Why I shouldn't read the National Post

I'm trying to decide what's most wrong with this National Post column.

Is it the complete failure to understand the Canadian political system? The Tories may have "increased their majority" last week, but they did so with only 38% of the popular vote, which kind of undermines the argument here.

Or is it the utterly unexamined assumption that Canadian Conservatives, Nicholas Sarkozy, and the American Republicans all occupy a similar place on the political spectrum? (For the record, Canada's "right wing" is nowhere near as far right as the American Republican party, no matter how much we like to call Harper "Bush lite".)

Or might it be the rather peculiar claim that people (not pundits, mind you -- people asked in opinion polls) base their opinions on foreign politicians entirely on those politicians' foreign policy?

We snark; you decide.

Complicit in Evil

I'm so angry that I can hardly write a coherent sentence. In the name of public safety, Canada will no longer seek clemency for its citizens who are sentenced to death.

This is appalling. Canada has outlawed the death penalty, and rightly so. Killing a human being is barbaric, no matter what they may have done. Ronald Smith is no threat to anyone's public safety when he's sitting in a jail cell -- hell, I'm not even saying we should be bringing him back to a Canadian jail cell. But taking steps to prevent his execution is something Canada must try to do if it is to maintain any moral high ground where capital punishment is concerned.

I hate that this is now my country's position. It makes me complicit in the deaths of Canadian citizens. I am so angry that political considerations have left this government in power long enough to make this policy change.

Yes, Tories in the House, Ronald Smith is a murderer. I'm not denying that. But if we allow him to die without trying to prevent it, we too are murderers.

This is not just a political decision to help us suck up to the Americans. This is a moral decision, and it is breaking my heart, and it is breaking the moral fibre of my country. How proud can I be to be a Canadian when we are willing to stand by and let our citizens die, contingent only on a politcal evaluation of a country's "rule of law"?

More blogging on this

Building a better bomb

So it seems Russia's got "the dad of all bombs" ('cause it's way, way bigger and more impressive than the American "mother of all bombs", and let's not even go there, okay?).

Didn't we (you know, the human race) establish that arms races are a bad thing? And isn't the cold war over? Why are Russia and the 'States still in this endless competition about who can kill the other more?

Oh sure, there's that hilarious insistence that

the new bomb would allow the military to "protect the nation's security and confront international terrorism in any situation and any region."

Whatever. Terrorism isn't a country. It isn't a big huge target that you can just blow up. Terrorism is not something that can be defeated by ever-bigger bombs or ever-fewer personal liberties. Or at least it wasn't until "terrorism" became a catchword for "something scary that we use to justify military and police spending".

My favourite bit in the article, though, is this:

Unlike a nuclear weapon, the bomb doesn't hurt the environment, he added.

There just aren't enough sarcastic comments in the world to respond to that one.