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.
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.
