What Should Be Done About Gaza?

Time to stop moralizing, recognize facts and look for practical solutions:

1. The Jews are by far the stronger group, and they are not leaving.

2. The Two-State Solution has failed, especially in Gaza.

3. Ethnic cleansing is the only way to bring lasting peace to the region.

Resettlement for the Gazans would be infinitely preferable to their prospects during the next generation trying to survive in the ruins: it was bad before and it will be worse now. For the moment, most countries don't want Palestinian migrants, and if they admit them they are kept in festering refugee camps, rather than being assimilated as citizens.

This can be fixed with money and diplomacy. For example Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Western Sahara, Arabic countries with plenty of space, could be offered billions of dollars to accept Gazan refugees, who would be provided with resettlement grants and living allowances for the first 25 years. Lavish amounts of cash, as well as American diplomatic suasion, would get Gaza's 2.3 millions established in places that would be better for them and for everybody else.

Where would all that money come from?

1. Military savings - Billions would not need to be spent on defense. The latest slice of US aid to Israel is about $17billion, which is more than $7,000 per Gazan. Over the years, the US has given Israel over $300 billion.

2 Real estate - Gaza would be worth trillions. Its redevelopment could create a fund to provide an ongoing pension for all the displaced Gazans, whose biggest problem might be coping with the envy of the citizens of their host countries.

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Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

                Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Had a very shiny nose

And ‘cause he was so handsome

He fucked all the reindeer does.

All of the other buck reindeer

Were frustrated as could be

So Santa’s Elves would wank them

Out behind the Christmas Tree.

Last year this caused a scandal

Because so many girls and boys

Opened presents on Christmas morning

And found Reindeer Cum on their toys!

A team of horny buck reindeer

Is a danger when they run at large

They sodomized poor old Sam McGee

On the marge of Lake Lebarge! *

A Christmas Eve photographer

Is fortunate to have the rights

To an image of Prancer screwing Vixen

Silhouetted by the Northern Lights.

*Apologies to Robert Service, “The Cremation of Sam McGee”

“Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, that’s the first time I’ve been …”

Police Funeral, for a Cop who was killed 102 years ago

I see that Constable Charles Painter, a Vancouver policeman who died in the line of duty 102 years ago, has been honoured with a special police funeral, a new headstone in Mountain View Cemetery, and a ceremony attended by many uniformed police. This obviously has cost thousands of dollars - all those policemen must have been paid for at least half a shift, because I doubt they attended on their own time. 

As a citizen, transit rider, and taxpayer, I would like to know what this affair cost, and to hear TransLink's explanation of why I should have to pay for it. I worked for 30 years on the docks of Metro Vancouver, during which several of my colleagues were killed on the job, and nobody except our union paid for their modest funeral expenses. Longshoremen, loggers, fishermen, and taxi drivers all do more dangerous work than police, and when we are killed on duty we don't get public funerals attended by our fellow workers on full pay. Especially, we don't have funerals provided at public expense for those killed 100 years ago. 

The Stanford Rape Case

If you don't read Facebook, you will not see what I wrote about this. I am incensed that there is a double standard for sexual responsibility while drunk:

Something in the news caught my eye lately, the case of the Stanford student convicted of rape and sentenced to 6 months in prison. 

<http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/stanford-sexual-assault-case-brock-turner-sentence-judge-1.3620631> 

Suppose a man and a woman each get drunk, they get into their separate cars and have a collision.  They are both charged with drunken driving, and maybe a few other things. In the Stanford case. the man and the woman get drunk together. She is so drunk she may have passed out, and he is so drunk he seems to have lost any good sense he had while sober. He then acts in a way that gets him "convicted of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated victim and two charges of digitally penetrating an unconscious and intoxicated victim." I am not sure how his intentions could be determined, since he, too, was drunk. As for "two charges of digitally penetrating…", did they charge him separately for each finger? 

Anyhow, he gets 6 months in jail, plus registering for the rest of his life as a sex offender. That is 6 months more than he would have gotten if I had sat on the jury. They both did something drunken and stupid, and nothing at all should have come of it. The so-called victim wouldn't have even remembered, except that 2 Swedish grad students decided to intervene and destroy Brock Turner's life. The drunken woman, who was not even charged with public intoxication, and whose name is shielded from publication, had the guts to make "an emotional statement read in court… describing how the attack has left her emotionally scarred." "Left her emotionally scarred" - a so-called attack that she was so drunk she does not even remember!   

You would think that this unfortunate kid has been punished enough for something millions of us have done. If they imprisoned everybody who has had sex while drunk, they would have to round up millions of men and women. But, no, a whole lot of people are trying to get the judge fired for being too lenient.

Think about it: Have you ever had sex while drunk? I certainly have. And I don't think I deserve to go to jail and be prohibited from living anywhere near a school, park, swimming pool, daycare, or library for the rest of my life.

Brock Turner plans to appeal his sentence. He might as well. A sex offender designation will destroy his life, so he can't do any worse, and next time he might draw a juror like me and get acquitted!

Tobacco and Indians

Of all the perverse incentives Canada gives Indians, allowing them tax free tobacco is at the top of the list. Tobacco addiction is very prevalent among Indians, and damage from second hand smoke is increased because of crowded housing. We need some studies to show how much of the lessened life expectancy for native Americans is caused by tobacco addiction.
Tax exempt tobacco leads to organized crime on Indian reserves, especially in Ontario and Quebec, where reserves extend across the international boundary.
This benefit needs to be replaced by a cash allowance equivalent to the tax paid on cigarette consumption by the average smoker. Then Indians can decide if they want to damage their bodies with nicotine, or spend the money on something healthier.

Waterboarding Your Cat

Water boarding has been in the news lately, but it has been well known to the American Army ever since the Spanish American War of 1898 left the USA ruling a lot of truculent people in the Philippines. Simulated drowning, called the "water cure", was used to force potential terrorists to give up information. It continues to be used today, for ostensibly the same purpose. The justification for using water boarding was that it was a means to an end which justified the practice.

It is for those same reasons that I advocate water boarding domestic cats for the purpose of administering pills. The cat in the picture has been medicated several times with the water board technique (AKA the Gestapo Method), and this has enabled him to recover from fights with large rats which infest our neighborhood. The procedure is as follows:

1. Position pill and dish of water with spoon on table beside chair.

2 . Sit down on chair with cat wrapped in towel.

3. Hold cat upside down in lap and force jaws open with fingers of left hand.

4. Drop pill in back of throat and follow with a spoonful of water, while holding cat in position upside down with jaws forced open. Cat must swallow or drown.

5. Take advantage of the moment to interrogate kitty about any feline crimes or plots that have not been uncovered.

6. Hold the cat and pet it for a while after administering the pill. NEVER let the cat think that it escaped from you and somehow won!

Cowboys in Uniform

Early in the morning of Wed, 12 Jan, in Toronto, a deranged and barefoot man named Kachkar hijacked a pickup truck with a snow plow blade on the front of it. He drove up and down, deliberately damaging vehicles, until a Toronto policeman named Russell placed himself in front of the truck and fired 3 shots at the driver. Why did Sgt Russell put himself, on foot, in front of a snow plow truck being driven by somebody who was obviously out of control? He could have rammed it with his police cruiser; it was only a pickup truck. Backup cars could soon have boxed it in. He could have shot out the tires.

But Russell didn't do any of those things, and I think I know the reason: Sgt Russell was angry and he decided to kill Mr Kachkar. By shooting from in front of the truck, he could claim he was being attacked by a man with a deadly weapon. He got that right! The part that didn't work out was he missed, 3 times, slipped on the snow and got squashed. A bit later, other police boxed the plow truck in so it couldn't move or hurt anyone else. And then they shot Mr Kachkar, apparently purely for revenge, and he is fighting for his life in the hospital. If he survives, our legal system is going to try to lock him up for the next 25 years at a cost to taxpayers of over $100,000 a year.

The entire problem might have been prevented by better mental health services. If not, the rampage could have been limited to property damage, except for the bloodthirsty approach of trigger happy cowboys in uniform.