"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."
*
Martin Luther King Jr. //
*
"There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them."
*
George Orwell //
Want to contact the Stubble Jumping Redneck? Shoot her an email @ oldweesie@sasktel.net
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Been Thinking Of The Hans Island Dispute Of A Few Years Ago...
...and I came upon this, which is kinda funny. (The whole dispute was the subject of a lot of humor at the time, but this is hilarious.)
"Canada is poised to claim ownership of a vast new expanse of undersea territory beyond its Atlantic and Arctic coasts that’s greater in size than Quebec and equal to about 20% of the country’s surface area, Postmedia News has learned.
The huge seabed land grab has been in the works since 1994, when federal scientists first conducted a “desktop study” of Canada’s potential territorial expansion under a new UN treaty allowing nations to extend their offshore jurisdictions well past the current 200-nautical-mile (370-km) limit of so-called “Exclusive Economic Zones” in coastal waters.
But the UN also set strict criteria for converting underwater tracts of “no man’s land” into a nation’s territorial possessions, including exhaustive geological studies proving these distant stretches of seabed — including potentially massive oil-and-gas deposits — are “natural prolongations” of each applicant country’s continental bedrock.
At the time, experts from the Geological Survey of Canada and Canadian Hydrographic Service estimated that as much as 1.75 million square kilometres of seafloor to the east and north of Canada’s 9.9-million-sq.-km. land mass — initially described as an area “equivalent to the size of the three Prairie provinces” — might eventually be claimed under provisions of the new international accord on continental shelf extensions, a component of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS."
Further to this and this is this and this, this and this. Even the CBC gets in on the act. It must have pained and confused them to write about this story. After all, it's so contrary to their usual America bashing, global warming, anti-Conservative mindset.
"This is a Canadian matter, and Canadians should decide it. Unlike the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would have crossed into the U.S., we don't need another country's permission."
[---]
"The federal government's review panel begins public hearings this week. But the bureaucrat in charge, Sheila Leggett, has done something bizarre: She opened up the hearings to foreign citizens, foreign lobbyists and even foreign governments.
Here's what Leggett says on her website: "Our job is to make sure that everyone who wants to talk to us about this project has an opportunity to be heard," she says. "We'll take whatever time it takes to ensure that everybody's views are heard."
The world's Canada-bashers laughed, then signed up to testify. Almost 5,000 of them. Including Hugo Chavez's state-owned oil company, CITGO. Including foreigners from Uruguay to Louisiana to Italy to Austria.
Then something really crazy happened. To ensure all those foreigners have time to talk, Leggett announced she was adding an extra year to her review.
Instead of telling foreigners to butt out, Leggett told Canadian workers to lean on their shovels while she listens to people who don't live here, work here or have any connection here."
Darn it. I so wanted to kick their asses on their way out. But, you know politics. The winds can shift in an instance. In any case, we Canucks are living in interesting times.
But anyway, what really pisses me off, is wannabe big stars or even genuine big stars singing a national anthem, doesn't matter whose, as if it was a lounge act.
In Spain they call it the "himno" and in Germany, hymne and that's how it should sound. Here's a few sung as they should be:
Would you think some jazzed up sleaze version of the Chilean national anthem would have been appropriate for this occasion? But isn't this just the type of occasion when the singing of a national anthem is most meaningful and deeply felt?
Anyway, I will not post Christina Aguilera's botched version of the Star Spangled Banner. Even if she hadn't botched it, it's a fine national hymn capable of inspiring millions the world over. It should not be given over to those who would treat it as their own personal opportunity to demonstrate that they might be eligible for a few contracts in the neighbourhood sports bar. Nor do I think professional sports events should cheapen their country's anthem just because they can afford some big-name ditz to sing it. /rant
I'm glad we lost our bid and I'm pissed off at Harper for even trying. The best and only thing we should be doing at the United Nations is what we have already done, namely, walking out on or boycotting all together, speeches by petty dictators and anti-Semites like Ahmadinejad and nearly all the other non-democracies like China or Russia or Saudi Arabia, or the AGW scam artist bagmen who want our money while they continue to develop their fossil fuel industries, when graft and incompetence doesn't get in their way, that is, with far less regulation that is expected of us. And I have felt this way for YEARS!!
What surprises me is the response from the left to the steady droning stream of these kinds of revelations and, most especially, their belief that sovereign countries, such as the United States, should surrender their sovereignty and abide by UN resolutions. Even more absurd, when you consider the number of resolutions coming from groups like the OIC, which are totally disingenuous, that Israel should do so.
I'm tired of scams, like the IPCC. Rwanda sickened me. The appointment of Libya to the Human Rights Council was pure theatre. The oil-for-food scandal did not surprise. I'm tired of Western Democracies shouldering the lions share of the financial burden and nearly all of the blame. This fixation our lefties have with old, no longer working (if they every did) ideas like peacekeeping have been shown time and time again to be worthless, hamstrung by corruption and deceit and should have been disbanded a long time ago.
The United Nations is a farce. Initiatives like this are not going to help. An even better thing we should do, and should have done a long time ago, is announce our departure from it and withdraw our money forthwith. The organization will be sixty-five years old in a few days and to the best of my knowledge, hasn't accomplished a single thing worthy of its original objectives.
We should get out. We should put all our development energies and resources into agencies with proven track records, or at least those with the potential to make a difference in the world, like this one, and kiss the UN good-bye.
Politics of the Arctic: Whose Passport Should Santa Carry?
So much going onlately. The pissing match should be enough to change the chemical composition of the Arctic ocean and warm it up several degrees, with or without the addition of more CO2 in the atmosphere.
"The Arctic contains a vast wealth of untapped oil and natural gas, according to a report released in July 2010 by the U.S. Geological Survey.
It estimated that the amount of "undiscovered, technically recoverable" oil north of the Arctic Circle was more than double the amount that had been previously found in the Arctic."
[---]
"No single country owns the geographic North Pole or the Arctic Ocean, which covers around one third of the total area. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the eight states have jurisdiction over waters extending 12 nautical miles from their shore, and their exclusive economic zones stretch up to 200 nautical miles into the Arctic Ocean.
Russia is among a number of countries seeking to extend their jurisdiction by gathering scientific data to back their case for consideration by the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.
Russia and Canada clashed as recently as last week over which country controls the Lomonosov Ridge, a mountain chain running underneath the Arctic."
So, I gotta ask it, since our betters in the MSM and Greenpeace don't seem capable of formulating such queries: How did all that oil and gas end up there in the first place? Could it be a once lush and tropical-like climate has changed?
And just as importantly, whose passport do you think Santa should be carrying? Russian? Canadian? American? Danish? Norwegian? Icelandic? or Finnish? I always assumed he was Canadian. Am I in for a bitter late-in-life disillusionment?
A Rambling Post I'll Call "Ode to an Irishman and the North"
I once knew an Irishman who personified the best of the best Irish stereotypes. No one could drink like he could.
We once snuck in to the Irish Pavilion at Saskatoon's Folkfest - through the back door, of course. No need to pay to get in. After all, we were intent on drinking enough to more than pay for our night's entertainment. Unlike the rest of the pavilions, the place was invariably packed with barely standing room only. If you got in early enough in the evening you stayed. If you came too late, you were outta luck. Oddly enough, Folkfest's Irish Pavilion had it's liquor license rescinded only a few years later. Pity that.
A staunch defender of the Irish Republican Army, Mr. Burke spent his Canadian life teaching in schools in Northern Canada, stirring up revolutionary zeal amongst his charges. Amazingly, being of English extraction myself, we got along famously. Both being party animals, perhaps we were kindred souls. Must have been our common Celtic roots. Or at least, I like to think I have Celtic roots, although it may be Saxon.
Anyway, here's to you Lord Burke, wherever you are:
And while we're in to things Canadian and Celtic and in honour of Harper's Arctic sovereignty tour, here's a goody from Canada's most famous Celt, Stan Rogers:
Which is the segue to the rambling part.
It's ours, Yanks. We were there first. Look at the names of some of those islands, villages, rivers and straits: Victoria, Prince of Wales, Prince Patrick, Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth Islands, Somerset, King William, Baffin, Hudson (we even have a huge salt-water bay named after him and the voyage from which he never returned), Beaufort, Mackenzie, named after one of Canada's most famous explorers, Parry, Melville, and, although political correctness has erased the name from our atlases, alas, even Frobisher. These were Brits and they were there long before the Americans. Even the Russians beat you to Alaska, as I'm sure y'all know. I mean, haven't you noticed all those places on the map are pink. Canadian pink. Not to be confused with commie pink. Rather, it's the standard colour for lands belonging to the former British Commonwealth. We've been planting our flags there forever.
"Simon, who served with the NSC during the Clinton administration, co-authored a column with President Obama's former Iran adviser, Ray Takeyh, this month noting that the U.S. would need to have some degree of support from the Gulf nations to leverage those assets."
[---]
""The U.S. Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain; the Combined Air Operations Center is in Qatar; prepositioned materiel for ground and other forces is in Kuwait and Oman; and the United Arab Emirates offers extensive port facilities and staging for tactical aircraft," they wrote. "A campaign against Iran would require not just the acquiescence of these governments but their willingness to absorb retaliation by a bruised and outraged neighbor for years to come."
Or is this just prep work for the coming resumption of Israeli talks with the Pals? Notice the timelines:
A stubble jumper is a prairie farmer. I'm from Saskatchewan and my dad was a farmer, so the name is apt. "Redneck" needs no explanation. It's anyone who disagrees with a lunatic leftie. My blog is mostly about the Middle East but other issues also catch my eye and get me going. I monitor comments to keep out trolls and lunatic lefties. Anyone who is zealously anti-American and anti-democracy in the Middle East is NOT welcome.
