Or, like so many before him, driven mad by prophecy. The Guardian is reporting that when GW Bush was trying to sell the invasion of Iraq to the French, the Shrub was doing it by using screwy biblical prophecy: Gog and Magog. To quote Andrew Brown:
In the winter of 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair were frantically gathering support for their planned invasion, Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, was rung up by the Protestant Federation of France. They asked him to supply them with a summary of the legends surrounding Gog and Magog and as the conversation progressed, he realised that this had originally come, from the highest reaches of the French government.
President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding. But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer.
He explained that Gog and Magog were, to use theological jargon, crazy talk. They appear twice in the Old Testament, once as a name, and once in a truly strange prophecy in the book of Ezekiel[.]
And, of course, the story just gets stranger--as is typical when talking about the Bush II Whitehouse.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Ever wonder...
...what our governments get up to? I do. And Google has decided to post just how many requests and of what kind governments are making of them. I applaud the transparency, even as I remain suspicious of Google's motives.
A screengrab from Firefox, cropped with GImP
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
The Biggest Threat to the World: Canada
George Monbiot's latest column from the Guardian, which focuses on Canada and the tar sands, deserves to be reprinted in full. We must do better than this, and that starts with politicians with vision and purpose, unlike what we have now on either side of The House.
When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.
So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.
Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.
In 2006 the new Canadian government announced it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%.
It is now clear that Canada will refuse to be sanctioned for abandoning its legal obligations. The Kyoto protocol can be enforced only through goodwill: countries must agree to accept punitive future obligations if they miss their current targets. But the future cut Canada has volunteered is smaller than that of any other rich nation. Never mind special measures; it won't accept even an equal share. The Canadian government is testing the international process to destruction and finding that it breaks all too easily. By demonstrating that climate sanctions aren't worth the paper they're written on, it threatens to render any treaty struck at Copenhagen void.
After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks. The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world's 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th.
In June this year the media obtained Canadian briefing documents which showed the government was scheming to divide the Europeans. During the meeting in Bangkok in October, almost the entire developing world bloc walked out when the Canadian delegate was speaking, as they were so revolted by his bullying. Last week the Commonwealth heads of government battled for hours (and eventually won) against Canada's obstructions. A concerted campaign has now begun to expel Canada from the Commonwealth.
In Copenhagen next week, this country will do everything in its power to wreck the talks. The rest of the world must do everything in its power to stop it. But such is the fragile nature of climate agreements that one rich nation – especially a member of the G8, the Commonwealth and the Kyoto group of industrialised countries – could scupper the treaty. Canada now threatens the wellbeing of the world.
Why? There's a simple answer: Canada is developing the world's second largest reserve of oil. Did I say oil? It's actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals. The tar sands, most of which occur in Alberta, are being extracted by the biggest opencast mining operation on earth. An area the size of England, comprising pristine forests and marshes, will be be dug up – unless the Canadians can stop this madness. Already it looks like a scene from the end of the world: the strip-miners are creating a churned black hell on an unimaginable scale.
To extract oil from this mess, it needs to be heated and washed. Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil. The contaminated water is held in vast tailings ponds, some so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface. Most are unlined. They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers. The First Nations people living downstream have developed a range of exotic cancers and auto-immune diseases.
Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. The companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes. Alberta's tar sands operation is the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions. By 2020, if the current growth continues, it will produce more greenhouse gases than Ireland or Denmark. Already, thanks in part to the tar mining, Canadians have almost the highest per capita emissions on earth, and the stripping of Alberta has scarcely begun.
Canada hasn't acted alone. The biggest leaseholder in the tar sands is Shell, a company that has spent millions persuading the public that it respects the environment. The other great greenwasher, BP, initially decided to stay out of tar. Now it has invested in plants built to process it. The British bank RBS, 70% of which belongs to you and me (the government's share will soon rise to 84%), has lent or underwritten £8bn for mining the tar sands.
The purpose of Canada's assault on the international talks is to protect this industry. This is not a poor nation. It does not depend for its economic survival on exploiting this resource. But the tar barons of Alberta have been able to hold the whole country to ransom. They have captured Canada's politics and are turning this lovely country into a cruel and thuggish place.
Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of Neanderthals to trample over it. Timber firms were licensed to log the old-growth forest in Clayaquot Sound; fishing companies were permitted to destroy the Grand Banks: in both cases these get-rich-quick schemes impoverished Canada and its reputation. But this is much worse, as it affects the whole world. The government's scheming at the climate talks is doing for its national image what whaling has done for Japan.
I will not pretend that this country is the only obstacle to an agreement at Copenhagen. But it is the major one. It feels odd to be writing this. The immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world comes not from Saudi Arabia or Iran or China. It comes from Canada. How could that be true?
When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.
So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.
Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.
In 2006 the new Canadian government announced it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%.
It is now clear that Canada will refuse to be sanctioned for abandoning its legal obligations. The Kyoto protocol can be enforced only through goodwill: countries must agree to accept punitive future obligations if they miss their current targets. But the future cut Canada has volunteered is smaller than that of any other rich nation. Never mind special measures; it won't accept even an equal share. The Canadian government is testing the international process to destruction and finding that it breaks all too easily. By demonstrating that climate sanctions aren't worth the paper they're written on, it threatens to render any treaty struck at Copenhagen void.
After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks. The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world's 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th.
In June this year the media obtained Canadian briefing documents which showed the government was scheming to divide the Europeans. During the meeting in Bangkok in October, almost the entire developing world bloc walked out when the Canadian delegate was speaking, as they were so revolted by his bullying. Last week the Commonwealth heads of government battled for hours (and eventually won) against Canada's obstructions. A concerted campaign has now begun to expel Canada from the Commonwealth.
In Copenhagen next week, this country will do everything in its power to wreck the talks. The rest of the world must do everything in its power to stop it. But such is the fragile nature of climate agreements that one rich nation – especially a member of the G8, the Commonwealth and the Kyoto group of industrialised countries – could scupper the treaty. Canada now threatens the wellbeing of the world.
Why? There's a simple answer: Canada is developing the world's second largest reserve of oil. Did I say oil? It's actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals. The tar sands, most of which occur in Alberta, are being extracted by the biggest opencast mining operation on earth. An area the size of England, comprising pristine forests and marshes, will be be dug up – unless the Canadians can stop this madness. Already it looks like a scene from the end of the world: the strip-miners are creating a churned black hell on an unimaginable scale.
To extract oil from this mess, it needs to be heated and washed. Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil. The contaminated water is held in vast tailings ponds, some so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface. Most are unlined. They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers. The First Nations people living downstream have developed a range of exotic cancers and auto-immune diseases.
Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. The companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes. Alberta's tar sands operation is the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions. By 2020, if the current growth continues, it will produce more greenhouse gases than Ireland or Denmark. Already, thanks in part to the tar mining, Canadians have almost the highest per capita emissions on earth, and the stripping of Alberta has scarcely begun.
Canada hasn't acted alone. The biggest leaseholder in the tar sands is Shell, a company that has spent millions persuading the public that it respects the environment. The other great greenwasher, BP, initially decided to stay out of tar. Now it has invested in plants built to process it. The British bank RBS, 70% of which belongs to you and me (the government's share will soon rise to 84%), has lent or underwritten £8bn for mining the tar sands.
The purpose of Canada's assault on the international talks is to protect this industry. This is not a poor nation. It does not depend for its economic survival on exploiting this resource. But the tar barons of Alberta have been able to hold the whole country to ransom. They have captured Canada's politics and are turning this lovely country into a cruel and thuggish place.
Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of Neanderthals to trample over it. Timber firms were licensed to log the old-growth forest in Clayaquot Sound; fishing companies were permitted to destroy the Grand Banks: in both cases these get-rich-quick schemes impoverished Canada and its reputation. But this is much worse, as it affects the whole world. The government's scheming at the climate talks is doing for its national image what whaling has done for Japan.
I will not pretend that this country is the only obstacle to an agreement at Copenhagen. But it is the major one. It feels odd to be writing this. The immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world comes not from Saudi Arabia or Iran or China. It comes from Canada. How could that be true?
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Peak Oil
According to The Guardian:
The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.
The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.
The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.
Listen to an audio clip with Terry Macalister here.
A report by the UK Energy Research Council (UKERC) said worldwide production of conventionally extracted oil could "peak" and go into terminal decline before 2020.
The world has used less than half of the planet's conventionally extracted oil, but the remaining resources will be more difficult and expensive to get out of the ground, slowing production and increasing prices of crude.
With exploitation of the world's reserves running at more than 80m barrels a day, even major new discoveries such as the oil fields recently found in the Gulf of Mexico by BP would only delay a peak by a few days or weeks, the report said as reported by The Guardian.
The report, from the Peak Oil group, warns that the problem of declining availability of oil will hit the UK earlier than generally expected - possibly within the next five years and as early as 2011. [Also reported in The Guardian]
We don't have any plans in place to deal with peak oil: in Canada, we import the oil we use, and export the oil we produce (leaving most of us feeling WTF?). We peak out, everything falls apart. Our government is in denial, our corporate heads seem to be suffering a complete meltdown,and the general public just doesn't want to know. Any wonder why I'm a bit despairing of our future?
Powered by ScribeFire.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Canada and the World
Even 20 months ago, no one knew what 350 meant, nor why it mattered. That's less than 2 years back. Then 10,000 year old ice sheets disappeared in the Arctic, Stephen Harper got a north of 60 hard-on, the IPCC released a report based on data that was already out of date (some of it a decade out of date), and a book detailing how James Hansen's work was censored came out. We shook our collective head, and some of us began to realize that we had entered what James Kunstler has called The Long Emergency.
It didn't take long to realize that 350 was the upper limit of atmospheric CO2 that could be considered "safe" (meaning that we might be able to keep global warming to 2°C and we might be able to live with the consequences of that rise), and here we are today looking at 390 ppm of carbon dioxide, no significant efforts being made to reduce carbon emissions, and a future that's looking at a minimum of 4°C warming and 6 metres of sea level rise--meanwhile emissions continue to increase and atmospheric CO2 rises at about 2ppm/year.
Here in Canada, we've got a Conservative government that is lead by a Prime Minister who still yet to convince anyone that he actually believes global warming may be a problem. Stephen "American Corporate Lackey" Harper is busy fiddling while the globe--including the nation of which he is nominally a member--burns. All our divorced-from-reality leader can see is the NorthWest Passage opening up and all that lovely ocean open to commercial exploitation.
Last week, the British Meteorological Office released a map of what we can expect to happen when we hit 4°C. The equatorial countries will get hotter, true, but the further you get from the equator, the more extreme the changes. But even now, Environment Minister Jim Prentice wants special treatment for Canada, allowing us--well, really just Alberta and the oil sands--to continue increasing our GHG emissions, while insisting that developing nations like China and India agree to hard caps that we ourselves will not accept. And the Canadian Government still refuses to release specifics of its plan to reduce our GHG emissions by 20% from our 2006 levels--which is light-years from our commitment under Kyoto.
Today comes the release of a new report. Quite unlike anything released in Canada before, it was financed by the Toronto Dominion Bank, produced by the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation, with economic modeling by the well-respected economic consultants, M.K. Jaccard and Associates Inc. As John Ibbitson writes in the Globe and Mail; "A major bank has paid two environmental organizations to produce a groundbreaking report that, for the first time, calculates the costs of both the Harper government's modest plans to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and the much more ambitious targets set by the environmental community, nationally and regionally."
The report offers a regional breakdown of economic impacts based on both the Harper government's vague commitment to 20% by 2020 (from 2006 levels) and the impact from the deeper and harder cuts that environmentalists are calling for and that would put Canada in line with our international obligations. And guess what? Neither scenario would kill us!
According to the report,"The Conservative government's goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 can be achieved, but only by limiting growth in Alberta and Saskatchewan." Alberta's growth would be 8.5% less in 2020 than it would be under a BAU (Business As Usual) approach, the report concludes. Under the same scenario, Saskatchewan would lose 2.8% of its projected growth. Central Canada, on the other hand, might well see some additional growth added to its projection. To quote Shawn McCarthy's article in the G&M; "Despite the steep costs involved in meeting targets, the analysis concludes the Canadian economy would continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace, and that investment in renewable energy and efficiency measures would result in an overall increase in employment compared to a “business-as-usual” scenario.
And even with the significant reduction in Alberta's potential growth and employment prospects, the province would still lead the country economically over the next 10 years."
So our economy would continue to grow AND there would probably be an increase in employment as well. And the cost? A reduction in projected growth an Alberta and Saskatchewan, and a significant out-migration from both provinces back to central Canada.
To further quote Shawn McCarthy's article: "TD's chief economist, Don Drummond, said the bank has not endorsed any targets, though it has supported a policy of a national emissions cap. He said the bank's interest was to shed light on an area where there has been little informed debate: the likely cost of imposing regulations."
I'm actually not seeing any real downside here. The Globe and Mail editorial board does though. In today's editorial, we read: "[T]he study acknowledges that what is proposed is no less than an economic upheaval: “There is a migration of capital and labour out of carbon and trade exposed sectors (e.g., fossil fuels) to sectors that are less carbon and trade exposed (e.g., manufacturing, services and renewable electricity).”
Canada cannot take its national unity for granted and must not, in the service of international obligations, allow itself to be immolated by a government policy of such wrenching dislocation." And the editorial concludes: "[T]he target [of carbon dioxide emission reduction] may be unreachable without unacceptable damage to Canada's economy and national unity. In which case, it is time for new targets, and new policies."
I can't help but think that no-one raised much of a stink about the "wrenching dislocation" caused by the development of the oil sands on the communities of Atlantic Canada. And even Jeffrey Simpson concludes that the Harper government's targets are just so much smoke being blown up our collective asses.
And so we have serious economic modelling of the potential and problems with trying to meet our international obligations regarding global warming and CO2 emissions. And we can now point to the report and say, "Tough, yes. But it won't kill us, and will probably make us stronger." And what of the complaints sure to come from the political and ruling classes of Alberta and Saskatchewan? Well, both provinces have had a great decade, with both provinces posting significant surpluses in their budgets, and neither has done a damn thing to prepare for the inevitable crash (particularly Alberta under Ralph Klein). For Alberta, that's two oil-based booms they've pissed away under Conservative governments. So honestly, I have no great sympathy for the Alberta government. And regardless of any future whining, we can look at the economic model contained in the M.K. Jaccard and Associates Inc. report, and read again the conclusion that "even with the significant reduction in Alberta's potential growth and employment prospects, the province would still lead the country economically over the next 10 years." And the planet (well, the human part of it) would thank us for facing up to our responsibilities.
It didn't take long to realize that 350 was the upper limit of atmospheric CO2 that could be considered "safe" (meaning that we might be able to keep global warming to 2°C and we might be able to live with the consequences of that rise), and here we are today looking at 390 ppm of carbon dioxide, no significant efforts being made to reduce carbon emissions, and a future that's looking at a minimum of 4°C warming and 6 metres of sea level rise--meanwhile emissions continue to increase and atmospheric CO2 rises at about 2ppm/year.
Here in Canada, we've got a Conservative government that is lead by a Prime Minister who still yet to convince anyone that he actually believes global warming may be a problem. Stephen "American Corporate Lackey" Harper is busy fiddling while the globe--including the nation of which he is nominally a member--burns. All our divorced-from-reality leader can see is the NorthWest Passage opening up and all that lovely ocean open to commercial exploitation.
Last week, the British Meteorological Office released a map of what we can expect to happen when we hit 4°C. The equatorial countries will get hotter, true, but the further you get from the equator, the more extreme the changes. But even now, Environment Minister Jim Prentice wants special treatment for Canada, allowing us--well, really just Alberta and the oil sands--to continue increasing our GHG emissions, while insisting that developing nations like China and India agree to hard caps that we ourselves will not accept. And the Canadian Government still refuses to release specifics of its plan to reduce our GHG emissions by 20% from our 2006 levels--which is light-years from our commitment under Kyoto.
Today comes the release of a new report. Quite unlike anything released in Canada before, it was financed by the Toronto Dominion Bank, produced by the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation, with economic modeling by the well-respected economic consultants, M.K. Jaccard and Associates Inc. As John Ibbitson writes in the Globe and Mail; "A major bank has paid two environmental organizations to produce a groundbreaking report that, for the first time, calculates the costs of both the Harper government's modest plans to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and the much more ambitious targets set by the environmental community, nationally and regionally."
The report offers a regional breakdown of economic impacts based on both the Harper government's vague commitment to 20% by 2020 (from 2006 levels) and the impact from the deeper and harder cuts that environmentalists are calling for and that would put Canada in line with our international obligations. And guess what? Neither scenario would kill us!
According to the report,"The Conservative government's goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 can be achieved, but only by limiting growth in Alberta and Saskatchewan." Alberta's growth would be 8.5% less in 2020 than it would be under a BAU (Business As Usual) approach, the report concludes. Under the same scenario, Saskatchewan would lose 2.8% of its projected growth. Central Canada, on the other hand, might well see some additional growth added to its projection. To quote Shawn McCarthy's article in the G&M; "Despite the steep costs involved in meeting targets, the analysis concludes the Canadian economy would continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace, and that investment in renewable energy and efficiency measures would result in an overall increase in employment compared to a “business-as-usual” scenario.
And even with the significant reduction in Alberta's potential growth and employment prospects, the province would still lead the country economically over the next 10 years."
So our economy would continue to grow AND there would probably be an increase in employment as well. And the cost? A reduction in projected growth an Alberta and Saskatchewan, and a significant out-migration from both provinces back to central Canada.
To further quote Shawn McCarthy's article: "TD's chief economist, Don Drummond, said the bank has not endorsed any targets, though it has supported a policy of a national emissions cap. He said the bank's interest was to shed light on an area where there has been little informed debate: the likely cost of imposing regulations."
I'm actually not seeing any real downside here. The Globe and Mail editorial board does though. In today's editorial, we read: "[T]he study acknowledges that what is proposed is no less than an economic upheaval: “There is a migration of capital and labour out of carbon and trade exposed sectors (e.g., fossil fuels) to sectors that are less carbon and trade exposed (e.g., manufacturing, services and renewable electricity).”
Canada cannot take its national unity for granted and must not, in the service of international obligations, allow itself to be immolated by a government policy of such wrenching dislocation." And the editorial concludes: "[T]he target [of carbon dioxide emission reduction] may be unreachable without unacceptable damage to Canada's economy and national unity. In which case, it is time for new targets, and new policies."
I can't help but think that no-one raised much of a stink about the "wrenching dislocation" caused by the development of the oil sands on the communities of Atlantic Canada. And even Jeffrey Simpson concludes that the Harper government's targets are just so much smoke being blown up our collective asses.
And so we have serious economic modelling of the potential and problems with trying to meet our international obligations regarding global warming and CO2 emissions. And we can now point to the report and say, "Tough, yes. But it won't kill us, and will probably make us stronger." And what of the complaints sure to come from the political and ruling classes of Alberta and Saskatchewan? Well, both provinces have had a great decade, with both provinces posting significant surpluses in their budgets, and neither has done a damn thing to prepare for the inevitable crash (particularly Alberta under Ralph Klein). For Alberta, that's two oil-based booms they've pissed away under Conservative governments. So honestly, I have no great sympathy for the Alberta government. And regardless of any future whining, we can look at the economic model contained in the M.K. Jaccard and Associates Inc. report, and read again the conclusion that "even with the significant reduction in Alberta's potential growth and employment prospects, the province would still lead the country economically over the next 10 years." And the planet (well, the human part of it) would thank us for facing up to our responsibilities.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Third World -- and why we shouldn't say it.
Interesting post here on why "third world" is a politically loaded term. I mostly agree with the author, but dislike the suggested alternative "developing world"; which harbors connotations of an inherent backwardness of other cultures and the assumption that over time they will become little clones of Western cultures, which is in my view similarly reprehensible usage. A commentator on the post suggests the phrase "majority world" to describe nonWestern cultures, which both more accurate and more interesting....
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Yes Men
It looked – at first – eerily like a routine news event. A man in a nondescript dark suit standing at a podium in one of the smaller meeting rooms on the 13th floor of the National Press Club. But then suddenly it wasn't.
"There is only one way to do business and that is to pass a climate bill quickly so this December President Obama can go to Copenhagen and negotiate with a strong position," said the speaker – who said he represented the US Chamber of Commerce.
The statement represented a complete repudiation of the Chamber's earlier opposition to climate change legislation. The hard line had triggered walk-outs from Apple and a handful of other high-profile companies in the past few weeks.From the Guardian Newspaper, who are reporting that the news conference was later boken up by an actual member of the US Chamber of Commerce screaming that it was all a hoax. This is typical of the Yes Men, who famously held a news conference claiming to be Dow Chemical and taking full responsibility for the Bhopal disaster, and promising to care for anyone injured in the incident. Dow lost $2bn off its share price and was later forced to announce that it was doing nothing of the kind. And, as with the Dow story, the Guardian reports: "And while a number of reporters still pressed Wohlschlegel for signs of a shift in the Chamber's position, he soon set them straight. The Chamber was as opposed to climate change legislation as ever."
Powered by ScribeFire.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Power Shift
I cannot remember the last time I (or anyone I know) had this much fun at a climate change rally. (The video will start automatically). Without this sense of joy and energy, we're going to get nowhere, and that isn't something we can afford. Without those of us in middle age with our "respectability" and (more importantly) dollars and commitment, things will be difficult. But without this kind of joy and energy, things will be impossible.
Great social movements arise in a sense of fear and excitement; from the sense of taking control of power and realizing that it's in each of us. It's a scary and exciting place to be. There's a sense of comradeship, of shared joy, that suddenly we really are all in this together.And for some reason, grim death marches don't really attract the crowds, the popular support, that you'd expect.
We need more of this; more dancing, more laughing, more joy. Greenpeace continues to draw people because there's always the chance to get arrested--as the protesters in Fort McMurray showed in mid-September.
(image from the CBC website)
Protesters from Greenpeace occupied two dump
trucks and unfurled a banner on the ground at Shell's
Albian Sands oilsands site in northern Alberta Tuesday.
(Greenpeace)
Great social movements arise in a sense of fear and excitement; from the sense of taking control of power and realizing that it's in each of us. It's a scary and exciting place to be. There's a sense of comradeship, of shared joy, that suddenly we really are all in this together.And for some reason, grim death marches don't really attract the crowds, the popular support, that you'd expect.
We need more of this; more dancing, more laughing, more joy. Greenpeace continues to draw people because there's always the chance to get arrested--as the protesters in Fort McMurray showed in mid-September.
(image from the CBC website)
Protesters from Greenpeace occupied two dump
trucks and unfurled a banner on the ground at Shell's
Albian Sands oilsands site in northern Alberta Tuesday.
(Greenpeace)
Powered by ScribeFire.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Backlash
Yup, we all need that good old CO2. What did we really expect? That Oil company execs would think that a threat to the planet might override a threat to their corporate profits? Not gonna happen. And it isn't surprising that this comes out of Amerika. After all, the Guardian reported on 28 September 2009 :
US ignorance about the risks and reality of global warming could sink hopes of a new global deal to control greenhouse gas emissions at December's climate talks in Copenhagen, an advisor to the German government has said.
Professor John Schellnhuber, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said the US was "climate illiterate" and that the rest of the world may be forced to agree a new deal without it.
"Nobody should dream of the possibility that numbers and targets for countries will be sealed in Copenhagen," said Schellnhuber, one of the world's foremost climate scientists. "If the US doesn't move then nothing will happen."
He added: "The US in a sense is climate illiterate. It is a deeper problem in the US, if you look at global polls about what the public knows about climate change. Even in Brazil and China, you have more people who know the problem, who think that deep cuts in emissions are needed."
Monday, September 07, 2009
Monday, June 08, 2009
More Bailouts
So, someone explain the Canadian GM bailout package to me. $10 billion dollars to 'save' a company building cars nobody wants to buy.
I thought the conservatives believed in capitalism? Isn't the whole point of capitalism and the free market that competition ensures quality and efficiency by weeding out inefficient producers of crap? Isn't the whole point of recessions to clear out the deadwood? What is the point of Adam Smith's invisible hand punishing GM if the government comes and props it up? They won't give welfare to the poor because that would be interfering in the market place, but 10 billion to GM is okay. What am I missing?
To prop up a manufacturing industry in a post-industrial age. Why are we investing 10 billion dollars in an outdated, polluting industry that we need to ban to save the planet from global warming? The fact that GM is failing is telling us that the industrial sector is done. That's not what the economy is about any more. We might as well be investing in buggy whip plants as gasoline engine cars. I could see 10 billion investment in nano tech because that might help keep Canada abreast of developments in nano tech; or genetics or synthetic biology or etc. But investing in an industry thats done?
Not that you can refer to it as 'investing', because Harper was uncharacteristically up front that tax payers will never see most of that money back. I had thought that it was about saving jobs, and I get that from time to time governments may need to step in to stimulate employment etc. But it looks like GM is getting to cut their workforce too.
10 billion dollars. Deficit spending, Borrowed money. We'll be paying not just the 10 billion but the interest on the 10 billion. And for what. To shore up a doomed industry.
What if that were invested in education? In post-secondary training in nano or genetics or any of the other emerging tech. Or research. Or the arts. $10 billion would feed an army of Canadian artists, film makers, writers. 10 billion works out to what, a living wage for about 250,000 writers/artists/etc. Can you imagine what a quarter million writers could accomplish? Even if only one in a thousand became an international best seller, that's still another 250 Canadian authors contributing to world culture, putting Canada no the map, and bringing in revenue and tax dollars. 250 new Margret Atwoods.
If that money was used to launch a quarter million writers, even if only half of them ever got published, and only a half of those ever wrote a second book, that still means 75,000 new writer. Selling books. Paying taxes, paying back, over the lifetime of their writing careers, the full amount of the initial investment, plus a significant return on investment. Non polluting, sustainable renewable resource development.
But no, we throw the money into a black hole where no return on investment is anticipated...
And on a related issue, here's that Canadian Guy talking about bank bailouts:
I thought the conservatives believed in capitalism? Isn't the whole point of capitalism and the free market that competition ensures quality and efficiency by weeding out inefficient producers of crap? Isn't the whole point of recessions to clear out the deadwood? What is the point of Adam Smith's invisible hand punishing GM if the government comes and props it up? They won't give welfare to the poor because that would be interfering in the market place, but 10 billion to GM is okay. What am I missing?
To prop up a manufacturing industry in a post-industrial age. Why are we investing 10 billion dollars in an outdated, polluting industry that we need to ban to save the planet from global warming? The fact that GM is failing is telling us that the industrial sector is done. That's not what the economy is about any more. We might as well be investing in buggy whip plants as gasoline engine cars. I could see 10 billion investment in nano tech because that might help keep Canada abreast of developments in nano tech; or genetics or synthetic biology or etc. But investing in an industry thats done?
Not that you can refer to it as 'investing', because Harper was uncharacteristically up front that tax payers will never see most of that money back. I had thought that it was about saving jobs, and I get that from time to time governments may need to step in to stimulate employment etc. But it looks like GM is getting to cut their workforce too.
10 billion dollars. Deficit spending, Borrowed money. We'll be paying not just the 10 billion but the interest on the 10 billion. And for what. To shore up a doomed industry.
What if that were invested in education? In post-secondary training in nano or genetics or any of the other emerging tech. Or research. Or the arts. $10 billion would feed an army of Canadian artists, film makers, writers. 10 billion works out to what, a living wage for about 250,000 writers/artists/etc. Can you imagine what a quarter million writers could accomplish? Even if only one in a thousand became an international best seller, that's still another 250 Canadian authors contributing to world culture, putting Canada no the map, and bringing in revenue and tax dollars. 250 new Margret Atwoods.
If that money was used to launch a quarter million writers, even if only half of them ever got published, and only a half of those ever wrote a second book, that still means 75,000 new writer. Selling books. Paying taxes, paying back, over the lifetime of their writing careers, the full amount of the initial investment, plus a significant return on investment. Non polluting, sustainable renewable resource development.
But no, we throw the money into a black hole where no return on investment is anticipated...
And on a related issue, here's that Canadian Guy talking about bank bailouts:
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Bailing out the Auto Sector
There's a lot of grief about bailing out the Big Three automakers in North America. Some of it centres on the fact that they've been making vehicles no one wants anymore (think about the Hummer and the F-series (200 and up) trucks. But most of the rage is based on the deals that the UAW have extracted from the Big Three; vacation time, overtime, and base-rates all seem to be freaking people out.
The problem with this rage is that it's seriously misplaced. Yes, there is a cost associated with building automobiles, and the numbers I've seen range from $65-$80/hr. Now that's all the labour associated costs related to auto manufacturing, although the people doing the screaming seem to think that this is $/hr in the worker's own pockets. It's not. And while the hour costs of car assembly are high, they are not really that far out of line.
Margret Wente in her Globe and Mail column of 12 March 2009 (p. A15), actually acknowledges her bias against the autoworkers--as well as health workers and municipal workers with the GTA--its that they get more than she does, that their union has extracted significant gains for their workers and hers hasn't. This seems to be common to most of the people doing the yelling about what autoworkers get paid--"they're just assembly plant workers and they get paid way more than me, get better pensions than me, get more vacation time than me, and I deserve better than them!"
Maybe they do. But from the quality of their analysis, I doubt it.
We acknowledge that manufacturing has been the way out of the working class and into the lower middle class for millions of working people--we just hate to acknowledge that a great deal of that social mobility has been because of a strong union movement. One of the most significant engines of Canadian prosperity has been the gains made by the UAW--because they spill over into the rest of the workforce. The Postal workers did the same, as well as the rest of the union movement in North America. Envy of these gains, as in Margret Wente's column, is an ugly thing, but its still easier than actually doing something to improve your own lot--like organizing, taking the beatings and killings from the owner-hired Pinkertons, and fighting for tomorrow even more than fighting for yourself. That's what the union movement has done, and all workers are the beneficiaries of their work.
Are cars more expensive than they need to be? Yes. And are the Big Three in trouble? Yes. But is it the fault of the unions? Not really. Assembly line workers build cars, they don't get the chance to design them, decide on profit margins, or decide which models will go into production. And let's be frank, for every stupid thing the UAW has done, the Big Three have made a couple of hundred stupid decisions--usually driven by short-term ROI needs rather than long-term sense.
Because it hasn't been the Detroit automakers that have driven the general rising level of prosperity in North America, its been the guys and gals making the damn cars, earning a decent buck, that have gone on to spend those dollars on other things like houses, furniture, food, vacations, and the like, that have spread the money around. Decently paid workers can afford to pay other workers decently.
Many of the Big Three's problems stem from other sources. For example, Saturn showed that it was going to be nearly impossible to rebuild car manufacturing in North America under the current financial/trade/political regime. Setting up a new line was simply too expensive compared to what could be done in other parts of the world under an aggressive free trade structure. So the assembly lines have aged, become less efficient, and are too expensive to upgrade at his point. Big capital doesn't see the return on investment (ROI) necessary to fix the problem--particularly with a global free trade environment. This parallels the problems faced by the British Empire at the end of its globe-spanning life. The wealth-generating heart of the empire had aged and become less productive and with free trade, the investment paid better if made overseas rather than at home. So big money made the sensible decision and Britain watched its trade deficit increase yearly and the country collapsed on on itself, hollowed out and emptied of wealth. The logic was unassailable--and unavoidable.
The problem with this rage is that it's seriously misplaced. Yes, there is a cost associated with building automobiles, and the numbers I've seen range from $65-$80/hr. Now that's all the labour associated costs related to auto manufacturing, although the people doing the screaming seem to think that this is $/hr in the worker's own pockets. It's not. And while the hour costs of car assembly are high, they are not really that far out of line.
Margret Wente in her Globe and Mail column of 12 March 2009 (p. A15), actually acknowledges her bias against the autoworkers--as well as health workers and municipal workers with the GTA--its that they get more than she does, that their union has extracted significant gains for their workers and hers hasn't. This seems to be common to most of the people doing the yelling about what autoworkers get paid--"they're just assembly plant workers and they get paid way more than me, get better pensions than me, get more vacation time than me, and I deserve better than them!"
Maybe they do. But from the quality of their analysis, I doubt it.
We acknowledge that manufacturing has been the way out of the working class and into the lower middle class for millions of working people--we just hate to acknowledge that a great deal of that social mobility has been because of a strong union movement. One of the most significant engines of Canadian prosperity has been the gains made by the UAW--because they spill over into the rest of the workforce. The Postal workers did the same, as well as the rest of the union movement in North America. Envy of these gains, as in Margret Wente's column, is an ugly thing, but its still easier than actually doing something to improve your own lot--like organizing, taking the beatings and killings from the owner-hired Pinkertons, and fighting for tomorrow even more than fighting for yourself. That's what the union movement has done, and all workers are the beneficiaries of their work.
Are cars more expensive than they need to be? Yes. And are the Big Three in trouble? Yes. But is it the fault of the unions? Not really. Assembly line workers build cars, they don't get the chance to design them, decide on profit margins, or decide which models will go into production. And let's be frank, for every stupid thing the UAW has done, the Big Three have made a couple of hundred stupid decisions--usually driven by short-term ROI needs rather than long-term sense.
Because it hasn't been the Detroit automakers that have driven the general rising level of prosperity in North America, its been the guys and gals making the damn cars, earning a decent buck, that have gone on to spend those dollars on other things like houses, furniture, food, vacations, and the like, that have spread the money around. Decently paid workers can afford to pay other workers decently.
Many of the Big Three's problems stem from other sources. For example, Saturn showed that it was going to be nearly impossible to rebuild car manufacturing in North America under the current financial/trade/political regime. Setting up a new line was simply too expensive compared to what could be done in other parts of the world under an aggressive free trade structure. So the assembly lines have aged, become less efficient, and are too expensive to upgrade at his point. Big capital doesn't see the return on investment (ROI) necessary to fix the problem--particularly with a global free trade environment. This parallels the problems faced by the British Empire at the end of its globe-spanning life. The wealth-generating heart of the empire had aged and become less productive and with free trade, the investment paid better if made overseas rather than at home. So big money made the sensible decision and Britain watched its trade deficit increase yearly and the country collapsed on on itself, hollowed out and emptied of wealth. The logic was unassailable--and unavoidable.
Friday, March 06, 2009
Explain it to me....
I'm becoming increasingly frustrated watching the massive bailouts to the auto industry etc. It just so damned wrong-headed. Forget the basic tenants of the free market which these same corporations preach whenever environmentalists or etc complain about their rapacious capitalism; forget about the fact that we're using tax payer money for private profit; forget that these welfare bums are demanding gobs of cash in return for nothing -- I'd be much more okay with handing over the cash to preserve a national presence in auto manufacturing IF in return the citizens get a couple of billion shares in the corporation (wasn't American built on the principle of 'no taxation without representation'?) -- forget all that. My problem is that we're propping up an industry whose time is over.
Why are we throwing gazillions into industry when we're a post-industrial society. John Bell explained this back in the 1970s, for heaven's sake. They're worried about saving jobs in a manufacturing industry, but the number of workers in the arts is significantly higher, and the jobs are more enjoyable, self-fulling, life-affirming, non-polluting, renewable resource -- why is no one trying to bail out the arts? Why do we think we need people to buy cars (polluting, global warming, road building tax drains that kill or maim thousands of drivers and pedestrians each month) but buying theater tickets or building art galleries is somehow wasteful. And talk about (as Harper did) art gallas -- but the car execs don't have galas, they have private jets; bankers have to have their salaries capped at $500,000 (not counting, if you read the fine print, stock options). We can't afford $10,000 grant to a Canadian magazine but we can give billions to auto manufacturing? To save a dying industry? The backwards looking boobies who have no vision and no leadership are trying to drive the ship of state in reverse. Let's go back to 1950, they seem to say, instead of figuring out how to aim for 2050. Might as well try to bail out blacksmiths and wheelwrights.
And wasn't the whole point of the exercise to save jobs? So how is it that these companies can lay off 35,000 workers at a go, AND still take the bailout money. If they aren't even going to preserve jobs (other than the execs who created the problems) what was the point of forking over the cash?
Let us instead look to Sweden. When GM went had in hand and demanded huge bailouts for Saab, the governments response was, why? If you're in trouble, it's because your cars suck. We can let you access some funds for R&D to design the transport of the future, but building more of the current model, not so much. Furthermore, what money we have is going into nursery schools, because that is our future competitive edge; and into elder care, because that is a massive growth industry, and because those citizens built what we have to day. In contrast to your executives, who screwed up a perfectly good car company when you bought it out. So get out.
The Sweds are putting their bailout money into the non-profit sector because it is the largest employer - many many times larger in Sweden and Canada than industry. And since most people in the non-profit sector work for a LOT less than autoworkers we can hire two or three nonprofit people for every autoworker laid off. And they are more interesting, rewarding, and socially necessary jobs. Hell, for the price of one executive, we could fund an entire town's worth of programs! The Sweds get this, and they are not going to have recession or unemployment to the same extent because there's tons of room to expand nonprofit -- no contracting market there.
Who do you think will be ahead economically in ten years? 50 years? Sweden or... will there even been a Canada in 50 years?
Why are we throwing gazillions into industry when we're a post-industrial society. John Bell explained this back in the 1970s, for heaven's sake. They're worried about saving jobs in a manufacturing industry, but the number of workers in the arts is significantly higher, and the jobs are more enjoyable, self-fulling, life-affirming, non-polluting, renewable resource -- why is no one trying to bail out the arts? Why do we think we need people to buy cars (polluting, global warming, road building tax drains that kill or maim thousands of drivers and pedestrians each month) but buying theater tickets or building art galleries is somehow wasteful. And talk about (as Harper did) art gallas -- but the car execs don't have galas, they have private jets; bankers have to have their salaries capped at $500,000 (not counting, if you read the fine print, stock options). We can't afford $10,000 grant to a Canadian magazine but we can give billions to auto manufacturing? To save a dying industry? The backwards looking boobies who have no vision and no leadership are trying to drive the ship of state in reverse. Let's go back to 1950, they seem to say, instead of figuring out how to aim for 2050. Might as well try to bail out blacksmiths and wheelwrights.
And wasn't the whole point of the exercise to save jobs? So how is it that these companies can lay off 35,000 workers at a go, AND still take the bailout money. If they aren't even going to preserve jobs (other than the execs who created the problems) what was the point of forking over the cash?
Let us instead look to Sweden. When GM went had in hand and demanded huge bailouts for Saab, the governments response was, why? If you're in trouble, it's because your cars suck. We can let you access some funds for R&D to design the transport of the future, but building more of the current model, not so much. Furthermore, what money we have is going into nursery schools, because that is our future competitive edge; and into elder care, because that is a massive growth industry, and because those citizens built what we have to day. In contrast to your executives, who screwed up a perfectly good car company when you bought it out. So get out.
The Sweds are putting their bailout money into the non-profit sector because it is the largest employer - many many times larger in Sweden and Canada than industry. And since most people in the non-profit sector work for a LOT less than autoworkers we can hire two or three nonprofit people for every autoworker laid off. And they are more interesting, rewarding, and socially necessary jobs. Hell, for the price of one executive, we could fund an entire town's worth of programs! The Sweds get this, and they are not going to have recession or unemployment to the same extent because there's tons of room to expand nonprofit -- no contracting market there.
Who do you think will be ahead economically in ten years? 50 years? Sweden or... will there even been a Canada in 50 years?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Groundhog Day
So the Governor General looked out her window this morning and saw her shadow.
That means at least six more weeks of a Harper government.
That means at least six more weeks of a Harper government.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Notes From a Constitutional Crisis Zone
In our system of parliamentary democracy, we do not elect a government; we elect a parliament. The government is formed when a group of members of the parliament can demonstrate that they have the support of the majority of the members to carry on a legislative agenda: to govern.
When the government no longer has the support of the parliament, the government falls and is replaced. The creation of a coalition of opposition parties to defeat and replace a sitting government is not illegitimate; it's how our system is meant to operate.
What it is, of course, is highly unusual in Canadian politics. Nothing like this has been done in the memory of most living Canadians. That doesn't make it illegal.
Canadians did not give Harper's Conservatives a mandate to run the country single-handedly. Canadians may be willing to let Harper sit in the driver's seat for a while, but after two elections they sure don't seem willing to let him have the keys on his own. Harper has spent the last three years forming coalitions; in a minority situation, the survival of his government has depended on it. Not one piece of his legislation could have passed the house without at least some opposition members voting along with the government. Harper may not have formed a formal coalition as the opposition has now done, but every piece of government business he presented to the House necessitated the forming of an ad hoc coalition with one of more opposition parties.
Harper's mistake is the age-old mistake of hubris. With Dion a lame-duck leader of the weakened Liberals, Harper believed he could push through with his damaging agenda, using a crisis to push through ideologically-driven economic measures.
Harper's economic statement originally proposed a three-year ban on the right of civil servants to strike, limits on the ability of women to sue for pay equity and eliminated subsidies for political parties. How does denying pay equity for women help stave off the effects of the worldwide economic meltdown? It doesn't, of course. It's just classic neo-conservative tactics -- use every chance to propel your ideological agenda. It's not about the economy, stupid; it's about using the economy to score every little political point you can.
Harper follows every page of the neo-con text book. He says one thing, but does another. Fixed election dates, anyone? He spent two years (and millions of dollars) on an ad campaign deriding Stephan Dion with personal attacks before the election was even called, despite his previous campaign promises on returning civility to politics. He accuses Dion of sharing power with seperatists, yet he and his party suck up to them in Quebec every chance they get. They have to, because that's the only group where he will get any support from in Quebec. His party has a long history of courting with the seperatists; it was Brian Mulroney's inability to control the seperatists MP in his Tory ranks that resulted in the formation of the Bloc.
In his acceptance speech this year, he said we work with the other parties in the House, yet his first economic announcement includes the cutting of party subsidies. How is this going to return civility to the House? Or more importantly, how does this help stimulate the economy when opposition parties have to lay-off low-level party workers during a recession? This is just petty nastiness.
And he lies, of course. He lies when he says that the coalition agreement was not signed in front of Canadian flags because of the presence of the separatist party (a lie - there were two Canadian flags). He lies when says he would never enter deals to govern the country with separatists. He signed a deal with the BQ to do just that in 2004, and his predecessor Stockwell Day arranged one with the BQ in 2000.
When confronted with criticism, he and his lackeys do not confront the issues, instead they issue personalize attacks on the messenger. How many Harper ads did you hear during the last campaign attacked Dion the person, yet how few did you hear actually debating the merits of Dion's proposals and presenting alternatives?
The crisis here is one of a reckless leader over-reaching for his dubious goals. It is a crisis of agenda, not process. You may argue that the Liberal/NDP coalition (with Bloc support) is fraught with dangers, and it is. They have matches and there's a lot of gasoline pooled about. But even that does not make their proposed actions any less legitimate.
And I'll take that over a leader who gives every indication of his intention to burn down the progressive house that we Canadians have spent 141 years building.
Percentage of Canadians who did not vote for Harper's Conservatives in the 2008 election: 62.4%
When the government no longer has the support of the parliament, the government falls and is replaced. The creation of a coalition of opposition parties to defeat and replace a sitting government is not illegitimate; it's how our system is meant to operate.
What it is, of course, is highly unusual in Canadian politics. Nothing like this has been done in the memory of most living Canadians. That doesn't make it illegal.
Canadians did not give Harper's Conservatives a mandate to run the country single-handedly. Canadians may be willing to let Harper sit in the driver's seat for a while, but after two elections they sure don't seem willing to let him have the keys on his own. Harper has spent the last three years forming coalitions; in a minority situation, the survival of his government has depended on it. Not one piece of his legislation could have passed the house without at least some opposition members voting along with the government. Harper may not have formed a formal coalition as the opposition has now done, but every piece of government business he presented to the House necessitated the forming of an ad hoc coalition with one of more opposition parties.
Harper's mistake is the age-old mistake of hubris. With Dion a lame-duck leader of the weakened Liberals, Harper believed he could push through with his damaging agenda, using a crisis to push through ideologically-driven economic measures.
Harper's economic statement originally proposed a three-year ban on the right of civil servants to strike, limits on the ability of women to sue for pay equity and eliminated subsidies for political parties. How does denying pay equity for women help stave off the effects of the worldwide economic meltdown? It doesn't, of course. It's just classic neo-conservative tactics -- use every chance to propel your ideological agenda. It's not about the economy, stupid; it's about using the economy to score every little political point you can.
Harper follows every page of the neo-con text book. He says one thing, but does another. Fixed election dates, anyone? He spent two years (and millions of dollars) on an ad campaign deriding Stephan Dion with personal attacks before the election was even called, despite his previous campaign promises on returning civility to politics. He accuses Dion of sharing power with seperatists, yet he and his party suck up to them in Quebec every chance they get. They have to, because that's the only group where he will get any support from in Quebec. His party has a long history of courting with the seperatists; it was Brian Mulroney's inability to control the seperatists MP in his Tory ranks that resulted in the formation of the Bloc.
In his acceptance speech this year, he said we work with the other parties in the House, yet his first economic announcement includes the cutting of party subsidies. How is this going to return civility to the House? Or more importantly, how does this help stimulate the economy when opposition parties have to lay-off low-level party workers during a recession? This is just petty nastiness.
And he lies, of course. He lies when he says that the coalition agreement was not signed in front of Canadian flags because of the presence of the separatist party (a lie - there were two Canadian flags). He lies when says he would never enter deals to govern the country with separatists. He signed a deal with the BQ to do just that in 2004, and his predecessor Stockwell Day arranged one with the BQ in 2000.
When confronted with criticism, he and his lackeys do not confront the issues, instead they issue personalize attacks on the messenger. How many Harper ads did you hear during the last campaign attacked Dion the person, yet how few did you hear actually debating the merits of Dion's proposals and presenting alternatives?
The crisis here is one of a reckless leader over-reaching for his dubious goals. It is a crisis of agenda, not process. You may argue that the Liberal/NDP coalition (with Bloc support) is fraught with dangers, and it is. They have matches and there's a lot of gasoline pooled about. But even that does not make their proposed actions any less legitimate.
And I'll take that over a leader who gives every indication of his intention to burn down the progressive house that we Canadians have spent 141 years building.
Percentage of Canadians who did not vote for Harper's Conservatives in the 2008 election: 62.4%
Naomi Klein on Harper's "Crisis"
As seen at rabble.ca:
What I think is really amazing about this moment is whatever happens next - whether we end up with this coalition or not, we will have an extremely chastened Harper. So the attempted shock doctrine has failed. I think we can say that decisively.
Just to be clear, what I mean by the shock doctrine, as you know, is the use of crisis to push through unpopular pro-corporate policies. This bundling of a whole package of policies: denying the right of public sector workers to strike, the attack on public financing of political parties, with the economic program - that is what failed, and people were offended by the opportunism of it.
This is what so many of us were worried about during the election - the context of a Tory victory in an economic crisis, because we know that there is this pattern of using an economic crisis to push through policies that were nowhere during the campaign.
Monday, December 01, 2008
I'm so embarrassed....
Listening/reading/viewing the commentary on current developments in parliament, I am left banging my head against the wall at the apparent total ignorance of the vast majority of Canadians about how a parliamentary system works. Every time I hear/read/see someone calling the coming change of government/Prime Minister a "coup" or "undemocratic" or whatever, I can't help but thinking it an indictment not of the opposition parties, but of Social Studies teachers everywhere who failed to teach their students the fundamentals of how democracy works in this country.
I'm fully sympathetic to Conservative supporters who say, "darn, I never saw that coming!", just as they were understanding that I was disappointed that the Conservatives managed to hang on to another minority government (for a while anyway). We all have to put up with it when the majority vote against what we think is the obvious best policy. But to characterize current developments as undemocratic, or as a 'coup' or 'treason' is just, well, embarrassing.
The majority of us did not vote for Harper. He did NOT get the mandate from the people for a majority government that he had hoped for. Even then, he got his chance to form a minority government, but any minority government has to win over at least a few of the opposition MPs/parties each time to survive. Harper's mistaken belief that he could introduce any legislation he liked and that there was nothing anyone could do about it (because the other parties could not dare force another election) strongly suggests both an undemocratic stance (i.e., not valuing the fundamental Canadian value of compromise) and a dangerously arrogant/naive understanding of Canadian parliamentary procedure. But parliament is working exactly as intended. The majority of MPs, representing the majority of Canadians, are ousting a Prime Minister and cabinet that no longer hold the confidence of the House. This is how the system works, and has worked stretching back to before there was a Canada to British parliamentary precedents. How could anyone in this country graduate high school and not understand this?
It's embarrassing.
They don't have to like the way things have played out, but they should at least be able to understand it.
January I get a new crop of Social Studies student teachers -- and they had better, by god, be ready to demonstrate that they take Social Studies seriously, not just a way to kill an hour between English and Mathematics. They had better be prepared to stand up and say, "No, you can't cancel Social Studies this week for school assembly because Social Studies is important. Can we cancel Phys Ed instead?" Or words to that effect. Because right now, it doesn't look like the previous crops have been doing their job.
I'm fully sympathetic to Conservative supporters who say, "darn, I never saw that coming!", just as they were understanding that I was disappointed that the Conservatives managed to hang on to another minority government (for a while anyway). We all have to put up with it when the majority vote against what we think is the obvious best policy. But to characterize current developments as undemocratic, or as a 'coup' or 'treason' is just, well, embarrassing.
The majority of us did not vote for Harper. He did NOT get the mandate from the people for a majority government that he had hoped for. Even then, he got his chance to form a minority government, but any minority government has to win over at least a few of the opposition MPs/parties each time to survive. Harper's mistaken belief that he could introduce any legislation he liked and that there was nothing anyone could do about it (because the other parties could not dare force another election) strongly suggests both an undemocratic stance (i.e., not valuing the fundamental Canadian value of compromise) and a dangerously arrogant/naive understanding of Canadian parliamentary procedure. But parliament is working exactly as intended. The majority of MPs, representing the majority of Canadians, are ousting a Prime Minister and cabinet that no longer hold the confidence of the House. This is how the system works, and has worked stretching back to before there was a Canada to British parliamentary precedents. How could anyone in this country graduate high school and not understand this?
It's embarrassing.
They don't have to like the way things have played out, but they should at least be able to understand it.
January I get a new crop of Social Studies student teachers -- and they had better, by god, be ready to demonstrate that they take Social Studies seriously, not just a way to kill an hour between English and Mathematics. They had better be prepared to stand up and say, "No, you can't cancel Social Studies this week for school assembly because Social Studies is important. Can we cancel Phys Ed instead?" Or words to that effect. Because right now, it doesn't look like the previous crops have been doing their job.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
World will struggle to meet oil demand
Output from the world’s oilfields is declining faster than
previously thought, the first authoritative public study of the biggest
fields shows.
Without extra investment to raise production, the
natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent, the
International Energy Agency says in its annual report, the World Energy
Outlook, a draft of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.
The findings suggest the world will struggle to produce enough oil to
make up for steep declines in existing fields, such as those in the
North Sea, Russia and Alaska, and meet long-term demand. The effort
will become even more acute as prices fall and investment decisions are
delayed.
This from the Financial Times Published: October 28 2008 23:32
Powered by ScribeFire.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Worst. President. Ever.
CNN and Opinion research Corporation released a survey Monday that shows that outgoing US President George W. Bush has now reached unprecedented levels of unpopularity--he is now more unpopular than Richard Nixon was when he resigned. Bush's disapproval rating has now gone over 70% three times this year--no other president has ever gone over 70%. Nixon was resigning from office in disgrace and was still more popular than the shrub. Heckuva job, Georgie.
| % Disapproval | Date | |
|---|---|---|
| G.W. Bush | 76 | Nov. 2008 |
| Clinton | 54 | Sept. 1994 |
| G.H.W. Bush | 60 | July 1992 |
| Reagan | 56 | Jan. 1983 |
| Carter | 59 | June 1979 |
| Ford | 46 | April, Nov., Dec. 1975 |
| Nixon | 66 | August 1974 |
| Johnson | 52 | March, Aug. 1968 |
| Kennedy | 30 | Nov. 1963 |
| Eisenhower | 36 | March 1958 |
| Truman | 67 | Jan. 1952 |
Powered by ScribeFire.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)