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The Land of The Indefinitely Incarcerated
 When I recently read the story of Shakir Baloch, a Canadian citizen who was unjustly imprisoned in the United States for seven months because of his Pakistani heritage and the colour of his skin, it reminded me of the Japanese incarcerations during the Second World War.
A doctor while living in Pakistan and son of a prominent politician, Baloch has been a Canadian citizen since 1994 and lives in Toronto. He had been working in New York as a taxi driver while he studied at the Columbia–Presbyterian Medical Centre in New York to recertify as a doctor in order to support his wife and teenage daughter. He was arrested in Queens, New York on September 20 in a post–9/11 frenzy in which more than 1,200 men, mostly of Arabic and Muslim background, were imprisoned in the United States. For months, his wife had no idea what had happened to him because he was denied the right to contact her or a lawyer. Of his seven months in prison, five were spent in solitary confinement in a small room that was under lights 24 hours a day. He said he was repeatedly interrogated about the events of September 11th. When he was able to go outside, he was in shackles. All this took place inside the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, a unit reserved for dangerous crimminals. He was finally released on April 15, 2002, after pleading guilty to a misdemeanour immigration charge and is banned from entering the United States for five years. Like he'd want to return... According to the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty : "We are entering a very dangerous understanding of civil society if disappearances of hundreds of men of Middle Eastern descent is becoming a silently acceptable norm." So it seems the majority of these men were arrested because of the colour of their skin. Perhaps the most injust and disgusting (but not surprising) part of all this is the fact that not ONE of the 800 people who have been detained in the Metropolitan Detention Center by the U.S. government has been charged with any terrorist crime. Read more in this week's online edition of The Village Voice.
 BUT WHAT ABOUT YA YA?? Elryano reviews Tom Cruise's latest blockbuster.
Anything for The TEAM!
 Whe and I have been participating in a Reality message board game, put together by our friend, and favourite movie reviewer, Elryano. The game consists of four tribes who compete in immunity and reward challenges. If you come in dead last you go to tribal council and vote fellow tribe members off - just like Survivor.  The teams' last challenge involved a Web Cam; one tribe mate per team had to do something very embarrassing on their cam, something that would bring them shame and dishonour. Well guess who is the only person with a cam on my team? Me, of course! The picture you see above is my pic of humiliation, but what the hell - it was for the team.
Most of the day on Sunday, I really had no clue what could be an embarrassing enough thing to do to actually win. We hadn't won an immunity challenge yet, we'd come close but DAMNIT we were determined to win one! I suddenly noticed the cheesehead Eigh's parent's had given to me for my birthday a month ago. Voila! It was the start of a plan! A few hours later I was sitting on the toilet, having a smoke and it came to me: Cheese - toe cheese! Just like that! Why most people tend to do their best thinking when they're sitting on the toilet I'll never know. I plan on keeping a notepad and pen in there at all times from now on. After I took the pic, and, incidentally, my toe actually tasted salty, I was still kinda nervous. I was wondering what the others would do to shame themselves and I wasn't sure if mine would be the worst. You see, I guess the thing I hadn't realized was that these judges don't know me. They have no idea that I'm completely shameless. Suckers. Today was a great day for our team, the Pickled Leeches - we not only won the reward challenge but my pic had also won us immunity, which meant we'd all still be in the game for another couple of days. There's a tribal council tomorrow night for the team that lost if you want to check it out. There's also lots of in-fighting among tribes (mainly mine but that's a whole other story) and a whole lot of suspense, just like on the televised version. Who will be the ultimate message board Survivor? I guess we'll know in a month or two...
Baby Boomers Can Kiss My Ass
I heard the song San Francisco on the radio the other day and thought about how the hippies had so many plans to change the world. What a generation of hypocrites. Sorry for being so bitter, it's just that my generation, unflatteringly called "Generation X" (those born between 1965 and 1980) is commonly defined as the “Postponement Generation” and described as 'indecisive, lacking in ambition and as having ‘few heroes, no anthems, no style to call its own’. In many ways, this is true and who can really blame us? The Baby Boomers got here first. They got all the choice jobs with the good money while the X-ers got whatever jobs (if any) were left over. In 1969, the Boomers were protesting the Vietnam War and fighting oppression and their parent's generation. They wanted to make the world a much better place. Then 10 years later, they turned around and voted for Ronald Reagan. What happened to peace, love and freedom? They traded it in for money, fancy cars and security. Fuck the Baby Boomers. Fuck them right up their fat, rich asses. That is all.
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