True Crime Carnival

True Crime Carnival of Blogs #55 is now online and yours truly has a contribution.

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Blog Carnivals






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All In A Day

Something is faster than a Federal Cabinet Minister putting his foot in his mouth then taking it out and shooting it.

His communications staff destroying the public evidence on his webpage.

In this case Stockwell Day. Who said, in print, (so the truth its out there) the racist slur; Spear-Chucker.

And sure enough there it is in print.

Weekly column generates interest from the national media By Stockwell Day is the member of Parliament for Okanagan Coqu Dec 20 2006

Aaaaanyway, it appears that local libs now send bits and pieces of my local columns to their favourite spear-chuckers down east who are quick to unleash a volley of indignation, which makes for good fodder back here at home.

Is Kate and the SDA bunch upset at Stock for his “spear-chucker” comment? asks Scott Tribe. Nope .

Like Kate mostof the Blogging Tories are ignoring it and of course there are rightwingnutbars who defend Stockwell.

But it gets better. Perhaps the reason Kate and other BT are not saying anything is because they could find; "No Evidence for the comment."

You see it disappeared from Stockwells web page. My goodness everything has. As Macleans pointed out. Suddenly there are no postings for 2006 yet they were there a week ago when I found this there.

It appears the PMO has 'communicated' with Day's staff.....

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day was ordered to remove an embarrassing comical commentary that ridiculed the science behind global warming from his personal website to avoid embarrassing his government about its real views on climate change, critics said Wednesday.

By order of the Autark himself no dout after all Harper spent summer reading a biography on Stalin.

Say this is reminicent of the Stalin School of Falsification, now you see it now you don't. In this case this is the last web page of article comments left by the Stock. But it links to nothing, abandoned in cyberspace the last fingerprint that Stock had posted anything this year.

But the offending article, along with all other commentary posted by Day since he became a cabinet minister were removed from the site by the end of the week.

Officials at Day's office had no explanation.

''Were they (articles) there before?'' wrote Melisa Leclerc, Day's director of communications, in an e-mail. ''I hadn't noticed.''

But of course he had, every time he did he said something quotable, that is something stupid, it was posted on his home page. Now poof its all gone.

She hadn't noticed sheesh, lie a little. Spin some more. I really think it had less to do with the climate remarks than the use of the term Spear-Chucker in his latest missive. Which was Day commenting on the comments raised over his climate change article. In this article they quote from his column but not about his use of Spear-Chucker.

You see his website changed the day the Spear-Chucker column ran. Opps. Can you say Cover Up.

There are those who would attempt to dismiss his use of the phrase, Spear-Chucker as not being racist, really, no not racist, not from the red neck white boy from interior B.C., old Socred country.

The polical Home of Wacky Bennett is now home to Wacky Day.

Spear-Chucker here means what it means; the troops, the grunts, the gophers, the nmasses. Waves of the masses.

Waves of Spear-Chuckers, wave upon wave, the waves of Zulu overwhelming her majesty's Imperial Army.

Stockwell , being the erudite latte sucking intellectual he is, was making a historical reference to major British defeats in South Africa,to end in a pyrrhic victory by the British.

Harsher views see the redcoat effort as dangerously cavalier and bumbling, epitomized by the infamous but apochryphal belief that ammunition boxes could not be opened at Isandhlwana - they could be kicked open! Critics also claim that the British fatally divided their forces, enabling the Zulu to concentrate on each invading column in turn. That a modern army with rifles and artillery could not make short work of the illiterate native host is seen as proof of reckless underestimation of the enemy and slipshod preparation.

To be followed by their ultimate defeat at the hands of their once erstwhile allies the Boers. A war that marked the first time Canada sent military and Mounted Police troops overseas to fight for the Empire.

So the British Imperialists turned defeat into victory by changing the term Spear-Chucker from one of horror, terror, and certain death to one of derision; backwardness, primitivism.

So yes Martha, Stockwell Day did use a racist slur in print. Unlike Republican George Allen who only got YouTubed saying Maccaca. Stockwells slur is still in print and on the web. Even if its not on his homepage.

At least he didn't use the other favorite South African racial slur; Kaffir. Though someone might have dismissed that as being just another Boy Scout term.

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Stockwell Day

Blogging



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Cat Carol

A sad Christmas tale, that is seasonally appropriate. Not all Christmas songs or tales are joyful. They are often tales of sacrifice and redemption, such as O Henry's famous short story The Gift Of The Magi or Dickens tale of the haunting of Scrooge.

I just wish it wasn't so damn popular on CKUA this season, I never can just turn it off, to late and I get teary eyed again when I hear it.

Score; 5/5 kleenex.

It is basically a retelling of the little match girl story for todays children. The author Bruce Evans is Canadian and the singer Meryn Cadell. gives the song it's haunting apprehensiveness. It is a sad carol despite the uplifting ending.

The Cat Carol

The cat wanted in to the warm warm house,
But no one would let the cat in
It was cold outside on christmas eve,
She meowed and meowed by the door.

The cat was not let in the warm warm house,
And her tiny cries were ignored.
'twas a blizzard now, the worst of the year,
There was no place for her to hide.

Just then a poor little mouse crept by,
He had lost his way in the snow.
He was on his last legs and was almost froze,
The cat lifted him with her paw.

She said "poor mouse do not be afraid,
Because this is christmas eve.
"on this freezing night we both need a friend,
"i won’t hurt you - stay by my side."

She dug a small hole in an icy drift,
This is where they would spent the night.
She curled herself 'round her helpless friend,
Protecting him from the cold.

Oooooo

When santa came by near the end of the night,
The reindeer started to cry.
They found the cat lying there in the snow,
And they could see that she had died.

They lifted her up from the frozen ground,
And placed her into the sleigh.
It was then they saw the little mouse wrapped up,
She had kept him warm in her fur.

"oh thank you santa for finding us!
"dear cat wake up we are saved!"
..."i’m sorry mouse but your friend has died,
There’s nothing more we can do.

"on christmas eve she gave you her life,
The greatest gift of them all."
Santa lifted her up into the night sky,
And laid her to rest among the stars.

"dear mouse don’t cry you are not alone,
You will see your friend every year.
"each christmas a cat constellation will shine,
To remind us that her love’s still here."

Oooooooo

See

Christmas

Rebel Jesus

Tannenbaum

Keeping the 'X' in X MAS

Solstice

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Merry Christmas, Red Baron

A tip o' the blog to Mapmaker Scrap who posted my favorite version of Snoopy's Christmas Song with a link to my article from last Christmas on the WWI Christmas Mutiny. A Story well worth remembering any time there is war in the world.


Of course the real 'Snoopy' was Canadian;

Shot down by the Red Baron - The First World War: Canada Remembers ...
A Canadian flying ace recalls the day he was shot down by Manfred von Richthofen.

As an update from that story; those Canadian soldiers who were executed during WWI for desertion, like their British and German counterparts, were finally given posthoumous amnesty this year.

Recoginizing most of them probably suffered from 'shell shock', which we call today post traumatic syndrome.

Four years earlier the Mon's was the scene of the first Christmas Peace, it would also be the last village fought over as real peace finally occurred in 1918.

By November 1918, trench warfare has finally given way to a headlong pursuit of the retreating Germans. Canadian troops under Sir Arthur Currie are tasked with liberating Belgian villages such as Mons, where house-to-house fighting is fierce. Then a rumour spreads: the war is over! As we hear in this clip, the news seems too good to be true. Even when armistice is confirmed, the exhausted soldiers can barely comprehend the new reality: death one day, peace the next.

And so I also get to link to that other great Christmas Anti War Song, Happy Christmas War Is Over. A sentiment best expressed 'out of the mouth of babes';

Dear Santa

What I want for Christmas is my dad to come home because he went to the war. I just hope he does not get hurt and I love him. Your friend, Anna Marie Eide

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WWI

Christmas

John Lennon Working Class Hero




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Chocolate Worms

Mmm love dem worms, especially chocolate covered ones.

They are a delicacy in some places.

But not apparently in India. Cadbury: The confectionary giant is now under fire

It could have been worse though, it could have been chocolate covered slaves.




The Cadbury Chocolate company of England drew attention to the abuses of indenture when it boycotted cocoa produced by African labour from the Portuguese-held colony of Angola to São Tomé, and further importation of contract labour to the island was halted in 1909.

Ironically, part of the reason behind the ending of the practice of indentured labour had more to do with overtly racist and expansionist ideologies than humanitarian concern. Because those who had completed their term of indenture sometimes opted to remain in the colonies and set up for themselves, they often came into competition with white labourers and businessmen, competition that increased as the numbers of emigrants from Europe increased.

After "Slavery" was televised in Britain last fall, horrified consumers bombarded the country's biggest chocolate manufacturers - Cadbury, Nestle and Mars - with demands for "clean products"which are untainted by slave labour.
Big companies, like Nestle, purchase their cocoa on international exchanges where cocoa from Ivory Coast is mixed with cocoa from other countries and loses its identity as a slave-made product. Anti Slavery International says, "Because of the way the chocolate industry buys its cocoa it is not possible to ensure that slave or other forms of illegal exploitation have not been used in its production." It says companies should purchase direct from plantations so they can ensure international labour standards are met. If they continue to buy their cocoa via the exchange or other middlemen, they should work with cocoa-producing countries such as Ivory Coast to ensure the labour standards are enforced.
If chocolate manufacturers fail to respond, Anti Slavery International offers this recommendation: "In the absence of industry action, the only way consumers can be confident the produce they use is free from exploited labour is by buying products which carry a fair trade label."

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Chocolate



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We're Number One, We're Number One,

So this may be why this happened.

Not only do we have some of the highest home computer usage in the world, just behind Finland and Norway, (baby its cold outside, I think I'll go surfing) we have the highest usage of the internet. It now appears we also have most bloggers.

So depite all the brouhaha down south about the impact of political bloggers, their public penetration is minimal whereas ours is far greater. Which means not only in blogging, but all aspects of the new media on the internet. Have computer will surf. And Canadians do.

Over the last couple of days many of us blogging, have said the Federal NDP needs to change and transform its communications approach to the DIY reality of the WWW. And while many blog comments focused on the Director of Communications, which was the spark that lit the prairie fire, it really was all about feeling like we are in the hinterland.

Battling the Blogging Tories and Liberalblogs, in a thankless battle to get the messaging out with little or no support from the party. Rather blogging gets short shrift and disdain from its top strategy and communications wonk.

In light of this information the least they could do is create a blog. Then in a few years they will figure out aggregators.


A tip o' the blog to Giant Political Mouse

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Bumph And Grind

Brad Lavigne

NDP

Internet

Blogging


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Punked

An email hoax, critical of Jack Layton is posted on the right wing SDA blog
And despite comments on her site that it is a hoax, she continues to post it with no disclaimer for at approximately 24 hours. Slimey Kate, slimey.
I originally wrote the above yesterday, pending posting, 11:40 PM Dec.20/2006

Update Dec. 21/2006
She finally admits it was a hoax but only credits her own commentators, not folks out here in the blogosphere that pointed out in the first place. Seems she is slow to read the comments till after the fact. Fact being that she didn't check her source or its authenticity. So if this is Kates citizens journalism I guess thats how its different from real, authentic, professional, journalism. Fact Checking.


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SDA


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Canada's New National Portrait

Gallery. Which is why this is Funny It was either that or build a prison. Hey maybe it can double up. RH Stephen Harper National Portrait Gallery and Prison. Art has consequences.

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Pay Back

Income Trust Payback

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Happy Solstice

The

Sun/Son

Returns.


And

Winter

Begins.










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The Problem Is Pagans

In the U.S Congress!!!

Discussion on the latest American religion and politics scandal, whats new, on CNN's Wolf Blitzer Situation Room.

Republican Spinmeister; "Bay" Buchanan blurted out her secret fear, the ultimate conspiracy theory, the problem with the Belt-way was all the Pagans in Congress

BEGALA: So, Carville is a Catholic. Ellison is a Muslim. And they were both in a synagogue at the same time. That is America.

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Keith Ellison got -- actually received the endorsement of a Jewish newspaper.

I mean, this is a man that ran on a certain platform. He gathered people from all different faiths to support him. And he has every possible reason in this great country to represent that district.
His religion, to me, is a strength, his strength. I mean, I will tell you what I'm far more concerned about in Congress, is -- than a Muslim, is the pagans we have up there.

(LAUGHTER)

BUCHANAN: I think they are a greater threat to us than anyone who has some religious beliefs.

(LAUGHTER)

Pagans in Congress? Heck the right wing mudpuppies are upset over a Democrat Congressman wanting to swear his oath of office on the Koran. Pagans, sheesh, America is not that liberal.

Of course saying something completely outrageous and untrue sounds better if you also make it outlandish. I am not sure what she was getting at with her us and them designation of Congress, but maybe if she said "believers and unbelievers: she would come under scrutiny of Homeland Security.

Or if she accussed Congress of being full of atheists, well that would have been laughed off, not an athiest among them, they make sure we all know that.

Nope pagans it is. And of course coming from a Catholic we all know what that means; any one who is not a Papist. Glad to know she didn't really mean Pagans just Non-Catholics.



I was suddenly envisioning the new Congress making Halloween and May Day sacred holy days on par with Christmas, and bringing back the Wicker Man for George W. Bush.




Instead being in a Yuletide mood of joy and giving I recommend someone sit Bay down and make her listen to Dar Williams; The Christians and the Pagans.

Amber called her uncle, said "We're up here for the holiday,
Jane and I were having Solstice, now we need a place to stay."
And her Christ-loving uncle watched his wife hang Mary on a tree,
He watched his son hang candy canes all made with red dye number three.
He told his niece, "It's Christmas Eve, I know our life is not your style,"
She said, "Christmas is like Solstice, and we miss you and its been awhile,"

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said,
Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses.

The food was great, the tree plugged in, the meal had gone without a hitch,
Till Timmy turned to Amber and said, "Is it true that you're a witch?"
His mom jumped up and said, "The pies are burning," and she hit the kitchen,
And it was Jane who spoke, she said, "It's true, your cousin's not a Christian,"
"But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share,
And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere."

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
And where does magic come from? I think magic's in the learning,
'Cause now when Christians sit with Pagans only pumpkin pies are burning.

When Amber tried to do the dishes, her aunt said, "Really, no, don't bother."
Amber's uncle saw how Amber looked like Tim and like her father.
He thought about his brother, how they hadn't spoken in a year,
He thought he'd call him up and say, "It's Christmas and your daughter's here."
He thought of fathers, sons and brothers, saw his own son tug his sleeve, saying,
"Can I be a Pagan?" Dad said, "We'll discuss it when they leave."

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold.

Yep, that should clear things up for her. Since we share a common ethic.

Pagans in Congress what a fantasy.

If that were to occur you would have a government of true federalism, and natural justice.

Yep pure fantasy.

McCloskey, Deirdre N. The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. 634 p., 3 line drawings, 8 tables. 6 x 9 2006

Cloth $32.50 0-226-55663-8 Spring 2006

For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned
the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us.

McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations.

High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life’s work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner.

CRITIQUE AND COMMENT

Towards Embodied Justice: Wrestling with Legal Ethics in the Age of the 'New Corporatism'

MARGARET THORNTON

[This article considers what feminist ethics might be able to offer public law and challenges the idea of ‘public’ law when strategically invoked by private interests. The article argues that ostensibly neutral phenomena, such as the public law–private law distinction, norms of universality and adversarialism are key technologies of power that facilitate the ‘new corporatism’. It is suggested that ‘care’, which is commonly assumed to be a corollary of feminist ethics, is problematic because it is associated with what is termed the ‘fictive feminine’, an impoverished notion of femininity within the popular imagination. An ethical feminist consciousness can nevertheless contribute to a new vision of justice by incorporating the perspective of the ‘other’, which involves effecting a dialogue between the universal and the particular.]

Pagan Virtue: An Essay in Ethics by John Casey at Questia Online ...

Man as person is absolutely free to choose his
destiny, his values, even his nature. His existence as a person, and
hence as a moral being, is not determined by something called
'human nature'. Morality must be concerned with man in his
freedom, and the moral law is the law of freedom. Ideas such as
these we can associate with Spinoza, Kant, and Sartre. Kant argued
that since the moral law must apply to all rational beings generally,
then it must apply to man simply as a rational being. No truly
moral command could be based on man's 'empirical' nature -- upon
particular desires, strengths, or skills.

In fact, the concept of a person, and its consequences for values,
is a focus of ideological disagreement. 'There is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor
female: for ye are all . . .' ⁵ persons. To insist that someone is above
all a person is to insist that all these other characters he may have
are irrelevant to that distinct pattern of response that is appropriate
to rational beings. To say that someone's colour, or sex, or caste is
irrelevant to his personhood is usually to say that it is inappropriate
or wrong to withdraw certain sorts of consideration from him
because of these features or accidents of birth, or to accord certain
sorts of consideration to him because of them.

Pagan Virtue: An Essay in Ethics. (book reviews)

This book presents the author's reflections on the "pagan" cardinal virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and practical wisdom (phronesis) as depicted by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. Casey sees these virtues as pagan because they "are undeniably worldly . . . , include an element of self-regard, and . . . rely on material conditions for their fulfillment" (p. viii). Christian virtue, by contrast, centers on the next world, emphasizes humility, and is independent of the vagaries of fortune because it depends (as Kant articulates in the Grundlegung) ...

The Sense of the Past:
Essays in the History of Philosophy

Bernard Williams
Edited and with an introduction by Myles Burnyeat

Bernard Williams' insistence that morality is about people and their real lives, and that acting out of self-interest and even selfishness are not contrary to moral action, is illustrated in his "internal reasons for action" argument, part of what philosophers call the "internal/external reasons" debate.

Philosophers have tried to argue that moral agents can have "external reasons" for performing a moral act; that is, they are able to act for reasons external to their inner mental states. Williams argued that this is meaningless. For something to be a "reason to act," it must be magnetic; that is, it must move us to action. How can something entirely external to us – for example, the proposition that X is good – be magnetic? By what process can something external to us move us to act?

Williams argued that it cannot. Cognition is not magnetic. Knowing and feeling are quite separate, and a person must feel before they are moved to act. Reasons for action are always internal, he argued. If I feel moved to do X (for example, to do something good), it is because I want to. I may want to do the right thing for a number of reasons. For example, I may have been brought up to believe that X is good and may wish to act in accordance with my upbringing; or I may want to look good in someone else's eyes; or perhaps I fear the disapproval of my community. The reasons can be complex, but they are always internal and they always boil down to desire.

With this argument, Williams left moral philosophy with the notion that a person's moral reasons must be rooted in his desires to act morally, desires that might, at any given moment, in any given person, be absent. In a secular humanist tradition, with no appeal to God or any external moral authority, Williams' theory strikes at the foundation of conventional morality; namely, that people sometimes do good even when they don't want to.

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Pagan



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