This spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights speaks truth to power.
Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.
Category: bad news
Kim vs Trump – what could go wrong?
Start worrying when Americans begin evacuating South Korea.
Very scary.
But Economist believes war in 2018 is unlikely. U.S. should use Cold War tactics to contain. Tougher sanctions.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
REDress Project – missing and murdered Indigenous women
Half of the women murdered in Canada are aboriginal.
The REDress Project began in 2010 as a way to remember the more than 1,000 missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls in Canada. And to prevent tragedies like those in future.
The educational program has reached Parksville and Qualicum Beach, B.C.
I saw them at Parksville City Hall.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The REDress Project is running in conjunction with the United Nation’s 16 days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
related – Trudeau apologises for ‘deep harm’ of residential schools
you might be killed by a drone
Greg linked to this video. I thought it was real … for the first few minutes.
It’s fiction. Black Mirror scary.
Click PLAY or watch Slaughterbots on YouTube.
The video was created by Autonomousweapons.org and Stuart Russell, a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. …
homeless downtown Montreal
I spent a few weeks this year near the Berri-UQAM Metro station on Rue Sainte-Catherine, heart of downtown Montreal. There are a LOT of homeless people. It reminds me of a major American city in that way.
One survey (Douglas Mental Health University / 800+ volunteers) counted 3,016 homeless in the city. 10% aboriginal. 10% immigrants. Veterans 6%.
Other guesstimates have been 10 times as high.
I was there during warmer months. During winter these folks need to find someplace heated.
A harsh and boring life, seems to me. They all seem to have cigarettes. Somehow.
Not sure what can be done to reduce the numbers. A guaranteed minimum income experiment — or new kinds of free housing — could be tried.
I’m not celebrating the 4th of July
His approach is not working. Five months into his first term, Mr Trump presides over a political culture that is even more poisonous than when he took office. …
The Trump presidency has been plagued by poor judgment and missed opportunities. …
Unethical, immoral, illegal and unconstitutional. If you still support Trump I’d prefer we never speak again.
The Hama massacre – Syria 1982
The Hama massacre (Arabic: مجزرة حماة) occurred in 2 February 1982, when the Hafez Syrian Arab Army and the Defense Companies, under the orders of the country’s president Hafez al-Assad, besieged the town of Hama for 27 days in order to quell an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood …
The massacre, carried out by the Syrian Army under commanding General Rifaat al-Assad, effectively ended the campaign begun in 1976 by Sunni Muslim groups …
… the lower estimates claiming that at least 2,000 Syrian citizens were killed, [5] while others put the number at 20,000 (Robert Fisk),[1] or 40,000 (Syrian Human Rights Committee).[2][6] …
The attack has been described as one of “the single deadliest acts by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East”. …
I visited Hama in 1994. All these buildings had been bulldozed to the ground. The town rebuilt.
It was very quiet.
It was Hafez al-Assad, president of Syria, and his brother Rifaat al-Assad responsible for killing those thousands of Syrians.
In 1994 his the dictator’s eldest son and successor Bassel had just died in a car accident. Hafez turned to his his younger son Bashar.
It’s Bashar al-Assad who’s killing Syrians in 2017.
Once seen by the international community as a potential reformer, al-Assad has few friends left. Russia continues to protect al-Assad in the the UN Security Council.
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In June 2014, Assad was included in a list of war crimes indictments of government officials and rebels handed to the International Criminal Court. …
Nobody knows exactly how much money Assad and family have extracted from Syria. One estimate says Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has amassed up to $1.5bn (£950m) for his family and his close associates. Hidden out of the nation, of course.
Sooner or later al-Assad will be gone. What comes next may be even worse — the tiny impoverish, war torn country the spoils of many different warlords.
Steve Bannon exposé
Who is this dangerous man? 😦
“Darkness is good,” Bannon told the publication.
He added: “Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, Satan. That’s power. …
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah
This sad week got a little sadder. 😦
Leonard Cohen, the hugely influential singer and songwriter whose work spanned five decades, died at the age of 82. …
Cohen was the dark eminence among a small pantheon of extremely influential singer-songwriters to emerge in the Sixties and early Seventies. Only Bob Dylan exerted a more profound influence upon his generation, and perhaps only Paul Simon and fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell equaled him as a song poet. Cohen’s haunting bass voice, nylon-stringed guitar patterns, Greek-chorus backing vocals shaped evocative songs that dealt with love and hate, sex and spirituality, war and peace, ecstasy and depression. He was also the rare artist of his generation to enjoy artistic success into his Eighties, releasing his final album, You Want It Darker, earlier this year. …
Click PLAY or watch Hallelujah on YouTube.
the World hates Trump
Just back from my 3rd trip overseas in 2016, everyone I meet abroad hates Donald Trump.
Paul Thomas – New Zealand Herald in July, 2015
Trump personifies everything the rest of the world despises about America: casual racism, crass materialism, relentless self-aggrandisement, vulgarity on an epic scale. He is the Ugly American in excess. …
Drumpf fans, I expect, are happy when the world hates the USA. And that’s sad. 😦
Rick McCharles 