What Makes Us Human

Last night I was having a very good intelligent discussion with my friend Cole (he shares my music blog with me). We were talking about what happened 20 years ago, yesterday. Of course I am referring to the Tiananmen Square Protests, and their culmination on June fourth. This event is one of the most covered stories in history. The Chinese government has been covering it up for 20 years now even though the rest of world knows the history. I sent Cole a picture of "Tank Man" because it is (in my opinion) very inspirational. Well, Cole agreed and he made a comment that went something like this, "That guy fought every natural instinct we have as humans. Every instinct in his body." That made a click in my mind. It was as though a light bulb turned on in my head. To explain what the realization was I have to tell another story.

As many of you know I have a bit of a grudge against animal rights activists. Well because of this my animal rights friends and I have very good (if not heated) discussions about a variety of topics concerning animals. Well a place where the discussions get stuck is when we start to talk about how humans are animals. My stance on that is always that we may be part of the animal kingdom but we are not animals. My usual defense behind that is how humans are capable of rational thought and they always just return with how we are a barbaric race. Well, because of my discussion with Cole I found another point to back my defense. Other than rational thought, there is another human attribute that separates us from the animals, and it is shown perfectly in this picture...



Courage, in the face of certain death. The ability to stand up for something you believe in an instance when you know that you are going to die. Being able to fight off every survival instinct in your body to do something that might not even help your cause. This is what makes us human. Looking past the here and now, and looking to what will make a better future.

Strike Number (how many does this make now?)

Mr Harper, how could you be so foolish? You already have all the opposition parties scrutinizing you for various reasons (i.e. the budget, the spending of the budget, the prorogation of parliament). Why do you need to continue to give them fire. Obviously I am talking about the incident with cabinet minister Raitt. Her aide left a sensitive document at an Ottawa television station, and she is being called on to resign her cabinet post. Well it would seem that she offered her resignation but the Prime Minister refused it. I know I'm a liberal and should be rejoicing in Harper's stupidity but now it's just getting annoying. He should have just accepted the resignation then the political situation might be able to smooth out for just a few weeks. But no, he has to add more fuel to the fire and just keep a doomed minister on. Can he help creating controversy or does he have some ulterior motive. Alas we will probably never know.

My Problem with Mr Flaherty

I know I'm about a week late on this issue but this is my blog so ha ha. The Canadian federal deficit has been raised to 50 billion dollars. That is an extra 16 billion dollars from the budget announced in January. 16 billion dollars. Wow that seems like a lot, and it is. It is roughly (I'm not sure so don't quote me) 3.4% of the national GDP. When you look at it that way then it doesn't look as bad. It's still really huge, but it's not as big as it could be. So after saying that, I still have a problem with this whole budget hoopla. It is how the Prime Minister and the Federal Budget Minister handled the situation. Going back a bit over a year from now, Economists were predicting hard economic times coming soon (nothing compared to what actually happened, but hard times none the less). The party in charge of this country did nothing to try and prevent it. Then when the economic downturn hit us hard in September and October, they denied the almost certain recession and decided to call an election. During the whole election they continued to deny an oncoming recession. It wasn't until after the election that they acknowledged it and even then they decided to do nothing. The December fiscal update had no plans for economic stimulus. Eventually, from the threat of the new Liberal Party leader (Michael Ignatieff) they created a budget (a red one at that) with a 34 billion dollar deficit. Finally some truth, right? Not just last week Jim Flaherty came out and said that the deficit would be closer to 50 billion. That is my problem. He lied and denied and lied and denied. If he had had this number in the January budget then I would not be nearly as upset as I am. But he did not. He lied and deserves to pay with his job.

TORONTO Cyclists Inched Ahead

Another big discussion point on the news lately has been the new Bike Lanes being added to Jarvis St in Toronto. Many car drivers have been coming to the city council meetings expressing their dissatisfaction with the city's choice to create bike lanes due to the effect that it will have on traffic. Another of their arguments for their point has been how when they drive they never see cyclists on the road. Well no **** Sherlock I wouldn't want to ride a remote control bike in Toronto. The dangers totally outweigh the environmental pros. It's practically suicide.
One other thing that the anti bike lane people can not seem to realize is that oil and other fossil fuels are one of the main causes of the recession we are in. Sure everyone says that they want to save the environment in a survey but to get people to leave their cars at home and to start using public transit and bikes, you need to drag them kicking and screaming. We have the public transit, we have the workers but some people still wont go. The solution, raise parking taxes and gas prices. Add bike lanes to make the public transit system faster then cars. Make it a hell of a lot cheaper and faster to take public transit then to drive their cars. This is also one way of helping the crisis were in right now. Get rid of our dependency on oil and you get a lot of things falling into place. Less obesity because people get more exercise. More help for small family owned companies because they become more accessible to people who are walking and taking the TTC everywhere. These are only a few examples of what can happen when we get rid of our dependency on fossil fuels.

Good Job Governor General

A big topic on the international stage over the past couple of days has been Governor General Jean's actions on her trip to Nunavut. The action that has caused a huge hoopla across the world was... wait for it... participating in an Inuit ritual and eating a piece of seal heart. Wow, umm I don't get it. The liaison to the head of state participated in a cultural ritual and she is being criticized for it.

For god's sake animal rights people, UNCLENCH. For some unknown reason, the entire animal right community have been getting into a hissy fit because they think that the Governor General is sympathising with the commercial seal hunt. There was no secret agenda. She went up there because it's a part of her job. She was offered a piece of meat. She ate it and she liked it. I fail to see how this innocent act has any kind of secret agenda behind it, and I fail to see how boycotting Canadian Maple Syrup is going to help anything. I think that all the propaganda behind this issue is just that, propaganda.

Last night I sent in an E-mail to The National on CBC and I'd like to share it with you.

"I have a few things to say on this topic. I would love to ask some of these animal rights activists if they have something against Canada. These people seem to just bash and bash Inuit Canadians when there are people in other countries that eat Horse and Dog. How come these cultures aren't being criticized when the Inuit people of Canada's are. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against any culture. I'm sure there are people in other countries who think similarly about some of our eating habits. So I would just like to say that these activists should leave it alone and that Governor General Jean did a great thing eating that heart. She showed exactly what Canada's stance on this issue should be."

This basically sums up my views on this point so I just have one last thing to say to the animal rights people. I don't care what your views on right and wrong are, you have absolutely no right to interfere with cultural traditions.

The Picket Line

You've seen it in the movies. The picket line; in between Pro Life and Pro Choice, Pro LGBT and Pro Family, Pro Church and Pro State. It's everywhere. No matter how far away you try to look there is nowhere on earth where you can escape these types of debates, believe me I've tried. The one thing that I found odd, aside from all of them stemming from a religious perspective, is how moronic some of these debates can be. For instance, the Pro Life vs Pro Choice debate. You have one side that is saying that no woman should ever be allowed the choice of aborting they're pregnancy and another side that says all women should have the choice to abort. My question to the pro life side has always been, "Where did you get the nerve to intrude onto these women's personal lives?" They are independent and smart (there are always exceptions) people who have every right to do what ever they want to they're bodies. Another question to that side (especially in the U.S) is, "Have you read the bill of rights recently?" It is clearly stated in the first amendment to the constitution (and I quote) "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." If your not up on your liguistics and definitions of that time it means Congress will not make a law that takes a religion's point of view on a topic rather than doing what is best for the people of the country. QED the church has no buisness in the bedrooms or abortion clinics of people.

A little History Lesson

I've been doing some research on WW2 lately and I've made some astounding discoveries. First of all; Hitler was not an idiot, or at least not in the beginning. Before he became corrupt with power during the war Hitler did amazing things for Germany. He gave them a fairly stable economy and brought the people together in a way very few politicians have ever been able to do. The other thing I noticed was what his three crucial mistakes were during the war. The first was how he dealt with Great Britain. It can be argued that if Hitler had continued his bombing of British air fields he might have won the war. Instead he changed his tactics to bombing the major cities in England and gave the Brits time to regroup. The second was declaring way against Russia. He made the same mistake Napoleon made. He thought that he could handle the frigid winters and harsh conditions and take the largest piece of land the world had to offer. Obviously he couldn't and he had to retreat. His third mistake was probably his biggest. After Pearl Harbor and the Us declaration of war against Japan, Germany declared War on the United States. This put Nazi Germany against Britain, the US, Russia, Canada, and all of the underground rebellion movements in the countries they invaded. There was no chance at victory at that point. I think that most people can agree that those were the most crucial mistakes and that it is a great thing that he made them.