The Galloping Beaver

Nazi wants privacy?

2012-02-03T00:41:00.000-08:00

Regardless of whether Anonymous was right or wrong in releasing personal data, I might suggest that Nazis lost any reasonable expectation of privacy somewhere between Kristalnacht and the invasion of Poland, although I'd lean more toward the Beer Hall Putsch. Genocide and tens of millions dead will do that to a brand.

The only concern I might have is that if any of these unfortunately-inked examples of societal failure actually mature out of the movement, they might have hard time starting over given the infinite memory of the internet.

Occupy American Anthropological Associaton

2012-02-02T23:40:00.000-08:00

For unfamiliar readers, the vast majority of published peer reviewed academic research appears in journals controlled by massive for-profit publishing houses. Academics do not see the monetary profit, the publishers do because they control distribution and access to their journals through expensive subscriptions. The lay public, independent researchers, and others must pay through the nose in order to access this research. The advent of the internet has challenged this middle-corporation driven model by allowing journals to flourish free of the need for massive publishing houses. All you need is some server space and bandwidth and away you go, able to publish really groovy research that anyone with an internet connection can look at. If you haven't got your own IT person and html programmer, there's even open source software to get you set-up.

Via a post on one of my listserve subscriptions this morning, I learn that the American Anthropological Association has come out against open access journals because the rights of Wiley, Sage, T and F, Elsevier, etc to profit from the free labour of professors (and, ahem, grad students!).

Yet, in other corners of the academic universe, pissed-off profs are forming posses.

It's interesting reading the comments around this topic. There seem to be two very clear camps emerging among the rank and file scholars. On one side there are those big-picture idealists who see the social value in open access and decry the fact that their work is essentially being sold for profits they never see and are willing to do something about it. These are the ones willing to challenge the field.

However, on the other side, you've got people afraid to boycott the Wileys and Elseviers of the world because they wouldn't be able to publish in the places they need to publish in order to further their careers. That sort of cowardice is fair enough I suppose: I've been hanging around universities long enough now to know that that many professors exist solely to attract grant money and add publications to their CV in a sort of weird egocentric-indentured servant-chicken-egg driven feedback loop. Challenge the big ideas of your subject matter, but don't you dare try to knock down a few ivory walls or leave gate open so the plebes can get in. They've also got to eat and stable academic work is harder and harder to come by.

Nevertheless, as internet file-sharing revolutionised the music and video industries, so too internet open access is radically shifting the business of knowledge sharing. It is telling that, like his entertainment counterparts, the head of a major ~~astroturf org~~ scholarly association has to run to policy-makers to prevent well, the common folk from seeing the results of the tax-dollars and not those tax-dollars appearing on corporate publishers' balance sheets.

Midwinter's Freditorium . . .

2012-02-02T14:49:00.000-08:00

— Fred —

MIDWINTER: AKA GROUNDHOG DAY. Actually, celebrating midwinter happened a long time before some American marketing weenie thought of promoting a rodent. According to thepaganperspective,

Midwinter began as a celebration of the returning sun and sometimes a propitiation to assure that same return. Neolithic chambers, such as An Lianh Greine (Cave of the Sun) at New Grange were built to capture the sun’s power, while the Zuni and the Hopi Indians performed sacred dances to guide the returning sun. The temples of Egypt in Karnac, Thebes, and Abydos focused the midwinter sun’s rays into the heart of the pyramid’s chambers. It was also a celebration of the midwinter sun, the birth of the sacrificial god(s) (Mithras, Attis, Osiris, Jesus, etc.) that assured the promise of the ensuing year.

— The Freditorium —

Part of the promise is a return to using the barbecue with the advent of Spring. You see, we have a particularly energetic red squirrel, Fred, who has decided it makes a perfect Freditorium. If there were a Costco for red squirrels, he'd belong. Fred collects stuff, lots of pine cones, leaves, insulation, well, just ponder:

— Fredstuff —

Great little guy, a real gonzo spirit, loves walnuts.

The Komen cave

2012-02-02T06:30:00.000-08:00

If it's got a pink ribbon on it, I'm not buying it. Simple.

As TBogg points out, the upper end of the Susan G Komen foundation had to know that THIS bombshell was being released in the same week at they issued a press release severing their breast cancer funding from Planned Parenthood. And, as he asks, is that hubris or stupidity?

Run for the cure? Apparently the mega-charity holding the trademark rights on that line (in the US) doesn't really give a damn about the cure part, especially since they've been hijacked by the religiously-driven woman-haters.

Cowards.

Hardware Dep't Bulletin . . .

2012-01-31T22:07:00.000-08:00

DEFENSE TECH follows military happenings world wide. Of interest, India has decided to buy 129 French Rafale fighters after comparing "against everything from the Eurofighter Typhoon and Mig-29 to the American made F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and F-16." That's the Rafale, below. They will definitely give China and Pakistan something to ponder, because gaining air superiority over the Indians isn't going to get any easier in the next decade.

Next, we have the dispatch of HMS Dauntless to the Falklands, to the relief of the inhabitants. You see, over the last 18 months, the Argentine government has become ever more truculent, and it's starting to look like the Argies might just be stupid enough to give it another try. While Dauntless is a mere 7,000 tons, according to Denfense Tech, it's not your average destroyer, and the Argies really don't want to try this one on for size:

The Type 45 destroyer is the most advanced anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic ship in the world equipped with 48 Sea Viper missiles and the Sampson radar, which is more advanced than Heathrow air traffic control.

Last, it appears the USAF is up-grading its bunker-busters. It seems they spent close to $60 million on 16 of 'em, but they're not sure they will go deep enough to take out the deeply buried Iranian nuclear facilities, but another 80 or 90 million bucks should fix the problem. As it is now, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) is a 30,000-pound tool for penetrating 32 stories of reinforced concrete, carried in pairs by a B-2.

The decision to ask now for more money to develop the weapon was directly related to efforts by the U.S. military’s Central Command to prepare military options against Iran as quickly as possible, according to a person briefed on the request for additional funds.

Hmmm . . . 6 months, 12 months?

Dream life . . .

2012-01-29T14:56:00.000-08:00

EXCELLENT! Cartoon Brew is a fine site for classic animation aficionados. As Jerry wrote:

Here’s the perfect film for me to post in the middle of the night. Andres Tapeton’s graduation film from the Classical Animation program at the Vancouver Film School. It’s quite a trip.

Ya gotta wonder . . .

2012-01-28T18:40:00.000-08:00

WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE of Noah's house? Somehow, he remembered cockroaches and black flies, and a couple of Sasquatch to make up for it, I guess. Then there's bed bugs. Way to go, Noah.

Aislin . . .

2012-01-28T14:50:00.000-08:00

Wente suggests you read the psuedo-science of a racist

2012-01-28T14:30:00.000-08:00

The woman really needs to hire a research assistant who can click on and read the results of any one of these links.

Unlike Wente's fawning over Charles Murray's latest piece of fiction based on fantasy, others have already relegated it to the irrelevant bin. Good party game; no place in the library.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Oh yeah. The concept promoted by Murray in The Bell Curve, that race and inferior intelligence are linked, is racism, pure and simple.

Robbing seniors to pay the well-to-do

2012-01-28T13:59:00.000-08:00

Greg nails it. The Harper agenda to carry out "pension reform" because the population of seniors in Canada threaten to undermine the economy is based solely on ideological propaganda and not an analysis of the facts.

For one thing, most of these PMO talking points are propaganda utilizing grade 4 arithmetic (at best):

OAS is funded primarily through taxes on working people and is unsustainable on its current course.

For example:
The number of Canadians over the age of 65 will increase from 4.7 million to 9.3 million over the next 20 years.
The OAS program was built when Canadians were not living the longer, healthier lives they are today.
Consequently, the cost of the OAS program will increase from $36B per year in 2010 to $108B per year in 2030.
Meanwhile, by 2030, the number of taxpayers for every senior will be 2 - down from 4 in 2010.

If we do nothing, OAS will eventually become too expensive and unsustainable.

Simplistic enough for some, (the group that would buy that line of tripe), but unsubstantiated with any statistical evidence. So, The Jurist engages in a statistical exercise which immediately puts the Harper PMO sputtering to the lie.

The Cons' estimated total cost is about $108 billion. But based on Statistics Canada's medium-case demographic estimates, seniors ages 65 and 66 will make up only 11.5% of the total population aged 65 and up as of 2031.

So if OAS is relatively evenly applied across the age spectrum, the savings from pushing back the retirement age for Canadians in general will amount to 11.5% of $108 billion - or just over $12 billion per year.

And then he takes aim at the real plan. The Harperites promised that, once they've balanced the budget, as long as you have a large enough income, you can increase the amount of money you put into a Tax-Free Savings account from the current $5,000 to $10,000 annually.

At the same time, the Cons plan to push through general income splitting and increases to tax-free savings accounts. And those plans - targeted squarely at large-single-income households and those wealthy enough to have $10,000 to sock away every single year - will cost...just under $12 billion per year. And unlike the Cons' numbers for OAS, that's without taking into account any growth in the size of the tax base in the meantime.

Just so we're clear here, the cost of the Harper frat-boys' plan to allow income splitting in high-earning-single-income households and to double the amount that those with a spare ten-thousand bucks laying around can shelter from interest and investment income taxes is about the same as would be saved by forcing seniors to delay an old age benefit until they reach aged 67.

The question is, how many wage-earning Canadians have an extra $10,000 laying around to toss into a tax-shelter? Not many, I reckon, so it would be a benefit acquired by a smaller percentage of the population than would be surrendering that same amount of needed survival income.

The truth is, a solid majority of Canadians in their peak earning years do not or cannot afford to make annual contributions to the primary retirement savings instrument (RRSP) and only 12% of those in their 40s make the maximum allowable contribution. Of those in their 50s, only 14% make the maximum contribution.

Is the fog coming off the mirror yet? The Harper plan for "prosperity" is to rob seniors of their past tax payments and give it to the wealthiest portion of the population.

And if you're a Harper Conservative, that's as it should be.

Oppression is eternal . . .

2012-01-28T08:56:00.000-08:00

Bad Hair Day: Execution of the Czech 'heretic' Jan Hus
at the Council of Constance, anonymous woodcut, 1415 ©AKG-images

THE NEW HUMANIST is a delightful site, at the other end of the intellectual rainbow from the GOP and its chimps, and well worth a visit anytime. Currently, there's a fascinating article about the Holy Inquisition. Why should you care, in a Stevie world, about stuff that happened 500 years ago? Well, Cullen Murphy believes its echoes are to be heard today:

Interrogation. Surveillance. Ethnic profiling. Censorship. The words come from 21st-century headlines, but they have an ancient pedigree. Inside the heresy files: how the Inquisition ignited the modern police state.

• • •

Here’s the central question: why did the Inquisition come into being when it did? Intolerance, hatred and suspicion of one group by another had always existed. Throughout history, these realities had led to persecution and violence. But the ability to sustain a persecution – to give it staying power by giving it an institutional life – did not appear until the Middle Ages. Until then, the tools to stoke and manage those embers of hatred did not exist. Once the tools do exist, inquisitions become a fact of life. They are not confined to religion; they are political as well. The targets can be large or small. An inquisition impulse can quietly take root in the very systems of government and civil society that order our lives.

As the Industrial Revolution progressed, people controls became more powerful. With the October Revolution in 1917, the Russian Marxists got their turn in 1930, with the supremacy of Stalin in the Party, and the advent of collectivization. From this effort to remake society, Stalin created the Gulag system. Richard Overy discusses this in an article on the NEW STATESMAN site, "The killing fields".

Once shrouded in secrecy, the history of the Soviet concentration camps is now well known. But why did these open-air prisons really exist?

• • •

The camp system has usually been regarded as a way of extracting compulsory labour for a rapidly industrialising Soviet economy, but Khlevniuk insists this was not its primary motivation. The camps were the product of a bizarre shift in the Soviet penal system in the early 1930s, when trivial infractions became state crimes. As a result, the conventional prison system became swamped. In effect, the camps were open-air prisons, easily assembled and cheap to run, and capable of accommodating millions. The labour extracted was unproductive, and many of the projects on which prisoners worked had little economic value. Free labour would have been more productive. And the slaughter of 700,000 in the Great Terror makes no sense if the regime's objective was the extraction of forced labour. The camps existed, rather, because of the regime's vision of a classless, productive and cultured communist society - a vision that required the violent exclusion of all those deemed by behaviour, social origin or ethnicity to be a threat to its achievement.

In his way, Stevie wants to do the same thing: remake Canada, starting with his crime legislation.

Just wondering...

2012-01-27T13:45:00.000-08:00

Does it always take a lethal mill fire before the minister will leap into action to help displaced mill-workers?

I only ask because between 2000 and 2010 the Canadian forest industry lost 144 900 direct jobs, hitting fully two-thirds of the forest-dependent communities in the country. I wonder where the leaping ministers were then?

Putting the boots to granny (updated)

2012-01-27T09:24:00.000-08:00

If the priorities of the Harper government aren't fairly clear by now you, you've been living under rock. Everything is driven by the ideology espoused in this Harper speech.

Now, Harper is going to start executing the agenda everyone on the right said he didn't have. You know - the hidden one.

One would like to think that Harper's blustering at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland was simply his continuing attempt to pat himself on the back for no other reason than his very existence. It was these lines which have everyones' ears pricked up:

As I said earlier, one of the backdrops for my concerns is Canada's aging population.

If not addressed promptly this has the capacity to undermine Canada's economic position and, for that matter that of all western nations, well beyond the current economic crises.
...

We must do the same for our retirement income system.

Fortunately, the centrepiece of that system, the Canada Pension Plan, is fully funded, actuarially sound and does not need to be changed.

For those elements of the system that are not funded, we will make the changes necessary to ensure sustainability for the next generation while not affecting current recipients.

That generated immediate speculation. And so it should. Harper is nothing if not the dirtiest player in the room. He has already demonstrated that he will publicly smear anyone who stands in the way of his plans. He has used government to attack any and all who express the slightest opposition to his authoritarian advance on power.

He's also a coward for failing to stand on Canadian ground and make such a pronouncement. And if he goes ahead with what many suspect is a rise in the age of eligibility for Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement to age 67, it also makes him a Mulronyesque liar. During the 2011 election campaign, in a blatant vote buy, he promised something completely different. (Page 28).

As a real economist has pointed out, Canada is in good shape to deal with the wave of baby-boomers approaching retirement age. There is no need to adjust retirement ages upward in this country and Harper has no legitimate mandate to implement such a change.

The only pension plan that needs to be overhauled is the one in which he and his political cronies reside. The original purpose of that plan has long since vanished.

As far as attacking wasteful spending, (something all conservatives talk about but never actually do), his first target should be the things he created.

Harper, devoid of conscience, steeped in his personal fable and determined to enrich his corporate masters will likely forget the name Solange Denis, the 63-year old woman who stood up to Brian Mulroney. And if he proceeds to gut this country's retiring generation, intent on ignoring the single largest active voting block in the country, you might brace yourself for the next ugly maneouvre.

Update: As might be expected from somewhere among the tax-payer funded, very expensive battalion that constitutes the PMO, the talking points have been issued. Interesting isn't it? The body of the Conservative caucus is so unreliable that they need "talking points" on every single issue.

In any case, as Kady points out, the author fails to acknowledge that all this speculation (and the pulling down of the Harper mask) was caused by Harper himself.

And I will point out that not one, not a single one of those talking points puts the speculation to rest nor does it address facts.

Advice for the Liberals . . .

2012-01-26T07:59:00.000-08:00

GOOD ADVICE from CalgaryGrit: "Advice from South of the Border". How the Liberals can learn from Obama — if only the back-room wizards would pay attention. I sure hope that the party chimps that clustered around Ken Dryden and the rest of the Liberal insiders have been sacked. In talking to them, I was impressed with their arrogant obliviousness, but that's another story.

Check out CalgaryGrit's post, which outlines what the Liberal party has to do to off Stevie. More important, it outlines what YOU have to do to off Stevie. Capice? It all starts with you. Indifference and laziness are Stevie's best allies.

The art of death . . .

2012-01-25T21:47:00.000-08:00

THE BONES OF WAR, indeed. That's the article title at WEB URBANIST: "The Bones of War: Haunting Skeleton Photography"

When Francois Robert unexpectedly acquired a human skeleton in the 1990s, he knew he had to do something wonderful with it. Several years later when the economy collapsed and he found himself with time on his hands, Robert finally settled on a project: powerful anti-war images spelled out in human bones.

Powerful stuff. Check out the rest.

A bit rich, dontcha think?

2012-01-24T12:27:00.000-08:00

Steph Harper.

"To be sure, our government has no grand scheme to repeal or to unilaterally rewrite the Indian Act," Harper said in his opening speech.
"After 136 years, that tree has deep roots. Blowing up the stump would just leave a big hole."

This, from a man who seems quite comfortable with subverting 500 years of parliamentary evolution and convention?

Follow the money . . .

2012-01-24T10:49:00.000-08:00

WHILE WE WAIT FOR STEVIE and the chiefs to get really going, check out WIRED's accounting of who spends how much to advertise on Google. According to John C. Abell's article, "Who Buys All Those Google Ads? An Infographic Breakdown",

Google cleared $37.9 billion in 2011 revenue, which equates to more than $3 billion a month, mostly from those little text ads next to your search results that neither you or anybody you know will admit to ever clicking on.

Insurance and finance buys for Google Adsense words accounted for $4.2 billion of that total — more than 10 percent — according to Larry Kim, the founder of Wordstream, a company that sells software to analyze text ad campaigns and commissioned the infographic above. The most expensive search term in that niche was “Self employed health insurance” — not surprising in the aftermath of the recession and the Affordable Care Act, which will eventually require nearly everyone to have health care insurance (unless the Supreme Court nullifies the law later this year).

That phrase cost $43.39 per click, nearly $10 more than the next most expensive term, “cheap car insurance”.

Retail has its share:

Retailers were a somewhat distant second, but still accounted for a hefty $2.8 billion in ad buys, and were led by e-commerce behemoth Amazon. Inexplicably, the top-priced search term in this niche was for “zumba dance DVD.”

The web is so wonderful. Any universe that creates a place for Uncle Booger's Bumper Dumper is doing alright.

Hehehe

2012-01-23T23:36:00.001-08:00

Revolting.

Dear Keith Baldry and associates ...

2012-01-23T23:28:00.000-08:00

We don't believe you anymore.

All of you need an assignment where the food ain't so good, the alcohol can kill you and the perks mean you don't get eaten alive by bedbugs.

You guys are far too comfortable being thrown a comforter by the slimy creatures that inhabit the halls of power.

You peddle bovine scatology.

You are all in conflict of interest.

Language . . .

2012-01-23T09:35:00.000-08:00

PARAPROSDOKIAN SENTENCES: A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to re-frame or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect.

If you are supposed to learn from your mistakes, why do some people have more than one child?
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine
I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public.
War does not determine who is right — only who is left.
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. My desk is a work station.
How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut and still think they are sexy.
Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?
Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.
Hospitality: making your guests feel like they're at home, even if you wish they were.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.
You're never too old to learn something stupid.

Stormy week on the west coast

2012-01-23T06:48:00.000-08:00

Sunday, 22 January 2012, was not a good day for BC Ferries. Or more accurately, it was not a good day for travellers intent on using BC Ferries to get anywhere. Shortly after 9 a.m. Sunday the sustained winds across Vancouver Island started to lay a beating on the place, from Juan de Fuca Strait in the south to Queen Charlotte Strait in the north.

BC Ferries, very wisely, stopped operating a majority of routes exposed to extreme winds. Route 1, the heavily travelled Swartz Bay (Victoria) Tsawwassen (Vancouver) saw the cancellation of at least 4 large ship departures from each terminal from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. That undoubtedly threw a spanner into the works of travel plans for many people. Even the Brentwood Bay - Mill Bay route suffered cancellations because the usually sheltered Saanich Inlet was ripped up by high winds.

And you could hear the bleating all the way to Port Aux Basque, NL; People berating BC Ferries for something over which nobody had any control and howls that ferry crews didn't have the stuff to handle a little bit of rough weather.

They have more than the stuff. And the masters of those ships made the right decision. To those who loudly complained about the scuttling of plans and decided it was the fault of BC Ferries, it might be time to blame somebody else.

Try yourself for a start. If you cannot or are too lazy to read a weather forecast and include it in your winter-season travel planning, that's a condition no one else can rectify.

I am among the first to bore into BC Ferries when it does things which are obviously unsafe or when safety is not a primary element of their planning and decisions. I will not, however, find fault when a decision is taken not to put their passengers at risk.

So, take a look at the graphic at the top. Click on it and look hard. That's not what happened. That's what's going to happen. Another of a continuing string of mid-latitude depressions piling in from the central Pacific is going to do it all over again. Figure on Tuesday.

Why, how Kandahar?

2012-01-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

CBC's Dispatches hosts an interview with Matthew Willis, who has a chapter on Canada in a new Royal United Services Institute book on the NATO/UK experience in Afghanistan.

It's interesting because Willis suggests that Canada lobbied hard to get Kandahar without really knowing what it was getting itself into. The US presence before Canada took over was small and as a result there remained a dearth of intelligence regarding the province and the problems it might contain. There are other details regarding the small size of the forces Canada has compared the larger resources available to the British and Americans, implying maybe that we bit into the mission without a sense of what it was going to entail.

But as with all these things, it is what's hidden between the lines that tells more of the story. Willis, in my reading anyway, seems to suggest bits of what I've heard from other places along the way. Namely, Canada went to Kandahar for domestic ego. Various types between the military brass and government wanted the hard parts because it would buy us a better seat at the table with the other big NATO powers and forever dismiss the notion that the Canadian Forces are 'soft' peacekeepers in the eyes of the public.

Missing from the interview at least is any explicit reference to the role of actual mission success in the reasoning behind deploying Canada to Kandahar. You know, the whole 'winning' thing and whether it was possible. Did Canada/NATO idiotically assume winning was a forgone conclusion because we aren't the loser Soviets or something? It would be interesting to read the chapter in full as well as other book mentioned in the interview to see if any of that is addressed.

I mean, it sounds like even before Harper and some politicians or generals projected their own insecurity onto this thing called Canada and blew-up a bunch of people so they could feel better and get let into the posh clubs. You know, The World Stage(tm) and all.

Harper's leading hillbilly

2012-01-22T01:00:00.000-08:00

Andrew Potter pulled no punches on this one.

Tony Clement is the dumber than a sack of hammers and has a bag full of the stupidest ideas to hit government since the invention of the failed curved machine gun barrel.

In his six years in power, Stephen Harper has successfully positioned the Conservatives as the party of neither the left, nor of the right, but of the deeply stupid. And as Canadians have come to realize, when Tony Clement is sent out to sell a policy, things are about to get seriously neuronally challenged.

...

There is nothing wrong with trying to reduce red tape. Only the most naïve statist could believe that every single one of the alleged 2,600 regulations on business for which the federal government is responsible are necessary. Those rules that aren’t should be eliminated.
But equally naïve is the dopey libertarianism that motivates the commission’s report, and Clement’s gleeful endorsement of the one-for-one recommendation. Conservatives love these sorts of things. They pull off the neat double-shot of catering to the desired special interest while allowing the government to wrap itself in a thin gauze of ideological principle.

...

To see how confused this is, try applying the one-for-one rule to everything else the government does. How about, for every new law the government wants to enact, it has to eliminate one. For every criminal it wants to imprison, it has to release one. For every tax it wants to cut, it has to increase another. For every cabinet member it wants to add, it has to fire another.

...

... in his drunkard’s walk through Stephen Harper’s cabinet, from Health to Industry to the Treasury Board, Tony Clement has earned a more precise title: Minister of Everything Stupid.

Potter left out the part where Clement went to Denver to attend, (of all things), the US Democratic convention in the middle of a listeriosis crisis in Canadian meat packing plants.

H/T Holly Stick

English hospitality . . .

2012-01-21T09:48:00.000-08:00

AN AMERICAN TOURIST in London decides to skip his tour group and explore the city on his own. He wanders around, seeing the sights, and occasionally stopping at a quaint pub to soak up the local culture, chat with the lads, and have a pint of Guinness. After a while, he finds himself in a very high-class neighbourhood.....big, stately residences... no pubs, no stores, no restaurants, and worst of all...

NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS. He really, really has to go, after all those Guinness's. He finds a narrow side street, with high walls surrounding the adjacent buildings and decides to use the wall to solve his problem. As he is unzipping, he is tapped on the shoulder by a London bobby, who says, “I say, sir, you simply cannot do that here, you know.”

“I'm very sorry, officer,” replies the American, “but I really, really HAVE TO GO, and I just can't find a public restroom.”

“Ah, yes,” said the bobby... “Just follow me.” He leads him to a back “delivery alley”, then along a wall to a gate, which he opens.

“In there,” points the bobby. “Whiz away sir, anywhere you want.” The fellow enters and finds himself in the most beautiful garden he has ever seen. Manicured grass lawns, statuary, fountains, sculpted hedges, and huge beds of gorgeous flowers, all in perfect bloom.

Since he has the cop's blessing, he unburdens himself and is greatly relieved. As he goes back through the gate, he says to the bobby, “That was really decent of you... is that what you call ‘English Hospitality’?”

“No, sir,” replies the bobby, “that is what we call the French Embassy.”

Stevie's Oil Ugliness . . .

2012-01-21T06:35:00.000-08:00

SLATE ASKS: Saudi Arabia. Nigeria. Venezuela. Canada? Is our neighbor to the north becoming a jingoistic petro-state?

Take, for instance, the country that provides by far the largest share of our petroleum imports. Its regime, in thrall to big oil interests, has grown increasingly bellicose, labeling environmental activists “radicals” and “terrorists” and is considering a crackdown on nonprofits that oppose its policies. It blames political dissent on the influence of “foreigners,” while steamrolling domestic opposition to oil projects bankrolled entirely by overseas investors. Meanwhile, its skyrocketing oil exports have sent the value of its currency soaring, enriching energy industry barons but crippling other sectors of its economy.

Yes, Canada is becoming a jingoistic petro-state.

Oh, to see ourselves as others see us. And with the Head Jingo, Stevie, at the helm, well, the next 3 years are going to pass very slowly, but eventually, de-nazification will commence. Save the papers, videos, e-mails, all the evidence for Stevie's day in court.

Harper MP displays ignorance

2012-01-20T14:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know. You're shocked.

Conservative MP Wladyslaw Lizon has raised a little ridicule by sending a survey out in his ethnically diverse riding asking constituents if they speak “Indian.”
The problem, of course, is that there is no such language. In India, there are 29 languages each spoken by more than a million people, like Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Punjabi. English, though the first language of few Indians, often serves as a common tongue.

A novel idea comes from one of the commenters to that story.

If only there was some sort of national survey that asked people questions about what languages they speak at home and other things MPs might need to know to better serve their constituents. I don't know what you would call it, a census maybe, that collected information about ordinary Canadians and how they live.

Harper's Canada: The politics of stupidity.

Ya know,

2012-01-19T23:53:00.000-08:00

I'm all for not passing judgment until the facts are all in and examined, but it is becoming much harder to do that in light of what's coming out in the media now about the [in]actions of Costa Concordia's master and crew (and possibly further up the chain, the ship's owners). This could be one of those disasters that rewrites the book. You know, the 'what-not-to-do' section.

And on the maple flag side...

2012-01-19T23:26:00.000-08:00

There's this from Cathie.

Oh dear! Did the Harper government lie to us again?

A federal agency created by the Harper government with great political fanfare in 2008 is costing millions of dollars to achieve pretty much nothing.

The Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board has just about everything a budding government agency could want.

So far, it has spent over $3.3 million for new offices, computers and furniture, well-paid executives and staff, travel budgets, expense accounts, board meetings, and lots of pricey consultants.

All that's missing is a reason for it to exist at all.

Personally, I hate it when that happens.

If you haven't read Skippy...

2012-01-19T22:56:00.000-08:00

The Bush Kangaroo lately, well, now is a good time.

Because, as Jon Stewart says:

When I want news, I go to CNN. And they turn to Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo.

Said brother Newt:

"I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that," he said.

Appalling brother. Simply appalling.

So, let's impeach somebody for getting a blowjob!!

I dunno, Skippy, whaddya think? Should Clinton get a chance to toss in a question here?

Northern Gateway, Northern Wall

2012-01-19T15:57:00.000-08:00

At the end of the day it won't matter what the JRP recommends or what the Cons and Enbridge do to negate or subvert the process. Something is different about this pipeline proposal compared to others.

The context is in so many ways changed from past proposals. The hearing process commences at a time when the world has seen the Deep Water Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Locally, people do not not need to be reminded of the destruction from the Exxon Valdez. And the black bleakness of the Tar Sands, for which this pipeline is proposed as servant, are infamous for their contribution to catastrophic climate change and our race to the bottom energy addiction.

Like the gas line in the Northwest Territories, numerous First Nations and communities are being bribed with jobs to harbour the siphon. Except Northern BC is not the early double-aughts NWT. Communities and people largely do not appear to want to all be heavy equipment operators in the pipeline. This is much bigger than 'good union jobs.' Ordinary people do not want to be responsible for enabling something which could kill the living breathing Northwest coast or the endless lakes, rivers, and forests across the route.

The ignorant felling of 14 trees by Enbridge's reconnaissance platoon, the appalling comments at the beginning of the hearing process by the Ethical Oil stained Harper Regime have served to set intractable terms between us and them. The consequent comments by First Nations leaders confirm this.

People will risk their lives to stop this pipeline because it threatens their homes and it imperils the living future of the planet. If approved, it will not be constructed without bloodshed. One thousand one hundred and seventy seven kilometres of exposed pipe is a lot to build and defend.

The Northern Gateway is a threshold. Energy politics in Canada will not be the same.

Delights . . .

2012-01-19T15:27:00.001-08:00

WHILE DAVE, BORIS & REV regale us with an outrageous string of things to get outraged over, I ran across this small delight, worth 1:27 of your time. It's a video, as you see, with the title: "Aston Martin Loves Women. Women love Aston Martin." Chris Shunk, at AUTOBLOG, points out that it's not what you think:

The spot illustrates that women don't need a mini skirt to be featured in an exotic luxury car commercial, and that you don't have to be a guy to appreciate automotive beauty.

Plus a charming piano, too. Astons are so delightful, so Savile Row bespoke, with a certain something that even Mercedes' greatest AMG sports sleds just cannot possess. Check out the video, then get back to the eternal war in Fubar Province.

Northern Gateway links

2012-01-19T15:17:00.000-08:00

First, via thwap, a link to another Rabble piece by Tyler McCreary. In it he describes the appalling start by which Enbridge and even JRP chair Sheila Leggett stepped in it.

Second, The Regina Mom has a solid series of recent links to all things Enbridge and Northern Gateway.

Go and read.

Checking Enbridge's homework: I-O models edition

2012-01-19T11:05:00.000-08:00

Marc Lee at the Progressive Economics Forum (and Rabble)has his Sherlock hat on sleuthing out the the math behind the employment numbers Enbridge is claiming for the Northern Gateway project. He explains how economic input-output models are manipulated to produce person-year employment numbers.

Input-output models are fairly standard economic models used by government and industry predict the impact of an economic event on a region, such as the addition or loss of a major industry. I'm not an economist so I'm not the one to ask about the details of these things, but I can tell that as with all economic models, a certain set of assumptions are made about the nature of the economy and variables are added.

Socio-economic impact statements as part of the overall environmental impact statement (EIS) put forward by project proponents use I-O models to come up with their job and economic benefit numbers before later processes like the Northern Gateway JRP hearings convene. I-O models were used in the Mackenzie Gas Project and the assorted diamond mine impact assessment projects. Lee explains the first part of the problem with Enbridge's numbers with reference to how I-O models work:

So how do we get from an average of 1,850 workers for three-years to 63,000 person-years of employment (construction only)? To answer this question we have to understand input-output models, which use GDP data to proxy the flow of income through the economy. Modellers “shock” the I-O model to estimate an increase in economic activity. The important pieces are (a) that direct expenditures on the pipeline also lead to employment in upstream industries that provide the goods and services that are inputs to construction and operations (called “indirect employment”); and (b) income to workers, whether direct or indirect, support jobs in the local economy on food, housing, cars, entertainment and so forth (called “induced employment”).

The second part is where the Sherlock Holmesing comes into play and pertains to the question of indirect jobs and how that relates to the 63 000 person years figure. Lee contacted Statistics Canada and writes the following:

So I am scratching my head a bit, in particular as it relates to direct jobs and how all of those reported indirect jobs could include such large numbers of in far-flung industry categories. There is some kind of flaw in how this is being modelled but without deeper information I cannot get at it. It could be that Oil and Gas Construction Industry [code 2300D0] in the I-O Model is broader than pipeline building (in the NAICS, 23712, Oil and Gas Pipeline and Related Structures Construction).

To translate, every job, yours, mine, and your neighbour's falls under a job classification code. NAICS is the North American Industry Classification System, a coding system for classifying jobs that is standardised across Canada, the US, and Mexico. It isn't as simple as it looks as a person's job title doesn't necessarily correlate with the most obvious industry they're involved in. For example, a plumber working at an airport might be coded as working in air transportation, not in something more intuitive like home or commercial construction.

So when Lee speculates that coding for "the Oil and Gas Industry in the I-O model is broader than pipeline building" he is suggesting that the I-O model Enbridge used to come up with their person-year numbers may have used a much more generous code than it should have. It may have included estimates of indirect employment that really would have nothing do to with the pipeline! I mean, does Oil and Gas Construction Industry include someone welding oil derricks in rural Alberta who would have been employed regardless of what Enbridge wanted to do?

I think there's also something to be said about the difficulty in obtaining from a government department work it did for a private firm regarding something in the clear public interest undergoing a massive public consultation. It appears to put Statscan in the unenviable position of protecting Enbridge from potential scrutiny of the support for its claims. It will be telling if Enbridge obfuscates the release of their I-O models and what went into them.

It isn't your imagination, they really are talking to themselves

2012-01-18T21:00:00.000-08:00

The SUN-TV news network was never intended to cover the news, it was intended to make the news. Some might even say make up the news, but what I mean is that the gang of clown-shoed commentators put together by right-wing Quebecor chieftain Pierre Karl Peladeau and former PMO flack Kory Teneycke are paid to act out and grab headlines, not to report the news.
Nobody watches SUN-TV outside of a few elderly shut-ins, the staff at QMI newspapers who are a captive audience, Blogging Tories and professional media watchers.

Bill Brioux, a freelance TV writer for CP, owner of TVFeedsMyFamily.com and a former Sun Media TV columnist, has access to BBM numbers. He says the audiences for Sun News Network are indeed minuscule.

“Very few Canadians watch Sun News Network. A look at the BBM Canada overnight, estimated ratings for a typical mid-week night, Wed. Dec. 28, showed that their highest rated show was The Source with Ezra Levant at 10 p.m. with 38,000 viewers across Canada. ByLine with Brian Lilley at 9 pulled 35,000. Only 5,000 and 6,000 of those viewers were between 25 and 54, across Canada. There are more people, on any given night, in a mall in Toronto,” says Brioux.

So who does watch Sun News Network? “The vast majority of the few viewers SNN does get are way over 50, outside the demo advertisers want. So SNN draws enough on a nightly basis to fill a senior’s mall,” says Brioux.

He went on to say that after the top two shows, Sun News Network gets even fewer viewers. “Beyond Lilley and Levant’s shows—the two highest rated SNN offerings by far—everything else stiffs,” says Brioux. “Charles Adler has bombed from the beginning, drawing 8,000 at 8 p.m. and 2,000 at 11 p.m. on the 28th—and zero in the 25–54 demographic both hours, across Canada.”

As for David Akin’s Daily Brief, Brioux says 6,000 viewers tuned in over the supper hour. But the late-night slot tanked. “Daily Brief at midnight got zip and zip—so few viewers, BBM Canada could not measure them. The same night, CBC News Network peaked at 198,000/60,000 viewers.”

The idea behind the "news" network is to make a lot of noise through calculated and contrived outrageousness and get the other media in the country to pay attention. This results in the media that most people do watch and read - the CBC, CTV, Global TV, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Province et al - reporting "both sides of the story" and thus giving the radical right wing side of an issue equal balance with the truth, thus advancing the radical conservative neofascist agenda.
Every time Ezra Levant prances around in a fright wig or tells a foreign executive to go fuck his mother for opposing the destruction of the environment, every time some ignorant spokesbimbo insults a guest and spouts nonsense, every time Michael Coren tells the audience that real Canadians hate brown people and non-Christians --it makes the news, the blogs (including this one) go nuts and people talk about it.
With very few exceptions - and they should be ashamed of themselves - the people on SUN TV don't care about the news or journalism or truth - that isn't the business they are in. They will say or do anything to get covered by other media. They have to, because no one is watching them.
Essentially, SUN TV is engaged in cultural trolling and the way you get rid of trolls is to quit feeding them. So I call on other bloggers, other journalists, the real news media in Canada to stop giving these trolls the oxygen of public attention.
As long as the CRTC refuses to force cable companies to make them a standard station and force subscribers to give them money, SUN-TV will not turn a profit. Eventually PKP will get sick of shovelling money down a hole and Levant, Adler, Coren, Erickson and the rest will all be forced to go out and try to get real jobs.
And being a professional clown only looks good on a resume if you are applying for a job at Ringling Brothers or a rodeo.

Crossposted from the Woodshed

Harper: Gas bag in the wilderness

2012-01-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

The Rev. took the juiciest parts of Harper's latest "sit down" with Peter Mansbridge and spread them out here. It's so good that it's difficult to pick out which part of "Iran really scares me" is the brownest part of Harper's utter bullshit. But by way of example:

“I’ve raised the alarm as much as I can, but obviously I don’t advocate particular actions publicly. I work with our allies to see if we get consensus on actions,” he said.
Mr. Harper said he has no doubt that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. “There is absolutely no doubt they are lying,” Mr. Harper said, referring to statements by Iran that the nuclear program is for peaceful uses.
“The evidence is just growing overwhelming. This is not, as was the case of Iraq, merely the opinion of allies,” he said.
The development of nuclear weapons as one of the purposes of Iran’s nuclear program “is just beyond dispute at this point,” he said. “The only dispute is how far advanced it is and how far off it will be until they actually develop those weapons and develop the capability of delivering the weapons.”

This is measuring in centimeters and calling it inches. "Mr. World-Stage", if he actually expresses these same things the same way at international gatherings, must be an amazingly embarrassing spectacle. You see ... the Israelis have a different take on Iran.

Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb, according to the intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present later this week to Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

...

The Israeli view is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear capabilities, it has not yet decided whether to translate these capabilities into a nuclear weapon - or, more specifically, a nuclear warhead mounted atop a missile. Nor is it clear when Iran might make such a decision.

Israel also believes the Iranian regime now faces an unprecedented threat to its stability, which for the first time combines both external and internal pressure: from abroad, increasingly harsh sanctions and threats of military action, and at home, economic distress and worries about the results of the parliamentary election scheduled for March.

Read the whole article. Then ask yourself why Harper is in such a bum's rush to go to war.

And, if Harper disagrees with the Israeli intelligence estimate, does that make him anti-semitic?

Keep those "radicals" out of Canada

2012-01-18T10:52:00.000-08:00

Rick Mercer gives a great rant here.

And a video to remind you that in the eyes of Harper, you are under attack.

Trash talking us into war

2012-01-18T09:55:00.000-08:00

I think most reasonable people, at least in hindsight, would agree that one of the things the Liberals' got right under Chretien and Martin was keeping Canada out of the gigantic deadly goat rodeo known as the Iraq War.
Remember how in the months that lead up to the invasion we were told again and again that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, that there was no question he was working on 'nookyalur' weapons, that Saddam Hussein was seen french kissing Osama Bin Laden under the bleachers during the homecoming game. This was all given as gospel truth by the White House, Pentagon, CIA and about 90% of the Western Media.
And yet, hundreds of billions of dollars and a million or so deaths later, we know it was all bullshit. They were wrong or lying or both.
Iraq was about as close to having nukes or a means to deliver them as say, Guatemala is and was about as much a military threat to its neighbours at that point as Belgium is to France, Germany and Britain.
Outside of a very few conservative true believers and George W. Bush's inner circle, no one, least of all the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, think the invasion of Iraq worked out well.
Remember too, that Stephen Harper very much wanted Canada to take part in the Iraq War.
Now that Harper has his majority, he cannot and will not be denied his opportunity to show the world that Canada is a major player on the world stage just as capable of killing lots of non-Western Nogoodniks and Nogoodnik women and terrorist children as any other NATO member and not just some namby-pambly peacekeeper. Truly, lives could be saved if someone would just give the man a ruler, tell him the centimetres are really inches and send him off to measure his little Cheney.
Even though the current U.S. president is likely to be reelected without having start a war with Iran, Harper, ever hopeful of a victory for his Republican fellow travellers, is already laying the groundwork to take Canada into the next war of choice.

“I’ve raised the alarm as much as I can, but obviously I don’t advocate particular actions publicly. I work with our allies to see if we get consensus on actions,” he said.
Mr. Harper said he has no doubt that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. “There is absolutely no doubt they are lying,” Mr. Harper said, referring to statements by Iran that the nuclear program is for peaceful uses.
“The evidence is just growing overwhelming. This is not, as was the case of Iraq, merely the opinion of allies,” he said.
The development of nuclear weapons as one of the purposes of Iran’s nuclear program “is just beyond dispute at this point,” he said. “The only dispute is how far advanced it is and how far off it will be until they actually develop those weapons and develop the capability of delivering the weapons.”

Given that Israeli and U.S. conservative hawks have been warnings Iran is just x-number of years/months/weeks/days/hours away from "getting the bomb" roughly every two weeks since the Shah was chased out of Tehran, I tend to take such certainty with a bushel or two of salt.
Given the number of sabres being rattled at it, Iran would be wise to follow North Korea's example and actually get hold of some nukes. Saddam Hussein didn't and look what happened to him.
Mind you, it isn't just that Harper want to get his war on for its own sake, he also thinks he sees a way to turn a dollar or three for his oil-patch pals:

Also during the interview, Mr. Harper linked the debate over the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas with concern over Iran’s threat to blockade the main shipping route for oil in the Middle East. “It’s pretty obvious what the right decision is … not just from an economic and environmental standpoint, but from an energy security standpoint,” Mr. Harper said. “When you look at the Iranians threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz, I think that just illustrates how critical it is that supply for the United States be North American,” Mr. Harper said.

The winning quote from the interview though, by far was this bit of classic right wing projection. The same comment could have come from any leader in the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America or Africa in discussing the United States and conservative Canada.

“In my judgment, these are people who have a particular, you know, fanatically religious worldview, and their statements imply to me no hesitation of using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes,”

Crossposted from The Woodshed

This is silly (2) . . .

2012-01-17T08:58:00.000-08:00

MERCEDES MARKETING: clever, sensitive. At least, that's what Dieter thinks. The Doktor made an appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show, to proclaim a revolution in new Mercedes sleds. Some in the audience were less than pleased, according to AUTOBLOG. Che with M-B Tri-Star?

This is silly . . .

2012-01-17T07:09:00.000-08:00

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS are some of the funniest people around. Check out the delightful lunacy.

Just wondering...

2012-01-16T23:10:00.000-08:00

...if all allegedly corrupt Toronto cops wear button-fastened brown or black leather jackets with step collars? Or is it just a drug squad thing?

Do the homicide folks wear trench coats? Do they go shopping together and giggle over the racks in fine leather shops? Inquiring minds want to know.

Consumerism . . .

2012-01-16T10:03:00.000-08:00

FROM THE NEW YORKER, the triumph of the wall-wart.

A quick note on comment decorum

2012-01-16T09:25:00.000-08:00

Back here I deleted comments and left a note explaining that I did so because of the vicious ad hominem nature of some of these comments. I won't speak for my co-bloggers but I ask that commenters on my posts refrain from personal attacks.

I don't particularly care if the thread veers off topic and you want to talk about flower gardening instead of oil pipelines. But if you start screaming FUCK YOU in caps or calling another commenter nasty names, I'll delete your posts without a second thought, whether or not I agree with you. I won't ban you unless you persist and you're welcome to continue posting if you change your tone.

Yes, I'm quite aware that some of my posts are vitriolic, but I try direct that vitriol at politicians and certain cohorts, not individuals adding their tuppence in the threads. Unless you're trolling and/or have the initials PR.

That is all.

Fifty years ago . . .

2012-01-16T08:16:00.000-08:00

1962: FIFTY YEARS AGO, and a time of great changes, the effects of which are still being adjusted to, today. MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE, a fine site run by the Economist gang, has an article by Matthew Engel, "FIFTY YEARS ON: 1962", that is worthy of your attention.

For most real people who remember 1962, the 50-year mark will not necessarily be a moment of celebration. It was not that kind of year.

We can expect 2012 to be punctuated by the customary anniversary articles. Politically, 1962 is remembered above all for the Cuban missile crisis (October), in which President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev led the world as near as it has ever come to instant destruction. The Berlin Wall had just gone up, and all year Khrushchev veered between confrontation and calming. John Glenn’s orbit of the Earth (February) established that America would not allow the early Soviet lead in space to go unchallenged. On their Himalayan border, China and India really did go to war, briefly (October-November). In a referendum (April) the French overwhelmingly and finally ratified their tormented retreat from imperialism in Algeria. Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Israel (May), the last reckoning with a major Nazi figure.

The new Coventry cathedral was consecrated (May) to replace its bombed-out predecessor and become perhaps the only well-loved post-war building in Britain. Marilyn Monroe died (August), aged 36, in circumstances that have never lost their morbid fascination. David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton did their first Vogue shoot (January, for the April issue), bringing youth and attitude to some starchy pages. Rudolf Nureyev, newly defected, danced with Margot Fonteyn in “Giselle” to loud acclaim at Covent Garden (February). In South Africa, Nelson Mandela was jailed (November) for five years, which turned into 27. In Albany, Georgia (July), Martin Luther King was jailed for two weeks. The Telstar satellite began relaying flickering TV pictures across the Atlantic amid great excitement (July). And Richard Nixon failed in his attempt to become governor of California and angrily announced, 12 years prematurely, that he was quitting politics: “You don’t have Nixon to kick around any more.” All these events made global headlines.

Not an easy year to sum up, then. Time’s choice for Man of the Year, Pope John XXIII, was an unusually subtle and discerning one, reflecting the modernisation and humanisation of the Catholic church that was happening beneath the headlines. Fifty years on, however, modernity and humanity are not the most obvious characteristics of Catholicism. The lasting importance of 1962 stems from what was happening well below Time’s radar screen. The volcano that spewed forth all the debris that we think of as the 1960s was bubbling under, waiting to explode. And the vulcanologists were sound asleep.

The trouble with astro-turf ...

2012-01-14T14:07:00.000-08:00

Is that, unlike real grass, it wears out.

That's a fact.

The other problem, of course, is that, (despite the fact that it's a Monsanto invention), you can't kill it with this Monsanto invention.

Unlike real grass, it has no roots. Where real grass, once established, adapts to its environment and then takes hold, astro-turf is held in place by another artificial substance - glue.

So ... the best way to get rid of the astro-turf is to dissolve the glue.

Waiting for the snowball fight in hell

2012-01-14T13:03:00.000-08:00

I agree with Cathie.

I am done with giving the Harper Cons the benefit of the doubt. I'll believe they'll actually amend the residency requirements law only when I see them bring it to the Commons and whip their caucus to support it.

Scary . . .

2012-01-14T10:48:00.000-08:00

THE ORIGINAL TERMINATOR: the Japanese Giant Hornet. Really. Check out the BBC doc below, as 30 of these intelligent team-workers slaughter 30,000 European honeybees. Awesome photography of ruthless extermination, not war. Mother Nature can be so warm and fuzzy. All that delusional 18th and 19th century European poetry about the wonders of Nature . . . then again, North America generated its Walden wackos, too, and Jack London, to compensate.

Spokesthingie Marshall Spincycle Friday the 13th

2012-01-14T01:21:00.000-08:00

Wow, what is it with spokesthingies called Marshall saying misleading things today?

First we have BC Ferries' Deborah Marshall trotting out a line about a smoking clutch when in fact we learn it was an apparently serious crankcase problem that disabled the Queen of Oak Bay.

Second, we've got Ethical Oil's Kathryn Marshall, well, watch for yourself:

The Conservative week in review

2012-01-12T19:20:00.000-08:00

Wow, Stephen Harper's had quite the week. First, one of his minion could keep his yap shut about Kitimat pipeline, pissing off the very people who, if not fully convinced of the benefits, must be persuaded to at least not hate the project. Then another one of his dungpumps gunged up the idea that same-sex marriages performed in Canada weren't valid if same-sex marriage was not allowed in the couple's home locale.

What these useless people don't quite understand is that some things, once out, cannot be put back again. There's no going back on the corruption of process in the Joint Review Panel hearings and Oliver's arrogant utterings will echo in the ears of every single follower, attendee and intervenor at the hearings. There's a lot of rednecks out there in Northern BC who also happen to hold some progressive environmental views. None but the handful of the blinkered actually believe climate change is bullshit or that oil isn't without serious risks. This could ultimately cost the project.

Same-sex marriage, like the neutering of kings and tyrants in favour of democracy, the end of slavery, and universal suffrage is the latest advance in the long process of shedding the dark and brutal ideas driving of our development as a society and species. It represents true progress and resonates deep within the souls of newly freed and those who support them.

Oil pipelines and trade agreements cannot do this and in many ways represent one of the remaining shadows of our past. Foreign wars do this, but only for the cowards who get misty-eyed starting yet send others to fight them.

People will risk their lives to defend their homes and livelihoods from encroachment by a malevolent government attempting turn the clock back to an age we'd long rather forget.

Millions of us understand and reject the oil economy killing our future. Exxon-Alaska, BP's Deepwater Horizon are well within recent memory. The entire world watched these disasters unfold. Lesbians, gays, and the transgendered have far more allies and support than active enemies.

Harper's government stood up this week and declared itself the enemy of a great many millions and the deep conveyor of social history. It will cost them.

Gimme some of that ole time safety

2012-01-12T14:09:00.000-08:00

If you live in Moose Jaw (note: two words) you probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about BC Ferries. On the other hand, if you're planning on a vacation which involves world-class flower gardens or whales or even just a decent cup of tea, you're probably going to end up on a BC Ferry at some time. Anyway, your tax dollars, (Yup! Even federal ones), go into making that stretch of water a part of the Trans-Canada highway ... so you should care a little bit.

Back here there were links back to a couple sites which hauled up some information on BC Ferries and that more-than-inconvenient crash into the dock which, just before the Christmas/New Years rush, put Duke Point terminal out of business.

Now, I have always been a bit mystified by double-ended ships, particularly large ones like the Coastal Inspiration. I cut my teeth on twin-screw, stern propulsion systems, even if the first of them was a relic which required burning the furniture to maintain 16 knots. I have always preferred that both engines produce power out the stern for a variety of reasons. But, that's just me.

Vancouver journalist Chris Montgomery has done some serious digging into the possible causes of Coastal Inspiration's latest mishap and it is truly worth the read.

It brings to mind something an old Master once told me in my first passenger ship: If you're counting up redundant systems and you're still on the fingers of one hand, you probably don't have enough. (Although three layers of redundancy should work if you maintain regular practice).

It's on the hidden agenda

2012-01-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

Therefore it's not on the agenda you can see.

The Harper government has served notice that thousands of same-sex couples who flocked to Canada from abroad since 2004 to get married are not legally wed.

But speaking in Halifax Thursday, the Prime Minister said the issue was not on the agenda for his majority Conservatives. “We have no intention of further re-opening or opening this issue,” Stephen Harper told reporters when asked about The Globe and Mail’s report.

The reversal of federal policy is revealed in a document filed in a Toronto test case launched recently by a lesbian couple seeking a divorce. Wed in Toronto in 2005, the couple have been told they cannot divorce because they were never really married – a Department of Justice lawyer says their marriage is not legal in Canada since they could not have lawfully wed in Florida or England, where the two partners reside.

I am about the furthest thing from a lawyer, but I'm betting lawyers from Whitehorse to Moose Jaw are reading this report with a significant amount of horror. James C. Morton holds out one of the easy examples of where this leads.

This is your Harper government. Their leader stands there and lies to you while they disassemble the rule of law.

Corrected Moose Jaw; two words; just down the road from Regina. TUVM Regina Mom.

Petro-addled banana monarchy

2012-01-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

The vile Harper is planning a mission to China to sell oil. Used to be that Canadian conversations with China at least had to think about mentioning human rights issues. Reuters points out that Harper has dropped the charade and human rights concerns are not even being paid the lip service they once were.

In light of Oliver Oil's recent comments on the Northern Gateway JRP process, I'll go one step further and suggest that the Harper-cons think the Chinese government has the right idea when it comes to rights.

These recent events are instructive in that they reveal a little more of the Harper's plan for mutilating Canada. We're set to become a weird northern version of a petroleum-addled authoritarian banana ~~republic~~ monarchy. You know, like pretty much every other petro-state on the planet.

International trade policy is going to centre on selling tar sands oil. Domestic policy is going to focus on crushing any resistance to it and the rest of the suite of far-right reactionary crap the ReformaTories want to impose on the nation. We've already got the military glorification and the princeling ministers with their Quadaffi-esque sense of entitlement.

To hell with these people.

Who's the Jack Ass now, Tony?

2012-01-10T22:57:00.000-08:00

Jesus H Christ on a popsicle stick. This is the same guy who made a joke about Canadians dying from listeriosis.

Isn't it wonderful? If you criticize a politician in a position of power, you get a personal swipe.

We're their frigging bosses!!! By their own standards we can call them on anything we want to. We are their employers. And they are obliged, by their subordinate position, to sit there with their mouths shut and their Blackberries silent.

Goddamn, I hate every politician in this country, and Clement is an excellent example as to the, "why".

A compost heap is too comfortable a position for him to land.

Oil-stupid

2012-01-10T13:32:00.000-08:00

Shortly after my recents posts in the Oliver and the Oil Pipeline, I tripped over this bit by Michael T Klare, where he surveys the shifting geostrategic picture around oil resources. In a nutshell, he talks about US bases in Australia, Chinese versus ASEAN posturing around contentious bits of water with potential reserves, the Caspian, and of course the latest sabre-rattling between Iran and the US over the Straight of Hormuz.

A couple of things stand out about this apparent return to full-time Great Game posturing after the Bush-era clumsiness of invasions and occupations (they never understood that you don't actually want go to war). First is that nowhere, anywhere, in all these great powers has a serious amount of effort gone into attempts to take oil out of the equation. The amount of effort and expense that goes into strategic planning, building blue-water navies, and setting up new military bases to leverage access to the remaining oil deposits is astounding. Serious domestic policies and international agreements aimed at drastically reducing fossil energy reliance would go much further to alleviating the tensions and risk of disaster that strategic posturing promotes. However, this idea seems to escape all those slick advanced degreed international relations and strategic studies people in foreign services who still can't get over their Hobbesian realism (or fear of it) enough to share a dinner bill, let alone an international treaty or two. It's oil or anarchy, war if necessary.

The second thing that stood out was that Klare provides a context for Oliver Oil's comments about environmentalists and other "radicals." If he and his cohort lump those opposed to domestic fossil fuel development in the same boat as an Iran threatening close access to the Persian Gulf, then we have a bit of a problem. Oliver's rhetoric looks like a trial balloon for some interesting shifts in Conservative rhetoric. As I told a friend a while ago that they'd ring the Tar Sands in tanks and wire, forcibly relocate communities, rather than kerb development. A government quite happy to let the police lock up a thousand people on a secret law, no time for democracy, a serious martial fetish, and a fanatical allegiance to a petrol economy could be a serious threat to a lot of Canadians if it starts painting them with certain brushes.

Oh! look what that twit Oliver has done

2012-01-10T12:50:00.001-08:00

We've got an Alberta prime minister trying to bully British Columbians.

Art Sterritt

Haida First Nation

Executive Director

Coastal First Nations

10 January 2012

I have no doubt that the hillbillies in the Harper government, (and particularly a feces flinging moron like Oliver), cannot even begin to understand the nuance of what's just happened.

Northern Gateway Pipeline notes

2012-01-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

Given that I have a little experience around pipeline and megaproject issues, I thought I might provide readers with a bit of a rundown on how the JRP hearing process works and what's involved.

Under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, a project of the magnitude of Enbridge's Northern Gateway proposal triggers a Joint Panel Review. The Joint Panel is made up of individuals representing the federal National Energy Board (NEB) and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA). The process begins with the preparation and submission by the proponent (Enbridge) of a document sometimes called an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). This is a very large item detailing Enbridge's views on the projected environmental and socio-economic impacts and benefits of the project. The Northern Gateway EIS is available here, downloadable in pdf by item.

Once the review is underway, the JRP conducts a series public hearings in communities along the pipeline route. Individuals and groups can apply for intervenor status at the JRP hearings and make presentations regarding social, economic and environmental concerns stemming from the project and the claims made in the EIS. The the hearing process is long, tedious, and does not hear all the voices it should. But it does produce a much richer sense of what the project might actually look like beyond and in spite of the claims made by the proponent in the EIS. Once the hearings end, the JRP members ~~sequester themselves in a Tibetan monastery~~, spend some months reviewing the project and hearing information before coming to a decision on whether to recommend to the Minister of the Environment whether to allow the project and what recommendations that might include. The National Energy Board website hosts the JRP and you can find more documentation and information there. You can find the hearing schedule and broadcasts here.

The Mackenzie Gas Project JRP* (the latest one, not Berger) was very similar to this one, and would make a good reference benchmark for what to expect for those interested.

While, in my view, there are serious issues of power, privilege, and bias on the part of some intervenors (e.g. governments) and the proponents, as well as recent changes to assessment process, the process is still very open and there is considerable opportunity for the public to raise their concerns directly to the both the proponents and the JRP. Naturally, this little chunk of open-process democracy is a problem for the Cons.

The intervenors are by and large people - and the groups and experts representing them - who will be directly affected by the pipeline. Joe Oliver's appalling comments about foreign agitators and radicals is an attack on both the fairness of the process (unsurprising from a Con) and the people likely to be most affected by the toxic tube.

The Natural Resources Minister might regret his words if his comments definitively sway local opinion (LIKE THIS) against the pipeline and this becomes reflected in the JRP hearings and final recommendations.

* Mackenzie Gas Project linked website and documents are disappearing online given the end of the project. You may have to hunt around a bit.

Getting it.

2012-01-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

Stephen Hume gets it. Better yet though, via Alison, Carol Off gets it.

In short, people (who should have been paying closer attention all along) are starting to see through the hypocrisy and dirty politics of the likes of Harper and the minister his extremist frat boys sent out to face the mob, Joe Oliver.

Say Joe,

2012-01-09T15:32:00.000-08:00

Be careful with them words.

Environmental and other "radical groups" are trying to block trade and undermine Canada's economy, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver said Monday. Oliver's comments come one day before federal regulatory hearings begin on whether to approve Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline, which would deliver crude from Alberta's oilsands to Kitimat, B.C., for shipment to Asia. More than 4,300 people have signed up to address the proposed pipeline over the next 18 months.
"Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade," Oliver said in an open letter. "Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydro-electric dams."
Oliver says the groups "threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda," stack the hearings with people to delay or kill "good projects," attract "jet-setting" celebrities and use funding from "foreign special interest groups."

Joe Oliver is getting pretty close openly labelling Canadian environmentalists enemies of the state. Does he realise there are millions of us?

Be afraid . . .

2012-01-09T14:09:00.000-08:00

BE VERY, VERY AFRAID. WIRED has a disturbing report: "India Reports Completely Drug-Resistant TB". Not good. TB is difficult to treat at the best of times.

Over the past 48 hours, news has broken in India of the existence of at least 12 patients infected with tuberculosis that has become resistant to all the drugs used against the disease. Physicians in Mumbai are calling the strain TDR, for Totally Drug-Resistant. In other words, it is untreatable as far as they know.

Total drug resistance. Nothing works. Untreatable. Marvelous. It's the ideal Republican/Conservative Party disease: it primarily afflicts the poor, and it kills.

A mellifluous note . . .

2012-01-09T11:20:00.000-08:00

IN CONTRAST TO the political foulness below, here's a bright piece of humanity. According to the Star, "Video for Burlington band Walk off the Earth goes viral". Almost five million hits. Wonderful. Dedicate this song to Stevie. Enjoy.

What's the matter with Kansas, you ask?

2012-01-08T23:34:00.000-08:00

Well, the Speaker of the Kansas state legislature is a festering racist who, if the US Secret Service is on the ball, should end up being seriously grilled under some seriously hot lights.

Then, Charles P. Pierce, (who's on the road with the Republican clown act), points out the obvious. It's the entire conservative "movement":

I think, maybe, it's time for the nation to rise up and point out to the Republican party that, root and branch, it is a racist embarrassment to democracy and a blight on this nation that all the world can see. Whether it's N. Leroy Gingrich's chirping about how all the black people are on food stamps, or Rick Santorum's talking about the mysterious Blah People, or this clown whom the other clowns in the Kansas House elected to lead them, there is a steady, noxious river of bile flowing through the entire Republican party, and through the conservative "movement" that empowers it. It should marginalize the party to whatever back lot of hell it is in which a crosseyed James Earl Ray attempts to shoot an apple off the head of Byron De La Beckwith for all eternity.
No, I don't accept your apology, you ignorant old fart. No, Rick, I don't believe for a moment you meant to say something else and it came out "Blah people," you Bible-banging coward. Nobody's talking in code any more. It's right out front there, for all the world to see. How dare these people? How dare their evil souls?

Yup.

There's nothing "ethical" about it

2012-01-08T15:03:00.000-08:00

Since when did oil companies give a red rat's ass about the "ethical" behaviour of the governments of lands from which they sucked oil out of the ground?

The truth is, oil companies are some of the least ethical corporations on the planet. Being harboured in Canada doesn't increase their ethical behaviour. It simply masks what they are and have been all along.

Now go read Norm, then go read Ian.

Update: Go Alison!! And check out Holly Stick's links in the comments.

Interesting ... Some people, depending on where they are, cannot access Ian Reid's blog. No one knows why. So ... Norm has reprinted it.

1812 - 2012: Harper's Zygotian Canada Day Bicentennial Event Spectacular

2012-01-08T13:24:00.000-08:00

This whole War of 1812 glorification schtick the Harper-toons are pushing is actually starting to amuse me - to a point. Most recently, the mucous ones have hired a firm to inject 1812 into this year's Canada Day celebrations.

Nevermind that to include 1812 would logically mean renaming Canada Day British North America Day because that's what Canada was called in 1812, if only by the colonial power. However, one can understand the Conservatives thinking around this as many of their leaning also believe that life begins when the sperm meets the egg, and not nine months later when a living human exits the birth canal. It makes sense that they'd also believe Canada began when ~~Aboriginal ancestors crossed the Bering Land Bridge to become the original inhabitants of this land~~, ~~Vikings landed in the East~~, ~~Jacques Cartier went up the St. Lawrence~~, the British Crown confirmed military and political domination over the remainder post-American Revolution northern North America, and not at Confederation. Or the signing of treaties with conquered peoples. Or Gawd-forbid, the commie-Liebrul repatriation of the Constitution in 1982.

This stuff stops being funny when it is understood as a form of historical revisionism that ignores inconvenient facts and time-lines. It stops being funny when it glorifies the colonial-imperial military history of Canada. This is a form of history which ultimately leads to needless death and disruption of the lives and livelihoods of a great many at the hands of those who find satisfaction in guns and uniforms and the conquest of territories.

Happy Birthday

2012-01-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

STEPHEN HAWKING IS 70 today. Our foremost living theoretical physicist, his work is given thoughtful appraisal by Luboš Motl, who ponders things astrophysical from Pilsen, in the Czech Republic, on his site, the reference frame.

What made Hawking somewhat special was that he was very good not only in quantum field theory as understood by particle physicists: he was doing lots of important research in general relativity, too. This pretty unusual combination has predestined him to become the first person who usefully merges these two mostly incompatible pillars of fundamental physics, namely QFT and GR.

The Stevie Burger?

2012-01-08T08:08:00.000-08:00

ACCORDING TO IO9, the "French fast food chain offers Darth Vader burger with black Dark Side bun". Looks like a Stevieburger, to me, fried in VX for an extra tasty, crispy flavor.

Alternatives . . .

2012-01-07T08:38:00.000-08:00

The Canada Party: The sanity alternative.

The legend lives on . . .

2012-01-06T07:50:00.000-08:00

GM HQ, aka "The Tubes"

JIMMY HOFFA. How Jimmy Hoffa Was Buried Under GM’s World Headquarters. Really. Rather inspirational. Now, are there any big building sites in Ottawa? Do Conservatives mix well with Portland?

Conservative poster boy

2012-01-05T23:52:00.000-08:00

Mike Adams is, beyond doubt, one nasty piece of work.

In his latest Conservative outing he tells the tale of one Allison, a depressed white girl who, despite her wisdom and energy found herself in the clutches of a black lad. Her life ruined and her virginity gone forever she realizes the folly of her liberal ways and becomes a Conservative talking head whore.

Cool story for the Blogging wankers ... and total bullshit.

Mike Adams, who positions himself as a 'thinking" Conservative ends his tale thus:

The story may be a simple one but that is okay. Liberalism is a simple way of viewing the world. It lacks the complexity and even the nuance of conservative thought. Although simple, this story is not actually true. It is an Ally-gory meant to show the depth of the divide between conservatives and liberals in America today. It is a divide so deep that it simply cannot be negotiated away. Barry can only get what he wants by forcing himself upon us all. Right-thinking people judge him according to his merits and not according to his race.

Only if you didn't write the preceding page and a half.

And he did.

Lee Atwater would call him an amateur.

Canada's little ray of SUNshine

2012-01-05T09:35:00.000-08:00

Canada's ethical snake-oil salesman and Glenn Beck wannabe Ezra Levant continues to keep it classy. As far as I can tell, Ezra's objection isn't that Chiquita Banana keep paying right-wing death squads to murder labour activists in South America, but that they are denying that they are boycotting tarsand products as a PR dodge. How dare they obey free market principles, eh Ezra? I don't know how the mother of the Chiquita Banana exec feels about you suggesting her son should have carnal knowledge of her, but your mother must be so very proud of you.

Crossposted from The Woodshed

From whence the power flows

2012-01-04T15:28:00.000-08:00

DAMMIT JANET! is keeping a weather eye on the emerging pack of Conservative anti-choicers intent on imposing their authoritarian religious will on the women of this country. Go read and then return.

The article referred to in fern hill's post comes from the uber-propagandist, anti-woman, Lifesite. What makes it interesting is that it is not breaking news. Lifesite has simply regurgitated this older report from The Windsor Star in an apparent effort to keep up some momentum which would have been lost over the holidays.

What makes it more interesting is that this is now the fourth nutball Conservative to have yapped off in less than two weeks about "re-opening" the abortion debate.

To which Harper replies that it won't happen while he's prime minister.

There is absolutely no reason to believe him.

Harper's party is manufactured from an alliance of the worst of political outcasts. Refugees from former Ontario premier Mike Harris' "common sense revolution" to evolution-denying, thought-vacant, science-is-too-tough-so-it-can't-be-true christian freaks. Then Peter MacKay, after lying to his membership, folded the rotting corpse of the Mulroney-shredded Progressive Conservative party into the batter. From all of this, the Harper party built its base.

Charles P. Pierce recently described the current day Republican Party in the US thusly:

... nativist hooligans, anti-intellectual crackpots, Christomaniacs, and the sad detritus of American apartheid ...

A description which, with only the slightest adjustment, would serve to describe the alliance of refuse which makes up the Harper party. Lee Atwater*, if he were alive today, would be proud.

And now Harper has a problem. His alliance of feces-flinging knuckle draggers got him what he wanted and they're starting to call in some markers.

While the Harperites were stuck in a minority in parliament he could easily shut them up on the premise that such extremist ideological public statements, unpalatable to most Canadians, would not only deny them a future majority but might cost them their tenuous minority in any future election.

Now, Harper possessing the power he craved, and the position from which to expand it, will either have to deliver or pay an even greater price - division from within and a dilution of his personal hold on power. He can no longer silence the freaks with the threat of an electoral loss. Re-election doesn't come up for 36 months and the poo-chuckers have been sitting on their hands for six years. They are, if nothing else, an impatient lot who will demand the reward they were promised or think they were promised for giving Harper his dream.

Harper has already proven he is prepared to drive legislation with only ideology at the wheel. He's also demonstrated a keenness for jack-booting his legislative agenda into law.

Now, he's going to kick it up a notch and make sure you can't hold his party of rejects to account for their words. From Frances Russell:

When Parliament rose for the Christmas break, there were signals the Harperites were planning to go where no government has gone before and place all business conducted by parliamentary committees -- or at least all potentially embarrassing business -- behind closed doors.
...

The government is especially sensitive about discussions on social issues such as abortion, capital punishment and official languages, Comartin says. He warns that if the government is able to keep everything behind closed doors, it can, given its majority on each and every committee, ensure committee reports will be "totally opaque" so that the public will never know what was said or what specific action was taken.

The only reason you would want to hide all that away is because you've got something to hide. And the reason the government is so sensitive is because they know it won't wash with most Canadians.

Clearly, abortion is back on the table. Harper is feeding you the big lie.

* Lee Atwater was the repugnant individual who, when he wasn't smearing or generating outright lies about opposition candidates during US presidential campaigns, became known for building the base of the US Republican party with southern anti-black racists. His legacy in the US Republican party lives on.

State rape

2012-01-03T14:43:00.000-08:00

From The Guardian:

Undercover police officers routinely adopted a tactic of "promiscuity" with the blessing of senior commanders, according to a former agent who worked in a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police for four years.
The former undercover policeman claims that sexual relationships with activists were sanctioned for both men and women officers infiltrating anarchist, leftwing and environmental groups.
Sex was a tool to help officers blend in, the officer claimed, and was widely used as a technique to glean intelligence. His comments contradict claims last week from the Association of Chief Police Officers that operatives were absolutely forbidden to sleep with activists.
The one stipulation, according to the officer from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a secret unit formed to prevent violent disorder on the streets of London, was that falling in love was considered highly unprofessional because it might compromise an investigation. He said undercover officers, particularly those infiltrating environmental and leftwing groups, viewed having sex with a large number of partners "as part of the job".
"Everybody knew it was a very promiscuous lifestyle," said the former officer, who first revealed his life as an undercover agent to the Observer last year. "You cannot not be promiscuous in those groups. Otherwise you'll stand out straightaway."

If true, and I think likely it is, then rape is the only word that fits.

Nuts and flakes . . .

2012-01-03T09:19:00.000-08:00

TAKES ALL KINDS TO MAKE A POLITY. And in Iran, nuts and flakes abound. There's an election coming at the beginning of March. I Need a Dinner Jacket's kinda worried about it, too, because Iranian politics have become more fractious, as the various factions try to work out the path to power held by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

According to Thomas Erdbrink at the Washington Post, in his article, "Establishment factions to face off in Iranian elections", it's a real free-for-all:

Iran has begun gearing up for elections that will represent a showdown between two factions that just three years ago formed a united establishment against the opposition Green Movement.

In parliamentary elections March 2, supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will face off against an alliance of hard-line clerics, Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and bazaar merchants who had been instrumental in keeping Ahmadinejad in power before they turned against him.

Both groups are striving for a majority in a parliament that can either obstruct or speed up initiatives by Ahmadinejad’s government. While the two factions together had formed a hugely influential bloc, monopolizing all major centers of power, a disagreement over the firing of the country’s intelligence chief last spring caused a final breakup after months of tension. Now clerics and commanders are accusing Ahmadinejad’s advisers of plotting to push them from power and to reduce the role of Islam in the country.

Now, add the nuclear considerations and military egos . . . should be an interesting year.

Harpoonage:
Iranian naval ships take part in a naval parade
on the last day of the Velayat-90 war game
in the Sea of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.

Somewhere, not too far away, there's a Seawolf-class hunter-killer with targeting solutions for the Harpoons and the Mk 48's . . . memo to Gen. Ataollah Salehi: do not obsess over the carriers.

And you thought I was "Over the top"

2012-01-02T23:38:00.000-08:00

Well, you know what part of my anatomy you can kiss. Try not to get shit on your lips.

Read it again.

Yeah, this outfit really needs a tax cut

2012-01-02T11:33:00.000-08:00

From CBC: (emphasis mine)

Electro-Motive Diesel, which makes diesel-electric locomotives and engines in London, Ont., has locked out almost 500 unionized workers after they failed to take a 50 per cent cut in wages and benefits.

The collective agreement between EMD and the Canadian Auto Workers Local 27 ran out at the end of 2011, and picket lines were set up at 6 p.m. Sunday.

EMD is owned by construction equipment maker Caterpillar through its Progress Rail subsidiary. Caterpillar has a reputation for being tough on unions and waiting out long strikes.

So, lets look at Caterpillar's condition. Is this a suffering corporation? From Caterpillar's 3rd quarter report of 2011: (emphasis mine)

"This was the best quarter for sales in our history, and our order backlog is at an all-time high. Excluding Bucyrus impacts, this was also our best profit quarter in history, and year-to-date operating profit as a percent of sales was higher than any full year in more than three decades. Machinery and Power Systems operating cash flow has also been very positive, with the first nine months of the year better than any full year in our history," said Caterpillar Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Doug Oberhelman.

The Bucyrus impacts refer to the Caterpillar acquisition of Bucyrus International, (a heavy mining equipment company), in 2010.

Even with the negative number from Bucyrus added to Caterpillar's year-end figures, the company is forecasting a $6.79 profit per share, a 63 percent increase over the previous year.

Again from CBC:

Union leaders fear Caterpillar will move production to a Progress Rail plant in Muncie, Ind., which was opened on Oct. 28 and also produces diesel-electric locomotives, media reports say. It could benefit from any Buy American policies that might affect purchasing in the U.S.

Union officials told the London Free Press that the final offer would cut wages to $16.50 from $35 an hour, though the CAW has made it clear it rejects wage cuts as long as Caterpillar enjoys record profits.

Unfortunately, here's a piece of reality no one is going to like.

The economic development arm of the state gave Progress Rail $3.5 million US in tax credits and $1 million in training credits, another $1 million for the region to build public works, and help to pursue a $1-million grant and $22.5 million in tax abatement over time, Roysdon said.
In return, Progress Rail was to invest in the shell of a manufacturing plant and employ as many as 650 workers by 2012.

But the hoped-for flood of new jobs has been less than overwhelming, and the company is keeping secret how many it's hired, Roysdon said.

In October, when the plant rolled out its first two locomotives for mass transit, three different public officials cited the number of employees and all three numbers were different, varying between 150 and 180.

"The workforce hasn't been as easy to find as they thought," Roysdon said.
Why that's the case is tough to determine, with Progress Rail reticent to speak. But two factors come to mind: low wages and training requirements.

In September, an employee told Roysdon that wages ranged between $12.50 and $14.50 an hour, a tough sell in a region where vanished manufacturing jobs once paid $25 and up an hour.
The other challenge has been finding employees with the requisite skills, a problem that drew the attention of the Economist.

Progress Rail even paid retirees from London to help - something that raised the ire of the Canadian Auto Workers, the union for the London factory's workers.

So, Progress Diesel went to where the corporate welfare was and made big promises into their lapels. Not that such behaviour will bother the Governor of Indiana. He's cut from the same rotting cloth as Stephen Harper.

The Republican governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, has made it a priority to pass legislation that would make his state less hospitable to unions, so-called right-to-work laws ...

Yes, well right-to-work legislation has done wonders for the U.S. It attracted German auto manufacturers to position themselves in the right-to-work states because they consider the U.S. a low wage country. Even the German car makers admit that the only reason they pay such low wages is because they can get away with it.

Welcome to Stephen Harper's Canada. Tax cuts for corporations which are exploiting employees and reaping more profits. Higher unemployment insurance premiums for employees on an already reduced wage.

Right. When you only have one tool in the box it becomes a race to the bottom.

Perspective and circumstance . . .

2012-01-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

The Laetoli footprints of Tanzania date back to approximately 3.5 million years: the original Mall-crawl.

EVERYWHERE AND EVERYWHEN, people have tried to cope, tried to "get ahead", tried to prevail. Different times and different scenery produce different challenges and different perspectives from common-sense survival to the sophistry of delusional abstraction.

Venkatesh Rao, has a post on his RIBBONFARM site that is worthy of pondering, "The Evolution of the American Dream".

Remember the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm and their sloganeering? In the beginning of the story, when they overthrow the humans, they lead with the chant, “four legs good, two legs bad!” By the end, they’ve become human-corrupt, and lead the chant, “four legs good, two legs better!”

Just one word changed, and the new and old words both begin with b, bolstering the illusion of continuity and natural evolution.

Let’s call such a slowly shifting narrative, simple enough to be captured in a slogan, and designed to help a small predatory class dominate a larger prey class, a Pig Narrative. The American Dream is a Pig Narrative.

Venkatesh seems to have a point here. A Pig Narrative, indeed. But that's not the reason I'm posting this. The reason is that Venkatesh presents an interesting list of generations in the evolution of the U.S. as a country, below:

You can compare Pig Narratives on the basis of the degree of prey liberty (or conversely, predator control) they represent, allowing you to plot the evolution over time. If you plot the course of the American Dream through its many rewrites (9 so far by my count, each associated with a major coming-of-age event that defined a generation), you get something like the picture above.

Now, IMHO, this is where the perspectives become fascinating:

Civil War generation (1870s):
If I Go West as a Young Man, and work hard, I have as good a chance as anyone else of making it (gold miner, wildcatter)
Gilded Age generation (1890s):
If I work hard, I can make it (Horatio-Alger-inspired young people working for Robber Barons)
Gatsby generation (1920s):
Anybody can make it (Gatsby type easy money)
New Deal generation (1930s):
Together, we can make it* (worker building Hoover Dam)
GI Bill generation (1940s):
Any American can make it if he fights hard (WW II veteran, college-educated and starting high-responsibility job white collar job with young, growing American post-war companies)
Organization Man generation (Silents, 1950s):
I already have it; if I don’t screw it up, I can keep it (employee of mature, wealthy post-war company)
Peace Corps generation (Boomers, 1960s):
Americans already have it; we should share it (progressive, generous child of Cold War prosperity)
Deregulation generation (X, 1980s):
We’re losing it. If I keep my head down and step around the falling rubble smartly, I may escape (entering workforce among layoffs and uncertainty in manufacturing)
Net generation (Y, late 1990s):
We’re losing it. I don’t know what to do, I’ll go Occupy Wall Street (this generation lived through a boom and a bust and 9/11 while coming of age, turning the pig narrative into garbage at the starting gate, leaving a harsh, anomic landscape)
Next generation (coming of age right now ):
If I Go East as a Young Person, and work hard, I have as good a chance as anyone else of making it (lifestyle entrepreneur in Asia or Eastern Europe — this script will likely take shape with the 2016 election, when the generation is first courted by politicians).

And so, are we approaching the closing stages of the Monopoly game?

Perspectives . . .

2011-12-31T11:12:00.000-08:00

FROM THE ISS. In spite of humanity's foibles, it's a beautiful world, even if some parts of it suffer from too many Stevie portraits. Have a fortunate 2012.

Northern Aurora

Nile Delta

Historical failure . . .

2011-12-30T11:13:00.000-08:00

ONCE UPON A TIME, THE USAAF got a bright idea for a bespoke night fighter, which resulted in the Northrop P-61 Black Widow. Not one of John Northrop's successes. Over-weight, overly complex, the USAAF European theater generals wanted the de Havilland Mosquito, instead, but they got the P-61 because that's what the procurement process had produced. Mind you, it was not a Brewster Buffalo failure, the P-61 did OK, but it was an unnecessary redundancy and economic waste. For what it's worth, the USAF isn't the only beneficiary; the Navy and Army get their opportunities, too. A classic case is the expensive frustration of the M247 Sergeant York self-propelled antiaircraft vehicle.

Well, according to Dina Rasor at TRUTHOUT, the tradition is alive and well. Her article, "F-35 Fighter Is Latest in Long Line of Wasteful Weapon Failures", describes the stumbling to date.

There has been a flurry of articles in the defense press Tuesday about an internal Department of Defense (DoD) report on how the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon's newest attempt to buy a fighter jet, is skating toward potential mechanical and monetary disaster. The DoD top civilian weapons buyer put together a team to do a quick look at how the fighter was doing in its journey to become the next main fighter in the DoD arsenal. The report has the usual DoD hedge wording and qualifiers, but the answer is: not too good.

• • •

Now, the newest fighter is falling under its own bloated procurement weight. Is the system, which has given us generation after generation of overpriced and technically dubious fighters, tanks, and other weapons finally succumbing to its own folly?

• • •

To understand why this keeps happening to our weapons acquisitions and to try to change it, you have to know some history on how the system works and what has happened in the past. It is a sad tale of déjà vu all over again.

Ernest Fitzgerald, the well-known Pentagon whistleblower who fought the bureaucracy in hand-to-hand combat for better weapons and realistically priced weapons from the 1960s to 2006, came up with a simple law of why this sordid history keeps repeating itself. Fitzgerald's first law of weapons procurement is: "First it is too early to tell, second, it is too late to do anything about it." I have found that this is the way that the DoD, the military services and the defense contractors squeeze every last dime out of the procurement budget and then even more, while making sure that their weapon doesn't get so obviously gross as to go on the rare weapons' chopping block.

It's like watching a slow-motion train-wreck, and thanks to Stevie and Airshow, we're paying for a ring-side seat. Think of it as a solid gold plank in the gallows that is being built for the Conservative Party.

Times are tough, and friends are few?

2011-12-29T07:32:00.000-08:00

The R.A.N.'s the place for you!

That would be the Royal Australian Navy which, in case you hadn't been approached by some digger with a funny looking cap, is making some interesting offers.

Apparently the Aussies are feeling a bit pinched.

As it competes with industry for skilled personnel, the ADF has focused its recruitment effort in Britain, which is cutting back heavily on defence as part of a government-wide austerity drive.

However, Australian navy chief Ray Griggs has given an undertaking to his British counterpart, First Sea Lord Admiral Mark Stanhope, that Australia will not recruit personnel the British need to maintain their capabilities.

And to find enough trained personnel to crew its submarines and the fleet of new warships now being built, the navy is also recruiting from the US, Canada and New Zealand.

Their own sailors are heading for the Never Never to cash in.

The RAN is facing tough competition for engineers from the booming resources industry.

It is preparing to provide crews for a new fleet that will include potent Air Warfare Destroyers and giant 28,000-tonne landing ships, bigger than Australia's past aircraft carriers.

But many comprehensively trained naval engineers deployed to submarines based at HMAS Stirling, south of Perth, have found themselves quickly moving on up to the Pilbara mines after being offered big pay rises and less arduous working conditions.

To sweeten the offer, there's this:

Applicants must apply for a permanent resident visa before coming to Australia.
They must also give a written undertaking that they will apply for Australian citizenship as soon as they are eligible. This is normally two years after permanent residence is granted, but an exception will be made for these service personnel, who will become eligible after three months' service.

The army is asking for a rather specific lot:

The army is looking for bomb-disposal experts and is also particularly keen to recruit Catholic chaplains.

Odd mix, that, but you're a figjam bombo with a rosary and you haven't got a brass razoo to you're name, well it might be time to go walkabout.

Or, you could just bypass the whole uniform thing and apply for double the pay.

Still, the Oz navy looks like a bonzer go, what with their own TV series and all.

(Not to mention we had a hand in training some of their officers).

Those of you who are dashing about packing a tucker and booking a Qantas flight should practice this.

How much crap do you need?

2011-12-28T13:21:00.000-08:00

CONSUMERISM. You look at the Boxing Day ads, ya gotta wonder, doesn't everybody have a flat-screen TV? Like the song goes, buy, buy . . .

More on the "Blessed" Season . . . .

2011-12-28T12:49:00.001-08:00

As Rodney King would say: "Why can't we all get along?"

From the CBC and other sources today:

Clergymen brawl at Bethlehem church
Fight erupts at traditional site of Jesus' birth

The annual cleaning of one of Christianity's holiest churches deteriorated into a brawl between rival clergy Wednesday, as dozens of monks feuding over sacred space at the Church of the Nativity battled each other with brooms until police intervened.

The ancient church, built over the traditional site of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, is shared by three Christian denominations — Roman Catholics, Armenians and Greek Orthodox. Wednesday's fight erupted between Greek and Armenian clergy, with both sides accusing each other of encroaching on parts of the church to which they lay claim.
_______________

A fragile status quo governs relations among the denominations at the ancient church, and to repair or clean a part of the structure is to own it, according to accepted practice. That means that letting other sects clean part of the church could allow one to gain ground at another's expense.
_______________

Although the roof has needed urgent work for decades, and leaking rainwater has ruined much of the priceless artwork inside, a renovation has been delayed all these years by disagreements among the denominations over who would pay.

Why is this not at all surprising?

How very moral and upright of them . . . .

Dragon's Den ? ? ? ?

2011-12-28T11:51:00.000-08:00

Michael Byers has an excellent analysis on China, the Arctic, oil and international relations in today's Al Jazeera:

The dragon looks north

China grows hungry for Arctic resources and shipping routes as northern ice melts.
_______________

Snubbed by Arctic countries

China's laissez-faire approach to Arctic legal disputes has, however, been shaken by the recent actions of Arctic countries.

In 2009, China applied for permanent observer status at the Arctic Council, a regional organisation composed of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US. It was a reasonable request, since countries as distant as Poland and Spain had already been accorded that status.

However, the Chinese request came at the same time as one from the European Union, which was caught up in a dispute with Canada over restrictions on the trade of seal products. When Canada retaliated by blocking the EU's request for permanent observer status at the Arctic Council, China's application was collaterally suspended - and has remained so ever since.
_______________

China is respecting international law and has legitimate interests in the Arctic. Its request for permanent observer status should be granted forthwith.

Dragons, even well behaved ones, do not appreciate being snubbed.

Indeed . . . .

Corporate history . . .

2011-12-27T09:37:00.000-08:00

OCCUPY WALL STREET has created an extended awareness of the corporation as enemy of the people, a viewpoint shared by most thoughtful people. However, while a lot are concerned, a lot of us have no real idea how the corporation came to be.

RIBBONFARM is a site that proclaims its purpose "experiments in refactored perception". One of its principals, Venkatesh Rao, has a fascinating post, "A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100", chronicling the rise and fall of the corporation.

On 8 June, a Scottish banker named Alexander Fordyce shorted the collapsing Company’s shares in the London markets. But a momentary bounce-back in the stock ruined his plans, and he skipped town leaving £550,000 in debt. Much of this was owed to the Ayr Bank, which imploded. In less than three weeks, another 30 banks collapsed across Europe, bringing trade to a standstill. On July 15, the directors of the Company applied to the Bank of England for a £400,000 loan. Two weeks later, they wanted another £300,000. By August, the directors wanted a £1 million bailout. The news began leaking out and seemingly contrite executives, running from angry shareholders, faced furious Parliament members. By January, the terms of a comprehensive bailout were worked out, and the British government inserted its czars into the Company’s management to ensure compliance with its terms.

If this sounds eerily familiar, it shouldn’t. The year was 1772, exactly 239 years ago.

• • •

In its 400+ year history, the corporation has achieved extraordinary things, cutting around-the-world travel time from years to less than a day, putting a computer on every desk, a toilet in every home (nearly) and a cellphone within reach of every human. It even put a man on the Moon and kinda-sorta cured AIDS.

So it is a sort of grim privilege for the generations living today to watch the slow demise of such a spectacularly effective intellectual construct. The Age of Corporations is coming to an end. The traditional corporation won’t vanish, but it will cease to be the center of gravity of economic life in another generation or two. They will live on as religious institutions do today, as weakened ghosts of more vital institutions from centuries ago.

The ghastly Gipper . . .

2011-12-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

THE ENDLESS VENAL LUNACY OF THE GOP can overwhelm, and it's easy to lose track of where a large part of this originated. SLATE has a reprise of a delightful article by the late Christopher Hitchens, "Not Even a Hedgehog / The stupidity of Ronald Reagan".

Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars. Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

• • •

I only saw him once up close, which happened to be when he got a question he didn't like. Was it true that his staff in the 1980 debates had stolen President Carter's briefing book? (They had.) The famously genial grin turned into a rictus of senile fury: I was looking at a cruel and stupid lizard. His reply was that maybe his staff had, and maybe they hadn't, but what about the leak of the Pentagon Papers? Thus, a secret theft of presidential documents was equated with the public disclosure of needful information. This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.

Like Gil Scott-Heron said, the man is cheap-steak tough.

bennie Speaks . . . .

2011-12-26T12:31:00.000-08:00

But should anyone listen?

From Global Post yesterday:

Pope Benedict XVI urges faithful to see through "superficial glitter" of Christmas

Pope Benedict XVI has urged worshipers to see through the "superficial glitter" of Christmas during the traditional Christmas Eve Mass at St Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI lamented the commercialization of Christmas during the traditional Christmas Eve Mass at St Peter's Basilica in Rome.

“Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity,” he said, Euronews reported.

He went on to urge worshippers to "see through the superficial glitter of this season" and to discover its true meaning, "the child in the stable in Bethlehem," according to the BBC.

Of course, he was surrounded by the glittering gold in the pic above and in the article itself while making this astute observation.

No doubt wearing the nifty little red numbers to the left, also.

His hypocrisy knows no bounds . . . .

2011-12-25T06:31:00.000-08:00

2011-12-24T23:05:00.000-08:00

T'is dark,
And I like it.

T'is silent,
And I am reflective.

T'is peaceful,
And I am reminded of my friends.

To all of you, may you and all who surround you have a joyful holiday season.

* About the graphic: We are not snowballs, it's not the correct size family and I would never wear a hat like that.

Deborah Grey gives Harper a reformer wedgie

2011-12-24T14:35:00.000-08:00

On CBC's The House, Evan Solomon asked Reform Party matriarch Deborah Grey about Harper. Harper used to be her legislative assistant so we can probably safely assume she has some insight into the way he thinks. While she waxed on about how wonderful Harper is and how he's a Conservative and therefore the neatest thing since the invention of peanut butter, she slipped from referring to "conservatives", in a general sense to "Reformers", specifically. Solomon latched on:

Solomon: Is he still a Reformer?

Grey: Pardon?

Solomon: Is Stephen Harper still a Reformer?

Grey: Oh, I'd say so.

So much for the "mellowing" his supporters keep trying to foist on us. If you go to link and listen to the audio you can pick it up at about minute 18.

Something they would rather not discuss ...

2011-12-24T11:46:00.000-08:00

Unless you live in British Columbia you might not consider yourself affected by the goings on at BC Ferries. That would be until you realize that, while BC Ferries fares have skyrocketed since they became not-quite-a-Crown-corporation at the hands of Gordon "privatize-everything" Campbell, they also receive provincial and federal taxpayer subsidies.

On 22 December the relatively new Coastal Inspiration slammed into the berth at Duke Point, just outside Nanaimo. The result was about 12 people with minor injuries, a ship that is out of service until the vehicle deck weathertight doors are repaired and a shut down of the strategically important Duke Point terminal for months.

I have a pretty good idea what happened but, unlike the grossly uninformed commenters to the various media outlets carrying the story, and the failure of those media outlets to actually blow away the dust to see the real story, there is a story out there.

On The Waterfront started by looking below the surface. Tidal Station reaches in and pulls out some guts. What is interesting is that BC Ferries, once Campbell had crowbarred it away from government oversight, had refused to cooperate with any Freedom Of Information requests on the basis that they were a "private" company. In October 2010 they were compelled to behave as what they actually are - a government-owned operation - and started answering FOI requests. They didn't come along nicely either.

What Tidal Station produces is something that BC Ferries probably did not want you to know (since it was kept hidden away until forced into the light by an FOI request). The propulsion system on those awesome Super C ferries was a source of concern before they even finished building. In fact, the potential problem described in the 2007 report is likely exactly what happened.