Marijuana activist Marc Emery will be extradited to the US sometime this week to serve up to five years in Uncle Sam's Greybar Hotel. Emery pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana in the US.
The debate isn't whether Emery sold marijuana seeds to Americans nor whether that is a criminal offence in the oh so United States of America. The issue is whether a five year tariff is remotely fair? Even the BC Court of Appeal thought a couple of months slammed up followed by a year of probation would be appropriate but that wasn't the issue before them.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for Emery. He did appear to enjoy his passing notoriety and made a bit of a martyr out of himself and, quite possibly, a good bit of money in the process (but I confess I don't know).
What is beyond question is this - Emery's martyrdom would be neutralized if only the government (both in fact) would decriminalize pot and market it in a manner similar to the way they reap the rewards of booze sales.
Now I'm a beer guy myself although I do enjoy a glass of wine with dinner. That said, in my immediate region, pot growing may be what passes for agriculture. It's pretty much just rocks and Christmas trees here, rocks and Christmas trees and pot. That said, I think it's harmless enough that it deserves to be treated like our other pet intoxicants.
My best buddy of some 40-years now is a freshly retired Detroit cop and Vietnam marine. For the sake of this item I'll only refer to Bob as "Bob." Many years ago Bob, as I'll call him, told me that he was all for the decriminalization of pot. He explained that he'd been to too many domestic violence scenes where the evidence comprised a corpse, a still warm gun, and a nearly empty bottle of bourbon on the kitchen table. Yet he'd never attended a murder that featured a corpse, a still warm gun and a stoner sprawled on the sofa. There was pot violence, make no mistake about that, plenty of it. But the pot violence came from the criminal element that enjoyed the exclusive market to traffic in the highly lucrative, illegal product. Kill two birds with one stone, Bob argued, stop banging up kids for a relatively harmless intoxicant while simultaneously cutting out the powerful criminal element that was profiting from it.
If people like the Lord of Flies could truly stop the pot trade by retaining the criminal sanction I'd say okay. But he can't, and he knows it. Does he, or anyone remotely sentient, believe that mandatory sentencing is going to reverse that, is going to put a meaningful dent in the pot trade? That has to be the sine qua non. You have to have some weird shit going on in your cortex to buy that and, if you do, your problem is far worse than pot.
Unfortunately, Marc Emery's martyrdom is a diversion to the debate we need to be having on this issue. I guess that's why this guy gets under my skin.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Softpeddling Torture - CSIS Runs Interference for Harper?
The National Spot is doing its best to take the heat off the Son of Perdition over the Afghan torture scandal. Today it offered up a claim by Michael Coulombe, a top official of CSIS, that Canadians would be okay with torture if it meant saving Canadian lives.
Implicit in Coulombe's fantasy is that torture generates reliable intelligence, something the Americans have tried and thoroughly debunked long ago. Torture is what you use to elicit confessions, not intelligence. Even the Khmer Rouge knew that dipshit.
What Coulombe is also spinning is the idea that torture has somehow saved Canadian lives. Too bad he didn't seem to have any specifics to back that up but, then again, that wasn't the point of his remarks, was it? He doesn't want to try to make the case for torture, he just wants to confuse the issue.
One cardinal achievement of the FBI during the Bush years was to prove, conclusively prove, that standard interrogation techniques consistently yield high-grade, actionable intelligence while coercive, even illegal CIA and military techniques yield precisely whatever the interrogator/torturer wants to hear.
Implicit in Coulombe's fantasy is that torture generates reliable intelligence, something the Americans have tried and thoroughly debunked long ago. Torture is what you use to elicit confessions, not intelligence. Even the Khmer Rouge knew that dipshit.
What Coulombe is also spinning is the idea that torture has somehow saved Canadian lives. Too bad he didn't seem to have any specifics to back that up but, then again, that wasn't the point of his remarks, was it? He doesn't want to try to make the case for torture, he just wants to confuse the issue.
One cardinal achievement of the FBI during the Bush years was to prove, conclusively prove, that standard interrogation techniques consistently yield high-grade, actionable intelligence while coercive, even illegal CIA and military techniques yield precisely whatever the interrogator/torturer wants to hear.
Is L'il Stevie Feeling the Heat?
Not a great day for the Prince of Darkness. Canadians have drawn their own conclusions about the Afghan detainee torture issue and they're convinced that Canada's military and political leadership knew full well that Afghan detainees were being tortured and turned a blind eye to it.
The troops? Support the troops? Oh we don't have any reservations about the troops. We support the foot soldier as we haven't in decades. It's their leaders - Harper and his cabinet and guys like "Big Cod" Hillier - we don't support on this one.
An Ipsos-Reid poll commissioned by Tory house organs, the National Post and the CanWest television network, Global, probably to their regret, finds Canadians pointing a decidedly angry finger at Harper, MacKay and "senior Canadian military officials" which seems to be code for the Big Cod hisself, safely retired ex-general Rick Hillier.
"More than half -- 52% -- said they believe Prime Minister Stephen Harper knew what was going on, and the same percentage said they believe individual soldiers knew it was happening, according to the poll.
However, a much larger majority -- 75% -- said they believe senior Canadian military officials would have known that transferred prisoners were being tortured. Sixty-five per cent said they believe the minister of defence had to have known, and 66% said they believe the Defence or Foreign Affairs Department were in the know.
Canadians see the story as a "chain-of-command issue" where responsibility rests at the top, and not with individual soldiers, said Mr. Wright, senior vice-president of Ipsos Reid.
For the first - and last - time to quote Don Cherry - "Beauty!"
So, if a solid majority of Canadians believe detainees were regularly tortured and a much larger majority believes that, if so, the guys at the top were in on it and did nothing, then surely it follows that the great unasked question - why is Harper digging in on the documents? - answers itself - to cover his rather exposed ass.
The troops? Support the troops? Oh we don't have any reservations about the troops. We support the foot soldier as we haven't in decades. It's their leaders - Harper and his cabinet and guys like "Big Cod" Hillier - we don't support on this one.
An Ipsos-Reid poll commissioned by Tory house organs, the National Post and the CanWest television network, Global, probably to their regret, finds Canadians pointing a decidedly angry finger at Harper, MacKay and "senior Canadian military officials" which seems to be code for the Big Cod hisself, safely retired ex-general Rick Hillier.
"More than half -- 52% -- said they believe Prime Minister Stephen Harper knew what was going on, and the same percentage said they believe individual soldiers knew it was happening, according to the poll.
However, a much larger majority -- 75% -- said they believe senior Canadian military officials would have known that transferred prisoners were being tortured. Sixty-five per cent said they believe the minister of defence had to have known, and 66% said they believe the Defence or Foreign Affairs Department were in the know.
Canadians see the story as a "chain-of-command issue" where responsibility rests at the top, and not with individual soldiers, said Mr. Wright, senior vice-president of Ipsos Reid.
For the first - and last - time to quote Don Cherry - "Beauty!"
So, if a solid majority of Canadians believe detainees were regularly tortured and a much larger majority believes that, if so, the guys at the top were in on it and did nothing, then surely it follows that the great unasked question - why is Harper digging in on the documents? - answers itself - to cover his rather exposed ass.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Seymour Hersh Weighs In on Obama's Conundrum
Legendary American reporter Seymour Hersh spoke at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva last month. He took time to answer a few questions about Barack Obama, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.
"...At this point he's in real trouble. Because the military are dominating him on the important issues of the world: Iraq, Iran, Afghan and Pakistan. And he's following the policies of Bush and Cheney almost to a fare-thee-well.
...In Iraq I don't have to tell anybody the prospects – in the American press they never mention Moqtada Sadr, but look out. He's going to be the kingmaker of that country. He's now studying in Iran. And he's going to be the next ayatollah-to-be. I don't know how he'll work it out with Sistani. But he's going to be the force, the Shia
.
...He's never going to be win, whatever that means, in Afghanistan. The only solution in Afghanistan is a settlement with the Taliban. And the only person to settle with is Mullah Omar, and he's become another Hitler to the American public. So how we're going to do that and survive politically?
And the same in Pakistan. He's got the wrong policy there. So it is – and again for Obama, Iran's not resolved, in terms of, Iranians have come out of this crisis stronger than ever. We don't want to believe that."
"...At this point he's in real trouble. Because the military are dominating him on the important issues of the world: Iraq, Iran, Afghan and Pakistan. And he's following the policies of Bush and Cheney almost to a fare-thee-well.
...In Iraq I don't have to tell anybody the prospects – in the American press they never mention Moqtada Sadr, but look out. He's going to be the kingmaker of that country. He's now studying in Iran. And he's going to be the next ayatollah-to-be. I don't know how he'll work it out with Sistani. But he's going to be the force, the Shia
.
...He's never going to be win, whatever that means, in Afghanistan. The only solution in Afghanistan is a settlement with the Taliban. And the only person to settle with is Mullah Omar, and he's become another Hitler to the American public. So how we're going to do that and survive politically?
And the same in Pakistan. He's got the wrong policy there. So it is – and again for Obama, Iran's not resolved, in terms of, Iranians have come out of this crisis stronger than ever. We don't want to believe that."
A Pakistani Take on the Times Square Bomber
This insightful look into the makeup of Faisal Shahzad by the Pakistani news service Dawn is an eye opener:
...As anti-US lava spews from the fiery volcanoes of Pakistan’s private television channels and newspapers, a collective psychosis grips the country’s youth. Murderous intent follows with the conviction that the US is responsible for all ills, both in Pakistan and the world of Islam.
Faisal Shahzad, with designer sunglasses and an MBA degree from the University of Bridgeport, acquired that murderous intent. Living his formative years in Pakistan, he typifies the young ...Pakistani who grew up in the shadow of Ziaul Haq’s hate-based education curriculum. The son of a retired air vice-marshal, life was easy as was getting US citizenship subsequently. But at some point the toxic schooling and media tutoring must have kicked in.
...Ideas considered extreme a decade ago are now mainstream. A private survey carried out by a European embassy based in Islamabad found that only four per cent of Pakistanis polled speak well of America; 96 per cent against.
Although Pakistan and the US are formal allies, in the public perception the US has ousted India as Pakistan’s number one enemy. Remarkably, anti-US sentiment rises in proportion to aid received. Say a good word about the US, and you are labelled as its agent.
...In part, Pakistan displays the resentment of a client state for its paymaster. US-Pakistan relations are transactional today but the master-client relationship is older. Indeed, Pakistan chose this path because confronting India over Kashmir demanded big defence budgets.
...The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, even as it brought in profits, deepened the dependence. Paid by the US to create the anti-Soviet jihadist apparatus, Pakistan is now being paid again to fight that war’s blowback. Pakistan then entered George W. Bush’s war on terror to enhance America’s security — a fact that further hurt its self-esteem. It is a separate matter that Pakistan fights that very war for its own survival and must call upon its army to protect the population from throat-slitting fanatics.
Passing the buck is equally fundamental to Pakistan’s anti-Americanism. It is in human nature to blame others for one’s own failures. Pakistan has long teetered between being a failed state and a failing state. The rich won’t pay taxes? Little electricity? Contaminated drinking water? Kashmir unsolved? Blame it on the Americans.
Unfortunately the writer of this piece doesn't hold out much hope that these corrosive attitudes are likely to change anytime soon. If he's right, America faces a political challenge in Pakistan an order of magnitude greater than the threat it faces from the Pakistani Taliban.
...As anti-US lava spews from the fiery volcanoes of Pakistan’s private television channels and newspapers, a collective psychosis grips the country’s youth. Murderous intent follows with the conviction that the US is responsible for all ills, both in Pakistan and the world of Islam.
Faisal Shahzad, with designer sunglasses and an MBA degree from the University of Bridgeport, acquired that murderous intent. Living his formative years in Pakistan, he typifies the young ...Pakistani who grew up in the shadow of Ziaul Haq’s hate-based education curriculum. The son of a retired air vice-marshal, life was easy as was getting US citizenship subsequently. But at some point the toxic schooling and media tutoring must have kicked in.
...Ideas considered extreme a decade ago are now mainstream. A private survey carried out by a European embassy based in Islamabad found that only four per cent of Pakistanis polled speak well of America; 96 per cent against.
Although Pakistan and the US are formal allies, in the public perception the US has ousted India as Pakistan’s number one enemy. Remarkably, anti-US sentiment rises in proportion to aid received. Say a good word about the US, and you are labelled as its agent.
...In part, Pakistan displays the resentment of a client state for its paymaster. US-Pakistan relations are transactional today but the master-client relationship is older. Indeed, Pakistan chose this path because confronting India over Kashmir demanded big defence budgets.
...The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, even as it brought in profits, deepened the dependence. Paid by the US to create the anti-Soviet jihadist apparatus, Pakistan is now being paid again to fight that war’s blowback. Pakistan then entered George W. Bush’s war on terror to enhance America’s security — a fact that further hurt its self-esteem. It is a separate matter that Pakistan fights that very war for its own survival and must call upon its army to protect the population from throat-slitting fanatics.
Passing the buck is equally fundamental to Pakistan’s anti-Americanism. It is in human nature to blame others for one’s own failures. Pakistan has long teetered between being a failed state and a failing state. The rich won’t pay taxes? Little electricity? Contaminated drinking water? Kashmir unsolved? Blame it on the Americans.
Unfortunately the writer of this piece doesn't hold out much hope that these corrosive attitudes are likely to change anytime soon. If he's right, America faces a political challenge in Pakistan an order of magnitude greater than the threat it faces from the Pakistani Taliban.
A Survey of Opinion from the Israeli Left
Here are a few snippets gleaned from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz:
Amos Harel notes the growing influence of religious Right in the Israeli military.
"...the IDF of 1993 is not the IDF of 2010. Here is what happened in the officers' course for the infantry corps, the spearhead of the combat units, during that period: In 1990, 2 percent of the cadets enrolled in the course were religious; by 2007, that figure had shot up to 30 percent. And this is how the intermediate generation of combat officers looks today: six out of seven lieutenant colonels in the Golani Brigade are religious and, beginning in the summer, the brigade commander will be as well. In the Kfir Brigade, three out of seven lieutenant colonels wear skullcaps, and in the Givati Brigade and the paratroopers, two out of six. In some of the infantry brigades, the number of religious company commanders has passed the 50 percent mark - more than three times the percentage of the national religious community in the overall population.
Harel also notes the rightward shift of Israel's officer corps that followed the abandonment of officer training by the Israeli left and members of the Kibbutzim put off by the first Lebanon war and the first Intifada. As the Left has shunned officer school, the Right and the religious Right has gained increasing influence in the Israeli Defence Force.
Zvi Bar'el writes that there'll be no peace for his homeland unless Israel returns the Golan Heights:
... there is a balance of terror between Israel and its neighbors, whose purpose is deterrence. That's what every rational country does when it feels threatened and can't find a nonmilitary alternative. No doubt, Israel is threatened, but so are Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It's enough to listen to Israel's threats to "take Syria back to the Stone Age," "destroy Lebanon's civilian infrastructure" or smash Hamas to understand that the style of the Israeli threat approaches that of Iran. If anyone should be waking up in the morning in a cold sweat, it's the Lebanese, Syrians and Gazans, not the Israelis.
...But unlike Israel, which sees the threat but forgets the catalyst, each of its neighbors has territory under Israeli occupation, each has a legitimate national claim to get its occupied land back. Anyone looking for a nonviolent alternative can find it well-packaged and waiting to be used, but it's merely getting wet in the rain.
...Peace with Syria might neutralize the military threat from that country, stop Hezbollah from arming and put Iran in a confusing situation, even if it doesn't break off its relations with Syria. Peace with Syria and the Palestinians would also change Turkey's position and neutralize the hostility between Israel and the other Arab countries.
In short, the military threat would lose a great deal of its punch. A rational country, even one not seeking peace - and Israel, after all, is not one - would have done the arithmetic long ago and understood that by continuing to hold on to the Golan Heights, the chances of a confrontation would simply grow.
The paper's editorial calls on Netanyahu to change course while there's still time to save Israel's "very existance as a Jewish and democratic state."
Three destructive trends threaten Israel's very existence as a Jewish and democratic state. The first is the continued occupation of the territories, which as of next month will have gone on for 43 years. Ruling over a large Palestinian population through forceful and nondemocratic means compromises Israel's moral case and destroys its image in the eyes of the international community, while buttressing extreme nationalist sentiment within the country.
The second destructive trend involves the expansion of the ultra-Orthodox community, whose members do not work and do not bear the burden of military service or paying taxes. Instead, they are dependent on welfare payments and they deprive their children of the kind of education that would give them the necessary skills to join the labor force.
The third destructive trend is the discrimination against and marginalization of Israel's Arab citizens, who want to study and to work but have difficulty finding employment and integrating into society. If these trends are not reversed, the Haredim will continue to be isolated at the expense of the shrinking core of Israelis who work and serve their country, while the Arabs, in the absence of opportunities, will be pushed to the margins of society. The shortage of working people will cause the Israeli economy to collapse.
...In a weekend interview with Haaretz, opposition leader Tzipi Livni called for ending these destructive trends before it is too late. She also called for two strategic decisions to be taken: the first, to partition the country into two states, one Jewish and the other Palestinian; the second, to impose the teaching of a core curriculum to Haredim in order to enable them to integrate into the labor market.
Unfortunately this body of wisdom doesn't reach far beyond the Israeli Left which, today, is becoming increasingly marginalized by a national drift to the Right.
Amos Harel notes the growing influence of religious Right in the Israeli military.
"...the IDF of 1993 is not the IDF of 2010. Here is what happened in the officers' course for the infantry corps, the spearhead of the combat units, during that period: In 1990, 2 percent of the cadets enrolled in the course were religious; by 2007, that figure had shot up to 30 percent. And this is how the intermediate generation of combat officers looks today: six out of seven lieutenant colonels in the Golani Brigade are religious and, beginning in the summer, the brigade commander will be as well. In the Kfir Brigade, three out of seven lieutenant colonels wear skullcaps, and in the Givati Brigade and the paratroopers, two out of six. In some of the infantry brigades, the number of religious company commanders has passed the 50 percent mark - more than three times the percentage of the national religious community in the overall population.
Harel also notes the rightward shift of Israel's officer corps that followed the abandonment of officer training by the Israeli left and members of the Kibbutzim put off by the first Lebanon war and the first Intifada. As the Left has shunned officer school, the Right and the religious Right has gained increasing influence in the Israeli Defence Force.
Zvi Bar'el writes that there'll be no peace for his homeland unless Israel returns the Golan Heights:
... there is a balance of terror between Israel and its neighbors, whose purpose is deterrence. That's what every rational country does when it feels threatened and can't find a nonmilitary alternative. No doubt, Israel is threatened, but so are Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It's enough to listen to Israel's threats to "take Syria back to the Stone Age," "destroy Lebanon's civilian infrastructure" or smash Hamas to understand that the style of the Israeli threat approaches that of Iran. If anyone should be waking up in the morning in a cold sweat, it's the Lebanese, Syrians and Gazans, not the Israelis.
...But unlike Israel, which sees the threat but forgets the catalyst, each of its neighbors has territory under Israeli occupation, each has a legitimate national claim to get its occupied land back. Anyone looking for a nonviolent alternative can find it well-packaged and waiting to be used, but it's merely getting wet in the rain.
...Peace with Syria might neutralize the military threat from that country, stop Hezbollah from arming and put Iran in a confusing situation, even if it doesn't break off its relations with Syria. Peace with Syria and the Palestinians would also change Turkey's position and neutralize the hostility between Israel and the other Arab countries.
In short, the military threat would lose a great deal of its punch. A rational country, even one not seeking peace - and Israel, after all, is not one - would have done the arithmetic long ago and understood that by continuing to hold on to the Golan Heights, the chances of a confrontation would simply grow.
The paper's editorial calls on Netanyahu to change course while there's still time to save Israel's "very existance as a Jewish and democratic state."
Three destructive trends threaten Israel's very existence as a Jewish and democratic state. The first is the continued occupation of the territories, which as of next month will have gone on for 43 years. Ruling over a large Palestinian population through forceful and nondemocratic means compromises Israel's moral case and destroys its image in the eyes of the international community, while buttressing extreme nationalist sentiment within the country.
The second destructive trend involves the expansion of the ultra-Orthodox community, whose members do not work and do not bear the burden of military service or paying taxes. Instead, they are dependent on welfare payments and they deprive their children of the kind of education that would give them the necessary skills to join the labor force.
The third destructive trend is the discrimination against and marginalization of Israel's Arab citizens, who want to study and to work but have difficulty finding employment and integrating into society. If these trends are not reversed, the Haredim will continue to be isolated at the expense of the shrinking core of Israelis who work and serve their country, while the Arabs, in the absence of opportunities, will be pushed to the margins of society. The shortage of working people will cause the Israeli economy to collapse.
...In a weekend interview with Haaretz, opposition leader Tzipi Livni called for ending these destructive trends before it is too late. She also called for two strategic decisions to be taken: the first, to partition the country into two states, one Jewish and the other Palestinian; the second, to impose the teaching of a core curriculum to Haredim in order to enable them to integrate into the labor market.
Unfortunately this body of wisdom doesn't reach far beyond the Israeli Left which, today, is becoming increasingly marginalized by a national drift to the Right.
This Will Get Your Attention - Sex Injury Survey
The Telegraph reports that a full third of British adults admit to having suffered some injury during sex. It's a pretty funny article. The newspaper has also abbreviated the problem in lists:
Most common injuries during sex:
1. Pulled muscle
2. Injured back
3. Carpet burns
4. Cricked neck
5. Bashing elbows / knees
6. Bruised shoulder
7. Twisted knee
8. Sprained / strained wrist
9. Sprained / strained ankle
10. Bending fingers back
Most dangerous locations:
1. Sofa
2. Stairs
3. Car
4. Shower
5. Bedroom
6. On a chair
7. Kitchen table
8. Garden
9. Lavatory
10. In a work cupboard
Most commonly broken items:
1. Bed frame
2. Wine / pint glass
3. Picture
4. Chair
5. Tea cup
6. Wall
7. Chest of drawers
8. Door
9. Window
10. Vase
Most common injuries during sex:
1. Pulled muscle
2. Injured back
3. Carpet burns
4. Cricked neck
5. Bashing elbows / knees
6. Bruised shoulder
7. Twisted knee
8. Sprained / strained wrist
9. Sprained / strained ankle
10. Bending fingers back
Most dangerous locations:
1. Sofa
2. Stairs
3. Car
4. Shower
5. Bedroom
6. On a chair
7. Kitchen table
8. Garden
9. Lavatory
10. In a work cupboard
Most commonly broken items:
1. Bed frame
2. Wine / pint glass
3. Picture
4. Chair
5. Tea cup
6. Wall
7. Chest of drawers
8. Door
9. Window
10. Vase
The Party's Over
''We have destroyed ourselves. We are angry
at what is happening now, this is why people are on the streets
screaming 'thieves' at the parliamentarians.
''We are also grieving the end of an era,
the end of a 30-year party. We are staring into an abyss now
and no one knows where we will land.
We have absolutely no idea where we are headed.''
That is how Kostas Argyros, presenter of the weekly television news program The Correspondents describes what has befallen his native Greece. The bachannal is over, the purse is empty and now comes the hangover. From the Syndey Morning Herald:
...with the passing on Thursday of austerity measures that raised taxes and loosened employment laws and will slash the budget deficit from 13.6 per cent of gross domestic product this year to less than 3 per cent by 2014, the social contract that has held Greece together since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974 is finished.
In return, Greece will receive loans worth €110 billion ($158 billion) from its European Union partners and the International Monetary Fund to save it from bankruptcy.
''We are all expecting Greece to become Argentina, or worse,'' said an Athens financial consultant, Nikos Kontodimos.
Imagine, a country that has run out of easy options, that will now be forced to live within its means. The rubber meets the road.
Greece, however, is but one of several Western countries sinking in debt. They're not like their big brother mega-debtor, America, because their creditors don't need them in the same way they need the USA. That leaves them highly vulnerable to their creditors and those who would "game" their debts.
Maybe, just maybe, the 30-year binge much of the West has been on is drawing to its inevitable end. Perhaps we're witnessing the beginning of a new era of reality. What a change that would be.
Journalistic Privilege Is Not the Problem
It seems that some Canadian journalists feel that their imaginary "special place" in the Magna Carta has been taken from them by the recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on protection of sources. The Court said there is no blanket immunity and each case has to be weighed on its own merits.
Press freedoms are a poorly understood and rarely visited subject. For that matter, journos usually have a weak and flawed grasp of the law. Trust me, I've seen this from both sides.
All democracies need a "free press" but those essential freedoms extend far beyond the strict confines of law. Understand that press freedom is also powerfully constrained by corporatism and by concentration of ownership coupled with cross-ownership.
It could be said that Canada no longer has media chains or networks but, instead, multi-media cartels. Even now it's taking lawyers years to butcher the ungainly corpse of CanWest which is ultimately making its way to the tables of other giant media players. Call it corporate cannibalism if you like.
What's wrong with this? At the end of the day there'll be a handful of people who will decide just what you are told about what happened. Their views, their interests, their biases will inform your mind about the world around you. And, as they become increasingly corporatized, their views, interests and biases are becoming synchronous. True press freedom depends on diversity of opinion and that's being choked out.
This uniformity of message in the hands of a media cartel also becomes corruptive of the relationship between journalism and politics. It is, after all, the politicians who regulate many aspects of the media, particularly radio and television broadcasting and copyright. Those policy powers directly impact the bottom line of the media cartel. That gives rise to a community of interest between the corporate media and the politicians they're not supposed to serve. It creates the basis for a quid pro quo, a "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" symbiosis. In this way the MSM can morph from the "watchdog of government" into government's lap dog.
Never forget that we live in the age of Asper, the age of Rupert Murdoch. The era of Thompson is but an artifact, a fond memory of a better day. David Frum famously remarked that the Republicans thought FOX News worked for them only to later discover it was they who worked for FOX. What he's admitting there is the marriage of political and journalistic power and the ultimate corruption of both.
I suspect political favouritism in the recent decision of the CRTC accepting the right of Canadian broadcasters to extract fees from cable companies for distributing their programming. In other words, if you happen to watch CTV's advertisers via a home antenna it's free of charge but if you receive those ads via cable, CTV is entitled to add a cost that will ultimately work its way into your cable bill. The logic is utterly fallacious and indefensible. It is, however, entirely consistent with a government regulator exercising favouritism to a powerful and potentially useful messenger.
The Ignatieff Liberals seem to be floundering about in search of policies. Here's one they can run with. Promise to break up the media cartel by introducing strict controls on concentration of ownership and cross-ownership. Force the cartel to divest itself of newspapers, radio stations and television stations anywhere that diversity of opinion is suppressed which, in Canada, pretty much includes every population centre.
Somehow I don't think the IgLibs are up to a challenge such as taking on the media. Perhaps they're quite content with the status quo. After all, sooner or later Harper will die and they might then have a chance at power themselves in which case a compliant, helpful media might be quite handy.
Press freedoms are a poorly understood and rarely visited subject. For that matter, journos usually have a weak and flawed grasp of the law. Trust me, I've seen this from both sides.
All democracies need a "free press" but those essential freedoms extend far beyond the strict confines of law. Understand that press freedom is also powerfully constrained by corporatism and by concentration of ownership coupled with cross-ownership.
It could be said that Canada no longer has media chains or networks but, instead, multi-media cartels. Even now it's taking lawyers years to butcher the ungainly corpse of CanWest which is ultimately making its way to the tables of other giant media players. Call it corporate cannibalism if you like.
What's wrong with this? At the end of the day there'll be a handful of people who will decide just what you are told about what happened. Their views, their interests, their biases will inform your mind about the world around you. And, as they become increasingly corporatized, their views, interests and biases are becoming synchronous. True press freedom depends on diversity of opinion and that's being choked out.
This uniformity of message in the hands of a media cartel also becomes corruptive of the relationship between journalism and politics. It is, after all, the politicians who regulate many aspects of the media, particularly radio and television broadcasting and copyright. Those policy powers directly impact the bottom line of the media cartel. That gives rise to a community of interest between the corporate media and the politicians they're not supposed to serve. It creates the basis for a quid pro quo, a "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" symbiosis. In this way the MSM can morph from the "watchdog of government" into government's lap dog.
Never forget that we live in the age of Asper, the age of Rupert Murdoch. The era of Thompson is but an artifact, a fond memory of a better day. David Frum famously remarked that the Republicans thought FOX News worked for them only to later discover it was they who worked for FOX. What he's admitting there is the marriage of political and journalistic power and the ultimate corruption of both.
I suspect political favouritism in the recent decision of the CRTC accepting the right of Canadian broadcasters to extract fees from cable companies for distributing their programming. In other words, if you happen to watch CTV's advertisers via a home antenna it's free of charge but if you receive those ads via cable, CTV is entitled to add a cost that will ultimately work its way into your cable bill. The logic is utterly fallacious and indefensible. It is, however, entirely consistent with a government regulator exercising favouritism to a powerful and potentially useful messenger.
The Ignatieff Liberals seem to be floundering about in search of policies. Here's one they can run with. Promise to break up the media cartel by introducing strict controls on concentration of ownership and cross-ownership. Force the cartel to divest itself of newspapers, radio stations and television stations anywhere that diversity of opinion is suppressed which, in Canada, pretty much includes every population centre.
Somehow I don't think the IgLibs are up to a challenge such as taking on the media. Perhaps they're quite content with the status quo. After all, sooner or later Harper will die and they might then have a chance at power themselves in which case a compliant, helpful media might be quite handy.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Will Brazil Bring Nuclear Weapons to South America?
Brazil is a full member of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia?, India and China) said to be the emerging economic superpowers of the 21st century.
There's now concern that Brazil is secretly working on its own nuclear weapon not because of any legitimate threat but to bolster its position on the world stage:
Why all this secrecy? What is there to hide in the development of small reactors to power submarines, systems that several countries have had for decades? The answer is as simple as it is unsettling: Brazil is probably also developing something else in the plants it has declared as production facilities for nuclear submarines: nuclear weapons. Vice President José Alencar offered a reason when he openly advocated Brazil's acquisition of nuclear weapons in September 2009. For a country with a 15,000-kilometer border and rich offshore oil reserves, Alencar says, these weapons would not only be an important tool of "deterrence," but would also give Brazil the means to increase its importance on the international stage. When it was pointed out that Brazil had signed the NPT, Alencar reacted calmly, saying it was "a matter that was open to negotiation."
How exactly could Brazil go about building nuclear weapons? The answer, unfortunately, is that it would be relatively easy. A precondition for the legal construction of small reactors for submarine engines is that nuclear material regulated by the IAEA is approved. But because Brazil designates its production facilities for nuclear submarine construction as restricted military areas, the IAEA inspectors are no longer given access. In other words, once the legally supplied enriched uranium has passed through the gate of the plant where nuclear submarines are being built, it can be used for any purpose, including the production of nuclear weapons. And because almost all nuclear submarines are operated with highly enriched uranium, which also happens to be weapons grade uranium, Brazil can easily justify producing highly enriched nuclear fuel.
Read more here.
And, as though Brazil's nuclear ambitions aren't bad enough, the American journal Foreign Policy warns Burma, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates could soon join the nuclear club.
There's now concern that Brazil is secretly working on its own nuclear weapon not because of any legitimate threat but to bolster its position on the world stage:
Why all this secrecy? What is there to hide in the development of small reactors to power submarines, systems that several countries have had for decades? The answer is as simple as it is unsettling: Brazil is probably also developing something else in the plants it has declared as production facilities for nuclear submarines: nuclear weapons. Vice President José Alencar offered a reason when he openly advocated Brazil's acquisition of nuclear weapons in September 2009. For a country with a 15,000-kilometer border and rich offshore oil reserves, Alencar says, these weapons would not only be an important tool of "deterrence," but would also give Brazil the means to increase its importance on the international stage. When it was pointed out that Brazil had signed the NPT, Alencar reacted calmly, saying it was "a matter that was open to negotiation."
How exactly could Brazil go about building nuclear weapons? The answer, unfortunately, is that it would be relatively easy. A precondition for the legal construction of small reactors for submarine engines is that nuclear material regulated by the IAEA is approved. But because Brazil designates its production facilities for nuclear submarine construction as restricted military areas, the IAEA inspectors are no longer given access. In other words, once the legally supplied enriched uranium has passed through the gate of the plant where nuclear submarines are being built, it can be used for any purpose, including the production of nuclear weapons. And because almost all nuclear submarines are operated with highly enriched uranium, which also happens to be weapons grade uranium, Brazil can easily justify producing highly enriched nuclear fuel.
Read more here.
And, as though Brazil's nuclear ambitions aren't bad enough, the American journal Foreign Policy warns Burma, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates could soon join the nuclear club.
Germany Throws in the Towel on Climate Change
Germany has given up hope of ever achieving a global consensus to arrest climate change. Yes, you heard right, Angela Merkel has thrown in the towel. From Spiegel Online:
As recently as last December [Chancellor Merkel] said: "If we don't succeed in limiting global warming to 2 degrees, then the costs of the resulting damages will be many times higher than what we now, with a change in our lifestyle, can achieve."
Now it's a different story: Merkel will no longer endeavor to contractually implement the 2-degree target -- in other words, to reach a legally binding agreement with specific reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. She doesn't want to be snubbed again because she has realized that important countries won't lend their support the next time around either. This was confirmed two weeks ago at the nuclear summit in Washington by Chinese President Hu Jintao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Germany now has to acknowledge the limits of its influence. The country's climate policy was an attempt to play a leadership role on the grand stage. But the others didn't follow suit. On paper they praise the objective, but they are not prepared to do more than make vague promises. The only way forward, it seems, is by taking side roads. But even there the Chinese and the Indians won't simply trot along behind the Germans.
On the domestic front, this threatens to bring down the great symbol of Germany's efforts to remodel society in line with a climate-friendly lifestyle and mode of production. If Merkel is no longer fighting on the international stage to achieve the 2-degree target, how does she intend to convince her fellow Germans that they have to change anything? A domestic temperature target would be absurd.
The article suggests that Merkel has given up hope of reaching a binding, global agreement and will instead focus on side deals with individual countries on a variety of approaches. Unfortunately you can't solve a global problem without a global solution. That much we learned when the world got together to tackle CFCs to protect the ozone layer.
As recently as last December [Chancellor Merkel] said: "If we don't succeed in limiting global warming to 2 degrees, then the costs of the resulting damages will be many times higher than what we now, with a change in our lifestyle, can achieve."
Now it's a different story: Merkel will no longer endeavor to contractually implement the 2-degree target -- in other words, to reach a legally binding agreement with specific reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. She doesn't want to be snubbed again because she has realized that important countries won't lend their support the next time around either. This was confirmed two weeks ago at the nuclear summit in Washington by Chinese President Hu Jintao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Germany now has to acknowledge the limits of its influence. The country's climate policy was an attempt to play a leadership role on the grand stage. But the others didn't follow suit. On paper they praise the objective, but they are not prepared to do more than make vague promises. The only way forward, it seems, is by taking side roads. But even there the Chinese and the Indians won't simply trot along behind the Germans.
On the domestic front, this threatens to bring down the great symbol of Germany's efforts to remodel society in line with a climate-friendly lifestyle and mode of production. If Merkel is no longer fighting on the international stage to achieve the 2-degree target, how does she intend to convince her fellow Germans that they have to change anything? A domestic temperature target would be absurd.
The article suggests that Merkel has given up hope of reaching a binding, global agreement and will instead focus on side deals with individual countries on a variety of approaches. Unfortunately you can't solve a global problem without a global solution. That much we learned when the world got together to tackle CFCs to protect the ozone layer.
Without Leadership We Will Fail to Act on Global Warming
World leaders put on a brave face at the Copenhagen climate change summit but, in reality, it was a disaster. From a Western perspective we can claim that the talks were sabotaged by China and India. If you doubt that, der Spiegel, has an audio tape of the leaders that reveals how the talks failed. You'll find the tape here. Draw your own conclusions.
It certainly sounds as though India, China, Brazil and South Africa don't want to see the 50% by 2050 emissions cut target put in place. Don't be so sure. There's another side to this, their side.
Their way of looking at it doesn't accept the West's "clean slate" approach. We want to forget about the past, the CO2 emissions going back to the start of the Industrial Revolution, most of which is still in the atmosphere. We're practical people (tee hee), we want to deal with today, the real world. What that means is we want across-the-board percentage cuts, specific percentage targets for all nations, with little tweaks here and there for the emerging economies.
Their approach doesn't let us off the hook for what we've done over the past two centuries. They want a reduction regime that reflects per capita quotas. Of course China and India between them account for a third of the global population so per capita is pretty attractive from where they sit.
Per capita quotas, however, are pretty alarming from our perspective. That's because we North Americans now put out about 20-tons of CO2 emissions per person per year. On a per capita basis we'd have to trim that in very short order to less than 2.7 tons per person per year. Unfortunately that would be the death knell of the fossil fuel industry as we would effectively have to decarbonize both our economy and our society.
But are per capita quotas fair? Well, they're at least as fair as our, across-the-board reductions approach. The deal we want essentially locks in for us a priority to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Percentage cuts lock in the current inequities ratios. America, for example, would still get to produce 25% of global emissions (at whatever reduced percentages were introduced) with but 5% of global population. That's 500% better than a per capita arrangement where everybody's equal. We want to grandfather our unjustifiable advantage.
So, both sides have good arguments but neither approach will achieve the global consensus that's absolutely essential to make this work. Is there an alternative? I think there is.
As I've argued repeatedly, you cannot solve the global warming crisis in isolation, which is the only approach we've tried. We've tried it - again and again and again - and we've failed - again, and again and again. The Spiegel tape confirms how the industrialized world and the developing countries are at loggerheads both with defensible positions, both defensible positions - without more - irreconcilable. Without More - there's your problem.
As Jared Diamond argues in his terrific book "Collapse", mankind is facing a host of environmental calamities but we haven't come to understand that we absolutely have to solve all of them if we're to have any hope of solving any of them. It's an "all or nothing" world today.
Among these challenges we must confront are overpopulation, resource depletion and exhaustion, all manner of freshwater problems, air/soil/water pollution, desertification, deforestation, nuclear proliferation and other threats to global security - among others. We have to find a means to keep each of these under control or risk losing control of all of them.
Within a generation, two at the very outside, we're going to have to find a way to live within mankind's skin, our biosphere, the only ecology we have, spaceship earth if you like. We're nearing the railway crossing and the lights are flashing. Here's what I mean. On 28 April, I reposted an item from 2006 on World Overshoot Day. That is the day each year on which the world's population consumes the planet's annual production of renewable resources. In 2006 it stood at 9 October. By 2009 it had fallen to 25 September. That ought to be alarming because it means that, just last year, from 26 September to year end, we were eating our seed corn. Want proof? It's easily found in our disappearing forests, our diminishing aquifers, our collapsing fish stocks, our ongoing transformation of arable land into desert. We're exhausting the very resources we need to provide next year's essential resources. We're consuming ourselves faster and faster. We advanced overshoot day two full weeks in just three years which is like driving toward a brick wall with your foot hard on the gas pedal.
We're at the point where we need to make some pretty hard choices and, if we don't, we may not like the default option. One option is a massive die-off of mankind and other flora and fauna. That's the course we're already on. It's coming due to a number of contributing factors. Here are a few.
The collapse of global fish stocks is one example. For a lot of the Third World, fish is their major or only source of protein. We're not merely overfishing, we're fishing our way down the food chain which means exhausting one species after another according to their desirability. The best die first.
Climate change is causing havoc with precipitation patterns, particularly in Asia, South Asia, Africa, Central America, the Great Plains and the American south. Regions are getting whipsawed by cycles of drought and flood. Any farmer will tell you that crops cannot be grown unless you get the right amount of precipitation and the right time. Drought means your crop fails. Floods mean you may not be able to get on the land to plant or you may not be able to get on the land to harvest and your crops rot in the field. Oh sure there's groundwater for irrigation but here's the thing. Those vast underground swimming pools we've been pumping out to water surface crops are beginning to run on "empty" and we don't have any solutions for that, especially in the face of disruptions of natural rainfall patterns.
Maude Barlow warns that our rapidly growing freshwater crisis presents an existential threat to mankind that may rival even global warming.
Then there's soil exhaustion and desertification. Farmland is like a slave. You can only work it so hard before it dies.
There was a time when parts of the world faced grave food shortages. The answer was what became known as the "Green Revolution." This entailed the use of pesticides, fertilizers and lots of irrigation to produce bumper crops with which to feed the hungry masses. The Green Revolution transformed India into a net food exporter. Neat, eh? Well, not so much.
The Green Revolution did introduce hyper-agriculture but we failed to understand it was unsustainable. Part of that arose out of the aquifer/groundwater problem already discussed. Another part was the inevitable impact of those pesticides and fertilizers on the soil. As the Indians are now discovering, Green Revolution farming techniques work the soil so hard that growing crops becomes much harder. Some farmers now have to use twice the fertilizer they needed before and the pesticides are creating highly resistant weeds also. This is like burning a candle at three ends. I guess it really doesn't matter much whether that farmland gives up the ghost from the collapse of irrigation or the sterility of the land itself, does it?
So how are we to find meaningful, effective solutions to these vexing challenges? We have to see the common thread that runs through all of them - reduction. Whether it's reduction of greenhouse gas emissions or reduction of freshwater consumption and wastage or reduction of hyper-intensive but unsustainable agrictulture or reduction of fishing quotas, forestry and, yes, even population, we have to see the answers lie behind us, in stepping back onto terra firma, instead of ahead, growth that can only accelerate our problems and our day of reckoning with them.
We in the West are going to have to accept responsibility for our excessive, unjustifiable carbon emissions. China and India are going to have to acknowledge their population crises. The industrialized countries and the emerging economic superpowers together have to accept their responsibility to compensate the Third World for the very real injuries we've inflicted upon them.
There are no solutions except global solutions to these problems. That's going to be a tough sell in our own Canada where we have vast territory, abundant resources and yet a tiny population of (by my rough calculation) one half of one per cent of the global population. Canada and countries in similar positions need leaders who can engage their publics and make them see they are not immune to the challenges facing less advantaged countries; that these are truly 'global' crises and that we cannot allow ourselves, through false notions of superiority or simple greed, to become the bottleneck that thwarts global consensus.
As James Lovelock proposes in his book "The Revenge of Gaia," there no longer is such a thing as "sustainable growth" and mankind's only hope for coming through this century relatively intact rests on accepting "sustainable retreat."
We have to retreat, we have no choice. The Earth cannot produce renewable resources in the volumes we have already allowed ourselves to become completely dependent upon just to maintain the status quo. We're running out of water, we're running out of arable land, we're running out of forests, we're running out of fish stocks, we're running out here and there and over there too. So how do we expect more unless we're willing to take it from somebody else and what we're talking about here are the very cornerstones of life itself.
So that is the "without more" I mentioned at the outset of this piece. We have to embrace sustainable retreat as the core principle of solutions to each of these environmental challenges, including global warming. We have to see that we cannot keep eating am ever bigger slice out of next year's pie and we have to go back to living within our environmental means because we have no other choice. That means retreat and that means finding an equitable allocation of all the world's resources among all the world's people.
We in the West and the expectant populations of the emerging economies won't much like that idea but they need to be made to understand that ignoring this environmental imperative comes with very real and very ugly costs for us all. This isn't going away and the only option for reaching manageable solutions has to rest on accepting sustainable retreat in our lives, in our society and in our economy.
It certainly sounds as though India, China, Brazil and South Africa don't want to see the 50% by 2050 emissions cut target put in place. Don't be so sure. There's another side to this, their side.
Their way of looking at it doesn't accept the West's "clean slate" approach. We want to forget about the past, the CO2 emissions going back to the start of the Industrial Revolution, most of which is still in the atmosphere. We're practical people (tee hee), we want to deal with today, the real world. What that means is we want across-the-board percentage cuts, specific percentage targets for all nations, with little tweaks here and there for the emerging economies.
Their approach doesn't let us off the hook for what we've done over the past two centuries. They want a reduction regime that reflects per capita quotas. Of course China and India between them account for a third of the global population so per capita is pretty attractive from where they sit.
Per capita quotas, however, are pretty alarming from our perspective. That's because we North Americans now put out about 20-tons of CO2 emissions per person per year. On a per capita basis we'd have to trim that in very short order to less than 2.7 tons per person per year. Unfortunately that would be the death knell of the fossil fuel industry as we would effectively have to decarbonize both our economy and our society.
But are per capita quotas fair? Well, they're at least as fair as our, across-the-board reductions approach. The deal we want essentially locks in for us a priority to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Percentage cuts lock in the current inequities ratios. America, for example, would still get to produce 25% of global emissions (at whatever reduced percentages were introduced) with but 5% of global population. That's 500% better than a per capita arrangement where everybody's equal. We want to grandfather our unjustifiable advantage.
So, both sides have good arguments but neither approach will achieve the global consensus that's absolutely essential to make this work. Is there an alternative? I think there is.
As I've argued repeatedly, you cannot solve the global warming crisis in isolation, which is the only approach we've tried. We've tried it - again and again and again - and we've failed - again, and again and again. The Spiegel tape confirms how the industrialized world and the developing countries are at loggerheads both with defensible positions, both defensible positions - without more - irreconcilable. Without More - there's your problem.
As Jared Diamond argues in his terrific book "Collapse", mankind is facing a host of environmental calamities but we haven't come to understand that we absolutely have to solve all of them if we're to have any hope of solving any of them. It's an "all or nothing" world today.
Among these challenges we must confront are overpopulation, resource depletion and exhaustion, all manner of freshwater problems, air/soil/water pollution, desertification, deforestation, nuclear proliferation and other threats to global security - among others. We have to find a means to keep each of these under control or risk losing control of all of them.
Within a generation, two at the very outside, we're going to have to find a way to live within mankind's skin, our biosphere, the only ecology we have, spaceship earth if you like. We're nearing the railway crossing and the lights are flashing. Here's what I mean. On 28 April, I reposted an item from 2006 on World Overshoot Day. That is the day each year on which the world's population consumes the planet's annual production of renewable resources. In 2006 it stood at 9 October. By 2009 it had fallen to 25 September. That ought to be alarming because it means that, just last year, from 26 September to year end, we were eating our seed corn. Want proof? It's easily found in our disappearing forests, our diminishing aquifers, our collapsing fish stocks, our ongoing transformation of arable land into desert. We're exhausting the very resources we need to provide next year's essential resources. We're consuming ourselves faster and faster. We advanced overshoot day two full weeks in just three years which is like driving toward a brick wall with your foot hard on the gas pedal.
We're at the point where we need to make some pretty hard choices and, if we don't, we may not like the default option. One option is a massive die-off of mankind and other flora and fauna. That's the course we're already on. It's coming due to a number of contributing factors. Here are a few.
The collapse of global fish stocks is one example. For a lot of the Third World, fish is their major or only source of protein. We're not merely overfishing, we're fishing our way down the food chain which means exhausting one species after another according to their desirability. The best die first.
Climate change is causing havoc with precipitation patterns, particularly in Asia, South Asia, Africa, Central America, the Great Plains and the American south. Regions are getting whipsawed by cycles of drought and flood. Any farmer will tell you that crops cannot be grown unless you get the right amount of precipitation and the right time. Drought means your crop fails. Floods mean you may not be able to get on the land to plant or you may not be able to get on the land to harvest and your crops rot in the field. Oh sure there's groundwater for irrigation but here's the thing. Those vast underground swimming pools we've been pumping out to water surface crops are beginning to run on "empty" and we don't have any solutions for that, especially in the face of disruptions of natural rainfall patterns.
Maude Barlow warns that our rapidly growing freshwater crisis presents an existential threat to mankind that may rival even global warming.
Then there's soil exhaustion and desertification. Farmland is like a slave. You can only work it so hard before it dies.
There was a time when parts of the world faced grave food shortages. The answer was what became known as the "Green Revolution." This entailed the use of pesticides, fertilizers and lots of irrigation to produce bumper crops with which to feed the hungry masses. The Green Revolution transformed India into a net food exporter. Neat, eh? Well, not so much.
The Green Revolution did introduce hyper-agriculture but we failed to understand it was unsustainable. Part of that arose out of the aquifer/groundwater problem already discussed. Another part was the inevitable impact of those pesticides and fertilizers on the soil. As the Indians are now discovering, Green Revolution farming techniques work the soil so hard that growing crops becomes much harder. Some farmers now have to use twice the fertilizer they needed before and the pesticides are creating highly resistant weeds also. This is like burning a candle at three ends. I guess it really doesn't matter much whether that farmland gives up the ghost from the collapse of irrigation or the sterility of the land itself, does it?
So how are we to find meaningful, effective solutions to these vexing challenges? We have to see the common thread that runs through all of them - reduction. Whether it's reduction of greenhouse gas emissions or reduction of freshwater consumption and wastage or reduction of hyper-intensive but unsustainable agrictulture or reduction of fishing quotas, forestry and, yes, even population, we have to see the answers lie behind us, in stepping back onto terra firma, instead of ahead, growth that can only accelerate our problems and our day of reckoning with them.
We in the West are going to have to accept responsibility for our excessive, unjustifiable carbon emissions. China and India are going to have to acknowledge their population crises. The industrialized countries and the emerging economic superpowers together have to accept their responsibility to compensate the Third World for the very real injuries we've inflicted upon them.
There are no solutions except global solutions to these problems. That's going to be a tough sell in our own Canada where we have vast territory, abundant resources and yet a tiny population of (by my rough calculation) one half of one per cent of the global population. Canada and countries in similar positions need leaders who can engage their publics and make them see they are not immune to the challenges facing less advantaged countries; that these are truly 'global' crises and that we cannot allow ourselves, through false notions of superiority or simple greed, to become the bottleneck that thwarts global consensus.
As James Lovelock proposes in his book "The Revenge of Gaia," there no longer is such a thing as "sustainable growth" and mankind's only hope for coming through this century relatively intact rests on accepting "sustainable retreat."
We have to retreat, we have no choice. The Earth cannot produce renewable resources in the volumes we have already allowed ourselves to become completely dependent upon just to maintain the status quo. We're running out of water, we're running out of arable land, we're running out of forests, we're running out of fish stocks, we're running out here and there and over there too. So how do we expect more unless we're willing to take it from somebody else and what we're talking about here are the very cornerstones of life itself.
So that is the "without more" I mentioned at the outset of this piece. We have to embrace sustainable retreat as the core principle of solutions to each of these environmental challenges, including global warming. We have to see that we cannot keep eating am ever bigger slice out of next year's pie and we have to go back to living within our environmental means because we have no other choice. That means retreat and that means finding an equitable allocation of all the world's resources among all the world's people.
We in the West and the expectant populations of the emerging economies won't much like that idea but they need to be made to understand that ignoring this environmental imperative comes with very real and very ugly costs for us all. This isn't going away and the only option for reaching manageable solutions has to rest on accepting sustainable retreat in our lives, in our society and in our economy.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Take Your Pick - Public Beating or Get Stuffed Into a Bag with a Cat - Women's Rights in our ally, Afghanistan
Is this a country worth dying for? The UN Humanitarian Affairs news service, IRIN, has released a look into the state of women's rights in Afghanistan today - eight years after we liberated the country for the benefit of warlords and druglords:
...In January domestic violence forced two young women to flee their homes in Oshaan village, Dolaina District, Ghor Province, southwestern Afghanistan. A week later they were arrested in neighbouring Herat Province and sent back to Oshaan, according to the governor of Ghor, Mohammad Iqbal Munib.
"One woman was beaten in public for the elopement [i.e. escaping spousal abuse] and the second was reportedly confined in a sack with a cat," Munib told IRIN.
According to the governor, the illegal capture of the women was orchestrated by Fazul Ahad who leads an illegal armed militia group in Dolaina District. Locals say Ahad, a powerful figure who backed President Hamid Karzai in the August 2009 elections, has been running Oshaan as his personal fiefdom
.
..."I poured fuel over my body and set myself ablaze because I was regularly beaten up and insulted by my husband and in-laws," Zarmina, 28, told IRIN. She, along with over a dozen other women with self-inflicted burns, is in Herat's burns hospital.
Over 90 self-immolation cases have been registered at the hospital in the past 11 months; 55 women had died, doctors said.
"People call it the 'hospital of cries' as patients here cry out loudly in pain," Arif Jalali, head of the hospital, told IRIN.
Gee, if we can't find Taliban to shoot, it sounds like there are plenty of other deserving targets over there.
...In January domestic violence forced two young women to flee their homes in Oshaan village, Dolaina District, Ghor Province, southwestern Afghanistan. A week later they were arrested in neighbouring Herat Province and sent back to Oshaan, according to the governor of Ghor, Mohammad Iqbal Munib.
"One woman was beaten in public for the elopement [i.e. escaping spousal abuse] and the second was reportedly confined in a sack with a cat," Munib told IRIN.
According to the governor, the illegal capture of the women was orchestrated by Fazul Ahad who leads an illegal armed militia group in Dolaina District. Locals say Ahad, a powerful figure who backed President Hamid Karzai in the August 2009 elections, has been running Oshaan as his personal fiefdom
.
..."I poured fuel over my body and set myself ablaze because I was regularly beaten up and insulted by my husband and in-laws," Zarmina, 28, told IRIN. She, along with over a dozen other women with self-inflicted burns, is in Herat's burns hospital.
Over 90 self-immolation cases have been registered at the hospital in the past 11 months; 55 women had died, doctors said.
"People call it the 'hospital of cries' as patients here cry out loudly in pain," Arif Jalali, head of the hospital, told IRIN.
Gee, if we can't find Taliban to shoot, it sounds like there are plenty of other deserving targets over there.
British Papers Say Good Riddance to Objective Journalism
Yesterday I wrote about a piece published in The Guardian advising anti-Tory voters how best to vote tactically, Labour or Lib-Dem, on a riding by riding basis so as to have the best chance of defeating the Conservative candidate. To me and my old journalistic ethics that seemed to be way over the line, even for a partisan paper.
Today, the Sydney Morning Herald has an eye-opener suggesting that virtually every major British paper threw objectivity into the dumper yesterday:
If there is one certainty about this most unpredictable of British polls, it is that any notion of objective journalism is dead in Britain.
''Day of Destiny: choose hope over fear'' urged The Daily Telegraph with a thoughtful, silhouette of St David Cameron against a cloud studded, dawn sky. ''The British media have always been politically aligned, worn their colours on their sleeves'' I hear you cry. Yes, true. But never has the bias been so obvious, so untrammelled, so utterly and completely fearless.
In Scotland, The Sun at least had a sense of humour: a piece of burnt toast with Gordon Brown's face superimposed on it and the entire page devoted to the headline: ''Use your loaf today or Britain is Brown bread''. The pro-Labour Mirror, Gordon Brown's only ally, reignited the class war, digging out an old picture of a fresh-faced Cameron resplendent in coat and tails: ''The picture David Cameron really really doesn't want you to see … Prime Minister? Really?''
Today, the Sydney Morning Herald has an eye-opener suggesting that virtually every major British paper threw objectivity into the dumper yesterday:
If there is one certainty about this most unpredictable of British polls, it is that any notion of objective journalism is dead in Britain.
''Day of Destiny: choose hope over fear'' urged The Daily Telegraph with a thoughtful, silhouette of St David Cameron against a cloud studded, dawn sky. ''The British media have always been politically aligned, worn their colours on their sleeves'' I hear you cry. Yes, true. But never has the bias been so obvious, so untrammelled, so utterly and completely fearless.
In Scotland, The Sun at least had a sense of humour: a piece of burnt toast with Gordon Brown's face superimposed on it and the entire page devoted to the headline: ''Use your loaf today or Britain is Brown bread''. The pro-Labour Mirror, Gordon Brown's only ally, reignited the class war, digging out an old picture of a fresh-faced Cameron resplendent in coat and tails: ''The picture David Cameron really really doesn't want you to see … Prime Minister? Really?''
Mikey's Chance to Show Us His Spine. Nah, Forget I Mentioned It
The Harper Cons, who never met a prison they didn't like to fill, are back with their mandatory imprisonment pot bill. Renters caught with just six plants (although, in fairness, I really don't know how much pot that is) face a minimum 9-month sentence. Of course Harper is a firm believer in his American Idol, George w. Bush's "ownership society" so you only get slammed up for 9-months if you're a lowly tenant, not a homeowner.
Aside from the obvious offence of being "just" a renter, other aggravating factors include finding a gun on the premises (that one makes sense), whether the location is unsafe and whether the pot plants posed a danger to residents in a residential neighbourhood.
While I favour Paul Martin's proposal for the limited decriminalization of pot, I think it's ludicrous to scrap judicial discretion in cases of small-scale pot growing. What is it going to achieve other than providing another red meat issue for Harper to toss to his law'n odour fans?
Any Liberal leader who can't or won't defend Canada's judicial system against these redneck punks should be given a one-way ticket back to wherever he calls home. This ought to have been an issue on which the faux-liberal Liberal Leader could have taken a stand but, instead, the Libs supported Harper in resurrecting the bill. Harvard or no, this character is a total disappointment to anyone who embraces progressive liberalism. With this kind of leadership the LPC deserves to be polling at 26%. They've earned that. If they back mandatory minimum sentences for this, Harper already has them on a well-greased slippery slope.
Aside from the obvious offence of being "just" a renter, other aggravating factors include finding a gun on the premises (that one makes sense), whether the location is unsafe and whether the pot plants posed a danger to residents in a residential neighbourhood.
While I favour Paul Martin's proposal for the limited decriminalization of pot, I think it's ludicrous to scrap judicial discretion in cases of small-scale pot growing. What is it going to achieve other than providing another red meat issue for Harper to toss to his law'n odour fans?
Any Liberal leader who can't or won't defend Canada's judicial system against these redneck punks should be given a one-way ticket back to wherever he calls home. This ought to have been an issue on which the faux-liberal Liberal Leader could have taken a stand but, instead, the Libs supported Harper in resurrecting the bill. Harvard or no, this character is a total disappointment to anyone who embraces progressive liberalism. With this kind of leadership the LPC deserves to be polling at 26%. They've earned that. If they back mandatory minimum sentences for this, Harper already has them on a well-greased slippery slope.
Republican v. Democrat - What's the Difference?
There are times when the distinction between congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans gets awful blurry. That's inevitable when you have a " bought and paid for" Congress, heavily in thrall to corporate lobbyists.
But I think there is a difference. Democrats are corporate lackeys. Republicans are corporate hitmen. Democrats softsoap legislation to ease its impact on corporate America. Republicans don't even pretend. When corporate America needs to sodomize the American people, it sends in its A-team, the Republicans.
The political football before Congress at the moment is the 1,600 page Wall Street reform bill. The fact that it runs to 1,600 pages is pretty much a telltale that this bill is stuffed full of all sorts of things that have nothing or very little to do with America's financial industry's shortcomings. Be that as it may, the financiers don't like it and some parts of it they really don't like, particularly consumer protection measures. From McClatchey Newspapers:
The bill calls for setting up a consumer protection watchdog bureau in the Federal Reserve that would regulate mortgages, credit cards, payday loans and other products.
The spread of subprime mortgages in the real estate bubble ahead of the crisis showed that consumers need better protection from aggressive lenders, Democrats say.
But Republicans say the Fed unit would be too powerful and impose excessive compliance costs and red tape on small businesses including orthodontists and florists.
Major financial firms' credit card and mortgage profits would also be threatened by a consumer protection watchdog.
Time and again congressional Republicans brazenly intervene on behalf of corporate America to the direct detriment of the American public - and they get away with it! In fact, America's rightwing propaganda media have been enormously successful in spreading the delusion that these interventions are in Joe Lunchbucket's best interests. Governing a country with America's problems is a truly Herculean chore but to do it with a large segment of the population seriously unhinged by rank propaganda is an order of magnitude more challenging. I think we need to remember that when we cast a too critical eye on Barack Obama.
But I think there is a difference. Democrats are corporate lackeys. Republicans are corporate hitmen. Democrats softsoap legislation to ease its impact on corporate America. Republicans don't even pretend. When corporate America needs to sodomize the American people, it sends in its A-team, the Republicans.
The political football before Congress at the moment is the 1,600 page Wall Street reform bill. The fact that it runs to 1,600 pages is pretty much a telltale that this bill is stuffed full of all sorts of things that have nothing or very little to do with America's financial industry's shortcomings. Be that as it may, the financiers don't like it and some parts of it they really don't like, particularly consumer protection measures. From McClatchey Newspapers:
The bill calls for setting up a consumer protection watchdog bureau in the Federal Reserve that would regulate mortgages, credit cards, payday loans and other products.
The spread of subprime mortgages in the real estate bubble ahead of the crisis showed that consumers need better protection from aggressive lenders, Democrats say.
But Republicans say the Fed unit would be too powerful and impose excessive compliance costs and red tape on small businesses including orthodontists and florists.
Major financial firms' credit card and mortgage profits would also be threatened by a consumer protection watchdog.
Time and again congressional Republicans brazenly intervene on behalf of corporate America to the direct detriment of the American public - and they get away with it! In fact, America's rightwing propaganda media have been enormously successful in spreading the delusion that these interventions are in Joe Lunchbucket's best interests. Governing a country with America's problems is a truly Herculean chore but to do it with a large segment of the population seriously unhinged by rank propaganda is an order of magnitude more challenging. I think we need to remember that when we cast a too critical eye on Barack Obama.
Supreme Court Gives National Post One Upside the Head
Remember the forged documents the National Stain tried to use against Jean Chretien? Chances are you don't recall what happened to them afterward. Well NatPo has been fighting a fierce rearguard action to keep the documents and the envelope they came in out of the hands of police seeking to investigate the forgery and possible associated crimes.
NatPo really dug in its heels on this one, winning at the provincial level, losing in the Court of Appeal and today, finally, getting slapped down by the Supreme Court of Canada. The National Post must turn over the documents and envelope so the RCMP can conduct forensic tests on them that may reveal the identity of the forger. Here are a few excerpts from the 7-judge majority ruling:
...Freedom to publish the news necessarily involves a freedom to gather the news, but each of the many important news gathering techniques, including reliance on secret sources, should not itself be regarded as entrenched in the Constitution. The protection attaching to freedom of expression is not limited to the “mainstream media”, but is enjoyed by “everyone” (in the words of s. 2(b) of the Charter) who chooses to exercise his or her freedom of expression on matters of public interest. To throw a constitutional immunity around the interactions of such a heterogeneous and ill‑defined group of writers and speakers and whichever “sources” they deem worthy of a promise of confidentiality and on whatever terms they may choose to offer it (or, as here, choose to amend it with the benefit of hindsight) would blow a giant hole in law enforcement and other constitutionally recognized values such as privacy. The law needs to provide solid protection against the compelled disclosure of secret sources in appropriate situations, but the history of journalism in this country shows that the purpose of s. 2(b) can be fulfilled without the necessity of implying a constitutional immunity. Accordingly, a judicial order to compel disclosure of a secret source in accordance with the principles of common law privilege would not in general violate s. 2(b).
... A promise of confidentiality will be respected if: the communication originates in a confidence that the identity of the informant will not be disclosed; the confidence is essential to the relationship in which the communication arises; the relationship is one which should be sedulously fostered in the public good; and the public interest in protecting the identity of the informant from disclosure outweighs the public interest in getting at the truth. This approach properly reflects Charter values and balances the competing public interests in a context‑specific manner.
...The alleged offences are of sufficient seriousness to justify the decision of the police to investigate the criminal allegations. The physical evidence is essential to the police investigation and likely essential as well to any future prosecution. While it is appropriate under this criterion to assess the likely probative value of the evidence sought, the reviewing judge ought not to have pre‑empted the forensic investigation by seemingly prejudging the outcome without first considering all the relevant factors in her assessment. DNA analysis is capable of producing results even under exceptionally unpromising circumstances. The police should not be prevented from pursuing well‑established modes of forensic analysis of relevant physical evidence on the basis that in the end such analysis may prove to be unsuccessful.
Read the entire decision here
NatPo really dug in its heels on this one, winning at the provincial level, losing in the Court of Appeal and today, finally, getting slapped down by the Supreme Court of Canada. The National Post must turn over the documents and envelope so the RCMP can conduct forensic tests on them that may reveal the identity of the forger. Here are a few excerpts from the 7-judge majority ruling:
...Freedom to publish the news necessarily involves a freedom to gather the news, but each of the many important news gathering techniques, including reliance on secret sources, should not itself be regarded as entrenched in the Constitution. The protection attaching to freedom of expression is not limited to the “mainstream media”, but is enjoyed by “everyone” (in the words of s. 2(b) of the Charter) who chooses to exercise his or her freedom of expression on matters of public interest. To throw a constitutional immunity around the interactions of such a heterogeneous and ill‑defined group of writers and speakers and whichever “sources” they deem worthy of a promise of confidentiality and on whatever terms they may choose to offer it (or, as here, choose to amend it with the benefit of hindsight) would blow a giant hole in law enforcement and other constitutionally recognized values such as privacy. The law needs to provide solid protection against the compelled disclosure of secret sources in appropriate situations, but the history of journalism in this country shows that the purpose of s. 2(b) can be fulfilled without the necessity of implying a constitutional immunity. Accordingly, a judicial order to compel disclosure of a secret source in accordance with the principles of common law privilege would not in general violate s. 2(b).
... A promise of confidentiality will be respected if: the communication originates in a confidence that the identity of the informant will not be disclosed; the confidence is essential to the relationship in which the communication arises; the relationship is one which should be sedulously fostered in the public good; and the public interest in protecting the identity of the informant from disclosure outweighs the public interest in getting at the truth. This approach properly reflects Charter values and balances the competing public interests in a context‑specific manner.
...The alleged offences are of sufficient seriousness to justify the decision of the police to investigate the criminal allegations. The physical evidence is essential to the police investigation and likely essential as well to any future prosecution. While it is appropriate under this criterion to assess the likely probative value of the evidence sought, the reviewing judge ought not to have pre‑empted the forensic investigation by seemingly prejudging the outcome without first considering all the relevant factors in her assessment. DNA analysis is capable of producing results even under exceptionally unpromising circumstances. The police should not be prevented from pursuing well‑established modes of forensic analysis of relevant physical evidence on the basis that in the end such analysis may prove to be unsuccessful.
Read the entire decision here
Thursday, May 06, 2010
The Guardian Shows Anti-Tory Bias
Clicking through The Guardian for the latest election news I was surprised to stumble across the paper's "tactical voting guide." It's a riding by riding list of where voters wishing to keep the Tories out of power should choose Labour or the Lib-Dems.
There's something about this that makes me feel uncomfortable. Should any newspaper go this far to impact an election outcome? Where do you draw the line?
Not that it makes much difference anyway. The Tories are expected to pick up about 90+ seats with Labour losing roughly as many. Curiously enough, the Lib-Dems seem apt to lose a few themselves. The final call is Tories short of a majority but able to form a government with a small party coalition.
There's something about this that makes me feel uncomfortable. Should any newspaper go this far to impact an election outcome? Where do you draw the line?
Not that it makes much difference anyway. The Tories are expected to pick up about 90+ seats with Labour losing roughly as many. Curiously enough, the Lib-Dems seem apt to lose a few themselves. The final call is Tories short of a majority but able to form a government with a small party coalition.
Are Religious Fundamentalists Inherently Bigoted?
Researchers from Duke, USC and Augsburg College have published a study in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review that finds the more tightly fundamentalist a person is, the greater the likelihood that person is racist. From the online journal, Miller-McCune.com:
In a new study drawing on nearly a half century of data, a team of researchers report that religious adherents in the United States — especially fundamentalist Christians — are more inclined than agnostics to harbor racist attitudes toward blacks and other minorities.
This “religion-racism paradox,” as University of Southern California social psychologist Wendy Wood explains it, is deeply embedded in organized religion which, by its very nature, encourages people to accept one fundamental belief system as superior to all others. The required value judgment creates a kind of us-versus-them conflict, in which members of a religious group develop ethnocentric attitudes toward anyone perceived as different. The study, “Why Don’t We Practice What We Preach? A Meta-Analytic Review of Religious Racism,” appeared in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review.
“Religion creates a very strong sense of a moral right and wrong within the group,” says Wood. “When you do that, members of the group will be more likely to derogate anyone who is not part of it.” And because religion in America is practiced largely along segregated lines (just 12 percent of U.S. congregations report even a moderate level of diversity, one study shows) that derogation, and the sense of superiority that drives such diminishment of others, can extend beyond religious differences to race, class and ethnicity.
Compounding the effect, the study’s authors explain, are similarities in the moral makeup of people drawn to religion and of people who exhibit racist attitudes and behavior. Previous studies have shown that religious adherents are more likely than agnostics and atheists to rate conservative “life values” as the most important principles underlying their belief systems.
In a new study drawing on nearly a half century of data, a team of researchers report that religious adherents in the United States — especially fundamentalist Christians — are more inclined than agnostics to harbor racist attitudes toward blacks and other minorities.
This “religion-racism paradox,” as University of Southern California social psychologist Wendy Wood explains it, is deeply embedded in organized religion which, by its very nature, encourages people to accept one fundamental belief system as superior to all others. The required value judgment creates a kind of us-versus-them conflict, in which members of a religious group develop ethnocentric attitudes toward anyone perceived as different. The study, “Why Don’t We Practice What We Preach? A Meta-Analytic Review of Religious Racism,” appeared in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review.
“Religion creates a very strong sense of a moral right and wrong within the group,” says Wood. “When you do that, members of the group will be more likely to derogate anyone who is not part of it.” And because religion in America is practiced largely along segregated lines (just 12 percent of U.S. congregations report even a moderate level of diversity, one study shows) that derogation, and the sense of superiority that drives such diminishment of others, can extend beyond religious differences to race, class and ethnicity.
Compounding the effect, the study’s authors explain, are similarities in the moral makeup of people drawn to religion and of people who exhibit racist attitudes and behavior. Previous studies have shown that religious adherents are more likely than agnostics and atheists to rate conservative “life values” as the most important principles underlying their belief systems.
Karzai's Peace Plan. All the Taliban Need Do is Surrender.
You have to give Hamid his due. He doesn't let reality stand in the way when it comes to governing Afghanistan and handling the rekindled civil war.
Karzai has a peace offer for the Taliban - surrender. His plan calls for putting Taliban foot soldiers through "deradicalization" classes. The Talib leadership can then go into exile in a third country, probably Saudi Arabia.
Karzai's plan might make some sense, at least a tiny bit, if only he was winning and the Taliban were facing imminent defeat. He's not and neither are they.
Wait a minute, I get it! Karzai is reprising the role of Monty Python's Black Knight:
Karzai has a peace offer for the Taliban - surrender. His plan calls for putting Taliban foot soldiers through "deradicalization" classes. The Talib leadership can then go into exile in a third country, probably Saudi Arabia.
Karzai's plan might make some sense, at least a tiny bit, if only he was winning and the Taliban were facing imminent defeat. He's not and neither are they.
Wait a minute, I get it! Karzai is reprising the role of Monty Python's Black Knight:
Madam Minister for Big Hair Puts All You Feminists In Your Place. Now Go Make Steve a Sandwich!
Stephen Harper knows what Canadian women want and who better to say so than Minister for Big Hair and Small Minds, Rona Ambrose?
According to Rompin' Rona, Canadian women don't care about all this abortion nonsense. They want tough law'n odour to keep them safe and happy. Forget about women's rights, or reproductive choice or any of that loony leftie business. Women don't care about that when they can have more of the "crime & punishment" stuff. From TorStar:
“Our government has done more than any other government in the history of this country to keep women safe,” says Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose, who is also in charge of the status of women in the Harper government.
“We have introduced new laws to make sure that we keep rapists and murderers off the street and to make sure that we protect children from sexual predators. That is what women want.”
There you go, see? You really didn't understand what you actually wanted. You were just a bit confused, worked up. By the way we've got this really charming house for you just up the road in a place called Stepford.
According to Rompin' Rona, Canadian women don't care about all this abortion nonsense. They want tough law'n odour to keep them safe and happy. Forget about women's rights, or reproductive choice or any of that loony leftie business. Women don't care about that when they can have more of the "crime & punishment" stuff. From TorStar:
“Our government has done more than any other government in the history of this country to keep women safe,” says Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose, who is also in charge of the status of women in the Harper government.
“We have introduced new laws to make sure that we keep rapists and murderers off the street and to make sure that we protect children from sexual predators. That is what women want.”
There you go, see? You really didn't understand what you actually wanted. You were just a bit confused, worked up. By the way we've got this really charming house for you just up the road in a place called Stepford.
Is Wall Street Engineering a Food Bubble for the Third World?
This is the rotten, predatory face of a financialized economy - extracting wealth from bringing misery to the poor.
At some point we're going to have to come to grips with the need to rein in the financial sector to keep them out of critical areas. Wall Street is already up to its neck in the carbon trading industry and now it's wreaking mayhem by gaming food futures. I'm sure all of this is going to make the vastly rich vastly richer but at what cost?
At some point we're going to have to come to grips with the need to rein in the financial sector to keep them out of critical areas. Wall Street is already up to its neck in the carbon trading industry and now it's wreaking mayhem by gaming food futures. I'm sure all of this is going to make the vastly rich vastly richer but at what cost?
Peace in Afghanistan? India and Pakistan Won't Hear of It!
And we thought the war was just about the Taliban and the warlords and the druglords and a rancidly corrupt government. Who knew there was so much more? Now The Guardian's Simon Tisdall warns NATO's predicament is being made far murkier by the escalating proxy war between India and Pakistan.
Intent on filling a power vacuum after the United States withdraws from Afghanistan, India and Pakistan are engaged in what analysts warn is a dangerously escalating "proxy war". That's bad news for Britain and its Nato partners – because, paradoxically, the two old foes' intensifying machinations could delay or fatally undermine the western pull-out on which all current calculations are based.
...MK Bhadrakumar, a former ambassador, summed up Indian thinking in Asia Times. He said policymakers were "deeply disturbed … that the Obama administration is determined to end the fighting in Afghanistan and as a means of securing that objective, seeks the Taliban's reintegration and reconciliation. They want the fighting to go on and on until the Taliban are bled white and vanquished from the face of the earth".
India's objections to peace talks arise directly from its conviction that key Afghan Taliban groups are the creatures of Pakistan's military, specifically the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency. In its view, such connections mirror Pakistani security establishment links to the Punjab-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for the 2008 Mumbai atrocities and for a long history of attacks in Indian Kashmir.
...India's worries that Pakistan, by inserting itself in the centre of the peace process, will either fix it or wreck it, depending on its self-interest at the time, may be shared in Washington. But in a deliberate switch, the US is now determined to keep both Pakistan's military and Karzai sweet, after the furious ructions and recriminations of the last 12 months over battlefield setbacks.
...Amid rising region-wide tensions, in which China, Russia and Iran also hold cards, the risk is increasing that the jockeying for position over Afghanistan could fatally complicate US and British hopes of finally extricating themselves from the quagmire into which they strayed in 2001. Yet the closer their withdrawal gets, the less leverage they can apply.
"Neighbouring states are already considering the Americans as good as gone and are preparing for an endgame scenario with old rivalries renewed," Rashid said. "If no solution is found to reconcile Pakistani and Indian interests [in Afghanistan], the coming months might see stepped-up terrorist attacks against Indians in Kabul and the return of militants infiltrating Indian Kashmir."
Rather than the end of the Afghan war, this sounds uncomfortably like the beginning, or resumption, of a regional one.
Tisdall's account confirms what I've feared all along - that over the past decade all we've been doing in Afghanistan was babysitting an unresolved civil war. We've brought no resolution to any of the Afghan rivals nor have we even attempted to sort out the conflicting but powerful interests of so many outside players including Iran, China, Russia and of course India and Pakistan. That witches' brew has just been simmering along awaiting our inevitable departure and we're all but powerless to defuse any of these potential troubles.
Is this a reason for the West to remain in Afghanistan? Hardly. This is the price you can wind up paying for hubris and, in the 21st century, the Americans have found hubris irresistable. Remember that the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was the heyday of the Project for the New American Century, the pinnacle of the influence of the neo-conservatives. These lunatics absolutely believed that their country's military was so omnipotent that no other nation or group could stand up to them - and they had the ear of the White House where several, including Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney were neo-cons themselves. Ideology trumped intelligence at every turn and the mess that is today's Afghan aftermath is the direct result of that mad arrogance.
The reality is that this miserable adventure could go sideways whether we remain or leave and the price of staying is unbearable. We wouldn't be staying to win, we'd merely stay to avoid losing all the while increasing the likelihood that we would lose in the end. Nobody has a game plan for winning this thing.
Intent on filling a power vacuum after the United States withdraws from Afghanistan, India and Pakistan are engaged in what analysts warn is a dangerously escalating "proxy war". That's bad news for Britain and its Nato partners – because, paradoxically, the two old foes' intensifying machinations could delay or fatally undermine the western pull-out on which all current calculations are based.
...MK Bhadrakumar, a former ambassador, summed up Indian thinking in Asia Times. He said policymakers were "deeply disturbed … that the Obama administration is determined to end the fighting in Afghanistan and as a means of securing that objective, seeks the Taliban's reintegration and reconciliation. They want the fighting to go on and on until the Taliban are bled white and vanquished from the face of the earth".
India's objections to peace talks arise directly from its conviction that key Afghan Taliban groups are the creatures of Pakistan's military, specifically the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency. In its view, such connections mirror Pakistani security establishment links to the Punjab-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for the 2008 Mumbai atrocities and for a long history of attacks in Indian Kashmir.
...India's worries that Pakistan, by inserting itself in the centre of the peace process, will either fix it or wreck it, depending on its self-interest at the time, may be shared in Washington. But in a deliberate switch, the US is now determined to keep both Pakistan's military and Karzai sweet, after the furious ructions and recriminations of the last 12 months over battlefield setbacks.
...Amid rising region-wide tensions, in which China, Russia and Iran also hold cards, the risk is increasing that the jockeying for position over Afghanistan could fatally complicate US and British hopes of finally extricating themselves from the quagmire into which they strayed in 2001. Yet the closer their withdrawal gets, the less leverage they can apply.
"Neighbouring states are already considering the Americans as good as gone and are preparing for an endgame scenario with old rivalries renewed," Rashid said. "If no solution is found to reconcile Pakistani and Indian interests [in Afghanistan], the coming months might see stepped-up terrorist attacks against Indians in Kabul and the return of militants infiltrating Indian Kashmir."
Rather than the end of the Afghan war, this sounds uncomfortably like the beginning, or resumption, of a regional one.
Tisdall's account confirms what I've feared all along - that over the past decade all we've been doing in Afghanistan was babysitting an unresolved civil war. We've brought no resolution to any of the Afghan rivals nor have we even attempted to sort out the conflicting but powerful interests of so many outside players including Iran, China, Russia and of course India and Pakistan. That witches' brew has just been simmering along awaiting our inevitable departure and we're all but powerless to defuse any of these potential troubles.
Is this a reason for the West to remain in Afghanistan? Hardly. This is the price you can wind up paying for hubris and, in the 21st century, the Americans have found hubris irresistable. Remember that the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was the heyday of the Project for the New American Century, the pinnacle of the influence of the neo-conservatives. These lunatics absolutely believed that their country's military was so omnipotent that no other nation or group could stand up to them - and they had the ear of the White House where several, including Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney were neo-cons themselves. Ideology trumped intelligence at every turn and the mess that is today's Afghan aftermath is the direct result of that mad arrogance.
The reality is that this miserable adventure could go sideways whether we remain or leave and the price of staying is unbearable. We wouldn't be staying to win, we'd merely stay to avoid losing all the while increasing the likelihood that we would lose in the end. Nobody has a game plan for winning this thing.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Figures Don't Lie, But... 25 from 90 by 20??? Go Figure!
The NDP and the Libs, out to score political points, have passed a climate change bill that calls upon the government to cut Canada's greenhouse gas emissions by 25% from 1990 levels by 2020 but, typical of the Canadian Parliament and its denizens in the House of Commons, it's all greenwash which is a fancy term for environmental bullshit.
The NDP are going to crow about it, it's what they do, but they don't mean it for a second. All it is to them, and to the Libs, is a way to embarrass Harper. It's not that Harper doesn't have it coming. He does, in spades. It's that neither the NDP nor the Libs have shown the slightest willingness to support the sort of measures necessary to achieve the 25 from 90 by 20 cuts.
Iggy, like Harper, is a Tar Sander, through and through. That alone disposes of the Liberals' bona fides in supporting the NDP bill. You can't suck and blow no matter how hard Ignatieff is willing to try.
And let's recall Dion's Green Shift and how gleefully Mr. Greenwash himself, Jack Layton, the disingenuous prick, used it to club the then Liberal leader over the head. The reality is 25 from 90 by 20 will mandate a carbon tax regime, presumably associated with a tax realignment to ease the impact on working Canadians. There's no way around that if the NDP is sincere.
And Ignatieff has already pronounced Dion's plan as "off the table." He went so far as to claim the last election was a referendum on it. This coupled with his enthusiastic support for the Tar Sands only shows that,when it comes to 25 from 90 by 20, Iffy is every bit as disingenuous as that greasy bald runt.
But they've rallied their caucuses to support this bill. Now it's up to Layton and Ignatieff to show they're not complete slime. They owe it to us to explain just how we're to achieve the emissions cuts they've mandated for Harper all within the span of but one brief decade. Specifics, let's hear them. If they can't or won't do that they're just pulling your chain and, for that, the two of them deserve to be tossed.
Figures don't Lie but Liars, oh do they ever Figure. I'm betting this pair of liars are counting on the new Conservative-majority senate to take them off the hook.
The NDP are going to crow about it, it's what they do, but they don't mean it for a second. All it is to them, and to the Libs, is a way to embarrass Harper. It's not that Harper doesn't have it coming. He does, in spades. It's that neither the NDP nor the Libs have shown the slightest willingness to support the sort of measures necessary to achieve the 25 from 90 by 20 cuts.
Iggy, like Harper, is a Tar Sander, through and through. That alone disposes of the Liberals' bona fides in supporting the NDP bill. You can't suck and blow no matter how hard Ignatieff is willing to try.
And let's recall Dion's Green Shift and how gleefully Mr. Greenwash himself, Jack Layton, the disingenuous prick, used it to club the then Liberal leader over the head. The reality is 25 from 90 by 20 will mandate a carbon tax regime, presumably associated with a tax realignment to ease the impact on working Canadians. There's no way around that if the NDP is sincere.
And Ignatieff has already pronounced Dion's plan as "off the table." He went so far as to claim the last election was a referendum on it. This coupled with his enthusiastic support for the Tar Sands only shows that,when it comes to 25 from 90 by 20, Iffy is every bit as disingenuous as that greasy bald runt.
But they've rallied their caucuses to support this bill. Now it's up to Layton and Ignatieff to show they're not complete slime. They owe it to us to explain just how we're to achieve the emissions cuts they've mandated for Harper all within the span of but one brief decade. Specifics, let's hear them. If they can't or won't do that they're just pulling your chain and, for that, the two of them deserve to be tossed.
Figures don't Lie but Liars, oh do they ever Figure. I'm betting this pair of liars are counting on the new Conservative-majority senate to take them off the hook.
Calgary Ped Gets Nailed. Faces Big Time
Calgarian John Wrenshall has pleaded guilty in a US court to charges of conspiring to engage in sex tourism and possessing and making kiddie porn.
American authorities learned Wrenshall was operating a Thai brothel for peds when they seized the computers of a New Jersey man.
The sex tourism charges carry a minimum 15-year sentence on each count and the kiddie porn fetches 10-15 years. In other words Calgary won't be seeing this 63-year old for a good long time, if ever.
Wrenshall was convicted in 1997 of sexual assault against members of a Calgary boys choir. Newspaper articles from the time claim he'd been preying on young boys for three decades. He was convicted of molestation in 1970 and given a suspended sentence. For the 1997 convictions he received a year in jail plus two years of probation. His recent convictions should put an end to his 40-year career in paedophilia.
American authorities learned Wrenshall was operating a Thai brothel for peds when they seized the computers of a New Jersey man.
The sex tourism charges carry a minimum 15-year sentence on each count and the kiddie porn fetches 10-15 years. In other words Calgary won't be seeing this 63-year old for a good long time, if ever.
Wrenshall was convicted in 1997 of sexual assault against members of a Calgary boys choir. Newspaper articles from the time claim he'd been preying on young boys for three decades. He was convicted of molestation in 1970 and given a suspended sentence. For the 1997 convictions he received a year in jail plus two years of probation. His recent convictions should put an end to his 40-year career in paedophilia.
Euros Tell Harper - Quit Stalling on Climate Change
It's time for Stephen Harper to quit stalling on global warming.
European Union president Jose Manuel Barrosa says Canada can't keep stalling, waiting for the rest of the world to act before it takes concrete measures to fight climate change. From CBC News:
"What we don’t want to see, frankly speaking, is that someone does not move because the others don’t move."
He said that if every country adopts Canada's position that it won't start taking drastic action to combat climate change until most other countries in the world agree to do the same, "no one will move in the end."
Not only is the Big Blue Buffoon letting down Canada and embarrassing us on the world stage but he is creating a bottleneck that deters action by other states. Stephen Harper is a genuine disgrace to Canada.
European Union president Jose Manuel Barrosa says Canada can't keep stalling, waiting for the rest of the world to act before it takes concrete measures to fight climate change. From CBC News:
"What we don’t want to see, frankly speaking, is that someone does not move because the others don’t move."
He said that if every country adopts Canada's position that it won't start taking drastic action to combat climate change until most other countries in the world agree to do the same, "no one will move in the end."
Not only is the Big Blue Buffoon letting down Canada and embarrassing us on the world stage but he is creating a bottleneck that deters action by other states. Stephen Harper is a genuine disgrace to Canada.
Bookie Already Paying Out on British Election Bets
British/Irish bookmaker Paddy Power isn't waiting for the votes to be counted. So sure is it of a Conservative win that it's already paying out on all bets for Cameron to be prime minister and for the Conservatives to win the most seats.
From electionbetting.com:
Cameron’s strong performance in the final TV debate on Thursday saw a relentless tide of betting support for the Conservatives in the outright market, shortening the odds on the Tories winning most seats at the Election from 1/5 a week ago to just 1/16. Punters will be collecting over £100,000 from the leading bookmaker.
From electionbetting.com:
Cameron’s strong performance in the final TV debate on Thursday saw a relentless tide of betting support for the Conservatives in the outright market, shortening the odds on the Tories winning most seats at the Election from 1/5 a week ago to just 1/16. Punters will be collecting over £100,000 from the leading bookmaker.
I'm With Harper on the Global Bank Tax
The global recession we're maybe, possibly, could be just beginning to emerge from taught the West a few lessons - and they came from Canada.
1. Unlike so many other countries Canada did not suffer a major bank failure.
2. Canada didn't suffer a major bank failure mainly due to the former Liberal government's prudent and restrictive regulation of our chartered banks.
European leaders want next month's G20 meeting to result in an accord for a global bank tax, a tax on transactions that would generate a global fund some foresee reaching hundreds of billions of dollars. Proponents say the fund would be available to cope with a future financial meltdown and would "discourage risky banking."
Bullshit.
The way to discourage risky banking is to strictly regulate the banking industry so that banks remain - gasp - banks. Banks should not indulge in gambling and its up to their national governments to see to that. Setting up the global bank tax fund is tantamount to accepting another financial meltdown. Otherwise why are you putting aside hundreds of billions of dollars?
If the Euros are afraid of putting their boots on the necks of their bankers that's their problem. This global bank tax is nothing but an invitation for a repeat performance of the mess we've just gone through.
1. Unlike so many other countries Canada did not suffer a major bank failure.
2. Canada didn't suffer a major bank failure mainly due to the former Liberal government's prudent and restrictive regulation of our chartered banks.
European leaders want next month's G20 meeting to result in an accord for a global bank tax, a tax on transactions that would generate a global fund some foresee reaching hundreds of billions of dollars. Proponents say the fund would be available to cope with a future financial meltdown and would "discourage risky banking."
Bullshit.
The way to discourage risky banking is to strictly regulate the banking industry so that banks remain - gasp - banks. Banks should not indulge in gambling and its up to their national governments to see to that. Setting up the global bank tax fund is tantamount to accepting another financial meltdown. Otherwise why are you putting aside hundreds of billions of dollars?
If the Euros are afraid of putting their boots on the necks of their bankers that's their problem. This global bank tax is nothing but an invitation for a repeat performance of the mess we've just gone through.
More Snake Oil on Afghanistan
More bullshit from yet another Canadian general, this time Lt.-Gen. Marc Lessard.
According to the head of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, we still have the ability to get the upper hand on the Taliban in southern Afghanistan before we fold our tents in 2011.
Say what? How do you get the upper hand on insurgents when for them merely to survive is to win? Does Commandant Lessard (oh, sorry - that was the character from the Police Academy movies) believe we're going to wipe them out by then? Hardly.
Lessard's optimism was slightly conditional. He added that truly reaching a turning point now hinges on Afghan leadership, civilian and military. You mean that's all that stands between victory over the insurgents and utter failure - the Karzai government and Afghanistan's wobbly military? Well that's certainly a piece of cake for one side, just maybe not our side.
According to a map prepared by ISAF just two months ago there's not a single district, not one, that can be considered to actually support the Karzai government although there are a few that are rated as 'somewhat sympathetic' to Kabul. Even by ISAF's assessment, however, there are several districts that are Taliban supporters and many more sympathetic to the insurgency while many more districts, including those most hotly contested by Western forces, are labelled "neutral."
I don't know, maybe Lessard hasn't seen the map. As for the Afghan's leading the military effort, the Toronto Star had this observation:
U.S. officers on the ground, meanwhile, told Reuters this week that a shortage of effective Afghan military leaders recently forced the cancellation of a major helicopter assault involving hundreds of American and Afghan troops. The operation, due to take place in March and repeatedly postponed, was cancelled outright last week.
“It wasn’t Afghan enough … approval was denied,” a U.S. Army officer with knowledge of the plans told Reuters. “The implication is that Afghans are in the lead. The bottom line is we’re nowhere near the stage where they can be in the lead.”
According to the head of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, we still have the ability to get the upper hand on the Taliban in southern Afghanistan before we fold our tents in 2011.
Say what? How do you get the upper hand on insurgents when for them merely to survive is to win? Does Commandant Lessard (oh, sorry - that was the character from the Police Academy movies) believe we're going to wipe them out by then? Hardly.
Lessard's optimism was slightly conditional. He added that truly reaching a turning point now hinges on Afghan leadership, civilian and military. You mean that's all that stands between victory over the insurgents and utter failure - the Karzai government and Afghanistan's wobbly military? Well that's certainly a piece of cake for one side, just maybe not our side.
According to a map prepared by ISAF just two months ago there's not a single district, not one, that can be considered to actually support the Karzai government although there are a few that are rated as 'somewhat sympathetic' to Kabul. Even by ISAF's assessment, however, there are several districts that are Taliban supporters and many more sympathetic to the insurgency while many more districts, including those most hotly contested by Western forces, are labelled "neutral."
I don't know, maybe Lessard hasn't seen the map. As for the Afghan's leading the military effort, the Toronto Star had this observation:
U.S. officers on the ground, meanwhile, told Reuters this week that a shortage of effective Afghan military leaders recently forced the cancellation of a major helicopter assault involving hundreds of American and Afghan troops. The operation, due to take place in March and repeatedly postponed, was cancelled outright last week.
“It wasn’t Afghan enough … approval was denied,” a U.S. Army officer with knowledge of the plans told Reuters. “The implication is that Afghans are in the lead. The bottom line is we’re nowhere near the stage where they can be in the lead.”
Harper Gives Canada Black Eye - Again
This time we got a smack upside the head from the European Union commissioner José Manuel Barroso. He said it's time for L'il Stevie Harper to get his thumb out of his arse and do something tangible about climate change. He said Canada can't sit by and wait for the rest of the world to act before making its own changes. From CBC News:
"What we don’t want to see, frankly speaking, is that someone does not move because the others don’t move."
He said that if every country adopts Canada's position that it won't start taking drastic action to combat climate change until most other countries in the world agree to do the same, "no one will move in the end."
Barroso said the matter is pressing enough to require immediate political action, despite the economic toll that might result from measures to reduce carbon emissions, which a large body of research has linked to global warming.
"In Europe, we believe, according to science, that there is a real threat to our survival as a civilization. And for the future of our planet and the quality of life of our children ... I think we have to move."
Yeah, Steve. Why do you want to ruin the quality of life of our kids? What have you got against Canadian kids? Why do you hate your own kids?
"What we don’t want to see, frankly speaking, is that someone does not move because the others don’t move."
He said that if every country adopts Canada's position that it won't start taking drastic action to combat climate change until most other countries in the world agree to do the same, "no one will move in the end."
Barroso said the matter is pressing enough to require immediate political action, despite the economic toll that might result from measures to reduce carbon emissions, which a large body of research has linked to global warming.
"In Europe, we believe, according to science, that there is a real threat to our survival as a civilization. And for the future of our planet and the quality of life of our children ... I think we have to move."
Yeah, Steve. Why do you want to ruin the quality of life of our kids? What have you got against Canadian kids? Why do you hate your own kids?
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Times Square Bomber a Total Bumpkin
Faisal Shahzad deserves even more than he's got coming to him. The cops seem to have Shahzad's guilt pretty tightly nailed down. They know he bought the vehicle in which the bomb was found. They found fireworks that appear to match the fireworks found in the bomb vehicle, apparently as a makeshift detonator. And, according to the cops, Shahzad has admitted it was him, that he acted alone, and that he received bomb-making training recently in Pakistan.
Whatever punishment he's given, and I expect it will be life, should be doubled on account of this bozo's rank stupidity. For example, take the vehicle. He bought it in his own name. WTF? Then he decided fireworks would make a suitable detonator. He couldn't even figure out how to make a bomb? Then he completely screwed up his getaway plan. Fact is he didn't have one. He called for a flight reservation on his way to JFK international. Like he didn't think anyone would be looking for one Faisal Shahzad at the airports?
The worst thing is that, stupid as he plainly is, Shahzad almost pulled it off. He almost detonated a powerful car bomb in Times Square. If he'd succeeded all his blunders would have been instantly irrelevant.
Whatever punishment he's given, and I expect it will be life, should be doubled on account of this bozo's rank stupidity. For example, take the vehicle. He bought it in his own name. WTF? Then he decided fireworks would make a suitable detonator. He couldn't even figure out how to make a bomb? Then he completely screwed up his getaway plan. Fact is he didn't have one. He called for a flight reservation on his way to JFK international. Like he didn't think anyone would be looking for one Faisal Shahzad at the airports?
The worst thing is that, stupid as he plainly is, Shahzad almost pulled it off. He almost detonated a powerful car bomb in Times Square. If he'd succeeded all his blunders would have been instantly irrelevant.
How America's Liberals Betrayed Their Country
Chris Hedges has written a telling piece on how America's enlightened liberals are complicit in their country's downward spiral. From AlterNet:
...The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military. Liberals, whose children are more often to be found in elite colleges than the Marine Corps, did not fight the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the dismantling of our manufacturing base. They did nothing when the Democrats gutted welfare two years later and stood by as our banks were turned over to Wall Street speculators. They signed on, by supporting the Clinton and Obama Democrats, for the corporate rape carried out in the name of globalization and endless war, and they ignored the plight of the poor. And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of liberals. We have lost all credibility. We are justly hated for our tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families.
Our passivity has resulted, however, in much more than imperial adventurism and a permanent underclass. A slow-motion coup by a corporate state has cemented into place a neofeudalism in which there are only masters and serfs. And the process is one that cannot be reversed through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics.
...Corporations have effectively taken over our internal security and intelligence apparatus. They run our economy and manage our systems of communication. They own the two major political parties. They have built a private military. They loot the U.S. Treasury at will. And they have become unassailable. Those who decry the corporate coup are locked out of the national debate and become as marginalized as Kucinich.
Hedges quotes activist David Swanson: “We have a corporate media cartel that overlaps with the war industry. It has no interest in democracy. The Congress is bought and paid for. It is absolutely corrupted by money. We kick ourselves for not being active enough and imposing our demands, but the bar is set very high for us. ...Hypocritical Congress members talk about money all the time, how we have to be careful about money, except when it comes to war. It is hypocritical, but who is going to call them on that? Not their colleagues, not their funders, not the media, only us.
Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill condemned the privatization of not just the nation's military but its government also: "...There are 18 U.S. intelligence agencies on the military and civilian side and 70 percent of their combined budget is outsourced to for-profit corporations who simultaneously work the United States government as well as multinational corporations and foreign governments. We have radically outsourced the intelligence operations in this country because we have radically outsourced everything. Sixty-nine percent of the Pentagon’s entire work force, and I am not talking only about the battlefield, is now privatized. In Afghanistan we have the most staggering statistics. The Obama administration is infinitely worse in Afghanistan in terms of its employment of mercenaries and other private contractors than the Bush administration. Right now in Afghanistan there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors alongside 68,000 U.S. troops."
The point I take from Hedges' piece is that Liberals have to stand up and fight the drift to the right because, when it comes right down to it, no one else can restore balance, no one else can hold the centre. That's as true in Canada as it is south of the border. We need to reject out of hand any leader who tries to steer the party to the right - and that means Michael Ignatieff. The party is already too far right and voters are unwilling to support the party where it stands. We have to stop being afraid of holding the centre which includes the progressive, centre left.
...The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military. Liberals, whose children are more often to be found in elite colleges than the Marine Corps, did not fight the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the dismantling of our manufacturing base. They did nothing when the Democrats gutted welfare two years later and stood by as our banks were turned over to Wall Street speculators. They signed on, by supporting the Clinton and Obama Democrats, for the corporate rape carried out in the name of globalization and endless war, and they ignored the plight of the poor. And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of liberals. We have lost all credibility. We are justly hated for our tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families.
Our passivity has resulted, however, in much more than imperial adventurism and a permanent underclass. A slow-motion coup by a corporate state has cemented into place a neofeudalism in which there are only masters and serfs. And the process is one that cannot be reversed through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics.
...Corporations have effectively taken over our internal security and intelligence apparatus. They run our economy and manage our systems of communication. They own the two major political parties. They have built a private military. They loot the U.S. Treasury at will. And they have become unassailable. Those who decry the corporate coup are locked out of the national debate and become as marginalized as Kucinich.
Hedges quotes activist David Swanson: “We have a corporate media cartel that overlaps with the war industry. It has no interest in democracy. The Congress is bought and paid for. It is absolutely corrupted by money. We kick ourselves for not being active enough and imposing our demands, but the bar is set very high for us. ...Hypocritical Congress members talk about money all the time, how we have to be careful about money, except when it comes to war. It is hypocritical, but who is going to call them on that? Not their colleagues, not their funders, not the media, only us.
Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill condemned the privatization of not just the nation's military but its government also: "...There are 18 U.S. intelligence agencies on the military and civilian side and 70 percent of their combined budget is outsourced to for-profit corporations who simultaneously work the United States government as well as multinational corporations and foreign governments. We have radically outsourced the intelligence operations in this country because we have radically outsourced everything. Sixty-nine percent of the Pentagon’s entire work force, and I am not talking only about the battlefield, is now privatized. In Afghanistan we have the most staggering statistics. The Obama administration is infinitely worse in Afghanistan in terms of its employment of mercenaries and other private contractors than the Bush administration. Right now in Afghanistan there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors alongside 68,000 U.S. troops."
The point I take from Hedges' piece is that Liberals have to stand up and fight the drift to the right because, when it comes right down to it, no one else can restore balance, no one else can hold the centre. That's as true in Canada as it is south of the border. We need to reject out of hand any leader who tries to steer the party to the right - and that means Michael Ignatieff. The party is already too far right and voters are unwilling to support the party where it stands. We have to stop being afraid of holding the centre which includes the progressive, centre left.
Even Academics Ignore our 800 Pound Gorilla
Yesterday there was a fascinating exploration of the political and security issues arising out of China's ascent to global economic supremacy. Today there's an interesting discussion at the Huffington Post on how America will respond to its debt crisis. Reading these projections is eye-opening and thought-provoking but virtually all of them have the same fatal flaw - they totally ignore the mounting impacts of climate change and associated environmental threats. We're looking at problems in isolation of realities we cannot afford to overlook and it's backfiring on us.
Huffington refers to the era we're in as the "Age of Much Worse Than We Thought It Would Be." From Katrina to Wall Street, America's problems (and they're not alone) are starting to become almost uncontrollable or at least unmanageable:
...In practically every sector of our society, the old order is exhausted. But we seem incapable of making fundamental changes without the loaded gun of a full-blown crisis pointed at our heads. For example, the financial crisis -- and what it has exposed about the behavior of Wall Street -- has caused us to rethink the relationship between Wall Street and rest of our economy.
It's obvious the old way of doing things is no longer viable. But, absent the sense that everything is about to collapse, we are dragging our feet on deciding what will replace it.
And there are some other "unprecedented," "unique" -- and potentially catastrophic -- problems headed our way if we continue to accept the old order's lack of imagination about what is possible. I'm thinking, first and foremost, of our debt problem.
...America is like a patient in danger of suffering a massive heart attack. We may be able to postpone things with a bit of outpatient surgery, but we won't be able to avoid it without some serious lifestyle changes. The economic coronary isn't quite here yet, but it's on the way. And when it hits, it will, of course, be "unprecedented" and "unique." But not unforeseen -- let alone unforeseeable. Here are just a couple of the symptoms of big time trouble ahead:
By 2020, interest on the debt alone will reach $900 billion per year.
That same year, five segments of government spending -- Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, net interest and defense spending -- will account for an estimated 77 percent of all government expenditures. All other federal spending will have to come out of the remaining 23 percent.
...The needs of the past and the demands of the present exert a powerful pull on our attention while the future doesn't have many advocates -- it's always something we can get to later. And there was a time when we could get away with pushing our problems down the road, secure that our reserves would always bail us out. And there was a strong safety net to catch those who fell through the cracks. Well, those reserves are gone now and the safety net is frayed and full of holes.
...For a change, let's imagine a crisis that is worse than we think it will be, and take the necessary steps to avoid it. If we don't, we'll find ourselves facing another "unprecedented" disaster.
Huffington is dead right. The old order is over, we have to accept that. The 80's are gone - politically, economically, socially even militarily. By clinging to the past we undermine our ability to prepare for the future. We have to stop operating on a "best scenario" basis and stop falling back on some intangible trust that the future will take care of itself.
What she is saying is that there's an enormous leadership void today and I would argue nowhere more so than in Canada. Ours is a country led by people without vision, incapable of laying out a path for the future, ours, our children's and our grandchildren's. This is an unoccupied field just waiting for someone to answer the challenge. That "someone" should have been Michael Ignatieff but he's shown himself not up to it.
Huffington refers to the era we're in as the "Age of Much Worse Than We Thought It Would Be." From Katrina to Wall Street, America's problems (and they're not alone) are starting to become almost uncontrollable or at least unmanageable:
...In practically every sector of our society, the old order is exhausted. But we seem incapable of making fundamental changes without the loaded gun of a full-blown crisis pointed at our heads. For example, the financial crisis -- and what it has exposed about the behavior of Wall Street -- has caused us to rethink the relationship between Wall Street and rest of our economy.
It's obvious the old way of doing things is no longer viable. But, absent the sense that everything is about to collapse, we are dragging our feet on deciding what will replace it.
And there are some other "unprecedented," "unique" -- and potentially catastrophic -- problems headed our way if we continue to accept the old order's lack of imagination about what is possible. I'm thinking, first and foremost, of our debt problem.
...America is like a patient in danger of suffering a massive heart attack. We may be able to postpone things with a bit of outpatient surgery, but we won't be able to avoid it without some serious lifestyle changes. The economic coronary isn't quite here yet, but it's on the way. And when it hits, it will, of course, be "unprecedented" and "unique." But not unforeseen -- let alone unforeseeable. Here are just a couple of the symptoms of big time trouble ahead:
By 2020, interest on the debt alone will reach $900 billion per year.
That same year, five segments of government spending -- Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, net interest and defense spending -- will account for an estimated 77 percent of all government expenditures. All other federal spending will have to come out of the remaining 23 percent.
...The needs of the past and the demands of the present exert a powerful pull on our attention while the future doesn't have many advocates -- it's always something we can get to later. And there was a time when we could get away with pushing our problems down the road, secure that our reserves would always bail us out. And there was a strong safety net to catch those who fell through the cracks. Well, those reserves are gone now and the safety net is frayed and full of holes.
...For a change, let's imagine a crisis that is worse than we think it will be, and take the necessary steps to avoid it. If we don't, we'll find ourselves facing another "unprecedented" disaster.
Huffington is dead right. The old order is over, we have to accept that. The 80's are gone - politically, economically, socially even militarily. By clinging to the past we undermine our ability to prepare for the future. We have to stop operating on a "best scenario" basis and stop falling back on some intangible trust that the future will take care of itself.
What she is saying is that there's an enormous leadership void today and I would argue nowhere more so than in Canada. Ours is a country led by people without vision, incapable of laying out a path for the future, ours, our children's and our grandchildren's. This is an unoccupied field just waiting for someone to answer the challenge. That "someone" should have been Michael Ignatieff but he's shown himself not up to it.
That Oil Slick in the Gulf of Mexico? That Might Be Dick Cheney's Greasy Doing.
Is Dick Cheney at least partly responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico? According to The New Republic, going by the deterioration in the Interior Department during the Bush years, the answer could be "yes":
First, an oil-drilling procedure called cementing—which is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor—has been identified as a leading cause of well blowouts. Indeed, a 2007 study by the Minerals Management Service (or MMS, the division of the Interior Department responsible for offshore drilling) found that this procedure was implicated in 18 out of 39 blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over the 14 years it studied—more than any other factor. Cementing, which was handled by Halliburton, had just been completed prior to the recent explosion.
...Second, the oil well now spewing large quantities of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico lacked a remote-control acoustic shutoff switch used by rigs in Norway and Brazil as the last line of defense against underwater spills. There’s a story behind that. As the Wall Street Journal reports, after a spill in 2000, the MMS issued a safety notice saying that such a back-up device is “an essential component of a deepwater drilling system.” The industry pushed back in 2001, citing alleged doubts about the capacity of this type of system to provide a reliable emergency backup. By 2003, government regulators decided that the matter needed more study after commissioning a report that offered another, more honest reason: “acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly.”
...After the Bush administration took office, the MMS became a cesspool of corruption and conflicts of interest. In September 2008, Earl Devaney, Interior’s Inspector General, delivered a report to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne that has to be read to be believed. One section, headlined “A Culture of Ethical Failure,” documented the belief among numerous MMS staff that they were “exempt from the rules that govern all other employees of the Federal Government.” They adopted a “private sector approach to essentially everything they did.” This included “opting themselves out of the Ethics in Government Act.” On at least 135 occasions, they accepted gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies with whom they worked. One of the employees even had a lucrative consulting arrangement with a firm doing business with the government. And in a laconic sentence that speaks volumes, the IG reported: “When confronted by our investigators, none of the employees involved displayed remorse.”
...unfettered oil drilling was to Dick Cheney’s domestic concerns what the invasion of Iraq was to his foreign policy—a core objective, implacably pursued regardless of the risks. Is there a connection between his infamous secret energy task force and the corrupt mindset that came to dominate a key program within MMS? Would $500,000 per rig have been regarded as an unacceptably expensive insurance policy if a drill-baby-drill administration hadn’t placed its thumb so heavily on the scale?
First, an oil-drilling procedure called cementing—which is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor—has been identified as a leading cause of well blowouts. Indeed, a 2007 study by the Minerals Management Service (or MMS, the division of the Interior Department responsible for offshore drilling) found that this procedure was implicated in 18 out of 39 blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over the 14 years it studied—more than any other factor. Cementing, which was handled by Halliburton, had just been completed prior to the recent explosion.
...Second, the oil well now spewing large quantities of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico lacked a remote-control acoustic shutoff switch used by rigs in Norway and Brazil as the last line of defense against underwater spills. There’s a story behind that. As the Wall Street Journal reports, after a spill in 2000, the MMS issued a safety notice saying that such a back-up device is “an essential component of a deepwater drilling system.” The industry pushed back in 2001, citing alleged doubts about the capacity of this type of system to provide a reliable emergency backup. By 2003, government regulators decided that the matter needed more study after commissioning a report that offered another, more honest reason: “acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly.”
...After the Bush administration took office, the MMS became a cesspool of corruption and conflicts of interest. In September 2008, Earl Devaney, Interior’s Inspector General, delivered a report to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne that has to be read to be believed. One section, headlined “A Culture of Ethical Failure,” documented the belief among numerous MMS staff that they were “exempt from the rules that govern all other employees of the Federal Government.” They adopted a “private sector approach to essentially everything they did.” This included “opting themselves out of the Ethics in Government Act.” On at least 135 occasions, they accepted gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies with whom they worked. One of the employees even had a lucrative consulting arrangement with a firm doing business with the government. And in a laconic sentence that speaks volumes, the IG reported: “When confronted by our investigators, none of the employees involved displayed remorse.”
...unfettered oil drilling was to Dick Cheney’s domestic concerns what the invasion of Iraq was to his foreign policy—a core objective, implacably pursued regardless of the risks. Is there a connection between his infamous secret energy task force and the corrupt mindset that came to dominate a key program within MMS? Would $500,000 per rig have been regarded as an unacceptably expensive insurance policy if a drill-baby-drill administration hadn’t placed its thumb so heavily on the scale?
Is Harper Backing a Murderous Regime in Honduras?
The Harper government, heard through the mouthpiece of his Minister of State for foreign affairs (Americas), Peter Kent, was pretty much OK with last year's military coup in Honduras that toppled democratically-elected president Mel Zalaya.
In February of this year, Kent made a 3-day visit to Honduras where he met with Zalaya's successor, Porfirio Lobo Sosa that caused Kent to gush: “We are pleased to see that President Lobo is beginning the process of national reconciliation, including supporting the formation of a truth commission. This is an important step in healing the wounds created by the recent political impasse and for Hondurans to regain a sense of trust in their country’s democratic institutions.”
It seems Lobo's backers are doing everything they can "to regain a sense of trust in their country's democratic institutions," one of which has seen the return of death squads targetting opponents from the National Front of Popular Resistance. From the online magazine, In These Times:
Since the coup last June, a number of union leaders have died under... ...mysterious circumstances. Many Hondurans believe the military-backed government to be responsible for these assassinations. Of the 43 members of the FNRP that have been killed, about half have been trade unionists.
Gilda Batista, director of the Tegucigalpa-based human rights organization Refuge Without Limits (ASL), has investigated the murder of Zepeda and other recently executed union leaders. Batista says her research leads her to believe that assassination squads are being “financed by the corporatocracy and military.”
Batista believes the targeting of key individuals like Zepeda “sends a message to the Resistance that union members will be murdered if they meddle in the political arena.” In Zepeda’s case, forensics experts finally labeled the case a homicide, but still have not disclosed any details about the cause of death. More than three weeks after the autopsy, Torrez is still awaiting an explanation from the government concerning her daughter’s murder.
“[The Lobo government] knows that the trade unionists are one of the biggest threats economically. The labor movement has been really central to the resistance,” says Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in an interview in a Tegucigalpa human rights office. “In Tegucigalpa, many of the biggest Resistance meetings are happening in the Bottling Plant Union building."
It's no stretch to believe the Lobo regime is the sort of government Harper would support. Is it?
Read more here.
In February of this year, Kent made a 3-day visit to Honduras where he met with Zalaya's successor, Porfirio Lobo Sosa that caused Kent to gush: “We are pleased to see that President Lobo is beginning the process of national reconciliation, including supporting the formation of a truth commission. This is an important step in healing the wounds created by the recent political impasse and for Hondurans to regain a sense of trust in their country’s democratic institutions.”
It seems Lobo's backers are doing everything they can "to regain a sense of trust in their country's democratic institutions," one of which has seen the return of death squads targetting opponents from the National Front of Popular Resistance. From the online magazine, In These Times:
Since the coup last June, a number of union leaders have died under... ...mysterious circumstances. Many Hondurans believe the military-backed government to be responsible for these assassinations. Of the 43 members of the FNRP that have been killed, about half have been trade unionists.
Gilda Batista, director of the Tegucigalpa-based human rights organization Refuge Without Limits (ASL), has investigated the murder of Zepeda and other recently executed union leaders. Batista says her research leads her to believe that assassination squads are being “financed by the corporatocracy and military.”
Batista believes the targeting of key individuals like Zepeda “sends a message to the Resistance that union members will be murdered if they meddle in the political arena.” In Zepeda’s case, forensics experts finally labeled the case a homicide, but still have not disclosed any details about the cause of death. More than three weeks after the autopsy, Torrez is still awaiting an explanation from the government concerning her daughter’s murder.
“[The Lobo government] knows that the trade unionists are one of the biggest threats economically. The labor movement has been really central to the resistance,” says Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in an interview in a Tegucigalpa human rights office. “In Tegucigalpa, many of the biggest Resistance meetings are happening in the Bottling Plant Union building."
It's no stretch to believe the Lobo regime is the sort of government Harper would support. Is it?
Read more here.
What One Policy Do You Want the LPC to Adopt?
One reason the Liberal Party is languishing in trail to the Tories is its ongoing policy vacuum. Without solid policy the party really has nothing to say to the Canadian public and I think that's reflected in the dismal polling results.
A couple of months back Mr. Ignatieff convened a "thinkers' conference" that was heavily weighted with academics, corporate executives and management consultants but that doesn't seem to have generated any great policy initiatives.
Maybe what the LPC needs is a bottom-up approach on party policy. Here's your chance. Give one idea above all others you think needs to be incorporated into Liberal Party policy. One policy that would be attractive enough for you to definitely vote Liberal.
Here's mine. I want the Libs to rip the lid off climate change and the impacts it is going to bring to the Canadian people, on a region by region basis. I want the government to focus on getting specific information out to Canadians to make them aware that climate change is real, that certain impacts are coming no matter what we do, and that we need to use that information to plan and implement remediation and adaptation measures tailored to each of our specific regions. We have that information. The scientists at Environment Canada can get it out to the public once Harper's gag is torn from their mouths.
So that's my one policy proposal. What's yours?
A couple of months back Mr. Ignatieff convened a "thinkers' conference" that was heavily weighted with academics, corporate executives and management consultants but that doesn't seem to have generated any great policy initiatives.
Maybe what the LPC needs is a bottom-up approach on party policy. Here's your chance. Give one idea above all others you think needs to be incorporated into Liberal Party policy. One policy that would be attractive enough for you to definitely vote Liberal.
Here's mine. I want the Libs to rip the lid off climate change and the impacts it is going to bring to the Canadian people, on a region by region basis. I want the government to focus on getting specific information out to Canadians to make them aware that climate change is real, that certain impacts are coming no matter what we do, and that we need to use that information to plan and implement remediation and adaptation measures tailored to each of our specific regions. We have that information. The scientists at Environment Canada can get it out to the public once Harper's gag is torn from their mouths.
So that's my one policy proposal. What's yours?
CanWest Slips Through Asper's Fingers
"...kind of hurtful to see a family not be successful."
Shaw Communications has slammed the door on the Asper family's connection to the media empire created by their patriarch, the late Izzy Asper. Despite repeated attempts by son Lenny Asper to salvage at least something from the CanWest television operation, Goldman Sachs finally turned its back on him and began negotiating the sale with Shaw Communications instead.
In announcing the culmination of the sale, JR Shaw seemed to get a couple of digs in at Lenny and the other Aspers, pointed referring to their failure:
“When you look back at it today, there’s no joy in seeing the Asper family not continue to grow and prosper. ...This is not necessarily a celebration; this is kind of hurtful to see a family not be successful."
Somehow it doesn't sound as though JR is all that choked up about the Aspers.
For People Too Stupid to Understand Evolution
You can thank Monsanto, creator of the herbicide RoundUp, for dispelling your doubts. The agricultural use of RoundUp has caused the evolution of super weeds resistant to the herbicide and, according to The New York Times, it's giving farmers a real headache:
"Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.
To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.
“We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”
Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water."
I don't care about religious fantasies - evolution and natural selection are real and, if you open your eyes, there are plenty of examples that happen in the course of just a single lifetime.
"Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.
To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.
“We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”
Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water."
I don't care about religious fantasies - evolution and natural selection are real and, if you open your eyes, there are plenty of examples that happen in the course of just a single lifetime.
Monday, May 03, 2010
Tax Break for Volunteer Firefighters. Is That Ignatieff's Idea of Liberal Policy?
Yesterday it was extending the term of the Governor General. Today's it's unveiling a Liberal policy for a $3,000 refundable tax credit for volunteer firefighters.
Look, I appreciate volunteer firefighters as much as the next guy, but why does Ignatieff keep linking himself with piddly little policy pronouncements? Does he not want the public to take him seriously? It comes across sounding as though he's talking for the sake of getting noticed. With all the problems afflicting our country today, the tax plight of volunteer firefighters surely isn't really that high on the list. It makes Iggy look like he's lost in minutiae, grasping at straws to mask a lack of vision.
We waited well over a year for Ignatieff to host his "thinkers' conference" and he's had two months since then to formulate policy all the while the LPC's national support continually sags.
Sorry but it's time for this guy to deliver something meaningful that will energize the Liberal Party and resonate with the voting public - or get out of Dodge. The party faithful have displayed their considerable capacity for political masochism but enough is enough.
Look, I appreciate volunteer firefighters as much as the next guy, but why does Ignatieff keep linking himself with piddly little policy pronouncements? Does he not want the public to take him seriously? It comes across sounding as though he's talking for the sake of getting noticed. With all the problems afflicting our country today, the tax plight of volunteer firefighters surely isn't really that high on the list. It makes Iggy look like he's lost in minutiae, grasping at straws to mask a lack of vision.
We waited well over a year for Ignatieff to host his "thinkers' conference" and he's had two months since then to formulate policy all the while the LPC's national support continually sags.
Sorry but it's time for this guy to deliver something meaningful that will energize the Liberal Party and resonate with the voting public - or get out of Dodge. The party faithful have displayed their considerable capacity for political masochism but enough is enough.
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