And Now, in Braille for the Blind

Somebody's idiot nephew has let the side down again! 

Just when we should be celebrating a breeze of refreshment in the ranks of the Tory carcass, on outing of the old guard and an inning of the new, it comes to light that there is another incident of 'ovum on the puss' by way of, well, maybe just trying too  darn hard. You try to get the word out to people about all the good things being done unto them and golly-gee whillickers if it's not some ungrateful spending watchdog, or yer friends over at the Maine Railroad, it's somebody getting the word out to the blind by using a picture of braille script to do it. Not that the blind give a shit about make-work programs anyway.

In Tory circles it's what's called an "honest mistake", eh? Especially if the handouts are distributed by 'busy fellas' like the 'Big Mouth' Johnny Baird, or his fat friend Dean 'the wiener' Del Mastro, or by one of the newly-deputized cabinet like Shelly Glover. You can bet yer bippy there are a few million more bailed-up, ready for free postal delivery, by the lesser lights of Torydom, now presently sucking-up beverages at their cottages. Let's see how effective the machine is at stopping the distribution.

 Some summer vacation. That tool,(in retrospect), that Harpo the Great appointed to keep an eye on government spending (after he canned the old, outdated Liberal edition) has the moxie to go to court and the press and tell them he has to apply for government spending information they same way all the other idiots do, through freedom of information requests. There's some transparency for ya.

Meanwhile over at Megantic, the little 'sheener' who showed up to suck his teeth and wring his hands and 'promise' to 'be there' for the mess his railroad cars made when they exploded, has now taken his pension to suck-up some beverages at his cottage. This leaves the town of Megantic the object of a round of lawsuits between the railroad and its insurers who are both refusing to cover the costs of clean-up. That's starting to look like something the 'people of Canada', will be doing to 'bail-out' a couple of 'vital' services - and clean up an unsightly mess of course.

That's the least the Tories could do for their 'investing' pals,  having already agreed with them that running a one-man train full of volatiles was a reasonable, cost-saving idea.

Not to be outdone at covering a fat fanny, immigration minister Jay Kenney took some pains to remove his speaking notes for a talk he delivered  recently to a  Muslim group. Nobody told him what 'Allahu Akbar' meant - he thought he was saying, 'hello'. Maybe it wasn't that dumb, or up there with Bushco's 'Mission Accomplished' but, if he said it, why not leave it up for non-muslims to read. Where there's redacting, there's covering-up.

Summer's half over which means there are only another three months of the legislators' summer break left. The ship of state sails on, however, and the captain still mans the helm - even if he is sucking up some beverages at the government cottage, too.

We can all rest assured that somebody's idiot nephew/summer intern, won't be getting a hold of the tiller.

What's Up in the Rez?

Canada's failed residential schools system for aboriginal peoples is back in the news with a bullet. Just in time to kick start lagging truck sales, it has just been announced that, along with abusing native kids and committing cultural genocide, dooming hundreds of thousands of them and their 'rellies' to lives blighted by abuse and failures to thrive, the University of Guelph has just discovered the government of Canada was using some of them to perform diet experiments.

Right there along with the story was a photo of Elsa the Beast of Belsen, newly immigrated to Canada no doubt, drawing blood from some poor native lad.

Needless to say, there are the beginnings of the sallying forth of the abused, " I never did get enough of that gruel, Ollie."

Being starved is something that you might think was a topic for the 'truth and reconciliation' panel, eh? Like how can you have truth and reconciliation if the government is hiding the results of medical experiments using Indians as guinea pigs. Frank Fontaine and other native leaders weren't long off the mark with cries of genocide. One ex-inmate claimed, "They never did treat me like a human being."

I thought the cash settlement, official government apology and more money splashed into 'programs' to help people come to terms with this stuff, was supposed to have put the matter to rest. Obviously not.

Not if there's a chance to reopen the hearings and work out another deal. Those trucks from last time will be ancient by now. And the dealers have to have been thirsty after that long-ago banquet of gratuitous sales. "Drive 'er away to-day and we'll settle-up when the cheque gets cut. Better still why wait, I'll give ya three quarters of the value if you sign your cheque over to me to-day."

Why would Canada's Indians ever want the government to "give the place" back to them? The government keeps on buying and re-buying it. It's a gift that keeps on giving, a bottomless bank account that's done nobody much good.

Watch this issue being fought out between the 'new wave' and the 'old guard'  of  the aboriginal people. With a bit of luck, Harpo the Magnificent can split the difference and stay the course.

Little Girls at School

College Blues


What a lousy way to have to start your 'college life experience'. As if post-secondary education wasn't hard enough, with dorms and dorm-mates and classes and study and all  that stuff. And choosing a career path and getting good grades and things. But now, having to be faced on campus, for the first time, by lying liars who lie. Not only lying liars who lie, but lying liars who lie and are aided and abetted by liberal Deans and Boards of Governors and college administrations. And even if you do 'name them' and 'call them' on their lies, it won't matter, they'll just go on lying  because they're haters, too. And haters just hate and that's why they  lie.

Got it?  A career in liberal arts is going to do this gal an awful lot of good. One day she might run a library, or teach a class of kids, or shoulder a weapon and fight for her country. But it's highly unlikely she'll ever stop to ask why?

Why do haters hate - is that genetic? Why do liars lie?  Is that the result of nature, or nurture? Why don't people see the same incident from the same perspective and what makes the difference?

Is truth absolute? Or is our 'truth' coloured by experience and emotion? Is our truth more valid than someone else's? If this gal graduates college thinking about this stuff she'll be on her way to an open mind.

As it is, she's had the benefit of a 'planned' holiday in Israel. It's obvious the 'plan' worked. She's learned that Israel's new Eden is threatened by evildoers who don't want it to exist. And they're here in America telling their side of her story - and she doesn't want to hear it - more than that, she doesn't want them to say it.

Sadly,  there is a significant part of the population of North America to-day, perhaps even the world, who reason like the gal above. For them 'truth' is relative ... to them and to how they feel. They are the ultimate arbiters of their own existence. And it follows that they filter all their relationships through that sieve. As St. Matthew so simplistically quoted the Son of God, "You are with me, or you are against me."

With a subtle difference that they 'can't be with' the Son of God and adhere to this philosophy of a subjective truth. They, in setting themselves up as 'God', omit a good number of admonitions and caveats about 'doing unto others' and judging and forgiveness. But this isn't about religion, and being told what to do by somebody else is so passe.

Moral relativism is the norm in societal behaviour these days. Looking out for number one is considered 'smart'. And looking out for somebody else usually means an opportunity for some forward-thinking entrepreneur to take some advantage. In fact there's a whole economy predicated on it.

Disasters are such opportunities. And there are such an increasing number of these in the news that a pattern is developing in how they're handled.

The first stage is awareness. The news media goes out of its way to 'cover' the story 24/7 for a week or so (unless something else more newsworthy appears) pity the disaster that happened during the OJ trial for instance - aside from the Oklahoma City Bombing it was more than likely a blip. After that comes the mobilization of resources. Usually local resources are the first involved - neighbors with needed equipment or facilities pitch-in to help. In many places this is where it stops - the locals are on their own. In more civilized places regional assistance is available and various governmental levels have assistance to provide. In some places NGOs are available to assist - some 'in country' and often some international services. Foreign governments often assist by sending aid, manpower or equipment. But eventually 'private enterprise' shows up, looking for opportunities to make money.

In some sad cases that 'money making opportunity' starts well up the timeline of assistance. Helpful neighbors are often willing to help whoever can pay them the most.  And 'security' forces are often the first assistance to arrive on scene, to protect private property. Looting is a real problem at times of emergency, but rather than use security to try to ensure equitable distribution of something that will be lost anyway - and pre-planning for that - people get killed by security protecting the property of absent owners. That's probably the worst thing about disasters. Because we often can't see them coming before it's too late, we generally haven't given much thought to avoiding them or coping better with them. We - all of us - certainly don't practice enough.

Disaster has engendered an insurance industry. Whether the disaster is personal or domestic, self-caused or the result of an interaction with another person or thing, insurance sells. Predicated on the notion that not everybody is going to have bad things (claimable events) happen to them, and that, provided you can get and use their money to develop resources and assets,  a company can take 'risk' in order to generate a profit. This might have started as betting on whether or not a 17th century trading vessel was going to make it back to port but it was soon realized that spreading the risk of loss among a number of  ' investors', for a price was good business. Shares could be repaid if the venture was successful, and those shares meant that failure wasn't a total loss. That notion spread to property and eventually to life and longevity, to health, to body parts - some famous - to, in our age, insuring banks against bad loans.

Insurance helps, if you have it. But it doesn't eliminate disaster. You can't buy insurance that will cover you if you're fortunate enough to go to college, or that will pay your way into a good university. There are some kinds of investments that you can buy that will assist - sort of an EIF. But they don't guarantee a tranquil education. And that's the truth.

Guessnocentric Learning

The Toronto School Board has decided that one way to stop young black men from shooting each other at school would be to get them all to stay in one school together and teach them an 'Afrocentric ' view of the world. And so the Board is preparing to launch its first all-black educational institution.

Not that there's anything wrong with exclusive educational institutions - the rich have had them for years. Some religious groups and organizations, too. Just look at the Army - although 2 military colleges have bitten the bullet. An all-black school might be just what's needed.

But if the bone-headed dopiness displayed by an overjoyed Director of Education is any indication, the school curriculum might be in for an interesting slant on reality. Didn't the head honcha of the Board go all deep when she gleefully reminded the media that 'eurocentric' history wasn't the only kind. Take those Spaniards who 'discovered the new world', the conquest was different from the Indians' point of view she gushed. As if the Indian point of view, if we could figure it out at a distance of 3 centuries, would change a single fact of that history. And as if any sort of school history textbook to-day would relate that story in the words of only Hernan Cortes, and not mention anything about the peoples he encountered. Bottom line, they do help kids understand what happened by looking at events from different perspectives. At the black school they might concentrate on telling the story perhaps featuring one of the Moriscos present, but once again the 'history' would be the same. Something tells me it wouldn't stop Jar-vhonn from bringing his shooter to school if he was feeling dissed, or quitting to lie-in late if his momma let him.

To be rednecked about it, letting the black kids all go to their own school might eliminate some of the racial bumpff that does on in some of the others. But next I can hear the Moslem kids starting to agitate for their schools too. A math school for Chinese, East Indian schools, Canadian Indian schools - the French already have theirs. And that should leave the polyglot Euroschools that did such a fine job of turning 'euros' into Canadians.

And what about the 'wanna-bees'? Those white kids with the baggy trouz who wantz to be bruth-ahz. Who knowz the rap and wearz da colahz? Like the M&M copyist from the Trailer Park Boys, any 'euro' who wishes may apply for the black academy. But admittance is to be determined by space availability. Now whitey will get to know what it's like at the end of the line and the back of the bus.