Chinese Olympic officials fail to control information

The fake fireworks displays and the pretty lip-syncing girl do not bother me at all. Westerners accept this all of the time. Actually, I think it is a good thing because it represents a small wedge in totalitarian power.

These fake ceremonies expose the dishonesty of Chinese statesmen whose mission of defending what is “in the national interest” as a fraud. Apart from their projected image — naive or otherwise, it makes it clear to the communist stooges that they can not control all information regardless of how much of their parasitic time is spent filtering the media and no matter how low they go.

Let’s Do The Limbo! How Low Can You Go?

This is disgusting. Or, at least, that’s what I think.

I could be wrong, though. I mean, apparently I’m a warmonger at breakfast.

American Foreign Policy: a Ruinous War?

I hardly ever comment on American politics, but I was reading a piece on running mates for Obama, and I encountered a statement that made me think for a second.

If anything, Obama has rejected this notion — arguing with vigor and conviction that Washington’s “experience” led the nation into a ruinous war in Iraq (with prominent Democrats such as Clinton, Dick Gephardt and even enthusiastic Obama supporter Jay Rockefeller backing the preemptive war).

Is it ruinous?  That word stuck out at me.  I think that Iraqis are better off now than they were under Hussein.  I think that the Middle East is less volatile today than it was.  But considering what the USA has had to deal with to achieve this: deficit spending that hasn’t been seen in years.  Huge increases in national debt.  A spread out military means they haven’t been able to respond to other things.   There’s probably lots of other things but as I said, I am no expert.

The money alone seems to me to be ruinous.  I don’t have a hate-on for Bush the way most of my liberal friends do (and even some conservatives), but I don’t think what’s been achieved in Iraq was worth the cost to America’s economy, nor to its people.  I think Afghanistan has had much more immediate results with more gains for the people of Afghanistan, with less cost in lives and in spending.  But not Iraq.

I guess the difference is it is easy to say that in hindsight.

Federal pilot project: GPS tracking of parolees

I do not understand why we need a pilot project to test these federal GPS ankle bracelets. With all of the other jurisdictions in Canada and overseas that have already implemented them there would be enough information to make a responsible policy decision. Maybe not. There is just something about the duplication of bureaucracy that gets me.

Assuming this technology actually provides useful information, I wonder: What is the point of tracking them so closely? When a parolee violates terms of probation, my understanding is that the final decision to act rests with Correctional Service of Canada anyway. So, unless there is any discussion about how CSC operates and makes decisions pertaining to the paroling of convicts, the technology may not make a difference — apart from a few PR points:

Mr. Day spoke on a podium with a bilingual “Preventing Crime” slogan, and his staff arranged for four children from the community to play soccer in the park behind him, in sight of television cameras.

This is being touted as a glorious method “to rein in sexual predators and violent cons” but I question why such efforts must be made to integrate them back into communities. If they are going to be released in my vicinity, I would rather their names and photographs be advertized instead of relying on the reports of a bureaucrat hired to monitor useless information emitted from a gadget.

The cynic in me says that the main beneficiaries of this GPS scheme are the manufacturers of these new toys.

A Weekend To Start Breast Feeding!

That breastfeeding mother, Allison Loblaw from Ontario should be ashamed of herself – for taking her complaint to the Human Rights commission, that is.

On the other hand, those mothers in Vancouver should be proud of themselves for tackling the issue of nursing in public the right way. They peacefully demonstrate and publicly humiliate the store that tried to stop them:

At least 60 women sat cross-legged on the floor, milled about the store feeding their babies or spilled out into Pacific Centre Mall in support of Manuela Valle, who was told by store staff on Tuesday to go into the change room to feed her two-month-old daughter Ramona.

A weekend to remember, indeed! but you would think that the store clerks would be a bit more reasonable.

Liberal house leader Laurie Blakeman struggles to understand sex health issues

Clearly, Laurie Blakeman has trouble understanding that throwing money at problems does not solve them:

“How could we, in the third millennium, be dealing with the levels of syphilis that are out there in this province with this amount of money?” she asked.

“This province doesn’t know what to do with health so they keep shifting everything around hoping it will all work and this time out, I think they’ve impaired the ability of the public-health section to do their job.”

What job might that be? The job of telling people to wear condoms? telling them again and again and again? Most people already know. Not a very complicated sex-ed lesson.

Old-fashioned conservatives and religious-folk are often characterized as proponents of abstinence education and usually they are. They are ridiculed as being the cause of failed sexual health programs. I suppose we

On the other hand, socialists have trouble accepting the free-will of mankind. They have trouble accepting the possibility that people are choosing to have the type of sex they are having. Given that most sexually transmitted diseases are transmitted by sexual contact (surprise!) and given that most preventive measures are cheap or readily available, it would seem preposterous to think that money is an issue. However, Laurie Blakeman looks at the money.

It certainly is distressing to hear about children dying of congenital syphilis but none of it surprises me. Just look at the math. Half of them are the children of prostitutes. Since it takes a minimum of two people to have sex, that means the other half are bringing it home. Ultimately, what it all boils down to is this: people are choosing to have sloppy and promiscuous sex. Now, look at the biology:

Musto says all women who attend pre-natal care are screened for syphilis but it’s almost inevitable that with a high rate of sexually transmitted infection, some pregnant women will slip through the cracks.

Antibiotics can be administered to pregnant women suffering from syphilis but may not stave off the disease’s effects on a fetus.

It seems like it is biologically impossible to prevent all congenital cases of syphillis.

I do not want to see any children suffering due to their parent’s irresponsibility but, unlike the deluded socialists, I do not think there is any education campaign that can eradicate the problem. Maybe we should all be grateful that nobody is proposing any neurotic interventions as the statesmen are doing in Africa.

‘Scuse Me. You Got a Permit for that Butterknife?

A few weeks ago, when a couple of news stories broke on the same day about knife attacks in Canada, I joked to a very left wing friend of mine, “Next they’ll be calling for knife registry.”

We both had a good chuckle.

What twits in parliament, upon considering a singularly bizarre homicide in Canada, let alone on a Greyhound bus, thought to stave off the once-in-a-billion chance of this happening again by actually considering a national knife registry?

I want their names so I can plaster this all over their ridings.  What embarrassments they are to their constituents and to Canada.  They must not be re-elected.

Fred Phelps group to picket slain Tim McLean funeral

These followers of Fred Phelps are evil. Even though they are just visitors to Canada and their only purpose is to spread their own brand of evil, I do believe they have the right to protest and demonstrate as they wish. If Tim McLean was my son, I am not certain how I would respond to these protesters. However, I am certain about one thing: there is no reason to criminalize free speech.

With respect, this is no libertarian dilemma at all. Obviously, a basic lesson in true libertarianism is overdue. There is only one true libertarian “punishment” and it is ostracism. Here is how it works: they should be permitted across the border. Upon entry into Canada, they are photographed or identified as best as possible (name, license plates, etc.) with this information widely published and following them wherever they go in Canada. Every service center, gas station, corner store, grocer store, etc. in Canada is then encouraged to deny them service. That should give them a taste of true freedom and what it means to respect free speech.

- – -

(Sunday, August 10th, 2008 morning) UPDATE: Well, will you look at this:

Even without a conflict, they claimed victory.
—- SNIP —-
Where the Kansas-based protesters could have been was a subject of intense speculation along Westwood Drive. Some suspected the group had members watching the church. A rumour also emerged that a handful of Westboro members had picketed briefly with signs in Osborne Village.

Gee, who would have thought the libertarian strategy of ostracism could actually work???

If anybody comes across a group of weird Southern American tourists that happen to look like these people, do not sell them any gas, do not sell them any water, do not let them stay at your motel and do not even give them the key to the washroom. Just tell them to go to hell.
I probably do not have to make that call-out but just in case there are still some confused socialists in Canada left who do not have the good sense to rely upon themselves to resolve their differences with other people, I figured I ought to pitch it out there. Some people have to be dragged kicking and screaming to see how much power they actually hold in their own hands.

Bill C-20, Senate elections, and the future of the Liberal Party

Peter Aucoin has penned an alarmed critique of the government’s Bill C-20, which will govern how parties raise and spend money during future Senate elections. The important points:

• No public funding for Senate candidates
• Individual contribution limits of $1000
• No spending limits for candidates

The much-ballyhooed money problems of the Liberal Party illustrate why the C-20 regime would spell disaster for the Liberals in any future Senate election. In the last quarter, even the NDP had more individual contributors than the Liberal Party. Under C-20, the Liberals would continue to struggle for individual contributions, but without the mitigating benefit of public funding. In other words, they’d be dirt poor.

And the news gets worse for the Liberals. Aucoin points out that concurrent elections for the Senate and the House of Commons would also favour the Conservatives in the H of C election:

By having no spending limits, Bill C-20 would create loopholes that would diminish, if not eliminate altogether, the effectiveness of the spending limits on candidates for election to the House of Commons and on their political parties if elections for the Senate and the House of Commons take place at the same time.

Needless to say, if at any time in the future the Conservatives and NDP are in a position to pass legislation without the support of the Liberals or the Bloc, they would do well to extend C-20′s provisions to House of Commons elections. Given the differences in the parties’ ability to collect individual contributions, eradicating public funding (recently advocated by the National Post) while maintaining individual contribution limits would likely bankrupt the Bloc, cripple the Liberals, and benefit the Conservatives and, to a lesser extent, the NDP.

Needed Balance for CTV’s Adoption Report: The Real Reason Parents Choose International Adoption

Heh.  My wife found out that her family while in Ottawa for an award for adoption advocacy (for their oldest adopted son), were put on camera for a Robert Fife piece about adoption.  The more I watch it the more I think the CTV was actually taking a swipe at them for adopting from Russia.  They split the piece giving them a pat on the head for adopting six children from Russia’s underfunded, unsafe orphanages, but then launch into a plea for Canadian adoption.  The quick suggestion by the narrator is that people don’t like to adopt in Canada because of FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome), a common problem amongst the many thousands of aboriginal children in the system in Canada.  However if the guy took two seconds to talk to my in-laws, they would know that those same reasons are held up for not adopting from Russia – FAS is a major problem there too.

The biggest reason in my mind to choose international adoption over domestic is not FAS or “red tape” as the video suggests.  The biggest reason is that the need simply is not as great for children in Canada as it is in places like China, Haiti, or Russia.  While our system isn’t perfect, the child welfare system in Canada work pretty well.  All orphans or children under protection are housed in hoster families, with a semblance of a normal life.  They are well funded and supported and want for nothing, except real parents (though as someone who knows many foster parents, do not doubt that the vast majority really love the children in their care!)

Contrast this with the situation my new brothers and sisters (in law) left behind in eastern Russia.  They resided in an orphanage, with hundreds of other kids.  While America and Canada may have progressed beyond the “Little Orphan Annie” institution, Russia has not had the funds.  Their building was an ancient cement structure, with unreliable heating and electricity.  In the year before they were adopted, for months in the middle of winter some orphanages in their city with without heat at all.

Imagine that.  Russian winter, without heat for months.

As Coltyn said in the video, rats were commonplace in the building.  The staff there cared as best they could for them, but were sparse given the numbers of children in their care.  Health care was sporadic at best.  I could tell you a lot more about different health concerns that they faced after coming to Canada, but our system was up to the task.

Russia is better today than 7 years ago when most of them were adopted.  But they still run orphanages, and an institution is no way to raise a child.

Other countries that are popular are worse off.  Haiti is well known for its problems.  Ethiopia is also one which is commonly looked at, as well as old Eastern Bloc countries like Romania and Bulgaria, and the Ukraine.  Compared to them, Canada’s orphans are in paradise.  That to me is the real driver of most international adoptions.

It is really sad that so many Canadians, living as we do with Satellite TV and cel phones for everyone, and an XBox 360 in every room of even the poorest households, have the gall to complain that they “can’t afford” more kids.  Whether natural or adopted, children need love and care first and foremost.   Lucky for us, those are renewable resources that actually increase in quantity with each additional child in your life.  The fact that there are any children that need adoption at all should be a shame to us all that we prefer to have our twice annual trip to Cancun than to give an orphan the love and the family that they deserve – whether Canadian-born or born elsewhere.

If you could do something to save one child’s life, why wouldn’t you?  Do your part.  Not everyone needs to do what my family did.  But everyone should do something.  Support an adoption group or charity.  Support a group that seeks to improve the plight of orphans in the 3rd world.  Consider adoption.  Give a child a home.  Imagine what kind of message it sends to your children about compassion and caring in adding a child to it who never had a home.  If you’ve raised your children right, they’d be thrilled to switch to a bunk bed to save a new brother or sister from life without a family.

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