Assisted Suicide

Sleaze Crime reporter Nancy Grace has not yet been charged with aiding and abetting a suicide. Considering her outrageous style of accuasatory reporting, that all those accused of a crime are guilty, one would think she would have turned herself in already for the crime of bullying someone to death.

In 2006, Grace was involved in an incident reported heavily in US and international media when a 21 year old woman, Melinda Duckett, committed suicide following an interview given by Grace concerning the disappearance of Duckett's 2 year old son.

Duckett had reported her son missing to police on August 27 having finished watching a film, telling them that she returned to her son's room to find his bed empty and a 10in slit in a window screen in his room.

Grace had interviewed Duckett the day before her suicide, during which she banged her desk and attacked Duckett for her perceived lack of openness regarding her son's disappearance, asking Duckett "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?"^[3] Duckett appeared to become confused, and was unsure if she had taken a polygraph test. When Grace asked her "why" she had not given out specific details, Duckett began to reply "Because I was told not...", to which Grace responded "Ms Duckett, you are not telling us for a reason. What is the reason? You refuse to give even the simplest facts of where you were with your son before he went missing. It is day twelve..." Grace then allowed Duckett a reply before cutting to a media psychologist.

The next day, Duckett shot herself to death, a death which relatives claim was influenced by media scrutiny, especially from Grace.Speaking to the The Orlando Sentinel, Duckett's grandfather Bill Eubank said, "Nancy Grace and the others, they just bashed her to the end... She wasn't one anyone ever would have thought of to do something like this. She and that baby just loved each other, couldn't get away from each other.

See:

Crime



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Red In Tooth and Claw

Blogging Tory; mesopotamia west writes; There is one fact that binds Liberals, Socialists and Communists; a belief in the perfectibility of man, the feeling that somehow, someway, a loving, caring and compassionate humanity can be hammered out of the anger, greed and loathing of human nature.

Oh what a conceited negative view of oneself this poor man has. Clearly though since humanity is such a beast it must be dominated and ruled over. Hence we should make laws that protect us from ourselves. But wait he opposes this.

I can never understand how those who declare we are vestigial beasts can then turn around and declare we should have the right to bear arms, to kill each other at will, at a whim. As Mr. Mesopotamia West does. Since this would seem to be a contradiction. But wait no of course given that then we need to have both the right to bear arms and a police state to govern us.

What stupidity. What illogic. But of course one cannot take these kinds of arguments seriously, since the premise is incorrect. Humans are social beings, we like other animals live cooperatively, in solidarity, balancing out our personal needs with our social obligations. There is no need to hammer that into us. We are inherently compasionate, which is what all great religions in the world appeal to and tell us is so.

We are loving or we would have no families, kinship groups, tribes, why society would be nothing less than the war of all against all. Opps thats what Hobbes said to Calvin.

We are inherently socialist because we socialize, individualism is liberalism, socialism arose out of the liberal movement of the 18th century as did anarchism.While the conservative politics of Mr. Mesopotamia West are a Burkean throw back to Empire, to not just the rule of law, but the rule of tyrants, and empire. The rule of the Great Man who needs to hammer chains onto humanity to keep us from returning to our beastial selves.

Mr. Mesopotamia West refers to Stalin, as if he was a Marxist, when he was just another tyrant using ideology to justify his rule over the people. In fact he was truly a conservative the ideal Great Man that Burke and other conservatives love to praise.

Socialism and Anarchism recognize humanities 'human-ness', while conservatives deny that, they believe we are red in tooth and claw and in need of restraint. It is conservatives who created the State to satisfy their demented need to dominate others. The state will always be conservative, not liberating. Hence even Marx and Engels accepted the need for the withering away of the state.

What is truly loathsome is the rhertorical strawmen in articles like that written by Mr. Mesopotamia West.


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Mr. Conservative

I watched the HBO special on Barry Goldwater, which is a brillant piece of famialial history done by his grand-daughter.It put Goldwater in a better historical light than he may be remembered by most due to the controversial Presidential campaign tactics used by the Democrats to denounce him.

In his old age he became more outspoken on the wrong direction that the Republican party was going in. Moving away from its libertarian roots to embrace the neofascist theological right wing.

This past election saw Goldwater vindicated in his concerns, and hopefully it will finally cause a reassessment on the right as to what damage aligning with the forces of bigotry can create in a political party.

Like the Republicans the Canadian Conservatives under Harper once gave lipservice to being libertarians, but have embraced the politics of the social conservative theocrats and authoritarian law and order types.

There are no Goldwaters in the Canadian Conservative Party anymore than there are Goldwaters left in the Republicans. Which is a damn shame.

To rephrase Lloyd Bensten's famous quote; Mr. Bush, Mr. Harper, Blogging Tories et. al I knew Barry Goldwater and you are no Barry Goldwater.

Barry Goldwater
By the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan as president and the growing involvement of the religious right in conservative politics, Goldwater's libertarian views on personal issues were revealed, which he believed were an integral part of true conservativism. This put him at odds with the Reagan Administration and religious conservatives who wanted stricter government control on public and personal morality. Goldwater viewed abortion as a matter of personal choice, not intended for government intervention. In fact, his own daughter, Joanne, chose to have an abortion before her first marriage at the age of 20, and he supported her decision. He was also not against gays in the military. As a passionate defender of personal liberty, he saw the religious right's views as an encroachment on personal privacy and individual liberties. In his 1980 Senate re-election campaign, Goldwater won support from religious conservatives but in his final term voted consistently to uphold legalized abortion.Goldwater also disagreed with the Reagan administration on certain aspects of foreign policy (e.g. he opposed the decision to mine Nicaraguan harbors). Notwithstanding his prior differences with Dwight Eisenhower, Goldwater in a 1986 interview rated him the best of the seven Presidents with whom he had served.


See:

Libertarian

Death Of Laissez-Faire Politics

Fukuyama Denounces War In Iraq

A NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION

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Psudeo-Science vs Real Science

Before accepting a newspaper reporters assertions that climate change is bunk, one should at least google data on said reporter.

In this case right wing climate change denier Christopher Monckton. Otherwise known as 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. A former member of the Thatcher government.A newpaper reporter given to creating puzzles. Not a scientist.

Top Tory in a kilt hit by visa 'racket' case - Sunday Times ...
A MILLIONAIRE aristocrat and one-time Downing Street adviser is under investigation by detectives probing an alleged international immigration racket.

Christopher Monckton, a former adviser to Lady Thatcher when she was prime minister, is at the centre of a criminal inquiry into claims that hundreds of eastern European migrants were brought to Britain on bogus visas.

Investigators at the National Crime Squad have raided a London-based employment firm that uses Monckton as an immigration adviser.

Monckton is credited as the brains behind the Thatcherite policy of giving council tenants the right to buy their homes. A scion of a famous Tory family, his sister is Rosa Monckton, who was a friend of Diana, Princess of Wales, and is chairwoman of the committee that selected her memorial fountain in Hyde Park.

Monckton appears to be at it again in the Telegraph, denouncing climate change scientists as being part of a conspiracy which he calls the climate change consensus. When rightwingers use the term consenus, it a.) demeans the science b.) is another tern for acceptance of the status quo c.) is a term used by conspiracy theorists.

In November 2006 two articles written by him criticising the traditional view of global warming were published in the Sunday Telegraph. His executive summary states his own set of criteria that would need to be met in order for global warming to be true, most of which are unusual in terms of scientific practice, such as a criterion of consensus, which Monckton defines as universal acceptance.

Monckton's debunking of the global warming was criticized by George Monbiot in The Guardian newspaper. In the article, Monbiot states that Monckton's arguments in are based on either misinterpretations and omissions of scientific and historical facts or pseudo-scientific discourse. Monbiot gives historical, political and scientific arguments Monckton's criticisms. Monckton was offered the right of reply to Mobiot's claims in the next day paper and vigorously defended his Sunday Telegraph articles.

As the debate over climate change gets heated those who go over the top on calling it a pending apocalypse allow for climate change deniers like Monckton to appear to give voice to reason.

Monckton brings up the Middle Ages Glaciation period as evidence that climatologists are wrong. However this right wing interpretation of the facts are wrong. As Jeffery Sachs pointed out to the Wall Street Journal editorial board who also used it to excuse America's position on Kyoto.

And as NASA points out paleo-climactic changes have impacts on climate change models. And in fact this model verifies the so called Middle Ages Glaciation period and the resulting increase in climate change.

Feature: Paleoclimatology: Understanding the Past to Predict the Future

Between 1650 and 1710, a period known as the Maunder Minimum, the Sun was relatively quiet, bombarding the Earth with fewer ultraviolet rays than normal. Decreases in the amount of ultraviolet energy hammering the Earth change the stratosphere by decreasing the amount of ozone that is produced. During the same period, paleoclimate data showed that Europe was colder than most other areas. Scientists estimated how much ozone levels would have decreased during the Maunder Minimum based on the decrease in ultraviolet energy from the Sun, and they plugged the information into global climate models. “A change in the stratosphere gave a change in the NAO,” Schmidt says. In fact, the models said the NAO should have been more negative on average during the sixty-year period, resulting in cooler temperatures over Europe.

What climate change deniers on the right cannot accept is that capitalist industrialization has increased the speed of climate change over the last century.
Denouncing the science and the facts as a 'consensus' does not make it any less true. But it does place these climate deniers like 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in the same catagory of nutbars that believe in Jewish Conspiracy Theories.

See

Global Warming

Environment

Climate Change

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New Island

While news from the Pacific usually focuses on disasters; monsoons, tsunamis, islands burning, earthquakes, etc. NASA reports that a new island has appeared and a mysterious shelf of pumice has arisen in the region. It is the dance of the dialectic in nature.











August 2006 brought two new things to the Tonga Islands in the South Pacific. One was a raft of lightweight, frothy volcanic rock—pumice—floating on the ocean surface. The other was a new island emerging out of the water.


See:

Boreno is Burning

Did Nuke Cause Earth Quake

Our Living Earth

Dialectics of Extinction

(r)Evolutionary Theory

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Ambrose Admits the Truth

The Kyoto Protocol is being used to divide Canada, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose told the UN Climate Conference today

Yes by Ambrose and the Harpocrites. Of course thats not what she said.





See:

Rona Ambrose

Environment


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Iraq Inspector General

The rebuilding of Iraq is a case of corporate fraud extrodinare.

If it was a comedy it would be starring Danny Kaye.

Unfortunately like the failed reconstruction in Afghanistan, and after Katerina when it comes to nation building, America is better at nation destruction than reconstruction as today's PBS Newshour reports (transcript available tommorow)

The news remains business as usual for American crony capitalism in the rip off that is Iraq reconstruction.

Little scrutiny for firms in Iraq

Iraq's health care a shambles

Pentagon lacks independent watchdog




A year after these reports;

Inspector General Report Confirms Iraq Reconstruction Still Failing

US inspector general for Iraq paints 'grim' picture of reconstruction effort

Report to Congress says problems exacerbated by lack of cooperation between State Department, Pentagon.

Reconstruction is just War profiteering by any other name.


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Death Of Laissez-Faire Politics

A cheeky and insightful political comment from Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post on the impact of the election in the United States last week on Laissez-Faire politics of the right. Which of course never really were the politics of the post Reagan Republicans. They have not been real laissez-faire conservatives since Goldwater ran for President.

Besides, when Americans think of isms, they think -- at least they think first -- of how liberals and conservatives stand on social issues. A liberal backs abortion rights and gun regulations; a conservative wants to ban abortions and legalize all guns. By that measure, what has defined conservatism in the popular mind over the past couple of years has been its willingness to enlist government to block stem cell research, stop the teaching of evolution and supersede the duties of Terri Schiavo's husband.

This may be a conservatism that makes libertarians cringe, but it is the conservatism that dominates the Republican Party we have. Republicans generally and conservatives particularly have profited mightily from the rise and politicization of fundamentalism over the past few decades. The decimation of Republican moderates from the Northeast and Midwest in last week's elections came at the hands of centrist and independent voters who'd had it with the Southernized religious conservatism of the Republicans' base -- and with its moderate Republican enablers.

Finally, conservatives argue that the newly elected Democrats are really conservatives, too -- proof that the ideology is in no need of a tuneup. It's true that some of the Democrats take conservative positions on guns and abortion. But it's also true that virtually all the new Democrats look askance at free trade, want to raise the minimum wage and back a bigger role for government in making health care more affordable.

At a time when corporations abandon their employee benefits, globalization depresses wages, and individuals are compelled to shoulder more and more risk, the last thing Americans need is a government that tells them -- as it told their countrymen in New Orleans last year -- they're on their own.

That's why Republicans just ran a campaign devoid of new ideas. In a laissez-faire world that already induces anxiety and that becomes more laissez-faire with each passing day, who needs a laissez-faire party? Conservative, heal thyself.

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Conservative State Capitalism

Andrew a stalwart conservative is shocked, shocked I say, that the New Canadian Government is acting just like the last Canadian Government. The Harpocrites will continue to hand out taxpayer monies to Bombardier Inc.

Corporate Welfare, Conservative Style
15-11-06, 8:14 am @ Bound By Gravity

Stephen Harper's government continues to disappoint...

What right wing idealist ideologues fail to understand is that Canada's capitalist system is not laissez faire but a state capitalist economy, always has been always will be. Especially in Quebec. State Capitalism Quebec Style

Its what we call a mixed economy, to use Ed Broadbents phrase, a mix of private investment and taxpayer subsidization of capitalism. Whether that is done directly as in subsidies, indirectly as in increasing military purchases, or through P3's. It is all still state-capitalism. Or socialism for the rich as my pal Larry Gambone calls it.

It is the historic nature of post WWI capitalism. The concept of a free market is a myth. So get over it.

See:

Corporate Welfare Bums

Plundering Tax Payers

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Temp Workers For Timmies

Rules eased for hiring foreign workers
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Camrose or Calgary, Edson or Edmonton, ‘Help Wanted’ signs are everywhere,” Solberg said “And you know, when it starts to affect our ability to go to Tim Horton’s and get a double-double, it ceases to be a laughing matter. It’s a serious issue.”

Well we know there is a labour crisis when our Immigration Minister Monte Solberg can't get a coffee at Tim Hortons cause its closed due to worker shortages. And of course he would never go to Starbucks cause that would make him a latte liberal. And the reason for many businesses closing is that they will not pay well or offer benefits. The result is that more folks are going into construction trades, thus shortages abound for low paying jobs.

And the reason we have a labour shortage, well its called lack of planning; The Labour Shortage Myth Instead of planning for labour needs the province has avoided doing anything with the word 'plan' in it. Alberta's Free Market In Labour

The result is the return of child labour in the province and now the use of temporary foreign workers both forms of 'cheap labour'.

And the result is more deaths in the construction industry which is benefiting from this boom and the use of underskilled labour. $345,000 fine a record-breaker

The most recent accident involved a 16 year old who should have been in school not working in a trench on a construction site. But the temptation to make big bucks in Alberta's construction boom economy is too great. And in a conservative hands off business province like Alberta, regulations and legislation around worker rights and health and safety are not only woefully inadequate, they are not enforced.

Relaxed Foreign Worker Rules Will Lead to More Abuse of System says AFL

"Streamlining" is Shorthand for "Letting Employers Do What They Want"

See;

Better Late Than Never

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