'Lynch Mob'

Peace flotilla member (in the orange life jacket) viciously 'lynching' an Israeli paratrooper... or possibly providing him with medical care...

Quote of the Day

Yesterday's fiasco could and should have been prevented. This flotilla should have been allowed to pass and the blockade should be brought to an end.

This should have happened a long time ago. In four years Hamas has not weakened and Gilad Shalit was not released. There was not even a sign of a gain.

And what have we instead? A country that is quickly becoming completely isolated. This is a place that turns away intellectuals, shoots peace activists, cuts off Gaza and now finds itself in an international blockade. Once more yesterday it seemed, and not for the first time, that Israel is increasingly breaking away from the mother ship, and losing touch with the world - which does not accept its actions and does not understand its motives. - Gideon Levy in Haaretz

"...a plot essentially by the US, France and Canada..."

The line of those responsible for Haiti's wretched state even before this new disaster is a long and dishonorable one.

And more than a few observers put Canada in that shameful list.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And can you explain why are there UN peacekeepers deployed on the ground? Explain for people. We had the ouster of the democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Where does it stand politically right now in Haiti?

KIM IVES: Well, the UN occupation is extremely unpopular. This was sent in after Aristide was removed by a plot essentially by the US, France and Canada on February 29, 2004. US, France and Canada sent in occupation troops, which remained there for three months. And then they handed off the mission to the UN, as they’ve done in the past—in 1995, in particular—to the UN to carry out. That’s mainly done by the Brazilians, are heading that. But it’s extremely unwelcome. People are sick and tired of the millions being spent, having guys riding around in giant tanks pointing guns at them. And, you know, essentially, this is a force to keep the country bottled up. And I don’t know what’s going to happen now, because the dogs of madness have really—are going to be unleashed by this catastrophe.

UPDATE: Rabble on the international community's responsibility for Haitian suffering.

Sarah Palin: Planned Parenthood's Sugar Momma

Heh. I like this a lot.

Planned Parenthood is suddenly a lot richer because of Sarah Palin. And the Republican vice presidential nominee will soon be receiving tens of thousands of thank-you notes.
A three-week-old Internet campaign is asking abortion-rights activists to send donations to Planned Parenthood in honor of the Alaska governor.[..]
One e-mail making the rounds on the Internet says: “Instead of (actually, in addition to) all of us all sending more e-mails about how absolutely horrible she is, let’s all make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin’s name.”
Katie Groke Ellis, field manager for the Planned Parenthood of the Rockies Action Fund, predicts that the five-state chapter of the group alone could draw $100,000 in donations.[..]
Planned Parenthood sends a handwritten thank-you card to the donor. If a donation is made in someone’s name, he or she gets one, too.
In this case, the Palin cards will go to Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s national headquarters.

The false economy of callousness

BC's 'liberal' government of Gordon Campbell pushed over 100,000 people off of welfare. Over 6000 died. Many more became homeless. Now it turns out that a homeless person costs taxpayers almost 8 times as much as someone on welfare due to increased emergency supports, health care, policing and emergency housing.

Local and provincial taxpayers are now paying an estimated $644 million a year on emergency services for the province's 11,700 homeless people who are both severely addicted and mentally ill, according to an exhaustive study by SFU's Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction.
Put bluntly: Welfare pays $7,320 per person per year. Homelessness costs an estimated $55,000 per person per year.
"It's definitely a false economy," Klein said. But because that cost is spread between various ministries and shared among dozens of local municipalities, it's effectively hidden in plain sight.

Slashing welfare may give the uncaring among us a mean-spirited little frisson of satisfaction that they aren't being 'forced' to contribute as much to the social contract, but in fact all it does is eat up even more taxpayer dollars than would have been spent keeping the same numbers on the welfare rolls.

Quote of the Day

From John Cole at Balloon Juice to his Canadian readers:

We have six more months of Bush, and at this rate, what we need most from our allies are a stable currency and the willingness to send in the RCMP to help stop the food riots. Thanks in advance.

Scary thing is, I think he's only half joking...

'Our charity means we own you.'

Digby has an excellent post about one of the lessons of the Graeme Frost hideousness: the right wingers really do believe that if you take any government money you have forfeited the right to privacy.

Digby goes on to connect the dots to why public support was brought in to supplant private charity in the first place:

Charity robs the recipient of the dignity and personal liberty to which all people have a claim, rich, poor or in the middle. Using government to act as the safety net instead of the good will (or good mood) of those of means allows that. Citizen pays in, and someday, god forbid, if he needs some help, he won't have to kiss the ass of some rich busybody or self-righteous hypocrite who thinks he or she has a right to dictate his behavior on the basis of a couple of bucks.

Krugman chimes in that Digby is more right than she knows, there was an explicit movement among 'charitable' organizations in the 19th century to use charity for social control:

The Bush administration has proved adept at what the British call “dog-whistle politics,” the art of sending out messages that only the intended audience can hear. A classic example is Bush’s description of himself as a “compassionate conservative,” which most people heard as a declaration that he wasn’t going to rip up the safety net. It was actually a reference to the work of Marvin Olasky, a Christian right author whose 1995 book The Tragedy of American Compassion held up the welfare system of 19th century America, in which faith-based private groups dispensed aid and religion together, as a model - and approvingly quoted Gilded Age authors who condemned “those mild, well-meaning, tender-hearted criminals who insist upon indulging in indiscriminate charity.”

The thousand points of light Bush Sr wanted to replace the public sector with are glinting off the shiny probing noses of the reactionary busybodies who want to dictate how their aid can be spent. When the right wingers decry the oppressive control of social welfare programs, the Stalinist totalitarian diktat of government health care or any kind of public safety net program, they are really revealing their own mindset. It's what they would do, so they assume it's the inevitable nature of any kind of government support.

I recently received an email from a family member - one of those 'forward this along the internets' samizdat things that can be jokes or rants or pleas to find missing children. This one was the modest proposal righteously demanded by a 'hard working oil rigger' that anyone on welfare should be forced to undergo urine checks in order to receive the checks 'I'm helping pay for.'

I'm sorry to say I flew into a fury, responded with a long, bitingly sarcastic response, suggesting that 'yeah, the poor should have to wear tracking anklets and have video cameras in their bathrooms too' and have been in the doghouse with that branch of the family ever since.

Bob Geldof: Stephen Harper is blocking Africa Aid

Apparently our aid pledges are now just as vague, long term and open to interpretation as our climate promises. Rocker and African aid campaigner Bob Geldof accuses Canada of stinting on aid dollars and blocking an international funding commitment.

Geldof said Canada's aid contribution of $160 million falls far short of the $623 million it needs to contribute this year in order to fulfill that pledge.

He also said Harper promised in January 2006 that Canada would maintain the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average for international aid -- which is 0.46 per cent of gross national income.

"The OECD is the overarching body that everyone agrees should monitor their economies, all the governments agree on that. Point in fact, Canada is way behind the OECD average which is 0.46. Canada is about 0.3," said Geldof.

"So you have one of the richest nations on the planet deliberately breaking their word and thereby killing the poorest."

Harper said the allegations are "false." Without elaborating, he said Canada is on the right track to honour a pledge to double aid to Africa by 2010.

I still remember watching Geldof on TV around the time he was knighted, when he happened to run into then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at a public awards meeting.

With reporters clustered around them and cameras whirring, Geldof grilled Thatcher on why the UK government was dumping tons of butter into the sea in a market support scheme while people were starving in Africa. Thatcher responded snippily while searching for an exit 'They can hardly eat butter Mr Geldof.' In fact as Sir Bob quickly pointed out, people can survive on butter oil alone for quite a long time when there's nothing else to live on.

Thatcher shot him a look of pure hatred, mumbled that it wasn't that simple and dashed for an exit.