As IF Times

link Publishers dumbfounded by airplane book ban – The Globe and Mail

It was just a matter of time. Canadians have been peripheral to the knee jerk reaction to the undie bomber thus far, but now our geniuses at Transport Canada have apparently thrown their submission into the idiot contest. There is little point in adding to the deafening chorus of those pointing out the uselessness of this new measure to try keep us ‘safe’. They are many, they are right and we don’t need to parrot them. Keeping books and magazines off flights? As if.

This is baldfaced competitiveness by our government on the eve of the Olympics to show that we can be as inane as the U.S. when it comes to inflicting senseless policies. We can be proud that although our budgets are smaller than the Americans’, we too can come up with world class performances on the world’s stupid stage. But it’s really not a fair playing field. In the U.S., you have strong voices condemning and bringing to task those that try to inflict misguided policies on the public. They have a long tradition of personal freedom and thus are less inclined to acquiesce to government edicts as is the case in Canada.

In Canada, where the sheep complex is deeply ingrained from generations of leftist politics, it’s much easier to impose all manner of ill conceived edicts spawned from the minds of petty bureaucrats and misguided politicos. The reputation of Canadians’ respect for law and order makes us particularly vulnerable to the whims of anyone able to get into a position of authority. It’s like having a Tim Hortons next to a police station.

But I could be wrong and this recent travel edict may not just be one upmanship in the 1000 meter giant stupid, but a sincere belief on the part of the 4 person braintrust that is probably the quorum at Transport Canada that this measure will outsmart the human fuses. Someone should slip them a note that in practice anything brought on board a plane can be dangerous. I’d feel safer sitting next to a guy with a book than if he carried on 4 bean burritos which is apparently allowed. Even if we are compelled to board with nothing on but the radio, some bright Abdul can still have explosives hidden in his toupee.

The people who somehow wind up in charge of such things,(and it’s a minor mystery how they got into such positions) are behaving as you would expect, they are unimaginative, they make wrong decisions and they inflict policy on the pretext of doing something useful. The true mystery is why the public stands for it. Why isn’t there a clamor to demand to know who these people are and then make them take the consequences for their incompetence. Fire them. Oh that’s right, they’re bureaucrats, they can’t be fired. They can only be transmogrified into another department. I suggest we contract them out to Al Qaeda or whomever is in the terror racket. They have done more to inconvenience the public and endanger lives than any of the human fuses.

The public should demand more of the people we elect to office and of the people we allow to live, yes live, in the bureaucracy of the country. A handful of incompetents should not be allowed to inflict stupidity on the rest of us. Sadly, this is definitely not a majority opinion. In the comments section to the above article, you have evidence of a segment of the population that just doesn’t get it. Someone named Northat62 opines,

“…Targeting all young Muslim men as terrorists would certainly breed more young Muslim men that have been terrorized by irrational government actions into terrorist acts. Sorry, that just doesn’t work…”

As long as this mentality exists in the public, it will exist in our politicians and in our bureaucrats. Because of this mindset, we’re definitely in the final 3 for the stupid medal.

link Peru’s mountain people face fight for survival in a bitter winter | World news | The Observer

This is one of those articles that illustrates the propaganda that the left leaning media spins so well. This particular paper is notorious for their slant on today’s events. Unless you view these pieces with some healthy skepticism, you are subtly coerced to believe that it is industrialization that’s at the root of the problems facing these unfortunate people.

Full credit is given for the ambitious article since a number of evils are roped in to blame for the suffering of these rustic mountain people. This passage:

“…In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers…”

doesn’t even make any sense. The accepted strategy of the weather chicken littles is to assign every incidence of abnormal weather to anthropocentric warming…even if it’s extreme cooling. Again, we hear Orwell guffawing from his musty grave. Rational people will be exhausted at attempting to argue the logic of these people. In a different time, when one was accused of being a witch, they were either burned or thrown in the lake. If they survived, they were a witch, if not, then society was rid of a scourge. You would think we’ve moved a bit past that, but ample evidence shows otherwise. In any event, that was only the side point.

Another gem:

“…Climate change campaigners and development NGOs say that the failure of Copenhagen has signed the death warrant for hundreds of thousands of the world’s poorest and that a quarter of a million children will die before world leaders meet again to try to thrash out another deal at the United Nations next climate change conference in Mexico in December. Among them may be these children of the high mountains…”

Heck, a quarter of a million children will die anyway because of falling out of trees, falling over cliffs, eating bad shrimp, skateboarding without helmets, but more likely because of corrupt and inept governments and their ill conceived policies. The weather as a cause of minor mortality is probably down the list somewhere at 47.

Of course the real culprit are industrialists,

“… Last July, dozens of indigenous protesters were killed and scores injured when riots broke out in Bagua Grande in the Amazonas region over claims that the government was giving away land to oil and gas drilling…”

While I can’t comment on the veracity of this, I do know from a parallel life that if an economic resource can be developed in a lesser developed country, all manner of concessions and considerations are given to the local government as compensation for any displacement. In many cases, large infrastructure projects are created such as power or water supplies as well as transportation routes. It is in the best interests of the developer to have everyone happy. It is then up to the government to best decide how and where to use these resources. As we know, in many nations, even ours, some people are more equal than others so the distribution of resources is never fair.

What perplexes me about this piece is why these people are still living in this harsh, hostile area. The article states that winters are longer, disease is rife and conditions have worsened over the years to the risk of losing this population. Why doesn’t the local government use resources to move these people, create alternate means of making a living etc etc? Are they not allowing people to move from the mountains to more hospitable parts of Peru? Apparently the people here are ‘hardened to poverty’. Why should that be? If you lived in New Orleans and the water rose again, would you become hardened to the mud?

You can bet humans are at the root cause of this grief, but not via the weather.