Not Neutral... Ambivalent. Not Compassionate... Evil

I will never donate another penny to the Red Cross.

The Red Cross' treatment of the Taliban in Afghanistan exemplifies the predominant philosophy of our age writ large. The Red Cross is exhibiting its altruistic roots, it is supporting people who would see it and every other vestige of "western society" completely destroyed. How wonderfully selfless.

Ayn Rand once said that "Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent." and she was right.

That answer to the Red Cross' implicit philosophy draws some fire from "compassionate humanists" though...

"The Red Cross is just being neutral" they say just like in WW2 when they dealt with German POW's in Prison camps.

That is a good point and I hadn't thought of it before but their assistance to the Taliban now is no different than their assistance to Nazi's in WW2.

I see now that the Red Cross is not immoral for doing this but rather that it is amoral. It is designed as an organization to be unable to distinguish between right and wrong, good from evil. Which in my book puts it directly alongside the evil it is unable to recognize.

"But the Red Cross is just like Switzerland..." they cry "Neutral!"

But they miss a very important distinction between the Swiss neutrality and the Red Cross'.

The Swiss neither help nor hinder any side. They keep their hands to themselves in all matters. This isn't amoral, they have decided that it is in their self-interest as a nation to stay out of it all altogether.

The Red Cross is not neutral it is ambivalent. It doesn't care who it helps. It makes every one of the good guys fighting for the moral and right reasons, the exact same as every misogynistic, racist, ignorant, socially backward, religious fanatic and bugger Taliban on the battlefield.

In short, the Red Cross equates MMV winners, guys like Tpr Shane Dolmovic and our leaders, like General Hillier with the scum-bags who throw acid on schoolgirls and stone women to death for the crime of adultery when they have actually been raped.

There is a moral choice facing the Red Cross, it is as clear as white and black, and they are evil for failing to make that choice.

Then comes the next philosophical head fake...

"The Taliban were raised to believe what they do, their society is structured that way, their religion has taught them that they are right. So who are we to say what is moral? "

To answer a question of morality I would ask what is the purpose of existence and what position among all the positions of all religions, ideologies and cultures best upholds that purpose?

For me the purpose of existence is life, my life and my living of it. In other words living in a rationally self-interested way.

Now this does not mean living as a range of the moment hedonist. Tiger Woods was not operating in his self-interest when he was out whoring around, as evidenced by how much those actions have cost him personally and professionally.

Nor is it a blank cheque to treat people as sub-human, as disposable and worthless. After all it does not further my life to live in a society where I would need to treat every other person as a danger rather than a possible source of value to enhance and enrich my life.

It also doesn't benefit me to treat this life like a shadow of something more "beyond the grave". Reality and the facts of it all point to this being the only existence we are going to get. Dismissing reality is the first cardinal sin against living a good, long, successful and happy life.

It also means that altruistic sacrifice (the relinquishment of a greater benefit for a lesser one) is contrary to living in this life.*

* A note here, our soldiers do not sacrifice themselves for a lesser value. They have either made a conscious decision that what they are fighting for is worth the possibility of death or they have weighed the risks and believe themselves to be skilled enough to survive where others will not. Neither of these is sacrifice.

So to get back to the deciding of what is moral or not; using these few points and many others that it would take too long to list I can, and you can, determine what is moral and what isn't, and we should.

More than that I believe that this world would be much better off if people would use the standard of their own lives to determine their morality instead of accepting someone else's definition, ideology or superstition.

Like Rand said. "The moral principle to adopt is Judge and be prepared to be Judged."

Actions can not be separated from their results, no matter if you claim compassion, humanity or neutrality as your excuse. No matter if you are an individual or a multi-national organization.

I have judged the Red Cross by their actions and I find them to be immoral, and evil.

*H/T Chris

Time to Pay Up

UPDATE: Second Firm Pulls out of Greece , and the Greeks continue to evade reality...

This is the end of the road for socialized medicine.

Medicine just like bread, automobiles and bowling balls cost a certain amount to produce. That is a fact. It is not a construct of a company or a secret cabal of evil capitalists perpetrating a "brutal blackmail".

It is also not "a violation of corporate social responsibility" the company would not exist, there would be no insulin to buy, and no one to produce it if they (the company) were to ignore the realities of what it takes to produce this or any other product.

It is simply a matter of reality, things cost money, and nothing can be produced for free. Nothing can be supplied indefinitely at a loss. Yes, you might be able to supply it for a time at a loss but as less money comes in less product is produced and soon there is nothing and no company to produce it.

The decree by the Greek government that all medicine prices shall be cut by 25% (so that the government can continue to supply those medicines through the health care system) is a command divorced of reality.

There is a simple solution. Return the portion of taxes that each Greek pays into the health care scheme and allow then to pay for their own medicine at the market rate.

The Greek Government is not the only one to blame for this though. The Greeks have themselves as individuals to blame. Every time they demanded that their government give them more for less, every time they allowed another government program to supply for them something that they should have bought themselves. Every time they asked for more pay and less work, every demand to feather their social safety net led to this.

Reality can not be ignored forever, you may survive for a time while evading it but sooner or later its time to pay up.

Greece's bill is due.

McGuinty Plans Surgical Castration

ARTICLE
“The Ontario government is warning doctors that it plans to radically overhaul how they are compensated by paying more of them salaries – the latest salvo in its efforts to rein in the biggest contributors to ballooning health-care costs.”

Sounds like the McGuinty government wants to cut Doctors wages. What does that mean for those of us on the streets. What is that “savings” going to mean at the end of the line (our health care) vice at the start line (the bloated provincial budget)? You can choose from three doors. Behind Door #1 we have fewer people decide to become doctors in Ontario because they will have no control over what they are paid. Door #2 = Doctors stop working as hard because no matter how many patients they see or how many procedures they do they get paid the same amount. Door #3 leads us to an accelerated “brain drain” as more Doctors upon finishing medical school run to the US where they can still (for now) get paid more for what they do than in Canada.

If you guess all three then you are probably correct.

“The McGuinty government has already targeted generic prescription drugs and hospitals as part of a plan to get a bigger bang for its investment in health care. Now it is zeroing in on doctors and a fee-for-service compensation system that has been in place for more than four decades.”

Whoa! Wait a second… “fee-for-service compensation system”? What a ham-fisted attempt to drop the context of the entire issue here. It’s called PAY! Compensation makes it sound like some sort of government run welfare system not a persons honest work and effort.

Would you expect the mechanic at your local garage to fix 10 cars in a day and only charge for 5 of them? Would you trust your car to a mechanic that has been told (forced) that he will fix your car for a certain $value regardless of what is wrong with it?

“I think we’ve got some work to do when it comes to appropriately compensating physicians and others in health care for that matter,” Health Minister Deb Matthews told reporters on Thursday."

No. Government intervention and arbitrary establishment of pay based on political and budgetary concerns rather than value, skill and complexity is about as far removed from “appropriate compensation” as one can get.

“The majority of Ontario’s approximately 24,000 doctors are paid on a fee-for-service basis, meaning they bill the provincial health plan for each service they provide to a patient. But in recent years, some hospitals, particularly those in smaller, rural communities, have switched to a salary system for doctors in their emergency departments. As well, the 1,900 doctors who work in clinics as part of family health teams created by the McGuinty government are also paid a salary.”

Fee for service means if the Doctor works harder he is paid more.
What will the alternative mean?
No incentive.

Ha! These people are actually holding up rural Canada as a model that they are trying to emulate? Didn’t I hear something about a shortage of Doctors in Rural Ontario/ the rest of the country? Yes, yes I did.

“Ms. Matthews said she would like to see that compensation model expanded to include more doctors. She was responding to a report released this week by Toronto-Dominion Bank, which made eight proposals to wring more efficiencies out of the health-care system, including moving doctors away from the fee-for-service compensation model.

In a system where doctors are paid for each service, the report says, there is no incentive for them to measure the cost-effectiveness of their treatment decisions against the potential benefits.”

$5.00 for anyone who can make rational sense out of the last sentence. Are they really trying to tell us that a set wage will make Doctors think about the cost effectiveness of their work? Or is it that they are saying that Doctors will ration their services more? Pick and choose who gets their limited services from their limited pay.

“Robert Bell, chief executive officer of University Health Network, Ontario’s largest hospital, said the government has to examine the rapid rise in doctors’ compensation, which has far outstripped the increase in hospital budgets.”

Finally a sentence that gets (in an off hand way) to the root of the problem. It’s not that Doctors aren’t worth the money they are paid. Just ask anyone who has undergone a life saving operation. It is the arbitrary allotment of funds by a government who is trying to nickel and dime a system that has never worked properly.

There is no personal incentive in a government run system to innovate or to reduce costs. If hospitals were privately run each would be competing for customers and each would be trying to innovate to reduce costs and take more customers from the other hospitals. Yes, they might even reduce the amount they are willing to pay Doctors, but then the Doctors would be free at least to search for better pay.

Compensation divorced of effort, skill and quantity is a good way to castrate a system that is already suffering from financial erectile dysfunction.

Why?

Why is it always a chore to get our government to do the right thing? Why is it that every Tom, Dick and Harry on the street from Toronto to Tuktoyaktuk knows what the right thing is and what should be done but our elected officials don't?

From Letting the Auditor General see MP's expenses to the Afghan Detainee "scandal" how come these people are so damn obtuse?

Are these "issues" some sort of political version of a head-fake? While we are getting the run around on a simple matter of transparency what else is happening?

We need a new way of doing politics in this country, and fast.

Fire. Them. All.

Forget the Colour of the Collar

Here is a question for you. What is the difference in principal between an embezzler and an unarmed bank robber?

What is the difference between stealing for a mob boss and stealing for a legal and legitimate organization?

The answer is of course none. There is no difference, theft is theft, force is force. So why do we have a distinction of "white collar" and "blue collar" crime?

Lady justice is supposed to be blind but do we as a society draw aside the blindfold just enough to let her know if the person standing accused has a good education or is more well to do? Apparently so.

The story of Benoît Corbeil makes that abundantly clear. The maximum sentence for theft over $5000.00 is life imprisonment, according to this chart, can you imagine our imaginary unarmed bank robber being sentenced for only 15 months after stealing $117,315? Could you imagine a judge entertaining an appeal on the grounds that such a sentence was "too onerous"?

It's time to put the blindfold back on Lady Justice and start handing out sentences for theft that reflect the actual crime.

By the way Corbeil, as far as you loosing your job at Université du Québec à Montréal that is something you should have considered before becoming a thief and a criminal.

Buried Chest High...

Come on Ladies

This article by The Globe And Mail spends a lot of effort telling us that the government is sorry that no women won grants to become Canada Excellence Research Chairs under the governments attempt to attract academic talent with the 20 million dollar program. But what really do they have to be sorry about?

The G&M themselves finds "No deliberate attempt to shut out women, but concludes the tight deadlines for the competition, the areas picked for research and a competition where candidates on the short list had only a 50 per cent chance of winning probably all worked against female candidates."

With the government falling over itself to make amends for the lack of women in what has been ruled as a fair competition, it has elicited the help of three prominent women academics...

Their recommendations include;

1.To include a rising stars category - this is apparently to offset the male domination in some fields... but if it is proven talent that the government is trying to attract then to throw money at potential ability is contrary to the point.

2. another suggested the inclusion of an "established leaders" category - hold on, If the complaint being addressed by point #1 is that there aren't enough women in some of these fields do they really mean that they want an "established women leaders" category?

There is a nebulous complaint directed at an academic old boys club and this is connected once again to male domination, not any specific misogyny. But the specific complaint seems to be that women were unwilling to try, and that is the real tragedy here.

As the article states;

"Senior women also may be more reluctant than their male colleagues to move for personal reasons or to enter a competition where the odds of success were 2 to 1, the report says, citing U.S. studies."

The question that ought to be asked is why are women unwilling to extend themselves to compete for an opportunity like this? There has been a human rights challenge to the fact that 19 male winners were selected and not one woman but is this a symptom of the problem? Do women in our oh so politically correct society expect some sort of gender based distribution regardless of merit, regardless of effort even?

Come on Ladies, you can do better than that!

Why all the Fear?

The more they talk, the more I want to see, the more I think we need to see...

Why all the fear folks?

You know, I don't trust a single one of these people as far as I could spit a wet rat, and the second they begin telling me that I don't need to know what they are spending my taxed money on, well that really piques my interest.

It is our money, they have been entrusted to spend it wisely within agreed upon terms on agreed upon expenses. If they are doing that then they shouldn't mind giving us a peek. An honest man fears nothing, a criminal fears all, so I'll ask again...

Why all the fear?

Big Brother's Mascots

Well, what else would you expect from the worlds most surveilled society but Mascots that bear a striking resemblance to giant eyes perched atop disembodied eye stalks.

On a brighter note...

It's good news for the Vancover Olympic Committee. They won't go down in history as the games with the lamest mascots after all.

Push and We Push Back...

I wasn't going to get involved with "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day"on the 20th as advertised here, and elsewhere... That is until I saw this.

So here he is.

Although, as of yet no one has tried to do the same here I have no doubt that Islamofascists would try if they thought they could get away with it.

Regardless, here is a little bit of advice for any would be Islamic fanatics out there. If you try to push your nonsense onto our way of life, if you try for the sake of stupid superstition to limit our freedoms, if you threaten and if you cajole... we will push back. And you will loose.

By the way... my response is the same to Christian fanatics that want to force their particular brand of stupidity down our throats.

Believe what you want, that is your right but your right ends where my right begins.

Ponzi Statism

According to Wikipedia...

"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. The Ponzi scheme usually entices new investors by offering returns other investments cannot guarantee, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors to keep the scheme going."

If you replace the promise of cash returns for government "services" then the definition above doubles as the definition of a welfare state...

A Welfare State is a fraudulent investment operation that pays social services to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. The welfare state usually entices new citizens by offering social services that are either abnormally efficient or unusually inclusive . The perpetuation of the services that a welfare state advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from citizens to keep the scheme going.

No Escape Hatch

This kind of forthright honesty ought not to be a rarity in politics. The fact that it is indicates how much more effort modern politicians put into maintaining their place at the government trough than anything else. Their desire to hold on to power wins out over principle, over conscience, over law and even over ideology.



Congratulations to Governor Christie for being in the 1 percentile.

Compromised.

There has been a lot of noise in both politics and the press over the English Coalition. The press and opposition have bent over backwards to try to demonstrate that the British coalition is oh, so much more democratic. "Don't you see..." they say breathlessly "the British know how to compromise... I wish we could learn to."

Ok, enough drivel.

Would someone please tell me in what practical way the Harper Government doesn't have to compromise? Harper is leading a minority parliament which could be brought down on any of a number of issues. The Harperites have to walk a fine line between what they as a party would like to implement and what they as a government will be able to implement. Compromise? Their continued existence as the government relies on their ability to compromise before they can even put a single contentious issue to a vote.

How is the British coalition any more of a compromise? Once the coalition is up and running, once the two parties in this bastardization have decided on a platform they will, have a virtual majority in parliament. Sure they will compromise between themselves but as for the Labour party to use a Brit retort the reply is… “Get stuffed!”

The End of The Beginning of the End

"This really is Act V of the fiscal welfare state, in which monetary policy becomes the shameless handmaiden of fiscal policy in order to sustain an unsustainable kind of riskless society with massive benefits for everyone paid for by a few."

Read the whole thing.

So close...

And yet so far.

This article in the National post begins with a precise and correct statement of principle.

"If you have a language, heritage or sexual orientation you would like to celebrate, good for you. This is Canada: Feel free to stage a march, parade or festival in honour of whatever makes you proud. But, please, do it on your own dime."

but then they go and ruin it by adding...

"As Toronto's Pride Parade and several recent Sikh events have demonstrated, public funds should not be used to underwrite controversial gatherings for niche communities."

Do you see the problem?

It's not that these parades "underwrite controversial gatherings for niche communities." it's the theft of public funds to support any such event. Whether it be the Molson Indy or a boy scouts parade, if there isn't enough voluntary or corporate support in the community then there is no damn way that a government, any government ought to be able to use taxes to put on a show.

This is a fine example of the waste in our public finances. We have millions of dollars of debt at the municipal level, tens of billions of debt at the provincial level and hundreds of billions at the federal level and we are throwing parties?

I don't know about you but when I find myself a little short at the end of a month I don't decide to pay for a friend's kegger.

Islam is...