Too little, too late (Darfur)

After many months of wrangling, the UN Security Council finally approved a resolution to send peacekeepers to Darfur. Several years too late, in my opinion and that of many others.

The hold out had been China, which depends on Sudan for a large part of its oil consumption and which only wanted to see what was happening as an internal affair -- that is, until civil society started putting pressure on world governments to threaten to boycott the Beijing Olympics next year. I guess the butchers couldn't stand being embarrassed like that.

I must admit I was rather annoyed by the Sudanese ambassador to the UN, interviewed by the BBC. In one sentence, he said his government would respect the resolution and allow the peacekeepers to come into his country unimpeded; in the next, he said the refugee crisis had been fantasized by NGOs.

That doesn't change the fact too many have been displaced, never to return home. And it was all because the oil was in the wrong part of the country. If it had been elsewhere and a refugee crisis erupted, Bush would have sent in the 82nd and 101st Airbornes in a New York Minute.

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Ban the tax-free allowance!

A few days ago, the local council here in Hamilton voted to keep one-third of the annual salary councillors make tax-free. There's nothing illegal about that -- federal and provincial law allows for this possibility and many towns and cities across the country have similar provisions. But it's an outdated one and it's time to pay politicians a straight salary, one that's fully taxable.

The rationale behind giving people from the Prime Minister down to a local alderperson a tax-free allowance was that they received dozens of requests for support from civic society groups and social clubs, and it was just easier to make donations from this stipend without having to ask for a tax receipt. But that goes back to the days when the former Revenue Canada only allowed paper returns and demanded receipts for everything. These days, however, only about 7% of Canadians actually get their returns reviewed each year and usually it is just a request for additional info. Maybe only about 2% of us, if that, get a full blown audit, way less than the 33% quota for the IRS.

In recent years, the federal government and most provinces have gotten rid of the tax-free allowance and make elected representatives pay taxes on a full salary. The trade-off has been their base salary goes way up to make up the difference, but it's a fair trade in my opinion.

That local leaders continue to get this rip-off while raising property taxes on everyone else is inherently a conflict of interest. It's time to put it to an end. All politicians should get a straight salary just like the rest of us. And pay raises should be pegged to the Consumer Price Index, just like Old Age Security is. Not one penny more.

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Prayers for a friend

A request from me to all of my readers. A friend of mine, a single mother, is trying to get a restraining order against a truly evil man -- one who abused her two children and assaulted her. I can't name names at this time due to legal reasons, but from what I understand it's notoriously hard to persuade a justice of the peace to issue such an order let alone criminal charges, because the courts naturally assume it's the custodial parent who had something to do with it; and I know this person well enough to know she truly is a victim here and so are her kids.

Oh ... and the guy's here illegally too, and managed to get a work permit while his immigration application is processed.

So, if you could all spare a prayer today for her? That she begins to see that justice is finally served. And the coward is deported back to his home country where, oddly enough, he faces even more wife assault and child endangerment charges.

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BC Ferries bomb threat a hoax

Osama Bin Laden's threats a few years back that eventually he was going to attack Canada took on new urgency as a bomb threat was called into the ferry terminal at Tsawwassen, cancelling services from Vancouver's south side to Victoria, Nanaimo and the Gulf Islands. About 50,000 people had their weekend plans torpedoed not to mention all the commercial traffic disrupted. BC Ferries is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the culprit.

An uncommonly stupid and cowardly act to be sure. But was this an Al Qaeda operation? Even though the caller sounded "Middle Eastern," according to the ferry company, I doubt that it was.

AQ never announces their operations in advance, especially not to us so-called "infidels." They only communicate on their channels and websites, and exclusively in Arabic and other languages used in Africa and South Asia. These sites are actually well known to intelligence agencies, according to Michael Scheuer, the ex-CIA agent who authored Through Our Enemies' Eyes and Imperial Hubris. The trouble is there still aren't enough spies and analysts who are fluent in Arabic and the other languages we know the evil-doers use, giving the visitors a huge advantage.

Does that mean we shouldn't find this particular moron? Of course not. I hope they do, and sue him for the lost business. At 11.15 per passenger (with 50,000 grounded) plus 39.00 per car (and about 10,000 vehicles were stranded) that works to -- a minimum of $947,500; plus punitive damages for mischief. I don't care if you're a facist or an anarchist or somewhere between the two; there is absolutely no excuse for this kind of stunt.

Kudos, though, to the ferry authority and the police. This was a dry run for what eventually will be the real thing.

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9/11 Report a go

George W. Bush, the very President who fought so hard against an independent inquiry into the 9/11 attacks until forced to do so by the estates of the 3000 who were murdered, has finally been forced to eat humble pie. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid won a huge victory when Congress voted to adopt most of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations (by votes of 371-40 in the House and 85-8, more than enough to be veto-proof) fulfilling an election promise the Democratic leaders made on the way to getting Congress back last year; and Bush said he would sign the bill. (PDF of the report here.)

It's amazing that it's taken three years to get to this moment. It's going to be very expensive to implement Kean-Hamilton, but the fact is it could have been paid for with all the money blown on Iraq with plenty to spare. Rather than fortify the defences, the US unwisely decided to go on the offence overseas. By now, the states could have had several additional military units with members from all branches as well as stronger ports and airports.

And the lost opportunity of creating permanent jobs at home, good jobs for the long term, paying taxes to the three levels of government to protect against sudden market and interest shocks like we've seen in the last few days. Instead, who knows how much has been lost not just in terms of lives and wounded, but also corruption in Baghdad and kickbacks to terrorists based in Tehran and Riyadh?

Bush had nearly six years to do what the Democrats were telling him was necessary all along. A veto here would have been a total disaster, if for no other reason than it would have been overriden in a heartbeat. But for now, there is some balance back in DC. If the GOP was still running Congress, the 9/11 report would never have gotten into committee let alone on the floor for a final vote.

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So it was tap water after all!

At my former job at the pizzeria call centre, one of the most popular items from the vending machine was bottled water. Couldn't figure out why that was -- and why people would pay seventy-five cents for what tasted like tap water when it was labelled bottled water. Until I checked the label, and oddly enough, it said it was tap water from Mississauga. Yes, Hazel McCallion country!

Today, Pepsi said they're going to be more upfront about where the water is from as well as how it's filtered (reverse osmosis). Turns out the federal government doesn't think it's a very efficient way to clean up water (about 50% is purged in the process). That may be fine for some parts of the world where many sources are polluted beyond belief; but where we pay utility bills to get the water cleaned up already, it doesn't make sense to filter water even more that's already 99% or more pure.

Get the lead out of the water? Try running the kitchen faucet on cold three minutes about once every other week. It's still less expensive than bottled or a faucet water filter. Or a reverse osmosis system.

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No solicitors means just that

I usually don't blow off my top the way I did today, but I had reason. Earlier today, I got home and no sooner did I try to rest for a few minutes before ordering dinner than someone knocks on my door wanting me to switch gas companies. Now natually he went into his shtick about "we just want to check your gas bill" but it was pretty obvious what he was up to. I pointed to the sign on my door that says "No solicitations" and when he tried to persist, I literally had to scream at him to get off my property.

Maybe I was out of line. But it's my house. And if I wanted to consider pricing options I'd call around myself. They're talking about a "do not call" list for Canada. Maybe it's time we had a "do not disturb" list that applied all around.

I don't care if the door knocker is sixty years old raising money for charity, or six and selling candy. When I say I'm not interested, I mean precisely that!

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Guess this means the Darfur massacre goes on ...

A US District Court has ruled that the government of Sudan has provided financing for al-Qaeda and as such is liable for the attack on the USS Cole. The government denies any role and is refusing to pay $8 million in penalties to the estates of the 17 murdered; although the amount awarded is far less than the $105 million sought.

What I'd really like to see is countries, and officials within them, indicted for their role in 9/11. Don't forget that 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report are still censored because they name names within the House of Saud. Given Saudi Arabia's longstanding connection to the Bush clan, it would be truly embarrassing to both 41 and 43 if it comes out (as it eventually must) that country was responsible for the attacks that day.

Meantime, Sudan can come up with another excuse to prevent peacekeepers from Darfur. After all, the UN is the tool of the US (according to Middle East and African fundamentalist governments).

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So long, Weekly World News!

Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind: I Spent a Week on Pluto! Hitler Dead at 103: Suffered Congenital Heart Disease His Whole Life! Secret Prophecies of The Virgin Mary: World Will End [Insert Date]!

These were the kinds of stories one could only find in the most outrageous supermarket tabloid of them all, Weekly World News. Next month, it becomes the latest publication to switch to an all-Web only format.

Interesting sidebar: Their parent company also publishes the National Enquirer and the much more legitimate Men's Fitness. Make what you will of that.

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Drew Carey gets Barker's TPiR slot

It's an interesting choice. It wouldn't have been my first (and who I would have picked is now irrelevant since the choice has been made) but I think Carey has the right stuff.

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Free Free Dominion!

HT to Psychols: I too support free speech, period -- and oppose the attempts by some to silence the right-wing site Free Dominion, no matter how much I disagree with the viewpoints posted over there.

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Best argument yet for US public health care

Here's an FAQ from a coalition of US physicians who say it's time to have a single payer health care system like Canada has.

Scrolling down to the bottom, I found this nugget -- answering the latest dead donkey the neo-cons make against universal coverage; that a government run system would result in fiascoes like Walter Reed:

As we consider what we can learn from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center debacle with regard to government-run efforts, some clarifications should be made:

1) Walter Reed Army Medical Center is an Army hospital and is run by the Department of Defense. The VA hospitals are run by the Veterans Administration (Veterans Health Administration) and are a separate structure. The reporting in the news media has clouded this fact and has led the public to presume that all government-run health efforts should be tarred and feathered and run out of town. Nevertheless, the VA health system continues to hold the position of the US health system with the most satisfied patients and one of the highest quality ratings for its use of information systems, access of patients to their medical records, transparency and accountability programs for dealing with medical errors, application of AHRQ quality guidelines to patient care for both inpatients and outpatients, and it won the Baldridge Prize (2004) for quality and patient-safety improvements.

2) There is a lot we can learn from the Walter Reed disgrace. Its operation was outsourced to a Halliburton-connected company in 2002, over the objections of some Army medical personnel and leadership, with a subsequent loss of government employees with institutional experience and a drastic reduction in staff. There was also some hanky-panky with the contracting process when the government employees’ bid for the operations contract came in lower than the Halliburton company’s bid, and the bids were subsequently “recalculated” to make the private company the lowest bidder.

Remember who used to run Halliburton? That's right!

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It's always you, you, you!

Today's Gospel reading in the Common Lectionary is the story about Martha and Mary -- you might be familiar with it; Martha's ticked off that Mary won't help her with the household chores and serving the dinner guests. Notice how Jesus gently rebukes Martha ... but also notice too that Martha still misses the point.

The point: Martha wanted someone to serve her. Me, myself, I. And that we need in turn to serve God; which unfortunately is what many televanglists also believe (meaning serve the preachers by paying up and shutting up). It's really the other way around: God came as a human being to serve us. And we need to pay attention to his service and learn from the example God has set for us.

Are we going to trip along the way in his service? Of course we are. But if we just focus on us -- that is, we each believe "I'm entitled to my entitlements," then we're certainly going to get that although it's not what we believe we're entitled to.

Compare that to the example of Abraham who was still struggling to make meet -- and served his guests without even questioning why he had to do that. His reward: His long barren wife Sarah became pregnant.

Wonder what Martha got as her "reward"? Or what today's "me first" politicians and preachers will get in the end? Let's face it, we're all more like Martha than we are Mary.

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Tammy Faye dies

RIP, sister.

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Why should hairdressers have to pay royalties to SOCAN?

There's no question we need to stamp out piracy in the movies, music and theatrical arts. But I have to wonder whether this is trying to squat a fruitfly with a sledge hammer.

Incredibly the group that represents music composers in Canada, SOCAN, is demanding dentists and hairdressers pay a license fee; if they play CDs, or radio (whether off-the-air or satellite). What's next? We'll be facing criminal charges if we don't pay such fees to play our own radios in our private homes or driving in our cars?

This isn't the UK. We don't pay a government-mandated fee as a condition to use signals off the airwaves. And professionals aren't pirating anything when they play freely available music because radio and TV stations are already paying reverse payola back to the record labels.

SOCAN should just bugger off unless they are actually suggesting, seriously, we adopt the UK model. Problem is, they don't have the guts to say it because there would be a revolt in Canada against that even if it is the most practical way to save vital institutions like the CBC and the Canada Council.

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