The Great Divide

I have never understood the racial tensions that can grip people and population segments.  Racism may never end and there is certainly no quick fix to get over this problem but I believe we must try to overcome racism as I believe it keeps people from being as free as they can be; even in this country. 
I personally have never understood why one man may judge another based on the colour of skin.  From a line in a favorite movie of mine: "any man who judges the worth of another man based on his skin colour is a fool".  
It is hard not to stereotype (and I have fallen short) but I have tried hard to judge individuals based on their life deeds and not on their nationality.  Once again Dr. Ron Paul has provided some nice commentary over the years which I believe sheds light on how even the US government (inadvertently) has made the situation worse.     
 
One major problem, says Ron Paul, is that people constantly align themselves in groups and derive their rights as belonging to a group (whether a racial group or social group).  These groups then lobby the government for monetary support which then further alienates them from the rest of society.  Ron advocates a philosophy of individualism.  Instead of seeing people as belonging to a certain group, see them as individuals.  Since we derive our rights from our maker, every person should be treated the same way.

For those who hate:
Hate can become an overwhelming disease.  I am quite certain of this.  It can affect how people treat others, how they speak, think and act.  In American History X (an extremely powerful movie) the lead character is at a crossroads in his life.  As a devout skinhead, he has realized that his life's choices had not advanced him anywhere.  His former high school teacher (who is black) visits him in prison after he is assaulted by his skinhead clan (his so-called friends and protectors).  His former teacher asks him a very important question:  "has anything you've done (the hate, the skinhead gang, his violence) made your life better"?  His obvious answer was no.

Who's Next!?....

It would have been hard to imagine 3 years ago that Obama would have been about the same as W. Bush in their foreign intervention policies.  Sure, Obama's intervention is with less troops but is it really that different??

I am hugely opposed to Canada's involvement in Libya.  The U.N. says we can bomb them, so we do it?  Who the hell is the U.N.?  We should not be putting our citizens lives and tax money on the line at the behest of the U.N.  They have caused enough problems with their handling of different conflicts over the last number of years.  We live in Canada, we are Canadians.  Let us protect our border and use our military to defend our freedoms.  Our troops should not be ordered out at the request of a foreign body. 

We have known that Gadafi was an idiot for the last 30 years...what changed now?  Now we are bombing them to help a rebel army get in power.  Do we know who these rebels are?  Can we guarantee that they will be less corrupt then the present government?

I have always felt that we in Canada do not have to worry about terrorist attacks like other countries do.  All of the security measures we take to streamline us with the U.S. is more for their benefit than ours.  I strongly feel that the more you push your values on other countries, the more they will resent you and the less safe you are.

If we keep up our involvement in Afganistan and now Libya and who knows where else we will go in the Middle East, the less safe we are from radicals and nationalists who will resent us for our involvement.  When that happens, hate breeds, and the end result may very well be an attack of some sort.  We are involved in countries whose politics have almost never been secure or logical in our sense.  It's silly to think that we can just usher in democracy and that everyone will love it.  

   

Finally - Someone sees it as the failure that it is.

A global commission made up of various political and business leaders from many countries around the world have released a report stating "The global war on drugs is failing".

Amen, it's about time someone stands up to report what a gigantic waste of time and resources this war has been.  According to the report:
"Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won." (msn.com)

What they are reporting, has been understood by many for years.  When you criminalize something that works, and people want it, you create a black market.  People make huge profits off of it, many people are persecuted and thrown in jail for victimless crimes and others get victimized through gang violence (fighting turf wars for control of sale). 

Drug use is tragic, but we must help those hooked on them, not treat them as criminals.
The overwhelming, vast majority of people would never start using drugs just because they become legal.  We choose to not use them because of their addictive, destructive nature.  Those that are huge opponents of drug legalization would admit themselves that if drugs were legalized they wouldn't use them.  So what are they doing?  Protecting us from ourselves?

Such logic and reasoning that I'm sure was found in the report was dismissed by the drug czar in the U.S.  Of course it was, what else did we expect them to say?

From msn.com:

The office of White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said the report was misguided.
"Drug addiction is a disease that can be successfully prevented and treated. Making drugs more available — as this report suggests — will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe," Office of National Drug Control Policy spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said.

I've said it before, it's not the federal governments job to enforce health on us.  That's our job.