OVER THE EDGE ~~
ey 13-27, 2008

| Opinion

Andrew | _Letters to the! Baby Seals and

The Prince George airport wanted to improve its cleanliness
and air quality, along with the overall health and well-being
of airport employees and visitors. Therefore as of January 1,
the only place a person can smoke while at the Prince George
airport is inside their vehicle. It’s a fantastic idea, making
smokers who have just gotten off a flight which, as the air-
port now flies internationally, could have been many hours of
a nicotine attack nightmare, wait even longer to inhale some
sweet, sweet, lady nicotine. Non-smokers are officially declar-
ing outside a non-smoking zone. Shocking, ridiculous, pre-
posterous, unfair and insane all come to mind. but that’s be-
cause I’m a smoker, a huge smoker, an evil corporate agenda
feeding, evil organization patsy, two pack a day, chain smoker.
You can all hate me and blame me for your lung cancer, heart
disease, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (emphysema
and chronic bronchitis), asthma and other diseases, which ac-
cording to the Canadian Cancer Society, can all be caused by
exposure to second hand smoke. I understand it’s bad but I do
it anyway because it is an addiction. An addiction which the
Canadian government did very little to try to stop when I was
a young, impressionable, gorgeous little boy watching all the
cool guys on TV shows smoking. Hell even Rocky, the peak of
athleticism, smoked. But now that I am addicted, now that it’s
no longer a conscious choice, now is the time the government
is going to make it impossible for me.

But I’m being selfish, and this is going to sound like an opin-
ion article soon if I don’t get back to the facts. Unfortunately,
the non-smokers are right. There is an incredible amount of
evidence that shows second hand smoke to be horrible and

Kitten Lungs

limiting it in the atmosphere is absolutely necessary. I’m just
bitter to be on the losing team, but I’m used to this, I am after
all a Canucks fan. So here is the awful truth of second hand
smoke and why smokers are being scapegoated as the root of
all evil.

I smoke quite often at the.main entrance of the University,
and for all you people who stop and tell me I can’t you need
to read the sign on the outside wall which clearly states that
the main entrance is only a non-smoking zone during peak
hours at the University. Sometimes it will take me as little as
thirty seconds to finish my cigarette because it’s a menthol
and they’re damn good. However, each cigarette produces
about twelve minutes of smoke, which means that after I’m
done inhaling, the smoke from my cigarette lingers in the air
for everyone including baby seals and kittens to breathe in for
much longer. This is bad. This is bad because second-hand
smoke contains approximately four-thousand evil chemicals
many of which are proven to be cancerous. These chemicals
which I knowingly leave in the air for non-smokers to breathe.
include but are not limited to: carbon monoxide (car exhaust),
ammonia (a harsh window cleaner), cadmium (used in batter-
ies), and arsenic (that’s rat poison, seriously, rat poison). Gross
right, disgusting, and people walking past me get all that stuff
in their system without getting the awesome nicotine feeling
which makes it all worth while for us who choose to smoke.
These chemicals are the main reason why each year approxi-
mately one-thousand Canadians die from diseases caused by
second hand smoke, or at least that’s what the Canadian Can-
cer Society claims, and I for one believe them, or at least have

no reason to call them liars.

Not enough to demonize smokers yet? Well how bout this:
Second-hand smoke has at least twice the amount of nicotine
and tar as the smoke inhaled by the smoker. The concentration
of hydrogen cyanide (a poisonous gas that attacks respiratory
enzymes) in tobacco smoke is considered toxic. Smoke from
cigarettes contains nitrogen dioxide, which is measured at fifty
times higher than the standard for harm. Regular exposure
to second-hand smoke increases the risk of lung disease by
25% and heart disease by 10%. These are facts, not theories,
and smokers know them to be true, yet we still want to put
non-smoking strangers in harms way. We still want to smoke
outside entrances and even inside bars. Therefore this ban on
smoking at the Prince George airport is not a bad thing; we
obviously aren’t going to stop smoking around you because of
moral concerns. There has to be a law which stops us all from
killing off the population in such a selfish act. I say good-on
the airport authorities, sure it sucks for me and my smoking
brethren but non-smokers shouldn’t care about us, we are after
all putting their lives at risk every single day. However, we
smokers can take solace in the fact that we look cooler, more
mature, and infinitely more sophisticated with that sweet tube
of ecstasy hanging from our lips so our relatively shorter lives
are that much sweeter. Peace be with you and also with me.
Andrew Bailey.

The war in Afghanistan isn’t what’s
made out to be

To the editor of OTE:

I write this in belated response to OTE’s November editorial
by Andrew Kurjata in which he laments that those opposed to
Canada’s war in Afghanistan “seem to ignore or be unaware of
what Canada is doing in Afghanistan and how Canada wound
up being involved there in the first place.”

I confess to being ignorant of present-day Afghanistan
although I have indelible impressions gleaned from pass-
ing through the country 35 years ago on the
“Gringo Trail” between Pakistan and Iran. My
ignorance is magnified by the fact that our
federal government has been busily lying and

than any of our recently-minted “experts” on
Afghanistan really grasp the complexities of
that strange land.

The countryside we traversed between
Kabul, Kandahar and Heart was some of the most barren out-
side of Death Valley. The people we met were proud and tough.
Only those engaged in commerce had any use for foreigners.
The rest appeared to be concerned exclusively with surviv-
ing and scratching a living from an inhospitable land with few
resources and no obvious government. I had the definite im-
pression that we were tolerated only because some powerful
people made money selling us gasoline, food and lodging.

Afghans we saw were all tough, and for good reason. The
weak ones were dead. Sanitation was abysmal. Water was un-
safe, even in Kabul’s tourist hotels. In fact, we were warned
that if we accidentally drank any unboiled water, we should
head for an airport and get the first flight to a developed nation
as we would have acquired amoebic dysentery. Even the local
Coca Cola was suspect and those who could afford it bought
Coke canned in Germany.

Every male big enough to carry a rifle was packing one. The
females, well they were out of sight unless hauling firewood or

water on their heads for long treks along the dusty roads.

Ihave no reason to believe that the average Afghan’s attitude
toward foreigners was improved by either the invasion of the
Russians or the current one of assorted NATO member states.
Surely they are not pleased to have alien, infidel soldiers rip-
ping around their roads in monster vehicles, brandishing guns
and hauling off their defenders while dressed like aggressive
astronauts.

Let’s disabuse ourselves of the notion that we are going to

The UN Security Council, that cosy club of World War

Two victors, has also been bribed and bullied into granting om entitled 'o settle its own fate.

transplant Western versions of democracy, freedom, justice
and women’s liberation in that fragmented quasi-nation state,
while we step back and envision what they think of our oc-
cupation. To the extent that Afghanistan is a nation at all, it is
bound by tradition, family, tribe and religion.

Americans blundered in there, ostensibly in search of the
illusive Osama bin Laden. They unseated the Taliban govern-
ment which, although oppressive, provided stability and order.
That order was shattered. The fanatical Taliban regime was
removed and replaced with gangsters and sycophants. Canada
got dragged into this Afghan fiasco because the United States
bullied us, along with other members of NATO, into sending
soldiers as a cover to make their invasion look like an inter-
national effort. Malarkey. NATO is a cat’s paw for American
power now that the alliance’s nemesis, the Warsaw Pact, is
dead. The UN Security Council, that cosy club of World War
Two victors, has also been bribed and bullied into granting
grudging support to the occupation, although the invasion was

a clear violation of the United Nations Charter.

Without belabouring the point, it seems to me that we had
no business going into Afghanistan. We have no business stay-
ing there. The godawful mess that the United States made by
following in the Soviet Union’s footsteps will meet the same
end and Canada would well be clear of the whole thing when
it falls apart.

We owe that benighted country, so far away, serious repara-
tions but we cannot engage in anything meaningful until all
foreign troops are removed or driven out and we
acknowledge that Afghanistan is a sovereign na-

This should be a learning experience for Can- ,

obfuscating our role and actions there. I doubt gru d ging supp ort to the occupa tion, although thei invasion ee We should not allow ourselves to be dragged

was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter.

ond our traditional role of peacekeepers. It
oe that, under the Harper regime, we are
headed into future adventures as he squanders
our resources on tanks and huge transport air-
craft with no relationship to what we need to nacteae our na-
tion.

Since Kurjata’s article in November it has come to light that
prisoners we turned over to puppet Afghan forces, in violation
of the Geneva Conventions, have been abused and tortured.
We found that NATO knew that the governor of Kandahar
personally tortured those we surrendered to his care. But that
is all right, according to our prime minister, as these are just
“detainees” and not “prisoners” and, what the hell, they are all
terrorists anyway.

This war has cost us more than blood and money. It has bled
away the respect that our nation earned as an international
honest broker and promoter of peace. We should be ashamed
of our current government and do our level best to replace this
bunch with an administration of which we can be proud.

Uncle Don of CFUR, aka Jim Loughery