Climbing Everest

Hockey night on Mt. Everest
Ever since I read Into Thin Air I have been fascinated with the annual Everest expeditions. They begin each year in March, when the climbers arrive at the base of the mountain. They work their way up the Everest base camps throughout April and into May, gradually acclimatizing to the altitude, the cold, and the lack of oxygen. The one-day push to the summit from the fourth base camp usually happens sometime between May 5 to 25, depending on weather. A number of the expeditions now run websites which are compelling to check, particularly as the climbers ready themselves for the last day, the climb to the top -- by then, the climbers are close to their limit in managing at these altitudes, with some of the trickiest climbing just a few meters from the top.
This year's Canadian expedition aims to play hockey on the Khumbu glacier -- the Sherpas will undoubtedly view the whole thing as just another example of Western madness. Hey, maybe this is where they can award the Stanley Cup this year!
Here is the glacier where they will be playing:

Everest is the mountain on the left. See here for other Everest photos.

Meaningless positioning

Anti-Abortion Dem. to Seek Pa. Nomination
You know, I get a kick out of headlines like this.
The only thing worthy of note about this man, apparently, is that he is anti-abortion and a Democrat.
And his being anti-abortion, in this particular electoral office, is virtually meaningless -- what power has any Senator ever had to outlaw abortion? None, really. Yes, they passed some kind of late term abortion law a couple of years ago, but wasn't it overturned?
Anyway, what gives me a chuckle is how often politicians run on, or get publicity about, policies about which they can do nothing.
Its like a rural alderman running on a platform of relieving taxpayers from education taxes -- easy to say this, considering that municipal governments have nothing to do with how the schools are managed.
Or a provincial politician running on a platform of changing the equalization formula -- this is a federal formula, not a provincial one, so provincial MLAs can't really promise to do anything about it.
Or a federal politician saying he will make sure new highways are built in the constituency -- again, this is a provincial matter and all the feds can do is give provinces some money and hope they might use it to improve a particular highway.
But politicians won't stop doing this kind of thing until their public draws them up short, and says -- hey, tell me what you CAN do something about, instead of pandering to me about policies that you are powerless to implement.

Has he got a deal for you!

From The Hill, via MyDD.

Changing feet

POGGE points to this Paul Wells post Why doesn't Frank McKenna resign?
McKenna seems to open his mouth only to change feet.
So what's he going to say next? Let's have a contest!
Will he sympathize with the US about the recent WTO ruling on their cotton subsidies by telling them how we subsidize our lumber even more?
Or maybe he'll start talking about how Canadians appreciate the US for letting us fight with them in Afghanistan even though our soldiers aren't really doing anything important.
Or maybe he will entangle us in the red state/blue state thing by telling Americans how Canadians only enjoy visiting the blue states.
Or maybe he will talk about how important it is for Canada to keep its Muslim citizens out of sight and away from the border, so the Americans don't get pissed off.
Gee, there's just so many things he could say, aren't there . . . stay tuned.

You ain't seen nu-nu-nuthin yet

Winnipeg Sun: Way to go, rock fans Every time we watch a show on CTV now, we are deluged with ads for the Junos. Why I don't know, because there are no tickets left, and its still weeks away -- my son says its because the ads for a Canadian TV show also count as "Canadian content" in the CRTC rules -- can this be true?
Anyway, every time I saw a Juno ad about some star who would be performing, all I could think of was how stupid the Juno organizers were -- making such a big deal about holding this event in Winnipeg, and then not inviting Randy Bachman or Burton Cummings to perform, the people who put Winnipeg on the map musically. We've seen both Bachman and Cummings do shows over the years, and they are both terrific performers, too.
So now, though still with obvious bad grace, the Junos have caved -- Bachman and Cummings will perform.
And they will blow everyone away.
Perhaps the reason the Juno organizers didn't want them was exactly that -- they are so good, they will show up the award-winners!

Tragedy with a gun

Police Probe Mountie Killings As Canada Mourns
Its been over a century since four Mounties were killed in a single incident.
I am sad for them and their families and coworkers, of course, but also for the town. We visited some friends in Mayerthorpe a few years ago. -- they were so happy there, so proud of the town in which they had built their life and raised their children - showing off the town swimming pool, their store, their comfortable house. Now, the whole town has this tragedy to deal with. But they are strong, and they will heal.

One simple-minded atrocity at a time

Digby's piece Kill Chill talks about the broader implications of the Afghan prisoner who was left to freeze to death --

There are many, many questionable deaths and not in the field of battle. Junior's ill advised edict to "take the gloves off" resulted in unknown numbers of innocent or only mariginally involved people being killed, tortured and imprisoned. It seems that every day new evidence emerges that troops were ordered to behave like animals in the pursuit of this enemy and for no real purpose except indulging a barbaric bloodlust.

The justification for this barbarity is a self-indulgent and self-serving perception of 9/11, resulting in panic and hysteria.

. . . the overarching theme of abject panic at the threat of 'Islamofascism' applies to all aspects of the Republican approach to the 'GWOT.' From the minute the WTC was attacked their immediate response was to say that this threat is completely unprecedented. Therefore there are absolutely no limits to how much pain and suffering we are allowed to inflict and no limit to the freedoms we are allowed to restrict because this is the worst thing that ever happened to any nation or people in the history of the world. And anyone who doesn't agree is nothing more than a treasonous girly man. The only problem is, it just isn't true. These guys were nothing but quivering hysterical panic artists. Why they are considered to be such tough guys, I will never know. Grace under pressure certainly isn't their strong suit, that's for sure.
The damage they have done to this country's sense of itself as a moral force for good, however, cannot be papered over with soaring speeches about freedom and liberty. Leaving that naked prisoner (so many naked prisoners!) to die of the cold that night is just one of the many ways in which these puerile egotists sold this country down the river one simple minded atrocity at a time.

She's out

Yahoo! News - Martha Stewart Leaves Federal Prison
And I am glad.
The Stewart conviction was a miscarriage of justice -- the jurors seemed to think they were striking some kind of blow against the rich by finding her guilty, though the evidence of her guilt just wasn't there. I admire her for sucking it up and doing the time. She'll be back on top pretty soon.

It's the Charter, Stupid

Young Liberals push gay marriage
I like their slogan -- it makes the right point.

He did it!

I've been following this story for the past two days. Steve Fossett is described in the news stories as a "millionaire adventurer" -- what a life this would be!
If I had a million dollars . . .

Excommunicate this!

Yahoo! News - Bishop Calls for PM's Excommunication
So, excommunicate him.
But if you do, Mr. Bishop, then you also have to excommunicate:
All the Catholics who have ever been divorced.
And all the Catholics who have ever used birth control.
And all the Catholic women who have ever had an abortion.
And all the Catholic doctors who have ever prescribed birth control for a patient.
And all the Catholic pharmacists who have ever dispensed birth control.
And all the gays.
And all the Catholics who fought in the Iraq War.
And all the Catholic politicians worldwide who voted in favour of it. I think there may have been several in Italy, and in Spain. . .
Shall we continue?

War Crimes R Us

CIA Avoids Scrutiny of Detainee Treatment (washingtonpost.com)
Well, maybe the Washington Post can shame the Republican senators into investigating this kind of stuff:

"In November 2002, a newly minted CIA case officer in charge of a secret prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets, according to four U.S. government officials aware of the case. The Afghan guards -- paid by the CIA and working under CIA supervision in an abandoned warehouse code-named the Salt Pit -- dragged their captive around on the concrete floor, bruising and scraping his skin, before putting him in his cell, two of the officials said.
As night fell, so, predictably, did the temperature.
By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death.
After a quick autopsy by a CIA medic -- "hypothermia" was listed as the cause of death -- the guards buried the Afghan, who was in his twenties, in an unmarked, unacknowledged cemetery used by Afghan forces, officials said. The captive's family has never been notified; his remains have never been returned for burial. He is on no one's registry of captives, not even as a "ghost detainee," the term for CIA captives held in military prisons but not registered on the books, they said. "He just disappeared from the face of the earth," said one U.S. government official with knowledge of the case."

Or maybe not -- after all, they're awfully busy passing bills to make it harder for people bankrupted by medical costs to declare bankruptcy, and trying to sell the destruction of their social security system to a skeptical public. They don't really have the time or the interest to investigate what their own employees are doing in the name of the United States government.
As the stories continue to emerge, it becomes clearer exactly WHY the CIA wanted then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to give them legal cover for torture. And why Bush pulled the US out of the International Court in December of 2002.

So why are we surprised?

CANOE -- CNEWS - Canada: Canadian beef producers 'devastated' by latest mad cow setback: "Canada's beef producers were stunned Wednesday by yet another setback as an American judge agreed to postpone the opening of the U.S. border to live cattle due to continuing fears about mad cow disease. 'It's a disaster for our industry again,' feedlot operator Rick Paskal said"
So that tears it -- we can, I think, count on at least six more months before the border opens, if then. The Montana cattlemen will keep fighting this in every court they can find, as long as they can -- and when they're done, maybe some cattlemen in North Dakota will start running to court, or Washington State.
And why is this so surprising to the cattle industry here? I said back in January that we could likely expect US politicians to seize on the new BSE cases to keep the border closed.

Its about time

The Globe and Mail: Zundel deported, on way to Germany. He's gone, and he's not coming back. And its about time. When trolling through some of the US right-wing white supremist sites a few weeks ago, I was amazed to realize how the Zundel case is viewed as some sort of international cause celebre. Creepy.

Pit bulls are a risk that society no longer wants to take

The Globe and Mail: Ontario bans pit bulls
My sister and I have had lots of arguments about this kind of legislation. She is a dog trainer who has an almost magical ability to work with dogs, and with their owners -- she know a lot about how dogs think, so she can often figure out some way that an owner can deal with dog misbehaviour, or just dog annoying behaviour, and she does a number of individual consultations with owners who are at their wits end in dealing with a doggy problem. Anyway, she disagrees with anti-breed legislation, saying it is the owners that are the problem not the dogs.
Pitbulls are not the only dangerous breed around -- shepards, spaniels, labs, dobermanns, rotweilers, can be abused and can become untrustworthy. We own two yellow labs, and I know how strong these dogs are -- if they wanted to take off, I would not be capable of holding them back physically. But they are good dogs to work with, and they listen to us -- and we have trained them for bite inhibition, which all owners of dogs in a city should do.
And we have also gone through the agony, a few years ago, of putting a dog to sleep which we had got from the SPCA, which turned out to be so emotionally damaged by his previous life as to be untrustworthy around children.
But pitbulls have a tenacity in fighting that most other breeds do not have, and also seem to be the dog of choice for the worst owners. While I agree it is the owners that are the problem, I feel that society can no longer take the risk with strong, potentially violent breeds like pitbulls -- the consequences of bad ownership are too horrific.
If a bad owner owns a dashund or a toy poodle, well, so what if they jump up and bite you on the kneecap?
But if a bad owner owns a pitbull, that dog can kill a child. The other benefit of this legislation is that it will stop the unprincipled breeders who are breeding and selling these dogs.
Anyway, that's what I believe. But my sister also sees the tragedy of the dogs who could be saved if they only had owners who cared.