This guy makes a lot of sense.
Don’t get me wrong – I am more of a hawk than a dove, but what we are doing in Libya makes absolutely no sense.
If we were outraged over the atrocities against civilians, how come the civilians in Darfur (or any other of a hellish places) did not matter?
How come Khadaffi’s atrocities did not make us his enemies until he had had a ‘falling out’ (to put it mildly) with the French President?
And why exactly is it that we are helping the ‘rebels’ who are – even according to the government sanctioned experts – controlled by Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?!?!?
This is insanity! And that is even before we look at the specifics of the action itself – going in without clearly defining what the ‘end result’ we desire is….
OK, it sounds patronizing, but in this case, it is well earned: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail!
Now, my question to you is this:
Statistics are showing (or so we are being told) that fewer and fewer Canadians vote. Commentators are lamenting this, some are suggesting that people who do not vote should be fined and all kinds of other nonsense.
So, why?
The reasons why the percentage of Canadians actually voting isdecreasing are really very simple: our votes do not matter.
REALLY matter.
Oh, I understand – we get to vote in one band of politicians or another – and our votes matter in deciding which bunch gets in when. And, some politicians are worse than others.
But that is quickly becoming minutia, a cosmetic change rather than a substantive.
Why?
Because our very system is broken. And it is broken on multiple levels, which is why fixing it is not an easy proposition.
One level on which it is broken is the most easily visible one: our elected representatives are supposed to be answerable to us, the citizens….but, increasingly, they are only answerable to their own party leadership!
In other words, the party system we have in Parliament and in Provincial Legislatures has tipped the balances too far toward ‘party influence’ and away from ‘voter influence’. After all, if their nomination papers are not signed by the party leadership, a candidate must run as an independent: and just how many of those manage to get elected?!?!?
This gives the party leaders great power of control over their elected MPs! Too great an amount of power: to the point that the good/will of the party is the only thing our elected officials consider when ‘representing us’.
In a very real sense, we are no longer voting for our local representatives – when we cast our votes, we are voting for one or another party. Sure, it is still a choice to make – but it is not the choice our Parliamentary system was designed for. It is not the one for which the ‘checks and balances’ we have built into the system were designed. And it makes for very unresponsive government…because the policies of each party have to cover so many issues, we can only pick ‘bundle A’ vs ‘bundle B’ of good and bad things.
That is not the type of choice most people want: picking a lot of bad things, because among them are few good things you want. It means that no matter which party you are choosing, you are necessarily choosing some things you do not want, things you consider to be bad things. And, by voting, you are making those bad things happen.
People don’t like that. So, more and more don’t vote.
Because, when being forced to pick from several bad choices, most people prefer not to choose at all.
But that ‘level’ is only the most visible way in which our system is broken.
If the ‘party in power’ is the ‘what’ of the government policy, the civil service is the ‘how’.
I have personally seen and heard some high ranking civil servants explain exactly ‘how’ the elected politicians must be ‘handled’. Real life – not Sir Humphry Appelby. How what I thought to have been a uniquely ‘sound’ government policy which does not reflect the goals of the public service is contorted and the way it is implementation is sabotaged to the point where it not only fails, but fails in such a manner that it is obvious such an ill-conceived policy could never have worked and it failed because the politicians were too arrogant to listen to the experienced civil service experts!!!
Yes – to a degree much higher than most of us are aware of, we are being governed by a bunch of unknown, unseen, unaccountable high-level civil servants with a vision of their own: power through regulation.
Do you ever ask why is it that representatives of various government regulatory agencies have much, much greater powers than police do? Power to enter your property without a court order – and also without your knowledge, much less content. Power to take your stuff away from you ‘pending their investigation’? Do you even know the full extent of their powers?
It is a stealth-totalitarianism-through-red-tape!
In a state like that, the elected politicians are increasingly little more than window dressing. Why bother voting for them?
If I knew how to fix this, I would say so. I don’t. But, considering that most of these career bureaucrats have been in the public service for several decades before they have gained sufficient ‘influence’ and arrogance to sabotage policies they disagree with, I suspect we will need to bring in laws limiting the amount of time a person may serve in the public sector. Regulate the regulators, so to speak…
Sure, front line police officers and similar things – a different story. I don’t claim this is a well developed solution – to the contrary. It is more of a niggling suspicion that has been growing for a while .
These are just two of many failures in our governance structures – pretending there is no problem is only driving voters to apathy…
What do you think?
Friends,
The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) designated by the US Justice Department and the FBI as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood, is partnering with the Liberal Party and Michael Ignatieff to host a fundraising event for liberal candidate Omar AlGhabra in Mississauga tonight.
As if this link alone was not troublesome, ICNA is making no secret of their association with both Ignatieff and AlGhabra. In a mass e-mail burst, ICNA head A. Qayyum Mufti wrote:
“Please help Omar AlGhabra reach the the parliament once again. Support him in his campaign by volounteering, financially, and inviting others. Join him this Monday to kick start his 2011 election campaign.”
For the uninitiated, ICNA follows the ideology of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan and the doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Albanna. The spiritual head of ICNA is the late Syed Maududi who was once sentenced to death for his role in the pogroms aimed at liquidating the Ahmaddiya Muslims in Pakistan in 1952.
How on earth will the leader of the Liberal Party Michael Ignatieff explain why he got himself in bed with ICNA? Well, if Rob Oliphant can have lunch with a pro-Taliban politician Imran Khan, then ICNA promoting a liberal candidate should be no big surprise.
Tarek
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Head over to his page – he has more!
HT: BCF
Tuesday evening, the Free Thinking Film Society presented ‘Caledonia: No More Nightmares’.
It was a memorable evening.
I hesitate to say ‘good’, because even though the speakers were engaging and informative, all the people were pleasant (with only minor exceptions, hardly worth mentioning) and everything was well 0rganized – even the Ottawa Police were friendly and effective – the very fact that the events discussed during this evening happened is deeply troubling.
Here is a taste of what the evening was like:
There was a lot of food for thought there, that evening, and I am still not done thinking it all through – I am a slow thinker. I will write more about this.
The one thing that I learned coming from the evening was this: The ‘bad guys’ here were not ‘The Natives’ – a few residents there misbehaved at the beginning, true, but as soon as there was conflict which the OPP refused to police, militants from all over, of all races and colours, traveled to the 6 Nations land and robbed, raped and otherwise oppressed the Native residents. ‘The Natives’ were just as stuck as Caledonia residents. The OPP refused to help all of them.
The only ones whom the OPP protected were the militants. Yes, some of the militants were Natives. But most of the Natives from 6 Nations were not militants and most of the militants were not from the 6 Nations!
Had the OPP done their job at the beginning, the militants would not have sensed weakness and set up camp in Caledonia. None of this would have happened!
Marie Trainer, who was the Mayor for Haldimand county during these events, gave the most moving speech of the evening. It really brought home just how helpless and abandoned the people – both on the Caledonia/Haldimand county side and on the 6 Nations Reservation side.
One could see just how responsible she felt for her people, how heavily this weighed on her.
She told us an interesting story.
A number of illegal smoke shacks had sprung up in the area. These sell cigarets which have not passed any safety controls, and they sell cigarets to minors. Marie Trainer worked together with the 6 Nations Council to shut down the two smoke shacks on the County property and the two smoke shacks on the 6 Nations land. Now, only the 2 shacks on land owned by the Province of Ontario (controlled by the militants) remained. A representative from 6 Nations and Marie Trainer together went to the Province, asking for action to be taken to shut these illegal smoke shacks which sold tainted cigarettes to minors – to no avail. The Province of Ontario refused to take action to help them!
Shameful!
If looks could kill, I do believe ‘Old Rumpy’ would have to have been charged with murder….
A quick reminder that tomorrow night (22nd of March, 2011), the ‘Caledonia: No More Nightmares’ presentation is coming to the National Archives Library on Wellington Street. From ‘The Free Thinking Film Society’:
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Blazing Cat Fur has the story on how an MP – and a cabinet minister to boot – was effectively shut up by cries of ‘security concerns’. No matter that he was willing to provide his own security at his speech…
Thunderfoot is right: Japan HAD prepared for earthquakes.
They lead the world in practical applications of the principles science discovers on how to build in earthquake zones. If this natural disaster had struck in a less technological and science-focused country, the death toll would be several magnitudes larger.
Which does not mean that it is somehow ‘negligable’, or that the human suffering the people of Japan, in Japan, their families and friends are experiencing is in any way less worthy of our help!
Just to drive the point home….
When I first started blogging, I came across a blog by a guy named Robert Evans. He was an Anglo (don’t know which English-speaking country he came from) who went to Japan to teach English for a year – then two, then three…. He fell in love with the country, the language, the people.
In fact, he was a budding writer who had oodles of potential. I know, because after reading his blog, I was spellbound by his writing style and commented often. He had since shut down that blog, and the next one he started, but, every now and then, we would converse on Google’s instant messanger: mostly discussing linguistics.
Robert was in love with the English language, as I am. The big difference between us was that for him, it was his 1st language while for me, English is either 2nd, 4th or 7th language (depending on how you count this). So, even though I am not familiar with Japanese, I do see some of the things which might appear ‘obvious’ to a ‘native Anglo’ but which are not if you have to learn the English language later on in life….
No, we were never close friends (not even ‘internet buddies’) – but we did have a few very ‘interesting chats’.
Last I knew, Robert Evans was teaching English on one of the islands located in the North-East of Japan.
I wonder if he was there, when the earthquake struck.
I wonder if he is OK!
Yeah, I know – I am a sap. But if I am this upset about not knowing the fate of someone I kind-of knew through the internet, who might not even have been in the danger zone any longer, is any indication of the worry that people DO go through worrying about loved ones whom they KNOW to have been in the area hit by the earthquake and whose fate is still unknown….well, I get the picture!
My thoughts and best wishes are with everyone affected by this natural disaster!
As for religious (or secular dogmatic) idiots who want to use this human suffering as a propaganda vehicle (or self-righteousness thingy, like the idiot-chick in Thunderf00t’s video, or the dumb-asses who claimed the Haiti earthquake was because women in the West did not wear hijabs or burkas or some similar religious drivel – or the morons trying to draw any sort of association between this earthquake and global warming):
POX ON ALL YOUR HOUSES!!!!