Downtown Eastside residents have been known to call it Harmaggedon. Conservative Health Minister Tony Clement calls it, "harm addition." Downtown Eastside residents and Tony Clement are no longer parroting the term "harm reduction" used by activists such as Mark Townsend and his spouse Liz Evans, who for years have paid their mortgage pushing projects for addicts on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
At the World Health Organization's 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City this week to promote a WHO guide on fighting HIV and AIDS, Clement made UN povertarians squirm when he told reporters,
"Allowing and/or encouraging people to inject heroin into their veins is not harm reduction, it is the opposite ... We believe it is a form of harm addition."
These activists are never satisfied, Clement pointed out. "There are already people saying injection sites aren't enough, that true harm reduction is giving out heroin for free," the minister said. He could have also mentioned that activists are even calling for a safe crack cocaine smoking room inside the supervised injection site on the Downtown Eastside. "You have to draw the line somewhere....", he said.
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It's not a gratuitous personal attack to name these people "Death Hippies." It is, in pure and plain fact, dead on. Ask yourselves how many people you knew who died of drug over-doses and hep. c. and AIDS and so on who would today be alive had they had their sorry arses tossed in jail for being losers and goofs, in jail wher ethey ight have gone straight and gotten their PhD.s at the government's expense and gone on to work in the "community" as something better than Povertarians preying on th eweak and sick.
Death Hippies are cannibals. They kill and eat the corpses of those who should at least be laid to rest rather than being dragged from the tomb to be paraded around as "martyrs." It's the Death hippies who live on the dead and the dying.
Harmageddon indeed.
THE BLOGGING ADDICTION:
CAUSES & CURES
If you are not a blog addict,
someone you love is. A son or daughter, perhaps. A close friend. Perhaps it is your lover's secret sin. No family is immune to the addiction; no relationship is impervious to the personal storms unleased by rampant, out-of-control blogging.
How do you identify a blog addict? Perhaps he says he has other things he'd rather do than watch a movie with you on Friday night. Perhaps she sneaks off to the computer desk once she thinks you've fallen asleep. Perhaps he is bleery-eyed and unable to track when you talk to him about plans for next weekend. Perhaps she plays at you again and again with the tips of her fingers, as if trying to see if you are real.
The blogging addiction occurs for a variety of reasons. "I spend all day working at this computer - it's so lonely," one might say. "No one listens to me at home. At least someone out there in bloggerland is willing to read what I have to say," says another. Some may take to blogging simply for the pleasure of it, like recreational sex. For others it may fill a deep-seated need to "be somebody."
Whatever the cause in a particular case, the enablers are everywhere: Blogspot, Bloglines, Journalspace, and Typepad are a few of the more obvious ones. All of them are readily available at the click of a mouse, and some of them are free. Free like maybe the little bag of free sample your heroin dealer offered you at the beginning of that addiction.
You'll see that one who is tempted to blog starts by hanging out with bloggers (in a virtual sense) and soon enough gets sucked into the endless cycle of Post-and-Read-and-Post-and-Read. And soon enough, something that started out as an innocent and fun way to pass the time turns dark and ugly and begins to ruin a life - and not just the blogger's life, but the lives of those around him.
Unlike the heroin addiction, the cure for the blog addict is not necessarily total abstinence. Rather, as with many sexual addictions, the goal is to change the habit and the mind-set, so that the patient gains control of the activity, rather than allowing the activity to control him.
Is it hopeless? Not necessarily. The loved one of a blog addict needs to:
(1) Ensure that the blogger posts no more than once or twice a day.
(2) Aid him in reducing the number of blogs he reads - get it down to no more than fifty per day.
(3) Assist her in lessening the number of comments she leaves on other blogs to no more ten per day maximum.
These seem to be reasonable standards; anything more has the potential to become extreme and to push the addict out of control again.
One who loves a blogger has to practice tough love at the first sign of back-sliding, has to remember Lysistrata and tell the out-of-control blogger: "No more driving my bus til you get this under control, buster! (or babe!, as the case may be)."
"I blog, therefore I am" is a great and dangerous fallacy and the blog addict needs to understand that.
BLOGGING IS NOT
LIFE - LIFE IS LIFE
Bumperstickers will be issued.
Yes, blogging can be one facet of a fulfilling life, but only when the blogger is in full control. The Blog is a monster which must constantly be subdued, wrestled down like some wild animal, tamed and made subservient to the blogger's enlightened self-interest. In its proper context, under strict watch, with a blogger who is in full control of his faculties and in control of the activity itself, blogging can become a useful and therapeutic adjunct in the development of one's emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual life.
When the blogging is out of control, the blogger will end up - well - like you and me
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