The disappearance of a 25-year-old tree planter in the northwestern Ontario bush must be investigated by a coroner’s inquest to provide the long-sought answers his anguished family needs to help put the tragedy behind them, relatives said Monday.

Aju Iroaga disappeared May 15, 2006 and only after a Reader’s Digest article, increased press converage and public scrutiny do the politicians actually start to give a damn, two years later. Where was all this attention when it could have, maybe, made a difference?

A passenger who left his seat to pray in the back of a plane before it took off, ignoring flight attendants’ orders to return, was removed by an airport security guard, a witness and the airline said. How long did his prayer take, you ask? Two minutes. Well, you say, maybe he said them at an inopportune time. Oh no, he did them while the other passengers were boarding. Somehow this was a nuisance (those 2 minutes while passengers were boarding may have caused a delay, heaven forbid!) and he was removed. No apology was issued, but the man did get on another flight.

This gem was actually said on The Calgary Eyeopener on Thursday by Calgary Conservative MP Rob Anders: “China is the worst human rights abuser in the world and it’s not just against Tibetans, it’s against their own people, their own population.” Surely everyone’s been thinking it since Harper officially announced that we would not boycott the Olympics, but who would have guessed it would be a Conservative MP who would finally say it?

Read the whole article, because you won’t believe what else he lets slip. It just about made my day (and probably ruined PM Harper’s)!

Sigh, Australia so rarely acts to better Australia… What’s so bad about being inclusive and tackling homophobia in schools? Nothing as far as I can see, obviously Education Director-General Coutts-Trotter disagrees. Figures. Sure suicide is more common among gay, lesbian and transgendered teenagers than the hetero-teens, but that’s obviously not his problem. According to an article coming out of Washington Blade, 30.6% of gay teens considered suicide in the precious year, 28.9% made a plan to commit suicide and 32.6% attempted suicide.

In other news, a gay phys. ed teacher in the UK has commited suicide. Rumor has it he was afraid of being “outed”.

And, a bit closer to home, in the US, presidential hopefuls Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama appeared at an anti-gay college in Pa. The campaigns blame CNN for the venue choice. The college is known for referring gay students to help “combat” their homosexual feelings, including recommending them to Exodus International, a ministry that offers “freedom from homosexuality through Jesus Christ”. Having Clinton and Obama there must have been a real riot.

The International Day Against Homophobia is May 17.

So, the inevitable’s happened. A toddler got shot on a reserve, not fatally thank gods, and now The Press is interested in the problems on reserves. It’s always like this, some tragic thing happens, someone dies sniffing gas, someone gets murdered, someone gets shot, something always happens, and for a week or two The Press, not to mention politicians, pretend that it actually gives a damn about the going-ons of reserves. Sadly, this too will pass and problems on reserves will be relegated to fillers or not discussed at all… until of course the next tragic thing happens, and rest assured, it will happen, sooner or later it always does.

Just a little fyi, if you pretend a problem that definitely exists does not, it won’t go away. You have to actually do something about it.

Since Harper came to power in the 2006 election, he tried to re-open the same-sex marriage debate, an issue which was ultimately closed amusingly due to lack of interest. His reasoning? “Fundamental human rights are not a magician’s hat from which new rabbits can constantly be pulled out…Same-sex marriage is not a human right.” That’s right ladies and gents, you heard it here first, same-sex marriage is not a human right. So what is it, more of alien one I suppose? Former PM Martin had it right when he said “Seperate but equal is not equal.”

Then he put the icing on the cake by cutting funding to Ontario AIDS Service Organizations (ASO’s) by 1 million in 2007-08. A further 1 million will be cut in 2008-09. What a difference a year makes… for World AIDS Day (December 1, y’all) 2006 Harper announced funding of $120M.

I don’t even want to know what he did here in Nova Scotia. Next, he’ll only fund abstinence-only education. What did he do? Find out teens were the most at risk, which means teens are having sex? Or maybe that it’s near epidemic proportions in our First Nations communities? Or, better yet, that male prisoners are at high risk? Or, oh yeah, that gay men and men who sleep with men are climbing the risk-charts too?

As mentioned previously, Harper plans big changes to Canadian immigration. This is a guy who undoubtedly would have refused (as the United States of America did) refugee status to Anne Frank and her family.

And, because every cake needs icing, he’s proposed a bill that will in effect censor our artists who rely on Canadian grant money.

This guy has never been good news for Canada, at this rate he’s going to turn us into a carbon copy of the US, specifically the bible belt.

downplaying concerns about an RCMP raid on Conservative party headquarters in Ottawa. Hmm… I wonder. He says they were perfectly above board (but then, would you want to be the leader of a country and admit to having done wrong? Clinton certainly looked peeved when he uttered those now-infamous words “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”. I mean, who honestly says sexual relations? But all in all Clinton’s a pretty good guy, and you should all vote for his wife, so we’ll forgive him that.)

In other news, I wouldn’t have wanted to sit through the speech that probably accompanied this tidbit, Harper is just like Bush, hell, they could be brothers from other mothers and everything, long-winded, stern and most of all boring. I can just see it — “We will not boycott the Olympics in China…’ (because if we do, well, we might piss them off, or something.) Harper’s all about image, too bad he looks something like the devil from HBO’s Carnivale!

The Harper cabinet was noticeably absent last week at the Arctic security conference, instead sending a lowly mid-level public servant. All I have to say is “Uh… what?” that doesn’t sound like something someone serious about Canadian sovereignty does, does it?

And have you ever noticed how many times you (meaning, The Press) can say “Harper downplays”? Take a look. Come on, this guy has got to be setting a downplaying record or something.