Back in the Saddle.

I am sick and tired of this depraved and senseless world we live in. I look at the statistical map of mass killings in the US and think: no one does anything, those who are elected to serve and protect only protect the gun lobbies, the NRA. 'We the people' is a fallacy, truly. A sop to the masses.

I look at the murdered and missing aboriginal women in Canada well over 1,000 and counting just about daily and think: no one gives a shyte. Our man Harper focuses on Niqabs and the wearing of them at citizen oath-taking ceremonies and the troops rally around that particular flag and sends him skyrocketing in the polls,(our election looms shortly)which says a whole pile about our electorate and their hidden prejudices and women hatred. Forgetting, of course, that not too long ago Xtian nuns were so garbed and in some cases hidden behind screens even from their parents, looking at you Carmelites.

I predicted, way back months ago, that Trump and Harper would be the kings of North America. Two first class manipulators, millionaires, man-beasts. Both held in thrall to the worst of capitalism and fundamentalism, slurping at the troughs of oil, the standards of industrial militarism held high, death to the brownies, the blackies, the other than Xtian belief systems. Not forgetting, in Harper's case, overt references to the "Old Stock" Canadians - i.e. the founding-rampaging-death-to-all-aboriginals "fathers". In Harperland your legitimate citizenship can be revoked if you don't behave. Even if you were born here. Stasi-land, Harper style. And I haven't gone into the spying network he has set in place to monitor the "New Stock" citizenry like yours truly and presumably those pesky First Nations people with their protests and marches against clear cutting and unbridled oil-derrick hoistings.

I backed away, consciously, several years ago from political commentary, it was frying up my brain. But it seems that lately the corruption, callousness and trampling of rights is breathtaking in its audacity and horror. I am compelled to vent.

Terrorism as 'out there' no longer exists, if it ever did.

Terrorism, in many forms, is right at our own front doors.

July Month

{And I post the above graph just to show how USians have been consistently lied to about universal health care costs.}

I remember that expression from my childhood. My grandparents would say "July month", rather than "month of July". And this is the Newfoundland useage also.

There's something poetic about it. To my ear anyway.

I had many medical appointments today, from 8.30 a.m. to 2.30 with a narrow break for lunch. I was sitting in Starbucks with my netbook (I've been having awful problems with the turbo stick and its so-called "upgrades" here at home - don't get me started) so I availed of the chance to post responses to my blog comments, check my email for client payments and my daily email from my childhood friend, etc. when it hit me. As it does now and again. Everything was free, down to the emergency glucose pills for my purse to exercise equipment to books, to consultations - some lasting more than an hour. As in FREE. And not a death panel in sight.

How lucky I am to live in this country, this True North strong and free, I thought. Even though our prime minister Harper (aka Bush-lite) would have it very different given his druthers. And we are all carefully watching those druthers.

When I see in the wee country south of us druthers are being yanked left right and centre as the debt deadlines come marching home with the trillions in treasure blown into the cavernous pockets of the giant industrial military machine.

And with Harper in charge can we be far behind I ask myself as he ramps up the prisons and the fighter planes and gives away our water and mining rights.

So, I'll enjoy this universal health care while I can. And never, ever take it for granted.

The View from Here

I feel cast out in an alternative universe. Observing the ants running around on earth. Scrabbling to (or pretending to) fix the unfixable.

Ireland's economic woes being what they are, billions are now being offered by the IMF to inject some more coin into the broken piggy bank.




Is anybody else struck by the irony of the old man begging beside the bankers on their important, oblivious walk through the streets of Dublin?

The US warns Canada that we are facing the same housing bubble burst that they are continuing to deal with. Well, duh. We never knew.

I've been saying for oh, well over a year now, that Sarah Palin will be the next US President. It seems fitting. It seems right somehow. In that appalling, awful, doom-ridden pall of a nightmare that has descended upon the world. A fitting finale to all that has transpired.

And will Barrack Obama go down as one of the most ineffectual presidents ever?

Did anyone else want to barf as the Bushling ran around with his book launch (with 650,000 copies sold in the first few days) and strutted proudly on to talk shows, waving his breach of the Geneva Convention by authorising horrific torture like a flag?

And Stephen Harper, our prime minister, with the assistance of his appointed Senate (a pork barrel reward system that he promised to end to get elected and of course did not) terminated the climate change bill in another strike against democracy (see also proroguing parliament when things got too sticky for him) with another almighty f*** you to this broken planet.

The only good news I see is so very many people both here and elsewhere turning their backs on the whole sorry mess and striking out recreating their daily living from the ground on up.

Like I've said before, we, the downtrodden, are on our own. Self sustainability and off the grid living should be a priority with any thinking person.

We have just witnessed the greatest transfer of wealth from the peons to the wealthiest few in the history of mankind.

But stop all this nonsense. Don't we have the wedding of the decade to look forward to?

Thanks for cheering us all up there, Wills & Kate!

19-square-mile ice sheet breaks loose in Canada

Hellooooooo! Is there anyone out there?
Anyone??

There's this:

A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic, another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said Wednesday.

And this:

The loss of these ice shelves means that rare ecosystems that depend on them are on the brink of extinction, said Warwick Vincent, director of Laval University's Centre for Northern Studies and a researcher in the program ArcticNet.

"The Markham Ice Shelf had half the biomass for the entire Canadian Arctic Ice Shelf ecosystem as a habitat for cold, tolerant microbial life; algae that sit on top of the ice shelf and photosynthesis like plants would. Now that it's disappeared, we're looking at ecosystems on the verge of extinction,' said Mueller.

Read the whole thing here

And what sayeth our esteemed Prime Minister Harper? Who will, incidentally, be running in a newly called general election on October 13th. No grand election hoopla circus here folks. Apart, of course, from the pronouncements of the above Minister Harper who says on this catastrophic tipping of the balance of the arctic:

Harper announced last week that he plans to expand exploration of the region's known oil and mineral deposits, a possibility that has become more evident as a result of melting sea ice. It is the burning of oil and other fossil fuels that scientists say is the chief cause of manmade warming and melting ice.

Harper also said Canada would toughen reporting requirements for ships entering its waters in the Far North, where some of those territorial claims are disputed by the United States and other countries.

In other words: "Oh goody, more oil! Buzz off, it's ours."