“American Woman”; ‘American Woman‘ (1970) [Live In Toronto 2003] Burton Cummings wants you to feel his emo.
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Canada Doesn’t Allow Multiple Marriages…
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…but there’s this one community in southern British Columbia where you can marry as many people as you like. It’s a large “C” Cult made up of American Mormon Fundamentalists who moved here because Utah, and America, made polygamy illegal and the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City said “okay, sure, like, whatever.” Since the community (Cult) was “outed” a few years ago as being a haven for polygamy the citizens of British Columbia and the rest of Canada have been wondering “WTF? How come no one’s been arrested? Why are they allowed to marry as many people as they want, and I’m stuck with this deadbeat loser who can’t even put a new Goddamn bag in the milk jug?!?” Since then it has been reported — several times over the past several years — that the Cult’s primary belief is the Husband is God’s messenger on Earth and women must obey His every whim and desire. So how can a progressive country like Canada — what with our laws and women’s rights and free Lithium and such stuff — allow something like this to continue?
Most people think it has something to do with The Government being afraid the case might go to the Supreme Court as a Charter Challenge because they’d lose over Freedom of Religion issues, thereby making Polygamy all out legal. But that’s not why nothing has been done to free those women from the Cult. The problem is… ready? The problem is it’s illegal in Canada to be married to more than one person at a time. The State that is Canada decides who gets married to whom based on you and your loved one going to the Court House and signing a piece of paper. Bango wango, you’re married. Show up tomorrow with another significant other and, wango bango, they say “nope, not a fucking chance, you’ve already got one”.
Bountiful, British Columbia is the home of a Cult based on Mormon philosophies, one of which is that Men get to marry as many women as they want including, sometimes, cousins and other close relatives. These girls/women then become slaves for the rest of their lives… not “virtual slaves”, real ones. They get an elementary education, if their fathers want them to, then they’re sold or bartered off inside the Bountiful Community or across the American border to other Fundamentalist Mormon communities. Girls as young as 14-years old are given as gifts to men ten, twenty or thirty years older than the young girls. And it’s ‘legal’ because no one shows up at the Court House to sign any papers and these girls have been Trained to not talk to any Outsiders. There can be no polygamy in Canada because Canada doesn’t recognize your marriage to your second, tenth, twelfth or fiftieth wife. Kind of Orwellian, isn’t it? Polygamists live in Canada but Polygamy is Illegal in Canada, therefore there are no Polygamists.
There you are. Maybe not so convoluted after all. There’s also a large Chapter of this Cult in America that has warehouses of guns, ammo, a huge fortified compound and a desperate belief their leader is the Messiah — not “a” Messiah, “the” Messiah. Good times. This is a PDF of a petition to get the governments of British Columbia and Canada to save the young girls from a lifetime of sexual abuse and slavery… print it off, sign it, pass it around and mail it in.
1) Political Peace In Northern Ireland: And ‘The Book’ said “the crazed homicidal psychopath shall lay down his pride so that he may share power with the bloodthirsty rapist and killer of children and all shall be at Peace in Northern Ireland (re: the country which has raised itself from ashes to charred embers to some semblance of non-burned remains through willpower and a lack of ammunition).” Ian Paisley — as evil a fucking monster of an Evangelical Fundamentalist Christian there ever was — sat down in the same room as Gerry Adams — the proud leader of the political wing of a blood crazed Catholic terrorist organization which never had any qualms aboot killing unarmed citizens — and signed a piece of paper which had on it (written in the blood of many an Irish man woman and child) plans for the two to share power in an Irish Parliament. This only two months before a deadline imposed by the Blair Government. Way to go boys, Peace Cigars all the way around. Fifty years of blown up and assassinated Irish People celebrated by staying dead.
Four things aboot “that fuck” being in the same room as “the other fuck” to stop a civil war which had no purpose:
1) The last bomb set off by the (Real) IRA was in August, 2001, and injures seven people in West London. The last Irish Americans funding the IRA or The Real IRA stop their support for either side a month later, which happens to be September 11, 2001. 9-11, also made it impossible to keep pretending to rationalize, or pretending to believe the rationalizations, for that level of violence. The IRA finally agreed to a complete “decommissioning” in October, 2001. Funny how arguments stop when the two parties are exposed for being complete ignorant assholes.
2) Canada played a large enough, but behind the scenes, role in the Good Friday Accords and the decommishioning that we’ll probably get a footnote in the history books. In 1997 retired Canadian General John de Chastelaine was appointed as the chair of the body to oversee decommissioning.
3) These Accords and Peaceful things happened under Tony Blair’s Prime Ministership so he should get a few footnotes as well. But lets not forget the other side of Britain’s involvement.
4) Almost 4000 people were slaughtered and over 36,000 injured so these two “Proud Irishmen” could sit at a table and proclaim their dual victory and consequent taking over of the Irish Parliament. Awesome. Good job. Fanatical interpretations of religion once again saved us all from having to live peaceful lives without having shit blow up in our faces.
2) Aussie In Guantanamo Bay: An Australian man being held in Guantanamo Bay for trying to hook up with the Taliban. David Hicks, became the first person in over 60 years to face an American military tribunal. His lawyer was hilarious. The Americans have let several detainees go back to their country of “origin” so the lawyer listed almost every nationality to be sent “home”… he must have listed twenty countries. Then he said something like “what makes an Australian passport different so that an Australian can’t come home?” Thing was he didn’t mention Canada in that list… because there’s a Canadian in that same Jail who won’t be coming home anytime soon either. Hicks is one of only four detainees to actually be charged (to date), the Canadian is one of the others. The appearance was the first in what will be several… basically it was a pseudo voir dire. He did, however, plead guilty. Dave will probably be back in AussieLand in time for that holiday they have down there that involves getting drunk and beating up Dingoroo Bearawallies or whatever the fuck those things are called… I think the holiday is “TuesWedThursFriSatur Day”.
3) Britons Held In Tehran: Kamangir has got a lot of recent information regarding this from media reports in Iran and from Iranian bloggers working in secret from inside Iran. Basically Iran fucked up in a huge way. Britain’s navy has satellite images and GPS data proving its ships were well within Iraqi waters doing work for the United Nations. And now Iran is desperate to find a way out of this that doesn’t involve them looking like complete tools. The soldiers will not be harmed and will be released in a month or so, but Iran is falling apart. Russia has backed out of the nuclear reactor deal, the UN is getting serious with the sanctions, the American military has more nukes parked three minutes off the coast of Iran than Europe currently has in its arsenal, and now Iran kidnaps 15 British soldiers for reasons that remain mystifying which means Europe will be hard-pressed to support anything Iran does from here on, and the American Democrats have lost an incredible amount of leverage regarding troop redeployment in Iraq. Despite what a lot of people are saying, things are not going well for the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Iran. If you really want to know what’s happening on the ground in Iran read Kamangir‘s site daily.
1) Heart Stents Unnecessary: Ends up taking a few pills everyday for five years is better for you than having a piece of steel jammed into your artery. The New England Journal of Medicine has published the results of a study which claims non-emergency stents (a coiled piece of mesh put into your artery) do not work better than pills in keeping people alive. Also, the thing aboot the pills is you can eventually stop taking them while the stent is forever. They interviewed some Doctor Dude who claimed the study was so much bullshit, but he looked a little like David Lee Roth and probably needs the stent-operations to support his “rocker lifestyle”. Heart surgery, in America, is big business. So are medications.
2) Alberto Gonzales Interview: The President of the United States gets to decide who his Federal Prosecutors are, he fired eight of them for reasons which appear a little… juiced. But that pesky Constitution says that’s what he gets to do. The Congress, trying desperately to prove they still exist, are using this as a pretext to punish GWB a little. Alberto was on NBC trying to do some explaining… . In Canada the Prime Minister gets to chose judges from lists put together by provincial councils, but he can ignore them and just pick judges at whim. It’s a thing we’re working on fixing.
3) Pat Tillman Cover-Up: Nine American military officers misled and liedaboot how Army Ranger Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan, including four Generals. But there was no criminal negligence in Tillman’s death. Tillman, a former NFL crazy person, was killed by his own troops in a case of mistaken identity. At least that’s what today’s report concludes. There have been a lot of questions since Tillman was killed, mostly asked by his parents and mostly unanswered by the American military. The Americans were looking for heroes to pin their PR Battle on and they found two in Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. One was rescued by Special Forces in a scripted propaganda movie from the doctors who saved her life, and the other was shot dead by his fellow soldiers who thought he was firing on them. Who — the fuck — is in charge of this cluster fuck?
1) Sunni’s Turning On Insurgents: Violence in Baghdad is down 25% over the past two months from previous months. But it’s starting to spread outside of the capital. Apparently the American government is now in negotiations with Sunni “tribal leaders” aboot getting their support against insurgents, and the talks are going pretty well. The Americans are also starting to “negotiate” with other Arab States regarding the creation of a Palestinian State, which is unprecedented because the talks don’t involve Israel. This is a huge step, especially for this particular President. Five American soldiers died in Iraq over the weekend, four of them in a single attack
2) War Funding Veto Coming: The American Congress and Senate are finally getting the votes necessary to send War Funding Bills to the President which include set dates for withdrawals and troop redeployment, but not nearly enough votes to make them Veto Proof. So they will be vetoed. One random Republican Senator (Chuck Hegal), in an interview in Esquire Magazine, made a veiled threat aimed at the President: “veto and be impeached”. This was quickly followed by a message from the President: “know your fucking role.”
3) Britons Held In Tehran: Go see Kamangir. His site’s one of the very best for this stuff and he speaks the language… I’m just a dancing monkey. Albeit one whose blog recently won an award and whose blog hits have quadrupled in three weeks, but a monkey nonetheless. See? I just scratched myself in a rude place.
1) Quebec Election: Canada has fundamentally changed tonight because Quebec finally decided the quest for sovereignty is dead. Quebec has only had two political parties since the 1960’s when the Union Nationale had their spectacular flameout. Those two political parties had one issue: the Parti Quebecois (PQ) wanted to take Quebec out of Canada and create a new country while the Quebec Liberal Party didn’t. The PQ is, mostly, a Left of (Canadian) Centre party with financially conservative tendencies, while the Liberals are further Right with larger government tendencies. The problem has been that with only two parties and one issue Quebec has gone 45 years with no place to put their vote regarding social issues. If you were a federalist and disliked the Liberal spending sprees you held your nose, voted PQ and hoped they lost the referendum. But tonight that changed, and with that change the chances of Quebec separating anytime soon are zero, zilch and none.
2) Quebec Election: This is how it works… the hardcore supporters of Quebec As A Nation only add up to aboot 20% of the Quebec population. The PQ won Provincial elections because people didn’t like the policies of the Liberal Party, not because they wanted separation. The referendums we’ve had in Quebec were close only because the questions were so vague and the PQ lied to the voters aboot their intentions. So with a third party, The Action Democratique de Quebec (ADQ), all those non-separatist people who voted PQ because they never liked the Liberals have a place to put their vote now. And because the ADQ is a “right wing” (for Canada) party, this means it will be finally possible to have an actual honest-to-God Left Wing Party as its bookend. The Quebec Green Party made huge gains in Quebec, although not quite enough to get anyone elected. So now all of those Lefty Types who were voting PQ because the Liberals are too “right wing” (for a Canadian Lefty) now have an alternative on that end of the Political Spectrum. This leaves the PQ with their hardcore supporters, who will never again have a majority large enough to govern Quebec.
3) Quebec Election: This is unbelievably huge. Even the BBC covered it. Quebec is now a full-on member of Canada. Somewhere Charles DeGaulle can go fuck himself.
1) Quebec Election: So what does this mean for Canada? It means the Conservative Party of Canada did in a year what the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) couldn’t in thirty: create the conditions necessary to bring Quebec into the Constitution (the LPC is not directly related to the Quebec Liberal Party). The LPC, for thirty years, gave in to every demand made on them by the PQ and the separatist blackmail. The result? A 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty that the Good Guys won by less than 1%. We were within a few thousand votes of splitting apart. So the Conservative government, which has been governing with a minority for over a year now, did the opposite. Marginalize the separatists, prove to Quebec that Federalism works, support the Quebec Liberal Party but at the same time show Mario Dumont, the leader of the ADQ, some Love and give him some street cred.
2) Quebec Election: Not only has Stephen Harper, our Conservative Prime Minister, broken the back of the separatists, he has set himself up for huge gains among the Quebec Federal Electorate by showing that it’s okay for Quebecers — by voting for the ADQ — to vote “Other”… as in “Other Than The PQ Or Liberals”. It’s a brilliant piece of political maneuvering and a “seismic shift in Canadian politics”. Quebec is now comfortable within the Canadian framework and the Liberal Party of Canada has been exposed for having spent thirty years spreading fear among the Quebec and Canadian electorate for their own gain. Now there are no knives at the throat during any negotiations between Canada and Quebec. Fucking Amazing.
3) Lottery Fraud: Four per cent of lottery winnings over $50,000 have been going to Ontario Retailers (the people who sell and check the tickets), which is a statistical impossibility. A report came out today accusing the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Agency (run by the Ontario Government) of turning a blind eye and being complicit in $100 million in fraud. The government says it’s taking the report seriously.
If you find a broken link, or the YouTube stuff isn’t loading
properly, let me know and I’ll find an alternative…
I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.
Billy Talent: Canadian “Red Flag”; ‘Billy Talent 2′ (2006)
Stephen Lewis woke a lot of people up, but people don’t like to wake up. We like to be asleep for as long as we can and we will actively resist any alarm, going so far as to beat the alarm into little pieces even when we know that listening to it will save our lives.
Stephen was that alarm clock and he got beaten up by governments around the world for trying to wake us up to the African AIDS epidemic. But Lewis fought back, hard. For five years. Not too long ago the United Nations had no concrete policy to fight AIDS. Now it does. So do a lot of other Non-Government Organizations. So do a lot of the worlds governments. In between then and now was Stephen Lewis.
In 2005 Time Magazine named Stephen one of the “100 Most Influential People In The World” in the same category as The Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela for his work as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. As Special Envoy from 2001 until last year, it was his job to be the person who screamed in your ear to wake the fuck up and recognize the desperate situation in Africa, to recognize the HIV/AIDS crisis and to convince leaders and the public that they had/continue to have a responsibility to respond.
Pretty much every AIDS initiative dealing with AIDS in Africa today came from his work. But because he had to scream aboot it so people would understand and listen to him, he also alienated a lot of people. He was constantly telling governments that they weren’t doing enough, but he’d do it in public. While the leader was beside him on the podium. And the government’s would be embarrassed into action. But they’d remember. And Stephen, eventually, stepped on too many toes and the UN shut him down. But the world’s richest countries now contribute billions of dollars that they weren’t before. And the Foundations, like Bill & Melinda Gates, are pushing money into Africa and the African nations themselves have stopped treating the disease like it was mystical and could be treated by witches.
Stephen made AIDS personal for the world by teaching world leaders and the rest of us aboot stories of Africa’s grandmothers, who have taken on the responsibility of caring for their dying children and raising their soon orphaned grandchildren. An estimated 24.5 million adults and children were living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2005. During that year, an estimated 2 million people died from AIDS. Africa now has an estimated 13 million AIDS orphans, and in some countries up to 60% are looked after by grandmothers. An entire generation has been scooped out of Africa by AIDS leaving children to care for their brothers and sisters, and elderly grandmothers left to care for handfuls of orphans. Think of the education that’s missing, all of that knowledge not being passed from mother to daughter or father to son. Most of the population in most African countries are dying from AIDS or HIV, and unlike every other disease it is the middle of the population structure that is being killed off. AIDS in Africa is a Generation Killer and will forever alter every African generation to come. Stephen once referred to the worlds response to Africa’s tragedy as “mass murder”.
When Stephen was finally replaced by the United Nations he immediately created “The Stephen Lewis Foundation” so he could make the grandmother’s struggle known to the world and try to bring grandmothers together to fight for the lives of their grandchildren. The Foundation recently held its first international Grandmothers’ Gathering, where one hundred African grandmothers from eleven countries met in Toronto with 200 Canadian grandmothers. The Gathering provided a forum for African grandmothers to set the agenda for support and to establish networks and plan ways of moving forward to help.
The biggest, in my opinion, effect Stephen had during his time with the United Nations was in convincing and educating the African governments themselves into believing that AIDS was real and — more importantly than that — the disease could be, and needed to be, managed.
Stephen is an emotional and effective speaker and one of the most decent people you could ever hope to meet, and he spent the better part of his life fighting, hard, to make the lives of strangers better. If you have a chance to see one of his speeches on YouTube, take it. In fact I’ll leave one here. In the 1960s and 1970s, Stephen Lewis was an elected representative to the Ontario Legislature, and served as leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party. From 1984 through 1988, he was Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations. From 1995 to 1999, Lewis was Deputy Director of UNICEF. Lewis is also the recipient of The Pearson Peace Medal for his outstanding achievements in the field of international service and understanding.
Stephen was born in Ottawa, Ontario on November 11, 1937. He is married to Michele Landsberg, and they have three children.
Now… watch a person of conviction stun the audience at the 2006 AIDS Conference in Toronto:
Stephen Lewis: Canadian “Keynote Address:” ‘The 16th International Conference On AIDS’
— Toronto, Ontario, Canada: August, 2006
1) Second Tory Budget: Canada’s government announced its new budget toady. We don’t have a financial deficit anymore. Your country still does. In fact Canada hasn’t had one for over a decade now and that makes this country pretty frigging unique. Mostly this has occurred because our federal government downloaded debt and responsibilities to the provinces without supplying any new funding. Then there was the twelve years or so where our government stopped funding the military. And taxes barely even went up… which was important. I mean, sending our overburdened and under funded soldiers into Bosnia and Somalia without the proper equipment, that makes sense. But raising taxes a few more points while maintaining military preparedness, that’s just crazy talk.
Anyway. Canada has had a conservative government for two years now which in the Canadian political spectrum is like saying we’re driving in the Left Lane, just a little closer to the yellow line. Our conservative party is known as the Conservative Party (it saves time) and they’ve been reaping some of the benefits of having Surpluses — that’s right, annual fiscal Surpluses — so today they can spend on things like $3.2B on Provincial Social Programs, tax cuts and incentives for the working poor, $1200 rebates on fuel efficient cars with $4000 levies on fuel hog SUVs… yes, this is Conservatism in Canada. There will be no general tax increase and another $2B in tax “relief” for “average” Canadians. The standard of living in this country, on a GDP per capita basis, has been going up consistantly over the past ten-plus years, which also makes us pretty freaking unique in the world. I’m sure this has nothing to do with Canada being a safe place for immigrants who are sick of being hassled by European Nationalists.
Canada’s GDP has passed the US$1.12T (T!) mark. That’s for a county of 32M people. For comparison the United Kingdom is at US$1.9T with 60.6M, Australia’s got US$650B with 20.2M and America’s still on top with $12.98T for a population of 298.4M (America could purchase countries 2-10 and still have enough left over to buy Microsoft and Google and some nice shoes. Think aboot that the next time someone tells you China’s taking over). Surprisingly most of this “newly discovered” Canadian wealth has very little to do with Canada’s rapidly expanding oil fields (we have more natural gas than anyone and as much oil as Saudi Arabia). That money will start to seriously pump into the system in aboot five years or so. We still haven’t even built the freaking pipelines yet. Canada: you can smoke The Weed here, there are gays getting married on every street corner, free lung transplants, Die Mannequin got a record contract… okay, daycare’s till a problem, but the handfuls of Lithium are free. And we’ve still got room.
2) Quebec Premier Reacts To Budget: The largest chunk of this budget’s money allocated to our ten Province’s goes to Quebec. The premier, Jean Charest, is in the middle of an election so this budget makes him look like a freaking Quebecois Warrior For Quebec… yeah, he’s okay with the budget. Charest leads the “Liberal Party” which, in Quebec, is the most conservative political party, and the only fully Federalist one. The number two party, the Parti Quebecois, wants to take Quebec out of Canada, while the number three party — the Action Democratique de Quebec (ADQ) — is a mix of the other two and just really wants to be liked. They’d also wait a few months before renegotiating Quebec’s place in Canada. Charest and our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, are pretty good friends. For politicians. Some of this budget was Harper doing a favour for Charest… which, if you like Canada with Quebec in it, makes a lot of sense.
3) Mario Dumont Reacts To Budget: This is the leader of the ADQ. He liked the budget as well. This election should be a breakthrough for the ADQ. Oh yeah… Canada also generates more hydroelectric power than any other country and the budget will allow for more East & West hydro sharing in this country. Basically this means Manitoba and Quebec can sell more electricity to Ontario. Tell me why — any random Lefty — Iran can have nuclear reactors but we can’t have new ones in Ontario?
Bonus — Quebec Is For Le Quebecois: Quebec has spent fifty years trying to redefine itself. For 350 years it was either a colony of France, a strange out of place attachment to the British Empire, or a fiefdom for the Catholic Church. I’ve written aboot this before somewhere in this blog but if you were Francophone and living in Quebec in the 1960’s you made 97 per cent less than an Anglophone. So “The Quiet Revolution” of Quebec, which started in the mid-1950’s and was led by the university aged children of French-Canadian veterans, swept away the Church and the influences of America and English-Canada and French-Quebecers were allowed to be French again. Only without the sneering. Around the mid-1970’s Quebec started taking in large groups of French speaking immigrants. Mostly from the Middle East, Haiti, Jamaica and North West Africa. It was a slightly cynical attempt to create a French Nation, as most Quebecers identified Culture as being “Language-First”. But the thing aboot being a Nationalist is the ultimate definition of a country becomes “Those Who Were Here Before You”. So now, with a growing immigrant population, Quebecers are stepping back and saying “this is not what we wanted. We wanted immigrants, just not their culture or religion.”
Over the weekend a large group of Muslim families and friends held a semi-private function at a “Sugar Shack” in rural Quebec. They needed a place to pray, the owner said use the dance floor. A photo of the men praying appeared in a city paper and people are going nuts… “they have to learn to accept the Quebec way.” That was the (paraphrased) reaction from the Premier. Other reactions included “it’s unreasonable to pray in Sugar Shacks.”; “I don’t mind if they don’t eat pork, but they shouldn’t pray…” [the owner of the Sugar Shack prepared a special Quebec Pea Soup for the Muslim families which didn’t include the usual massive glob of pork fat]. The owner said next time he’d supply a more private prayer space.
It isn’t just Islam. Conservative Jews have also been involved in conflicts with local governments, activists and institutions for decades. Quebecers, like Europeans, gave up on religion a long time ago. Unlike Europe’s reasoning — we’re old and tired and we just don’t care anymore — Quebec did away with their religion more out of disgust than anything else. And now they can’t figure out why people get insulted when governments limit religious freedoms.
1) “War Without End”: Not the best headline I’ve ever seen. There is such a thing as “polite editing” where you know/think you’ve got a great/funny headline but maybe you modify it slightly so the families of 120,000 American soldiers serving in the Middle East and the relatives of another 60,000 dead Iraqi’s don’t turn on the TV and get confronted by your cute but totally erroneous attempt to make the newsroom laugh and/or appreciate your razor sharp wit.
Year Five of The Iraq War starts today. The report’s basic conclusion was that Years One and Two went pretty well, Year Three was a tie while Year Four was a complete Cluster Fuck. Which sounds aboot right to me. 3218 American soldiers have died with another 24,000 injured while — admittedly they made a guesstimate — 60,000 Iraqi’s have died. In a speech GW Bush said “It can be won… if we have the courage to see it through.” Then he said something aboot a big comeback in the fifth quarter… sorry. I hate Bush jokes, but I couldn’t resist.
It was the fucking looting. That was the turning point. After the looting the Iraqi people got scared, who the fuck was ‘In Charge’? The Americans couldn’t stop the looters so the local guys did. The Sadr-type guys. The people turned to the local “strongmen” because they understood that the Americans were not prepared to seriously govern and that was the beginning of the end. Or the end of the beginning. Then Bremmer disbands the army… sweet motherfuck. Read “Imperial Life In The Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. You’ll weep at the incompetence.
2) Car Bombs In Iraq: Fifty-five Iraqi’s killed… ever get the feeling that it’ll take decades before we can say “Iraqi” without adding the “killed”? Fifty per cent of American soldiers in Iraq are on their second tour. Weirdly enough this has created a downturn in the number of American soldiers killed because the ones coming back into the theatre of operations are more experienced at urban Baghdad warfare.
3) In Studio Interview: NBC’s Iraq Chief Reporter was in New York for a few days so he stood across from Brian and entertained some previously selected questions. Basically the answers boiled down to: “This surge could work depending on the definition”, “America is still not putting enough into diplomatic solutions”, and “the surge will take at least a year or more to take effect”. If I had a seven-year old child they could have memorized the same talking points and would have been just as earnest, but for a fraction of the cost.
1) Invasion Anniversary: Jim was off for the evening, Gwen was filling in. The Iraq War was still going on regardless… as if it didn’t care aboot Jim or Gwen. Fucking war. 30,000 new American troops are moving into the region. They didn’t specify Iraq so some of them may be in Tehran right now, milling around in shops and drinking dark, thick coffee while partaking in the local sights and sites. President Bush was quoted as saying “our most important mission is protecting the Iraqi capital.” There were protests and marches in several American cities marking the anniversary. Cindy Sheehan even managed to tear herself away from Hugo Chavez for some face time on American television.
2) American Soldiers Killed: Eight more American soldiers were killed over the weekend.
3) More Iraqi Citizens Killed: There’s that “Iraqi’s Killed” thing again. The war in Iraq has now been going on longer than America’s involvement in WWOne, WWTwo and Korea. For whatever that’s worth. Does this mean the vets from those three wars get moved down on some list somewhere? It was the fucking looting… if they had just had some fucking soldiers in there to provide security. Oh well… next time.
1) Big Spending Budget: Canada is still getting used to having a conservative political party again. Until the early 90’s our conservative party, the Progressive Conservatives — who had been around since Confederation in 1867, were responsible for the largest majority governments in Canadian political history. But then they imploded in a way rarely, if ever, seen in a Democracy. They went from super-majority to two seats in the House of Commons. That’s like today’s Democrats not only taking a complete majority in the Senate, but also taking a 100 seat majority in Congress and Hillary taking the Presidency. The Conservative Party in Britain almost went through something similar when John Major was finally knocked out. It made no sense when it happened here, and it makes little sense now. Mostly it was based on four factors: 1) Canadians were tired of the PC Government, which had been in power for eight years; 2) the Liberal Party of Canada’s disinformation tactics in smearing the PC Party as liars, cheats and thieves; 3) the willingness for the “media” (re: the CBC and the Toronto Star) to repeat everything the Liberal Party fed them, and; 4) this weird belief among “Western Democracies” that the Fall Of The Wall meant “The Left” had won a victory so Conservative governments around the world were unceremoniously booted out. So here we are with a Conservative government for the first time in twelve-or-so years and no one, specifically in the “media” (re: the CBC and the Toronto Star) knew what to expect from their latest budget. Well, here it is (all figures CDN$): Total Projected Revenues: $236.7B Projected Economic Growth: 2.3 per cent and 2.9 per cent in 2008-09 Total Spending: $233.4B, up $10B from the current year Total Projected Surplus: $3.3B Program Spending: $199.6B, up 7.9 per cent from $188.9B spent in 2007-08 Total Canadian Debt: $472.3 billion, before a $9B payment over the next three years
Along with $6B in tax cuts there were $14B in new programs announced, including a new $310/child annual tax credit for parents.
2) Green Budget: In Canada, and — I think — most other Parliamentary Democracies a vote on the Budget is considered a “Confidence Vote”, which means if the Government loses the vote we get an election. The Conservative finance minister had barely started his announcement when the leader of the Bloq Quebecois — a regional federalist party whose goal is supposed to be getting Quebec out of federation — stepped in front of a pack of cameras and said “oui, I support this budget”. This means there will be no snap election (we’re in a minority government right now) and the other two opposition parties — the left wing NDP and the barely left of the Conservative Party, the Liberals — get to be… well, they get to freely oppose the budget. The problem is both the NDP and the Liberals have been chirping for months aboot how their plans are so much more Environmentally Friendly than the Conservatives plans… and now the Conservatives have laid out the most “Green” Budget in a generation so the NDP and Liberals are being forced to ask questions like “aren’t the Conservatives just taking your sole position away from you?” The problem with only having one public policy (re: environment) is you become irrelevant when that postion is adopted or put into place by the opposition.
Anyway. The budget (FINALLY) is giving Canadians a (up to) $2000 rebate when we buy a fuel efficient car. The big gas sucking SUV’s will now (FINALLY) cost up to $4000 more because of a levy on vehicles with mileage worse than 13Litres per 100km. There’s another $2B being injected into biofuel research, and tax credits for industries like the Alberta Oil Sands Project will be phased out by 2015, and there’s also another $4.8B for environmental programs.
3) Election Budget: The CBC is convinced we’re heading to a spring election because they consider this to be a “feel good” budget. Everybody gets something. The problem with that theory (there are several) is that every budget during the Fat Years is a “feel good” budget. Paul Wells, a columnist for MacLean’s Magazine (kind of a Time-Lite) had a post on his blog aboot this very issue a few days ago: [here]. I met Paul a few times when I was reporting in Ottawa. The last time was in a bar in the Byward Market which got really awkward because — when I introduced Paul as “one of Parliament Hill’s best columnists” to my very drunk brother and his buddy — they thought Paul was Andrew Coyne. Oh yeah, the government is going to fund that cervical cancer vaccine.
1) Iraq Anniversary: Iraqi’s Killed. Some BBC reporter got a tour of Sadr City hosted by some of Sadr’s Army. It was like a freaking travelogue. “Everything’s just great wherever the Sadr Army is in control… we never saw an American soldier… Americans have horns and hooves and talk with Jewish accents”. Fuck. Off. Fox News sucks giant elephant ass, fine. But sometimes — maybe more than that — the BBC is just as bad going the other way. Don’t even get me started on CBC’s Neil “The President Has Horns And A Tiny Penis” MacDonald.
2) Saddam’s VP Executed: Saddam’s long time VP — the guy who sent Iraqi citizens into Iranian bullets as cannon fodder, the guy who was considered to be the most brutal member of Saddam’s regime since Saddam took over, the guy convicted of having 150 innocents shot in the head — was executed today. His last words were “God knows I didn’t do anything wrong. God will condemn everyone who oppressed me.” God then laughed and pulled the switch.
3) Russian Coal Mine Explosion: At least 80 miners were killed in an explosion that occurred while the mine’s management were testing a new safety system. The mine is/was considered one of Russia’s most modern.
Canada is the fastest growing country in the G8, and soon we’ll become the first country where people can take their time to safely fuck humanity back together.
According to a Statistics Canada national census we have the fastest growing population of any G8 country. And two thirds of our population growth of 5.4 per cent over the past five years is through immigration.
Canada, with a population of just under 33 million, is currently admitting over 250,000 immigrants every year, mainly under something called the “Federal Skilled Worker Program” which selects candidates from around the world based on their education, training, and work experience.
Among the G-8 countries, only the United States, at 5.0 percent, approached Canada’s growth. According to an Associated Press story, France and Italy grew 3.1 percent and Britain 1.9 percent, while growth for Japan and Germany was near zero and Russia’s population actually shrank 2.4 percent.
It takes takes a birthrate of 2.1 children per woman to keep a positive population growth. Other than America no Western country has anywhere near this number. Canada may be growing faster than any other G8 nation but our birthrate is aboot average at 1.5. With a dwindling national birthrate and baby boomers nearing the end of their life spans towards 2030, Canada will soon be completely dependent on immigration to maintain population and economic growth.
Here’s the thing… humans all used to be one colour. We were all black back in the beginning. The first humans left Africa, travelled through the Middle East to Southern India and down into Australia. Then the second tribe of humans left Africa and turned North in India into Kazakhstan and Afghanistan where our colour started to fade. Then we went out through China and across into North and South America. Finally Europe opened and we populated the final continent available to us. By then we were different colours and we used those colours to define “race” because we were ignorant and mostly stupid. There is One Race. There are many cultures. We come from the same tribe.
But now, thanks to the jet engine, the phone, the Internet, armed conflicts and the ability to move somewhere better, more people are moving further than ever before in our history. We are coming back together. We are learning and adapting to each others cultures. We are marrying each other, we are having babies together. And Canada — the safest G8 country to live in, with one of the highest standards of living in the world — is becoming the main meeting place for the world. And even with all of that growth, crime — which has never been a major problem — is going down in this country and we have aboot as low an unemployment level as you can have in a democracy. In fact every problem or difficulty given by the European Union for not increasing immigration or even allowing immigrants to become citizens has been disproven here in Canada.
There are problems, of course. Nearly a third of the population of Canada now lives within an hour of Toronto, fully half of the population of the Province of Quebec lives within an hour of Montreal, and half of the population of British Columbia lives near Vancouver. But what happens when this incredible assortment of religions and cultures move to the suburbs of this massive country? Their kids grow up with a Canadian accent eating Beavertails, thumbing their Blackberry and watching hockey.
So far the only serious backlash is coming from Quebec. Which makes sense when you consider how long Quebecers have fought to be recognized as being a Nation within a Nation. Nationalists are Absolutists. When you’re defining a Nation the first thing you do is define the People of that Nation. And Quebec, they’ve decided, is made up of people who distrust religion, speak French and are, with few exceptions, white.
The Irony, of course, is all of this immigration and having sex is possible because of Canada’s lack of an entrenched history. The only historical battle fields in Canada anyone really cares aboot are in Quebec (never tell a Quebecer they were conquered). There are no Orange Parades anymore, and when there were they were small and insignificant. There are no massive statues in our harbour, there are no Custers, we barely know the Official Lyrics to our national anthem, and no one can quote any of our Fathers Of Confederation. I can remember a high school history class where, collectively, we had to come up with twelve things that made us Canadian. Hockey had two spots and “hot dogs” was close to the top.
Why should you, a non-Canadian, care? Because by the year 2030 your country will have had a negative population growth rate for ten years and our country will have the smartest grandchildren of peoples from all over the world trying to figure out new ways of exploiting your country’s fading wealth.
The more industrialized a country becomes, the lower the birth rate falls. It was common in Quebec for families to have 12 or more children. The same for Ireland, England, Scotland and Russia. If you wanted to retire you needed enough kids to take care of you. If you wanted the farm to expand, you needed sons. But Europe and Russia and Canada and Australia have become so rich, so industrialized, that fewer kids makes sense. And government “fixes”, like offering a national day care plan or tax incentives, have been proven to do very little to encourage Western women to have more babies. So everyone in your country is getting older, and there are no kids being born and no immigrants to fill the jobs and universities.
There are two things every old person around the world have in common 1) there will soon be more of them than at any time in Human History, and; 2) soon after that they’ll all be dead. And right now there are more aging Baby Aged Boomers in Europe, North America and Australia than any other demographic. And all of the other demographics are shrinking. Except in Canada and America. We’re the only ones getting younger.
Canadians, of every colour, will be growing up together, watching hockey together, playing hockey together and — most importantly — having sexual relations with each other while watching hockey, drinking maple syrup and listening to Leonard Cohen. We will have a shared history through Canada. It’s an inevitability. We, as a species, started as one colour and now we’re going back to being one colour. Canada’s just going there first.
1) Passenger Train Derailment: Trains have had a habit of coming off their tracks in Canada. This one involved 32 cars of a 142-car freight train jumping the tracks just outside Kingston’s VIA Rail (commuter) train station. The wreck left the busiest commuter line in Canada, which connects one of the most populated regions in North America — Quebec City, Quebec to Windsor, Ontario — closed for at least twenty hours. There were no injuries, there usually aren’t in Canadian train derailments. Canada’s transportation infrastructure is a mess. While our previous government (the Liberal Party of Canada) were telling anyone who would listen that we had not only signed the Kyoto Accords but had started the process to get them into existence, they were busy selling off the land rights to our rail networks and tearing up the track beds so we could have a “TransCanada Walking Trail”. Fewer trains = more trucks on the roads. Now we have a patchwork, at best, of railway lines that don’t serve our major cities. Our only commuter train, which is a Government agency, is grossly under-utilized mostly because the stations are so fucking impossible to find. Then the new owners of CN Rail (freight) even, in a cost saving measure, replaced their Mountain Engines with Flat-Ground train engines without changing the braking systems. Weeee… bam.
2) Air Quality Concerns In Sports Arenas: Apparently it’s not a good idea to run combustion engines inside an enclosed area where athletes are training. Asthma levels among winter athletes who train in an arena are higher than those who train outside… away from direct exhaust. There are thousands and thousands of ice arena’s in Canada. Saskatchewan*, with a population of 950,000, has over 700 hockey rinks (some are outdoors) with more than 24,000 registered minor hockey league players (those are just the kids). Each of these rinks has to be “cleaned” six, eight sometimes ten times per day depending on how heavy the use. The CBC did a small sample study recently and found that “ultrafine particles” — particles so small they can easily deposit deeply into the lungs, agitating asthma and some cardiovascular illnesses — levels were so high the kids might as well be playing in traffic during rush hour.
“We found the ice-rink athletes, all the skating athletes, the figure skaters, the short track speed skaters and the hockey players had a higher prevalence of exercise induced asthma … and their lung function was chronically low,” said Kenneth Rundell, who runs the human performance lab at Marywood University in Scranton, PA. There are no rules or laws regulating these kind of pollutants in Canada. But, hey, we signed Kyoto.
Keeping in mind most of these rinks are in small communities where hockey and figure skating is a volunteer-run enterprise, and that most of these rinks have little or no serious air filtration systems and the “ice resurfacing machines” (Zamboni is the most popular brand name), which use natural gas or propane as fuel, can cost in the six figure range to replace or upgrade to an electrical engine, the chances of anything changing anytime soon is nil and none.
(*The Province of Saskatchewan (251,865 sq-miles) is roughly 2.6 times larger than the United Kingdom (93,788), which has a population of 60,000,000 funny sounding people.)
3) Minor League Hockey Brawl: Some hockey players in the Quebec Junior Hockey League (17 to 19-years old) got into a tussle and the coaches yelled at each other. Some of the fans thought it’d be a good idea to start throwing stuff and swearing. This was news because the two teams, the Quebec Remparts and the Chicoutimi Sagueneens, do this aboot every time they meet on the ice. Sometimes after the games as well. Also, the owner and coach for the Remparts is Patrick Roy. Patrick is/was/will always be the greatest goaltender in National Hockey League history. Until Martin Brodeur retires anyway. There were some fines. No suspensions. There will be lots of suspensions if this happens again though.
1) Gas Prices Jump: There are such a thing as “Calendar Stories”. These are news stories that you can plan you coverage for months, even years in advance. Like stories aboot consumerism versus Christmas, aboot how cold it can get in Canada or Buffalo in the winter, or American elections, or aboot gas prices going up before a holiday or when a season changes. Taa-daaa: it’s spring.
2) Walter Reed Fallout: When people finally take notice of the shit conditions you’re supplying to wounded soldiers returning from an unpopular war it is best, from a public relations view, to just bow your head and agree with everything everyone says aboot your character. The last thing you do is say things like “Yeah, but…” or “This isn’t a catastrophic disaster”, both of which were said by Lt. General Kevin Kiley (MD), the Numb Brain Fuck Nut who was, until today, in charge of the Walter Reed Hospital. This Iraq/Afghanistan Adventure was only supposed to last three weeks. The worst injury Walter Reed was expecting was a sprained foot and some random VD. SURPRISE!! The Veterans Administration is now reviewing all 1400 of its hospitals in America.
3) Mentally Wounded Soldiers: From 2001 to 2005, 31 per cent of American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have got, and will continue to have for a very long time, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Which means they’ve been exposed to enough loud noise and traumatic experiences that they will periodically relive their experiences for the rest of their lives. But, doctors and researchers say, the numbers should be much higher. Most soldiers, they say, are being misdiagnosed or just aren’t talking aboot their symptoms. Fifteen per cent of veterans of the Vietnam war, the report said, still show symptoms of PTSD. Again, the American military health care system is overwhelmed and ill-equipped to deal with such high numbers of mentally ill veterans.
1) Another Walter Reed Official Resigns: More aboot the forced resignation of Lt. General Kevin Kiley. He’s the third general to be fired over the Walter Reed issue… because of the number and frequency and type of injuries returning soldiers have experienced, several new “barracks” had to be bought or reopened to house these men and women. Some of these buildings should have stayed condemned. The recovering soldiers were forced to cohabitate with rats, mould and roaches. The entire system will be under review for a few more months.
2) Iraqi’s Bury Their Dead: The people who were blown up over the weekend during religious “festivities” were laid to rest today. American soldiers, acting on tips, found three “car-bomb making factories” and were expecting to find a lot more over the next few days.
3) Who Loves The Troops More: American Congressional Democrats are trying to prove they love and care aboot American soldiers more than Republicans, the Republicans gave Democrats the finger. Has anyone noticed that politically — so far — the New Democrat “Majority” have been outflanked and beaten by the Republican “Minority” on almost every issue since the “earth shattering” election of just a few months ago? And now, surprise, the Democrats are going to give President Bush another blank cheque… or at least another US$100B to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Does anyone remember Nancy Pelosi?
1) CDN Soldier Charged With Manslaughter: A Canadian soldier was charged with Manslaughter today in the accidental shooting of another Canadian soldier. The incident happened eight months ago in Afghanistan while a vehicle of Canadian soldiers were on patrol when a single shot was discharged, killing Master Cpl. Jeffrey Walsh of the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry regiment, who was in the first weeks of his second deployment to Afghanistan. If convicted Master Cpl. Robbie Fraser, also from the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry regiment, could receive 12-years in a military prison. The two men were close friends and the widow of Jeff Walsh spoke out against the charges, saying “I’ve been irate at the fact that they’ve even considered manslaughter as one of the charges,” Julie Mason in a report on CBC.ca. “It’s painful enough when a soldier loses a brother, it’s even harder when you lose a friend and it’s your weapon that went off.”
2) Lost Detainees Stay Lost: Canada’s Defence Minister, Gordon O’Conner, and Canada’s Chief of The Defence Staff , General Rick Hillier, were both in Afghanistan trying to figure out what happens with “detainees” after Canadian Forces hand them off to Afghanistan officials. A few weeks ago there was a vague report of three… lets call them “Opposition Forces” who were handled roughly (scratches and bruises) by Canadian soldiers while they were “being detained”. When Canadian officials went to find out if Canadian soldiers had roughed them up unnecessarily, they had ‘disappeared’. The Afghans say they were either released or never existed. Now Canada is trying to get an NGO called “the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission” to monitor all detainees Canada drops off at the Afghan doorstep.
3) Canadian Mystery Man Arrested In Spain: Some Canadian dude was busted in Spain on fraud charges totaling over $20M. He is also suspected of helping to finance “al Qaeda-esque” training camps. This must have been a ‘Breaking Story’ because I just gave it more time than CBC did.
1) Zimbabwe Nearing Breaking Point: The BBC has been banned from Zimbabwe for a few years now, so the footage — I think — was from ITN. It looks like Zimbabwe is finally aboot to fall apart. Zimbabwe troops are now, on a daily basis, beating the shit out of anyone and everyone they can reach with those four-foot long clubs they carry. Political gatherings have been banned and, like Stalin and Castro before him, Zimbabweans can no longer gather in groups on the street without Official Permission. Robert Mugabe has had 27 years in power and has essentially crushed one of the very few African successes. Four out of five citizens are unemployed, inflation is running at 1700 per cent, which means last weeks Z$800 loaf of bread will cost Z$3000 this week. Three million Zimbabweans have fled the country. Mugabe plans on ruling until his 90th birthday. Which would be aboot another five years or so. Unless someone puts a bullet in his head before that. Just saying.
2) BBC Reporter Kidnapped: Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Gaza, where he was working. The BBC seems to be, at least from here, being very muted aboot this story. Reporters are kidnapped often enough in Gaza that this isn’t a surprise. Sometimes there’s a ransom. Mostly Hamas or the PLO remind the kidnappers that keeping reporters somewhat neutral is best for The Cause.
3) Russia Not Supplying Uranium To Iran: Russia, who is building Iran’s nuclear facilities, has decided that it will withhold the actual uranium fuel for a little while. Just in case. They say Iran is behind in its payments. Iran says it’s because America Just. Won’t. Leave. Us. The. Fuck. Alone.
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properly, let me know and I’ll find an alternative…
I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.
0_o
cultural sn:afu 