Category Archives: News and politics

Today’s burning question:  What the hell are the 12 Grains in my bagel?

Wheat, Flax, Rye, Oats, Millet, Triticale, Corn, Rice, Sesame Seeds, Barley, Sunflower Seeds and Buckwheat would be the answer from Dempster’s Bakery.

Others include Spelt, Poppy Seeds, Soybean flour and Quinoa.  I know, technically, Sesame, Sunflower, Soy and Poppy are seeds or legumes, not grains, but somehow they’re now called grains, at least when it comes to advertising. 

Then there is the whole probiotic and prebiotic.  Probiotic means bacteria your gut can use to digest food.  Acidophilus comes to mind and various yogurt manufacturers jack up the amount of acidophilus or other lactic acid bacterium in their products to give you a "probiotic" fix that they can charge more for. 

Kraft makes a probiotic cheese.  I am also waiting for a probiotic shampoo and conditioner that makes your hair shiny, manageable and is high in fiber.

I’m certain we’ll see a ‘probiotic’ vodka cooler that also has Omega-3 fatty acids and is high fibre.  It should run about 70% alcohol, so you can get falling-over drunk at the same time as you are improving your health.

Prebiotic refers most often to Inulin, a plant fiber from chicory or dandelion root that you can’t actually digest in your upper intestine.  It winds up in your lower intestine to feed the bacteria living there to "promote digestive health". 

In advertising-speak that means fart like a sailor and pass turds the size and weight of a small fire extinguisher.

The problem is the modern water-saving toilets.  With all this fiber going through us, we’ll have to flush nine or ten times to make our waste go away.

It is interesting to see how the wildfires and evacuations are being handled in California this week.  There are several comparisons that can immediately made between the Hurricane Katrina mess and how California is handling things that speak to the ability of organizations to learn from their mistakes.

Katrina is still, by all assessments, a complete monkey-screw.  California, with a million evacuees and all kinds of losses, seems to be working as well as could be expected:  There has been no Superdome fiasco of dead people in wheelchairs covered with blankets.  The police haven’t been carting off possessions or dropping their guns and giving up. 

California is a different type of disaster.  Fire insists you leave.  Flooding means you could tough it out.

A second area where the Katrina comparison falls over is the type of people who are being evacuated.  Those living up in the hills of Malibu or San Diego are not dirt-poor.  Most interviews with ‘survivors’ start with "We got in the Benz and drove to a shelter with Pooksie and Muffy, our two dogs…" 

Compare that to Katrina where the people most affected were economically marginalized, without a Benz, or for that matter any other way to get out of New Orleans.  To the credit of the California authorities, they used as much technology as they could, to get people out of harm’s way.  Katrina? Tell you what, let’s just call it a learning situation:  The learning was that if you’re poor and inner-city, you’re on your own.

There are other areas where the two disasters don’t compare.  New Orleans is a fairly compact city and Katrina clobbered the densely populated downtown.  San Diego and Malibu are spread out.  The California fires nailed the urban, suburban and fringe rural areas where population density is less than the city proper.  There were no long lines of cars and trucks bumper to bumper clogging the one or two roads out of danger, like there was in New Orleans.

There are areas to investigate.  The various California fire services have almost been universal in their call for more help.  They don’t have enough gear or people to do their job which means they can only try to control things until the weather changes enough to allow them to fight the fire. 

There is a balance that has to be struck with emergency services, in that you have to scale things for known and sensibly predictable disasters.  The 2007 California wildfire season so far, looks like it might be beyond the test of ‘sensibly predictable’ so a shortfall in gear and people would be understandable, not good, but understandable. 

With Hurricane Katrina, the worst the Army Corps of Engineers had built for was a Category 3 storm, historically what had been experienced by New Orleans.  That was a sensible decision, as we have to think back to pre-Katrina time and Cat 3 was as bad as it had ever been.  One must be cautious about using after-the-fact eyes.

However, where the similarities exist, there is that constant theme:  "We don’t have enough resources to do this properly."  You’ve heard it from fire commanders in California and from cops in New Orleans. 

The reason the California fire services don’t have the resources is easy enough:  The gear and personnel are expensive.  Welcome to the fallout of the Regan and Bush-era, read-my-lips-no-new-taxes mentality. 

Emergency services Professionals (not "Brownie" but pros like David Paulison from FEMA) can scale their services to any disaster you can imagine, as long as they have the budget.  Budget means Taxes.

Here’s the conundrum.  You buy house insurance for the usual perils and pay the premium without question.  You don’t like it, but you pay because you know it is a sensible, prudent thing to do, in the event bad things happen.  But heaven’s forbid the politicians ask you pay a few more dollars to protect you and your neighbors with expanded emergency services that might sit unused for weeks on end. 

You know that newspapers and TV stations would be doing "Investigative Reports" on expensive people and gear that are waiting for the one time every five years when they’re really needed and complaining about ‘waste and inefficiency’ and ‘demanding answers’.  Of course, we’ll have all forgotten about the one time society needed the resources and they magically appeared.

You can’t have it both ways.

Remember back to the end of August, when a B-52 flew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, with six nuclear-tipped missiles under the wings?  There was much gnashing of teeth from the US Air Force and a promise of a thorough investigation, which came out yesterday.

Seventy Air Force members are involved, receiving everything from a boot up the arse, to being relieved of command, which is appropriate enough.  Buried in the story from AP is this quote, regarding the protocol (called a schedule) of handling the actual nuclear warheads:  "The airmen replaced the schedule with their own "informal" system, he said, though he didn’t say why they did that nor how long they had been doing it their own way."  That is the truly scary part. 

Humans are lazy at the best of times and that is a well-understood behavior.  Repetitive tasks do not get our full, thorough attention, even if the potential for injury and death with the task is well known and recognized. 

As an example, driving your car:  Do you check behind the vehicle, along side the vehicle or in front of your car before you get in?  Do you check tire pressures, oil level, brake fluid, power steering fluid level, coolant level and concentration, fuel quantity and percentage of water in the fuel before you get in and drive off? 

Do you test and document the condition of all door latches, airbags, seatbelts, internal warning lights, window defogging heaters and fans, mirrors and instrument lights?  You should also test the operation and condition of all surfaces, external lights, signals and braking system too, by the way.  And the fire suppression system.  You have one in your car don’t you? 

We are talking about a ton or more of steel that can travel at more than 88 feet per second and can easily kill a passerby.  Plus it contains many liters of highly-flammable, known-carcinogenic fluid, flammable interior components, glycols, and hydraulic oil that are bad for the environment, toxic if burned and, in the case of the Hula Girl ornament on your dashboard, in damned poor taste.  

Imagine if you had to, by law, do a checklist of all those items above, plus more, sign it off, present it to someone, get it signed off by a third party, then be allowed to drive to the supermarket to buy a bag of pretzels. 

If you want to come back home from the supermarket, you have to do the same checklist and signoffs again to be cleared to come home with the pretzels, which must be weighed and stored securely in a documented place in your car.

If you’re driving, you get in, do up the seatbelt, crank it over, find Drive, punch your radio station of choice and go get some pretzels.   

Technically, to get pretzels with an aircraft, the long checklist would apply.  I’m being very light on the number of steps, leaving out weather, navigation, clearances and maintenance. 

That level of repetitive tasking is common in aviation, which explains why the aviation industry has studied how humans pay attention.  This also explains why aviation has checklists that you work through to do things: Humans will cut corners. 

To come back to the Air Force and the ‘informal’ schedule of handling the nuclear warheads at Minot AFB, it is perfectly understandable, from a behavioral standpoint.  However, the US Air Force has existed since 1947 and as the US Army Air Force since, oh, 1917, give or take.  It is an organization with a long history in researching, observing and understanding how humans work with checklists and repetitive tasking.

Here’s the real problem.  If you document everything with a lengthy checklist and precise steps to perform the tasks, the humans involved will do it faster, cut corners, or not pay attention.  Invariably, at some point, a human will skip one step too many, or assume someone else did their part and not check. 

When it comes to handling nuclear warheads, there is no step that can be skipped, glossed over or, to use the slang, "pencil-whipped" by an inspector.

Now, how to fix it?  There is a simple way: Change the checklist.  Change the layout, or the colour of the paper it is printed on, or the way the checklist is signed off.  That difference from what was done before, clues our lazy brains into paying attention again.  We look at the words, or steps, or kill your parents satan is king, check boxes on the list and actually read or recognize what we are reading.

How many of you caught that little misstep in the paragraph above?  Go read the "Now, how to fix it?" paragraph again.  Anything seem odd about it?  Anything seem like a non-sequitur?  This posting, by the way, is something you have never seen before.  It is new to your brain and eyes and you might have missed something odd about the previous paragraph. 

The US Air Force should have known that humans don’t pay attention at the best of times and done things that would work around the human nature problem. 

There is no excuse for six nuclear warheads to wind up on pylons without everyone involved knowing they were there.

(My personal bet, is that half the people who read it, will miss the reference to satan.  I am kidding about the sentiment, but let me know if you did miss it the first time please.)

Following up on the collapse of the overpass in Laval, Quebec last year, the Provincial Inquiry, chaired by Pierre Marc Johnson dropped their report off at the government.  The backstory:  A four-lane overpass collapsed September 30, 2006, killing five and seriously injuring several more.  There was no indication anything was amiss until the road disappeared under the cars and trucks.

Johnson’s report lists "a total lack of quality control"; shoddy construction and low quality concrete used to build the overpass 35 years ago.  Johnson also pressed the button on poor inspections, a bad repair in 1992 and people and organizations that "failed to assume their responsibilities during construction (and) during the bridge’s service life"  No real surprises there.

Infrastructure is not glamorous, like a conference centre or a professional sports team, which means politicians are always willing to cut the day to day maintenance of infrastructure when it comes time to decide between votes or money.  As for the initial construction and engineering sign off, someone didn’t do their job.  Structural engineers know how much, or how big things have to be.  They have books of reference materials that tell them. 

This wasn’t a one-off modern engineering marvel of the reinforced concrete arts:  It was a run of the mill, done-that-before, four lane overpass.  One of hundreds of structures along our highways.  There are so many of them in our cities and towns that we don’t see them. 

Until they fall down and kill five people.

Which leads us back to who is responsible.  Technically the concrete suppliers, the engineers and the inspectors are the ones who will catch the manure mist on this one.  However, those of us who vote for candidates who promise all kinds of tax cuts also have to take a small slice of the sandwich.

We need to tell our elected representatives that we will pay taxes, even increased taxes, if the money is used for sensible things.  Yes, we will grumble about taxes going up, but if taxes go up for things that matter, then it’s OK in the grand scheme of things. 

There sits the problem:  Politicians as a species have the backbone of half-set gelatin and the long term memory of a a ferret with ADHD.  The distant future timeline for the few good politicians is What’s for Lunch.  The usual politicians’ distant future timeline is what will get me applause in the next 45 seconds. 

Remember that when you vote for someone with a ‘vision for the future of our fair city’  They’re thinking about a sandwich, not your best interests, or doing what is right.

In an Associated Press article, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez who drove the bus in Iraq, said that the US mission in Iraq is a "nightmare with no end in sight".  Sanchez knows of what he speaks, as he commanded the coalition troops for a year, beginning in June 2003.

The condensed version of his comments are that the US State Department, the National Security Council, the Idiot Boy Administration and most of the other players had no clue what to do with a fractured, invaded country.  The extra 30,000 troops are a "desperate attempt" to make up for years of misguided policies in Iraq.

One could claim a degree of bitterness in Sanchez’s comments, as the Abu Ghraib School of Photography was opened on his watch and he had to work with Paulie Bremner, of the Coalition Provision Authority.  Bremner was the hand-picked fixer of the President Jo Jo The Idiot Boy and Bremner needed nearly 800,000 pounds of cash, by the pallet load, shipped to Iraq to pay for photocopies and pencils.

Nonetheless, Lt. Gen. Sanchez has nailed it.  When asked by a reporter when he knew the mission was going pear-shaped, he replied "about the 15th of June, 2003"  This would be the day he got off the plane in Baghdad to take the keys to the bus.

At a strategic and conceptual level, the Iraq deal should have been over by 2005 at the latest.  Go in, kick Saddam off the chair, set up the new government, get out.  That didn’t happen because the private industries associated with the invasion saw exactly how much money they could make. 

Supposedly the whole Iraq reconstruction was going to be funded by oil revenues.  Oil revenue is a fickle thing.  An Iraq government ministry could cut the US private interests out of the money stream.  It would be much better to have a US government source of cash, as the US government isn’t known for cutting their buddies out of the profits. 

Therefore the US government must continue their reconstruction efforts.  Rather than relying on pallet-loads of cash Bremner-style, the private interests change where they send the invoices:  That would be the GSA in Washington DC.  Much closer than some office in Baghdad.

In the end, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez is right, the US mission in Iraq is a "nightmare with no end in sight"  As long as the United States is funding it, the nightmare won’t end.  The Military-Industrial Complex, in the United States (not Iraq, not Iran, not Saudi Arabia) won’t let it. 

Shut off the money and it ends.  Is there someone with the stones to do that?

Here’s the setup:  You live in the US and you want to fly to Frankfurt, Germany.

In order to fly to Frankfurt, the airline takes your information, including your passport data, SSN, date of birth, address, phone numbers, contact numbers, credit card information and itinerary.  Then it compares your data to a list of known Bad Guys, the No-Fly List. 

Other data is obtained, including your flight history over the past years, seat selection, meal selection, previous duty-free purchases and all the frequent flyer data the airline has on you, which usually includes domestic flights, hotel stays, car rentals and so on.  This wad of data is sent to Germany, who looks the data over and decides if you are OK to come to their country. 

This, of course, happens after you buy the ticket and before you show up at the airport.  The day of the flight to Frankfurt, you show up, with your bags, four hours before your flight.  

The airline counter person says that you have been chosen as a selectee.  They don’t tell you why.  Why is because your name, Jerimiah Dingobaby, is close to Jim M. Dingleby, who is a known Bad Guy.  Germany isn’t too keen on letting a known Bad Guy into their country and the airline isn’t keen on flying a known Bad Guy. 

You get poked, prodded and squeezed like a melon by the TSA.  The TSA and airline says you are now OK to fly.  Germany grudgingly goes along, but is now scouring your data with a jaundiced eye.  Expect to get the melon treatment at Frankfurt from the German Customs. 

After all, you visited Columbus Ohio last February and Columbus is a known hotbed of anti-German sentiment, as well as Chicago, Charlotte and Cincinnati, all places you went to in the last five years, according to your Frequent Flyer account.  Any city that starts with the letter C is not looked upon favorably by the German Customs, even if it is domestic business travel, in the US, by a US citizen and has nothing to do with Germany whatsoever.    

If some of the data about you is wrong, misguided, opinionated, or not about you at all, your recourse is to sit down and shut up.  If you don’t like it and complain, then there’s always more room on the No-Fly lists in Germany and the US.

That’s more or less how the system works today.  There’s no problem with Germany not wanting Known Bad Guys in their country: They’re a sovereign country and they can decide who they choose to admit. 

If the rules are nobody left-handed can come in, then so be it.  The airline is acting sensibly by checking for left-handed passengers before the Frankfurt flight leaves, after all, the rules at the destination apply.  The US airline has to go along, in order to land at Frankfurt.

The change that is currently under discussion is this:  The US owned aircraft, with US citizens as passengers, going to Frankfurt, Germany, has to fly over Canada to get there.  Canada has a 200-mile border limit, like most countries, so taking a flight that starts in Boston, Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit or Seattle, is technically within Canadian airspace.  Chicago and Minneapolis are close.  

Canada is now demanding that the full wad of data from the US sources must be given to the Canadian government and security folks before the aircraft leaves.  The Canadians are going to scour the data and apply their rules.  They don’t want anyone with the potential of being a Bad Guy, in their airspace and conceptually at least, ‘in’ their country. 

Never mind that they’re talking about US citizens, on a US flight, that has nothing to do with Canada, has no intention of landing in Canada and has nothing whatsoever to do with Canadian immigration, Customs, security or laws.  The Canadians demand the data and the implied threat is that the airline will not be allowed to overfly Canada to get to Frankfurt. 

This will add several hours to the flight, as the aircraft will have to fly due East to get over the Atlantic ocean, then go North to get to the International airways.  

Now, as a US Citizen, on a US flight, how do you feel about Canada having the full panoply of data on you?  Do you trust Canada to treat the data securely and not accumulate more and more data on you?  Will Canada use the data for its declared purpose, keeping Bad Guys out, or are they just fishing for data on US Citizens on US flights because they can? 

I’d be grumpy about it, after all, who the hell died and made them Grace Kelly?  When did Canada become the arbiter of who is allowed to fly or not fly, if the flight doesn’t land there?

Now, reverse the situation, exactly 180 degrees.  The US Department of Homeland Paranoia and the TSA are proposing a change to overfly rules. 

Any flight that enters US airspace must submit all passenger information to the TSA in advance.  The TSA and Homeland Paranoia will determine the suitability of any passengers to overfly US airspace, regardless of the destination of the flight.  That’s the real change.  I made up the Canadian stuff. 

Therefore any flight in Canada, going to Mexico, or the Caribbean is subject to US rules, as the aircraft has to fly over the US.  Any Canadian flight going to Tokyo will most likely fly over Alaska, which is US airspace and the US rules will apply.  Same with flights from the Pacific, most take the polar route, over Alaska, therefore the US rules would apply. 

Even if the flight is only landing in Canada, Mexico, or the Dominican Republic, from India, Korea or Japan, the US rules would apply.  Doesn’t matter if Korea Air or JAL has vetted all the passengers with Canadian, Mexican or Dominican Republic entry rules, as they should, the US rules also apply.  If the US don’t like the passengers on that flight, the airline is potentially denied overflight rights.

Who died and made the TSA and Homeland Paranoia, Grace Kelly?  When did the US become the sole arbiter of who is allowed to fly, or not fly, if the flight doesn’t land there? 

Technically, many of Canada’s major airports are within the 200 mile international boundary with the US.  Does that mean all our domestic flights are going to be subject to US security rules?  Our standards have been higher and more thorough for more than twenty years, since the Air India bombing, so we have to lower our standards? 

What happens with all that data about Canadian citizens on a Canadian aircraft, flying from one Canadian destination to another on a purely domestic flight?  Why does the TSA need the credit card, frequent flyer, name and address data of a Canadian not going to the US? 

Who says the TSA is responsible enough to even look at, let alone literate enough to read that level of data collection?

The US would never put up with that kind of crap from anyone else, so why are the trying it on the rest of the world?  Because they think they can get away with it is why.  The TSA and Homeland Paranoia want as much data as they can get on anyone, anywhere, regardless of where they live, work or go.  All of this under the guise of "Security".  Naturally, if you’re not for it, then you’re an Enemy and an Evildoer of the Axis of Evildoers Evil Axis.

My proposed rule in return?  If the TSA and Homeland Paranoia change the rule, which they can, arbitrarily at their whim, then the Canadian and Mexican governments immediately impose the same rules in return, using the internationally agreed upon 200 mile limit boundaries. 

In the interests of our sovereign "security", we’ll want US flights to be subject to our rules, in the event they might have to land in Canada or Mexico. 

Check your personal GPS.  I did, and found the proposed TSA rule at the coordinates of "WTF?" and "Bite Me!" at an elevation of "Kiss my pink, puckered, rear orifice!"

I was wrong with my predictions for a Liberal Minority, now that the votes have been counted.  Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals won back-to-back majority victories, the first since 1937, with 71 of 107 seats.  The Conservative leader, John Tory, lost his own seat and saw his party stay flat at 26 seats.  The NDP and Howard Hampton are at 10 seats, just like before the election.  

It would seem that voters, when confronted with the folded pieces of paper, decided that the status-quo was the safest route to take and marked their ballots appropriately.  It was a bland, boring campaign that was utterly unmotivating. 

The process of voting also took a shot:  Only 52% of voters showed up.  The previous low-water mark was 54%. A combination of the political handlers and the media succeeeded in demotivating the voters.

Interestingly, we had a referendum on the table for what is called MMP, or Mixed Member Proportional representation.  It was blown out of the sky because nobody bothered to explain it to voters.  Again, voters kept the status-quo.

The media is examining the runes and entrails to appear wise, while commentators and party wanks are spinning the results to find something, anything to be positive about.  Truthfully, the Conservative Leader, John Tory, shot himself in the head backing away from full-funding for religious schools and handed the Liberals the cake. 

Which means what?  Nothing will change in Ontario.  We’ll keep stumbling along.  No great leaps forward and no falling over sideways either.

Today is the day the voters of this fine province vote for a new government.  For those not from Ontario, here’s the Player Program so you can follow along.  There will be American translations as needed.  (The first translation:  Province = State)

Previous Government.  Liberal under Dalton McGuinty.  (Liberal = Democrats, or close enough to make no never mind)

Running this time:  Liberals under Dalton McGuinty, Conservatives, under John Tory (Conservatives = Republicans, more or less) and the New Democratic Party under Howard Hampton (Not Quite Socialists, more like Germany’s Social Democrat Party.  More left than Liberals)  Plus the usual smattering of Green, Marijuana Reform, Loon, and Highly Medicated parties.  Earnest, but without a hope in hell of being elected.

Issues:  Funding for Religious Schools, Jobs, Energy Policy, Health Care Reform, Fiscal Reform, Electoral Reform.

New and innovative ideas promulgated:  None, except one from the New Democratic Party:  Conservation of Electrical Energy is less expensive and pays back faster than trying to build new nuclear reactors or keeping coal-fired generation plants going around the clock.  Too easy to understand and too easy to implement, which is why it has never been talked about in the mainstream media.   

Usual Bovine Manure Promises:  Liberals and Conservatives, with a fine mist of New Democrat populist working-class sentiment.  The press releases and talking points from the provincial election in 2003 could have been used again without change. 

Divisive Chatter designed to distract voters:  Dalton McGuinty’s Broken Promises.  John Tory running away from the full funding for religious school issue.  Howard Hampton actually telling the truth and scaring the crap out of voters.

Worst Photo Op:  Leader’s Debate on TV a few weeks ago.  All three looked barely lifelike.

Best Photo Op: Leader’s Debate on TV a few weeks ago.  All three at least looked barely lifelike.

Most Quoted Quote:  None.  The speechwriters have been drinking NyQuil for 54 days straight.  The leaders are not allowed off the bus, without first being struck in the head with a mallet. 

One party leader actually has wires and an armature up his back.  Dalton’s handlers have cans of 3-In-1 oil and WD-40 at the ready in case the mechanism starts to squeak:  Buying a knockoff from Jim Henson’s Muppet Shop will do that.  Howard Hampton embodies all the cosmopolitan excitement of Lincoln Nebraska with all the verve and flair of viewing an extensive collection of masking tape; in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

Likely winner:  Liberal minority, with NDP holding balance of power.  (Joys of Parliamentary Democracy, you get Coalition politics.  Necessity may be the Mother of Invention, but Politics is the Mother of Strange Bedfellows)

The Conservatives are doomed because their leader looks like he sold his soul to Big Business years ago.  The Conservatives would do, or say, anything to get elected again.  That includes being in favour of sending all the visibly ethnic back to where they came from and mandatory shotgunning of anyone ‘different’.  As long as the polls say it would be popular enough to get them elected, the Conservatives would be for it.  John Tory is an empty suit.  A nice, well-groomed, expensively tailored suit, but still an empty suit.

The other two choices are a known incompetent, mostly empty suit and a well-meaning but misguided half-full suit who could bore a wharf bollard to death.

We’re having one of those hold-your-nose-and-vote elections.  Vote anyway.  If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.  The next four years promise many things to complain about. 

Five-time Olympic medal winner, Marion Jones, did the Right thing yesterday.  She pleaded guilty to using performance enhancing drugs in her career as one of the fastest people on Earth.  Her press conference was hard to watch, quite moving actually, as she took responsibility for her actions.

Then there is Senator Larry Craig.  In a press conference earlier this week, he’s come out and said that he’s not resigning and will continue to serve the people Idaho, despite the controversy regarding disorderly conduct in a washroom in the Minneapolis airport.  Larry did the Wrong thing.

Right and Wrong are considered to be absolutes, but they truly are not.  Essentially, we are looking at situational ethics.  Depending on the context, certain actions may be wrong in one context, but right in another context.  Take for instance, lying, the telling of falsehoods.  We are taught from a very early age that we should always tell the truth. 

Did someone ask you today, "How are you?" Did your respond with "Fine, thanks and you?"  Unless your life is utterly fine, all the time, you are a liar. 

Using the judge of absolutes, you should have replied:  "I’m not too good.  My hips hurt, I’ve got an ingrown hair on my shoulderblade.  My kids are lazy, irresponsible bastards.  The boss is a thieving pig who works me like a pit pony. I want to run away to a small tropical island and stay drunk for six weeks while engaging in lewd behavior with a troupe of acrobats.  And I don’t eat enough fibre, so my arse is burning this morning.  Aside from that, Fine, thanks and you?"  Now, that would be telling the truth.  Society would grind to a halt, but it is the Truth (absolute version) 

Killing someone is Wrong, an agreed-upon absolute.  It would make the workday fraught if we could kill without social sanction.  Traffic jams would be a thing of the past, but then there would be gunplay in the local supermarket over the mangoes.  Schools would be battle zones, or, more correctly, more of a battle zone than they are today.  As for organized sports?  Being a spectator would mean being heavily armed, even at Junior Girl’s League Soccer games.

In a military context, killing someone who it trying to kill you, is Right.  Not just Right, but God-Approved, Right.  The Allies in WWII believed that God was on their side.  The German Heer featured a belt-buckle with the initials IHR (Im Himmel Reich) which loosely translates as "God is on the side of the Reich".  It would seem that God was playing the spread, but in either case, killing was accepted as Right, in that context of Global war.  

Which means that what is Right and Wrong are not absolutes. They’re like Pornography or Good Modern Art:  We know it when we see it.  This is not a satisfactory answer either.

I’m proposing an alternative:  Doing the Honourable Thing. 

Marion Jones did the Honourable Thing.  She apologized for lying.  She took responsibility for hurting and affecting a large number of people.  She asked for eventual forgiveness.  She admitted that she screwed up and did something dishonourable.

Larry Craig did the Dishonourable Thing.  He wedged the word "intend" into his resignation so he could have a self-serving escape hatch that he has now wriggled through, staying on as the Senator from Idaho.  Even his own party has said "Larry, go away" but Larry is going to stay.

Honour is a terribly intangible thing that isn’t readily communicated, taught, or performed.  A component of honourable is putting others ahead of yourself. 

If you see someone trying to carry five bags of groceries and wrangling two dogs at the same time, it would be honourable to help them.  Or letting someone go ahead of you in line when they only have a can of coffee to buy and you have enough to fill two shopping carts. 

On a larger scale, like our provincial election here in Ontario, saying that you believe in funding for all religious schools one day, then dumping that platform like a full diaper, when the public says "No damn way!" the next day, is dishonourable.  So is saying "No New Taxes" beforehand, then hosing the taxpayer a few months after the election, is also dishonourable.  

Had the Premier said:  "The Provincial Treasury is a mess.  We had no idea how bad when we promised no new taxes.  This sucks, but we have to put in a new tax, otherwise we’re out of money in six weeks.  I’m sorry to break my promise, but we’ve got no choice, except closing all hospitals and doctor’s offices for the whole summer.  This is what we’ve got to do." 

If Dalton McGuinty (the Premier at the time) actually said something as simple as A New Tax, or No Health Care, then the voters would be angry, but at least understanding.  Admitting you are wrong, then fixing it, is honourable.

Can we do honourable things?  Honourable is very personal.  Marion Jones, by many measures did several dishonourable things, but did one honorable thing that might well make up for all the others.

Larry Craig did several dishonourable things, and continues to wriggle, being dishonourable still.  The honourable thing would be to resign as he knows he has been dishonourable and makes no apologies for it.  He should at least suspend his membership in the Senate until his trial comes up and the appeal gets decided:  That would be somewhat honourable.

As for me: I try to do at least one honourable thing a day.  Somedays I succeed, other days I fail.  Yesterday I bought an Ovarian Cancer leaf, one of those $1 donation things that some stores do.  You write you name on it and they glue it up in the store window to show how many customers have donated. 

I wrote "For Those Who Can’t" on mine and handed it back to the cashier.  I got hit with a half-dozen tears that shot straight out of her eyes.  Which wasn’t what I was expecting.  

I didn’t write that to upset someone, or to grandstand.  Not everybody can afford the $1, or they’ve passed on and I’m doing it for them.  I don’t need to see my name in the window of a drug store on some cardboard leaf to feel like I’m a good person.   

Now, the question:  Was that honourable?  Technically, it made someone cry, which is not a positive reaction or emotion.  Donating $1 to Ovarian Cancer is a positive thing.  Signing it the way I did; I don’t know.  

Honour is something you keep inside, but is also judged very quickly by others.  I have no answer.

Rebranding is something that big businesses do when they’re caught with their fingers in something they shouldn’t be touching.  For example, Phillip Morris Inc.  You and I know it as makers of cigarettes.  Oh no!  It is a division of Altiris Inc. (which also owned Kraft Foods at one time) and has a piece of SABMiller, who makes beer.  Lots of Beer.  And cigarettes.  Which, if you think about it, is a natural pairing.  

The name, Altiris, doesn’t actually tell you this.  General Motors, you get an inkling of what the heck they do.  Altiris is a made up, pleasant combination, of vowels and consonants.

Countries also rebrand.  Yugoslavia was a rebranding of some or all of Serbia, Croatia, Slavonia, Vojvodina, Slovenia, Carniola, Dalmatia, Styria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina.  A couple of the areas were not much bigger than your living room and had a full monarchy.  Rebranding them made sense.

Ceylon rebranded in 1972.  You know it as Sri Lanka.  What used to be on the map as the Belgian Congo, changed its handle to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960

Then there is Burma.  Having achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1948 they have changed the business cards a few times:  Union of Burma, Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma, back to Union of Burma then in 1989 settled on Union of Myanmar.

Stuck in between Bangladesh, India, China, Tibet, Thailand and Laos, Burma has been a bit of everyone and everything at various times.  The one person you might know from Burma was a former Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant.

Politically, the joint has been a mess.  Democracy went out the window in 1962 when General Ne Win led a military coup d’etat and wobbled over in the direction of the Burmese Way to Socialism.  By 1988 the economy had gone into the porcelain facility and pro-democracy forces staged a bit of an uprising.  This got smacked down hard by General Saw Maung who formed another military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, declared martial law and managed to slaughter a few hundred pro-democracy protestors.

They rebranded as Myanmar in 1989.

By 1990, the government held free elections and, oddly enough, nobody wanted the military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), as their government.  They voted for the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who scored 392 out of 489 seats.  The SLORC, said "No effing way is that going to happen!" and annulled the election.

The SLORC, rebranded in 1997 as the State Peace and Development Council, (SPDC) hoped that nobody would notice, or count the bodies.  Now, as the SPDC, the current head of Burma is Senior General Than Shwe, who is Chairman of the SPDC. 

According Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the military junta has been doing what they always do:  Terrorize the population.  They use the classic tools:  Forced labour, human trafficking, child labour, systematic rapes by the military, taking women as sex slaves and the usual shoot anyone else who complains, then kill their families.

Burma is also known as being very insular.   Not because the people are insular; the military junta wants and is controlling everything in and out.  The Internet is very closely monitored (much like China) and looking at the ‘wrong’ pages or sites can get your ass beat by the police, if you’re lucky, or you simply disappear, if you’re unlucky. 

Foreign journalists invited in?  Only if they agree to be shot and killed on arrival then have their dismembered bodies buried in an unmarked shallow grave in the jungle.  Even FOXNews won’t go for that one, so there is a shortage of independent data on Burma.    

Today, the Daily Mail is reporting that there might be thousands of bodies of Buddhist monks that have been tossed in the jungle.  Military police have raided several monasteries and invited the monks to go for a truck ride that doesn’t end well for the monks.  Democracy protestors who were, with the monks, agitating for open elections, have also been taken for one-way rides.

According to the Daily Mail, a former Intelligence Officer with the military junta, who dropped tools and ran for the border with Thailand yesterday, several hundred monks and several thousand protestors have disappeared.  20,000 military troops have been called out to ‘prevent demonstrations’ and keep order. 

One report has several hundred monks kept in a sports stadium and  university dorm rooms, under lock and key.  Soldiers take them out for beatings, killings, then a bonfire.  Not a good bonfire.

Which brings us back to rebranding.  The name Myanmar is now tarnished as an insane military junta, where murder by the military is a day at the office.  Beating Buddhist monks until the rivers run red with blood and bodies, is considered just Another Manic Monday.  What name should Myanmar choose next? 

I’m taking my cue from the CSI television series.  As best I can tell, there is a CSI:Someplace for every major city in the US and probably spinoffs in Europe too. However, Baltimore has avoided the CSI: handle.  

I respectfully suggest that the military junta rename their savage little corner of southeast Asia, as Baltimore.  I’m not going to call it Myanmar.  Hell on Earth is more like it.