Too Much Going On – Issue 56

I had planned to continue the series on Third Places / Public Spaces . I have a great article from The Economist   to use about the impact of asphalt and concrete covering flood plains in Britain. It would tie into this discussion and I will get back to this topic but there is too much going on! 

Did Canada need an election?

A very simple answer – no! I have voted Liberal in every election but one. In that election I voted for the Greens. I just completed CBC’s Vote Compass. At the top – the Greens, the NDP, and the Liberals are all within 4% points of one another. Then, to my surprise, the Bloc Québecois sits in fourth spot. It is 17 percentage points ahead of the Conservative Party but a good 14 percentage points behind the top three. 

Stay tuned for a newsletter setting out the election issues I consider most important. I may even tell you how I intend to vote! It isn’t for parties that I have supported in the past. 

Defeat in Afghanistan!

NATO nations and other allies have been at war in Afghanistan for almost 20 years. It is important to remember why there was an invasion in the first place. Forget the altruistic motives currently being ascribed. Post September 11, 2001 the United States wanted revenge. It wanted to eliminate Al-Qaeda and deny terrorist groups a safe haven for their operations. It is another variation on “woke” to claim otherwise.

Allied forces successfully toppled he Taliban regime. However,  they failed miserably in their neo-colonial ambition to establish a democracy that favoured the “West”. Revisionist history attempts to cast the conflict as a struggle for human and women’s rights. If it had been, we should have invaded Saudi Arabia eons ago. Oh! They have oil and buying power so their  state support of terrorism and dismal record on human rights is OK?

The last people to conquer Afghanistan were the Persians who ruled there from 539 BC to 331 BC. Take note, BC not AD. And, where has the west had any success establishing democracy? Now the Taliban has roared back into power. Make no mistake, the Taliban mean to humiliate the allies, particularly the US, with its August 31 deadline for evacuation / withdrawal.

The fourth wave

From the  Québec government’s daily dashboard:

• The unvaccinated’s risk of infection: 8.2x the fully vaccinated and 3.8x those awaiting a second jab
• And the risk of ending up in hospital: 22.4x the fully vaccinated and 3.8x those awaiting a second jab

Do the anti-vaxers need elementary school remedial math? There has to be a limit to stupidity. 

And then there is the hypocrisy! Example: Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, leaves it to individual business owners to require masking! Then he fights “tooth and nail” to deny cruise companies the right to require full vaccination to board. If I ran a cruise line I would look for any port other than in Florida from which to operate. Let’s face it, Miami is the ugliest stop on any Caribbean cruise.  

Heatwaves! Forrest Fires! Floods!

I can’t keep up! Where will the next climate change calamity strike? 

• Floods killed over 20 people in Tennessee the weekend of August 21st and 22nd
• British Columbia has had 1,553 wild fires in 2021, and 236 are still active. Check out its dashboard!
• An article in the New York Times asks: “Could assigning names to heat waves, the way officials do for hurricanes and tropical storms, help protect people from the warming climate?” 

What kind of world do we want to leave to our grandchildren? Are you more worried about the national debt or an inhabitable planet?

I could keep going. There really is too much going on!