Death by a Thousand Cuts, Canada's Healthcare

The Canadian public healthcare is under serious threat. The powerful private health companies, especially the American insurance and health companies south of the border, are salivating for a piece of this lucrative market. There are powerful lobbies in the federal and provincial governments that are trying hard behind the scenes to privatize the healthcare system.

The way they do it is "death by a thousand cuts". This is the name of an old traditional Chinese torture and does not need explanation as the name itself is quite clear. Nobody comes forward to announce that they have privatized the system once and for all ,nobody actually dares to do that. They know that the Canadian people will never let a party or person dismantle their excellent public healthcare system. Oh, no, they do it piece by piece. Each year, they privatize a little part here and a little part there until after 10 years or 15 years, nothing remains but a skeleton of the once mighty and great public healthcare and nobody in the general public will ever notice it. Like the Ontario government did last year, they privatized all physiotherapy and chiropractice services and also made people pay for the formerly free eye exams. Next year they will privatize another piece and this goes on until nothing remains.

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Quebec vote

So ADQ wins second in the elections. Mark it, the vote for ADQ is not a vote for ADQ, it is a vote against the two other major parties. It is the only way people can tell the two other that we don't approve of your policies at least for the time being. It is not at all clear if ADQ will keep the same number of votes in the next elections. And it is somehow sad, Quebec has always been left leaning, and for the first time after many years it is tilting to the right.

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Alcohol and tobacco worse than pot, and yet they spend billions prohibiting the pot while these two are freely available!

Saturday March 24, 2007

Alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than illegal drugs like marijuana or ecstasy, according to a new classification of drugs published in The Lancet medical journal yesterday.

The table, drawn up by a group of leading British scientists, ranked heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and street methadone as the most harmful drugs, closely followed by alcohol in fifth place.

Tobacco was assessed to be the 9th most dangerous drug behind ketamine in 6th, benzodiazepines, which are prescription tranquillizers, and amphetamines.

Cannabis was said to be the 11th most harmful. LSD was ranked 14th and ecstasy 18th among the 20 drugs classified.

And yet our stupid governments, following the lead of the US government, spend billions of dollars fighting pot use, while drugs worse than that, like alcohol and tobacco are freely available. In the prohibition era in the US, they spent billions trying to stop people drinking. Not only did it backfire and alcohold was freely available the prohibition turned into a joke, but it also caused lots of unnecessary pain, and created huge criminal gangs that their sole purpose and sustenance was providing alcohol for the population.

Most people know how to use drugs in moderation not to harm themselves. Banning any drug is like banning knives in kitchens because a few people don't know how to use them and harm themselves or others. There are people in high places who use cocaine on a regular basis without harming their careers or life or families, and yet there are people in the street that are alcoholics and damage their lives and ruin their families. The rational way to deal with drugs is not banning them. Banning drugs just creates crime and corruption resulting from the crime. The solution is educating people how to deal with the drugs and how to use them in moderation.

Why they turn to Islam in droves?

Because communism has lost its validity after downfall of the Soviet Union and socialism tarnished because of its wrongful association with communism. Because Arab nationalism has not created any hope after 60 years of trial and error. Because Palestine is still an open wound and US and Israel are not ready to let the Palestinians have their own country. Nothing has remained except Islam to answer to the revolutionary aspirations of the younger generations across the Arab world.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/195624

The Stupid Empire and Somalia. Same mistakes again!

Isn’t America the stupidest empire in the world ever? Or do all empires become stupid? Were Romans as stupid as Americans at the height of their power? Is it the hubris? Is it that they think they don’t need to be smart as a fox because they have the power of a lion and can afford to be as stupid as they want?

Look at Somalia now. They are repeating the same mistakes they made in Vietnam and just recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. When they invaded Somalia with the Ethiopian troops, it was very odd that Mogadishu fell in just a few days. It was just impossible to imagine that an organized force like the Muslim militia that had nearly conquered the whole country was going to be defeated and disappear in a few days. It was very clear what was their tactic. They had just melted away like Taliban in Afghanistan to reorganize and regroup and then start a guerilla war and hit the empire back. It was very clear that the corrupt bickering warlords of the different tribes that are united in a loose confederation called the legal government of Somalia can’t bring peace back to Somalia and yet Americans supported them and gave Mogadishu to them, for what purpose. To bring back the old rivalries and infighting, like Afghanistan after the American invasion. And now the same scenario is repeating itself in Somalia. Guerilla war which bites at the feet of the empire and leaves it helpless, an elephant surrounded by millions of local ants, helpless.

What really baffles me is: isn’t there a brain anywhere in US, in all those right wing think tanks that run the American foreign policy? What is wrong with these people? Why can’t they learn? Why do they make the same mistakes and blunders again and again?

Refugees, Illegal Imigrants and then some legal

We talk a lot about the plight of refugees in Canada. But nobody concerns’ themselves with the plight of the legal immigrants. The amount of money they have to pay, the trials and tribulations they have to go through, the long waits, the lack of any help and support when they arrive in Canada and try to find a job. As a person who has gone through this process myself with first hand experience I find it abhorring that fake refugee claimants often find far more support with open arms in this country than the legal ones.

I have heard stories about some refugee claimants, stories that I can corroborate, that leaves me angry and frustrated with the system. About people who come here claiming they are gay and are helped by the gay community and the moment they get their landed immigrant status go back to their country to marry and bring their brides, the country they claimed if they go back to will persecute them. Of the so-called political refugees who claim they have escaped their country and if they get back they will be executed or jailed, but the moment they get their landed immigrant or citizenship status go back and live and work in that country. Of people who come here claiming they have been under religious persecution because they had converted to Christianity and attach themselves to a gullible church here and get letters supporting their claims and the moment their claim is accepted disappear and never show up in the church again. And then I see highly educated and honest people, who apply for immigration through routine legal channels and are rejected.

Indigenous Canadians, who have been born in Canada, because they are not in touch with the immigrant community firsthand don’t know and hear about these stories. The immigrant communities usually don’t discuss and share the stories with the indigenous people because they feel they have a moral duty to support each other even ones among them that have come here illegally. But there is no such restriction among immigrants themselves and they talk about these stories openly. The wall of silence is only there when it comes to the indigenous citizens and media. And boy oh boy, the stories you share among your fellow countrymen about the fake claims!

For example I hear a lot about real political refugees who are rejected while the ones with the more spectacular stories that does not have any base in truth are accepted easily. People like me and my countrymen, because of our personal experience in our country, can easily separate the fake story from the real one, but not Canadians. It pains me that unfortunately so many of the claims come on the side of fake. But of course I know a Canadian born in this country is a poor judge in these cases, it is easy for them to believe these stories as they don’t have firsthand experience. Sometimes I feel all judges for refugee claimants from each country should come from among people born and bred in that country so that they can’t be cheated so easily.

The other injustice is the easy path of millions of illegal immigrants in the US that will be exonerated and soon become citizens while honest educated people who want to immigrate there through legal channels are not allowed and are rejected. As a landed immigrant myself, I am outraged about the event and I don’t think I am alone here. I find it a highly partial and biased process, unjust and hypocritical. What it says to people is: don’t bother about the cumbersome process, just manage to set foot in this country, we are going to give you amnesty soon, while your brethren who have tried the legal ways are left out. Will we do the same to others who have committed illegal acts, to thieves, murderers, criminals? No, and we don’t accept if somebody suggests it, but we let the illegal immigrants through this same process which we deprive other criminals. If the big business needs cheap slave labor, to counter the unions and the indigenous labor, let them bring them through legal channels, with work permits and due legal protection, instead of this most unfair and crooked process.

300

The "300" is now on screens. 300 Spartans defeating the huge Iranian army of hundreds of thousands. Can anybody believe that such a feat is possible? Of course not in real world.

But in a world where there were no media, radio and TV and papers, anybody could write anything they wanted and boast as much as they wanted about their great achievements. There were no checks and balances. There were no records kept, no photos, no videos, no journalists. It was easy to claim you have seen miracles, prophets, mythical warriors. And if all around you are surrounded by your own tribe who wants to believe and pride themselves with their achievements, you can even claim more.

Imagine for a moment that George Bush claims that he conquered Iraq with only 300 brave American soldiers against 300,000 Iraqi special forces, he can never write a history book with this claim. Media will eat him alive if he ever boasts about this. But in the Greece of 500 BC you could get away with it. And then if these books later were absorbed and made into foundations of a civilization(western civilization) the claims would be widely accepted in that civilization.

The problem is, nobody has asked what the enemy wrote about the same event. Unfortunately the Persian history books, were all wiped out and burnt during the Arab and later invasions. There was not even one book saved from the devastating Arab conquest, so we don’t know much about Persia before the Arab invasion. If the books were not burnt, then we would have had the other side of the story at least and how the Persians looked at that incident.

My take is that: Imagine the most powerful empire of our time, US, sends a few of its forces to Somalia for peacekeeping because groups in Somalia has asked it to send the forces and stop the civil war. It is not a force of hundreds of thousands, but a few thousand. Somalia does not have anything to draw the empire in, no oil, no minerals, no technology, it is a backward primitive land of tribes fighting each other forever. Now after a short period the empire understands it has made a mistake sending even that little force there, it is wasting money and resources on a land and people which is not worth it. It calls them back.

Now imagine Somalian historians later write books and claim that a few hundred Somalians had defeated a force of hundreds of thousands of Americans and kicked then out. The empire does not care about those books. The empire does not even notice somebody has written such a book, the empire has its own history and its own important matters. Now imagine in an atomic holocaust the whole US civilization, all the books, the library of congress and everything is burnt. Nothing, not even one book is saved and the empire is no more. After a thousand years, the only books that remain are the history books written in the Somalia and now we have a civilization in Africa that traces its roots to Somalia. Now what everybody will believe in that civilization is that, yes, a few hundred Somalians really defeated the main forces of the US empire thousands of years ago.

For Persians, the same thing happened. Greece was a mountainous faraway land like today’s Afghanistan, full of warring tribes, without any riches to attract the empire to its gates. They had some goats and a little olive oil and some small towns here and there. No empire in its sane mind would care to even contemplate wasting its forces to conquer such a land. Greece was located far away from the centre, on the vicinity of the empire, inhospitable and poor and not at all enticing. From time to time they had to be dealt with to stop them from sending small pirate missions to Asia minor cities, that was it. Persian empire never cared about Greece. But, for Greeks it was completely different. Persia was the great power of its time and all they could think of was the huge riches of that empire. They fought for that empire from time to time as mercenaries and tried to take part in the trade.

So the story of 300 is just what it is. Only a story, told by uncontested historians that did not have to deal with checks and balances of modern academia and could write virtually any nonsense they wanted. And the counter-history, the history books of Persia, were all burnt down and turned into smoke during the Arab invasion, so we don’t know how the other side saw it. Perhaps no more than a small temporary military operation to calm down some warring tribes at the fringes of the empire. Like how Romans saw their affairs in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus Christ, not even one Roman historian has mentioned his name in their books, he was a non-entity for the empire.

footnote: just to finish it on a funny note, somebody wrote recently: ignore the whiners, they are just a bunch of pussy Athenians!

Pearls of Wisdom by great philosopher Jin Tao

Recently very old and tattered manuscripts were discovered in the north east corner of China in a cave. Scientists and liguists are deciphering and translating these manuscripts now. Apparently they are by a Chinese philosopher, Jin Tao. Read this section regularly, new thoughts are added the moment they are translated from the original:

ON SOCIETY

* There are two sorts of criminals. Small-time criminals are the ones filling up the jails. Big time criminals turn out to be the CEOs of international corporations, politicians, rulers and dictators. They are the Alpha males ruling the world.

* 95% of any society are sheep, grazing happily and not caring who rules them. They are oppressed, cheated, made to work for the rulers with their own consent, provide the wolves with their milk and wool and meat. 2.5% of the society are the wolves, they are the so-called shepherds of this herd of sheep, working them to death and enjoying the booty. The rest are the intellectuals, they are the ones trying endlessly to awaken the sheep to their tragic destiny. Once every 50 years or so they are successful, the sheep start to move, bleat, open their eyes, rise against the wolves, resist, and ..... sadly, get back to their old ways soon. Intellectuals are trying constantly to warn the sheep, to tell them this is not the way to live, there can be a better world, where the sheep can have their own government and there are no wolves anymore, but to no avail. What is left of this never-ending struggle for the poor intellectual is sorrow, frustration, and lots of crucification by the wolves, while the sheep are watching contentedly and actually giving a helping hand in the repression of their saviours and dancing around the cross.

* Parenting needs training, education and licensing, like anything else in our society, like driving, etc: Even the simplest most basic jobs in our society nowadays needs a license and at least months of coaching and training. Even to drive a car you need a license. And yet, the most difficult, the most delicate of jobs, which is educating and bringing up the young is totally neglected in this respect. Any addicted alchoholic person with a penis or womb is allowed to have children and bring them up without any knowledge about education. We let millions of children to grow up in households that don't know a word about how to teach and train a young human brain. What a waste! There must be license for parenting, and frequent checkups. This grey matter inside our skulls is the main capital of any society. If it is wasted, the society will be doomed. And yet, we let anybody, without any training, to bring up the children. Especially the first six years of life, where the whole personality of a human being is formed for the rest of their lives, should not be left in the hands of everybody just because they are the "genetic" parents of the child.

ON HUMAN CONDITION

* The stupider, the happier, the wiser, the gloomier.

ON WOMEN AND MEN

* Open up any woman's head, in the centre of it you will find a baby, a house and a man. Open up any man's head, in the centre of it you will find a harem.

* The deepest love of a woman is reserved for her children and through her children she loves her man. The deepest love of a man can be his woman.

* Women don't need philosophy to explain to them why we are on this earth. It is enough for them to have a look at their children and all the philosophical humdrum is solved for them. They know and feel the reason of their being in this universe through their children and their wombs. Men need philosophy because they don't give birth, they are not fertile, so they have to ask themselves again and again why am I here, what is the purpose of my life. For a woman, the purpose of her life is crystal clear when she looks at her children. Women don't need philosophy.

* A man who loves a woman showers her with his attention and favours and does not expect much in response, which is normally what happenes. Women don't return love as much as they receive it. But the man does not complain, he knows in his genes that the return of his love will be towards the children she will have from him. She compensates double his love in taking care of his children, of his genes.

* A woman can't feel in a thousand years how powerful a role sex drive plays in a man's life. She might try to understand it, but feeling it is different. The only way a woman can feel it is by injecting testosteron for a few months! Women might know that men have sexual thoughts every few mintues, but to have it themselves with that regularity will be an eye opener. They might know that men are aroused easily, but being aroused yourself by the drop of a hat such as seeing just a beautiful woman with skimpy dress in the street is different. If women can experience it, they might have second thoughts in having revealing clothes in unsuitable places, or be too inviting to some men who can't control their drive.

* For men sex is sex. They have a billion sperms available at any moment so they can forget about the real meaning of sex which is breeding the species and just enjoy the pleasure. There is no lifelong giving from your body to a new life, no lifelong investiment. For women sex is children. Any act of sex implies a lifelong investment in a new life. That is why women don't take it lightly and don't give easily.

* Women love strong men. On the other hand, most men are genetically attracted to women that are not strong and threatening to their manhood. It gives the man a sense of power and pleasure of protection. Just imagine a helpless woman by the roadside with a flat tire. A million men stop to help her and bond with her. Now imagine a strong woman dealing with it herself and changing the tire. No man there!! Smart women use it to their benefit, at the same time that they are strong, they flaunt some female weaknesses to attract the man.

* At the end of the day, a woman looks at a man's pockets instead of his brains or looks. That is in the genes and an evolutionary necessity. A woman who went after a man who could not provide her and her children with food and shelter, was doomed to failure and could not transfer her genes to the future generations of women. Only women who got men who could support their offspring managed to transfer their genes. All the women in our world now carry those women's genes, the gene of supremacy of pockets over brains and looks.

* I never understand why women go through all this trouble to follow the fashion. Is it so important to sacrifice your time and health for it? Whenever I see a woman angling and tilting on top of a 10cm high heel and can see the pain she is going through, I wonder.

* It always strikes me as a great gift: the power of women to talk about "nothing" for hours. If only we men could have inherited a little of that!

* On coming back from a trip to India: Thank god for arranged marriage in India otherwise half the Indian women would go to grave without having experienced the touch of a man, so ugly they are!

The New Proletarians

The new proletarians are of course the wage and salary earners, and mostly in the service sector. Marxists have it totally wrong when they still refer to the proletariat as only factory workers. The ranks of factory workers are diminishing by day and soon with automatic and robotized factories there won't be any. But the nature of slave labour is still the same as long as one sells his/her labour to another human being to sustain him/herself. There is no difference between the nature of the economic relationship between a Walmart employee, or a computer programmer's employee for that matter, and a proletarian factory worker. They all sell the fruit of their labour to somebody else to sustain themselves. As long as human beings do slave labour, socialism will be alive to defend the rights of wage earners(slaves) against the employers(slave owners).

Evangelicals in Toronto? What are they up to?

Religion again. Wolves in ship's skin posing as shepherds. Poor people desperately seeking solace in all the wrong places:

Toronto Star article

The day we won the Revolution

In the morning we were under the shah’s rule, in the evening it was a new age, a new totally democratic popular government, sort of the ideal of the anarchist philosophers, real power of the people in the hands of the people and for the people, no government institution left, everything run by soviets of people’s representatives, with no standing army but just local militias.

Early morning I wake up. I have an appointment to pick up Majid my best friend and go to a series of speeches and demonstrations by the Tudeh party in Elmosanat University. These days are so colorful and exciting. I know I will never live life like this in my whole life again. After all, These events, if you are very very lucky, just happens once in a lifetime and most people on this planet never have the opportunity to experience such a thing. They are doomed to normal boring lives, day after day. I am among the few lucky ones in the history that am going through a full fledged popular urban revolution like the English and French revolutions so let me cherish every moment of this ecstasy and every drop of this maddeningly strong red wine. It is like sitting in a movie theater 24/7 and watching the most exciting, the most interesting and absorbing action movie in the world. Every moment is different. River of time has changed pace and is running like a flood. Every day is new, every day something new happens, every day new cracks in the structure of power appears. The crushing strangling dictatorship of the Shah is falling apart, something nobody could even dare to imagine to witness in his lifetime. Shah has already escaped in disgrace with his family and a few moments after the radio announced that he has left the country nothing remained in the whole country that would testify that there was ever a shah ruling this country for the past 37 years. The smallest relics and statues were brought down and broke. Now we are in a new phase, where the core of the army who is still faithful to their ruler are facing the whole population. Every moment an explosion might take over the whole power structure. Everybody is scared of a copy of the 28^th of Mordad American. The American coup that brought back the Shah and a nightmare to my country for the next 25 years. Americans are still plotting behind the scenes to keep any possible remnant of his government, but the last pieces of the structure is falling apart now. Even the mighty empire can’t keep its crony on the throne anymore. The whole country, every class of the society is up against just one person, the Shah. The sense of unity is unique, something you never find in other revolutions. He is so hated in the society that there is no group left to support him. From the rich bazariz to the dirt poor peasants are all united in their opposition to one person, to Shah. Beautiful is this unity, which is so rare, but a glimpse of it is enough to make you drunk for a lifetime. For once, there are really two colors here and the choice is made so easy, you are either for the dark, the shah and the Americans, or you are for the light, the oppressed people of Iran. And after 37 years of bloody rule and torture and mayhem, nobody has any doubts about that choice.

I eat a quick breakfast and drive the car. Gasoline is nearly extinct in this second oil producing country in the world. A long-term debilitating strike by the oil workers and the whole industry has brought the country in to a near standstill in this cold winter. To fill up a tank you have to wait in long lines of cars for hours, and even for a few days. I am lucky I have gas in the tank today and I want to use it. The party has asked everybody to be present at the elmosanat university. And we are going. I drive true eerily empty streets in this early morning. If you have gas, driving in Tehran is an experience to cherish. There are no cars anywhere, and it is like driving on a movie set without any cars in the street. In a jiffy I am in North Tehran, pick up Majid and we are heading to Elmosanat, calm and cool in our ignorance of what is going on in the other part of the city, where last night a mere struggle over watching a TV program of the return of Khomeini, in an airforce base has now turned into an armed insurrection, with pro and anti khomeini forces in the army now facing each other in a battle over the fate of the revolution. This had to happen, sooner or later, since the day a big group of the airforce officers showed up in Khomeini’s residence and vowed allegiance to the revolution.

We reach the university. The gates are closed, nobody is here!? Strange, where are the throngs of people expected, the party supporters and cadre and sympathizers. There is nobody around. We get out, check the gates, there are not even guards anywhere, nobody in the university, the streets are too deserted, even for these days. There are even no signs about the cancellation of the program. We head back, we have come too early in the morning and there are nobody else to ask what has happened. It is strange, the party does not just call off its meetings without notice.

But on our way back we notice the columns of smoke, billowing from different parts of the city, something’s going on, something new. I notice some cars in the streets, agitated, driving fast, with lots of people inside each car, and for the first time, I notice something new in the cars. In a few of them, I see the tip of the guns jotting out of the windows. Some very few people in the cars are carrying guns. Well, this is new. This is the first time I see guns in the hands of the people not the army. OK, something is going on. The revolution up till now was strangely peaceful, with people carrying only their feasts against the guns, baring their chests in front of the guns and dying heroically without fighting back. But now, I see guns in people’s hands. Instantly we notice that we are entering a new phase. The battle has started, the one everybody was waiting for, and this time, people have guns in their hands.

Last night, pro Khomeini forces had opened the doors of the garrisons to people and started to distribute guns and ammunition to anybody who came in, indiscriminately. In parts of the city the battle is raging. The last remnants of the Shah’s special guard who are brainwashed to fight for him to death are battling the people and the other sections of the army that are on open mutiny now. Tanks are in the streets. Majid wants to go to his neighborhood. I drop him off at an intersection near his home and drive back home.

I am living in an anarchist’s dream now. It is pure anarchy. There is absolutely no central power, no government, no army, no police, it is pure anarchy, government of people for people. People say Khomeini has ordered everybody to break the martial law and stays in the streets tonight. There are talks about other units of the army invading Tehran under the command of the American officers. I stay in the streets. We walk down the main street of our neighborhood, past the police station. The hated police station, now a few of them are on the roof and one has a bull horn imploring people not to attack the station. He says the army central command has issued a command for the whole army not to take part in the battle pro or against Khomeini and remain neutral. People have brought huge thigh cables from the government Electrical posts and tied them between light poles as a barrier against the tanks. With these barriers, no cars can drive. We can only walk, ah, the pure air in the polluted Tehran, it is amazing. No cars, no heating, no oil, the air is pure as 200 years ago, when there was no Tehran here spreading on the foot of the mountains.

I join a group of neighbors near our house. Everybody is armed, with something, sticks and knives and I even see a sword. These days and nights have brought people together. Neighbors who had never met each other now know each other by first name. There is a huge bonfire in the middle of the street, it is cold, and people gather around it, I can count more than 100 of our neighbors here. Suddenly all of them break into singing “Ey Iran”, the national popular anthem of my country. After years and years of listening to the Shah’s imposed national anthem, which is nothing but praise of him and his father, it is so emotional. I start to cry and see lots of people crying.

There is no radio, and no TV. But at around 4:30 in the afternoon there is a rumor that the central TV station has been liberated by the revolutionary forces. The staff of the TV station who were on strike for months, are hastily back. I don’t see it, I am in the street, but the ones that see it say that they just gather in an indistinct room, in a rush and start talking to people. Apparently the Shah’s guard had tried to capture the TV station but people and other army forces had stopped them. The cameras show rows of tanks being stopped on their way to the TV station. This is so invigorating, for the first time in my life I am hearing the TV and radio, who were always praising his majesty, the sun of the Arians, now declaring his demise and the demise of the Pahlavi dynasty and the victory of the revolution. There are announcements by all the parties, mostly leftist parties, asking people to stay in the streets tonight and to fight against anti-revoluitionary forces. Am I dreaming? All my life, from the time I can remember, I had one big dream, and that was to see the end of the bloody rule of the Shah, and now it is happening in front of my eyes. Right here, in the streets of Tehran, and the world is watching us. We, people of Iran, are playing the greatest game of the last half century.

We hear shots fired from the direction of the garrison at the east side of the neighborhood. This is one of the greatest garrisons inside Tehran. We move towards the garrison. Near the garrison there are lines of people behind the walls, there are shots fired from inside the garrison, towards the people. I see soldiers escaping the garrison and running towards the people. I see one of them shot dead right there in the middle of the highway that separates us from the barbed wires and walls of the garrison. I see others escaping to this side and taking off their army uniforms, they don’t want to be mistaken as the Shah’s army and killed by people. Some people here have clothes ready for them, they change and melt among the people. Later we learn that the government officials that were arrested towards the end of the Shah’s rule, by his own command, to save his neck, were imprisoned in this garrison and managed to escape when the garrison fell into the hands of the people. Some of them were arrested later and brought to justice and some disappeared and later were appeared mostly in LA.

For the first time I see somebody with a M16. The American gun which is the standard army gun for the foot soldiers. The same gun that had killed so many Vietnamese when it was used in Vietnam. The guy shoots a few bullets into the air. I see one of the most famous Iranian wrestlers right there, with a radio in one hand and a gun in the other. People clap for him. He is so popular, wrestling is one of the most popular sports in Iran and this guy has got several gold medals in Olympics and is popular and now he is here, next to us, shooting at the garrison. The shots from the garrison die off gradually. Nobody is there anymore. People start to move towards the garrison and cross the highway. I follow, the barbed wires are cut off already in one place and the wall pulled down. People spread out inside the garrison through the hole in the wall. For so many years I used to pass around this huge garrison to go to school. I walked around it and always looked inside through the gates, mesmerized by the tanks and other army vehicles parked inside in huge numbers. And now I am inside. I follow the crowd. Now I come across a big building, one storey, people go in and come out with guns and ammunition. Loads of ammunition. Boxes of mortars and every conceivable explosives. I follow in, I want to have my own gun. Nobody tells me, or anybody else, that one spark might start a huge explosion that will blow all of us to pieces. In that confusion it can happen at any moment. This happens later that night in another huge garrison at the south west of Tehran and a for a long time that night we can hear huge explosions and the orange color of fire reflecting from the clouds.

But, this does not even pass through my mind. I want my gun. I go in. Inside is dark, pitch dark. It is night already and there are no lights. People roam inside and you keep bumping into them. You touch the shelves in search of a gun, and at last you come across rows of them and you grab one and you run out. Now, for the first time in my life, I am touching the cold metal of a gun, a heavy gun. Everybody is carrying guns, I get back through the hole in the wall and cross the highway. People are carrying big boxes of ammunition. And then I see a tank in the street, and it is run by ordinary people, it has been taken from the garrison and a few people are trying to drive the beast. There are many tanks and other army vehicles like this that night in Tehran, taken out of the garrisons, a few of them end up in the Tehran University and when tomorrow I go to the university I find them parked in the centre of the university with the leftist party’s insignia and flags on them.

It is getting late, there are bonfires everywhere. Electricity is back, the long strike of the electricity workers is apparently ended at last. As all the other strikes. In the next few weeks, everything will be back to normal, we will again have gas and electricity and public transport and everything. But tonight I am on cloud nine. I have my own gun, I have seen the birth pangs of a new order, of people’s power, pure and true democracy when there is no government, just people’s soviets. I bring the gun to home. My parents are there, and my uncles. All watching the new really national Iranian TV. There are news after news from different cities, following the lead of Tehran, all falling one after the other to the revolutionary forces. The army has just melted down and disappeared, the police also. There is absolutely no police force, and no army. Just armed people in the streets, protecting this dear newborn, this victorious revolution. No festive mood can be compared to this. Everybody is happy, everybody is laughing, people are crying with joy and hugging each other in the streets.

This morning, when I was leaving home, I was still an Iranian living under the oppressive dictatorship of the Shah and the Americans. Tonight, I am a proud citizen of a new democratic government, belonging to a brave people that after 50 years of resistance, and hundreds of thousands of executed and tortured, at last have managed to get rid of the yoke of the foreign powers.

And I have my own gun.

Farsi Writings

Please check my Farsi writings at this Blog

Global Warming is true but no need for panic as earth has been warmer before

Global warming is true. It is now proved nearly beyond doubt that the planet is warming up. But there is no place for panic. Earth has gone through a thousand cycles of warming and cooling through its long history and sure this time also the living matter on this planet will adjust as it has done for the past 3 billion years. We should not let media turn a scientific discussion into a panic circus as they did with something like Y2K.

For example what they don't say and we should know is that the earth's climate was very warm during the Miocene (about 17 million years ago) and when forests extended up to the Arctic about 2 million years ago. On the other hand there has been 33 glacial advances (ice ages) from 1.5 million years ago to the present. The last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. In between we have had very warm periods like the cycle we are going through now. But if the cycles are any clue, we are heading for another ice age sooner or later and will wish we would have enjoyed the warmer climes of today.

We should also know that the Arctic was warmer during the Holocene (about 5,000 years ago) by up to 5C than present. Also the Arctic was as warm during the 1920s (up until 1940) as it is today. According to the available climatic information, from 1940 through 1975 the earth's mean temperature declined by about .25C before starting to climb by approximately 0.35C from 1977 to the present.

So despite that we are in a warming up cycle now, we can adjust and there is no reason to panic like it is the end of the world.

Starry Night

A story about revolution in Iran and its bloody aftermath

"They used to drag them out at night, under the stars, and then they shoot them. It wasn’t my fault. I did not do anything wrong. I was just watching them through the bars. They used to sing or shout for freedom when they were shot at."

Poormand and I looked back. We had arrived pretty late and had just managed to get the two seats at the back of the bus, the worst seats. The guy was behind us. He was sitting on something even worse than ours, the driver’s bed, or throne, a very uncomfortable box that was also used to store drinks. The driver had picked him up while on the road, just outside the city. He had flagged the bus and had begged to get in and now was sitting there talking to himself under his breath. A dark tall skinny guy in his 30s with old clothes clutching a small brown paper bag in his bony fingers. He had stubble on his face and it was evident he had not taken a shower for a long time. He was just sitting there and mumbling under his breath. Other passengers also looked back, but then turned back and “tried” to forget him. People did not like to listen to this sort of talk. It was 1985, just after the complete purge, when the crude and terrifying fist of the government forces had crushed the last remnants of opposition and there was a bloody murderous purge going on. Nobody dared to talk about it and nobody dared to listen to others talking about it. Especially outside the capital and in the small cities and towns people were really scared. They had to be scared. It was a matter of life or death, how could they know who was in the bus and who was listening to what one was saying to others. Especially with all those road blocks that were dotting the roads. Every half an hour, near each small town and village, there was a post established by the militia of the village or the town. The bus would stop and a young teenager with a Klashnikov would pop in and walk the length of the bus, looking at all the passengers. It was real difficult and scary. Everybody tried to avoid his gaze, some looked outside, some pretended to read something, some pretended to be asleep. From time to time one was picked out and ordered out and sometime they would not return and the bus was ordered to leave. So it was that our poor friend at the back was talking to himself and being ignored intentionally by everyone.

Poormand and I were on our way to one of those small dusty towns in the middle of nowhereland for the new master plan. I was newly employed by his office. There was a lot of work that had to be done in just a few days before we got back. I had the papers and plans and maps with me. I was trying to focus on them but could not help listening to the guy talking to himself. He was the tragedy of my sorrowful land that was talking and would not shut up. Poormand was also trying not to listen and busy himself with work. But I could not. I was still hot with revolutionary zeal and ideals. Still a student, though the universities were shut down in the so called “cultural revolution” to get rid of the troublemakers. Everyday was more horrible, darker and more painful than the day before. The long list of the executed was getting longer and longer. You felt helpless. It was like you have been caught in a madhouse, it was like there was no intelligence and pity left in this world. It was a civil war, but a silent civil war, without physical destruction and the clashes in the streets and the bombs and the bombers. It was a civil war, but a civil war without the loud explosions and without ruins in the streets. It was a civil war fought behind closed doors. Away from the eyes of the population, a civil war everybody was aware of but nobody would dare to mention. The only thing you knew was that everyday the list of the dead and disappeared would get longer and longer. The guy must be one of them, one of the casualties. Like many of my university friends. Like Kazem, Akram’s husband, with a one month old daughter, who was got killed in his own house in front of his wife and daughter. Kazem, who was the first one who introduced us to a guy called Khomeini preaching against the shah in Iraq, several years before the revolution, in the department’s cafeteria. Kazem, who the day after the massacre at the Jaleh square was in the university, the blood of the massacred still fresh on his shirt. Kazem, who at the same day, was in the car with us while we were driving around the city checking out the soldiers with their American gun and the tanks in the streets on the first day when the martial law was declared and more than three people in the street could not gather together. Later it became a joke when more than a million people were taking part in demonstrations and it was still under the martial law.

The bus stopped late afternoon at one of the cafes on the road. We got out to have the food we had brought with us and most passengers went in to order food. Poormand went into the long line in front of the washroom. There, while he was in the line, the guy had come to him, gave his crumpled bag and had asked him to keep while he was eating in the restaurant. When Poormand got in the bus he was still carrying the bag. Other passengers showed up little by little and the driver came in later and started the bus. We looked at each other. The guy was not in and the bag was left with Poormand. I told him to open the bag. Wow, there was lots of money, cash, in the bag. Thousands of toomans, before the inflation, at that time, it was lots of money. What should we do? We went to the front and told the driver about the bag and the guy. The driver was one nice guy, when he heard the story, he turned the bus and drove back to the café. Other passengers threw nasty looks at us, but who dares to challenge the driver who is going to drive the whole night and has our lives in his grip? When we arrived there, the guy was waiting outside. He got in, without even looking at us or the driver, without one word, not even a thanks, and went back and sat at his throne. Poormand gave him the bag. For the first time he looked up at us and thanked him. We sat down. It was dark and getting late. The monotonous movement of the bus had most of the passengers sleeping and dozing off already. But we could not sleep, he was still talking to himself. And then I heard him: “ It was not my fault comrades, it was not my fault. I swear to god, they pushed the gun into my hands and told me if I don’t shoot you, they will kill me, what could I do? Please forgive me comrades, please forgive me”. He was repeating the same line, and he was crying. I was shocked, motionless. When I looked back, I could see the tear lines on his unwashed face.

What could I say? How could I even try to calm him down? Is it at all possible to sooth this pain. I looked at poormand. He had also heard this, no denying it. He was also in a state of shock. We looked at each other, but uttered no word.

I could not sleep the whole length of the trip to that small dusty town. When we arrived, he disappeared into the dark cold night, a broken soul with one small paper bag in his hands, no suitcase, no backpack, nothing else. One broken soul spit out of a dark evil world that had crushed him senseless.

I can never forget that night and that trip. If anything can explain what we went through in those dark years, that is the closest. That trip through the dark night falling on my land.

American Soldiers driving in Baghdad

Click here to watch the clip.

If you need any other reason, apart from Abu ghareib, to convince you why people in Iraq love American guys so much, just watch the clip.

Allende's last moments

The Last moments of Allende, before he was killed by the American-instigated coup in Chile. Some pictures are worth a million words.

It is astounding to witness the bravery and courage of this small man against the wrath of a whole army. He could have easily escaped, like our Mossadegh, but he stood to the end and chose to die for his people rather than to save his life. Now the story of his life and his heroic death is a light that leads his nation to democracy. He joined the mythological figures in this moment.

An Iraqi man comforting his mother in their house while American invaders watching. He is still handcuffed. Is this the way to win the hearts and minds of these people?

End Israel Apartheid Week in Toronto

Take part in one week of action, lectures, movies about Israeli Apartheid in the West Bank.

Check Some of my Photos

A sample of some of the photos I have taken and like.

The meal, the mortar and the bumps, a story of war

This is a draft:

We had just got the day’s lunch and were sitting in a quiet yard and having it. The lunch comes in a pot. The pot is rather large and they give you lots of food. They virtually fill up any size pot you take with yourself to the kitchen. It is the Pasdaran kitchen, they are more generous than the military kitchen. Pasdaran are the paramilitary forces that are the real backbone of the resistance to the Iraqi invasion. They are the ones that send the waves of young teenagers over the mine fields to open headways for the invasions.

The kitchen is located at the other side of the Karun. Karun is the river that cuts through Khoramshahr. At the other side Pasdaran and the mayor have their headquarters, at this side, it is mostly soldiers and militias and the front line, where the Iraqis are located at the other side of shatalarab. Here the devastation is complete, as Iraqis had it for two years and pulled down nearly everything. At the other side which remained in Iranian hands for the length of the war houses are still standing though shattered by a two year diet of mortar shells, katyooshas and artillery bombardment. You can find a family life frozen in time inside some of them who have escaped the heavy bombardment complete with rugs, TVs, beds and pillows and chairs and cars in the parking and even plants still growing inside the pots.

We use to take the pot to the kitchen, they fill it up with the meal of the day. It is always delicious and hearty. These people have money, you can smell it in the kitchen and the size of the handout. Then we hop on the car, drive over the temporary bridge(the main bridge was bombed by Iraqis on the first days of the war and is now but just a few shattered pillars jotting out of the water, good background for the first photos of Khoramshahr to send to your family), usually go towards somewhere along the river and sit down and eat. Eating is dangerous, eating is fun, eating is exciting. You can get killed any moment while eating. Of course, human beings being human beings both sides have to eat, both sides have lunch and dinner. During lunch and dinner time the war stops temporarily, there are no explosions, no shootings, no bombs. Everything gets eerily quiet, you can hear the birds chirping, the water running under the bridge, the wind howling in the empty streets and visiting half ruined houses. You can even hear the fat rats in the trenches running around. Rats getting fat by eating human remains. Rats that scare even the few ramining stray cats. Cats that have gone deaf by living under constant bombardment for two years. Cats that don’t’ hear you getting close by even when you are just behind them. They only run away if they see you, their ears being useless.

This day our feast is inside one rather standing house in a neighborhood who has somehow escaped the complete devastation in the Iraqi part. We are working here, arranging plans of the area and measuring the houses, and we have reached this house and decide it is the place for today’s lunch. We park the car behind the house. Our car sometimes becomes target practice for Iraqi mortar shells. The mortars follow us and then we try to drive fast and put a distance between us and them. Sometimes we just have to stop, open the doors and rush into the first trench or house that is nearby and pray that we, or the car, is not hit. It is scary, I don’t like it at all to be a target. Somebody having fun at the expense of my life?

We go inside the house and then to the courtyard. Like all Iranian courtyards it is surrounded on all sides by high walls. It is sunny in a mellow winter day, quiet, with a nice breeze. We sit down, move the lid and start to share the hearty meal when suddenly we hear the woosh. Something deadly is coming our way. Something very bad. Somebody had decided not to have lunch and instead ruin the pleasure of having lunch at the other side of the river. It is just one mortar, not a volley, a single mortar, and it has set its eye on our courtyard. The cold long hand of death reaching out for us from the other side of the river. Us that are not even soldiers but builders.

There is no time left. We just have time to dive onto the ground, crouched and with our hands over our heads. You don’t even have time for a prayer. Suddenly it is over us, suddenly it prefers the next courtyard. A deafening sound, an explosion, a gray blinding rain of particles big and small, lots of dust. We are dazed, death changed his mind at the last moment and gave us another chance at life. The walls, the traditional tall walls of the courtyard protected us. A 2000 year history of cultural introversion became our saviour.

But all is not well, after the first wave of sound and explosion and ricochets and debris, I feel pain in my shoulders. A quick touch with my hands exudes pain and red palms. The shirt on my back is tattered and bloody. My colleague is in better shape. That day he drives me to the makeshift hospital at the other side. The bearded doctor do a quick checkup and says it is nothing and just some very small debris left in my skin that will be rejected by the body soon and I will be as healthy as I was born. Just washes and disinfects my back. Well, compared to what he has to deal with every day, I am a completely healthy person, not injured at all.

I am out quickly.

Every time I touch my back now, it reminds me of that brush with death. I rub my fingers over all the bumps one by one, count them and think of the minuscule debris that is still embedded there. Some people keep a small bag of their motherland's soil in their pockets or at home, I don't need that, I have it on my back.

What is your ideal utopia?

A few days ago in an article I mentioned that until the day that people start to dream of a better world, nothing will change. The ruling class in any society is strongly against dreaming of better worlds because that might weaken their grasp of power.

Now hereby I want you to post me your dreams, the ingredients of that better world, how it functions, what are the rights and duties of its citizens, etc. I will try to make a list built on your dreams. The dream of a better world, of a Utopia, is the compass to start on the path to change the world.

What do I think this world will have? Well, building up on what we have already in Canada and consider the essential necessities of life here, here is just a very short list:

1. universal and public health care, covering everyting from minor problems to dental and eyecare and medicals.

2. Humane minimum wage for everybody, and if somebody can't make ends meet, it is his "human rights" to receive that minimum from government, no questions asked.

3. Free Universal education for everybody from daycare up to the Ph.D. level and not only school and highschool studies.

4. Shelter and residence for everybody. Every human being is entitled to a decent living space, with at least a bedroom for each member of a family, with all the amenities we consider essential now like clean water, electricity, a fridge, etc.

5. No armed forces. No budget for killing people, there are better ways to use the tax money of the people than pay it for killing others.

6. In my Utopia, scientists are the most famous celebrities, not the rock stars and actors. The role models for my Utopia's teenagers are scientists not Rap singers. If we human beings are here and not still roaming the forests, it is because of the scientists not the rock stars, actors, painters, writers, politicians, etc. If we can cure diseases and send human beings to the moon, it is thanks to our scientists.

7. In my Utopia, the act of bringing up children is the most important activity of the society. Instilling a sense of citizenship and duty to others as a citizen must be the primary goal. In this Utopia, not every alchoholic and illiterate person is allowed to bring up children, just because they have donated their sperms and eggs to give birth to that child. It needs prior education, every father and mother has to be taught how to do this most delicate of human endeavors.

Come on, click on comments and post me your opinions and suggestions. I will add them to the list!

Roman Legions and the US Army

This article(click on the title please) is an eye-opening one about the growing role the mercenaries play in the US army thanks to the greedy plutocratic system now ruling in the States. The danger for US and the world is that, like Rome, the mercenary numbers will grow and soon the mercenary army won't be happy with just fighting and getting some handouts. Not that an all voluntary army, like the one existing in US, now is much better, but a mercenary army is much worse in that respect.

In Rome, when the citizen's army was replaced with a mercenary(Legions) army, soon they started to demand more and at last the whole political system was corrupted by use of the mercenary armies. The mercenaries started to sell their services to the highest bidder for controlling the population and supporting different political factions. The Rome's democracy was extinguished forever and changed into a dictatorship. Right now, people might laugh at this idea, as I am sure people were laughing in Rome when the mercenaries were just taking root and it looked a good idea to use expendable cheap lives instead of the citizens lives, but the empire's rulers should beware, it won't stop at this stage. They will gradually grow in numbers and force(as you can read in the article, they are now having their own heavy machinery and are even using air force), and will replace the Pentagon's regular army. Soon it won't look a bad idea at all to contract out the whole structure of the army to outside mercenary corporations. That will be the beginning of the end.

Small city states like Florence of the Renaissance period could use small mercenary armies without endangering their democracy, but empires can't do that. The rewards of the game in the empire is too high and sooner or later will attract the mercenaries into the internal squabbles of the powerful elites of the empire.

Maher Arar

Maher arar is compensated for 10 million dollars. Well, it was time the government did something to compensate for its unbelievable stupidity and cooperation in giving him away to the Americans. No person in his sane mind will give information about one of its own citizens to a government like US who is kin on torturing people at the fall of a hat. Thank goodness Canadian government is still not as corrupt and distant as the US government. The empire south of the border is getting a bit rotten, even we can smell it here in Toronto!

I have to admit I feel a little bit proud to belong to a country that its prime minister himself takes the time to appear on TV and apologize to an ordinary citizen because of his mistreatment. I also notice that Harper still insists on calling himself and his government “the NEW government” of Canada. I think somebody has to remind Mr. Harper that it is past the one year point with his government already and he is not totally NEW anymore. Anyways, I can’t see Dubya ever do the same to an American citizen and apologize for anything.

One Night Under the Bombs

ONE NIGHT UNDER THE BOMBS IN TEHRAN

I stop the car and pull up to the shoulder. It is crazy driving now, there is no way I can be at home before the rockets start raining around us. The city is in total darkness. The highway is dark also, there are no lights. Iraqi jet fighters are flying low overhead and you can hear the woosh of their engines. The city is in total darkness, like the second world war, like the modern warplanes don’t have radars and a million other technical innovations to direct them to their targets, like we are still living in 1940s, but … “they” order us to turn off lights each night, and we have to abide by it. I can't even have the car lights on in this pitch black highway and must rely on the faint moonlight to drive.

The first explosion, I hear it and a moment later I see the skies lighten up in south Tehran. A direct hit, somewhere in downtown, more dead people, more destroyed houses. We have to take cover. I can nearly smell the fire and smoke of the second and third explosion.

My son is only two months old, sleeping safe and sound and undisturbed in his mother’s arms. We open the car’s doors and run away towards the bushes. You can hardly see anything, I know there might be a ravine around, and we might just fall off into it, but there is no time to think. The bombs are dropping all around us and each one is closer. I take Ben from my wife, he is now in my arms, soft and warm, a bundle of life, deep asleep, as if nothing is happening. How I wish I could be like him, not knowing what is happening. Not knowing that there are jet fighters right there over our heads, with pilots intent on killing people on this dark night. You can’t believe that you are right in the middle of an air raid and any moment you might be the next target and explode into a million little pieces. We duck under the bushes, lie down, try to be one with the earth, like it can protect us. I can see the horizon now, red and orange hues behind the hills, and the smoke, and the sound of other explosions, getting further away. They break the sound barrier as a good-bye to Tehran and disappear. Just in a few moments, which lasts like a lifetime, tens or hundreds of people are dead, gone forever, families destroyed, hopes and futures dashed. Is this life we are living? Every day new air raids, without any anti-aircraft defence, the city is wide open to the jets and rockets of the Iraqi dictator, and people are welcome to be “martyrs”. After all, what is better than getting killed with one of these bombs? You become a martyr instantly and end up in paradise for eternity.

We get out from under the bushes, tap the dust away from our clothes and get into the car and drive back home in silence. My son is still sleeping, in his little innocent world, there is no death, there is no war, and there is no air raid.

OBSERVATIONS OF A NEW IMMIGRANT ABOUT A JOB IN CANADA

Oh my, why does not the cook stop using “fucking” when he speaks? Between each two words he inserts one “fucking”, without no specific reason. It does not help the grammar and seems out of place, but it is inserted, as if out of a sense of duty. The others(the others who help him) aren’t much better. Even some of the women do it, out of a sense of duty. Worst one is the little guy with beard and ever- present baseball hat and Harley-Davidson jacket. He tries to look tough, but poor guy, the eyes give him away. Eyes like a beaten dog with the tail between legs, head down, looking anxiously around to find a place to hide. He is released from jail every weekend to visit his family and he has to work here for some hours. He is not much communicative so you don’t understand how long he has to work, you only know he has to work here. There is a competition between him and the cook to see which one can insert more f words in their vocabulary. The others are not that bad, of course “f” word is one of the standards by which the class you belong to is recognized, like the “Sun” and the baseball hat. Even the women use it frequently, and please, I am not a male chauvinist, but I find it unpleasant when a woman uses the word, like the last bastion of politeness has also been defeated.

The kitchen is just a greasy messy and untidy place, with lots of empty cardboard boxes and chairs and tables stacked at corners, big garbage bins, and of course the ever spewing hotplates, hot tops, ovens, microwave and a big bread toaster which for some reason has the pride of place and is praised by the cook form time to time, as if it belongs to him . It does not create much of a delicacy. What they cook here amounts to hot dogs and some sandwiches and burgers in different shapes accompanied by toasts and breads, so the cook can not be considered a chef per se actually. He has been working here for at least 6 years now and has quite a reputation. He is somehow considered “cool” and liked by the people working here. There are informal meetings in the kitchen and you learn a lot about behind the scenes of this establishment just by listening to people talking to him. He is a sort of father confessor, or the unofficial boss here. Under his baseball hat which never is removed he must have some hair, or perhaps he has already lost it. Only thing I see are two short sparse ponytails hanging out. He is rather tall and skinny. That always strikes me. Why aren’t cooks all fat, after all, they are working with food all the time and they can eat as much as they want. Is it because they know what horrible stuff they concoct in the kitchen that they are not tempted at all to nibble at the food? Is it a sort of secret sect like oath they take when they begin their profession, like the doctors, that forbids them from eating in the kitchen? But working here I begin to understand the reason. It is just the ever present smoke and smell of grease, and the professional way you deal with the food. After a short time you come to look at it just as a mechanic looks at the car parts. Does he want to eat them? No! Same here, for the chef and the staff, food looses it’s luster as something delicious, it turns into a thing like paper for office people. It is just something you work with. After some time, even I start to feel the same about it, although at first I was wondering how people resist the temptation to eat from the meals they serve for others. I even throw out the spillage from the courses I serve into the garbage, instead of eating it.

There is a small fridge at the back, a sort of walking through fridge, where you go in and grab lard or margarine and bring in. Also it is used to save the cooked but not ordered burgers from the night for later use. Sometimes these poor things have to wait for three days to be re-cooked and served at last. Once when I ask the cook about them, he becomes nervous and takes the pain of explaining that they are quite clean and he has cooked them just a few hours ago and he never uses leftovers. He does not use gloves and I don’t know what things does he touch with his hands and fingers during the day, I hope at least he does not play with his genitals. But anyway, “the people at the other side” don’t care. They even drop by sometimes, the old customers, the professional small time gamblers, the ones that don’t have anything to do except bingo, bingo, and more bingo, the ones that really live in this place, instead of living at their homes and consider the whole body of employers as some sort of family. They drop by directly to order what they want instead of writing and handing it over to the cashier. They stay there, talk and joke and don’t seem to care a bit about the hygiene of the place. Oh well, I suppose if they don’t, why should anybody else?

There is also a door at the back, which is used mainly for getting out for short smoking breaks by the people working in the kitchen. There is no place for people to sit and wait until the next serving session. It works like this, between the bingo sessions the kitchen is nearly lifeless and workless. The cook goes around, talks to the other employees, and the kitchen gets empty and soulless. The hands also get out for a smoke, or just hang around. I take one of the chairs from the tall column of old greasy chairs and sit down and start to read my book. It must be a strange sight, but nobody complains or says anything. Actually the hands are very formal, no camaraderie here. They look like people who don’t know how to carry their bulk, where to sit and where to stand and where to wait for the next order to be delivered. There is just one small narrow table by the wall next to the ovens with two chairs next to it. People often hang their jackets on it and you don’t dare sit there in case their jackets are creased. Sometimes when you get your miserable lunch or dinner you sit there by that thing called the table and gobble it up between the orders. The employees also sit there for their food. The only free food here is the beverages like coffee or pops. The coffee served is the worst imaginable type, a boiled water coffee soup, despite that, the customers don’t care and don’t complain. Anyway, the generosity of the Bingo house towards its employees only extends to the drinks.

There are two halls here, the larger one belongs to who else than the smokers, it is always blue with smoke, and smelly, and crowded, the non-smoking areas are usually relatively quiet and empty. It shows the types of people that usually go to bingo. There are vending machines, some old gambling machines and one of those bunny and teddy bear grabbing machines. Between sessions, the obsessive gamblers go to the machine and try their luck, it seems they can’t tolerate even a few minutes without the thrill of losing and losing more. There is one window to another world, and that is the window that opens to the hockey arena beneath the Bingo hall. Sometimes people stand there and gaze into that different world of sports and health, but then they come back mechanically to their own familiar world of bingo papers and markers and balls. Sometimes when I am tired I look through the window into that other world, usually there are people playing there, mostly young kids, mostly white, no immigrant stock there.

And what a pathetic bunch are these, customers of this bingo house. It is the saddest sight in the world to behold. Before seeing them I did not know that life could be so pathetically meaningless. can life be so miserable, so meaningless, so empty of joy and happiness? Is life meant to be spent in a smoky hall eating French fries and putting marker points on cheap checkered paper, machine like, soulless?? I wonder, between the delivery sessions, when I lean on the counter in the small shop area and look at these people, a sort of dark depression comes over and gets hold of me. Is this what humanity and life is all about? This place is the domain, the palace, of sad old fat women, smoking tons of cigarettes, wasting centuries of time. If Freud was alive today, he would call this place the temple of unsatisfied sexual desires, the replacement masturbation.

There are some permanent customers, some people that come virtually every day and sit at the same seat and repeat this meaningless pursuit day by day. They smoke, they mark, they eat cheap junk food, they play cards between the sessions, or do crossword puzzles, or play some board games, they have their cello tapes to stick the paper to the table so that it does not wiggle when they mark it. They spend most of their waking hours here. They must hate their guts, I can’t imagine why a healthy human being would spend hours here smoking or inhaling the smoke of others sitting motionless on a chair and mark endless papers like a machine. With a little change they could make at least some money, contracting out their movements to some packaging or data entry company. The most eminent one among these is an old emaciated woman in the last stages of decomposition, unkempt with cheap sports trouser and T-shirts, dirty, hair never combed, not taking any care of herself. Everyday she is there earlier than us, same clothes, same seat. I have enquired from other employees, they say that is her routines, she is here everyday. She always sits at the same chair and table in the smoking area. She sometimes plays cards with some regulars. Most of the time she is smoking cigarettes and after each session her ashtray is full. I don’t know how long is she going to live with this exciting and healthy lifestyle, but she seems to enjoy it. She must be losing a whole lot of money, where does she get the money from? She must be one of those compulsive gamblers. Some people hate themselves, or drown their sorrows in alcohol, this little woman seems to drown them in bingo.

There are other interesting personalities here as well. The woman that sits with her back to the hall and the people, in the smoking area, mechanically marking her papers. She seems to have a grudge against THE people. Always on the same seat, far corner of the hall, north east. Now this is a corner seeking creature if there is any. Then there is this shaky-head daddy. I call him by this name. Most nights he is here. Like other regulars, he sticks to the same area night after night. Always black dress, sort of western cowboy style, just without the hat. They all have a special area that they protect dearly and other regulars don’t dare to take, I guess they even mark it like dogs or cats from time to time. He wears a dark glass and shakes all over. His head shakes, his hands shake and his legs shake too. But he manages to mark anyway, and I think that is enough in this place. Oh, and of course, the Teddy bear woman. She brings a different teddy bear every night, has it sitting next to her cards and touches it from time to time. Come intermission, the Teddy is being rubbed all over her face, like a small baby. She cuddles and kisses it. I guess it is her lucky Teddy bear. Talking of luck, some people bring strange lucky stuff with them. There is this woman that lines up a whole menagerie of little figurines on her table, funny little statutes of people and animals. The other one has some sort of shiny stones museum that are lined up in front of her. From time to time she rubs them like a magician or witch, I guess they have some luck locked into them and by touching them, it moves to your arm and body and your marker and from there spills into the paper. You see some old gentlemen in full dress, ties and jackets and all? Cologne smell around them, coming for the Bingo, I don’t know if they manage to pick up any of those fat old sad ladies or not, but for their sake I hope they do. Some of them are too old, for example this old lady comes there with a stroller and can barely move, she comes up with the elevator, buys papers and stack them up on their stroller and walks slowly to the smoking area and drops herself down in a chair. And then there is the Halloween night. The young sleepy girl at the counter has got her white angel wings at the back, some others come with demon dresses. The funniest ones are the three old black ladies with full costume, red demons with even the forks.

Most people here are old, retired sort, but sometimes you see some younger ones. The saddest sight of course is of the ones sitting alone by themselves all through the session. I pity these bunch. Don’t they have any friends? Why should somebody come here all alone by herself/himself, sit in a corner and waste his/her precious time like this. Something strange I noticed here is some couples, the woman is visibly older than the man. The man is a young guy in funky dress, the woman old and fat smoking type, and definitely not his mother. Other thing you notice, there are no immigrant faces among the customers of this bingo hall. You don’t see one Chinese and Asian, or any middle eastern, or south American, or Russian. They are all Canadian-born. There are not even blacks among them. They are a homogenous bunch.

What I do here? I sit in the kitchen and serve the food to the customers. Most is ordered in the smoking area. Somehow they eat more, or are more extravagant and easy with their money. The non-smoking area does not order that much, it just nibbles some snack. Most of the time I am in the smoking area, when I come back home I reek of smoke. It just sticks with you and does not go away, it sits right there on my smell buds, even next morning I still feel it. One other duty I really hate and try to dodge as much as I can is emptying the ashtrays, after I do it, it seems like I have smoked a whole pack of cigarettes. The smoking area is large and after each session the ashtrays are full and you have to go table by long table and empty the ashtrays is small buckets, the bucket fills up quickly and you have to bring another bucket. I also wash the dishes and skin the carrots from time to time, not very difficult, but the difference with washing at home is that the pots and pans are huge, fortunately there are no patrons dishes as everything is served in paper plates and cups. Speaking of paper cups reminds me of this stupid young boy that usually serves the ground floor salon. Yes, there is also a little ground floor salon, dark and with no windows, but some people actually use it, I don’t know why on earth one wants to sit there. Anyway this boy has one very interesting character. he eats paper cups, after he drinks his pop, he starts to chew on the plastic cup and chops off big pieces and chew and gulps them down. he says it is delicious, I think he is stupid. He also collects coins, whenever he receives coins from customers, which is many times, as he uses to sell paper and food in the halls, he checks them and from time to time he comes up with something interesting. He is also somehow interested in the chubby young lady at the counter, both are the same age, but apparently the young one is not interested at all. She is the only one without tattoos, and the only one that does not smoke, a bit strange in this place.

Some Thoughts about immigration

1. If you have a family and you want to invite somebody to live with you, forever and forever, and be a part of your family, who do you think is suitable for this purpose? If you have the chance between two options, who will that option be? Will it be that educated refined professor from the Cambridge University, or that illiterate peasant from a far off village in the mountains of who-knows-where land who needs to be educated how to use a toilet and a fridge?

I think it is a no-brainer what you will do, despite all the talk about political correctness and multi-culturalism and tolerance. You prefer your kids to be around that professor. His presence will elevate the culture and arts and conversation level in your family and all of you will learn from him and benefit from his presence. What will that peasant offer your family by living with you????

2. When mass movements of populations happen in history, the new settlements will be the exact same copies of their motherlands. They can't be otherwise, can they? They bring the same culture and level of education and behaviour and social structure with them. It has always been like this throughout the history. The Greek colonies around the Mediterranean were exact same copies of the Greek cities that sent them there. If the city was Athens, they were democractic. If it was another city with dictatorial social structures the new colony was a dictatorship.

In the new colonies of Americas, the Spanish created the same backward social structure of the motherland and the whole of south America turned into a bunch of bloody corrupt coup ridden dictatorial states, and the British immigrants in the north created a democracy.

It can't be any other way and it is stupid to expect these people to do otherwise.

Now, if you had a say 300 years ago in shaping the immigration policy in your new American country, which group would you have prefered to immigrate to your country, or colony, or whatever it is? The British immigrants with their culture for democracy back from the motherland, or the Spanish immigrants who would have built up the same corrupt dictatorships they had back home. If you had a choice, would you bring the mafia infested peasants from Sicily, or mostly educated Holland or Scandinavian immigrants?

It is a no-brainer again, isn't it?

3. The barbarian invasions, how correct it is. If a society open its gates to barbarians and can't moderate and control the rate of immigration, sooner or later it will pay the price of it's folly by being drowned under the waves. Rome resisted it, but when cracks appeared and then the walls came down completely and waves of barbarians flooded the empire and also were granted citizenship, soon it was destroyed and changed beyond any recognition. I have witnessed another similar one in Tehran. Tehran was a city with its own refined urban culture created for good or bad for 200 years. Then in the short period of 20 years waves after waves of freed serfs from the countryside swelled the population. The immigration was so huge that the city culture, that had been planted painstakingly for two hundred years was totally overtaken by the peasant mentality and culture. The city drowned and died. You could feel it and see it year by year. Everything got worse, from the driving codes to the attitude of people towards each other. And when the revolution happened, it was a peasant revolution in the city, not an urban one. And of course none of us forgets the Russian Revolution which was supposed to be a revolution of workers and PEASANTS, but at the end was turned into a revolution of the peasants only.

The point is, whenever in the history the advanced civilizations have opened the gates to huge waves of immigration from less developed socieites, without first providing a strict system to change and educate the barbarians, they have been destroyed under the waves. I am sure the Romans were still discussing the benefits of multi-culturalism and tolerance and the merits of mass immigration when the Rome was being burnt down and pillaged by the barbarians.

I am not against immigration if it is planned well in advance and with a goal to refine and advance a society. I am just against a "barbarian invasion" sort of immigration. Although sadly, from what history teaches us, I know that most of the time barbarians win at the end.

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Same old Same old with brand new :-(

I am sitting in the subway and watching people listening to music and playing games on their latest brand modern gizmos. If you are the type who seeks or believes in miracles in the religious stories, forget it, the miracle is right here in front of your eyes, just look at what they have in their hands. If it is not a miracle, what is a miracle then? Out of the shapeless rock and oil of the land and mountains, we human beings have created these marvels of technology. We are the GODS, not the old Santa up there. And then...... how do we use these miracles???

Look at 99% of the programs in the TV! Same old middle ages junk. Stories about ghosts and ghost hunting in old houses, junk and trash reality shows, shopping channels, trash commercials. Have we made even one small step ahead of the trash they were showing 2000 years ago in the Coliseum? Isn't it sad and sardonic to watch a program about ghost hunting in this marvel of human ingenuity, the TV?

It is sad..... This primate called human, or Homo Sapiens, is a bundle of contradictions. It never stops to amaze me with it's brain and alas, its stupidity. On one hand it has created miracles with its creations, on the other hand, somehow, it does not know how to use them properly. If I wanted to watch gore and blood and empty headed shows and programs, I did not need a High Definition TV for that.

ISN'T IT SAD? What can we do about it?