RSS
The Police State Rocks On! - New Media and Politics
As I watched US policy take a drastic turn to the right during the administration of GWB jr. and Dick Cheney, I'll admit to being alarmed but not surprised. The Patriot act, unwarranted spying on Americans, "free speech zones," rendition, enhanced interrogation all seemed to be the wish fulfilment of a laundry list of items the right has always lobbied for. The Republicans have never been about increasing freedoms - other than 2nd amendment ones. So when Obama was inaugurated I thought all of this would be walked back and I was one of those who had no problems with the slow pace he was moving at figuring it would take considerable time to undo what Bush/Cheney had wrought. I'm starting to feel naive.
Glenn Greenwald has been covering and documenting how access to the spill sites are being blocked by BP, by police departments working for BP and by the government. Now comes word that getting any closer than 65 feet to an oil boom (called a "safety zone") will get you arrested and possibly charged with a Class D Felony which carries with it fines up to $40,000 dollars and a sentence of "not less than two years." He calls it "creepy police state behaviour," and asserts that this seems clearly to be unconstitutional acts to intimidate and impede the media... (and he would know with his background in constitutional law and as a civil rights litigator.)
What's even more remarkable is that this behaviour of intimidation extends to reckless BP acts at other refineries with DHS agents and local police officials acting as BP's personal muscle to detain, interrogate, and threaten a photographer. Not acceptable.
Here's Anderson Cooper of CNN going off on these same subjects asserting, "We are not the enemy!"
Those Craaaaazy Believers iIn Global Warming! - New Media and Politics
I was reading a post over at Climate Progress about vanishing sea ice in the Arctic, and how in June it was at its' lowest extent and had gone through the fastest rate of decline in the satellite record and was thinking, "What does it matter?" The deniers will either claim it's not happening, or it's a one-off, or it's all part of some master plan to sandbag us all and they'll be loud enough and strident enough to continue to prevent real action from being taken. "Who the hell would these idiots listen to?" was the question that came to mind. Other than Jeebus, I mean.
Then I got lucky. I found a video with former Army Chief of Staff, General Gordon Sulllivan, discussing national security and climate change. Turns out he was once a skeptic but having looked at tall the data, he changed his mind and he wasn't alone. The military leaders who agree with him are many and include Rear Admiral David Titley, Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, James Woolsey former director of the CIA and former undersecretary of the US Navy, General Ron Keyes former Commander Air Combat Command, Wesley Clark former Supreme Allied commander of NATO, General Chuck Wald USAF and former Deputy Commander US European Command, and General Anthony Zinni former Chief US Central Command. These are not the kinds of people that are prone to being alarmists nor did they rise to the very top of the conservative military chain of command by being free-thinkers who rely on their intuition. They are the kinds of people who, when making decisions, had to rely on facts to guide their actions. If you watch you'll see they are all worried about wars for water, wars for oil, mass migrations and food insecurity all as a direct result of climate change. See for yourself... and be alarmed.
Not Easy Being Green - New Media and Politics
Any excuse to play a Kermit the Frog song will do. Sadly Canada's Senate has decided to ignore the vote taken by Parliament on Bill C-311 which passed by a vote of 149-136 and requires the government to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050.
NDP MP Bruce Hyer who drafted the bill says he has been told by Conservatives that the government has decreed that the bill cannot be passed into law. Mr. Hyer said it would be disappointing and “undemocratic” if the Conservatives killed the bill for what he called ‘ideological” reasons. But what else is there to be expected from the Tories?
Happily for Montreal's trendy Plateau district, they have a mayor, Luc Ferrandez, with the courage to stand up and fight for the right to make the urban environment he governs a greener and more welcome place for it's inhabitants and less so for automobiles. Even though he is being beset by attacks from all manner of interests he has, so far, stuck to his principles - “There is an inalienable right to have peace in the city. You have the right to raise kids here, you have the right to live here,” he says.
Canada's head of CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) Richard Fadden, gave an interview to the CBC wherein he alleged that the Chinese government was infiltrating Canadian political bodies and that this influence extends to municipal and political bureaucrats and politicians and even a couple of unnamed cabinet ministers. So on Monday he was asked to testify, back up the allegations and name names. he says he will do so but only behind closed doors.
There was some good news for Omar Khadr on Monday as the Federal Court of Canada ruled that the government has seven days to come up with a list of remedies to its breach of Mr. Khadr’s constitutional rights. I can't stress this enough, Stephen Harper would do the same to protect any of us as he has for the 15 year old boy who was snatched off the Afghan battlefield and charged with killing an American soldier. That is nothing.
The Gusher in the Gulf - New Media and Politics
The New York Times is reporting this morning that the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with protecting endangered species, signed off on the Mineral Management Service's conclusion that deep water drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico posed no serious threat to wildlife. The agency signed off on the minerals service’s biological evaluation, even though that assessment considered only the risks to wildlife based on spills of 1,000 to 15,000 barrels — a minuscule amount compared with the hundreds of thousands of barrels now spewing into the gulf.
The explanation from Deborah Fuller, the endangered species program coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s office in Lafayette, La., that “We all know an oil spill is catastrophic, but what is the likelihood it will happen?” defies reason, like most news related to the disaster. She said her office had considered that any likelihood under 50 percent would not be enough to require the protections of her office. I find myself dumbfounded as I read those words - anything less than a 50-50 chance was okay? That's an absurd and obviously dangerous amount of leeway for a region whose eco-systems are as fragile as those of the Gulf region are.
Keep in mind that American taxpayers are paying for the spill's costs by giving tax breaks and direct payouts to BP and Haliburton and the oil industry in the US is receiving all sorts of subsidies, while at the same time raking in billions and soiling beaches.
Canada's Silly Season Still Missing - New Media and Politics
Post Canada Day weekend, summer is well under way and the arrival of the silly season is nowhere in sight - unless you think McGuinty calling himself a liberal or the suspension of Canadian civil rights constitutes a laugh riot.
From the same publication a report on the police brutality that was inflicted upon the protesters and bystanders - the article makes the point that ...broken bones, cracked heads and eyes filled with pepper spray - have yet to feature prominently in any mainstream media.
Over at the Globe and Mail, Adam Radwanski writes about the so-called five-metre rule and why it matters - the choice of governments, through both their actions and inactions, to give police gratuitous leeway in securing these kinds of international summits. All in all a shameful episode in Canadian history that will no doubt go down the memory hole in short order unless an unbiased investigation of police tactics is conducted - and that doesn't seem likely.
Some actual good news, as the National Energy Board is considering forcing oil companies to drill a secondary relief well in any deep water Arctic exploration project, which is a sign of sanity considering the current state of the Gulf of Mexico and the ongoing spill. Sadly they are not considering extending those rules to drilling off of Canada's east coast.
There is a report that Canada is poised to become a leader in forest conservation - read the entire article. It is filled with weasel words and propaganda noting the fact that Canada's boreal forest covers about 5.8 million square kilometres and ...agreements under consideration would allow highly restricted development on about half the land and no resource exploitation at all on the other half. That's roughly 3 million square kilometers that will see exploitation - we are supposed to feel good about this because they are only raping half the available forests.
Lastly, the Federal Court has given the government seven days to come up with a list of remedies to its breach of Omar Khadr's constitutional rights. The court ruled that the Canadian citizen now jailed at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is entitled to “procedural fairness and natural justice.”
News July 5th 2010
Read and produced by Emily Brass.
Stories written by Chris Hanna, Emily Brass and Jose Espinoza.
Climate Change - Not Controversial
Stephen Harper said he did not make climate change a priority at the recent G8 and G20 summits because it was a controversial issue. That is a bald-faced lie. It may be controversial to him and his climate science denying corporate pals but to the rest of the scientific world it is accepted science.
A recent study published by the National Academy of Sciences, involving 1,372 climate scientists, most considered top researchers in their field, shows that 97 percent agree that global warming is occurring and is being driven mainly by human activity - emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
The only controversy has been created by organized campaigns of disinformation by those in the fossil fuel industries and given the weight of equivalency in the various media. The disagreements come from astroturf organizations, those in the thrall of corporate interests like the American Enterprise Institute (an Exxon-Mobil funded think-tank), Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato institute, the Manhattan Institute and the Foundation for research on economics and the environment. All have been involved in "spinning" the "climategate" story or are at the forefront of the anti-global warming debate. You can also include the US Chamber of Commerce in that list. In truth the climate science skeptics are few and lack expertise according to a study led by Stanford researchers.
Which leads me to a post over at Joe Romm's blog, Climate Progress. Today, Joe wants Americans to celebrate Interdependence Day and he makes a couple of important observations. Taking from the Declaration of Independence, he highlights the self-evident, unalienable rights that the Founding Fathers say all are endowed with, ...life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that with those words the Founding Fathers were pointing out that ...we are all in this together, that we are interdependent, that we have a moral duty to protect these unalienable rights for all humans. He's right, yet we are doing very little that acknowledges that relationship with one another or to change the current course we are on so that mankind may continue to prosper... or pursue happiness!
Interdependence extends not to just with those in the U.S., or all of us here on the same continent but worldwide. Otherwise we are headed for 9°F planetary warming by the end of the century, 850+ppm of carbon concentrations in the atmosphere, and massive species loss, all of which will change life as we know it irrevocably and condemn future generations to live in conditions that resemble those in kitschy, dystopian, science- fiction movies. Seriously.
That interdependence also extends to various eco-systems which are interconnected and equally at risk. For example, rising CO2 concentrations are leading to increasingly acidic oceans and there's a report today that the deteriorating health of the oceans may be irreversible. The report, in Science magazine, doesn't break a lot of new ground, but it brings together dozens of studies that collectively paint a dismal picture of deteriorating ocean health. Put it all together and it paints an alarming picture.
Abdicating Responsibility - New Media and Politics
Hello there! Hope your Canada Day celebrations were great and it all went your way. Hope you spent it with family, ate great food and enjoyed summer weather.
Just stopped in to post about the shameful behaviour of Ontario's Premier, Dalton McGuinty. For those of you not following the story about how the security situation at the G-20 in Toronto devolved into such a mess, let's recap: For a couple of days preceding the summit everyone was under the impression that the province of Ontario – through a temporary regulation affecting the Public Works Protection Act – had given police the power to conduct searches and demand identification within five metres of the security fence erected for last weekend’s G-20 summit. people were under that impression because police acted as if that was the case.
The legislation was cited in the arrest of two activists last Thursday, neither of whom had tried to enter the zone. There is video evidence of officers citing the so-called five-metre rule as they demanded that one of those activists, stop filming video well outside the fence.
Chief Blair, told a reporter on Tuesday that he was willing to allow the public to continue to think that those police powers existed where they really didn’t, because he was “trying to keep the criminals out.” Chief Blair clearly has a lot to answer for, but it was McGuinty and the Liberals who put this mess in motion, and did not put an end to it when they had the chance. Instead, Dalton McGuinty has washed his hands of the police mistreatment allegations.
Seems to be a cowardly act by someone who was only too happy to suspend the civil rights of Canadians for reasons that seem to have nothing to do with peace, order and good government. Sounds a lot like "shut-up, do what we tell you or we'll throw your sorry ass in the clink!" All the weekend before a holiday that celebrates our country and our democracy. We hope the citizens of Ontario are keeping score.
The pictures make us wonder, were these guys separated at birth?
News July 2nd 2010
News Produced and read by Drew Pascoe
Stories written by Jonathan Moore, Alina Gotcherian, Nick Fiscina and Drew Pascoe
Happy Canada Day!
I am not a flag waver by nature. In fact I feel pretty certain about stating that flag waving and nationalism throughout history has to led to terrible acts. In George Orwell's essay Notes on Nationalism he points to the narrow scope of the nationalist's point of view, A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist — that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating — but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the upgrade and some hated rival is on the downgrade.
This kind of nationalism is not only limited in its' purview it is ultimately useless. The quality of our short lives and our own country's success is not irrevocably tied to the endless rise and fall of the fortune's of other nations. In the global economy the economic ties we commit ourselves to can and do have severe affects and consequences, especially if we do not take safeguards against the vagaries of the various markets, but in the end we are responsible for our own happiness and successes. It is about what we can accomplish together, pulling in the same direction, with the resources that we have at our disposal - and as Canadians we have an enormous amount of resources.
Peace, order and good government, are simple and decent things to aspire to and amount to a sound and simple philosophy for governing. In the best tradition of Canadian politics this clause marks a compromise that charts a middle path between a centralized state and a federation. The peace, order and good government clause, in section 91 of the BNA Act, allowed the federal government far-reaching powers to override the provincial powers when an issue or event threatened the country.
It's good that historically our successes have come without the attendant jingoism that we see from our global neighbors but of late Canadians have let a kind of chauvinism creep into the national identity and that's not necessarily a good thing. Humility is a far more endearing and useful national character trait. It's the kind of thing that will keep Canadians looking forward to finding ways to improve on what we do with all that we have - and there's lots we can improve on. After all, there's nothing to be gained from being smug about our riches and good fortune, this is just a day to celebrate it. Enjoy!
Pages
Staff Login | Advertise | Our Location | RSS | Contact Us
