How to Kill Democracy, the Ultimate How-To Guide

Remember when voter intimidation was considered an outrage, a threat to democracy?   That was then, this is now.

The oligarchs are moving very powerfully and relentlessly to dismantle democracy and the battleground is the Greatest Democracy on Earth (TM), the United States.

From disinformation services that spew outright falsehoods and propaganda to inculcate fear, confusion, targeted frustration and anger in an ignorant populace; to vote-rigging and the use of electronic voting technology tailor-made for manipulation; to voter ID laws that suppress minorities and the poor; to outright intimidation of working Americans by the rich and powerful, America remains a democracy in name only.

Michael Paarlberg, writing in The Guardian, reports that in America today, a "wrong" vote can cost you your job.

 Romney Stage Props Ordered to Take the Stage or Else

 A number of Romney backers took it upon themselves to spell out more clearly to their workers what "the best interest for their job" really means. David Siegel, CEO of Florida's Westgate Resorts, emailed his employees that a second term for Obama would likely give him "no choice but to reduce the size of this company". Republican donor-activists Charles and David Koch were no less subtle when they sent 45,000 employees of their Georgia Pacific paper company a list of whom to vote for, warning that workers "may suffer the consequences" if Obama is re-elected.

Florida-based ASG Software CEO Arthur Allen informed his employees that he was contemplating a merger that would eliminate "60% of the salaries" of the company – should Romney lose. In Ohio, coal mine owner Robert Murray left employees in no doubt that they were expected to attend a Romney rally – off the clock and without pay. In Cuba, at least they pay workers for show demonstrations.

...News outlets, on the other hand, are merely confused.

"Can your boss really tell you who to vote for?" asked the Atlantic incredulously, before concluding the answer is "probably yes". Should this be a surprise? Seeing that your boss can legally tell you to do nearly anything else, down to what you may wear, when you may eat and how often you may go to the bathroom (and, if he wishes, demand samples when you do), the question comes across as a little naïve. So, too, is the corollary "Can you be fired for expressing political views at work?" Again, the answer is probably yes, which should only be a shock to anyone who has never held a job in an American private-sector workplace.

In truth, as an "at-will" (that is, non-union) employee, you can be fired for much less. In Arizona, you can be fired for using birth control. If you live in any one of 29 states, you can be fired for being gay. You can be fired for being a fan of the Green Bay Packers if your boss roots for the Bears

Lest you think employer authority ends when you clock out, only four states – California, Colorado, New York and North Dakota – protect workers from being fired for legal activity outside of work. For the rest, workers can and have been fired for anything from smoking to cross-dressing, all in the privacy of their homes. The growing practice of employers demanding job applicants to hand over their Facebook passwords underscores the blurring of the work-life divide in this information age.

...Brooklyn College political scientist Corey Robin sees a historical pattern:

"During the McCarthy years, the state outsourced the most significant forms of coercion and repression to the workplace. Fewer than 200 people went to jail for their political beliefs, but two out of every five American workers was investigated or subject to surveillance.
"Today, we're seeing a similar process of outsourcing. Government can't tell you how to vote, but it allows CEOs to do so."

Robin concluded:

When workers are forced to go to rallies in communist countries, we call that Stalinism. Here, we call it the free market.

This is a wake-up call for Canadians.   When will we hear any of our political leaders denouncing America's malignant democracy and calling for the sort of safeguards essential to keep this contagion from sweeping across our borders?

We're bound to be smug about this just as Americans were for more than two decades.   Yet we need to realize what is happening today is the inevitable result of corporatism, the merger of corporate and political power, the phenomenon Mussolini defined as "fascism."

As If You Need Another Reason to Despise the Harper Government

One of the most odious and blatantly theocratic affronts perpetrated by the Harper regime is its fierce opposition to physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

Team Harper is now before the B.C. Court of Appeal seeking to overturn a decision in June that struck down the government prohibition on doctor-assisted suicide.

The Harper regime's arguments are the standard, vacuous pap:  this is a decision that only government can take and allowing assisted suicide would put vulnerable people at risk of being coerced or even forced to end their lives.

Bollocks.

Oregon has a decade of experience with physician-assisted suicide under the state's Death With Dignity Act.   Oregon's system incorporates multiple safeguards to prevent the very abuses that lurk within Harper's dark fantasies.   The Oregon experience was scrutinized by Eastern Michigan University prof J.M. Dieterle.

Dr. Dieterle found no evidence whatsoever of either involuntary or non-voluntary euthenasia occuring in Oregon.   Nothing, nada, zip.

The important point to bear in mind is that the terminally ill who go through Oregon's elaborate process merely receive a prescription for a life-ending drug.  They are under no obligation to fill the prescription nor are they required, if it is filled, to take the drug.

What flows from this is that many of the terminally ill never fill the prescription and, of those who do, many never take the drug.   They find, instead, they are able to meet death without it.  In essence, having the prescription or having the drug at hand merely eases the anxiety of facing death knowing that, should their ordeal become truly unbearable, they can be relieved of it.   That is what Harper wants to deny the terminally ill - the right to die without fear and the right to a humane death without unbearable suffering.  That is what Harper cannot abide.

Even Albertans Don't Want Chinese Ownership of the Tar Sands

The China Institute of the University of Alberta has released a poll showing that Albertans, by better than a two to one margin, oppose investments in the province's fossil fuel resources by Chinese state-owned companies.   And it's 64% against and just 15% for Chinese investments that amount to total ownership of oil and gas resources.

It seems like Albertans think one authoritarian government stirring up their tar is plenty.

New York Braces for Frankenstorm

New York City is now squarely in the crosshairs of Hurricane Sandy.   The NOAA has updated its hurricane track to predict Sandy may slam into the Big Apple on Tuesday morning.

The unique nature of the storm is its scariest aspect. From the National Weather Service :

THE HIGH DEGREE OF BLOCKING FROM EASTERN NORTH AMERICA ACROSS THE ENTIRE ATLANTIC BASIN IS EXPECTED TO ALLOW THIS UNUSUAL MERGER TO TAKE PLACE, AND ONCE THE COMBINED GYRE MATERIALIZES, IT SHOULD SETTLE BACK TOWARD THE INTERIOR NORTHEAST THROUGH HALLOWEEN, INVITING PERHAPS A GHOULISH NICKNAME FOR THE CYCLONE ALONG THE LINES OF "FRANKENSTORM", AN ALLUSION TO MARY SHELLEY'S GOTHIC CREATURE OF SYNTHESIZED ELEMENTS.

Mayor Bloomberg has warned New Yorkers to be prepared for an evacuation.

In August, Bloomberg issued New York's first ever mandatory evacuation order to clear out flood prone parts of the city and shut down its subways.

 

The Evil Face of the Republican Party

From AlterNet -
 

The End of the Road for Mitch Romney?

A Massachusetts court has unsealed the transcripts of a 20-year old divorce case between the CEO of Staples and his wife that could spell the end of Mitch Romney's chances to become America's next president.

AlterNet has the transcripts and is poring over them right now.

At issue is whether Romney lied to the court about the value of the husband's shares in Staples.   It's alleged that Romney gave evidence under oath to mislead the court into finding the shares were worth far less than their actual value.   Then after the wife had been left high and dry, Romney and his Staples buddy are said to have both flogged their shares at Goldman Sachs for a fortune.

A Canadian Tests America's Citizens United Decision

Meet Canadian businessman, V. Prem Watsa.   He's the founder, CEO, Chairman and 45% shareholder of Fairfax Financial, a Canadian insurance and investment management company.  Fairfax, in turn, owns a Connecticut reinsurance company, OdysseyRe, where Watsa is also Chairman of the Board.

OdysseyRe recently donated $1-million to Restore Our Future, a SuperPac supporting Mitch Romney.   The U.S. Supreme Court's controversial decision in Citizens United seems to make this sort of donation just dandy.   Except the U.S. also has a law prohibiting any foreign national from directly or indirectly  contributing money to influence U.S. elections.

The sticky question is whether an Canadian-owned and controlled U.S. subsidiary corporation is free to throw money into an election to help swing the outcome?   If so, can the Chinese get in on this action?   The possibilities seem endless.

Smoking Pot is Really Bad for You Except When It's Good

Blame UCLA professor  Don Tashkin for the confusion.   Tashkin, a professor of pulmonology at the David Geffin School of Medicine, has been "the guy" on the perils of pot smoking for decades.

He was the lead investigator on studies dating back to the 1970s that identified the compounds in marijuana smoke that are toxic. It was Tashkin who published photomicrographs showing that marijuana smoke damages cells lining the upper airways. It was the Tashkin lab reporting that benzpyrene -- a component of tobacco smoke that plays a role in most lung cancers -- is especially prevalent in marijuana smoke. It was Tashkin's data documenting that marijuana smokers are more likely than non-smokers to cough, wheeze and produce sputum. 

The National Institute on Drug Abuse supported Tashkin's marijuana-related research over the decades and gave him a grant to conduct a large, population-based, case-controlled study that would prove definitively that heavy, long-term marijuana use increases the risk of lung and upper-airways cancers. What Tashkin and his colleagues found, however, disproved their hypothesis.

Tashkin and his researchers found that for all the coughing, wheezing and sputum horking, the Demon Weed slightly inhibits lung cancer and cancerous tumors.


Tashkin noted that an anti-proliferative effect of THC has been observed in cell-culture systems and animal models of brain, breast, prostate, and lung cancer. THC has been shown to promote known apoptosis (damaged cells die instead of reproducing) and to counter angiogenesis (the process by which blood vessels are formed -- a requirement of tumor growth). Other antioxidants in cannabis may also be involved in countering malignancy, Tashkin said.

Much of Tashkin's talk at Asilomar was devoted to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, another condition prevalent among tobacco smokers. Chronic bronchitis and emphysema are two forms of COPD, which is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Air pollution and tobacco smoke are known culprits. Inhaled pathogens cause an inflammatory response, resulting in diminished lung function. COPD patients have increasing difficulty clearing the airways as they get older.

Tashkin and colleagues at UCLA conducted a major study in which they measured lung function of various cohorts over eight years and found that tobacco-only smokers had an accelerated rate of decline, but marijuana smokers -- even if they smoked tobacco as well -- experienced the same rate of decline as non-smokers. "The more tobacco smoked, the greater the rate of decline," said Tashkin. "In contrast, no matter how much marijuana was smoked, the rate of decline was similar to normal." Tashkin concluded that his and other studies "do not support the concept that regular smoking of marijuana leads to COPD."

This research came out in 2005 but the findings were simply overlooked by the media.

Today's Chuckles from the Times-Colonist

Big story in this morning's Times-Colonist headlined "Severed head found in Edmonton alley; link to body probed."   Apparently the Edmonton police are trying to figure out if there's any possible connection between the head recovered from a dumpster and a headless body found around the same time in a ditch.   Must probe...

And a Montreal bureaucrat is roundly scolded for saying it wasn't his job to report corruption he witnessed at City Hall.   This same guy, retired city engineer Gilles Surprenant had earlier admitted pocketing $600,000 from rigged contracts.   Surprenant excused himself, saying:  "I'm not a villain.  I am a civil servant who has been corrupted."  Gilles seems to think it was the contractors' fault for waving all that money under his nose.   Must probe...

Wait a Minute! I Thought Buddhists Were Pacifists.

Turns out that Buddhists are quite ready to drop the gloves when it comes to Muslims muscling in on their turf.

Riots have been sweeping western Burma lately.   A few deaths have resulted in the latest unrest, Muslim and Buddhist, and a thousand homes are said to have been burned.   Four months ago, 90-were killed and 3,000 homes destroyed.

Will this Setback the Future of Altnerative Energy in the U.S.?

Drill, baby, drill.   We've heard of America's natural gas bounty realized by extensive fracking.   Overlooked, however, is the success of fracking in U.S. oil production.   The Associated Press reports the United States may soon become the world's top oil producer.

U.S. oil output is surging so fast that the United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest producer.

Driven by high prices and new drilling methods, U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons is on track to rise 7 percent this year to an average of 10.9 million barrels per day. This will be the fourth straight year of crude increases and the biggest single-year gain since 1951.

The boom has surprised even the experts.

...The United States will still need to import lots of oil in the years ahead. Americans use 18.7 million barrels per day. But thanks to the growth in domestic production and the improving fuel efficiency of the nation's cars and trucks, imports could fall by half by the end of the decade.

...The major factor driving domestic production higher is a newfound ability to squeeze oil out of rock once thought too difficult and expensive to tap. Drillers have learned to drill horizontally into long, thin seams of shale and other rock that holds oil, instead of searching for rare underground pools of hydrocarbons that have accumulated over millions of years.

Two things seem likely from America's petroleum bonanza.   With a declining dependence on imported oil there'll be less pressure on American governments to move toward alternative energy.   And that same declining dependence on imported oil will (probably already has) sent alarm bells ringing from the Prime Minister's Office to the Alberta legislature, increase pressure to push the Northern Gateway through and up the chances of a showdown between Ottawa and British Columbia.

The Impoverishing States of America

Hard times for the working man, indeed.  We're familiar with statistics showing working class wages have stagnated, even declined somewhat, since Reagan waved his wand across the U.S. but it seems the figures we've been given are actually pretty rosey.

This finding of stagnant wages is unsettling, but also quite misleading. For one thing, this statistic includes only men who have jobs. In 1970, 94 percent of prime-age men worked, but by 2010, that number was only 81 percent. The decline in employment has been accompanied by increases in incarceration rates, higher rates of enrollment in the Social Security Disability Insurance program and more Americans struggling to find work. Because those without jobs are excluded from conventional analyses of Americans’ earnings, the statistics we most commonly see — those that illustrate a trend of wage stagnation — present an overly optimistic picture of the middle class.

When we consider all working-age men, including those who are not working, the real earnings of the median male have actually declined by 19 percent since 1970. This means that the median man in 2010 earned as much as the median man did in 1964 — nearly a half century ago. Men with less education face an even bleaker picture; earnings for the median man with a high school diploma and no further schooling fell by 41 percent from 1970 to 2010.

And, of course, the question becomes how did the working classes tolerate this decline?   Why didn't they take to the streets with pitchforks and torches?   Well peace was maintained by a conjuring act made up of equal parts real estate bubble and cheap (and tax deductible) mortgage financing.   This created a powerful perception of wealth that, as many Americans finally realize, was all smoke and mirrors.

They're a good ways off still but some day the American people will realize the stark truth - that today's radical right has facilitated the greatest unearned and undeserved transfer of wealth in their country's history, gutting the middle class to engorge the richest of the rich.   Today the radical right remains reasonably successful at persuading many of its victims to blame themselves for their plight, for their loss of jobs, income and opportunity.    That won't last forever, it can't.

Colin Powell Endorses Obama

Former Bush secretary of state and former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Colin Powell, is endorsing Barack Obama for a second term as president.

Powell said Obama is on the right track in winding down the Afghan war and fighting terrorism.


Powell criticized Romney's foreign policy as inconsistent and questioned the former Massachusetts governor's ability to tackle the deficit and looming defense cuts.

"I'm not quite sure which Governor Romney we'd be getting with respect to foreign policy," Powell said, calling Romney's foreign policy "a moving target."

As for the U.S. budget, he added: "It's essentially, let's cut taxes and compensate for that with other things, but that compensation does not cover all the cuts intended or the expenses associated with defense."

TMZ Outs the Mormonstrosity

Gossip shop, TMZ, says Mitch Romney may have lied under oath in a divorce trial to help a buddy and screw that buddy's wife out of big bucks.

Mitt Romney LIED under oath when he testified in the divorce of his good friend and screwed the friend's wife out of a lot of money in the process ... so claims the ex-wife of Staples' founder Tom Stemberg.

Multiple sources connected with the divorce tell TMZ ... during Tom's uber nasty divorce case with ex-wife Maureen, Mitt Romney gave a deposition and testified during the trial that Staples was worth virtually nothing. Romney testified that the company was worth very little and Tom was a dreamer and "the dream continues."

Romney characterized the Staples stock as "overvalued," adding, "I didn't place a great deal of credibility in the forecast of the company's future."

Partly as a result of Romney's testimony, Maureen got relatively little in the divorce, but we're told just weeks after the divorce ended, Romney and Tom went to Goldman Sachs and cashed in THEIR stock for a fortune.  Short story -- Romney allegedly lied to help his friend and screw the friend's wife over.

 And there's more ...  Our sources say years later, Maureen, who suffered from MS and had multiple bouts with cancer, got a visit from one of Tom's guys, who gave her papers informing her that Tom was cancelling her health insurance.  Our sources say the irony here is that we're told Tom was working as one of then Governor Mitt Romney's chief health care advisers.

Sources tell us ... Tom also got custody of the couple's one child, making allegations of abuse against Maureen.   And get this ... in the mid-90s, after the divorce, Tom sent the boy a letter saying, although he loved him, because of issues related to the divorce "it will not be possible for you to be a part of our family for the foreseeable future."

Maureen lost her home in the process and struggled financially. 

Sounds like Maureen didn't know how to act like a good Stepford Wife, like the Mormonstrosity's.

 

 

Don't Forget, It's Mine. You May, However, Borrow Freely

I've coined a new word, Mormonstrosity, to refer to the unfit-for-prime-time, Republican presidential candidate, Mitch Romney.  My creative instincts were piqued when I read of Romney's assertion that, "Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea. It's the route for them to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon, which threatens, of course, our ally, Israel."

As this map published in HuffPo illustrates, the Mormonstrosity doesn't have a freaking clue about the Middle East.

For starters, Iraq, lies directly between Iran and Syria.   And Iran's has direct access to the Caspian Sea and, of course, the Persian Gulf which is why America has three, count'em three, carrier battle groups there.

The Mormonstrosity also seems to be completely ignorant of the fact that Iran has a navy, complete with those ship thingees that go underwater, submarines.   Now the Iranian navy obviously wouldn't stand much of a chance against the massed fleet of the world's only Permanent Warfare State.   But they're not really counting on those ships so much as they're counting on these:

 

These are Iran's "Triumph" anti-shipping cruise missiles, part of a family of such weapons that are considered highly effective and easily capable of shutting down the Persian Gulf, especially the oil tanker traffic which, if disrupted, could crash the world's already wobbly economy.   They don't even have to go to sea with these things.   Fired from mobile launchers along the Gulf Coast they have plenty of range to reach out and touch everything that tries to pass.

And, while Syria may indeed be Iran's best Arab ally, the Mormonstrosity doesn't seem to understand that Iran has other, even more important allies - including newly liberated Shiite Iraq (thanks Dick Cheney), Pakistan, China and Russia.

Which brings us to the inescapable conclusion that Mitch Romney isn't fit to serve as president of the United States, not even close.

h/t LeDaro

Clark Kent Defies Corporate Media, Quits Daily Planet

Superman has had it with the corporate media.    Faced with the takeover of the Daily Planet by a conglomerate, Clark Kent has quit and may turn to blogging instead.

"Why am I the one sounding like a grizzled ink-stained wretch who believes news should be about, I don't know, news?" says a disillusioned Kent, according to a leaked panel from Wednesday's edition of the comic that appeared on the Newsarama.com website.

New Superman writer Scott Lobdell told USA Today newspaper: "This is really what happens when a 27-year-old guy is behind a desk and he has to take instruction from a larger conglomerate with concerns that aren't really his own."

Shit Republicans Say - or Music to Rex Murphy's Ears?

Mitt Romney endorses Republican Indiana senate candidate Richard Mourdock.   And Romney isn't budging even though Mourdock contends that rape is no cause for abortion because, if the victim becomes pregnant, that's god's will.



P.S. Be sure to get out to the UBC campus to catch Rex Murphy denounce secularism.

At Least His God Has a Sense of Humour

The Newfie Screech has descended on the University of British Columbia.  Noneother than T-Rex Murphy has crossed the country to deliver a 3-part lecture at Regent College, UBC's evangelical graduate school.

Murphy will preach to the choir - three times, count'em three - about the evils of secularists, how they're all in league with those science-believing environmentalists and slaves to political correctness.

"Regent College theologian John Stackhouse and Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party and the Alliance Party, will respond to Murphy, whose confident opinions are featured regularly in The National Post and on CBC radio and television."

"Respond to Murphy"?    With Stackhouse and Manning it sounds more like a sanctimonious Mazola Roll to me.   Murphy will use his bully pulpit, the very font of his rank hypocrisy, to attack the Left for their "orthodoxy" while nestling snugly into his own.

 

Do I believe in Murphy's "God"?   No.   But at least if I'm wrong and Murphy is right, it's comforting to know his God must have had one hell of a sense of humour to create someone like T-Rex.

Grounds for Divorce

Is Steve Harper trying to engineer the breakup of Canada?  That might be just what the prime ministerial bully boy accomplishes with his closet trade deal with China.

The deal, that no decent Canadian, emphasis on decent, would ever accept may be Harper's way to endow China with the leverage to coerce British Columbia into surrendering on the Northern Gateway pipeline/supertanker catastrophe in waiting.   Out here it's already being called "economic treason."

The deal apparently empowers China to sue anyone and everyone who impedes their access to Athabasca bitumen.   That, presumably, would target the people and province of British Columbia.   We would be coerced, through lawfare, to bend a knee to Beijing and Ottawa.   Harper has loaded the pistol and put it in Beijing's hand to hold to British Columbia's head.

This would also be the very last straw.   It would shred the final bonds of confederation and spark a powerful sovereignty movement in British Columbia - or worse.

If Harper is abusing Canada's sovereign powers to beset British Columbia with the excesses of a brutal, totalitarian foreign sovereign power, what choice does British Columbia have but to proclaim its own sovereignty?

And for you who think this doesn't really matter, imagine how long it would take Quebec to join British Columbia in ditching this poisoned confederation.

The Haida's Lousy Eco-Bet

Read between the lines in the financing agreement between the Haida and the North Coast Credit Union and it appears the Old Massett Village council's $2.5-million gambit was a scheme to generate lucrative carbon credits to flog on world markets.

Too bad the band council and their partner, controversial carbon credit entrepreneur, Russ George, didn't take into account the Haida eddies in their plans to dump 200,000 pounds of iron sulphate into the north Pacific waters.   Those eddies literally wash away any possible hope of gaining carbon credits for their illegal scheme.

The Haida eddies, clockwise-rotating areas of water up to 300 kilometres in diameter, are known to carry iron-rich coastal water out to sea, where there is less iron and therefore less ocean life. The eddies form off the southern tip of the island and become highly concentrated with phytoplankton and chlorophyll, which is readily visible as a “bloom” from satellites as they travel through the northeast Pacific.

But experts also say adding iron to this particular ocean region would obscure any data collected by the salmon restoration company because it would be impossible to tell if any growth in fish food — plankton — was a result of added iron or the eddies.

“If you were going to plan to do an experiment to demonstrate the impact of iron fertilization, you wouldn’t dump it into a Haida eddy, I don’t think,” said Jay Cullen, an ocean scientist who runs a lab at the University of Victoria that studies chemicals and trace metals in marine environments.

“If a group were to fertilize such a feature with iron, it would be next to impossible to determine how productivity and phytoplankton biomass was influenced by the treatment,” he said, calling it “bad scientific design.”

So this appears to be another hare-brained stunt for Russ George that may leave the Old Massett Village band stiffed with a $2.5-million headache.
 

Harper Government Winging It With Canada's Future

The Auditor General has slammed the Harper regime for spending tens of billions of dollars without cabinet, much less Parliament, knowing the long-term consequences.

In his fall 2012 report released Tuesday, Auditor General Michael Ferguson concluded the Department of Finance Canada often does not take into account the impact of tens of billions of dollars of spending and tax measures on the government’s long-term fiscal sustainability.

 

Furthermore, the lack of federal reporting about long-term economic consequences of major government decisions means parliamentarians are forced to vote blindly on some budget measures without knowing their true impact on the country’s finances, the report says.

 

Just hours after the auditor released his report, the Finance Department unveiled a sweeping study on the economic and fiscal implications of Canada’s aging population. It projects that a greying society will translate into slower growth for the economy and government revenues, and additional stresses on public finances.

 

The auditor’s report says long-term financial projections are important because Canada faces many challenges that could impact the country’s fiscal sustainability, such as changing demographics, climate change and aging infrastructure.

 

The Harper government promised in its 2007 budget to publish a comprehensive report on the government’s fiscal sustainability that would provide a broad analysis of current and future demographic changes, and the implications on Canada’s long-term fiscal outlook. A draft report was prepared in 2007, but it has not been published.

 

Moreover, the long-term fiscal sustainability analyses have been regularly prepared since 2010, but have not been made public.

 

In contrast, governments in several Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries have regularly published such reports.

 

“This lack of reporting means that parliamentarians and Canadians do not have all the relevant information to understand the long-term impacts of budgets on the federal, provincial and territorial governments in order to support public debate and to hold the government to account,” the audit says.

In One-Man Rule the notion of responsible disclosure, analysis and accountability is irrelevant.   The only one who needs to know is Steve, our Ruler.   And contrary to the complaints of the Auditor-General, Steve's approach is anything but unusual in plenty of countries - take North Korea for example.
 

My High School Projects Were Never Like This

Hold onto your hat.   The history of everything in two minutes by Joe Bush with music by Zack Hemsey.

Defending What's Ours

 The police didn't intervene.  From the comments of Victoria's deputy police chief, Del Manak, it actually sounded as if the cops were on side with the demonstrators.  “It’s a peaceful, vocal protest and we don’t want to get in the way of sending a strong message to government.”

 Victoria police estimated the crowd size at 3,500.

There were no arrests. The protesters at the Defend Our Coast demonstration, led by Coastal First Nations, environmental groups and unions, were passionate and noisy but well-behaved.

 The aim was to send a strong message to the federal and provincial governments that British Columbians are overwhelmingly opposed to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline carrying Alberta oilsands bitumen to Kitimat for export to Asia, planned twinning of the Kinder Morgan oil pipeline from Edmonton to Burnaby and oil supertankers on the coast.

“It’s time to ‘warrior-up,’ ” hereditary Chief Pete Erickson said.

“Together, we can stop this,” said Squamish First Nations Chief Ian Campbell.

 

 Grand Chief Stewart Phillip said First Nations are standing shoulder-to-shoulder to stop the proposed pipelines. “We will fight this insanity through the joint review panel, in the courts of this country and, if necessary, at the barricades on the land itself,” he said.
“We will not stand down, we will not step back. We will stop Enbridge and the Kinder Morgan proposals dead in their tracks.”

What a Romney America Could Look Like

Wanna see something scary?  BusinessInsider.com has a thorough rundown on how Mitt Romney would change America into a country of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.   It's an eye opener.

Who Says Israel is an Apartheid State? Why, a Majority of Israelis, That's Who.

Two-thirds of Israeli Jews want Palestinians denied the vote if their country annexes the West Bank.

Three out of four are in favour of segregated roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, and 58% believe Israel already practises apartheid against Palestinians, the poll found.

A third want Arab citizens within Israel to be banned from voting in elections to the country's parliament. Almost six out of 10 say Jews should be given preference to Arabs in government jobs, 49% say Jewish citizens should be treated better than Arabs, 42% would not want to live in the same building as Arabs and the same number do not want their children going to school with Arabs.

A commentary by Gideon Levy, which accompanied the results of the poll, described the findings as disturbing.  "Israelis themselves ...are openly, shamelessly, and guiltlessly defining themselves as nationalistic racists," he wrote.

"It's good to live in this country, most Israelis say, not despite its racism, but perhaps because of it. If such a survey were released about the attitude to Jews in a European state, Israel would have raised hell. When it comes to us, the rules don't apply."

There is nothing particularly shocking in these results, perhaps except for the open expression of a reality rational people always understood existed.

Israel is not "of us."  It is not a Western state nor does it embrace our values. It is a quintessential Middle Eastern, theocratic state only it's Jewish, not Muslim.   Israel faces an intractable problem, its Arab residents.   Some are Israeli citizens, others are Palestinians under occupation.   Israel has no intention of returning the West Bank to the Palestinians.   It sits atop a strategic aquifer that Israel deems critical to its survival.    That land and that aquifer are not going to be restored to Palestinian control.   Netanyahu has said as much.

We in the West have built a relationship with Israel founded on illusions.   We need a new relationship, one based on reality.

This Is My Mecca

I make it pretty plain that I'm a biker.  I had my first serious crash in, I think, 1965.  '75, '85, '95, '05, what is it now, 2012?  I've ridden Europe, N. Africa, most of N. America, a hunk of Central America and a gaggle of island states most of them too small to mention.  I've owned Triumphs (Bonneville), Nortons (Atlas & Commando), BSA (Lightning & Spitfire), Matchless, Royal Enfield (Interceptor), Hondas and Yamahas.  And, yes, I have seen the inside of an emergency operating room or two although most times I was unconscious and saw nothing.

In my geezerdom I ride this, "The Beast."   Since 2006 this has been the mechanized love of my life.  It has carried me from the island to eastern Ontario, many times alone the Pacific Coast Highway to the desert, through Mexico.  I have left a tip for breakfast in Lethbridge, Alberta and ordered supper from the menu in Kenora, Ontario.  There's a true Zen state that comes with riding for hours on end at 90 to 110 mph.   Your worries disappear, your mind going into a subconscious zone focused solely on keeping you upright.



Good enough for geezers but it can't erase memories of an earlier time, a younger time, in England.   Then bikes were simpler and far more dangerous, much less forgiving.  Our gods were Mike "the Hammer" Hailwood and Giacomo "Ago" Agostini.   We went to places with names like Silverstone and Brands Hatch to see these immortals.   But we also went to motorcycle Mecca, the Isle of Man, for the legendary Tourist Trophy, or TT.

I only managed to go once, when I was 20.  I almost went back this year but I had to put it off...   maybe next year.  Here's just about everything you need to understand what is and has always been the greatest street race on Earth.



At times I think we're going to need a new generation of Hailwoods and Agostinis to inspire us to fight our way through the challenges of the 21st century.  Truly fearless people who draw others to emulate them.  In this century, it won't be recklessness that kills you.

Only 44?

Only 44?   That was my first reaction to the announcement that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had agreed to send 44 observers from its human rights office to monitor America's elections this year.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP and the ACLU, among other groups, warned this month in a letter to Daan Everts, a senior official with OSCE, of “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans — particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities.”

 “They [will] observe the overall election process, not just the ballot casting,” said Giovanna Maiola, spokeswoman for OSCE. “They are focusing on a number of areas on the state level, including the legal system, election administration, the campaign, the campaign financing [and] new voting technologies used in the different states.”

BC'ers Turn Out to Say No to Northern Gateway.

Organizers of the Defend Our Coast protest were hoping a thousand people would turn up outside the BC legislature to say "no" to the bitumen pipelines and supertanker initiative.   The weather was anything but helpful - unduly cold and wet.   But they turned out, thousands of them, and stood in defiance of Harper and Enbridge and Big Oil.

More Trouble for Old Massett Village

They say it was a salmon restoration project.   The banking documents suggest it was really about flogging lucrative carbon credits.  "It" was the dumping of 200,000 pounds of iron sulphide in the Pacific off the Queen Charlotte Islands.

The council of the Old Massett Village band borrowed $2.5-million for the project.   The funds were loaned by the Northern Savings Credit Union.   The loan was fully secured by assets of the Gwaii Trust.

The credit union, although fully secured, was plainly skeptical of the claims made by OMV's economic development officer, John Disney.   The credit union checked out Disney's supporting material and found it incredible.   Given the loan was fully secured, the credit union went ahead with the loan but felt it had a duty to the band council to point out the discrepancies and its concerns.

The Living Oceans Society argues that there is no way the Old Massett Village band was looking to salmon stocks to repay this loan.   The leaders had to have been expecting to recoup their investment out of flogging carbon credits.   Now experts are lining up claiming there's no way OMV will realize any sellable carbon credits out of this gambit.  This is rapidly turning into a complete fiasco.

Against Our Will, Without Our Consent

The only thing Steve Harper can count on if he tries to ram through the Northern Gateway pipeline/supertanker project is a united British Columbia determined to stop him.

Even our unelected/unelectable/outgoing premier, Crispy Clark, knows what awaits Harper.  “Heaven forbid, it would be a national political crisis. Whether or not people supported the pipeline, they would band together to fight the federal government if they decided to intrude into British Columbia without our consent.”

That's right, band together to fight the federal government.   There are plenty of people who will go to jail before the first tanker docks in Kitimat and most of them have got kids or mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters who won't stand for seeing their loved ones banged up in Harper's cells over this.   Who knows it might even fracture the Conservative Party.

Suzuki On the Broader Issue at Stake in the Northern Gateway Battle

David Suzuki and the executive director of Coastal First Nations, Art Sterritt,  write in today's Globe and Mail that the upswelling of opposition among British Columbians to Harper's Northern Gateway initiative is about far more than just pipelines.

However hopeful it is to see everyone looking closely at pipelines and tankers, it’s time we took a distant look – from 10,000 metres up and 200 years in the future.

That’s because this is about far more than the proposed Enbridge pipeline and the tankers they plan to fill. Back in Alberta’s tar sands, oil companies are tearing up hundreds of square kilometres of earth, polluting millions of litres of water and pumping millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere just to extract oil from the tar sands.

And once the oil is in China, it will be burned to make us more cheap products, sending ever more carbon into our shared atmosphere, and edging us closer to catastrophic climate chaos.

Underlying the widespread opposition to tankers on the coast is a much broader discontent with the way our social and political systems are working. People are angry about the decisions that degrade and destroy the foundation of life on Earth. When government should have stepped forward to protect Canadians and the environment, ours gutted Canada’s environmental laws.

People are rushing to stop the pipeline, because it is such a drastic attack on nature. But we are reacting to a single soldier from a single battle in a much bigger war, and ignoring the bloodbath. That bloodbath is the war on nature, a war on the very foundation of life – on the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soils that provide us with the food we eat. We are simply failing to address the fundamental issue; it’s about our long-term survival and quality of life, not whether B.C. gets enough money from the pipeline.

Conrad Black Calls Rupert Murdoch a "Psychopath"

Former Canadian media mogul Conrad Black has never concealed his contempt for his Aussie contemporary, Rupert Murdoch.  But now Connie has really dropped the gloves.

"He's a psychopath ... like Stalin, except that he doesn't kill people," Lord Black was quoted in The Independent newspaper.

"I'm not suggesting he's a homicidal psychopath - he just severs people out of his life like that.

 

"I have great admiration for what he's achieved but he's a terrible man."

He said the public outcry over revelations of phone hacking within News Corp was "one of the all-time backflips of hypocrisy".

"For 40 years (the establishment) knew how Murdoch ran his company and they did nothing but kiss his undercarriage," Lord Black said.

"Mr Murdoch is a psychopath, a person of no emotional or ethical thought, governed entirely by an expedient analysis of what his self-interest requires."

Hey, wait a second - a person of no emotional or ethical thought, governed entirely by an expedient analysis of what his self-interest requires - isn't that the very job description of our Conservative prime minister?

How Petty Can Israel Get

Last week ambitious students around the world took the SAT, or scholastic aptitude test, their ticket to a chance at a good education and a bright future.

Students around the world except for Palestinian students that is.  It seems the Israelis received the exams for the Palestinian kids and withheld them.   From the Harvard Crimson.

The Israeli authorities held the exams sent by the College Board for weeks, not releasing the tests to AMIDEAST’s office in Ramallah.

AMIDEAST is the only testing agency in the West Bank, serving over three hundred thousand Palestinian students. Yet Israel controls the flow of goods and people in and out of the ever-shrinking Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli occupation impacts nearly every aspect of Palestinian life. In particular, the military occupation, illegal under international law, violates the basic right to education for Palestinian youth.

This SAT cancellation has been devastating for high school seniors across the West Bank who were planning to apply to college in the United States—including those from the Ramallah Friends School.

If You Consider Yourself Progressive, You Need to Watch Where Your Future Could Be Headed

Sure, it's the United States.   But Canada is lashed tightly to its gunwales.   And we're taking on water.   You need to watch this.

An Australian Take on the American Voter

The 2012 presidential election is so close that the outcome will come down to the undecided voter.   Yet it seems this is the group most easily buffaloed with nonsensical claims disseminated repetitively by today's corporate media.   The Sydney Morning Herald has one Australian's take on the state of the American voter who will decide this election.

In rally after rally, from airport hangars in Florida to obscure Ohio colleges, Mitt pops up, impeccably groomed, like an ageing Max Headroom with his soft-focus wife, Ann, by his side, and his five sons, interchangeable as a set of spanners, behind him, and tells the crowd: ''I have a plan.''

A plan that will create 12 million jobs in four years, and balance the budget! That will cut taxes for the middle class but add $2 trillion to military spending, to make sure America is respected again! To crack down on the ''unfair competition'' by the Chinese, and ensure that full employment returns. Taken together with his promises not to touch key programs such as social security and Medicare (the socialised medicine program for the over-65s), the proposal is nonsense, reliant on deep cuts, and as likely to reverse recovery by lowering demand as it is to stimulate the dozens of new Apples and Microsofts that will somehow replace vanished manufacturing.

 But as visions go, it's a beguiling one, the future as the past, the economy of the 1950s, the mores of the 1960s, and all the cool stuff that started coming in the '70s. Even in Springfield, a Democratic stronghold, the Romney vision tempts.

''Yeah, I'm really thinking of giving Romney a shot,'' says Martha, a former factory nurse, from the days when there was health and safety, and factories. She'll be voting in Pennsylvania, a state that could come into play should Obama's campaign falter further.

Adds her husband, Steve, an electrician: ''Y'know, we gotta stop buying cheap stuff from China.''

This election illustrates - yet again - that far too many people are willing to believe nonsense when their media won't tell them it's nonsense.   The essential function of the media as gatekeeper to ward off and expose outright lies is no more.   And the segment of the voting public left confused and misled is more than enough to swing an election.   Mission Accomplished.

It's a worthwhile article that deserves to be read and considered in its entirety.

 

Will Anybody Demand Peter Kent's Resignation?

Would someone who didn't have prior knowledge of this please demand Peter Kent's resignation?   This, of course, is the deliberate dumping last July of 200,000 pounds of iron sulphide into the waters off the Queen Charlotte Islands or Haida Gwaii.

The Old Massett Village band, scrambling for cover, says the Harper department of fisheries and oceans and the Harper environment ministry knew of it and did nothing to stop it.  The MP for the Charlottes, NDP Nathan Cullen admits he knew all about it and likewise did nothing to stop it.

Given the NDP are caught up in this there's no realistic hope of the leader of the official opposition going after Kent who, himself, has said the dumping violates Canadian law.  Do we really have to leave it up to Elizabeth May to carry the ball yet again?

Demand Kent's resignation.    Given the integrity of the Harper government, getting it will be a real long shot but it's a pretty clear case of ministerial responsibility.

NatGeo Sheds Light on Queen Charlotte Iron Dumping

Russ George is a man on a mission to come up with some scheme that will allow him to create, and sell, a fortune in carbon credits.  His scheme of choice has been to promote seeing oceans with iron powders.   The iron is supposed to promote algae blooms that will then absorb CO2 before dying and taking that trapped CO2 to the ocean floor for safe and permanent disposal.

National Geographic pours salt water on the scheme.

The ‘experiment’ that was executed by George and colleagues is primarily under fire because it was done undercover, without scientific peer review or process, and without international collaboration, yet can have global consequences. It is also the largest iron fertilization experiment to have occurred anywhere – 200,000 pounds versus a few thousand pounds. Other smaller scale international experiments over the last fifteen-plus years have concluded that the sequestering efficiency is low (and sometimes no effect was seen) – the amount of iron you’d need to make even a slight dent in our carbon emissions is in the million tons per year, and even if you put in that amount, it may just not work. Unregulated iron fertilization on this scale could have dramatic consequences and goes against an international moratoria created by the UN to protect ocean environments. Far from being a savior, this experiment is being called a large scale dumping of waste into our oceans.

Enough said.   Now maybe Peter Kent, whose job it is to know about these goings on, and Nathan Cullen, the NDP MP who did know about it in advance yet apparently did nothing to stop it, can explain themselves.

Another Scurrying Rat - This Time He's NDP

NDP MP Nathan Cullen says the federal government should have done more to prevent the experimental dumping of 100-tonnes of iron sulphide in the waters off the Queen Charlottes.

Oddly enough Cullen, the MP for that area, acknowledges he knew about the project as far back as last summer when he met with its backers and it appears he saw no need to sound an alarm.

"I never got the sense that they were trying to do harm or that there was any bad intent at all, and felt like they had done their work in terms of talking to marine scientists and lawyers. … They thought they had a defensible case," the NDP MP said.

Nothing two-faced about that, is there?

No Woman Dies in Childbirth, Another Republican Fable

This time it's in Illinois where Republican congressman Joe Walsh attacked the abortion exception for "life of the mother" on the basis that no woman today dies from childbirth.



In fact, pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. have been increasing and now stand at just over 15-deaths per 100,000 live births.

Peace? It's a Dangerously Flexible Concept

The Canadian debate over the F-35 has always overlooked perhaps the most critical issue.   We never want to discuss what signing on for the F-35 means for Canada's defence policy and posture.   Yet that airplane, as none other could, will steer our defence policy and posture for decades to come.


The F-35 is the love child of America's 21st century hyper-militarism.  It's not a fighter, that's just bullshit.   The F-35 is a light attack bomber, a "penetration" warplane intended to wrap itself in stealth protection to enter heavily defended airspace, bomb some target, and get back out again.   Like all bombers, it's a "straight line" warplane.   Even the manufacturer says that.

Here's something everyone can understand.   Canada won't be attacking anyone with sophisticated air defences, say Russia or China, on our own.   So that must mean our political and military leadership envisage using our light attack bomber in conjunction with someone else or under some other military's command.  Hmm, what country might that be?   Presumably it would be a country that has the specialized support aircraft the F-35 needs  in order to operate - the United States.

Which raises the question of just what Canadians know of United States defence and diplomatic policy today, the policies we're signing on to support?  Should we maybe take a look at what we're getting ourselves in for?

We like to think the United States just wants peace, first and foremost - peace.  But, as career soldier turned professor, Andrew Bacevich points out in the latest Harper's magazine, peace to America today has taken on a much different meaning.

"Peace means different things to different governments and countries.  To some it suggests harmony based on tolerance and mutual respect.  To others it serves as a euphemism for dominance, defining the relationship between the strong and the supine.

"....A nation committed to peace-as-harmony will tend to employ force as a last resort.  The United States once subscribed to this view...

"A nation seeking peace-as-dominion will use force more freely.  This has long been an Israeli predilection.  Since the end of the cold War and especially since 9/11, however, it has become America's as well.

"...For Israel, peace derives from security, which must be absolute and assured.  Defined this way, security requires not simply military advantage but military supremacy, and threats to supremacy require anticipatory action, the earlier the better.

"...What's hard to figure out is why the United States would choose to follow Israel's path.    A partial explanation may lie with the rightward tilt of American politics that began in the late 1970s, affecting the way both Republicans and Democrats have approached national security ever since.  Among hawks in both parties, Israeli pugnacity strikes a chord.  As a political posture it can also win votes.

"...Over the course of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama quarter-century, following in Israel's path is precisely what we've done.   The pursuit of global military dominance, a proclivity for preemption, a growing taste for assassination, all justified to self-defense: that pretty much sums up our m.o."

"...We have choices that Israel does not.  In disregarding those choices the United States has stumbled into an Israel-like condition of perpetual war, with peace increasingly tied to the unrealistic expectation that adversaries and would-be adversaries will acquiesce to Washington's will."

Canada could pay dearly for failing to recognize the metamorphosis of the modern American politic into a true, permanent warfare state.   Washington has adopted military force and coercion over diplomacy as its principle instruments of foreign policy.   The F-35 is a "top tier" instrument of military coercion.   Do we really want to get in on that?   If we do, shouldn't we first have a candid and honest debate on the question.

The Rats Scurry for Cover

Russ George must be wondering where everybody went.   The rogue geoengineer behind the dumping of 100-tonnes of iron sulphate off the Charlottes in July suddenly doesn't have all the friends he had just a few months back.

Harper EnviroShill Peter Kent says he only learned about it just this week.   Oh my goodness, gosh, how could this have happened right under Pete's nose?

Kent, responding to questions in Parliament, said spreading iron on the ocean appears to be illegal.

"Environment Canada was not asked to approve this apparent violation of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act," Kent said.

"Anyone who contravenes environmental law should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

Adam Sweet, Kent's press hack, said his boss was entirely in the dark.   "Until three days ago, this matter had not been elevated to the minister's attention. Upon being notified, he immediately sought answers into the scope of Environment Canada's involvement."

It had "not been elevated" to Kent's attention which suggests that someone at EnviroCan knew about it but kept it from the minister.   Really?  This is the same shill who is running cover for the proposed supertanker traffic through B.C.'s treacherous coastal waters, right?  And he's utterly clueless about what's going on in those waters, right?

Green Party leader Elizabeth May pointed out the painfully obvious, "This incident should be a wakeup call that we don't have a handle on this."

And the Haida who, by some accounts, may have shelled out up to $2.5-million for the dumping experiment, are likewise running for cover.

On Haida Gwaii, where the Council of Haida Nations prides itself on environ-mental responsibility, hereditary chiefs and Guu-jaw, president of the Haida Nation, distanced themselves from the experiment, which was approved by Old Massett village council.

"The Hereditary Chiefs Council and the Council of the Haida Nation are in no way involved in artificial fertilization through dumping of iron compounds in the ocean around Haida Gwaii," said a council statement.

"The consequences of tampering with nature at this scale are not predictable and pose unacceptable risks to the marine environment. Our people, along with the rest of humanity, depend on the oceans and cannot leave the fate of the oceans to the whim of the few."

They knew, they all bloody well knew.   The Harper EnviroMin staff knew.   The Harper FisheriesMin staff knew.   The Haida bloody well knew and ponied up big bucks to fund the dumping.

Here's something to keep in mind.   If this experiment was a great success, you wouldn't be hearing the feet of so many rats scurrying down the sewers.  Remember what JFK said?   "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan."   The orphan in this fiasco is wannabe geo-engineer Russ George.

Another Sanctimonious Rightwinger Explodes in Flames

You might have seen him on Real Time with Bill Maher or the Colbert Report.   He's Dinesh D'souza, radical rightwing pundit, president of an Evangelical college and the guy behind the film 2016:  Obama's America.

He's a weasly sort of sanctimonious, holier than thou little prick and now, true to form for his sort of Republican, he's been caught putting that prick where it doesn't belong.

If you look back over recent decades, you will find this creature surfacing in any number of conservative crusades. Stirring up jingoistic anti-Obama fantasies , for example. Or protecting traditional marriage from gays.

Which is why it has been amusing to hear D'Souza, the president of an evangelical college, explaining just how he came to be sharing a hotel room with a woman who is not his wife and introducing her as his fiancée. Apparently D’Souza was in the process of ending his marriage of twenty years, but had not quite gotten around to signing the divorce papers when he shacked up with his lady friend at a South Carolina conference. He has since “suspended” his engagement. 

Video Shows Plight of Marineland Orca

This is Kiska, a killer whale at Ontario's Marineland.   The video shows the whale swimming alone, a trail of blood coming from her tail.   Her former trainer says Kiska has been bleeding since July.

 

Parliamentary Cyber-Hacker Attacked Quebec Government

Who was Javier Doyon-Tremblay working for when he used a computer inside the House of Commons to launch cyber attacks on the Quebec government?

The RCMP says the man, who also worked as an RCMP computer specialist, performed a series of attacks on the Quebec government in April.   The press release suggests that Doyon-Tremblay might have been working for Anonymous in launching the attacks.

“While working at the House of Commons, [Mr. Doyon-Tremblay] allegedly hacked into the network and gained administrative privileges. He then would have proceeded with uploading a malicious program which would have targeted the Government of Quebec’s main website,” the RCMP said.

According to his Linkedin account, Mr. Doyon-Tremblay worked as a LAN administrator for the RCMP and as a support officer in the information technology department of the House of Commons at the time of his alleged attack.

Billy Graham Gets His Tits Caught in the Romney Wringer

Evangelist Billy Graham must have thought he was doing Mitt Romney a big favour, inviting the Republican candidate to join him in prayer.   That seems to have backfired - on Graham and Romney.

"As Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics told the Boston Globe, for an October 13, 2012 story, "Romney is counting on evangelicals. The irony is that this is a shotgun marriage between two very different religions but they are completely dependent upon one another for victory." But even before that Boston Globe story hit the press, an emerging public relations debacle of the first order was undermining consummation of the "shotgun marriage" and now, with only three weeks before the 2012 presidential election, millions of Americans are confronted by news stories with headlines that feature the terms "Mormon" and "cult". On October 11, 2012, aging evangelical icon Billy Graham met, prayed with, and in effect endorsed presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But Graham's endorsement backfired when an LGBT rights group discovered an article on the website of Graham's flagship organization, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, apparently authored by Billy Graham himself, that labeled Mormonism a "cult". In a textbook case of ineffective damage control, Graham's BGEA proceeded to wipe the offending article from the BGEA website but left in place other BGEA website articles that conveyed the same message. Visitors to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association website who use the site's search engine to search for the term "Mormon" will get six search results; the first will be a page featuring Billy Graham's own definition of what a "cult" is, an explanation that clearly encompasses Mormonism. On that page, featuring an entry from Graham's My Answer column, Billy Graham explains,

"[Cult] Members reject what Christians have believed for almost 2,000 years, and substitute instead their own beliefs for the clear teachings of the Bible. Often, they add to the Bible by claiming that the books their founder wrote or "discovered" are from God, and have equal authority to the Bible."

Founder of Mormonism Joseph Smith discovered new books of scripture that comprise the Book of Mormon which, according to the Mormon faith, augments and completes biblical scripture."

Must Read - Greg Palast Outs Romney's Vulture Perfidy or Why Mitt Romney Really Won't Release His Tax Returns

Veteran investigative journo Greg Palast has the goods on Mitt Romney and why the Republican candidate doesn't want anyone looking at his tax returns.

"Oh, it’s one of the creepiest stories I’ve investigated in a long time, Amy. Mitt Romney, through Ann Romney’s blind trust—not so blind, they could see exactly where the money was going—gave their money to Paul "The Vulture" Singer, a guy you and I have been following on  Democracy Now!  for five years. Singer, with two of his hedge fund buddies, bought up the auto parts division of General Motors for only 67 cents a share. They were able to turn 67 cents a share into $22 a share by threatening GM and the U.S. Treasury with a complete shutdown of the auto industry. They had complete control of all the steering wheels and steering columns of every car that was being made in America. GM would have been liquidated. They literally threatened to shut down GM. And so, they—the government simply allowed GM to pay them $12 billion. About half of that was straight from the U.S. Treasury in a takeover of Delphi’s pension fund.

Romney with Singer (far right)

Once they got the money—once they got the money, they eliminated 28 of 29 auto plants in the U.S. They moved—they eliminated every single job of every  UAWmember; 25,200  UAW members all lost their jobs. Almost every plant was then moved by the Romney group to China. Delphi is making a fortune today. So you have 25,000 workers who lost their jobs to China. Three hedge fund managers made at least $4 billion, $4.2 billion. And the Romneys have made at least 15, but the evidence suggests that it’s more like $115 million for the Romneys, about a 4,000 percent profit.

 What we can’t get from them at this moment, this may be the reason why they are not releasing their 2009 taxes, because that would give us a better hint. Unfortunately, they’ve not only moved the company operations to China, but they’ve moved their incorporation of the auto parts division of General Motors from Troy, Michigan, to the Isle of Jersey in the Mediterranean Sea (since when?), which hides their taxes and also, of course, hides their accounts. So that—that’s the story.

Well, I’ve been, you know, tracking Paul "The Vulture" Singer and his hedge fund for five years, as you saw, for Democracy Now!, from the Congo to England to South America. And I was stunned, absolutely stunned, to find out that the Romneys had given what ABC called a vast chunk of their money to Elliott Management. But it was well hidden. It not only went through Ann Romney’s blind trust, but then the blind trust was put in a special limited liability partnership with Paul Singer, which they then hid their levels of investments. Plus, by putting it in Ann Romney’s name—and remember, every dime that Ann Romney has comes from her husband—by Mitt moving his money to Ann Romney, they didn’t have to declare exactly how much money they made here, only that it was more than a million. But we were able to calculate that it was at least $15 million, and more likely $115 million.

 And let’s bring in Paul Ryan, as well. Number one, Mitt Romney said, "Let Detroit go bankrupt." And everyone thought this was a great, principled position. And yeah, he wanted it to go bankrupt so that he could buy the auto parts division for literally pennies, 67 cents a share, then flip it for 30, 40 times that amount. In addition, don’t forget that this is TARP money. This is money that comes from the U.S. taxpayer.

And Paul "The Vulture" Singer became the number one donor also to a congressman named Paul Ryan. And it is, by the way, Singer, according to theWall Street Journal, who forced Romney to accept Ryan as his running mate, in part because Paul Ryan, despite his speeches against TARP and against the bailouts, Paul Ryan voted for both the bank bailout and the auto bailout, very much enriching his number one donor. That’s—so that’s the politics of it, because also Romney has made Paul Singer a key economic adviser, and in addition, he’s considered the most important donor to the Mitt Romney campaign.

So there it is, in a nutshell.  Mitt Romney was all for letting Detroit implode but, when the bailout came through, he used his Stepford wife to be a mule for gaming the government out of millions of dollars of TARP money.  He larded the Romney pantry with a bundle, perhaps as much as $115-million, and later, when his benefactor called in his marker, had to accept Paul Ryan as his running mate.   Is there anything Romney won't sell out for a million bucks?

Paul Ryan's Greasy Soup Kitchen Stunt

Romney running mate Paul Ryan really doesn't like the poor or their soup kitchens.  In fact, if he had his way, he'd slash the very social spending they depend on.

That's why it was curious when Ryan, with wife and three kids in tow, showed up uninvited at the soup kitchen in the poorest town in America, Youngston, Ohio.  The blatant hypocrisy even made the pages of Germany's Der Spiegel:

On Saturday afternoon, the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan paid a short visit to the dining hall for a photo op with his wife and three children as they helped doing the dishes.
The only problem was that serving had ended. The kitchen had already been scrubbed clean. [The] homeless people had all gone. Now the director of the Mahoning County St. Vincent de Paul Society has criticised the Vice-Presidential candidate for using the diner for political reasons.

“They showed up there and they did not have permission and it’s against our bylaws to do that sort of thing. We are apolitical because the majority of our food is from private donations,” Brian Antal told the Youngstown Vindicator.

 Infuriation at the episode has certainly not been mellowed by the fact that Paul Ryan’s own economic plan sees cutbacks in Federal subsidies to charitable organisations such as the one which runs the Youngstown dining hall. Last year, the hall received some DKK70,000 in Federal support, while private donations totalled about DKK1million.

“It’s a bit hypocritical to put it mildly,” Antal says.

“We cannot accept seeming to support the Republicans by letting them use our premises for photo-ops,” he adds.

A Ryan spokesman told the US media that the visit to the dining hall had been a good opportunity to pay tribute to the voluntary work carried out by millions of Americans every day.

The worst thing is that a great many Americans still wouldn't hesitate to vote for a guy this creepy.

B.C. Conservative Exiles Back NDP's Adrian Dix

For a good while now, B.C.'s provincial Conservative Party has been a laughingstock.   Now with the party's hopes for renewal in tatters, members of its disaffected wing say they'll back the NDP leader Adrian Dix.   What was that line about politics and bedfellows?

They Have Binders and Binders and Binders

From TruthDig:

He Never Saw It Coming

61-year old Colin Farmer (above) is blind and, due to two strokes, walks at a snail's pace using the standard white cane.


Enter the local cops in Chorley, Lancashire, where Farmer was wending his way to a pub for a drink with his pals.   The police were responding to reports of a man in town wielding a deadly martial arts weapon, a Samurai sword.

White cane, Samurai sword - whatever.

"The whole thing was like being trapped in a nightmare," he told the Chorley Guardian.

Mr Farmer said he heard shouting on the street but did not know what it was about and thought he was about to be "attacked by some hooligans".

He was then struck by the Taser and fell to the ground, dropping his white stick on the floor before a policeman handcuffed him.

Farmer is said to be considering legal action against the cops.  Go for it.

 

Hey Steve, Guess Who's on the Security Council? Australia

Well, well, our cousins down under have succeeded where Steve Harper utterly failed.   Australia has been given a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Not that it matters to the Harper regime.  They've been dissing the U.N. ever since they got tossed.  Sour grapes but, to you Aussies, "Good on ya."