Fighting the Taliban

For those who are still buying in to this "fighting the Taliban" propaganda, here's the portrait of an average Taliban painted by the London Independent.

So best of luck to NATO. They're going to need it!

OGM

Je vous invite à lire un texte que j'ai écrit sur les OGM pour mon cours de biologie. Je n'en suis pas incroyablement content, mais je me suis bien amusé à l'écrire!

La manipulation génétique existe depuis bien longtemps. Dès les débuts de l’agriculture, l’homme a compris l’art de la sélection artificielle et a cherché à domestiquer les plantes et les animaux pour améliorer leur rendement ou leur goût. Bientôt, l’hybridation est aussi apparue, de sorte qu’en 6500 après Jésus Christ, on croisait déjà des chiens.

Avec l’apparition des premiers clones et organismes génétiquement modifiés dans la seconde moitié du vingtième siècle, beaucoup d’experts ont affirmé qu’il ne s’agissait là que d’une nouvelle étape dans l’histoire de la domestication. En effet, après presque 10 000 ans d’hybridation, il était grand temps qu’on apprenne à faire la même chose en laboratoire. Or le présent rapport, loin de prendre ce parti, cherchera plutôt à montrer que la génétique artificielle commerciale – clonage et recombinaison génétique – est une pratique exceptionnellement dangereuse qui doit absolument être éradiquée.

Mais commençons au début de l’histoire.

Les organismes génétiquement modifiés sont indéniablement avantageux. Aujourd’hui, à peine cinquante ans après la découverte de la spirale de l’ADN, on produit déjà des tomates à mûrissement ralenti, des pastèques carrées, et des légumes capables de pousser dans des climats désertiques. On gaspille moins, on combat la malnutrition, les fermiers s’enrichissent, et tout le monde est content!

En fait, c’est à peu près ça. Car les OGM, voyez-vous, sont fabriqués sur mesure pour nous plaire. Ils peuvent être grands, petits, ronds, carrés, faibles en gras, forts en protéines, esthétiquement parfaits, ou tout simplement résistants. Avec le génie génétique, tout est possible. Les seules limites sont celles que nous nous imposons.

Les environnementalistes trouvent certes beaucoup d’arguments pour dénoncer la production d’OGM. Ils sont vulnérables aux parasites, disent les uns. Ils bouleverseront l’équilibre des écosystèmes, disent les autres. Certains juristes et philosophes soulèvent aussi des problèmes d’éthique sur des questions comme le rapport de l’homme à la nature et la brevetabilité du vivant.

Mais tous ces arguments paraissent bien faibles dressés contre les centaines de millions de vies qu’on pourrait sauver grâce aux OGM. Oui, il y a des dangers ; oui il y a des contraintes. Mais si on peut sauver des vies, si on peut améliorer le niveau de santé de la population mondiale, ces risques sont acceptables.

Alors c’est terminé ? Oui aux OGM ? Presque. Mais il nous manque encore une dernière mise en garde qui nous vient d’un philosophe grec mort il y a maintenant bientôt 2500 ans.

«Je suis sage (…) par le fait même que ce que je ne sais pas, je ne pense pas non plus le savoir. » disait Socrate.

Nous, hommes du 21^ème siècle, nous savons mettre une fusée sur la lune, combattre des virus 10 000 fois plus minces qu’un cheveu, et depuis quelques années, nous savons modifier le code de la vie. Nous sommes capables de faire des choses que tous ceux avant nous croyaient impossibles. Mais pourtant, sommes-nous aussi sage que Socrate? Sommes-nous capable d’admettre comme lui qu’il y a encore beaucoup de choses que nous ne savons pas?

La nature, malgré toutes nos connaissances, est encore trop complexe pour oser y toucher. Oui, nous savons beaucoup, mais nous ignorons encore plus. Chaque nouvelle découverte est accompagnée d’une nouvelle question. Or pour pouvoir modifier la vie en toute sécurité, sans crainte de répercussions imprévues, il nous faudrait connaître toutes les réponses.

Si nous sommes sages, nous acceptons de tourner le dos à la manipulation génétique à des fins commerciales. Nous arrêtons de produire des pastèques carrées et nous abandonnons le rêve de faire pousser des oranges dans le Sahara. C’est dommage, mais contrairement à l’autre solution, ça ne sera jamais la fin du monde. Et comptez bien sur une chose : on s’en remettra.

New Poll

Harris-Decima has just released a new poll today. The verdict: Liberals and Conservatives tied at 32%.

But the agency also did a second series of polls to examine some trends hidden beneath the apparent tie. The verdict: advantage Liberals.

Basically, Harris-Decima tried to replicate the scenario of a polarised election, where, in the last days of the campaign, Bloc, NDP and Green supporters realise that only the Liberals or Conservatives can form a government and therefore give their vote to the party that they dislike the least. The numbers, which leaned in favour of the Conservatives last fall, are now strongly Liberal.

Simply put, a strong majority of Canadians would now prefer a Liberal government to a Conservative government. The also feel that Liberal values are closer to theirs than Conservative values, and that the Liberals have a stronger front bench. The only area in which the Conservatives come first is leadership, with Steven Harper still significantly ahead of Stéphane Dion.

With these numbers in mind, it’s quite surprising that the Liberals didn’t choose to topple the government today by voting against the controversial immigration legislation. It would have been a good election issue for them, and the Conservative organisation still hasn’t recovered from the series of scandals that have plagued their party since the beginning of this year. Apparently, the whole Liberal caucus advised Dion to drop the gloves, but he refused because he wants to spend the summer selling his environmental plan.

He may well feel, like Kim Campbell, than an election is not the place to discuss serious policy. But if he doesn’t succeed in getting his message across, it’s very much possible that he’ll come back to the House in October cursing himself, because the Conservatives will have spent all summer repairing their organisation and littering the country in negative ads. Dion had better hope for a long, warm and humid summer.

Questions

Lawrence Martin of the Globe and Mail, usually a staunch Liberal supporter, published an article in today's paper partly blaming the opposition for the chronic misconduct of Question Period. He wrote, very accurately, that the questions posed to the government are so blatantly rhetorical and demagogic that they make it easy for the government to refuse to answer. For example, when an opposition MP asks a minister whether he's "incompetent or deliberately misleading the house", that MP can't seriously expect the government to answer.

Lawrence Martin strikes a very good point here. But one could also argue that the structure and sole objective of Question Period makes it impossible for the opposition to ask serious questions. After all, when Question Period only exists to put a member of each party on the 10 o'clock news, one shouldn't be surprised to see that the questions have little relevance.

Personally, I think the whole concept of Question Period needs reviewing. It's currently a waste of both time and money, and a source of serious embarrassment to our country. Those who defend it say that it strengthens our democratic process and forces the government to stay in tune with day to day issues. But there are better solutions. My suggestion is to adopt the British model where Question Period starts with a debate between the leader of the opposition and the Prime Minister, and the rest of the questions deal exclusively with local issues. I really think that it would make all the difference. We'd have real debates every day on Parliament Hill, but the government would still need to pay attention to small local issues like water towers leaking in Milton or passport offices being closed in Vancouver. And unlike Senate reforms, we wouldn't need a constitutional amendment.

Why?

The Conservatives held a press conference today announcing that two experts had ruled the incriminating "Cadman tape" to be "doctored". The two men, both paid by the Conservative party, filed an affidavit in the Ontario Superior Court asserting that the recording in which Stephen Harper admitted to financial offers having been made to Chuck Cadman had been edited by its author.

At first glance, this expert ruling would seem to clear the Prime Minister and vindicate the Tories in this whole "Cadman affair", but in reality, it's not worth much at all. The only thing the experts are saying is that there have been edits to the recording. But this does not mean that the PM's words have been artificially fabricated or moved around on the tape to misrepresent the event as it actually occurred. In fact, the Conservatives have refused to say if any edits were made to the relevant part of the tape in which the Prime Minister talked of "financial considerations". This suggests that there were none.

The affidavits filed by the Conservative "experts" are part of a court injunction to stop the Liberals from using the tape as evidence in their defense against the Prime Minister's defamation suit. This is a common procedure, and we can assume that the Liberals will also have a group of hired "experts" who could very possibly end up claiming the exact opposite of the Conservative "experts".

But all of this raises a simple question: why? Why did the Conservatives choose to bring back the "Cadman affair" long after it had died away by holding a press conference to call in question the value of the tape recording? They could easily have made that argument in court without anyone noticing, but instead, they invite all the media to watch James Moore speak of the "expert" findings, thus catapulting the affair right back into the spotlight.

Daniel Lessard, of Radio-Canada, gave the following answer: "I feel like being cynical by saying that it's a desperate attempt by a desperate party in a desperate Parliament where everyone should go on a holiday because they don't have anything intelligent to say!"

That may be a little too harsh, but on the whole I agree! It's the beginning of summer, people are sick of politics and MPs are ready to take a break. This press conference is irrelevant, and probably just a symptom of the general level of frustration and acrimony on Parliament Hill. I don't think that the Conservative thought about what they were doing, and at the moment, I don't know how much they really care!

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Jenkins, Globe and Mail