You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2009.
Welcome to Edmonton, your temperature is now a balmy -41 degrees centigrade. Your face will freeze off in less that two minutes if you are not careful. Rubber will snap like glass, the snow makes a new sound when you walk on it and if you have not plugged your car in well… enjoy your indoor stay.
Days like today are good for only one thing. Multiple blankets, cats, hot chocolate (preferably with peppermint schnapps) and a good book and warm radio.
Or you can be like me and have a choral concert to attend to. *sigh* The things I do to sing.
Oh hey, I found the windchill chart from Environment Canada posted here in all of its frosty glory. Make note of the helpful chart at the end we are almost in the red-zone, woo-haa.
*update* – The choral concert was a smash hit! A 2 minute standing O for us, it was great. Almost worth the frozen extremities.
Way to go Calgary police department. I mean really what should we be expecting from the justice system? Five years just seems to fly by while waiting for the people that raped you to go to jail.
Deputy Chief Murray Stooke said:
“Regrettably, we have a situation that demonstrates we don’t have enough checks and balances in place and we’ve had a catastrophic result,” he said. “Our police service does regret very much that we’ve had a file stayed on the basis of system delay.”
What perfectly ugly example to set for those women who right now are considering bringing charges up against their rapists? Like it isn’t hard enough as is.
Alberta Justice spokeswoman Kim Misik said this result is “extremely rare” and they understand the woman and her family must be disappointed.
“We’re taking this seriously,” she said. “We want to make sure if there are any gaps in the process, we identify them to make sure this kind of result doesn’t happen again.”
Well that is nice. It certainly looks like you are managing your public image and spin very well.
The issues women face, once again, are marginalized. How can you justify a five (5!!) year delay in getting this in front of a judge? What kinda of clerical errors are we talking about here?
As the article says the police are profusely sorry. Good for them, it should much to appease their conscious because what was taken from the rape victim does not get fixed by a ‘sorry’ or an ‘oops we screwed up’. A conviction does not ‘fix’ anything either; how could it? Rape is a gross violation of a woman’s autonomy and personhood, leaving lasting scars and traumatic wounds that will follow her for the rest of her life. A conviction is the very least of what should be done.
The police could not have set a worse example for women and their potential rapists. Thanks for nothing CPD.
What is not surprising is that Harper’s Government continues to stonewall the inquiry into the allegations that Canadian troops knowingly handed over captured Afghan prisoners. The playbooks seems to somewhat disorganized as Gen. Walter Natynczyk found out he needed to change his story to harmonize with what the current acceptable truth needs to be.
“The individual who was beaten by the Afghan police was, in fact, in Canadian custody,” Natynczyk told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday.
Natynczyk had told a parliamentary committee that Canadian troops questioned the man, picked up during operations in Zangabad. But Natynczyk said it was the Afghans who took him into custody.”
Okay..but then….
“On Wednesday, the defence staff chief said he has received new information and learned that Canadians had taken the suspect into custody before handing him over to the Afghans.”
Whoops! Well, apparently we did actually have him in Canadian custody. The general was very apologetic. Also, the prisoner in question was also rescued by Canadian soldiers after they saw the prisoner being beaten by Afghan authorities.
This is just one case though. The amount of smoke and mirrors being produced in Ottawa as of late lead me to question our policy and presence in Afghanistan.
Objectivism remains one of my pet peeves. I meet and cross swords with many who are beguiled with this particularly noxious dogma. From the blog Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature this post details yet another Randian disciple waking up and choosing reality instead of “rationality”.
Greenspan’s breaking away from Objectivism. In his autobiography, The Age of Turbulence, Greenspan explains why he stopped being an orthodox acolyte of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy:
Like any new convert, I tended to frame the concepts [of Rand’s philosophy] in their starkest, simplest terms. Most everyone sees the simple outline of an idea before complexity and qualification set in…. It was only as contradictions inherent in my new notions began to emerge that the fervor receded.
One such contradiction I found particularly enlightening. According to the objectivist precepts, taxation was immoral because it allowed for government appropriation of private property by force. Yet if taxation was wrong, how could you reliably finance the essential functions of government, including the protection of individuals’ rights through police power? The Randian answer, that those who rationally saw the need for government would contribute voluntarily, was inadequate. People have free will; suppose they refused?…
I still found the broader philosophy of unfettered market competition compelling, as I do to this day, but I reluctantly began to realize that if there were qualifications to my intellectual edifice, I couldn’t argue that others should readily accept it. By the time I joined Richard Nixon’s campaign for the presidency in 1968, I had long since decided to engage in efforts to advance free-market capitalism as an insider, rather than as a critical pamphleteer.
Greenspan here admits what has been suspected for some time: that he came to believe that Objectivism was flawed and so ceased being an orthodox advocate of Rand’s philosophy.
Not really surprising, but thanks Alan, for fueling the latest bust in a run-away neoliberal capitalist dream we’ve all been participating in as of late.
It is the unabashed realm of the conservative media to engage in hyperbole about issues that effect things they care about. The whole climategate nonsense is a perfect example of what happens when commentators who, being short on brain but long on wind, get a hold of a story and spin it to meet their own particular agenda.
The hacked emails from CRU seems to be the holy tinfoil jesus for climate change denialists, finally proving that it was all a lie and a hoax. Keep in mind these are some of the people that also believe that a rapture is coming and need to prepare for the coming of their lord and high-douchbag – jebus himself.
Predictably, when actual rational people look into things the picture is much different. The data in question does not contradict the last 30 years of evidence based climatological research. There is no grand conspiracy, no deliberate hoax; just much partisan grandiloquent bloviatation from ignorant people.
Thunderfoot does his usual impeccable job of describing the situation and illustrating how thick the tinfoil is for some people. Enjoy the video.
Update: More information on the ‘debate’ here and here.
Second Update June 2010 – The media admits it was wrong and prints a retraction.
Ladies and Gentlemen! Here for your enlightenment, a champion of truth and master of wit. I present to you Mr Pat Condell!
I had a tough time picking which of his movies to link, so I must encourage you to watch as many of them as you can. It is definitely worth your while. Peace.
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephan Harper went to China. Fascinatingly enough it was to encourage economic relations between Canada and China. Previous relations have been described as cool as Canada has been pushing the issue of China’s human rights record, dampening Chinese enthusiasm toward our diplomatic and economic overtures.
I’d like to do a little comparison of similar dealings with China and our plucky PM. 2006 and 2009.
In 2006 our benevolent leader said:
“Prime Minister Stephen Harper says his government will not abandon “important Canadian values” by toning down criticisms of China’s human rights record to improve trade relations with Beijing.”
In 2009 Harper said:
“Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday his government would not let the pursuit of expanded economic ties with China lead to silence on human rights issues.”
Okay well, I’ve seen our PM say less auspicious things, so really we are still in ‘win territory’ here.
“Canada-China relations have been frosty since Harper became prime minister in 2006, particularly because of his past comments on China’s human rights record and his public support of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader who has been living in exile since China annexed the region in 1958.”
Showing ethical backbone is so unlike our PM. Time in power will often fix that:
“The Conservative government has backed off in the last year from publicly chiding China, opting instead for more quiet diplomacy, a recognition of China’s growing importance as an economic power.”
There we go, dilemma resolved! We simple will not discuss human rights anymore to any significant degree. Why? Because we can make some money! And as we all know, economics trumps morality.
“They [Harper on Canadian’s preferences] don’t want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar.”
Huh. It is almost like in 2006 when the stability of the minority government was in question it made political sense to at least make noise about caring for human rights. Now in 2009 we get the ‘realistic and pragmatic’ conservative version of enlightening Canadian foreign policy:
Thursday’s statement only briefly mentioned the issue of human rights, saying the two sides agreed they had “distinct points of view.”
Checkmate human-rights. Although our point of view is getting much closer to China’s every day.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…