After what was thought to be a potentially crisis meeting for the current rotating chair of the EU Council Presidency, Sweden's PM Frederik Reinfeldt, the 27 heads of government came very quickly to agreement on who's going to run the massive EU bureaucracy under the new Lisbon rules. The new European President is the present Prime Minister of Belgium, Herman van Rompuy; and in a bit of a shock, the Foreign Minister of the EU will be a British peer, Baroness Catherine Ashton.
It's somewhat of a relief that the PMs didn't choose Tony Blair. Although extremely fluent in French, one of the working languages at the Commission, he has a lot of personal and political baggage. Besides having little credibility left after the sexed-up Downing Street Papers, it would seem rather inappropriate to have someone running the EU who was from a country that is presently outside both the Schengen open border zone as well as the Euro. Besides which, his relationship with the Queen wasn't exactly cordial even at the best of times; imagine having to get heck from her as well as 26 other monarchs and presidents.
The big concern of the new leadership will be trying to get the eurocracy down to a more reasonable size and to put a stop to some of the boneheaded regulations that come out of Brussels and court rulings out of Strasbourg and Luxembourg City; as well as a Parliament that has to rotate between all three cities for no apparent reason other than to make the state railways and public transit companies rich in the pockets.
I don't think we're anywhere near the "United States of Europe" that many fear, but Rompuy and Ashton will have to act quickly to put their feet forward to be taken seriously. Still, for those who haven't been paying attention to Fortress Europe, there is no question this juggernaut is about to get a whole lot more influence. There's already more Euros in circulation than US dollars and it's just a matter of time before the common currency becomes the reserve currency of choice among most nations -- as it already has with Canada.
And many may not know what hit them until it's actually the EU -- not China -- that holds most of America's staggering debt. Sweden knows what it was like a few years ago when interest rates hit 500%. It'd be very interesting to see how America would react if they faced those terms, and the nuclear missiles of the UK and France were aimed not at Russia but the States.
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Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Ten percenters hit new now
By now, we're all used to the so-called "ten per center" fliers we get in the mail, thanks to the virtually unlimited double-ended franking privileges, meaning one can send and receive mail free of charge, the Governor General and all Senators and Members of Parliament have. (The privilege is also held by the Sovereign, the Clerks of the Commons and the Senate, Parliament's Librarian and his or her deputy, the ethics officers and the other "officers of Parliament" -- including the Information and Privacy Commissioners, the Auditor General and the Chief Electoral Officer.)
The Liberals and the NDP are actually no less guilty than the Conservatives -- I regularly get fliers from all three federalist parties in the mail from out of town MPs. It's more of an annoyance than anything and they usually just end up in the recycling bin without even being read. They are also increasingly partisan and in many cases, outright misleading or take quotes from "enemies" out of context.
(They are called "ten per centers" because, besides the four general mailings per year to the homes in one's own district -- although there are many more, to be certain -- MPs are permitted to sent out letters or fliers, equal to ten percent of the households in the district they represent, to homes and apartments in other districts and there appears to be no limit to how many times this can be done. For example, if you have 50,000 homes in your district, say in downtown Toronto, you can send 5,000 fliers to homes in, say, a district in rural Nova Scotia.)
Many have called to change the rules, including banning mailings outside one's home district other than for correspondence from actual letters. But after yesterday's torture bombshell, the latest fliers being sent out accusing the Liberals of anti-Semitism sets a real low for the ruling Conservative Party. In essence the pamphlet in question praises Mr. Harper for boycotting the "anti-Semitic" Durban conference while pointing out that Michael Ignatieff once accused Israel of war crimes (but neglected to mention that Ignatieff later retracted the remarks).
On the second point, a war crime is a war crime. I have always and will always support the State of Israel and its right to self-defence, but Israel gets no special exemptions from international law simply because six million Jewish people were slaughtered during World War II. Not only that, it clearly states in the Mosaic law that one is to have the same law for citizens as for foreigners; therefore it could be suggested all countries are guilty of this sin. "The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." (Leviticus 19:34, NIV).
On the first point, by being absent, one actually is complicit with any lies (real or imagined) that might be stated. If Harper imagines himself to be the latter day Daniel then he should jump in the pit and face the lions in the den and call them out.
I share Scott Tribe's concern that the Cons timed the release and mailing quite deliberately, to distract attention from yesterday's damning testimony. If Harper thinks we're that stupid or forgetful, or that we have short attention spans, he may be in for a shock. When the death camps were liberated by Canada and our allies, it was by soldiers and other armed personnel of all political stripes, all persuasions and all religions. We've seen the pattern of atrocities repeated time and time again since then and the vast majority of us simply do not stand for it.
A lot of us have very, very long memories; and, for those among us who are Christian, we will not stand idly by and watch as our Jewish brothers and sisters are dragged through the muck, not the least of which is MP Irwin Cotler. We will also not stand and be silent about innocent people, including Christians, being bombed out of their homes under the principle of "collective guilt." If this is how $10 million of the Parliamentary budget (really, our money) is being spent every year, then it's time for the Board of Internal Economy (the "Board of Directors" for the House, which currently has a majority of opposition members) to put an end to the paid partisan b.s. that comes from all parties, once and for all. After all, if I sent a letter like that using the free mail to my MP or a Senator, I could be potentially charged with libel or promoting hate. But because a Parliamentarian does it (and on my and everyone else's dime), it's protected by Parliamentary privilege. That is unacceptable.
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The Liberals and the NDP are actually no less guilty than the Conservatives -- I regularly get fliers from all three federalist parties in the mail from out of town MPs. It's more of an annoyance than anything and they usually just end up in the recycling bin without even being read. They are also increasingly partisan and in many cases, outright misleading or take quotes from "enemies" out of context.
(They are called "ten per centers" because, besides the four general mailings per year to the homes in one's own district -- although there are many more, to be certain -- MPs are permitted to sent out letters or fliers, equal to ten percent of the households in the district they represent, to homes and apartments in other districts and there appears to be no limit to how many times this can be done. For example, if you have 50,000 homes in your district, say in downtown Toronto, you can send 5,000 fliers to homes in, say, a district in rural Nova Scotia.)
Many have called to change the rules, including banning mailings outside one's home district other than for correspondence from actual letters. But after yesterday's torture bombshell, the latest fliers being sent out accusing the Liberals of anti-Semitism sets a real low for the ruling Conservative Party. In essence the pamphlet in question praises Mr. Harper for boycotting the "anti-Semitic" Durban conference while pointing out that Michael Ignatieff once accused Israel of war crimes (but neglected to mention that Ignatieff later retracted the remarks).
On the second point, a war crime is a war crime. I have always and will always support the State of Israel and its right to self-defence, but Israel gets no special exemptions from international law simply because six million Jewish people were slaughtered during World War II. Not only that, it clearly states in the Mosaic law that one is to have the same law for citizens as for foreigners; therefore it could be suggested all countries are guilty of this sin. "The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." (Leviticus 19:34, NIV).
On the first point, by being absent, one actually is complicit with any lies (real or imagined) that might be stated. If Harper imagines himself to be the latter day Daniel then he should jump in the pit and face the lions in the den and call them out.
I share Scott Tribe's concern that the Cons timed the release and mailing quite deliberately, to distract attention from yesterday's damning testimony. If Harper thinks we're that stupid or forgetful, or that we have short attention spans, he may be in for a shock. When the death camps were liberated by Canada and our allies, it was by soldiers and other armed personnel of all political stripes, all persuasions and all religions. We've seen the pattern of atrocities repeated time and time again since then and the vast majority of us simply do not stand for it.
A lot of us have very, very long memories; and, for those among us who are Christian, we will not stand idly by and watch as our Jewish brothers and sisters are dragged through the muck, not the least of which is MP Irwin Cotler. We will also not stand and be silent about innocent people, including Christians, being bombed out of their homes under the principle of "collective guilt." If this is how $10 million of the Parliamentary budget (really, our money) is being spent every year, then it's time for the Board of Internal Economy (the "Board of Directors" for the House, which currently has a majority of opposition members) to put an end to the paid partisan b.s. that comes from all parties, once and for all. After all, if I sent a letter like that using the free mail to my MP or a Senator, I could be potentially charged with libel or promoting hate. But because a Parliamentarian does it (and on my and everyone else's dime), it's protected by Parliamentary privilege. That is unacceptable.
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Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Torture, Canadian style (?)
If what former diplomat Richard Colvin told a House of Commons committee today is true, than Canada may be guilty of even worse crimes of war than many of the personnel serving in the armed forces of our allies as well as the political leaderships of all at the time the crimes took place. And to make it worse, those who were tortured after our forces turned them over to the Afghan government weren't even "high value" targets, those actually responsible for terrorist acts or in the leadership of the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
Ignorance of what was going on is no excuse, and telling a diplomat to tone down his or her memorandums or to just shut the hell up amounts to, in my opinion, complicity in the crimes. Not to mention the Red Cross -- the ultimate neutral arbiter -- also being told to mind its own business. Hearing the accounts on the radio tonight, I almost threw up. I didn't actually, out of courtesy for the people I was carpooling with, but I might have if I was alone.
What did Harper and MacKay know, and when did they know it? They owe Canadians an answer -- and they owe us the truth. Those responsible for such reprehensible actions should face courts martial in the case of the armed forces, or civilian trials in the case of the politicians.
I do have to ask, though, why didn't Mr. Colvin raise the questions while federal ministers were touring Afghanistan? Someone could have put a stop to this. In fact, it never should have been allowed to happen. Then again it's hard to see how our complaining would have helped much since we forsake our "honest broker" role in diplomacy quite some time ago.
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Ignorance of what was going on is no excuse, and telling a diplomat to tone down his or her memorandums or to just shut the hell up amounts to, in my opinion, complicity in the crimes. Not to mention the Red Cross -- the ultimate neutral arbiter -- also being told to mind its own business. Hearing the accounts on the radio tonight, I almost threw up. I didn't actually, out of courtesy for the people I was carpooling with, but I might have if I was alone.
What did Harper and MacKay know, and when did they know it? They owe Canadians an answer -- and they owe us the truth. Those responsible for such reprehensible actions should face courts martial in the case of the armed forces, or civilian trials in the case of the politicians.
I do have to ask, though, why didn't Mr. Colvin raise the questions while federal ministers were touring Afghanistan? Someone could have put a stop to this. In fact, it never should have been allowed to happen. Then again it's hard to see how our complaining would have helped much since we forsake our "honest broker" role in diplomacy quite some time ago.
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Boondoggle, Caesar's ™ style
Truly unbelievable: To get the new and expanded Caesar's Palace ™ Windsor off the grid (because Windsor and area simply didn't have enough power to light up the hotel / concert / casino complex), the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation decided to build a "clean energy" co-generation plant on site. The Caesar's project was supposed to cost $40 million; it's now run up to at least $81 million but may actually be worth zero zip nada on paper because no one knows how much excess power would be created to pump back into the grid so it could pay for itself. And the worst part: It still hasn't generated a single watt of power.
Meanwhile, the designer of the power plant and the OLG are suing each other because of claims the province reneged on the deal to buy power in the case of the former, and lack of timely delivery for the latter.
You'd think with a name with the caché of Caesar's, and with several former auto plants in Windsor now idle permanently, there would be a top notch facility with plenty of power to spare. But the nearest power facilities in Lambton and Bruce are pumping out as much as they can -- to the Greater Toronto Area; meanwhile the juice from Michigan is sold out of state at top dollar.
For a Premier who promised accountability and major improvements in health and education, partly funded by the revenues from gaming facilities across the province (the casinos, slots at racetracks and the horse races themselves), we the taxpayers have gotten one hell of a snow job from Dalton McGuinty. Sure there's a recession going on and Ontario's casinos collectively lost money last year for the first time, but that's no excuse for overspending on a clean energy project with nothing to show for it.
Why couldn't they have done what they did up at Casino Rama near Orillia? They built a backup gas generation plant, which came in handy during the big blackout in 2003; in fact they were the only gaming facility in Southern Ontario that was still running. It doesn't cost that much to build a purpose-driven gas plant.
This is yet another thing Dalton McGuinty has to answer for. This is beyond embarrassing. Little wonder people would want to go to the casinos in Detroit -- and not just because one can bet on a single game there which is still illegal in Canada (a three game parlay minimum is required).
And if they can't be trusted to build an in-house plant at a casino, how can they be trusted to build a windmill farm, or a nuclear power plant, at or below the contracted or stated price? When pigs can actually fly, then I'll believe it's possible to keep a promise when it comes to power.
At this point one couldn't blame Harrah's if they decide to strip the OLG of the right to use the Caesar's name. Who would want to be associated with a bs project like this knowing there's money for nothing? That's what's supposed to happen to those who patronize the facilities, not those who built it -- in this case, us the taxpayers.
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Meanwhile, the designer of the power plant and the OLG are suing each other because of claims the province reneged on the deal to buy power in the case of the former, and lack of timely delivery for the latter.
You'd think with a name with the caché of Caesar's, and with several former auto plants in Windsor now idle permanently, there would be a top notch facility with plenty of power to spare. But the nearest power facilities in Lambton and Bruce are pumping out as much as they can -- to the Greater Toronto Area; meanwhile the juice from Michigan is sold out of state at top dollar.
For a Premier who promised accountability and major improvements in health and education, partly funded by the revenues from gaming facilities across the province (the casinos, slots at racetracks and the horse races themselves), we the taxpayers have gotten one hell of a snow job from Dalton McGuinty. Sure there's a recession going on and Ontario's casinos collectively lost money last year for the first time, but that's no excuse for overspending on a clean energy project with nothing to show for it.
Why couldn't they have done what they did up at Casino Rama near Orillia? They built a backup gas generation plant, which came in handy during the big blackout in 2003; in fact they were the only gaming facility in Southern Ontario that was still running. It doesn't cost that much to build a purpose-driven gas plant.
This is yet another thing Dalton McGuinty has to answer for. This is beyond embarrassing. Little wonder people would want to go to the casinos in Detroit -- and not just because one can bet on a single game there which is still illegal in Canada (a three game parlay minimum is required).
And if they can't be trusted to build an in-house plant at a casino, how can they be trusted to build a windmill farm, or a nuclear power plant, at or below the contracted or stated price? When pigs can actually fly, then I'll believe it's possible to keep a promise when it comes to power.
At this point one couldn't blame Harrah's if they decide to strip the OLG of the right to use the Caesar's name. Who would want to be associated with a bs project like this knowing there's money for nothing? That's what's supposed to happen to those who patronize the facilities, not those who built it -- in this case, us the taxpayers.
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Monday, November 16, 2009
Zambian "porn" editor acquitted
Back in August, I wrote about the crazy story of a newspaper editor in Zambia who was charged with pornography because she took photos of a woman who was forced to deliver a breech birth in a parking lot after two hospitals turned her away for a lack of nurses caused by a labour dispute. The baby later died from suffocation. Many felt that the arrest was politically motivated as the editor -- Chansa Kabwela -- has been an outspoken critic in her newspaper about the incumbent and (allegedly corrupt) president of the country, Rupiah Banda; even though the photos were never published.
Today, a court in Lusaka ruled that there was nothing to suggest the photos were anywhere from being "obscene" and duly acquitted Kabwela.
For a continent largely unaccustomed to the idea of a free press, this is without doubt a huge victory -- not just for journalistic integrity, but also for the common sense idea that a woman has the right to give birth safely. How anyone could have possibly viewed photographs of child birth as being "porn" is beyond comprehension, but that kind of idiocy exists even on our shores and it needs to be challenged if women are ever going to truly be considered the equals of men not just in law but in fact.
Put it this way: If the roles were reversed and men could give birth, would a woman pursue such silly charges? I would hope not.
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Today, a court in Lusaka ruled that there was nothing to suggest the photos were anywhere from being "obscene" and duly acquitted Kabwela.
For a continent largely unaccustomed to the idea of a free press, this is without doubt a huge victory -- not just for journalistic integrity, but also for the common sense idea that a woman has the right to give birth safely. How anyone could have possibly viewed photographs of child birth as being "porn" is beyond comprehension, but that kind of idiocy exists even on our shores and it needs to be challenged if women are ever going to truly be considered the equals of men not just in law but in fact.
Put it this way: If the roles were reversed and men could give birth, would a woman pursue such silly charges? I would hope not.
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Friday, November 13, 2009
Military contractors get free pass when raping?
You would think by now that the message has gotten through to people: Rape is a crime, anyplace and anytime. It apparently hasn't reached the ears of some US Senators.
A few weeks ago, ex-comedian Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) put forward a bill that would prevent the US Department of Defense from signing contracts with private companies that require their employees to resolve sexual harrassment and / or assault via private binding arbitration rather than through the courts. In effect, the situation as it currently stands gives service companies -- I'll let you guess which ones -- immunity from prosecution, and the Franken amendment if it becomes law would end that immunity. The amendment passed in principle, as well as it should -- the vote was 68 to 30. But on the way there, 30 Senators, all Republicans, voted against it.
In many states, as well as in most of Canada, a restaurant or bar can be held liable if they were aware someone had too much to drink then hit the road and caused an accident under the influence. Furthermore if it was one of their employees that had one too many, they'd be fired on the spot as well as facing criminal charges. Most companies nowadays have strict sexual harrassment policies knowing full well that they could be held liable if they create a "hostile work environment" that allows such discrimination to take place.
Why should it not be any different with contractors on the battlefield? Should they not be held to the same standards as those who wear the uniform and could face a court martial if they committed similar acts?
As it turns out, President Obama's Defense Department is trying to get the amendment killed as it goes to conference for reconciliation and a final vote -- they say it would disqualify too many current and potential contractors. Tough. Taxpayer money should not be subsidizing criminal acts and those who do commit such acts should face justice, both monetary and criminal. It's that simple.
Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.
A few weeks ago, ex-comedian Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) put forward a bill that would prevent the US Department of Defense from signing contracts with private companies that require their employees to resolve sexual harrassment and / or assault via private binding arbitration rather than through the courts. In effect, the situation as it currently stands gives service companies -- I'll let you guess which ones -- immunity from prosecution, and the Franken amendment if it becomes law would end that immunity. The amendment passed in principle, as well as it should -- the vote was 68 to 30. But on the way there, 30 Senators, all Republicans, voted against it.
In many states, as well as in most of Canada, a restaurant or bar can be held liable if they were aware someone had too much to drink then hit the road and caused an accident under the influence. Furthermore if it was one of their employees that had one too many, they'd be fired on the spot as well as facing criminal charges. Most companies nowadays have strict sexual harrassment policies knowing full well that they could be held liable if they create a "hostile work environment" that allows such discrimination to take place.
Why should it not be any different with contractors on the battlefield? Should they not be held to the same standards as those who wear the uniform and could face a court martial if they committed similar acts?
As it turns out, President Obama's Defense Department is trying to get the amendment killed as it goes to conference for reconciliation and a final vote -- they say it would disqualify too many current and potential contractors. Tough. Taxpayer money should not be subsidizing criminal acts and those who do commit such acts should face justice, both monetary and criminal. It's that simple.
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Thursday, November 12, 2009
Can't terrorist groups come up with better names?
There's ETA (Basque Freedom and Homeland) ... the Tamil "Tigers" ... and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a separatist group in the Phillipines. Yes ... MILF.
Maybe that's why many people don't take the threat seriously. With a name like that ... who would?
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Maybe that's why many people don't take the threat seriously. With a name like that ... who would?
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Last dance for Dobbs at CNN
I don't think anyone saw this one coming, Lou Dobbs asked for and was released from his contract two years before it expires ... then again, Lou Dobbs was getting increasingly belligerent over the last six months. Not that he wasn't already but he may have finally worn out the patience of even the most tolerant editors at CNN.
He concluded tonight's show, his last, with "I'll be seeing you on the radio ..." à la Charles Osgood. Don't count on me tuning in.
It's almost certain he's going to settle in at Fox News any time now; proving just much of a comedy channel FNC is.
Indeed, he is the last of the original CNN anchors. Maybe they need to bring back one of the other originals -- that station is dead meat.
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He concluded tonight's show, his last, with "I'll be seeing you on the radio ..." à la Charles Osgood. Don't count on me tuning in.
It's almost certain he's going to settle in at Fox News any time now; proving just much of a comedy channel FNC is.
Indeed, he is the last of the original CNN anchors. Maybe they need to bring back one of the other originals -- that station is dead meat.
Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.
Blackout in South America
Just weeks after Rio de Janiero won the 2016 Summer Olympics and as it gears up for perhaps as equally big an extragavanza, hosting the 2014 Men's World Cup of Soccer, a huge security concern has come up. Last night, a blackout plunged 60 million residents of Brazil and Paraguay into darkness for over two hours.
Why did this happen? No one seems to know for sure. Officially, sabotage is being denied at this time and the blame is instead placed on an "atmospheric event." The events have pointed critics to a huge flaw that nearly did in the Northeast of North America in the summer of 2003 -- too much interconnectivity causing a chain reaction blackout.
But if a 60 Minutes story the other night about how easy it is to hack into critical infrastructure is any indication, it may not be a good sign. It's happened before in Rio and many point a finger for those past events directly at Mainland China which, while it was unstatated, cannot tolerate any possible economic rivals and democratically elected ones at that. Or perhaps organized crime who can operate virtually anywhere on the planet.
Or it could be al Qaeda or another tech saavy terrorist group. And we know trojan horses have already been downloaded into central computers by stealth.
It doesn't make me feel all that comfortable about the security of Canada's electrical grid and our chemical and other raw materials plants. Or how easy it is to disconnect some power plants that may need to go offline in a hurry without causing damage to other plants or infrastructure at the end-user points. Not only that, if it's easy to hack into civilian systems, what leap of logic would it take to go from there to hacking into -- say, drones that can be flown by remote control, guided missles, entire cargo planes or destroyer ships.
And God forbid if a terrorist ever cracked the official nuclear launch codes.
I don't want to necessarily know what's being done -- that of course gives the hackers the heads up. Just that something is being done and intrusion attempts are caught and prosecuted.
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Why did this happen? No one seems to know for sure. Officially, sabotage is being denied at this time and the blame is instead placed on an "atmospheric event." The events have pointed critics to a huge flaw that nearly did in the Northeast of North America in the summer of 2003 -- too much interconnectivity causing a chain reaction blackout.
But if a 60 Minutes story the other night about how easy it is to hack into critical infrastructure is any indication, it may not be a good sign. It's happened before in Rio and many point a finger for those past events directly at Mainland China which, while it was unstatated, cannot tolerate any possible economic rivals and democratically elected ones at that. Or perhaps organized crime who can operate virtually anywhere on the planet.
Or it could be al Qaeda or another tech saavy terrorist group. And we know trojan horses have already been downloaded into central computers by stealth.
It doesn't make me feel all that comfortable about the security of Canada's electrical grid and our chemical and other raw materials plants. Or how easy it is to disconnect some power plants that may need to go offline in a hurry without causing damage to other plants or infrastructure at the end-user points. Not only that, if it's easy to hack into civilian systems, what leap of logic would it take to go from there to hacking into -- say, drones that can be flown by remote control, guided missles, entire cargo planes or destroyer ships.
And God forbid if a terrorist ever cracked the official nuclear launch codes.
I don't want to necessarily know what's being done -- that of course gives the hackers the heads up. Just that something is being done and intrusion attempts are caught and prosecuted.
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Double Exposure Remembrance Day podcast
This is quite a surprise but a nice one ... comedians Bob Robertson and Linda Cullen ("Double Exposure") get very serious for once and have put together a 45 minute podcast in honour of Remembrance / Veterans Day, tomorrow, November 11. Their motivation: Hadnan Hajizade and Emin Abdullayev, who are in jail in Azerbaijan for a satirical video. This is very moving. You can get it off iTunes or download it directly from the humourists' website.
http://doublexposureradio.com/remembrance.html
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http://doublexposureradio.com/remembrance.html
Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.
Rescuers get rescued
Yesterday morning, there was a special bulletin on the radio about someone who was hunting, who got caught in an ice floe and a rescue mission was underway. It turns out the victim was indeed rescued, but then the rescue team got stranded on the way back to their own port and themselves had to be rescued.
No, I'm not making this up. This definitely isn't funny, but yet more proof positive the climate changes we're responsible for in the South are wreaking havoc way up North -- and we can expect to have more incidents like this. Thank God everyone was safe, and one can only hope beyond hope that no one dies in the future. Of course, most of the televangelists and their followers won't ever be convinced and they wouldn't be even if they could see the evidence for themselves up close.
Quite frankly, if Jesus came back today, he'd be executed by the religious right, before sundown, because they'd think he was the anti-Christ -- such is their unbelief.
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No, I'm not making this up. This definitely isn't funny, but yet more proof positive the climate changes we're responsible for in the South are wreaking havoc way up North -- and we can expect to have more incidents like this. Thank God everyone was safe, and one can only hope beyond hope that no one dies in the future. Of course, most of the televangelists and their followers won't ever be convinced and they wouldn't be even if they could see the evidence for themselves up close.
Quite frankly, if Jesus came back today, he'd be executed by the religious right, before sundown, because they'd think he was the anti-Christ -- such is their unbelief.
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Korean naval clash -- again
After yesterday's celebrations in Berlin around the 20th anniversary of the fall of The Wall, one would have guessed the optimism would be short lived. It was. Enter today and a naval skirmish between North and South Korea -- two countries who don't even recognize the other's right to exist, to the point where broadcasts from the communist North are actually jammed in the democratic South. The world needs a regional war like a human needs a shot in the head and cooler heads need to prevail before this gets really out of hand.
But the bottom line is, just as is only one German people and the wall between them had to come down, so too is there only one Korean people and it's time for the DMZ to go and for Koreans in the North to be free. If it takes force to achieve that goal, then so be it. Much as I'd like to see Kim Jong-Il get shot, it'd be even sweeter justice to have him captured and tried at the Hague for crimes against humanity -- specifically, bringing his citizen slaves to starvation levels -- and get a life sentence.
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But the bottom line is, just as is only one German people and the wall between them had to come down, so too is there only one Korean people and it's time for the DMZ to go and for Koreans in the North to be free. If it takes force to achieve that goal, then so be it. Much as I'd like to see Kim Jong-Il get shot, it'd be even sweeter justice to have him captured and tried at the Hague for crimes against humanity -- specifically, bringing his citizen slaves to starvation levels -- and get a life sentence.
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Monday, November 9, 2009
Twenty years ago today -- the Fall of the Wall
Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall fell. When I got home from high school that day and turned on the TV and saw all the channels covering this extraordinary event I had to pinch myself -- was this really happening. Then my parents and I saw people climbing up on the walls, the notorious Trebants literally lining up to go through Checkpoint Charlie -- and people using chisels, jackhammers, anything they had handy to literally rip the wall down and I thought ... well, there are no words to describe it. The following day, a Friday, the students at school were in a total party atmosphere -- whether our parents had come from Eastern or Western Europe, we knew then the Cold War was finally over. With Remembrance Day just a couple of days away, it made what our soldiers had fought for truly worthwhile after 44 years.
There had been a power shift in Poland earlier that year via a semi-democratic election; in Hungary the Communist Party simply declared itself out of business. The "day after" as it were the government in Bulgaria just proverbially threw in the towel and the end of dictatorship in Czechoslovakia was just around in corner.
What happened in Germany, however was inconceivable. One had to reasonably presume that, even with Erich Honecker out of office, the Soviet Union would intervene as they did in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The fear was especially real given that the Soviets still had several hundred thousand troops stationed in the East. This time, Moscow, which was under the control of Gorbachev at the time, just let things play out on their own. One supposes it was because the still active Soviet Union had problems of their own; but the realization that the Warsaw Pact was no longer to be considered a group of client states beholden to a superpower's interests was huge.
It was hard enough to know that a double-fenced No Man's Land cut through the heart of Europe, quite literally from the Baltic to the Adriatic. Even more insane was the Berlin Wall, which completely surrounded West Berlin (well inside of East Germany), a city that had vast urban and rural tracts.
The truly horrible thing, one reason why I still hate walls so much, is that it wasn't meant to keep the people of West Berlin out of East Germany as in a prison city -- instead, it was East Germany that was the prison country and West Berlin a free international city for while France, the UK and the US occupied West Berlin it couldn't actually say it was part of West Germany. In fact, it was so crazy that many in the "main" part of West Germany actually tried anything they could to get into West Berlin to evade compulsory military or alternate service. Some sources I've read suggest it cost the East about USD 1 billion per year to maintain the Berlin Wall -- when a country was still basically trapped in a post-World War II infrastructure. Today, public transit across Berlin is so generally easy it's hard to remember that as many as 12 of the 25 rapid transit lines that serve Berlin, both surface (the S-Bahn) and underground (the U-Bahn) were either totally cut off mid-point or had to run through so-called "ghost" stations -- not to mention the chaos done to the tram / streetcar lines.
Twenty years later after the fall, it's reprehensible to see people advocating for walls in the United States, such as Lou Dobbs. As pro wrestler and former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura pointed out to Larry King last year, you build a wall to keep people in -- not out, citing Berlin as just one example. And America is literally being its own prison as more people want a wall to keep the "enemy" Mexicans from crossing in. It will get to a point where people want to break down the walls, and when it does it will either be peaceful as it was in Berlin or a violent bloodbath as the Christmas coup in Romania was a few weeks later. It's true a "wall of the mind" is still there and people still speak of being from "East" or "West" Berlin and reconstruction has been hugely expensive but the vast majority, I am certain, would never want to go back to the bad old days.
So many of us saw the Iron Curtain as permanent that when it just faded away, literally in one night, I think it caught the West off guard. It's been said that all NATO ever did was plan for an invasion from the East, it never had a plan for what to do if Eastern Europe ever actually did democratize.
Yes, we had always had the hope that freedom would ring from Lisbon to Tallinn. But had you told me that not only would the Iron Curtain disappear but it would become possible to travel across Europe without any border guards whatsoever, and that over time you would only need one currency as well -- not to mention that Canada would build a permanent embassy right where the death zone stood -- I would have said you were nuts. Yet within a few years after "the end" people from both East and West Germany could travel freely to the other countries in Western Europe without border checks, by 2007, border controls had been abolished in nearly all of central and eastern Europe. Even Switzerland and Liechtenstein, about two of the freest countries you can imagine, finally got with the program and also opened their borders to the rest of Europe this year. The Euro is the currency of 16 of the 27 EU member states and widely accepted in many of the others. The impulse for freedom cannot be resisted.
Freedom doesn't come by building walls. They come by breaking them down. Meanwhile, while the former Warsaw Pact and the Baltic States have relative prosperity and complete freedom, Russia has retrenched back into dictatorship. I think deep down people want the openness of the late 1980s back and they will wake up sooner or later. So too will the people of Mainland China, the ordinary people who know their country took the wrong path in 1989 unlike Eastern Europe which understood a future would like in freedom and not repression. Sadly it's just not happening fast enough.
Twenty years ago today was the day that changed everything. I for one am glad it did.
UPDATE (Tues 09/11/10 3:26 PM EST, 2026 GMT): Some minor corrections. Also, the party last night in Berlin, where Lech Walesa toppled the symbolic dominoes across the city, was a lot of fun. Too bad Thatcher wasn't well enough to attend -- on the other hand, she was at first opposed to reunification.
Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.
There had been a power shift in Poland earlier that year via a semi-democratic election; in Hungary the Communist Party simply declared itself out of business. The "day after" as it were the government in Bulgaria just proverbially threw in the towel and the end of dictatorship in Czechoslovakia was just around in corner.
What happened in Germany, however was inconceivable. One had to reasonably presume that, even with Erich Honecker out of office, the Soviet Union would intervene as they did in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The fear was especially real given that the Soviets still had several hundred thousand troops stationed in the East. This time, Moscow, which was under the control of Gorbachev at the time, just let things play out on their own. One supposes it was because the still active Soviet Union had problems of their own; but the realization that the Warsaw Pact was no longer to be considered a group of client states beholden to a superpower's interests was huge.
It was hard enough to know that a double-fenced No Man's Land cut through the heart of Europe, quite literally from the Baltic to the Adriatic. Even more insane was the Berlin Wall, which completely surrounded West Berlin (well inside of East Germany), a city that had vast urban and rural tracts.
The truly horrible thing, one reason why I still hate walls so much, is that it wasn't meant to keep the people of West Berlin out of East Germany as in a prison city -- instead, it was East Germany that was the prison country and West Berlin a free international city for while France, the UK and the US occupied West Berlin it couldn't actually say it was part of West Germany. In fact, it was so crazy that many in the "main" part of West Germany actually tried anything they could to get into West Berlin to evade compulsory military or alternate service. Some sources I've read suggest it cost the East about USD 1 billion per year to maintain the Berlin Wall -- when a country was still basically trapped in a post-World War II infrastructure. Today, public transit across Berlin is so generally easy it's hard to remember that as many as 12 of the 25 rapid transit lines that serve Berlin, both surface (the S-Bahn) and underground (the U-Bahn) were either totally cut off mid-point or had to run through so-called "ghost" stations -- not to mention the chaos done to the tram / streetcar lines.
Twenty years later after the fall, it's reprehensible to see people advocating for walls in the United States, such as Lou Dobbs. As pro wrestler and former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura pointed out to Larry King last year, you build a wall to keep people in -- not out, citing Berlin as just one example. And America is literally being its own prison as more people want a wall to keep the "enemy" Mexicans from crossing in. It will get to a point where people want to break down the walls, and when it does it will either be peaceful as it was in Berlin or a violent bloodbath as the Christmas coup in Romania was a few weeks later. It's true a "wall of the mind" is still there and people still speak of being from "East" or "West" Berlin and reconstruction has been hugely expensive but the vast majority, I am certain, would never want to go back to the bad old days.
So many of us saw the Iron Curtain as permanent that when it just faded away, literally in one night, I think it caught the West off guard. It's been said that all NATO ever did was plan for an invasion from the East, it never had a plan for what to do if Eastern Europe ever actually did democratize.
Yes, we had always had the hope that freedom would ring from Lisbon to Tallinn. But had you told me that not only would the Iron Curtain disappear but it would become possible to travel across Europe without any border guards whatsoever, and that over time you would only need one currency as well -- not to mention that Canada would build a permanent embassy right where the death zone stood -- I would have said you were nuts. Yet within a few years after "the end" people from both East and West Germany could travel freely to the other countries in Western Europe without border checks, by 2007, border controls had been abolished in nearly all of central and eastern Europe. Even Switzerland and Liechtenstein, about two of the freest countries you can imagine, finally got with the program and also opened their borders to the rest of Europe this year. The Euro is the currency of 16 of the 27 EU member states and widely accepted in many of the others. The impulse for freedom cannot be resisted.
Freedom doesn't come by building walls. They come by breaking them down. Meanwhile, while the former Warsaw Pact and the Baltic States have relative prosperity and complete freedom, Russia has retrenched back into dictatorship. I think deep down people want the openness of the late 1980s back and they will wake up sooner or later. So too will the people of Mainland China, the ordinary people who know their country took the wrong path in 1989 unlike Eastern Europe which understood a future would like in freedom and not repression. Sadly it's just not happening fast enough.
Twenty years ago today was the day that changed everything. I for one am glad it did.
UPDATE (Tues 09/11/10 3:26 PM EST, 2026 GMT): Some minor corrections. Also, the party last night in Berlin, where Lech Walesa toppled the symbolic dominoes across the city, was a lot of fun. Too bad Thatcher wasn't well enough to attend -- on the other hand, she was at first opposed to reunification.
Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Health care in States crosses huge hurdle
It's kind of hard to believe but more than a hundred years after health care reform was first proposed by Theodore Roosevelt -- TR! -- the US House of Representatives passed a proposal for overhauling the medical system, one more ambitious than what President Obama proposed in his landmark speech to Congress barely two months ago and also even more broad than "Hillarycare" which never even came to a final vote before the Gingrich revolt in 1994. The vote last night was close; 220-215 (219 Democrats and 1 Republican for, 39 Democrats and 206 Republicans against). The GOP well as pro-life Dems did get one major concession -- they got through a provision that tightens the 1975 Hyde Amendment (which prohibits federal funding of abortions) further.
The most important provisions have been the two humps that has bedeviled lawmakers for years -- first getting rid of the anti-trust exemption that ensures virtual oligopolies in 34 states (even though there are dozens of companies who would gladly want to compete as they can for federal employees and drastically drive down premiums were it not for the loophole); and second, the rule allowing denial of coverage for a pre-existing health condition and also permitting cancellation of a policy for a condition one didn't even know about when applying for a policy. No other country would tolerate either of these, even for supplemental insurance over and above the state plan.
The bill will have to be reconciled with whatever comes out of the Senate (certainly less sweeping, about $300 billion less over ten years) but approval in principle is still a major victory for Obama after months of "teabagging" (a misappropriation of a lewd sexual act) and even comparisons of universal health coverage to the Holocaust (which prompted Elie Weisel, the famous survivor of the massacre, to write a very angry response on his Twitter account this week). Not to mention using babies, live babies, as props on the House floor saying such things as "our babies don't want a government run plan." I don't recall their being asked if they want to die, though.
It still seems amazing that every industrialized democracy other than the US has figured out a way to pool the wealth when it comes to health care. As I've mentioned previously, some have had complete takeover, such as with the NHS in the UK. Even there private competition exists and all three major parties there have offered, under certain circumstances, to have the government pay to "go private" if the wait for certain procedures gets too long. This is something Canada should stop fearing and also approve, provided that the private clinics generally outside the loop only first take patients who are not entitled to our health care system at all.
Other countries strictly regulate the health care markets to ensure every can affordably access the system. Then there is Canada, which as noted before is basically Medicare for all but needs more than tinkering to ensure its survival especially with an aging population.
The battle is far from over; but the fact a vast majority of Americans support at least a broad outline of reforms similar to what Obama and most other Democrats have advocated will put pressure on the Republicans to offer something should they ever regain control of Congress -- getting rid of reforms barely a year after they were passed will create an uproar that will make the teabagging / birthers / KKK protests seem tame by comparison.
A major item that will have to be in the "reconciliation" bill would have to be portability. Firstly, across across state lines. Second, being able to continue to be able to buy into a company plan after one leaves an employer within certain time limits with the of course much lower premiums than under an individual plan (this is actually the law, an act written by two former Senators -- Republican Nancy Kassebaum and Democrat the late Edward Kennedy -- but never enforced due to the powerful health care lobby). Just these two would drive down premiums enough to get about half of the uninsured covered again; and cut down the length of the current bill by at least two-thirds (from over 2000 pages to around 600).
Admittedly, Obama should have stuck to his prior guns and demanded the right of Americans to buy into the public service plan. But at least there is a start.
Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.
The most important provisions have been the two humps that has bedeviled lawmakers for years -- first getting rid of the anti-trust exemption that ensures virtual oligopolies in 34 states (even though there are dozens of companies who would gladly want to compete as they can for federal employees and drastically drive down premiums were it not for the loophole); and second, the rule allowing denial of coverage for a pre-existing health condition and also permitting cancellation of a policy for a condition one didn't even know about when applying for a policy. No other country would tolerate either of these, even for supplemental insurance over and above the state plan.
The bill will have to be reconciled with whatever comes out of the Senate (certainly less sweeping, about $300 billion less over ten years) but approval in principle is still a major victory for Obama after months of "teabagging" (a misappropriation of a lewd sexual act) and even comparisons of universal health coverage to the Holocaust (which prompted Elie Weisel, the famous survivor of the massacre, to write a very angry response on his Twitter account this week). Not to mention using babies, live babies, as props on the House floor saying such things as "our babies don't want a government run plan." I don't recall their being asked if they want to die, though.
It still seems amazing that every industrialized democracy other than the US has figured out a way to pool the wealth when it comes to health care. As I've mentioned previously, some have had complete takeover, such as with the NHS in the UK. Even there private competition exists and all three major parties there have offered, under certain circumstances, to have the government pay to "go private" if the wait for certain procedures gets too long. This is something Canada should stop fearing and also approve, provided that the private clinics generally outside the loop only first take patients who are not entitled to our health care system at all.
Other countries strictly regulate the health care markets to ensure every can affordably access the system. Then there is Canada, which as noted before is basically Medicare for all but needs more than tinkering to ensure its survival especially with an aging population.
The battle is far from over; but the fact a vast majority of Americans support at least a broad outline of reforms similar to what Obama and most other Democrats have advocated will put pressure on the Republicans to offer something should they ever regain control of Congress -- getting rid of reforms barely a year after they were passed will create an uproar that will make the teabagging / birthers / KKK protests seem tame by comparison.
A major item that will have to be in the "reconciliation" bill would have to be portability. Firstly, across across state lines. Second, being able to continue to be able to buy into a company plan after one leaves an employer within certain time limits with the of course much lower premiums than under an individual plan (this is actually the law, an act written by two former Senators -- Republican Nancy Kassebaum and Democrat the late Edward Kennedy -- but never enforced due to the powerful health care lobby). Just these two would drive down premiums enough to get about half of the uninsured covered again; and cut down the length of the current bill by at least two-thirds (from over 2000 pages to around 600).
Admittedly, Obama should have stuck to his prior guns and demanded the right of Americans to buy into the public service plan. But at least there is a start.
Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.
Friday, November 6, 2009
What they are expected to say
I got a call about 4:45 pm (Eastern) today from someone who said they were an organizer for Terry Anderson, the federal Conservative candidate in my district (Hamilton Mountain) for the "coming election." (Hint, hint -- looks like PMS may call one when even the media least expects it). The caller asked if they could count on my support. I said, quite matter of factly, "No ... I'm a card-carrying Liberal."
"Oh thank you ..." the caller breathlessly began -- then she realized what I said and laughed. "I'm sorry. I guess I was answering what I'm expecting to say."
"That's quite all right," I replied, "but you have a nice day."
"Thank you."
Click.
What they are expected to say? I thought politics was about dialogue. I was willing to talk about some issues on my mind but she didn't even want to hear from me. She didn't even take the chance to see if I could be persuaded to defect.
I'm surprised they even called me at all. I would have thought the Cons would have scanned for all the "progressive" blogs, taken names, and struck them off the list.
That's Team Harper for you. But I'll take the hint that an election is coming.
Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.
"Oh thank you ..." the caller breathlessly began -- then she realized what I said and laughed. "I'm sorry. I guess I was answering what I'm expecting to say."
"That's quite all right," I replied, "but you have a nice day."
"Thank you."
Click.
What they are expected to say? I thought politics was about dialogue. I was willing to talk about some issues on my mind but she didn't even want to hear from me. She didn't even take the chance to see if I could be persuaded to defect.
I'm surprised they even called me at all. I would have thought the Cons would have scanned for all the "progressive" blogs, taken names, and struck them off the list.
That's Team Harper for you. But I'll take the hint that an election is coming.
Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.
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