Until 1922 diabetes was treated through starvation diets and exercise. Right up until January 22, 1922, having diabetes ruthlessly and inevitably meant blindness, renal failure, heart attacks, strokes, leg amputations and/or a reduced life expectancy.
But on January 23, 1922, Frederick Banting and Charles Best, two Canadian doctors, started human trials using insulin — a naturally occurring hormone that converts sugar into energy — in an effort to find a treatment for the debilitating disease. The first human injected with insulin — taken from the pancreas of dogs — was 14-year old Leonard Thompson*, whose prospects for survival into his 20’s were slim, none and “I’m sorry Mrs. Thompson, your son has passed away.”
But the boys health improved almost immediately, and so did every other diabetic they injected. With insulin reintroduced to their blood stream, diabetics could control their blood sugar level for the first time. Insulin is not a cure, but Banting and Best’s discovery has saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world and improved the quality of life for each and every one of them.
Diabetes is still an evil little bastard of a disease, afflicting 177 million individuals worldwide. It is a Top Five Killer in most countries — usually just behind heart disease and cancer — and is the leading cause of adult blindness, kidney disease, heart attack, stroke and non-traumatic amputations. According to Health Canada “Diabetes is a lifelong condition where either your body does not produce enough insulin, or your body cannot use the insulin it produces. Your body needs insulin to change the sugar from food into energy.”
A relatively recent Health Canada report revealed that “in 1999/2000, 5.1% of Canadians (1,196,370) aged 20 and over were living with diagnosed diabetes”. The death rate among Canadian adults with diabetes, according to the same study, was 1,393 per 100,000. Diabetics, according to the Florida-based Defeat Diabetes Foundation, are 65% more likely to develop Alzheimer’s Disease.
Banting and Best could have made themselves rich through their discovery by seeking a patent for the life-saving serum. Instead, they sold the rights for insulin to the University of Toronto for $1, ensuring that insulin could be cheaply manufactured for decades.
Banting was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923, but did not accept the award until 1925 because Charles Best, his friend and colleague, was not recognized by the Nobel Committee for the work he had performed. The Prize was the first for a Canadian.
“Of the 130 children treated with insulin,” Banting said during his speech to the Nobel Committee, “120 are still living, while of the 164 who did not receive insulin, there are 152 dead. Of the 120 still living, 40% have either not increased or have actually decreased their insulin. Dr. [Elliot] Joslin believes that if the 60% who have had to increase their insulin had received similar treatment, they too would have been able to reduce their insulin.”
Banting split his share of the Nobel Award money with Best, and went one to be knighted in 1934. Soon afterwards he went on to create the world’s first G-suit to help pilots cope with high-speed flight. This led to his appointment in 1939 as the chairman of the National Research Council’s Committee on Aviation Medical Research. He died on Feb. 21, 1941 after his plane crashed in Musgrave Harbour, Newfoundland. Banting was 49 years old.
Charles Best went on to pursue graduate studies and became a professor of physiology at the University of Toronto. He died on March 31, 1978.
November 14, Banting’s birthday, is now recognized as World Diabetes Day. Each year the Canadian Diabetes Association celebrates November 6 as Sir Frederick Banting Day.
The Canadian Diabetes Association estimates that over 2.2 million Canadians live with the disease and roughly one third of that amount are undiagnosed. Symptoms of diabetes include excessive thirst, frequent urination, blurry vision and unexplained weight loss. Without treatment, high sugar levels can damage blood vessels, which sometimes leads to blindness, amputation, renal failure, heart attacks and strokes.
*Leonard Thompson died thirteen years later due to complications from diabetes.
1) Iran And Britain: Everything that has happened until now has been aboot Iran trying to humiliate Britain and, by extension, the United States. Everyday brought at least two statements, one from the Good Cop — “Of course we will release them, as soon as Britain apologizes for their years of imperialism and hatred of Islam.” And one from the Bad Cop — “The British infidels who trespassed against us will be tried in court and will be dealt with according to the customs of Persia… by the way ‘300’, while a special effects marvel, was still a hateful representation of Everything Persian.” Every “diplomatic” note has been used as a prod in the side of the British people and every broadcast of the hostages eating, apologizing and smoking Iranian cigarettes has been an attempt to make Tony Blair’s blood pressure shoot up. This is what Fascist governments like the Islamic Republic of Iran do for kicks. Read Kamangir’s blog for up to the minute news reports from Iran, including translations from the Government news services. They’re fascinating.
2) Yushchenko Dissolves Ukrainian Parliament : Russia has been trying to screw with Ukraine since the “Orange Revolution” which tossed the Russia friendly government out and brought in the government of Victor Yushchenko, the guy Russia fed poison. Russia has been trying to regain its pride since 1989. Embarrassing Russia by voting to separate from the MotherLand did the Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine no favours within the Russian political hierarchy. Yushchenko claims the pro-Russian Prime Minister is usurping too much power and Parliament is fighting back claiming Yushchenko has no mandate to tell them what to do. Both parties are planning massive street protests and the general consensus is the situation will be resolved in the street. Last year Russia turned off the gas to Georgia, this year it’s aboot Ukraine… Russia is a failed state grasping for its former glory by fucking with its former, and now successful, colonies. A good way to stop this from happening might be for the European Union to start negotiations with Ukraine over membership. But that would involve the EU growing a set of balls, something which — at this point — would seem to require genetic engineering.
3) Somalia Gets Worse: Honestly, did you ever think you’d read “Somalia gets worse“? There is some support for the “Islamic militia’s” because, once again, desperate people mistake making the trains run on time for peace and security. Of course Islamic Fascists would stop the trains entirely, but you get the point. The Islamic militia is making its last stand in a series of attacks in and around Mogadishu. Somali and Ethiopian troops are fighting back along with some occasional and extremely clandestine support from the American Air Force. An estimated 380 Somali’s have died in this latest fighting with another 500 injured.
1) Nuclear Iran Closer Than Thought : Since January of this year Iran has added 1000 centrifuges to its uranium enrichment program. It previously had 370+ centrifuges in its program which, according to a CIA report to Congress just a few days ago, would have given the Iranian government enough uranium for a bomb by 2015. With the additional 1000 units the estimate is now two years. Whoops. Iran has also recently said that it will have 3000 centrifuges by May… of this year. These units aren’t operational, yet, but they will be soon. This spending spree by Iran will triple their uranium capacity. Here’s the Thing aboot That… the uranium produced by these centrifuges is completely wrong for the types of reactors Iran is building for their “domestic power initiative”. The Iranian Government is trying to speed up the process because it knows they are being isolated by the “Rational Resolute”… you can read all aboot it here: “Iran vs. America In ‘The Marketing War’: Where Being The Victim Is Victory.”
2) British Diplomacy In Action: Once a British diplomat says “we regret how this situation is being perceived” you know it’s just aboot over. No one beats the British in Diplomacy. Don’t forget, they invented the English language. Iran is now promising not to show any more broadcasts of the hostages… but they did it once more just to prove that Persian Logic is supreme.
3) Tsunami Hits Solomon Islands: Initial reports say eighteen people have been killed after an 8.1 earthquake just to the North-East of Australia. The numbers will go way up. The Solomon Islands have a really interesting history we could learn from… if you can find “Collapse” by Jared Diamond pick it up. It looks at how successful civilizations manage to kill themselves off through nine easy to follow steps… he looks at the Vikings in Greenland; modern Montana; the Polynesians and a few others. Fascinating book. Setting up societies in an environmentally insanely-unstable region, like a line of volcanic islands in the Southern Pacific, is on his list somewhere.
1) Supreme Court Rules On Carbon Emissions: For several years the American Government has been saying that the Environmental Protection Agency did not have the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate the Carbon Emissions from new cars. Today the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, disagreed. Which means Global Warming has been cured and now it’s cool to use your hair dryer as a cooking element. This will be seen as a rebuke of the environmental policies of G.W. Bush, but really it doesn’t mean a whole lot for the environment in the short term… “short term” being the next thirty years. The EPA position was they did not have the authority to interfere with other federal environmental initiatives and also that there was no direct causal link between carbon emissions and pollution… basically that carbon emissions was too broad a term and could mean anything. Like breathing. They had other arguments as well, but the Supreme Court shot them all down. Within the Clean Air Act, the majority decision said, “air pollution” has a sweeping enough definition which includes carbon emissions. So instead of the EPA dismissing carbon emissions out of hand, they must offer scientific proof as to why those emissions should be disqualified from the “Air Pollutants List”. Which means the Supreme Court is not demanding carbon emissions be automatically added to the list of pollutants, just that the EPA must provide proof one way or the other.
2) Guantanamo Detainees Denied Appeal: Today the Supreme Court also decided not to hear the appeals cases of detainees in Guantanamo Bay until after they’ve had their Military Hearings. Which should be anytime now… nope, not now… maybe now… nope. Now? Nope.
3) Iraqi’s Killed: There were a bunch of car bombs over the weekend. 81 American soldiers died during the month of March. Several orphans were created in at least two countries. Now? Nope. How aboot now? Nope.
1) Britain v. Iran: Tom Clark reported this story. Tom’s a bit of an enigma. He was chosen a long time ago to be Lloyd’s replacement as anchor — he’s got the voice anyway, but Lloyd won’t freaking retire. So Tom has been shuttled around inside the CTV News Department for years and now, surely for longevity reasons, CTV has made him their Washington Correspondent. But he has never been a very good reporter… anyway, he reported on this story using the same source I did, “according to ABC News“. There was an extra interview (it’s not clear whether it was from stock footage or done today because Tom wasn’t shown with the person) that had this interesting observation: “saving face to country’s like Iran is incredibly important”. Then there was a quick quote from the Pool Camera in the White House media centre: “by calling them “hostages” and not “captives” we’re not trying to increase tensions as a means to start a war with Iran.” Again, that was not a response to one of Tom’s questions. Reporters from Canada, especially the TV people, rarely get to ask White House Spokespeople questions and since Tom’s a bit of a dipstick and the CBC’s Neil MacDonald is still convinced 9/11 was a plot hatched by Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney back in the Gerald Ford administration, the chances of them getting Face Time with the Important Spokespeople is slim, none and no.
2) RCMP Moves To Kabul: There’s a series of scandals going on right now involving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police which I plan on writing aboot soon. The Force has been broken for over a generation now, and this ‘scandal of the moment‘ involves millions of dollars missing or not in the pension fund. So, after watching the RCMP take a shit kicking in The Press for a week, the government thought it’d be a good idea to create a “feel-good RCMP moment“. So Canada is sending another 12 RCMP officers to Afghanistan to train the Afghan police department. This brings the number up to 36 officers.
3) Arrest Warrant Issued For Lafleur: There is now an international manhunt underway for a 66-year old advertising executive from Montreal accused of pilfering millions of dollars in government money earmarked for advertising the Goodness of Government, then passing hundreds of thousands of dollars back into the Liberal Party of Canada… which was the ruling party at the time and the ones handing out the advertising money. So you can see why there’s some interest in finding this guy. Jean Lafleur, former head of Lafleur Communication Marketing, is facing thirty-six counts of fraud. Since his apartment hasn’t been used lately and his drivers licence expired a couple of years ago there’s a pretty good chance he has left the country. There’s still $40 Million unaccounted for in a scheme created by the Liberal Party in response to their completely inept handling of the last Quebec referendum. The scheme/strategy for convincing Quebec to stay in Canada was based around the Government of Canada buying ad space at “events” in Quebec and putting up huge “CANADA DOESN’T SUCK” banners. There was no oversight and the money, a lot of money, got spread around to Liberal Friendly Marketing and Advertising Firms. A lot of that money then got donated back to the Liberal Party. Lafleur, for example, hired his entire immediate family and paid them $2.8 million in salaries. His own salary went from $108,000 to $2.5 Million over two years. Lafleaur then “encouraged” his employees to “donate” money to the Liberal Party, which he then reimbursed with the money he received from the advertising contracts. No one in the Liberal Party Leadership knew anything aboot any of this. Ahem… [awkward silence]. Cough.
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I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.
“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.
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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.
0_o
cultural sn:afu 