Thursday, July 27, 2006

Long Live the New Flesh...NOT!

I frequent a wonderful website called Digg.com, and it's another place like Slashdot.org where interesting stories get pointed at, and people can comment on them. I was commenting on a story about how Peter Doran, a scientist whose work has been misrepresented by many Global Warming Denier to prove that scientists have not reached a consensus on the subject. Well, Mr Doran has published a note in both the Amerst Times and the New York Times stating that he is does feel that the data supports Global Warming.

But that is not what prompted me to write about this. It was a comment by one of the other users who claimed to be a Canadian on Digg.com that bothered me.

"Yeah. Wow. Half a degree. Awesome. Man the lifeboats."

As a fellow Canadian, comments like yours make me wince.

But then again, the Neo-Cons have taken over the Canadian Parliament. Most Neo-Cons, both in Canada and the US, are members of a Fundamentalist Christian Church. They are best described as The Religious Reich, and they have a hard-on for anything that can help bring about "The End Times". That is why most of them are Climate Change Deniers. Global warming means that the Earth is becoming more like the Christian's Hell. It's also why they support war in the Middle East. If they can get "The Rapture" going, they all get beamed off Earth by an old guy in a beard, and get to live in a place with limitless amounts of Philly Cream Cheese.

As Prime Minister Harper is a Neo-Con, a Fundamentalist, and Climate Change Denier, could be why the Canadian Government website that covers Climate Change and Canada's response has be removed by the government:

Go to http://www.climatechange.gc.ca and you will see a missing website...luckily, the Internet Archive's Way Back Machine has a copy of it...here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050325095138/www.climatechange.gc.ca/english/

It contains a great number of "inconvenient truths" that the Canadian flavour of Neo-Cons dislike, especially as it would affect their "Preciouss", the Oil Patch. What is it with Neo-Cons and oil? Maybe it's like the Black Oil in The X-Files...or worse, like the video tapes in that Canadian classic, Videodrome by David Cronenberg Oil gets into their bodies and creates "The New Flesh"...I have this scary image of PM Harper standing up in Parliament yelling "Long Live The New Flesh!" Then the Black Oil starts shooting out of his mouth...and covers the entire House of Commons in that Black Oil.

That's an image that kepts me awake at night....

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Perception, And America

As someone who holds both Canadian and American Citizenship by birth, and the fact that I have lived and worked in both countries...I can say that there is a major skew between Americans and how they perceive themselves, and how others do.

I lived in the US during both Reagan's time in office, and Bush Jr., and The times are very different. Back during the Reagan years, Democrats and Republicans both saw themselves as part of the American culture, and that they differed on many things, but at the end of the day, they were all Americans. Today, the Republican party has taken an "Us vs Them" attitude, and has had great electorial success by vilifying the Democrats. The Democrats don't know how to answer this, since the best response would be to vilify the Republicans...but it's against the Democratic nature. So the USA has drifted to the Right.

From the Canadian point of view, we see an America that has gone kinda nuts. They attack each other, when they have much bigger fish to fry. Canadians see the Left in the US as being very Right Wing, and as much as we hate it, the US always has a big influence on Canadian Culture. And we see this with the rise of Harper, and his use of the same type of tactics that the Republican party has used so successfully. Harper and company have managed to take an accounting scandal and turn it into a tool bludgeon the Liberal Party. Unfortunately, for Harper, eventually, simply being an alternative to the Liberal Party will wear off, and the ultimate benefactors of this will be the New Democratic party.

Ultimately, many Canadians no long feel comfortable with the US government...and many Americans feel the same way. The Bush Jr. has managed to damage the perception of the US around the world. He has taken a situation where he, either through deception or incompetence, has put the US and a number of it's allies into the situation where they are attempting to prosecute an undeclared war in a country that didn't have the nuclear weapons that Bush Jr.'s government claimed they had. And for *that* they should be criticized. For using a base outside of the US to try to get around their Constitution, they should be criticized. And both Americans, and the other citizens of the world should be holding the US, and Bush Jr to blame for these, because ultimately it was the people of the US who elected Bush Jr. and a majority in the both Houses. But don't blame me...I didn't vote for Bush Jr. Not that Kerry was significantly better, but at least he has combat experience, and thus would have had a clue about how to clear up the problem in Iraq.