You know there is a time when you should just lock the doors and drive away as fast as you can. Today would be one of those times.
Rumour has it, North Korea has a seagoing freighter with a missile and a nuke onboard steaming towards Hawaii. The objective, at least if you read the runes with the right kind of eyes, is to nuke Hawaii and piss off the US of A.
Let’s see, what would the global response be? Oh, I don’t know, probably China will turn all of North Korea into a glass lake. China knows if they don’t, the US will. There is that issue of South Korea being next door, radiation, millions of casualties and so on, but the essential response would be massive, violent and permanent.
Of course, Kim Jong-Il could just be goofin’ with us, but we really don’t know for sure and he is just nuts enough to try. We really should get him the Diamond level Hair Club for Men membership, free of charge. Perhaps then he’d eff off and leave the rest of the world alone.
In other comforting news, the Iranian elections are all upside down. Mahmoud “Mike” Ahmadinejad has either won, straight up, or had pulled off one heck of a sleight of hand move and got caught. Protesters who technically do not exist, at least to the Iranian media, are beeping and mooing with a fair amount of nerve in a theocratic dictatorship.
The Iranian government has found that total control of the media doesn’t mean the story is capped, thanks to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the rest of the social media. Supreme Religious Leader Ali Khomeini has even said “Sit down and shutthefokup”, to no avail.
The Braidwood Enquiry of the RCMP in the Taser death of Robert Dziekansky at Vancouver airport a couple of years ago, had a 500 pound manure bomb dropped on proceedings. An email between two senior RCMP supervisors suggests that the four officers responding to the airport discussed a plan to use a Taser on Dziekansky before they even got to the airport and knew what was going on.
The email was leaked today and commissioner Thomas Braidwood just about blew a head valve. Essentially, everyone from the RCMP said they felt threatened by Dziekansky and figured that zapping him five times would be fine. So would two guys kneeling on his neck as they wrestled him into cuffs. We’ll overlook the lack of pepper spray, baton, command voice, or even just a boot to the nuts. Cut to the chase and zap the poor mook. Ooopsie, he’s dead.
The Braidwood Enquiry is on hold until September 22 while Commissioner Braidwood has asked the RCMP to “Get your shit square, you assholes and stop jacking me around. Tell the friggin’ truth or I will take a Taser to your effin’ eyeballs!” I think that quote might not be accurate, but I can’t tell from here.
At a Wendy’s in Jacksonville Florida this week, an employee got annoyed at another employee, went home, got a gun and shot his colleague dead. At a Denver McD back on May 21st, a Denver cop felt it was taking too long to fill his order at the drive thru late one night. He flashed the tin, then waved the piece in a way to encourage faster service. Even the meat-related automatons at the drive thru recognized the level of hostility as inappropriate. Who says fast food is bad for you?
Next year might not be a great year for motorcar racing. The Formula One Teams Association has invited the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile to go spoon a goose. Essentially Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone have run the FIA like their own Dutchy of Grand Fenwick.
The F1 teams, tired of Max and Bernie behaving like Idi Amin without the charm, are considering putting their own formula and series together. This would mean Idi Mosley and Bernie Amin would own the pre-eminent motor racing series in the world, with no cars. The racing might be better: Significantly quieter, but better.
Who knows, maybe Montreal will get its’ race back. The sound of no cars racing around Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, in front of the advertising hoardings sold by the FIA, to finance Ecclestone’s personal Malaysian toast chef or Mosley’s escapades involving professional talent and uniforms. It could happen.
Finally, the CBC’s Don Newman is hanging it up after 30 years on Parliament Hill. He was a superlative journalist, of the old skool, where you knew your stuff, asked intelligent questions and didn’t take a sound bite for an answer.
The eternal mystery however, is Newman’s upper lip. It never moved. Ever. It was like the middle part of his face was carved out of bird’s eye maple, immovable and immutable. All the federal parties respected Don Newman and at the same time, feared him as he wouldn’t always play softball with the questions. Which is what a journalist is supposed to do.