eye for an eye - the hanging of saddam hussein

I am disgusted today. Today is tomorrow in Iraq, and even as I write this, they are either fitting a hempen cravat around Saddam Hussein's neck, or they have already hung him.

There is no debate that Hussein was a very bad man, like so many brutal dictators supported by countries like the US and Britain. There is little point in rehashing the history of Iraq either. It is a convoluted lie - like so many histories popular.

The point is (for me) that there were irregularities to his trial. The government of Iraq, and it's institutions, have been set in place by the American gov't - just as in Afghanistan. There are other crimes that Hussein was charged with, that he won't be tried for. The inconvenient truths will not be revealed.

The crime that he is being hung for at this moment occurred in the early 1980's after an assassination attempt. The French, and the Americans, carried on a relationship with him until he ruffled feathers by drilling at an angle into Kuwait's oil reserves - with technology, and tacit approval afforded by the Americans. Then came Gulf War I. Then came sanctions and no-fly zones. Then came 9.11, and the perfect smokescreen to invade Iraq on false pretexts. And now the little shrub from Texas is probably sitting with eyes glued to some satellite feed so that he can watch Saddam struggle and kick at the end of a rope. What a pair of pricks they both are.

The British, Americans, Russians, Israelis, etc., assassinate people all the time, and when people stand up against it, they unleash incredible military might - killing women, children, men young and old - by the tens and hundreds of thousands, but it's in the name of democracy, so it's ok.

Finally, I just do not agree with capital punishment. I can understand revenge killing in the heat of battle. I can understand killing to protect oneself, or someone innocent in danger, but capital punishment is done clinically, and in cold blood. To me, that is a crime.

I heard an Iraqi man on the radio today who told of his father being one of those killed by Hussein. He did not want Hussein to be executed. He did not believe that it was right, and further, believed that it will inflame the mayhem in Iraq ten-fold. There are crazy mulef*ckers running things that want Armageddon. They are going to get it - and so are we. Hussein is not afraid to die, but he asked to be executed by a firing squad, instead, they want to hang him like a rat - for the spectacle.

It's a terrible day today (tomorrow in Iraq). Nothing unusual about that.

EDIT -

For those of you fascinated with snuff films, who have been hunting for the video of Saddam being executed, here is a link. It does not show him kicking at the end of his rope, but shows him dropping from sight. I did not really care to see it, or not, but did want to provide the link.

I do have to say that he showed a lot of courage for someone moments away from his end, but did look a little like he was going to cry.

Interesting comment from Scotsman.com - TV plans tasteful coverage of Saddam execution. How the hell does one have tasteful coverage of an execution?

I still maintain that it was wrong to kill him. It was not justice, but vengeance.

third world class

This was originally published at my other blog, but I thought that I'd post it here for those of you who don't make it over there. That, and the thing about me liking to post every day, and I haven't been doing so. I'm busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest...


Welcome to Vancouver! Home of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games (well, unless the snow doesn't show up in sufficient quantities).

Vancouver is a world class city! It fits in comfortably with Mexico City (though we don't have the weather that they have, and they had the Olympics 38 long years ago), Tegucigalpa (though their water is more potable), and Addis Abbaba (though their mountains are not as spectacularly snow-peaked), and Los Angeles (though they only had the piddlin' Summer Olympics, and their cops are tougher).

Yesterday there were 2 million people in the Lower Mainland who were warned to boil their water. Today, that number was halved to merely 1 million people. One million pregnant women, children, elderly, and the heavily mortgaged. The news spread far and wide very quickly. Last night I had three calls from other parts of Canada - concerned for our well-being. I also had an e-mail from the US with the same concerns. I didn't even know of the advisory before receiving these calls.

Hotels in Vancouver were quick to spread the advisory to all hotel rooms, and offered bottled water to their guests. Coffee shops and restaurants were hit where it hurts as they had to refuse their clients anything involving tap water. There were a lot of cranky, caffeine-deficient people in Vancouver the last couple of days.

I can just imagine visitors filling up their bathtubs with the murk that is on tap, and thinking that they might be better off to smell bad for their flights out of town. And what if any of them become sick with Giardia (classically known as Beaver Fever. How very Canadian...), Cryptosporidium, or such. And what if they sent their nice white shirts to the hotel laundry, and they came back looking as if someone had pissed all over them?

I was not personally affected - we have been drinking spring water for years, and have a good supply of 18 litre bottles stocked (because of the chlorine, we avoid tap water for drinking. At least there is no fluoride added.). I have also had amoebic dysentery, and Giardia, and have a pretty tough intestinal tract, but I had those infections in the Third World - where it can be expected. But Vancouver? That's some bad press man.

Third World Class. The city where people live on the streets. Where you can't even brush your flipping teeth unless you use bottled water (good luck finding any). The city where the middle class can't afford to buy the crappiest house.

Are we over ourselves yet?

clean air?

Great - the Conservatives have come up with a clean air act that will reduce emissions to "45%-65%" of 2003 levels by 2050. Never mind that the earth is melting, that cancer is more and more prevalent - as is asthma, COPD (Coronary Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), plants are choking and going chlorotic, etc., etc.

It is telling that Rona Ambrose is the daughter of an oil executive. We now have the same problem with our government as the Americans do with theirs (vis-a-vis the environment), in that the fox is in charge of the hen house. The Conservatives have also said that the economy is more important than the air we breathe. The proposed regulations will not be enforced if they "hurt the economy".

Rona Ambrose is a piece of work. She is scary. Where the hell did they pull her from? The Sydney Tar Ponds link? She is just making crap up. Example:

OTTAWA -- Environment Minister Rona Ambrose is under fire for statements to a committee that appear to have been inaccurate.

Sun Media has learned that costing figures cited by Ambrose during testimony to the environment and sustainable-development committee don't match estimates offered by the purported source.

Ambrose told the committee last week that electricity costs would rise 65% in Ontario and 40% in British Columbia if Canada tried to meet its Kyoto protocol commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 6%.

When asked where the numbers came from, officials in Ambrose's office said they were extrapolated from a study by M.K. Jaccard and Associates in Vancouver.


The company's general manager Chris Bataille said Ambrose's projections for the electricity figures don't match the company's analysis.

"Looking at our latest calculations, they should be more like 26% for B.C. and 32% for Ontario," Bataille wrote in an e-mail. Minister's Kyoto figures questioned -Toronto Sun

She (Ambrose) trotted out some pie-in-the-sky ideas such as Transit Pass Tax Credit - which, it was claimed, would take 56,000 cars off the road every day. That is assuming that people will get out of their cars, and use the woefully inadequate (in Vancouver, anyhow) public transit systems. The tax credit will only really benefit those who already use public transit.

“Just based on the ridership that we have today in Canada, the transit pass tax credit alone is the equivalent of taking 56,000 cars off the road, every day,” Ambrose said. “That’s a lot of greenhouse gases.”

Michael Roschlau, president and chief executive of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, said he was mystified as to where Ambrose was getting her numbers.

“I’m not familiar with those figures,” Roschlau said. “They certainly didn’t come from us. We have no way of measuring that at this point.”link

The Conservatives have put forward the idea of a 15% tax credit on a monthly transit pass costing $80 ($12/month). For the projected 56,000 drivers leaving their cars for public transit, that adds up to $672,000/month, or $8,064,000 per year. If every household in Canada changed just one 60w incandescent light bulb for a 20w compact fluorescent bulb, it would save the equivalent of 64,000 cars off the road.

I think that it would be more effective to subsidize the lightbulbs.