Moon Travel – Another opportunity for the public to pay for private sector innovation?

The great capitalist and believer in small government (at least when he is talking to the base) has promised to put a permanent base on the moon by the end of his second term.

So I guess this could be test of that mantra of evangelical free-marketeers, that the private sector should be left to innovate and the government has no role in business.

“Throughout history, technological advances have been driven by private investment, not by government fiat. There is no reason to expect that to change anytime soon.”

So I hope this means no tax breaks, no direct government payments, no publicly funded safety net or insurance, only private investors and private money should be expected in financing this enterprise.

However in reality you just know that the private sector will be begging for welfare in the research and development phase and conveniently forget the role of the government after the base is built. It will become another myth in support of corporate achievement. Just like production line manufacturing, public health care, banking systems, the last space effort, the internet etc.

As is often the case in faith-based systems, reconciling doctrine to the facts of history can be tricky. When I read Neeley’s piece, I immediately thought of the long list of modern technological innovations that came directly from government-directed and -financed projects, most notably containerisation, satellites, computers and the internet.

The initial research-and-development for all these projects so central to the modern economy came from the government, often through the military, long before they were commercially viable.

So is the pusher of small government and “making your own way in the world” gonna remain consistent or is he, like every other right wing proponent of the free market gonna pillage the public purse and not care about who will pay for it.

Kidding… rhetorical question the first option is even an option.

LSE Students Union stiffles free expression and kneels before the intolerant.

Back in the day I played football against the LSE for my School and we beat them because they were spineless gits. Nice to see that that requirement is still needs fulfilling before you can represent the LSE in Office today too.

Their statement is just the sort of cowardly crap you should expect from some folk who think they know what they are doing but clearly don’t. This extract says it all,

The LSE Students’ Union would like to reiterate that we strongly condemn and stand against any form of racism and discrimination on campus.

Yeah except discriminating against free expression. A couple of religious whackjobs invent some offence about an unclear representation of something they claim to be their prophet and you ask “how high sir?” (That always confused me, if there are no illustrations of their prophet then how can they know this is him?)

Given that each religion claims to speak the truth and that they are the only ones going to be saved or whatever, could every other person claim that moslem soc, xian soc or what ever other grouping of deluded individuals exists at the LSE also discriminate against them. This clearly contravenes your self serving wishy washy statement, because is it

…. not in accordance with our values of tolerance, diversity, and respect for all students regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or religious affiliation.

Oh and don’t forget the views of the religious towards gays, women etc. But the LSESU won’t be consistent because the followers of the sky faeries are allowed to hate others, their faith insists on it. And as for this,

There is a special need in a Students’ Union to balance freedom of speech and to ensure access to all aspects of the LSESU for all the ethnic and religious minority communities that make up the student body at the LSE.

Is there a more marginalised minority community than the atheists and humanists at college?

h/t Butterflies

Oh yeah and I meant to spell it stiffles it combines stiffing the freespeakers with stifling free speech.

Mario Balotelli – A 21 year old infant with sycophants all around him.

Raiola added on BBC Radio 5 live: “We had a very clear image of his career at the beginning and I told the press openly Mario will have to stay at Manchester City for at least three of four years, helping the club on this important project and grow as a man and a player.

What a sound looking plan for a 21 year old football player. Quickly undone by,

“I think he feels persecuted; he cannot go on like that,” said Mino Raiola.

and

“He [Mario] is very disappointed about the decision. He loves playing in England. He keeps asking ‘why always me, why does it always come back to me?’ He loves playing in England and I think he feels persecuted.”

I’m surprised the racist card wasn’t played, oh!

Raiola had earlier suggested he felt there might be a conspiracy against foreign players such as Balotelli and City team-mate Vincent Kompany, who was also suspended for four games earlier this month.

He did go there. So what is this great conspiracy then?

Oh you stamped on a guy’s head while was on the ground. You are lucky Parker didn’t press charges and you were treated like Duncan Ferguson was a few years back.

Oh and this was shortly after throwing a dart at a team mate in training and setting your own house on fire by igniting fireworks off indoors.

Even your own coaching staff thinks it looks bad.

Mario part of growing up and becoming an adult is taking responsibility for your own actions. Those who advise you are not doing you any favours. They want you to remain the mental infant you are because I guess it suits some purpose for them.

Sack everyone who works for you and think for yourself, or you could just whine like a pussy and blame everyone else. Man or large baby that’s the choice you have.

National Post – A pretty pathetic second to Fox News on Mexico

Appreciating risk accurately is always a tricky prospect but ratcheting up the fear factor is a time honoured way of not having to worry about the evidence supporting ones position. On Mexico and folk taking their holidays there the National Post and it’s reporters are a case study in talking bollocks and inconsistency of approach.

NP reporters throughout the years have targeted Mexico for their ire and they just can’t understand why Canadians flock there.

A recent attack on a Calgary women is their latest excuse to continue their quest. Let me say now I hope that Sheila Nabb recovers fully and this post is in no way meant to minimise the seriousness of her condition. This post is criticising those who would use her suffering to push their own agenda.

The first thing that told me the two reporters were spouting crap was this sentence,

The attack against Nabb is the latest on a growing list of Canadian injuries and deaths in the country over the last five years, which have started to cast doubt on Mexico’s safety as a place to live or visit.

See no figures just a vague assertion that it is bad. So I set to digging and found this NP article on the topic which said,

According to Foreign Affairs Canada, 112 Canadians have been killed in accidents, murders, drownings or suicides since Mexico started an aggressive war against its various drug cartels in Feb. 2006. From that number, 15 Canadians were murdered or died in suspicious deaths.

See again another sleight of hand, mention the total who died and hide the number of murders at the end, after mentioning the drug war. In the first article the pup reporters went totally off track and raved about Juarez, violence along the border, do not drive directives and the number of Mexican dead. Oh and don’t forget the drug war. So unlike the reporters I thought I’d check the facts behind deaths here at home and the Posts position on them. Since the Post looked at murders from 2006 and found 12, I started searching in 2006.

Of the 605 homicides, 190 were committed with a firearm, 33 fewer than in 2005. This resulted in a 16% drop in the rate of firearm homicides. Both the rate of handguns and rifles/shotguns decreased in 2006, while the rate of sawed-off rifles and shotguns doubled from 2005.

2007

Of the 188 firearms used to commit homicide in 2007, two-thirds were handguns – 16 more than in 2006 (Table 5). There were also 32 homicides committed with rifles/shotguns and 17 with sawed-off rifles/shotguns in 2007, both down from 2006.

2008

For the past 30 years, there have been two primary methods used to commit homicide: shootings and stabbings. In 2008, this trend continued as shootings and stabbings each accounted for approximately one-third of all homicides. There were 200 victims killed by shooting, 12 more than the previous year, and 200 killed by stabbing, an increase of 10 from 2007.

And 2010

In 2006 in Canada 605 Canadians were murdered by Canadians. 190 of them were committed with a firearm. Wow really? I wonder what the view of the Post was with respect to firearms murders in Canada.

National Post editorial board: Scrap the gun registry, and its records

In the 2010 report from StatsCan I found this,

Between 2005 and 2009, police recovered 253 firearms that were used to commit homicide where the registration status with the Canadian Firearms Registry could be determined.

Of these, 31% were registered and 69% were not registered. Of the firearms that were registered, 67% were rifles or shotguns, 22% were handguns and 12% were sawed-off rifles or shotguns.

Also during this five-year period, police were able to determine the ownership of the firearm in 212 homicide incidents. Of these, 49% were owned by the accused, 8% by the victim and 43% by another person.

Hmm, so obviously the facts about Canadian murders in Canada are as unimportant as the facts about Canadian murders in Mexico when it comes to reporting in the Post.

All one can determine from the Post’s hostility towards Mexico is that fear sells and the Post needs every penny it can wring out of people right now. Things ain’t looking good.

Calling Stephen Harper – If the US Secret Service investigate this, would that make them anti-Semites?

Fringe Editor of an US extremist Jewish mag wrote,

Option three, wrote Mr. Adler, is for the Israeli leader to “give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice-president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

Ah but this is just one whackjob in a sea of tolerance I hear you say. Really?

“Adler’s crazy and criminal suggestions are not the ranting of some loony-tune individual,” opined Chemi Shalev, a political analyst at the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “They were not taken out of thin air. Rather, they are the inevitable result of the inordinate volume of repugnant venom that some of Obama’s political rivals, Jews and non-Jews alike, have been spewing for the last three years.”

Just like extremist catholics wanting to list identities and addresses of those they despise and the rantings of the mad mullahs of Islam, why the hell should the third religion of the book be any more sane? Judaism spawned xianity and islam and a house is only as good as the foundations on which it stands. A triumvirate of intolerance, stupidity, superstition and hatred.

RCMP – Coming soon, the paramilitary, state security arm of the Harper Party?

The new boss of the RCMP better be careful. The latest news about our MP’s access to senior officers has really bad optics. And Dan, I’m not sure they aren’t well founded.

• Harper doesn’t like civil servants publicising findings before his communications crew (~1500 of them and counting) has had a chance to assess them for ideological implications.
• Harper also doesn’t like MPs from other parties speaking to civil servants on their own. Who knows what they might learn?
• Harper redesigned the communications protocol for the RCMP.
• A previous Harper apparatchik was moved from Public Affairs to the RCMP. To ensure nothing untoward happened in the redesign?
• Another Harper placeling watched the process from Public Affairs. Ditto?

“If this guy kowtows, the whole force has got problems,” said Kenny, who has been rebuffed in attempts to meet with Paulson. “The cops aren’t meant to be part of the political apparatus.”

Unless that is exactly what is intended.

Are we seeing the formation of a party aligned policing policy and the moving of policing from being a community based function to just a uniformed, armed, ideologically aligned extension of the party in power? Based on the meekness of the so called leader of the RCMP and the centralisation of control of the RCMP, it sure looks like the groundwork may be being laid now.

Given Harpers recent leanings towards GW Bush like thinking (conflict between good and evil) and his undoubted leanings towards being convinced he can bring about a win for the forces of “good,” this latest development is worrying.

The lack of leadership and independence shown by the new RCMP commissioner does nothing to convince that he will be anything other than a yes man, just like all the others in government who aren’t part of the cult, or who aren’t already in ideological purdah.

 

 

“The RCMP needs to work in an independent way,” Jasbir Sandhu

Not anymore it would appear.

If Tony Clement shows up and starts talking it’s going to get stupid quickly.

I’ve heard of the term trouble shooter, but it appears that a new job title is needed for the King of Muskoka. Andrew Potter has put together some pretty convincing evidence that Slimey Tony is the government’s conduit for the public dissemination of it’s ideologically necessary, but reality challenged policies.

He’s a kind of Sith for “teh retard” (hmm Sith Stupid?) and when he appears the level of idiocy in the universe is raised causing those sensitive enough to register it.

h/t Gardner

18th January is Strike Day – The bought and paid for US Politicians can go screw themselves

Just thought I’d come out in solidarity against the forces of censorship and twatitude.

What is Harper doing to combat this threat to our sovereignty? As it involves large corporations probably nothing.

Even more worrisome is the fact that SOPA and PIPA would give the U.S. government the direct authority to block entire domains and blocks of IP addresses. Canadians should be especially concerned about this, since the legislation treats all dot-com, dot-net and dot-org domains — as well as all North American IP addresses — as “domestic Internet protocol addresses” that would be subject to U.S. law.

But maybe the Harper’s recent sojourn to China could explain his in action after all

The bills would employ the same practices used by authoritarian regimes, such as China and Iran, to censor information and quash dissent.

Now that’s what I call controlling the message, but for a guy worried about the involvement of foreigners in Canadian affairs how did US control of our cyberspace escape his notice?

Who is the real Canadian, the dual citizen who respects the rule of law in Canada or the political parties who ignore it when it suits them?

As I’m a dual citizen and each of the major political parties have said that I’m not a real Canadian according the the Harper Party, the Liberals or the NDP. Canadian Law and the Charter say otherwise but our party political types don’t think that the law of the land is enough and that they can discriminate against some Canadians based on their arbitrary standards.

Well I guess that only leaves me with a few options come election time – Separatist, Independent or run as MP myself.

I’m considering the latter, then I won’t have to worry about discrimination within the caucus.

Mr Harper you were right about the country changing, picking on the other is now a trait of all the major parties.