At the 50-minute mark: “one of the best gems of the era” – Sam calls it a “world-wide anthem of another life”!

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None of us will ever forget today, not in our lifetimes. But I am struck, today, by how it is increasingly discussed less in the media – and perhaps by all of us, too.

Is that good? Is that normal? Is it a mistake? I don’t know the answer. But I am thinking about it – and the victims and the consequences – today.

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In Calgary in January. Nasty Bob, we need you! Anyone want to help make this happen?

These guys, by the way, deserve all the credit for making the Hot Nasties relevant, 30 years after the fact. Buy their EP here!

And come to the show in Calgary!

Palma Violets strike a Hot Nasties pose!
Out now on Rough Trade!

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This is one of those days, for me.

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Also lawbreakers like this guy, or this one, or this one.  Under Quebec law, they’re effectively criminals, you know.

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Saying that truth is a casualty of war isn’t new. It’s the world’s oldest declaration, you might say.

Syria is no different. Monday, Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad gave an interview in which he casually acknowledged chemical weapons may have been used in Syria — but, if so, by his enemies, not him. “There has been no evidence that I used chemical weapons against my own people,” he told Charlie Rose of PBS.

Asked if he possessed chemical weapons, Assad again argued in the alternative. If he did, the Syrian dictator told Rose, they were under “centralized control.”

Got that? Sounding irritated that Assad was being given airtime to spout bald-faced lies, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry erupted. “I just gave you real evidence of a chemical weapons attack,” he said. “I’m confident about the state of the evidence. Read the unclassified report on whitehouse.gov — what does (Assad) offer?

“This is a man who has just killed 1,000 of his own citizens. This is a man without credibility.”

Credibility is indeed the issue. Various governments have confirmed Assad used chemical weapons against his own people on the morning of Aug. 21 in a suburb of Damascus. Fifteen hundred were killed, one-third of them children.

Doctors Without Borders, who many (including this writer) cited in the days following Aug. 21, issued a statement confirming Syrian civilians had experienced “mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent,” and this was “a massive and unacceptable violation of international humanitarian law.” The group added it lacked the ability to assign blame, something missed by many (including this writer).

Doctors Without Borders was the first international aid group to issue a report on the Aug. 21 gassings. As such, the New York Times reported, “its report appears to lend credibility to other accounts by witnesses and to the opposition’s estimates of the dead.”

But is that really credible? Well, for those of us who have said we favour limited military action against Assad for his use of chemical weapons against his own people, various counter-arguments have been offered up. That military involvement can sometimes be a slippery slope (true), that the opposition rebels are worse (after Aug. 21, untrue), that the real motive for a strike is oil and money (untrue).

Mostly, however, those who are unmoved by the victims in the Aug. 21 attack — those who are indifferent about our collective obligation to punish the use of chemical weapons — have simply said one thing, over and over: Prove it happened. “I doubt/deny it happened.”

This line is Zundel-like in its simplicity. No matter how much evidence is marshalled, deny it is sufficient. Insinuate that it has been forged. Then go back to sleep.

For this, we can thank George W. Bush and his illusory weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. WMD has given genocide-deniers a useful excuse for inaction for generations to come.

There is a striking symmetry to the positions of the genocide-deniers and Bashar al-Assad. The ghastly implications of that are apparently lost on the former.

But not on the latter. He remains grateful the real truth remains a casualty — along with the hundreds murdered on the morning of Aug. 21.

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What HuffPo has done has inspired me. Along with my own previously-posted comment rules, here’s a new one: if I see a handle I don’t recognize – and particularly if the commenter is highly critical of others – I will send him/her a confirmation email. If it bounces back or goes unanswered, bye-bye. Au revoir.

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…like much else they do. What a colossal farce.

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It amazes me – amazes me – that the paid-up citizens of Ford Nation thought they were doing their heroes a favour by bringing Press Council complaints against media organizations who did extraordinary investigative work about the drug-related enthusiasms of DoFo and RoFo.

All that these addled, knuckle-dragging fools have done is given the Star and Globe privileged opportunities to testify, in brutal detail, how (a) Rob Ford was in a video smoking crack and how (b) Doug Ford was a drug dealer in Etobicoke.  Which said media are doing, right now, without making use of the word “alleged.”

You know that old adage about “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it?”

It’s true.

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