This being the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Summer of Love, I've noticed a lot of newspaper and magazine articles extolling the virtues of the mid-60s and, to be fair, a few that have actually questioned them.

I imagine this is due to a couple of factors. One would be that most editors of larger dailies and magazines are in their 50s and were teenagers during the heyday of that chaotic time. The second is that baby boomers are by far the most self-absorbed generation that has ever walked on planet Earth and the mid-1960s was the time when they were coming into their own. Those who can remember anything about those days, I'm sure, remember how they were busy changing the world.

Being born in 1965, the first post-baby boom year, means I basically missed out on the 60s. Instead of LSD, free love and the most creative period of rock and roll, I got the AIDS scare, disco and Reagan's War on Drugs. My memories of the 60s are largely restricted to the moon landing and watching teenagers smoke pot (though I didn't know that that was what it was) on front porch of our New Jersey home because my parents were nice enough to let them stand there if it was raining while waiting for their school bus.

I'm not really bitter about missing out. I grew up with the music and, despite Reagan, managed to indulge most of my curiousities about drugs when I was a teen. Could have used some of that free love but AIDS wasn't the 60s fault...

What I don't like about the 60s legacy is the ongoing concept that the protest and social change movements of the day are applicable today. If anything the opposite is true: the leftover hippies and those they have influenced have become the far-left and the far-left quashes free speech and supports horrible political systems around the world. They do this because they have somehow arrived at the incredibly misguided conclusion that their lives are more sacred than everyone else's lives and that appeasement, no matter how grotesque, is better suited to dealing with problems than ever using our armaments in anger.

Much of the media is a major supporter of this approach, going out of its way, for instance, to trumpet loudly every lost life while almost never publicizing the good that is coming out of efforts in places like Afghanistan or that could come out of Iraq if the US were allowed to deal with the terrorist elements and their supporters properly. The other places where the leftist culture of the 60s flourish include our universities which, perhaps more than any other single institution, has allowed the dippy part of hippie to take centre stage, churning out generations of far-left mush heads who didn't even need acid to get that way.

Forty years on, the world is a much changed place. Most of those people have probably given up smoking pot and sleeping around. A few may even have traded in their Bob Dylan albums for, well, Bob Dylan CDs. But, unfortunately, the political hangover continues and it's strangling our growth in horrible ways. It is time we buried the 60s alongside Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

The Surreal Days of Summer

It's actually way too nice here to sit at a computer blogging which explains why I haven't bothered much lately. But, a couple of items in the past couple of days have caught my attention. And, no, I'm not talking about the Simpsons Movie which was absolutely wonderful; these things are far more surreal than anything Matt Groening and company could have dreamed up.

The first is the announcement this morning that the UN has finally agreed to send 19,000 troops to the Sudan in an effort to stop the murderous arab janjaweed from their genocide on the innocent black Sudanese populace.

The surreal part is: those 19,000 troops will only have a limited role in combat operations and that they will only go if the Sudanese government lives up to its agreement to have them there.

Inasmuch as the Sudanese government is sponsoring the janjaweed and their slaughter, the chance of Khartoum all of a sudden thinking this is a good idea is about as great as Al Gore all of a sudden admitting the polar ice caps aren't melting and the world is cooling off. It ain't gonna happen.

Anyone with half a brain - thereby excluding anyone connected to the UN - knows the only reason the Sudanese government made their so-called "agreement" in the first place was to stall further sanctions and isolation.

What's needed in Sudan is armed intervention with a strict mandate of killing the janjaweed and restoring order. And, if the government falls at the same time, well, one less islamoshithead government on planet Earth would also be good.

But, then, that's not going to happen either, because the West is too busy gazing at its navel to actually intervene and save innocent lives.

The second - even more surreal occurrence - was the US administration's announcement that they're going to beef up arms supplies to Middle East nations Egypt and Saudi Arabia by billions of dollars.

According to Condolleezza Rice, who must ponder which face to wear each day, this will help battle extremism in the ME. Uh, Ms Rice...the Saudis are the main sponsor of extreme Islam around the globe. Sure, they may not announce it loudly as the madmorons of Iran do, but there is simply zero question that radical Islam flourishes because the Saudi wahabbist movement pours money into making it so.

Much more likely is that the Bushies are sending more money to Saudi Arabia because the Saudis have a lot of money invested in the US, the Bushies have always been far too buddy/buddy with the Saudis and they don't want the House of Saud to fall. Unfortunately, George and company are ignoring history yet again. It has long been proven that propping up dictatorships only hurts freedom in the end.

As for Egypt: the US has been giving the Egyptians money for years. And, the US gain from that has been that the Egyptians use the money to foment anti-US sentiment and to crush independent thought in their own country. Yes, that includes radical Islam but it also includes those who promote democracy and human rights.

The Bush White House has completely lost the thread. The best solution at this point - especially with the Sunnis pulling out of Iraq's government - is now: a) to announce that they have done everything they can in Iraq and that the Iraqis have only themselves to blame for the continued violence, b) to announce that they will begin immediately to remove troops from Iraq, c) that the arabs can now solve their own problems, d) to support the only relatively peaceful arabs, the Kurds and a few Gulf States like Dubai and Qatar, and negotiate some kind of solution with Turkey, e) to not send weapons to any arab nation except for Iran and when it sends weapons there, it should be by aggressively dropping them from airplanes and f) giving Israel carte blanche to deal with hostile arabs as it sees fit.

It's about freedom and the future and the vast majority of the arab world is not part of either at this moment in time and probably never will be.

Poor Sports

Ordinarily, I'd think being the commissioner of a professional sports league would be a pretty cool thing. You get to go to all the games, hang out with stars and make tons of money.

But, not last week, which might go down as the darkest moment in professional sports history, if you were to combine all the scandals from all the leagues that hit the papers.

Professional baseball: Bud Selig was forced to sit through a three game set in Milwaukee where Barry Bonds, the human steroid laboratory, could have broken Henry Aaron's all-time home run record in the city where Aaron was a long-time star and against the team that Selig once owned. But, Bud got off lucky, Bonds fell short.

Professional football: Roger Goodell, newly-appointed commissioner, now has to deal with the scandal of Michael Vick, once seen as one of the game's bright young stars - a black quarterback who could have been a role model for millions of kids. Ooops, turns out in his spare time, Vick was part of a dog-fighting ring that featured not only the inhumane "sport" of forcing dogs to fight against one another to the death but also an even more cruel side problem of people involved in the ring torturing and killing the dogs. PETA has been protesting, Vick has been indicted and Goodell has been forced to basically suspend him.

Professional golf: On the eve of the British Open, perhaps the most prestigious tournament in the world, Gary Player, one of the game's most respected elder statesmen, announces he knows that at least one player has taken steroids. WADA - the World Anti-Doping Agency headed by Canadian blowhard Dick Pound who would charge my 11-year-old is on steroids if he watched him play XBox - promptly wades into the fray. Think this is going to just go away? I doubt it.

Professional hockey: Gary Bettman, the rat who basketball sicked on hockey, is under fire because he apparently quashed a sale of the Nashville Predators to Canadian Ron Bellisle who wanted to move the team to Canada. God forbid the NHL allow teams to actually play in cities where they're wanted instead of the Deep South where they rate slightly lower than, well, dog fighting. But, this could be the end of Bettman. If he actually colluded to deny Bellisle the right to buy the team, he's in shit so deep even his ratness might drown in the sewers.

Amateur soccer but with professional players: At the World Under 20 tournament in Canada, the Chilean team gets in a fight with a bunch of Toronto cops wearing bicycle shorts. Chile promptly goes nuts, filing an offical complaint with the Canadian government. Okay, let's look at this logically: Canada has never had a soccer riot in its history because Canadians don't give a shit about soccer; the Chileans had just lost a semi-final match against South American rival Argentina that had turned vicious with 9 yellow cards handed out and something like 60+ fouls called. Who do you think was to blame? Sepp Blatter, the head of FIFA, soccer's world body, was forced to do some serious back-pedalling, especially since Canada had just set the record for the most tickets sold at the World Under 20 and had acted as a perfect host nation.

Professional cycling: the leader at the time of the Tour de France is forced to acknowledge he'd skipped as many as four urine tests due to an "administrative error" and been kicked off his national team. Where's Dick Pound when you need him?

And, the topper? NBA basketball, where David Stern is under serious heat after it was revealed a referee had been betting on games including ones he was reffing. Uh-oh...the whole league, long a disaster for its shoddy rule calling and on- and off- court antics, just took a black eye like it had been beaten by Mike Tyson. Frankly, even basketball fans probably can't take it seriously anymore.

I'm a big sports fan but the fact is there is now too much money, too many egos, too much TV involvement and a severe lack of respect for the games and the fans these days. Professional sports is heading for a fall and last week may have accelerated the descent.

No Fools Like Some Old Fools

According to my morning paper, Nelson Mandela, who turned 89 this past week, has gone completely senile.

Well, actually, the paper didn't say that but it's the only conclusion one can draw from the announcement that the former President of South Africa and the man who was a central figure in the fight to end Apartheid has compiled a "group of elders" who will come together on occasion to help solve the world's problems.

This, of course, sounds very nice. In many cultures, although not in the caucasian world, Elders are looked upon as people who, through their years have gained wisdom and insight and can guide younger people in times of difficulty. Clearly, however, this is not the case with the names Mandela has chosen to associate himself with.

Among the less obnoxious names are Richard Branson - billionaire businessman with a flair for innovation and good-humoured self-promotion. Okay, I don't mind Branson. There's also Peter Gabriel, the former frontman for the 70s arts band Genesis before embarking on a successful solo career. I liked Gabriel in both incarnations though I don't think he's even that old and he's certainly never done anything particularly wise or outstanding that I'm aware of. There's also Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland. She, too, ain't that old and since she once served as UN Commissioner for Human Rights, she's obviously not that wise, either. There's also Muhammad Yunus, billionaire and Nobel Prize winner for his Green bBank which gave microloans to the poor. Don't have anything against him. Bishop Demond Tutu is also on the list, not the least one imagines, because he and Mandela go way back - I'm not particularly a fan of either because both have been highly critical of Israel while ignoring human rights violations by numerous other nations and, of course, the palestinians, showing a clear lack of objectivity.

Then there are several people I've never even heard of, or if I have heard of them, it was only in passing. They include Gro Harlem Bruntland, environmental envoy to the UN - whoopee! Also, Ela Bhatt, Indian women's rights activists. Well, East Indian women certainly do need a human rights champion, so she's probably okay.

Then, there are the downright insane. Li Zhaoxing, foreign minister of China, one of the world's most regressive nations and a major violator of human rights. He's right in there with Jimmy Carter, asshole extraordinaire and quite possibly the worst president the US has ever had, certainly the worst of the 20th century. And, topping them all: Kofi Annan, former UN head honcho, who oversaw numerous genocides while his family and cronies lined their pockets at the expense of the unfortunate and downtrodden.

This is no council of elders. This is a council of people who should exit stage left and stay exited. If anything, a few of them should be subjected to the Eskimo way of dealing with the elderly and infirm...that is, left to float away to the next world on an ice floe.

God forbid any members of younger generations look to this collection for guidance.

Sensibly Stoned

According to a recently released UN report, Canadians are the highest people in the industrialized world.

That's right: we smoke more pot than any other first world nation, placing fifth overall in the world behind a handful of third-world countries where, let's face it, there isn't much else to do.

As someone who has enjoyed a toke or two in his lifetime, (or maybe even more - I forget, man) it didn't really come as a surprise that one out of every six Canadians admits to firing up a doobie or that that number rises to as high as one in three if you're a high school student in Quebec. Marijuana fits in pretty nicely with the Canadian lifestyle - it goes great with a hockey game, beer and chicken wings, it gives you a nice buzz, usually a slight sense of euphoria, but nothing too outrageous and it grows like a weed - probably because it is a weed - in most regions of the country.

British Columbia, as any dope afficianado will tell you, is one of the world's great producers of pot. Often in the summertime, you can hear and see police helicopters as they search for crops - growing it between rows of corn is pretty common - or seek grow-ops which they can identify by the amount of infrared heat that's picked up. Other common ways of busting growers include targeting homes with a highly unusual consumption of water and electricity.

The silly thing about marijuana is that there are somehow still politicians and law enforcement officers who believe they can stamp it out and that it's worth any effort to do so. This, of course, flies in the face of all logic: prohibition of any material has never worked, pot is way too easy grow and move around and, lastly, there's no good reason to persecute it in a society where I can legally get wrecked on alcohol or over the counter medications that are far more dangerous to my health and the health of those around me and also far more addictive.

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend who just caught his teenage son high on the reefer because said son had doused himself in Axe to cover up the smell. "Did he admit it?" I asked "Yes," said dad. "Did you have to give him one of those stern talking tos?" "Yes", said dad, "I had to pretend I was really angry even though I wasn't." "Did you feel like a bit of a hypocrite?" "Yes."

And, therein lies the great Canadian conundrum with weed. Even in only one-sixth of us admit smoking it - which makes me believe a lot of people were lying - almost no one I know really cares.

The best thing we can do with pot is legalize it, sell it in liquor stores with all the appropriate regulations about providing it to the young, take it out of the hands of organized crimes and use the tax revenues to subsidize the cost of Cheesies. Or maybe to help people get off really serious drugs or other addictions. Or build roads. Or whatever.

One thing is for sure: just because it is illegal doesn't mean anyone's going to stop smoking it.

Canada Has the Palis Figured Out

If Condolleezza Rice and the rest of the current American administration ever want some help figuring out how to deal with the palestinians and Mahmoud Abbas, all they have to do is pick up the phone and call Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

I can hear the laughing now. Canada, after all, is the socialist welfare state, home of the porous border that probably harbours terrorists. Hell, even Michael Moore likes Canada so obviously, we suck. But, for any of its other faults, our current Conservative government certainly has the palis figured out.

Canada was the first country to cut off funding to the palis after they foolishly elected hamas, saving taxpayers about $30 million a year in wasted cash. This week, Jordan's king was in Canada promoting MidEast peace and probably other fictitious things like unicorns, too.

Anyway, among the king's requests: that Canada reinstate the funding to help prop up Abbas.

Harper, thankfully, declined. He suggested Canada would reinstate funding when Abbas began cracking down on the corruption that is endemic to Fatah. After all, Harper noted, even palis who weren't terrorist lovers voted for hamas because they were tired of the lousy style of governing practised by Fatah. Canada, he added, wasn't about to prop up a dictator just because he had less blood on his hands than the hamassholes.

This approach is far different than that being practised by the Americans, Israel, the EU and others who have fallen all over themselves singing the praises of Abbas "the moderate".

Canada's tactic is the only one that has any chance of helping the palestinians. Lack of money is not the problem; the palestinians are the largest recipients of foreign aid per capita of any group in the world that I know of. They have been mollycoddled for decades while the cash has gone into a great sewer of corruption and the private bank accounts of their so-called "leaders".

The only way to change this is to tie the money to reform. And, if nothing else, at least we won't be throwing away our tax dollars on the palis anymore. It can be used for much better causes.

The UN - Number One For My Vote of the World's 7 Greatest Blunders

Finally! The United Nations has found an issue it can really get behind, issuing strong statements and declarations.

Yup, that's right: the world body is all ticked off at a private initiative to choose 7 modern Wonders of the World. According to newspaper reports, UNESCO - some gobbledygook alphabet of an acronym which no doubt translates to "abject failure" - is not the least bit pleased. Christian Manhard, UNESCO's press officer, went so far as to say it sends out "a negative message to countries whose sites have not been retained". Other officials also criticized the online effort sponsored by a private Swiss foundation that reportedly gathered close to 100 million votes on 21 chosen sites.

I guess the UN must be worried that the sites that didn't win will suffer from a drop in self-esteem. That seems to be all the rage these days. And, just like my kids are sometimes subjected to games where no one is allowed to win so that no one else will lose, I think it's massive bullshit.

The 7 winning sites were the Great Wall of China, the Taj Majahl, the ruins of Petra in Jordan, the Colosseum in Rome, the statue of Christ that towers above Rio De Janeiro ("it's like a Jesus on the dashboard of the whole city", said Homer Simpson in the episode where the Simpsons go to Brazil), the Incan ruins at Machu Picchu in Peru, and the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza in Mexico. I haven't seen any of them so I don't know how spectacular they are or aren't.

It wasn't only the UN that was upset with the whole competition. Egypt complained about it and claimed only the Pyramids at Giza - one of the seven original Wonders of the World and the only one still in place - were truly worthy of the honour.

One thing I did notice was that none of the historical sites was in Israel or built by Jews. Which is a good thing. Because if any had been, you can bet the UN Human Rights Commission would be meeting right now to condemn the contest as a zionist plot and the internet would be humming with neo-nazi morons and their arabist lapdogs claiming that it was just a Jewish attempt to take over architecture.

Anyway, it's nice to see the UN fired up for once and taking a stance. If only we could elicit that kind of response out of them when it comes to Iran or Sudan or China or Zimbabwe, etc.