When faux-martial artists get religion…

…you know times are weird.

As if his lame acting and faux-philosophizing aren’t enough to make it obvious, there is still more evidence that Chuck Norris is a fucking tool. This week in World Net Daily he blames the Virginia Tech shootings on those who wield the baton of the secular progressive agenda. More specifically, he blames these deviants for “teach(ing) our children they are nothing more than glorified apes” and implores us to “to return and call out to the God of our founders, Jesus Christ“. He goes on:

If we are ever to restore civility in our land and our schools, we must turn back the clocks to a time when such shocking crimes didn’t even exist – when we valued life and respected one another much more then we do today. We must use the Bible (humanity’s blueprint for life and ”bluebook” for value) to retrain our youth about theirs and others’ value as children of God, made in His image. We must each contribute to rebuild the infrastructure of our homes, schools, and society upon respect.

Deferring to current trends that require us to call all dead people “heroes”, he does that, too. Sorry Chuck, while perhaps a few of the victims sacrificed themselves for others, more than likely most of them just got shot and are simply dead. That doesn’t make them heroes, just dead, plain and simple. Dead because some psychotic jackass that should not have been able to get his hands on guns did, not because evolution is taught in schools and certainly not because we haven’t returned to some weird Biblical nirvana that would make Norman Rockwell appear hedonistic.

This from a guy that made his money by pretending to beat people up. I suspect he has suffered one or two breakfalls too many in his career and it’s beginning to show.

(h/t to Pandagon)

The new neo-con mantra regarding global climate change…

…has changed from “It’s not happening!” to “You first!”, after making a brief stop at “Human’s aren’t responsible!”.

Let me explain “You First!”. “You First!” is the notion that no one group can make an impact alone, so no one group should bother trying until every other group makes the effort. Including, but not restricted to, the group known as Canadians. This new mantra is politically powerful, because it can be used very effectively in the politics of divide-and-conquer. Ontario’s auto manufacturers can’t think about phasing out 6.3 mpg auto designs until Ontario Hydro starts phasing out coal- and oil- generated power. “You First!” Albertan energy giants can’t begin implementing CO2 sequestering technologies until the Siberian energy giants do the same. “You First!”. The Federal Canadian government can’t pass legislation to attempt to meet it’s Kyoto commitments because China and India are continuing to increase their carbon outputs. “You First!” There are numerous examples, I’m sure.

What if nobody goes first?

Jack is always Charlie Brown

and this time the role of Lucy is played by Stephane Dion, not Stephen “do you like my hair, my personal assistant knows it’s going to look good” Harper.

I read this morning that the Liberal motion to pull Canadian troops out of Afghanistan in February, 2009 went down to defeat after the NDP voted with
the Conservatives. The motion was a clever move by the Liberals, because it puts the NDP in a tight spot (see Galloping Beaver for more on this) having to either back the government or the opposition.

And Layton did what Layton does, he handled it pretty badly.

He claims he voted with the Conservatives because he wants the troops withdrawn now, not in 2009, however this looks like a simple gloss to cover his increasingly cozy relationship with the Conservatives – a relationship I’m sure borne not of ideological similarities but of fear of what will happen to the NDP, more importantly his leadership, if an election were to be called. (Not that this was not a confidence issue as written, but Harper has used the threat to force condfidence motions in the past and the Opposition has always blinked.) Layton fears that the NDP would fare quite badly in a pop election and knows that his days as leader are numbered from that point forward.

Getting played by the Liberals like this is not going to help – in the next election campaign you can be sure that the NDP’s support of the Conservative government is going to be played hard in any riding where the two leading candidates are Liberal and NDP.

It’s good to have principles, and perhaps Jack’s opposition to this war is done on principle, but somehow I doubt it. Perhaps he really thinks we should be out of there right now, but does he really think that the NDP’s 20-odd seats is going to force this? Is he planning to put forward and NDP motion to get the troops out right away and expect the Liberals and BQ to back it? I doubt that, too.

What could he have done? He could have voted with the Opposition and then said to his base, which is largely against the war, that it was the best way to get Canadian troops out in the shortest time. In short, a compromise, which is what parliamentary politics is supposed to be about.

Howard, great leader of sycophants

I caught this story yesterday while perusing the New Zealand Herald, and it continues to amaze me.  The Right Honourable Mr. John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia, thinks that the potential of “humiliating” the USA and Britain is good reason to leave his nation’s troops in the meat grinder that is Iraq.  Observe:

It would be a “colossal blow to American prestige in the Middle East and around the world” if the coalition pulled out of Iraq and appeared to have lost the war, he said.

“There is nothing in it for Australia in seeing America humiliated in the Middle East,” he told ABC Radio.

“And that’s the effect of calling for Australian withdrawal, because if it’s OK for us to go why isn’t it OK for the Americans and the British to go?“

The irony of that last statement leaves me breathless. I wonder if Howard will ever realize that he just made a great point for Australian withdrawl?

Meine Kampf – Crawford Style

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it gain: Don’t be afraid, average citizen. Be very,very afraid. This article on how to set up a facist state in The Guardian Unlimited by Naomi Wolf should be ringing alarm bells with all Americans. A disturbing number of the ten steps could be argued to be under execution here in Canada too. If its a little more gradual, and drawn out, the possibilities/ implications are no less scary.   I guess what scares me most is that I suspect Canadians of being even more complacent and apathetic than our southern cousins when it comes to opposing the Neocons’ and Neolibs’ little erosions of the social benefits and our constitutional rights our forefathers[mothers] fought for.  How many times has Tommy Douglas spun in his grave? Can he get drunk in heaven?

I was wondering…

Why Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crowe broke up. It’s all becoming clearer now.

Today’s 1000 words

We don’t need no (history) education

Ah.  Walls through the centres of cities.  They work so well at bringing people together.  And at ending sectarian violence between disparate peoples.  That must be why the occupying forces in Iraq are declaring:

The concrete wall, which will be up to 12ft high, “is one of the centrepieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence,” US officials said.

Others disagree:

Critics of the scheme said it had been tried in past counter-insurgency campaigns in Vietnam and Algeria, but found wanting.

Some Sunnis living in Adamiya have welcomed the attempt to improve security but warned that it was another sign of the deep hostility between Sunnis and Shias.

Others were sceptical about the latest initiative to staunch the bloodshed in Baghdad, which reached new heights when a series of suicide bombings killed more than 200 people in a single day this week.

“I don’t think this wall will solve the city’s serious security problems,” Ahmed Abdul-Sattar, a 35-year-old government worker, told the Associated Press. “It will only increase the separation between our people, which has been made so much worse by the war.”

Even the so-called Great Wall of China wasn’t that great at actually foiling Mongol invaders. The Israeli separation wall doesn’t seem to be stemming the violence from either side of that conflict.

Oh well. Good luck with the construction, boys. I’m sure there will be a fun parade in a few years when the locals tear it down.

NRA North?

Leave it to a Blogging Tory to suggest that the killings at Virginia Tech are “a direct result of well-meaning, but patently foolish anti-gun laws” and that the university students disappointed him by not displaying the “let’s roll” spirit and attack the gunman unarmed.

I’ll let the latter statement stand for what it is – blather from a Rambo wannabe; a classic example of the chickenhawk squeaking that I’ve come to expect from the basement weapon onanists I associate with the NRA. The kind of foolishness that comes from those that would start wars after having opted out from the actual fighting – keyboard warriors.

As for the “it wouldn’t have happened if the teachers and students were armed” bit, where do we start? How many deaths, accidental and otherwise, would be caused for every one prevented by someone having a loaded weapon on hand at the “right” time? How many accidental discharges? How many drunken fights? How many road rage incidents? In a world where idiots shoot at a sound when hunting deer and vice-presidents shoot their buddies in the face instead of aiming at the quail released from a box?

These kind of statements spring from the “an armed society is a polite society” mindset that views itself as the only “realistic” approach to survival in a mad world. Accepting that premise for a moment, all things are categorized by their threat level and all people are either friend or foe. Students and teachers, doctors and patients, everyone and everyone else, must all be armed for their own protection from the arms and intentions of others. Yeah, that’s smart.

I don’t want to live in that headspace, and the moment I do, I would like to be quickly taken out as a hazard to those around me.

What’s the buzz?

A quick lunchtime scan of Google news brought up this story:

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive’s inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London’s biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: “There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK.”

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.

It’s certainly an intriguing hypothesis as to the cause of the bee collapse. There are other, competing hypotheses.

Colony Collapse Disorder (from Wiki)

The cause (or causes) of the syndrome is not yet well understood and even the existence of this disorder remains disputed. Theories include environmental change-related stresses, malnutrition, unknown pathogens, mites, pesticides such as neonicotinoids, disease, genetically modified (GM) crops or electromagnetic radiation (such as cellular phone signals).

From 1971 to 2006 approximately half of the U.S. honey bee colonies have vanished, but this decline includes the cumulative losses from all factors such as urbanization, pesticide use, tracheal and Varroa mites and commercial beekeepers retiring and going out of business, and has been fairly gradual. Late in the year 2006 and in early 2007, however, the rate of attrition was alleged to have reached new proportions, and the term “Colony Collapse Disorder” was proposed to describe this sudden rash of disappearances.

Scary. Even scarier that we don’t really have a firm grasp of what is killing off these vital pollenators.