Author: R J Adams

It’s a part of the culture in America. Individual achievement is rated more highly than collective effort.

Maybe it stems from the old idea of the American Dream: one man arrives on these shores with nothing, then, using his intelligence and abilities, rises to become President of the United States.

The problem with that idea, in practical terms, is the other 299,999,999 American citizens who don’t make President.

Let me illustrate what I mean.

We all know the total cock-up in New Orleans, created by Bush and the American government after Hurricane Katrina. Two and a half years after the disaster, many of the poorer areas remain uninhabitable. So much for FEMA, Federal Aid, and George Bush’s atrocious guitar playing while Louisiana drowned.

Disgusted by the plight of Louisiana residents, Frank Stronach invested $10 million of his own money into Magnaville, a 325 hectare site some 150 miles from New Orleans. Capable of housing 110 people, but designed to eventually accomodate 300, Magnaville is a mobile home community, each with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, air-conditioning, washer/dryers, and front and back porches. The site boasts a community center and basketball courts.

Residents of Magnaville live there rent free for five years. The only stipulation is they have to obey the rules. One of those rules is the residents have to be in, or actively seeking, work. To aid in that, Stronach is developing organic farming in the community and has negotiated with a large chain of natural foods supermarkets to take the produce.

All in all, it’s a great success story for people left with nothing after Katrina struck, and it’s all the brainchild of one man who was, as NBC Nightly News aptly commented, “Making a Difference”.

So Frank Stronach is an American hero. Except, he’s actually a Canadian business man. It’s why most of the residents of Magnaville don’t call it that at all. They’ve named it, “Canadaville”.

That doesn’t make Frank Stronach any less a hero. After all, he’s done what the American government failed to do. If one man can achieve so much, imagine how much more a really efficient government, properly organized and run, could have done for the people of Louisiana.

In many ways, Canadaville sums up the total ineptness and corrupt degradation of, not just the Bush administration, but of US governments back through the ages.

With a presidential election looming, take a good hard look at the pseudo-aristocratic riff-raff presented for your edification and eventual vote. Then ask yourselves the simple question:

Which one of these individuals can form a government that could do better than Canadian Frank Stronach, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?

This will narrow the field considerably.

“Making a difference” is the real job of a government. It’s what the other 299,999,999 have the right to demand.

Read more about Canadaville HERE

Filed under: Citizen’s rights

Twenty-seven years ago today, on December 8th, 1980, John Lennon died at the hands of yet another crazed idiot let loose on the streets of America with a handgun.

Lest We Forget.

STOP THE MADNESS – GUN CONTROL NOW!

^{Thanks to This Old Brit for the reminder.}

Filed under: Victims

Alberto Gonzales will be remembered, not as an eminent US Attorney General, but as the man who “didn’t recall”. His boss, George W Bush, is unlikely to be remembered as the most esteemed president in United States history, but he may well go down as the president who had “no recollection”.

The recent revelations concerning the “disposal” of CIA interrogation tapes are yet another example of a White House deliberately flouting the law. Bush says he has “no recollection” of the missing tapes, or even of their existence. CIA Director Michael Hayden, in whom George Bush “continues to have confidence” – just as he did with Alberto Gonzales, FEMA head Michael Brown, and numerous other total failures appointed by this incumbent US president to top positions they had neither the qualifications, nor the whit, to hold – said the tapes were destroyed, “because they posed a security risk”.

To whom were they a security risk? To the CIA operatives who used water-boarding and other forms of torture defined under the Geneva Conventions against their victims, or to certain high-up members of this administration who might one day be brought to justice for sanctioning such techniques, if the evidence were still available?

“We do not torture.”

In April this year, it came to light that around five million White House emails had “gone missing”, or, to put it another way, had “been deleted”. The law requires the president to preserve all presidential records.

According to the latest reports, that figure may be in excess of ten million. The president, it would appear, is yet again “outside” the law.

Alberto Gonzales pleaded his “ignorance’ right to the end. Eventually, pressure left him with no option other than resignation.

George W Bush won’t resign. He is determined to see out his second term. Yet, with still more than a year to serve, it would appear he has already begun to “clear out his desk”.

Filed under: Early onset senility