Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

It’s Organ Donation Wareness Week, so please tell your loved ones that you want to donate your organs in the unlikely event you die suddenly and can help one of the many people waiting by the phone for a second chance at life. There are a lot of myths regarding organ donation, so I encourage you to learn some facts from reliable sources and tell your family today. When you die, you have no use for your organs, so why not turn your last act as a human being into a gift that saves and improves many lives?

One common question listed on the organ donation site I linked to is:

• If I sign a donor card, will it affect the quality of medical care I receive at the hospital?

No - every effort is made to save your life before donation is considered. What would the sense be in taking the donor’s life for just creating a chance at saving another’s life. Sales of human tissue is illegal in Canada, you don’t have to worry about organs being stolen from your body.

Consider if everyone who died in an accident became an organ donor. There wouldn’t even be a market anywhere in the world for people to sell organs since there would be enough for everyone with failing organs. There are few things easier in life than giving up your organs after you die. You have to give them up anyway, so tell your family not to bury or burn them if they’ll save a life.
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On the radio today I heard that the provinces in Canada need to “seek USA approval” to harvest more lumber, or something like that. This clause which was overlooked at the signing of this week’s bad deal with the USA over the softwood lumber tariff dispute, is just another thing wrong with the costly deal.

The idea of NAFTA is dead - Stephen Harper’s government has now put the nail into NAFTA’s softwood coffin. Free Trade is supposed to mean that the Canadian, American, and Mexican markets will not have artificial barriers to trade put up unilaterally by one or two governments against the other(s). This deal the Conservatives have signed with Bush’s government leaves Canadian choices in the hands of American politicians, and leaves $1 Billion dollars collected illegally [according to the NAFTA agreement the States signed], in the hands of the Americans who illegally collected it.

Some people, including me, see some benefit to getting $4 Billion back now, and assume that the USA would never return all of the money it stole. 4 birds in the hand is worth 5 in the Bush country after all. However, now that the USA is apparently able to break international agreements without penalty, that means we might as well too, right? What’s to stop Canada after we have the $4 back in our banks, to go back to Washington and demand the $1 Billion that remains missing? Canada is an honourable country, and our first duty is not to break the word of an international agreement, but when left to deal with “trade terrorists” like the Bush government, what other option do we have than a costly trade war?

Conservatives like to say that terrorists can’t be dealt with at a diplomatic level, and the Bush government has proven that to be the case with themselves, on many occasions. Despite numerous rulings in Canada’s favour, the USA still denied the letter and spirit of the law in NAFTA. Can you imagine them letting Canada get away with breaking a trade agreement, without punishing us? In fact, some people have suggested that the softwood lumber stalemate came about as a punishment devised by the US government against Canada for not joining in the illegally initiated US/Iraq war.

Does that make you wonder too where Harper is gearing up to send Canadian troops to fight the phoney-phrased “war on terror”? And I hope the USA can reclaim respectability by electing a government that won’t steal from weaker countries, especially ones that are their closest ally and provider of a great deal of their resource strength.
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United 93 is a movie depicting the struggle on board United Airlines flight 93 which was hijacked and crashed on September 11, 2001 by terrorists planning to crash it into, most likely, the White House. The radio was non-stop chatter about it, and I might go to see it, but what concerns me is the intention behind making it. Will it be used by some as an argument for sending soldiers to Iraq? Undoubtably, even though Iraq had nothing to do with September 11, 2001 other than the prominent figure in charge of the States at the time of both events was George Bush in both cases.

The key thing to remember is that you cannot fight terrorism with the military alone. You fight terrorism by killing both terrorists and the conditions in which they are created. You improve education, peace and security for all people of the earth, and bring equity to nations that have almost nothing to bargain with but the threat of bringing death to others.

In Afghanistan in 2001, there was a country rife with terrorist training camps, and it was fair for the USA to attack the government and places that set the September 11 attack in motion. But one has to draw a line of distinction between the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq, although ruled by an enemy, was not a country devoted to training people destined to kill Americans or Canadians. There were other motivations than “protecting Americans from terrorism”, when Bush ordered Saddam overthrown. There were many good reasons to get rid of Hussein, but one of them was not Bush and Blair’s claimed Weapons of Mass Destruction, or terrorism used against the USA.

Let’s remember the victims of United flight 93 as heroic people who fought terrorists with their bare hands. Please, don’t let anyone use their deaths as an excuse to justify the phoney-phrased “war on terror” in Iraq. It may not be a coincidence that Neil Young’s Let’s Impeach the President song is being released [Edit] the day before United 93. About 35% of Americans need to be reminded that Bush is using the lives of those people lost on September 11th, to justify an unrelated war killing thousands of civilians and American soldiers.

Update: I’ve listened to Let’s Impeach the President, and it’s a catchy song of the protest variety.  I’m sure it’ll be banned by Clear Channel stations across America.