There's an awful lot of internet traffic today devoted to imaginary prophecies concerning visions allegedly visited on Mizrahi rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri.
Kaduri was quite a character. Spent his whole life reading scripture and seeing visions. He kicked the bucket just weeks after Sharon went into what was to be his terminal coma. But he's having a bit of a resurrection today, thanks mostly to Christian Zionist propagandists in the US.
I'm personally a bit of a skeptic when it comes to visions. Oh, I've certainly had my share... that's why I'm profoundly skeptical. But Kaduri was mostly a big deal among the more orientalist folks in the Holy Land, and God knows those are the folks who will go in for visions and prophesies and quackery of all stripes.
It's a bit of Netanyahu-inspired folk-lore that Rabbi Kaduri once confided to him that Jehovah himself had revealed in a vision that anyone to the left of Likud was no longer an authentic Jew.
Netanyahu himself is of course the ultimate pragmatist and he knows quackery when he hears it, but he's certainly not adverse to harnessing it for his own ends.
Pretty much the only people anywhere even more susceptible to quackery are American Christian Zionists like Paul Begley.
What is really astonishing, and this is a profound indictment of the American education system, is that millions of people lap this stuff up.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Sharon dead - coast now clear for return of Christ?
Ariel Sharon was many things; a great Israeli patriot, a mass-murderer of biblical proportions, and at least according to Charles Krauthammer, the founder of the independent Palestinian state of Gaza.
But I had no idea that Ariel Sharon was single-handedly preventing the coming, or second coming, depending on your perspective, of the messiah.
Apparently it's got to do with some visions visited upon the late Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri.
But I had no idea that Ariel Sharon was single-handedly preventing the coming, or second coming, depending on your perspective, of the messiah.
Apparently it's got to do with some visions visited upon the late Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri.
Canada talking above its weight in fight against polio
On January 7 Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs issued a news release with the heading Canada leading Fight to Eradicate Polio in Pakistan. That headline trumpeting Canada's leadership role was then splashed across news sites and blogs from coast to coast.
Too bad it isn't true.
News sites from Pakistan had a more nuanced story. The headline at The News reads Canada offers $20 million for Polio Plus initiative. No hint of Canada's leadership role in that title.
At DAWN.com, Pakistans biggest English language news source, the headline is Canada contributes $20m to polio eradication. That doesn't sound like we're leading anything either.
At Vaccine News Daily, a US based industry news site, we are told Canada supports battle against polio in Pakistan. We've gone from "leading" to "supporting".
Information available at the Polio Eradication Initiative's own website indicates that the Pakistan program costs about $100 million per year. Giving $20 million over three years or something in the range of 6-7% of the budget, is a very lovely gesture, but it is not leadership.
One could argue that in a country that spends more than that on the PMO, a country whose Prime Minister spent well over a million dollars shipping two armoured limos to India for a brief visit, a country that had $350 millions to spare for the campaign to smash Libya, seven million dollars a year to eradicate polio in Pakistan isn't really such a big deal.
And it is most definitely not "leadership."
So why does the Harper gang insist on spinning it that way?
Too bad it isn't true.
News sites from Pakistan had a more nuanced story. The headline at The News reads Canada offers $20 million for Polio Plus initiative. No hint of Canada's leadership role in that title.
At DAWN.com, Pakistans biggest English language news source, the headline is Canada contributes $20m to polio eradication. That doesn't sound like we're leading anything either.
At Vaccine News Daily, a US based industry news site, we are told Canada supports battle against polio in Pakistan. We've gone from "leading" to "supporting".
Information available at the Polio Eradication Initiative's own website indicates that the Pakistan program costs about $100 million per year. Giving $20 million over three years or something in the range of 6-7% of the budget, is a very lovely gesture, but it is not leadership.
One could argue that in a country that spends more than that on the PMO, a country whose Prime Minister spent well over a million dollars shipping two armoured limos to India for a brief visit, a country that had $350 millions to spare for the campaign to smash Libya, seven million dollars a year to eradicate polio in Pakistan isn't really such a big deal.
And it is most definitely not "leadership."
So why does the Harper gang insist on spinning it that way?
Friday, January 10, 2014
Why police salaries won't be downsized anytime soon
I was just reading where the Ontario Provincial Police scored a beauty 8.5% wage increase. That takes the annual pay for your basic copper to about $94,000 a year before overtime or paid duty. In other words, the vast majority of them will be into the six numbers come the end of this year.
Frankly, I don't begrudge them a penny of it. It can be a glorious job, to be sure. Hell, give me a badge and a gun and a new Harley and I'd be happy to be a cop for minimum wage!
But it's also the shitiest of shit jobs. You'd be the guy taking charge of the scene when a toddler on his bike gets run over by a drunk. Or where some meth-head stabbed his girlfriend. Or a thousand other eventualities that you could never pay me enough to be anywhere near.
No, I don't begrudge them a penny of it.
But the OPP and other police services have done better than most folks in maintaining their standard of living. Why is that?
For one thing, they're 100% unionized. Constable Nimrod doesn't wander into the Chief's office one day to ask for a raise...
"Please Sir, I busted a marijuana dealer and a pedophile this year, I think I'm worth another two bucks an hour..."
No, they stick together and their union leaders, even when their unions soft-peddle the union deal by calling themselves "associations," do the negotiations for them.
Contrary to what the last 75 years of American pop culture would have you believe, there is strength in numbers. The "rugged individualist" survives mainly on TV and in comic books.
For another thing, you can't send their work to Mexico or China. Unlike Caterpillar, you can't lift your $30/hour guys out of Ontario and send them to build your shit in a $12/hour "right-to-work" state. Like nurses and teachers, that gives them a bit of leverage.
So good on you, boys and girls in blue. Enjoy it while it lasts, and if you stick together, you can make it last a good long time... maybe even till the pendulum swings back and every worker is once again considered worthy of a living wage.
In the meanwhile, next time you pull me over, remember this great plug I put in for you.
Frankly, I don't begrudge them a penny of it. It can be a glorious job, to be sure. Hell, give me a badge and a gun and a new Harley and I'd be happy to be a cop for minimum wage!
But it's also the shitiest of shit jobs. You'd be the guy taking charge of the scene when a toddler on his bike gets run over by a drunk. Or where some meth-head stabbed his girlfriend. Or a thousand other eventualities that you could never pay me enough to be anywhere near.
No, I don't begrudge them a penny of it.
But the OPP and other police services have done better than most folks in maintaining their standard of living. Why is that?
For one thing, they're 100% unionized. Constable Nimrod doesn't wander into the Chief's office one day to ask for a raise...
"Please Sir, I busted a marijuana dealer and a pedophile this year, I think I'm worth another two bucks an hour..."
No, they stick together and their union leaders, even when their unions soft-peddle the union deal by calling themselves "associations," do the negotiations for them.
Contrary to what the last 75 years of American pop culture would have you believe, there is strength in numbers. The "rugged individualist" survives mainly on TV and in comic books.
For another thing, you can't send their work to Mexico or China. Unlike Caterpillar, you can't lift your $30/hour guys out of Ontario and send them to build your shit in a $12/hour "right-to-work" state. Like nurses and teachers, that gives them a bit of leverage.
So good on you, boys and girls in blue. Enjoy it while it lasts, and if you stick together, you can make it last a good long time... maybe even till the pendulum swings back and every worker is once again considered worthy of a living wage.
In the meanwhile, next time you pull me over, remember this great plug I put in for you.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
French government's relentless bullying of Dieudonne just makes him more popular
A month ago I'd not heard of Dieudonne or the "quenelle". It was the hysterical over-reaction of mainstream media to French-African footballer Nicolas Anelka's quenelle to celebrate a goal that brought both the quenelle and its inventor onto the world stage.
French President Francois Hollande and his inner circle suddenly saw an opportunity. Hollande the Crusader has been stymied in his attempt to "earn his spurs," as the great BHL has put it, in those troubled African colonies, and his already record-low standing in the polls continues to sink. The brain trust came up with a brilliant idea! If Hollande the Conqueror can't earn his spurs on the backs of those Africans in Mali and the CAR, perhaps he can earn them by crushing that uppity African who has been selling out shows all over France with his racially offensive comedy routine!
After all, virtually the entire Hollande cabinet has been on the butt end of Dieudonne's sarcasm at one time or another; time for their collective revenge. The entire legal apparatus of the state was unleashed in a desperate attempt to silence the vile black anti-semite. This unseemly effort is not unexpectedly being cheered on most loudly by the usual professional anti-semitism spotters who claim to speak for all Jewish people.
They don't of course, as this article in Jewlicious makes plain. I agree wholeheartedly with Gil Tanenbaum. If you don't agree with Dieudonne, change the channel or speak out, but don't harness the machinery of the state in the service of stifling free speech, no matter how offensive.
Thanks to Hollande's misguided vote-pandering, Dieudonne now has a bigger international profile than he could ever have imagined.
And Hollande is still chasing those spurs...
French President Francois Hollande and his inner circle suddenly saw an opportunity. Hollande the Crusader has been stymied in his attempt to "earn his spurs," as the great BHL has put it, in those troubled African colonies, and his already record-low standing in the polls continues to sink. The brain trust came up with a brilliant idea! If Hollande the Conqueror can't earn his spurs on the backs of those Africans in Mali and the CAR, perhaps he can earn them by crushing that uppity African who has been selling out shows all over France with his racially offensive comedy routine!
After all, virtually the entire Hollande cabinet has been on the butt end of Dieudonne's sarcasm at one time or another; time for their collective revenge. The entire legal apparatus of the state was unleashed in a desperate attempt to silence the vile black anti-semite. This unseemly effort is not unexpectedly being cheered on most loudly by the usual professional anti-semitism spotters who claim to speak for all Jewish people.
They don't of course, as this article in Jewlicious makes plain. I agree wholeheartedly with Gil Tanenbaum. If you don't agree with Dieudonne, change the channel or speak out, but don't harness the machinery of the state in the service of stifling free speech, no matter how offensive.
Thanks to Hollande's misguided vote-pandering, Dieudonne now has a bigger international profile than he could ever have imagined.
And Hollande is still chasing those spurs...
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Toilet science
When me and Junior and the Farm Manager took over this joint now known as Falling Downs we were not at all acquainted with the vagaries of a septic system.
We were, all of us, "townies", who were accustomed to taking a crap and never giving it a second thought after you pull that handle on the toilet tank.
One does of course give it a prompt second thought when and if one's troubles do not flush away as they should on pulling that handle.
I remember back in my growing up years, when a cousin of mine who was a bit older and much worldlier, married a chap by the name of "Crapper." Her previous beau had the name of "Smith", and the extended family was mightily discombobulated by the fact that one of our own would disown a Smith to embrace a Crapper, but that is neither in the here nor there of things at this point.
That cousin, like me a foreigner trying to gain traction in a new world, soon left Crapper for greener pastures, but not before they had a little Crapper. Little Crapper has had an extraordinarily good run making a living for himself on the small screen, but not, oddly enough, under his birth name.
That Crapper who is related to me by marriage is also a distant relative of one Thomas Crapper, the reputed inventor of the flush toilet, although his Wikipedia page would beg to differ. That's just one of the problems with open-source knowledge; I may know something to be true, you may know the opposite to be true, and how the hell do we ever know who's telling the truth?
But this is toilet science, not rocket science, so let's leave the big questions to the philosophers and Wikipedia and focus on the commode. The crapper. The shitter. The toilet.
It's pretty much taken for granted today, isn't it?
When I worked at GE my pal Ernie Hudman got sent off on a three month trip doing a transformer installation somewhere in rural Pakistan. The thing that shocked him the most is that indoor plumbing in that country at that time was considered a privilege for the elite. Regular folks just ducked behind the nearest shrub to do their business.
That's not as foreign as it sounds. I still remember the first place my folks bought with their own money here in the promised land when they were DPs fresh off the boat - no indoor plumbing. Old school manual water pump out in the yard, and an outhouse behind the barn. Not a hint of a water pipe anywhere in the house.
Now, considering where they came from, the privacy of a one-hole outhouse was a bit of a luxury. Many a National Park to this day still makes do with the one-holer, the two-holer, and so on. A good friend of mine still has a family camp that was once a religious retreat of some sort, and they've still got a functional five-holer going on, if you can imagine such a thing!
But for my folks, who came up in refugee camps in Denmark post WW II, that one-holer outhouse was a luxury because in the camps you just had a long wooden pole mounted over a trench, and you dropped your drawers, hoisted your haunches onto that wooden pole, and went about your business right there among the dozen or two fellow campers, of all ages and genders, hoisting their haunches over the same pole in the same shit-shed at the same time.
Mind you, it didn't take them long to figure out that what they really wanted wasn't a private outhouse, but indoor plumbing, and we made that giant step just as the fifties were turning into the sixties.
Somewhere along the line the two old gals who had lived out their lives here at Falling Downs before we got the place, at least lived them out till they spent a couple of twilight years in nursing homes, had gone in for the indoor plumbing.
And while we are thankful for that, the novelty of a septic system has from time to time caused a certain amount of consternation. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that whenever a handle pull is less than 100% successful, the Farm Manager embarks on a lobbying campaign to have the entire septic system uprooted and replaced.
At a cost of at least $15,000.
One can trace the trajectory of modernity here; from those Pakistanis dropping their drawers behind a shrub, to the refugees on the poo-pole, to the one-holer, the two-holer... the five-holer, to indoor plumbing...
Right up until today when somebody claims I need to spend fifteen big ones before they can take a big one.
That's progress for you.
We were, all of us, "townies", who were accustomed to taking a crap and never giving it a second thought after you pull that handle on the toilet tank.
One does of course give it a prompt second thought when and if one's troubles do not flush away as they should on pulling that handle.
I remember back in my growing up years, when a cousin of mine who was a bit older and much worldlier, married a chap by the name of "Crapper." Her previous beau had the name of "Smith", and the extended family was mightily discombobulated by the fact that one of our own would disown a Smith to embrace a Crapper, but that is neither in the here nor there of things at this point.
That cousin, like me a foreigner trying to gain traction in a new world, soon left Crapper for greener pastures, but not before they had a little Crapper. Little Crapper has had an extraordinarily good run making a living for himself on the small screen, but not, oddly enough, under his birth name.
That Crapper who is related to me by marriage is also a distant relative of one Thomas Crapper, the reputed inventor of the flush toilet, although his Wikipedia page would beg to differ. That's just one of the problems with open-source knowledge; I may know something to be true, you may know the opposite to be true, and how the hell do we ever know who's telling the truth?
But this is toilet science, not rocket science, so let's leave the big questions to the philosophers and Wikipedia and focus on the commode. The crapper. The shitter. The toilet.
It's pretty much taken for granted today, isn't it?
When I worked at GE my pal Ernie Hudman got sent off on a three month trip doing a transformer installation somewhere in rural Pakistan. The thing that shocked him the most is that indoor plumbing in that country at that time was considered a privilege for the elite. Regular folks just ducked behind the nearest shrub to do their business.
That's not as foreign as it sounds. I still remember the first place my folks bought with their own money here in the promised land when they were DPs fresh off the boat - no indoor plumbing. Old school manual water pump out in the yard, and an outhouse behind the barn. Not a hint of a water pipe anywhere in the house.
Now, considering where they came from, the privacy of a one-hole outhouse was a bit of a luxury. Many a National Park to this day still makes do with the one-holer, the two-holer, and so on. A good friend of mine still has a family camp that was once a religious retreat of some sort, and they've still got a functional five-holer going on, if you can imagine such a thing!
But for my folks, who came up in refugee camps in Denmark post WW II, that one-holer outhouse was a luxury because in the camps you just had a long wooden pole mounted over a trench, and you dropped your drawers, hoisted your haunches onto that wooden pole, and went about your business right there among the dozen or two fellow campers, of all ages and genders, hoisting their haunches over the same pole in the same shit-shed at the same time.
Mind you, it didn't take them long to figure out that what they really wanted wasn't a private outhouse, but indoor plumbing, and we made that giant step just as the fifties were turning into the sixties.
Somewhere along the line the two old gals who had lived out their lives here at Falling Downs before we got the place, at least lived them out till they spent a couple of twilight years in nursing homes, had gone in for the indoor plumbing.
And while we are thankful for that, the novelty of a septic system has from time to time caused a certain amount of consternation. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that whenever a handle pull is less than 100% successful, the Farm Manager embarks on a lobbying campaign to have the entire septic system uprooted and replaced.
At a cost of at least $15,000.
One can trace the trajectory of modernity here; from those Pakistanis dropping their drawers behind a shrub, to the refugees on the poo-pole, to the one-holer, the two-holer... the five-holer, to indoor plumbing...
Right up until today when somebody claims I need to spend fifteen big ones before they can take a big one.
That's progress for you.
Christie scores beauty own-goal with "Bridgegate"
Everybody's favorite fat pol, at least since Rob Ford 'fessed to smoking crack while in one of his drunken stupors, can kiss 2016 goodbye.
There'll be no Chris Christie on the ticket at the next election and no President Christie after it. Pity, as he's been one of the more appealing Republican candidates to come along in ages.
But he's totally shot himself in both feet with this stupid stunt. Now, instead of looking like a guy who can rise above partisan politics, he just looks like a bully, and a particularly petty one at that.
There'll be no Chris Christie on the ticket at the next election and no President Christie after it. Pity, as he's been one of the more appealing Republican candidates to come along in ages.
But he's totally shot himself in both feet with this stupid stunt. Now, instead of looking like a guy who can rise above partisan politics, he just looks like a bully, and a particularly petty one at that.
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