CBC The WaBenzi's Best Friend

Just saw a segment on the CBC National newshow on the upcoming Live 8 concerts. Heavy emphasis on stirring up liberal guilt using interviews with members of the NGO's that are looking to stuff their bank accounts with money from the Canadian taxpayers. No mention from them of the WaBenzi. Only in a brief clip from a Tony Blair speech did the concept of good governance come up. From the CBC commentator and the NGO's? It's nothing to see here, move along please, just drop your cash off at the door, thanks.

Good governance is the 500 pound gorilla in the room which the CBC and NGO's studiously ignore. But not addressing that particular gorilla means all the money they manage to guilt trip out of the taxpayers just will end up financing the lifestyles of the WaBenzi. All and all, another typical substandard, one sided CBC news segment. I imagine the WaBenzi are already leafing through the latest '06 catalogs from Stuggart and Munich just waiting for the cash to roll in.

The Wa Benzi

Damian Penny posted a link to this story in the Spectator (Registration Required) which ties in with my earlier post. Money quotes from the author Aidan Hartley.

" '‘Get off the corruption thing,'’ says Bob Geldof. The point is that nobody has got on to it properly yet. Aid-giving nations pretend to be tough on corruption, while African leaders pretend to change. Aid bureaucrats care less about financial probity than the press releases claiming that an economy is on a positive reform track. They are not helping Africa'’s young entrepreneurs. By throwing fiscal discipline to the wind and shovelling aid at Africa, the international bureaucrats will fuel a new renaissance in corruption.

Meanwhile, NGOs refuse to focus on corruption because it'’s simply not a priority for them. They blame corruption on Western multinationals. Charities are ideological museums stuffed with socialists and anti-globalisation activists. They loathe private enterprise. I sometimes wonder if they would prefer to see Africans stay poor so that aid workers could carry on doing good works for them.

Western pundits say the WaBenzi still exist because African culture is inherently sick, that black Africans can'’t help but admire the Big Men. This does ordinary Africans an injustice. The West needs to help them get better leaders before it increases aid. Make the WaBenzi declare their wealth to their electorates and donors. Name and shame those who drive expensive cars while their people starve. Encourage policies that will create wealth so that the only Africans buying Mercedes-Benzes are honest men and women. Unless this happens Africa'’s new aid package will not alleviate poverty, disease and ignorance. What it will definitely mean is more flashy limousines."

"Today, though, there is one man who is doing more than the Lord himself to buy a Mercedes-Benz for the leading creeps of the world. That man is of course Bob Geldof, the spur to our global conscience. Africa'’s leaders cannot wait for the G8 leaders,— hectored by Bob and Live 8 into bracelet-wearing submission, to double aid and forgive the continent'’s debts. They know that such acts of generosity will finance their future purchases of very swish, customised Mercedes-Benz cars, while 315 million poor Africans stay without shoes and Western taxpayers get by with Hondas. This is the way it goes with the WaBenzi, a Swahili term for the Big Men of Africa."

It will be interesting to see what happens at the G8 summit because Bob Geldof's African circus sideshow taking up so much press space no one is bringing up the fact that the anti-globalisation crowd is also coming and they will be looking for trouble.

Global Warming Comment

Do I think the world is getting warmer? Yes. Do I believe it is caused by mankind? No. I know from history that the world was warmer in the past. Greenland is so named because when the Vikings arrived they found the southern fiords lush with vegetation. Now in Der Speigel is a story that the shrinking glaciers occuring now in the Alps is a natural event that also happened back in the Roman's time. Which probably helped Hannibal cross the Alps.

So to me the global warming proponets have not made their case yet that we are not seeing anything other than our planet entering a phase of it's climate that is perfectly natural. Now I am not dogmatic enough to think we may not be aggravating this trend and make it a little warmer than in the past. And I know the weather is not a Newtonian system but a chaotic system so we may change the shape of the strange attractor of our climate to our detriment. But overall I am not convinced yet. So needless to say I am not onside with the Kyoto Protocol.

To me a good rule of thumb is when you are looking at large scale systems such as our planet it is always best to first look toward the organ grinder not the monkey. We may be the smartest monkey on the planet but at the end of the day we still are just a monkey. Mother Nature is the organ grinder and calls the tunes. Of course some people are not smart enough to see that. Take one Charles Secrett who says in the Independent that,

"...we are killing the planet. That is not an exaggeration, but a scientific fact."

No Charles, that is not a scientific fact only your opinion, which I think owes more to environmental dogma than facts. We humans are incapable of killing the planet. We could possibly bring about our own extinction if we really, really tried. But the planet will survive what ever we do and life will survive as well. More powerful forces than us puny monkeys have done worse to our planet.

So this is another rule of thumb. When you hear someone saying we are destroying the planet or in this case killing the planet you are listening to someone who is scientifically illiterate. The planet will be destroyed, only not by us but by Mother Nature, when the sun enters it's next phase in it's stellar evolution.

Charles Secrett is the environmental advisor to Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, who came out with this gem. At least we now know where it came from. You don't know whether to laugh or cry when you see someone like this in a position as an advisor.

The Live 8 Concert

I have to say this is a joke. Seems like some African's aren't impressed by this latest circus, a well intentioned circus to be sure, but to me it looks to be designed to make first world liberals feel good about themselves. I can see the Boomer's kids wearing T-Shirts with "My Parents Went to Barrie to End African Poverty and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt".

In 1985 Bob Geldof pulled of a similar spectacle called Live Aid with over $141,000,000 being raised to help alleviate the famine in Ethiopia. Looks like the it didn't last. But Sir Bob isn't giving up. He wants to forgive the debt of African countries and then double the aid to them. Great idea Bob!

Without the end of corruption and the installation of good governance in those African countries the only winners from Sir Bob's latest circus will be the Wabenzi. A good take on this over at Samizidata.

UWO's Blunder

It is telling that UWO is the only institution to ever honour Henry Morgentaler. I never thought I would agree with Bill Clinton but words back in 1996 on abortion is right when he said it should be safe, legal and rare. We have got the first two parts down but we need a lot of work to achieve the last part.

There is nothing honourable in abortion. With the state of medical science today when a women finds out she is pregnant the odds are she can carry to term and deliver a healthy baby. Even a woman living on the streets with a solvent sniffing abuse problem can deliver a baby. I dismiss the twisted logic the pro-choice side has to go through. There is no way around the fact that abortion is the killing of a human being. A potential human being to be sure. But as I said, the odds are that potential would be achieved if allowed to carry on normally.

Robin Manton in a letter in the June 15th London Free Press has some very good points. He/she is responding to a previous letter writer who defends Morgentaler by referring to a friend who had a back alley abortion in the '60's by pointing out it is 2005 and now the stigma of single parenthood is gone, sex ed is taught in public school, condoms are available in high schools, we have day care centers for unwed teens and desperate parents looking for babies to adopt. So having an abortion is really a sign today more of irresponsibility.

I felt I was in a time warp watching the feminist dinosaurs defending Morgentaler with their clotheshanger buttons and stale rhetoric. Yes they achieved the right of a woman to have an abortion. I agree it is her body and her decision. What does not change and will not change is that decision stops a human life from being born.

Karla Homolka Should Be Charged

The 5th Estate re-broadcast a show on Karla Homolka originally done several years ago which certainly raises the blood pressure. Watching again the two smarmy gits involved in cutting Karla her deal still defending it lowers my respect for our legal system. And again seeing that chemical burn on the side of Tammy Holmolka face certainly shows how incompetent the coroner was. If he hadn't sweep her death under the rug, Karla and Paul Bernardo would have been charged, and Kristen French and Leslie Maffey would not have been murdered. All in all a thoroughly disgusting episode in our history.

London's Made The Bigtime

No, not the Knights winning the Memorial Cup, but London has a story on Fark. It's a dumbass story of course. But reading the comment thread I found out that London has Farkers. Cool, maybe someday we can have our own Fark Party.

Michael Jackson is Innocent

Not really. He is still a child molester IMHO. What he is not is a convicted child molester. I am not surprised with the not guilty verdict. Given his celebrity and the problems with the prosecution it was inevitable.

I watched the verdict come in while at the gym and one TV had the CBC Newsworld feed on. They interviewed a police investigator who was part of the team back in 1993 that tried to put together a similar case against Michael Jackson. That feel apart he told the CBC because the witnesses went to the tabloids and told their story for money which then destroyed their credibility. Exactly the problem the prosecution had here.

So for all you Michael Jackson fans who think this is a victory, remember O.J. Simpson.

The Red Ensign Standard Flies Again

Via Instapundit I found the latest edition is online and hosted at West Coast Chaos . Fittingly it flies on June 6th a time to reflect back to what Canada did on D-Day and contrast it with our present military status.

Amensty International Backtracks

As I noted in my earlier post "The Left Strikes Again" the sheer historical ignorance shown by Amensty International in using the term gulag. Now their US branch is backing off the claim.

Go to this post where someone has done more research on the gulags. Note the number of victims varies with what source he uses. Bottom line is no one knows the true extent of the death toll but it is in the millions.

Bias at the BBC

Found via The Shotgun this article on the bias at the BBC. As they say replace the first B with C and you have our situation here in Canada.

Douglas Fisher Does It Again

Good article. I agree with his assessment of Steven Harper. Which is to bad as I don't think he would be as bad a Prime Minister as Paul Martin has proved to be. And I totally agree with his assessment of our present civil service.

Liberal Corruption

I think the Federal Liberal Party is the most corrupt political party in Canadian history. I know that from the start corruption has been part of our history. What makes the current situation different is we are now seeing institutional corruption instead of the personal corruption we had in the past.

The Liberals have corrupted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Federal Civil Service and if the testimony heard in the Gomery Commission is correct, the Judiciary.

This is why it is important to remove the Liberals from power for a few elections. One party rule is not good for Canada's future and I fear for that future if the Liberals remain in power.

Oh The Irony

Via the WSJ.com Opinion Journal is this story "Minnesota Men Abandon Artic Trek". LOL

And Now the Dutch Have Had Their Say

A resounding No to the EU constitution. Looks like the EU constitution is dead in it's present form. But with so many of the European elite behind this I know they will not let a little thing like the will of the people stand in their way. So I doubt they will do the right thing and drop this. At least when we went to the polls and defeated the Charlottetown Accord in 1992 our elites did drop it.

Via Instapundit, here is a BBC report that blogs played a role in the No victory in Europe. I bet we now see an EU move to curtail blogs politically just as we have seen in the US and here.

For a good source of analysis on the Dutch and French votes go visit Peaktalk.