Sunday, September 02, 2007

Canada Goes To Pot


Canada is a nation of pot heads.
\Marijuana use in Canada is the highest in the industrialized world and more than four times the global rate, according to a report from the United Nations.

Forty per cent of Canadian cannabis is produced in British Columbia, 25% in Ontario and 25% in Quebec, the report noted.

 Health

- One in 10 Canadian women uses marijuana.


Experts and activists are not concerned about the high rate of Canadian marijuana use reported in 2007 UN World Drug report —even though young people are the largest users of the drug.

The report states that 16.8 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 64 used marijuana in 2004. Canada is ranked fifth in marijuana use and the country’s usage percentage is four times the world average of 3.8 per cent. To compare, the report found that 12.6 per cent of people in the United States and 6.1 per cent in Holland have used the drug.

Richard Mathias, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine, said he is pleased with the results from the report and is not worried about the high numbers of young people using the drug.

“I think that marijuana is a safer drug than some other options and I know that youth is a difficult, highly stressful time and it is to be expected that youth will explore and that’s good,” he said. “I teach these kids. They’re not criminals.”

A study conducted in 2002 by Carleton University professor Peter Fried also concluded that only heavy pot smokers are negatively affected by marijuana use. Fried’s 70-person study found that only heavy marijuana users between the ages of 10 and 20 had a decline in their IQ scores. The rest saw an increase in their scores.

The study also found that those who smoked heavily and later quit returned to their former IQ level.

Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa-based lawyer who specializes in drug policy issues, said the UN report shows that the legal status of marijuana in a given country seems to have little bearing on consumption rates.

The report found that only 6.1 per cent of people in the Netherlands, where marijuana use has effectively been decriminalized, reported trying pot.

This shows decriminalization has no bearing on rates of use, and Canada shouldn't be so afraid to follow the Dutch lead, Oscapella said.

"The criminal law does not prevent people from using marijuana, nor does legalization force people to use it," he said.

Jean Chretien's Liberals first introduced a bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana in 2003, but it was never brought to a final vote. Stephen Harper's Conservatives killed the bill when they came to office in January 2006.

Oscapella added that Canada should be focusing its resources on the root causes of drug abuse, rather than persecuting people for possession.

"It is a health and a social issue," he said. "The criminal law is not the appropriate mechanism for dealing with drugs in the vast majority of cases."


Marijuana and tobacco use among young adults in Canada

The authors characterized marijuana smoking among young adult Canadians, examined the co-morbidity of tobacco and marijuana use, and identified correlates associated with different marijuana use consumption patterns. Data were collected from 20,275 individuals as part of the 2004 Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey. Logistic regression models were conducted to examine characteristics associated with marijuana use behaviors among young adults (aged 15-24). Rates of marijuana use were highest among current smokers and lowest among never smokers. Marijuana use was more prevalent among males, young adults living in rural areas, and increased with age. Young adults who were still in school were more likely to have tried marijuana, although among those who had tried, young adults outside of school were more like to be heavy users. Males and those who first tried marijuana at an earlier age also reported more frequent marijuana use. These findings illustrate remarkably high rates of marijuana use and high co-morbidity of tobacco use among young adult Canadians. These findings suggest that future research should consider whether the increasing popularity of marijuana use among young adults represents a threat to the continuing decline in tobacco use among this population.

We have a large scale industry in producing illicit and licit marijuana. The latter for medicinal purposes. We have approved marijuana and its byproducts for medicinal uses.

Since the 1970's when the LeDain Commission recommended decriminalization to today when the right wing think tank the Fraser Institute recommends decriminalization for controlling grow ops and increased tax income.

Canadians favour decriminalization. However the Harpocrites ignored their old Fraser pals as they ignore 'polls' and once elected declared war on pot. Quietly without much fanfare, what had been Liberal policy waiting for a vote was squashed.


“We will not be reintroducing the Liberal government’s marijuana decriminalization legislation,” Harper announced at a Canadian Professional Police Association meeting. “I thought we might find a receptive audience here,” he added, according to a Reuters report.


The Harpocrites would rather pander to their regressive base with a phony war on drugs, blaming as they do the rise in crime and pot smoking on the Liberals, pathetic.

In view of the former Liberal government's determination to medicalize and legalize marijuana, it is not surprising that, according to a study of young people in Canada released in 2004, our youth now hold the distinction of topping all nations (Switzerland was second) in frequent marijuana use. The lead researcher for this study, Dr. William Boyce of Queen's University, stated that the increased use of marijuana in Canada was tied to the three As - affordability, availability and acceptability. He stated, "in Canada, I think all three of those things come together so that it's actually used quite a bit by kids here. It's not so expensive, it's definitely available and with the legislation introduced in the last Parliament - and perhaps again in this one - that decriminalizes marijuana use, it certainly provides a signal to kids that this is not a highly illegal activity."

Thank heaven, the Conservative government is now providing a different message to our youth on marijuana use.

Please write to Prime Minister Harper and Minister of Justice Toews to thank them for the planned enforcement of the present marijuana laws rather than legalizing its use. Their actions will make a significant difference to our nation's youth. Please also request that marijuana use for so-called medical reasons be stopped if and until such time that it can be scientifically determined that its use has in fact, medical benefits.

The Harpocrites have adopted the oh so successful American War On Drugs Policy. And they have included marijuana as a key element of their new anti-drug campaign. Look forward to more regressive stupidity in the fall sitting of the house as the Minister of Health declares a drug panic.

Clement to MDs: Get tougher on illicit drugs

Federal Health Minister Tony Clement delivered a tough, anti-drug message to doctors yesterday, saying young people need straight talk about the dangers of illicit drugs, including marijuana.

"The messages young people have received during the past several years have been confusing and conflicting to say the least," Clement told the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association in Vancouver.

"We are very concerned about the damage and pain that drugs cause families and we intend to reverse the trend toward vague, ambiguous messaging that has characterized Canadian attitudes in the recent past," he said.

Ottawa plans a campaign emphasizing the dangers of all illicit drugs in any quantity, Clement said. "We will discourage young people from thinking there are safe amounts or safe drugs."

Meanwhile the Police and Senate disagree with the Harpocrites new War On Drugs.

Victoria's No. 2 cop testified in B.C. Supreme Court yesterday that neither the Vancouver Island Compassion Society nor its distribution of medical marijuana has ever been the subject of a criminal investigation.

Deputy Chief Bill Naughton said the society's Cormorant Street office of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society has not generated any complaints, adding marijuana ranks behind drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin in terms of Victoria police priorities.

"The enforcement of federal laws against marijuana takes a back seat," said Naughton, who was subpoenaed by the defence in the trial of Michael Swallow, 41, and Mat Beren, 33.

Also testifying yesterday in Victoria was Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, who chaired the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, which called in 2002 for the legalization of marijuana in Canada.

Nolin told the court the regulations, as they currently exist, are an obstacle to Canadians who want access to medical marijuana.

He said the rules ask doctors to be "gatekeepers" for access to legal marijuana. It's a role doctors don't want, and so Canadians are being denied access to a medical product.

"[The] medical profession is reluctant, generally reluctant," he said. "They don't want to be the gatekeepers, they don't want that responsibility."

Heck even the da Judge disagrees with the Government.

Rolling a joint might require the removal of stems and seeds, but the legal limbo in which pot smokers in Canada find themselves is far from clear-cut.
On July 13, an Ontario Court judge in Toronto acquitted Clifford Long, who was charged with possession of 3.5 grams of marijuana.
The court held that Canada's marijuana possession laws are unconstitutional. Justice Howard Borenstein cited a seven-year-old Ontario Court of Appeal case, which also described the possession law as unconstitutional, due to its ambiguity on medical marijuana.
Long argued in court that since the government of Canada allowed for medicinal use, but did not change the law on marijuana to accommodate this policy change, then all possession laws should cease to exist.

While the Harpocrites declare a War On Drugs, including marijuana, at the same time they approve big pharma profiting off Medical Marijuana.

GW Pharmaceuticals plc (AIM: GWP) and Bayer Inc., a subsidiary of Bayer AG, announce that Health Canada has approved Sativex®, a cannabis derived pharmaceutical treatment, as adjunctive analgesic treatment in adult patients with advanced cancer who experience moderate to severe pain during the highest tolerated dose of strong opioid therapy for persistent background pain.


While local marijuana growers are limited in providing medical marijuana to one or two Canadians. Clearly the Harpocrites missed the point of the Fraser Institute Report. Local grow ops legally functioning can produce medical as well as recreational marijuana that then could be taxed. Quality and consumer protection, would be assured.

A Vancouver Island grower of organic marijuana is being inundated with pleas for pot from disease sufferers, but Health Canada says he can supply only one person, a provincial court trial has been told.

Eric Nash said he wrote to Canadian Health Minister Tony Clement with a list of 121 people, all approved by Health Canada to use marijuana as medicine and asking him to grow it for them. One of them was a former RCMP officer diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

But Nash said regulations forbid him from growing for more than one person at a time. So his company, Island Harvest, can supply only two people, one each for him and his partner, although it could easily supply more.


And Tony's announcement of a new PR campaign in the War On Drugs looks suspicious in light of the governments failure to extend the license for the Vancouver Safe Injection Site.

The Canadian government is ramping up a massive anti-drug campaign, the first in 20 years, amid calls to keep open a Vancouver clinic that monitors heroin addicts as they inject themselves with the drug.

"Canada has not run a serious or significant anti-drug campaign for almost 20 years. The messages young people have received during the past several years have been confusing and conflicting to say the least," federal Health Minister Tony Clement said yesterday in a speech to the Canadian Medical Association in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, the Health Minister was vague about whether the Insite injection clinic in Vancouver would stay open. "There has been more research done, and some of it has been questioning of the research that has already taken place and questioning of the methodology of those associated with Insite," he said.

Isra Levy, president of the National Specialty Society for Community Medicine called for Insite to remain open in an interview with The Globe and Mail, stating that "illicit drug use is indeed a scourge, it's the cause of untold misery for those ill with addiction and their loved ones."

Is Harpers War in Afghanistan an excuse to expand his War On Drugs.....not only against opium but against the powerful Cannabis Indica and Afghani Hash....remember Afghani hash? It ain't been around in North America since the late Sixties and early Seventies when Hippies made their holy pilgrimage to Marrakesh and on to Afghanistan and back. It remains however a staple in Europe.

Hashish is produced practically everywhere in and around Afghanistan. The best kinds of Hash originate from the Northern provinces between Hindu Kush and the Russian border (Balkh, Mazar-i-Sharif). As tourist in Afghanistan it will be very difficult to be allowed to see Cannabis-Fields or Hash Production. The plants which are used for Hash production are very small and bushy Indicas. In Afghanistan Hashish is pressed by hand under addition of a small quantity of tea or water. The Hashish is worked on until it becomes highly elastic and has a strong aromatic smell. In Afghanistan the product is stored in the form of Hash-Balls (because a round ball has the less contact with air), however, before being shipped, the Hash is pressed in 100g slabs. Good qualities of Afghani are signed with the stem of the producing family. Sometimes Hash of this kind is sold as Royal Afghani. Color: Black on the outside, dark greenish or brown inside. Can sometimes look kind of grayish on the outside when left in contact with the air. Smell: Spicy to very spicy. Taste: Very spicy, somewhat harsh on the throat. Afghani can induce lots of coughing in inexperienced users.

Afghani
aka Afghanistan
Marijuana



Afghani Marijuana Strains - The origins of this seed strain come from Afghanistan and travel to Holland. Afghani has big round fat leaves and the same beautiful big fat buds. It usually has a rich smooth hash like heavy smoke taste. The Afghani marijuana plant tends to be very bushy and will yield large amounts of very sticky buds. Well known for excellent growth because it originated in mountainous conditions and over thousands of years a very stocky, sturdy and disease resistant plant was produced.


Well Cannabis in Afghanistan is back in a big way. As Canadian forces found last fall. Hey guys don't put that to the torch or ya' all will fall down.

Maj. Patrick Robichaud, commander of the operating base, this week characterized the security situation around Ma'sum Ghar as "fragile." He said Taliban insurgents appear to have taken advantage of a change in command among the Canadians and the Afghan National Army to slip back into the region. The insurgents are looking to strong-arm local farmers for a piece of the action in the impending marijuana harvest, said Maj. Robichaud.

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-foot-tall marijuana plants.

Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.


IMAGE: Soldier and marijuana forest


The United Nations has conducted surveys of poppy crops, but has not done so for marijuana plants. The focus on poppies possibly reflects the view of international donors that highly addictive heroin is the more urgent problem.

Marijuana plants are widely grown in at least three of the 16 districts in Balkh province, which is home to Mazar-e-Sharif. Local authorities have sent letters to villages urging farmers to stop growing the illegal crop, but they have yet to decide how and when they will crack down.

"The farmers have planted this stuff like smugglers," said Saheed Azizullah Hashmi, head of the province's agriculture department. "We don't know how much there is out there."

He said many people associated with the hashish trade were linked to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. But marijuana plants thrived well before they held sway over much of Afghanistan, and local commanders with large land holdings reportedly benefit from its cultivation.

Rouzudin and his fellow farmers made no effort to hide their plants, which loom over nearby cotton bushes. The two crops are interspersed along the road leading to Shibergan, the headquarters of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek commander and powerful political figure in the north.

Farmer Majid Gul said he can get 5 million Afghanis, or about $100, for 2.2 pounds of hashish, 200 times more than he could earn for the same amount of cotton.

"When we're ready to sell, people in big cars will come from the bazaar in town," he said. "We don't know who they are, we just want the money."

. For the decade before the Soviet army invaded in 1979, the teahouses of Afghanistan were the toking tourist's hangout of choice. And even during 23 years of war, when the Afghans fought the Soviets and then one another, the hash trade thrived. "Afghan black" remained a staple sale for cannabis dealers across the world. Mazar-i-Sharif gave its name to a particularly potent variety. And last year, in the final weeks of the Taliban, Amsterdam's coffee-shop owners even boasted they were doing their bit for the war on terror by buying blocks stamped with a golden Northern Alliance stencil reading "Freedom for Afghanistan."

Now, as Afghanistan emerges from war, dope farming has never been so good�and the drought never so bad. The Taliban banned hash production, but in the postwar chaos of lawless fiefdoms that dot the land, growers and traders across the country are finding themselves free once again to cultivate and export hashish without fear, and often with warlord protection. Moreover, the international perception that cannabis is a relatively benign drug�prompting some authorities across Europe and Australia to decriminalize its use�has persuaded drug-policing agencies to largely ignore it. So, while opium cultivation is monitored to the acre, neither Interpol, the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention nor the U.S.'s Drug Enforcement Agency can offer even rough estimates for how much hashish Afghanistan produces or what the trade is worth. But around Mazar it's almost impossible to find a field where hemp is not being grown, either openly or poorly hidden behind watermelons or knee-high cotton plants. "Everybody's farming chaars now," says former Taliban fighter Faizullah, 27, watering a verdant six-hectare oasis of hemp surrounded by desert. Cannabis used to be outlawed by the Taliban. "But now," says Faizullah, "it's a free-for-all."

Harpers War On Drugs is doomed to fail, as has the American campaign. But this proves once again that he and his pals have abandoned any pretense to libertarianism, while embracing the traditional right wing screed of Law and Order Republicanism. Heck Canadians even support the medical use of opiates despite this governments opposition.

While in the U.S. Republican Presidential Candidate and Libertarian Ron Paul embraces his inner Canadian and calls for decriminalization, and an end to Americas war on drugs.
Why Is This Canadian Pot Dealer Campaigning for Ron Paul?


Also, a little known fact is that if Ron Paul got his way, there would be no federal war on drugs. He has called the war on drugs “as stupid as the war in Iraq”. He is uncompromisingly against federal laws banning medical marijuana, and completely opposed to the federal government coming in, when a state has legalized medical marijuana, and using force to nullify this legalization (such as has happened in California, where medical marijuana is legal, but the federal government uses force to effectively keep it criminalized. This would NOT happen under a Paul administration.)



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Saturday, September 01, 2007

Harpers Latin American Success

Remember that mission to Latin America and the Caribbean that the Harper went on in July to promote development and bi-lateral trade. He missed Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, but made it to Chile. Looks like the mission was a success.

Scotiabank to buy major stake in Chilean bank


Of course we just lost another thousand jobs at GM in Oshawa, despite all the corporarte welfare they got and the previous cuts announced this spring.

And Stelco just got bought by U.S. Steel.While we de-industrialize while watching Canadian resource companies get sold off to foreign capital, Canadian Banks go offshore to invest.


Of course when we think of trade and development Banks buying Banks is not what comes to mind. But thanks to all those bank fees, ATM charges, and tax breaks from the Canadian Government they have excess profits to invest. Profits made off the backs of their workers and Canadian taxpayers.

Bank of Nova Scotia's (BNS/TSX) international group may have taken a back seat to its domestic cousin when the company reported stronger-than-expected third quarter results Tuesday, but it still proved there is plenty of money to make overseas.

Profits at Scotiabank rose 9% year-over-year to $1-billion in the quarter, as domestic operations rung in profits of $391-million, up 23% from last year.

The international group, for their part, turned in profits of $270-million, a 15% increase from the year previous, after Scotia CEO Richard Waugh said operations in Peru, the Caribbean, South America and Chile all reported strong results.


SEE:

Contientalism

Afghanistan or Africa

Bank Union

Left Wing Pragmatism

Banks Profit From Job Cuts


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He's Off His Meds, Again


Werner Patels that is.

It appears he has gone off on one of his multiple-blog-personality psychotic tirades again attacking various bloggers including some of those whom he had praised only months ago.

Just scroll down this aggregate of his posts here.

Here are response from those he attacked or have commented on his attacks.

Herr Patels has gone from being a blogging pundit claiming to be a Conservative, then a Liberal (provincial and federal ,he supported Kennedy for Leader, though not at the same time), a Green, a Dipper and back to a Conservative.

  1. Werner Patels Says:

    I have been saying it now for months on end: of all the leaders in Ottawa, Layton is the most reasonable, most common-sensical and most honorable leader out there, which is why he and the NDP deserve my vote next time — I won’t kid myself and predict an NDP government, but it would be nice if the NDP could become the official opposition and move up to second place in the HoC.


Heck he even announced support for the Labour Party in the UK. All these flip flops in a year!!!

Being a compulsive multi-blog-personality type, he produces numerous blogs which then disappear as his mood swings. Lucky there is always Google Cache to track him.


As I said he suffers from multiple-blog-personality syndrome.

Werner put the tinfoil hat back on and stay away from the microwave.


For my posts on poor Werner's blog psychosis see:

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2007/05/mixed-reviews-for-ndp-website.html

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/06/poor-jim-dinning.html

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/05/herr-patels-proves-my-point.html


http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/05/werner-patels-cesspool.html


http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/05/blog-spam.html


http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/04/ashamed-of-being-tory.html

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/04/werner-patels-doesnt-like-my-politics.html

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/03/hes-baaaack.html

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/01/vote-for-canadas-politcal-nutbar-of.html

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/01/future-of-werner-patels.html


http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/01/werner-patels-is-blog-stalker.html

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/01/werner-patels-voice-of-conservative.html

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/01/personals-multiplepersonality-blogger.html

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/01/gotcha.html

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/01/thanks-herr-werner.html



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No Reincarnation Without Permission


Perhaps they are afraid of Chairman Mao....

China Says Tibetans Need Permission To Reincarnate

“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” according to the order, which comes into effect on September 1.


...returning as Chairman Meow.

The image “http://www.wendychao.com/chairmanmeow/propaganda.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.


One thing I did learn from His Holiness was that everything experiences reincarnation. Animals, insects, and other creatures also can be reincarnated as something else. I had thought that reincarnation was only towards human beings but I was wrong. In fact, it turns out that being an animal is one of the lowest forms of life you could come back as. I can see where that is coming from, it just never occurred to me that coming back as a dog or cat would be really that bad.
As humans, if we live a good life, we will be rewarded in our next life, but if not we will be punished; we would come back as an animal maybe? But fear not, because animals have just as much of a chance in being rewarded in their next life. Say you are a cat. You could be a really good cat, treat others kindly and live a very peaceful life, and you could be reincarnated as a human, which is a step up from being a cat.

Sacred Cat of Burma Legend


The legend also has it that when a priest dies, his soul was transmigrated into the body of the cat and upon the cats' death the priest's soul's transition into heaven had been accomplished - and according to Major Russell Gordon "But woe also to he who brings about the end of one of these marvelous beasts, even if he did not mean to. He will suffer the most cruel torments until the soul he has upset is appeased."

Research Shows That a Certain Cat Parasite Affects Our Behavior and Mood


Kevin Lafferty is a smart, cautious, thoughtful scientist who doesn't hate cats, but he has put forth a provocative theory that suggests that a clever cat parasite may alter human cultures on a massive scale.

The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the planet, and it has been shown to affect human personalities in different ways.

Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.

Lafferty argues in a research paper published Aug. 2 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biology, that aggregate personality types, or what cultures tend to be like, fit neatly with the effects that the parasite produces in individuals.

So that led to a basic question:

Can a common cat parasite account for part -- even if only a very small part -- of the cultural differences seen around the world?


If humans wiped themselves out, where would that leave religion ...

In the paws of Buddhist cats.
Cameron Davie, Springwood


Of course the real reason for the ban is that the Chinese have their own pretender to the Tibetan Throne in place.

Reuters
Sunday, April 23, 2006; 11:32 PM



A Tibetan youth considered by rights groups to be the world's youngest political prisoner turns 17 on Tuesday, 11 years after disappearing from public view when he was named the Himalayan region's second-ranking religious figure.

The whereabouts of Gendun Choekyi Nyima -- who human rights watchdogs say has been living under house arrest since Tibet's exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, appointed him the 11th Panchen Lama -- is one of China's most zealously guarded state secrets.

A Canadian official pressed for access to Nyima during a visit to Tibet this month, but it fell on deaf ears.

Chinese officials parroted their assertion that Nyima was "safe and comfortable and wishes to maintain his privacy," said the Canadian, who requested anonymity.

The Dalai Lama's unilateral announcement embarrassed and enraged China's atheist Communists, who dropped Nyima's name from a shortlist of candidates and endorsed Gyaltsen Norbu as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989.

While Nyima languished in limbo, Norbu has studied Buddhism for years and made his debut on the world stage this month at China's first international religious forum since 1949.

"China made a huge gamble in 1995 when it decided to appoint its own Panchen Lama. It seems this has failed completely so far," said Robbie Barnett, a Tibetologist at Columbia University.

Party hardliners have sought to undermine the Dalai Lama's influence in Tibet and appear to be dragging their feet on reconciliation in the hope that the headache would disappear after the 70-year-old Dalai Lama dies.

By sticking firmly to its Panchen Lama choice, China may have deprived itself of having a say in the next Dalai Lama.

"China has lost a great opportunity to control the selection and training of the next Dalai Lama," Wang Lixiong, author of two books on Tibet that are banned in China, told Reuters.

Tibetan tradition calls for the Dalai and Panchen lamas to approve each other's reincarnations.

New Legal Measures Assert Unprecedented Control Over Tibetan Buddhist Reincarnation

The Chinese government State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) issued legal measures on July 18, 2007, that if fully implemented could transform Tibetan Buddhism as it exists in China into a less substantial, more completely state-managed institution, and further isolate Tibetan Buddhist communities from their counterparts outside China. The "Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism" (MMR) (Web site of the
SARA (in Chinese), 18 July 07) take effect on September 1. The MMR (ICT translation) would empower the Chinese Communist Party and government to gradually reshape Tibetan Buddhism by controlling one of the religion’s most unique and important features—lineages of teachers that Tibetan Buddhists believe are reincarnations and that can span centuries. As elderly reincarnations pass away, the measures authorize government officials to decide whether or not a reincarnation is eligible to reincarnate, and if one is permitted, the government will supervise the search for the subsequent reincarnation, as well as religious education and training.

The MMR substantially expands the geographical reach of government oversight of reincarnation because the measures will be effective throughout China, not just in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), where less than half of China's Tibetan Buddhists live (according to official census data, 2.43 million of the 5.42 million Tibetans in China were located in the TAR). Once the measures take effect, they will apply to every reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist teacher who is recognized and seated in a monastery. Until now, the Chinese government has intervened only in the selection and installation of exceptionally important Tibetan Buddhist teachers. Most famously, China's State Council in 1995 installed a boy, Gyaltsen Norbu, as the 11th Panchen Lama after declaring the Dalai Lama’s recognition of Gedun Choekyi Nyima as the Panchen Lama to be "illegal and invalid." The government has approved only 30 Tibetan Buddhist reincarnations in the TAR in the period following 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled to India and the Party instituted "democratic reforms," according to a May 2004 State Council White Paper on "Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet," (Xinhua, 23 May 04). Since it is unlikely that any of the approvals occurred until the early 1980s, when the government began to allow Tibetans (and other Chinese citizens) to resume religious activity, the number of government-approved reincarnations in the TAR appears to have averaged less than two per year.


SEE:

Same Old Olympics



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A Tale Of Two Heiresses

Compare and contrast. These two well known American Hotel Heiresses died within week of each other.

One made the news for a day, being a well known Philanthropist and clothes horse.

The other, well even dead she is still the Queen of Mean. And she gets more posthumous press than her more liberal counterpart.

One suffered at the hands of her son while her grandson exposed how badly his father had treated her. The other is making her grandchildren suffer.

Brooke Astor, 105, aristocrat of the people, dies

Astor's image as a benevolent society matron was overshadowed last year by that of a victimized dowager at the center of a very public family battle over her care and fortune. Yet for decades she had been known as the city's unofficial first lady, one who moved effortlessly from the sumptuous apartments of Fifth Avenue to the ragged barrios of East Harlem, deploying her inherited millions to help the poor help themselves.

Among the rich of New York, she was perhaps the last bridge to the Gilded Age, when "society" was a closed world of old-money families, the so-called Four Hundred, who were ruled over by a grandmother of Astor's by marriage, Mrs. William Backhouse Astor.



Helmsley's dog gets $12 million, but leaves 2 grandchildren zilch

Leona Helmsley's dog will continue to live an opulent life, and then be buried alongside her in a mausoleum. But two of Helmsley's grandchildren got nothing from the late luxury hotelier and real estate billionaire's estate.

Helmsley left her beloved white Maltese, named Trouble, a $12 million trust fund, according to her will, which was made public Tuesday in surrogate court.

She also left millions for her brother, Alvin Rosenthal, who was named to care for Trouble in her absence, as well as two of four grandchildren from her late son Jay Panzirer - so long as they visit their father's grave site once each calendar year.

Otherwise, she wrote, neither will get a penny of the $5 million she left for each.

Helmsley left nothing to two of Jay Panzirer's other children - Craig and Meegan Panzirer - for "reasons that are known to them," she wrote.

But regardless of their personal peccadilloes they both represent inherited wealth. One from the Robber Barons of 19th Century American Capitalism the other from the modern day Robber Barons of Property Speculation.




THE concept of
richesse oblige has various dimensions. The bottom line is that those who have come into oodles of money should give some of it back; the second-to-bottom line is that they should cut a certain style while doing so. Both Brooke Astor and Leona Helmsley, who died within a few days of each other, gave millions of dollars away. And their similarities ended there.

The Astor money, more than $120m by the time it was Brooke's to disburse, was old, from New York land and the fur trade. The Helmsley money, $5 billion by the time Leona got her hands on it, was pretty new, from property speculation. Both fortunes came from late third marriages to cunning husbands. But whereas Mrs Astor, aside from writing features for House & Garden, merely let the markets increase her pile and relished spending the capital (something, she admitted, that John Jacob Astor would have thought as outrageous as dancing naked in the street), Mrs Helmsley worked like a dragon to build up and expand her husband Harry's hotel empire. As a Manhattan hatter's daughter with several competitive siblings, she was used to graft and struggle. Mrs Astor, a solitary and dreamy child who had come by money almost magically, treated it like fairy dust to the end of her days.

The arrogance of big money, Mrs Astor wrote once, “is one of the most unappealing of characteristics”. Mrs Helmsley, though fun to her friends, was arrogance personified: “Rhymes with rich”, was Newsweek's caption for her portrait on its cover. “We don't pay taxes,” she was said to have told a housekeeper once; “only the little people pay taxes.” Mrs Astor, a gentle soul, was upset when her first father-in-law, a colonel, yelled at his secretaries. Mrs Helmsley believed staff existed to be barked at, slapped and called fags if appropriate; two of them sued her for firing them because they were gay. On visits to underprivileged areas Mrs Astor, gloved and immaculate because this was what the ordinary person expected of the rich, would happily sip from a paper cup and praise the hot-dog mustard on her paper plate. At the sight of a paper-cup-carrier in any of her reception areas, Mrs Helmsley would get her doormen to throw the offender out.
SEE:

Rich Getting Richer




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The Horror of Glorifying Bomber Command

The Canadian campaign to legitimate Bomber Harris and his use of fire bombing against Dresden in WWII began with the CBC documentary the Valour and the Glory.

Today that long campaign of historical revisionism has concluded with the National War Museum agreeing to revise its Bomber Command display.

And it has resulted in more not less controversy.

Veterans force WWII museum exhibit change

Fighting words rile historians

Historian decries change to war museum exhibit

Beyond dispute

The cowardice and the horror

We owe our freedom to Bomber Command vets

Museum consultation pledge pleases war veterans

Veterans claim victory - Canadian War Museum to change wording on controversial Bomber Command Plaque


A fellow progressive blogger who runs a Canadian History list has opened up discussion on this amongst academic Canadian historians.

What do historians think about the Canadian War Museum controversy?


Of course amongst the Blogging Tories there is the popping of corks and tinkling of toasts in celebration of their Orwellian victory.

Revised does not equal 'Revisionist'

The plaque in question is poorly worded because it purports to be a neutral commentary on Bomber Command but then goes on to draw a negative conclusion about the Canadian air campaign against Germany. The plaque draws a reader's attention to the 'enduring controversy' regarding 'the morality and value' of the air strikes and then wraps up by drawing the conclusion that the raids were ineffective except in their slaughter of innocent civilians. Hansen might believe the conclusion is factual, but then why does the plaque pretend the issue is controversial if this conclusion is unequivocally true?

He Who Controls the Present . . .

Historian David Bercuson seems to have summed it up best, "I don't see it as giving in. I see it as correcting something that was unfortunately and badly placed in the first place, and I don't see why anyone shouldn't be given leeway to correct errors."


'Right wing ' historians like David Bercuson who is part of the Calgary School with his pal Barry Cooper , along with their political compatriots in the think tank that created the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party have made Bomber Command their political bugaboo since CBC ran the WWII documentary series; the Valour and the Glory. His opinion appears to have influenced the Senate Committee that raised the issue of the display at the War Museum.


So it's worth noting that the Senate report here identifies the four historians who examined the War Museum text: Serge Bernier (Department of National Defence), Desmond Morton (McGill), Margaret MacMillan (Oxford University) and David Bercuson (University of Calgary). Indeed, that is four experienced and credentialled historians, one actually working in a public museum.

Margaret MacMillan has been very public in condemning the change to the museum's text. I understand Desmond Morton has also publicly defended the integrity of the text as it stands. That would suggest the two experts who endorsed making the change were David Bercuson and Serge Bernier.


Bercuson is not an objective historian in the least, and one with an axe to grind. Far more so than even Jack Granatstein. He is a neo-con hack who along with Cooper has advocated for a right wing shift in Canadian politics.

Neoconservatives criticize social scientists for putting forward ideas that are not necessarily workable, yet the Canadian neoconservatives David Bercuson and Barry Cooper argue that inventive intellectual suggestions are vital to the political system, and that the give and take of politics, and the inherent need to compromise, generally sand down the most unrealistic edges of intellectuals' prescriptions


And they share an advocacy for an Imperial and Imperialist Canadian Military is colored by they right wing politics.

Bercuson and the other Reform Party ilk used the Honor and the Glory segment on Bomber Harris and the Dresden Raids to attack its producers and directors, the McKenna Brothers, along with CBC as being historical revisionists. They claimed, falsely as they still do, that the Honor and the Glory smeared Harris as a war criminal and in doing so slighted the troops who carried out his commands.
Aired on the publicly owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Valour and the Horror is a Canadian-made documentary about three controversial aspects of Canada's participation in World War II. This three part series caused a controversy almost unprecedented in the history of Canadian television. Canadian veterans, outraged by what they considered an inaccurate and highly biased account of the war, sued Brian and Terrance McKenna, the series directors, for libel. An account of the controversy surrounding The Valour and the Horror with statements by the directors, the CBC Ombudsman and an examination of the series by various historians can be found in Bercuson and Wise's The Valour and the Horror Revisited.

The second episode, "Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command," proved to be the most controversial of the three episodes. It details the blanket bombing of German cities carried out by Canadian Lancaster bombers, including the firestorm caused by the bombings of Dresden and Munich. The McKennas claim that the blanket bombing, which caused enormous casualties among both German civilians and Canadian aircrews, did nothing to hasten the end of the war, and was merely an act of great brutality with little military significance. In particular British commander Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris is cited for his bloodthirstiness.


What it did was raise the well known public fact that Bomber Harris was hell bent on proving air war worked especially against civilian populations. He had proved it in Iraq!

Yet it was in Iraq that Britain employed its air force for the purpose of suppressing local revolts most widely and for the longest period
. Full-scale bombing in Iraq by eight RAF squadrons began in October 1922 and continued until 1932, the year that the British mandatory rule of Iraq officially ceased. Various types of bombs--including delayed and incendiary bombs--were dropped in attacks on villages where militia were believed to be hiding, and in some cases petrol was sprayed over civilian houses in order to intensify the fires ignited by the bombing. Tents and other types of Bedouin dwellings and even their cattle became targets, resulting in the death and injury of many women and children. British Forces justified this indiscriminate bombing by claiming that their operations “proved outstandingly effective, extremely economical and undoubtedly humane in the long run” as they could swiftly put down revolts and riots. One of these RAF squadron leaders in Iraq was Arthur Harris, who later headed the RAF Bomber Command during World War II. Based on their experience in Iraq, the RAF leaders concluded that the best way to defeat the enemy was to conduct "strategic bombing" on civilian dwellings, in particular those of industrial workers.

And that along with the Americans the Brits planned massive fire bombing raids on civilian populations in Germany. The Americans built models cities of Berlin and Tokyo in the Utah desert to test the allies fire bombing theories.

Unfortunately what they found was that fire bombing was not effective, it was not controllable for precision strikes, and it laid wholesale waste to civilian as well as military targets. Knowing this they recognized that it was a not weapon for use except as a final solution, a weapon of mass destruction, to be used as a last resort.

Often contrasted with Britain’s policy of “promiscuous bombing” of urban areas, the United States Army Air Forces entered the fray in 1942 with a precision bombing doctrine that called for the destruction of critical nodes in an adversary’s war economy. Owing to a series of disastrous daylight raids in the summer and fall of 1943, however, American forces implemented a policy of radar bombing through clouds that conserved American aircraft but drastically increased the loss of life among German civilians.

The effects of incendiaries on a city made of paper were soon seen.
On the evening of March, 9, 1945 a fleet of over 300 B-29’s flew towards Tokyo containing napalm and cluster bombs. As the bombs burst into flame, aided by the wind, the resulting fires flew across streets and buildings creating a firestorm engulfing the center of the city with flames burning at temperatures exceeding 1,800°F. The heat from the fire created additional winds traveling at velocities of over 40 miles per hour that fed the flames and created thermal winds that were beginning to affect the flight paths of the bombers flying above. Many people attempted to escape the firestorm by jumping into the canals surrounding the city. Of those who did immerse themselves in the canals, most died not from drowning but were either boiled alive when the water began to heat or died from asphyxiation caused by the inhalation of the thick black smoke. Many characterized the conditions within Tokyo that night as a holocaust not knowing that they were witnessing the most destructive fire in human history. Death counts were averaged to be around one hundred thousand with over one million homes and buildings destroyed making this the second most destructive air attack of the entire war next to Hiroshima. Had a significant number of the citizens not already evacuated the city, many more would have lost their lives making the loss of human life in this bombing greater than any other battle or attack in the entire war. This same bombing technique continued until numerous towns, villages, and six of Japan’s seven largest cities had been destroyed.

Dresden was the result of Britain's use of incendiary bombing resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilians dead. The American's on the other hand came up with a much better weapon for mass destruction, a final solution, the weapon of last resort; the Atomic Bomb.

However the mass of deaths of allied forces, the bomber crews themselves occurred before the fatal assault on Dresden. Our men as well as British crews ended up dead because Bomber Harris believed in low level bombing missions. Rather than using height for safety he had his planes fly low and through anti-aircraft fire . Aimed at Dam busting, they resulted in massive losses of life of allied bomber command. Harris considered incendiary bombing as less effective than large scale bombs. The type still used today by American Armed forces.

Night after night tens of precious bombers and their irreplaceable crews failed to return from missions which only managed to damage a house or two and kill the odd cow, as bombs were almost randomly scattered within a huge area usually somewhere vaguely near the intended target. Depressingly often, Bomber Command casualties far outnumbered German casualties on the ground.

Harris was hopelessly optimistic when it came to assessing the effectiveness of bombing, making unrealistic claims as to accuracy and destruction, and displaying a remarkable complacency when assessing the effectiveness and failure rate of weapons. He also had an entirely unrealistic view of the overall significance and importance of Bomber Command’s role. He predicted in mid-1942 that it could win the war alone, with a continental land campaign having no use except for mopping up, and describing the ‘entirely defensive’ Coastal Command as ‘merely an obstacle to victory’.

While politicians maintained the pretence that Bomber Command was attacking military and industrial targets Harris was more honest, seeing no shame in attacking the German people and having no problem with describing the aim of his attacks on Berlin as being ‘to cause the heart of the German nation to stop beating’. When pressed to use a higher proportion of incendiaries, he argued the case for high explosive, saying:

I do not agree with this policy. The moral effect of HE is vast. People can escape from fires, and the casualties on a solely fire raising raid would be as nothing. What we want to do in addition to the horrors of fire is to bring the masonry crashing down on top of the Boche, to kill Boche and to terrify Boche.


For that reason, his sacrifice of his own troops and his decision to assault civilian targets, there is a public revulsion of his actions today in Great Britain,
except amongst Bomber Command veterans.

Even in wartime Britain, a backlash developed as the extent of the devastation and the number of civilian casualties became known. At the end of the war, all major British commanders were elevated to the peerage except Sir Arthur.

Unlike other senior officers in the fight against Nazism, Harris was knighted only in 1953, eight years after the war ended. He died embittered in 1984.

Convinced that Harris was treated badly, the 7,500 members of the Bomber Command Association, a British veterans organization, have collected $200,000 to erect a statue of him in London. They want the memorial to stand opposite one of Lord Dowding, commander-in-chief of the Royal Air Force's fighter command, in St. Clement Danes, the RAF church in the Strand.

The Times of London has urged that the project be abandoned, calling Harris a "fanatical believer in the carpet bombing of civilians."

But Bomber Command Association spokesman Ray Gallow insists the statue is appropriate. "When we started area bombing, we were losing on all fronts. The public didn't find a thing wrong with bombing German cities then."

In 1992, a statue to Harris was unveiled near Trafalgar Square in London. Within 24 hours, red paint was poured over it - such was/is the controversy the beliefs of Harris caused.


This statue of the infamous ‘Bomber’ Harris was greeted with a hostile reaction when first erected in 1992. This was due to the mixed feelings about Sir Arthur Harris, who was responsible for the indiscriminate bombing policies on German cities during World War II. Although his widespread bombing helped win the war, he as criticised for his lack of remorse at the death of civilians and his own men. The statue, which is located outside St Clement Dane’s RAF church, had to be kept under 24 hour guard for a period of months as it was often vandalised.


Of course Harris was made a scapegoat for decisions made by those in command of the war, none the less his enthusiasm for the use of bombing to terrorize civilians was his downfall.

"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, should be reviewed. Otherwise, we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land." Winston Churchill, 1945 ordering Bomber Command to halt operations over Germany.

Harris's defence of himself and Bomber Command is clear-cut and straightforward. It bears and deserves another hearing. In his memoirs, published in 1947, he wrote: 'There is a widespread impression that I not only invented the policy of area bombing but also insisted on carrying it out in the face of natural reluctance to kill women and children felt by everyone else. The facts are otherwise. Such decisions on policy are not in any case made by Commanders-in-Chief in the field but by the Ministries, the Chiefs-of-Staff Committee and by the War Cabinet. The decision to attack large industrial areas was taken long before I became Commander-in-Chief'.

Sir Arthur Harris, who died in 1984, aged 91 felt aggrieved and slighted at the end of his career, not, perhaps, without reason. He complained that he was not consulted or invited to contribute to the official history of the air offensive directly concerned with his own Command. His official dispatch, written in 1945, was placed on the restricted list apparently because the Air Ministry took objection to it. From all this, the author says, it is not hard to infer that the RAF and the political establishment which had supported him during the war later decided to distance themselves from him and the odium created by the bombing offensive in general.


In Canada the right wing use our vets to justify their glorification of this mass murderer and war criminal. They are after all war mongers, and now have their own war in Afghanistan to tout. And that is the reason that the campaign to change the War Museum display is both revisionist and a revulsion.


The bombing of Dresden in World War II, and to a lesser degree the 1943 bombing of Hamburg, and the firebombing of Tokyo remains a source of controversy to this day (though in the case of the latter, the effect on Tokyo's intentionally decentralized subcontractor war industry manufacturers was devastating).

The bombing of Dresden, led by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and followed by the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between February 13 and February 15, 1945, remains one of the more controversial Allied actions of World War II. The exact number of casualties is uncertain, but most historians agree that the firebombing resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Historian Frederick Taylor says:

The destruction of Dresden has an epically tragic quality to it. It was a wonderfully beautiful city and a symbol of Baroque humanism and all that was best in Germany. It also contained all of the worst from Germany during the Nazi period. In that sense it is an absolutely exemplary tragedy for the horrors of 20th century warfare

Firebombing destruction


SPIEGEL ONLINE: Since the war, discussion of World War II war crimes has focused almost exclusively on those committed by the Nazis. But hundreds of thousands of German civilians were also immolated in firestorms created by English and American bombs. Should not Allied excesses be addressed as well?

Taylor: We have to discuss them frankly. There is something inherently fascistoid in air warfare -- you don't see the person you are bombing and killing or injuring and you have this sort of psychopathic gaze from above. The air war is the only part of the war where the Allies, leaving aside the Russians, seriously ran the Axis powers a good race in terms of ruthlessness. But it is now 60 years after the fact, most people involved are dead and we shouldn't start pointing fingers except for in the case of the Holocaust. But the English and especially the Americans have continued since World War II to rely on bombing as an instrument of policy and that really concerns me. I feel uneasy about it. So I think Allied excesses are a legitimate subject for discussion. Absolutely.


SEE:

Vonnegut, Dresden and Canada



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