Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!

Gore Calls Canada's Climate Plan a Fraud

This week Toronto held a huge consumer environment show. The focus was on products and services that assist one in being a better citizen of the planet. Sadly Paul and I did not go. It featured all sorts of 'celebrities', many of whom were commenting on the 'big' announcement made by Canada's environment Minister the week before.

For those of you who do not follow the minutiae of Canada's politics (how could you NOT?) . . . the current government is to the right of the spectrum and not know for  being friendly or even concerned about environmental issues. Then the start of the some problems for them: the opposition elected a leader with strong environmental credentials, Canadians seemed to be more concerned about the environment than they had been in the past,  and then the Green Party started to gain prominence and suddenly the government cares. Unfortunately their huge base of support is in Western Canada -= home to Canada's greatest producers of carbon dioxide gases in the oil and gas industry.

Anyway - enough of the lesson. This is a report of what Gore said:

Gore Calls Canada Climate Plan a 'Fraud'

Sunday, April 29, 2007

(04-29) 20:31 PDT TORONTO, Canada (AP) --

Al Gore condemned Canada's new plan to reduce greenhouse gases, saying it was "a complete and total fraud" because it lacks specifics and gives industry a way to actually increase emissions.

Under the initiative announced Thursday, Canada aims to reduce the current level of greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020. But the government acknowledged it would not meet its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, which requires 35 industrialized countries to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

The country's emissions are now 30 percent above 1990 levels.

The conservative government's strategy focuses both on reducing emissions of gases blamed for global warming and improving air quality. But the plan failed to spell out what many of its regulations will look like.

Gore said the plan did not make clear how Canada would reach its 2020 emissions goal. He also criticized the plan for allowing industries to pollute more if they use emissions-cutting technologies while increasing production.

"In my opinion, it is a complete and total fraud," Gore said Saturday. "It is designed to mislead the Canadian people."

He said "intensity reduction" — which allow industries to increase their greenhouse gas outputs as they raise production — was a poll-tested phrase developed by think tanks financed by Exxon Mobil and other large polluters.

Canadian Environment Minister John Baird rejected Gore's criticisms.

"The fact is our plan is vastly tougher than any measures introduced by the administration of which the former vice president was a member," Baird said in a statement.

Baird also invited Gore to discuss climate change and the government's environmental policies with him.

Gore was in Toronto to present his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," at a consumer environmental show. He acknowledged that as an American, he had "no right to interfere" in Canadian decision.

However, he said, the rest of the world looks to Canada for moral leadership, and that was why Thursday's announcement was so "shocking."

Canadian opposition Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said Sunday that Gore was right.

"Mr. Baird is embarrassing Canada around the world," Dion said. "The world expects Canada will do its share — more than that, that Canada will be a leader and we are failing the world. We are failing Canadians."

The truth is we all knew it was fraud - as is the government!

In the name of God

The rant of the day has been percolating for some time.

It started last week when I read this:

An anti-gay group from Topeka, Kan., announced plans to picket the funerals of victims of the Virginia Tech massacre.

The Westboro Baptist Church, which is not affiliated with any national Baptist organization, claims shooter Cho Seung-hui was carrying out God's wishes by punishing the victims who weren't Christian, CBS News reported.

"The evidence is they were not Christian. God does not do that to his servants," WBC member Shirley Phelps-Roper told CBS.

Phelps and his group are notorious for taking extreme positions in the name of God. They run a website (which I refuse to link to because it gets too damn much traffic anyway) in which they explain why Americans are generally all going to hell. While I'm not a religious person, I remember enough from my years of Sunday school as a child to know that the message of the bible is forgiveness.

Phelps protested the funerals of the Columbine victims - they got what they got because they were evil. They preached at the funeral of Matthew Sheppard because he was gay and as their literature states unequivocally: God Hates fags. Perhaps it should read: God doesn't appreciate those who use his name to promote their own narrow, bigoted, and evil message.

Later in the week it looked as if sanity would rule the day. I read that the group had cancelled their plans to protest (as they did earlier this year after they had announced plans to protest at the funeral;s for the 5 Amish girls who were slain in Pennsylvania). Why did they cancel the planned protests? Because a TV commentator agreed to give them air time and let them take their message to the airwaves! GRRR

I agree passionately about freedom of speech but this tripe is just too darn much!

Senseless Loss

Like many yesterday I was reeling from the news of the senseless rampage that left 33 people dead in Virginia. There is no way to comprehend such a tragedy. Less than 48 hours later people are busy trying to exploit the events . . . a testament to where we are as a society I suppose.

Not long after the news broke sick Internet folk started registering domain names in the hopes of making a future profit. Some even tried to sell them on eBay. Here is an assortment of what was listed yesterday:

1) vtechkilling.com
Registrant: Jason Berlinsky of Morristown, New Jersey
Registrar: Moniker Online Services, Inc.
Starting bid: $0.01
Buy It Now: $500
Bids: 0
Vtechkilling.com is registered through 2008. It is "a perfect domain name for any memorandum or other site dedicated to the recent mass killing of students at Virginia Tech." The eBay description has a visual "memorandum" of an assault rifle. Berlinsky has a 100 percent positive feedback rating.

2) virginiatechkiller.com and viriginatechstudentmemorial.com
Registrant: Lewis Dennison of Southfield, Michigan
Registrar: GoDaddy
Starting Bids: $99.96
Bids: 0
--Both listings feature an American flag waving in the breeze. Selling under the handle "groovybluedragon," Dennison has a 99.5 percent positive feedback rating.

3) Virginia-tech-rampage.com
Registrant: Matt Owens of Jackson, Michigan
Registrar: Melbourne IT
Starting Bid: $1,000
Buy It Now: $10,000
Bids: 0
According to Owens, www.virginia-tech-rampage.com is a "great domain name for development! Make a [sic] offer!" In his description, Owens includes a rather disturbing photo-shopped image of a comely angel in what appears to be lingerie. She is hovering next to a cross. Owens has a 100 percent positive feedback rating.

4) vatechvictimsfund.com and vatechhelp.com
Registrant: Rory Klinge, possibly of Greenport, New York
Registrar: Melbourne IT
Starting Bid: $5,000
Buy It Now: $10,000
Bids: 0
Klinge's apparent sense of charity also apparently encompasses his own well-being. Feedback rating? 100 percent positive.

5) virginiatechlawsuits.com, vatechlawsuits.com, vatechlawsuit.com, vatechlawsuit.info, vatechlawsuits.info, virginiatechlawsuits.info
Registrant: Proxy, Inc. (a anonymous registrant service)
Registrar: GoDaddy
Starting Bid: $417,007
Buy It Now: $500,000
Bids: 0
This mystery profiteer hopes to corner the legal angle on the tragedy. "Unfortunatly [sic], we know that this is coming," he writes in his description. "Lawyers will jump on this thing real quick!...These domain names will be good for years to come; we all know how long a lawsuit takes." A clue to this seller's identity: mbradley005 in Sterling, Virginia.

It is a sick world that we live in. Happily eBay got wind of what was going on and pulled the auctions.

Others are trying to make political 'hay' out of this horrific act. Supporters of gun control are using it as proof that guns should be banned. Supporters of 'the right to carry' are using it as proof that we should have guns to defend ourselves. Anti-immigration pundits are using the fact that the shooter was from South Korea as proof that America should ban immigrants and it goes on and on.

The reality is that the perpetrator of this shooting spree was a product of American culture; his life in the US being greater than his time in Korea. Evidence is slowly trickling out that he may have been emotionally unwell, yet he was able to purchase guns.

Other reactions are as troubling. The 'blame game' has started before facts are even released. The magnitude of the loss is alarming; let folks come to grips with that before examining what happened in an effort to learn how to prevent further tragic events. The fact that people were discussing lawsuits so quickly saddens me.

Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott (a victim of the Columbine massacre), was asked today if he believed we lived in a society which glorifies violence. This was his response:

I've said for eight years that the responsibility lies with all of us. When I was a child, they didn't allow the extreme violence to be so widely available to young people the way it is now. Unfortunately, today people can go to the Internet and find out how to make bombs. We've got artists and musicians who glorify suicide and homicide. We've got video games being mimicked after Columbine. And you've got extremely violent movies. It's no secret that when people are exposed to extreme violence and become angry, it triggers something. And if they have access to a weapon, the combination of all of that can be pretty volatile.

So much to think about . . . .

Finally. My rant. I am coming to despise journalists, the media, and ourselves for watching it. . . I am sickened by what I see on TV. In our era of 'instant messaging' we have lost something precious; people have lost privacy to cope with tragedy in their own manner without a microphone or camera shoved in their face. We are becoming focused on the sensationalistic story. I have seen more disaster, horror, death, and sadness played over and over again in my life. I don't want to hide my head in the sand but I would like some balance . . .

A Blog About Race

Last week I received a lovely e-mail from Sandi at The Whistlestop Cafe. She was tagging me because my blog post had caused her to think. This is what she wrote:

One of my favorite ThinkingBloggers would have to be Jerry, who spends his days with his Thoughts, Musings, & Rants! His blog is a way to get his thoughts out of that busy head and into our busy heads. I look forward to the day we can sit under the sun and share our musings.

How flattering. I think she also captured why I blog more than I could have . . . sometimes blogging helps me to make sense of my world. Not all of the time; posting about my Easter Egg Hunt clearly does nothing to make sense of the world I do understand that nuance and am not trying to make my little piece of blog wasteland out to be more than it is.

Today's post is about race, a sensitive issue for sure.

I confess to never having heard about Don Imus before his ill-conceived statement about the Rutgers women's basketball team, nor have I made an effort to find out about him. I understand that he is part of that group I place below pond scum - radio shock jockeys.

The net result is that after his comments there was a huge outcry: advertisers pulled their sponsorship from his show, he was fired, he apologized in the media 100s of times, he cried, the NJ Governor practical killed himself racing to a reconciliation meeting' between the team and Imus (note to Corizone - wear a seat belt you fool, talk about setting a bad example, but I digress).

Were Imus' comments really that bad? I hear people calling one another "hos" regularly. I read books where one of the main characters is a self-described "ho" and proud of it.

Are these comments really worse than what young people hear everyday when they listen to gansta rap, or when they go to the movies, or when they watch TV? I assume that the great 'anti-racial comment backlash' will now target TV, radios stations, and movie distribution companies. I shall go and burn my Janet Evanovich novels.

Please, if there is a God - will Howard Stern be next?

Where do I send my bottle of Aunt Jemima 'psuedo-maple syrup'?

I don't think you'll see this happen. It would be wonderful, but it won't happen. So why Imus, why now?

Was he expendable for some reason? I have no answers, only questions.

Is it because he committed the ultimate sin of attacking a sports team? Is there a double standard in our society - if people of a different race win basketball games, baseball games, or provide what we perceive as worth (i.e. make money) then they are OK and untouchable?

Only time will tell.

Now let's look at a Canadian example shall we?

The woman on the left has just had a chocolate brown sofa set delivered to her house. If you look at the packing label you can clearly see that it is described as 'nigger-brown'.

Good lord, it felt so wrong even typing that.

Message boards and blogs have bee rife with debate about it, this ghost of an expression, which once was common usage – most commonly, it would seem, in Britain where schoolchildren were instructed as late as the 1950s to buy "nigger-brown" cloth for their school uniforms.As one blogger pointed out: "Someone tell me who in their right mind would use that term when describing the color brown and even further what company would let that pass through their standards! Some people are so STUPID!"

The audience of Lady's Pictorial magazine in London, circa 1914, would have wondered what all the fuss was about. Ads for soft taffeta hats in nigger-black were common then. A 1915 edition of the British Home Chat magazine described cloth as "nigger-brown." Writers D. H. Lawrence and John Dos Passos wrote about nigger-grey and nigger-pink. And as late as 1973 The Times wrote of autumnal colours in a shade that "used to be nigger brown."

The couch bearing the offensive label landed in Brampton last week by way of China, where things like paint and shoes for men are still being sold today with the description.

"Nigger-brown" pigment is available for purchase from the Wenzhou Kunwei Pearly-Lustre Pigment Co., Ltd. Men's shoes from the Nanhai De Xing Leather Shoes Habiliment Co., Ltd., are described this way on its website: "this product is leisure & fashion, Comfortable, beautiful outside Size 39#-46# Color French rose, `nigger-brown.'"

There is actually a museum of racist memorabilia in Big Rapids, Michigan where presumably one can go and see crayola crayons with colours such as Indian red, nigger brown, and the flesh tone being a pinkish white.

I doubt that the company in China meant any harm by the choice of label for the sofa. I do questing though why we are willing to accept billions of dollars of goods each year from a country that clearly has some racial issues (I know, there are many other issues there as well but this is the topic of the day). Clearly money talks.

If we really believe in racial equality the we should demand those same standards from all. At times like this one has to wonder just how Deep those convictions really are . . .

Razor Blades in Playgrounds

Once the floodgate is opened . . .

Recently the newspapers have been full reports of a playground in a nearby city - Oakville. Unusual stuff this. Playgrounds don't often make the front pages. Why did this playground hit the news?

It seems as if someone decided it would be fun to hide razor blades in the cedar bark on the ground.

What sort of a tin-head does something like this?

Unfortunately it isn't an isolated incident. A quick GOOGLE search reveals that this has happened before:

Parents in British Columbia are being told to be vigilant when taking their kids to play at public parks after razor blades and broken glass were found in a play area.

Police in Maple Ridge, B.C., said someone glued razors to a playground slide and buried shards of glass in the sand at the park.

We do live in a sick world. Where would someone get so much hate that they would decide to do this?

Unfortunately this nonsense isn't that unusual. We had a case here in Burlington 2 years ago where five teens aged 14 - 16 decided it would be a hoot to glue glass shards to the slide and to the monkey bars. Luckily it was noticed prior to anyone going down the slide or climbing in the monkey bars. These weren't hardened criminals, these were bored kids who thought that this would be fun.

I know that these are isolated incidents but it worries me. When I was fourteen and I wanted to rebel I didn't do my homework or I skipped class or I drank or smoked. I didn't do something that I knew would harm other people - perhaps seriously.

Where Did We Go Wrong?

The other day as I was planning Easter hunts, dinner, and fun, six families here in Canada were facing a very different reality. These six families were dealing with the news that their sons had just been killed in Afghanistan. While I was planning fun, they were planning funerals.

This news has inspired this rant. I want to warn you - it is political. I also need to include a caveat, I mean no disrespect to those soldiers who made the sacrifice nor their loved ones who will deal with the loss for the rest of their lives.

Here  goes . . .

Last fall President Bush and other Republicans called on John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, to apologize to U.S. troops for telling college students in California Monday that if they didn't get an education, they would end up "stuck in Iraq". I think Kerry's slip was quite a Freudian one; unfortunate but true. When I was in the US last month I saw many tributes to the dead . . . these soldiers tended to be Hispanic. They were young, shockingly young. Many seemed to be fromareas where there were few opportunities to better themselves. In fact, I suspect that many of them were in the army because it was an opportunity to better their lives and to get an education. You didn't see names such as Thomas Smith III there.

The news report yesterday caused me to look at our war dead - and sure enough the same pattern was here. These soldiers didn't come from large cities, they didn't appear to come from the upper crust of society. Rather, they appear to be loyal, hard working men and women who want a better life for themselves and they have precious few opportunities to do that. The army, navy, and air force sure play on that with their recruitment ads.

It is a sad testament that we as a society let this go on; that we allow the social conditions exist where there are a large number of young people who feel that the best option to better themselves is to join the armed forces and face possible death. This says so much about the social structure.

The furor from those on the right over Kerry's comments was equally as frightening. It showed the extent to which those who question or challenge their 'right' vision for the nation are derided, insulted, and ridiculed. Public discourse is a cornerstone of a democratic country. It has been missing in action these days.

In the US the President and his advisers have a saying: 'you are with us or you are against us'. Implying that those who question, wonder, or heaven forbid, challenge, are suspect, treasonous even. How enough people have been fooled into voting for this crew  astounds me to no end.

Back to Canada . . . public discourse still exists here but it is less vibrant than it once was. Our politics used to be more civil but gradually we are becoming more 'American' in our politics. Our politics are becoming more about power and control than the public good. Those who question face ridicule and insult.

I worry about where we are going.

I know though, I will continue to question and wonder why things are happening the way they are. If people ridicule or insult me for that then I have a good idea of who I need to worry about - I'll be looking them in the eyes.

Things in the News that Bother Me!

Lately there have been stories in the news that are distressing me in the few moments when I have the luxury of time to be distressed. On some levels they serve to remind me of how sensationalized and celebrity driven the news has become.

This week the Canadian media has been awash with the plight of the 'Canadian Afghan War Widows': they and their soldiers spouses purchase houses. They buy insurance on the mortgage but the banks, knowing full well that the spouse is a soldier on active duty, do not point out the exclusion for 'acts of war'. They are happy to collect the premiums for years. Hmmm Hubby later is killed in Afghanistan and the banks refuse to pay up. These same banks record multi-billion dollar profits every year. Would it be so much to compensate these women?

Shame!

Lately all of the news from Ottawa seems to be blame. The Tories blame the former government for not doing enough on the environment. The Liberals blame the RCMP for their election loss. The NDP doesn't blame anyone because no one is listening to them Grrr Blah, Blah, Blah. Guys (and the paltry few gals who manage to get elected - another blog that!) stop blaming one another and start governing a bit.

Shame!

Is anyone else sickened by the way comics and even the mainstream media has latched onto the story of the 'astronaut love triangle'? What we have here is clearly a very unwell woman who was not in control of her actions. How about getting her some help? Watching her treatment in the hands of the 'popular' media would make anyone with an emotional illness even more afraid to disclose it. Have we all fallen so low that we enjoy National Enquirerlike stories?

Shame!

Finally - poor Anna Nicole Smith. This woman was a victim. She is dead. Her daughter is without a parent and all anyone can do is to wrestle over the estate. Not a day goes by when some sad sap doesn't declare that he is the baby's father in hopes of claiming the inheritance.  Everyone is speculating as to how she died; when the autopsy was underway it was as if there were hourly press briefings. Stop! This is the tragic death of a tragic woman - let her have some peace in death.

Shame, shame, shame, shame.

There, now I am cleansed and I can go forth with my day.

Carbon Neutral Events

Lately there has been much talk of climate change, the environment, and the footprint made by our activities on the earth. The union that I work for has spent considerably time reflecting on its activities and planning ways to counter the enormous imprint that we have. The first strategy was put into action yesterday and today.

Three times a year we bring in representatives from all of our locals across the province to a meeting in Toronto. Many from the far reaches fly, others drive or take the train. We spent two days in a hotel discussing policy, issues, and advising the Executive as to possible direction.

We have partnered with Tree Canada to offset the carbon emissions created by this event. Tree Canada calculates the total emissions created by the event through travel, the food our delegates would eat, the hotel usage, paper, etc and calculates how many trees would need to be planted in order to counter the impact of the event. This short event was calculated to create more than 3 tonnes of carbon emissions! In order to counter this we need to plant 166 trees - it will take these trees (assuming a 70 % survival rate) 10 years to offset the carbon created by our meeting.

Here is information about Tree Canada:

The Foundation encourages the running of your conference, trade show or annual meeting as "carbon neutral". By this we mean that the amount of carbon generated (through travel, heating, lights etc.) be offset through the planting of trees. The Foundation can assist your group in the calculation of carbon expenditure as well as calculating the amount of trees required to offset this amount of carbon.The Tree Canada Foundation will:

• do the carbon calculation estimate
• provide an estimate of the number of trees to plant to absorb the carbon over 1, 10, 20 or 80 years
• arrange the site selection, landowner contact, seedling transportation, tree seedling purchase, site preparation, planting, maintenance and survival assessments
• guarantee survival to be 70% to Year 5 of the planting by refill planting if necessary
• issue your event our "carbon neutral event" logo until the event has taken place
• place your event on our main homepage until the event and on our carbon neutral events listing page of the website