The gift that keeps on giving

I had planned to update this more over the holidays, but I managed to catch a bad Christmas cold. Oh well, at least it's not avian flu or something.

Anyway, I thought I'd elaborate a bit on the "Merry Christmas" thing. In my post below I mentioned that I was annoyed by people calling Christmas winterfest and such. Don't confuse this with the sentiment with the people who say "Christmas is under attack". Of course it isn't. Saying "Happy Holidays" is not some secularist conspiracy to erase Christmas.

However, well intentioned people (who are probably Christian themselves) have gone overboard lately by trying to call this time of year "Winterfest" and renaming things like "Holiday" trees. In a sense, this is almost as bad as the right-wing "say Merry Christmas or else". It's an attempt to force non-Christians into celebrating a holiday they don't believe in by secularizing it. People either celebrate Christmas or they don't. Renaming things will not suddenly make people throw up a tree and wait for Santa if they didn't do it before.

A little sensitivity and common sense is in order. If you celebrate the holiday, then go ahead and party. Don't try to force your Muslim/Humanist/Hindu/Jewish/etc. neighbor to join in.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to one & all!

I'll probably won't be doing any updates until Thursay, when I'm off for Christmas vacation.

By the way, nothing annoys me more then people trying to call this season "winterfest" or some such. I know a large number of non-christians (and I probably wouldn't call myself christian), and quite frankly nobody's offended by the word "Christmas". You can't avoid offending everyone, so why go through these verbal gymnastics?

But that's a topic for another day...

The Terrorist Bogeyman

Here's a question for you: How many people have died in terrorist attacks in the past 4 years?

Give up? I did a little reasearch, and from 9/11/01 to August of this year I came up with the following number: 5500. No, that's not a typo, it's five-thousand-five hunderd. That's worldwide, and it includes the victims of the World Trade Centre. This figure only includes attacks by terrorist organizations like Al-Queda, ETA, etc. Civillian casulties due to military operations such as the Israeli Defence Force, Russian Army, etc. aren't counted.

To put things in perspective, in that bastion of gun violence and murder, Canada, 2400 people have been murdered by normal criminals over the past four years. In the U.S, 40 000 people have been murdered in the past four years. In South Africa, 66 000 people have been murdered in the past four years.

These crime rates are actually lower than they were 10 years ago in all three of the above countries. Given this little nugget of info, how many rights and freedoms are you willing to give up to stamp out murder?

This doesn't mean we should ignore terrorism. Far from it. However, we should take a more realistic approach to counter-terrorism besides assuming there is a terrorist hiding under every rock and around every corner.

9/11 couldn't have been prevented by the military. The only thing they could have done is shoot down the planes. Innocent people would still have died, Afghanistan still would have been invaded, and there'd still have been a congressional investigation about 9/11.

Simple procedures and policies, and maybe an observant airline employee are the only thing that could have prevented 9/11.

Unfair and Unbalanced

If you've been reading the news lately, you'll probably heading things like "The NY Times elitist liberal bias blah blah" or "Fox News is the mouthpeice of the GOP, blah blah blah".

Frankly, I think the scariest people are the ones who say "I get all my news from so-and-so". The truth is, there is no such thing as objective journalism. Every news organization is biased one way or the other. However, another truth is that people can't see their own bias. Everyone thinks the way they see the world is the correct way. I'm positive that people like Bill O'Reilly really think that they're being fair and centrist, and really don't understand how anyone can disagree with them.

I strongly encourage you to read several news sources. I especially recommend that you read ones that have an opposite bias to your own. If the way they're presenting the news makes you angry, then you've found a good source. Getting opposing views helps you understand the big picture, and also forces you to justify your own opinions. You can make huge mistakes when you only pay attention to information that reinforces your opinion, such as invading a country over non-existent weapons.

I regularly read the following news agencies, which would seem to make strange bedfellows:
Fox News
New York Post
New York Times
Washington Post
CBC (Canada)
Global (Canada)
Ha'aretz (English Version - Israel)
Al-Jazeera (English Version - Qatar)

Some of you might wonder "he reads Fox News and Al-Jazeera? What the hell is wrong with him?" For my answer, I say consider this: At an intersection, there is a person on each corner. Two cars collide in the middle of the intersection. If you are the police offficer investigating the accident, would you only ask one of the people what happened? No, you'd ask all four of them. All four people will agree that two cars collided, but because each one only saw one angle, you'd get four different versions of what happened and who's to blame. It's up to you to reconcile all four accounts and piece together what really happened.

Suggested Reading

I never really paid attention the the blogging world, until I started reading this blog: We Move to Canada. It all started out as an innocent search after reading an article in the news about disenfranchised Americans moving north to friendlier territory.I started reading Laura's blog regularly, and after she suggested I get my own account (so that I didn't have to keep posting comments as "anonymous"), I decided "heck, why not blog my own opinons too" and so here I am.

Oh, and I should mention this truly wonderful book (that I haven't read, but I'll have to rush over to Chapters and buy it over the holidays).

Note to self: I've edited this post twice already. I really should read my own writing to catch mistakes.

What this blog is about

What is this blog about, you ask?

Well, it's my voyage of self-discovery into the realm of politics. I've had an interest in politics for a while, but none of the "standard" labels really fit my views. After taking the Political Compass test, I decided that my politics might be described as "progressive libertarian".

My position on the compass varies slightly each time I take the test, but basically I score slightly to the left and significantly towards the bottom of the graph.

"Pure libertarians" like the Libertarian Party of Ontario would probably fall in the right-hand bottom corner of the same test. I don't fall into this group.

"Moderate libertarians" tend to fall somewhat right of center. This doesn't quite describe me, but its closer.

The bottom left corner would be occupied by true communists, in my opinion. I mean true, Karl Marx type communism where everyone works for society willingly, not the Stalinist-Leninst communism that was implemented in the Soviet Empire. That kind of "communism" would fall in the upper left hand corner. But either way, that's far to the left (and too idealistic) to suit my views.