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Crazy comes in many flavours. These particular douche nozzles are prime candidates for most insipid video ever posted on youtube.
During the holiday season with all the choral concerts to attend and sing at sometimes I can feel a little (very little) thaw in my heart toward religion as it is at least partially responsible for all the wonderful music. Then I see this.
Ah yes, intolerance, ignorance and vapidity all rolled into one supernova explosion of Stupid representing the ugly facade that religion is.
Happy Holidays to all.
The Conservative government is handling our alleged abuse of Afghan detainees with an sublime air of stupidity that George Bush made (in)famous. It seems that outright lying has not worked. We are now own to indignant posturing and appeals to patriotism. Allow me to illustrate.
Richard Colvin, a senior intelligence officer brought to light Canadian misdeeds:
“According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured,” Colvin told a parliamentary committee on Nov. 18.
Canadian Defence Minister War Propagandist Peter Mackay said:
“The member is suggesting by implication that the military did something wrong, that somehow they did not do the right thing. That is what is so despicable,” MacKay said on Dec. 10.”
What? How dare anyone question the character of our troops and our mission in Afghanistan! Especially when their allegations are false…
“The documents reveal that in 2008, military police launched six separate investigations into allegations of abuse involving Canadian troops.”
Errr….whoops! It seems like something is going on over there. However, so far we’re clean according to our military:
“The military police determined that the allegations were unfounded in five of the six cases, and the remaining investigation is ongoing,” said Maj. Paule Poulin, a spokesperson for the Canadian Forces Provost Marshall.
One can always trust the military to police itself.
And now the sour flourish:
“However, MacKay apparently never told the House there were allegations against Canadian troops, at least one of which is still being investigated.”
We can always trust politicians to act unethically. It is nice that Mr.Mackay provides such a clear example (via his briefing notes) of his dedication to the service and maintenance of power, justice be damned.
I’ve been keeping an eye on what has been happening recently with the Canadian Armed Forces and their handling of the detainee situation. The prognosis has been rather bleak. We are most likely responsible for people being abused and tortured while under our aegis. The Harper government has been doing backflips as of late to keep a lid on the story. Intransigentia has forwarded this article to my attention.
“The Harper government has effectively suspended parliamentary hearings on allegations that Afghan detainees were transferred to torture – boycotting attempts by opposition MPs to continue a Commons probe of the matter.”
Why are the Conservatives engaged in what seems to be a full on exercise in damage control if in fact, there is no substance to the allegations raised by Richard Colvin?
The Conservatives are blocking parliamentary inquiries saying insipid tidbits like this:
“It’s not the time to be having meetings that are implying, intentioned or not, that Canadians are somehow guilty of war crimes,” Laurie Hawn, the parliamentary secretary for the Defence Minister, said on CTV’s Power Play after the aborted meeting.
Well Mr.Hawn when exactly is the time to investigate possible war crimes perpetrated by our forces? The optics do not improve by stalling and delaying the House of Commons about the issue.
What is happening is that the Conservatives know they have a situation that will bring down their government. Delaying parliament is only the first step in the three ring circus that is forming around this issue. I guarantee this is only going to get worse.
I bring this article to your attention only to illustrate the longevity of certain popular myths.
“Drinking a cup of coffee for every cup of spiked eggnog likely won’t help you drive home more safety, a study on drunken mice suggests.”
The wisdom one can find on the internet. We can all rest easy now that we know with more evidence that we had before that drinking caffeine does not help reduce the effects of intoxication. Rather, it makes you a jittery drunk as a opposed to just plain ‘ole drunk.
“His advice for holiday revelers is to be responsible and plan ahead by establishing a designated driver, or stop drinking early enough to allow blood-alcohol levels to go down before getting behind the wheel.”
Compare this to the complete anti vaccination lunacy that vaccines cause autism. It has been proven time and time 
again that this is not the case, yet the tomfoolery still persists. Why? I would suggest the stupid comes can be divided into three categories: Too lazy, intellectually/research-wise, to0 arrogant to admit they are wrong, or too deluded from the start, as their world view took a left turn somewhere and has never come back to reality-ville.
Thus ended the rant.
In the ‘gotcha’ world of the internet, specifically the blogosphere, it seem that it is almost a never ending contest of who say their points the loudest. Proper argumentation and facts be damned. Debate is good, of course, but to what end when people involved are unwilling to change their opinions even when clearly they are wrong.
Debate then, rather than being a spirited exchange of ideas, discussion merely becomes yet another seemingly pointless timesink. The effort put into stating your case with the correct amount of profunidity necessary to prove your point becomes almost an odious task, because nothing really changes between you and the person you are debating. It can be very discouraging at times.
It is important to focus on the people who do not comment, so that they might see both sides of an argument and gather more information so they might be able to make an informed decision on the issue at hand. At least, this is what I tell myself.
This clip is fairly old news in the Blogosphere, but I am going to post it anyways; I’ve always had a soft spot for Patrick Stewart.
Patrick Stewart swooning aside, what is important on this video is the message he extols. The unacceptability of violence toward women. He, as a survivor of a violent household, and he shares his insight on how violence wrecks havoc with family life.
The justice system in Canada moves slowly but this just in from the CBC:
“The girl, whom Kennedy identified as “Miss X” in his report, was a 15-year-old inmate at the Arctic Tern Young Offenders Facility in Inuvik when on March 13, 2007, she was subdued with an RCMP Taser while she was handcuffed and held face-down on the floor by jail staff.”
Well isn’t that nice. Yet another case of a taser being misused by police.
“Kennedy said the officer who used the stun gun, Const. Noella Cockney, had been called to the youth facility by staff who said the girl was not co-operating with their orders to go into a segregated area.
After Cockney gave Miss X several warnings, the girl swore at her and told her to go ahead and use the electric stun gun. The officer “deployed the Taser for a full five-second cycle, causing Miss X to co-operate,” according to the report.”
Here is what gets me. According to the above report the girl swore at her and told her to go ahead and zap her. I have personal experience in working with highly charged situations with youth. One must always remember to remain in control of your own emotions and thought processes despite the fact your heart is beat a million beats per minute and your nervous system has you jacked up and ready to react to the presented stimulus.
Was Miss X asking for it? Should that even enter into the equation? Especially after being handcuffed and restrained by two other individuals. As the chairman of the Commission for the Complaints against the RCMP, Paul Kennedy, states:
“You’re in a custodial situation; you’re not going to go very far. You’re handcuffed — that’s a problem — [and] you’re lying on your stomach and with three people holding you down. So obviously there’s no need for it.”
Kids have a knack for getting under your skin, and if you let them, you give them control of the situation. I would like to put forth the assumption that this is what happened in this case. The Miss X, the youth, pissed off the constable off and she reacted with more force than was necessary to subdue her. Something was amiss as later in the news story it was reported that there was two versions of the incident:
“Cockney [the constable involved with Miss X] filed a report after the incident, but it was undated and printed nine months later. Kennedy said that report did not provide any detail on what Miss X was doing to justify using the Taser.
Cockney was not certified to use a Taser at the time, as her qualifications had expired about a year before, Kennedy found.”
Huh. Two versions of the truth, again. This particular case seems to have a fair amount of CYA involved, but still the two reports are indicative the incident was not handled ‘by the book’.
I wonder how many more people will have to be subjected to electro-torture before we realize that stun-guns should not be in the hands of our police forces.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
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