What is to be learned from WWII? That appeasement does not work? How about the cold war? That Mutually Assured Destruction is a valid policy? And now, how about North Korea?

We are not appeasing Mr. Kim. We are not letting him join in the MAD fun. We are insuring that North Korea constantly feels threatened. It is not for sure that he would use nukes. But the more he is provoked the more likely it is that he would use them if given the chance. He is a cornered animal.

I do not believe that violence ever solves anything. But is it possible that some of the crazies might become more sane if allowed to join the insane fun of nuclear proliferation? Is it possible that some of the despots are sociopaths as a result of how we are treating them?

I don’t believe there is comfortable solution. I also don’t believe that anyone in power has spent any real time trying to learn from the mistakes of the past. The lessons which have been learned so far are not the only lessons available, they are the easy answers which support the ideas we were already clinging to.

The cost of buying a used car often rises after paying for it.  When you buy used, you also are buying all the problems with the car incurred by the previous owner.  Afghanistan is Canada’s used car bought from the US.  The last listed price was $8 billion.  It has now risen by more than 40% to $11.3 billion.

As soon as the idea of guns or the use of force enters the conversation, the Conservatives get so giddy that they cannot think clearly.  Afghanistan is the Conservatives favourite firing range.  But there is no place like home to use force and to demonstrate power.

The new anti-gang legislation is a “tough on crime” approach but does not deal with the actual problem.  Criminals will continue to be criminals as long as they have a reason to and they think they are smarter than the police who are working to stop crime.  The idea of a mandatory minimum sentence likely won’t enter into the pro/con flowchart that we know all criminals use before they commit a crime.

The funny thing about this legislation is what Harper says about his opponents:

“The truth of the matter is, those who say that the tougher penalties on perpetrators will not work don’t want them to work because they don’t believe in his kind of approach,” he told reporters.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the naysayers are saying nay because they don’t think this will work.  And NOT that they don’t want it to.  But it IS true, the anti-anti-gang gang don’t believe in this approach.

But communication is not one of Harper’s strong suits.  Although he has some nice suits that really emphasis his dick-ish-ness.  The government did not ask the right questions about Afghanistan.  They do not have any real answers about crime back home.  But it is does not matter how good your questions are, the answers the government does have are not available to you.

Access to information is limited by Stephen Harper.  And since no one in the Conservative party does anything without the Great Leader’s say-so, it seems that we will not know much more about our democratic country until we can oust all the sleaze bags in Ottawa.  Those sleazy, underhanded people who buy and then sell to us all the lemons they think we can afford. (The Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Bloc included)

Of course we cannot afford any of them. (The Lemons or the politicians.)

Sometimes there is nothing humane that can be done to prolong the life of someone or something.  We had a family pet that was something like 16 years old.  This dog was the best and the whole family loved her and she loved everyone.  Especially my grandpa.  When the dog started to show her age and was very sick, my parents knew it was time to put her down.  While I tease by calling them murderers, I know that what they did was for the best.  Without which we could not move on with our lives.

America’s pet is also getting old and showing signs that it might be best to let it die.  The Auto industry is losing money like my dog was losing blood from her nose.  The Auto industry is putting out shit cars that … well … no matter what we fed the dog it still was diarrhea and it still was more marketable.

If the auto industry is bailed out of their crisis, then they will never learn from the experience.  If the auto industry is bailed out of their crisis, then America will never learn from the experience.  It is important for the Americans and Canadians to realize that if a business loses money and goes bankrupt in a capitalist system, then it must die.

Death is a part of life.  Embrace it.  Celebrate it.  Remember those who have died.  Learn from them.  Love them.  But don’t prolong the agony.  Don’t create vegetable corporations.

Let it die.

or you can do as Bush did “Abandon free market principles to save the free market system.”

if you need to save it by abandoning it, maybe it needs to die.

Let it die.

What follows below is my response to an email forward I received.  The original email was from Chuck Strahl to his supporters.

______________________

Subject: Re: Our Federal Government needs serious prayer!

This [the forwarded] email is full of lies and half-truths. The thing about democracy is that it only works when people work together for the common good of the whole country. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have demonstrated time and time again that they are only interested in their own wants and needs. They do not care to work with others. The rule on the playground is that the kid who does not play well with others will end up playing alone. That is the position Harper put himself into.

Harper, before the election, was trying to rule the country as if he had a majority. Because the Liberals were in a bit of a predicament, they played along with the Conservatives. It was a game of chicken: two people speeding toward each other, both praying the other person would swerve out of the way. Before the election the Liberals always did. Now Harper tried to play the same game but the Liberals had a plan.

A coalition of parties working together is exactly what a democracy looks like. Each of the parties in the coalition will have to put aside some of the ideas which make them different and look to where they have common ground. As such they will be working for the majority’s interests and not a small group.

Harper demonizes the NDP by calling them socialists and the Bloc by calling them Separatists. But in order for the three groups to work together they will have to put aside their more extreme ideas. Therefore, this coalition is not socialist and it is not separatist. Any group can sound evil if their politics are boiled down into one word. The word I would choose for the Conservatives is Fascist or authoritarian. Harper controls his party like a dictator. He does not have them speak to the press and he wants to choose which reporters have access to the Members of Parliament. This is a restriction on freedom of information.  Harper also keeps us in the dark as to what his plans are to solve the economic crisis.

I believe that minority governments are best because the parties must work together in order to get anything done. Harper and the Conservatives have refused to do this, otherwise this would not have occurred. As such, everything that is happening is his own doing. There is no reason for anyone to complain because this is something which the Conservatives have done to themselves.

At any rate, the government does deserve our prayers. But our prayers should never be ones to tell God what is best. To demand that the Conservatives stay in power is to try to force the hand of God. We deserve a government which serves the interests of a majority of people and, I feel, that that is a government which is willing to work together. And the Conservatives are not doing that.

I will quit my rambling.

Take care.

——————–

[forwarded email below]

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My god, the sheer arrogance of this asshole.  Does he not realize that the Canadian people did not elect him as Prime Minister?  The Prime Minister is not a democratically elected position.  It is a position which is determined by the number of seats the various parties hold.  It is not elected and, therefore, it is not a democratic position.  Its only raison d’etre is because the voters are fickle and need someone to rule over them.

But Harper is even stupider than the electorate.  He believes that having the other parties work together to acheive common goals is undemocratic and scary.

“As you read this letter, the Liberals are holding secret negotiations with the socialist NDP and the separatist Bloc Québécois to overturn the wishes of Canadian voters and take power,” the e-mail says.

“They want to take power and impose on Canadians a prime minister without a personal mandate, a Liberal-NDP coalition not one voter has ever endorsed and have it all backstopped by the separatist Bloc Québécois, who simply want to destroy the country.

“We need your help to ensure that they do not succeed!”

How can 3 disparite groups “Impose their agenda?”  How can this be an imposition?  except to the conservatives.  And even so, the conservatives may have a greatest number of seats, but they do not have a majority of the vote.

But the same letter suggests that the leader of the coalition does not have a personal mandate.  That is hogwash.  Every politician who has ever been elected to office has a mandate.  Whether or not they were leading the party is irrelevant.  Each member of the House of Commons is supposed to have equal say and equal sway.

The mandate of the politiician in a Representative Democracy, is to represent the people.  As such, the will of the people cannot be determined by one group alone.  If one group has a majority they will impose their beliefs and the rest are not represented.  If the parties work together to solve a problem or answer a question, then they are acting democratically and are truly representing Canadians.  But the Conservatives believe that they are right and therefore everyone else must shut the fuck up.

The labelling of the opposition parties as socialist and seperatist is purely childish.  It is easy to scare people when you distill the situation or ideology down to a single word.  But the Fascist Tories do not want people to think for themselves.  They want to gain a majority in the HoC and rule with an iron fist.  Because Having 35-45% of the vote is a mandate to impose your own ideology.   But having 3 parties who generally disagree with each other, working together for all of Canada, that is imposing your own desires.

Stephen Harper claims that the opposition parties are acting undemocratically.  This is bullshit.  Democracy is the rule of the people.  As long as politicians act to serve their own political agenda, or that of their party, they are not acting democratically.  This is why I believe only in minority governments.

The House of Commons should be a microcosm of Canada; a representation of the whole of Canada.  But, in one sense, it should be better.  While each group may want to determine how the country’s priorities are determined, the HoC should demonstrate to the country that one group should not have and lord power over the rest.  In this way the politicians would work together to solve the problems of the country in the best interest of the whole of Canada.  This is not about compromise.

Compromise means sacrificing ideals.  Ideals, however, belong to ideology.  And ideology often means sacrificing what is best for everyone and holding fast to what is believed to be true.  The two are not necessarily the same.  In fact ideology usually blinds people from what is best.

Minority governments must work together in order to be productive and do what is best and what is right.  In a minority government there is not one group that has the power to determine the direction of government and the country.  Coalition governments help achieve this.  Particularly if all of the parties are involved.

In this case it is not all the parties.  But the ruling party has decided not to play with others.  And that is a demonstration that the Conservatives do not believe in democracy.  And in this case the ruling party has sent a clear signal to Canadians that their own ideology is more important than democracy.

Anyone who kills another person has made a definite declaration that there is a clear and distinct hierarchy of human life and value.  The willing to kill demonstrates that there are people who are of a lower calibre and are disposable.  Those who act selflessly to defend another person demonstrate that there are people of higher calibre.

Engagement in any act of war is a demonstration to the world that equality is a farce.  As long as governments and the people that support them,  continue to fund an army there cannot and will not be peace in our time or a semblance of equality in the world.

To remember those who fought for our freedom is to forget that our freedom cost us the realization of equality.

And to complain about those who have died in current war zones is to forget that a violent fight for freedom is a quiet fight against the dignity and equality for everyone.

Everyone has a right to life event those who are wrong about their convictions.

Remembrance Day is for remembering those who killed for their ideals.  Everyone who has ever fought or killed has done so for their ideals.  So, today, we should should remember everyone who fought and died for their beliefs, whether right or wrong.

Those who fought against the Nazis in WWII are called heros for doing what they thought was right.  But those who fought against the Allies did the same thing and we don’t call them heros.  And, while I agree they were wrong, there was no opportunity or channel for dialogue.   And without dialogue there cannot be change.

This leaves us with a conundrum.  The Nazis lost and the Allies won, but the hearts and minds of those who lived but lost were not won.  So the problem was attacked but never quashed.  This is why the Germans have never fully dealt with the issue of Nazism.

And the issue of WWII was never that of prejudice or racism.  The problem was that everyone who fought and killed did so because they believed that by killing others they would prove their ideals.  And, in the end, there was no dialogue and therefore nothing was proven or dealt with.

Without dialogue there cannot be change.  And war is always the end of dialogue.

I can almost hear the calls for me to not forget those who fought for our freedoms, and I am halfway around the world and days way from Remembrance Day.  My grandfathers both took a stand during WWII.  They refused to fight.  They believed that all people had inherent value and that to kill another person is to steal that value.

For every life a person takes, they are making a claim not over land, ideas, resources or power.  They are making the claim that some lives are more valuable than others.  They are making the claim that their own personal value is greater than those who will die for it.

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There are some things I understand.  There are some things I don’t understand.  I don’t understand the following:

• Why photosynthesis works
• What magnetism actually is
• The appeal of Sarah Palin
• The appeal of mushrooms
• Why the same brainiacs who created a problem are the ones who are being consulted to fix the problem.
• Why the solution to a problem is a new coat of varnish over the old.

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