The U-Turn

For the first (and perhaps only) time, I am currently on the side of the Conservative government in Canada. The Economist’s article on the new Canadian plan for lowering emissions is a good summary of what is going on.

David Suzuki isn’t happy. Al Gore, who is in Toronto this week, is very disappointed. The liberal government is calling it a fraud.

And I’m thinking – liberal government, shuttup. For 13 years after signing the Kyoto Protocol you took no steps toward meeting our targets. The current government has inherited from you a difficult situation of an unreachable signed agreement, plus emissions which have been increasing steadly for 13 years.

Environmentalists…I know, I know. It isn’t good enough. It won’t meet the Kyoto protocol. It is putting the economy first. I am with you on being annoyed by these things. HOWEVER–it is actually putting the environment on the priority list, and that is new. It is a commitment to change, and that is new. It is a step in the right direction and you should be grateful that the population actually cares a bit now.

This government’s support comes out of oil-based Alberta, Canada’s little Texas. I can’t believe anyone was expecting anything more than what they got with this deal. A minority government cannot risk cutting out it’s only support base by alienating them on an issue its opposition is pushing for. This is a brilliant compromise.

Pro-Awareness and Education

This, right here, is your biggest problem. If you want to stop abortions then make students aware of how NOT to get pregnant. Sure some students will wait until they are married. Sure it may be a good idea and one worth teaching. But if that’s all you give people then some of them are going to have unprotected sex and they are going to get pregnant. …and social conservatives, unwanted pregnancies cause situations you really don’t like.

A $166 million US INCREASE in money used to teach abstinance to students. Brilliant.

I am not pro-choice in the sense that I think abortion is a woman’s right. But women and men should be educated about making smart choices. And “unwanted children” is a phrase I would love to see irradicated from our terminology altogether. Just teach, people. That will solve your problem.

I have been taking classes over at the Catholic College, St. Michael’s, this year. The anti-abortion propoganda there has been blowing my mind. One sign says “Countries which allow abortion are not promoting love, but the idea that you can get what you want through violence. That is why abortion is the single greatest destroyer of love and peace.” Like I said I am not fundamentally pro-choice. The idea of abortion makes me queasy in a lot of ways. But THE GREATEST DESTROYER OF LOVE AND PEACE? …you have GOT to be kidding me. Try world hunger? no. War Children? nah. Lack of international literacy? nope. The AIDS epidemic? No silly. …abortion.

Ridiculous people. Get some perpsective.

Winning the Vote

In class today we were talking about the suffrigest movement in the UK. My prof was saying that her grandmother always used to say she would never forget the first day she went out to vote, refusing to allow her husband’s opinion to sway her.

“Before she died, she was around 100, she wasn’t going to mass anymore on Sundays, but by God she was out to vote in every election.”

Oh, the days of commitment to democratic responsibility.

Also Professor Ann Dooley rocks.

K I have to stop looking at this…

More from ann coulter:
where ‘we’ refers to good-american-christians
and ‘they’ refers to ‘godless liberals’
“We believe in populating the Earth until there’s standing room only and then colonizing Mars; they believe humans are in the twilight of their existence.”

….I don’t even…like how is she not a satire of herself? standing room only and then populating on mars?…and it’s actually printed in her book?!?!

Wow

“Environmentalists want mass infanticide, zero population growth, reduced standards of living, and vegetarianism. The core of environmentalism is that they hate mankind.”
-ann coulter from her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism

I’d heard the name before but never looked into her. Infanticide and vegetarianism together on a list. ….I’m so confused. I wish I thought she was joking or something.

If you scroll down the first chapter of the book is there. It’s pretty frightening.

Realities and (Somewhat Blissful) Ignorance

A 14-year-old Indian boy has been awarded the International Children’s Peace Prize for leading a campaign against child labour and child slavery.

“After he was rescued, Om set up a network that aims to give all children a birth certificate as a way of helping to protect them from exploitation”

I knew child labour was a very serious global problem. But somehow it never occured to me that children could be denied birth certificates. These children are being forced to work and there is no official record of their birth…. that is truly frightening. How far removed from those situations we are simply by being born in Canada.

I am aware of the conflicts this post could be taken to have with ones I posted with regards to Rememberence Day. Our country may well not have been such a wonderful place to be born if the World Wars had turned out another way. I would like to take ownership once again for a lack of clarity on this issue. On an ideological level I do battle with how I feel about the existance of nationstates, passports and birth certificates: Documents which seem to cage us in to one corner of the World of which we were born citizens. But one thing I do not lose sight of is that I am lucky to be Canadian, and I am grateful for the rights I enjoy as a Canadian, including of course the rights that allow me to think about and discuss these very issues, and indeed the right to be wrong when it comes to them, but to keep thinking and to keep going back to the drawing board.