the following is an excerpt from a conversation that took place between sanjeyan and me concerning our friend who is currently in china …

nomes: china’s communism and moral depravity is corrupting shawn
ksnite: <high five>
nomes: <high five>
ksnite: THREE CHEERS FOR SHAWN!!!
nomes: i could use more communist friends with no morals
nomes: just like stalin
ksnite: damn, stalin may not haven’t known a lot … but he could maintain a moustache like there was no tomorrow
nomes: in my books, that is a lot
nomes: that moustache is what every man aspires to
nomes: george bush
nomes: saddam hussein (who came close)
nomes: tony blair
nomes: everyone
nomes: elton john
nomes: john mayer
nomes: jesus
ksnite: i bet on good moustache days, he executed less men
ksnite: he had a heart of gold
nomes: just like jesus
nomes: yet so much more
ksnite: some consider that jesus was a little stubborn with the cross
ksnite: complaining about how heavy it was like every 10 minutes
nomes: did stalin ever complain about managing the largest country on earth? about world war two? about america’s nuclear capability? about rebellions and the immense material cost of perpetrating genocide?
nomes: no my friend, he carried that cross
nomes: and did not shed a tear nor ask for any sympathy
nomes: which is more than what we can say about jesus there, some reports allege someone else carried his cross — can you believe this guy? he’s GOD and still someone ELSE carries his cross
ksnite: i heard he was walking in all directions…couldn’t walk a straight path
ksnite: broke some vases, broke windows, snapped a few power lines
nomes: were there ever power outages under stalin?
nomes: NO! never! nein!
ksnite: he made sure to electrocute men on days when energy use was low
ksnite: he cared for his people
nomes: i think the world’s been worshipping the wrong guy for the past fifty years
ksnite: i propose we start STALINISM!!!

When people look at the options, they’re saying that Stephen Harper looks like Paul Martin in a hurry.

– Jack Layton, NDP

yaser took some great photos of ASSU‘s trip to collingwood

nice place, kind of culturally homogeneous
when we walked into a restaurant (two brown folks, one latina, three white folks), we got some stares from the largely, well all white folk

though there was a brown family in there, they seemed local (so the other locals had time to acclimatize to their brownness)

it can be great to get away from the city and its trappings to a place where the religiously discriminatory christian heritage party is actually running a candidate

a few days ago i was considering making a quiz not unlike those idiot online quizzes everyone takes but pretends not to take

only this quiz would be about the upcoming elections and would tell you which party best suits your views

i quickly stopped thinking about it because i don’t have the technical expertise to make something like this (though i probably have friends who do) and because i wouldn’t know how to stay unbiased (mainly via the questions asked)

but, the folks over at politics watch have done precisely such a thing

their voteselector quiz asks you a few key questions and turns out the political party (and leader) whose views most match your own

very cool
(for a guy doing a major in political science)

Tax cuts? Stiffer penalties for criminals? A return to governmental accountability? And all propped up on the myth of the ever-expanding economy. For an American who left California on the heels of George W. Bush’s bloodless coup, on the cusp of his illegal war, it all sounds very familiar. My Canadian wife and daughter and I came to Canada in 2002, expecting to find the Canada my wife left 20 years ago: Trudeau’s Canada, a place where no one’s too poor to be sick or sheltered, where no one’s too rich to be above the law. As the election looms, we can only shake our heads.

On one hand, the corrupt Liberal government and its zillionaire leader talking in whichever direction the wind blows and on the other, the Conservative leadership, finger-pointing, privatizing and apparently gaining ground by promising tax cuts to an Ontario that only months ago voted in a new Premier on the grounds that we needed to restore our public services to pre-Tory levels.

Round and round they go with the sound bytes and the tax cuts and the ducking and dodging of their own words as they go in and out of vogue, all the while vilifying and ostracizing Jack Layton, the only one of the bunch who, to me, actually sounds like a Canadian � the only one whose plans for the future of Canada actually include all Canadians.

I guess with all this going on, I felt obliged as an American to reach out to my Canadian neighbours and say, “Welcome to America.”

– David Kemker

one of the most common ways for a person to express his or herself on the internet is to go to blogspot, sign up, and thanks to the people over at blogger, instantly start blogging

unless you live in saudi arabia

what might have blacklisted all of blogspot is the site of “the religious policeman”

this is a western-educated saudi fellow who, via satellite internet (which cannot be censored), has taken the courageous step of posting his experiences, thoughts, observations, and outright criticisms of the way saudi arabia works

of course, the thought of any mode of expression which cannot be regulated is a severely distressing thought for those in power anywhere

at york university, it’s megaphones

there are ways to by-pass the censorship, however

go on google, type up “muttawa,” the first page that appears is the one in question
now clicking on the link itself will lead to the above-displayed, superbly designed “blocked!” notice, so click, instead, on the underlined “cached” under the description of the page — and enjoy

as for the blocking of blogspot itself, other services such as livejournal, though it sucks, are still available
again, a simple google search will bring out a great list of blogging and journal-keeping sites

can’t keep on censoring things forever

it was barely half an hour before the afternoon prayers, asr, and the unforgiving arabian sun beat down on the sprawling complex of the masjid-un-nabi, the mosque of the prophet, in medina

the elderly couple seemed iranian, they were both easily over seventy years old — the man held his wife’s arm and guided her to the ladies’ entrance to the actual masjid itself

unbeknownst to him, he violated the sacrosanct border of properness and, sitting in the shadow of a little outpost (wherein was drinking water from the holy well of zamzam and seating for several — access limited the employees of the “custodian” of the two holy mosques), the arab guard barked out at him: “hajji! ya hajji!”

in his aggressive arabic, he went on to explain at the old man that beyond this point no male may pass — there were still fifty or so metres to the actual entrance of the building, an oppressive fifty metres over which women dressed in their black, synthetic abayas had to tread under the glaring heat and beat of the sun

the man tried to argue back, in his broken arabic and farsi, that he simply wanted to guide his wife to the building and give her guidance on how to perform the ziarat, paying respects to the prophet mohammed

of course, he would not be able to pass despite all his feeble protests, and so he told his wife he would wait for her, outside

many laypersons were standing in the shade of the outpost, the real estate was choice, but there was none for the old man, and so he leaned against the outpost with the sun beating down on him

one young man, seeing this, discreetly stepped out of the shade and into the sun, and the weak old man took his place — the unspoken thanks met an unspoken welcoming

then a young policeman with a pious scrabble of a beard, having just taken a sip of the cool refreshing and spiritually rewarding zamzam, emerged from the outpost with a folding chair which he placed directly in front of the old man

forgive him for thinking it was meant for him — it wasn’t

the policeman forced the man out of the shade and took up his place, reclining on the plastic, green cushion of the chair, exchanging platitudes and anecdotes with the religious guard whose duty it was to condemn young and old alike to stay outside of the ladies’ section and to stand in the blistering heat without any respite from the oppression of the sun

the young man who had just, moments ago, given up his place in the shade to the old man looked on and shook his head

here, in the city of the prophet, madinat-un-nabi, madinat-ul-munawwarah, the enlightened city, a simple, elementary and well-known hadith of the prophet flashed in his mind:

you should not be sitting down while an elder is standing up

clearly, he thought to himself as the rage built up inside, inhabiting the enlightened city is not a guarantee of your own state of manners

as is most often the case, the would-be guardians of islamic behaviour are principally the ones who detract from it

miserable failure

(for those who don’t know, go on google and type “miserable failure” — it now points to michael moore…

for those who want to keep it pointed at bush, copy and paste:

<a href=”http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html”>miserable failure</a>

ciao)

i) his first miracle was to change water into bacardi
ii) he respected martin luther king jr. but acted like malcolm x
iii) he wore baggy ‘phat kibbutz’ clothing
iv) his rap outfit: jay-c and da dirty dozen
v) he consorted with ho’s
and
vi) he was always being chased by the police

[if this offends you, remember — what would jesus do, ma nizzle?]

here’s a random plug that i got from richard’s livejournal:
the hmong

something i didn’t know about

but something not unexpected from the likes of the united states government

i’d go on a long rant about its hypocrisy but hey, we all know everything about it