Nullius in Verba

Some few of you may be wondering what exactly happened to my website, and me for that matter over the last few weeks. Well to put it simply Rogers decided that I probably didn’t need a phone line and so they cancelled it. For no reason. After phoning their useless customer service over days and hours at a time and getting absolutely no-where my poor wife decided to go with another phone line carrier. And there it is. Thank God for the free market because it is truly what saves us from useless people and ineffective government.

(British Telecom used to “rent” people standard crappy phones like this one, whether the customer wanted it or not. As part of the phone line package one had to rent it. The joke was that there were hundreds of these things littering British junkyards as people quickly replaced them with modern phones. Thus you were renting an invisible phone.)

When the British people awoke from the stuporous haze of socialism and realized that it was at fault for their floundering economy, Margaret Thatcher privatized British Telecommunications, leaving economists with one of the greatest examples of why privatization is better for the welfare of all people. Even scientists with a social bent had to agree, as the landmark study by Galal et al. revealed that post privatization British people were better off as a whole.

***

I have just finished one of those crappy weeks where I am left to contemplate the raw state of mankind. It is quite evident from my observations working as a doctor that to put it quite simply there are some people who don’t care how much the rest of us pay for their health care. For example, they will continue to smoke when they have Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease and burn wads of taxpayer money with each breath of forced Oxygen, atrovent, ventolin, and the pitiful salary they are paying me to push on their chest when they try and die. Apparently another doctor feels the same way.

We spend a lot of money on mentally competent people who don’t value themselves. An economist would not be as judgemental, however. An economist would dryly state the fact: some people would rather trade years of life for enjoyment in the here and now. Its called opportunity costs and present value. An economist would beg the question of why we would pay to prolong someone’s life when they clearly wanted to trade years of life for puffs of smoke? Perhaps we are making the wrong moral judgement by treating them?

Unfortunately as a bleeding heart, even in a realistically structured insurance system where people pay higher costs if they chose to abuse their bodies unlike the naive one in Canada, people like me would still donate their time to push on the chests of those who try and kill themselves.

However what really crushes my soul is that some people have absolutely no emotional attachment to their children. I have seen people rather take care of a pet dog than be there for their child who is dying in hospital. It has nothing to do with being poor or rich, high IQ or low, but rather a clear lack of integrity. And this happens way too often.

The worst example of human selfishness is the woman who abuses drugs during pregnancy. As a libertarian I don’t specifically feel government has a role in regards to drug abuse, but in the case of pregnant women this is one case where government can actually do something. When anyone has a child they make a moral agreement to be there for the child and do everything to preserve the child’s health.

However government fails us here, as usual. A pregnant woman who abuses drugs cannot be incarcerated against her will in order to protect the child until it is delivered. This is a by-product ruling from our generally useless Supreme Court, made after the state of Saskatchewan incarcerated one of these women (who incidently became rehabilitated during this time and afterwards). (Winnipeg Child and Family Services v. D.F.G. in 1997). The main reason is simply to protect the women who choose to have abortions since the courts try and do everything in their power to ensure a fetus is not a human being until delivered. Only two Supreme Court judges had the intelligence to make the argument of “intent” that we make all the time for murder: if a woman intends to carry a child to term she must do everything a reasonable human would do to protect the child.

As Homer Simpson once said, “Humans are the only animals that will weasel out of things, except for the weasel.” And what do you expect of a system of toad-stools appointed by the Liberal Party of Canada?

(Pope Alexander VI was one of the most corrupt popes the world has ever known. His so called “piety” reminds me of the double-speak we get from the left. On the outside is this projection of virtue while inside is a devilish self interest.)

So there it is, another mini-tragety week.

***

A while ago I spoke of an organization called Kiva.org where you can make interest free loans to people in developing countries who are trying to make their lives better. This is much better than a subsidy since it works on a system of responsibility rather than government bureaucracy.

Anyhow my first repayment has come in from the person I lent money to. Very good. I encourage you all to give this a try instead of all the usual top heavy charities out there.

I’ve spoken time and time again about how the media are completely biased in this country and indeed influence what happens on the political scene. They don’t necessarily work for a politcal party per say, but they do work for specific people: for example there is no doubt that they killed Paul Martin for Chretien’s benefit. In fact Chretien through friends and friend’s marriages had the media quite sown up. As I’ve said before they failed to truly explain Chretien’s complicity in involving Canada in Iraq. Lately in Ontario John Tory’s Progressive Conservatives were defeated simply because the media reported only one issue and did a fifth grader job of describing the complete issue as well: I refer to the Private School funding. Yesterday I heard that the global idiot Al Goreacle won the Nobel Peace Prize at a time when there are people who actually deserve this award.

There are wild dogs, wild hogs, and then there’s the mainsteam media.

Today all you hear on CBC is their jeering tone describing Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez’s speech attacking the Bush Administration at the Military Reporters and Editors’ conference.

Now they have made mistakes in Iraq, but lately under General Petraeus’ leadership a lot of things have gone right and I have described some of them here in this blog as reported by independent journalists. I have no doubts that people involved in real real research into military and development of third world countries savaged by civil war will examine many of his methods.

The fact is that Sanchez was a failure. He was unable to interact with other members of his team and colleagues. He kicks Bush where it deservedly hurts, but fails to examine his own personal ineptitudes. Not only that but Sanchez was hung out to dry during the Abu Ghaib disaster and he’s one bitter man.

The media forgot to look in the mirror today, because Sanchez said something else. Something more significant and something you’ll never hear.

Because Sanchez spent much of his speech slamming the media’s horrible coverage of Iraq. This is something we can learn from in this country as well as the media does an abysmal job of covering Afghanistan. Some people try and blame the current government for not spreading a good message but I think the failure lies with a media doped up on the intoxication of mass death and explosions rather than boring works of human endeavor or improvement.

In Sanchez’s words:

GIVEN THE NEAR INSTANTANEOUS ABILITY TO REPORT ACTIONS ON THE GROUND, THE RESPONSIBILITY TO ACCURATELY AND TRUTHFULLY REPORT TAKES ON AN UNPRECEDENTED IMPORTANCE. THE SPECULATIVE AND OFTEN UNINFORMED INITIAL REPORTING THAT CHARACTERIZES OUR MEDIA APPEARS TO BE RAPIDLY BECOMING THE STANDARD OF THE INDUSTRY. AN ARAB PROVERB STATES - “Four things come not back: the spoken word, the spent arrow, the past, the neglected opportunity.” ONCE REPORTED, YOUR ASSESSMENTS BECOME CONVENTIONAL WISDOM AND NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO CHANGE. OTHER MAJOR CHALLENGES ARE YOUR WILLINGNESS TO BE MANIPULATED BY “HIGH LEVEL OFFICIALS” WHO LEAK STORIES AND BY LAWYERS WHO USE HYPERBOLE TO STRENGHTEN THEIR ARGUMENTS. YOUR UNWILLINGNESS TO ACCURATELY AND PROMINENTLY CORRECT YOUR MISTAKES AND YOUR AGENDA DRIVEN BIASES CONTRIBUTE TO THIS CORROSIVE ENVIRONMENT. ALL OF THESE CHALLENGES COMBINED CREATE A MEDIA ENVIRONMENT THAT DOES A TREMENDOUS DISSERVICE TO AMERICA.

Never were truer words spoken.

Such things remind me of how society as reflected by the mainstream media at it’s worst finds people to use as a scapegoat to sacrifice to the god of distractions. Late last week as an example that naive fraud Wei Chen agreed heartedly on CBC radio Ontario that “we’ll see how the economists like it when they are laid off as the world unites to have one main Bank to set monetary policy.” - in reference to an economist explaining the grim realities of cheap foreign labor when yet another Windsor Ontario car plant laid off people.

“The Republic has no need of geniuses,” stated a self-important and wholly ignorant judge during the sentencing and death of the scientist Antoine Lavoisier, at a time in France when genius’ and good men were needed more than ever.

The starknesss that society doesn’t need people pointing out the truth as much as it may hurt is plainly laid before us. What they really want and need is someone to blame… and quickly.

(Truth is Naked)