#WritingFromIsolationWard
Tag: Politics
How is it possible that a planetary body that has endured ice ages, meteor strikes, volcanic eruptions, etc can be said to be under threat by a puny species like humankind? How is it possible that we (as humans) continually overstate our individual and collective worth despite all evidence to the contrary?
There it is, in once simple statement. The Veritable “God of the Gaps” in Climate Change denial. Humans are puny, how could humans take any hand in the alteration of the Environment?
One does not have to look far to see the veracity of the claim that human activity affects the local enviornment. Trash and industrial waste go a long way to demonstrating the the localized power of human misadventure. How about on a transnational scale? Look at the Acid Rains that have ravaged the forests in Northern Ontario and Quebec, passed from plants in the USA and Canada. What about Chinese pollution that reaches North America?
Doesn’t humankind sport the ability to crack mountains?
Doesn’t humankind have the ability to shirk gravity?
Seriously; there are people who use the internet every day and say “pfft, human achievement is nothing when compared to the rain and babies. Babies are amazing mysterious things.”
I can type a few bits of text on a box with wires in it and EVERYONE ON EARTH CAN READ THEM IF THEY HAVE A BOX AND SOME WIRES WITH ELECTRICITY IN THEM. Why is it beyond some people to think that humankind might influence weather patterns a bit?
It’s amazing to live in a world with such people in it. Dunderheads all.
Republish this everywhere; okay?
From The Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/570638
The Canadian Auto Workers is criticizing the federal government for awarding a $254 million contract to a U.S. company to build trucks for the Canadian Forces at its plant in Texas while it is laying off workers at its plant in Chatham.
“Somebody has to explain to us why Canadian workers can’t build military trucks for the Canadian military,” said senior CAW executive Bob Chernecki, referring to a defence department contract to Illinois-based Navistar International Corp. to build 1,300 medium-duty trucks for the Canadian Forces.
…
Asked yesterday why the contract couldn’t have stipulated the trucks be built in Canada, a spokesperson for
Defense Minister Peter MacKay referred the Toronto Star to the public works department.“The workers in these facilities absolutely deserve the support of their government as we go through these very difficult and challenging times in our country,” said Lewenza’s letter.
“It seems the federal government has lost sight that in 2003 they invested in the Chatham facility, by
agreeing to provide over $30 million of assistance to Navistar to maintain these important jobs in the community and Ontario,” he told MacKay.In 2003, the Ontario government gave $35 million to Navistar to avert threatened closing of the Chatham plant.
Chernecki called it “nonsense” for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to promise to boost the Canadian economy
with infrastructure jobs in the Jan. 27 budget, while another department “is putting taxpayer dollars into the U.S. economy.”A regional benefits clause requires Navistar to match the $254 million contract with equal investment in Canada.
My response:
Dear Pres. Obama,
Just caught the news that the Harper Tories are handing out cash from our taxes to your citizens, sweet deal. Tell you what; apply this “bailout” towards any unresolved debt I have left behind in the USA as I feel strongly that my 10000 dollar tax bill for 2008 will easily cover anything I have left behind. Use the remainder for your kids, I think they may need more school clothes or something.
Hugs and Kisses,
Kevin.
Seriously; could the Harper Government be any more transparently pro-USA? Its no wonder that the Harper Government is rolling towards Bush Levels of approval (35% right now) .
Why not just outsource the bureaucracy to some overseas form while you’re at it Stephen?
I know you somehow become blindly enamored by the Harper Conservatives, with their eyes cast up and southward, but you may have a second chance to right what went wrong in the recent election.
Think back, for a bit, to when the Gomery inquiry wasn’t all over the headlines and you didn’t have just one reason to punish the dirty politicians for being dirty politicians. The Liberals stewarded an unprecedented economic period in Canadian history, with eyes towards balanced budgets and zero deficits, where you had jobs and were reasonably well cared for by a federal government less interested in running like a corporation with a church in its boardroom and more like a government with hands in its pockets.
When was the last time you looked at a staunch church-going CEO and thought of them as a warm, charitable person? That’s a Tory. One Half Cold Businessperson-out to gut the Government, one half authoritarian scold, looking to put a camera in your shower to make sure you’re not touching yourself or using unapproved oils for moisturizing, all while whistling past graveyards they fill with your kids.
This is a fairly inflammatory statement, but lets face it, reason doesn’t always work.
I’m a fucking Prison Officer! My name is printed on the list too! I’d like the party to make a legal case under the DPA 1998 and the Human Rights Act to have all the people on this list protected in some way.
An unknown party leaked the Party Membership rolls of the British National Party to the Internet. Which prompted some discussion on the matter.
Like other organizations of the same stripe (The National Socialist Party or the Christian Heritage Party) the BNP gets by on either Xenophobic persecution of the “other” in society or the call for a return to “traditional values”. This appeals to people on a number of levels; it appeals to their desire for a stable society (which is an admirable desire, as society really needs some form of status quo) and a desire for a “return to gentler values” which may be suspect as I think a long-view of history would show that the world is in fact a much gentler place than it has ever been, but with a more aggressive face (all hat no battle so to speak).
Yet, where these organization stray from their admirable goals is the use of prejudices to gain acceptance, rather than organizing around an ideal like “You remember how when you were a kid, your mom took good care of you, we’re like that” they say “remember when there were no something-ies in the neighbourhood, we liked that and want things like that again”. We have one ideal of a positive and one couched in a prejudicial negative. Rather than “for” something, the BNP is organized as “against” something and someone else. Which is where they have really lost their way.
I’m all for cultural preservation and the celebration of national history, swing that bat all you want. It’s just that in civil society, you don’t threaten to use a REAL BAT to do it.
As for this sad little Prison Officer, look where he wants to go, he wants the Government to protect him, the same Government he previously chided for giving asylum to other oppressed persons. The Irony is thick and delicious, kind of like a nice Clotted Cream.
It Benefits the country to keep the poor fed and clothed to keep them from falling further down the line and either dying or turning to violent crime.
Why is that a hard concept for you to understand? The lazy or the unwilling don’t look at what some people think is tough love and say “I’ll straighten up and go to DeVry and get a good paying job” they say “I’ll rob someone who can’t fight back” or “I’ll just give up”
It’s not a difficult sociological concept, Welfare (and the associated programs) may have it’s share of able bodied folks who could be working and are just gaming the system, but that’s the price we pay to avoid the creation of a massive underclass that would eat society from below.
It’s OUR society, not YOUR society, you may not like sharing the world with the poor and unmotivated, but they are still there and you can either keep them penned up in social housing and ensconced in the labyrinthine coils of the Bureaucracy or they can be on their own, hungry and motivated.
Welfare, it’s what keeps “The Poor” from becoming “The Hungry”
Brooks Bayne Let’s it all hang out. Seriously, if anyone still clings to the idea that the Republican Party ISN’T fast becoming the party of no-hope dead-end racists, I give you Brooks Bayne, who thinks this stuff is clever. Send him your love on the twitter
NOTE: Mr. Bayne has commented on his own post that he is not a Republican himself; and was using his forum to express what he thinks the sentiment of the Republican Party proper would be in this instance. In this case, Mr. Bayne was using sarcasm to express the public and private sentiments of a segment of the Republican Party. I apologize for using this as an example of Mr. Bayne’s own beliefs. Instead, I point you to another Article about yet another post that is among many espousing Mr. Bayne’s Conservative point of view.
The environMENTAL wackos are stooping to tactics of fear yet again, now trying to tell us we’re “too stupid” to understand that they want to screw us over with higher sanitation and energy costs while crippling the economy.
Yes, this is the ultimate goal of the the Scientists who predict envionmental collapse; they want to put their hands in your pockets. They have a vested interest in taking cash out of your hands and putting it into their pockets.
It is easy to look at someone else’s opinion and just say, well you’re crazy and want to steal my gold, so I don’t have to listen to what you say. Why not? If you do nothing, then die, what’s the harm? Even if the Scientists are correct and in 50 years New York is under a couple of meters of water, how does that affect you? It’s not like you’ll care, you’ll just pick up and move, problem solved.
Right?
It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it wasn’t for geologists (working for oil and mineral firms) and economics professors getting in on the action to tell us how foolish those guys are. If there is any justification for the person quoted above to just say it’s all hooey, they’ll take it. If Ming the Merciless himself spring forth from the pages of Flash Gordon and pronounced that Global Warming is Hooey, you’d have half the pundits telling us how while Merciless, Ming has run a whole Empire and knows something about taking care of planets. You’d have people fete’ing Ming at Values Voters summits, saying how he’s Right With God because believes in Dominion of Nature.
It’s that very phrase “Right With God” that drives a great deal of denyers to varying degrees. There is this belief that humanity is so small in the world that there is no way that the Actions of a few billion people who consume gigatons of resources each year could affect the health of the Planet as a whole. Just as God is so vast you can’t see or understand it; the Planet (as God’s special little playpen) is beyond Human Ken and therefore we can’t do anything to hurt or heal it, right?
Holy Crap these people have NO shame
Published by NiteMayr on March 18, 2009When these people say “they are for the little guy” they mean “Short CEOs”