Meet Frank Barningham, recipient of the YMCA 2008 Peace Medallion:

The NATO bombing of Kosovo got Frank Barningham started on a peace vigil that has continued weekly for nine years in Durham.

Except on occasional Saturdays when illness prevents it, Barningham, 75, spends an hour on the sidewalk wearing a placard he made in March of 1999 that reads: “War is not a solution.” He talks with anyone who’ll listen and listens to anyone who’ll talk.

Barningham’s “lifetime dedication” to peace activism earned him the 2008 YMCA Peace Medallion. Y officials presented the award to Barningham on Thursday before an audience of about 50 people at the Owen Sound Family Y boardroom. (Owen Sound Sun Times)

I can somewhat admire the dedication but does anyone else besides me find this story deeply sad?

It's in the way you dress. The way you boogie down. The way you sign your unemployment check. You're a man who likes to do things your own way. And on those special odd-numbered Saturdays when driving is permitted, you want it in your car. It's that special feeling of a zero-emissions wind at your back and a road ahead meandering with possibilities. The kind of feeling you get behind the wheel of the Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition from Congressional Motors.

All new for 2012, the Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition is the mandatory American car so advanced it took $100 billion and an entire Congress to design it. We started with same reliable 7-way hybrid ethanol-biodeisel-electric-clean coal-wind-solar-pedal power plant behind the base model Pelosi, but packed it with extra oomph and the sassy styling pizazz that tells the world that 1974 Detroit is back again -- with a vengeance.

More from Iowahawk.

I caught a snippet of Michael Moore on Larry King last night and he was advocating this very thing. Barack Obama must do what Roosevelt did and take over the 'Big Three' as we are facing a national crisis. The government will be in charge.  Check this if you can handle the angry spittle:

I actually agree with him on a lot of his points until he gets to the complete government takeover part.

While the whole world pleads helplessness and grapples with the Somali pirate 'problem' one solution stands out in front of them all.

I don't really care that much but I do note that pretty much every candidate in the previous federal election campaigned on things are going to be different once we get in and then when they get in they vote in a comfortable pair of shoes to the Speakers Chair in the Canadian House of Commons.

Liberal MP Peter Milliken has been re-elected for the fourth consecutive term. We call this the $230,000 a year drag and I'm sure he fought hard every damn second.

 "You die Hayer man. You die like Gandhi woman,"

This coming Tuesday (November 18th) marks the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Tara Singh Hayer who was a journalist and editor of Vancouver's Indo-Canadian Times. He used his paper to attack his fellow Sikhs and regularily denounced the terrorist tactics of the Babbar Khalsa, the International Sikh Youth Federation and those tied in with the Air India bombings.

In 1986 they tried to kill him with a bomb.

In 1988 he was shot six times and left a paraplegic.

In 1998 they came again and shot him down in his garage and to date nobody has been charged because people connected to the case have a habit of turning up dead.

Tara Singh Hayer was the first journalist to be killed in Canada because of his work and in November 1999 the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) renamed their Press Freedom Award the Tara Singh Hayer Award. Kim Bolan (who radical Sikhs really seem to hate as well) continues to write about his murder:

The months leading up to the Hayer assassination were volatile ones for the Sikh community. Temple congregations across Metro Vancouver were torn between the remnants of the Sikh separatist movement and a new moderate faction that decried Khalistanis and demanded charges in unsolved cases like the Air India bombing.

Threats from a small minority of extremists were levelled frequently against Hayer and other moderate leaders in the months before his slaying.

One of them arrived by letter at The Sun newsroom on Dec. 23, 1997, saying Hayer would be killed if he did not stop criticizing Ripudaman Singh Malik, the Khalsa School founder who went on to be charged and acquitted in the Air India case.

"You die Hayer man. You die like Gandhi woman," the letter said, referring to the Oct. 31, 1984 assassination of India's Indira Gandhi.

But Dave Hayer said his dad never wavered, despite the risk to his life. He had tried to convince him to give up the paper just a few days before the murder to give some peace to his wife, who was constantly worried.

"I said, 'Maybe it is time to move on and let someone else write about Air India and terrorism and maybe they will leave you alone,'" Dave Hayer recalled.

"He said, 'Do you think someone else's life is less important than mine?'

And his mother, Baldev, urged her children to keep the paper going in their dad's memory, which they have done for the last decade. "She said, 'We are not going to stop the paper. They killed him to stop the paper.'"

They still get threats. They get targeted by hateful propaganda, but they continue. "We can't allow terrorism to win. We can't allow these criminals and terrorists to come over here and control the life of the rest of Canadians," Dave Hayer said. (Vancouver Sun)

Notable that there is still a faction out there somewhere that believe Tara Singh Hayer got what was coming to him but his families choice to continue on with the paper make his death no triumph for extremism.

As he approached the stage after completing a 15 minute solo while walking amongst a crowd of 2,500 people Buddy Guy broke his pick and flicked it out into the audience:

This was my third time seeing blues legend Buddy Guy and he rocked Calgary's Jack Singer Concert Hall. He strayed somewhat from his standard high intensity in your face non-stop blues riffing to do a little bit of story telling in between songs and inside of them. One of the highlights was when he brought in his opening act - Calgary's Lindsay Ell to jam on stage with him to his tune Who's Gonna Fill Them Shoes. Can you imagine the pressure? They had a little guitar war going on but she held her own even though it was obvious 72 year old Buddy Guy was holding back... and she knew it. She had a lot of balls to get up there and play.

He's taking the show to Edmonton Friday night and for those with tickets your in for a treat.

The Calgary Herald has a decent interview up with blues legend Buddy Guy who is performing in Calgary tonight:  

Blues guitar icon Buddy Guy still recalls being summoned to the office of Leonard Chess, the head of Guy's record label Chess Records back in the '60s, only to have the record executive bend over his desk and demand a "kick in his butt."

Guy, who's performing Thursday at the Jack Singer Concert Hall, doesn't say whether or not he delivered that kick, but truthfully it was warranted.

Even though Guy had been signed to the Chicago label since 1959, Chess seldom allowed the guitarist to be himself artistically.

Live, Guy was carving out a blisteringly heavy blues sound that would turn out to be tremendously innovative.

But Chess hated the direction Guy was going--he denounced it as pure noise--and he tried to mould the Louisiana born musician as a singer of R&B ballads and novelty soul tunes.

When the British Invasion got underway in the '60s, however, Chess began to see, or rather hear, the error of his ways.

Suddenly, young, white English rock bands like The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds and Cream were emerging, topping the charts with a sound that seemed somehow familiar to Chess.

When the record executive quizzed the young bands as to where they were getting these raw, powerful sounds from, he was horrified to be told they were coming from his own backyard.

"They were telling him, 'This is Buddy Guy's s----, man!," says the Grammy Award winning blues hero.

"(Chess) sent his people to my house and said, 'Go get that (expletive), 'cause he's been trying to sell us this stuff ever since we been here and we was too dumb to listen to him!' "

Back then Guy struggled with his career while the blues rockers he so profoundly influenced found fortune and fame that Guy hadn't even dreamt of.

But the acclaimed guitarist, now 72, says he never felt bitter when the likes of Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Jimi Hendrix found enormous success as rock stars while Guy himself was marginalized in the far less lucrative ghetto of blues music.

"All those guys are my friends," explains Guy.

"Without them you wouldn't be interviewing me now. They're the ones that went out and sold (the music).. . .

"They'd always be telling me, 'I got this from you and that from you.' But I'd say 'So what? I got mine from Lightnin' Slim and B. B. King.' "

Indeed, when asked if he feels like a pioneer of blues-based hard rock, Guy is humble, assigning credit to his own heroes.

"I still feel like every guitar player I know should have two Bs on their guitars. . . . (B. B. King is) the one that started squeezing and bending them strings because he couldn't learn how to use slide . . . and that's all me and everybody else is doing."

Another way in which Guy's influence was profoundly felt on the rock world was in his explosive showmanship.

To this day, Guy is known for travelling into the depths of the audience while jamming, having excited audience members strum his guitar while he coaxes wild solos from the fretboard.

"I got that from the late Guitar Slim," Guy says.

"He didn't have the wireless (guitars) and all the technology which I have now . . . but he had a 150-foot chord. . . .

"The first time I ever saw him, it was around 1955 and, when they introduced him all I heard was a guitar playing. I couldn't see nobody. Suddenly somebody walked through the door with Guitar Slim on their shoulders.

"I couldn't believe it. . . . Right then I said 'I sure wish I could play like B. B. King, but I'm gonna act like Guitar Slim.'

"When I left Louisiana for Chicago, the first thing I did was go to the store looking for a 150-foot chord."

Guy is currently touring in support of his latest album which was released earlier this year entitled Skin Deep.

No more needs to be said. I'll be sitting front row tonight enjoying whatever he has to offer. I've seen him command crowds of 15,000 to 150 and it doesn't change much. His life is the blues and his fans and that 72 year old can kick some major ass.

See you folks tomorrow.

Slightly belated but better then not forgetting completely:

Mitch Mitchell, the drummer for Jimi Hendrix was found dead today in a Portland, Oregon hotel.

A different salute then the usual:

Another feel good case for the Ontario Human Righteousness Commission to grab onto.