The Irish-Italian Connection

Someone recently recited to me the famous line, "Una faccia, una razza" (One face, one race).

No doubt Mediterranean history and civilization involving Greece and Italy is intimately intertwined. It's a matter of historical fact that the nations (Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Lebanon, Israel to name a few) of the Mediterranean (including Arabs who introduced a form of pasta in Sicily) all share similar social and cultural traits.

However, speaking strictly from a North American perspective, Italians also share a tight common bond with the Irish. In fact, I wonder if the Irish-Italian axis is tighter than the Greek-Italian one. A voice with more authority would be needed here.

Despite a history that hasn't always been friendly, they do share many similar traits - religion, fighting spirit, artistic flair and general flamboyance. It's a connection I've observed. I could be wrong. Of course, it probably runs deeper than I'm treating it here.

I've made the same observations with the Jewish community. Which explains the phenomena of Jews playing Italians in pop culture. With Henry Winkler being one of the most famous as The Fonz.

Seriously, is there a more endearing rebel in television pop culture history than Fonzie?

Aaay!

Is This Is A Pseudo-Blog?

I definitely and readily admit I can't tell the difference between real philosophy and pseudo-philosophy. Sure, I get hunches but I can't always intellectualize what I'm reading into proper context. If you're like me, you're likely to pick up New-Age stuff like Ken Wilber, read it, put it down and say, "Meh."

I recently read over at the conservative site World Net Daily an article by Ellis Washington exploring the malady of liberalism and how it deals with terrorism in light of Mumbai. In it he refers to Islam as a pseudo-religion. Is this a social conservative thing or does it come from other places of thought? My feeling is that he's right about out obsession with "root causes" of terrorism. We know the who's and the why's. Next!

But about Islam I'm not sure. I'm simply not prepared to go that far for two reasons. 1) There's a shit load of people who follow it and 2) Islam's history and contribution to it is substantial - at least for a period of time. Even here we have to be careful, prior to Islam societies that roamed the Middle-East were advanced but not religious. I'll stop here.

It's either I don't get it - at which point I need to be taught and spanked - or I instinctively know that it's all dressed up nonsense. Besides, my brain simply doesn't function in any coordinated or specific way so as to be peer reviewed. I'm too aloof. I suck that way. That's why I blog. Capiche?

In a past post, I wrote about what I felt was unnecessary jargon in the investment world. No one seems capable of giving a damn presentation without speaking lucidly with straight forward answers. Instead, it's always complex schemes and "down the roads" and "future value" rubbishness.

I tend to apply this to history and philosophy - even in everyday life. That way, it helps determine what is (plus ou moins) real history and alternative history (I define this as interesting points of views with less facts), real ideas and bull shit. If I see a person on TV over and over it raises my suspicion. For many, Oprah, Dr. Phil and all that jazz help "educate" people. To bring "issues" in the public consciousness. Maybe but I take a difference stance. They just feed empty talk and thoughts to people who don't know any better. It's all smoke and mirrors - intellectually speaking of course.

I can go on and on but I shall stop here.

It's a never-ending if not frustrating journey but this pseudo-blog is willing to do it.

Always Remember...

Tom Selleck never needed a tattoo to look cool.

I must profess I never did get the tattoo craze. A few of my friends jumped on it but it never quite tickled my armpits. Good for people who enjoy it; real enthusiasts especially. Not the wannabes.

One thing that's always made me wary is how a tattoo wears poorly over time as skin ages.

It looks great when you're buffed at 25. But when you're skin is taking its natural course and sagging at 65 you may as well have raisins as ink spots.

I look at actors today and it feels like they try too hard to be "cool."

Not Tom Selleck!

Article Of Interest: Mumbai

From The Australian.

"Those who thought George W. Bush was the cause of radical Islamist hostility to the US and the West are set for a sore disappointment. The terrorists didn't hate the US because of Bush. They hated Bush because of the US. Similarly, they will not love the US because of Obama: they will hate Obama because of the US."

Duh.

"There's no one in charge in Pakistan. There's no one you can talk to, no one home. The multiple centres of power in Pakistan traditionally mean jihadis get a lot of leeway. Pakistan is now a net exporter of terrorism. No one's in charge and we're likely to see a spiral of violence out of Pakistan."

Ok. So does the U.S. invade?

Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine...where does it all end?

According to sources in this article India, in addition to all this, is "remarkably incompetent government on counter-terrorism."

Welcome, Obama.

India's Marine Commandos Do The Job

Am I the only one who was impressed with India's efficient military response to those animals?

The Marine Commandos are known as Marcos in India.

Queens Mafia Redux

"We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teachers leave them kids alone." Another brick in the wall Part 2 Pink Floyd

Here's another subject in the news.

The mere fact this even merits a discussion in the halls of academia should make one shiver.

Surreal.

All in the name of "progress." Bull shit.

What the fuck is a "dialog facilitator" anyway? That's so gay. I think I'm going to host a "Don't Be PC" week on my blog soon.

Who are they?

Murderers of freedom and liberty. Murderers of true enlightening thought. Murderers of the intellect.

That's who.

Brother, Can You Spare Me Some Change?

The $1.95 subsidy taxpayers provide to political parties is in the news now.

People who read this blog know I'm not a fan of wasteful subsidies and unions.

The idea that my tax dollars go to parties I flat out don't support strikes me as pathetic. How dare the NDP, for example, take my money? How dare they?

If they want money then they should earn it; work the streets and phones harder. Pull a PBS-style telethon. Show initiative.

Not succeeding? Then come up with better ideas Canadians can support without snickering.

The conservatives are right on this one. And to think the loser Liberals have the balls to threaten to take down the government over this issue...Hey, I'm all for it if they want to unite with the NDP. It means more humorous material for me.

Normally, I look into the history and origins of this sort of stuff but not here. The point of the subsidy was to make things "equal." Code for "hey, you're doing better than me give me your money."

The idea of voluntary political support means nothing to these people.

Is that our "concept" of "fair"? Liberty? Freedom of political choice?

Deadbeats.

All of them.

Link Of Interest: Source Watch

Source Watch is conducting its Fifth Annual Falsies Awards. Check out the nominations here.

The link will take you to the site.

The nominees include among others:

Coal Is the New Green: The coal industry-funded front group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) and the public relations firm Edelman have been promoting dirty energy with green rhetoric. ABEC doubled its budget in 2008, launching a $35 million ad campaign promoting "clean" coal, paying millions more to co-sponsor several U.S. presidential debates and hiring people to walk "around as human billboards" outside a January 2008 debate, handing out leaflets "with questions for voters to ask the [Democratic presidential] candidates." ABEC also tried to organize opposition to a climate change bill before the U.S. Senate, at one point misrepresenting itself to grassroots activists as an environmental group with no industry ties. In Britain, the PR firm Edelman helped energy company E.ON counter protests against its Kingsnorth coal-fired power station, while the firm's Canadian branch promoted its plans to go "carbon neutral." As one Edelman executive anticipating the next round of international climate change negotiations noted, there's a "global opportunity for carbon messaging."

Disputing the Count of the Dead: In January 2008, a spate of editorials appeared, attacking a peer-reviewed study from 2006 that estimated 650,000 "excess deaths" in Iraq, over the 40 months following the U.S. invasion. The Wall Street Journal claimed that the 2006 study, which was published in the British medical journal Lancet, "could hardly be more unreliable." The editorial, and others like it, repeated allegations made in a National Journal article titled "Data Bomb," which the Lancet study authors and other academics have challenged. Around the same time, another peer-reviewed study by the Iraqi Health Ministry and World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 151,000 Iraqis died due to violence, over the same 40 months. Many reporters and editorial writers saw the WHO study as a further challenge to the Lancet study, though the WHO data predicts that more than 400,000 Iraqis have died from both violent and non-violent causes. In July 2008, the New York Times reported that high costs and increasing U.S. military restrictions on reporters and photographers -- including "what some journalists say is a growing effort ... to control graphic images from the war" -- has led to declining news coverage of Iraq.

Front Groups Go Postal: Concerned that junk mail -- the unwanted catalogs, product offers and other direct mail clogging up mailboxes -- is not just annoying, but bad for the environment? Don't worry! Mail Moves America claims that "direct mail is not trees, it is printed communication." Mail Moves America is a front group established by the Direct Marketing Association, in response to U.S. states forming "do not mail" lists, which are patterned after the popular "do not call" lists that block telemarketers. Although it's not allowed to lobby, the U.S. Postal Service works "closely" with Mail Moves America, "to quash the Do Not Mail initiatives," according to the Washington Post. Another pro-junk mail group, IP Moves the Mail, was founded by the International Paper Company.

Philosophical Question

What's more important: Liberty or democracy?

Letter To The Editor: Keeping Doctors Away

What follows in italics is a letter to the editor I plucked from the newspaper.

It used to be an apple a day kept the doctor away. Now it's a little more complicated.

Things are not good nor acceptable in Quebec. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Part of the reason why private health care is on the rise is because there's a demand for it. People are not interested in playing roulette with their lives as they wait for timely service. Rather than wait for the government to make things better they are taking matters into their own hands. It's only going to continue...

"There has been a lot of talk during this provincial election campaign about the state of the health-care system, particularly the lack of family physicians in Montreal and the province. My wife, a family doctor who has been in practice more than 20 years, has felt the effects of the policies of successive PQ and Liberal governments. She has been training promising young doctors only to see them leave the province once their training is done because of low salaries and draconian restrictions on where they can work.

We had high hopes that the Charest government, which originally campaigned on fixing health care and education, would make more money available and lift the restrictions on doctors. It has not happened. Now, after years of working in a hospital unit with resources stretched beyond the limit, high stress levels and incompetent management, she herself has left the province.

I will join her in Toronto next year, where her pay is significantly higher, taxes are lower, and the system is more functional. We are leaving our long-time home, and Quebec and Montreal have lost another experienced family clinician and educator. That will definitely be on my mind as I cast my ballot in my last Quebec election."

D.G.

Indian Tragedy

India mourns deadly terrorist attacks.

It's not about American foreign policy; it's an international scourge without borders.

Perhaps one day we'll move on from this comfortable line of thinking and see these attacks for what they are: works of evil designed by individuals who operate independently from the international order.

The world must close ranks once and for all.

Are we about to see another round of attacks?

Beyond Logic Lies

Italy is a land where conspiracy theories find its ultimate expression. In fact, it also has a specialized name: Dietrologia. How's that for a title that sounds like a book written by St. Thomas of Aquino?

Dietrologia means "science or study of what lies behind" and it's the basis of all that is creative in Italian conspiracy culture.

Convicted murderer (of anarchist Pino Pinelli) Adriano Sofri sums it up this way: "Dietrologia is an air that you breathe in Italy."

When I read about Dietrologia I think about Noam Chomsky and Billy Fischer for some reason. They're so smart they say the darnedest, kookiest things.

Canadian Immigration History Lives In Halifax

Pier 21 in Halifax rightly holds a special place in Canadian immigration history but so did the largely forgotten Pier 2.

As I write here immigration is an evolving event in human life and with climate change wreaking havoc on many countries, Canada may see itself at the center of a new immigration movement down the road.

Link Of Interest: Cars

How can this site not be useful and helpful?

Office of Defects Investigation

Revisiting Enron With Malcolm Gladwell

Not too many people impress me but if I had to choose a person to sit down and have dinner with it would be Malcolm Gladwell.

His article titled "Open Secrets" goes back to the Enron fiasco and quite frankly it's overall message was something I try to convey, not just with Enron, on this blog - albeit clumsily.

The prosecutors didn’t attain justice. Ironically, their achievement is the legal equivalent of what Enron did in accounting. Just as Enron assumed the value of future profits that proved fleeting, prosecutors think they got justice when in fact it eluded them.

By extension, methinks that once the hysteria around Bush subsides we’ll be able to assess his Presidency with a more sober touch.

I could go on and on but I'll let the article speak for itself.

I would just add a sports analogy. We often blame one player or coach for the ills and failures of a particular team. In reality, the problems which ail sports franchises are often more complex and run deeper. It's just that it's way too easy to blame the last person in front of you. The same with politicians. Conversely, it works the other way too. When it's time for promotion, it's not always the best person who gets the spoils.

Interestingly, his discussion about how the allied intelligence community spied on the Nazi's reminds me of a great book called "The Code Book" by Simon Singh.

It's a long article but definitely enlightening and worth the read.

Letter To The Editor Of The Day

In one of my last posts I was disturbed by the content of a letter to the editor. The person basically shrugged her shoulders and said "what can you?" when it comes to our public health system. The fact that we have a "free" system that covers everyone is not an excuse to accept mediocrity. Ideology should not prevail over our practical senses.

I plucked this letter also responding to her letter:

"As a former resident of B.C. - where doctors' appointments are scheduled within days and serious medical procedures are performed within a couple of months - I must say the health-care situation in Quebec is alarming.

It is more disturbing to read that some Quebec citizens not only accept it, but compare Quebec health care only to the U.S.

And it is very reassuring to see forward- thinking provinces like B.C. and Alberta making health care a priority."

A.C.D

Amen, brotha, Amen.

Book Alert: Dyer's 'Climate Wars'

Gwynne Dyer is out with a new book called "Climate Wars."

Follow the link to CTV's website for an excerpt.

Dyer, who is Canadian, is a distinguished and respected columnist and military historian based in London.

As the world heats up the ability for nations to feed themselves diminishes. As they starve they must search for ways to feed their populations. Will the world be divided between nations lucky to not be affected by climate change (like Canada) and those aren't able to avoid it (United States)? How will nations fight? With nuclear weapons? What areas could be affected? Australia is facing a water drought and may not produce as much grains and wheat in the future. Luckily, they have a small population. Is climate change the highway to hell?

"This is a world in which food imports are no longer available at any price, as there is a global food shortage. But there are still relative winners and relative losers: the higher-latitude countries - northern Europe, Russia, Canada - are still getting adequate rainfall and are able to feed themselves, while those in the mid-latitudes are in serious trouble. Even the United States has lost a large amount of its crop-growing area as the rain fails to fall over the high plains west of the Mississippi, persistent droughts beset the southeast, and the rivers that provided irrigation water for the Central Valley of California cease to flow in the summertime. Countries of smaller size, like Spain, Italy and Turkey on the northern side of the Mediterranean (not to mention those on the southern side), find that their entire land area is turning into desert and that they can no longer feed their populations. The northeastern monsoon that brought rain to the north Chinese plain has failed, and the rivers that watered southern China have suffered the same fate as those that provided California's water: now they only flow in the wintertime."

Though the book paints a bleak if not apocalyptic future for Mother Earth, I did hear Dyer on Montreal radio say he does now feel more optimistic than he did during the period he wrote the book. He believes nations will cooperate and do what's necessary to avoid the pending catastrophe. Moreover, Climate Wars could (or should) provide climate change skeptics and deniers with enough evidence and thoughts to ponder their positions.

I haven't read the book yet but I plan to shortly.

Another book this reminds me of is Robert D. Kaplan's "The Coming Anarchy" and "The Revenge of Gaia" by James Lovelock.

Don't Walk To Canada - RUN!

Not too long ago I mentioned the annoying habit of some Americans who throw hissy fits and threaten to move whenever things don't go their way. And most want to come up here.

Yikes! With citizens like these...

Anyway, more often than not it's what we term "liberals" who do this.

The irony in all this is that most of what passes as liberal thought these days is actually illiberal.

We often hear terms like "liberal elites" and "intellectual elites" and "whatever elites" even though names are rarely mentioned. Is this couple members of the "liberal elite?" If so, who invited them anyway? Let's just go with "dumb elites." I get more into it here at Who We Are.

En passant, on the Who We Are blog I asked, now that Obama is in office how come racist KKK ingrates aren't threatening to move up here? Why not? After all, Nazi's found a loving home here.

Keep MY Money In MY Pockets

You know, it really is unconscionable that may tax dollars go to pay the salaries of people who earn over $100 000 (in many cases far more) all in the name of culture (for example CBC) and to protect jobs (oil industry, Bombardier).

"Well, all governments subsidize!" So let's all play this fake deck of cards!

Think of it, somewhere, somehow and exec is earning hundreds of thousands of dollars and part of his or her salary is financed by the public. Does this make sense? Is it fair?

Canada is not the only culprit. Many countries in many industries are doing it. It's wrong.

Are these real companies or lap dogs for the government? How come I don't get some form of refund when they succeed but when they fail out come the hands? How did their problems become public responsibility?

They remind me of a teenage kid who wants their independence, moves out but comes back home for rent money. Sorta like Quebec.

How long before the jig is up?

Yeah, erm, Right. Quebec Embraces Liberalism

I heard someone say we're liberals here in Quebec.

It is to laugh and die.

No we're not.

We're wannabe socialist cultural nationalists. It's a weak social democracy we can't really afford; I say weak because our democracy comes with conditions and restrictions. Expensive because we can't pay for the lavish social programs we want.

Moreover, we don't respect individual liberties here. You can't spin this fact.

Liberalism is dying a slow death here on this fine continent.

We're no more liberal than Americans who talk capitalistic but create bail outs to save corporate deadbeats.

Hey. It's a choice we made. Just don't tell me something we're not.