Buoyant blog of septuagenarian 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 annual Purdy Country LitFests (PurdyFests), events literary and politikal, and pics, amid swirling currents of earth magick and shamanism. Read in 119 countries last week - 22,924 readers in June.
Announcing the Advent of The Banished Poets Society.
Some of the founding members include Becky Alexander, April Bulmer, James Deahl, Katherine L. Gordon, Andreas Gripp.
No fees required, no costly contests or arranged readings. What you will receive is a monthly printed newsletter with every contributor's work published in that month, mailed to them each month. Poets are free to read their newsletters in whatever setting they choose.
We are hoping for poems that represent all cultures: Palestinian, Jewish, immigrants of every culture, black and indigenous poets who need their voices heard, the marginally suppressed in a tough economy, those who yearn to find their unique places, their own spirits and meaning in a challenging era. We hope to reflect the true spirit of the turbulent 21st, the glory of its diversity in loving and living. Poetry is a universal language as is music. Your work will not be channelled or changed to suit the opinions of others. Just express it beautifully.
It won't be boring, it might be startling, but it might open the door to the harsh reality and sometimes wonder around us. It is time that we allowed our poetry to do that.
You are a welcome member now. Just a poem a month and you will get a newsletter. Please send me your return address for the mailing.
We have to change the current stagnant poetry scene and hear from suppressed and side-lined poets, no fees, this is my work of the heart for all of us. We need
diverse points of view, all cultures. You are certainly a new era poet. I am well Chris Hugs from Katherine.
the precautionary and polluter pays principles and
intergenerational equity.
With a review of the Canada–U.S.–Mexico trade agreement
approaching, some have suggested that Mexico and Canada
should each pursue bilateral agreements with the U.S. But
this would further empower the U.S. and go against the two
other countries’ interests. The reliability of the U.S. as a trade
partner, as well as its trustworthiness as a member of the
international community, has collapsed. Pursuing trade
relations with a rogue superpower such as the U.S. will
substantially weaken Canada’s national resilience to
systemic shocks.
Canada’s renewed trade policy should prioritize economic justice and environmental sustainability by adhering to forward-thinking guiding principles.
But it does present a historic opportunity. Rather than launching a regressive nationalism based on reinvesting in a deceptive and declining boom-and-bust fossil fuel industry that has unfairly profited off the struggling working class to the benefit of its executives and shareholders, Canada must strengthen relations with long-standing and new trade partners — the European Union and Mexico as well as the Global South and emerging economies.
The wealth embedded in this approach is immense: new renewable energy markets, stronger domestic industries and a leading role in a global economy rooted in environmental justice and co-operation. By aligning its trade approach with the aim of reforming global economic structures to promote equitable development and reduce global disparities, Canada can forge a flourishing and just trade policy.
Canada’s renewed trade policy should prioritize economic justice and environmental sustainability by adhering to forward-thinking guiding principles. These include respecting Indigenous sovereignty, reinvesting wealth in local and Indigenous economies and eliminating tariffs on environmental goods and services. New trade agreements should define and phase out harmful fossil fuel subsidies to eliminate market distortions that favour carbon-intensive sectors, promote eco-labelling and implement periodic environmental impact assessments.
Canada has a unique opportunity to reclaim its leadership on the global stage.
A renewed trade approach should also emphasize transparency, public participation and inclusive governance in trade negotiations, allowing for meaningful participation of civil society groups and Indigenous rights-holders. This approach should support lifting trade barriers on green technologies, advancing climate change adaptation and collaborating with developing nations in sustainable trade. It should further promote environmental justice, workers’ rights in informal economies and ethical supply chains that respect human rights and environmental protections.
As the world faces new challenges from the U.S.’s growing trade isolationism and attacks on domestic, regional and international rules of law, Canada has a unique opportunity to reclaim its leadership on the global stage.
By embracing a new internationalism, Canada can strengthen its alliances with like-minded nations and set pathways for multilateralism and trade embedded in the protection of fundamental rights, including environmental human rights. This will not only reassert Canada’s historical role as a bridge-builder on the international stage but also enable us to lead in shaping a fairer, more cooperative world order amid shifting geopolitical dynamics.
By David Suzuki, with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Quebec and Atlantic Canada Director General Sabaa Khan
The David Suzuki Foundation is a registered charity in both Canada (BN 127756716RR0001) and the United States (94-3204049). We are located at 340-1122 Mainland Street, Vancouver, B.C., V6B 5L1, and we also have offices in Montreal and Toronto. Please visit our website for more information on how to contact us.
The next photo is just as shocking. A young boy, in absolute misery – terror and helplessness. Every day, at least ten children in Gaza lose one or both legs because of being bombed by the IDF. In the midst of the constant death horror, some smaller things, like stumps, fly under the radar.
In Gaza, more than 5,000 children have lost one or both legs because of Israel’s bombs, armed drones and shelling from tanks, in what Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, rector of Glasgow University and a British-Palestinian plastic surgeon calls the “biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history.”
But let’s jump back to Canada for a minute — what do the 555 doctors who proudly and publicly self-identify as Jewish, in DARA (Doctors against Racism and Antisemitism), have to say about this? As a reminder, these 555 Jewish doctors affiliated with the Temerty Faculty of Medicine (TFOM) at the University of Toronto, members of DARA, have pledged to guard against antisemitism, to ensure anyone that criticizes Israel will be punished, and want assurances that Jewish doctors should be able to work openly as Zionists. Of course, no one has ever stopped them from being open zionists. DARA’s founder or leader, Dr Phillip Berger, has publicly railed against the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, calling it “the epicentre of antisemitism at the University of Toronto.”
DARA opposes academic boycotts of Israel and “racial or geopolitical bias” –which means criticism of Israel. According to Toronto Sun columnist Lorrie Goldstein, Jewish doctors in DARA “stand firm with Jewish faculty and learners who live in fear in the TFOM.”
However, the silencing of doctors comes not from TFOM, but from DARA, which has worked to silence any Canadian doctors or health care workers who have criticized Israel for its genocide against the Palestinians. I’ve written several newsletters here, here and here about the disciplining and firing of some Ontario-based doctors such as Dr Yipeng Ge, and Dr Ben Thomson and even a fourth-year nursing student at the University of Manitoba.
If 90% of DARA doctors are parents, can they imagine their children as amputees?
My guess is that 90% or almost 500 of the 555 DARA doctors are parents themselves. Can any of them imagine their son or daughter lying in a bed, suffering with two amputations? Can any DARA doctor imagine living under a plastic sheet for almost two years, sleeping on the broken concrete surrounding a half-destroyed hospital – and being the target of a two-tonne bomb, or their families victims of a deadly firestorm created by attacks of Israel’s armed drones? Your son loses one or both legs. Your daughter is shot in the head by an IDF sniper. Today’s news is that each day, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) target a particular part of the Palestinians’ bodies – child or adult — such as the head, the legs, or the genitals.
Dr Nick Maynard, who has served as a surgeon in Gaza for 15 years, says he and other doctors have observed clusters of similar injuries — head wounds one day, abdominal wounds the next — raising questions about the intent behind the shootings. Yesterday, Dr Maynard said,
“[This] is beyond coincidence. The clustering of symptoms is what makes it so dramatic. And it is something that we at all levels — ER doctors, general surgeons, urology surgeons, neurosurgeons — have all recognized –this clustering of injuries.”
“. . . a form of tactical mutilation; a macabre design in which civilian bodies become test beds for ballistic research. It is a forensic tableau, a pattern that unfolds like a grisly liturgy. Neurosurgeons prepare for a flood of cranial trauma. Then, as if on cue, it pivots. The intestines next. The genitals. The spine. This is not the fog of war. This is the calculus of cruelty.”
Can one of the 555 Jewish doctors imagine his or her partner. or 12-year-old son (or grandson) walking for a day to get to the food distribution point, then to queue for hours for one 10 kg bag of flour and two tins of beans? Only to be killed, like 92 Palestinians on Sunday and over 1,000 Palestinians who have gathered to seek food aid since 1 June, by targeted IDF (and GHF) gunfire.
On Twitter, one DARA pediatrician posted a cartoon of the Road Runner and the words “beep beep motherfucker” – lauding the Israelis for the exploding pagers which killed 12 and injured 2,800 – mainly in Lebanon last fall.
How is it that a pediatrician, presumably someone who loves children– or at least wants to treat, cure and comfort children– can take such delight in the wanton injury to children, many of whom were victims of the pager blowups in Beirut? Indeed, two children died and scores were injured.
Is there any humanitarian response to the genocide in Gaza by DARA or by the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO)? Not at all. Everything is about THEM. Everything is about silencing the truth about Israel’s starving, bombing and incinerating Palestinians.
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed from an Israeli army bombardment of Gaza, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City Tuesday, July 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
“Right before Shabbat, there was talk in our doctor’s group chat, our WhatsApp group, that there was this article that was published online at first called “The Day the Pagers Exploded.” … I looked it up online, and the article was submitted by a Lebanese physician in respect to a day that she was working in a clinic when she was caring for patients who were injured in the pager attack, which very clearly were Hezbollah patients, a recognized terrorist entity by the Government of Canada since 2002. This article talks about caring for these patients. At the end, she says something which I found extremely objectionable, where she says their stories should be heard about their resilience, denial, faith, indoctrination.”
Dr Kalin was furious – in the interview he says he’s not upset with what Israel is doing, and the murders of likely more than 100,000 Palestinian civilians. He is upset that a “Lebanese physician” (code for an antisemite) published an article about caring for patient victims of the Pager blowups—some of whom may have been in Hizbollah. Kalin all but spits out, “We are talking about courageous Hezbollah fighters in a Canadian family medicine journal, and this has no place.”
And that’s not all. A third of Ontario’s Jewish medical practitioners say they are considering leaving Canada because of what they call antisemitism in their field, according to a Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO) survey in Dec. 2024. Though short on specifics on antisemitism, 31% of the 1,000 Canadian Jewish doctors, medical students, and residents surveyed by JMAO are thinking of abandoning the country! Before Oct 2023, only 1% said they wanted leave Canada. One doctor noted, “I feel I no longer belong in Canada and may need to flee,”
Really? Flee Canada? For where?
540 dead Palestinian children for every dead Israeli child
Do the 555 Jewish doctors in DARA dare to say that the shootings are acceptable because Israel has a right to defend itself – even against children and babies? That since perhaps a total of 37 Israeli children were taken hostage or killed on 7 Oct—that justifies Israel killing 20,000 children in the next 20 months. 540 dead Palestinian kids for every 1 Jewish child. Does that sound right? Why worry, as Gideon Levy a columnist at Haaretz noted sarcastically on the weekend, “No Jews were hurt.” That’s the key – not one Jew hurt (except for the brave 887 IDF soldiers sacrificed). Ask one of the 555 Jewish doctors. For a list, contact me. I wonder if even one would admit to Israel’s—the country whose military they defend right or wrong — genocide.
Cartoon at the top: From Cradle to Grave is a Journey of a Day, by Joe Sacco (6-24).
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