No Free Trade from China

A while ago, I wrote about the perverted application of the theory of competitive advantage in a post called Everything we ignore about Free Trade. I want to be clear: I love free trade.

What I hate is the fact that free trade does not exist and everybody ignores injustice in the economy. Recent international events constantly demonstrate that we do not have international free trade. In China, local citizens are protesting the construction of a coal-fired plant where they live. The Chinese stooges who work for the government are beating them into submission.

There may be nothing that anybody can do to stop the evil Chinese government. However, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that the cheap junk we get from Chinese factories demonstrates the benefits of industrialization for them and the benefits of free trade for us.

The truth is that we benefit from both outright theft and our ignorance of the truth.

Let her cover her face

I am 100% against the offensive and oppressive edict from the Conservative government that muslim women who, as an act of faith, choose to cover their faces must remove their niqab to take the oath of citizenship.

I have heard no good argument in favour of this measure. There are other ways of confirming identity, and their are other ways to accommodate the very few new Canadians with this particular religious conviction. This move is based neither in principle nor in necessity. The Tories have an axe to grind, and they don’t care if they chip away at our freedom of religion.

Lethbridge MP Hillyer Keeps on Embarrassing Himself

It’s almost too painful to watch:

Here’s the video of him firing his air guns!

All of this isn’t too surprising considering his stellar performance during the last election campaign:

Atheism and social entitlement

There is a great post over at Filibuster Cartoons called Those awful atheists wherein the author asks the question: “All things considered, if given the choice, would you prefer to have less of them [atheists] in your life?” This question comes from the revelation that theists generally distrust atheists.

Read that post and the comments. The comments from the atheists are very intriguing. They seem to have great difficulty accepting the free choice of theists to peacefully disassociate themselves from atheists when given the choice.

I have a question of my own for the atheists: Do you feel entitled to socialize with people who freely choose to avoid you?

The corruption of modern central banking

It is time that the inherent corruption of our modern central banking becomes public knowledge for our own sakes. I certainly would not want this fascist crony-capitalism poison to be secret nor to go unnoticed by my neighbors. The leaders are printing money and giving it to their friends before it cycles through the economy to cause price inflation:

“The bottom line is that senior-level people in Washington, in the name of keeping in touch with their stakeholders, are tipping their hands,” says Adam Zagorin, a senior fellow at the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington watchdog group. “You can’t prosecute them for insider trading if they didn’t trade the shares. You may not be able to even reprimand them. What the hell are the rules?”

An official such as Paulson has no legal obligation to keep material nonpublic information to himself, says Phillip Kaplan, partner for litigation at Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP, where he specializes in securities and class-action cases.

– SNIP –

Morgan Stanley and BlackRock Inc. both helped the Federal Reserve and OCC prepare the reports on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that Paulson told the New York Times would instill confidence the morning of the Eton Park meeting.

This is not coming from a gossip tabloid.

Adbusters for Christmas – Buy Nothing Day

This new campaign from Adbusters is pretty good and very timely in light of the recent insanity manifested by shoppers at Wal-Mart.

At least they are not afraid to say the word Christmas.

Blood Is Blood – anti-gay Canadian blood donation policy revisited

Earlier this month, a new website/presence/campaign began called BloodIsBlood.ca that clearly spells out some of the scientific folly behind the current Canadian policy to ban donors. We have discussed this before at The Politic here and again here.

Despite the merit of the science behind the BloodIsBlood campaign, I doubt the people operating the current Canadian blood collection will change their questionnaire and filtering policy because they usually only change in response to a crisis. The general public does not seem to care much either, in my opinion. At the same time, I doubt the general public has any idea how much resources go into making blood available to recipients.

This is the point of the BloodIsBlood campaign: lots of forbidden donors have lots of blood to donate that is never being accepted and scientifically, there is no good reason to reject their blood.

Regardless, I do not trust lab tests to prove the purity of blood and I do not think it is responsible to compel anybody to trust them either. I think the proper solution is to privatize the service by offering parallel collections. People who are in need of blood donations should be required to choose:
1) wait for your blood type to be received by a heterosexual donor, possibly dying for that wait
or
2) get blood from a homosexual donor faster, maybe as fast as tomorrow
or
3) get your own blood in the manner of your choosing

Homosexuals should be free to donate their blood in their own collection agency and offer it to recipients who freely choose their source. If there is public acceptance of gay men donating blood, it will be demonstrated through public choice. If there is truly extra risk involved with receiving blood from homosexuals, the collection agency should bare that risk and take out their own insurance policy. My idea will likely never take off the ground as long as we have a publicly funded/controlled health care system. It will have to wait until everybody goes bankrupt or more people die waiting for anti-gay blood.

Herman Cain or Rick Perry?

Is anyone out there as utterly confused as I am by the Republican primary? I mean, really, if you had to choose, for whom would you tick a box, Herman Cain, the serial misogynist, or Rick Perry, the guy who let an innocent man die?

More seriously, how can either of these men be even considered by supporters of a mainstream party? Especially when neither Gary Johnson nor Ron Paul can get much traction?

The Republican Party makes me full of sad.

Reader Mail

I quoted one of our readers, Dr. Michael Pilon, Major (retired), in an update of this post on a Remembrance Day program. I received a follow-up email from him that I’d like to share:

I have been watching the sad events unfold for a few days and I do not believe what has happened. I have known Mr. Michaud since the late 1970′s when we met at  Base Gagetown in New Brunswick. He is a very sincere and dedicated teacher. My receptionist has two children who have, and had him as a teacher and they both speak highly  and enthusiastically of his dedication, interest and sense of history.

I think “Hearsay” about kids pointing guns at passing cars and publishing this is slanderous. As a former trained military person Mr. Michaud would first instill a sense of responsibility in his students. In my basic training this was perhaps the most important aspect of our induction into the military. To tell people that the kids were acting like a game pointing them at cars is very irresponsible. No police reports were filed about this. But, I did hear neighbours were allegedly “complaining” about the event. And as to tanks…no such event occurred. Now if one imagines tanks one can only guess what one can imagine about guns. Time to look at fact.

Mr. Michaud has had a 20 year dream crushed through political correctness. The lesson has not been lost on his students.

 

The Scourge of Political Correctness

So I received a little pushback on my post about incorporating guns in the Remembrance Day activities of an Ottawa high school. I wasn’t surprised; just as when Charles writes about his white poppy, being semi-critical of any aspect of a Remembrance Day ceremony is going to elicit some emotional responses. That’s just part of the deal.

The post brought up the topic of political correctness, and I’m confident in suggesting that a sizable chunk of our readership here at The Politic will claim an antipathy towards political correctness. Much of conservatism has prided itself in being politically incorrect, as have I, at times – which is why I wrote such a politically incorrect post. [Read more]

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