Canada was the focus of critical attacks on its human rights record at a prominent United Nations forum by a cluster of countries with dubious human rights records, including North Korea, Iran and China.
The delegation from North Korea lamented: “We have serious concerns about continued violations of the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, torture and other ill-treatment, racism and xenophobia.”
Iran railed against “violations of human rights by Canadian government” including “child sexual exploitation and trafficking, the right to food, discriminatory law and regulation against indigenous people and minority groups including Muslim, Arab and African communities.”
China’s delegate complained of “widespread racial discrimination in Canada.”
Pakistan was dismayed by Canada’s “increased poverty and unemployment rate among immigrant communities”; Egypt by Canada’s “racial profiling in law-enforcement action”; and Cuba with the “racism and xenophobia” in Canada.
Russia expressed alarm over Canada’s “police actions of torture and cruelty against peaceful demonstrators.”
Just thought you would like to know, bunky! (And now you do know what kind of a fucked-up world we live in!)
———————————————————
News from Langley, B.C. that a woman called police because she saw two cats having sex in her front yard! (We don’t make this shit up kids!)
————————————————————–
News from Kitchener / Waterloo:
In a conversation with Duke University neuroscientist Warren Meck, theoretical physicist Smolin, who’s based at Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, argued for the controversial idea that time is real. “Time is paramount,” he said, “and the experience we all have of reality being in the present moment is not an illusion, but the deepest clue we have to the fundamental nature of reality.”
The Perspective Research Department will get back to you after WE have had more time to study this matter!
———————————————————
imagesCA42YSRPAccording to the FBI, the highest number of anti-Islamic hate crimes was reported in 2001 in the wake of 9/11. That year, 481 incidents were reported, compared with 28 the previous year. In 2002, the number of incidents dropped to 155. The decline was attributable, believes Mark Potok, an expert on extremism at the Southern Poverty Law Center, to speeches then President George Bush gave saying that Arabs and Muslims were not the enemies—al Qaeda was. “I think that mattered,” he says. Though public figures can influence matters for the better, Potok points out that social media has been a force for the worse, allowing Internet users to “say things, ugly things, that have the potential to reach millions of people. It makes it easier for people to participate in Muslim bashing.”
—————————————————————-
Just like ‘The Boys of Summer’ playing baseball boys and girls, the Taliban on Saturday announced the start of their spring offensive, signaling plans to step up attacks as the weather warms across Afghanistan, making both travel and fighting easier.
Hopes are high in both Afghanistan and Pakistan that they will make the play-offs this year, after failing to qualify for the past several years.
Tthey named their new offensive after a legendary Muslim military commander, Khalid ibn al-Walid, a famous twelfth century terrorist
—————————————————————–
The legendary George Jones, who passed away Friday at the age of 81, will be well remembered for his music–as well as the colorful stories that inspired it. Although perhaps best-loved for his aching tales of heartbreak, Jones also knew how to bring one heck of a funny story to life via song.
One of the best examples of this is 1996′s “Honky Tonk Song,” which relates the true story of what happened when a drunken Jones–who had a notorious alcoholic streak through much of his life–had his car keys taken away by his very fed-up wife back in in 1966.
As the story goes: The hard-living Jones had been drunk for several days, and his spouse at the time, Shirley Ann Corley, decided to physically restrain him from having any more liquor. She knew he was not in any shape to walk the eight miles into town, so before leaving the house herself one night, she hid every set of keys they owned…except one.
“I can vaguely remember my anger at not being able to find keys to anything that moved,” Jones recalled in his 1997 autobiography I Lived To Tell It All.
However, he happened to look out the window, and his eyes fell on his ride-on lawn mower sitting in a beam of light shining over the property.
“A key glistened in the ignition,” he remembered.
Jones wasted no time hopping on the mower, and took it all the way to town, despite the fact that its speed topped out at about 5 miles per hour.
“It might have taken an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did,” Jones related. “I wonder if the old timers around East Texas still wonder about a guy who they swear they saw mowing the concrete!”
Jones said that he was able to laugh at the story much later–and turn it into a tune featuring the hysterical lyrics “I saw those blue lights flashin’/Over my left shoulder/He walked right up and said/”Get off that riding mower”/I said “Sir, let me explain/ Before you put me in the tank/She took my keys away/And now she won’t drive me to drink.“
However: “Nobody was amused at the time,” he admitted.
If the story seems too crazy to be true, Jones’s third wife, fellow late country legend Tammy Wynette, told a similar story in her own 1979 autobiography–except in her version, she tracked the infamous lawn mower down at a bar a full 10 miles away from their house.
Jones became sober for good after surviving a drunken car crash in 1999. He credited his fourth wife, Nancy, with helping him achieve a clean lifestyle.

—————————————————–
South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co has been forced to apologise for an advertisement that sought to promote the zero carbon emissions of one of its cars by featuring a man failing to commit suicide using a hose attached to the exhaust.
(Gee folks, as you probably know by now, your faithful reporter has a bit of a black sense of humour, so I don’t see what the fuss is all about!  O.K. it would be a bit insensitive if you had a family member that did actually commit suicide, but other than that, why get your shorts in a knot?!)