MAPLE LEAF FOREVER!

[Click here for MP3 audio file]

In Days of yore, from Britain's shore,
Wolfe, the dauntless hero came,
And planted firm Britannia's flag,
On Canada's fair domain.
Here may it wave, our boast, our pride,
And joined in love together,
The thistle, shamrock, rose entwined,
The Maple Leaf forever!

The Maple Leaf, our emblem dear,
The Maple Leaf forever!
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless,
The Maple Leaf forever!

At Queenston Heights and Lundy's Lane,
Our brave fathers, side by side,
For freedom, homes, and loved ones dear,
Firmly stood and nobly died;
And those dear rights which they maintained,
We swear to yield them never!
Our watchword evermore shall be,
The Maple Leaf forever!

The Maple Leaf, our emblem dear,
The Maple Leaf forever!
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless,
The Maple Leaf forever!

Our fair Dominion now extends
From Cape Race to Nootka Sound;
May peace forever be our lot,
And plenteous store abound:
And may those ties of love be ours
Which discord cannot sever,
And flourish green o'er freedom's home
The Maple Leaf forever!

The Maple Leaf, our emblem dear,
The Maple Leaf forever!
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless,
The Maple Leaf forever!

On merry England's far-famed land,
May kind Heaven sweetly smile;
God bless Old Scotland evermore,
And Ireland's Emer'ld Isle!
Then swell the song, both loud and long,
Till rocks and forest quiver,
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless
The Maple Leaf forever!

The Maple Leaf, our emblem dear,
The Maple Leaf forever!
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless,
The Maple Leaf forever!

OFF TO THE MOTHER COUNTRY NOW! ENJOY YOUR FASCIST GAMES, CHINA- I'M RETURNING TO CIVILISATION!

It is the latest explosive example of how political corruption in China can have a dangerously destabilising impact. Thousands of rioters torched police cars and government office buildings in the south-western province of Guizhou after allegations that local officials covered up a teenage girl's death.

Riots in southwest China over girl's death: report

Rioters in southwestern China torched government buildings and cars after anger over a probe into a schoolgirl's death exploded into violent protests, locals and state press said Sunday.

The riots occurred Saturday in Guizhou province when protesters ransacked three government and police buildings after the girl's uncle died from an alleged beating by police trying to stop him from protesting against the handling of the case, locals and Internet postings said.

The official Xinhua news agency said the riots had erupted due to "dissatisfaction" over the investigation into the girl's death, but added no further details.

Pictures posted on Internet blogs showed several thousand people gathered in front of the Wengan county police station, its windows shattered and the building smouldering.

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said that over 10,000 people took to the streets in the protests, with up to 150 people injured in clashes with police.

Police have arrested nearly 200 rioters and Sunday were seeking to round up others caught on videotape ransacking the government buildings, the centre said.

Over 1,500 paramilitary and riot police have been dispatch to the county, it added.

Locals contacted by AFP by phone said protesters took to the streets after the deceased girl's uncle was pronounced dead in a local hospital on Saturday afternoon.

The uncle had protested against the conclusion of the police investigation that had determined the 15-year-old girl committed suicide.

He had been badly beaten as he sought justice after the death of his niece, locals said.

Internet postings said the girl had been raped and then killed nine days ago and that the police were trying to cover up the alleged murder and protect the suspect, who was identified as the son of the vice head of Wengan county.

Officials at the county government and police station did not answer telephone calls Sunday.

The uncle was a teacher at a high school and his students descended onto the police station after they heard he had died, locals said.

"Her uncle, who was beaten by police or gangsters hired by the police died Saturday," said one local who refused to name herself out of fear of police retribution.

"As he was a teacher at the local high school, students from local schools went to the police to ask for justice, dozens of them I think, then some students were beaten by the police, after they were beaten, they started fires at the police building and torched police cars."

The woman said she had donated money to the grandfather of the dead girl, who was in possession of the body and was refusing to allow police to take it away.

Photos on the Internet posted overnight showed a steady stream of police and military personnel and vehicles rolling into the city.

Internet search engines listed scores of postings on the riots, but access to most of the pages were blocked Sunday, indicating a possible government black-out.

"A group of unidentified people incited the crowd to attack the police bureau, the county government and the county (Communist Party) committee building," Xinhua news agency said.

"After this, a small number of criminals ransacked offices and even torched many public offices and several cars."

China's government and police are seeking to quell any unrest and ensure order across the country is maintained ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August.

China's crackdown on unrest in Tibet against Beijing's rule in March drew international condemnation and spurred protests in several countries that disrupted the Olympic torch on its round-the-world journey.

Xinhua said the Guizhou government has taken measures to "appropriately" handle the situation.

Early Sunday, the crowd had dispersed and "the incident did not further escalate," the report said, adding "order has been basically restored at present in Wengan county."

Reading through various reviews before I actually sat down to watch this film, I was struck by how much goodwill there is to this film. One would think that only those with their noses out of joint would bother writing negative comments, but to have the overwhelming reaction positive shows how engaging this film is. To have Colin Farrell as the star would normally stop me from sitting in front of the telly to watch him for 90 minutes but he provides a sympathetic, nuanced performance without going over the top which would have been understandable given the storyline. Gleeson is given ample screen time to show why he's one of Ireland's great thespians. I was first introduced to him in the film 'I Went Down;' although I can't for the life of me remember that film apart from the nonsensical reason given for the title, I do remember Gleeson's performance as a revelation that single-handedly raised an otherwise non-descript film. And Fiennes once again shows no matter the genre, he'll step up and nail it. His accent is spot-on; I thought for a minute they'd hired Michael Caine to phone in a cameo when I first heard his voice. The plot itself is nothing to get worked up over, and the various turns used to stretch out the film are a bit laboured but, with the sublime humour and great dialogue, it doesn't matter. And what a setting! My main issue was the ending where it rather fell apart for me in terms of believability, but it is truly minor compared to everything that makes up this movie. This is definitely worth an evening in to watch.
I first heard of this film more given its release date than for the film itself given the (continuing) Madelaine McCann saga. Then with the DVD in front of me, I wasn't sure if it was worth spending an afternoon to watch. Firstly, it's Hollywood so I assume all the characters will be cardboard cut-outs with a plot line simple enough to be understood in Arkansas drive-ins. Wait a minute- Ben Affleck is the director?!?! Come on! No wait, it gets better- it stars his BROTHER! And Morgan Freeman as yet another cop. Not only does this seem like further evidence of extremely lazy casting, but he looks almost a dead ringer for Nelson Mandela who turned 90 this week. And he's supposed to be retiring EARLY in the film! So perhaps all this led me to be pleasantly surprised. The characters don't seem much more developed from standard British cop shows on the telly, but they aren't tarted up either. The plot is complicated without being too complex which allows the view to be involved without being taxes. I do have an issue with some of the twists that seem too contrived, particularly at the end, but in the end the message leaves one actually thinking about one's own personal position- this is after all what made Million Dollar Baby so controversial and successful. The direction is tight, and performances understated. Since the Pearl Harbour debacle Mr. Affleck has really taken his craft seriously and sought to earn respect for his professional development. I certainly recommend this film, writing as a cynic.

Robert Mugabe’s thugs shout: ‘Let’s kill the baby’

What's wrong with the UN is Russia and China. We need a new organization that is suited to today's challenges. Western and other democracy loving countries should withdraw from this present useless UN and form a new organization. This old UN won't survive without funding from USA & W. Europe.

    Decades ago Mutrah, Muscat's main city, was 
    separated from the port by a huge wall with a
    large gate. Every sundown the gate would be closed
    and sealed till the next morning. When the authorities
    connected the roads and had to drive cars to the 
    port and back the gate wasn't large enough. So they
    knocked two giant gaps either side of the gate and  
    built the road through. 
 
    Of course you don't point out to anyone your job
    is useless, so for years the officer whose job
    it was to be in charge of the gate still arrived 
    at sundown, making sure the gate was sealed, before
    driving back out through the huge gap. 

That slogan is everywhere nowadays in the Chinese capital. But as the Games draw near, the eight-tooth smile that Olympic hostesses have been taught is beginning to look a little strained.

Fearful of terrorist attacks and of embarrassing protests, the authorities are draping a security blanket over Beijing so thick that many residents fear it will stifle the Games.

"They are not taking any chances, whatever the impact on ordinary people, either local or foreign," says Gilbert van Kerckhove, a longtime Beijing resident who is advising the city on Olympic issues. "They are totally paranoid; there is no other word for it."

In preparation for the Olympics, long billed as China's coming-out party, the government has tightened visa rules to restrict the number of incoming foreigners, snarled international broadcasters' plans to televise the Games, cleared almost all Beijing's itinerant vendors off the streets, and closed down one of the city's most popular English-language magazines, among other steps apparently designed to ensure control of the event.

The gathering mood here has caught the attention of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which organizes the games.

"We have asked the Chinese to try to find the right balance between security and operations, and I have confidence that they will do so," said the IOC president, Jacques Rogge, earlier this month.

'More serious' visa regulations

Attracting the most attention among Beijing's 250,000 foreign residents are the "more strict and more serious" visa regulations that a foreign ministry spokesman explained recently are aimed at ensuring Olympic security.

They have made it much harder for foreigners to get into China and to stay here once they have arrived.

The effects of rules introduced last month – eliminating multiple-entry visas, requiring applicants for visa renewals to return to their home country, and demanding proof of professional qualifications – have been felt most acutely among the hordes of young people who have been attracted to Beijing as an internationally fashionable place to live and who either study here or make a living as best they can.

Likely participants in the sort of protests the government is anxious to curb, they are not the sort of people the authorities want in Beijing in August. But the rules have also hampered international businessmen, prompting official complaints from foreign chambers of commerce.

"Business opportunities are being missed," the European Chamber of Commerce warned the Chinese government in a letter, since the rules "impose dramatic costs in terms of both time and money."

"Many European companies from multinationals to small- to medium-sized are experiencing issues with obtaining business visas," says the chamber's secretary general, Michael O'Sullivan, "and we have not noted any further changes in the situation" since the letter was sent.

Television broadcasters, meanwhile, are still battling the Chinese security bureaucracy six weeks before the Games' opening ceremony, seeking assurances they will be able to broadcast live from such iconic locations as Tiananmen Square and elsewhere.

It is still unclear, they say, whether Beijing will give way. "Unless the authorities relax and are a little more free with the media, they may well compromise coverage of the games," warns John Barton, director of sports at the Asian Broadcasting Union.

Ordinary Beijingers are more affected by minor irritants: new restrictions on what they can send in the mail (no electronics, no powder, no soap), a ban on the sale of fireworks, plans for airport-style security on the subway during the Games, and the disappearance of street vendors selling snacks and other items, most of whom come from out of town.

"The city police drove them all out," says one fruit-seller who has so far evaded arrest of his erstwhile competitors on a street near the Foreign Studies University. "It's because of the Olympics. They've all gone home ... and they can't come back until after the Oct. 1 holiday."

Such moves appear designed to reduce the workload for the 100,000 security agents – policemen, militarized police, security guards, and volunteers – that the city says it will mobilize for the Games. At the same time, 300 specialists in nuclear, biological, and chemical attacks will be on alert starting July 1, officials say, along with 100,000 commandos and ordinary soldiers in reserve.

A terrorist attack tops the authorities' list of security concerns, according to the police. They are especially concerned by the threat they see from militants demanding independence for the western province of Xinjiang, largely populated by the Muslim Uighur people. Earlier this year, the police announced they had foiled a plot by Uighur separatists to blow up a plane flying from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi to Beijing.

Large gatherings cancelled

But the government also appears nervous about large gatherings of foreigners. Last month the government banned a pop-music festival that traditionally attracts foreign bands and large numbers of foreign residents. It also cancelled a conference of the Holland-based Institute of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences for which 6,500 international academics had registered.

"What has happened around the torch has resulted in a stepping-up of the whole security issue, and security weighs heavily on all the decision-making now," said Hein Verbruggen, the IOC official in charge of overseeing preparations for the Olympics, recently.

The result, fears Mr. van Kerckhove, will be that Beijing "will be a police city. There will be no mood ... because everything will be controlled."

The controls extend to even the smallest detail. Chinese sports fans have been provided an official cheer, designed by the ruling Communist Party's Office of Spiritual Civilization Development and Guidance, involving raised thumbs, clapping, fist punching, and the chant "Go Olympics, go China."

Foreign visitors will be permitted to choose their own cheers, but they will have to abide by the rules published recently on the website of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games. These include a warning that "any illegal gatherings, parades, and protests and refusal to comply are subject to administrative punishment or criminal prosecution."

The guide also lists materials that may not be brought into China, such as items "that are harmful to China's politics, economics, culture, and morals."

It is still not clear just how many foreigners will attend the Games. Officials have said they expect half a million visitors from abroad, but difficulty in obtaining visas and tickets to Olympic events could reduce that number.

Only 25 percent of tickets to this year's games were allocated to international sales – half the proportion that organizers of the Athens Olympics sold abroad in 2004. Organizers point out that China is the most populous nation to host the Games, but their decision has made it harder for foreigners to buy tickets.

That may explain disappointingly slow bookings for hotels at a time when Beijing was meant to be bursting with visitors. Although the city's five-star hotels, where Olympic and national officials will stay, are registering a 77 percent occupancy during the Games, four-star hotels have so far filled only 44 percent of their rooms, according to Zhang Huiguang, director of the Beijing Tourism Bureau.

The figure "is even lower for three- and two-star hotels," she told reporters recently.

The biggest tragedy of all is that the Rhodesian security forces did not eliminate this maggot when they had the chance, and indeed, we hang our heads in shame, as should the then and present British government, who set the stage of his stoop into power. Mugabe is the epitomy of menacing evil, and to eliminate him would be an immense favour to the Zimbabwean people, (and indeed the whole of Southern Africa), who have continued to suffer horrific brutality and decimation under his 28 years of iron-fist rule. Don’t ever forget, this man is the orchestrator of endless suffering, brutality and murder of those who dared to even question his totalitarian control since independance. He needs to be eliminated, whether by the hand of his own people, or by International intervention and brought to book. But I would prefer the former, because, it’s what he deserves, what he has sown. Such is the hatred for Mugabe that without doubt, if the average axe-bearing Zimbabwean could get their hands on him, one-on-one, Mugabe would not survive, and it would be an agonising slow death, chopped up into small pieces. And in that light, it makes perfect sense why this despot is desperately clinging to power, he now lives in real fear, the time has come. The Zimbabwean people have voted, and despite every trick in the book encompassing mass and open intimidation of the people and vote-rigging, Mugabe has lost, that is clear. Whether he can continue to hold on will be seen in the next few days or weeks. But when Zimbabweans do get their true liberation, for one thing, it will be high-time and riddance to the rat that ruined everything. Democratic freedom at last for Zimbabwe. Mugabe came to power with the barrel of the gun, with a lot of help from the fascist-supporting Chinese who supplied the weapons, ideologies and funding may I add.

I don’t want to put the fear of God in South Africans, but present-day South Afrca is ominously reminiscent of the way Zimbabwe went down the toilet. Furthermore, Thabo Mbeki spent much of his exile during the Apartheid years in Harare with Bob, brothers-in-arms so to speak. So, indeed, we should be very wary of Mbeki, granted he is a completely lame duck and lacks much of the fiery rhetoric of his very dangerous and menacing comrade.

In conclusion, I hate Mugabe more for what he has achieved since his ascension to power, the complete and utter destruction of a once prosperous and beautiful country and it’s people. As a president, it goes without saying, as custodian to the nation, the duty bestowed upon that person is the wellbeing of the country and its people. There is no excuse for Mugabe and his madness, and he deserves what is in a long time-coming, and when that day comes, I will celebrate, the maggot has been removed and the shackles on Zimbabwe will at last be off. My only wish is that this really is it, the end of the road for Bob. Pamperi ne Hondo!

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/200806c.brief.htm:

During his unsuccessful presidential campaign, Democratic Progressive Party candidate Frank Hsieh had this memorable campaign ad about the consequences of a One-China market -- the hordes of mainland Chinese barbarians will invade Taiwan and urinate and spit in public everywhere.  Frank Hsieh lost that election and his predicted day is about to arrive.

In response to a question, Tainan city Department of Health director Hu Shu-chen said: "Every place that the mainland guests passes by will be disinfected."  A member of the delegation of mainland Chinese travel representatives reacted to that statement by saying that they had already gone through the disease control station at the airport and this is highly unnecessary.  He said that he has visited more than twenty countries already and nobody does that.  Neither Japan nor the United States does that to any of the many mainland Chinese tourists, and there has never been any outbreak of epidemics in those countries.

Later, Hu Shu-chen explained that the mainland tourists coming to Taiwan have high socio-ecnoomic status and their health should be relatively better.  The Department of Health plans to disinfect the tourist sites which mainland and other overseas tourists visit, and that would be good for the tourists as well as the local people.

The pro-green media are questioning why the government is letting the mainland tourists come without monitoring the infectious diseases.  This will place the people of Taiwan at risk from all sorts of deadly viruses.  They emphasized repeatedly that "there are 550 million people with infectious tuberculosis in mainland China" and 130,000 people die from it each year.  Since "the mainland people spit everywhere they go," tuberculosis will be all over the place.

According to a village mayor in Tainan county, "citizens should report immediately if they see a mainlander coughing."

According to a mainland woman who married to Taiwan, her husband's family used to be very nice to her.  But yesterday, her mother-in-law asked her whether she had any infectious diseases before her marriage.  "I heard on the radio that the Taiwanese people have no resistnace against certain types of diseases, so that they will die if they get infected."  The mainland woman said that she came to Taiwan several years ago and took care of her father-in-law who had tuberculosis.  She wasn't afraid of being infected.  But all of a sudden, the radio talk show has turned suspicions on her.

It's not easy to be an American abroad these days. Not only is your government hated and despised -- the US embassy is also worried you'll be hurt by rowdy enthusiasts of a strange, no-hands-allowed sport.

Looking at images of the 1936 Nazi olympics we can't help but ask ourselves what they were thinking. Today we have a similar situation brewing with the 2008 communist Olympics in Beijing. A land where christians are persecuted, democracy protesters are crushed with tanks and tibetans are ethnically cleansed. They have been awarded the olympics what can we do about it? Do you want your kids and grandkids to see pictures like this and ask what you did to oppose it?


The Times and some U.S. Congressmen have equated the Beijing Olympics with the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Not surprisingly, the comparison triggered an immediate protest from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But what of the comparison? Let's go back and look at what occurred around the Berlin Olympics.

In May 1931, Berlin defeated Barcelona to win the right to hold the Eleventh Olympics. The Nazis were not yet in power and Germany was a democratic country. Germany had earlier won the right to hold the 1916 Olympic Games, but the first World War got in the way, and the Games were cancelled. Giving Germany the right to hold the 1936 Olympic Games was seen as a kind of compensation. In 2001, the CCP won the right to hold the Beijing Olympics only after it had promised to improve human rights in China, as the international community debated China's failures in human rights, recalling the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, and among other things, the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong.

In 1933, the Nazis came into power. Hitler became the leader of Germany. Hitler quickly turned Germany from a democratic country into a totalitarian state. The police arrested numerous dissidents and sent them to concentration camps without trial. In the meantime, Hitler carried out a racial cleansing, proclaiming Aryan superiority, and started a systematic plot to wipe out the Jewish race. Gypsies and homosexuals were also rooted out, and sent to the notorious death camps.

Hitler himself was not very interested in sports. In the meantime, he was afraid that the international attention from the Olympic Games would expose the Nazi's racial discrimination policy. So Hitler still held a grudge toward the former government of Germany for applying to hold the Olympic Games. However, Paul Goebbels, his infamous Minister of Propaganda, convinced Hitler to use the Olympic Games as a propaganda tool.

Hitler then became enthusiastic about the Olympics. His government invested 20 millions Marks (a huge sum) to aid the Berlin Olympic Games. He ordered a stadium built in Berlin that would hold one hundred thousand people. He wanted the Berlin Olympics to be a political extravaganza and exceed all previous Olympic Games in scale. Goebbels said, "The sole task of German sports is to strengthen the German people's character." What he referred here was, of course, the pure German race. In the Nazis' sports posters, the artists were asked to show the masculinity and heroic strengths of the Aryan race.

The Nazis enthusiasm in promoting the Olympics even brought a technological breakthrough in broadcasting. The Nazis broadcast the Olympic Games live (television had just appeared in Germany), so the Olympic Games became a political stage for Hitler and the Nazis to promote their political agenda. Their motto was, "Publicity helps us seize power, publicity helps us consolidate power, and publicity will help us get the whole world." The Nazis and the CCP are much the same in this regard, both consummate masters of the evil art of deception through propaganda.

The Nazis anti-Jewish movement began to catch the attention of the world's people. After Hitler came to power in 1933, people started to discuss whether the Olympics should be held elsewhere, and calls to boycott the Berlin Games became increasingly louder. Many Jewish organizations held demonstrations. In 1935, Avery Brundage, Chairman of U.S. International Olympic Committee, personally went to Berlin, and made a short visit under the Nazis close watch. The Nazis had repetitively told him that the Olympic Games were purely a sports event and would not be used to promote its political views. Brundage went so far as even to believe that what he had seen was the real Germany, and had thus changed his original thought of boycotting the Olympic Games.

However, in the U.S., there was still quite a huge disagreement. Jeremiah Mahoney, President of the Amateur Athletics Union of the United States, insisted that Nazi racial discrimination violated the Olympic spirit. Brundage believed that "Politics must not be brought into sports." This echos the current cries from Beijing party mandarins, almost word for word, who to the outside world, accuse protesters of making the games political. Inside China, however, the CCP has made the Olympic Games its "political task number one".

Mahoney didn't want U.S. athletes to get involved in "the argument between Jews and Nazis." Ernest Lee Jahncke, an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member from the U.S., was fired from the IOC for his objections to the Berlin Olympic Games. He thus became the only IOC member who was ever fired in the history of over one hundred years. The vacancy he created was filled by Brundage. In the end, the U.S. participated in the Berlin Olympic Games and President Roosevelt attended the ceremonies. The U.S.'s attitude about the Berlin Olympics had a great influence on other countries. Following U.S. announcements that they would participate, other countries also participated in the games. There were a total of forty nine countries that had participated in this Olympic Games. Its scale had exceeded those of all previous ones; it was unprecedented.

On August 1, Hitler hosted the opening ceremonies. The Berlin Olympic Games began the tradition of the Olympic Torch Relay (before then, the Olympic flame was taken to the site of the games from Greece, but there was no relay). Over three thousand people relayed the torch for twenty-one days. On the day of the ceremony, when the torch was taken to Hitler, it was as if the world had forgotten the ethnic cleansing that continued, even under their noses. Nazi propaganda had promoted the torch relay crazily. Hitler's official propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl produced the full length documentary film Olympia, bringing further unearned prestige to Hitler and his Games. Hitler's deceptive propaganda was very successful. Germany went on to win the most gold medals. Hitler and the Nazis had stolen the limelight.

In August 1936, Berlin was decorated festively and there were Olympic banners and Nazi symbols everywhere. What most tourists did not know was that the anti-Jewish slogans had just been taken down, and would soon go back up after the games. The tourists could not know that Gypsies had been driven out of the downtown area during a city "cleaning" movement organized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They were detained in a temporary concentration camp in the suburbs. The tourists could also not know that Geobbels' Ministry of Propaganda had issued a large number of orders to strictly evaluate the media that would report the games, so as to not let the world's people see any signs about the Naz