The night is coming?

Via Kos comes this article: Realists Rebuffed: A vulgarized neconservatism in the saddle Author Scott Campbell describes what is happening in America today --
"[We are] setting in full motion of an aggressive, reckless, militarized foreign policy, viewed as lawless by much of the world -- one whose almost inevitable outcome is nuclear war. While Pinochet and Franco and for most of his reign Stalin kept within their own borders, Bush has ambitions of global scope. Of course they are idealistic ambitions, beautiful ambitions. The spread of democracy -- especially if it springs up from a country's indigenous institutions and populace -- is a very good thing. But the Bushites now see democracy's spread as necessary for America's own survival. The world, particularly the Muslim world, must become democratic now, or we will perish. The neoconservatives in the administration believe that democracy will spread only if the president commits more and more troops to Iraq and topples the regimes in Tehran and Damascus. As alarming as the neoconservatism of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Danielle Pletka, and John Bolton is, more alarming is the spirit that has spread in its wake -- a kind of neoconservativism without a graduate degree. You see it on certain blogs and hear it in the rants of some of the most widely listened to right-wing talk-radio hosts. If the Arabs don't want to be democratic, we should nuke them. We have no choice but to nuke them for our own safety. It's a vulgarized neoconservatism -- no one from the American Enterprise Institute speaks like this (in public). But this talk is around in the heartland and growing, and it is wind in the sails of the new administration . . . How has the country changed? Two years ago, when National Review editor Rich Lowry said that an appropriate response to a WMD attack on the United States might be to nuke Mecca, there was a fair amount of outrage. But Lowry, recall, was imagining how the United States might respond to a massive terrorist attack. Now the American airwaves and blogosphere are rife calls to nuke those whom military invasion couldn’t turn into democrats."
I've noticed these horrifying comments on right-wing blogs, too, and didn't know what to make of them or how widespread this had become.
The same thing happened in Vietnam, if anyone can remember. I credit the Vietnam anti-nwar demonstrators, including John Kerry, for forcing an end to that unwinnable war before the US reached such a point of desperation that they would use nuclear weapons to try to win it -- there were also, in those days, some calls of "Nuke Hanoi" and "what else is the bomb for?" but the anti-war movement overwhelmed them.
If Iraq is Vietnam on crack, I am worried that we don't have enough time anymore to stop Bush.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Blog, blog against the dying of the light.

2004 Canadian Blog Awards

2004 Canadian Blog Awards Vote for your favourite Canadian blog here (and no, I'm not listed -- oh well, maybe next year)
Its worth checking just to find out about some great blogs, whether you vote or not.
UPDATE: Sorry - the link above is the wrong site. Here is the correct one for voting: Canadian Blog Awards voting site.

Family disaster plan

The news from Asia is devastating - 14,000 dead now, and rising.
We owe it to ourselves and our families to have our own Family Disaster Plan. Now, Saskatoon is not a particularly disaster-prone area -- we almost never get summer or winter storms bad enough to even close the airport, for example, much less lose our electrical power, and we are far away from earthquake zones -- but its still worthwhile to consider possible problems and plan for them. The website I linked to above has a number of good ideas -- its more comprehensive than the Red Cross guide (pdf).

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."