Why is Stephen Harper like kryptonite to intelligence? Now scientists from Harvard, the Smithsonian Institute and other top academic institutions are furious with Harper for his decision to shut down the Experimental Lakes Area programme.
"I was pretty shocked," said Harvard University aquatic sciences Prof. Elsie Sunderland. "This is one of the foremost research projects and places to do research in the world. To have it shut down is just appalling. It's just embarrassing."
Before moving to Harvard, Sunderland, originally from Nova Scotia, worked for years creating policy at the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Research done at the experimental lakes on the effects of mercury on fish and waterways was discussed at the highest levels of the EPA and helped form the basis of new regulations on coal-fired power plant emissions. Those new rules became official in December.
Work on the lakes has also led to continent-wide policy shifts on acid rain, changes to the way hydro dams are built, a ban on phosphorus in detergents and huge advancements in the battle against the green algae that fouls Lake Winnipeg beaches every summer.
Scientists deliberately pollute all or part of a lake to measure the long-term effects on an entire complex ecosystem, allowing a huge breadth of research that could never be done by studying piecemeal samples of mud and water. Then, they let the lake return to its natural state.
This summer, ELA staff and researchers from Trent University were slated to begin a new long-term project on the effects of nanoparticles, an emerging multi-billion-dollar technology, on waterways and fish.
Specifically, scientists were planning to add micro-particles of silver, woven now into socks and underwear to kill bacteria, to a lake to measure the effects on the ecology.
Federal officials say the ELA no longer "aligned with the department's mandate and is not responding to our research priorities." Ottawa hopes a university or the provinces will take over funding the project.
Our Born Again Dark Ager really can't stomach science, especially if it's environmental science. Maybe it's those small, beady eyes scrunched so close together.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Dan Rather Slams Corporate Media
They've taken over in the States and they've done the same thing in Canada. In both countries our democracy is in peril due to the ascendancy of media giants pursuing corporatist agendas. The media that is supposed to serve the public as the watchdog of government instead betrays the public to become the government's lapdog.
The next government of Canada, be it NDP, Liberal or a coalition, must move to pry loose the chokehold that the corporate media has at our public's throat. We must break up these cartels and force divestiture if we're to have any hope of shoring up real democracy in Canada.
The next government of Canada, be it NDP, Liberal or a coalition, must move to pry loose the chokehold that the corporate media has at our public's throat. We must break up these cartels and force divestiture if we're to have any hope of shoring up real democracy in Canada.
The Petro-Politburo Strikes Again
This time the malevolent hand of Steve Harper is obvious.
The entire Department of Fisheries and Oceans contaminants programme is being axed effective April Fool's Day. In B.C. that means the entire staff of nine marine scientists and support staff are being canned. Across Canada, this is the firing of almost all federal employees responsible for monitoring ocean pollution.
“The entire pollution file for the government of Canada, and marine environment in Canada’s three oceans, will be overseen by five junior biologists scattered across the country — one of which will be stationed in B.C.,” said environmental toxicologist Peter Ross., a expert on marine mammals, notably killer whales.
“I cannot think of another industrialized nation that has completely excised marine pollution from its radar,” Ross said. Hired as a research scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada in 1999, Ross was one of the nine employees who received a letter Thursday informing him his position will be “affected as your services may no longer be required due to a lack of work or discontinuance of a function.”
Any doubt that this was a targeted hit was dispelled, totally unintentionally, by a DFO spokesperson trying to polish this turd.
“Between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, we have found $79.3 million of savings for Canadians primarily by adjusting our internal operations and administration,” said Melanie Carkner, a spokesperson for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, in an e-mail, Friday.
“To put the impact on employees in perspective, we will be removing about 400 positions from DFO’s 11,000-strong workforce. This works out to less than 2 per cent a year over three years.”
Okay Melanie, DFO needs to trim a paltry 2% of its workforce over the next two years, we get that. And it starts by immediately axing the entire contaminants monitoring programme? Sorry sweetie, that's a targeted hit and you made that obvious.
Why NATO?
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| China's Next Cold Warriors? |
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization made a lot of sense when it was an alliance of North Atlantic nations to mutually defend the security of North Atlantic nations. Notice the emphasis on "North Atlantic"?
With the demise of the Soviet Union, NATO's raison d'etre, the alliance lost its focus. It opened its membership rolls to most of Eastern Europe, the old Warsaw Pact states, advancing its frontiers right to the Russian border.
NATO moved on to Balkanization, waging a bombing campaign against Serbia. There was nothing particularly defensive about that. Then came 9/11. Under Article 5 of the NATO Charter, the founding members, or most of them, came to the defence of the United States by supporting the conquest and occupation of Afghanistan although most declined America's invitation to do the follow-up conquest and occupation of Iraq.
More recently NATO air forces intervened in Libya to bomb Gaddafi forces and enable the rebellion to topple their murderous dictator. Again nothing particularly defensive about that.
Now there's a move afoot to cajole NATO into joining the Pentagon's "pivot" into Asia, a polite way of describing poking China's panda with a sharp stick. That's part and parcel of the F-35 deal but we'll leave that for another day.
Perhaps this is a good time to ask if we're setting ourselves and our alliance up for a global military version of Groundhog Day? Are we backing ourselves into another American led fiasco or maybe even a series of them? We know how Iraq turned out. We know all too well where Afghanistan's heading. We have seen how much and how very little "all the King's men and all the King's horses" can deliver.
There's a faint whiff of "1984" in all this. The first true, Permanent Warfare State (PWS), in which military force has replaced diplomacy as the principal instrument of foreign policy, lining up its minions (us) like ducks in a row, to perpetuate conflict in the remotest corners of the world. Did Orwell write this script? An ascendant oligarchy, corporate media implementing a form of mind control, pervasive public surveillance. I dunno, sounds eerily similar to me.
We must also bear in mind the legacy of the Bush Doctrine. It stood for unilateralism, "preventative" war (i.e. illegal war), and regime change. Thus spake Incurious George:
"...the first duty of the United States Government remains what it always has been: to protect the American people and American interests. It is an enduring American principle that this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack."
Recall that this perverse doctrine prescribed that America would not tolerate and expressly reserved the right to use military force to prevent any other nation or group of nations achieving economic or military superiority to the United States. Hmm, what nation would be on the verge of achieving economic superiority to the United States? And what is "military superiority" anyway? Perhaps you should ask some defiant Afghan tribesman armed with a Korean War vintage assault rifle and a RPG.
Are we going to sign on to that? And if you think Obama has rescinded the Bush Doctrine, think again. I'm pretty sure President Mitt would find it to his liking too.
And then there's the matter of money. Canada is being criticized for failing to meet the NATO member committment to spend 2% of GDP on our military. We currently come in slightly below 1.5%. Yet we're hard pressed to find the funds necessary to meet our "Canada First" defence priority. Money spent on equipment, personnel and operations as part of America's Foreign Legion is money we don't have to provide for the security and defence of Canada.
It may have passed unnoticed by the Canadian public but Washington's Asian sabre-rattling has been heavily escalated by the Obama administration. The military leaders of China and the United States now wargame battles between themselves. And, by all accounts, the Chinese are decidedly hostile and in the mood for a scrap. Quite recently US forces staged Operation Chimichanga, a live-fire stealth bombing campaign simulating a first strike to obliterate Chinese air defences. It's sort of like Japan putting on, in public, a full dress rehearsal of its attack on Pearl Harbour. And next month we'll have RimPac2012, a multi-national (i.e. America and the Seven Dwarfs) naval and air exercise staged right in China's maritime back yard. And the Chinese aren't taking this lying down either. In fact we may be about to unpack a new Cold War.
It might just be too late to arrest this transformation of NATO. Canadians are certainly not alive to the issues. Their image of NATO is fixed in the alliance of half a century ago. Now when we most need the NDP to take up the challenge, that NDP is, like the NATO we once respected, a thing of the past.
Is It Merely Gross Incompetence or Something Truly Sinister?
Just what does Steve Harper have against British Columbia?
He's hell bent on ruining our pristine coasts with bitumen supertanker traffic routed through some of the most treacherous waters in the world. He relies on oil spill recovery vessels that can't operate in bad weather and are only effective on surface spills, useless against a tar product that doesn't float. He's moved the oil spill action centre from our coast to Quebec. But now, there's more.
The Harper regime has decided to inflict a little cost-cutting on the Canadian Coast Guard. He's paring the existing four stations - Victoria, Tofino, Comox and Prince Rupert - down to just two, Victoria and Prince Rupert, north and south or bottom and top if you like.
Here's the thing. The Victoria and Prince Rupert Coast Guard installations are both in tsunami zones. When the "Big One" hits, sometime between now and a hundred years hence, it's likely that Victoria and Prince Rupert will be knocked out.
The one Coast Guard station that isn't in a tsunami zone, Comox, is to be closed by decree of the Prince of Darkness. That one also happens to be adjacent to the only real Air Force base in British Columbia where all our aerial search and rescue assets are situated.
British Columbians will never need the Coast Guard more than we will when the next tsunami sweeps our coast. Unfortunately that's when we won't have a Coast Guard.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Chomsky on Plutonomy and America's Growing Precariat
Noam Chomsky chronicles the ascent of America's Plutonomy, the ultra rich and the economic and political power they have sucked out of the American state, and their dependence on a rapidly growing American Precariat, the great unwashed now stripped of their last vestiges of either economic or political power. The article has been making the rounds through AlterNet and other sites but if you haven't read it you really should and you can find it through this link to al Jazeera. I think Chomsky has neatly summed up what will become the struggle for the survival of democracy itself in the 21st Century.
In War, There Are Goals and There Are Goals
Germany achieved its war goals on May 7, 1945 when it signed the instruments of surrender at Reims, France. Germany's goal at that point was to end the war it had sparked six years earlier with the invasion of Poland.
There are countless books detailing Germany's war goals in 1939, and its war goals in 1940, and in 1941, 1942, 1943, and 1944 and again in 1945. Suffice to say that, over those six years, Germany's goals expanded and then contracted.
Keep that in mind this weekend when NATO bigwigs meet to work out how to leave Afghanistan. It sort of echoes in this comment from Obama National Security Advisor Tom Donilon:
"So Chicago is a critical milestone in the next step towards a responsible ending of this war, towards our achieving, very importantly, our goals in this effort in Afghanistan," Donilon said in his briefing on the NATO Summit.
Like Germany in WWII, our end of war goals bear little resemblance to our goals going into the Afghan war. Our hopes of "achieving, very importantly, our [initial] goals" in Afghanistan were dashed years ago. Democracy, liberty, human rights - failed. Ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban - failed. Exterminating al Qaeda - failed.
At this point it's not likely we'll have any clear statement of our exit goals. At least we won't have to sign an instrument of surrender to stop fighting.
There are countless books detailing Germany's war goals in 1939, and its war goals in 1940, and in 1941, 1942, 1943, and 1944 and again in 1945. Suffice to say that, over those six years, Germany's goals expanded and then contracted.
Keep that in mind this weekend when NATO bigwigs meet to work out how to leave Afghanistan. It sort of echoes in this comment from Obama National Security Advisor Tom Donilon:
"So Chicago is a critical milestone in the next step towards a responsible ending of this war, towards our achieving, very importantly, our goals in this effort in Afghanistan," Donilon said in his briefing on the NATO Summit.
Like Germany in WWII, our end of war goals bear little resemblance to our goals going into the Afghan war. Our hopes of "achieving, very importantly, our [initial] goals" in Afghanistan were dashed years ago. Democracy, liberty, human rights - failed. Ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban - failed. Exterminating al Qaeda - failed.
At this point it's not likely we'll have any clear statement of our exit goals. At least we won't have to sign an instrument of surrender to stop fighting.
Who Will Become White America's Sidekick?
It finally happened. For the first time, of all the babies born in America, white babies were a minority.
For the year ending July, 2011, white babies tallied just 49.6% with the remaining 50.4% being those of colour whether Hispanic, black, Asian, native American or mixed. With the increasing popularity of mixed marriage and the influx of non-white immigrants and a somewhat higher, non-white reproductive rate, white America is slowly breeding itself out of existence. Crackers is gonna be hard to come by 'fore long.
But if the financial bastion of white America, a.k.a. corporate America, is any indication, they won't go down without a fight. One thing I suspect we'll see, and sooner rather than later, will be an effort by white America to recruit a non-white group to bolster its numbers. Who is the least worrisome, wealthiest and most attractive group to white America? Why, I'm thinking that'd be the Asians - Japanese, Chinese, Korean-Americans, the lot. And did I mention they're really good at math?
It won't be a matter of lowering walls for Asian-Americans. They're already pretty much down. The focus, I suspect, will be on raising walls to insulate White/Asian-America from the riff-raff. I think that white-America wants Asian-America in its camp at least as much out of fear of what the alternative would mean.
For the year ending July, 2011, white babies tallied just 49.6% with the remaining 50.4% being those of colour whether Hispanic, black, Asian, native American or mixed. With the increasing popularity of mixed marriage and the influx of non-white immigrants and a somewhat higher, non-white reproductive rate, white America is slowly breeding itself out of existence. Crackers is gonna be hard to come by 'fore long.
But if the financial bastion of white America, a.k.a. corporate America, is any indication, they won't go down without a fight. One thing I suspect we'll see, and sooner rather than later, will be an effort by white America to recruit a non-white group to bolster its numbers. Who is the least worrisome, wealthiest and most attractive group to white America? Why, I'm thinking that'd be the Asians - Japanese, Chinese, Korean-Americans, the lot. And did I mention they're really good at math?
It won't be a matter of lowering walls for Asian-Americans. They're already pretty much down. The focus, I suspect, will be on raising walls to insulate White/Asian-America from the riff-raff. I think that white-America wants Asian-America in its camp at least as much out of fear of what the alternative would mean.
Steve Mixes Business with Pleasure
The business part is selling bitumen sludge to China, as much and as fast as possible. The pleasure part is playing Commander-in-Chief and sending Canadian forces to distant corners of the world for a bit of muscle-flexing. In this case it's RimPac2012, the largest international naval exercise in the world, right in China's maritime backyard.
And Canada isn't making a token appearance either. The forces we're sending - destroyers, frigates, even CF-18s - will make our presence second only to the U.S.
"China's antipathy toward this exercise may explain why highly informed Canadian reporters, such as David Pugliese of Defence Watch, have complained of an almost total clampdown on information about Canada's impressive participation.
"The federal government no doubt finds it a bit sensitive to be wooing Chinese business interests one moment, while embracing efforts to contain China's naval ambitions the next.
"Of course the 22 nations, which are sending 47 surface ships and subs as well as possibly 200 aircraft and 25,000 personal, deny that their combined five-week exercises, beginning June 29, has China's rapidly expanding navy in mind.
"But no one is fooled, least of all Beijing.
"China and North Korea are the only countries excluded from the exercise — at Washington's insistence. Even Russia is to take part for the first time."
According to the CBC's Brian Stewart, Canada is even sending along HMCS Victoria, the recently rehabilitated Upholder-class sub we got years ago from Britain and promptly docked for repairs.
And Canada isn't making a token appearance either. The forces we're sending - destroyers, frigates, even CF-18s - will make our presence second only to the U.S.
"China's antipathy toward this exercise may explain why highly informed Canadian reporters, such as David Pugliese of Defence Watch, have complained of an almost total clampdown on information about Canada's impressive participation.
"The federal government no doubt finds it a bit sensitive to be wooing Chinese business interests one moment, while embracing efforts to contain China's naval ambitions the next.
"Of course the 22 nations, which are sending 47 surface ships and subs as well as possibly 200 aircraft and 25,000 personal, deny that their combined five-week exercises, beginning June 29, has China's rapidly expanding navy in mind.
"But no one is fooled, least of all Beijing.
"China and North Korea are the only countries excluded from the exercise — at Washington's insistence. Even Russia is to take part for the first time."
According to the CBC's Brian Stewart, Canada is even sending along HMCS Victoria, the recently rehabilitated Upholder-class sub we got years ago from Britain and promptly docked for repairs.
The Humiliation of Canada Continues - Rio+20
Sending foreign affairs minister John Baird as Canada's frontman to the Rio+20 Earth Summit next month sends the world a pretty clear message - "forget it." It proclaims that, to the Harper regime, even at this critical point, climate change is primarily a political problem, not a pressing existential threat to humanity.
The Guardian has a lovely piece today on our For-Aff loudmouth and his explanation for cutting the funding for the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy.
"Baird told reporters that Canadian taxpayers should not have to pay for an organisation that has produced 10 reports promoting a carbon tax – "something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected".
"'But that's not correct,' the Roundtable's CEO, David McLaughlin, told the Guardian on Thursday, adding that it had never advocated a carbon tax but had looked at cap and trade for regulating Canada's greenhouse gas emissions in a 2009 report commissioned by the government. 'Which was government policy at the time,' said McLaughlin.
"McLaughlin, a former chief of staff to federal finance minister Jim Flaherty, stressed there was always original analysis in its reports, making available information that would not otherwise be in the public domain. McLaughlin also pointed to the Roundtable's ability to combine research while convening people from industry as well as the environmental sector together."
That the Ginger-Pig can lie so effortlessly about killing off the NRTEE suggests what we can expect when he gets to work derailing efforts at meaningful action at Rio+20. We'll know his work is done when Canada's humiliation is complete.
The Guardian has a lovely piece today on our For-Aff loudmouth and his explanation for cutting the funding for the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy.
"Baird told reporters that Canadian taxpayers should not have to pay for an organisation that has produced 10 reports promoting a carbon tax – "something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected".
"'But that's not correct,' the Roundtable's CEO, David McLaughlin, told the Guardian on Thursday, adding that it had never advocated a carbon tax but had looked at cap and trade for regulating Canada's greenhouse gas emissions in a 2009 report commissioned by the government. 'Which was government policy at the time,' said McLaughlin.
"McLaughlin, a former chief of staff to federal finance minister Jim Flaherty, stressed there was always original analysis in its reports, making available information that would not otherwise be in the public domain. McLaughlin also pointed to the Roundtable's ability to combine research while convening people from industry as well as the environmental sector together."
That the Ginger-Pig can lie so effortlessly about killing off the NRTEE suggests what we can expect when he gets to work derailing efforts at meaningful action at Rio+20. We'll know his work is done when Canada's humiliation is complete.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Cons Shoot the Messenger
They told the truth the Government didn't want to hear. They had to go.
"They" are the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. The message advocated introduction of a carbon tax to reduce emissions. For that the independent advisory group's funding has been axed.
Environment Minister Peter Kent had initially said the reason for the closure was because such research can now be easily accessed through the Internet, and through universities and other think tanks.
But Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Monday the shuttering of the round table had more to do with the content of the research itself.
"'Why should taxpayers have to pay for more than 10 reports promoting a carbon tax, something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected? That is a message the Liberal Party just will not accept,' Baird said in response to a question by Liberal Leader Bob Rae during question period.
"'It should agree with Canadians. It should agree with the government. No discussion of a carbon tax that would kill and hurt Canadian families.'"
When exactly have Canadians "repeatedly rejected" a carbon tax? When were they ever given the opportunity? Dion, in opposition, tried to raise the idea once but it died in an electoral ambush.
What are these characters, North Koreans? The entire Harper cabinet functions like a politbureau. If the message doesn't "agree with the government," it's off with their heads. What's next, a gulag?
"They" are the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. The message advocated introduction of a carbon tax to reduce emissions. For that the independent advisory group's funding has been axed.
Environment Minister Peter Kent had initially said the reason for the closure was because such research can now be easily accessed through the Internet, and through universities and other think tanks.
But Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Monday the shuttering of the round table had more to do with the content of the research itself.
"'Why should taxpayers have to pay for more than 10 reports promoting a carbon tax, something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected? That is a message the Liberal Party just will not accept,' Baird said in response to a question by Liberal Leader Bob Rae during question period.
"'It should agree with Canadians. It should agree with the government. No discussion of a carbon tax that would kill and hurt Canadian families.'"
When exactly have Canadians "repeatedly rejected" a carbon tax? When were they ever given the opportunity? Dion, in opposition, tried to raise the idea once but it died in an electoral ambush.
What are these characters, North Koreans? The entire Harper cabinet functions like a politbureau. If the message doesn't "agree with the government," it's off with their heads. What's next, a gulag?
How Many Canadian Soldiers Have Been "Pulped"?
Now there's a medical acronym for pulped, "CTE" or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. And it's estimated that one in five US veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have it.
Whereas PTSD is a mental illness, marked by unwelcome flashbacks and anguish, CTE is a progressive neurodegerative brain disorder characterized by abnormal protein deposits that eventually kill brain cells and thus cause cognitive declines, including loss of memory and the ability to learn as well as depression.
These researchers say they have demonstrated that exposure to a single blast equivalent to that generated by a typical improvised explosive device (IED) can result in CTE and long-term brain impairments that accompany the disease. The research, published online Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine, also indicates that soldiers are injured by more than just the initial shock wave of very high air pressure following a blast. An IED's secondary "blast wind," a huge volume of displaced air flooding at high pressure back into the vacuum, can also damage the brain and lead to long-term consequences such as CTE. The blast wind created by an IED can reach a velocity of more than 530 kilometers per hour. Winds from a category 5 hurricane (the most severe), by comparison, reach about 250 kilometers per hour.
For their study, the researchers analyzed postmortem brain tissue from four military service members who were known to have been injured by a blast or had a concussive injury. The scientists compared that tissue with brain tissue samples from three young amateur American football players and a professional wrestler, all of whom had a history of repetitive concussive injury, and with four samples from comparably aged control subjects with no history of blast exposure, concussive injury or neurological disease. The signs of CTE (which can only be diagnosed postmortem) in the brains of blast-exposed military veterans were indistinguishable from those found in the deceased athletes.
But here's the rub. A soldier can't prove he or she has CTE. That can only be confirmed through an autopsy. And once wars are over, particularly if they don't end in stunning victories, messed up veterans really don't hold much residual interest for the political classes. This sort of thing is more likely to wind up as a law enforcement/criminal justice problem. Don't believe me? Ask anyone from the family of a disabled veteran.
Is David Frum Making Sense?
I don't often agree with David Frum's take on the world but he has his moments.
Lately Frum has been taking a critical look at America's ruling class. While he maintains that the elite will also gravitate to positions of leadership, he argues that today's ruling class are exploiting their positions for their personal advantage evidenced by the ascent of oligarchy.
Lately Frum has been taking a critical look at America's ruling class. While he maintains that the elite will also gravitate to positions of leadership, he argues that today's ruling class are exploiting their positions for their personal advantage evidenced by the ascent of oligarchy.
In My Day
Okay, I hope I can put off full-blown geezerdom for another decade, maybe even two, but I'm becoming resigned to one day sharing a park bench with the equally decrepit and whiling away an afternoon reminiscing about the good old days.
Surely every generation does that. They look at the up and coming younger generation with a mixture of envy, resentment and sympathy. My elders did/do it but I expect in a way unique to their own experiences. After all, they endured the Great Depression and WWII and emerged to form a new Canada with a strong middle class and widespread opportunity and prosperity.
The generation or two that followed pretty much took what was handed them on a platter and enjoyed the unprecedented opportunity and prosperity, even taking it pretty much for granted. That probably accounts for the ease by which we consider ourselves aggrieved today.
But when it comes my turn to sit that bench, I expect we'll look at the next generation of youth with far more sympathy and far less envy than preceding generations. "In my day" will no longer be code for unappreciated sacrifice. No, it will be used to conjure memories of the Nirvana we once had that is no more and never will be. We will look at these kids and realize they will never have the carefree 60s or the buoyant 70s or the easy affluence of the 80s and 90s. They will have no experience of the world before constant growth finally sent it slamming into walls. And, for that, they are to be pitied.
Surely every generation does that. They look at the up and coming younger generation with a mixture of envy, resentment and sympathy. My elders did/do it but I expect in a way unique to their own experiences. After all, they endured the Great Depression and WWII and emerged to form a new Canada with a strong middle class and widespread opportunity and prosperity.
The generation or two that followed pretty much took what was handed them on a platter and enjoyed the unprecedented opportunity and prosperity, even taking it pretty much for granted. That probably accounts for the ease by which we consider ourselves aggrieved today.
But when it comes my turn to sit that bench, I expect we'll look at the next generation of youth with far more sympathy and far less envy than preceding generations. "In my day" will no longer be code for unappreciated sacrifice. No, it will be used to conjure memories of the Nirvana we once had that is no more and never will be. We will look at these kids and realize they will never have the carefree 60s or the buoyant 70s or the easy affluence of the 80s and 90s. They will have no experience of the world before constant growth finally sent it slamming into walls. And, for that, they are to be pitied.
Automakers Tied to Slave Labour, Deforestation
Big names too - Ford, GM, BMW, Mercedes, Nissan. They're all in the spotlight for buying Brazilian pig iron produced in blast furnaces fueled by illegal logging using slave labour.
Reports over the past decade from the Brazilian government, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and the US Department of Labour have indicated that charcoal used by many pig iron suppliers in the Amazonian state of Pará was obtained through forced labour and illegal logging of protected and indigenous lands.
A new report by Greenpeace uses customs data to link eight international companies to two major Brazilian exporters of pig iron, Viena Siderurgica do Maranhão (Viena) and Siderúrgica do Pará (Sidepar), that the green group says are linked through the supply chain to charcoal suppliers with histories of buying from illegal camps and concealing illicit behaviour.
Ford, General Motors, BMW, Mercedes, Nissan are all linked through a Severstal steel mill in Columbus, Mississippi, that buys from Viena and Severstal, while John Deere and ThyssonKrupp are linked through foundries supplied by the Illinois-based National Material Trading, a metal broker that sources from Viena. Two other metal brokers, Environmental Materials Corporation in Pennsylvania and a division of Cargill in Minnesota were also said by Greenpeace to have imported pig iron from Viena.
"By buying this steel, these well-known brands are helping to destroy the Amazon," said Greenpeace Brazil Amazon campaign director Paulo Adario in a statement. "President Dilma [Rousseff] must protect the Amazon and the people who depend on it by ending deforestation, slavery and the invasion of indigenous lands."
Reports over the past decade from the Brazilian government, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and the US Department of Labour have indicated that charcoal used by many pig iron suppliers in the Amazonian state of Pará was obtained through forced labour and illegal logging of protected and indigenous lands.
A new report by Greenpeace uses customs data to link eight international companies to two major Brazilian exporters of pig iron, Viena Siderurgica do Maranhão (Viena) and Siderúrgica do Pará (Sidepar), that the green group says are linked through the supply chain to charcoal suppliers with histories of buying from illegal camps and concealing illicit behaviour.
Ford, General Motors, BMW, Mercedes, Nissan are all linked through a Severstal steel mill in Columbus, Mississippi, that buys from Viena and Severstal, while John Deere and ThyssonKrupp are linked through foundries supplied by the Illinois-based National Material Trading, a metal broker that sources from Viena. Two other metal brokers, Environmental Materials Corporation in Pennsylvania and a division of Cargill in Minnesota were also said by Greenpeace to have imported pig iron from Viena.
"By buying this steel, these well-known brands are helping to destroy the Amazon," said Greenpeace Brazil Amazon campaign director Paulo Adario in a statement. "President Dilma [Rousseff] must protect the Amazon and the people who depend on it by ending deforestation, slavery and the invasion of indigenous lands."
All They Need is a Cup of Fine British Hemlock
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| Latest Banksy Graffiti in London
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Facts don't matter to these types because belief defines their truth, not results. If they believe something, it has to be true. That's the same mental infirmity that afflicts our own ruler, Harper.
And, when things don't go their way, when unemployment continues to rise as growth turns into retraction, they have a pat answer - if you're unemployed, leave, just go away.
The Monster Shows His Black Heart
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| The Face of Pure Evil |
"THE gesture was slow, deliberate and aimed at the bereaved mother in the public gallery - two fingers pressed together and drawn in a cutting motion across his throat.
"It was in this way that Ratko Mladic - the man known as the ''Butcher of Bosnia'' - addressed one of those who had come to see him face justice.
"...For his victims, memories of Mladic came back when he caught the eye of members of the Mothers of Srebrenica sitting in the courtroom in The Hague. Using the cutthroat sign he looked at Munira Subasic, 65, whose son and 21 other relatives were killed by Bosnian Serb soldiers under Mladic's command.
'''It brought me immediately back to 1995 and Srebrenica and I saw that this war criminal had not changed at all … he wants to kill us again,'' she said after the hearing. Mrs Subasic recalled the day when she had first looked into the eyes of Mladic while begging him to stop his soldiers taking her teenage son away with them.
'''I saw the same murderer, who is proud of the things he has done there.'''
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Beijing As The Sopranos?
It sounds like a scene straight out of a gangster movie. A new gang looks to take over a rival's territory. Thugs show up at a store and tell the merchant it'd be a shame if anything happened to his business but they can make sure he's protected - for a price. The shopkeeper, caught between two rival gangs, has to make a decision that might cost him his business or even his life.
This time the upstart gang is China and the territory is Australia. The none too subtle message is that it's time for Australia to find a new "godfather" and ditch U.S. protection for Chinese.
"AUSTRALIA must find a ''godfather'' to protect it and cannot juggle its relationships with the US and China indefinitely, according to a prominent Chinese defence strategist.
"The warning by Song Xiaojun, a former People's Liberation Army senior officer, comes after the Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, was told by his opposite number that Australia's close military alliance with the US was an outdated throwback to the Cold War era - an issue raised in two other meetings with senior Chinese officials.
'''Australia has to find a godfather sooner or later,' Mr Song told the Herald yesterday. ''Australia always has to depend on somebody else, whether it is to be the 'son' of the US or 'son' of China.
''[It] depends on who is more powerful and based on the strategic environment.'''
Mr Song said Australia was dependant on exporting iron ore to China ''to feed itself'' but that it had not done enough to engage with the middle kingdom.
'Frankly, it has not done well politically,'' Mr Song said."
This time the upstart gang is China and the territory is Australia. The none too subtle message is that it's time for Australia to find a new "godfather" and ditch U.S. protection for Chinese.
"AUSTRALIA must find a ''godfather'' to protect it and cannot juggle its relationships with the US and China indefinitely, according to a prominent Chinese defence strategist.
"The warning by Song Xiaojun, a former People's Liberation Army senior officer, comes after the Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, was told by his opposite number that Australia's close military alliance with the US was an outdated throwback to the Cold War era - an issue raised in two other meetings with senior Chinese officials.
'''Australia has to find a godfather sooner or later,' Mr Song told the Herald yesterday. ''Australia always has to depend on somebody else, whether it is to be the 'son' of the US or 'son' of China.
''[It] depends on who is more powerful and based on the strategic environment.'''
Mr Song said Australia was dependant on exporting iron ore to China ''to feed itself'' but that it had not done enough to engage with the middle kingdom.
'Frankly, it has not done well politically,'' Mr Song said."
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Why Do We Live in Denial?
When was the last time you heard a world leader so much as acknowledge that, as a species, man is consuming renewable resources 50% faster than Earth can replenish them? Renewables, you know - clean water, clean air, biomass (including all the stuff on your dinner plate, all of it). Collectively, everyone from Americans to Somalians, we're now dipping into our planet's reserves, eating our seed corn, to get through four months of consumption annually.
How can that be possible? It's easy. We turnto on our planet's basic stocks. We fell our forests. We collapse our fisheries. We drain our aquifers. We exhaust our farmland, transforming it into sterile desert. We've put the Earth store into a giant "going out of business" sale. You know it's true. It's visible to the naked eye from space. And, as stocks of so many things run low, we respond with new technologies and systems to make our depredations even more efficient, ever more rapacious.
World Wildlife Fund International, Global Footprint Network and the Zoological Society of London have released a report, "The Living Planet Report", that's especially tough on people like Canadians, the heavy-hitters of resource consumption. The report notes that, for all the people of the world to live at Canadian standards, would require 3.5-planet Earth's worth of resources.
"Clearly, the current system of human development, based on increased consumption and a reliance on fossil fuels, combined with a growing human population and poor overall management and governance of natural resources, is unsustainable," said the report, now in its ninth edition.
"Many countries and populations already face a number of risks from biodiversity loss, degraded ecosystem services and climate change."
The Global Footprint Network has for several years tracked "overshoot", a term that means consumption of resources at rates greater than Earth's replenishment rate. In 2011, they pegged "Earth Overshoot Day" at 27 September. That's when, had we been limited to the resources actually renewed annually, we would have been out of stuff. And each passing year sees Overshoot Day arrive earlier. The rate at which we're consuming our seed corn is accelerating.
"Swelling population, mass migration to cities, increasing energy use and soaring carbon dioxide emissions mean humanity is putting a greater squeeze on the planet's resources then ever before. Particularly hard hit is the diversity of animals and plants, upon which many natural resources such as clean water are based.
"The latest Living Planet report, published on Tuesday, estimates that global demand for natural resources has doubled since 1996 and that it now takes 1.5 years to regenerate the renewable resources used in one year by humans. By 2030, the report predicts it will take the equivalent of two planets to meet the current demand for resources.
"Most alarming, says the report, is that many of these changes have accelerated in the past decade, despite the plethora of international conventions signed since the initial Rio Summit in 1992. Climate-warming carbon emissions have increased 40% in the past 20 years, but two-thirds of that rise occurred in the past decade."
Unfortunately we are all firmly tied to a growth-driven civilization. It's as though we figure the answer to emphysema is to smoke an extra 20 a day. Sort of like the "Cancer cures cigarette smoking" line.
And there's a compelling reason our leaders won't reject our growth-driven civilization. That motivation is fear of what would follow in its wake. Without adherence to the growth-model, pretty much everything goes out the window. All our economic, social and even political models become obsolete, more or less irrelevant. That's what happens when everybody's bottom has to find a place at the table. You squeeze in. Those who found a spacious spot at the outset now have to settle for the cramped conditions everyone else has to live with. Dinner for six really can be transformed into dinner for twelve only nobody will be leaving the table bloated.
Somewhere, I'm convinced, lies the moment of change - the conditions or instrument of enlightenment necessary for change of the magnitude necessary. Unfortunately, on the timeline of change, intervening and decidedly unenlightened events may happen first. Two possibilities are environmental collapse on a regional, continental or almost hemispheric scale and, the second, war on a currently unforeseeable scale. And it is along those paths, collapse and war, that today's political leadership is taking us. Individually and collectively, they're just not up to challenges of this magnitude.
How can that be possible? It's easy. We turn
World Wildlife Fund International, Global Footprint Network and the Zoological Society of London have released a report, "The Living Planet Report", that's especially tough on people like Canadians, the heavy-hitters of resource consumption. The report notes that, for all the people of the world to live at Canadian standards, would require 3.5-planet Earth's worth of resources.
"Clearly, the current system of human development, based on increased consumption and a reliance on fossil fuels, combined with a growing human population and poor overall management and governance of natural resources, is unsustainable," said the report, now in its ninth edition.
"Many countries and populations already face a number of risks from biodiversity loss, degraded ecosystem services and climate change."
The Global Footprint Network has for several years tracked "overshoot", a term that means consumption of resources at rates greater than Earth's replenishment rate. In 2011, they pegged "Earth Overshoot Day" at 27 September. That's when, had we been limited to the resources actually renewed annually, we would have been out of stuff. And each passing year sees Overshoot Day arrive earlier. The rate at which we're consuming our seed corn is accelerating.
"Swelling population, mass migration to cities, increasing energy use and soaring carbon dioxide emissions mean humanity is putting a greater squeeze on the planet's resources then ever before. Particularly hard hit is the diversity of animals and plants, upon which many natural resources such as clean water are based.
"The latest Living Planet report, published on Tuesday, estimates that global demand for natural resources has doubled since 1996 and that it now takes 1.5 years to regenerate the renewable resources used in one year by humans. By 2030, the report predicts it will take the equivalent of two planets to meet the current demand for resources.
"Most alarming, says the report, is that many of these changes have accelerated in the past decade, despite the plethora of international conventions signed since the initial Rio Summit in 1992. Climate-warming carbon emissions have increased 40% in the past 20 years, but two-thirds of that rise occurred in the past decade."
Unfortunately we are all firmly tied to a growth-driven civilization. It's as though we figure the answer to emphysema is to smoke an extra 20 a day. Sort of like the "Cancer cures cigarette smoking" line.
And there's a compelling reason our leaders won't reject our growth-driven civilization. That motivation is fear of what would follow in its wake. Without adherence to the growth-model, pretty much everything goes out the window. All our economic, social and even political models become obsolete, more or less irrelevant. That's what happens when everybody's bottom has to find a place at the table. You squeeze in. Those who found a spacious spot at the outset now have to settle for the cramped conditions everyone else has to live with. Dinner for six really can be transformed into dinner for twelve only nobody will be leaving the table bloated.
Somewhere, I'm convinced, lies the moment of change - the conditions or instrument of enlightenment necessary for change of the magnitude necessary. Unfortunately, on the timeline of change, intervening and decidedly unenlightened events may happen first. Two possibilities are environmental collapse on a regional, continental or almost hemispheric scale and, the second, war on a currently unforeseeable scale. And it is along those paths, collapse and war, that today's political leadership is taking us. Individually and collectively, they're just not up to challenges of this magnitude.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Fixin' to Execute Steve Staley
As though sane people are short of reasons to decry capital punishment.
Steve Staley may be the new poster boy for state barbarism. Stanley is on Death Row in Texas for the 1989 murder of a restaurant manager he shot while trying to elude police.
Steve has been mentally disturbed since childhood. "He has a long history of paranoid schizophrenia and depression. Staley was abused as a child by his mother, who was also mentally ill; when he was 6 or 7 she tried to pound a wooden stake through his chest. His father was an alcoholic. Staley tried to kill himself as a teenager. Doctors who have examined Staley on death row have said that he talks in a robot-like monotone yet has “grandiose and paranoid” delusions, including the beliefs that he invented the first car and marketed a character from Star Trek. He has given himself black eyes and self-inflicted lacerations and has been found spreading feces and covered with urine. Medicated with the anti-psychotic drug Haldol, Staley complained of paralysis and sometimes appeared to be in a catatonic state. He has worn a bald spot on the back of his head from lying on the floor of his cell."
The problem facing the Texas courts right now is a U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting execution of the insane.
"The court quoted British judges in the 17th century worrying about the “miserable spectacle” of “extream (sic) inhumanity and cruelty” presented by executing a “mad man.” It served no retributive purpose, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, to execute a person “who has no comprehension of why he has been singled out.” He also noted “the natural abhorrence civilized societies feel at killing one who has no capacity to come to grips with his own conscience or deity.”
When Staley stopped taking his meds, a Texas judge found him incompetent, unfit for execution, and then overcame that problem by authorizing the state to forcibly medicate the condemned.
"...the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association hold that it is ethically unacceptable for doctors to prescribe drugs to restore competency for the purpose of execution. This should be an easy call for the Texas courts as well. If it’s awful to imagine psychotic prisoners going without their meds, it’s more awful to force shots on them so the state can kill them. If Texas fails to grasp this, other inmates will follow Steven Staley. Mental illness is common on death row. The only reason that the issues raised in Staley’s case haven’t been decided before, defense lawyers tell me, is that humane prosecutors and judges don’t insist on executing people whose sanity is so uncertain."
Staley is scheduled to be executed next week, if Texas authorities can drug him adequately by then so they can then drug him again and kill him.
Steve Staley may be the new poster boy for state barbarism. Stanley is on Death Row in Texas for the 1989 murder of a restaurant manager he shot while trying to elude police.
Steve has been mentally disturbed since childhood. "He has a long history of paranoid schizophrenia and depression. Staley was abused as a child by his mother, who was also mentally ill; when he was 6 or 7 she tried to pound a wooden stake through his chest. His father was an alcoholic. Staley tried to kill himself as a teenager. Doctors who have examined Staley on death row have said that he talks in a robot-like monotone yet has “grandiose and paranoid” delusions, including the beliefs that he invented the first car and marketed a character from Star Trek. He has given himself black eyes and self-inflicted lacerations and has been found spreading feces and covered with urine. Medicated with the anti-psychotic drug Haldol, Staley complained of paralysis and sometimes appeared to be in a catatonic state. He has worn a bald spot on the back of his head from lying on the floor of his cell."
The problem facing the Texas courts right now is a U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting execution of the insane.
"The court quoted British judges in the 17th century worrying about the “miserable spectacle” of “extream (sic) inhumanity and cruelty” presented by executing a “mad man.” It served no retributive purpose, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, to execute a person “who has no comprehension of why he has been singled out.” He also noted “the natural abhorrence civilized societies feel at killing one who has no capacity to come to grips with his own conscience or deity.”
When Staley stopped taking his meds, a Texas judge found him incompetent, unfit for execution, and then overcame that problem by authorizing the state to forcibly medicate the condemned.
"...the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association hold that it is ethically unacceptable for doctors to prescribe drugs to restore competency for the purpose of execution. This should be an easy call for the Texas courts as well. If it’s awful to imagine psychotic prisoners going without their meds, it’s more awful to force shots on them so the state can kill them. If Texas fails to grasp this, other inmates will follow Steven Staley. Mental illness is common on death row. The only reason that the issues raised in Staley’s case haven’t been decided before, defense lawyers tell me, is that humane prosecutors and judges don’t insist on executing people whose sanity is so uncertain."
Staley is scheduled to be executed next week, if Texas authorities can drug him adequately by then so they can then drug him again and kill him.
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