Sparky! Politics at dgiVista.org

This Blog is Migrating to Vista!

After 15 months and thousands of hits, the Sparky blog is migrating to the Vista blog at http://dgiVista.org. Join me there!

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London Bombings: One View

I think this about sums it up, except that the US/UK imperialists don't have a monopoly on terrorism:

"Terrorist Blair, who assisted The US Empire in raining death down upon the Iraqi populace, though Iraq harboured no weapons of mass destruction and posed no direct military threat to either Britain or the US, and is admitted, even by Rumsfeld, to have had no connections to Al Quaida, has regrettably reaped for the British people what he has sown in their name. And his sanctimounious posturing about "terrorism" doesn't change the reality of who are the real terrorists all one wit. And we all really know it."

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The Lie of Non-Partisanship

My previous post has helped me gel some ideas that have been bubbling in my head for years now.

Non-partisanship sounds spectacular. In BC, Gordon Campbell's neoLiberal government has spent its entire time in office--and then some time before that--complaining about special interest groups (SIGs): big labour, teachers, environmentalists...essentially, anyone with a bias, ideology, or belief system. The goal is to posit themselves as unbiased, objective and not swayed by hidden backroom string-pullers.

Campbell himself was mayor of Vancouver with the Non-Partisan Association, a political party that currently exists to counter the presence of COPE, a civic political party with NDP (partisan, yikes!) roots. So the NPA have been strolling around pretending to not have partisan affiliations, a political party with no political partisanship: a pure paradox.

Two of the NPA's philosophical elements are quite entertaining:

Individuals have the right to enjoy the fruits of their labour, and to own private property, and individual enterprise is generally preferable to government intervention.
Elected civic representatives should make decisions based on the viewpoint of many individuals and organizations, and not be under obligation to policies or platforms of political parties.

The first is a standard philosophical foundation for capitalist, right wing parties that exist in direct opposition to big government ideologues: communists, socialists, democratic socialists...generally, wealth redistributors. The second exerts the absence of particular political party platforms guiding decisions. If it looks like a neoLiberal, talks like a neoLiberal and acts like a neoLiberal, but says it is not a neoLiberal party, we can just nod and smile knowingly.

The problem, though, is this notion of non-partisanship is giving anyone with a political ideology a bad name, when those claiming to be unbiased, objective and free from ideology are as ideological as the SIGs they denegrate. They are getting away with it. Thus the lie of non-partisanship.

It's easy to see this play out in American federal politics lately. The Democrats are big-L Liberal scourges who want to tax and spend and erode the moral fibre of America. More accurately, I'd call them Republican-lite. The Republicans hate big government and taxes, want the courts to uphold the moral fibre of the land and tend towards evangelical imperialism. When the Democrats controlled the executive and legislatures, the Republicans demonized them Liberals [which is 21st century lingo for Godless Commie] and would not co-operate with their despicable agenda.

Now that the Republicans are in the White House, both houses of Congress and are set to appoint one, then soon another supreme court judge, they are demanding the Democrats not be so partisan. They should cooperate with bi-partisan efforts to expand their empire, reduce domestic civil rights and cut taxes to the rich and the corporations. If they don't give in, they're being difficult and swayed by SIGs. Bad Democrats. Truly, this is what the Republicans did when in opposition: oppose and stand firm to their ideology. As the Democrats give in and cooperate, they show how Republican-lite they really are; they do, after all, take huge campaign contributions from the same rich folks and corporations that the Republicans do.

And new paradoxes emerge as well. The Republicans are not doing the old tax and spend Keynesian trick, but neither are they following the traditional right wing balanced budge rhetoric. They are cutting taxes (not so much a new thing for them), but they are blowing open the government coffers and spending into huge deficits to justify cutting social programs: all the things that big government ideologues love. This way, they can fund imperial pursuits, reward their rich and corporate backers with more cash and erode the role of government impeding unregulated free markets.

This radical morphing of Republican fiscal priorities has forced Democrats to play the fiscally responsible conservatives, promising balanced budgets and fiscal control: just what the Republicans have always sought.

Back to BC, the same neoLiberal tax cuts for the rich and corporations has created an artificial cash flow problem motivating Campbell's dreaded "tough choices" reflecting three of the four horsemen of global neoLiberal Structural Adjustment Programs that the western funded IMF loves to foist on the majority world: privatization (BC Ferries, BC Rail, health care support workers), deregulation (trimming "needless red tape"), and free trade (build BC ferries outside BC); increasing foreign direct investment is the fourth horseman.

And just like the Democrats, the provincial NDP has slipped to the centre, elected a moderate leader, promised balanced budgets over Keynsian or neo-Keynsian approaches and are fiscally as conservative as Social Credit used to be. The pendulum has not just swung to the right, but the whole thing has moved to the right.

So as citizens, it is our responsibility to remember that everyone in political life is ideological. People who claim to be non-partisan are lying if they have some economic, political, moral or social priorities that exist over others. People who claim that Special Interest Groups pull the strings of their political enemies likely have groups or even personal ideologies that motivate them as well.

In the end, politics SHOULD be about ideologies. Ideologically vacant politicians are worthless, though can often get elected because as chameleons, they reflect the will of the pollsters' snapshots of public will. We should be electing people with ideologies and we should be wary of people who claim to have none to appear to be unbiased: they are dangerous, dangerous liars.

Longing for Ideologically Vacant Politicians?

I was quite shocked by Marshall Norgan's letter to the editor [Vancouver Courier, see below] regarding Vancouver city council's decision to not let the vomitous dog Wall-Mart into our city. He is dismayed that Vancouver city councillors Louis and Roberts "don't seem able to separate their personal ideology and agenda from their public position."

Does Mr. Norgan wish politicians to be completely free of the burden of personal ideologies and agendas? Would such morally and philosophically vacant politicians please Mr. Norgan with their utter inability to form opinions, preferences or goals for society?

As Mr. Norgan "anxiously await[s] the next election," I wish him well in trying to vote for candidates who show no sign of ideology whatsoever. Perhaps he'll get sucked in by the "Non-Partisan Association" whose name seems to suggest they have no ideologies when they clearly do.

To the editor:

Re: "COPE council delivers 'stunning' blow to big box giant," July 3.

I am so disappointed with our city council and specifically councillors Tim Louis and Anne Roberts. They don't seem able to separate their personal ideology and agenda from their public position.

Tim Louis bringing up Wal-Mart's support of the Bush campaign is just embarrassing on so many levels. I'm certainly not a fan of Bush but honestly, where does Mr. Louis think he is sitting? He consistently brings up world events and even dead foreign revolutionary leaders to justify his actions on a civic council. It's pathetic to be honest.

It's all been fun and games with this circus group but to the everyday working person who actually needs to stick to a budget in order to afford the high living costs of Vancouver, I can tell you I will now have to continue to find a way to get to North Van's Wal-Mart to pinch my pennies so that I can pay my taxes to keep Mr. Louis in his privileged job.

In my opinion, this council has had its day. I anxiously await the next election.

Marshall Norgan, Vancouver

The Futility of the Left-Right Political Spectrum

The left-right spectrum is pretty obsolete, what with right wing w.Caesar running crazy deficits to undermine government's ability to meddle with individual freedom to become rich and free from social regulation and left wing governments pledging to balance budgets: typically the reverse of the old Cold War Keynesian days.

In November of 2002 a friend sent me a link to a site, Political Compass, to do a survey to see where I would live on a two-dimensional spectrum consisting of left-right and authoritarian-libertarian, like so:

The next two images show estimates of where other well-known people could be on this spectrum.

So 2.5 years ago I did the survey and ended up in the bottom left quadrant:

These days, as I get older and wiser and parental and more mature and more commited to the establishment I did the survey again to find myself--shock--even more radical:

Ultimately, I think everyone ought to swing by this website, Political Compass, to see where they are. The sooner we get more and more people releasing themselves from the tyranny of a 1-dimensional political spectrum, the better. The next task will be to create 3 and 4-dimensional models.

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Cleverly Ignoring the Forest for a Tree of Hypocrisy

Mark Steyn's petty critique of Live8 in What rocks is capitalism... yeah, yeah, yeah [see below] is a cynical attempt to blow smoke up a legitimate action because a bunch of rich, selfish celebrities are involved: just the kind of people, by the way, to get hundreds of millions of folks watching a bunch of commercials with fingers snapping every 3 seconds to highlight the gong show we've made out of developing countries.

Sure these celebrities are rich and likely won't carve out heaps of their own cash to fix Africa, but in Steyn's effort to make it all look like a hypocritical scam, he creates a straw man out of the whole point of Live8. Live8 goals can be found here if Steyn cared to look at their whole approach: http://www.live8live.com/whatsitabout/index.shtml

It's not to toss aid to African nations, however corrupt they may/will be in the future. It's about more and better aid which focuses on community development involving citizens, not corrupt leaders sucking on the CIA tit of suitcases full of cash and US Marine bases.

It's about eliminating the debt of not just the poorest countries [the HIPCs: Heavily Indebted Poor Countries], but countries that have paid off the principal many times over through interest rates, principal incurred by criminal, kleptocratic leaders: odious debt.

But most importantly, it's about trade justice. The lie that is free trade currently allows the EU and USA to protect domestic textile and agricultural producers against foreign imports when those industries are the best hopes for developing countries partaking in the global capitalist marketplace. Such lies are unbearable.

Ironically, it's this hypocrisy that Steyn captures when he lambastes Linda McCartney's shrewd use of jurisdictional dancing to avoid "fair" tax payments. That's the same hypocrisy that kills millions a year through trade injustice. This is why the developing countries are stalling WTO talks: because they know developed countries' definition of fair trade is a lie.

The truth ultimately, though, despite Steyn's bitterness at the rich celebrities, is that it is not the job of the rich to fix global trade injustice and exploitation leading to a child dying every 3 seconds. It's citizens' job in democratic countries to force their leaders to stop the system from killing people. Cheques from Dave Gilmour and Madonna won't fix anything and Steyn is off-base hinting that as capitalists, celebrities have no right to speak when it's citizens of capitalist countries that gain from the death and exploitation of the poor.

Even my local Liberal MP got into the act of justifying virtual inaction when he responded to my Live8 email to Paul Martin with a rationalization that we're doing so much, when in reality we're helping with one hand and slapping with the other:

"When Prime Minister Martin was Finance Minister, he led an initiative at the G20 to establish a program to relieve the most indebted nations. As a result, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative was created. The HIPC is a comprehensive international debt reduction strategy, to help the poorest nations of the world reduce their external debt burdens. Canada was the first creditor country to call for forgiveness of all bilateral debt owed by countries eligible for the HIPC program. The HIPC is used as a complimentary program to the Canadian Debt Initiative which was introduced in March 1999; our Government recognized the grave implications of unsustainable debt levels of HIPC countries. You may wish to read more information about the HIPC at http://www.fin.gc.ca/toce/2005/cdre0105_e.html "

Shame on us and shame on Mark Steyn.

What rocks is capitalism... yeah, yeah, yeah

By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 05/07/2005)

'To sneer at such events," cautioned The Sunday Telegraph apropos Live8, "demeans the generosity which they embody".

Oh, dear. If you can't sneer at rock stars in the Telegraph, where can you? None the less, if not exactly a full-blown sneer, I did feel a faint early Sir Cliff-like curl of the lip coming on during the opening moments of Saturday's festivities, when Sir Paul McCartney stepped onstage.

Not because Sir Paul was any better or worse than Sir Elton or Sir Bob or any other member of the aristorockracy, but because it reminded me of why I'm sceptical about the "generosity" which these events "embody".

Seven years ago, you'll recall, Sir Paul's wife died of cancer. Linda McCartney had been a resident of the United Kingdom for three decades but her Manhattan tax lawyers, Winthrop Stimson Putnam & Roberts, devoted considerable energy in her final months to establishing her right to have her estate probated in New York state.

That way she could set up a "qualified domestic marital trust" that would... Yeah, yeah, yeah, in the immortal words of Lennon and/or McCartney. Big deal, you say. We're into world peace and saving the planet and feeding Africa. What difference does it make which jurisdiction some squaresville suit files the boring paperwork in?

Okay, I'll cut to the chase. By filing for probate in New York rather than the United Kingdom, Linda McCartney avoided the 40 per cent death duties levied by Her Majesty's Government. That way, her family gets all 100 per cent - and 100 per cent of Linda McCartney's estate isn't to be sneezed at.

For purposes of comparison, Bob Geldof's original Live Aid concert in 1985 raised £50 million. Lady McCartney's estate was estimated at around £150 million. In other words, had she paid her 40 per cent death duties, the British Treasury would have raised more money than Sir Bob did with Bananarama and all the gang at Wembley Stadium that day.

Given that she'd enjoyed all the blessings of life in these islands since 1968, Gordon Brown might have felt justified in reprising Sir Bob's heartfelt catchphrase at Wembley: "Give us yer fokkin' money!" But she didn't. She kept it for herself. And good for her. I only wish I could afford her lawyers.

I don't presume to know what was in her mind, but perhaps she figured that for the causes she cared about - vegetarianism, animal rights, the usual stuff - her money would do more good if it stayed in private hands rather than getting tossed down the great sucking maw of the Treasury where an extra 60 million quid makes barely a ripple.

And, while one might query whether Sir Paul (with his own fortune of £500 million) or young Stella really need an extra 15 million or so apiece, in the end Linda McCartney made a wise decision in concluding that her estate would do more good kept out of Mr Brown's hands, or even re-routed to Africa, where it might just about have defrayed the costs of the deflowering ceremony for the King of Swaziland's latest wife.

And that's why the Live8 bonanza was so misguided. Two decades ago, Sir Bob was at least demanding we give him our own fokkin' money. This time round, all he was asking was that we join him into bullying the G8 blokes to give us their taxpayers' fokkin' money.

Or as Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd put it: "I want to do everything I can to persuade the G8 leaders to make huge commitments to the relief of poverty and increased aid to the Third World. It's crazy that America gives such a paltry percentage of its GNP to the starving nations."

No, it's not. It's no more crazy than Linda McCartney giving such a paltry percentage of her estate - ie, 0 per cent - to Gordon Brown. And, while Britain may be a Bananarama republic, it's not yet the full-blown thing.

Africa is a hard place to help. I had a letter from a reader the other day who works with a small Canadian charity in West Africa. They bought a 14-year-old SUV for 1,500 Canadian dollars to ferry food and supplies to the school they run in a rural village. Customs officials are demanding a payment of $8,000 before they'll release it.

There are thousands of incidents like that all over Africa every day of the week. Yet, throughout the weekend's events, Dave Gilmour and Co were too busy Rocking Against Bush to spare a few moments to Boogie Against Bureaucracy or Caterwaul Against Corruption or Ululate Against Usurpation. Instead, Madonna urged the people to "start a revolution". Like Africa hasn't had enough of those these past 40 years?

Let's take it as read that Sir Bob and Sir Bono are exceptionally well informed and articulate on Africa's problems. Why then didn't they get the rest of the guys round for a meeting beforehand with graphs and pie charts and bullet points in bright magic markers, so that Sir Dave and Dame Madonna would understand that Africa's problem is not a lack of "aid". The tragedy of Live8 is that its message was as cobwebbed as its repertoire.

Don't get me wrong. I love old rockers - not for the songs, which are awful, but for their business affairs, which so totally rock. In 1997, David Bowie became the first pop star to hold a bond offering himself. How about that? Fifty-five million dollars' worth of Bowie "class A royalty-backed notes" were snapped up in minutes after Moody's in New York gave them their coveted triple-A rating.

Once upon a time, rock stars weren't rated by Moody, they were moody - they self-destructed, they choked to death in their own vomit, they hoped to die before they got old. Instead, judging from Sir Pete Townshend on Saturday, they got older than anyone's ever been. Today, Paul McCartney is a businessman: he owns the publishing rights to Annie and Guys & Dolls. These faux revolutionaries are capitalists red in tooth and claw.

The system that enriched them could enrich Africa. But capitalism's the one cause the poseurs never speak up for. The rockers demand we give our fokkin' money to African dictators to manage, while they give their fokkin' money to Winthrop Stimson Putnam & Roberts to manage. Which of those models makes more sense?

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Ralph Goodale's [Predictable] Rain on Live 8

I would have had to pinch myself if Canada's Finance Minister Ralph Goodale did not rain on the Live8 momentum to eradicate poverty.

Not only has Canada completely ignored its early 1990s pledge to eliminate child poverty in Canada by 2000, but our finance minister cannot be seen to buckle to the pressure of actual citizens getting together to push for political change. That would certainly make the politicians--leaders, decision-makers, beacons of hope and direction--look like they are being driven around by the electorate motivated by the latest rock star whim...regardless of the prime minister's eagerness to have Bono speak at a federal Liberal convention before blowing off the promise to actually fulfil Canada's 0.7% aid pledge by actually providing the cash for foreign aid to the level we pledged.

Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, in his post Live8 spin, blew a great big number out of his bum to scare us into the depth of crushing poverty it would thrust us if we actually spent 0.7% of our GDP on foreign aid. Forget for a minute that so much of our foreign aid is tied aid, where recipient nations must spent the money on Canadian companies to provide services and products, thus enriching our own economy. Forget also about all we aren't doing to address corrupt governments in recipient nations and we can look at Goodale's number for what it is: fearmongering in the only G8 nation with a current government budget surplus.

"The numbers involved are very, very large," Goodale told reporters. He said it would cost Canada C$41 billion in new spending over the next decade if Ottawa were to start boosting funding this year.

"Now, that is in the order of magnitude of our (new) investment in health care over the next 10 years ... Those are very large numbers to be able to absorb within the fiscal framework," he said.

$41b over 10 years is just $4.1b per year on average, but let's deal with a big big big number over 10 years. So to improve our already [virtually] universal health care of the next decade, the government plans to spend $41.3b over those ten years:

On September 16, 2004, Canada's First Ministers signed the 10-Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care. Under this plan, the Government of Canada will provide $41.3 billion in new health care funding over the next 10 years.

This leaves Canadians with the bitter, selfish task of deciding if a decade of improvements to our universal health care is worth the same to us as doing our part--taking a lead even--in helping a child not die from severe poverty every three seconds.

My sad fear is that too many Canadians will not feel those two $41b items are worth the same. Way to go, Ralph.

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Relative Monstrosity Versus Absolute Monstrosity

Max Boot's piece about how the Americans aren't so bad if we compare them to the right monsters is an unfortunate excuse piece. Ultimately it's comparisons that are the problem. Boot gets it right in the second paragraph: "Who wouldn't expect the 'land of the free' to behave better than the most monstrous regimes in history?"

But then it goes downhill in the next sentence: "So let's use a better comparison."

The whole point of moral acceptability is not that we or they are not as bad as someone or someone else; it's whether we live up to our own standards. Comparisons themselves are red herrings.

Saying the Americans are not as bad as butchers and better than some other group is still irrelevant if they cannot live up to their own moral standards.

Ultimately, the closing phrase, "I'm not saying that unlawful conduct by U.S. service personnel should be ignored or excused" betrays the real purpose of this piece: to excuse Americans because no one is perfect and the British were worse. Where is the second half of his article that talks about how Americans should hold American soldiers and leaders accountable for not living up to their standards.

So sad.

MAX BOOT

Torture at Gitmo? Ask the Mau Mau

History proves that the U.S. has been remarkably restrained.
Max Boot

June 30, 2005

By now it hardly needs saying that, contrary to the animadversions of Dick Durbin and Amnesty International, Guantanamo Bay bears no resemblance to Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags or Khmer Rouge killing fields. Millions of people were murdered in those places. The sum total of those killed at Gitmo is...zero.

But perhaps the critics of U.S. detention practices are correct in saying that this is damning with faint praise. Who wouldn't expect the "land of the free" to behave better than the most monstrous regimes in history? So let's use a better comparison. Look at how the United States' closest ally, Britain, handled an insurgency much smaller and much less threatening than the one we face today.

In Kenya during the early 1950s, a movement known as Mau Mau arose to challenge British colonial rule. Though Mau Mau became a byword for savagery, it was actually pretty restrained as far as guerrilla movements go. Its 20,000 adherents killed fewer than 100 Europeans and 2,000 African loyalists--fewer than the toll from 9/11 alone. Unlike the Iraqi rebels, the Mau Mau had no outside support and no sophisticated weapons. (They mainly killed with machetes.) Unlike Al Qaeda, they did not target the British homeland.

Yet the British used disturbingly harsh tactics against them, as revealed in two new books--"Histories of the Hanged" by David Anderson of Oxford University and "Imperial Reckoning" by Caroline Elkins of Harvard.

The British admitted killing 11,000 Mau Mau, but the real figure, these authors make clear, was much, much higher. Security forces held hundreds of thousands of suspects without trial in a system of penal camps known as the Pipeline. Unlike detainees at Gitmo, who receive three meals a day and all the medical care they need, prisoners in the Pipeline were half-starved, worked to the point of collapse, and sickened by the poor sanitation.

Torture was standard during interrogation, and was not what passes for "torture" in anti-American screeds today (e.g., stepping on a Koran). This was the real thing. According to Elkins, "the screening teams whipped, shot, burned, and mutilated Mau Mau suspects." Some men were forcibly castrated or sodomized. Others were beaten to death or summarily executed.

Little distinction was drawn between guerrillas and civilians. The Mau Mau were primarily Kikuyu, Kenya's largest ethnic group, and the British detained nearly all 1.5 million of them.

Men, women and children were forced off their homesteads at gunpoint. Those not sent to the Pipeline were herded into villages surrounded by barbed wire where they had to endure forced labor while denied adequate food or medical care. Many women were gang-raped by guards. Has anything like this happened in Iraq? Of course not. If it had, you'd hear about it on "60 Minutes."

Mau Mau was defeated by the mid-1950s, but colonial rule did not long survive. In 1963, Kenya achieved independence under Jomo Kenyatta, who had spent eight years in prison after being falsely convicted of being the Mau Mau mastermind.

There was really nothing unusual about the British counterinsurgency strategy. It was similar to the methods used by the British in South Africa during the Boer War (1899-1902) and in Malaya (1948-1960), by the French in Algeria (1954-1962), by the Dutch in Indonesia (1945-1949), and by the Americans in the Philippines (1899-1902).

These Western democracies were not guilty of genocide, a la Hitler or Pol Pot, but they did commit brutality light-years beyond anything that happened at Abu Ghraib, much less Gitmo.

Seen in historical context, what sets apart the U.S. campaign in the global war on terrorism is not its savagery, as the critics would have us believe, but its unprecedented restraint.

Military investigators have found that out of more than 50,000 suspected terrorists held since 9/11, 26 may have died wrongfully and another 100 or so were abused. Even if the real figure is higher (as it probably is), it is not worth mentioning in the same breath with the excesses committed in Algeria, Kenya or any other serious counterinsurgency. And, unlike in those places, the perpetrators are being prosecuted.

I'm not saying that unlawful conduct by U.S. service personnel should be ignored or excused. I'm simply suggesting that we can't judge U.S. soldiers by impossible standards of perfection attained by no other army in history--especially when they are battling fanatical mass murderers who make the Mau Mau look like Boy Scouts.

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More Sensational Fearmongering: Province-Style!

Perhaps it's because my 5 day old daughter is on my lap right now, but I can't help but be further disgusted by the irresponsible bastardization of journalism being malpracticed at The Province newspaper.

"Toddler Shot Dead for Crying" is pretty far from even an attempt at a subtle nod towards propriety. It makes me think that in some sleepy suburb around Vancouver, mom or pop just couldn't handle it anymore and decided to cure colic the ultimate way. And while "School Hostage Drama" technically exists above the sensational headline, it is not as visible 10-30 feet away from the newspaper boxes.

But in an even more cynical twist, after scaring the meconium out of us with a tale of "we're becoming just like them gun-slinging Americans," we get to see a nice piece of military hardware below designed to appease us into a new sense of security courtesy of the military industrial complex. Those terrorists can murder our crying babies, but at least we have armoured personnel carriers to protect our homes from ruffians and thugs who use the Skytrain to invade our neighbourhoods.

Scare us, then shove weaponry in our face to appease our fear. It's a good way to keep us insecure. Don't give in.

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Lamenting the Lack of a Black and White World

I guess I should shut up about the depravity of CanWest's media near-monopoly that undermines the free press in Vancouver. The Courier spent a good time slamming the Sun and Province for running identical pictures of Karla Homolka, as well as a number of other vapid idiocies in the Sun.

This kind of serious criticism is essential in a free press environment. Independent papers must stand up and assault the stranglehold of thought threatened by a media oligopoly. It's bad enough to be cynical about CanWest's share in MetroNews as it attempts to grab Sun and Province readers with its weekday free paper. Ah, thank god for the Courier.

Oh wait, on the Courier's masthead they admit to being a part of the CanWest group. Curses. Foiled again.

Finis
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Justice for Those Who Don't Vote

Barry Link sums up my views of the huge minority of British Columbians who have insulted us all by not voting last month. I respect his analysis of the state of citizens' relationship with the electoral process. But there are three additional points to make.

First, I disagree with Link's claim that the media is less cozy with government now compared to the past. I find no reason to stop referring to CanWest as Campbell's neoLiberal Ministry of Information. The cliche about not seeking conspiracy when incompetence can fully explain an event is poignant here. While not examining incompetence, there is no need to seek a deep conspiracy between the government and circus that pretends to be a independent, free press in BC; it takes no brain surgeon to recognize that Campbell's neoLiberals and CanWest share the same economic and social ideals. They need never even speak to each other: CanWest will support their saviour government like Mairkin Theo-Cons maniacally support w.Caesar down south. Turns out every once in a while we find evidence of a tangible link between CanWest and the neoLiberal party, but that hardly matters. The local media junta will forever support the government as fast as its editorial board will declare a premier's drunk driving Maui debacle a dead story. Shame.

Second, in cataloging all the reasons why our society is well-off, Link doesn't really go far enough. Our luxury is our complacency. Democracy evolved out of the need to achieve justice in an oppressive day. When the majority is living well and salivating over the Hummers crumbling our streets, there is less obvious need to "be" political. Campbell's neoLiberal goons championed this by not showing up to all-candidates meetings all over the province and trumpeting the "Golden Decade" hysteria, just to remind us that voting is not required. We should just stay home, watch the lottery commercials on TV and think about which Yaletown penthouse we'll buy when we build the better mousetrap or get bought out by some Mairkin corporate giant.

Third, the disastrously huge minority of people who didn't vote, in one sense, did vote: they voted for Campbell's neoLiberal junta. The BC government believes in undermining social interconnectedness. What better way to support that ideology than by not voting. We all get what we deserve. This is where Link's last line in his article is quite poignant, his sentiments towards the non-voters: "To hell with you."

I share his views. Good for him.

Finis
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The Tao of Politics

Kevin Potvin's philosophy shines steadily in The Republic. Snippets of it also grace the pages of The Vancouver Courier, despite its insistence on the Urban Landscape column where Fred Lee goes around taking pictures of the pretty people at high society galas for beautiful people. In fact, Potvin's column in the June 1, 2005 Courier is opposite Fred Lee's photos of the beautiful.

Irony lives as Potvin's column that day dealt with the philosophical depravities of the BC neoLiberal party that clash with his: values that respect more interconnectedness and interdependence in society. The neoLiberals would just like to ignore the mere abstract possibility of social responsibility, gutting it on the alter of individual freedom, greed and selfishness under the accomodating awning of unregulated global capitalism [$6.00 training wage, foreigners building BC's ferries].

I enjoy Potvin's work in The Republic so much that each issue has a number of articles that leave me with the me-too feeling of wishing that I had written them.

Potvin's June 1, 2005 Courier article expressed an optimism about the future of sane society that last month's tragic reelection of the neoLiberal fools undermines. In the ebb and flow continuum of social movements, the neoLiberal mongers of social destruction will not last long. Indeed, BC's tendency for polar shifts in political movements supports the yin-yang spinning that some day will return sanity to our provincial legislature.

In a turn of intent pragmatism, the BC New Democrats [formerly the NDP], have spend 19 months pushing new spin: they wish to be the new centrist party of BC. There has never been a substantial third party in BC: no centre. The Greens pretend they can be it, but they end up centre-right with token environmental tendencies that they will subsume beneath sustainable development paradoxes. The DRBC like every other centrist party is hampered by an intangible base. And ever since the Socreds left the scene as the right wing party of the province and the so much more right wing neoLiberal freakshow claimed that end of the spectrum, all that's left is the credibly-empty 1990's NDP.

So they elected Carol James as their leader and embraced a mushy middle on the idea, perhaps, that embracing more authentically centrist ideals will get them elected. For certain, a left-wing NDP that will in the future alienate the CanWest neoLiberal Ministry of Communication can never again govern, but a truly centrist party could.

This will leave many true left wingers shivering in the Vancouver winter rains in their patched red underwear. We'll see if LeftTurn.ca--or some similar umbrella--can make tangible the scattered will of lefties more effectively than the dozens of would-be centre-right parties have done since the neoLiberals have Thatcherized and Reaganized and Friedmanized BC's economy and social fabric under the guise of a centrist name: "Liberal."

However the next few years or two decades of the yin-yang spin of BC politics evolve, Potvin's right. It's all cyclical. He writes, "overall, we are moving over the course of five centuries inexorably toward and interconnected model of humanity. Sooner of later, our legislation and resources cannot but come to reflect it." The mere existence and voter support of the Green Party in BC both provincially and federally--despite their pale reflection of their European roots--indicates the truth that people who know about ecology and symbiosis are moving towards voting out shortsighted bastards who can't see themselves fitting in the big picture. They won't even have time to let us eat cake...being blind and all.

Vancouver Councillor Fred Bass reflected such long term vision in his letter in the same Courier issue. The blind will eat their young and they won't even know it.

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The BC Government's Idiotic Advice to Struggling Students

I stumbled upon the Achieve BC website a couple years ago and emailed this webpage to all who enjoy mocking Campbell's neoLiberal community-destroying regime. I'm shocked to see that no one has spruced up the idiocy on this webpage.

In their "Success Tips for Teens" section under the topic of "Learn to Deal with Reality," this is what they recommend:

So what happens when your motivation to do well in school collides with other interests? Or distractions? Friends, TV, job, a teacher you don't like--just to name a few. Life can be tough. It isn't always fair.

What do you do? Deal with it. Just deal with it. Don't give up. Everyone else has to keep going--including your parents and teachers. [emphasis mine]

This, from the government that creates the $6 training wage, $2 less than the real minimum wage. This, from the government that legislates a new non-negotiated "contract" for teachers that mandated modest raises but wouldn't fund them, forcing districts to cut back elsewhere to cover legislated raises. This, essentially, from a government that is not all that interested in helping those who struggle because that would require tax dollars from the rich and successful who have deserved the right to no longer contribute to society as a whole.

Campbell's neoLiberal, cavalier attitude towards those with difficulty seems perfectly encapsulated in this lame piece of advice. After all, Campbell himself had a tough childhood and rose to become mayor of Vancouver [when the condos began leaking] and premier of the province. Strangely though, the absolute absence of poignant, constructive and tangible advice on that Achieve BC webpage would have left Campbell high and dry in the Maui jail cell the night he was arrested for drunk driving.

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In the "Corporate Stooges Don't Get Irony" Department...

We have The Yes Men at it again making bankers look like the idiots only they can achieve.

In releasing the Acceptable Risk Calculator, The Yes Men, via their DowEthics.com website, posed as Dow executives arguing that their experience making billions in profits while dancing on the knife edge of human misery gives them ideal credibility in helping other corporate immoral criminals make as much cash as possible while optimizing human death and suffering.

The fact that a number of bankers gleefully had their pix taken with Gilda the Golden Skeleton mascot indicates the depth of their inability to get irony. And the world is the better for it. Now let's get off our ass and force our legislatures to reign in corporate banditry worldwide.

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Free K-12 Education in BC: Constitutionally Guaranteed

Too often, minute key factoids evade my memory: likely an aging and expiring neuron issue. One recent brain fart showed up last week when I got on a tangent in some [or maybe all] of my classes [I currently teach high school...for another 2 months anyway before less toxic pastures greet me] when I got talking about school and course fees for public K-12 school students.

I'm opposed to them. They're illegal and anti-constitutional.

But I couldn't remember if they had been upheld in court.

The March 2005 Columbia Journal provided me with a serendipidous resolution to my brain fart as it reminded me that a court case upheld section 82 of BC's School Act and set a clear precedent that meant that people didn't have to be [or pretend to be] poor to be exempt from paying annual school activity fees and course material fees.

The BCTF is pretty assertive in their opposition to fees in an egalitarian, universal, democratic school system:

Full equity is possible only with no fees.

In general, school boards and schools charge fees only because provincial funding is not adequate to cover all the programs and activities that they think should be offered. Despite the best intentions, even the most generous practices in waiving fees means that some students are excluded and that some take part at a cost to their dignity. The only way of ensuring full equity is to have adequate public funding so that fees do not have to be charged.

Thus I remain steadfast in my recommendations to students and parents alike: DO NOT PAY YOUR SCHOOL FEES.

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Walmart's Anti-Union Mania

Recently Walmart closed a store in Quebec that was moving towards unionization. The UFCW built a webpage to encouraging us to direct outrage at Walmart, who soon started bouncing complaint emails sent to it [no surprise there].

The contents of that page were picked up and included in the March 2005 Columbia Journal [see the bottom of the page of letters], one of the few independent papers in BC.

One phrase was particularly niggly in my head as I read it a few times. Eventually I figured out why I disagreed with it:

The message from the world's largest and wealthiest corporation to consumers, communities and workers worldwide is clear: Wal-Mart would rather close stores, eliminate worker's jobs and make the entire community suffer, rather than reach an agreement with workers for fair wages and benefits.

The bolded section is my emphasis; it reflects perhaps an ironic mistake. While a unionized Walmart would be better than a non-unionized one, no Walmart is better than a Walmart at all. Walmarts create a local economic black hole that uses economies of scale and monopolistic purchasing practices to drive out all competition, including small community-based businesses, many of which pay decent wages and benefits, thereby precluding a need to unionize.

Indeed sometimes Walmart will open two stores "too" close together to absolutely saturate the market and drive all competition six feet underground, then close one store and reap the monopolistic benefits.

My favorite Walmart cynical trick to destroy humanity was its dead peasant insurance policies it secretly took out on its employees with itself as the beneficiary. Such a policy makes one question whether their employer will pay any real attention to keeping them merely alive on the job.

Simply, though, if the Walmart virus happens to arrive in a community, one tool to actually help heal the community's economy would be a kind of chemotherapy that exists in a unionization drive. Success, or near success can get the parasitical virus to expel itself from the economic host.

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Who Listens to CKNW...

I think we now know which political stripe is represented by their listeners who use the internet and self-select to partake in the poll, despite BC Federation of Labour emails encouraging "others" to participate in the polls. Other recent polls are below this one.

http://www.cknw.com/station/corus_qod_poll.cfm?PollID=9013

[as of noon on May 9]
Who do you think won the radio leadership debate on CKNW?

82% Gordon Campbell
12% Adriane Carr
6% Carole James
1% No winner

[as of 1115pm today]
Who do you think won the radio leadership debate on CKNW?

83% Gordon Campbell
11% Adriane Carr
5% Carole James
1% No winner

http://www.cknw.com/station/past_polls.cfm

Who do you think would make the best premier of BC?
70.74% Gordon Campbell
16.02% Adriane Carr
10.59% Carole James
2.63% none of the above
Total Votes: 30001

Who do you think won the leadership debate on Tuesday night?
72.16% Gordon Campbell
4.12% Adriane Carr
23.73% Carole James
Total Votes: 33758

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The BEST BC Election Ad Yet

This one comes from the BC Federation of Labour's Count Me In campaign.

It's warm, compassionate, intense, moving and poignant. It should not be missed.

http://www.count-me-in.net/AudioandVideo/bc4sale-parody3-v2.avi

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A Scourge a Day Keeps Electoral Defeat Away

The CanWest Ministry of Information in BC has created another issue for the reigning neoLiberal Campbell junta.

In a province where St. Paul's and Women's hospitals tell maternity patients to bring their own pillows, linen, blankets and pads to the hospital to give birth, the premier along with the Province rag create their very own scourge: crystal meth. Certainly this is a serious problem, but it's far from the scope of a health care crisis affecting 4 million British Columbians. Too bad there's no SARS still hanging around for our beloved [until recently] invisible former drunk driving leader to battle.

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Education Commercialization [K-12 and Post-Secondary]...the Frog in the Pot

I just got the email containing this fantastic article on corporate creep in education. Its beginning is quoted below.

Then when I flipped through this month's BC Teachers' Federation Teacher Newsmagazine and read what's becoming a regular update on commercial creep in K-12 schools, I saw too much light for my strained eyes to bear. 62% of BC high schools have exclusive marketing arrangements. Vomitous. Truly. More research into the K-12 frog in the slowly boiling pot is in the BCTF's Public Education Not for Sale site.

The not-so-facetious beginning of the article below about homeschooling to keep our children from being preyed upon by cradle to grave marketing is beginning to make more than just unlikely sense.

All this to say that I'm glad we've got more and more creative people finding more effective ways of teaching us frogs that we're in a pot of trouble. Sean Cook's School Inc. play is just that. Here's hoping it gets extended runs and tours the province, country and our whole neo-liberal privatization world.

Corporate College
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Believe or not, there exists a group of homeschooling parents who teach
their kids at home because they believe that the public schools have
been destroyed by corporations.

The food is corporate junk.

The street clothes and sportswear are covered with corporate logos.

The curriculum is often sponsored by corporate predators. (The winner of
a spelling bee sponsored by the local high school's principal last week
won a choice of prizes from Wendy's, McDonald's or Dairy Queen. Can you
spell diabesity?)

Even the music increasingly is corporate-inspired crapola, driven
largely by payola.

And the morality of the schools is the morality of the marketplace.

But even the most ardent anti-corporate homeschooling parents often give
up the fight when it comes to college.

At 18, little Johnny has had enough of being at home.

And it's time to send him off to --

College.

We can only guess at the extent of the corruption of academia by the
corporate predators.

But if we are to believe what we read in journalist Jennifer Washburn's
new book, then academia is in it deep.

The title of Washburn's book tells it all -- University Inc.: The
Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (Basic Books, 2005).
(Disclosure: an old research piece of ours is mentioned in the book.)

If you listen to right-wing radio, or watch Fox News -- as we do -- then
you might be under the impression that universities are dominated by
left-wing professors, liberals and cranks.

If you don't, you might believe that universities are independent
non-profits dedicated to education and research.

Not true, Washburn says.

SNIP

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Media Impairs Democracy...Again

The DRBC, Democratic Reform BC provincial political party, is a centre-right party with one sitting MLA and a few dozen candidates.

Their leader is being shut out of the televised leaders debate.

In the past fifteen years such debates have included leaders of parties with no elected MLAs.

Regardless of your political stripe, democracy is not served by undemocratic media debate opportunities.

Join in DRBC's call to get representation at the leaders' debate.

Finis
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Nothing New: US Government and Media Corruption

I'm having a hard time saying anything in response to this other than I completely agree. It's nice to be speechless sometimes.

Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:41:52 -0700
From: Peter Phillips
Subject: Incomplete News Undermines US Values

Incomplete News Undermines US Values
By Peter Phillips

Dozens were kidnapped by roving gangs off the streets of their hometowns, disappeared from families, hooded, chained, repeatedly interrogated, incarcerated for years in military prisons, and then told it was all a mistake. Did this happen in Stalinist Russia, some South American military dictatorship, Apartheid South Africa? No, the gangs were special forces of the US Government operating with approval from the highest levels of the Pentagon, the victims Afghan civilians recently released from the Guantanamo military prison camp in Cuba.

The New York Times published an article April 20 reporting how 17 innocent Afghans were recently freed from Guantanamo prison after three and half years. "Several of the Afghans said in interviews that they had been told by American officers that they were being freed because they were innocent of any crime," the article reported. "The men would be given new clothes, turbans and travel money and allowed to go home," the paper disclosed.

Prior to the release of the Guantanamo prisoners last Fall, Seymour Hersh fully exposed the US's worldwide abuse of power and violation of human right in articles published in the Guardian and New Yorker. Hersh documented that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, with approval from the White House, had authorized a special-access program (SAP) to go on global manhunts for terrorists. It was deemed OK to kidnap suspected terrorists and take them to countries that would get tough (torture) them during interrogations. Several hundred people captured wholesale in Afghanistan and transported to Cuba were deemed enemy non-combatants without rights of due process or coverage under the Geneva Convention.

The New York Times' story covers the release of the internees without Hersh's historical context of high level official approval. Additionally, the NY Times story fails to address coverage of how, in a country that supports due process and human rights, our military could take such tragic action violating the rights of these men and their families. Instead the story implies that the kidnapping of these Afghans was justified in that undoubtedly some of the prisoners were guilty. This is like rounding up the church choir because the minister was caught in bed with the organist.

Failure to publish the full truth regarding the release of the Afghan prisoners is a strong indication that the New York Times and corporate media groups in general are unable and unwilling to fully address human right violations by our own government. The broad publication of stories about the breach of human rights by our national security forces is inconsistent with corporate media's continuing desire to have 24 hour access to sources of news inside the White House, Pentagon and State Department. This failure of nerve to support the public's right to know and insure a transparent governmental process is undoubtedly giving America a black eye in the world community. Increasingly America is seen as an uncontrolled empire of power and abuse. For many in the world we are the Darth Vaders of the planet - pure evil incorporated.

Non-Americans know that the people in the US do not approve of these practices. We must, however, openly share their outrage and demand that America hold to our values of due process and human rights. To do this we must support media that address these issues. We need a media that post and recognize the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in every newsroom. Anything less cuts at the very soul of the American people.

--

Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Sociology Department/Project Censored
Sonoma State University
http://www.projectcensored.org/

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The Wonkiness of Gasoline Boycott Emails

Everyone once in a while there is an email going around explaining how consumers can use the free market to force a reduction in gas prices [see below]. These gas campaigns are always so alluring, but ultimately they ring hollow for me, and not just because I sold my car.

I think the following quote is somewhat contentious; I don't believe it anymore [as much as I'd love to hate oil companies]:

> We all know that we're being controlled by the oil companies. Does everyone
> remember how they drove up the prices way past a dollar and got the gas
> prices to where they wanted them, claiming there was a shortage of oil?
> Well, there isn't any shortage now, and the oil is more abundant than it
> was 35 years ago when the price of a litre of gas was 29 cents!!!

And while the supply and demand subtleties of consumer gas prices are in the realm of elasticity voodoo, there has been a huge traffic spike recently in the whole debate about when we as a planet cross the point of increasing consumption, maximized extraction capacity, maximum refining capacity [may have been 8-12 months ago], and decreasing growth in new finds of deposits.

The Hubbert's Peak idea may sum it up best. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak and http://www.HubbertPeak.com

> all of you that buy Petro Can and Shell....read on....
> It is rumoured that we are going to hit close to a $1.42 a Litre by the
> summer. Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some
> intelligent, united action. Phillip Hollsworth, offered this good idea:
> This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the ''don't buy gas on a certain day''
> campaign
> that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed
> at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to hurt ourselves by
> refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a
> problem
> for them. BUT, this is a plan that can really work. Please read it and
> join with us!
>
>
> We all know that we're being controlled by the oil companies. Does
> everyone
> remember how they drove up the prices way past a dollar and got the gas
> prices to where they wanted them, claiming there was a shortage of oil?
> Well, there isn't any shortage now, and the oil is more abundant than it
> was 35 years ago when the price of a litre of gas was 29 cents!!!
>
>
> Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to
> think that the cost of a litre of gas is CHEAP at $0.78-$0.85, we need
> to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the
> marketplace....not sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more
> each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to
> see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not
> purchasing their gas! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How?
> Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN
> have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price
> war.
>
>
> Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline
> from the two biggest companies (which are now one), PETRO CANADA, SHELL.
> If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their
> prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to
> follow suit.
> But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of PETRO
> CANADA and SHELL buyers. Its really simple to do!! Now, don't whimp out on me
> at this point...keep reading and Ill explain how simple it is to reach
> millions of people!!
>
>
> I am sending this note to at least thirty people. If each of you send it
> to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) ... and those 300 send it to at
> least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message
> reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION
> consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten
> friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it
> goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!
>
>
> Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all.
>(after all we all forward messages to people every day that have no impact
> other than entertainment!- why not something that could make a difference
> in our pocket books!)
>
> How long would all this take? If each of us sends this email out to ten
> more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could
> conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! Ill bet you didn't
> think you and I had that much potential, did you?! Acting together we can
> make a difference!! If this makes sense to you, please pass this message
> on.
>
> PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $0.64 OR LESS
> RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK!!!!!!!

Finis
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The Death of Real News: Foretold by the Movie "Network"

The 1976 masterpiece Network was prescient enough to foretell the rise of reality TV, the absence of quality news, the public's lack of demand for it and our appetite for fluff that doesn't disturb our comfortable consumer lifestyles. Stories now are not why gas is over a dollar a litre, but where the price wars are to fill up our FUVs. God forbid that we actually delve into the complex geopolitical reasons for oil price increases like ensure the future ability to fuel aircraft carrier groups all within a context of reaching Hubbert's Peak of oil production.

Now I've just read an interview with Leroy Sievers, recently resigned Executive Producer of Nightline on why news today is pap. It's fantastic. Here's the best part:

Years ago I was at a conference and people were saying--a couple of people that ran other shows--"We don't want to challenge the audience. We want to make it easy and comfortable," and I was thinking to myself, God, I want to challenge the audience every night. That's what I want to do. Well, it turns out maybe the audience doesn't want to be challenged.

Maybe we're the lone voices crying in the wilderness. I think it's cyclical, but if people don't care about what's going on now, in the world we live in now, what will make them care?

And as we become more consumers than citizens, we demand news that meets our consumer impulse instead of our desire to learn about things we don't already know about:

Where I think it's headed as a business is news on demand. You know, you're going to say, "I'm interested in the weather, I'm interested in film, I'm interested in the beach, I'm interested in Iraq." And so your computer will simply give you those stories. What's being lost now, it's just about gone, and it's going to be lost when all that happens, is the idea that there are stories out there that you don't know about, that you don't know you're interested in, but you will be interested in.

God help us all.

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Soldiers in Iraq and their Wish Lists

Today's issue of the Scimitar, the weekly newspaper for the multinational occupation forces in Iraq has an article on page 3 [sadly, no longer online] about troops' wish lists.

Beyond the article is a nice sidebar with individuals' faces and wishes.

A member of ethically-squishy military privatization contractors [Haliburton-owned] KBR [Kellogg, Brown and Root] wants to travel through space.

Three wished to be with their families, a fourth wished to be a better father, and the last wished to be with his friends. Maybe he had no children.

The first soldier pictured, though, is a smiling "low maintenance" soldier who wished to stay in Iraq, fighting, I presume, since he's a Marine captain. I particularly enjoyed the low maintenance idea. Maybe he's an example of the kind of soldier they all ought to be: the kind that doesn't ask Donald Rumsfeld any awkward questions about being ill-equipped.

I love journalism.

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The Lie of Free Trade and Development

The World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting is taking place right now in Davos, Switzerland. The global corporate elite have named this year's meeting "Taking Responsibility for Tough Choices".

I have heard enough of the tough choices of BC Premier Gordon Campbell starting his junta's reign with a tax cut to the rich, followed by the tough choices of downsizing government spending. His neoliberal government eradication program is in full swing.

I sit appalled by the WEF's use of that phrase.

Even more appalled, I read Canada's International Trade Minister Jim Peterson's notes for his pandering talk in Davos.

Not speaking on behalf of me, but on behalf of the Canadian government, Peterson asserts, "We believe that the highest level of development will come from the highest level of trade liberalization."

As much as I would like to golf with Tiger Woods, I would not compete with him without using handicaps. Though a level playing field means comparing our raw scores, using handicaps lets us compete recognizing differences in abilities. Without handicaps, I would lose all the time. Free trade is a level playing field between differently abled economies. Trade liberalization will not allow the weaker economies to succeed when competing with stronger ones.

Peterson continues, "Admittedly, it is true that fear will have to be managed. Fear of failure and fear of being blamed for failure. It is also true that failure is not an option."

How brave of him to be bold. How brave of him to encourage the global corporate elite to be bold. And other nations--developed and developing--to be bold. Fear must be overcome. But from Canada's point of view, we're fine if we don't overcome it. Really we are. Failure is not an option, but if we do fail, Canada will not be destroyed and plummeted into a heart-wrenching economic and social depression. But the majority world will.

But ultimately what kind of failure are we really talking about? Failure to ensure developing countries can no longer protect themselves from the global corporate elite's ecnomic rape and pillage machine, of which Canada is a sponsor. If Peterson and the WEF gods succeed, the majority world will be playing golf every day with Tiger Woods and their handicap is merely their fault for not being better. And while domestic protection built the developed world and spawned the WEF, we will not let the majority world do the same.

So what exactly is failure?

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I Would Not Like to Buy the World a Coke

From corporate co-optation of education, to Dasani bottling fraud, to drying up the aquifers of Indian farmlands, to selling Coke in India with DDT, to likely being complicit in Colombian paramilitary groups killing union leaders at their bottling plants, to just generally being unhealthy, Coca-Cola is high on my list of amoral corporations.

But John F. Borowski's crusade against the Criminal Coke is refreshing and full of clarity. His latest piece is truly inspiring!

Finis
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CNN Showing Child Labour, Sweatshops and Fair Trade Initiatives

Tonight on Aaron Brown's Newsnight we meet the maker of the documentary "Stolen Childhoods."

Child slavery, sweatshop conditions, fair trade short term remedies then were discussed by a clothing manufacturer with a stern voice stating how they have to supervise their contractors and a professor talking about the inadequacy of band-aid solutions.

It's nice to finally see this on a major network in prime time. Slowly, slowly, slowyly people become aware. Interestingly, one of the things Brown mentioned to the director was how people need to become outraged to act. But first they need to lose their apathy.

Finis
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I Don't Like Football

Now I like it even less.

Not the European variety, but North American football, which has recently decided to pimp itself even more.

Much like why I dislike the Olympics--corporate sponsorship destroying pure[ish] sport--I'm growing greatly opposed to football's corporate bondage.

Now, Canadian universities' national football championship, the Vanier Cup, is sponsored by Desjardins.

BC's high school football championship is now titled the Subway Bowl, which is a rather smart idea since Subway exists in more than a few food fairs [formerly, cafeterias] in at least Coquitlam schools.

Subway is even sponsoring the season's awards night for players; I wonder if they'll get to eat subs. The best players even get to be Pepsi Provincial All-Stars:

"If you are selected as a Pepsi Provincial All-Star or a Scholarship Winner you will be notified by your coach at least one week before the banquet. The entire Pepsi Provincial All-Star Team, and Players of the Year, will not be announced until December 1st."

Hurray for "amateur" sports!
Finis
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USA Trapped in the Pleasantville Vortex

I saw Pleasantville for the first time last night. Boy, have I been missing out.

It was stunning to see how much post-9/11 Mairka is pummelled into fear and trembling much like the Hitler Youth Monochromes were toward the end of the movie.

It's sad to see Mairka take part in an anti-post-modernist backlash of reborn conservative, fundamentalism. With a crazy world after the relatively easy Us vs. Them of the Cold War, now it's Mairka versus all sorts of "folks" [to quote w.Caesar referring to the evildoers]. And since there is no easy enemy to spot, it's so tempting to act in fear and run for the security of the John Wayne resolute president...to elect him for a second four years of fear and loathing.

And it hit me after the movie last night just how much conservative Mairka is embracing "tradition". The TV show American Dreams is a classic example of how much they yearn for the good old days when they didn't have to be self-reflective [just like their philosophically self-alienated president]. Inasmuch as that show deals with social and political upheaval of the 1960s, it starts from a perspective of the good and wholesome god/family/country silliness that posits evildoers as satanic/anti-family/unpatriotic if they criticize the modernist, consumerist, pre-feminist delusion of decades ago.

No wonder w.Caesar won the popular vote. No wonder Fox News is actually accepted as "Fair and Balanced" by so many who are yearning for the plausible deniability that the world is not monochrome that comes from someone in authority [government, media] telling them that yes, being coloured and self-aware is evil.

The PATRIOT Act is thus our salvation.

Finis

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Blogger.com's Spellchecker Doesn't Include the Word "Blog"

I just don't know what to say about this beyond "REVEL IN THE IRONY!"

I had to actually add it to my user dictionary. Wow.

Finis

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Real Soap, "Real" Beauty, "Real" Feminism?

Dove soap's Campaign for Real Beauty is very interesting to me. I've seen the billboards and I appreciate their attempt to legitimize beauty beyond what we're brainwashed with in Maxim, Playboy, Baywatch and the like.

But I'm not so sure about Dove. I'm not so sure that even if their soap products, etc. are stupendous that I respect them co-opting a legitimate debate for corporate ends. True, they may be spurring some to expand their sense of beauty, but underlying Maxim, Playboy, Baywatch and Dove is the consumerist necessity of defining for us what we want so we can buy it from one company, as opposed to the other.

So cynically--or perhaps realistically--Dove is merely engaging us in clever market segmentation: they are the soap for people who don't wish to recognize any legitimacy in stereotyped constructions of beauty. How post-modern of them.

Then there's the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, that helps "girls all over the world to overcome everyday beauty pressures." Right. Again, Dove may be god's gift to women's dermitological health, but do we really want Dove being in charge of this dialogue? They sure want to be in charge of it. Great viral PR [we're encouraged to invite friends to the website]. In fact, instead of them actually having to advertise to you about how great they are in funding socially-conscious projects, we end up seeking that information from them. It'll stick to us better that way because we want to know about them. The cosmetics and health products industries are prime culprits in destroying women's self-esteem. How ironic--or socially healing?--of Dove to try to rectify this. Either way, they will probably sell more soap.

Happily for Dove, 2 of the 5 items listed as success stories for the Self-Esteem Fund are photo exhibitions they created themselves.

It may be terrible to rub this in, but Dove is even doing market research on us as we navigate their site. In providing information about their motives [thoroughly altruistic sounding, of course--remember, they're on our side!], they ration the information so that we need to click to further screens for elaboration. They end up with a good sense of just how much each of us is interested in various depths of information. This information about us can be combined with a log of all pages we visit on their site [including the time we spend between clicking through pages] to give them a pretty wonderful sense of how much we care to know. Heck, even I track my access logs to examine reading/clicking habits on my site [anonymously, though, because I collect nothing about yall but IP numbers]; I've got to believe Dove does it too. Worse still, if we actually log in and supply demographic data when we create our profile on the site [assuming a certain percentage of those signing up are not lying], they get an even broader sense of us, despite their claim that they only collect navigation data anonymously and in the aggregate. And what is our benefit from all this? Better soap? Better self-esteem through Dove products?

Even more cynically, perhaps, how many of the people taking part in the definition of beauty discussions on that site are Dove lackeys spinning conversation in defined PR areas? If I were running this campaign, I wouldn't leave the discussion board completely at the mercy of regular normal people without having my branding agents subtly making it all worthwhile.

So then I dug through my hard drive to find the August 1992 update of the soc.feminism faq that defines various flavours of feminism to see which ones would support Dove's campaign and which ones would condemn it. The updated faq of Different Flavours of Feminism is more useful.

Applying each flavour to Dove's campaign will require great thought: more than I can accomplish without a few more days/weeks of mental meandering. [Maybe in the meantime I'll write something in here about the disaster of w.Caesar's election. Or not]

For now, until you follow the link to the full faq with descriptions of the flavours, here they are, listed:

Amazon Feminism
Anarcho-Feminism
Cultural Feminism
Erotic Feminism
Eco-Feminism
Feminazi
Feminism and Women of Color
Individualist, or Libertarian Feminism
Lesbianism
Liberal Feminism
Marxist and Socialist Feminism
Material Feminism
Moderate Feminism
'pop-feminism'
Radical Feminism
Separatists

Men's Movements:
Feminist Men's Movement
Men's Liberation Movement
Mythopoetic Men's Movement
The New Traditionalists
The Father's Movements

Finis

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Who Are Our Corporate Rulers?

Well it turns out that the Trilateral Commission wasn't just some 1970s paranoid conspiracy theory. Neither is the global trade triad of the EU, USA and Japan that account for most of global trade.

But who runs the world's most powerful corporations and what kind of incestuous relations do they partake in?

TheyRule.net presents a nice interface to examine the overlapping neo-feudal aristocrats. They use a kind of six degrees of Kevin Bacon search engine to connect what is nebulous to most of us. But their description of themselves is more useful.

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The SFU Car Lot

Update! See below!

O bliss! On Tuesday, November 9, 2004 some marketing students turned SFU into a GM car lot.

They even got some advanced press about it with a truly absurd analogy from business prof, Colleen Collins-Dodd:

"We have a business school on this campus. I don't think we need to apologise for that," she said. "In biology they go out and examine bugs and birds and animals and plants. In chemistry they look at chemicals in the lab . . . this is no different - this is students doing a business project for a business course on a business. That's what we do in the faculty."

Without going into a large rant on how post-modern business faculties generally aren't, it is way too much of a stretch for me to accept that bugs, birds, animals and plants have as little feedback effect on the social structure of post-secondary education as bringing a car lot onto campus. Corporate commodification is more pronounced than flora and fauna.

And then, I just couldn't keep my opposition to myself.

Flashy cars and sold souls

Stephen Buckley

I want to send a big thank you out to the students of Business 448 - Sales and Promotion Management. Thank you so much for reminding us all that we are consumers, not citizens or students. Thank you for turning our campus into a General Motors car lot on November 9. Thank you for reminding us of the value of corporate growth, profit, marketing, and the capitalist core that should underwrite all university activities. Thank you for adding to the corporate commodification of learning. You are now in the good company of corporate-sponsored classrooms at the Harbour Centre campus and the new market condos on the hill that do not rate as affordable student housing.

Thank you for setting up your corporate co-optation freak show near the Terry Fox statue, just to let us know that you have no sense of irony. Thank you also for perpetuating the myth that corporations care about suffering, poor humans (who, oddly, are minimal consumers) by bribing students to sit in your little red car with food for the food bank, when you marketing students could have instead just designed a campaign to support the food bank without littering our campus with shiny brand-new cars. Thank you also for e-mailing the entire SFU Greens e-mail list with the surreal request that they advertise for you, again missing the irony of soliciting support from a group that contains members who are against consumerism and automobiles themselves. In short, thank you Business 448 students for reminding us that public-private partnerships (P3s) suck, and that being citizens before consumers takes a bit of work every day.

Update!

Someone replied to my letter to the editor!

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Welcoming American Immigrants to Canada

I understand how tempting it is to be an American wanting to move to Canada. I'm not, of course, refering to the 59 million who voted for w.Caesar, but the rest of them. They're welcome here. Some of my favourite people in the world are those who were displaced from the land of the free during the Vietnam "conflict".

But it seems there are good reasons to stay in Mairka and fight the good fight. Here are ten of them.

Update: Canadian towns recruiting Americans! Read about it here.

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Holy War: Evangelical Marines Prepare to Battle Barbarians

Unit, Corps, God, Country. God, Country, Corps, Unit. God, Corps, Unit, Country.

Holy War: Evangelical Marines Prepare to Battle Barbarians is a fascinating article about the religious zeal of Marines about to take on the anarchy in Fallujah. In April, w.Caesar pledged that they were not going to leave the gong show in Fallujah AS THEY WERE BUGGING OUT!

Meanwhile, the human truth of this occupation exists. While Mairka won't keep track of the Iraqi civilians they kill, IraqBodyCount.net does. CNN's keeping track of US casualties [dead soldiers] in Iraq.

I'll remember them tomorrow, Remembrance Day in Canada, Memorial Day in Mairka, but I won't remember the value of their deaths. It's lacking.

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Flipping the Osama/w.Caesar Coin

Hmmm. A quick response to Charles Moore piece in the Telegraph the other day [reprinted below]:

Speaking as one of the "twerp" critics Moore mentions, as far as I can tell, while Moore goes on about how the right side [ours] of this global war has to be fought and won [Spain is out [Canada has always been too]; UK, USA and OZ are in], he doesn't actually show that w.Caesar *isn't* actually representing the flip side of the coin from Osama: fighting against Islamic fundamentalism and being a western, Christian, free market [albeit oligopolistic] fundamentalist aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

Besides, the appeal to the crazy idea that it's immoral to criticize the man who had to clean up after 9/11 is just plain trashy rhetoric.

If Bush loses, the winner won't be Kerry

Daily Telegraph [October 23, 2004]

By Charles Moore

Earlier in the week, I was talking to a brisk, amusing, Toryish member of the Great and the Good. It had recently fallen to her to give away some prizes at a ceremony to do with helping the environment. Gripped with the desire to liven things up a bit, she said, she had dropped into her speech an aside about the "greatest human threat to the planet - Bush's re-election". There followed a moment's silence, and then a weird noise that it took her a second to recognise was tumultuous, orgasmic applause.

On the way home, she told me, she thought things over and felt uncomfortable. She did not repent of her dislike of the President of the United States, but she worried a little that people should feel so passionately, so certainly.

I think we should worry a lot. One of the criticisms thrown at George W Bush is that he is a menace because he believes that God is telling him what to do. A moral equivalence is set up, in which Osama bin Laden and Bush are presented as two sides of a fundamentalist coin. On Wednesday, a television programme tried to equate the Muslim Brotherhood, which advocates the violent destruction of all societies that do not conform to sharia law, with the American neo-conservative intellectuals who taught that people should revive their interest in Plato and the civilisation of the ancient Greeks. This is about as accurate as saying that the Nazi party and the Labour Party are the same, because both arose from the discontents of the working classes.

It is the critics themselves who are suffering from pseudo-religious certainty and superstition. Isn't there something self-righteous, slightly crazed, about directing such overwhelming anger at the man whose job it is to pick up the pieces of September 11 on behalf of the free world?

George W Bush as we see him today is a response to disorder, not its cause. Four years ago, he was the same as 99.9 per cent of Western politicians. He inherited the economic health and mental torpor of the Clinton years, when many people really had come to believe that the Western way of life was like a children's slide magically moving upwards towards ever greater pleasure and peace, in permanent defiance of the laws of political gravity. To the extent that Bush campaigned on foreign policy at all in 2000, his selling-point was that he didn't have one.

After some 2,500 Americans died in a day, he had to get one fast, so fast that he made some big mistakes. He resisted the idea of "nation-building", even as his policies of military intervention made it inevitable. Having had the maturity to choose able lieutenants, probably more intelligent than himself, in Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, he did not clearly adjudicate between their different versions of what ought to be done in post-war Iraq.

Understandably exasperated by the feeble multilateralism that had permitted genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s and hampered effective war in Kosovo, he did not see that determined unilateralism requires more, not less diplomacy. And whereas some conservative leaders resonate internationally (Margaret Thatcher was the patron saint of taxi drivers in six continents), George W Bush doesn't travel, literally or metaphorically.

But he has got the big idea. There is a global problem with Islamism. There is a problem of alliances between bad states and terror organisations that reach beyond state boundaries. There is an almost universal rottenness in the politics of the Arab world. There is an atrocious weakness or, as the UN oil-for-food scandal shows, worse than weakness, in many of the Western nations and international organisations that are supposed to help guarantee our security. And it is the duty of the most powerful nation on earth to do something about it.

The only big free country that has retained the untrammelled capacity to decide for itself has been decisive. The greatest terrorist hope about America - that it was not serious - has gone. And a huge, partly covert programme has begun to catch our foes and make us safer. It tempts fate to say it, but it is not mere chance that neither Britain nor America has suffered terrorist attack since 2001.

I don't understand what John Kerry or Jacques Chirac think should be done about terrorism. Or rather, I think they think nothing much should be done. Kerry compares terrorism to prostitution - a permanent affliction that can be mitigated, but no more. You can move a few tarts off the street, introduce more clap clinics, insist on curtains in the red light district, but in the end, the oldest profession regroups. It's a very French attitude, and it reflects a truth about human nature. But prostitutes, unlike Islamist terrorists, are not determined to destroy our way of life (in fact, they have strong conservative motives for keeping it ticking along). You can't say to Osama bin Laden, as you might to Madame Claude: "You're entitled to your little ways, but just be discreet about it, will you?" His little ways are death, our death. It's him or us.

So who gains if Bush loses? The Labour Left, of course, and the political power of the European Union, the Guardian readers who have been writing magnificently counterproductive anti-Bush letters to the voters of Clark County, Ohio, and every twerp who says with a trembling lip that Mr Bush and Mr Blair have "blood on their hands"; not to mention every corrupt, undemocratic, "pragmatic" government in the Middle East that longs for a return to stasis.

But some rather more fearsome people gain too, such as the man who said of Americans in a document discovered earlier this year "...these are the biggest cowards of the lot, and we ask God to allow us to kill, and detain them, so that we can exchange them with our arrested sheikhs and brothers". He is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and it is probably he who killed Ken Bigley. Such men believe they have already changed the government in Spain; they will claim at once that they have done the same in the United States. They will be right.

And who loses? Iraqis about to have real elections of their own for the first time, Afghans who have already voted with more than expected success, Iranians trying to assert their own democracy against its clerical corruptions. And us. What one can see in each twist of the Iraq story - don't send the US Marines into Fallujah, don't send the Black Watch to help the Americans, do give in to Ken Bigley's kidnappers - is exactly what is meant by defeatism, an actual longing to lose. Whatever you think of the war, why would you want that?

John Howard, who joined in the war, won again in Australia this month. I think that Tony Blair will do the same. And I suspect, though it is close, that George W Bush will win, too. Like them or not, all three have put themselves on the right side of a battle that has to be won.

Finis

No Two Term Bushes

Stunning. Just stunning. It just occurred to me that if w.Caesar doesn't get elected next week [after being merely selected in 2000] then both Bush presidents will have been robbed of their silver-spoon birthright of a second term.

That bastard Perot stole Bush 41's second term by splitting the right vote and letting that reprobate Clinton in, allowing him to sleaze his way to a second term.

Or you could look at it this way. With an illegitimately low voter turnout for US presidential elections [Canada's federal turnout isn't much better], if the Republicans had simply mobilized just a marginally larger proportion of their actual members to vote, Perot's influence would have been countered and HW would have danced to four more years.

The same argument holds for the blame Nader front from the 2000 election.

But now. NOW! Now, we have a chance to stick it to the Bushes once again by keeping w.Caesar from getting his double-double.

And as much as Bill Minutaglio and Frank Bruni's biographies of w.Caesar note his hatred for that bastard reprobate Clinton for stealing his father's second term [honour thy father and all that], he'll likely only have himself and his fellow idealogues to blame for his lost second term. And his hardball idiocy with North Korea. And Abu Ghraib. And the constitution-free zone at Gitmo. And the missing WMDs. And the needlessly alienating with us or against us, dead or alive cowboy rhetoric. And the criminally neglected Afghanistan. And the back door draft. And pissing off the French. And the Haliburton pillaging. And praising George Tenet's fantastic job of the slam dunk Iraqi WMD case. And alienating allies. And and and and...

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New EU Cigarette Boxes: EEEEWWWW! [Get it? Ew?]

image from http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/scaring_smokers

It's quite exciting to see the EU develop hideous cigarette box graphics and photos of the effects of smoking. Denial is such a powerful thing. Trying to ignore what you already know--but don't want to dwell on--is a basic human strategy for coping with distasteful things, like the true effects of how we destroy ourselves with smoking.

Odd, though, that Canada has had these images on cigarette boxes for several years now. BC's Ministry of Health has published the tobacco poster child for years as well: quite hideous.

See http://www.TobaccoFacts.org/order/posterchild.html

More disturbing information and images are at these sites:

http://www.TobaccoFacts.org/

http://www.GoSmokeFree.ca/

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Suicide: The Province Style

The Friday, October 22, 2004 Province newspaper front page red headline reflects that paper's continued diseased view of society. "Jumpers Snarl Second Narrow, Lions Gate Traffic." Suicide is an issue of traffic impediment, not a human suffering issue. To their "credit" though, at least with this cold view, they are appealing to their market of bridge users: pretty good business sense.

Pigs.

Finis

Hong Kong as a Trojan Horse Capitalist Bait

Someone recently mentioned an interesting perspective on the Hong Kong turnover to China in 1997.

Neo-liberal and not so neo-liberal capitalism proponents argue how great it is to use capitalism, greed, consumerism and free market forces to defeat the Chinese communist menace. It seems reasonable. Lure them with consumer goods, make them feel like consumers, then they'll consume democracy and throw out them Maoists.

Even still, the "loss" of Hong Kong to the godless hoards could be re-framed as a Trojan horse: let them taste the rich juices of hyper-capitalist, unregulated Hong Kong and it will work as a little insipid virus to transform their economy and political system to liberal democracy, thus further reinforcing Francis Fukuyama's assertion that history is over as there is no serious competitor to free market liberal democracy.

But what if China doesn't convert to our divinely-sanctioned political and economic system. What if the godless hoards can maintain centralized control with only limited market access. What if they really learned from Russia's eager embrace of a free unregulated market, which led to Mafia rule. What if they learned to include markets to a point, but to retain control of their society while managing a slow growth of a mostly urban middle class of consumers while keeping almost a billion citizens still in centrally-planned gulag-ish bliss.

What if China becomes something new that Fukuyama didn't envision: a capitalist dictatorship, much like a communist dictatorship, but with a McDonald's. And automobiles for the blessed party members [the new "middle class", a kind of expanded politburo with access to a Lexus]. What if China fools us all and keeps a kind of communism alive and leaves us wondering how constructive engagement could continue to be a paradigm of defeating this remaining evil empire. We couldn't toss constructive engagement, could we? How then would we sell all those hundreds of millions of American cars to those bicycle-riding Beijing yuppies?

Greed may be good for Gordon Gecko, but it may not defeat millennia of Chinese communitarian tradition that may somehow inject subtle legitimacy in a communist regime, despite what the Formosans say.

Ideally, I'd like to have a coffee with Fukuyama to mull this over. And I'd like to ask Karl Polanyi to join us.

Finis

Deficits: They Used to be a Left Wing Tactic, Now Let's Watch the Right

It's interesting to see the right-ward shift in fiscal policies of governments. Years ago, left wing Keynesian governments were often inclined to fund government with deficit financing while right wing governments stressed balanced budgets for fiscal and taxation responsibility.

More recently, the agenda has both shifted to the right and flipped in a freakish fashion.

As individualistic over communitarian values are rising, and government regulation, taxation and economic involvement are decreasing, the right has pushed the debate to the right. Now, more traditionally left wing governments are sliding to the right to advocate balanced budgets in part for the protection of the debt load of future generations. The 1990s in BC was a time of NDP reign that ended with two surplus budgets.

So the right succeeded in pushing the agenda rightward, causing leftist governments to seek middle ground.

But a perverse flip has also occurred. Right wing governments, not content with forcing left wing governments to advocate balanced budgets to spare "needless" taxation, have now begun to incur massive deficits. Gordon Campbell's crazy government in BC forced a deficit with a massive tax cut predominantly to the wealthy immediately upon installing their junta in the spring of 2001. w.Caesar's massive multi-billion dollar deficits to fight his monkey-on-his-family's-back war in Iraq will leading to some Campbell-style "tough choices of cutting domestic spending on social needs. Gotta fight the war. There's a group of folks out there...who wanna kill us. The hate our freedom. Gotta win the war on terror [an abstract concept, but whatever]. So social spending, which is for Keynesian wimps anyway, will have to be cut. Gotta love the neo-liberal economic pandering.

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MNCs and Governments: A New Cold War Proxy Relationship

There's an interesting parallel or analogy between Cold War geopolitics and the ascendency of corporations' relations with governments in the 21st century global trade regime. In the old days, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in proxy wars/battles in various battleground lands including the Koreas in the 1950s, Indochina in the 1950s to 1970s, and Latin America in the 1980s.

Lately it seems a new paradigm has emerged with a similar dynamic. A slim majority of the top 100 economies of the world are multinational corporations; in general they seem to be wielding a significant degree of power in the global trade regime. Governments need to join the WTO to retain access to global trade to avoid economic marginalization. In watching the trade wars between Fuji-Kodak over market access and Airbus and Boeing over subsidization, it seems that on some levels they are doing battle through their home state governments: Japan and USA in the first case, the EU and the USA in the second case. So are nation-states the new proxy battlegrounds for corporate proxy wars?

Finis

A Dystopic Project for a New American Century

The imperialist neo-conservative [neo-con] Project for a New American Century is a pretty terrifying doctrine, additionally so because they so boldly promote it--unashamedly.

Go see the Ted Rall comic at http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/2004/10/18/

But about on November 2nd the US presidential election will be decided. Or not. My money's on not. The US electoral system is such a gong show.

What with the crime of being black in Florida in 2000 to new electronic voting machines this year, I have no faith that the absence of tens of thousands of UN observers throughout the 50 states means there will be no clear winner by midnightish west coast time on November 2nd.

In fact, the home of democracy is so unreliable in holding morally legitimate elections that I can't see them being the philosophical leader in spreading democracy around the world, like in Afghanistan currently, or Iraq in a few months.

God help us.

Maybe the gong show that is "governing" in "Israel" may shed some light on the future stability of governing in the USA. Ted Rall's comic insight is quite poignant. Maybe Canada's current foreign policy and defense reviews ought to take his creative output as key input about our new role as maintainers of civil peace in North America.

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The Multinational Corporation is a Morally-Failed Organizational Form

So I was asked a few questions about multinational corporations (MNCs). I have a book on them that I could write, but I was asked to limit my responses. Here's where I went with it.

What is a Definition of the Multinational Corporation?

The multinational corporation controls or coordinates operations in more than one country. It is a champion of vertical integration through foreign direct or portfolio investment. It uses its power to exploit home and host states for their own ends of profit maximization. Rather than having to exist in the zero-sum perspective of a realist paradigm, it can operate in a liberal perspective that all boats can rise. The MNC succeeds by ensuring that all parties gain and that even though an MNC may gain much more than a host country, it persuades the host country to accept its lesser gain as opposed to none at all.

While on the surface an MNC can be distinguished from a state by its lack of territoriality and the monopoly on the use of force to control its citizens, in substance, MNCs are expanding to the point where they are eroding this once-meaningful distinction. They now have massive global land holdings (ex. plantations that have dispossessed traditional land-holders) and have engaged in security enforcement through private forces (ex.: South African diamond mines). Arguably MNCs may now constitute a category of actors on par with nation-states.

On Balance, is the Multinational Corporation a Positive or Negative Organizational Form?

The high concentration of ownership of stocks of MNCs among a small percentage of global society, coupled with MNCs' prime motive of profit generation over other ideals undermines its social and moral legitimacy. It is not sufficient that many have the legal ability to purchase stocks; while many share in ownership, few have sufficient ownership for significant or controlling interest.

Further, the structure of MNCs with limited liability for stockholders creates a model of unaccountability for those who benefit from the MNCs activities. Since more than half of the top 100 economies of the world are MNCs, not nation-states (with varying degrees of political representation), MNCs now have an illegitimate level of policy control in the world. While political empires, sometimes acting through chartered corporations, maintained feudal, medieval or imperial control, MNCs now exist with a neo-feudal control over much of the world.

What are Two Positive Aspects of Multinational Corporations?

While the Soviet Union was unable to develop an efficient centrally-planned economy in the long run, MNCs have mastered that task on a transnational scale.

Not that MNCs are the only organizational forms that can be capitalized to such an enormous extent, the fact that many of them enjoy access to billions of dollars of resources has allowed them to create effective research and development regimes that, despite negative consequences such development has on our ecology, have proven to be an organizational model that can be effective to accomplish tasks.

Finis

Loving Hating the "BC Free Press" Website

These folks are a riot.

In a March 2004 story on their website, I found this darling line, "BC is once again plunged into darkness by the NDP. They are fueled by a motivation not uncommon to terrorists - the fanatical belief they occupy a higher moral ground than everyone else."

I think by definition the political party at the opposite end of the spectrum from where you are is horrible, its ideology is flawed, they have a warped sense of human nature, and their values are inadequate. But I must say, regardles of whether the NDP does or does not actually believe they are morally superior to everyone else, if they were, they aren't therefore terrorists. Moral superiority may be a necessary condition for being a terrorist, but it is far from sufficient.

Silly rhetoric like this is dangerous. It must be stopped. As much as I abhor, for example, Gordon Campbell's neocon philosophy as morally lacking and societally toxic, he is far from a terrorist just because his morality leads him to enact neocon society-demeaning policy.

And I don't want to even get into the astoundingly sad comparison that the NDP beliefs are "fanatical" in any way remotely like suicide bombers or hijackers.

The email address of the unnamed editor of that website is editor@bcfreepress.bc.ca. Let "them" know if you think they're being irresponsible. And maybe suggest that they put their actual names on their site if they wish to display any integrity or be seen as credible.

Here's the whole article [with context] in case it evaporates off their website. It seems to have no permanent weblink. And as of today, none of their 2004 content is copyrighted. Whoops.

NDP READY TO PLUNGE B.C. BACK INTO DARKNESS

BC FREE PRESS, March 2004 - It's a toss-up. In recent memory, which is the sleaziest bunch to run a government? The federal Liberals or B.C.'s NDP? It depends how you define sleazy.

Jean Chretien's/Paul Martin's Liberals have probably pork-barreled more money to friends and insiders than all of Canada's combined provincial governments. The extent of federal corruption is enormous, and it will continue until Canadians decide to chance the devil they don't know rather than the devil they're sick of.

Previous NDP governments in BC were also very adept at pork-barreling and corruption, including cover-ups like the NCHS Bingo scandal where charities and nuns were ripped off.

But the NDP also bring a different kind of sleaze, best represented by Joy MacPhail's recent accusations against Liberal MLA Richard Stewart. These accusations were not spelled out, but were implied. They are of a highly personal nature, and have little or nothing to do with the running of government.

This is the kind of sleazy politics the NDP excel in. Slash and burn. It's not about policy or public business. It's about innuendo, speculation, rumour - character assassination. Joy MacPhail is a master at it - ruthless dissection of her opponent regardless of the harm to her target or her target's family. If the NDP's new Leader Carole James had any leadership qualities, she would have gone public with an apology and a statement that her party will not engage in that brand of politics. But instead, James continues to hide in the shadows like a jackal waiting to feed on wounded prey.

Only after feeling the heat from an appalled public and a threat of a lawsuit from Stewart, did MacPhail back off, offering a weak apology for her accusations. But not before enormous damage was done. Egged on by MacPhail, former Liberal MLA Elayne Brenzinger, now an independent, has also launched an attack on Stewart. Stewart is outraged and has promised to defend himself in the courts.

In the meantime, BC is once again plunged into darkness by the NDP. They are fueled by a motivation not uncommon to terrorists - the fanatical belief they occupy a higher moral ground than everyone else.

Take no prisoners. The end justifies the means - any means.

B.C. was an economic pariah for a decade under the previous NDP government. Joy MacPhail, Jenny Kwan, and Carole James are ready to send us back.

Finis

Paul Martin Will Be in No Rush for a New Election

Assuming the numbers hold and the NDP can supply support to a marginal Liberal minority government, I ponder how desperate Martin will be to buy off more votes to gain 25+ more seats for the Liberals. Not very.

With the only realistic threat to an eventual Liberal government being the Conservatives [about 60 seats away from a majority], Martin does not need to rush into a new election.

From a progressive's point of view, his ability to wait is a wonderful thing. The minority government itself better reflects the reality that the first-past-the-post electoral system is maimed and needing retirement. Jack Layton's well-founded desire for a national referendum on proportional representation will add to the obviousness for Canadians that we need an electoral alternative.

Paul Martin's email address is [still] pm@pm.gc.ca

Fair Vote Canada's website is still http://FairVoteCanada.org

Let's get busy!

Finis

Stephen Harper is Gordon Campbell in Paul Martin Clothing; Paul Martin is Gordon Campbell in Jack Layton Clothing

Joe Clark was right to describe Stephen Harper as dangerous. He's a neocon who wishes to undermine Canadian political sovereignty for harmonization with the United States and asserting economic freedoms over political democracy, thereby turning citizens into consumers. He supports the Washington Consensus of economics over democracy, including the 4 Horsemen of Structural Adjustment: Free Trade, Privatization, Deregulation and Foreign Direct Investment. He will do to Canada what Gordon Campbell has done to BC and what Klein and Harris perpetrated on Alberta and Ontario. But he pretends to be Paul Martin-ish in his concern for communities and "Canada".

Paul Martin is no better. As a neocon finance minister for most of the last decade he cut social services, downloaded expenses to provinces and municipalities by reducing transfer payments and dropped the Red Book commitment to address child poverty. Being a sweatshop-steamship owning millionaire globalization advocate doesn't help his likelihood of being a true man of social and economic compassion. He dresses himself up as one concerned for social good, but his track record is more like Stephen Harper's plan than Jack Layton's. Likely, if it weren't for more social and economic centrists in the Liberal caucus, Martin would have gotten away with far more neocon bullshit. An election mandate for him would be as disasterous as for Harper. And while Martin tried to scare everyone during the English debate last week that Harper wouldn't solve hospital waiting lists, the rest of the candidates who stated that Martin himself created that problem were quite accurate.

NDP or Greens or any ideologically progressive party. They are the only sound alternative. That and pushing for proportional representation in provincial and federal legislatures in the next election are our only real hope.

Finis

More Beheadings

Well, I was seriously hoping to be terribly wrong about suggesting the beheadings wouldn't stop at only one.

The PR value seems too alluring to refrain from this sustained terror campaign...because that's what it is: terrorism. You don't need to crash planes to terrorize a society.

Finis

Who ISN'T Iraq's New Interim President?

Perhaps it's a function of Al-Jezeera being Al-Jezeera, or perhaps it's just a diction or a translation issue, but in today's Al-Jezeera story about who actually is the Iraqi interim president--Sunni Muslim tribal chief Ghazi al-Yawir, it's instructive to note two items about w.Caesar's reputed choice--Adnan Pachachi.

The first point is the use of the word "accused": "In a press conference, Pachachi explained that he declined the offer of the post of Iraq's interim president after he was accused of being the candidate of the United States." [my emphasis] It would be interesting to see if in the original press conference he actually gave off the vibe that such an accusation felt like he was charged with knocking over a 7-11. That's how it reads in English anyway.

Pachachi continued, "It is a lie...that the Coalition Provisional Authority wanted to impose me as president." [my emphasis again] "Impose" sure sounds heavy-handed. So maybe Pachachi was wise to avoid appearing to be w.Caesar's lapdog in an occupied country that now actually has a slightly improved chance of being authentically self-determining now that there's a Sunni President along with a Kurd and a Shia holding vice-president posts in the new federalism.

Another report provides some background about why Pachachi--who is 81 years old--may be avoiding the job: "Pachachi came from a family that produced several top politicians over the past 50 years but has no power base in Iraq after more than 30 years in exile in the United Arab Emirates. His ties to the Americans did not help his standing among Iraqis frustrated by and distrustful of the occupation."

But then again, Pachachi was critical of w.Caesar's Fallujah debacle. Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut on that one.

Not Adnan Pachachi:

Finis

Getting Rid of the Toxicity in the White House

In preaching to the converted, or even w.Caesar supporters, it's always nice to have a clever piece of flash animation to reflect how toxic the White House occupant is.

Take a peek: http://flash.bushrecall.org/

Finis

Dasani Tap Water and Advertisements of Quality

I like water. A lot. I mean I really really like it. It tastes good. It keeps me alive. It's, dare I say, a human right, not to be commercialized or commodified so only those who earn enough money can buy it, not like the 3 billion or so people who live on less than a dollar a day.

This is why I don't like Dasani water. In part I don't like it because Coca-Cola owns it. But I also don't like it for the essence of it: privatized water. I'm not a fan.

Across the street is a bus stop with a large Dasani ad plastered on it. There's a delicious looking huge bottle of Dasani on the ad with some text, which includes this:

"It takes 14,000 years to filter water. (Who's got time for that?)"

Thankfully, Dasani does. They serve us. They provide us with water, the building block of life.

Unless, of course, you lived in England a few months ago. The following comes from an Alternet.org story from March 22, 2004, referencing another story in the Independent newspaper.

"The story begins with the debut of Dasani bottled water in the U.K. two weeks ago, accompanied by a massive Coke PR push labeling it "as pure as bottled water gets." Shortly thereafter, it was revealed that Coke's southeast London bottling plant was using tap water already renowned for its purity and marking up the price by some 300,000 percent."

Apparently, Dasani really doesn't seem to have the time to wait 14,000 years or long enough to do whatever magic they do to their water to justify selling it at a premium. And I know the England tap water incident is likely an anomaly, but seeing the bus ad just made me a bit sick.

Finis

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Beheadings

Right now, proportional responses aside [because they don't seem to fit much anymore when dealing with w.Caesar's regime], my only question is why would revenge killings just stop at one?

I suspect one act of revenge will not be the end of it.

Rumsfeld's dismissive, insulting, condescending minimization of his knowledge of American torture games while testifying before the Senate only fuels the will to vengeance.

Finis

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The Saudis, oil, and re-electing w.Caesar

Saudis urge OPEC to hike oil output: Oil minister seeks 1.5-million-barrel-a-day rise

So I saw Bob Woodward talking with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago. Of the many astounding things they discussed about w.Caesar, one stuck in my mind: how w.Caesar's buddy, Saudi ambassador to the USA, Prince Bandar [good friend of the Bush family for 3 decades], would ensure the Saudis increased the daily output of oil in time to reduce gas prices to spur the economy leading up to the US presidential election in November 2004.

It will be fascinating to watch the state of gas prices over the next 6 months, especially if the 1.5+ million barrels/day increase happens.

God bless America, and their Saudi financiers. What 9/11 hijackers? Huh?

[[[addendum 05.11.04: this Tom Toles cartoon: ]]]

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George Monbiot's Career Advice for Idealistic Journalists and Those Who Want to Shake the World

Monbiot's pretty astounding.

As I was developing the whole Politics vein of dgiVista.org, I came across this Monbiot piece about how to be idealistic, free and really really useful in the world. When unsure about the direction I've been taking with this [whole] site [actually], I serendipitously read this piece.

The result? What you see here. And what you'll see in the future.

Finis

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Michael Moore and Disney: a Symbiotic Relationship?

Michael Moore announced yesterday that Disney will not allow its Miramax production arm to release Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" film:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2004-05-04

Today, the New York Times editorial page took Moore's side:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2004-05-06

This is no big surprise. Big corporate interests owning big media and censoring big criticism.

Moore's books have gained from viral marketing, particularly when Stupid White Men was "held up" by its publisher. Disney's move is, from a cynical market perspective, merely good for business: for Moore and ultimately Disney itself...creating a kind of symbiotic relationship between Moore and Disney [if you want to be that cynical]. Moore's comments at the end of The Corporation indicate that he knows full well that big media only releases his books and movies for their bottom line, completely regardless of the fact that the core theme of Moore's work has been the corruption and danger of corporate pillage.

One thing that is quite odd about this move, though, is that much of what Moore's film documents has already been reported in North American media. The Bush family links to Saudi billionaires and bin Ladens, the evacuation of the bin Laden family out of the USA in the days after 9/11 with permission from the Oval Office: these have been reported enough that actually, I'm wondering just what new information will actually be in Moore's film.

And the beat goes on.

Finis

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Why we should REALLY fear the United States of America

May 6, 2004
editor@adbusters.org

Dear Editor,

Tess Rheinhardt's analysis of why the unilateralist USA abhors the multilateralist International Criminal Court in Issue #53 is quite poignant. But the "legality of their [the USA's] rampage through history" would not actually be on trial at the ICC because this international court does not have retroactive jurisdiction. No retroactive jurisdiction is designed in part to encourage past pariah states to reform and commit to good global behaviour in the future. So what is even more terrifying than what Rheinhardt brings up is that in rejecting the ICC, the United States of America is intentionally not pledging to cease war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in the future.

Further, though actually signing the Rome Statute to create the ICC, under w.Caesar, the USA went so far as to declare their unsigning of that document in an effort to assert immunity from the ICC. The USA has also enacted legislation asserting their right to retrieve nationals from the ICC, with military force if necessary. This "Hague Invasion Act"--as it is being called--is a unwaveringly bold assertion of how little esteem the USA holds for the rest of the world.

peace,

stephen buckley.

[See the July/August 2004 Adbusters issue for this letter.]

Finis

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Rumsfeld Apologizes for Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners...No Wait, He Doesn't

God forbid Donald Rumsfeld actually apologizes for US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. Jim Garamone from the American Forces Press Service certainly interpreted Rumsfeld's comments as an apology.

Then Garamone sent out an email with the press release declaring a major moral statement from the US Secretary of War. The beginning of that email is below.

Then 4 hours and 18 minutes later, Garamone sends an amended press release, eradicating the apology. The beginning of that email is also below. The amended press release is the only one archived on the Pentagon's website. Email me if you would like to see the entire original email.

Rumsfeld was not apologizing. He was only saying that seeing the photos of those abuses would make any American apologetic. I guess just not him though.

=====
The first email, with the Rumsfeld apology begins like this:

Rumsfeld Apologizes to Iraqi Victims of Prison Abuse

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 5, 2004 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld apologized today to Iraqis abused by American prison guards in Abu Ghraib.

"Any American who sees the photographs that we've seen has to feel apologetic to the Iraqi people who were abused and recognize that that is something that is unacceptable and certainly un-American," Rumsfeld said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

The secretary left open the door that compensation could be paid to the abuse victims.

=====
The second email, without a direct apology begins like this:

Prison Abuse 'Unacceptable, Un-American', Rumsfeld Says

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 5, 2004 - "Any American who sees the photographs that we've seen has to feel apologetic to the Iraqi people who were abused and recognize that that is something that is unacceptable and certainly un-American," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today.

Rumsfeld discussed the alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees by American guards at Abu Ghraib prison on ABC TV's "Good Morning America." The secretary left open the door that compensation could be paid to the abuse victims.

Finis

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We are Securing Fallujah=We are Leaving Fallujah

w.Caesar is doing well with the doublespeak.

Yesterday, when asked about Fallujah, he said they were commited to securing the town despite the resistance.

Q Mr. President, is it going to take an all out military offensive to put down the insurgency in Fallujah? And can you really have a successful transfer of power in 60 days if Iraq is wracked by violence?

PRESIDENT BUSH: ... Our commanders on the ground have got the authorities necessary to take action to help the Iraqi people realize a free and peaceful society. And what you must realize is happening in a place like Fallujah is, the closer we come to passing sovereignty, the more likely it is that foreign fighters, disgruntled Baathists or friends of the Shia cleric will try to stop progress. That's what's happening. They want to kill innocent life to try to get us to quit. And we're not going to. And our military commanders will take whatever action is necessary to secure Fallujah on behalf of the Iraqi people. [the emphasis is mine]

Meanwhile, the US Marines are bugging out of Fallujah itself, leaving a former Saddam general and 1100 Iraqi soldiers to form the Fallujah Protective Army.

I guess it's better to let Iraqis die securing a dangerous town. It's been a tough month already with more US troops/"contractors"/mercenaries killed [126 and counting] in April than during the entire "war" last spring. It's been tough on the Iraqis too, ten times tougher actually [1200 deaths and counting].

As much as this isn't a Vietnam for the USA, it's looking more and more that without an exit strategy, with corporate pillaging, and with no sovereign body in place yet to receive control of the country in two months, w.Caesar is writing off Iraq to entrenched civil war, which oddly may severely cost his corporate buddies hoping for a stable economy to rape.

Perhaps the only arena w.Caesar can control is the oval office, like today with the 9/11 commission in there. Without cameras. Without an official transcript. Without an audience or any public accountability. And most importantly without having to speak under oath.

It's a true testament to the actual state of democracy that people still trust w.Caesar. Stunning.

Finis

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Rogue Teachers

Emblazened on the cover of The Province newspaper rag on April 23, 2004 was the headline [which could hardly have been larger] "Rogue Teachers Will Be Exposed."

The Province has never in my lifetime presented itself as a bastion of journalistic integrity. Owned by CanWest [along with the Vancouver Sun, the National Post, Global BC TV, Canada.com], The Province enjoys flogging the neo-con agenda of privatizing the commons: public health care, education, assets.

And teachers, aren't they such awful people. Rogue teachers threaten the safety of our province's schoolchildren. The article was a review of disciplinary measures conducted by the BC College of Teachers.

Granted, there are some teachers in BC public schools who have been accused of illegal and immoral activities. Less than two dozen by my count in the last year.

Out of 43,000 teachers in BC, that's a whopping 0.056%.

Even just one teacher who behaves criminally or immorally is not acceptable, but such a low percentage reflects virtually statistically insignificant numbers, making the sensationalism of The Province's gigantic headine unwarranted. But the headline is also a worry because of the word 'rogue'. That word these days in public circles is usually used to refer to states: rogue nations who flaunt global order and peace, nations run by psychopaths or terrorists. We think of Libya, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, the USA, nations that don't mind being so far out of the norms of civilized countries that they are to be feared, isolated and eventually attack and pulverized to wipe out their deadly threat.

Rogue teachers, indeed. Let the demonization continue. It sure makes it easier to privatize the public education system when corporate media can paint teachers [about 1/20th of 1% of them, anyway] as moral degenerates. Keep the headlines big. They're scarier that way.

Finis

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The US Navy: Champions of Earth Day

I wish I were in the United States for Earth Day yesterday so I could celebrate Earth Day with their navy, champions of environmental respect and preservation.

I just can't see an organization that sends its boats around the world powered by nuclear reactors to be hallmarks of environmentalism. They dump their waste into the bucket that is the earth's ecology and champion themselves when they remove eyedropperfulls of their filth: removing 1,700 tons of contaminated soil [who contaminated it in the first place?].

Instead, silly me, I spent the evening at a Utah Phillips show in Vancouver, a man with no shortage of creative criticisms of the assholes who run the United States Empire.

=====

No. 354-04
Apr 21, 2004
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Department of The Navy Celebrates Earth Day 2004

The Department of the Navy will join the nation in celebration of the 34th annual Earth Day on April 22nd. The Department's theme for Earth Day 2004 is "Celebrating Successful Partnerships," recognizing the extensive collaboration that takes place among Navy, Marine Corps, industry, government, academic, and nonprofit organizations to enable the sea services to accomplish the primary mission of national defense while safeguarding the natural environment.

"Earth Day presents an excellent opportunity to highlight the department's continued contributions to ensuring a sustainable environmental future," said Secretary of the Navy Gordon England. "Earth Day 2004 is an occasion for the Navy and Marine Corps to work with partnering organizations to re-emphasize our commitment to the environment in which we work and live, both in the U.S. and overseas."

Finis

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The Conservative Party Loves the Dalai Lama?

Truly, I love the Conservative Party of Canada. They're sure making full use of the policy immunity that comes from being in the opposition: just criticize and don't worry about how you would do just the same if you were in government.

I agree with Conservative Kenney's motion to grant honourary citizenship to the Dalai Lama [see press release below]. The Dalai Lama's a splendid guy. A bud who saw him and Desmond Tutu last week was truly moved not only by the Dalai Lama, but with the interaction between these two accomplished people.

But why did the motion fail? China was already pissed off that our PM PM would meet with the Dalai Lama. Granting honourary citizenship could hurt trade relations with that blessed huge new market of 1.1 billion. Who cares that they're a capitalist dictatorship. We make money from the Chinese so we can't piss them off quite that much. And our neo-con in liberal clothing, steamship-sweatshop-owning millionaire PM knows this all too well.

But what is truly entertaining is Kenney's feigned shock at seeing his motion defeated. He was "hard-pressed to understand how any MP, in any party could refuse to grant this honour to the Dalai Lama." Yeah. Right. The Conservative Party of Canada, known champion of global human rights [not so much], denouncer of global imperialism [even less so], would bestow this citizenship on the Dalai Lama if they were in goverment?

I wouldn't bet on it. As much as the Liberals, they would fear losing access to 1.1 billion Chinese we are training to be hyper-consumers.

Ah, the luxury of being the opposition.

=====

Jason Kenney, MP
Official Opposition Critic for Canada-US Relations

News Release

For Immediate Release
Thursday, April 22, 2004

Liberal Government Refuses to Honour Dalai Lama

Kenney Moves Honorary Citizenship for "Tibetan Freedom Fighter"

Ottawa - Liberal MPs in the House of Commons rejected a motion Thursday morning to give honorary Canadian citizenship to His Holiness the Dalai Lama moved by Conservative MP Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, AB).

"It's a shame," said Kenney. "The Dalai Lama has led a courageous, decades-long, non-violent struggle for freedom of conscience, human rights and self-determination in Tibet. This is an honour Parliament reserves for a few select people and, I believe, the Dalai Lama should be one of them. I am hard-pressed to understand how any MP, in any party could refuse to grant this honour to the Dalai Lama."

Kenney's motion enjoyed support from all parties. His co-sponsors included the Hon. David Kilgour, MP (Liberal, Edmonton-Southeast, AB), Francine Lalonde, MP (BQ, Mercier, QC) and Alexa McDonough, MP (NDP, Halifax, NS).

"The Dalai Lama is not just a Buddhist spiritual leader. He is a freedom fighter. His fight for the Tibetan people is a heroic example that inspires millions. The Liberal government blocked this motion and they need to explain to Canadians why the Dalai Lama is not worthy of this honour."

"This is sad evidence that the Liberals are more concerned with kowtowing to the Communist dictators in Beijing than supporting one of the world's great human rights heroes. This is the moral debasement of the Liberal Party of Canada," said Kenney.

The text of Mr. Kenney's motion was as follows:

"That this House, recognizing his great efforts to preserve the cultural and historical heritage of the Tibetan people using peaceful methods, agree that His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, be declared an honorary citizen of Canada."

- 30 -

For more information contact:

Jason Kenney, MP

613.992.2235

Finis

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