DTK
It's funny how a man's definition of luxury can change over time. At one point, it involved liquor, a tiled dance floor and the phrase "every night is ladies' night". These days, two consecutive nights of uninterrupted sleep clocks in at pretty much the peak of my Epicurean fantasies.
Admittedly, I'm having trouble figuring out what to rant about. Our federal finance minister has declared that "Canadians are taxed too much" and plans to cut our taxes. He claims that people stay on welfare because they pay too much taxes if they go back to work. I'd like to see him substantiate that somehow. It seems to me that people who earn small amounts of money pay very little tax at all. Then he switches to talking about how important it is to cut capital gains taxes and corporate taxes.
Why is it that people who work for a living are expected to pay taxes while people who merely live on the interest and investment of massive amounts of inheritance money somehow believe that they shouldn't have to pay taxes? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't we be rewarding work and productivity over investment? But remember, for all the talk of Bob Rae amassing a deficit in Ontario, Bob Rae did it in a recession. It was our present federal finance minister, when his party was running Ontario's finances, that managed to increase that debt while in an economic boom - all while halving corporate taxes and cutting services like education and health care.
I hate to say "I told you so", but I did. Wait for the federal deficit to replace the surplus.
In other news, British PM Tony Blair was in town to tell us how Canada and the U.K. must forge a new partnership/friendship/relationship. This new association will be based on our mutual efforts in the war on terrorism and our mutual association with the United States.
Uh ... yeah. Good luck with that line of reasoning, Tony. People in Canada are beginning to disapprove of the Afghanistan mission. We find the "war on terror" quite dubious. People in your own country gave up on Iraq a long time ago. Too bad none of us are actually living in democracies. Then we might have peace, and wouldn't that be boring.
Should I mention that ridiculous big deal made over the "anti-Israeli" comments made by Liberal leadership hopeful Michael Ignatieff? Apparently he had the nerve to refer to the relentless cluster-bombing of civilian areas of Lebanon as a "war crime". Goodness. How dare he? Israel is an ally of Western powers and has white skinned, European types running its government. Those sorts of people only cause "regrettable civilian collateral damage". War crimes are committed by other people (terrorists, people we don't like, people who don't play ball with Wall Street, brownish people wearing turbans etc.).
The real crapfest is the fact that Ignatieff appears to be saying one thing to a pro-Lebanon francophone crowd in Quebec while saying something else to an anglophone crowd in Toronto. If that's really what's going on, then he deserves all the splatter off the ventilation he's getting, even if it's misdirected.
Enough ranting.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Conservative Distractions
DTK
Distraction is the name of the game. Our troops went in to Haiti, knocked over a government, installed a crazed dictator and destabilized a society to the point where it is estimated that 4000 political murders have taken place and 35000 women and children have been raped in that country. In Afghanistan, the government and the military have admitted that the "reconstruction" aspects of the mission will have to wait until after the "security" situation has stabilized. We're not doing any reconstruction, just killing and getting killed, and even the NDP aren't willing to discuss the elephant in the room - the billions of barrels of oil just sitting there to the north of the country, waiting for a pipeline; waiting for a country "secure" enough to run a pipeline through.
So our government tries to distract us. The Conservatives have decided that they're going to try to pass a "Defence of Religions Act" in order to make sure that the gay marriages can't be thrust upon people who believe that homosexuality is morally wrong. This seems to be reasonable, except that we already have a thing called the Charter of Rights that ensures that no one can force you to be gay.
The purpose of this act, apparently, is to "protect" the free speech of those who criticize homosexuals. Again, this sort of free speech is already protected unless, of course, you're advocating violence against homosexuals, or repeatedly quoting that bit of religious text that says homosexuals should be put to death. Then you're guilty of all sorts of crimes, same as you would be advocating death or violence to any other group. No need for a law here, and we certainly don't want to protect those who commit hate crimes.
The Act is also supposed to protect public servants - not just religious ministers - from having to perform or involve themselves in the technical parts of gay marriages. This would allow, for instance, a Justice of the Peace to refuse to perform the marriage. Maybe, once we actually see the text of the act, it will permit public servants to refuse to process the marriage certificate based on their own religious beliefs. That would be unacceptable. Science teachers have to check their religions at the door. Doctors are expected to handle patients using birth control. Pharmacists are expected to dispense prescription drugs. All of these servants are expected to do their jobs regardless of their religion and civil servants are no different.
But this Act is a distraction, and maybe a bit of pandering to the social Conservative base. It's supposed to distract you from the fact that we are now openly sending our soldiers abroad to prosecute foreign wars, to seize foreign resources and impose our will upon foreign peoples. Every paragraph, every speech, every letter written on the subject of gay marriages is one less moment devoted to noticing the villainy that our government is promoting abroad.
Greg.
Democracy Now on the Lancet Study in Haiti
CIDA in Afghanistan (note the priorities)
Distraction is the name of the game. Our troops went in to Haiti, knocked over a government, installed a crazed dictator and destabilized a society to the point where it is estimated that 4000 political murders have taken place and 35000 women and children have been raped in that country. In Afghanistan, the government and the military have admitted that the "reconstruction" aspects of the mission will have to wait until after the "security" situation has stabilized. We're not doing any reconstruction, just killing and getting killed, and even the NDP aren't willing to discuss the elephant in the room - the billions of barrels of oil just sitting there to the north of the country, waiting for a pipeline; waiting for a country "secure" enough to run a pipeline through.
So our government tries to distract us. The Conservatives have decided that they're going to try to pass a "Defence of Religions Act" in order to make sure that the gay marriages can't be thrust upon people who believe that homosexuality is morally wrong. This seems to be reasonable, except that we already have a thing called the Charter of Rights that ensures that no one can force you to be gay.
The purpose of this act, apparently, is to "protect" the free speech of those who criticize homosexuals. Again, this sort of free speech is already protected unless, of course, you're advocating violence against homosexuals, or repeatedly quoting that bit of religious text that says homosexuals should be put to death. Then you're guilty of all sorts of crimes, same as you would be advocating death or violence to any other group. No need for a law here, and we certainly don't want to protect those who commit hate crimes.
The Act is also supposed to protect public servants - not just religious ministers - from having to perform or involve themselves in the technical parts of gay marriages. This would allow, for instance, a Justice of the Peace to refuse to perform the marriage. Maybe, once we actually see the text of the act, it will permit public servants to refuse to process the marriage certificate based on their own religious beliefs. That would be unacceptable. Science teachers have to check their religions at the door. Doctors are expected to handle patients using birth control. Pharmacists are expected to dispense prescription drugs. All of these servants are expected to do their jobs regardless of their religion and civil servants are no different.
But this Act is a distraction, and maybe a bit of pandering to the social Conservative base. It's supposed to distract you from the fact that we are now openly sending our soldiers abroad to prosecute foreign wars, to seize foreign resources and impose our will upon foreign peoples. Every paragraph, every speech, every letter written on the subject of gay marriages is one less moment devoted to noticing the villainy that our government is promoting abroad.
Greg.
Democracy Now on the Lancet Study in Haiti
CIDA in Afghanistan (note the priorities)
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Why not torture?
Maher Arar.
Indeed.
So the whole sordid affair is out where everyone can see it easily. Maher Arar: Canadian citizen; deported to Syria by the United States; tortured in Syria until he confessed to crimes he couldn't actually have committed. If you have any doubt of he details, you can check them pretty much anywhere you like nowadays.
Then there was the inquiry which confirmed that the RCMP and CSIS, our own security organizations, provided the Americans with the information that led them to think Maher Arar was somehow associated with terrorism. The inquiry condemned the actions of those two organizations.
Our media appear to be doing something quite similar - the condemning part, that is - but they're missing the point.
The first thing I see on the news is the bit about the RCMP handing "evidence" over to American officials. The problem, apparently, is that the evidence is circumstantial. The RCMP, you see, had bad info on Arar. The American officials in question took this bad info to heart and sent Arar packing off to Syria. The next information we had was a report to CSIS that Maher Arar had confessed to being a terrorist. CSIS, for some reason that mystified even the inquiry, decided to accept this confession at face value despite Syria's record of human rights abuses and torture.
The crime, as portrayed by the media, was that Arar was tortured because of circumstantial evidence. The crime, as portrayed by the two reports I just saw on television, was that CSIS beleived the report of confession and therefore led the Canadian government to protest less than it should have.
The crime, apparently, was that Maher Arar was the wrong guy to torture.
I would like to submit, for your analysis, the idea that - perhaps - the people who bring us our news have lost their damned minds.
The crime was torture. Whether or not Maher Arar was a criminal; whether or not he attended a camp in Pakistan; whether or not he spoke to Al Qaeda members; whether or not he's even a murderer - none of these things are relevant to the fact that we as a nation acquiesced to his torture.
If you want to be pragmatic about it, you can make a lot of technical points about torture. For one thing, it doesn't work. While torture does illicit confessions from criminals, it elicits confessions from the innocent as well. (Google me this: "witch hunt" "salem".) While torture can get information from terrorists, it also gets completely useless, falsified information from non-terrorists who are just hoping that you'll stop it with the broomstick already if they pretend they know something.
So torture doesn't work? That's the reason we shouldn't do it?
No. The reason we don't torture is because it's a cruel, inhuman thing to do. I'm well aware that we are bound to come across cruel, inhuman people who do horrible things. These people will knock over World Trade Centers, spread depleted uranium all over Iraq, cluster bombs all around southern Lebanon or blow themselves up in a crowded plaza.
The question arises: Do these people deserve to be tortured?
The answer is a very firm "maybe". But it's the wrong question.
The question is: should we torture these people? The emphasis is on the "we". "We" must understand that undertaking to enact cruel punishment on other human beings isn't just bad for them, it's also bad for us. I can't pretend to have any magical power that allows me to decide what other human beings "deserve". Tolkien observed in the Lord of the Rings that "many die who deserve to live while many who live deserve to die". Fair enough, though I have no idea who is really entitled to make such decisions. When "we" decide to torture people, we have surrendered the moral high ground that was supposed to separate "we" from "they".
"We" don't have an infinite fountain of benevolence from which we can draw the right to torture people based on our generally friendly disposition.
Torture is an evil thing to do, even when it's done to an evil person. There is nothing we could gain from torture that could possibly be worth what we lose by doing it ...
... even if it did work.
Greg.
Indeed.
So the whole sordid affair is out where everyone can see it easily. Maher Arar: Canadian citizen; deported to Syria by the United States; tortured in Syria until he confessed to crimes he couldn't actually have committed. If you have any doubt of he details, you can check them pretty much anywhere you like nowadays.
Then there was the inquiry which confirmed that the RCMP and CSIS, our own security organizations, provided the Americans with the information that led them to think Maher Arar was somehow associated with terrorism. The inquiry condemned the actions of those two organizations.
Our media appear to be doing something quite similar - the condemning part, that is - but they're missing the point.
The first thing I see on the news is the bit about the RCMP handing "evidence" over to American officials. The problem, apparently, is that the evidence is circumstantial. The RCMP, you see, had bad info on Arar. The American officials in question took this bad info to heart and sent Arar packing off to Syria. The next information we had was a report to CSIS that Maher Arar had confessed to being a terrorist. CSIS, for some reason that mystified even the inquiry, decided to accept this confession at face value despite Syria's record of human rights abuses and torture.
The crime, as portrayed by the media, was that Arar was tortured because of circumstantial evidence. The crime, as portrayed by the two reports I just saw on television, was that CSIS beleived the report of confession and therefore led the Canadian government to protest less than it should have.
The crime, apparently, was that Maher Arar was the wrong guy to torture.
I would like to submit, for your analysis, the idea that - perhaps - the people who bring us our news have lost their damned minds.
The crime was torture. Whether or not Maher Arar was a criminal; whether or not he attended a camp in Pakistan; whether or not he spoke to Al Qaeda members; whether or not he's even a murderer - none of these things are relevant to the fact that we as a nation acquiesced to his torture.
If you want to be pragmatic about it, you can make a lot of technical points about torture. For one thing, it doesn't work. While torture does illicit confessions from criminals, it elicits confessions from the innocent as well. (Google me this: "witch hunt" "salem".) While torture can get information from terrorists, it also gets completely useless, falsified information from non-terrorists who are just hoping that you'll stop it with the broomstick already if they pretend they know something.
So torture doesn't work? That's the reason we shouldn't do it?
No. The reason we don't torture is because it's a cruel, inhuman thing to do. I'm well aware that we are bound to come across cruel, inhuman people who do horrible things. These people will knock over World Trade Centers, spread depleted uranium all over Iraq, cluster bombs all around southern Lebanon or blow themselves up in a crowded plaza.
The question arises: Do these people deserve to be tortured?
The answer is a very firm "maybe". But it's the wrong question.
The question is: should we torture these people? The emphasis is on the "we". "We" must understand that undertaking to enact cruel punishment on other human beings isn't just bad for them, it's also bad for us. I can't pretend to have any magical power that allows me to decide what other human beings "deserve". Tolkien observed in the Lord of the Rings that "many die who deserve to live while many who live deserve to die". Fair enough, though I have no idea who is really entitled to make such decisions. When "we" decide to torture people, we have surrendered the moral high ground that was supposed to separate "we" from "they".
"We" don't have an infinite fountain of benevolence from which we can draw the right to torture people based on our generally friendly disposition.
Torture is an evil thing to do, even when it's done to an evil person. There is nothing we could gain from torture that could possibly be worth what we lose by doing it ...
... even if it did work.
Greg.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
NDP and Afghanistan
Now I've made it clear, on many an occasion, that I believe in progressive ideas. These are ideas that the people in the mainstream media would call "left wing." I believe in universal health care, universal public education, free or very cheap post-secondary education, government controls on this dangerous "free market" thing before which we're apparently supposed to bow.
And so, more often than not, I find myself voting NDP.
Well, just a few days ago the NDP came out with a party resolution stating that it wanted the Canadian troops in Afghanistan to come home and now I have to rethink my support.
It's not that I approve of the mission in Afghanistan. I absolutely do not. The mission in Afghanistan, much like the government there, is a fraud, and I disapprove absolutely of sending soldiers to kill, die and be wounded for a fraud. Hamid Karzai, the "president" of Afghanistan, is an unelected stooge who used to work for an American oil company that wanted to build a pipeline from the small oil-rich nations to the north down to the Arabian Sea via Pakistan. Hamid Karzai, according to local reports, is nothing more than the "mayor of Kabul." Afghanistan is now sucking in more troops and more tanks and more lives. The goal isn't to improve the lives of the locals or drain the terrorist swamp, it's to get access to the oil in the north.
So what's my trouble with the NDP and especially their leader, Jack Layton?
It comes down to two counts of visible hypocrisy.
One, read this:
http://www.ndp.ca/page/4308
It's a critique of the way in which the war is being waged in Afghanistan. Much more could be said on the subject of tactics. How about "No one has conquered this country or defeated its inhabitants in over 2300 years of attempted conquests." So what? Where do we discuss the moral failure that led us in to this swamp? Where do we discuss how very, very wrong it is to occupy a people in order to run an oil pipeline through their country?
Count number two of hypocrisy, and I will bang this drum again and again, is how very differently the NDP are responding to our war in Afghanistan as compared to the invasion of Haiti. Haiti had a democratic government. It had an elected president named Aristide. The election was considered valid by everyone except the American
government. Aristide tried to improve the lives of his people by giving them some semblance of health care, some education and, the ultimate sin, a raise in the minimum wage. That was the last straw. Desperately needed economic aid was withheld until Haiti could be declared a "failed state". Then, just over two years ago Canadian, American and French troops entered the country, threw out the elected government and replaced it with a government made up of wiser, more corporation friendly people. Those people only had the support of 5% of the population in the last election, but that didn't matter.
Did the NDP cry foul then? Did we hear Jack Layton and Alexa McDonough demanding that Prime Minister Martin do something about this? What, indeed, did the NDP do about Canadian soldiers being used to knock over a democracy? Why, they demanded a thorough investigation in to, um, human rights violations... that were happening... to some poor people. Um, what? No mention of our role in these violations? No mention of the fact that our government was training the new regime's police, the same police who wandered in to the poor areas of Haiti and killed hundreds of peaceful protesters who were demanding their president back?
So, yeah, as progressive as I am, I find the NDP call for withdrawal to be self-serving and not at all based on any moral principles that I can see.
Greg.
And so, more often than not, I find myself voting NDP.
Well, just a few days ago the NDP came out with a party resolution stating that it wanted the Canadian troops in Afghanistan to come home and now I have to rethink my support.
It's not that I approve of the mission in Afghanistan. I absolutely do not. The mission in Afghanistan, much like the government there, is a fraud, and I disapprove absolutely of sending soldiers to kill, die and be wounded for a fraud. Hamid Karzai, the "president" of Afghanistan, is an unelected stooge who used to work for an American oil company that wanted to build a pipeline from the small oil-rich nations to the north down to the Arabian Sea via Pakistan. Hamid Karzai, according to local reports, is nothing more than the "mayor of Kabul." Afghanistan is now sucking in more troops and more tanks and more lives. The goal isn't to improve the lives of the locals or drain the terrorist swamp, it's to get access to the oil in the north.
So what's my trouble with the NDP and especially their leader, Jack Layton?
It comes down to two counts of visible hypocrisy.
One, read this:
http://www.ndp.ca/page/4308
It's a critique of the way in which the war is being waged in Afghanistan. Much more could be said on the subject of tactics. How about "No one has conquered this country or defeated its inhabitants in over 2300 years of attempted conquests." So what? Where do we discuss the moral failure that led us in to this swamp? Where do we discuss how very, very wrong it is to occupy a people in order to run an oil pipeline through their country?
Count number two of hypocrisy, and I will bang this drum again and again, is how very differently the NDP are responding to our war in Afghanistan as compared to the invasion of Haiti. Haiti had a democratic government. It had an elected president named Aristide. The election was considered valid by everyone except the American
government. Aristide tried to improve the lives of his people by giving them some semblance of health care, some education and, the ultimate sin, a raise in the minimum wage. That was the last straw. Desperately needed economic aid was withheld until Haiti could be declared a "failed state". Then, just over two years ago Canadian, American and French troops entered the country, threw out the elected government and replaced it with a government made up of wiser, more corporation friendly people. Those people only had the support of 5% of the population in the last election, but that didn't matter.
Did the NDP cry foul then? Did we hear Jack Layton and Alexa McDonough demanding that Prime Minister Martin do something about this? What, indeed, did the NDP do about Canadian soldiers being used to knock over a democracy? Why, they demanded a thorough investigation in to, um, human rights violations... that were happening... to some poor people. Um, what? No mention of our role in these violations? No mention of the fact that our government was training the new regime's police, the same police who wandered in to the poor areas of Haiti and killed hundreds of peaceful protesters who were demanding their president back?
So, yeah, as progressive as I am, I find the NDP call for withdrawal to be self-serving and not at all based on any moral principles that I can see.
Greg.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Atheist Definition
It came up on youtube.com, a purveyor of .... well ... whatever the hell video you upload, that a video called "Atheist" became immensely popular and then suddenly disappeared from the most-viewed list. Conspiracy was presumed but unproven. The video made a couple of simple, but apparently very upsetting statements, regarding atheism. The first was that an atheist is a person who doesn't believe in any gods. There were quotes from the bible, where it is stated that atheists are, by their nature, "fools" and "evil". This was followed by a list with images of nice, smart atheists.
The reply videos were entertaining, if nothing else can be said of them. The best contained the most common of flawed premises: the redefinition of atheism. For some reason, among those who are not atheists, it is more convenient to label an atheist as "one who denies the existence of God".
While these definitions seem similar, there's a glaring gap in the logic between them.
If you flip a coin and hide the result from me, you might ask "Do you believe I flipped heads?". I can answer to this question, "No". You might then state, "Ah, then you believe I flipped tails." I would then say, "No, I don't believe that either."
That is the key difference between the two. The definition that atheists use for atheism is, "I do not believe your proposition that god exists". The believer then says, "Ha, you therefore believe that there is no god. Now prove it!" This always leads to a hearty laugh from the atheist who invites the believer to prove unicorns don't exist. The believer gets offended, because the atheist is being a bit of a prick, and goes off in a huff. The point, however, is that the atheist never claimed to know that god doesn't exist, only that he didn't see any reason to think so.
I'm not sure how this definition problem happens, but I can make some educated guesses.
The first guess is that "the dictionary says so". Various dictionaries have various definitions and the writers of said dictionaries have their own biases. Some have one definition. Some have the other. Mind you, a definition of atheism that says, "denial of god's existence" is rather like an unheard of definition of christianity as, "belief in mythology". It assumes the person being defined to be wrong. Presumably we only do this to atheists on account of atheism being quite in the minority.
The second guess is a matter of logical consistency. When confronted with a demand for evidence of what is gathered from faith, the believer prefers to put the non-believer on the same ground. If an atheist can be defined as a person who says, "there is no god", it can then be demanded of the atheist that he produce evidence. Then we get the prickish bit about the unicorns.
(And no, that's not an agnostic. "Agnostic" means something else entirely and every dictionary I've ever checked agrees at least on that point.)
So, there you go. Atheism just means "not believing", not "believing in the opposite". Come on over. We have lower divorce and incarceration rates, no holy days to get you out of bed on the weekend, and you get a 10% discount on drinks at all casinos and strip joints (when you show your card).
The reply videos were entertaining, if nothing else can be said of them. The best contained the most common of flawed premises: the redefinition of atheism. For some reason, among those who are not atheists, it is more convenient to label an atheist as "one who denies the existence of God".
While these definitions seem similar, there's a glaring gap in the logic between them.
If you flip a coin and hide the result from me, you might ask "Do you believe I flipped heads?". I can answer to this question, "No". You might then state, "Ah, then you believe I flipped tails." I would then say, "No, I don't believe that either."
That is the key difference between the two. The definition that atheists use for atheism is, "I do not believe your proposition that god exists". The believer then says, "Ha, you therefore believe that there is no god. Now prove it!" This always leads to a hearty laugh from the atheist who invites the believer to prove unicorns don't exist. The believer gets offended, because the atheist is being a bit of a prick, and goes off in a huff. The point, however, is that the atheist never claimed to know that god doesn't exist, only that he didn't see any reason to think so.
I'm not sure how this definition problem happens, but I can make some educated guesses.
The first guess is that "the dictionary says so". Various dictionaries have various definitions and the writers of said dictionaries have their own biases. Some have one definition. Some have the other. Mind you, a definition of atheism that says, "denial of god's existence" is rather like an unheard of definition of christianity as, "belief in mythology". It assumes the person being defined to be wrong. Presumably we only do this to atheists on account of atheism being quite in the minority.
The second guess is a matter of logical consistency. When confronted with a demand for evidence of what is gathered from faith, the believer prefers to put the non-believer on the same ground. If an atheist can be defined as a person who says, "there is no god", it can then be demanded of the atheist that he produce evidence. Then we get the prickish bit about the unicorns.
(And no, that's not an agnostic. "Agnostic" means something else entirely and every dictionary I've ever checked agrees at least on that point.)
So, there you go. Atheism just means "not believing", not "believing in the opposite". Come on over. We have lower divorce and incarceration rates, no holy days to get you out of bed on the weekend, and you get a 10% discount on drinks at all casinos and strip joints (when you show your card).
Monday, August 28, 2006
Milk, Honey and Oil
First off, a little public service announcement:
If the milk is in any way questionable, just throw it out. It's not worth the buck and a half.
Moving on.
So the Hezbollah guerrillas, hiding in their bunkers, managed to push back the Israeli army. This served as notice that Iranian weapons, given sufficiently well-built bunkers to hide in during aerial bombardment, can indeed stop an army equipped with the latest American weaponry. This, in turn, implies that the United States will not soon be attacking Iran, in spite of the whole WMD-script they've been following.
And the price of oil drops. And the price of gas drops. The world is that cynical.
We all breathe a sigh of relief because we're happier when we don't have to think about foreign policy and whom we're antagonizing this week.
I spent a lot of time thinking about it last weekend. It was just after the Brits arrested those potential terrorists in London. These were the ones who, though they had no equipment for doing so, apparently had plans to mix explosives while on board planes and blow them up from there. I was flying back from the Maritimes shortly after those arrests, wondering what level of importance terrorists might attach to blowing up Canadian planes. How do we rate?
Canada was the first country to cut off aid and diplomatic contact with the new Palestinian government. Stephen Harper didn't like the democratic choices that the Palestinian people had made. When Palestinian militias captured an Israeli soldier and the Israeli government responded by laying waste to the Gaza strip, putting over a million under threat of starvation without food, clean water or fuel, Stephen Harper called it "measured and justified." We're also in Afghanistan, perpetuating a war for unknown purposes. We're dancing to the tune of the Bush Administration.
Does that merit, in the eyes of a bomb-mixing terrorist, a one-way ticket on Canjet? Probably not. Not from the East Coast to Ottawa at any rate. Perhaps the commuter flights between Ottawa and Toronto (most foreigners can't figure out which is the capital anyway) might merit more attention. Still, we can't pretend -- no matter the price of gas -- that the things done in our name around the world won't affect our lives here at home.
If the milk is in any way questionable, just throw it out. It's not worth the buck and a half.
Moving on.
So the Hezbollah guerrillas, hiding in their bunkers, managed to push back the Israeli army. This served as notice that Iranian weapons, given sufficiently well-built bunkers to hide in during aerial bombardment, can indeed stop an army equipped with the latest American weaponry. This, in turn, implies that the United States will not soon be attacking Iran, in spite of the whole WMD-script they've been following.
And the price of oil drops. And the price of gas drops. The world is that cynical.
We all breathe a sigh of relief because we're happier when we don't have to think about foreign policy and whom we're antagonizing this week.
I spent a lot of time thinking about it last weekend. It was just after the Brits arrested those potential terrorists in London. These were the ones who, though they had no equipment for doing so, apparently had plans to mix explosives while on board planes and blow them up from there. I was flying back from the Maritimes shortly after those arrests, wondering what level of importance terrorists might attach to blowing up Canadian planes. How do we rate?
Canada was the first country to cut off aid and diplomatic contact with the new Palestinian government. Stephen Harper didn't like the democratic choices that the Palestinian people had made. When Palestinian militias captured an Israeli soldier and the Israeli government responded by laying waste to the Gaza strip, putting over a million under threat of starvation without food, clean water or fuel, Stephen Harper called it "measured and justified." We're also in Afghanistan, perpetuating a war for unknown purposes. We're dancing to the tune of the Bush Administration.
Does that merit, in the eyes of a bomb-mixing terrorist, a one-way ticket on Canjet? Probably not. Not from the East Coast to Ottawa at any rate. Perhaps the commuter flights between Ottawa and Toronto (most foreigners can't figure out which is the capital anyway) might merit more attention. Still, we can't pretend -- no matter the price of gas -- that the things done in our name around the world won't affect our lives here at home.
Beasts Know When To Quit
In the realm of the beasts -- which is to say "mammals, other than humans" -- there is a common way of settling disputes over territory, food and mates. The two enemies will stand over the disputed property and screech at each other in attempts at intimidation. They will flex muscles, display plumage and attempt to frighten their opponents in to surrender. It's understood, in that sort of way that evolution programs us all without our knowledge, that a fight would cost both parties much more than the value of the contested goods. So if we can figure out in advance who will win, it's best to just let the likely victor take the spoils and avoid the damage. It's rather a lot like bribing a man to give up his lunch peacefully by offering not to kill him in return.
Humans aren't always so smart, but in general follow the same principles. Wars only happen when both sides think they can win. When that belief doesn't exist, you'll get a Chamberlain who lets a Hitler take a couple pieces of land here and there while the Allies build up a force that would have a chance against the Germany army.
In Lebanon, over the last month or so, there's been a war. Israel, backed by all of the technology and arms of the United States, selected a grievance involving a pair of captured soldiers and invaded Lebanon. Since the Lebanese guerrillas, a group called Hizbollah (or Hezbollah, depending on who's doing the spelling), had only munitions supplied by the technologically inferior nation of Iran, it was supposed to be an easy victory for Israel.
First came the aerial bombardment. The idea was to eliminate as much of Hizbollah's stash of arms and munitions as possible before the ground attack. Next came the ground attack. The ground attack, so says every source on the ground, failed rather miserably. While the aerial bombardment killed a lot of civilians, it apparently left a lot of Hizbollah alive in their caves and bunkers. Out of the ground they came, defended their cities, and apparently knocked out some thirty or forty invading tanks with Iranian anti-tank weaponry.
On the heels of this comes a leak from the U.S. Administration, via no more trustworthy a source than Seymour Hersh of Deep Throat fame. It turns out, according to this anonymous source, that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was meant (among other things) as a test of American weapons against Iranian defences. No one should be surprised, with the talk of Iranian "Weapons of Mass Destruction," that Iran is shortlisted for invasion. The fact that Hizbollah repelled the Israeli Defence Force -- the fourth most powerful army in the world -- is going to alter the plans of the hawks in the Bush Administration. It's going to put a bit of a crimp in the "birth pangs of the New Middle East" that Condoleeza Rice was going on about.
The thing you have to understand is that the evolutionary rule of the beasts, of surrendering when defeat is likely, simply doesn't apply to everyone. If you are a better fighter than I and you come for my lunch money, I might as well give it to you. But if you come in to my home to kill me, and I am trapped there, then I will fight you regardless of your size. You can't bribe me with my own life if that's what you've come to take.
That is the crucial difference that keeps the Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine from giving up when the fight is so asymmetrical and the death toll so unbalanced. They're fighting to defend their homes from people come to take them away. You can't pay someone enough to let that happen.
Greg.
Humans aren't always so smart, but in general follow the same principles. Wars only happen when both sides think they can win. When that belief doesn't exist, you'll get a Chamberlain who lets a Hitler take a couple pieces of land here and there while the Allies build up a force that would have a chance against the Germany army.
In Lebanon, over the last month or so, there's been a war. Israel, backed by all of the technology and arms of the United States, selected a grievance involving a pair of captured soldiers and invaded Lebanon. Since the Lebanese guerrillas, a group called Hizbollah (or Hezbollah, depending on who's doing the spelling), had only munitions supplied by the technologically inferior nation of Iran, it was supposed to be an easy victory for Israel.
First came the aerial bombardment. The idea was to eliminate as much of Hizbollah's stash of arms and munitions as possible before the ground attack. Next came the ground attack. The ground attack, so says every source on the ground, failed rather miserably. While the aerial bombardment killed a lot of civilians, it apparently left a lot of Hizbollah alive in their caves and bunkers. Out of the ground they came, defended their cities, and apparently knocked out some thirty or forty invading tanks with Iranian anti-tank weaponry.
On the heels of this comes a leak from the U.S. Administration, via no more trustworthy a source than Seymour Hersh of Deep Throat fame. It turns out, according to this anonymous source, that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was meant (among other things) as a test of American weapons against Iranian defences. No one should be surprised, with the talk of Iranian "Weapons of Mass Destruction," that Iran is shortlisted for invasion. The fact that Hizbollah repelled the Israeli Defence Force -- the fourth most powerful army in the world -- is going to alter the plans of the hawks in the Bush Administration. It's going to put a bit of a crimp in the "birth pangs of the New Middle East" that Condoleeza Rice was going on about.
The thing you have to understand is that the evolutionary rule of the beasts, of surrendering when defeat is likely, simply doesn't apply to everyone. If you are a better fighter than I and you come for my lunch money, I might as well give it to you. But if you come in to my home to kill me, and I am trapped there, then I will fight you regardless of your size. You can't bribe me with my own life if that's what you've come to take.
That is the crucial difference that keeps the Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine from giving up when the fight is so asymmetrical and the death toll so unbalanced. They're fighting to defend their homes from people come to take them away. You can't pay someone enough to let that happen.
Greg.
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