Buoyant blog of septuagenarian (77) Kanadian poet and haikuist Chris Faiers/cricket. People's Poetry in the tradition of Milton Acorn, haiku/haibun, progressive politikal rants, engaged Buddhism and meditation, revitalizing of Callaghan's Rapids Conservation Area, memories of ZenRiver Gardens and Purdy Country LitFests (PurdyFests), events literary and politikal, and pics, amid swirling currents of earth magick and shamanism. Read in 119 countries last week - 43,329 readers in September.
Today I received the following email from Judy Haiven, an old activist friend. She recently revisited Hari Kunzru's novel My Revolutions in a blog post, giving it high praise. Judy also reminded me that Hari Kunzru credits my memoir, Eel Pie Island Dharma, in the acknowledgments. Many thanks, Judy!
I remember a quote from Lit Hub by another author, also a lesser known writer like myself. Wish I'd kept the quote, but its essence was that there are great writers, who are like seas and large lakes, and then there are writers who may be but small streams, but our work helps feed these larger bodies of world literature.
Hari read the online account of my memoir which was posted in the early 2000s by weed, another Eel Pie Island communard. Weed's posting led to the professional publication of my memoir/haibun by Hidden Brook Press in 2012. Special thanks to Weed and to HBP publisher Tai Grove!
I must've talked to you about this extremely useful and good novel by the British novelist Harry kunzru strangely enough my son who now lives in London knows him because they're both writers I guess. in any case, this is a book that refers to your accounts of what happened in 69 and 70 and so on in London and I highly recommend it. I recommended it in my blog again this week. Judy Haiven
On the first day of the Iran war, they bombed a school and murdered 165 children, seriously injuring 95 more. It wasn’t so very long ago that such a brazen war crime would have resulted in shock, horror and global condemnation. Not anymore.
UNESCO condemned the bombing as a grave crime. But there was relative silence from Western leaders.
Canada’s foreign minister, Anita Anand, refused to say whether Canada stood with the UN in calling out the bombing campaign as a violation of international law. Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth, America’s Secretary of War, bragged to the media to expect more. He said this wasn’t going to be a “politically correct” war and he ridiculed “stupid rules of engagement.”
The “stupid rules of engagement” are the laws established internationally for over 100 years to stop the reckless murder of civilians.
In the age of monsters the wanton breach of these laws has become something to boast about.
Since the invasion of Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza war has become a terror exercise against civilians. In her book Autocracy Inc., Anne Appelbaum describes the underlying policy behind Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine:
“These acts were not collateral damage or accidental side effects of the war. They were part of a conscious plan to undermine the network of ideas, rules and treaties that had been built into international law since 1945 and to destroy the European order created after 1989.”
Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” is part of this plan — to sideline the United Nations and establish arbitrary rule by the powerful.
This was clear to anyone from the minutes the first bombs were dropped. This is why Canada’s decision to distance itself from the UN is deeply concerning.
Just four days ago, our PM supported Trump’s initial justification for the war claiming that it was about stopping Iran’s nuclear program.
But Iran didn’t have a credible nuclear program. Everyone knew this, and the nuclear threat justification has quickly fallen by the wayside. Also tossed aside is the claim that the war was launched to free the Iranian people from a brutal regime.
Pete Hegseth was blunt, saying that Americans weren’t wasting any time worrying about democracy or nation-building. He referred to the war as Operation Epic Fury.
The war should be called Operation Epstein because it is a desperate gamble for the president to distract from his tanking poll numbers.
What has become clear is that there is no credible plan for how the United States and Israel will surgically bomb Iran into submission. This is a nation of 93 million people living in a country larger than Germany, France and the UK.
We are seeing the result – chaos, violence and escalating regional war. Trump is backed into a corner. He is now huffing and puffing and threatening to unleash the kind of punishment that has never been seen before.
Did we just sign on to the nuclear option of a dangerous madman?
Canada failed the moment by accepting the claim that this is a crusade to stop a nuclear threat. It is an even more transparently bogus than the notorious weapons of mass destruction excuse used for the Iraq invasion.
Just last month, the PM galvanized the international community with his call for middle powers to work together in an age of lawlessness. He said that it was no longer “good enough to go along to get along.”
As we watch the growing destabilization in the Middle East, Canada is in danger of going along with the further disintegration of international law.
When I wrote about these issues on day two of the war I was reflecting the shock and unease of many Canadians. But I wasn’t surprised to receive some blowback. More than one person said, “Shame on you for undermining our Prime Minister.”
Others suggested I was being irresponsible for speaking out. There was the usual gaslighting that I misrepresented the PM’s words or that I should stay loyal to the “team” and say nothing.
One woman bluntly told me it was my responsibility to “trust your leader,” and then said that since I didn’t know the facts, people “don’t give a f -kk about your opinion.”
This isn’t the first time I have been accused of betraying the “Elbows Up” spirit. It happens whenever I call out the government for failing to speak up against attacks on the International Criminal Court or the rule of law.
My focus in starting the resistance network is not to be a cheerleader but to do the best I can to make sense of this age of monsters and to provide people with tools for maintaining our democracy and the rule of law.
I would be failing in my work if I was silent now. I am very frightened by what might happen next. There are no guardrails on the regimes in Washington, Tel Aviv and Tehran. Anything is possible.
I know that people get comfort by imagining ourselves as Team Canada with a strong Captain. But it is essential that we remember that Canada’s real strength is that we are a democracy in a world where democracy is increasingly under threat.
In a democracy, we do more than sit in the stands and cheer on the captain. A democracy brings with it specific rights and responsibilities. One of those rights is to have the PM brings his case to the people to get their buy-in and support. Our democratic institutions exist so the leader can be questioned and challenged to prove their case.
The problem with bringing this case to Parliament is that the normal checks and balances are no longer in place. The official opposition has sidelined itself with its obsession with culture wars, while the NDP has lost status and is unable to participate in committee hearings on vital issues like foreign affairs, military spending, the environment, and the economy.
The responsibility then falls to us, ordinary citizens, to make our voices heard.
This harkens back to the weapons of mass destruction debacle. In 2003, there was immense pressure on Canada to join the coalition of the willing. A number of Canada’s key allies gave in to American pressure and signed on to the war.
But in Canada, mass demonstrations helped stiffen the backbone of Prime Minister Chretien, and he eventually announced that Canada would not go along to get along. We are in such a moment again.
We need to remind the PM of Canada’s longstanding commitment to the rule of law and the United Nations.
In a time of growing instability, Canada must stand with the UN and distance itself from the murder fantasies of Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and Benjamin Netanyahu.
In 2003, Canadians marched in the streets. We must do what we can to stop the slide into the darkness now.
Contact the PM. Contact your MP. Tell them Canada needs to be a voice for peace in a time of dangerously spiralling global violence.
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These soothe my longing for an end to cold and drear,
the hair-shirt of winter bleakness and fear.
I long to fill the silent skies,
finger-brush the imminent snowdrops,
hoping more for a kite than a canoe
to wind-whisk me from this barren ground up
to endless seas of skies more blue
than human consciousness can bear.
Katherine L. Gordon, March 2nd. 2026.
Katherine, I wanted to have a spring graphic for your poem, but I didn't want to break copyright. So I used a pic from Anna Yin's website - hope she doesn't mind being our goddess of spring! (it's the lavender dress)
This morning, I keep thinking about Winston Churchill, and the powerful allegory he used to warn that the appeaser is the man who feeds others to the crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Last month, Prime Minister Carney rallied the world at Davos by telling middle powers that in this age of gangsters, it was no longer good enough to “go along to get along.”
The Prime Minister spoke those words as Donald Trump was making clear his plans to tear apart the Western alliance and replace the United Nations with his autocrat/gangster gang who make up the Board of Peace.
Sure, the support might be tepid, but it is support nonetheless.
The Prime Minister has claimed that this was about removing the threat of nuclear weapons. This is false, and the Prime Minister knows this.
He said that Iran posed a threat to regional peace. And yet he stands with Netanyahu, who has carried out a horrific genocide in Gaza, broken international law in the West Bank, bombed Syria, Lebanon and is now declaring war on Iran.
Iran has not posed a credible nuclear threat in years. The claim by Trump is even less credible than the Rumsfeld claim that the search for weapons of mass destruction was necessary to launch the massively destructive war in Iraq.
But in that case, George Bush Jr. brought the case to the United Nations. The world assessed the evidence, and Canada, at that time, took the principled position of not going along with the invasion.
This time, the United Nations has been totally sidelined. This is a unilateral act of war by two gangster regimes. In Trump’s case, it is a full-scale war to divert attention from Epstein and his sinking poll numbers.
This is not about debating how brutal the Iranian regime is. It is about whether the international rule of law and the United Nations still have a place in resolving conflicts.
Netanyahu, Trump and Putin are waging war on the crumbling notion of law, sovereignty and war crimes. On this issue, Canada doesn’t get to go along to get along.
If the PM isn’t going to be the one to call allied nations to seek a UN solution to resolve further escalation, then who will be there to stand up for the rule of law?
It comes back to the crocodile.
We gave our tepid thumbs up to the illegal invasion of Venezuela. We are now supporting the mass bombing of Iran.
What happens when Trump moves forward with his “friendly” takeover of Cuba?
Perhaps the thinking in Ottawa is that by becoming mired in a Middle East war, Trump will be distracted from his obsession with breaking our nation.
Playing nice with crocodiles in the hope that they will be nice to us never ends well.
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A scene of devastation in Minab, Iran, as parents waited to know the fate of their young daughters after the bombing of a girls' elementary school killed over 100.
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MINAB and TEHRAN, IRAN—Mohammed Shariatmadar stood outside the wreckage of the Shajareh Tayyiba girls’ elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran on Saturday morning, unable to process what he was seeing. His six year-old daughter, Sara, a second grade student, was among dozens of girls killed when the school was bombed in the first few hours of the war launched by the U.S. and Israel on Iran.
In the immediate aftermath of the strike he remained standing in the shade of a cracked wall, staring at the ground and ignoring the commotion around him. He didn’t approach the building, which had been sealed off, but he didn’t move away either. His hands knotted together, then separated, then knotted again, in a repeated motion. Every time a paramedic emerged or an ambulance moved, he quickly raised his head, then returned to staring at the ground. He asked no one a direct question. He was only waiting for his daughter’s name to be called.
When families were finally directed to a gathering point to receive the bodies of their children, he slowly moved forward. When asked if he needed help, he shook his head silently and waited for his daughter’s body to be brought out.
“I cannot understand how a place where innocent children learn can be bombed like this,” Shariatmadar told Drop Site. “We are talking about small children who knew nothing of politics or wars. And yet they are the ones paying the highest price.”
Some 170 students were inside the building attending morning classes when the missile struck. At least 108 people were killed, according to the public prosecutor’s office in Minab, many of them schoolgirls between seven and 12 years old.
It was unclear if it was a U.S. or Israeli strike. On Saturday, CENTCOM’s spokesperson said they were “looking into” the reports.
“My heart is broken,” Shariatmadar said. “For Sara and for all the children we lost today. I want the world to know that the children are the real victims. Every day that passes without a solution increases the pain and the suffering for the families and for the children alike.”
Minab sits far from Tehran, but the school was adjacent to a naval base belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Hormozgan province, where the small city of Minab is located, borders the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategically sensitive waterways.
A resident of Minab, who spoke to Drop Site on the condition of anonymity, said explosions shook the city Saturday morning, sending residents into an immediate panic. Then reports started emerging that the school had been hit.
“Everyone rushed to the school the moment they heard the blasts,” the resident, who spoke to Drop Site on the condition of anonymity, said. “Chaos took over completely. Security forces were trying to push families back, fearing the area would be targeted again.”
The school building was reduced to a massive pile of rubble and dozens of schoolgirls were trapped under the concrete. People began trying to frantically dig them out with their bare hands. Families wandered around in shock, searching for their children amid the wreckage. “The final number of dead reached around half the students in the school,” the resident said.
Fatima al-Zahra Mohammad Ali, a nine-year-old student, was among those killed. “When we arrived at the school, the place was in chaos,” her mother, Amina Ansari, told Drop Site. The girl’s father, Mohammad Ali, who lost his right leg during the Iran-Iraq war, did not want to speak.
“The school itself didn’t know how to handle the situation,” Ansari said. “There was no accurate information about what was happening. Every time we asked someone they said, ‘Be patient until we get the girls out from under the rubble.’” The family did not learn that Fatima had been killed until around 4 p.m., when her body was discovered.
In a statement, President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned the “brutal attack by American and Zionist aggressors,” calling it a “barbaric act [that] is another black page in the record of countless crimes committed by the invaders of this land.”
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted an image of the destroyed school on social media. “It was bombed in broad daylight, when packed with young pupils,” Araghchi wrote. “Dozens of innocent children have been murdered at this site alone. These crimes against the Iranian people will not go unanswered.”
“We do not understand the reasons for the U.S. attack on Iran,” he continued in a subsequent post. “Perhaps the U.S. administration was dragged into it. Here is what I do know: Iran will punish those who kill our children.”
Seyyed Ibrahim Mirkhayali, a municipal employee from Bandar Abbas, was also at the school gate. His nine-year-old daughter, Zeinab, a fourth-grade student, was killed in the bombing.
“I was at work when my wife called and told me that the girls’ primary school in Minab had been bombed. I could not process what I was hearing at first. Then I left immediately and drove to the school,” Mirkhayali told Drop Site. When he arrived he found a large crowd of parents standing outside. Some were crying. Others stood in heavy silence.
“The atmosphere was terrifying and catastrophic. The parents were in a deadly silence, filled with fear and dread for their daughters. We did not know who had gotten out and who was still under the rubble,” he said.
He said news seeped out gradually from inside the school as search and rescue operations continued. Every name announced changed the fate of an entire family.
“How long are we going to live like this? Why can’t the United States and Israel reach an agreement with Iran and end this war? What happened is a crime,” he said. “Since the last war we have not lived a stable life in our country because of the United States and Israel.”
The family waited through the afternoon. Near sunset, they were informed that Zeinab was among the dead. “We stayed until her body was brought out from under the rubble,” he said. Her body was largely intact. “But her head was crushed by falling stones from the building. That is what killed her.”
An ambulance took the body to the hospital. The family began the legal process of obtaining a burial permit. “We are waiting for the permits. The burial is expected tomorrow,” he said.
Mirkhayali recounted how Zeinab had memorized the Quran and was preparing to compete in a recitation competition in Tehran in two months. “I had a great dream for my daughter. She was hardworking and outstanding, and she had memorized the book of God. Her participation in the competition was a source of pride for all of us. My dream died with her.”
Iranian state media, citing the Red Crescent, on Saturday evening said at least 201 people had been killed across the country and more than 700 injured.
Iranians gather at Palestine Square carrying Iranian flags, chanting anti-U.S. and anti-Israel slogans to protest the attacks by the United States and Israel in Tehran, the capital of Iran, on February 28, 2026. Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images.
The scene in Tehran
Several hours after President Donald Trump announced the launch of the war in a taped statement, Iran’s National Security Council issued a statement, assuring residents of Tehran that food supplies were stable but advising those who wished to leave the capital to do so, while urging them to avoid traffic congestion. The council’s reasoning, according to the statement, was to prevent a repeat of the mass flight that occurred during the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran in June, when hundreds of thousands fled the capital to Turkey and to other Iranian cities including Gilan, Qom, and Isfahan, and Israeli strikes on those convoys killed dozens.
By the time the statement was issued, the exodus had already begun. Tehran’s main roads and highways filled with cars. Families loaded luggage onto rooftops or piled it between seats. Horns blared continuously. Passengers shouted into phones trying to reach relatives. Children cried. Women wept openly. Gas stations descended into chaos with growing queues of cars as fuel ran out within minutes at some locations. Nearby shops and small markets were emptied of food, water, and medicine as residents bought whatever they could carry, fearing supply disruptions or further strikes in the hours ahead.
University students from outside Tehran, those studying in the capital but from other provinces joined the flight. Some ran to catch buses. Others drove themselves, laptops and notebooks thrown into bags alongside whatever personal items they could grab.
Not everyone fled. At Palestine Square, one of Tehran’s most politically charged public spaces, scores of Iranians gathered to protest the strikes. They raised Iranian flags and portraits of Supreme Leader Khamenei and former commander Qassem Soleimani. They burned photographs of Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This story was published in collaboration with Egab.
