News Tiddly-bits

Good Morning! Okay, admittedly, I'm supposed to be working on a synopsis of a discussion paper, reading 6000 pages of stuff, or writing a feminist paper, but instead, I'm trolling the interweb, finding news bits that inevitably get my hackles up.

Let's start the day with a wag of the finger to Novartis, a pharmaceutical company who apparently hates poor people. They are suing the Indian government over the production of generic drugs used to treat its population. Once again, the evil pharmacoms are hiding under the auspices of the WTO and it's Trade Related Intellectual Property rights while going after poor governments who cannot afford to buy in sufficient quantities, the sheer volume of patented drugs to treat the people who need them. Want to sign a petition? http://www.msf.org/petition_india/international.html

Along the same vein, Thailand's government has had to declare a national emergency to override the patents on two drugs, one to treat HIV/AIDS and the other to treat Heart patients. They are allowed to break the TRIPs agreement by declaring it as a National Public Emergency. Good for Thailand! Seriously, it takes cajones to stand up to the Pharmacoms, who thanks to these patents, have a stranglehold on the prices of these drugs. Responsible patents, sure. A legit version of a drug cartel, evil.

Moving on...The Tory attack ads. Oh, I seriously felt like I needed to crawl back into bed yesterday when I heard the "leaked" news that the Tories were planning to unveil a series of attack ads against Stephane Dion. How retarded! Seriously, if we're not heading into an election, the point of these attack ads would be...? To annoy Canadians who don't give a shit while they are trying to watch the Super Bowl? To show us why we shouldn't vote Liberal? But I thought we weren't going to the polls :s No, must be to waste all that money the Conservative Party is swimming in! Yeah, that's got to be it! Well, as goofy as this news was, this morning on Global BC Morning show, we were treated to one of the ads, and now it makes sense why the Tories had Jason Kenney do the honours...They had to spice up what are possibly the world's DULLEST attack ads in the history of mankind. My disgust turned to disbelief! Did the Harpertron 2000 write and direct these ads? BOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRING!!! So I guess I have nothing to worry about in that front.

Next...13% of Americans have not heard of Global Warming. Cue Shock and Awe...is this a joke? Even George Shrubya Bush has heard of Global Warming, and he is generally acknowledged to be the stupidest contemporary person in the United States. Has there been a companion study linking the percentage of people who have not heard of global warming to the percentage of American cloistered cave hermits or people repatriated from having grown up in wolf colonies? Does that 13% include people who have been locked away in a Bio-dome somewhere? Bushmen of the Kalihari desert have heard of global warming. Siberian church mice have heard of global warming! Oy!

Finally, Rod has no idea how lucky he is that he didn't go to Australia this month for work. This morning, the state of Queensland, the area where Rod was supposed to be in January, announced that they are is such a severe state of drought, that they are now having to purify sewage water for consumption. Dude, I'm not touching that one. Just be glad Rod's not there.