May 2007
Monthly Archive
May 28, 2007
Paul Wolfowitz is a genuine Bushie to the end. Having been run out of the World Bank in disgrace, Wolfie says the whole thing was the media’s fault:
People were reacting to a whole string of inaccurate statements and by the time we got to anything approximating accuracy the passions were around the bend.
Sorry, Paul, were you talking about your World Bank screwup or the Iraq war fiasco? And please, stop licking my comb!
May 28, 2007
May 28, 2007
Canada’s health minister Tony Clement is blatantly more focused on politics than health care when it comes to Vancouver’s safe injection site.
According to NatPo, last year Clement ordered an aide to prepare a report debunking the “five myths” surrounding the facility before he announced his refusal to extend the site’s permit.
Here are the five myths that Clement’s aide conjured up:
1. safe injection sites are commonly used in other countries,
2. they operate “all across Canada”,
3. they are legal,
4. they present “a complete solution” to drug-use harms, and,
5. the Vancouver site “has the complete support of the community.”
Guess what, those are indeed myths. It’s too bad Clement thought it necessary to make them up. Hey Tony, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Safe injection sites are used in some other countries such as Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Luxembourg, and Australia. They’re legal enough that these countries, states we’re proud to be allied with, are running their own sites.
No one, save perhaps for this bozo, Clement, has suggested these sites are “a complete solution” to drug-use harms. To reach that far shows how desperate Clement is for any sort of justification to shut down this facility. Similarly no one has claimed that the Vancouver site has the complete support of the community. What project ever does get complete support? Try building a new arena or, better yet, a transit line and you’ll find plenty of people ready to bitch about it. That doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile or that you shelve them.
These myths exist only in Tony Clement’s tortured mind. Too bad we have to settle for a man of his calibre and vision as our health minister.
May 28, 2007
It’s all so confusing, especially given the sums being shoveled out the back door by Big Oil outfits like Exxon to keep you confused. It’s not just confusing, it’s frightening. We all find it frightening, me too. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be alarming, it should if only because it is.
Tackling global warming will be a scalding test of your – and my – beliefs. Principles are delightful to righteously espouse when they don’t really cost anything. When they come with a price, however, they’re not nearly as popular.
In coming years, we’re going to face a steadily mounting list of demanded sacrifices, that is if we’re going to confront the problem. Critics will denounce it as a socialist plot, an unprecedented transfer of wealth. It’s nothing of the sort. Global warming transcends political belief, at least of the sort that Edmund Burke might recognize. It is also anything but some felonious transfer of wealth. Wealth has little to do with it except as it may represent unconscionable privilege to continue damaging mankind.
Global warming is a global challenge and we don’t even begin on the same page of the prayer book. If you’re reading this you probably haven’t felt much in the way of the repercussions of global warming. You’re not one of those who is already displaced or dying from it. Displaced, dying? Yes, now go ahead and fill up that Hummer, eh?
You see, those who are dying as you read this are those who don’t have Hummers or Esplanades, yachts or holidays abroad. However, those who are killing those who don’t have Hummers or Esplanades, yachts and holidays abroad, do. Let that sink in for a minute unless there’s something irresistible on the Home Shopping Channel.
First question, my fellow Christians, are we going to stop killing these people? Second question, are we going to let things slide while they die in ever greater numbers? Yes, you’re right, I am looking at you Born Agains – you self-proclaimed, truly devout Christians. Hey, what’s the deal? Is it going to be the teaching of Christ or is it time to scurry away into the dark reaches of the Old Testament again? Don’t look to Falwell to bail you out, he’s all tied up with his real maker at the moment.
So there’s the first issue you need to keep in mind as you express your opinion – or vote – on this enormous issue: do we in the indulged West have a right to cause the deaths of the less fortunate? TO BE CONTINUED
May 27, 2007
Some observations on global warming by Garret Keizer, excerpted from this month’s Harper’s Magazine:
…We’re told that the “science is all in on global warming” and that it’s just about unanimous. I believe it. We owe a debt to Al Gore that most people now believe it. But the science has also been in, and in for a while, and is every bit as unanimous in concluding that we are members of a single species, descendants of common ancestors – ‘family’ in every conceivable sense of the word. How can we imagine that we will address one overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion without having acted fully on the other? The question is not sentimental. If one can be forgiven of applying base political considerations to such a sublimely moral issue” you do not repair the climate of an entire planet without staggering sacrifices, and people will not elect to make staggering sacrifices unless the burden is shared with something like parity.
To put that as succinctly as possible, the days of paradise for a few are drawing to a close. The game of finding someone else in some convenient misery to fight our wars, pull our rickshaws, and serve as the offset for our every filthy indulgence is just about up. It is either Earth for all of us or hell for most of us. Those are the terms, those have always been the terms, and any approach to climate change that begins on those terms can count me as a loyal partisan. Otherwise, don’t expect me to get overly excited as to which side of a golf-course heart attack shows the affluent, the educated, the suburban, and the wired a world much hotter than the one they were banking on.
May 27, 2007
Canada’s Enviromin, Furious John Baird, says Canada has to clean up its own climate change problems before lecturing other nations. Look, Johnny boy, talk is cheap so where are your policies?
In a letter to Stephane Dion, Baird says the United States has done more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than Canada did under the previous Liberal government. Of course, if it wasn’t for America’s new, bottomless gas tank – the Athabasca Tar Sands – our performance would have been decidedly better. Thanks to Alberta, the Tar Sands and the Tories, Canada is becoming a greenhouse gas factory and the Americans are eager for us to ramp up bitumen production and processing five fold.
Baird says that it’s not Canada’s place to lecture the US until we clean up our own act. How about we do both, kill two birds with one stone? How about we declare the Tar Sands an environmental disaster and shut the whole thing down until either Big Oil or the Alberta government or both come up with the long promised technology to make this black goldmine GHG neutral? How about it, Big John?
May 26, 2007
I’ve been the leader of the most militarily powerful nation on earth.
I sparked a war and was enormously successful, at first.
Instead of consolidating my victory, I put my first war on hold and went out to topple a vile dictator.
I didn’t listen to the many warnings of potential disaster before launching my invasion. I even rejected the advice of my top generals. Instead I surrounded myself with sycophants as incompetent as myself.
I contrived justification for pre-emptive attack.
I skilfully used deceit and half-truths to blind my own people.
I believed that governmental power should be mine, not some legislature’s.
I endorsed arrest without charge, detention without trial and I approved of torture.
I brought suffering and death to tens of thousands of innocents.
I waged war according to ideology and what I wanted to believe instead of military principles.
I squandered my nation’s treasury on a futile military quest that I could neither win nor leave.
After six years of slowly deteriorating war, I gambled everything on one last, grand operation even though it was almost certain to fail.
As my failures became inescapable I began blaming everyone else, even my own people, for my incompetence.
I made my nation a pariah to all other nations.
I stand as the worst leader in my country’s history.
Who am I?
May 25, 2007
I’ll bet George Bush wishes he’d never learned to say “eye-rack.” Four years ago he kicked the top off an anthill and has been plagued with the nippy little creatures ever since.
After fumbling and stumbling and bumbling year after year, George decided to change course, to fight another Iraq War. What, you say, there has been more than one Iraq War? Why yes, grasshopper. There was the war to protect America against an imminent attack by weapons of mass destruction, although that one’s best forgotten. Then there was the war to topple Saddam. Then there was the war to defeat the “dead enders”, disgruntled Saddamites. Of course we can’t forget the war to defeat al-Qaeda. Then there was the war to defeat the sectarian militias. Then, when everything else had been thoroughly botched, there was the war to reclaim Baghdad, the “Surge.”
Now, even Republicans in congress realize the Surge is just another flop atop all the earlier flops. It hasn’t quelled sectarian violence, it hasn’t stopped the killing of American troops, it hasn’t brought the insurgents to heel.
So what’s a complete incompetent right-wingnut president to do? Why not try something that’s worked so well before – spin? Let’s call the Surge, Surge II. Rebrand the hell out of it. Then, when no one’s looking, let’s move the goal posts closer and lower them – a lot.
According to the McClatchy news service this process is already underway:
“Less than five months after President Bush announced that ‘we need to change our strategy in Iraq,’ his administration is preparing to change course there once again, this time emphasizing political rather than military progress.
“‘…the search for a new direction,’ as one of the officials described the effort, was prompted by a recognition that the increase of American and Iraqi troops in Baghdad hasn’t produced the improvements in security or the political progress that proponents of the buildup had expected and that domestic support for the administration’s Iraq policy, even among Republicans, is ebbing quickly.
“The administration’s new Iraq war “czar,” Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, remains skeptical that the surge can succeed, and instead has favored the kinds of political steps that Petraeus and Crocker have advocated, one of the officials said.
“There’s little optimism in Baghdad or Washington, however, that a new effort to strengthen the Iraqi army, bolster the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and weaken Sunni Muslim insurgents and Shiite Muslim militias is likely to succeed.
“Publicly, the president and his advisers express confidence that the decision to send more troops to Iraq is making a difference. Privately, some administration officials are far more pessimistic.
“One of the major problems, one official said, is the Badr Corps, which is the military arm of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, which controls several government ministries, holds a key position in parliament and controls much of southern Iraq, which lies across the U.S. supply routes from Kuwait.
“Another official said he was skeptical that the Bush administration can find any credible Iraqi nationalists and persuade them to step forward, especially since doing so would invite assassination from Sunni and Shiite extremists. “The nationalists were mostly members of the (Sunni) Baath Party or a few secular Shiites,” the official said. “And forget about finding a Kurd who’s an Iraqi nationalist.”
“A former senior U.S. defense official who still advises the Pentagon said he thought the troop buildup was doomed because there were insufficient numbers of American troops and the insurgents were gaining strength.”
May 24, 2007
According to NatPo, the Harpies are taking the first, tentative steps back into the Dark Ages. Their opening salvo will be to cancel funding for safe injection sites where addicts can obtain clean needles to shoot up.
The idea behind the clinics holds that it’s better, for a number of reasons, to provide a facility for intravenous drug users.
One goal is to cut down on the rate of HIV/AIDS from contaminated needles shared by junkies on the street. Another is to draw them into a place where they can get information and counselling if they want to quit. Another nice little benefit is not having to worry about stepping on those used needles on our sidewalks and in our parks. It strikes me that measures that reduce the incidence of the spread of HIV/AIDS are probably worthwhile but that’s just my opinion. Not so say the Harpies. They claim the safe injection sites are tantamount to the government facilitating illegal drug use.
A peer-reviewed (i.e. “legitimate” for you Harpies) study in the London medical journal, Addiction, “…concludes that Insite’s opening in Vancouver’s grim Downtown Eastside has led to a 30 per cent increase by facility users in entering detoxification programs.The study, provided to The Vancouver Sun Thursday, by the journal Addiction also concluded that Insite users who began detox programs are more likely to enroll in long-term addiction treatment and reduce injecting.” (Vancouver Sun).
Message to Harpo. If you have any evidence that safe injection centres actually encourage drug use, let’s see it. If, on the other hand, this is just another one of your reactionary, jackboot bents then be honest about it.
Gee, Steve, why do you hate measures to reduce the spread of AIDS? Is this part of that Rapture bullshit you guys buy into? There ain’t no Rapture, Steve, and, even if there was, they wouldn’t be reserving a spot for your sorry backside.
Hey, here’s an idea. Why not promote trade with China instead of promoting AIDS within Canada?
May 23, 2007
Hamid, If I Catch You Negotiating Withthe Taliban One More Time,
You’ll Be Wearing This!
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