I was Wrong and Naive

Let's re-visit Lockerbie.

The man found guilty of blowing up a plane in 1988 that resulted in many, many deaths has been sent home from a Scottish prison to Libya.

The public story is that he was released on compassionate grounds because he is dying of prostate cancer.

Like you, I took this nonsense at face value.

I argued about whether or not his prostate cancer was a good enough reason to free someone this evil.

I took all of this cover story seriously.

Until yesterday, that is.

What changed?

I had my hair cut.

And my Libyan barber gave me the proverbial ear full.

"See if this murderer is still alive three months from now, or even a year," my barber asked.

Here is the real story, according to my scissors-brandishing source.

Libya is on the upswing.

Hell, it is flying high. One of the world's largest suppliers of oil and swimming in construction and new enterprise.

Last month, British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who has remained curiously silent on this release fiasco, was drinking tea with

Muammar al-Gaddafi

Scotland is one of the few countries in Europe to not have benefited from Libya's current successes. France, Germany, Italy, almost everyone else has been cashing in. Put your ear to the stones at Peggy's Cove and Kashing! Kashing! you can hear the registers ringing.

So now, Abdel baset Al-Megrahi, the mass-murderer, is released from a poor Scots jail and greeted in Libya with a hero's welcome.

"He will now be a very, very rich man. He will write books and be treated like royalty," my source assured me, as he held a hand mirror to the nape of my neck.

Soon, haggis will be served at every cafe in Tripoli. Amidst the desert heat, locals will wrap themselves in Scottish woolens.

I avoided my own best rule for news - follow the money.

Prostate cancer - my butt!

What was I thinking?

Don't Even Read It

Sometimes the question is the wrong question.

Sometimes the statement is oxymoronic, or just plain dumb.

Take this headline...please.

"Quebec's landmark heroin study in jeopardy

$600,000 funding cut would endanger research into whether it's more effective to give recovering addicts heroin than methadone"

This is a perfect example of an article in the daily news that I don't even read. Reality show contestants murdering their model girlfriends falls into this category as well. Not to mention how many drugs Michael Jackson's doctor may have given him the night, etc...

Let's look at this headline a little more closely.

"Landmark study"

Oh? By whose standards. It will prove what? And what useful action will follow?

Landmark, indeed.

'whether it's more effective to give recovering addicts heroin than methadone"

Hahahaha...

How about whether it is more effective to shoot people with bullets or hack them to little bits with machetes? Now there's a study worthy of a government grant.

"Recovering addicts?"

If they are being given heroin or methadone, what exactly is it that they are recovering from?

And how are they "recovering?"

They are being maintained on their insidious soul-destroying community-ravishing habits by a ghoulish and mistaken government.

Finally...

Why do papers publish this nonsense unquestioned?

Is it not the role of the Fifth Estate to ask questions? I mean, real questions?

Asking if it is better to give Poison #1 or Poison # 2 to an already poisoned person is not really a healthy line of enquiry.