The ThinEdge

Letters to Mike - The News.

2007-07-21T03:35:00.002-07:00

What news do you check out?
Here are some good sites:

http://www.democracynow.org/ - I download their daily new hour.
http://www.truthdig.com/
http://www.alternet.org/
http://www.factcheck.org/
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/
http://mediamatters.org/and closer to home:

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/
http://thetyee.ca/

Rules and advice about information and news:

1) Just remember don’t just trust anyone (yes, even me).

2) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

3) The more sources of news you can get (even occasionally from the evil ones like CNN) the clear the truth will filter its way out.

4) If you listen to enough, you start to cross-reference stories; hear them from different biases and our of that you discover the truth is usually not what you have been told but somewhere in-between.

5) If someone suggest something big (9/11 was a Nazi Conspiracy), in your mind, assume its true and work out the implications. If those implications also are true then maybe its true but often most big things fail this test. For example – IF 9/11 was a Nazi Conspiracy, then the Nazi’s would be in power, we would be racially segregated and the Jews would be dead; none of this happed, so its most likely there was no Nazi Conspiracy involved in 9/11.

6) Use your head.

Letters to Mike - Bush is bad

2007-07-21T03:35:00.001-07:00

-- one thing is clear however bush has done more damage than any terrorist organization could ever have hoped for

Well, yes and YES! It is hard to believe that one administration (I don’t like giving Bush any credit, even the bad stuff) could be so ruinous to their own country, global peace and the concept of internationalism. The really interesting thing will be to see what happened in 2008. There should be 0% chance of the Republicans winning…well in a fair election. And even if the Dems win, who wins will be important(ish). Nader, Moore, Chomsky and others, make the point that because of the dollar-ocracy in the US, the Dems and Reps are really the same kind of party, just different colours. That why things were not really better (well again, it’s hard to comprehend how bad Bush is) under Clinton.

Letters to Mike - the apparent rise of the Canadian $

2007-07-21T03:34:00.001-07:00

-Canada’s dollar could be worth even more but Canada might deliberately keep it lower for trade

No and yes. The dollar, although doing well compared to the Yank dollar, is not doing as badly and the US $ when compared to the British pound, Euro, Yen (less so on this one) and the Yuan. We are so infected with American Business (your province being the worst offender) and dependent of their trade, that if they go down, we go down. Until someone in Canada shift us to the left or to Europe or to China and away for the US, only then do we have a chance.

Letters to Mike - currencyin TNWO

2007-07-21T03:33:00.000-07:00

-- once new world order is established I think the euro dollar will be the currency of choice

Why the Euro? The Yuan Renminbi (Chinese currency) maybe. I think the US has mucked things up in Europe that the Union will be weak and ineffective for at least another generation or three. Remember the US push for Kosovo independence, Missile Defence in Easter Europe, and the resurgence of Imperial Russia under Putin.

Letters to Mike - Word getting out

2007-07-21T03:32:00.000-07:00

-- the govs are worried that if word gets out that they will surely be foiled.

Well, I think, if there is a BIG conspiracy, they have enough control over the media (print, TV, movies, and the internet) that they would worry about anything. IF a web site was too dangerous; it would have sudden virus attack, or their server would go down or worse. IF they did 9/11, “Loose Change” would not be a problem.

Letters to Mike - Rendition and Detention

2007-07-21T03:31:00.000-07:00

-- Soon one won't be able to speak out against the government. I have found some great info online.

Well, I can’t argue with you about that. You remember in the US, they had those illegal phone taps…to ferret out “terrorists”, I find it inconceivable that Bush (or at least Rove) did not listen into the Democrats calls. Bush should have lost in 2004; it was as if they had inside information.
To add to your nightmares, Harper is a Bush wannabe. I have no doubts that his gang are using similar dirty tricks. Fortunately, for some weird reason, our system still seems slightly less susceptible to US style campaigning…for now (I think).

Letters to Mike - U.S. Law (and ours too)

2007-07-21T03:30:00.002-07:00

--- U.S. Law states that they can confiscate anyone's dwelling even if they are a law biding citizen.

Those laws have always existed. Imminent domain, they can do it here too. The one that scares the hell out me is the rendition program. To kidnap people from anywhere and send to torture camps. What is even worse is the ability of the government (similar laws exist in Canada and UK) to “detain” people on suspicion of wrong doing (evidence of which is “top secrete” so you have to trust those who locked you up that evidence even exists and is creditable. When you start torturing people, anything they say is useless and lies). That they can keep you locked up indefinitely; with out trial, appeal, or hope.

Letters to Mike - USA - The New Rome?

2007-07-21T03:30:00.001-07:00

Well, I have heard some people say that what we may be listening is not the end of the US, but the end of the Republic and the birth of the Empire – just like Rome. Things in Rome, at the end of the republic, where so bad, things in such turmoil, that the people and politicians were willing to hand over everything to anyone who promised to bring prosperity and security. Sound familiar?

Letters to Mike - the Killing conspiracy

2007-07-21T02:51:00.000-07:00

-- Anyone gets in their way "Wack'em" i.e.: Lincoln, both Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe etc.

Well, I don’t know about the “wack’em”. Sure you might say that Lincoln, and Kennedy MAY have been trouble (to who?) and were killed. But I think Marilyn is a stretch (she had real life problems) and why not include Elvis, John Lennon or Jim Morrison? And if they would kill Kennedy why not Eisenhower? Or Ralph Nader? There are too many people they should have killed that they didn’t to make me think of the big “C”. One or two, maybe…sure but not a multi-century one, the evidence nor conclusions hold out (i.e., if they were wack’em people, we should be living in a Big Brother state by now)

Letters to Mike - U.S. theory

2007-07-21T02:48:00.000-07:00

Well first I would point out that “THEM” or “the puppet masters” (include Bush et all is you wish) are divided into three main groups.

1) The Neo-liberals – These are the capitalist. The ones who want to “shrink the size of government down so you could drown in the bath-tub”.
With what you said about saying the opposite of what you do; the “No child left behind” legislation intended to help child poverty of course reduced money given to help children because Bush did not give it any money in his budgets.

They push for the big tax cuts, global trade agreements that basically turn everyone (including the Americans and us) into slave labour. They are also responsible for the resistance against the move to reduce climate change. They try and destroy environmental and labour protections.

They are the ones Prez. Eisenhower warned people about when he left office. (Documentary – “Why we fight” 2006). They support the Neo-cons because they see money in the New America project. The also find it easier to manipulate a totalitarian state than a democratic one. They support the Theo-cons because they both like the idea of a repressive social order completely obedient to the power – which they see as the corporation if church/state garb.

http://www.thecorporation.com/
http://www.adbusters.org/home/

2) The Neo-cons – these are the ones who want the police state. Who believe the US is destine to rule the world in Pax America.

They push for the military action in Iraq. Want to push it for Iran. They got Bush et all, to tear up arms reduction treaties, turn the UN (not that it needed a lot of help) into nothing more than a debating society.

It is funny that the patriot act was already written BEFORE 9/11. They had it ready. The creation of what people are now calling the Imperial Presidency, when the US Prez, does what he want with none of the checks & balances (i.e. the other branches of government – Congress and Judiciary) they yanks are always said made their system so superior.

They support the Neo-Liberal because they want the support for their expansionist plans and they thing capitalism is a slave to the US (in this they are very wrong, capitalism have not friends). They support the Theo-cons because they can provide the “ground troops” as in the electorate. They provide half of the police that maintains the totalitarian state.

http://www.americanempireproject.com/
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/

3) The Theo-Cons – these are the people who want Armageddon. The ones who read and believe the Left Behind series of books. Bush is one of these, he believe he is agent of god, that he can no now wrong because he is divinely lead. Him and Blaire.

They attempt to illuminate free thought. They envy countries like Afghanistan and Iran because of their theocracies. They wish to remove the separation of church and state. They push policies that repress societies and make the docile and controllable by the church elite.

They support the other two because they believe no matter what they may give up in the short run, what gold they may give to Caesar, in the end (and they believe this to be sooner – like the next 20-50yrs) the apocalypse will straighten everything out. Their prime goal is to set the stage for Armageddon – start it if they need to. This explains why they, more than the other groups, support Israel as much as they do. According to their beliefs, once the Jews control the land of Abraham, the end of times will come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theocon
http://www.samharris.org
http://www.slate.com/?id=2165033
http://richarddawkins.net/

Letters to Mike...9/11

2007-07-21T02:47:00.000-07:00

Well, in the short, I don’t think it was planned by Bush or his crew. I do think they milked it for all its worth. I think they “let” it happen – when you an ideologue you get tunnel vision; Bush was more worried that rich and the righteous to worry about “foreigners”.
I do think it’s possible that elements in the US (CIA, Commandos or just some nuts) may have facilitated the attack. There is a lot of “evidence” that it was not just a 4 planes crashing. I have seen a lot of the docs on it. I think the biggest reasons I don’t think it was a US conspiracy (obviously it was an Islamism one…they apparently drove the planes) because of 2 things.
One, I don’t have confidence they could pull it off. I mean they are just incompetent. And building on that, those involved would have spilled the beans. That kind of a secrete, regardless of its intent (more so in how it’s been a disaster for the US) would not have stayed secrete – where is the guy who says, “I actually flew the plane or planted the explosives”?
Secondly, if it is true, that means there is a cabal in control of the US, the most powerful and belligerent entity on earth, who would think of nothing in killing thousands of their own to forward their aims (not to mention, that if they could kill thousand, why not kill the “loose change” guy and his fell debunkers?). If such a group were in control, you would expect thing to be more…ordered in the US. The US winning wars. If this cabal was so great in pulling off 9/11 they seem to have screwed the pooch on everything else.
I am more inclined to think that maybe passive help (i.e., not looking for bombs or suspects) may have happened. Not to instigate 9/11 but to instigate something – I suspect Bush, at least, had no idea the twin towers would the target. But once it did happen, the Project for the New American Century group (http://www.newamericancentury.org/) and those of a like mind, jumped at the opportunity. From there the Iraq was came from and the Patriot act. Ironically a second group also took advantage, they libertarian conservatives of Chaney, who jumped on the opportunity to, as you put it, bankrupt the US and destroy the government and replace it with the “watch man” government (only responsible for law and defence – for every and anything else, people are on their own.. like health, school, roads….etc.)
I heard a funny thing the other day. Someone said Bush was really an anarchist who is undercover. He has infiltrated the US to as to destroy the state. I agree that the Bush (and the puppeteers behind him) is intending to get rid of all social programs by bankrupting the US. They, neo-liberals, know they could not get popular support to get rid of social programs, like Old Age Security (although they did try) so if you cant get it voted out, just remove the money that would pay for it…legislation by attrition.
But look at me ramble on…you get me started. Well I will end it here. Peace, joy and happiness

The vision of time...

2007-03-06T22:42:00.000-08:00

What is “Visual” time?
Up to know we have dealt with time as either immaterial or at least trans-dimensional. There is however the school of thought championed by Aristotle that saw time not as a thing but an effect. To say some one has passed through time, we say they have aged. To age is to grow/decay. To Aristotle time was merely and solely the physical changes experience. If one could somehow be placed one twin into a “stasis field”, like mentioned in science fiction, a field were all physical operations were suspended, for a period of 150 years. The stasis twin would leave this field completely unchanged from the time entered whereas the other would be long since decayed. One could say, from this experiment that the stasis twin was timeless while in field.

The problem with visual time

As stated with our twin experiment, it appears that on twin is timeless. If we could replicate the effect but with a pill or some other thing such that the twin could interact with the world, would it still follow that they were timeless? If nothing existed in the universe but a lump of coal, does it follow that until the coal changes or some spontaneous creation occurs that the universe described is outside of or beyond time? It would seem apparent that if one substituted the coal with oneself that we would still “feel” time inspire of the absence of change.
Subjective to the non-stasis fielded twin

The Measure of Time...

2007-03-06T22:38:00.000-08:00

What is “Measured” time?

Another way of looking at time is to see it as a relative relations between two arbitrary point. For example Monday to Sunday, we say the period of time they represent is a week. Further, we state that there is a progression of days such that we know Monday always proceeds Tuesday and is in turn followed by Wednesday. We can tell where in time these events occur independent of our personal sense of time. This concept can be extended to clocks, colanders or geological epochs. These measures can also be less technical; they can apply to the idea birth, growth, decay and death.

Science of time

The need to measure time can be seen as the quantification of time or time as science – Chronology. In order to study time; it is necessary to create some form of independent scale that non-self’s can understand. As stated in “felt” time is very self-centered; so giving each “time event” a label allows scientific study. For example we can say with pure accuracy that Augustus Caesar died on August 19, 14 AD and that five hundred years later, September 4 476 AD, his empire was gone from Western Europe. Very precise and it does not fall into the ambiguity one date meaning two things as we found with “past” in “felt” time. This being said, we do find that it has a skeleton in it closet.

Problems with “Measured” time

Dependency of the “Measured” time

Have said that we can create a system of labelling such that relationships between events can be reasoned independent of personal experience, we are left with the question; knowing that the Cambrian period is before the Holocene is meaningless or at least limited in meaning if we can not relate it to now. In order for the series or measure to have meaning we mush be able to apply the “felt” time standard. We must know if an event is a past event or present or future. If we lack that information, the scale that we use has no base of reference, no real meaning at all. If I were to state that the first moon colony was built on April 1, 2150 and that the 9/11 happened on September 11, 2001; could you by virtue of the dates know which was real or which speculation? No, unless you have a now, we are unable to interpret what was and what could be.
This realization that in order to understand what dates mean we must have an understanding of the now but in measured time there is no now; could not be. Each event is labelled with a relative term yet “now” passes over them all. The now can not be part of the scale. So for the scale to have any meaning we must affix it to something beyond.

Duck Time

Time is our river, and we can gauge it flow by having a friend place an infinite number of sequentially number ducks at regular intervals. We then sit back, at some point down river we observe the ducks pass by like sands through the hourglass. Our Duck Time, though, is seen to pass only because we are external to the river. If we were in the river, one of our ducks, we would see no time pass at all as the only duck would be ourselves. But if we are on the bank watching the ducks pass by, then we our outside the river of time; we are a form of hyper-time.
Lets continue this Duck Time experiment, let us say that the observer on the back change every dawn and dusk. So our observers are themselves measurable but only if we again introduce another fixed reference, the sun; resulting in hyper-hyper time. This fixed sequence can become quickly an infinite regression with no necessary termination - reductio ad absurdum.
Thus, “measured” time seems unable to account for time and ultimately rests on the presupposition of “felt” time. There, however another more physical sense of time; that found in causation.

The Feel of Time

2007-03-06T00:47:00.000-08:00

What is “Felt” time
What do we think when we say we are “in” time? Often, when pressed, we say that time is felt as things that are past, present or future. If someone asks you about an event, your first instinct is to determine if it is in the past, present or future. Our language is predicated on “tense” wordage. That our sense of the past is what we remember. Our sense of the present is what we are experiencing and the future is what we will feel. This is a very primal way of seeing time; it requires no culture, no language or even a universe. It is the fundamental way we organize our life.
The future is man
We grant that most thinking things and even some not so thinking, have memory. Simple Pavlovian reaction or instinct shows most life has a “past”, and similarly to be classified alive it must in come way participate in a now, but it is, for the most part, man that we grant the special providence of for-sight. The ability to, not only plan, but to conserve of a present that is not “of the is-now” but “of the to-come”. Academic philosophers refer to this type of “time” as “A” series. It is the idea that time is seem only in terms of what it past, what is present and what if future. It is time as we feel it. This works for our internal conversations, but to transmit ideas of time to others we often use “measured” time.

Problems with “Felt” time

Incoherency of time
The problem with “Felt” time is two fold. First, the renowned philosopher J.M.E. McTaggart believed there an intrinsic contradiction in the idea of past present and future as terms to delineate time. The basic premise of his argument lies in the fact that all the terms can be applied to any event, thus rendering them meaningless or at least inconsistent. Any event, for example, in the present may also be said to be a past event in the future. Thus the label for this even would be a future past present event; thus the terms seem non-specific.
Relativistic nature of time
Another problem with “felt” time is the relativistic nature of it. Although many events may have a similar perspective with regards to past, present or future; this is a coincidence and not a necessity. The fact that my elderly neighbour eats dinner at 4pm. I eat at 6pm and the high school kids eat at 8pm. When I am eating, the neighbour’s dinner is in the past and the kids in the future, yet by their perspective, when neighbour eats, my dinner is in the future and yet the kid’s dinner is in a different future. Finally when the kids eat, as similar relativist effect occurs when my dinner is now past, and the neighbour’s dinner is also past but a different past than mine.
Mental convenience or irrelevant
We are left with two conclusions, first the idea of what is past or present or future depends on the observer. This idea of time is truly personal and as such looses meaning beyond the self. If we are to find a time beyond out own psychology then this concept seems to fail. Secondly, even if we somehow concede that this time may more than mental convenience, if is a term at best of negation not definition. To say something is past does nothing more than rule out it being in the others. We have shown that two events are “past” but not he same “past”, leading us to say that either the term is incoherent or irrelevant.
Either way, it seems “Felt” time is at best a mental convenience, not a thing of the universe but a construct of our minds. Perhaps is we apply a scale to time, measure it in such a way that it become common or independent of the observer. In this way perhaps we can find time.

2007-02-01T11:04:00.000-08:00

Lost land of the free....

I have never been a big fan of the USA. Its history of hypocrisy and self-centeredness has made it bully of the community of national. But this recent event of the Aqua-teen Hunger Force advertising campaign and the response to it by the city of New York, the national media and the population in general has shown a major c-change in the USA. Perhaps to be fair, others have been talking about since 9/11. The world bully has turned into the scared little girl.

I think its a landmark not because it is another incidence of the the paranoia of the Americans, seeing bogeyman around every corner. Most of the other events (well all i know of) have been plausible, exaggerated but plausible. Having seen the LED signs that were posted around Boston (and other cities (apparently) with no panic) i have to say it would take a tremendous act of will to imagine them as any form of "bomb". Even so, after investigating one of them i becomes irrational to continue with this mindset, and continue it did.

One of the most defining elements of the USA is its idea of freedom of expression. It has survived attacks from all sides and for a plethora of reasons. But i see that this advertising campaign has, implicitly if not legally (its too early to say it will be legally restricted), limited this freedom to things that do not create a fear, however abstract, in the government and the paranoid fringe (I wonder who started this fear-hunt?). Its is ironic that the perpetrator of the greatest injury on the USA is the USA. The terrorists that hit the twin towers, i am curtain, believed there attack would "bring the USA to its senses" (that it could not inflict pain with impunity). What it did was drive the USA deeper into its psychos, causing tit to lash-out not only outwardly to inwardly.

I hope USA, as a government, as a nation and as people, collectively seek counselling. What started out as a mild personality disorder is rapidly turning into psychotic behavior. The worst thing the world needs is a insane super power, we have seen it before, and Nazi Germany nearly drove the world into the abyss. Let us hope the USA find treatment or self destructs (as the Nazis did).

Mataphysics...

2007-01-28T01:02:00.000-08:00

There are three parts to "our" world. There is teh material universe, the genetic self and the abstract universe.

The material universe exists independent of ourselfs, it is the trees in the cambrian forest; i have no way of knowing they exist but i acknowledge that there is a world exest extrernal to self.

The genetic self is the only material reality that we may know directly, that exists both independent of self and as an extetion of self in the material universe. The mind knows all of the external world via the genetic self, it has no capacity to experience the material directly but only thoguht the mediatio of the genetic self (the flesh)

The Abstract universe is that which thought existes, and only thought. It is the solipsistic universe, the simulation in the machine. Like a simulation, if may seem real to the object running the program. Does the computer know the WarCraft is a game or is it reality to it. Optical regonition software approximate the idea of perserving sendoriy data from the opital organ (the hardware of the computer is the gentetic self) of a room (the materail universe) and seeing a room, a table, a world (the abstract univerve)

It is this the abstract mind that creates qualia. Even if we assume (and we can only do this, although with much confidence) there is a persitant substancance material world external to us and our experance, We all sence it thought our own unigue biologal organs, which will never give a complete duplicative redision. BUT even if we assume that what we experence is a duplicative one, our manifistation of that data in our abstract universe, the only on we KNOW, the experance of that data will be the unigue interpritation of our solipisitic world, created not by will but but the continual accumulation, interpitatotion, manipulation, deterioration and temporal existance. There is no absolute experance of Dog, everyone has a unique and particular abstract consept of dog, the product of there unique path though time and space.

So why is it possible people can communicate? if the abstract exist only in the mind, they how can anyone learn or transmit them?

The pains of private healthcare…pt1

2007-01-09T17:24:00.000-08:00

I welcome the opportunity, if I may take it from Louise, to provide first the main reasons “trying” private health care, at least on the models currently proposed have/will not work. Then I will provide an alternative (not that I assume my ideas are the best, but they have yet to be tried…)

First there are three main aspects of private delivery health care. The US model, which most of us are aquatinted with, is composed of these fundamental parts: private health care providers (the doctors et all) using private healthcare facilities (Hospitals and the like) paid by private healthcare users (you and me sooner or later). This model has been tired (i.e. the US) and the Americans are desperately trying to change their system and adopt ours. If you are wealthy in the US, their system works but beyond the top 10% the system begins to fail. The idea that one illness, pregnancy, or injury has the potential of stripping you of your house and saving is one that faces most Americans every day…and you would want that to be tried here? There is also the secondary issue; let say you have insurance and you are feeling ill. Do you go to the doctor or wait hoping it will go away on its own? If you go to the doctor a claim is made on your insurance; such claim will cause an increase (often extreme increase of 100-400%) of your premiums eventually driving insurance beyond your grasp. So, you want to ration your visits, only go when it is absolutely necessary…but your not a doctor, how do you know when you need to go so often when your body forces a visit the condition is far worse, costing more money (something for profit healthcare likes). The fundamental problem with this system is the primary goal of all concerned is not health but money.

I will continue this in a future post where I will discuss the individual problems of Private Providers (Self-employed doctors et all, pharmaceutical companies), private facilities (for profit hospitals and the like), private management (non-profit hospitals run by for profit companies) and private funding (User fees, private insurance, government funding, and the variations)

I will them provide (as requested) a solution to the “problem” of our current healthcare system.

A stink about Maple Leaf Foods???

2007-01-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

When I read the article on the CBC website Maple Leaf ends Chinese worker program over job fees I must confess to having mixed feeling. It brings up several important issues. One, the element from which the others spawn, in why, with an unemployment rate of ~4.5% do we need to “import” labour? They employees in question are apparently paid at least $15/hr. With a minimum wage of only $7.60, it would seem to be a finically lucrative. From what I know from my contacts in Brandon, the work is steady and full time. There is not the problem you get at places such as Wal-Mart (and the like) where no one gets enough hours to constitute a “full-time” job. I am also under the impression that job security is good. It well paid, steady work so we must ask ourselves why do “Canadians” not want to work at Maple Leaf Foods’ pork processing plant in Brandon, Manitoba?

Well there is more to work than the money. I have lived in Brandon a great many years and can attest that although it is by all accounts a small city (large town) is has no slums…no rampant crime…it is a very typical place to live. So location is not a detriment. Even if we assumed that the people of Brandon were very xenophobic, it would not explain why they would not accept their “own” people (i.e. they are more likely to accept other Canadians or Manitobans than imported labour). So, it’s not the money, it’s not the locations, it’s not the people…what about the working conditions? Well, I have done some cursory research into the matter, and although there are many environmental problems regard to the farming of hogs and many concerns over the monopolistic tendencies of the company, I find no issues with working at the plant. Some one could correct me on this, I believe the repetitive nature of the work, the handling of dangerous tools and extended working periods would make for a bad job site, none seem to have raised the issue in a vocal manner.

So we are left with the mystery as to why Maple Leaf Foods needs to import workers, I can not say. But I did notice on thing in the research, I found that a study done as part of the social impart of the plant, done between September 1999 and November 1999 (based on employment numbers compared to those reported in the analysis). In this survey it makes the claim that 73% of the employees were local to Brandon and region and that only 1 employee claims to have moved to Brandon to work in the plant.

Later it mentions these “Quick Maple Leaf Foods Brandon facility facts”
• 1300+ employees
• Approximately 44% of the current Maple Leaf Foods Brandon employees are foreign workers (95% historical retention rate for foreign workers).
• Approximately 25% of the current Maple Leaf Foods Brandon employees are aboriginal workers.
• Based on known demographics for current foreign workers, we anticipate the arrival of approximately 1400 foreign family members in the next 24 months as applications for landed immigrant status are approved.

From this we get that approximately 572 employees are foreign (the studies that lead to the approval of the plant seems a bit off on this) of which they expect that (historically) that can hope to retain 540 or so. Meaning they will need 30 or even let say 100 replacements. But if they expect 1400 new immigrant works in the next 24 months they either plan to double the size of the plant (which they can not having reached a hog production limit that has forced them to reduce the hours of plant operation) or that the next 1400 employees will have a retention rate of 7% (a little less than the “historic” rate).
I guess my point is that things do not add up. There is a bad small to the operation and I suspect the workers are the ones who suffer. What if the word?

An election in the wind…

2007-01-04T23:54:00.000-08:00

Well, it started with the election of Dion, then the timely departure from provincial politics of former Premier Bernard Lord, and now the inevitable pre-election cabinet shuffle. I think that historically small “C” conservatives are more likely to vote and therefore cold weather favours the Conservative Party. Add to these signs, we have the apparent manoeuvring of Harper of stroking the Quebec vote. The last election showed that the Conservatives, at present, have reached their high-water mark in Ontario, so the area Harper is looking at for grow will not be at the expense of the Liberals but the Bloc. The Bloc has also reached a turning point. After the extension of life given it by the Sponsorship scandal, the Bloc see its end, and so does Harper. Harper, though, has to walk a fine line between sucking up to the Quebecquer yet not alienate their western (anti-east) base. A tight rope he does not want to walk long.

Sooooo, with all this being said, it seem to be that I would be surprised if there was not an election call prior to the end of February. The only thing preventing an election in the next couple of months is a concerted effort by the opposition to keep Harper in power. Politics makes for stranger comedy than any stand-up routine. An election late in February (more likely early March) will bring a Liberal Minority Government with the NDP provided majority. It will mark the end of Layton and the current NDP who will be need to do for the left, what the Reform Party did for the right. The Bloc will be decimated with Liberals picking up most of the seats. Harper will keep power and run in the next election although he will have to wait several years (at least 3) before the opportunity to take the reigns of power will come again.

My predictions are out there, let see what history brings.

The slipper slope to genocide…

2007-01-04T23:07:00.000-08:00

Well, according to the latest pundency, my assessment of Saddam’s execution was correct. None believe it was planned by the government, not even Fox News. There are some who thing that if the Bush administration says something, it must be the inverse of the truth, so when the Administration said it had no warning about the the plans and nothing to do with them, you can almost be certain that the opposite is true. By this logic, Bush new about it and had something to do in its timing.
Another line, and one I think is more likely now, is that it was a power play by Muqtada al-Sadr. Having hear that the Prime Minister Maliki wanted to resign his post, and the way the sectarians of the timing of the execution, it makes it far more likely that Iraq is continuing to polarize which may inevitably arrive at its logical genocidal conclusion. History has an interesting pattern that no matter how bad things are, if left to fester things will always get worse. There is no 12step program for national insanity and I fear I must say that ;for the first time since the start of this farce call “the state of Iraq” (it was called a republic until the Americans annexed it and turned it into a state, literally);.I believe that Iraq will descend into genocidal violence akin to what plagues British India and its partition at independence. Well, it’s good to be Canada…and more to the point NOT to be in Iraq (my hopes and condolences to those not so lucky)

Not like a blast but with a whimper...

2007-01-02T00:37:00.000-08:00

Well, I should start the year on something more up, but life is what life is.

The other day Saddam Hussein was executed by those who feared and hated him, the most. Many have predicted a great up rising over the death but I think that will not be true. Saddam lost any true influence when he abandoned Baghdad in the face of US troops. He did not need to defend Baghdad, he had set the stage for history to remember him as not the vicious dictator he was but as the brave Muslim who stood up to the “great devil” and became a martyr. The fact this does not represent current realty will me little in the future when, I fear, he will become a rallying point for future offensives against the “the west”. History has a strange way of mutating what happened, and I think people now greatly underestimate Saddam’s intention and ability to cast his image to the future. I hope he fails, but time will tell.

ON a separate but related note, I find the timing of the execution to be interesting. The confusion and lack of information leads, inevitably, to theory and talk of conspiracy. I see three likely scenarios.

1) The Iraq Government, wanting to avoid riots and other interruptions planned the chaos as a way to ensure the events when off with out a hitch. I think this unlikely because, judging from the video, it was not a well planned, choreographed or secrete event.

2) The cleric Muqtada al-Sadr militia, trying to take as much control away for the “American” created Iraqi Government, just got tired of waiting, They grabbed, by force, Saddam and took him to the gallows. This was to satisfy their need for revenge, show the weakness of the “Americans” and strengthen the clerics hand in Iraq. Some might say it is unlikely the American forces could be forces to give up Saddam, but if we remember that in mid 2006, they were forced to abandon the search for a lost marine because this same militia did not want the American on their turf. I think this not obvious, because since the hanging there has not been any power move by the cleric to capture a bigger stage, but it is still more likely than the option 1.

3) Some may have missed it in the news, the just prior to event, the Bush team was meeting in Crawford to discuss Iraq and want should happen next. Bush ended the meeting on the 28ths, the next day by 10pm (6am the 30th in Iraq) he was dead. There is a history of miss reading events and rash actions. I find it easy to believe that Bush, and team, believe the problems in Iraq were not caused by a failure of the Bush administration, but really was has all been masterminded (or at least inspired) by Saddam. We all watch the movies; we know being in jail does not stop “evil doers”. I can picture the scene were people are arguing what to do and then a load voice, Bush, is heard, “let kill the Fucker! Why is he still around, I say we call Al and tell him the waiting is over, I want the SOB in the ground before the end of the year.” a rounding roar of cheers, and a call is made and a rushed execution is put into motion. I think this most likely because it is the main cause for the war (I do not think it was oil, not for Bush). He saw Saddam as an affront to his family honour and wanted him dead at any cost. It would also play well in the up coming primaries to say that Saddam was “removed” LAST year. To a media blitzed un-informed electorate, “Last” makes it seem like ancient history, and by the time it election time, Saddam will be a distant memory and the democrats will be blamed for all.

Life is a funny thing; you can’t fast forward it to see if you are right or not. So I quess we will have to travel the river of time and see what we find.

Argument against Pascal’s wager

2006-11-23T01:16:00.000-08:00

A response to an advocate of Pascal’s wager argument for a belief in god

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Stephen Roberts

Oh my Darwin!

Those who have any intelligence (obviously many don't) realise the fallacy of the Pascal wager.

A) It cost nothing to believe that is not true, obscenely not true.

1) The loss of knowledge and science.

Religion, the one we are debating, see knowledge as a sin. In fact why are you at SFU? IF you were a true believer, then the only truth is god and the only learning it thought prayer and revelation.

2) The lose of self.

Religion, the one we are debating, is conformist. You MUST live in one and only one way. The limitation on life, association and thought is so restrictive it is reminiscent of Big Brother in 1984.

3) Violence.

Religion, the one we are debating, is a violent and abusive thing. Some try and pretend that it is not, but that only makes them false believers. If you are allowed to pick and choose what parts of religion are true, then you are not paying your proper ante and by your own standards are dammed. IF you do follow them, then you may be strapping on the dynamite jacket while you read this, or beating your slaves, or giving your daughter into to a mob to be gang raped. All part of the literal word of God

2) A fate worse than atheism?

1) Wrong god.

What god do you wager on? If a god will condemn someone for unbelief, he would probably be really pissed for believing in the wrong god. So, your fate may be worse than not believing, gods being violent, vengeful and full a wrath. So really, the wise wager, the one to play it safe, would be strict atheism. At least then you could say you did not believe in false god, if he asks why you did not believe, tell him he did not leave enough proof (I stole this line from R. Dawkins book “The God Delusion”, a good read or listen)

2) False belief.

I think that IF a god existed, he would not think some one lying just to avoid punishment to be a good thing. If lying is a sin, then I think it would not work as a way into heaven. If fact it would likely fast track you to hell.

3) Benefits of atheism.

1) Science.

What has atheism done for you? This, computers and the internet. Science and technology, although not perfect neither is reality. The religious alternative is to sit, starving in a cave waiting, no HOPING for the end of the world. People like Bush, who believe, would look at the nuking of Israel and the victimization of Palestinians as glorious things because they believe it will mean Armageddon is at hand. Every time there is a difference between science and religion, when it comes to how the world works (round earth, sun centered, things smaller than a mustard seed…etc.), science has always been proven correct. And when science does get something wrong, it corrects itself. If religion gets something wrong it burns at the stake those who dare to assume they new more than the "divine" for to correct the error in belief would prove the fallacy of religious faith

2) Medicine.

And have you had anyone who died? Are they sick? Well I hope you did not send them to a doctor or hospital. IF you believe, then all is gods will and to subvert His will is blasphemy. You should just send them to church and get your friends to pray and hope god is in a good mood. If fact, if you had someone who had medical treatment and have died, they must be in hell, thanks to your beliefs and lack of faith.

3) Morality.

Slavery is a pious religious belief, sanctioned by god. Rape, murder, and torture as well. It is the atheist and “moderate” religious people, like abolitionist, that allow them to escape the evil that is religious and see the real morality, morality that can only be embraced through empracing atheism, even if some are unwilling to admit it. Think of the morality when a religious person would believe that a science teacher is more dangerous than a pedophile. A sexual predator can only hurt a child in this world, the teacher could lead to eternal damnation. Religion should offend any moral person as it offends me!

There is lots to be gained and infinitely little to be lost if you do not believe. Pascal made the wager comment as a joke, intentional or not. Wisdom can be found in many places but it is our rational and evolutionary instinct that allows us to see them, to picked them from the trash and immoral.
Religion is a cancer on society and society can not survive if it has not been completely removed. “Moderates”, although less damaging in them selves, act as enablers for terrorist, they act as cells that could metastases and revivie the society killers. The faithful are carriers and they also need to be cured. For them, though it is hard because you have remove brainwashing that has been with them all their life. Sunday school is a form of child abuse and those who perpetrate such offence should be locked up. Those who suffer from it need help to see the hypocrisy of religious faith.

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so”
Ernestine Rose
“the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief,”
Steven Weinberg
“Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.”
Thomas Jefferson

From demand to Supply - the squeeze on labour

2006-10-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

One of the most significant changes that has occurred over the 20th century is the shift from an economy based on demand to that based on supply. Keynesian economics is predicated on the idea of stimulating demand to stimulate the economy for the benefit of society. This had the side-effect, I would contend, in that this few puts the health of the labourer, the consumer, as a primary concern for this is fundamental away to increase prosperity. By that, I mean if the function of government and the economy was to ensure that labour has both the money to buy goods and the leisure time to enjoy them; that this will create an increasing demand over the long term and thus prosperity for all, consumer and producer alike. Of course, anything that tries to affect society on the whole is not a quick endeavour but in the long run, far more stable. It is a slow and stead progress to prosperity. But during the latter half of the 20th century, the focus shifted from demand to supply and consumerism was born.
Consumer economics differs from the previous in the philosophy that “if you build/make it, people will come/buy it”. That it is the creation of supply that leads to prosperity by stimulating demand. This shifts the focus away from the labourer and onto the producer or corporation, who create the supply. This means that the function of government and the economy is to ensure business has an environment that will maximize the production of goods. This makes sense for the corporation, because it is a much simpler endeavour to maximize profit in the short term by reducing expenses (labour, regulations,…) and increasing externality (healthcare, environment). Because of the relentless drive towards profit corporations, the belief in the limitlessness of demand (supply is seen as the limiting factor in this model), the effectiveness of commercial propaganda and the predatory nature of capitalism, economies are forced into a spiral that places short-term over long-term, the endless drive to produce more today that yesterday in-spite of demand. This goes a long way to explain how profits have continually been increasing and yet standard of living and other indicators have remained at best stagnant or have slid backwards, at least for developed countries. I would like to think that the losses made in developed countries have been gained by the undeveloped countries, but I do not believe this equation balances or that it would be sustainable if it were the case.
One might argue that in the past national corporations could not allow consumerism to run rampant, because to do so would in essence "soil the nest." But with the breakdown of the Brenton Woods system, technological innovations, and the ever-growing trans-national corporation, it has meant that it is possible to use up one place (recourse depletion, or until local politics makes the climate unprofitable); then transfer your capital, the essence of the corporation, to another location elsewhere on the globe where you can start the process over again. Because capital essentially knows no border, corporations are free to go where they want. As a side benefit, labours, being caged by borders, become forced to compete with other caged nations to the detriment of all but the corporation then “race to the bottom” effect. Unlike in the past, it is also much easier for translational to escape any "local" or national political backlash but capital transfers. Again, not being bound by borders, unlike the labour it does prey upon Corporations have the ability to move out of harms way.

There is some hope for labour, though, can be seen in the EU with its relative free movement of labour anywhere within the union. One of the ways that labour can compete, although only partially effective due to social reasons, is to create borders as porous to labour as they are to capital. Efforts in this regard are seen in the EU but not in the Americas, if only this model could be extended as effectively as the World Trade Organization, the world monetary fund and the World Bank has made it for capital, a more level playing field and thus greater real prosperity might be enjoyed by all. It is ironic that those who wish to use entities such as WTO, miss one important fact (present in current trade agreements now) that even when labour provisions are created, they are seldom enforces. Enforcement is usually left to this same entity which is akin to getting the fox to agree to a Chickens rights bill, then having the Fox enforce it…
I think the idea of a translational labour union becomes more viable as technology shrinks the world. I suspect in a millennia from now, assuming we do not blow ourselves up or poison ourselves, that the Internet and its progeny will be seen as important as Gutenberg and the printing press. A hundred years ago, people working in Southeast Asia would've seemed as alien to us as those living on Mars. But today, although our cultures may differ and on the surface are customs may vary, underneath we see that all societies are far more all like and dislike; that our needs…wants…desires are far more similar than we have been led to believe in the past. That if we can overcome the provincialism of petty politics; the derisiveness of religion and the corrosion of greed, that there is a hope that we can unite as a people for common purpose and the benefit of all.

The US melting pot...

2006-09-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

In response to a proposed letter-to-the-editor (included below) to a newspapers that wondered why people come the US and wish to keep their culture and beliefs. Wonders why they do not want to assimilate that they did in the early 1900’s on Elise Island. And thinks this is wrong and that if you come to the US, shut up and fit the mould. First, they ask why it was not actually published, why?
A decent newspaper would not print this because it they have what we up north would call morals. You may mask you bigotry in patriotism, believe that the US at the turn of the 20th century was the same Jack-boot it is now at the turn of the 21st century. For that is the same of what has been lost in the American Dream.
You mention melting pot...you may not have ever cooked, but when you make a stew, everyone brings something; that is what makes the flavour, strengthens the mean. When you insist that everyone bring nothing and can only drink the Kool-Aid (Sorry for mixing metaphors) you weakening the nation.
The Statue of Liberty was given to the US by France because it saw Liberty, Freedom and opportunity. Does anyone out there believe one today would do such a thing...the US has lost its moral compass, the high ground. People immigrate to the US because they are brain-washed by the TV (American’s biggest export) that the dream is alive; when they get here they see it is dead.
They come here, at great effort, expense and risk. Think about it, do you think they would really want to retain they traditions if they say the US you imagine. They come here and worry that they will become the soulless, greed-drive, pride-before-the-fall, arrogant products of your assimilation-pot.
The difference between the people of Elise Island and today is the people then came and saw something better, now they come and see something worse.
America can be, has been, a great nation deserving the respect and admiration. The gift of the Statue of Liberty is proof of that. But it is lost and falling into a pit of religious backwardness and empirical hubris; Iraq has shown that. Think about it, on Sept 12, 2001, the entire world was with you, EVEN IRAN! By Sept 12, 2003 she was alone and isolated.
As a Canadian, I am your friend. The people, the regular everyday people are the same as me (less hockey maybe) and in spite of see the world differently we have always been each others most honest and trusted friend, like roommates living in the same continent (sorry Mexico, you never seem to click). But now you are just plain embarrassing to be around. Your bad reputation is ruining our own. Because of our little Bush (Our Current Prime-minister “Stevy” Harper”) who used your President as a role model, bag-packers no longer can use our flag, like you have not be able to use your own for decades.
In spite of how your elites and politicians treat you, you’re not a stupid people; you are being lied too, constantly and with your knowledge. Why do you put up with it? For evil to succeed, good men need do nothing.

(Below the original letter-to-the-editor, i believe unpublished. Source, a mailinglist i am on)

Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register:Dear Editor:
So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren't being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.
Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr.Lujan why today's American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer.
Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.
They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture.
Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity. Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy, France and Japan. None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people. When we liberated France, no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.
And here we are in 2006 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I'm sorry, that's not what being an American is all about.
I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900's deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.
And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty, it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill. I wouldn't start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.
(signed) Rosemary LaBonte

Dear Al Franken, Why do americains let it happen?

2006-09-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

Al, this is a “hate letter”, but not directly specially at you, nor your sycophants, nor your enablers, but ALL of you. I have just listened to two of the major Democratic people (Rep. Charles Rangel and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,) who condemned Hugo Chavez comments during his stay in NY. I would concede that they where not polite words, but you Americans must understand that you allow him(Bush) to do what he does. YOU, and I mean you AL among others, let him and his crew lie constantly, let him wage war and terror (torture, at lest, is terror) around the world in the name of the United States. Rangel said

"If there's any criticism of President Bush, it should be restricted to Americans, whether they voted for him or not," Rangel said at a Washington news conference.

He is saying that it was not the place of non-Americans to comment on “MY” president but you as a people have failed. He is, and you have said this and it is true, he is a murder. He has killed your people, killed those around the world. Like a mob boss, just because he was not the one who pulled the trigger, does not make him any less responsible. More so for this president (who would easily be convicted of war crimes and maybe crimes against humanity), he should have been stopped by the people of America and he was not. Failure to do so means, at least to the vast majority of the world, implies he speaks with the approval of the people of the US (perhaps in the same why people think that Hitler spoke for the people of Germany, not that Bush is as bad as Hitler).
You may say you have tried to stop this horror, but your and your system (for-profit politics, commercialization of news, etc) have failed and you deserve to be chastised by the world. Your president deserves to be chastised by foreign leaders because he deserves it. I found it interesting that Chavez received cheers (and not polite cheer, but honest cheers) through out his speech at the Harlem church including those comments that offended the Not-so-Democrats (and yes, they are infinitely better than the Republicans, but far worse than then Green Party).
Your failure to allow this violent, sadistic and evil individual remain in office; remain being your leaders; the face of the US in the world; has shown that the people of the US are not up to the task to restrain this thug. Because of this failure the world is stepping up to the plate; forced for the sake of self preservation; for global preservation.. Chavez is saying what YOU should be; you should be doing what need to be done (impeach?). You have commented on the fact that the US has lost the moral high ground (something those who were subject to American intervention in South America, Southeast Asia, native American, etc would say they had lost it centuries ago), that the US is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands in an unprovoked belligerent war (Iraq) and indirectly by carelessly violent intervention (Afghanistan) and we will not ever mention the number of people who will die because the US (supposedly the worlds only super-power) failed to use its superior morality to help (Darfur).
There is more to being a super-power than having military might (mostly waited in Iraq) or economic might (currently mortgaged to China), but here is moral might, something the US has avoided very well. For every step to the virtuous made by the US, it makes several clumsy leaps to the offensive.
I am NOT an Americans and that only bothers be because I do not have the power to stop this global carnage, but then again I do not have to live with the guilt. Some might say that I am being too harsh and have no right to speak. That would be true if your president had not effect on my life, true if the only people he killed; the land he harmed was American but it is not and that gives the world the right to speak about your presidents, foreign policy, morality, political system and all things related. You listen to your leaders cheat and steal, you listen to them LIE to you CONSTANTLY and do nothing but hide behind the excuse that it is our system. PEOPLE ARE DIEING, suck it up and changed it or be prepared to suffer the consequence of global condemnation and the equally evil ramification of violence against your people and your allies. Canadians are dieing.
Al, you and the Democrat party (I use Democrat, because you are no more democratic than the Republicans although the world hopes you will be less corrupt, but I think the bar has been raised and they (again I hope you will be better, you should run not as a Dem but as a Green Party member, you have the image to win)

The False freedom of free trade…

2006-09-21T05:10:00.000-07:00

Free trade is a lie, or at least an illusion. The premise of free trade is that all countries/regions competing for markets with not constraints...or at least artificial constraint. The degree of free trade is usually measured in thing like tariffs, subsidies, ownership restrictions, monopoly laws, etc... But this is only the artificial constraint. For there to be true free trade we would also nee to remove the natural constraints, and that is impossible. Canada may wish to compete with Brazil in the production of Bananas, but there in no way we will ever have, could ever have, the same production of Bananas as Brazil. As is often mentioned with regards to artificial constraints, if the playing field is not flat, if all players are not equal, then free trade will not work, or at least it will work for those who benefit from the constraints while hurting the others. How could natural constraints have any other effect but the same!

It is this inability to achieve equality, substantial equality, which prevents Free Trade from being enacted or effective. It has become a growing movement in economics, spear headed by the progressive moments, to abandon the idea of free trade in favour of fair trade. Fair trade, is trade that acknowledged we are not equal, that in areas of your strength, you need to be willing to give ground, and in areas of your weakness, others will give you ground.

In a discussion with a friend of mine, I made an interesting observation regarding freedom. We all believe, at least in Canada we are free, that we have free trade, thanks to FTA and later NAFTA and maybe soon the FTAA, but if this true? Are you free to go south and get a job? Could you move to Mexico and make a living? Could they come here? No. But could you send you money there and could it work? Yes, and this means that you’re are not free but your money is, you are the slave, it is not. When we speak of free trade, we mean, in reality, free flow of capital.

Putting a bad education to good work…

2006-08-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

Lakewood University in Thunder Bay, On. has launched a new and not-so surprisingly popular not recruitment campaign. As some may or not know (and a few who refuse to believe) Bush graduated from Yale university, one of the US’s premier Ivy league institutions, in 1968. And we are not talking about Jebb or Daddy Bush, but the slow one G.W. Although most people will pass this off as either the power of money or that alcoholism is not all bad.

Anyway, this premier star of the anti-intellectual league is being harnessed by Lakewood to promote their own academic offerings(http://www.yaleshmale.com). Although Lakewood Vice-Chancellor, Frederick Gilbert, said that “older generations…have looked at is as not appropriate”, online comments have been almost unanimously positive and the site has had thousands of hits. Will this “tongue-in-cheek” campaign work…who know, but it does show promise for GW who can now rest easy at night knowing that if he can’t get any job anywhere else, a career in advertising…er, advertising props seems to be a real possibility. Don’t say that an Ivy League education is not work anything in the real world.

Israel: A definition of delusional

2006-08-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

I find it funny, that people will do the very thing that will make their lives harder in the future because they believe it might make things better now. Israel right now is doing more harm to its own long-term security than anything it has done since the colonization of the West Bank. Every day the killing continues Hezbollah gets stronger; the more Lebanese who die, the more rational their claims become; Everyday Israel claims it is just trying to stop the rocket attacks, the more isolated Israel will become.

A definition of delusional is when someone does the same thing twice but expects different results. Israel has invaded southern Lebanon at least 3 times with the intention of “cleaning” the area of “terrorists”. Each time its enemies have returned stronger, more deferent and better armed. Why should this time be different? Since the 1967 war, everyone has accepted that Israel exists and will exist even if their hopes differ; the reality of the situation told them otherwise. Propaganda is good to rally the troops but it did not change the strength of the Israeli army. Radicals and fundamentalists may deny Israel’s right to exist but they can not deny it exists.

I heard a disturbing thing the other day from an interview with Air America talk show host Al Franken. They were beginning to fear for the existence of Israel in fact. Israel, which has reluctantly made peace (or near-peace) with its neighbours and thus removed the only viable threat to Israel’s existence, has so damaged its relationships with those neighbours; its main benefactor, the US, has so enraged the region because of iraq; the naked anti-Arab sentiment running through both nations has had the effect of strengthen its enemies. Iran, prior to 2003, isolated has become the power in the Middle East, to the point where it can pose a credible challenge to Israel. It is the credibility of this challenge that is the true threat to the existence of Israel.

It has been pointed out that it is impossible to distinguish between combatant and civilians in the attack on southern Lebanon. Israel has also said it will not stop until it has eliminated ever combatant from the region (at that point they would allow peace-keepers on Lebanese soil). This means, and I think it was the intent, that Israel intends to kill everyone in southern Lebanon with the implicit understanding that if you are there you are guilty. This genocide is why Israel should really fear for its future. If that is the standard they are setting, they too may someday be judged. It is also in the works that if Hezbollah is receiving support from Syria and/or Iran than these too must die, it is the logical outcome of the Olmert Doctrine.

Lets us remember too that Syria is not a fundamentalist country, which in fact it is markedly anti-fundamentalist because that would threaten the current power structure. Their support for Hezbollah, what there is, is solely to keep Israel in check, something all Arab states will need to rework now. Syria still wished to reclaim its own occupied territory, the Golan Heights, which I lost in the 1967 war. So it uses, not a good thing showing Israel is not the only villain in the area, radicals in south Lebanon as a bargaining chip to restore its lands.

Iran on the other hand is a nut of a different shape; I believe it is really that radical or at least playing that role to improve its geo-political position as a counter to the Christian/corporate fundamentalism of the US. This is why things will be getting worse for Israel and the US not better as Israel’s rape of Southern Lebanon only straightens Iran’s position as the true defenders of the Middle East, something that makes its neighbours nervous about (the traditional rivalry of Sunni Vs Shiite)

It’s these threat that may cause more escalation as Israel, using the Olmert Doctrine first bombs Syria “supply routs” for Hezbollah, then an attack on Iran as the source of the missiles hitting northern Israel. This would signal the end of both the US presence or at least influence and the beginning of the end of Israel. This event would provide the spark that would ignite the Middle East in a fundamentalist inferno unchecked by the current US sponsored authoritarian governments. That would be bad for everyone.

The end of the familiy...Part II

2006-08-03T13:51:00.000-07:00

As we mentioned in part I, there are four functions to the family. So far we have fulfilled 2 of the 4 functions, the first function is easiest to solve, with the advent of science and technology; it is possible for almost any women to become pregnant. In time, this function could be replaced by machines. But until then it will be necessary, at some point, to ensure a certain number of children are born women will be encouraged to perform their duty.

It should be noted, in this world, procreation and raising (socializing) the child are separate tasks. A biological birther will only be needed for the gestations period, after birth, they will be required to return to their previous social collective. It should also be required, if population number require control, and they may not, to issue birth licences, at least until the animalistic urge to reproduce uncontrollably is evolved out of.

The creation of fair and equitable licences will be relatively easy, for those worried about Aryanism remember in modern genetics; diversity is the most important feature of creating or maintaining a viable population. Aryanism by definition is a dead end. The hard part will be the limiting of those with out licensing but this could be accomplished by reversible sterilization at birth. As part of the successful licensing, this sterilization would either be negated or artificial insemination would occur. Now three of the four functions are covered, but once they are born then what?

The final function of family performs that must be accounted for is the socialization, or raising, of children. This function would be dealt with in the same manner as the others. There would be communes or homes were people who wished to raise children would accept into their domain the child, these would be Storgeships.

These rearing homes might specialize in age groups are in cradle to grave (or maturity). It is a fact that the more people who care for a child the better are its chance of being better adapted and a valued participant in society. It would also benefit from the fact that only those wishing to raise children and only those qualified would have an active part.

This mode would not eliminate any other citizens from interacting with the child, but it would be the whole who would act as guide guardian and mentor to the youth. There would, however, be an advantage to ensure that a birth mother never knows who its bio-implant was. Historically kinships have created hierarchies and inequity as the mother inevitable favours her bio-kin (although in some cases this is the opposite if the child fails the mother’s expectations).

It would be good to use the animalistic instincts, so if they wish it bio-mothers would be allowed to participate in child socializations, but never knowing who there bio-kin is. This system would require external monitoring to prevent abuse, but because you would have several “parents” or mentors the chances of anyone or two having the opportunity to abuse the children would be greatly decreases. So to would the possibility of poor, destructive, anti-social or negative education and socialization would also be decreased because the group is more likely to arrive at a correct consensus than any individual discover it by chance.

The loss of the tradition family would make the next step in human evolution where we reduced the chains of individualism and learned that we are a communal one our species can achieve thing no other ever has, or ever will. United we are strong, isolated we die.

Solidarity and unity…VIVA THE REVOLUTION!!!

The end of the family...Part I

2006-08-02T15:35:00.000-07:00

The other day I had a discussion with some classmates over what is a family and more specifically alternatives. It was brought up in our readings ("The Ultimate Revolution" by Shulamith Firestone in Ethical issues in interpersonal communicaiton ISBN0-15-508257-4) that a more positive and ultimately stable form of relationships would be to abolish the institution of marriage. This would be in the context of a open and free society so those who insisted on the continuance of such idea would be free to live as they thought fit.

The purpose of marriage in to define ones family, and there are truly four (albeit disputable) main purposed:

The procreation of children
The socialization of children into the larger society
The mutual care and support of fellow members
The regulation of sexual behaviours.

If we lived in a society that allowed for the fluid and free forming relations to form, were there was no contractual obligation to remain with the person beyond the mutual desirability, we would eliminate the major cause of domestic abuse. We could call these relationships Eroships. This could be between any number of individuals and exists only as long as there is mutual consent. Intimate relationships would have to exist with in the confines of these friendships, but because of the transient nature of them, lust should still flow freely but only as the will of the participants. This we no-longer need the family for perform duty 4, the regulation of sexual behaviour.

But our needs for companionship and aid exist beyond that of lust, there is also the support, moral, psychological and material, that we offer member of our family, what of these. Again, we look at free forming relationships. We find in the real work that people outside of kin relationships help others. In fact is could be argued that if we had no kin relationships we would treat everyone as though there were kin. By removing the implicit hierarchy found in kin relationships; we remover the hierarchy found in society. These relationships formed for mutual aide, irrespective of kinship, we could call Agapeships a communal living arrangement intended on the mutual care and companionship of fellow members.

Now most people would say that the able and healthy will abandon the needy. That those homes with the able will prosper inequitably and at the expense of the needy. This is true and would happen if it were not for the ingrained believe in the communal. The greater family we form or our Philiaships, our loyalty to the common good. It is the understanding that comes out of the evolution of the traditional hierarchal family unit that we all members of the same family, that we prosper only as much as the lest among us and suffer as little as the one who suffers the most. Martin Luther King put it:

”The…good… [make] concern for others the first law of…life…He is a part of me and I am a part of him. His Agony diminishes me, and his salvation enlarges me”

Societies are not judged by what they for the powerful, they are not judged by how pamper the rich; no they are judged by how they have treated the worst off, by the poorest, the weakest. It is the only measure that any moral person can see having value. So we need to educate our people that wealth is not found in things, but in people; in the whole. When this society is created caring, truly caring for ones fellow person will both a pre-requisite and a necessity at least by the majority and it is the majority that will benefit most from this mindset.

The Enemy of my enemy if not my friend…

2006-07-31T13:59:00.000-07:00

Well I don’t like defending religious nuts. So I find it hard to defend Hezbollah in the face of the Israel on slot. Because of many of my previous posts I thought it necessary to make it clear that the enemy (Hezbollah) of my enemy (Religious fascists) are NOT my friends. Nothing would make be happier to have the Israelis wipe from the face of the earth the Islamic fundamentalist. I also think that although the Israeli government is acting in like a thug to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, they have cause to have fear. It is understandable why the Israelis distrust and fear the Arabs in their midst, because of the Suicide bombing. No matter how you justify the rational for such attacks, they are violent attacks and should be deplored.

I do not deplore the Israelis because of their attacks on Hezbollah, I applaud them. At the present moment (and it was not a simple path here) Hezbollah’s continued rocket attacks against northern Israel (as opposed to attacking the Israeli solders in Lebanon, that would be defendable and moral) only justifies the Israeli attack. No I fear the Israeli attack because of the innocent or semi-innocent (I would classify myself as semi-innocent because of my defence of Palestinian rights and condemnation of Israeli oppression in the soon to be mostly annexed West Bank) people who are being killed, injured, displaced and harmed by their grouping and clumsy attempt to punish Hezbollah. What Israel is doing is laying the seeds for further conflict. It is created more enemies in Lebanon. It has single handedly strengthened Hezbollah beyond anything it could ever have hopped for. It is hard to believe that anyone living in Lebanon now would think the Israelis the innocents and will find themselves more open to the propaganda of the religious fundamentalists. In the next couple of years the ranks of the true terrorist organizations (of which an arm of Hezbollah is) will swell with the orphans and grieving left behind by the Israelis.

There is a movement afoot by the international community to finally but in a UN force with strength to ensure Israelis northern border is peaceful. I would hope it would equally ensure that the influence of Israel, the US, Iran and Syria is also minimized to ensure a peaceful southern boarder for Lebanon. But why stop there. This force should also be deployed to the other killing zone, Gaza, to protect the innocents there, and the West Bank. Israeli is quick to mention that the UN should enforce UN Resolution 1559 and 1583, charged with the disarming of Hezbollah (something I totally agree with). But when it comes to implementing UN Resolution 181, 446, 452, or 478 which would repatriate land back to the Palestinians. I also thing my plan (“ How to bring peace the lands of Abram...”) would also bring peace to the Middle East, for again although NOW Israel is the primary aggressor and most powerful nation, it was not always and the neighbours of Israel and Palestine must take there own responsibility for the turmoil created.

(Coming soon - West Bank deception http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/index.html)

UN and the green light of terror

2006-07-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

Well it seems that the Israelis have accomplished their objective in murdering the UN observes in southern Lebanon. The UN announced it will pull out its observers, thus leaving the southern regions of Lebanon. This will give Israel a free hand in “liquidating” any suspected Hezbollah. Of course the test whether you are Hezbollah is whether you have a distaste or hatred of Israel, something very common NOW, thanks to the indiscriminate killings perpetrated by Israel. This of course done on the heals of the passive approval of a multi-national conference charged with stopping the vicious attack on Lebanon.
The passive agreement was not the will of the majority but of the big bully in the room, the US who insistent that the final wording of the communiqué state an eventual end to hostilities as opposed to an immediate end. This was done because the US policy is that any aggression, how ever lopsided, misdirected or inhumane is okay as long as you say it is to stop terrorism; Terrorism, the orgasm word of the US presidents George W. Bush’s Administration.
I found it interesting that many people, including our own Prime Minister Stephen Harper, claim Israel has full rights to do what it is doing to defend itself. But at what point do you say you have over done it. "It's been horrific... There is something fundamentally wrong with the war, where there are more dead children than armed men," Mr Egeland said in an interview with the BBC.
For those who thought it was just an act of defence, the comments made by Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon are illuminating. He stated that Israel wants further attacks on infrastructure, including electricity supplies. Ramon had earlier infuriated the EU by claiming that the Rome meeting on Wednesday, which failed to produce a unified call for an immediate ceasefire, had given Israel the green light to continue.(BBC) To put the war in context for the Israeli government, Ramon was quoted as saying in an interview Israeli radio on July 13 “a war waged by the sovereign state of Lebanon against the sovereign state of Israel” (Regum)
It seems the majority of Canadians are appalled at Israel’s reaction (the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the killing of innocents in Lebanon) to what some would state as measured and justifiable actions against Israel (the detention of some Israeli solders and the deaths of tens of Israel, all of which started after Israel’s initial overreaction) (see previous blog “Forbissima chalcious mishigas“June 30, 2006 for clarification on this).
Our prime minister continued on his plan of destroying Canada international reputation by suggesting, in an interview yesterday, that the Canadian peace keeper, who was killed by a directed attack by Israeli forces on the UN observation post, was the fault of the UN. That the UN was asking for trouble by keeping the observers there.
This is much like the classic defence used by sexist who claim that rape victims ask for it and probably had it coming. This not only continues to present to the world a more fascist view of Canada; defames the ideals of Peace Keepers (the one great thing Canada has created for peace); undermines the authority of the only international body wanting to save lives and create peace in the middle east; places Canada more firmly in the US orbit (and Harpers plans fore eventual annexation of Canada by Texas); no it also is an insult to every Canadian alive and dead because of is absolute lack of anger, compassion or outrage at the death. Even if he did think it was and accident, he should have been overflowing with compassion for the family of the fallen peacekeeper and should have been praising the work he was doing. But no, all Harper can hear is the soft whispers of him mentor, Bush.

I would suggest us grabbing Harper and giving him to the Americans, but in fact they already have his mind and soul, what would they want with the body….

How to bring peace the lands of Abram...

2006-07-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

I was listening to the Al Frankin show on Air America Radio and he had Rabbi Michael Lerner (I am not a fan of any religion, nor of its enforcers) who I thought had the best and simplest plan to bring peace for Israel and its neighbours. In essence it come down to 4 steps.

1) Call for an immediate cessation of hostilities by Israeli
a. In Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank
b. The immediate withdrawal by Israel to the 1967 boundary
c. Areas of evacuated by Israel to be immediately succured by peace keeper forces.
2) Create an effective DMZ
a. International Peace Keepers with the authority, support and
ability to enforce a buffer zone
3) The creation of a UN body with the authority to impose
a settlement on the parties involved
a. Facilitate “mandatory” negotiations to fix boundaries to roughly pre-1967
(Green Line) using the Geneva Accord has a blueprint for how and
what these adjustments should entail
b. The creation of an International fund by donor nations,
with emphasis on nations that originally created Israel
i. Funds should be paid to all those who lost land, commerce or
employment due to the turmoil from 1947 to 1967
1. This would include the Palestinians
2. This would include Arabs who were forced to relocate from
Israel and occupied lands
3. This would include Jews who were forced to leave Arab countries.
ii. Such a fund should represent 10% of the participating countries GDP.
1. to provide restitution
2. to provide a base for economic development.
4) Jerusalem would become an independent international city,
under the UN charter and with UN support.
a. All major religions would be granted complete control over THEIR holy sites
b. The city would be treated as a historical world heritage site.
5) Security
a. The creation of a joint Palestinian Israeli police force to
enforce border security on both sides
b. A UN/NATO guarantee/treaty that would assure territorial
integrity of both Israel and Palestine from both internal and external forces.

It is in Israelis hands to stop the physical conflict, it is up to the world, especially those Arab nations who pledge allegiance to Palestine, to provide the economic and moral support that that both nations can co-exist and prosper together.

Israel bombs UN: why would they do it?

2006-07-26T14:31:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning while watching the CBC, I listened to an interview with a British correspondent (I will try and get his name), who was positioned near the Israel forces that shelled the UN observation post. He stated that it was impossible not to see the post, that it was clearly marked and its location what known to all those in the area, including the Israeli forces. He also stated that it was impossible for this to have happened as an accident, as claimed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his American supporters.
There is mounting evidence that the attack on these UN forces was deliberate. In an interview posted on CBC.ca:

"On six separate occasions
he was in contact with the Israelis
to warn them that their bombardment
was endangering the lives
of U.N. staff in South Lebanon,"
said a spokesperson for
Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs.

The biggest case against it is why would they do it? Again I point to the consistent theme by Israel that an abused partner is a more compliant one. Israel knows that when it has completely decimated Lebanon it will have to leave and that there is the possibility that a UN peace keeping force will be deployed, a force with more muscle that the current incarnations.
Lebanon, once the Israel eventually leaves, will quickly turn into a hot spot for even more anti-Israeli territory as those who WERE innocent, the vast vast vast majority, will seek revenge on Israel or at lest to ensure it never suffers from state-rape again.
There is a less evil explanation too that allows both UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (‘Israel murdered our people on purpose’) and Olmert (‘It was an accident, it war- shit happens’) to be right. It is possible that, like US soldiers in Vietnam, acted independently. Considering the state of Zionist propaganda in Israel, the drive for Palestinian independence, the Bush “Axis of Evil” rhetoric and genuine fundamentalism (mostly but not limited to Islam) it is conceivable that the soldiers manning the guns thought the UN Post was just a front for Hezbollah guerrillas or that the UN support of the Palestinians caused terrorism in Israel or that the only way to peace for Israel it to exterminate them all. And thus thinking deliberately ignored UN please for mercy, and with full will targeted and bombed the UN outpost.
Hate breeds hate. Zionism was created out of European hatred of Jews, modern Israel was forged out of the hatred of Arabs, and 21st century Lebanon and Palestine are being formed by the hatred of Israelis. It is there hatred that unites them as Middle Eastern; it is their hatred that will be the end of them all…

Norm Ornstein is a butt-head.

2006-07-25T21:07:00.000-07:00

Lets make this a hate letter about Norm Ornstein with added commintary

You say Norm is a smart man but either he is a neo-Zionist or has his head stuck up so far up his arse that he has dumbstruck me. I have listen to you show since near the beginning. I was there for the O’Franken hour, the loss of Katherine Lanpher and now have been impressed by your rational view about the Israeli attack on Lebanon. As everyone has agreed, Israel has a right to defend itself, but so do the Palestinians.
Norm, most American media, those propagandized by said media, and those in Israel (also subject to propaganda) acts like this started in isolation. It is important that every nation in the world has condemned the actions of Israel, as you have, and demanded an immediate cessation of aggression by Israel the instigator of the current trouble. As you have pointed out many times this stretches back to 1948 when Israel was created out of European guilt. Israel has earned the right to exist as a nation where it is. But the Palestinian are an occupied people, Israel intends to keep them weak, or at least the leading neo-Zionist like the near-dead Sharron, so Israel can have the land “granted it by god”. The Israeli pull out of Gaza was not a peace offering it was a passive aggressive action intended to show the Palestinians how unimportant they are.
The Wall, much like the one in East Germany, is intended to deprive the people who have lived on the land, give to them by the UN, the same people who gave Israel its legal right to exist. A nation that did not need to use terrorism when I could use its army to pacify the occupied territories that is have been constantly and rapidly setting up settlements. IT’S NOT THEIR LAND!! On wonders why the conflict continues. Israel had a right and a genuine fear prior to 1973, having soundly and finally defeating its neighbours its right to exist was moot. It could have taking that opportunity to try and create the nation of Palestine, but it got greedy, and lost the moral high ground. Israel is subjected to terror because if have earned the right as an aggressive occupying power.
This latest trouble began a little over a month ago, when faces with mass arrests and no other means to resist, Humas operatives “detained” a Israeli soldier with the intention of trading his freedom for that of several innocent Palestinians the Israelis had “detained”. This is something done before, even by the Sharron, the Butcher of <>. The current governments response was…well not to put to fine a point on it, it freaked!
It did not perform surgical incursions to reclaim its solder, an acceptable tactic. No instead its started bombing Gaza, hitting its infrastructure; cutting electricity which in turn knocked out water: it get very hot in Gaza during the Summer think about how hot it feels here, then multiply it by a factor of 10. Israel arrested a large portion of the Palestinian Authorities government, something near unprecedented in modern history.
In the midst of the terrorizing of the citizens of Gaze, seeing Israeli’s actions as collective punishment, a war crime, the Pro-Palestinian Hezbollah came to the aid of is brother and “detained” some soldiers on northern boarder. In response, Israel again FREAKED!!!.
It has done to Lebanon (who is also an economic competitor: good reason to destroy its infrastructure and ruin its tourist industry) what it has done to Gaza, there just are more witnesses (I discount the popular press as most people do), real people not abstract “them”.
Norm is out to lunch or worse. He sounds like a Rush Limbaugh for Israel. If Israel is lucky, and it never has been in the past, it will succeed and so abuse its neighbours and its captives (the Palestinians) they will act like whipped dogs and meekly subject to Israeli overlordship. What I fear will happen is it will provide martyrs for the cause and lead to the destruction of Jerusalem, not by an army or even a revolution, but one lone man seeking revenge on Israel in the form of a nuclear bomb. Remember the only ones more insane than the Israeli military are the radical terrorist groups they are trying to defend Israel from, and defend badly they are.
I do not want Israel to disappear, it has a right to exist, and exist in peace. If only it could see that it is the greatest cause of its own insecurity. Much like you Americans have done for your self by abandoning Afghanistan and invading Iraq. Birds of a feather I guess. I hope my analysis is wrong and Israel and its neighbours find peace, but that still doesn’t change my opinion that on this issue Norm Ornstein is a butt-head.

Don from Canada
Visit “The ThinEdge” @ tnwo.blogspot.com

Israel declares war!

2006-07-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

Israel declares war on UN
Well I have just heard that Israel has declared war on the UN. Well not a written official declaration but a UN observation post, clearly marked, was bombed Tuesday by Israeli invasion forces. This after the Prime Minister of Israel gave firm assurances that the post would not be targeted. This could be seen as a Perl Harbour type provocation, but the UN can only act with US approval..
US approval for anything, even a balanced harsh word, against Israel, the American enforcer in the middle east (Israel has on more than one occasion bombed a recalcitrant Arab neighbour). Even in the face of overwhelming would condemnation of the obscenely violent aggression and collective punishment of Gaza and Lebanon, the US will not act, let us look at who their ambassador is, John Bolton.
John Bolton, a receive appointment because even the rightist US congress would not allow him to be confirmed, is on record as saying:

“There's no such thing as the United Nations.”

(Global Structures Convocation, Feb. 3, 1994)

“There is an international community that occasionally

can be led by the only real power left in the world

and that is the United States when it suits our interest

and when we can get others to go along.

And I think it would be a real mistake to count on

the U.N. as if it is some disembodied entity out there

that can function on its own.”

(Global Structures Convocation, Feb. 3, 1994)

“If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories,

it wouldn't make a bit of difference.”

(Global Structures Convocation, Feb. 3, 1994)

In an interview in 2000 on National Public Radio,

Mr. Bolton told Juan Williams,

"If I were redoing the Security Council today,

I'd have one permanent member because

that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world." ...

"And that one member would be, John Bolton?" Mr. Williams queried.

"The United States," Mr. Bolton replied.

(New York Times, March 9, 2005)

“Not only do not care about losing the General Assembly vote

but actually see it as a 'make my day' outcome.”

(USA Today, September 10, 2001)

This man would let the earth burn to a cinder. He is accused, by subordinated, that as lead negotiator for the US at the 6 party talks to disarm North Korea. It was said that he single handily drove North Korea away from the negotiating table and back into the Nuke business by shear weight of arrogance on his part.
With out the US, it is unlikely the UN will be able to do anything of substance. China, the one who hold a sword over the US via its holding so much US debt, will not intervene. China has little interest in the area, and wants to keep its ace in the hole until a more beneficial time. The true wild card in this though is Russia. Although Russia has strong ties to Israel because of the mass emigration then after the dissolution of the USSR, its ties to Syria are stronger. Plus Vladimir Putin seems to of late been taking great pains and pleasures in embarrassing the west, most notably Bush and Blair at the G8 conference (plus, who left he mic on next to Bush??? Did anyone notice a smiling Putin when Blair finally noticed it and turned it off? Why was that one the only one on?)
Although I find it very very very unlikely, it would be interesting to see if suddenly Russia, under the valid pretext of humanitarian intervention, lands troops in Southern Lebanon, at the request of some international body or of the Lebanese government. As I stated before, Russia is back and wanting to claim its place as one of the worlds superpowers, along with the ailing US and the up-and-coming China.

The Harper-Cons lack harm-reduction InSite.

2006-07-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

There is something wonderful in the East End Vancouver that has saved hundreds of lives. This miracle of the street in the safe injection site where which has intervened in 6## overdoses, these are people who would have died were they not this sanctuary. For those not familiar with InSite let me give a quick outline. InSite is a location where IV drug users can go to inject their fix. The site ensures users are giving clean needles, safe places free of rape and robbery, the onsite nurses are there to assist in case of overdose and there are councillors to help those wanting to be cured of their affliction. The principle of the site is harm reduction, it holds that the reality of situation is that people do drugs, and in the act of doing them people are harmed or die. They hold the moral stand point that you must help the suffering, and that drug addiction is a disease. As such you must help. To do this, the safe injection site was created with financial assistance from the three levels of government and an operating exception from federal drug laws.
Let’s look at the value, it costs approximately $63/per user compared that to the cost of an emergency call, around $460 (Vancouver Sun 06/07/20). Beyond financial savings there are the lives that would have been lost. The deaths from overdoses have dropped significantly since the opening of InSite. The real benefit to both users and society, though, is the number of people who find treatment for their addiction and are cured of their disease. This program has received immense notoriety in the world medical journals, the vast majority (perhaps all) stating the program is a success and has a positive impact on all the stake holders. Articles from such magazines as New England Journal of Medicine, Canadian Medical Association Journal, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, The Lancet, The International Journal of Drug Policy, and British Medical Journal have come out onside of InSite.
Now in the face of this we have our own Stephen Harper and his Harper-Cons. The operating exception, which is due for renewal, will probably laps as Harper seems intent of letting those in society beneath him, suffer. It is the belief of the Harper-cons that those who do drugs should die, it is the deterrent factor. To them it is like capital punishment, something else the support. Death, via overdose or worse, is the punishment for being weak and immoral and starting drugs in the first place. It is another plank in the reactionary socially hyper-conservative agenda that is intent on turning us into a US style theocratic plutocracy. There is no legal or moral issue with extending the operating exception for a period of time, at least until the government(s) have completely studied the results of the experiment. Harper would much rather use the excuse of studying the findings of the site to shut it down. For someone who claims to be pro-life (or maybe just at election time) I must say shame Mr. Harper, shame. How many people must die so you can maintain your ivory tower of self-righteous hypocrisy? Pro-Life my ass!
To help please check this out HomelessNation.org.

The advantages of Terror

2006-07-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

Harper has not missed the opportunity to have the photo op, by bravely kicking off the press core from the government plane he has in Europe (for the G8 Meeting in St. Petersburg) he will take a 100+/- evacuees from Cypress to Canada. If he was truly companionate for those who have suffered in Lebanon, he might have given up his own seat, but no, that would not look good on the front page of the Post, much better to have it with the suffering than catching a budget flight back from Paris (where he is currently). CBC quoted” “’It's more than a symbolic trip,’ Harper said. ‘There is a need for air support in Cyprus. We believe this is the right thing to do and that's why we are going to do it.’ Well if this was true you have to wonder why the people who will be on the plane are “Officials said only Harper's wife, Laureen,”(the focus of the photos) “and a couple of his communications staff”(to ensure the press get the photos)“and his official photographer”(The taker of the photo) “will fly to Cyprus with him.”(as near to the setting of the photo as Harper is willing to risk). There will be half a dozen people who will have to spend at least another day in isolated terror, that is the price Harper is willing THEM to pay for his photo op…remember he is looking at the next election. Well Steve (Bush’s pet name for his pet) we will remember too come the next election.

Being Fair – Maintain the truth

2006-07-19T12:34:00.000-07:00

I do not believe in being balanced. They are not balanced, and it is our weakness, in confronting their propaganda, that has allowed them to not only win the debate but to frame the question; to define the terms; to set the tone. So I make no pretence to be balanced, but that does not mean I will not be fair, no dishonest. I will not fight there lies with lies, their obfuscation with obfuscation If you, the reader has found and seen something factually incorrect or intentionally misleading, let me know, I will check it for accuracy and clarity. With this in mind, I have reviewed my previous articles and have these updates or clarification.
I had said that George W. Bush (US President) and Stephen Harper (Canadian Prime Minister) have been the least active of world leaders in their attempt to rescue their citizens from Lebanon; that was not exactly correct. I have heard today that Australian Prime Minister, and right wing nutter, John Howard could not be bothered to provide assistance at all and asked Harper if he could squeeze a few Aussies on the ships Canada is providing to evacuate our citizens. So, Bush and Harper fall to #2 and #3 with Howard grabbing the #1 spot for heartless rightwing ideologue.
In the last post I mentioned that most European Nations had evacuated it people from Lebanon; that was not accurate. I have learned that other nations are still evacuating their people; they were less vocal in their support of the Israel’s invasion of Lebanon something I think wiser regardless of your opinion on the validity of Israel’s actions. So to date from the sources I can find, these are the countries that evacuating their people.
Those who have evacuated people Prior to 2006.07.## (the day of the blog) are : Italian, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Morocco and Ukraine;
Those who have plans to evacuate: Canada, Britain, US, France, Holland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Austria, Russia and the UAE
Those nations who are sending people into Lebanon: Israel and to be fair, probably Iran, Syria and those who wish to enter the heaven of bloody religion.
IF there are more, let me know and will continue to perform by own checks.

Harper: Bush’s gutless lapdog

2006-07-18T14:54:00.000-07:00

I was just reading about Harpers reaction to the deaths of 7 Canadians by the Israelis in there disproportional attack on Hezbollah and the victimization of Lebanon. He reiterated his, or should I say Bush’s, position on Israel’s attack on Lebanon. Even Blaire, Bush’s (former?) ally and buddy has even saw fit to side with the human and condemn the actions of Israel as grossly disproportionate. Harper says this in the face of dead Canadians, which according to the logic of Israel (and yes, the Palestinians) we have just cause to bomb Tel Aviv and arrest some people in the Toronto Synagogue because they MAY know someone who MAY know something.
Harper, I hope, as committed a fatal error in not speaking out for our citizens and compromising our international standing by being but-boy for Bush. It is interesting that of the nations last to assist its people to evacuate the war zone is the US and Canada (with Britain not much quicker). I believe it is part of the true intention of the Israel and its string pullers in Washington and Ottawa. They want to put off helping, and even then I am sure they do so only because the outcry at home would cause rebellion, because those people there are Lebanese supporters, they are no better than the “terrorists” (referring the Arab ones, not the Jewish ones, they are our and there for can do not bad). They must be punished for their traitorous actions, in fact I think Harper thinks it a good thing that they dies, and better if they all dies, we don’t need security risks in this country, might upset Master Bush. To prove my point, the other nations of the world, who have mostly already evacuated their citizens, not having the same punishment mentality, did so as a service of the state, like saving a drowning man, or arresting a bank robber. The Americans, and I would not be surprised Harper as well, are charging the people rescued from a situation largely caused by American inaction in helping push Israel to a fair and equal agreement on the West Bank and blind support.
Just when I thought my discus fro Harper could reach no lower, manages to dig a little deeper. I am sure it is not his fault; he is merely doing the bidding of his master, Bush. On a secondary note, that might also explain why MacKay is so sour these days. I am sure Harper takes it out on MacKay; feeling inferior to the mighty Bush, he needs to assert his superiority over someone, like an abusive husband he comes home and beats poor MacKay until he looks like a broken dog…have you noticed. He has become the yes man to Harper, and he seems depressed, even lower than after his break up with Belinda Stronach. I think the RCMP should investigate for spousal or in this case ministerial abuse.
There is an election coming, and it is our duty not to forget, not to be quite. Remember these wrongs he and his party have committed on the very soul of our nation. Tell your friends, tell you neighbours, tell the people you meet at work, the bus stop or while shopping. We need to create a tremor of truth that will grow with each passing day, unit the eve of the next federal election when a seismic event of cataclysmic proportions will be wrote on the Conservatives, casting them into the chasm of inconsequence and bad memory. They were destroyed once, and they can be destroyed again.

We are many, they are few.

Some Dylan Thomas

2006-07-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

For those who do not know the poem, I have decided to add it...

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(i have ripped it from: http://www.bigeye.com/donotgo.htm)

Rage against the dying of the light

2006-07-17T14:26:00.000-07:00

I hope our Canadian Prime Minister Stephen “neo-con” Harper is watching what is happening. In the accidental candidness of conversations, between US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair today at the conclusion of the G8 conference, we hear the true loyalty of Bush and the Americans. We hear a pleading Blaire asking Bush to help support his and Kofi Annan plan to put a peace keeper force into Lebanon to stop the emerging catastrophe. Blaire, who has supported Bush on the international stage, in Britain and militarily in Iraq, has put his own reputation and career at risk, to support what he thought was his ally and world partner, found out that loyalty to the republican president existed only as long as you can be used by the US. Bush’s refusal to support Blaire, and his overt support for Israel (one wonders what use the president had for them...) in near lone defiance of the rest of the civilized world. Blaire tossed his own career and any hope of a positive legacy when he joined Bush’s coalition of the willing, a war he relied on Bush’s intelligence (don’t laugh) for justifying. Blaire learned to late that Bush lacked any real intelligence (okay you can laugh now) and the war on Iraq was unfounded and only created a less safe world and was probably the impetus for the Subway Bombing of 07-07. Blaire is too far gone to change horses now, but we can still hope, but now it seems that Harper is planning to take his place.
As I mentioned earlier, Harper’s very uncharacteristic impromptu talk to the press (that he despises like his mentor) to show is support for the aggression of Israel, showed he was on Bush’s speed dial. Harper continued parroting of the American line has the potential of destroying over a century of careful manoeuvring of Canada to be seen as a fair broker; the neutral party that can always be called upon to defuse situations other parties are unable to. The entire sane world has condemned the actions of Israel, even prominent pro-Israeli commentators in Canada have called this one of those things Israel does from time to time that makes it impossible to defend and hard to support Israel. It seems our neo-con prime minister, expressing the opposite of the will of the majority of its Canadian citizens, has supported what seems to be the true source of power in this country. I again would like to see how much money/support the Conservatives received by the fascists that govern the nation south of us.
Harper, and his minions, is a source of evil in this nation, and it is my fear that he has made a Faustian deal with the American devil, a selling of his soul that will condemn us all. There is an election coming; keep your ears open; you hearts pumping; your shoes on, your voice clear, your spirit strong and you voice loud…We will rage against the darkness, we will not go willingly into the night…( Dylan Thomas: http://www.bigeye.com/donotgo.htm)

Collective punishment and Israel’s wars of aggression.

2006-07-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

How long can you claim to be the victim? Germany claimed this right up until the collage of Berlin in 1945, Japan used it as the reasons for the attack on Perl harbour and Israel is using to this day. It is true on same levels that their claims were true, but from the kernel of truth has grown the ugly monster of vengeance. I agree that Israel has a right to defend itself, but everyone is taking these attacks in isolation, and that is how Israel wants it portrayed because in isolation, she can claim to be the victim, and yet the truth is both muddier and contrary to that.
From 1947 to 1967 Israel had the high ground; had the right to claim that it was the victim of Arab aggression. This changed though when Israel began to settle the West Bank and Gaza. It was at this point it lost the high ground and became the oppressor. It was at this point that the Palestinian movement, and its supporters, could claim the mantel of victim. Israel, by necessity and by American strategic design, has become the most militaristic nation of the Middle East (Lebanon spent 500 million on it military last year compared with Israel’s 9 billion) and as such its reaction to the “arrest and detainment” (to put it in term the Israeli government would had it happened by Israel on a Palestinian) by a small number of individuals of a couple of Israeli solders (one from the Gaza border and 2, after the Israel attack on Gaza, from Lebanese one.) has the entire world (with the exception of the Bush and his northern puppet, Harper) aghast.
It should be noted that the “rockets” that are being fired at Israel from Lebanon, that has promoted the Israel incursion into that nation (having recently recovered from the last shit-kicking it received in the 1980’s, by...wait for it…Israel) have been described by experts, not as hi-tech Iranian imports but as makeshift home-made munitions. If the Israel were true interested in recapturing its missing soldiers, it would negotiate and let is secrete police loose, and either the soldiers would be found or an negotiated agreement would be found, regardless the soldiers would be released. But, like 9-11 for Bush, the powers of Israel saw an opportunity and took it.
Israel is punishing the people of Gaza and Lebanon, it is powerful and a playing the role of the bully, one that seem to all too conveniently fit it. It is punishing the people of Gaza for exercising their democratic right; for not behaving like an obedient dog and quietly accept the over-lordship of the Israel. Instead of lying down in subjugation, the Palestinians choose to thumb its nose at the occupiers of its historic land (and I mean those of the West Bank, granted that most Palestinians accept the 2 state solution, it is sad that Israel only favours the 1.5 state solution) and elected Humas (and yes, I am not a fan of any group what is theocratic, but democracy is democracy). So, to punish the Palestinians (starving them did not seem to have an effect, but it is hard to steel from a man who has nothing to start with and nothing to loose) Israel has intimidated, terrorised, bombed and killed (over 50 since this current chapter started) the people of Gaza. Then, in response to this excessive use of power, Hezbollah, in Southern Lebanon, offered its own resistance (detaining 2 solders and killing 6, and yes, they have launched some home made rockets into Israel that kill only 8 people in the last 5 years, not really a credible threat). To this Israel has decided to increase the level of violence and punish the people of Lebanon. If Israel wanted to stop the rockets, recapture its soldiers, it could have used the restraint of a mature nation and focus its attack on those who perpetrated the offence. But that is not what Israel wants; it wants to punish the Lebanese for daring to defy Israel, to support the just claims of the 2-state Palestinians and for its offence against Zionism over 200, mainly innocent civilians, have paid the price for the impudence.
Israel has a write to defend it self, as Germany had the right to rise from the ashes of WWI, but do we really want to see another aggressive and domineering state appear out of those rights. It was wrong then, it is wrong now. If Israel truly wanted peace, it would abandon the fundamentalist and hawkish claims to the West Bank, it would share Jerusalem, and it would, in cooperation, help fulfill the promise of the 2 state solution first sought for these lands almost a century ago.

Stephen Harper – our own Bush 2.0 new and dis-improved

2006-07-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

I saw in a news paper the other day (Common Ground, not a mainstream media; they would not have the imprudence to speak such truths) a cartoon about a make-believe press release by minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper; it had Harper had government stationary with the words “From the Office of the Prime Minister: No Comment – Aucun Commentaire” then it had in the corner a Harper in military uniform (he was never in the military; that seems to make people more willing to send other peoples children to die for THEIR causes) . He was saying “What part of My press release don’t you understand?” [I hear it in the voice of the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket]. I should point out that the military outfit looked like a US air force with one of the medals being the Conservative logo.
What is this satirist trying to say? I used the word satirist because they take the real and make if funny by either twisting or amplifying it a little, as oppose to a cartoonist who creates fiction of exaggerates to an extreme. So what is being said is what is on the mind of many Canadians.
Let’s take the most extreme point, that of the American uniform, this is symbolic in at least three ways all pertaining to Bush. Harper, like Bush won power by the slimmest of margins (let us remember Bush in 2000, and Harper in 2006 did not win a majority of the popular vote, Harper’s party only received 36.25%) and yet he governs like he has a huge mandate ( a term, meaning moral authority to rule). It is this arrogance that has been both the defining feature of his presidency (I am sure this is how he sees it) and also it’s most offensive. So he rules like Bush, he also believes that it is not enough for politicians to write the laws, they must also their interpreter, that they are more impartial and judicious than…JUDGES. Harper, like Bush, references to our Supreme Court Justices as judicial activists (the offensiveness and incorrectness of this term I will talk about in another blog, Bush does not like Kyoto, so we back out of that international agreement in-spite (it seems spiteful) of the will of the people (67% that almost twice as many who voted for Harper). Harper, like Bush believes in the War on Terror (I guess he thinks poverty or hunger affects fewer people, well fewer who count) and as such has unilaterally decided to up-step out involvement in Afghanistan from peace keeping and reconstructions to offensive actions by those who are annoyed with foreign intervention into their country, I think the toppling of the Taliban was a good thing-period! That having been done, what is wanted now, is to ensure those people neighbouring the oil reserves in Kazakhstan are suitably humble to accept western (and Chinese) over-lordship. Can it really be much longer before we are sending “technical” support to Iraq?
Further on the Harper Bush connections, when Israel attacked Lebanon this week, Harper, very much out of character, had an impromptu press conference in the back of an Air Plane (he was off to the G8 conference) with the stipulation that he would ONLY talk about the Israeli situation. I really have to wonder if he got a cell call from Bush (can you use cells on a plane, maybe air-phone) telling him what to do, so being an obedient pet he promptly had is “spontaneous” discussion where he parroted the word of Bush. Don’t forget the increases in military spending (which is debatable about its value) to help ensure Bush’s support and more importantly the finical support (Current information is extremely hard to find…what are they hiding?) as Americans poor into Canada to ensure they are in the same country regardless of what side of the boarder they are on.
So that explains the uniform and the medal (for being a good Neo-Con) but the press release, what does that mean? Well he again Harper is using imitation with the hopes of similar success (and if he was PM during 9-11, I am sure we would have our one Patriot act, and the end of true democracy [what there is] in this country). In the US Bush browbeat the press, starving it of food (news) so that it would be obedient and pliant like a trained dog. In doing this though, he is not attaching the Press or the media corporations (who are more willing to go along out of self-interest) He is attacking the very foundations of this country. By denying the Canadian electorate access and information about the operation of the government and by denying it, though it press proxies, the opportunity to question the government and its intentions and motivations, he is not only hurting the institutions of journalism but fatally weakening the ability for Canada to BE a democracy. Of course having been elected by a minority, this may not be such a bad thing for the Conservatives. It is interesting the amount of “strategic” movements the current regime had done to curry the favour of those who would blindly or misguidedly (remember with o FREE press or OPEN government, how can we make informed decision) vote for the conservatives against their best interests. I worry this will help them steal another election, just like his mentor, Bush. We need proportional representation, publicly funded campaigns, a free press and open government.

Nothing big, just the end of the world...

2006-07-13T12:30:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine asked me the other day whether the things going on around the world would lead to WWIII. I told him “no, things have been bad like this before, and will be in the future” and I still think that is true but then I had another thought. I have been listening to a few docs on the evils of religion. I think religions have always been inherently a ban on humanity (no, not all religious people are bad people…but they could be if they thought god commanded them…and if they really believed, they would do it, no?). This is not new and has been the source (or excuses) for violence since the down of time (Don’t hold me to this part, I would need to study it better, but defiantly since the dawn of the Abrahamic religions, of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam but I am sure not limited to them) There is a difference now though.
I was remembering the Anarchist movement in the 19th century. It was responsible for the assignation of many powerful leaders, including the Tsar of Russia, but all of these remained relatively local events and had no direct impact of history (but many provoke indirect changes, especially in Russia where this moment greatly retarded the advancement of Democratic reforms as they created a authoritarian conservative backlash that kept Russia medieval right up till the Revolutions of 1917.) But as societies and technologies evolve, the potential for a single actor to possess the power to move the world has increased, take for example the assassination of the Emperor Ferdinand, that act by one gunman sparked, thanks to the context of modern military, WWI. What about today?
Today it is possible for a agent of evil (again most likely some religious person) to take a nuke and explode it in some sensitive area, like Jerusalem. What would be the response? First the US would accuse the “terrorists” (who ever they want them to be), then they will accuse those who COULD have provided it. They will ignore there own corporations, because the US government in is controlled by them; they will ignore the Western Nations because they are one of us (aren’t they?) and they will ignore the other Superpowers (yes, the US is no longer the only one) of Russia and China because they could not win a war with them. NO they US will focus its attention on the annoying and venerable, this will be Iran, Saudi Arabia (yes, the US want control of their oil, but will no longer be happy to control it by proxy, and they will have troops in the area). But the US is no longer strong enough for a conventional military operation, so it will rely on its arsenal of “advanced” weapons, this will include tactical nukes. This will put oil supplies for China and Japan (and I assume the rest of the Asia nations) in decline and incomplete control of the US. Japan will object on moral grounds, being the only other nations to have suffered an nuclear attack, and it will pull away from the US and fall into the Chinese sphere of nations. China will act against it because it will not allow its interests to be compromised or control put at risk, it will respond first by dumping its American bonds and currency, causing the US economy to collapse, and not a neat collapse like Russia after the dissolution of the USSR, no more like that of Germany in the inter-war years.
With the US society in ruins (well there society is tied up with their economy, the destruction of one will be the destruction of the other) the President, a born again fundamentalist, will see this as a sign of the end of times. He will wonder why the he is there and the Rapture has not carried him to heaven (the President of the US must be the most worthy….no?), he will figure that the Armageddon must start first, so he will launch the US arsenal of nukes on who ever they happen to be pointing at (probably China). This will start a chain of retaliatory strikes, leading to his wanted Armageddon, but no rapture, not salvations, only desolation and destructions…not for the earth, it will survive, it always has, most life will die, but not all, humans will be whipped, a curious artefact for some other, hopefully wiser and less violent intelligent race will evolve out of the remnants of life on earth, to discover and wonder what calamity caused this destruction. At least the Dinosaurs could claim that their extinction was not their fault, I fear our legacy will not have that dignity.

What makes a war?...The weakness of power

2006-07-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

Well I hoped to move on past the trouble in Middle East but alas it has come back to the beginning of the conflict, it is as if the past decade plus years of negotiation did not happen as Israel move back into southern Lebanon and re-“secures” the Gaza.
There are many points I could mentions about this, the fact that it could be argued that the Palestinians did not kidnap a an Israeli solder but detained for investigation a suspected terrorist. The fact the Israelis have detained on little or no evidence thousands of Palestinians (and yes a view very deserving and violent ones) required a response, so the Hamas, a group I do not support nor agree with its ultimate goals, used the only leverage it had to try and secure the freedom of its fellow citizens from an aggressive, powerful and paranoid (with some cause) occupier. Israel just blew up, and not the first time, an entire building to “remove” a suspected leader of Palestinian resistance. This they did with the claim it was trying to save lives…Israeli lives…and the fact that nine “collateral” people died (and the target was not one of the fatalities) is seen as acceptable losses…I mean they were not Israeli.
But no, I will focus on the news talk and them claiming that the war between Israel and Palestinians…interesting one side is a country and the other a people…and thought how inappropriate that word was. War, as defined by international law is between two independent states. In this case though we have one participant, a favoured US ally, a huge military budget, a regional uni-superpower country and the other participant (and it must be stated that they Palestinians are actively aggressive) a phantom idea of a nation with no independent army, financial support (which was recently cut off) and totally dependent on the other. This is not a war, in any sense of the term; it might be a civil war, if you believe that Israel was granted by god the historical lands of Israel, or an occupation, if you believe that the 1947 UN resolution created 2 nations, or a mix of both. I think it can only be seen as a war of aggression, an attempt to ensure that the weaker acquiesces completely to the stronger; this is supported by the unilateral “withdrawal” of occupation forces (the lands in questions have never been legal or formally annexed so it is technically still occupied lands) from territory that Israel does not want or thinks too costly to keep and that any nation that is left behind would be impotent and depended on them. This has a distasteful reek of that of what Germany did to Czechoslovakia in 1938.
I do not want to make the claim that the Israelis are Nazis, that would be ridicules; the Nazis had the belief their nation had a historical right to expansion; that its nation has been the subject of aggression by its neighbours; that it have within its midst agents of a power that is intent on the destruction of the nation and willing to do any sabotage (old speak for terrorism...funny how language change); that pre-emptively attached its neighbours to protect its people and to restore lands that historically belonged to them…no, there are no similarities there at all. There is an old saying that “in time we hate that which we often fear.” When a victim of brutality is given power, they are often tempted to show the same or greater vehemence in revenge and fear, irrespective of the threat, real or perceived, to them. You may have noticed I have talked a lot about Israel and nothing about the Jews. I did this on purpose because it is easy to fall into the trap of condemning a people for the actions of a nation. Israel are the aggressors, they just happen to be primarily Jewish, and accident of history, not a precondition for conflict. There is something about fundamentalism to be said, that exists in Israel, and Palestine and the us and in many other places, but that is a blog for another day.

A future together or not future at all...

2006-07-05T12:11:00.000-07:00

Well as I said last blog, having kicked on the Israelis, settlement and the legal taking of hostages via arrest, it is time to look at why the Israelis are so hostile. And they are, hostile, but would you not be if since the literal inception of your nation your Arab neighbours have been sworn to your elimination. That until literally forces at the end of a gun and with the promise of statehood, the Palestinians, as lead by Yasser Arafat, did not recognise the right of existence of a Jewish state and that less than a decade ago. Now this is not that new in history, there are been many states that denied others, one could look at Northern Ireland or India and Pakistan.
So, living in a community that believe they have no right to exist there is the other matter that since its inception, Israel has been in 4 major wars with its neighbours, were it has been the on the defensive, except for Lebanon but that could be argued as defensive because of the cross boarder attacks by militia. So no only has there been a moral attack on them but also a classical military conflict…so two vary very good reasons for Israel to the Palestinians as they do, think about how the west treated Nazis…no I do not think Palestinians are as bad as Nazis but I think to the Jews of Israel the comparison is valid, and it is threw there eyes.
Now coupled with this more traditional animosity, the Palestinians use a common tool the weak use against the strong - terrorism. I will not make a moral judgment on why and how the Palestinians use suicide bombing and other techniques but they have had a profound and powerful effect on their enemy, but not totally as expected. This elevates the level of buy-in of the populations. Unlike the US and Vietnam where the population could sympathies with the “enemy” because the battles were other there, and did not effect them personally except when bodies came home and even that was not strictly blamed on the Vietcong, because they were thousands of miles away, the true enemy was the US government, not only because of there aggression (and we could for the sake of this argument give them that it was a defensive war) but because they were who the people interacted with. When the source, real of perceived, of your anxiety is in your midst, at arms reach we strike back, in rage, in fear, in a desperate attempt to regain normality, to return to the safety in the familiar.
The Israelis live with, work with are indistinguishable from the Palestinians, and they, the bombers have betrayed the trust, what there was. They made the familiar not a comfort but a source of fear, of apprehension. The Jews of Israel are afraid, and the sources of that fear are the Arabs, the Palestinians, and the history that has intermingled them all. You may believe the Israelis have over reacted, are aggressors, are many things but you must grant them that they have had cause; they have been injured again and again.
What we can learn from both sides; that fear breeds fear, violence breeds violence. That I can understand why the Israelis arrest and occupy the Palestinians lands; that I can understand why the Palestinians use terror to defend themselves, they see the Jews as invaders. It is a sad state where both sides must share blame for the current situation, and understand they are not alone in sharing the blame. They need to, somehow, forget the past, and remember they are the same people; citizens of the Middle East who must move into the future together or neither will have future. .

Forbissima chalcious mishigas

2006-06-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Well here is something new, Israel is invading and terrorizing Palestinians because they attacked a military outpost and kidnapped some civilians. There seems to be some strife in the middle east, when did this happen? Ok seriously. I find coverage to be, as usual, very lop sided. The attack on the Israel military checkpoint, as constant source of intimidation and aggravation for the Palestinians, was portrayed as the first act of aggression between the two parties in years…decades. AND it is true that the Palestinian government has refrained from attacks on Israel for a long time. But the Israel government has been bombing Gaza and the West Bank right up until the present. Most times they, I want to believe, try and avoid civilians but it is true that they have not done a good job of avoiding them and many hundreds have been killed as collateral damage. In fact it was less than 2 weeks ago that the Israelis killed an innocent family on a Gaza beach, with the only comment it that we were after legitimate targets, sucks to be them. This is seen as the provocation for the strike on the military target, the boarder check point.
The response to this by the Israelis is to commit what must be called war crimes. I do not mean the actual invasion, with tanks and troops; I do not mean the arrest of Hamas leaders, many have openly stated their involvement in attacks on Israel; no I am referring to the destruction of civilian faculties: the power station and the water supply. Because of the provocation I can rationalize, although no agree with, the arrests and tanks, but the attack on civilian services, which has lead to severe water shortages in Gaza and the loss of electricity in the middle of the hottest season, has turned the Gaza into a concentration camp. This collective punishment being inflicted on the Palestinians by the Israel’s is against international law. Coupled with the buzzing of civilian areas with jet fighters, with their loud and unnerving sonic booms which is seen as psychological torture, Israel has lost any moral high ground and should, as a measure of reparations, with draw from Gaza AND the West Bank.
Why the West Bank? I heard the father of the Israelis soldier being held by the Palestinians say he saw that the Israel pulling out of Gaza did nothing to placate the Palestinians. He said it as though when Israel withdrew from Gaza, the people of Gaza should revert to a humble and peaceable state, with neutral or positive attitude to Israel. This of course assumes the Gaza people are dissociative and will somehow forget the Israelis are still in the West Bank with an eye to keep the majority of it. The withdrawal of troops of Gaza was not an olive branch to the Palestinians; it was an effort to reduce governmental expenses. To the people of Gaza and the Palestinians as a whole, do not think they owe Israel anything; the Israelis are still the aggressors, the invaders who must be repelled. As long as Israel insists on enlarging itself beyond the 1967 boundary, there will be no peace for them, the Palestinians or the Middle East.
That being said, it is not an Israeli problem; it is not a Palestinian problem; it is not a Middle East problem; it is all of this. Having kicked on the Israelis, I will next leave Monday open to kick on the Palestinians and if there is anything left to say, will take on the rest of the players in a third instalment.

Foundations of all totalitarianism...

2006-06-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

"The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment."
Sound like something Gonzales would write; something Rove would have arranged; something Bush lives. But this claim was not made by the current Republican administration; no it was made by a much more infamous, though in retrospect less deserving of that derision than the current incumbent, Richard Milhous Nixon. This line was lifted from the opening arguments of Nixon’s legal council, James D. St. Clair, at the Supreme Court trying to defend Nixon’s attempt to extend executive privilege. At the time the Supreme Court held to the foundational premise that no one was above the law; that although it was important to defend the nations, defending it from internal threats, threats that grind away at the very foundation of open and free democracy, were more important. And yet those of the Bush administration would put forward the argument:

“…because the Constitution makes the President the 'Commander-in-Chief,’ no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the President would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished." John Yoo (as summarised by David Cole)

It might be argued that if the nations leader had the support of, by that I mean people believe he is doing an excellent job (I think for this point, a good job would not be good enough), the vast majority of the nation. And when I use the term “vast’ I do not mean it in a Bush-tax-cut way, meaning less than 1%, but by the acceptable definition of much greater than a majority, lets just say I mean greater than 75%. If they had the support of the vast majority of the nation, they could then claim to have the authority to act in an unrestrictive way. But the current administration does not have that kind of support, and it is acting in the antithesis of a larger and larger segment of that nation’s population. The Bush administration is running the government as though it was the absolute ruler as a totalitarian state, and henchmen like Fox news it is effectively doing this. Winston Churchill was talking about Hitler and Stalin, but one can not help but think that somehow he would be saying the same thing today about the leader of the most powerful and dangerous nation on the planet.
“You might however consider whether you should not unfold as a background the great privilege of habeas corpus and trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the English people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the Executive to cast a man in prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist.“ (21 November 1943)

The times they are a-changing…

2006-06-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

Can you feel it on the wind? In the US right now we are seeing a shift not so much a shift to the right, although there has been, but a shift to the authoritarian… It is striking that the US is now involved in a war with no end, much like that found in 1984. It is striking that those in power feel immune to rewrite history (or their part in it, remember the claims for the war) like they perfected in 1984. It is striking that the act of criticising the powers that be, the dogma of the day is the crime, is seen as the important question and not he truth uncovered. Last week President Bush criticized one of the few organs of freedom and openness for telling the citizens of the nation of illegal activities performed by its own government. It should be noted that this is not the first time that the Bush administration has saw fit to “re-intrepid” laws or the US Constitution and Bill of Rights to justify its activities, lest we forget rendition, torture, Phone tapping…
The shift is not in the fact that the Republican revolution has done the things it has done, although they are distributing in their own right, it is how they defend them or should I say they don’t defend them. They have shifted from trying to justify their actions to attacking all those who criticise or show a difference of opinion as traitors to the nations, dangerous to the safety of the people and, worst of all, hide behind the veil of war to defend and justify these attracts and their actions. I know you will say I just said they did not defend their actions but attacked, and then I said they defended their action by being at war, this is not a contradiction but amplification. It is amplification because they do not defend the war, not anymore; they do not defend their performance of the war, except to state there are no other alternative ways (although there are those who said there are). The war is an amplification because they use it, a war that could have not end, has no solid enemy, has not chance of ultimate success, but it does provide an excuse to duck and criticism about execution of the war, about the grab for power in the name of war, and the overt attempt at crushing all descent in the name of the war.
No times they are a changing and you can hear in the wind, of CNN, Fox and the other media prostitutes as they bend over and take one for the nation. As a student of history it has provided an interesting contrast to the totalitarian states created in the last century in Germany and Russia. The US government has not use overt violence yet, well at lest on its own nationals but perhaps this has changed as those arrested in Florida may be a sign or a warning to those that even if you are American, in the name of war, you may be treated like the show trials of other requiems, can the black shirts be far behind (let us not forget the Minuteman Project a so called Citizen Border Guard). I am thankful that I am north of this meltdown and hope we can avoid the loss of freedom I see happening in the US, and then again I am fearful because, thanks to our vast reserves of oil, gas and water, I am beginning to understand what it was like to live in Poland during the rise of National Socialism in its neighbour.

Poking the whale - Aboriginal Racism

2006-06-26T13:45:00.000-07:00

Well this may one blog that will come back and bite me in the future, it’s not very PC and I must admit its more working out ideas then firm opinions. For disclosure I must point out at the start that I am a white male born and breed in a small city on the prairies. I grew up in a culture of passive racism, and have a constant struggle to deal with this brain washing. On this last item, I believe I have, for the most part, identified and ignored the effects of this heritage. Now just because I have this history does not negate my opinion; no more than it would for some one who has prejudicial feeling because they have been the subject of racism. So this being said let us begin….
Let me stop here to make something clear. I, as most sensible people, believe that many people thought out the ages have been gravely wronged by others. This happened to the Jews of Europe, the Tibetans of China, and the Negros of the Southern US. That those wrongs must be addressed and redress made. In this particular context previous governments of Canada (and mostly the people they represented) were grievously prejudicial to our aboriginal population. Beyond making personal reparations to individuals who suffered specific abuse as a result of these actions; it is the responsibility of this nation to ensure the culture of this special part of Canada is preserved and promoted. They are we, and we all have the right to be protected by (and occasionally from) the nation.
That being said, I find it both offensive and disturbing that some of those in the aboriginal community are segregationalist, racist and separatists. I say they are segregationalist because there is an attempt to isolate these communities on isolated and insular reserves. I accept that it was the imperialist that created these “homelands” but I find it a curious fact that those who suffered the most from these attempts at isolation have now taken it on as their own and see it as a way to promote there own culture. I am stunned by this because this method, again tried in the negative for generations, has worked so well in the past and why they think it will suddenly work now reminds me of the generals in WWI who thought one more rush of the lines would win the war, it cost them millions of young soldiers and I fear these native segregationalist will cost thousands of young native futures.
Beyond segregationalist there is also, and more offensively, a strong vein of racists in the aboriginal community. This has two forms, one and the less defendable, is the outright belief that aboriginals are better, smarter and more intone with nature than white people. I read something in the local weekly, the Georgia Straight. The article was titled “urban planners need indigenous thinking”. In it a Kamala Todd is stated as arguing, at “At the indigenous City, a public World Urban Forum”, that “aboriginal advice is essential in helping cities transform ecologically”. On the surface this may be taken as a sense of cooperation.
It think it hard to honestly say modern aboriginals have any greater inherent tie to the land than anyone else but because of the fight to regain their cultural identity some have educated them selves more so in ecology than perhaps those who did not have this background. But things often get darker once one moves away from the surface. Later Todd is quoted as saying that with out an aboriginal world-view in planning it is “just more western experts reasserting their control”. Here we see the racism, that western experts (is this all white people or just those in Canada? And what about an Asian view?) are only motivated or capable of domination, that it is the white people (and that is what was meant) who are incapable of ecological sensibility, that we somehow need the paternalistic efforts of the great and wise elders of the aboriginal ‘nation’.
The comment above by Todd shows, perhaps latent or subtle, racism that hold the world view that somehow all white people are evil, imperial and impure; that our only motivation can only be for power or money. That the only pure people, those in touch with the earth, are the aboriginal and that if we could only return to the natural. This is a form of fundamentalism and as such must be identified and countered. This does not mean I think the aboriginal community should not be a part of the planning, they should, as should everyone, equally. This racism coupled with the segregationalist leads to the growing separatist movement among “first nation” peoples.
Unlike the other issues, which with time will fade, the separatist, like those of Quebec, can be the source of great unrest, problems and destruction in the future. Unlike Quebec, the aboriginal lands as spread out, sparsely populated and to dependent of their neighbours. These means that there is a danger that if they push to hard, their may be a backlash against them. The case in Caledonia, where the aboriginal community actively demonstrated their dislike for a legal ruling over land and their claims on them and I am not speaking about the validity of that, I will assume it was valid for the sake of this discussion. They chose to extend their civil disobedience to their neighbours, who were offended by our double standard. In the past, and I am will to concede to a degree today, there has been a legal and political bias against natives. Because of our collective guilt over this disgraceful past; we have inverted our political bias and now allow crimes to be committed by natives that would not be tolerated if the perpetrators were white, or any other ethnicity for that matter. This immunity to civil law, come the shouts for self-government. Now each community should have the right to govern itself in the larger context of region, province and nation but aboriginal self-government is a racial one; one defined not by community but by race, and as such is offensive to ever developing sense of multiculturalism in Canada.
There is a limit to our collective guilt and Caledonia showed that this limit is approaching. We, as a nation, are more than willing to support, help and protect members of our community, cultural patches on our national quilt. But if you are not, or do not wish to be, part of our nation, that makes you them, something that is in competition with Canada, something dangerous and poisonous. If the aboriginal community allows itself to be dragged along this path there will come a day where the people of Canada will stay no, and our quilt may turn to rage. The reason those in our past were able to do the things they did is because the aboriginal community was sparse and isolated. Today’s communities suffers this plus a dependence on the nation that totally surround them. Radical native terrorist have lived under the false belief that their gains have been made due to the strength of their position, were in reality it has been “gifted” to them (granted with much effort and education) by the more populous majority. When the day comes, and it could be sooner than they think (what if native activism gets painted with the brush of international terrorism, some small group contacts Al Qaeda, where will the aboriginal community be then?); when the multicultural whale will swamp the aboriginal community and eat it alive, and at that point the smaller will be gone and the other irrevocable diminished.

Shopping to feed the beast...

2006-06-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

When we think back to the “good old days” of the 50’s and 60’s we think about the birth of the automobile, prosperity and a better future. It was the combination of wanting to improve your life (a need created by consumerism), the ability to pay for it (thanks to a rising standard of living), and increased opportunity brought by the increased mobility of the automobile. Stores, most notably the food drive-ins, seeing this reliance on the automobile realised that if they made accommodation for it, people were more likely to visit there stores over other, thus leading to an abandonment of the downtown, with its limited parking, for the wide open parking lots of the suburbs. The birth of a mobile society addicted to the car, and its bloated parking lots, lead, inevitably to a powerful yet simple idea. Get together several stores onto a single location that could share a common parking lot would have several befits. They could share the costs of construction (for the common lot). They would also create a ready clientele for each other because as a person went to one of the stores for a need, it would be simple for them to stop and the other stores because they were so convenient. It was at this time that we saw the birth of the strip mall.
In the early days of the malls, stores would band together to stimulate sales. This effect could be amplified by enclosing the mall and the strip mall turned into the mega mall. There was no need to compete directly with each other (unless you were selling the same products) because the standard of living was rising so people would “always” have more money tomorrow to spend, there was plenty for all. To increase this money pump malls expanded to include more than stores and services but entertainment facilities became both a means to drive more people into the malls and to ensure they left with yet lighter wallets. This was possible, achieving an increase in sales each year, because prosperity was shared, thanks to some degree to unions, and progress was every onward this model worked, but this changed in the 70’s when this was no longer the case.
As capitalism reached it peak and corporatism because to replace it, people were not getting the rise in income as they did before. Corporatism changed the ethos to an "all for the head and nothing to the hands"; this coupled with the beginning of the destruction of the union movement meant an end to the prosperity of the west. Coincidently the rising independence of the “third world” mean that there was no longed a limitless pool to create more wealth as those people were no longer willing to ship the benefits offshore and demanded more for themselves, thus progress was no longer a moment up but of spreading out that which already existed. So now we still had the mobile society but the era of prosperity and progress was gone, but the stores remained and now need to rethink their business as their customers began to reduce their spending.
The first response to this crisis was not to change the business model to accommodate this more stable environment, no; the insatiable appetite of corporatism forced the business to find new ways to feed off the consumer. The invention of credit, well the credit card and financing, allowed the consumer to spend beyond their means, to artificial experience a rising standard of living at the expense of their long term economic health. Businesses created a new culture of buy to day and pay tomorrow, and if done right there would be no tomorrow as revolving credit meant you would always be able to charge as long as you were willing to sign over your pay cheque, all you cheques to the credit company. Those business people, who thought about it, could believe that people would use credit as a tool, and not as a drug but if we learned anything about the birth of the automobile, western cultures love addiction and soon we were addicted to credit.
By the 80’s we had a consumer society that saw credit the same as most see food, both a necessity of life and a status symbol but then the recession hit which showed the less fortunate that credit would not always be there and some entrepreneurs saw the writing on the wall when the credit flood would crest. This is why in the 90’s we saw the introduction of the box store. This took the basic idea of the shopping mall but reduced the number of stake-holders, thus profit takers, to one. The mall was failing because as money and credit dried up stored were competing for an ever shrinking pool of money. It was no longer the consideration of where will I buy my stereo, it was do I buy a stereo, cloths or food, this new competition made the enclosed space of the mall a liability because people who were going to your store to buy something could be lured away and spend there money else were. But people expected one stop shopping, there was no going back to the small independent, so the big box store provided the perfect, well for them, answer to this problem. By providing a complete line of goods people would still be driven to your store, but because you were the one selling everything, there was no risk of loosing sales because there were all yours. There was also another side effect that made this more profitable than first hopped, by locating these big box stored in isolated areas, you could buy land cheap, get concessions for local governments, prevent people from wandering to competitors or worse price comparing and finally you could afford to loose money on some items because you could make it back on others. Once you had them in your store they would buy, so you created the lost leader, an item sold below cost to people out of your competitors store and into yours. If you were lucky and were the first big box in town you could use this strategy no only to get customers but kill the competitions because the smaller stores did not have the depth of products to make up for the losses of the lost leader, so they could not compete as the mindless consumer were to the cheapest appearing price. Eventually the other local stores close and now the big box could make it highest profits because there was no need to have the lost leader, there were no other stored to buy from so they could dictate pricing. But it does not end there, because they have become, thanks to their predatory pricing, the biggest employer in town, they can dictate to local government, and they are the only ones with enough capital to buy the not-so-local politicians.
Thus the big box has removed its competitions, enslaved its consumer base and bought the tools of civil control, government. There is one show in town and you let it happen, when you go to Wal-Mart, or its many imitators, you save money now, but at the expense of your future. Don’t let it happen in your neighbourhood, protest and block any plans to build them in you community. If they already have a foothold in you life, cut them off, you have the choice to buy from them or not, so don’t. Frequent that local shop, even if it does cost a few more pennies, think of it as investing in your future, the future of the generations to come. Evil only need good people to sit back and do nothing to triumph, do not let you shopping habits feed the beast.

The Blind and the Deaf

2006-06-20T11:55:00.000-07:00

There are those out there who hold to the claim that those unemployed are lazy; that if they “got off their asses they could get a job”. These are the kind of people who think they are, we all are, islands adrift in an ocean of isolation.
When they look at their life they suddenly seem to developed a blindness for all that they take for granted: good parents, socio-economic position and stability, ethos of hope, health (both physical and mental), and most of all a community that gave them opportunity. This does not mean that they all came from wealthy background, but most did; this does not mean they had stable family lives, but most did; this does not mean they had the opportunity and received a good education, but most of them did; this does not mean they were blessed with health, but most of them did; this does not mean they had all of these, but most of them did…what it does mean is that they all had some of these and unfortunately we live in a world, largely created by them, that permits people to be brought into this world with none of these.
But blindness to their own good fortune is not their only affliction; a deafness to the pain of others, for those who have suffered by no fault of their own, except by the accident of their birth. They can not hear the pain of the child sexually abused, but most of us have; they can not hear the rubble of an empty belly; but most of us have; they can not hear the anguish of prejudice, despair and hopelessness of systemic poverty of ghettos of fear, but most of us have; they can not hear the crying of those physically and/or mentally abused by parent, spouse, relative, or neighbour, but most of us have; they can not hear the suffering of those who have not, those that opportunity has passed up or passed by, those that society has deemed expendable, unworthy or unimportant, but most of us have. This does not mean we have felt all of these but we know of these and live in a world were the sounds of inequality and disparity are muffled by the complacency of them, we are not them…we are many they are few, the present may be there but the future shall be ours…