Just deserts!

  I must admit I am getting a bit of a kick out of the recent complaints I am reading regarding the SPCA. It seems a growing number of people are surprised to find that they are disqualified from adopting a pet from the SPCA. The reasons given were anything from having an outdoor dog house, or having owned an unspayed pet in the past, or even having surrendered animals found abandoned. The one constant was the feeling of outrage and confusion that the SPCA would actually refuse THEM, of all people. Actually, make that two constants, because each and every one of them is still falling over him/herself to assure the dear readers that the intent was to give a good home to a poor rescue animal and that the animal would most assuredly be spayed/neutered.
    I have no sympathy for these folks. Each and every one of them has a degree of smug prick in their personality. After all, these people all supported the SPCA in their endless campaign for more regulatory powers, more money and most of all more spaying and neutering. Exotic pets? Ban them! Zoos? Regulate them into oblivion! The circus? No elephants allowed! Screening people who want to own a pet? Good idea! Keep those bad folks from owning an animal, especially if they are too poor to afford the extortionate vet charges! Well I guess what goes around comes around. So folks, if you have supported the SPCA in their crusades, or even if you have not objected to their quest to strangle the life out of pet ownership, don't complain when you find out that you have been judged unworthy of pet ownership.
    Sympathy aside, there is the logical aspect. If the SPCA gets it's way, and all pets a re neutered, where will pets of the future come from? Why is it, when they are actually short of shelter pets at many shelters in BC that the SPCA still treats spaying and neutering as its prime directive?  Apparently the general public are stupid enough to support spaying of all cats and dogs (one has to be a 'responsible ' pet owner after all) without ever wondering how they will get their dogs and cats in the future. I suppose most people don't really think that hard on the subject, or they believe there is a huge unwanted pet problem. The SPCA however labours under no such delusion. They know that there is no shortage of homes for pets. So much so that they can afford to get very picky about who can adopt. Their insistence on every owner being a lifelong believer in mandatory pet sterilization is clear evidence that they wish to make pet dogs and cats rare or extinct. This isn't all that far feteched when you consider that it is PETA's stated policy that pets would be better off dead than 'kept' and that the stated purpose of Zoo Check is to eliminate private zoos. Is it so hard to believe that the people running your local SPCA are not of the same ilk? It isn't hard for me, but then again I have been dealing with their sharp end for years now.
    Even if you don't care about pets there is a moral of this story: If you are going to support judgement of regulations on other people, it is only just deserts when you become the one being judged or regulated.

Surveillance, Now and Then

So I was reading A bit by Dalrymple on Takimag regarding (in a rambling way) the amount of surveillance we experience in or everyday lives, and it strikes me that there is a point being missed.
   Any time someone expresses concerns about the growing use of non targeted surveillance (think 'security cameras') there is the response: 'if you are not doing anything wrong, why would you care?" I think it is essentially the same argument cops will still use on you regarding talking to a lawyer, or taking a lie detector test. If you are the sort who feels that only guilty people need lawyers to help them deal with police then there is little I can do for you. If you were not born yesterday or if you ever read the news, or even if you have just a little bit of common sense then you know that there are a lot of reasons to be careful when dealing with authority, even if "you have nothing to hide".  But cameras? where is the harm?
   Dalrymple, and most others discussing the subject will bring up repressive societies which made extensive use of surveillance to keep their populations in line. These historical examples are usually formerly eastern bloc countries which bear little resemblance to our modern western democracies. As such they suffer as analogies. Tyrannies use surveillance to control their peoples, yes but our country is not tyrannical so why worry about being on camera all day every day? The problem with this argument is simple of course:it assumes that ones government will never take on aspects or tyranny. That is a big problem since every government in the world, in the absence of conflict, inevitably slides toward increased government control and decreased individual freedom. Democracies are by their very natures tyrannies of the majority, capable of all the sins associated with the worst of human behaviour.
     The point being missed is that the  biggest problem with comparing the old iron curtain governments with the modern situation lies in the sequencing. It's not that our government is tyrannical and using the surveillance to suppress our freedom, it's that the surveillance will allow them to do so if they so choose. The old states established repressive regimes and used surveillance in order to ensure their people stayed in line. In western countries, extensive surveillance is being integrated with our everyday lives for benign or even beneficial reasons. Thus the is little resistance to them. However, their existence will facilitate increased government controls and may ensure  successful transition to more and more authoritarian rule. Future dictators will have a easy time ensuring complete compliance with dictates.
    If this sounds paranoid to you then i would ask what, exactly are you basing your assumptions on? I mean, you are assuming that governments will progress towards freedom and accountability, forever are you not? How long has that been the case? How many great republics or benevolent non democratic governments  have been replaced with repressive regimes? What is it about your current government that suggests that it will always support your right to freedom?
   An individuals right to live freely within any society is bolstered by limitations in the power of governments to enforce the rules. This applies to people's living arrangements (you cannot, in Canada live with one woman while still married to another) or to their rights of freedom of expression, or assembly, or anything else. If the government of Ukraine had been able to suppress the riots of 2014, the president (prime minister?) would not have had to step down. Likewise Syria, Afghanistan now and under the soviets, and Egypt. The point is that if your government has the power to see everything you do then they will have the power to control you should you act against them. Add civilian disarmament to the mix and you have a population of slaves living in a system which doles out rights and privileges as it sees fit, in the interest of perpetuating itself. If we could drop such a scenario into historical nations or empires, how many of them would you want to live under today?
    If you are still not worried consider the many tales of inappropriate use of authority in the news today. After all cops, enforcement officers, child welfare bureaucrats, tax assessors and everyone else who can impact your life are all just people. They will act stupidly, politically or maliciously, impacting you. Having access information about where you go and what you do, all day every day in the hands of such folk can seriously harm you. Safeguards you say? Read the news.

Global Warming For Dummies

Most folk have some idea of what they believe regarding man made global warming. I use the word  "believe"  advisedly, even in the case of scientists. It is my view that the average joe has as much chance of reaching the right conclusion as a trained scientist (I am the latter). As an average joe with a science education I have come to my own conclusions.  While I may not know  the actual effect of man made CO2 on climate change I do know the following:

1.   No scientist would state: "the science is settled" because it never is, on any  subject. Ever.
2.   Consensus, even if true is a piss poor argument in science. Don't believe me? Ask  Einstein.     
3.   Anyone can do science. You do not need a degree in the appropriate field, or a list of published papers. Doubt me? Ask Einstein again. Conversely, just because someone  has such a degree, this does not mean that anything third person says is valid.
4. Science and activism do not mix. Are you listening David Suzuki?
5. Most of the people involved in the debate are cheerleaders. They have not read  any of the science or arguments, or they are not able to understand them, and they are just choosing sides based on their prejudices and adding their voices to the choirs.
6. There is big money to be made or spent.
7. The issue connects seamlessly to political ideologies, nationally and internationally.
8. The world is warming, naturally and will likely to continue to do so as we proceed out of the last ice age.
9. One way or another, we will eventually find out the truth of the matter. Unlike the ozone layer, nothing has been done about the alleged cause of global warming

For me, I would add some more 'facts' which I imagine many out there would dispute:

1. If you are talking about 'global warming', and it doesn't warm up you can't rebrand  it to 'climate change', especially when all the impacts have to do with warming.
2. You cannot erase the medieval warming period just because it is inconvenient.
3. Models are only as good as the predictions they make. If they are wrong, then they have no predictive value. If they have no predictive value, why are we talking about them?
4. If you are unwilling or unable to provide your original data for review and verification, then there is no data.
5. Standardizing, correcting or otherwise modifying original data largely destroys the credibility of the data.

•    There is one more very important  question I have : Given that there is little chance of stopping anthropogenic global warming  (this is something we all agree on) why is it that the believers in AGW are not advocating any actions to mitigate the effects it might have?

The Cops and You, well more like Me actually.

  Ever since I was a kid I have considered the cops to be trouble. Until recently I thought this to be due to my rather rambunctious years as a teenager. Now I am beginning to think that it is some sort of primal instinct for survival. Incidents here in PG as well as around the province do little to contradict this notion.
    In Northern BC over the last decade or so we have had a number of questionable deaths at the hands of the police. In Vancouver a passel of cops tasered a polish to death at the airport because he was being unruly. One has to wonder how many more, less mortal incidents there have been. Recently we have the case of the woman dentist who got stopped for speeding and ended up in the hospital, having somehow provoked a royal beat down by a sheriff. I didn't know they had sheriffs in Alberta but this one sure had chutzba. Not only did he beat the woman to a pulp, he later charged her with assault and resisting arrest. http://www.edmontonsun.com/2014/02/09/woman-launches-plea-to-have-sheriff-charged


From the Edmonton Sun Feb 9, 2014

There appears to be a dash cam recording of the incident but the cops are not releasing it. Doubtless it will be lost before they make it public.
     While i have never been beaten or killed by a cop I have learned that they are not necessarily your friends. Once I was shot at by some trapper in Dawson creek. I reported the incident, including the part where i fired a shot in the air to tell the dick that i was human (he knew that already). Nothing was done at the time since I was not in possession of the bullet he shot at me, even though I followed his tracks to his house. Two weeks later , however, I had a call from a police woman inquiring about which gun I used that day. You see, I had 2 new guns for which I had no permit to carry  and they were looking to get me on that terrible crime. I was carrying the legal one, so fuck them.  Last year when i reported a burglery next door I was scolded for mentioning that it took them about 40 minutes to come around, even though it was reported as being in progress. It seems they had "real crimes" as opposed to the theft of some metal. I have a few more stories but the real point is that cops seem to me to have pretty short fuses sometimes and they are sure as hell not above going for the low hanging fruit.
     So I think my mistrust of cops is not unreasonable. As a gun owner I am  made even more uncomfortable about the fact that any call to my house would be flagged as dangerous due to my 'arsenal'. While the long gun registry is gone, handguns are still on record. Given that you can be beaten to a pulp for speeding, or shot dead for holding a remote control in a distracted manner, or have a cop approach your house with her gun drawn and a scared look on her face because someone saw a pellet gun by your door, or that your dog might be shot for barking at a cop in your carport maybe my trepidation is justified.
    So what to do? Be careful when you are dealing with a police officer. Well, don't call a cop unless you really need to. Don't invite them into your home, even if it is cold out.  Don't talk to a cop unless you really need to, especially if you intend to argue with them. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc  Don't count on the police to protect you, they are more for clean up than crime prevention. Don't use the cops to settle arguments with your family or neighbours. If you are going to have an encounter, record it and let them know you are doing so.
    The days of messing with cops are gone. These days their ranks contain too many people with aggressive or cowardly natures.

Reason Enough For Concealed Carry

One thing we are not even close to having here in Canada is concealed carry. In fact we cannot even conceal a knife legally. The reason for these restrictions on our freedoms is simple: the cops don't want to have to worry about armed citizens. That's it. That's the whole of it. I have one thing to say to these folks, well three actually: I have daughters, the law is bullshit and Cody Legebogoff, our own local serial killer. Four dead girls that we know of in a little city called Prince George. One serial killer here that we know of. Lots of missing girls. One of them carrying a .32 on her somewhere might have saved more lives than the cops had right up until they captured the bastard by luck a couple of years ago.

I Am Not An Asshole! Ok Maybe Sometimes I Am.

I grew up in a family that argued, all the time. I can be argumentative, But I swear I do it for the best of reasons, mainly because I hate BS. I do tend to have an adversarial attitude toward people who hold different views than I do. However, I seldom hold it against folk personally. The way I see it, if you disagree with me on something, we can discuss it in a friendly manner. If you disagree in an imperious or condescending manner, then I am gonna respond with a little more heat. If you are trying to convert me, I will resist. If you are saying something which I feel is immoral or potentially harmful to society, I will fight (figuratively) with vigour and some heat. In none of the above will I harbour ill will due to our differences in opinion or point of view.
   However, if you are advocating a position which will directly or indirectly affect my personal freedom or the freedom of my fellow man then we will have a problem. I take such things personally since I am a firm believer in individual freedoms, even if they are not my own. Thus it is ok by me if you are gay and want to get married, or if you want to have two wives, or 10 cats, or ride your bike without a helmet, or smoke, or drive your car for fun. You can pray five times a day or say that God is a myth. Unless you are harming other people in a real way, knock yourself out. If you want to tell people how to live, or limit free speech, or pass laws protecting folk from themselves then you are no friend of mine.
 

The Record On Communism.

With the US president in full diversion mode ( Look! Gay marriage!) not a day goes by without some pundit , blogger or serial commenter stating that communism has been a failure everywhere is has been tried. This is 'common knowledge' and 'accepted fact' everywhere in the western world. It isn't actually true though, and I'll tell you why.
    The conditions for the peasant class in Tsarist Russia were a nightmare. Work was hard to get and devastating when lost. Unemployment meant starvation or death due to exposure. There was no potential for advancement out of abject poverty, and no justice for those inhabiting the low rungs on Russia's ladder.
   Trotsky, Lenin et al promised the peasants (serfs) a better life: security of food and shelter, equal justice under the law and a share in the overall prosperity of the nation. These promises were for the most part delivered. Communist Russia did provide food and shelter to all, and every citizen obtained a share of the country's prosperity. As for equal justice well, not so much. Of course, equal justice has not existed  and does not exist in most countries in this world including the USA ,  UK and Canada.
     Now, to be clear, I am no fan of socialism or communism. I do not adhere to the common mantra that they are " beautiful ideas" that just don't work in the real world.  They are antithetical to humanity because by definition they remove individual rights and responsibility in favour of the collective. They are a beautiful idea in the same way that slavery is a good business model.
   The fact remains, however that communist Russia delivered on it's promises to the serf masses. They were better off than they were under the Tsars. There a quite a few western governments who have failed to do as much.  Relatively speaking of course, communism served Russians less well (by far) than the republics and democracies of it's neighbours served their peoples. Prosperity wise communist countries performed poorly, due mainly to human nature. Corruption, militarism and totalitarian leadership further degraded the communist 'experiment' until it became a bogey man for the west.
     I realize that I am open to accusations of nit picking here but I think facts matter. In that vein  does it bother anyone else out there that some people on national (albeit cable) news shows believe that Putin is a dictator, ruling a communist Russia, wherein people have no human rights?

When seeking the truth is about doing the opposite

I have a problem with calling 911 conspiracy buffs 'truthers'. Can't we call them something more accurate, like 911 conspiracy buffs?  I realize they are the ones who coined the name for themselves but really, need we go along? 'Truthers' are not even traditional conspiracy buffs. Normal buffs use their conspiracy theories to solves mysteries or to answer questions which have not been sufficiently answered by the 'official narrative'.  I suppose sometimes it takes a conspiracy and a convoluted line of reasoning to explain events that simple logic and investigation cannot. In the case of the trade center bombing the role of the conspiracy theory is quite different.
  First off, for those who have forgotten or never knew, the 911 attack was conducted by a number (19) arabs in the al qaida terrorist organization. The leader and some of the actual participants were Saudi Arabians. Members took flying lessons in America, smuggled carpet knives on board, commandeered the aircraft and crashed them into the world trade centers and the pentagon and (due to the efforts of some passengers), an empty field. Osama Bin Laden was implicated and accepted responsibility. That's the official version. It is also one that fits in well with the facts.  Included is the well established fact of islamic suicide bombers and Bin Laden's expressed interest in using aircraft for terror purposes.
    So what is the truthers' theory? A good  question, but one without a good answer. The problem is that there are so many out there. Like all kooky conspiracy theories, this one evolves in response to changing memes and in response to criticisms. Basically however, they assert that the attack was an inside job. George Bush/the CIA/Mossad/ Big oil set the whole thing up in order to justify an attack on Iraq/destroy evidence stored in building number 7/forward some evil zionist world control plot. They did this by means of brainwashed arabs who thought they were terrorists/suicidal CIA and or Mossad agents posing as arab terrorists/just blowing up the buildings and claiming it was aircraft (my favourite) or using remote controlled 747's, utilizing an override switch. The evidence supporting these manifold theories is abundant and varied, from leaked autopsies, to passenger manifests, the black boxes, explosive residue on site,  pictures of the pentagon, you name it. All you have to do is Google it. Any idiot can find it. More importantly any idiot (the idiot part is mandatory) can believe it. The same idiots who mistrust the footage of the moon landing nonetheless are willing to take the word of any crazy fool on the 'net who claims to have evidence of a big cover up.
      Addressing the manifold pieces of 'evidence' is like trying to slay a hydra. People will believe what they want to believe. I also contend that it is possible to find 'evidence' on the web to support any contention you could imagine. The internet is full of BS. We all know it. It is a little easier to address the who and why and how in terms of logic.
     Most truthers agree that it was the government of the US, under George Bush that was the culprit. Not the whole government of course, just George Bush and some of his evil allies, using agents and such. Whether it was the Jews playing puppet master or just George himself trying to impress his dad, they all think  the president was the one who did it. His motive for doing such a thing is less clear. I refuse to address the whole Mossad thing. The anti jew (yes jew, not zionist you bull shitters out there) derangement precludes the use of logic. There is no point in arguing with someone who hates so much they are willing to put a jewish face on every villain. So what were Bush's motives? There seem to be two main themes here.
    The most popular involves the president's desire of another war in Iraq. In order to please his dad/ capture all the oil rights for Haliburton/steal the Iraqis oil/ kill arabs to sate his blood lust, George Bush dreamed up and executed the elaborate 911 false flag terrorist attack. There are serious problems with this theory. For one thing, at no point was there an effort to blame Iraq for the attack. Certainly an organization which could pull of 911 and fool billions of people could have also managed to implicate the people they wanted to take revenge on. Iraq and Al quaida were enemies, not allies. More to the point, the war in Iraq was justified by the (as it turns out inaccurate) reports that the Iraqis were making weapons of mass destruction. Surely if you wanted justification for attacking Iraq, you would have used a bombing or nerve gas attack, rather than what happened on 911. After all, we didn't attack Iraq to prevent them from building  air liners. It is also important to note that months passed between 911 and the Iraq war. It seems reasonable that an administration trying to use fear and revenge as justification would not have allowed so much time to pass.
    The other suggested motive that i have heard was that Bush needed to destroy evidence that was going to be used to convict him of something or other. I don't recall the details, and I won't address the likelihood that  a US president had much to fear, regardless of the evidence. The real telling point here is that people are willing to believe that George Bush would be willing to kill thousands of americans, including women, children, friends of his, and hundreds of thousands of foreigners just to keep himself from getting a slap on the wrist in an american court.  There is no precedent for this type of crime. Of all the mass murderers throughout history, none had so petty a motive. If true, it would mean that George Bush was probably the most evil person in history.  Really? Somehow I just don't  see it.
     If George  wanted to destroy evidence in one of the world trade center buildings why didn't he destroy the building directly? Would it not have been easier to blow up the building with a huge truck full of explosives and incendiaries? Surely they could have taken out the whole block just to make it less obvious. No, I suppose it made much more sense to fly jets into the twin towers, then use demolition charges to make them fall, knowing that enough debris would fall on building 7 to light it up. Then they just had to use the massive demolition charges they had secreted in building 7 (after working hours ) to drop the building and watch it burn. Throw in some other planes, aimed at the pentagon and white house just to throw folks off the scent. Yes, that is much simpler and so much less risky than just firing up a truck bomb or 5 with Allahu Akbar written on the side.
    The complexity of the 911 conspiracy theory (which ever one you like) is the key weakness. All of the theories end up being so much more complicated and risky and evil than the accepted story. The other problem is consistency. The shadowy government figures manage to pull off an immensely complicated false flag attack but then fail to find a single piece of evidence of weapons of mass destruction in the Iraqi war zone. What happened there? Did Bush's chief covert operator go on vacation? I am sure a man evil enough to murder thousands of his own citizens would not hesitate to kill few million to avoid being made a fool of in Iraq.
    When these theories first began people were actually denying that there were any planes involved! Then they settled on the pentagon plane not being a plane at all (based on a dodgy picture). There was a lot of argument about whether the towers were intentionally demolished (based on incorrect and simplistic engineering 'facts'). Now it turns out that the planes were flown by remote control (by Americans of course) and that there were no arab terrorists at all (the passengers of flight 93 must have been so surprised that they had dreamed it all up).  This last bit of nonsense evolved as a response to doubts about whether you could find american pilots willing to kill themselves by crashing planes full of people into buildings. What does it say about people who are willing to believe you can find agents ready to murder thousands of people using human bombs but unwilling to believe that you could find suicidal maniacs who would do so? It tells you that they are not really using logic or common sense, they are just trying to create a scenario that fits the narrative they believe.
    Which brings us full circle. Truthers are misnamed. They are not interested in the truth. They are interested in promoting an anti Bush, or anti government or even an anti Israel narrative. They are not even trying to exonerate an unfairly accused arab group. Bin Laden and al Quaida did not deny their responsibility. Truthers are motivated in the same way as the Egyptians who accuse the Israelis of causing shark attacks and hepatitis outbreaks. Hatred.
    On a final sad note I see the the Boston marathon bombings were an inside job. Despite all the evidence, including a police chase involving grenades and fire fights and dozens of witnesses, some people prefer to point out apparent homeland security presence a the event as proof positive of a false flag operation. This time it is president Obama who is murdering us in order to increase government control. One believes what one wants to believe i guess.
 

Plus ca change.....

Wow, I read my last two posts before looking at the dates they were posted. Things move a lot more slowly than we realize. My wit for one thing. I have not written much on here for a year, and I don't know why. Of course, it doesn't matter much since things don't really change much around here in so short a time. At least some things don't.
     A long time ago, when pen pal ads were free and Gmail had a dating/ friendship service i used to troll for email pals. I could respond to a number of posts asking for friends and I even threw out a few pleas myself. I got a fair number of responses and corresponded with folks from Quebec, Australia, Zimbabwe and the US.    Friends came and went, some lasting years, some only a letter or two. It was fun and educational. What was both striking and kinda sad was what I realized after getting a letter from a long lost pen pal a while back. WHen I wrote her back my letter was very much the same as the last one I had sent her, more than 2 years earlier. I was still working on the houses i was renovating. I was still trying to be a farmer. I was still off into the same bush a few months a year for real work. Those things are what i do for work i suppose and as such they are bound to remain fairly constant. The problem is that I always thought of my life as being full of adventure and freedom. I think perhaps that self employment is a little further from the promised land than i thought.
    More distressing still is the astounding speed at which time flies by as one gets a little older. It is impossible for me to grasp that my eldest is 18 when it was only last summer ( a month or two ago really) that he was 16. The girls are 16 already! Thank God that they are all still children at heart. I cannot imagine what it will be like when I am in my 60's, 70's or 80's! My theory is that ten years for an octogenarian is like 10 days for a 50 year old. Therefor I am unwilling to sacrifice all those things i so dearly love (bacon, cinnamon buns, meat, candy, pop, loose women) in order to live an extra 10 or 20 minutes.
     

This is Us:

It is the middle class itself that has insisted on its own enfeeblement with continual demands for the regulation of daily life and for insisting on the elevation of concerns such as animal rights and the environment as if nobody would have to pay or as if there were a source of unlimited wealth to draw on.

Wisdom From Lord Moncton.

" It was the age of reason that built the West and made it prosperous and free. The age of reason gave you your great Constitution of liberty. It is the power of reason, the second of the three great powers of the soul in Christian theology, that marks our species out from the rest of the visible creation, and makes us closest to the image and likeness of our Creator. I cannot stand by and let the forces of darkness drive us unprotesting into a new Dark Age.”

Is it Just me? Of course it is.

OK, since nobody else is going to say it I will. Where is it written that UN, US or any other intervention is called for in Syria? I think anyone with a brain realises that Libya had nothing to do with saving a few thousand rebel 'freedom fighters' and everything to do with removing Ghadafi and getting a new, helpless regime installed from which Europe could extract more oil and concessions. No? So we in the west always support people who are killed by their government? I think that would be news in Sudan.
   But all quibbles and evil western motives aside, the question in my mind is what right we have to interfere. This isn't Korea, or Kosovo, or even Viet Nam. There is no shadowy superpower trying to overthrow the Syrian government. On the contrary, the Syrian government is trying to suppress a revolt. The protesters are not protesters, they are revolutionaries, as anyone in Egypt, or Libya could tell you. One might not support the Syrian style of govt. but it is as legitimate a govt. in the worlds eyes as the Canadian govt. is. SO why is it OK for the world to get involved with Syria's revolt when we would not want that sort of interference in our country?
  The year is 2019. The federal NDP government, responding to the concerns of American and European activist and governments has shut down Oil sand production and introduced a hefty carbon tax on oil and gas development. The provincial government of Alberta has been driven into massive deficit and unemployment has spiked to 22 percent in the western provinces (with the exception of the lower mainland of BC, which no longer uses the term: unemployment, preferring the term 'government funded arts and recreation sabattical' for which it compiles no statistics (since it has been shown that statistics often offend the people involved).
    Large demonstrations break out in major cities in the west, expanding to the rural areas and the oilfields, eventually shutting off oil and gas supplies to the east. Police and army are unable to quell the protests and secondary protests against the hardships caused by fuel disruption begin in eastern Canada. The federal NDP, concerned about falafel shipments rotting for lack of transport orders a crackdown. Violence ensues and escalates. The western provinces are awash with anger and the populace declare the government of Canada as illegitimate due to the violence used against their mostly peaceful protests.
    Here is where it gets interesting. The US and Mexico, both under several severe fuel constraints, and wanting the oilsands back on line (so they can condemn them while buying the oil) decide that they must act against the imminent slaughter of western canucks at the hands of the evil federal government of Canada. Accordingly, they begin supplying the most radical elements of the western protesters with advanced weapons and commence bombing the shit out of every communication facility, airstrip, CBC station and the Prime Ministers house (they had info that he had a shortwave radio in there). After torching the country and turning it over to the rednecks (who basically just go home, secure and happy in the belief that the federal government will never be heard from again) the US offers aid and advice on how to deliver our good more cheaply and efficiently, while educating the new, weak government on the benefits of selling our resources directly to American and Mexican concerns (who just happen to be super PAC contributors).
   Couldn't happen here? Sure, you are probably right. But it can and did happen in a few other countries last year, and folks are itching for another go. So how would you like it if it DID play out that way here in Canada. To put anti Western sentiment in perspective, how would you fell towards the Americans and Mexicans after the above scenario?
  Hypocrisy is a wonderful thing isn't it?

Mindless

Is it just me or is it almost impossible to think without verbalising your thoughts inside your head? I find I talk to myself (silently) when i am trying to form arguments or thoughts. Of course i don't need to do so when i am talking to someone or when i am writing (typing) things out. I don't remember a time when i was not thins way, even studying for school, so what gives? When i dream i think very clearly. It must be all the mental noise cluttering up my conscious mind.

To all the Arab Spring enthusiasts:

Screw You.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/muslim-brotherhood-takes-lead-in-egypt-vote-count-1.398753
  It was bad enough I had to listen to ridiculous talking heads prattle on about how the muslim brotherhood is a secular organisation, or that the protesters were fighting for the pursuit of happiness, but to have so many supposedly intelligent people confuse democracy with freedom really turned my stomach. So now all you supporters (and the untold millions in the 'I don't know, but I am hopeful ' group can see what democracy can lead to in an arabic country. Egypt WAS our ally (of a sort) and WAS one of only two countries in the Arab world to recognise Israel. It IS now another islamist hole, bent on it's own destruction and that of the only free nation in the Middle East.
    Take a bow.

A lesson for Goverment Spendaholics.

I hear a lot about Italy and Greece these days. One of the things we hear is that Greeks and Italians don't pay their taxes. This moral failing is oft cited as a major reason for the countries being in the state they are in. I suspect it is vice versa. If my government were as prone to giving away my money as the Greek and Italian govts. are i would cheat on my taxes too.  Think about it. Who are the people cheating on their taxes? People who make money and who have opportunities to cheat. That is: private sector employees and small businesses. Who are the folks that the government spends all their money on? Public employees, bureaucrats and the unwashed masses who, as a rule do not make enough money to owe taxes. So where is the incentive for honesty here?
   Here in Canada things are more moderate. Our government has not yet completely spent us into the poor house, public sector employees make up less than half the workforce and people generally don't try too hard to cheat the tax man. But make no mistake. every time we read about billion dollar G20 summits, or lavish Governor General expense accounts, or any other profligate waste by our government or bureaucracy it has an effect.
   People don't really understand billions and trillions of dollars. It has no real meaning. We understand wealth in terms of what we could expect to have or dream of spending. So when some government fat cat spends 100 grand renovating or travelling or partying , the average joe thinks: "shit. that's about as much as i can save up in 20 years, gone in a day".  Or when the government tells Joe's dad that they are going to have to index his pension in order to make a dent in the deficit, the old guy thinks :" how many pensions do you need to claw back to pay for Strombolopolus to throw a music awards party  at my expense? " The two men then start to see their obligations to pay their taxes in a different light.
    Faced with  morally bankrupt government spending of taxpayer money, the moral argument against cheating on ones taxes goes out the window. The more the government wastes, the less inclined we are to give them money, and the more inclined we are to break the rules in order to do so.

Punting the ball

  While a lot of folks are heralding the BC supreme courts ruling on polygamy as a major victory and an affirmation of everything from Canadian values to women's rights I beg to differ. Set aside the fact that the ruling is just a rehash of the usual fear mongering that goes with the FLDS. The fact is that this is the BC court, punting the case to the Canadian supreme court. That's where the authority is and that's where the decision will be made. I believe the BC court is playing it safe.
    Hopefully the Canadian court can see the forest for the trees, or perhaps the trees for the forest. Polygamy or polyandry is already practiced by thousands of Canadians  right now. The current law against it covers anyone involved in more than one committed relationship. It could be read to include people who are having a long term affair. Even an unenforced law should be in the interest of the public at large. This one isn't. Polygamy between consenting adults has no victims. Gay marriage not so much (ie kids ). Polygamy does not include child abuse, forced marriage or incest. Those are all crimes already and should be punished accordingly. To suggest that plural marriage necessarily leads to such behaviour because of the examples in FLDS communes is like saying the concentration of natives in small communities causes incest, alcoholism,  drug use and domestic violence just because these things are present at high levels in some of our reserves. If people can see the problems with the latter example, surely the learned judges can see the problems with polygamy example. Well, they could if they actually turned off their TVs and used their heads.

Sometimes It's Hard

to know whether to worry or not. Given our short life spans it is difficult, even for an old guy like me to get perspective. How do we know whether we need to be concerned by the 'disasters' facing us? I think it is natural to assume that things will continue on as they have been. For our parents (well my parents) the world would be a huge place, filled with the risk of tragedy and disaster forever. For my generation, 'progress' will continue unabated, as it always has. We will get richer, life will be safer, the US will be the bastion of western strength and stability, and we will retire into the world we know.
   In the long term none of this seems likely to be true. My parents left a Europe in it's typical shambles. They left a class system that kept them where they were, in a country that told them what to do. During their lives Europe's old rivalries were usurped, and a soviet spectre arose and then faded away. The expectation of war also receded.  They retired in a world completely unlike their parents' , one that follows few of their worlds rules of conduct or sensibilities. The same could be said for many generations in the last few thousand years, even for those who lived their whole lives in one place.
   So what will change in my lifetime? What already has? I was born in the cold war. My house had a bomb shelter (a nasty, dark place filled with my sister's evil dolls). Apocalyptic movies had the taste of reality and the world still held vast wild lands where white people (we still were allowed to specify color back then) had never fared. I wanted to be like my dad, and expected to live like my parents. I went to church, and believed in God as a default, then as a choice. Already I can see much of what was is no more. The cold war is gone, war has become an economic consideration and religion has become almost taboo.
    So what will change next? What is too far fetched? Global warming? It's a poor substitute for nuclear annihilation apocalypse wise. I mean 2 degrees in a hundred years? I find it hard to picture Charleton Heston on the beach, yelling 'damn you all to hell' at the people responsible for the water lapping a full 2 feet higher on the sea wall than it did in pre-industrial times. Of course if we actually try to do something about it we may succeed in lowering our kids lifestyles a little but i suppose they will still be replete with big screen TV's and even better gadgets.
    Should we worry about economic crises? Will the US fail and be replaced by China? Would we notice? The EU could fall and the US slip into depression and I suspect we could still muddle by, again with less wealth, but is it really a game changer?
    I think I will worry about cultural drift. We are losing our varied western cultures in favour of some sort of dynamic western way. This would be ok (or is ok in theory) so long as the replacement is a strong, durable culture. The problem is that I don't think it is. European cultures are the products of centuries of history, a common ethnic identity and strong religious ties. The replacement is none of these things. We are not linked by common ancestry, and we never will be. We share very little history, as most of us are first or second generation Canadians. We have pushed religion to the sidelines. Well, our traditional one anyway. I can't see anything good coming from this

The more things change....

It's not always good to see things from the good old days. 30 odd years ago i bridled at my teachers introducing politics into their lesson plans. I argued too, and my marks suffered. Now my kids tell me about their teachers doing the same thing. Mostly it is disguised as current events but sometimes it is more blatant. Teachers prattle on about 'stupid george' (bush) because he fought a war for oil. ( I guess that's true in a way, since the americans get less oil from Iraq than they did before the war.) Or stupid 'Harper'  because he didn't ratify kyoto. This coming from a high school biology teacher in a backwaterish northern BC town. My son would love to argue but he is smarter than i was. Also, he cares more about marks. 
  It is annoying as hell. I am not all that worried  since i have always taken a keen interest in brainwashing my kids. Thus they already know how to tell sh-t from shinola before they are exposed to  educators who overstep their bounds. The same approach should be taken to protect our kids from the ridiculous lesson plans in gender, reproduction and virtually every other subject. While it is good to be exposed to new ideas and different points of view, it is essential to have had some exposure to critical thinking first.
    Parents: take responsibility and teach your kids how to think. A lesson or two on right and wrong, responsibility and self respect wouldnt hurt either.

On Faith

I recently read a blurb on Pascals Wager. If you are not familiar with it i can summarize: Pascal decided that belief in God was the safer (better) bet than unbelief. He decided this as follows: If you believe in a god and there is none, when you die you lose nothing. If there is a god then you win. If you choose not to believe then you lose if there is a god (you will be sorry) and you break even if there is no god. Wikipedia summarizes it better
 Pascal's Wager, also known as Pascal's Gambit, is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Blaise Pascal that even if the existence of God could not be determined through reason, a rational person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain, and nothing to lose.
   On the face of it this seems like the ultimate cynical attitude toward faith. At least I thought so. Now I am not so sure. But more of that later. I found what I believe to be an  even more cynical religious approach.
    Some of the blogs I visit take a more muscular view of christianity. The approach taken is to blend science and religion to arrive at a logical proof of the existence of the christian god. I got into some of the nuts and bolts of the thing after reading a guide on how to ensure your potential wife is a 'real christian'. Suffice it to say that I did not pass the test, being ignorant of almost all of the arguments involved. I am not concerned, however since I am not insecure about my being a christian ( I certainly am one) . Also i am not looking to be some guy's wife.  I do feel , however that the whole idea of proving there is a god through science (or conversely disproving scientific theories which cast doubt on god's existence) is wrong headed. The flaw relates to security of position. Scientific fact is fleeting, religious belief , if it is to be worth it's salt, is unchanging.  Science is a two handed sword that way. Just as buddhists could claim that the old theory of an expanding and contracting universe supports their cyclical existence beliefs, the recent evidence that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate could be used to prove that they are wrong (as one blogger has suggested). If one or two major scientific break throughs can disprove your god and abolish your faith then you are on shaky ground religion wise.
  Science is, of course a kind of gnosticism. It's acolytes believe that everything can be explained and thus that we will someday know it all. It is a good working premise and it has the ring of intellectualism but it sucks as a religion. While people who 'believe' in science get intellectual entertainment and a feeling of superiority, they derive no comfort. There is a void there. Science can perhaps explain how everything works. It can not explain why anything is. I think human beings need to know that there is a why out there, even if they will never know what that why is. Who better to know why everything is than god, it's creator? Thus our belief in god gives us comfort. The fact that this is so is probably the strongest evidence of god that there is.
   Which brings us back to belief and Pascal's wager. The reason that the wager is more than an exercise in cynical self preservation lies in the nature of belief itself. Belief is a choice. How we make that choice is immaterial. What matters is whether we believe or not. To suggest that one needs proof in order to believe is a non sequiteur. If you have proof then you don't need to believe, you know.  One believes because one is willing to accept, on faith the existence of something or someone far greater than oneself. Your god is that someone. In the case of the christian god that belief includes the trust in god's wisdom, and benevolence. Religious belief by definition needs no supporting rational. One can chose to believe 'just because'. However, it is not possible to fake it. One cannot actually choose to believe without following through.  I believe therefor that Pascal's wager has little to offer people who do not already believe. Of course it is a pretty good way to antagonize atheists and shut agnostics up.

The power to protect (yourself)

So I was reading this story in the Telegraph. It was about some contributor who was mugged by black dudes during the London riots ( they took his bike the big bullies!) On his way home in a cab he reflected on ho w helpless he was in the face of the rioters. In the end he muses that the citizens of england, cowering in their homes, are at the mercy of violent men, who can come at any time , and do what they like. In the comments there are a few smart asses suggesting that the English ought to adopt american gun laws. Predictably (esp. in the Telegraph) this is met with smug ridicule and ersatz gun crime stats.
  The fact is, this column written by a beaten man in england is the best argument for gun ownership I have ever seen, even though the writer never mentions guns. Ownership of a gun means you are no longer defenseless. You are not at the mercy of a mob, nor are you cowering in your homes, hoping the bad men will pass you by (and victimize the little old white lady next door). You can stand up against bigger, meaner, more abundant people than yourself. You can protect your possessions and your loved ones, rather than having to make a panicked phone call to big brother for help.
   This alone is worth the price (if any) we pay for gun ownership in this country. Wanna set my house on fire? Wanna attack my family? Come and get some.