC, the Movement for Democratic Change, in typical Mugabe fashion. The MDC says at least 120 of its supporters have been killed, about 5,000 abducted and 200,000 forced from their homes since the first round of the elections, in a campaign of violence by pro-Mugabe militias and the army.

The Mail and Guardian rails against Mugabe and the reluctance of anyone, including Western powers to intervene. It quotes the mantra “the people of Zimbabwe have suffered enough” to propel the current talks between Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangarai, mediated by the stunningly inept Mbeki. It goes on:

“And indeed, the suffering is beyond levels that anyone with compassion can accept. Everyone knows the figures; the hyperinflation, the unemployment rate and now, yet again, the spectre of creeping starvation -- the United Nations reports that up to five million people face starvation. But how far should this mantra be carried? Have the people suffered so much that non-bread and butter issues to do with the dismantling of oppressive institutions, accountability, justice and reparations must be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency?”


It’s a dreadful question we must all ponder with shame. “Never again!” Sure. But only if you’re not African.

First published at www.openbooktoronto.com