On a lighter note

Check this one out -- The year in pictures
Lots of stuff for news junkies, cat bloggers, extreme weather junkies and everyone else.

It's ba-a-a-ak!

Five killed by Vietnam War shell
And what do you think of this little factoid at the end of the story - "Since the U.S.-led Vietnam War ended, nearly 40,000 Vietnamese have been killed by leftover ordnance."

It makes the world go 'round

Isn't this a sad start to Christmas -- Lottery Winner's Granddaughter Is Buried. And there was a story this week in the Saskatoon paper about a $3 million lottery winner in MooseJaw who is broke three years later.
Now I, on the other hand, would make an excellent lottery winner! I would know how to handle it all -- fame, success, money, and all that. So why haven't I ever won? Inquiring minds want to know.

Merry Christmas!

And an especially merry christmas to readers of this blog, who have given me information, insight and laughter (you know who you are, Frog!). Thank you for making my life richer.
I was searching for "good news" headlines to blog about this Christmas eve. Amid all the reports ot carnage in Mosul and massacre in Honduras and travellers buried in snow and found this -- Paper Prints Only Good News in Christmas Issue Well, I guess Christmas comes but once a year!

Fake tree but real bugs

Well, we thought about getting an artificial tree this year, but went with the real one again. Now, aren't I glad that we did -- Oh, Christmas tree!

WTF?

What is the matter with this man? Williams declares flag war over equalization payments
So Newfoundland has been a have-not province for years, meaning it got equalization money from Ontario and BC, and now that it has the potential of becoming a "have" province, the rest of the country is just supposed to go F--- itself? Is that what Newfoundland is telling us all? Well, you know the reply to that one, don't you!

Looking for America

When I read this post at Seeing The Forest I was reminded of Paul Simon's America, written in 1968:
America
by Paul Simon
Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies
And walked off to look for America
Cathy, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America
Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said be careful his bowtie is really a camera
Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat
We smoked the last one an hour ago
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field
Cathy, I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America

I'm not sure why I made this connection -- perhaps both are basically some sort of plea that America needs to live up to the best in itself, rather than the worst.

Talking sense about Iraq

A sensible report - What Can the U.S. Do in Iraq? International Crisis Group - with realistic observations and recommendations: "In Iraq, the U.S. is engaged in a war it already may have lost while losing sight of a struggle in which it still may have time to prevail. Its initial objective was to turn Iraq into a model for the region: a democratic, secular and free-market oriented government, sympathetic to U.S. interests, not openly hostile toward Israel, and possibly home to long-term American military bases. But hostility toward the U.S. and suspicion of its intentions among large numbers of Iraqis have progressed so far that this is virtually out of reach. More than that, the pursuit has become an obstacle to realisation of the most essential, achievable goal -- a stable government viewed by its people as credible, representative and the embodiment of national interests as well as capable of addressing their basic needs."
So what are the chances that anyone in the US government will listen?

Arar as Everyman

Peace, order and good government, eh? describes why the Arar case is so important for all Canadians -- "If it can happen to Maher Arar, it can happen to any of us. Certainly his religion and ethnic background made him a more likely target, but if the treatment he received remains even remotely acceptable, if it's seen as even remotely "normal", it increases the odds that it can happen to me. Or you. That's why this story is so important."

A "cultural choice" world

This post about China and India, on the road to surfdom blog, reminded me about something I had wanted to comment on last week.
CBC National News ran a couple of terrific stories in their Road Stories series, about multiculturalism in Vancouver. The city is beyond multiculturalism, really, moving toward a new "cultural choice" world that should be the model for us all.
First, there was the woman who described her boyfriend as half-Irish, just like she was. Her other half was Scottish; his other half was Chinese. She said her parents weren't happy about the relationship, refusing to be molified by the Irish connection -- an attitude she and all her friends did not comprehend at all.
Then there was the Chinese Canadian restauranteur Todd Wong, who runs the largest Chinese restaurant in the Lower Mainland (something like 500 seats). Every year for the last several years he has hosted a traditional 12-course Chinese feast -- in honour of Robbie Burns Day. And his trio entertains the crowd -- Wong himself (who says his nickname now is Toddish McWong) plays the accordian wearing his kilt, while the East Indian band member plays sitar and the Scottish band member plays the pipes, I think, or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, its terrific!

Not "what choice?" but "whose choice?"

With all of the discussion now about abortion and whether US democrats should be for it or against it, I wanted to do a post about what 'pro-choice" actually means.
I think a lot of people have forgotten -- the basic question is "whose choice is it?" not "what choice should be made?"
In Canada after 1969 it wasn't illegal to HAVE an abortion; rather, it was illegal for a doctor to PERFORM an abortion outside a hospital, without permission of a committee of doctors. In other words, it was the doctors' choice whether an abortion procedure was permitted or not. In 1988, our Supreme Court found this abortion law unconstitutional because it violated women's civil rights.
Ever since, it has been the woman's choice whether to have an abortion or not. Here, as in the United States, the Christian Right can disagree with a woman's decision to have an abortion, but its her choice to have it, not theirs. Even countries which still outlaw abortion usually have a "life or health of the mother" exception, which again makes the question "whose choice" rather than "what choice".
And that is still the issue. The so-called abortion issue is not whether abortion is moral or immoral. The issue is whether a woman has the right to make HER OWN DECISION, based on her own morality, about having an abortion, or whether a committee of doctors makes the decision for her.
Now in the United States, people keep saying that an anti-abortion Supreme Court would someday "make abortion illegal" again. But the Supreme Court cannot do this -- it can overturn Roe V Wade only by waiting for a state to pass an anti-abortion law, then supporting that law when it is appealed to them. I think it is unlikely that even an anti-abortion Supreme Court would support a draconian state law which simply bans abortion completely, thereby denying life-saving medical care to a woman whose pregnancy is killing her -- the Christian Right wouldn't like it, but chances are no state legislature would be able to pass such a restrictive law anyway. More likely, the Supremes would overturn Roe V Wade by supporting a law that restricted abortions unless a committee of doctors thought abortion was necessary to protect the life and/or health of the mother, or when the pregnancy resulted from rape.
So once again, we would be back to the committee decision, back to the "whose choice is it?" issue. Women who decided to seek an abortion would again be in a situation where a committee of doctors would be making the choice for her, evaluating whether her case to have an abortion was good enough.
Planned Parenthood defines pro-choice this way: "To be pro-choice is to believe that a woman has the right to decide for herself when and whether to have a child. It means believing that a woman can make that decision on her own, based on her personal beliefs, health, and life-circumstances, without government interference."
I agree.

Do you believe in magic?

Here's a random thought -- there are, I think, something like 4 billion people in the world now and, for 90 per cent of them or more, this story is absolutely and utterly incomprehensible -- Rice University Computer Scientists Find a Flaw in Google's New Desktop Search Program
Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark once said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

42 days

Iraq election has monitors worried reports on an secret international meeting involving Canada, Latin America, Europe and Middle Eastern states, held in Ottawa this weekend, trying to pull America's fat out of the fire by figuring out how to organize the Iraq vote -- which is supposed to happen in just 42 days.
Media weren't supposed to know about the meeting, apparently, and no results were announced. But I'll bet they spent the first half-day just venting steam at the Americans for getting us all into this mess. The world has been saying "you broke it, you fix it" to the Americans for the last year, but it has now become embarassingly clear that America is utterly incapable of fixing anything in Iraq, nor even of electing a president who could have turned things around. So the world now feels it has no choice, I think, except to step up to the plate and try to salvage this shattered country.
Liberal house leader Tony Valeri is quoted as saying "We may in fact send people to Iraq. But it certainly needs to be safe, and we need to ensure that Canadians are protected.”
Oh, come on -- there is no safety in Iraq for anyone who is perceived to be on the American "side" there. If we do send people there, they will be risking their lives to witness their faith in democracy, for the chance that our being there will somehow make things a little better for the suffering Iraqi people.
I can admire their courage, while cursing the stupidity that created the need for it.

From the "wouldn't touch them wirh a ten foot pole" department

comes this story (thanks to Antiwar for the link) Agencies warn Bush that U.S. isn't defeating Iraq insurgents, which ends thusly ". . . a vital effort to woo Sunnis... hasn't borne fruit. 'It all boils down to the aura of the former regime. I think there are a lot of people sitting on the fence. They don't want to be seen as collaborating,' one defense official said. "
Or maybe they just don't want to . . you know . . . actually collaborate? Did anyone think of that?

Saving America once again

Well, I think I have finally figured out why the Bush administration is hell-bent-for-leather on destroying Social Security while simultaneously driving up US federal deficits to unsustainable levels -- they want to Save America!
"Saving America" has been a constant Republican/Christian Right refrain for the last two decades -- on issues as diverse as abortion-on-demand, Hollywood movies, gay marriage, charter schools, government bureaucracy, civil liberties, judicial appointments, foreign aid, and job creation, the Republicans have been convinced since the early 1990s that America is going to hell unless 'something is done'. It must be stopped! American values must prevail!
And the fact that economic prosperity and social progress highlighted Clinton's administration, after the higher crime rates and wars and economic depressions during the Reagan and HW administrations, really infuriated Republicans -- how could it be that things were getting better under the Democrats? No, no - things were WORSE, WORSE I TELL YOU. Any right-wing radio host could chatter endlessly during the 1990s about how awful things were, how America was endangered and declining and immoral.
But after George was elected, objective reality intruded again -- the American economy went into recession, giant companies like Enron disintegrated, terrorists launched the most horrific attack in American history, jobs disappeared as manufacturing went overseas -- and things continued to decline, got worse even, after the Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress.
How could this be, that things were getting worse under the Republican watch? So they had to find things to fix, to Save America.
I have written before about the Republican tendency to think there are Magic Bullets -- its a human tendency, really, to believe there is one noble action or policy which will, when aimed at a problem, solve it easily and magically in a single stroke, making everything better all at once, without any need for further effort or focus or incremental steps.
So they passed massive expensive legislation -- No Child Left Behind, Medicare prescription drug benefits -- to save American schools and health care, and they promoted massive expensive wars -- Afghanistan, Iraq -- to save American democracy and bring peace to the world, and they ran up enormous expensive deficits to fund congressional pet projects across the country, and their social programs consist of one single act - the gay marriage ammendment - which somehow singlehandedly will save American morality and society. They even began to reject objective reality itself, promoting "faith-based" reality in which things were BETTER, BETTER I TELL YOU, regardless of the evidence.
So now here is Social Security, the most successful social program in American history. Democrats keep saying that Social Security doesn't need much fixing, that its basically OK for the next 40 years anyway, and that small-scale tweaks will keep it going after that. But for Republicans, that isn't good enough. The next Magic Bullet must be fired, and Social Security is in the cross-hairs. Democrats won't be able to stop it -- the Republicans are just too excited about it, too enamoured of another big, complicated, massive piece of legislation that will give them lots of ways to pontificate and to add more pork. And they are utterly convinced that destroying Social Security is their new opportunity to Save America!