Saskboy Strikes Again

Or should that be Strikes Out?

At Macleans Magazine's website a debate about Heather Mallick's abuse of public funds is taking place. Saskboy weighs in, defending his favorite propaganda machine, as usual, by pointing out a typo and extrapolating from that:

"typo alert:

“I told him that I didn’t know him personally, but that I was familiar with her writing.”

Fox News is tabloid journalism at its worst. When paid journalists want to write mean things about someone they should be required to talk to that person to try and get a comment. Otherwise they should admit they are just a simple blogger with a salary."

To which I responded (my words in italics, with quotes of Saskboy's words in regular print):

Note to Saskboy @ 2:29 PM.

"When paid journalists want to write mean things about someone they should be required to talk to that person to try and get a comment." So Mallick talked to Palin, did she?

You should sharpen your debating skills a bit there, my darlin'. And while you're at it be prepared to explain why Mallick refused to come on to Van Susteren's program to defend her position."

Let me further explain to Saskboy how private sector networks actually function and the role played by advertisers in those networks.

1) Advertisers seek large audiences. The larger the better for their bottom line.
2) Advertisers pay big bucks to pitch their products on networks that can promise them large audiences.
3) Advertisers move their money away from networks whose audiences are shrinking and will also think carefully about advertising on networks whose programs solicit many letters complaining about programs that they sponsor.
4) What 1 through 3 imply is that advertisers respond to what viewers want. It's not the other way around. This is as it should be.

CBC and other tax payer funded institutions have a vested interest in keeping in power a political party which is most likely to advocate continued support of its government funded status, and will seek to provide programming that furthers that goal (self-preservation). After all, who wants to lose their job? It's the same dynamic as private networks operate, except that the money, in the CBC's case, is channeled through a political party, not from advertisers responding to the public's demands. Hence, CBCs programming responds to political pressure, not to viewer demand. Consider the fact exposed a couple of years ago by Stephen Taylor about political contributions made by CBC's Board of Directors. A full 82% went to the Liberal Party.

I've watched and listened to CBC for forty years. They have gradually become more and more political and less and less responsive to public opinion which does not support their goal. One of the earliest overtly political programs was "This Hour Has Seven Days" way back in the late 1960s. (The current comedy program This Hour has 22 Minutes is a parody of that program.) Over the years the Liberal Party has been the most strident supporter of the public broadcaster. The CBC has responded by becoming more and more political and more and more strident in pitching of the Liberal/left ideology. It has now developed a habit of going absolutely ballistic when election campaigns suggest that some other party has a good chance of getting to make decisions about the Corporation's fate. (There's that self-preservation motive again.)

The Liberal/Left are willing to pay their wages and their operating costs. The CBC is an employer where many an aspiring journalist with liberal/left leanings want to work and where those who do the hiring seek out like-minded compatriots. The ability to please their most willing funder, the Liberal Party, appears to be a primary consideration when recruiting staff.

Why, then, would they need to respond to public outcries, other than through lame letters explaining and defending their position. It's far more useful to act as the semi-official mouthpiece of their public funder, and to do this, a tried and true tactic is to brand those who complain as any number of currently in vogue non-Liberal/Left epithets.

Little wonder that CBCs discussion boards and call in shows are dominated by opinion from the left of the political spectrum. No one else is listening, viewing or reading. We, on the political right, have taken our "eyeballs" and "ears" somewhere else. If we had the option of taking our money with us, CBC would have to respond the same way the private sector responds; by adjusting their programming to regain the lost revenue, or focusing only on their remaining audience and being satisfied to fill a niche market.

Let me be very clear. There is a place for Liberal/Left points of view in a democracy. It is one of many niches that should be filled. I would have no problem with them focusing on their remaining audience, but the problem is, that as taxpayers who do not hold these views, we should not be compelled to pay for the organs that publicize them. That's undemocratic.

Saskboy, you pretend to know so much about the democratic process, yet you continue to uphold the notion that government paid television and radio (and websites) that consistently broadcast political opinion is "democratic". Regardless of what political line a broadcaster takes, it should not be done on the taxpayers dime. It is all too easy for the government to become the guardian and sole arbitrator of political thought when they pay the shot. We are already seeing the consequences of that with our Human Rights Commissions. People all over the world are watching as we sink further and further into a frightening place from which there is no easy return. The CBC must be privatized or its political programming substantially curtailed.

Rural Restructuring: A Response to Saskboy and Northern Farmer

Over at John Murney's blog we've been talking about possible policy platforms for a new and improved Saskatchewan Liberal Party and about sensible economic renewal in our province. I've suggested reducing the total number of municipal entities which are currently vastly disproportional to their population as one way of reducing costs. Both Northern Farmer and Saskboy have taken issue with me. Northern Farmer, I can safely bet, speaks with some knowledge of rural life. However, Saskboy doesn't seem to understand the issue at all, and has even mistaken my intent. He seems to be of the opinion that I'm suggesting all rural governance be delivered from Regina, by which I presume he means the provincial government. In his words, after first quoting one of my statements (in italics), he says:

"Why does a village of 75 people need a municipal council?"

"It's called democracy Louise, you should learn to love it; it's here to stay if I have anything to say about it. There's nothing democratic about some wonk in Regina determining how someone a 3 hour drive away ought to chlorinate their private well, pay for policing that doesn't happen, or tell them they have to close their school and pay more for busing than what it cost to run the school."

Well, Saskboy, the "wonk" would not have to drive from Regina, unless, of course, the municipal office is in Regina. Only about 30 to 40 miles at the absolute maximum, give or take, from the closest viable town would be required in the vast majority of cases. No one said anything about obliterating all municipal entities altogether.

To follow your argument to its logical conclusion, why doesn't Regina have 4 municipal councilors for each 75 of its citizens? If you believe so passionately in democracy, you should be disturbed by that glaring discrepancy and you should be fighting right now for the installation of another 9800 city councilors down at City Hall. It's called economies of scale, and although there are critical differences between major cities and rural areas, such as distances between communities, the discrepancy is something that seems absurd on its face, wouldn't you say? I mean you can vote in municipal elections in Regina regardless of whether you live in the Cathedral district, Uplands or North Central. It's all one city as far as governance is concerned. But that doesn't stop you from also participating in neighbour activities that are political in nature, or joining local organizations that work on local projects and having some influence on what happens in your parks and on your streets.

You may know that when the Municipal Act was created it set population benchmarks that a community had to reach in order to gain city status, town status or village status, if it chose to apply for such status. That legislation is 100 years old. Well, 99, actually, but you get my point.

The vast majority of towns and villages that were created under that Act have dropped below that threshold, thanks to continued rural depopulation over the past 60+ years. But population patterns aren't the only thing that has changed since the Municipal Act was created. Technologies of communication and transportation have also changed, as have a lot of the technologies used in rural economies. We don't drive horses and wagons around any more to get into town. Farming isn't done with horse drawn plows.

Not only that, but for two generations now the kids have left the farms and haven't come back. Not only that but the average family size today is only about half or less than what it was in the 1950s. Because of that, the average age in most rural communities is far older than the average age of the population in Regina. That's why schools are closing. There are fewer and fewer young people standing ready to take over in the role of municipal governance, whether elected officials or paid employees.

Vast numbers of the small villages and towns do not have a viable retail sector so most people have to travel to the larger centers just to pick up their groceries or their mail, let alone see a doctor, if the town can find one, or get a prescription filled. You talk about the absence of policing service. Well, you know, someone has to pay for that. Without a population base sufficient enough and capable of paying taxes, who is going to pay? That's the rural reality and it has been driven by forces far larger and remote than local or even provincial governments can control, such as technological advances. Bill Gates doesn't live in Saskatchewan. MRI machines weren't invented at the University of Regina, but we've all adopted those technologies into our daily lives.

But, all is not lost. Thanks to those technologies, those 75 people living in that village can participate in the governance of their jurisdiction just as easily whether they live in an incorporated entity or not. I'm saying that dissolution should be mandated if a community drops below a certain threshold, but I'm not saying that people should or will lose the capacity to participate in decision making. Teleconferencing and computer connections make that possible.

Saskboy, you might want to think a bit more about complexity and change and how democracies must and should deal with that ever present reality. If change does not happen, democracies stagnate and stagnation leads to rot. It's time to take another look at the legislation and it's time for a big shakeup. Reducing the numbers of municipal entities substantially could very well have the added benefit of reducing the size of our provincial civil service, since they deal with municipal governments and institutions on a daily basis. If they have substantially fewer municipal governments to deal with, I would think that we don't need so damned many of them. We could also transfer much of their legislated mandate to the regional authorities. I think most rural folks would appreciate that. I know I would. What I'm really talking about is genuine revitalization of rural life and bringing control back closer to the grassroots. That means that teensy tiny governments must go as well as big huge bureaucracies. I'm salivating at the possibilities but I'm betting civil service rich populations such as the city you live in, Saskboy, will not allow it happen.

Saskboy Hysteria Syndrome

Over at Saskboy's blog the other day, various and sundry econuts were decrying the usual doom and gloom future that will surely be our fate as a result of global warming. One of the arguments Saskboy makes is that coastal areas will be devastated, cities wiped out, etc., etc.. Commenter Zach Bell pointed out that people do have the ability to pack up and move, but that, apparently, never occurs to econuts. Their egos are rather attached to the notion that disaster awaits us, and no other scenario is allowed to penetrate. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a denier, a right winger, a blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc..

At the same time, Canadian Blue Lemons provides a little explanation of what all the hysteria is really about:

"The point I think that is the stupidist thing about the whole looming global warming catastrophe and the subsequent sinking of Manhattan Island, Great Britain, PEI and Salt Spring Island is the forecasted rises in sea level.

It's about 1 Foot!
Maybe as much as 3 Feet!

So, each year for the next 100 years we are gonna see the beaches rise by about 1/8 to 3/8 of an inch...
And each of us are gonna stand there for 8 years and see the water come up an extra one full inch and drown..."

You see, Saskboy, that's why you and your fellow econuts are so easy to laugh at. Get a brain. Even a snail can move fast enough to get out of the way.

Oh. And Saskboy, you might want to read this for an ego shattering experience regarding your take on the link between global warming and Katrina.

BTW, at the Canadian Blue Lemons link there's some other interesting info, too. RTWT.

History of Indian and White Relations 101 - Part I

A special for Saskboy. Saskboy points to this website in his August 7, 2008 blog entry. Saskboy has been caught before swallowing a load of Indian Industry BS, lock, stock and barrel. However, on this one, I can't really blame him much since the narrative on the site he links to has become standard fare for today's politically correct version of history. However, there is barely a single sentence in the webpage to which he links which is wholly accurate, and that's a polite statement.

It's about the Treaty Right to education and that's only a small part of the vast and ever expanding politically correct version of the history of Indian and White relations that has been written by professors in various politically correct colleges and university departments over the past thirty five years or so. There's plenty of that there on the site, so I am going to have a grand old time, as you will see.

I intend to pick this one apart, bit by bit, especially for Saskboy's deprogramming efforts, should he ever come to the realization that he, along with legions of others have been duped. I don't really expect it will work toward that end and I fully expect several leftards to pounce upon me and accuse me of racism and an assortment of other honorable badges now hung around the necks of those who speak the truth.

However, let's begin, shall we. Here are the first two sentences from the website:

"Treaty Rights in Canada are promises that were made during the signing of Treaties with First Nations from across the territory that would become Canada. These agreements were made on a Nation to Nation basis because of the implications of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 [link added], which established that the First Nations possess legal title to the land and that the only provision available to extinguish that title was through Treaties."

This one is not too bad, actually. It is true that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 did contain provisions for ensuring that Indian lands were properly surrendered to the crown rather than just trampled on and taken over by the westward rush of American settlers into Indian country (those of you of a certain age will remember all those movies about whooping Indians shooting arrows at hapless settlers in covered wagons and what not). Well, that had been going on for a long time prior to that and it had been making things difficult for King Charles III, who needed Indian allies in his struggles to hang on to his North American possessions. The colonies were restless and the French and Spanish were cunning opponents, capable of forming alliances with who ever else on the continent wanted to stick it to the British.

However, if you read the actual text of the Proclamation and understand the history and milieu in which it was issued, you will know that the version adopted by Indian groups almost two hundred and fifty years later is just a wee bit distorted. King Charles does not view the various Indian tribes all as Nations. In fact, the very concept and definition of the word "nation" was something quite different than what it is today as far as nations states possessing sovereignty are concerned.

Even though the word "nation" is used in the Proclamation, the text specifically says the lands are "reserved" for Indians for the purpose of hunting, implying that they do not belong to the Indians, but have been set aside for their exclusive use by the British Crown who is the owner. Note the way the Proclamation refers to the territory on which the Indians hunt (the use of the word We, Our, Us, etc. are expressions of the Royal We, in other words it refers to one person only, that person being King Charles III):

"And whereas it is just and reasonable, and essential to our Interest, and the Security of our Colonies, that the several Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom We are connected, and who live under our Protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the Possession of such Parts of Our Dominions and Territories as, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their Hunting Grounds."

Not exactly a statement expressing a strong sense of Indian sovereignty, is it? But it gets worse.

"And We do further strictly enjoin and require all Persons whatever who have either wilfully or inadvertently seated themselves upon any Lands within the Countries above described. or upon any other Lands which, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are still reserved to the said Indians as aforesaid, forthwith to remove themselves from such Settlements."

Oh. Wait a minute, now. What does this mean? Just who has the right to police this edict and evict squatters. You'd think the Indians, if they are recognized as nations, would have that right, wouldn't you? If the Royal Proclamation recognized their sovereign status, why would agents of the British Crown have to do the dirty work of evicting people? Note, this is not a negotiated document. It is a statement issued by a King during the era when the Divine Right to Rule philosophy prevailed across Europe. The Indians whose protection it seeks to guarantee did not negotiate the terms of the text.

And what about this?

"And We do hereby strictly forbid, on Pain of our Displeasure, all our loving Subjects from making any Purchases or Settlements whatever, or taking Possession of any of the Lands above reserved, without our especial leave and Licence for that Purpose first obtained."

What's that you say? The Indians are sovereign nations but they can't enter into contractual relationships with anyone they please. Any land sales have to be handled by the Crown? Hmmm. Not much in the way of nationhood expressed there, is there?

The next few passages express the notion that any settler or governor (and here he's referring to the governors of the various New England colonies which were still British possessions, including the newly acquired territories that were formerly under French and Spanish control) could not purchase or take land directly from the Indians but were compelled to purchase it from the Crown.

In other words, by this Proclamation, the British Crown is making it absolutely clear whose sovereign territory is being preserved for the use of Indians as their hunting grounds and it ain't the Indians'. Needless to say, for anyone who knows American history, those Governors and settlers ignored the Proclamation and went on seizing and grabbing up lands from the Indians anyway. Some thirteen years later the American Revolution occurred, with the Royal Proclamation being one of the colonists' grievances against the British king, and as we all know, poor ol' Charles lost all the lands covered by this declaration, so neither he nor his agents could enforce it anyway. But I digress.

There is one final point that needs to be made, and it's a biggie. The Royal Proclamation specifically exempted vast tracts of land within what is now Canada. The entire Hudson Bay drainage basin was exempted, not to mention most of the land east of there, under which treaties already existed.

"And We do further declare it to be Our Royal Will and Pleasure, for the present as aforesaid, to reserve under our Sovereignty, Protection, and Dominion, for the use of the said Indians, all the Lands and Territories not included within the Limits of Our said Three new Governments, or within the Limits of the Territory granted to the Hudson's Bay Company, as also all the Lands and Territories lying to the Westward of the Sources of the Rivers which fall into the Sea from the West and North West as aforesaid." [Emphasis mine]

That includes just about every river from the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains to the Red River and beyond. For the most part, this is the territory known as Rupertsland, named after the British Prince Rupert, in a Charter issued in 1670 for the establishment of the Hudson's Bay Company and its trading monopoly. Not much thought was given to Indian sovereignty then, either. Anywho, that covers 40% of what is now Canada and is precisely the territory where the Treaties numbered 1 through 10 covering most of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta apply. The first of those treaties was negotiated in the early 1870s, some 200 years after the British King, a certain King Charles II, had granted all that land to a group of Englishmen interested in trading for furs. So, the moral of the story is, that to claim that the Royal Proclamation recognized all this great stuff about Indian rights and nationhood is pure unadulterated bunk.

Never mind that the people in the story about the lack of an adequate school facility, which Saskboy is discussing, are the James Bay Cree whose "treaty" wasn't negotiated until 1960s - one hundred years after the first mention of education in a treaty and more than 200 years after the Royal Proclamation that didn't apply to the James Bay area anyway. Well done, Saskboy. Way to pick your sources.

Of course, that hasn't stopped an entire industry from developing, devoted to spin and misrepresentation about the Proclamation. But oh well. C'est la Vie. Every generation brings with it some freshly scrubbed gullible newbies ready to believe everything an Indian says.

History of Indian and White Relations 101 - Part III

A couple of weeks ago I posted a rant about the content of a link from Saskboy's blog, which he had swallowed as gospel truth, lock, stock and barrel. I published two parts, the first one here and the second one here. My issue with Saskboy can frequently be boiled down to his naivete. Poor Saskboy. Unbeknownst to him, he had hit upon a subject that I have devoted my entire life to - the study of the history of Indian and White relations in Canada. But God bless the young trooper - that didn't stop him from arguing with me and pretending to know more than he does.

I finished Part II with a short discussion about the taxation issue, in response to this passage from the website Saskboy links to:

"Another area of Treaty right is taxation. "Personal property on a reserve, including income, is not subject to taxation, either federal or provincial. This is an affirmation of oral promises made at the signing of the Treaties that the reserves shall be tax-free" (Brizinski, 1993: p. 188)."

First of all, since I have not read her book, and since the phrasing of the text on the website doesn't make it clear, I do not know if the passage quoted above is word for word from her book "Knots in a String: An Introduction to Native Studies in Canada", or if the creator of the website merely uses Brizinski as a source and attributes the idea expressed in the passage to her. Although, the use of quotation marks around the two sentences immediately prior to the citation data in brackets does suggest that those words are a direct quotation. If that is the case, then I also have an issue with Brizinski's knowledge of history. But that's typical of the academic wing of the Indian Industry. While the very essence of a historians' work, by definition, is the examination of original documents and an interpretation of them in the context of a thorough knowledge of the era under study. But this isn't considered necessary in the Indian Industry's world view. Oral history, several generations removed from the events in question are of equal or superior value in piecing together what really happened generations ago.

So what's wrong with the bolded part of the quote? To begin with, the passage attributed to Brizinski, viz - "This is an affirmation of oral promises made at the signing of the Treaties that the reserves shall be tax-free" - taken together with the whole tone and context of the language use on the website, implies that the tax exemption is a Treaty right applicable to all Treaties negotiated between various Indian groups and the Canadian government (or British Crown, if you're a purest) and that is unmitigated balderdash.

It is true that oral statements regarding taxation were made by the Canadian government's negotiator during the negotiation of Treaty 8 in what is now northern Alberta and parts of adjacent territories. It is also true that the statements were made in response to concerns raised by the Indians present at the negotiations. But that is the only Treaty from that era at which the subject of taxation was raised during negotiations, so why is the plural "Treaties" used in the Brizinski citation? This is typical of the Indian Industry - taking a tiny slice of historical fact about a very specific and unique event and extrapolating it across a broad swath of other events that happened both before and after in which the specific milieu did not exist.

But more to the point, why would the subject of taxation even be raised by Indians in northwestern regions of the then North West Territories, who lived on lands that were remote and, for the most part, heavily wooded and unsuited for settlement by agricultural enterprise or any other mode of permanent settlement?

One of the best explorations of this question is found in a paper by Wendy Aasen delivered at a conference commemorating the centennial of the signing of Treaty Eight. I have the proceedings of that conference. It was published in the premier issue of Lobstick: An Interdisciplinary Journal, which, much to my surprise, is also published on the net, so you can read it yourself. Although she deals with the exemption from military service, which was also an issue raised and a promise made during the negotiations, the answer she gives applies equally to the taxation issue. To put it simply, the Indians were well aware of what was happening in the world at the very end of the 19th century, as she states:

"The world at the turn of the century (which had experienced relative peace for approximately 40 years) was becoming increasingly unstable. This instability was accompanied by uprisings in the colonies and in rising tensions between world powers."

This included concerns in Canada's government about the possibility of an Anglo-American war and other problems that could play out right in their back yard. In essence, the Indians wanted no part in someone else's war, including paying for it.

With respect to the issue of taxation, from the Treaty Commissioners' report as quoted in Aasen:

"There was expressed at every point, the fear that the making of the treaty would be followed by the curtailment of hunting and fishing privileges and many were impressed with the notion that the treaty would lead to taxation and enforced military service...

We assured them that the treaty would not lead to any forced interference with their mode of life that it did not open the way to the imposition of any tax, and there was no fear of enforced military service."

Aasen also describes how and why Indian people living as far north as Lessor Slave Lake would have knowledge of world affairs and why it mattered to them. Their way of life, which was largely living off the land and trading (bartering) furs, rather than cash, could be disrupted. The Spanish American war had raised the value of furs to an all time high. At the end of the 19th century, in this corner of the world at least, trapping was good business.

But the answer to a companion question is also necessary. Why did the Canadian government promise not to tax or conscript them? What were their motives? The answer is quite simple and the number of journal articles and books devoted to this is by now legion. Since the 1840s Indian land was considered non-taxable because it was crown land (a throwback to the Royal Proclamation and to the Hudson's Bay Company Charter). It did not belong to Indians. The British North America Act, which created Canada in 1867 states that:

"No lands or property belonging to Canada or any province shall be liable to taxation."

Moreover, Indians themselves were considered wards of the state, hence, not liable for enforced military service, or, by extension, taxaton. The notion that the tax exempt status of Indians derived from a treaty negotiated in 1889 in which the Indians were recognized as sovereign peoples is - to put it bluntly - pure unadulterated nonsense.

Not so Fast, Obama

Obama can't withdraw troops before one year unless Iraq agrees

Meanwhile, Saskboy once again demonstrates his usual inanity. He attempted to post this comment:

"If there's one thing Bush taught Americans, it's that the President can do whatever the heck he wants -- Iraqi opinion be damned."

He's clearly suffering from BDS, and since I have far greater respect for Iraqis than that, I will just have to ask him a few questions before I decide whether he is opposed to democracy for Iraq, and therefore not welcome here. So how 'bout it, Saskboy. Which Iraqis are you talking about? This one?



Or did you mean these people, Saskboy?



Or these? (Note that they guy being kissed is an American soldier.)



Or this little one?



Maybe these?



Oh, I know. You meant the ones in mass graves, didn't you:



Yes. That's it. That's what Iraqis want. I mean it certainly wouldn't be the Iraqis who participated in this poll about their upcoming elections.

Own up, Saskboy. You know diddly squat about Iraq and Iraqis. You're like all the other brain dead leftists who have spent the past six years carefully cultivating ever more deeply entrenched BDS, while completely ignoring the real aspirations of Iraq's citizens. I'm sure you'll come up with some addled conspiracy theory about the elections next week, too. They are all Bush's fault, all these elections. Iraqis don't want to choose their governments. Perish the thought.

A Lesson in Plate Tectonics

UPDATE:

The air travel and freight disruptions are costing airlines at least $200 million a day and perhaps billions more to the affected economies, one industry group warned.

[---]

"Meanwhile, the air industry in Europe -- already battered by the financial crisis and labor disputes such as strikes at Lufthansa and British Airways this year -- is putting on pressure to reopen the skies.

"This crisis is costing airlines at least $200 million a day in lost revenues and the European economy is suffering billions of dollars in lost business," said Giovanni Bisignani, director general and CEO of the International Air."

Not to worry. Saskboy has a plan. Trouble is, he is blissfully unaware that it would amount to the same thing.
==========================================
...for Saskboy.

Threat of new, larger Icelandic eruption looms

"For all the worldwide chaos that Iceland's volcano has already created, it may just be the opening act.

Scientists fear tremors at the Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) volcano could trigger an even more dangerous eruption at the nearby Katla volcano — creating a worst-case scenario for the airline industry and travelers around the globe.

A Katla eruption would be 10 times stronger and shoot higher and larger plumes of ash into the air than its smaller neighbor, which has already brought European air travel to a standstill for five days and promises severe travel delays for days more.

The two volcanos are side by side in southern Iceland, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) apart and thought to be connected by a network of magma channels.

Katla, however, is buried under ice 550 yards (500 meters) thick — the massive Myrdalsjokull glacier, one of Iceland's largest. That means it has more than twice the amount of ice that the current eruption has burned through — threatening a new and possibly longer aviation standstill across Europe."

[---]

"There are no clear answers, however, and even fewer predictions about what the future may hold. Volcano eruptions, like earthquakes, are difficult to predict.

"Katla can start tomorrow or in 100 years (emphasis mine), you don't know," said Palsson. "All we can do is be ready.""

Volcano's eruption getting hotter

"Located near the island’s southern coast, Eyjafjallajökull is actually one of the Iceland’s smallest and least threatening volcanoes, standing at just 1,666 metres.

It is not a beautiful cone-shaped volcano like Mount Fuji in Japan, but an elongated ridge stretching for more than two kilometres under a cap of glacial ice. Reversely magnetized rock indicates that there has been volcanic activity beneath the surface for almost a million years."

[---]

"It has erupted only 10 times, but one incident lasted almost two years." (emphasis mine)

[---]

"Unlike Mount St. Helens, which burned itself into the North American psyche with a fierce but short-lived eruption, Dr. Hickson said, Icelandic eruptions tend to persevere for days or months. In Hawaii, she said, a similar eruption has been bubbling since 1986.

“It would not be unexpected for this eruption to continue to carry on.”"

[---]

"Trouble began at Eyjafjallajökull on March 20, when a red cloud was spotted above the glacier, and the first eruption occurred in a pass of ice-free land between Eyjafjallajökull and a neighbouring volcano called Katla.

Two weeks later, the current eruption began around midnight on April 14, in the glacier’s central calderra, or crater.

Glyn Williams-Jones, a volcanologist at Simon Fraser University, visited Iceland two years ago and said the entire island is essentially being ripped apart from below.

“It’s sitting on a hot spot, so you’ve got a big pulse of magma coming up from the core of the Earth,” he said. “ But it also sits on the mid-Atlantic ridge, which is where new ocean floor is created all the time.”

And while Eyjafjallajökull is a threat, it’s nothing compared to Katla, a larger and more dangerous volcano. In the past 1,100 years, every time Eyjafjallajökull has erupted, Katla has soon followed suit."

Frankly, I wouldn't want to be eating 100 year old lobster, nor would I wish my great-great-grand daughters to be walking down the aisle with dry, wizened up old bridal bouquets, nor latter day hippies to have to wear crumbling dead flower stocks in their hair.  Nor would I want an economic disaster that lasts a 100 years.

There's a limit to how well we can prepare for the consequences of a volcanic eruption, and that limit is first and foremost being sure the citizens who live below it can be safely and quickly evacuated. Planning meetings, international travel and funerals are not and cannot be among the list of to-dos.

And on top of all that, Saskboy, watermelon that he is, wants to create a perfect command economy. I'm sorry Saskboy, but to say you are naive is putting it mildly.

Greens Pipe Dreams of Passenger Rail Service

At Huffb1's place and at Saskboy's place, there is a debate going on about the passenger rail. Frankly, it's history, as far as I'm concerned. All of the alternatives are better for a host of reasons, but still, the Greens persist that we need to return to the 1950s.

Here's a good study about the issue that might shine some light on why naivete's perpetual lock on Saskboy's brain is so sad.

Canada's passenger rail services represent a thin shadow of the network that prevailed into the 1950s. Although rail used to be the choice of the cost-conscious longer-distance traveller, it has been unable to match transcontinental air fares for two decades. Now, VIA has great difficulty trying to match air fares on its moderate-distance service between central Canada and the Maritimes. This is a market that rail is bound to lose.

With air's greater speed and lower labour cost per passenger-kilometre, it is difficult to envisage this trend being reversed. For example, the Montreal-Halifax service might be successfully recast as a tourist experience or as local services competing with bus for travellers within the Maritimes and within Quebec, but it is unlikely that it will again become a force in the Montreal-Maritimes intercity market. Similar conclusions could be drawn for the western transcontinental service."

[---]

Rationale for VIA Rail Subsidies

The question of why intercity passenger rail that competes with commercial alternatives (air and bus) should be subsidized has not been addressed explicitly in government documentation of VIA funding decisions. Among the arguments advanced to support continued subsidy are environmental benefits relative to alternative modes, infrastructure cost subsidies received by private vehicles and intercity buses, and service to travellers with lower incomes. Available evidence does not support such claims.

The Royal Commission on National Passenger Transportation (set up mainly to resolve the future of passenger rail) concluded in 1992 that rail's system-wide cost per passenger-kilometre is three times that for private cars and more than four times the total social cost of intercity bus — even when estimates of the social cost of accidents and environmental damage, along with infrastructure costs, are included. Even for Montreal-Toronto, the rail cost was more than 50% greater than the car cost and more than triple the bus cost. While the exact valuations of social costs are open to debate, the conclusion is inescapable: subsidies cannot be justified by social cost differences among modes.

Apparently, Saskboy, like all good greenies, thinks we have a bottomless pit of money and believes passenger rail service is greener simply on faith. A lack of evidence to support his case is immaterial.

Saskboy Stomps Off...

...sucking his thumb:

"The weather has been quite unusual for most of the year, especially in Regina where it’s been hovering around zero degrees Celsius through most of December! Reality deniers will try to say these sorts of extremes happen all of the time, or happen naturally, and they’d be correct except they are happening in the context of humans polluting the atmosphere at an increasing rate never achieved before in human history."

Earth to Saskboy. Earth to Saskboy. Warmer winters doesn't prove a thing about "humans polluting the atmosphere". It doesn't even prove that humans are the cause of anything. Throughout history, the earth has been much warmer than it is now, without a corresponding increase in CO2 and there have also been many periods when concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere have been much higher than they are now with no corresponding increase in temperature. I can see you sucking your thumb as you drag your teddy bear off the stage. Don't let the door hit your teddy bear on the way out.

There's Roughly a Dozen..

...videos at CTV's website about the economic impact of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption and one at CBC's website.

And then there's this astute analysis from Saskatchewan's most naive blogger.

"This is what happens when you base your economy on businessmen flying in and out of countries instead of using the Internet and telephone to its greatest capacity." (emphasis mine)

As if, Saskboy.

"If everyone didn’t try to live on the wire, and had some patience, things would work a lot more simply when nature taps us on the shoulder and says, “Hey there, slow down and do something else for a day or two.”"

Yes, Saskboy. Try importing flowers from Holland before they wilt, or exporting lobster to France using the Internet and telephone.  Try running a tourist resort by the Mediterranean without tourists. Try finding hotel rooms for those thousands of stranded travellers, whose rooms are now occupied with people who had arrived just hours before the volcano blew. Try making up the lost wages of those passengers who would have been back at work by now, not to mention the taxes collected on those wages.

Try using your brain, once in a while, Saskboy. Use it, or lose it, if it's not too late. I presume you know what the term "watermelon" means. Or maybe you don't

Ode to SDA Comment Posters

They post the greatest links. This one came from SDA yesterday and it's a goody:

Botched environmental forecasts

I wonder what Saskboy would say. No doubt he'd dis it because it's Fox News.

And by the way, anyone reading Saskboy on a regular basis will know the boy has a pretty hefty carbon footprint of his own. He does a lot of travelling and it's not by travois.

Happy New Year Saskboy. Hope you come to your senses this year.

Saskboy

..has completely flipped his lid.

What a delusional nutbar!

Hide under your bed, Saskboy. They're coming to get you.

Stupid Films Update

Remember the liberal leftie whining and howling a few days ago about the Harper government's promise to implement additional criteria for its funding of Canadian film productions. "Censorship" they all cried. Well lookie here:

"C-10, censorship, Liberal outrage and double standards"

"The Liberals acknowledged yesterday that they tried when they were in office to eliminate tax credits for offensive movies,..."

"the controversial section of the legislation limiting grants for subjectively offensive films is virtually word for word the same as the Liberal legislation!"

Sweetness!!

I wonder if Sean and Saskboy will comment, especially Saskboy, the dyed in the wool sock puppet Liberal.

The Man Who Should Be Afghanistan's President

From Terry Galivan at the National Post:

'STAY FIRM' AGAINST TALIBAN: ABDULLAH

"Canada would not be trespassing on Afghanistan's sovereignty if it moves to block a "reconciliation" deal that circumvents Afghanistan's parliamentary system. More importantly, he said, Canada is burdened by a duty to its own citizens to see that it does not happen."

[---]

"The former Afghan foreign minister, who was Mr. Karzai's front-running challenger in last year's fraud-plagued presidential election, credited the Canadian-led Electoral Complaints Commission with heading off a fatal rupture in Afghanistan's young democracy last November."

[---]

"Canada cannot give up now, with a complete political collapse looming after Mr. Karzai's attempts to strike a power-sharing bargain with the Taliban."

[---]

"While Mr. Karzai has been offering peace deals to the Taliban ever since he was first elected in 2004, he has ramped up his entreaties since his close-call re-election last November. The Taliban leadership has repeatedly rebuffed his appeals, but Mr. Karzai has lately won some Western backing for an internationally funded package of buyouts to Taliban fighters."

[---]

"That plan has been overshadowed, however, by Mr. Karzai's oblique suggestions of outright power-sharing with the Taliban by granting its leaders top government posts and control of government ministries."

[---]

"...while Ottawa's long-standing policy of backing "Afghan-led reconciliation efforts" is appreciated by the Afghan people, the policy could be easily subverted, Mr. Abdullah warned. The policy could make Canada complicit in a power-sharing deal that reverses Afghanistan's slow and painful strides toward democracy."

[---]

"If the Taliban will finally break the resolve of the North American public to stay in Afghanistan, they will be back," he continued. "They don't want to be part of the political process. They want to destroy it and replace it with their own."

Of course, Saskboy thinks this is just grand. And he's terribly hurt by Glavin's well deserved rebuke of him some time ago.

This is what the Taleban do, Saskboy.

Okay. Now I've Seen Everything

I was checking out sitemeter to see where my blog's visitors came from today and I found someone had visited from Los Angeles and had actually transliterated my page.

How cool is this:

留茬跳躍redneck

母乳喂養，掃盲和愚

有趣的。

.幾天前， Saskboy張貼在胡說八道， 對這一言論的生產者約翰葛姆雷顯示，泰米羅伯特。 羅伯特是演說對新任命的領導人的薩斯喀徹溫省綠黨，琥珀瓊斯和她的外貌，與嬰兒拖車，在政治活動舉辦的立法機關。 ".我只是讀完羅伯特的言論，我有很多更好地利用它，僅僅是“過時的關於母乳喂養的意見” 。在我看來，正確的羅伯特的言論，有一個詞語概括了她的論點，即黃色瓊斯曾使用嬰兒作為一個支柱，以評分的政治布朗尼點通過媒體和這樣，她是從事性剝削。.因此，綠黨沒有更多的聖地比任何其他的政治團體。

I guess there's no equilvalent for either "redneck" or "Saskboy" in the Chinese language.

More Fun Than a Monty Python Skit!!

UPDATE: Ezra Levant has excellent summaries of pollsters' findings about Canadian sentiment on this issue. Read them Saskboy, and cry.

As Ezra says, it just goes to show how far removed the media is from the real opinion held by the rest of us, the great unwashed in this country . Here's hoping that the voters remember this fiasco when the next election roles around and give Harper a real majority and then let's hope he privatizes the CBC. Go, Harper!!!
==========================

Coverage of the anti-coalition rallies are featured on several Canadian blogs this evening and I see Saskboy, like the rodent in a game of whack-a-mole, is popping up on the right side of the Canadian blogosphere desperately mewing. Some great placards at some of them, too. Too bad I'm so far away from any of the chosen rally sites.

Check out these: Deborah Gyapong on Ottawa, Darryl Wolk, on Toronto, Queens Park and other places, two entries at Dust My Broom, and one at the Mad Dino's place on the rally in Winnipeg or should that be Winterpeg (gotta like the Louis Riel reference in the vid at the Broom). Daveberta in Edmonton, Robert Jago in Vancouver. Kate also has a good round-up.

Mad Dino, but the way, has a great compilation of editorials from Canada's MSM newspapers about this grand theatre.

Meanwhile, Adam Daifallah reports that the knives have come out in the upper echelons of the Liberal Party.

So long, Dion. Looks like you're the sacrificial lamb. For good reason, too.

Hit the road, Jack. And don't you come back, no more, no more, no more, no more. Liberal Party coat tails have been ripped off, thanks to you and your incompetent sugar daddy, Stephie.

Gilles, that's a long steep hill you're falling down. Good luck with that. All that beautiful hair is gonna be messed up, no matter how carefully you roll, but it serves you right for being such a crass opportunist.

And Bob Rae? As you know, those who can, do. Those who can't - teach. Looks like you might have to take up consulting for a living.

Such fun!! I love it.

Saskboy's World

is rosy hued.

In Saskboy's world, people carrying AK47s and RPG launchers aren't fair targets in a war. Apparently they are supposed to wait until they start shooting and then shoot back, presuming they're still alive and airborne. The videos only show a small portion of the area where insurgent attacks had already taken place. The guys in the air, on the other hand, could see a lot more than what Wikileak chose to focus on. Read up on it, dingbat! And if you're too lazy or too frightened to break your comfortably naive little bubble, listen to this NPR broadcast. Even the left-leaning NPR gets it.

History of Indian and White Relations 101 - Part II

Here's the next part of the Indian Industry version of events expressed in Saskboy's linked page:

"There were many promises made under the treaties. Education is a major Treaty right. The Treaties called for a promise to have schools on reserves and to pay teachers. However, schools could be contracted out to churches or to the provincial government."

The very first mention of education made during the negotiation of a treaty occurs in 1871 during the negotiation of Treaty 1 and Treaty 2, which cover parts of southern Manitoba and the extreme western portion of what is now Ontario, specifically those parts bordering the south east corner of Manitoba as it is now and the Lake of the Woods district. Both of the subsequently negotiated treaties contained a clause promising a school on the reserves. In Treaty 1 the clause reads:

"And further, Her Majesty agrees to maintain a school on each reserve hereby made whenever the Indians of the reserve should desire it." [Emphasis mine.]

In Treaty 2, it's exactly the same.

Previous treaties, the Selkirk Treaty of 1817, as well as the Robinson Huron and Robinson Superior Treaties of 1850 covering lands east of this, made no mention of education. The James Bay Attawapiskat Cree are no where near these territories and were not in any way shape or form parties to Treaties 1 and 2. They were, in fact, signatories to an adhesion of Treaty 9, originally signed in 1905, but their settlement on lands reserved for them did not take place until 1964.

The text of the Treaty 9 clause pertaining to schools reads as follows:

"Further, His Majesty agrees to pay such salaries of teachers to instruct the children of said Indians, and also to provide such school buildings and educational equipment as may seem advisable to His Majesty's government of Canada." [Emphasis mine]

But that doesn't mean education provided by Europeans had not already been undertaken. As early as the 1840s the churches were engaged in providing schools for Indians and the then colonial government representing Great Britain's interests in her Canadian colonies encouraged their efforts. Education in the 1840s consisted primarily of church run schools and Christianity based curricula in any case, whether in Britain or in her colonies, so it should not surprise anyone that the education provided by the churches to Indian communities was no different. Publicly funded education was not the norm at that time in history.

In their zeal to convert Indians to Christianity the churches wholeheartedly endorsed whatever efforts the colonial administration and subsequently, the Canadian government, undertook to provide education for Indians. This endorsement was mutual, as the government was only too happy to relieve itself of the financial burdens and lay it on the churches. Throughout the 1840s and the remaining part of the century, successive colonial and then Canadian governments developed policies that would remain the bedrock of their Indian policy well into the twentieth century.

In a nutshell, this policy can be described as the isolation and civilization strategy. In essence, isolate Indians on reserves sufficiently far removed from civilization, where corrupting influences were causing havoc, and let the churches teach them the accouterments of civilization. Consequently, the next sentence "schools could be contracted out to churches or to the provincial government" reflects the long standing practice of a colonial policy that the modern Indian movement detests, a policy that existed long before any of the treaties mentioning education were even contemplated, and which, although the statement appears intended to suggest such, it is not found in any text of any treaty nor in any record of negotiations leading to those treaties.

The remainder of that section of the document Saskboy links to is equally ridiculous.

"Another area of Treaty right is taxation. "Personal property on a reserve, including income, is not subject to taxation, either federal or provincial. This is an affirmation of oral promises made at the signing of the Treaties that the reserves shall be tax-free" (Brizinski, 1993: p. 188)."

For now, it's sufficient to note that the basis for the argument in the above quoted passage is a quotation taken from a book written in 1993 and seems to have no foundation in the examination of original documents or transcripts from the time during which the treaties were negotiated. The same can be said of other parts of the document. In other words, it appears to be some undergrad student's attempt at writing history, quoting secondary rather than primary sources. Neither the landmark Supreme Court decision of April, 2004, concerning Indian tax exempt status nor any of the historical context regarding that exemption are taken into account.

But I'll save that one for Part III.

Oh, I'm Soooooo Embarrasssed - Not

Down at this entry, Saskboy has told me I am embarrassing myself.

He wants me to believe that catastrophic droughts are in store for Saskatchewan.

It would be interesting to see how the U of R scientists explain past droughts.

"Bonsal and Regier report that "over the agricultural region of the Prairies, 2001 and 2002 generally ranked high in terms of spatial extent and severity of drought," and that "at some stations the 2001/2002 drought was the most severe one on record." Nevertheless, they state that "the SPI and PDSI as drought indicators revealed that the worst and most prolonged Prairie-wide droughts during the instrumental record (1915-2002) ... occurred in the early part of the 20th century (1915 through the 1930s)."

[---]

"So, we know when the most severe and widespread droughts of the historical record occurred on the Canadian Prairies (1915 through the 1930s); but as for why they occurred at that time is anybody's guess, although we definitely know they were not caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions!"

Never mind that record rainfalls have been the norm across the Canadian prairie this year. Never mind, that none of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming models predicted a downturn, now in it's tenth year, in the global temperatures. Never mind that alarmist scientists are now reduced to engaging in some pretty creative doublespeak:



Never let facts get in the way, Saskboy.

For Saskboy's Edification

A lesson on the many accomplishments of arch anarchist apologist Noam Chomsky by way of some choice passages from relevant sources:

Noam Chomsky's Jihad against America

"Chomsky seems to believe that America and Europe are still living in the age of colonial expansion -- a rhetorical assumption that allows him to ignore the fact that America and its allies do not want to acquire Afghanistan or another Third World country, and are even reluctant to be involved to the extent that they should be. (Their benign neglect of Afghanistan after the collapse of the Soviet invasion is often pointed to as a factor in the creation of the Taliban and the Al Qaeda network). Chomsky also ignores the mass slaughter and savage tribal wars conducted by indigenous peoples in today’s post-colonial world. In Chomsky’s calculus America and Europe will always come up negative values. Thus, Chomsky even denounced the recent efforts of the NATO allies to rescue impoverished Muslims facing systematic extermination and expulsion by Serbian ethnic cleansers as an example of "NATO imperialism." So much for Chomsky’s concern for the oppressed."

Happy Anniversary Noam Chomsky

(T)hroughout the years of Cambodia's "killing fields," throughout the communist genocide committed against Cambodia's people, Noam Chomsky was the unofficial apologist and academic spokesman for the Khmer Rouge regime.

[---]

"Chomsky is for the Khmer Rouge what David Irving is for the Jewish victims of World War II."

The hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky

"For all his in-principle disdain of communism, however, when it came to the real world of international politics Chomsky turned out to endorse a fairly orthodox band of socialist revolutionaries. They included the architects of communism in Cuba, Fidel Castro and Che Guevera, as well as Mao Tse-tung and the founders of the Chinese communist state. Chomsky told a forum in New York in December, 1967 that in China “one finds many things that are really quite admirable.” He believed the Chinese had gone some way to empowering the masses along lines endorsed by his own libertarian socialist principles."

[---]

"When he provided this endorsement of what he called Mao Tse-tung’s “relatively livable” and “just society,” Chomsky was probably unaware he was speaking only five years after the end of the great Chinese famine of 1958–1962, the worst in human history. He did not know, because the full story did not come out for another two decades, that the very collectivization he endorsed was the principal cause of this famine, one of the greatest human catastrophes ever, with a total death toll of thirty million people.

Nonetheless, if he was as genuinely aloof from totalitarianism as his political principles proclaimed, the track record of communism in the USSR—which was by then widely known to have faked its statistics of agricultural and industrial output in the 1930s when its own population was also suffering crop failures and famine—should have left this anarchist a little more skeptical about the claims of the Russians’ counterparts in China.

In fact, Chomsky was well aware of the degree of violence that communist regimes had routinely directed at the people of their own countries. At the 1967 New York forum he acknowledged both “the mass slaughter of landlords in China” and “the slaughter of landlords in North Vietnam” that had taken place once the communists came to power. His main objective, however, was to provide a rationalization for this violence, especially that of the National Liberation Front then trying to take control of South Vietnam. Chomsky revealed he was no pacifist."

[---]

"The long political history of this aging activist demonstrates that double standards of the same kind have characterized his entire career.

Chomsky has declared himself a libertarian and anarchist but has defended some of the most authoritarian and murderous regimes in human history. His political philosophy is purportedly based on empowering the oppressed and toiling masses but he has contempt for ordinary people who he regards as ignorant dupes of the privileged and the powerful. He has defined the responsibility of the intellectual as the pursuit of truth and the exposure of lies, but has supported the regimes he admires by suppressing the truth and perpetrating falsehoods. He has endorsed universal moral principles but has only applied them to Western liberal democracies, while continuing to rationalize the crimes of his own political favorites. He is a mandarin who denounces mandarins. When caught out making culpably irresponsible misjudgments, as he was over Cambodia and Sudan, he has never admitted he was wrong.

Today, Chomsky’s hypocrisy stands as the most revealing measure of the sorry depths to which the left-wing political activism he has done so much to propagate has now sunk."

May I suggest, Saskboy, that you purchase this book and study it carefully: The Anti-Chomsky Reader