The Meatriarchy If God didn't want me to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?
Saturday, September 20, 2003
Me Neither
I didn't talk like a pirate on Friday. This was beyond a blogging phenomenon - they were doing it on the local radio station as well. Heather didn't either so she is not as trendy as her hubby who took part in a truly awful flash mob.
I grew up in Newfoundland. Everyone talks like a pirate there so talking like a pirate has no special meaning for me.
There was a pirate ship called the Bulldog that wrecked in the harbour where I grew up. My dad showed me the location where the boat was beached and left to rot. I couldn't see the remains because they were over 200 years old and buried in silt but he assured me they were there - and I believed him.
Newfoundland had it's share of pirates over the years - the most famous was probably Peter Easton or maybe Henry Mainwaring. My grandmother said there was pirate treasure buried somewhere on our family land (which was near the water) but we never knew where to look. I suppose if she had known she would have dug it up a long time ago.
Despite what the communist Frank J. says piracy is still common today especially around the Philippines and Indonesia. If you are being boarded by pirates you haven't traveled back in time. You have probably traveled to the far east.
A fairly light blogging week for me primarily because I was so busy at work. However a bunch of bloggers linked to me so here is my chance to give "props" to all those who did.
8 days ago on September 11th I worked myself up into a rage and posted an angry entry (by my standards)
Several bloggers noticed. Mondo Simondo (who didn't link it ) actually told Ghost of a Flea (seriously, apparently they had a conversation about me) and he threw up a good link to me.
Also the Watcher of Weasels council noticed and included me in their weekly vote for best post. I didn’t win but I got one vote! Hurray!
Then on Sunday I woke up cranky and took a piece out of Naomi Klein. Dave Janes and Brian Noggle (he also finally added me to his blogroll) each linked to the post. (No reply yet from Naomi or her hubbie Avi Lewis).
Heather Noggle who always reads my blog - and I am thankful for that. Noted my post on the blizzard in Calgary as well as my little joke about the giant rodent fossil.
Rocket Jones (another regular reader hurrah!!) noticed that I am a hockey fan (pretty weird for a Canadian eh?).
Apparently these CD's will be much harder to copy and share with people. Like all other hacker-proof technologies that came before and were defeated by hackers, this one is supposed to be hacker proof.
It's only September but remember the advocates of Kyoto want this to happen more often:
Calgary Forecast from Environment Canada: Issued 5.00 AM MDT Tuesday 16 September 2003 Today .. Snow at times heavy. Amount 15 to 20 cm. Wind northeast 20 km/h. Temperature steady near minus 1."
From the Toronto Star's Rosie Dimanno:: "This year, with a dearth of veteran forwards, Renberg may no longer find himself on the top line with Sundin. No matter. 'As long as I can stay in the lineup, I'll be happy."
Just to clarify for those who aren't up on the latest in Leaf land. The Leafs have PLENTY of extra forwards. They added Owen Nolan at the trade deadline and Joe Nieuwendyk just last week. Renberg will not play on the top line because there is a PLETHORA of forwards.
Some people say that anti-globalization protesters are merely idealistic youth who are fighting what they believe to be poverty and injustice however naively. Others (like me) say it is no more than hard core communism wrapped in fake good intentions.
If you want proof of the latter you have to do no more than read Naomi Klein's latest ravings in The Nation entitled Free Trade Is War
She first starts out with a red herring about private water meters in South Africa, which are pay as you go. She carefully omits the fact that her home city of Toronto started installing water meters about 5 years ago without fanfare or protest and also makes no mention of the fact that South Africa was once a much more prosperous nation ( not politically correct to mention that there was some merit in the old regime).
Then she invokes September 11th as an inconvenience to the anti-success movement by saying:
After September 11, right-wing pundits couldn't bury the globalization movement fast enough. We were gleefully informed that in times of war, no one would care about frivolous issues like water privatization. Much of the US antiwar movement fell into a related trap: Now was not the time to focus on divisive economic debates, it was time to come together to call for peace.
I don't remember anyone being gleeful about September 11. I like most people thought it would shock those who were sanguine on the threat of Islamic terror into reality. For Klein however it was a mere bump, forcing her and her creatures away from the real war - the war against decent middle class people and their right to improve their lives.
Naomi knows how to preach to her choir. Two years have gone by let's go back to being selfish brats. And don't worry you will have plenty of faux danger and excitement boys and girls:
"those who resist and "refuse to disappear," as the Zapatistas say, are routinely arrested, beaten and even killed"
This is nonsense. Who has disappeared? Jaggi Singh? Maude Barlowe? Well her husband Avi Lewis has disappeared as the host of "counterspin" but I hardly think it was the forces of "neoliberalism" that snuffed him. Would that it were true Naomi. But truth as we know is an mere inconvenience for Klein and the lunatic fringe she orbits in. Just like the crushing of dissent during the run up to the war this fantasy of brave warriors being hunted down and eliminated is so prevalent among the anti-global types that they go out of their way to get arrested. Naomi however has very few martyrs to hold up as examples (don't worry later on she will find one - and you wont believe who it is).
"Take Rachel Corrie." WHAT?
" Although she is engraved in our minds as the 23-year-old in an orange jacket with the courage to face down Israeli bulldozers, Corrie had already glimpsed a larger threat looming behind the military hardware. "I think it is counterproductive to only draw attention to crisis points--the demolition of houses, shootings, overt violence," she wrote in one of her last e-mails. "So much of what happens in Rafah is related to this slow elimination of people's ability to survive.... Water, in particular, seems critical and invisible." The 1999 Battle of Seattle was Corrie's first big protest. When she arrived in Gaza, she had already trained herself not only to see the repression on the surface but to dig deeper, to search for the economic interests served by the Israeli attacks. This digging--interrupted by her murder--led Corrie to the wells in nearby settlements, which she suspected of diverting precious water from Gaza to Israeli agricultural land. "
Ok she's lost me. What does Israeli water diversion (if it is true) have to do with free trade? How many free trade agreements has Israel signed? Well only one that I know of, Israel and Canada have a free-trade agreement that the anti-globalization crowd doesn't seem to care about. Is Jean Chretien responsible for Rachel Corrie's death??
I guess I was misinformed. I thought Rachel was a supporter of a bunch of murderous Jew hating fanatics. Turns out she was a gentle "water warrior".
We then move to a comparison of the situation in Iraq to that in Chile. Both had their governments removed by the US. One was legitimate (Iraq) the other highly questionable (Chile 1972). Chile had a freely elected government removed. Iraq had a bloodthirsty tyrant removed. Klein I guess is part of the hand Iraq back to Saddam gang.
Why? Well consider this:
Thirty years have passed since that other September 11, when Gen. Augusto Pinochet, with the help of the CIA, brought the free market to Chile "with blood and fire," as they say in Latin America. That terror is paying dividends to this day: The left never recovered, and Chile remains the most pliant country in the region, willing to do Washington's bidding even as its neighbors reject neoliberalism at the ballot box and on the streets
Wow you mean to destroy the left we have to engineer more coups? Good let's have at it. Interesting that her linkage between Iraq and Chile has to do with silencing the left. Gee these guys are always worried about being silenced. First it was Chile, then September 11, now Iraq. What passes for silence among this crowd anyway? We only talk 50% of the time then we are forced to listen to someone else's point of view??
Incidentally in case you don't know. Chile has one of the strongest economies in the region. Unlike socialist basket cases Venezuela and Argentina (no one cares about the socialist dictators who ran that country into the ground).
And in case you've lost track as have I that this article was about free-trade, let me remind you that Naomi's home country of Canada has a free trade agreement with Chile. Conveniently forgotten as she berates Bush:
the Bush Administration has let it be known that if the Canc?n meetings fail, it will simply barrel ahead with more bilateral free-trade deals, like the one just signed with Chile. Insignificant in economic terms, the deal's real power is as a wedge: Already, Washington is using it to bully Brazil and Argentina into supporting the Free Trade Area of the Americas or risk being left behind
Boy that Jean Chretien. How did he manage to bully Chile into a free trade agreement almost 10 years before Dubya??
And as for forcing Brazil and Argentina into a free trade zone let's get some more facts straight.
Latin America has had a common trade agreement for years called Mercosur - the left doesn't seem to care about it.
And let's not forget the grand daddy of globalization: The European Common Market, which a lot of countries felt "bullied" into joining. The European Union is first and foremost a trade agreement with a government slapped over it.
Free trade is only bad remember if America is involved.
If trade agreements were Naomi's main concern she would give credit where credit is due. It was George Bush who slapped duties on the steel industry and lumber industry to help save jobs (and votes) in the US.
But Naomi will not ever give credit for that. Why? Trade is a red herring. Globalization is the last battle for the economics of the left. They know that if full on globalization were in place communist based economics would be discredited forever.
Why else would they be so willing to support the PLO, Hussein and all the other creatures of Marxist-Leninist psychosis?
