The Fertilizer Tree Catches On in Africa

Researchers in Malawi have found a way to free farmers of dependency on expensive and destructive fertilizers.   Farmers there grow maize, corn, and their crops require large quantities of nitrogen and phosphorous from the depleted soils necessitating large amounts of fertilizer.

Enter the "fertilizer tree."

The 'fertilizer tree' or gliricidia, a leguminous tree, has the ability to draw nitrogen from the air and insert it into soil, changing it into a form that plants can use. "The trees also restore some amount of phosphorus to the soil," said Gudeta Sileshi, the study's lead author and the Southern Africa representative of the Kenya-based World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

In addition, the leaves shed by gliricidia return organic matter to the soil, increasing its structural stability, erosion resistance and capacity to store water. Three consecutive experiments, begun in 1991 in Malawi and Zambia, showed that when gliricidia was planted in rows between maize plants, maize yields were good year after year.


The Gliricidia is a good example of the innovation we need to pursue in a world now in a state of permanent food insecurity.

Why We Must Break Up Canada's Media Cartel

Once you have a thoroughly corporatized mass media, rife with concentration of ownership and cross-ownership, your democracy is in peril.  It's not a question of if but a question of when and how badly democratic freedoms will suffer.

A corporate mass media does not trade in information.  It trades in messages conveying the ideas it wants disseminated.   These can have little or no relationship to actual information or even truth and, unlike information, messaging is a very lucrative commodity for corporate mass media.

FOX News is a perfect example.  Its content is tied tightly to messaging evidenced in its dishonesty and repetitiveness.  Several credible studies have shown that FOX viewers are woefully misinformed about the events of the day.   Even a judge has ruled ludicrous the FOX claim to be "fair and balanced."

When corporate mass media perverts the information function and warps it into rank messaging it creates the fuel for corruption - of mass media, of politics and of democracy.   The ability to misinform the public is a precious commodity to those who would manipulate them.  It invites a commercial collaboration between politicians and their corporate media partners.

How bad can it get?   Skip one country past the U.S. to Mexico and have a look at the current presidente, Pena Nieto.   He's featured in the latest edition of AdBusters in an article, "Mexico's Blue Revolution."

"Less than a month before Mexico's Presidential election in July, The Guardian leaked signed contracts showing that candidate enrique Pena Nieto had for years been paying tens of millions of dollars to Televisa, the largest television network in the Spanish speaking world, to produce and air propaganda - hundreds of 'news reports, interviews and features' - designed to support his rise to power.

In a further leak, just days before the vote, the British newspaper revealed that a 'secretive unit' funded by Pena Nieto and dedicated to getting him elected was embedded inside Televisa until 2009 with the implication the unit may still exist.  Pena Nieto is now the President of Mexico.

...And yet ...the kind of ironic detachment and apathetic response that reigned in the last decade has given way to an unexpected passion and eagerness to push back.   Witness the inspiring response of Mexicans to the news this time around:  thousands of protesters chanting, 'Tell the truth,' surrounded the studios of Televisa, blockated the entrances and refused to let employees enter for 24 hours.  Media democracy activists everywhere watched in awe as Mexican jammers effortlessly pulled off the kind of bold action that we have been dreaming of for yeears would happen at the headqaurters of News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom, Vivendi and the rest of the media monopolies.

After percolating at the edges of global revolutionary thought, blue politics - based around mental environmentalist demands like transparency, media democracy, whistle-blowing protection, de-commercialization, total internet liberty and free speech - is moving to the center-stage.   Driven by a generation of fiery young Mexicans, the spotlight is finally settling on one of the core issues of our time  who controls the information flows?"

We're not in the same boat as Mexico, not yet.   But what happened there could happen here, eventually, just as something similar is underway in the Greatest Democracy on Earth (tm) next door.  Only we're more sophisticated.   The candidate doesn't buy the media, in a powerfully corporatist state he doesn't have to.   Citizens United made that inconvenience redundant.


I got in a dust-up with my cable TV provider, Shaw, the other day after I discovered that Sun TV had been added to my cable lineup.  I called to find out if I could ditch Sun TV and get another channel in its stead.   They said no, it was part of the line-up.  I said I didn't want political porn on my television and it would be the same whether it was radical leftwing political porn or radical rightwing political porn.   They said they were powerless to delete it but they did throw in a couple of extra channels free of charge.

We need political leadership that is going to press the "reset" button on Canada's mass media.   That means purging it of the corporate cartel and diversifying media outlet ownership as broadly as possible.   Democracy itself depends on it.

Is America Too Divided to Continue?

Being American these days is becoming something akin to sharing bathwater - it's no fun if you know the previous occupant is too damned dumb to wipe his butt.    A good many Americans today find themselves wondering if they're wallowing in a human gravy boat.

It was the South, today's Red States, that fought for their independence a century and a half ago.   It's taken a good long while but now there are some Yankees coming out and saying maybe it's best for Red and Blue to part company.   The internal contradictions and tensions may leave no other choice.

A huge gap is emerging between the Red States  (a.k.a. the Slave States, Republican states) and the Blue States (the north and the coasts).  The New Republic posits that in today's America, Blue States are from Scandinavia, Red States are from Guatemala.

 We’ve come to think of “blue” and “red” states as political and cultural categories. The rift, though, goes much deeper than partisan differences of opinion. The borders of the United States contain two different forms of government, based on two different visions of the social contract. In blue America, state government costs more—and it spends more to ensure that everybody can pay for basic necessities such as food, housing, and health care. It invests more heavily in the long-term welfare of its population, with better-funded public schools, subsidized day care, and support for people with disabilities. In some cases, in fact, state lawmakers have decided that the social contract provided by the federal government is not generous enough. It was a blue state that first established universal health insurance and, today, it is a handful of blue states that offer paid family and medical leave.

In the red states, government is cheaper, which means the people who live there pay lower taxes. But they also get a lot less in return. The unemployment checks run out more quickly and the schools generally aren’t as good. Assistance with health care, child care, and housing is skimpier, if it exists at all. The result of this divergence is that one half of the country looks more and more like Scandinavia, while the other increasingly resembles a social Darwinist’s paradise.

...By nearly every measure, people who live in the blue states are healthier, wealthier, and generally better off than people in the red states. It’s impossible to prove that this is the direct result of government spending. But the correlation is hard to dismiss. The four states with the highest poverty rates are all red: Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Texas. (The fifth is New Mexico, which has turned blue.) And the five states with the lowest poverty rates are all blue: New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, Minnesota, and Hawaii. The numbers on infant mortality, life expectancy, teen pregnancy, and obesity break down in similar ways. A recent study by researchers at the American Institute for Physics evaluated how well-prepared high schoolers were for careers in math and science. Massachusetts was best, followed closely by Minnesota and New Jersey. Mississippi was worst, along with Louisiana and West Virginia. In fact, it is difficult to find any indicator of well-being in which red states consistently do better than blue states.

...Since red states have more poor people, and since their state governments spend less money on the safety net, they receive a larger share of federal funds. Among states that voted Republican in the last three elections, all but one gets more money back from the federal government than it pays in taxes. For most Democratic states, it’s the opposite. Looked at this way, the red states are the moochers and the blue states are the makers.

...Restricting access to public assistance and programs obviously isn’t on the same moral plane as denying people the right to vote or holding them as slaves. But these things should weigh on our consciences all the same. Food stamps keep people from going hungry. Unemployment checks prevent people from losing their homes. Health insurance keeps people from suffering and dying. Food, shelter, medicine—these are basic needs to which all people, and certainly all Americans, should be entitled. Over the course of the last century, from the Progressive era through the New Deal and Great Society, the United States slowly but surely moved toward guaranteeing those things. Giving the red states the power to deviate from this course means giving them the right to undo that progress.

Advocates for the red-state approach to government invoke lofty principles: By resisting federal programs and defying federal laws, they say, they are standing up for liberty. These were the same arguments that the original red-staters made in the 1800s, before the Civil War, and in the 1900s, before the Civil Rights movement. Now, as then, the liberty the red states seek is the liberty to let a whole class of citizens suffer. That’s not something the rest of us should tolerate. This country has room for different approaches to policy. It doesn’t have room for different standards of human decency.

But the divide may be unbridgeable.  The South remains invested in bizarre and fanciful notions, some long obsolete others simply unhinged, such as Manifest Destiny, American exceptionalism and the Bush Doctrine.   As the article reveals, a lot of the South's disdain for "big government" is anchored in a perception that the social safety net is a vehicle for the transfer of wealth to the poor, i.e. blacks.   And the election of Barack Obama has demonstrated, sickeningly, that racism and bigotry remain close to the bosom of the South.

The United States, from the Rio Grande up to the 49th Parallel, is a pretty big territory.   Maybe it is time that Red and Blue-America faced up to their irreconcilable differences and parted company.   Here's one point the article overlooks.   With the onset of climate change; particularly severe storm events, severe floods and sustained droughts, the viability of the South will be the most heavily impacted.   That will only exacerbate strains between North and South, fiscal and political.   Maybe the North is indeed, "Better Off Without'Em."

Mittsy's "Binders" Lie

In last night's debate, Mitt Romney said, as governor of Massachusetts he looked around and noticed a distinct lack of women in senior positions.   So he went to women's groups to seek their help.

"And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.

"I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women."

A bald-faced lie atop all the other lies this bastard has been spinning.   Here's what actually happened from a guy who knows, David S. Bernstein.

What actually happened was that in 2002 - prior to the elction, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration - a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government.  There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as lead sponsor.

They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions.   They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.

 Romney didn't spot an equality problem.   He didn't ask for anything.   He got handed a binder of qualified women.  He's just a damned liar.

Romney Fun Time

Among Mitt Romney's gaffes in the second debate was his remark about "binders full of women."   When the subject of helping women achieve pay equity came up, Mittsy dodged the subject by talking about his days as Massachusetts governor.   According to the latest Romney fable, he asked a women's group to help find him qualified women candidates for his office and he received "binders full of women."

A lot of women are up in arms at being so blatantly objectified by Romney but The Young Turks, bless them, found a bit of humour in it.

Here's Lil' Stevie

This shouldn't come as a surprise but here's Rick Mercer's take on the dickhead we know as Steve Harper

Yeah, it's Lil' Steve and, yes, he's a dildo.

CBC "comedian" Rick Mercer has painted the face of Canada's 22nd prime minister on a wooden penis. The piece of "art" is called "Lil' Steve".

It's all for a good cause. The wooden phallus—or "woody"—and others like it are being auctioned off as a fundraiser for the Calgary Sexual Health Centre. The centre provides pregnancy testing, birth-control and post-abortion counselling, sexuality-education programs, anti-homophobia presentations, and other services—you know, stuff Harper's Conservative base loves.

"Woodies are wooden phalluses that we use to demonstrate proper condom use," the centre's auction website states. "These woodies have been hand-decorated by some prominent supporters of our work who have graciously donated their talents so that we can offer these unique conversation pieces to other supporters like you!"

Right now, bids on "Lil' Steve" are up to $694. The auction closes on October 25.

And surely, demonstrating condom technique is all "Lil' Steve" will be used for.

The Costs of Keeping Cool

North Americans had a tough and expensive time keeping cool over the summer.   A prolonged heat wave coupled with sustained drought (that continues in many places) drove demand for plenty of air conditioning.

Know how much electricity Americans, in a normal year, consume for cooling?   More than the entire electrical consumption of the billion plus population of Africa.   Vehicle air conditioners are said to account for 7 to 10-billion gallons of gasoline annually.

And now, with the planet warming and billions in some of the hottest regions coming into newfound prosperity, the demand for air-conditioning and the emissions nightmare associated with it is set to skyrocket.

The climate impact of air conditioning our buildings and vehicles is now that of almost half a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Yet with other nations following our lead, America’s century-long reign as the world cooling champion is coming to an end. And if global consumption for cooling grows as projected to 10 trillion kilowatt-hours per year — equal to half of the world’s entire electricity supply today — the climate forecast will be grim indeed.

Because it is so deeply dependent on high-energy cooling, the United States is not very well positioned to call on other countries to exercise restraint for the sake of our common atmosphere. But we can warn the world of what it stands to lose if it follows our path, and that would mean making clear what we ourselves have lost during the age of air conditioning. For example, with less exposure to heat, our bodies can fail to acclimatize physiologically to summer conditions, while we develop a mental dependence on cooling. Community cohesion also has been ruptured, as neighborhoods that on warm summer evenings were once filled with people mingling are now silent — save for the whirring of air-conditioning units. A half-century of construction on the model of refrigerated cooling has left us with homes and offices in which natural ventilation often is either impossible or ineffective. The result is that the same cooling technology that can save lives during brief, intense heat waves is helping undermine our health at most other times.

...China is already sprinting forward and is expected to surpass the United States as the world’s biggest user of electricity for air conditioning by 2020. Consider this: The number of U.S. homes equipped with air conditioning rose from 64 to 100 million between 1993 and 2009, whereas 50 million air-conditioning units were sold in China in 2010 alone. And it is projected that the number of air-conditioned vehicles in China will reach 100 million in 2015, having more than doubled in just five years.

...The Middle East is already heavily climate-controlled, but growth is expected to continue there as well. Within 15 years, Saudi Arabia could actually be consuming more oil than it exports, due largely to air conditioning.

The report from Yale's 360 Environment is well worth a complete read.   A big factor in my own decision, 30-plus years ago, to relocate from Ontario to coastal B.C. was to escape central Canada's punishing summer weather.   It's a decision I have never regretted.

But our summers (when they actually arrive) can get uncomfortably warm for brief spells and I've noticed a few homeowners putting in central air.  I went another route.  In the course of ordinary renovations, I replaced all the low-flow, contractor-grade, aluminum-frame windows with high-efficiency, casement windows and equally effective blinds.  Every window in the house can open out like a door.   To fend off the summer heat, the windows are closed and the blinds drawn during the day.   As the sun goes down and the coastal breezes appear, the windows are opened wide and the blinds go up and all that fresh, cool, fragrant air literally flushes the residual heat out of the house.  It's very much like bringing the outdoors inside and it's very enjoyable.  And it's a low-carbon (or no-carbon) alternative to air conditioning.

Canada's Outrageous Geoengineering Scam

The Harper government knew of Russ George's plan to seed the waters off the Queen Charlotte Islands with a hundred tons of iron sulphate.   The Harper government also knew that this was the very sort of geoengineering experiment in ocean fertilization that is banned by  the UN's convention on biological diversity (CBD) and London convention on the dumping of wastes at sea and yet it looked the other way.

The Californian had been trying to find a place to stage his experiment but he's been turned down around the world by countries rich and poor until he got away with it in Canadian waters in July.

George even got the Haida to contribute a million dollars.   The Guardian is investigating.


The dump took place from a fishing boat in an eddy 200 nautical miles west of the islands of Haida Gwaii, one of the world's most celebrated, diverse ecosystems, where George convinced the local council of an indigenous village to establish the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation to channel more than $1m of its own funds into the project.

The president of the Haida nation, Guujaaw, said the village was told the dump would environmentally benefit the ocean, which is crucial to their livelihood and culture.

"The village people voted to support what they were told was a 'salmon enhancement project' and would not have agreed if they had been told of any potential negative effects or that it was in breach of an international convention," Guujaaw said.

..."It appears to be a blatant violation of two international resolutions," said Kristina M Gjerde, a senior high seas adviser for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. "Even the placement of iron particles into the ocean, whether for carbon sequestration or fish replenishment, should not take place, unless it is assessed and found to be legitimate scientific research without commercial motivation. This does not appear to even have had the guise of legitimate scientific research."

..."If rogue geoengineer Russ George really has misled this indigenous community, and dumped iron into their waters, we hope to see swift legal response to his behavior and strong action taken to the heights of the Canadian and US governments," said Silvia Ribeiro of the international technology watchdog ETC Group, which first discovered the existence of the scheme. "It is now more urgent than ever that governments unequivocally ban such open-air geoengineering experiments. They are a dangerous distraction providing governments and industry with an excuse to avoid reducing fossil fuel emissions."

Harper & Co. have some explaining to do.   Why did they choose to ignore two international conventions to allow George to get away with this?   What assessment did the federal government conduct in advance of this dumping?  What assurances did it receive that the experiment was even safe much less viable?  Why did the federal government not inform the Haida of the international stance on geo-engineering experimentation?

For those unfamiliar with this character, Russ George, and his past, read this piece from the Christian Science Monitor.   And this is the guy the Harper government allowed to conduct a dubious and potentially dangerous geo-engineering experiment in Canadian waters.

Update

The Globe & Mail is apparently giving this an environmental spin claiming it was a salmon enhancement project, not a climate change geo-engineering venture.   You can only dish up that much sophistry by completely ignoring this guy's past.   He may have dressed it up as salmon enhancement to wrangle a million bucks out of the Haida but Russ George's quest in all his ventures is to come up with a scheme to generate and sell carbon credits.

By the way, Russ George's own government has banned him from operating his ships under the American flag.

George is the former chief executive of Planktos Inc, whose previous failed efforts to conduct large-scale commercial dumps near the Galapagos and Canary Islands led to his vessels being barred from ports by the Spanish and Ecuadorean governments. The US Environmental Protection Agency warned him that flying a US flag for his Galapagos project would violate US laws, and his activities are credited in part to the passing of international moratoria at the United Nations limiting ocean fertilisation experiments

Your Boot, Government Ass - Insert, Repeat

Interesting and timely observation from EnviroCan climatologist David Phillips.   He says it's time for the public to ensure their government authorities are planning for climate change.

“The insurance industry is absolutely convinced that what they are seeing is the result of climate change. Since 2000 they are paying out gobs of money because of severe weather and flooding issues. It is something that we have to convince at all levels, municipal, provincial, and federal governments that we have to invest in our infrastructure.

“It’s a responsibility of government to protect us from ourselves and to prepare us for the future,” said Phillips. “If the future is going to be warmer, wetter and wilder, than we need to be forward thinking about this.”

The Dalai Lama Calls for Climate Change Action by All World Leaders, Even Ours

Maybe Steve Harper should stop taking orders from his Beijing mandarins long enough to listen to the Dalai Lama.

Speaking at MIT, the Dalai Lama warned that every nation will suffer if leaders don't recognize common interests and responsibilities in responding to climate change.

“Whether we can really solve these problems or not, we have to make an attempt, that’s how I feel,” the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader said at a forum hosted by the The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values, a nonprofit think tank at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

...Rebecca Henderson, an economics professor at Harvard Business School, says we need to transform the world economy from one where resources are cheap and waste is free, to one where resources are properly priced. That, she says, will change polluting behaviors. Henderson says the challenge is convincing businesses to manage morally and ethically.

“I think there’s increasing consensus that business as usual may have unacceptable social and environmental costs,” Henderson said.

Penny Chisholm, a professor in the environmental studies department at MIT, looked at the latest efforts in geoengineering — tinkering with nature to try and reverse the effects of climate change. Scientists are looking at technical solutions such as collecting carbon in the atmosphere and storing it deep in the earth, controlling the temperature of the earth or adding nutrients to the ocean. But, she told the Dalai Lama, these solutions could be dangerous.

“We aren’t going to know what will happen,” Chisholm said. “So to take that risk with our planet is too great when we know there’s a solution at the root cause.”

Now that the public consensus, even in the United States, is coming into line with the scientific consensus on global warming, badly needed and long overdue resources are flowing to the scientific community.  NCAR, the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research has announced it is now using a 1.5 petaflop supercomputer, said to be one of the 20-most powerful on Earth, for geoscience research.   It's 30-times more powerful than NCAR's former main computer.

Along with climate change, this supercomputer will be used on a number of geoscience research issues, including the study of severe weather, oceanography, air quality, geomagnetic storms, earthquakes and tsunamis, wildfires, subsurface water and energy resources.

It's hoped the extra computing power will allow NCAR to do climate change modeling on a scale as small as 10 kms.

Think You're Creative? No, You're Just Sick

I'm not sure this will come as a surprise but there's a link between creativity and mental illness.   It's no coincidence that so many great comedians, for example, are or have been manic-depressives.

Now a study of more than a million subjects finds that creativity is often an actual part of mental illness.

Writers had a higher risk of anxiety and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, unipolar depression, and substance abuse, the Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute found.

They were almost twice as likely as the general population to kill themselves.

The dancers and photographers were also more likely to have bipolar disorder.

 Lead researcher Dr Simon Kyaga said the findings suggested disorders should be viewed in a new light and that certain traits might be beneficial or desirable.

For example, the restrictive and intense interests of someone with autism and the manic drive of a person with bipolar disorder might provide the necessary focus and determination for genius and creativity.

Similarly, the disordered thoughts associated with schizophrenia might spark the all-important originality element of a masterpiece. 

Dr Kyaga said: "If one takes the view that certain phenomena associated with the patient's illness are beneficial, it opens the way for a new approach to treatment.

 "In psychiatry and medicine generally there has been a tradition to see the disease in black-and-white terms and to endeavour to treat the patient by removing everything regarded as morbid."

Beth Murphy, head of information at Mind, said bipolar disorder personality traits could be beneficial to those in creative professions, but it may also be that people with bipolar disorder are more attracted to professions where they can use their creative skills.

Women Are "Too Diabolical" to Vote

That remark actually came from a woman,  Tea Party leader Janis Lane, a former marketing manager who is now the Central Mississippi Tea Party president.  Okay, now brace yourself.

“Our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting. There is nothing worse than a bunch of mean, hateful women. They are diabolical in how [they] can skewer a person.  I do not see that in men. The whole time I worked, I'd much rather have a male boss than a female boss. Double-minded, you never can trust them.”

Asked about what part of the Tea Party platform would appeal to minorities, [conservative talk show host and former Nation of Islam member, Kim] Wade said, “Our position on charter schools is incoherent as black people. We're sitting up here watching our kids be destroyed because our leadership says we're supposed to dislike private schools because they were born out of segregation.”

Lane, the female Tea Party leader, came out strongly against reproductive rights as well. “I do not agree with the federal government supporting killing a preborn human. A child is a child from the moment of conception,” she said. 

How can you possibly heal a terminally divided nation that has a sizeable population that thinks like these women?

That Other Pole - the Antarctic Is Also Changing Fast

In the northern hemisphere our focus is primarily on the Arctic and the vanishing sea ice.  Australians tend to focus on their backyard, the Antarctic, and they're being warned that change is rapidly spreading.

The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) told a Senate estimates hearing today "rapid changes" taking place across the icy land mass would have significant impact on global climate.

Changes in ocean flows and shifts in Antarctic ice cap levels were occurring at rates faster than at any other time in history, chief scientist Nick Gales said.

 ...Scientists were detecting major changes in the circulation of deep, dense salty water off Antarctica.
This water, which drives the circulation of the world's oceans and in turn climate patterns, was reducing, while becoming warmer and less salty.

Meanwhile, parts of the Antarctic ice caps were melting at unprecedented rates.

"The findings around changes in Antarctica and the southern oceans are critically important to driving world climate," Dr Gales said.

"That is the engine room of a large amount of world climate, so changes there are important."

He dismissed suggestions the claims were alarmist, adding scientists were "by definition" sceptics and based their conclusions only on testing data.

 

The Olive Grove War Re-Ignites

How do you steal a Palestinian's land?   It usually begins by destroying his olive groves.   Destroy his livelihood and then you can claim the land unoccupied and build a settlement.

It's the olive harvest on the West Bank and, true to form, Israeli settlers with the help of the Israeli Army are on the attack.

The Palestinians are pleading for the international community to send observers to their lands, hoping this will force the Army to restrain the settlers' land grab.   Maybe Ottawa could do the right thing for a change.   Nah, forget it.

You Can't Open the Door If You Won't Pick Up the Key

The keys to a Liberal comeback are at their feet.  What remains doubtful is that they'll ever pick them up.

Canada is facing a few enormous challenges.   Let's call them, in the political context, "issues."

Political parties either take up issues or treat them as non-issues.  It's a matter of priority and political will and, sometimes, it's a matter of political courage and vision.

There are several "red flag" issues that are ready-made for a Liberal champion and could put the party back on the path to power if only it stops treating them as non-issues.   Among them are dismantling Canada's corporatist media cartel; the multi-dimensional environmental challenge; and the growing threat posed by inequality.  1, 2, 3.

As written so often in the past, the corporatist media cartel is a direct threat to Canadian democracy.   Instead of having access to the broadest range of opinion, the cornerstone of an informed electorate, we have allowed the evolution of a Wal-Mart media.  The cartel, as these blocs do, has amassed unhealthy political influence and, in the process, transformed Canada's media from watchdog of government to government's lap dog.   That must be broken up.  We need a government that will dismantle the cartel and reverse concentration of ownership and media cross-ownership.

On the environmental issue, we need a Canadian government that will put the interests and well-being of the Canadian people, including the very young and future generations, first.   That means placing the public interest well ahead of corporate interests and the interests of foreign countries.   We have tried the "balancing" approach for decades and that inevitably results in indifference to the public interest.   Government is supposed to serve all the people, not just the few people who inhabit corporate boardrooms.

On the inequality issue, we need a Canadian government with the courage to act independently of the United States in rehabilitating Canada's middle class.   While inequality is not as bad in Canada as in America, if we continue to accept lockstep measures to match the US, it will worsen and turn as corrosive as it has south of the border.

We need to recognize that only a limited portion of inequality results from natural market forces.   We need to accept that the greatest part is the result of government policy.   Our governments legislate inequality in a variety of ways.  See Stiglitz, "The Price of Inequality."

This century is already turning difficult and it's bound to become more challenging, more dangerous.    For Canada to meet these challenges, we need our own New Deal to restore the real "beating heart" of our economy and our society, our middle class.   Bitumen won't solve our problems.   The only thing that can work is to rebuild the broadest, most robust and cohesive middle class possible... even if the Americans won't.

There was another Trudeau, this was many years ago.   He  captivated a nation with his vision of a "just society" and he connected us to our country in a way we had not previously experienced.   What I wouldn't give to have that guy back.

Inequality is Monkey Business

Even monkeys know inequality is just plain wrong

Let it Start Here

h/t Cowichan Conversations

San Fransiscans Hit the Beach to Dump Citizens United

A picture is worth a thousand words, at least when it's a photo of an estimated thousand people who gathered on a San Fransisco beach to call for the end of Citizens United and the corporatization of American democracy.

Suckers!!!

Like the autumn leaves, the myths about the F-35 stealth light bomber are finally falling.   Now it's beginning to emerge that the F-35 may just be the warplane our potential adversaries want us to buy.  

As Travis Sharp, an analyst with the Centre for a New American Security puts it, "There's a real risk that a lot of the high-tech investments are going toward things our adversaries want us to invest in, because they can neutralize them - and spend far less money to do so."

The thing is, there's never been a warplane quite like the F-35.  Its systems use almost 9-million lines of computer code of which some, perhaps a lot, has already been hacked.   Originally intended to be in operational service by now, the F-35 won't enter service with the U.S. until 2016 and, even then, isn't expected to complete operational testing until somewhere around 2019.   That's right.   Testing won't be finished until the airplane has already been in service for three years.   Yes, this aerial horse is definitely behind the cart.

Not only is the F-35 incredibly complex, it's also hyper-expensive.  You pay dearly for the latest and greatest.   You pay in a lot of ways.  You  pay in limited numbers.   The more something costs, the fewer of them you can afford to buy.   You pay in the number of years you need to rely on the thing.   The more it costs, the longer you'll have to wait before replacing it.   When you buy the F-35, you're strapping that baby on for somewhere between three and five decades.   You're gambling the farm on that warplane remaining viable for up to half a century.   Oh yeah, good luck with that.

The F-35 is designed to hold its own against older airplanes.   It hasn't been designed to defeat the next generation of warplanes our potential adversaries have under development.   And it won't necessarily do too well against updated, older warplanes either.

The F-35 is a provocative weapons system, make no mistake about that.  We're pointing it at the heads of already and increasingly advanced countries. the type that have sophisticated air defences the F-35 is designed to overwhelm.   And, based on what we've already shown them and all that data, equipment and material they've filched, they think they've figured out how neutralize our threat - and, worse, do it on the cheap.

Once they manage to defeat the F-35's stealth technology and copy its electronic wizardry, they may be able to hand us our greatest strategic defeat in history, all without firing a shot.   We'll have spent ourselves into impotence, so fiscally deep into the F-35 we won't be able to get out.

Are there alternatives?  Plenty.   As US Navy admiral Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations, pointed out we might do far better focusing on advanced, long-range weaponry instead of focusing on hyper-expensive, perishable-technology warplanes to essentially do the same job.

Or we can be suckers.

Tough Chewing for Sunday Brunch

Pop a Zantac and try to digest McMaster prof Henry Giroux's lament on the Disappearance of Public Intellectuals.   Here are a few excerpts:

As a theater of cruelty and mode of public pedagogy, economic Darwinism removes economics and markets from the discourse of social obligations and social costs.  The results are all around us ranging from ecological devastation and widespread economic impoverishment to the increasing incarceration of large segments of the population marginalized by race and class. Economics now drives politics, transforming citizens into consumers and compassion into an object of scorn.  The language of rabid individualism and harsh competition now replaces the notion of the public and all forms of solidarity not aligned with market values.  As public considerations and issues collapse into the morally vacant pit of private visions and narrow self-interests, the bridges between private and public life are dismantled making it almost impossible to determine how private troubles are connected to broader public issues. Long term investments are now replaced by short term profits while compassion and concern for others are viewed as a weakness.  As public visions fall into disrepair, the concept of the public good is eradicated...

...As the language of privatization, deregulation, and commodification replaces the discourse of the  public good, all things public, including public schools, libraries, transportation systems, crucial infrastructures, and public services, are viewed either as a drain on the market or as a pathology.

...Vulnerable populations once protected by the social state are now considered a liability because they are viewed as either flawed consumers or present a threat to a right-wing Christian view of America as a white, protestant public sphere. The  elderly, young people, the unemployed, immigrants, and poor whites and minorities of color now constitute a form of human waste and are considered disposable, unworthy of sharing in the rights, benefits, and protections of a substantive democracy.  Clearly, this new politics of disposability and culture of cruelty represents more than an economic crisis, it is also speaks to a deeply rooted crisis of education, agency, and social responsibility. 

...Since the 1970s, we have witnessed the forces of market fundamentalism strip education of its public values, critical content, and civic responsibilities as part of its broader goal of creating new subjects wedded to consumerism, risk-free relationships, and the destruction of the social state.  Tied largely to instrumental purposes and measurable paradigms, many institutions of higher education are now committed almost exclusively to economic goals, such as preparing students for the workforce. Universities have not only strayed from their democratic mission, they seem immune to the plight of students who have to face a harsh new world of high unemployment, the prospect of downward mobility, debilitating debt, and a future that mimics the failures of the past. The question of what kind of education is needed for students to be informed and active citizens is rarely asked.

What Giroux writes is quite true.   His article, linked above, deserves reading in its entirety.

Voices like Giroux's are helping us to start seeing ourselves for what we have become, what we have done to ourselves and our society.   There's a movement building, for example, to fundamentally reform the study of economics, to strip the discipline of its intensely theocratic orthodoxy that is so at odds with reality, that predisposes our nations to cataclysmic events such as the collapse of 2008.

At the beginning of my law studies I was lucky to spend a couple of hours talking with a visiting professor from Trinity College, Dublin.   He taught Equity, the ancient, unwritten law of fairness that is sometimes used to temper harsh outcomes from the strict common law.   This fellow freely criticized law schools for turning out students prepared to convey real estate, draw contracts, shave taxes and prosecute petty thieves - essentially, legal trade schools.  He pointed out how subjects such as Equity and Jurisprudence (the philosophy of law) had fallen out of the mainstream of law school teaching. 

When I came to practice litigation I quickly discovered the professor's take was spot on.   Counsel often made either far too much or far too little out of Equity and even judges routinely stumbled over its maxims, retreating headlong for the safety of neatly written statute law.   Equity became anachronistic, unpredictable and hence unreliable.   What had served us for so many centuries and had tempered law to keep it in some degree of harmony with the public interest waned.

As Giroux warns, we're too readily discarding knowledge of immense value and necessity to our societies and our future generations.   We can keep going down this road but at what cost?

Climate Change In Our Own Backyards

When global warming impacts come up, it's often focused on vanishing Arctic Ocean ice or retreating glaciers or tropical islands inundated by sea level rise.   But global warming at home?   Not so much.

Yet there are windows into what's happening in our own backyards in the temperate zone.  The Boston Globe looks at an experimental forest that has logged a half-century of research into New England's warming winters.

For more than five decades, the changing face of winter has been studied by scientists at the 7,800-acre Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in Woodstock, New Hampshire, which is managed by the USDA Forest Service. According to our ongoing Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study, average winter temperatures have warmed by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1955. Maximum snowpack levels have declined by about 10 inches. Over the past 45 years, the ice cover on Mirror Lake in the White Mountains has decreased by 22.5 days.

These changes are incontrovertible. Less certain are the implications to our winter way of life. But in recent meetings between Hubbard Brook scientists and traditional users of the winter landscape — including ski area operators, managers of the White Mountain National Forest, and maple sugar makers — a picture is taking shape of a startlingly different kind of New England than that experienced by our parents and grandparents.

For ski area operators, winter seasons that once somewhat predictably started after Thanksgiving are now more likely to begin after the New Year. Needing to make do with less natural snow, ski areas must continue investing in significant artificial-snow making. Even though they have learned to make snow using less energy and water, the operators still face a battle of perceptions: When there is no snow on the ground in Boston, fewer people think about driving north to ski.

...Maple sugar producers are affected by a complex array of temperature and snow conditions. While improvements in technology, such as vacuum systems to extract sap, have kept pace with an apparently shortening sugaring season, scientists point out that sugar maples are already influenced by stresses such as acid rain (a threat discovered in North America at Hubbard Brook). Warming temperatures may also inflict harm to stands of trees over the long term.

Having been born and raised in southern Ontario in the post-WWII decades, I cringe a bit now when I see news clips of Torontonians golfing in February.   In my time and my parents' time and grandparents' time that sort of thing was unimaginable.   It simply didn't happen, not in what was the coldest month of the year.

Most of us are familiar with the story of the "boiled frog" in which a frog dropped into a pot of hot water immediately jumps out but a frog dropped into a pot of cold water atop a stove stays put and dies as the water gradually heats to the boiling point.    We're often compared to the boiled frog except we're not.   There's one huge difference.   That frog dies because it doesn't know any better.

Will the Opposition Stand Up for Canada?

The NDP and the Libs should be storming the Bastille over Harper's Canada-China Trade Agreement and Harper's craven sell out of our country.   The Tyee's Andrew Nikiforuk calls it "economic treason."

The one politician we can rely on to sound the alarm, Elizabeth May, exposes the venal duplicity of Harper's backroom deal at  the Green Party's web site.

Whether you back the NDP or the Libs, if you care about Canada, read these commentaries and then raise hell with your party's leadership over this.   We don't have much time.   Harper is counting on that.

The Economist Pleads for "Radical Centrist Politics"

The ordinarily conservative magazine, The Economist, is calling for radical political reform, what it calls "true progressivism."

 One reason why Wall Street accounts for a disproportionate share of the wealthy is the implicit subsidy given to too-big-to-fail banks. From doctors to lawyers, many high-paying professions are full of unnecessary restrictive practices. And then there is the most unfair transfer of all—misdirected welfare spending. Social spending is often less about helping the poor than giving goodies to the relatively wealthy. In America the housing subsidy to the richest fifth (through mortgage-interest relief) is four times the amount spent on public housing for the poorest fifth. 

Even the sort of inequality produced by meritocracy can hurt growth. If income gaps get wide enough, they can lead to less equality of opportunity, especially in education. Social mobility in America, contrary to conventional wisdom, is lower than in most European countries. The gap in test scores between rich and poor American children is roughly 30-40% wider than it was 25 years ago.

...The priority should be a Rooseveltian attack on monopolies and vested interests, be they state-owned enterprises in China or big banks on Wall Street. The emerging world, in particular, needs to introduce greater transparency in government contracts and effective anti-trust law. It is no coincidence that the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim, made his money in Mexican telecoms, an industry where competitive pressures were low and prices were sky-high.

Next, target government spending on the poor and the young. In the emerging world too much cash goes to universal fuel subsidies that disproportionately favour the wealthy (in Asia) and unaffordable pensions that favour the relatively affluent (in Latin America). But the biggest target for reform is the welfare states of the rich world. Given their ageing societies, governments cannot hope to spend less on the elderly, but they can reduce the pace of increase—for instance, by raising retirement ages more dramatically and means-testing the goodies on offer. Some of the cash could go into education. The first Progressive era led to the introduction of publicly financed secondary schools; this time round the target should be pre-school education, as well as more retraining for the jobless.

Last, reform taxes: not to punish the rich but to raise money more efficiently and progressively. In poorer economies, where tax avoidance is rife, the focus should be on lower rates and better enforcement. In rich ones the main gains should come from eliminating deductions that particularly benefit the wealthy (such as America’s mortgage-interest deduction); narrowing the gap between tax rates on wages and capital income; and relying more on efficient taxes that are paid disproportionately by the rich, such as some property taxes.

Still decidedly conservative, to be sure, but this sort of advocacy is long overdue from the Right.   Their post-Reagan ideology is rotten to the core with inconsistency and hypocrisy which is one reason it's bundled up in phrases of a Grade 10 level of simplicity.   How else to obscure the sophistry?

Yes, "radical centrist politics" are badly needed and long overdue but it would be a lethal blunder to limit their scope to economic reformation.   We desperately need this same sort of eyes-open, clear-headed and firmly centrist reason to address the gamut of the challenges we face today.
 

Don't You Just Hate It When...

It's such a bitch being well off in an affluent homeland.   Just ask these folks:

Doom And Gloom - The Stones Return

They're not going anywhere, not yet at least.   The Stones return to celebrate their 50th year of rock and roll.  Doom and Gloom.

Who Says Shit Like This? Oh yeah, ...Republicans - Again

"Some Girls Rape Easy"

Wisconsin state representative Roger Rivard says his pappy taught him to be wary of "consensual" sex because "some girls rape easy."

“He told the Journal Sentinel that his father had advised him not to have premarital sex, and he took that seriously.

‘He also told me one thing, “If you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry,”‘ Rivard said. ‘Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she’s not going to say, “Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.” All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she’s underage. And he just said, “Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,” he said, “they rape so easy.”

‘What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me, telling me, “If you’re going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.” So the way he said it was, “Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.”‘

Those Damned Vikings and Their Carbon Taxes

What's wrong with those backwater pinkos in longboats?   Don't they know that socialism doesn't work?   Can't they get it through their Scandinavian skulls that they're supposed to be dying off prematurely in poverty?

Apparently not.

Not only are the Norse awash in Kroner that they're setting aside for future generations, they're also taking serious action on climate change.   Norway has just announced it will be doubling its carbon tax to $24 Cdn per tonne.

Norway will also plough an extra £1bn (Nkr10bn) into its funds for climate change mitigation, renewable energy, food security in developing countries and conversion to low-carbon energy sources, Environmental Finance reported.

It will step up spending on new projects to combat deforestation in developing countries to £44m, taking up its spending overall on forestry programmes to £327m. Previous forestry projects have involved Brazil, Indonesia and Ethiopia.

The Oslo government is also to spend £69m on buying carbon credits in 2013, to help offset its emissions, force through new building regulations to make all new homes carbon-neutral by 2015 and increase efforts to heavily cut emissions from cars, switching to electric vehicles.

F-35, A Nuclear Strike Bomber?

Surprise, surprise - the F-35 is being designed with a nuclear weapons capability.  Presumably even Steve Harper hasn't got the guts to add a nuclear arsenal to Canada's military establishment but, with that guy, there's no telling.

A nuclear capability on such a range-limited warplane suggests one thing - nuclear first-strike.

That the F-35 is, in reality, a light bomber rather than the fighter our government and Air Force leaders claim is evident in this throwaway line from Aviation Week about bomb jettisoning tests now underway:

"...in the field, the F-35 will likely be employed primarily in level flying conditions to maintain the lowest radar cross section possible for ground-attack missions."

Exactly.  It doesn't have "fighter stealth", it has "bomber stealth."   The one supposed advantage for which it sacrifices every quality that defines a great fighter warplane is stealth, bomber stealth.   This is a straight line in, straight line out airplane - a bomber.

The Youngest Old Man in the Liberal Party

The Ottawa Citizen's Sue Riley looks at Justin Trudeau and sees the youngest old man in a Liberal Party full of old men.

...The Liberal leadership hopeful's much-anticipated launch speech last week was disappointingly banal. He ran through the familiar Liberal checklist: a nod to strength in diversity, the Charter of Rights, Quebec's central role, First Nations poverty and so on.

Overall, the speech contained not one fresh idea or memorable quote, although the former high school drama teacher strove mightily to impart depth, quoting his father, who was quoting Paul to the Corinthians, about putting away "childish things."

...You can almost hear the old guys whispering in his ear: The middle class is a big, big constituency! Lots of votes! Trudeau's bold new pitch looks more like cynical political positioning.

Trudeau is, undeniably, personable, well-intentioned, attractive and connected. He can easily captivate a curious crowd with his impassioned stump speech. But new ideas? You'll hear more fresh thinking standing in a coffee line with Green party leader Elizabeth May, 58, for 15 minutes.

...stamina and glamour aren't enough. Trudeau needs content and experience. He needs more than a fashionable concern for the environment; he needs to unambiguously oppose the Northern Gateway pipeline and offer an alternative.

...The political old guard can be complacent and arrogant, of course - they, after all, ruined the brand. But we should be wary of misty-eyed romanticism about a new generation.

Public life isn't going to improve if young politicians continue to embrace the narrow range of topics, timid policy prescriptions and poisonous rhetoric of their elders. That isn't change, no matter how contemporary the wrapping.

Riley's op-ed is in much the same vein as my previous post about establishment politicians governing to preserve and secure the status quo indifferent to the punishing costs and dangers they're bequeathing to the young and the generations to follow them.   With the enormous challenges looming today it is inexcusable for the Liberals and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the New Democrats to ignore them.

To the Big Picture, Does the White House Matter?

A substantial majority of Canadians want to see Barack Obama re-elected.  Why?

To be sure, the Republican offerings of late have been unpopular here and pretty much around the world, Israel perhaps excepted.  It could be that Ike was last truly popular conservative president of the United States on the world stage.

Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II - slim pickings at best.  Anyone believe that gang left the world a better place than they found it?  (Hint - if you do, seek help)

The other team put forward Kennedy, Johnson (don't undervalue his civil rights achievements), Carter, Clinton and Obama.  Of course they struck out often enough but, remember, you're comparing them against Team Republican.   Enough said.

The comparison plainly justifies Canadians' preference for Obama over the slash and burn Republican contender but does it really matter?  To my mind, that's a clear "no."

Why doesn't it matter?   Because we're using the wrong metrics, that's why.   We measure one side against the other and that's like choosing one dwarf over another in Olympic high-jumping.   You have to look at the bar first.   Only once you see what they have to clear can you get a real measure of the contenders.

It's not just Democrats versus Republicans.   It's not just what's going on in Washington.  It's a global problem.  It's a Canadian problem.

In the six decades of the post-war period, politics has atrophied and become the preserve of "baby step" technocrats.   They're tweakers at best.   They tinker with tax rates and trade arrangements and they sometimes launch small (or even large) indecisive wars that everyone quickly enough tries to forget.   They're stuck in economic, social and geopolitical models that often pre-date manned flight and are of increasingly marginal utility in a world of 7+ billion human beings en route to 9+ billion.

Liberals used to contend this this sort of technocratic backwardness was an affliction of Conservatives.   Liberals still like to think of themselves as progressives.   They're not.   Don't get smug, Dippers.  You're in the same boat.   You're not progressive if you still believe in a future of economic growth.   You're not progressive if you believe in a petro-economy.   You're not progressive, you're something else.   You're obsolete.

Progressives don't fixate on the dwarfs.   They study the bar and try to figure just how they might possibly clear it.   They know what's at stake if we don't clear that bar and they know that only progressivism can do it.

The bar has never been higher.  It has risen and risen and risen steadily over the past several decades but we didn't notice because, well before then, we stopped bothering to try to jump over it.  We were too busy tinkering, tweaking, and taking the measure of our equally diminutive rivals.   We adopted the baby step as our mode of conveyance.

The bar today represents all the challenges our civilization faces that will determine how mankind and how many of us get through this century.   The Big Three - global warming, overpopulation and the freshwater crisis - have to be met and mastered as best we can.  The dwarfs no longer get to set the agenda for us.   Their agenda can no longer be ours because it remains immersed in 18th century economics, 19th century industrialism and 20th century geopolitics.

Which brings us back to Obama versus Romney, the contest to determine who will be the mightiest dwarf on Earth.   In these presidential elections we delude ourselves that one of the candidates will soon chart a new course for his country, for the world.  It's a preposterous chimera, something last seen, albeit imperfectly, in the 40's.  Democracy has yielded to corporatism and oligarchy.   Of the vaunted three branches of government, at any given time, each seems mainly preoccupied with fettering rather than balancing the other two.

Does it matter whether we have a dysfunctional president Obama or a dysfunctional president Romney beset by an even more dysfunctional, "bought and paid for" Congress and a shamelessly corporatist Supreme Court?   It is a plateau fit solely for dwarfs that will never clear the bar.

The challenges of the 21st century will not be met by political progression because the dwarf beast cannot evolve nearly fast enough for that.  The very nature of these challenges - rapidly growing in size and power, intractable, destructive - defies solution by our outmoded institutions locked in the past.

The last twenty years, the last ten in particular, have revealed that change in this 21st century will not be had from baby-steppers no longer capable of clearing the bar.   If there is any sign of life coming from today's political class it is the sound of shoveling as they dig in to try to preserve their privileged past. 

Soon enough today's youth and the generation that follows them will realize the party apparatus of Republicans and Democrats; Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats; is tightly integrated in a broken machine that itself has to be swept aside if they're to stand much chance.   And so they will. 

We give them no other choice.  We continue to advance an agenda tailored for dwarfs even as events rapidly overtake us.   Our agenda is to preserve our comforts from the past.   Their agenda, the one we quite wilfully ignore, is to survive into an increasingly unpredictable future.   You cannot reconcile the two.

Who Says Shit Like This? Oh Yeah, ...Republicans.

If Barack Obama has achieved nothing else, he has fundamentally disproved the notion of a post-segregationist America.   Even before the Obama family moved into the White House the floodgates of blatant racism opened.

The latest degenerate is Arkansas Republican lawmaker Jon Hubbard who has just written a book, "Letters to the Editor, Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative."   As if we didn't know that today's movement conservatism and racism are joined at the hip, Hubbard confirms it arguing, among other things, that slavery was a blessing in disguise for American blacks:

“… the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.”

And Hubbard doesn't bite his tongue about school integration either:

“… one of the stated purposes of school integration was to bring black students up to a level close to that of white students. But, to the great disappointment of everyone, the results of this theory worked exactly in reverse of its intended purpose, and instead of black students rising to the educational levels previously attained by white students, the white students dropped to the level of black students. To make matters worse the lack of discipline and ambition of black students soon became shared by their white classmates, and our educational system has been in a steady decline ever since.”

Ah, well there it is.   America's educational decline is the result of letting those toxic black students into white kids' classrooms.   It doesn't have anything to do with the relentless assault on educational funding or the skewing of the tax base to defund government to the point the only thing it can splurge on is its military.

Mitt Romney says he'll cut anything that isn't helpful that has to be paid for with money borrowed from China.   Well, America's tax cuts from the rich are directly financed by money borrowed from China.   Yet Mitt seems intent on increasing those profligate tax cuts for the rich....  with money borrowed from China.

Will the Country that Gave the World Democracy, Lose Its Own?

The prime minister of Greece warns his country is on the verge of becoming the next Wiemar Republic.   Antonis Samaras is appealing for funds to fend off the outright collapse of Greek society.

"Greek democracy stands before what is perhaps its greatest challenge," Samaras told the German business daily Handelsblatt in an interview published hours before the announcement in Berlin that Angela Merkel will fly to Athens next week for the first time since the outbreak of the crisis.

Resorting to highly unusual language for a man who weighs his words carefully, the 61-year-old politician evoked the rise of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party to highlight the threat that Greece faces, explaining that society "is threatened by growing unemployment, as happened to Germany at the end of the Weimar Republic".

"Citizens know that this government is Greece's last chance," said Samaras.

I'm Not Like My Father - J. Trudeau

When it comes right down to it, Justin Trudeau really has just one thing going for him, his youth.  It's sad that he doesn't seem to want that getting in his way.

Trudeau showed he's simply a younger version of the traditional, celo-packaged Liberal hack when he hemmed and hawed about Enbridge and the Northern Gateway pipeline.   The route is bad, he said.

Really, that's it?   The route is bad?   Trudeau is barely a quarter notch past Ignatieff on that.   The route is bad.

Trudeau doesn't seem able to discuss the tar sands in the context of fossil fuels and what that's going to mean for his generation and his kids'.  He's skirting around the biggest threat that he and his will have to endure.  "No, no, - no problem here.  This Trudeau's on-side with the bitumen business.   I'm not my father, nothing remotely like him."  Indeed.

I could be wrong but I like to think Justin's father would have been profoundly disappointed with his son's obsequious weaving and ducking this week.  It's a safe bet that for every vote he gained in Alberta, both of them, he lost vastly more in British Columbia.

Kind of reminds me of Mark Twain's line about how so many men die at 27 but don't get buried until they reach 72.

Living Beneath the Drones Overhead

The villagers hear them.   They know the distinctive buzzing sound of the American drones patrolling overhead that the villagers call "mosquitoes." 

The US missile-attacks destroy militant training compounds and cars but they also hit mosques, homes, religious schools and civilian vehicles.

I witnessed the fear, stress and depression this causes for the tribal communities on a visit to the region in May.

The drones do not suddenly appear over the horizon, carry out the attack and leave. At any given time of the day, at least four are hovering in the sky, emitting a distinctive and menacing buzzing sound.

They call them "mosquitoes". 

"Anybody who has been listening to the buzzing all through the day usually can't sleep at night," says Abdul Waheed, a tribesman in North Waziristan.

"It's like a blind man's stick - it can hit anybody at any time."

People here tell me that it is not just Taliban and al-Qaeda members who are targeted, many ordinary citizens have been killed as well.  In some cases, tribesmen, motivated by a clan or blood feud, have pointed out a rival as a Taliban member or al-Qaeda sympathiser, they say, in the hope he will be blown to bits.

Everybody believes they could be next.

"There is only one way to sleep now," says Mateen Khan, a car mechanic in the town of Miranshah. "I take sleeping pills like many other people here. It is either that or stay awake all night."

Jeffrey Simpson Pronounces Northern Gateway D.O.A.

Globe & Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson writes that the Enbridge/Harper/China Northern Gateway pipeline proposal is dead - stone cold dead.

To survive, the Gateway pipeline would have to push past the growing opposition of British Columbians in general, the opposition of the current Liberal provincial government and the NDP government likely to replace it next year, the unanimous opposition of environmentalists, considerable opposition from at least some of the aboriginal groups along the route and, if all this were not enough, the likelihood of prolonged court battles.

What’s not standing in the way are U.S. environmentalists, whom the Harper government accused of being the principal reasons for the project’s problems. This wild statement was, then as now, completely at variance with reality, since British Columbians are hardly to be led around by their collective nose by a handful of folks from south of the border. To suggest otherwise is to insult their intelligence.

This is music to the ears of a majority of British Columbians who aren't as addled as so many in the rest of Canada who believe supertanker traffic through our northern archipelago was a dandy idea.   It probably won't sit well with the premiers either who were looking to filling their coffers from the Northern Gateway gravy train.

But there's still hope.   Simpson  notes, "Shipping more oil to Eastern Canada seems to be the easiest option politically of all.
But bitumen oil to Asia through northern B.C. just ain’t going to happen."

Shipping that sludge to Eastern Canada is a terrific idea.   All those provinces that were so happy to back the pipeline so long as it went through British Columbia surely won't have any qualms about Enbridge running a few pipelines across their turf.   Oh, and did we mention the jobs?   It's going to take more than a few workers to run lines all the way from Athabasca to Halifax.   Good luck with that.

God Save the Queen

Neil Young, bless him, recorded this ode to HM

NATO Went to War for America, Why Not Turkey?

Like the United States, Turkey is a full member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.   Article 5 of the NATO charter obliges all members to come to the aid of any other member under attack.   For the second day running, Turkey has received artillery barrages fired by Syrian government forces.

So, what's the hold up?

Turkey is the only Muslim member state of NATO.   Maybe it's because we have a Muslim state being attacked by a Muslim neighbour that accounts for our apparent indifference.

I can't help thinking about John Baird, Harper ForAffMin, slamming the U.N. for failing to act on Syria.   I wonder if that loudmouth is railing on against NATO for doing precisely the same thing.

The Turkish government has authorized its military to enter Syria in response to the shelling.

Fighting Corruption with Vitamins

Malnutrition is a huge problem in Afghanistan.   One-fifth of Afghan kids are malnourished and that increases to one-third in combat zones.  60 per cent of children under five are stunted.

Tens of billions of dollars of foreign aid flows into Afghanistan but much of that disappears into the gaping maw of a corrupt government and bureaucracy.   The resurgent civil war prevents NGOs from operating at all in some regions.

One solution being attempted by the World Food Programme is to distribute "fortified food" to nearly half the country's population, 15-million in all.   Vitamins and minerals are added to wheat flour, oil and gee.  Whether a solution that has worked elsewhere will succeed in Afghanistan is, however, uncertain.

"There are several problems, besides security which is an obvious issue," said one Afghan analyst who asked to remain anonymous. "Are Afghans prepared to eat this food? How are you going to convince people that something added to their food is good for them? Afghanistan is full of conspiracy theories. And then there is corruption; how can this be implemented so those who buy the fortified wheat flour are not taking it out of the bag and filling it with other flour? In a large project like this, mullahs [religious leaders] and tribal elders need to be key advocates, otherwise it won't work. And getting Afghanistan's neighbours to comply and work for the good of Afghanistan is another story."

Is Your Cell Phone Giving Away All Your Secrets?

Privacy?  That's a thing of the past.   The Surveillance State is the new reality and, barring massive government intervention, it's here to stay.

How are you liking that fancy Android cell phone?   Don't bother answering that, we already know.

Taxpayer-funded programs have created malware for Android smartphones that can remotely take over your phone's camera and use it to spy on you, according to reports in the Washington Times and PCWorld.

 ...Researchers from the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center developed the software along with researchers from the school of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University in Bloomington, thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation. (You can read their full paper here [PDF].)

The study was designed to see what kind of information hackers might be able to steal using malware disguised as an app on a smartphone; other forms of malware already include programs that can listen in on calls and steal credit card numbers or PIN numbers that users might say while calling their bank, or use the phone to “feel” keystrokes typed on a computer keyboard near the phone.

...Perhaps the concern should be, not that individual “bad guys” might hack your phone to steal your credit card number, but that the government itself might be collecting your information. As Kade Ellis of Privacy SOS and the ACLU reported, a security expert says that everyone who was at Occupy Wall Street had their cell phone surveyed by the NYPD. “[T]he identity of that cell phone has been logged, and everybody who was at that demonstration, whether they were arrested, not arrested, whether their photos were ID'd, whether an informant pointed them out, it's known they were there anyway. This is routine,” private investigator Steven Rambam says in a video talk.

He continued, "[C]ell phones are now the little snitch in your pocket. Cell phones tell me where you are, what you do, who you talk to, everybody you associate with." 


And if the NYPD or other government agencies spying on you through your cell phone doesn't make you nervous, perhaps Rambam's last comment will: he says that the government is “amateur” compared to big business.

“Your privacy today isn't being invaded by big brother -- it's being invaded by big marketer."

There is no privacy any more.   The little we haven't foolishly surrendered through social networking, the internet and countless other activities has been taken from us without our knowledge or consent.   Your home may still be your castle but, henceforth, what goes on behind your portcullis may be less secure than you imagined.

Connecticut Court Aquits Rapist Because Victim Couldn't Scream

Yeah, you heard that right.   The Connecticut Supreme Court, by a 4 to 3 vote, overturned the sexual assault conviction of a man who allegedly raped a woman who “has severe cerebral palsy, has the intellectual functional equivalent of a 3-year-old and cannot verbally communicate.”

The court held that Connecticut law the man could not be convicted if there was any chance that the victim could have communicated lack of consent.

The court ruled the state failed to adduce,  "any credible evidence that the [victim] was either unconscious or so uncommunicative that she was physically incapable of manifesting to the defendant her lack of consent to sexual intercourse at the time of the alleged sexual assault."

It found that the victim was capable of kicking, scratching, biting or screeching to communicate lack of consent.