That's Another Fine Mess He's Gotten Himself Into

In a post yesterday, The Mound offered a searing assessment of Justin Trudeau's abject failure on the climate-change file. Only the most ardent acolytes of the Prime Minister will fail to see that his soaring rhetoric has far outpaced his level of achievement. Says Mound:

Raising public awareness about climate change as needed to secure public support for carbon taxes only shines a spotlight on the hypocrisy of Trudeau's pipeline policy. You can't have people thinking too much about climate change when you're trying to ramp up the extraction, transmission and export of dangerous, toxin-riddled, environmentally devastating, high-carbon, ersatz petroleum. You simply cannot square that circle.

And Trudeau's dilemma is deepening as he is hoisted on the petard of his own pleasing rhetoric about social license, indigenous rights, etc., all of which some people, especially residents of British Columbia, have taken seriously, putting them on a collision course with both Alberta and the federal government.

Alberta's Rachel Notley is warning of an approaching constitutional crisis over B.C.s refusal to play ball with the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline:

The lack of action followed Monday morning comments by Premier Rachel Notley that British Columbia’s actions to halt construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion aren’t “too far off” from a constitutional crisis.

“If the national interest is given over to the extremes on the left or the right, if the voices of the moderate majority of Canadians are forgotten, the reverberations of that will tear at the fabric of Confederation for many, many years to come,” Notley said.

In his determination to get the pipeline built, Trudeau has a panoply of unpalatable options, all of which would entail a huge political price. As the following clip states, he could suspend transfer payments to British Columbia, impose economic sanctions on the province, or, most draconian of all, invoke the Federal Emergencies Act, which would allow him to call a state of emergency in both B.C. and Alberta, enabling him to suspend provincial law, thus paving the way for the pipeline construction.



None of these options is desirable, but again, Trudeau has brought himself to this precipice by his love of his own public image and rhetoric. One thing is certain in my mind,whatever option he chooses: in 'going to the mats' for the petroleum industry, Justin Trudeau will be making abundantly transparent that he is little more than a servile enabler of the neoliberal agenda.

Corporate Crocodile Tears: A Guest Post

In response to my post yesterday about CBC bias in its reporting on Ontario's minimum wage increase, the Mound wrote a detailed commentary that I am featuring today as a guest post. Following his piece I reproduce a letter from a Star reader pillorying corporate hypocrisy.

"Government should function on the expectation that corporations will act in their own economic self-interest." That point is inarguable. The corporate self-interest, however, has to be subordinated somewhat to the public interest. The political caste is elected to represent the public who voted them into power and those voters who preferred someone else. They are not elected to put corporate interests ahead of the public interest but to balance the conflicting needs of labour and capital recognizing, as Lincoln said, that "labour is by far the superior."

That principle, stated by Lincoln, is especially relevant today in this era of early-onset automation that is going to become a more dominant factor in our industrial economy. Galbraith addresses this in "The Predator State."

Ours is a consumer economy and there's really nothing else we can substitute for that. The corporate sector collapses without access to markets sufficiently large to purchase and consume their wares. Henry Ford knew that it was essential that his workers earned enough to be able to afford to buy his cars.

Commerce today engages in nihilistic pursuit of unsustainable profits at the expense of even its own mid- and long-term interests. Executive compensation is based on what the company takes in today, not how it may be positioned to fare in the next decade or the one after that.

A month before the Republican tax cuts were passed, corporations were gearing up for the anticipated windfall. They weren't hiring new employees or adding additional machinery, they were organizing share buy backs. They were using the newfound money to buy back outstanding shares sending share prices soaring, hence increasing executive compensation. And the US government is funding this nihilism with an additional 1.5 trillion in borrowings. Call it "the art of the deal."

In the era of globalism our neoliberal political caste thought they could finally wash their hands of responsibility for the balancing of public and private interests, delegating this fundamental responsibility to "the invisible hand of the marketplace." Only that hand no longer works as they fantasize.

We think fondly of the era of Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, the vision they brought to our country. That began to wane under Mulroney and Chretien but it was crushed under Harper and, sadly, now Trudeau the lesser. Now when we desperately need leaders of vision again, leaders who can navigate us through these enormous challenges of the day, that quality is no longer on offer.

And from Robert Bahlieda of Newmarket:

Starting salary for top CEOs? $2,489 an hour, Wells, Jan. 2

Kudos to Jennifer Wells for exposing the other side of the coin. The sadness of the headline is that we have all accepted and internalized the bizarre logic of capitalism and can see no way out. We read the article and then move on.

The logic of a free market is to convince everyone that extreme wealth is good and necessary, so extreme relative poverty must be its alternative. But even here, there is deception. This is reflected in the salaries of CEOs and of the minimum wage for workers. The $14 minimum wage is held out as either a pariah or a godsend.

The business community warns of job losses while it pays its CEOs handsome salaries and perks. But if paying a living wage is that critical, businesses that are stretched so thin should close their doors. The whole point of business is not to create wealth for the business but also a good quality of life for workers. If businesses cannot pay good living wages, health care, pensions and other basic aspects of daily living, they should not be in business. It’s a false capitalist logic to say we can only operate on minimum wages while profits are booming and the senior suite is golden.

CEO salaries are the same. They have increased every year for the past 40 years while workers’ wages have remained stagnant. Everyone knows this lie. The Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report (2016) noted that the top 1 per cent owned more than half of the worlds’ assets and the bottom half owned virtually nothing.

The real irony is that taxpayers are paying for the minimum wage and CEO increases. The federal government is cutting small-business taxes by 0.5 per cent immediately and another 1 per cent cut is coming. They have also modified the corporate tax penalty on small business to make it non-existent. Provincial governments have chipped in cash to ease the transition as well.

But still the wailing and gnashing of teeth goes on in the business community. So stop the whining and change the system.

Can You Imagine?

I have always believed, and still do, that one of the essentials for bringing about real political change is knowledge. To be aware of and informed about the key issues is, in many ways, to be engaged. However, I now also realize, after watching the George Monbiot video posted by The Mound the other day, and reading No Is Not Enough, by Naomi Klein, that there is another essential ingredient: imagination.

For far too long, as Monbiot explains, we have been given a binary view of the world which offers essentially two choices: there is the neoliberal perspective, which originated with the Chicago School preaching (and there is no better word than that if we consider their proponents' zeal) the virtues of free markets with minimal government interference; then there is the Keynesian model, which extols government expenditures and lower taxes to stimulate demand and pull economies out of recession and depression.

As Monbiot points out, neither is a viable model today. Neoliberalism has plundered our world and brought us to the brink of environmental collapse and an ever-widening social/economic inequity; Keynesian policies, which are predicated on constant growth, are no longer viable because we live in a world of increasingly finite resources that can no longer sustain the environmental consequences of unlimited growth.

So Monbiot asserts that we need a new narrative to compete against the old ones, a narrative that will revive and inspire our imaginations. And that begins with paying attention to an essential component of our natures: our altruism.

If we consider the cant of the neoliberals, we are little more than homo economicus, people who behave with almost a machine-like rationality that determines our behaviour as we go about 'getting and spending." It is a soulless depiction of who we are, and ignores the non-rational, 'human' side of our natures. Monbiot points out that we are the most altruistic creature on earth, far-surpassing that found in other animals, and it is the realization of that fact that can propel us towards a much better world, one whose foundation is cooperation, not ruthless competition. The video provides stirring examples of that altruism, including those who, at grave risk to themselves, harbored Jews from the Nazis in the Second World War, and the millions who marched in solidarity after the Charlie Hebdo killings. The key is for us to be reminded that we are so much more than the neoliberals would have us believe.

That better world begins with imagining its feasibility. Once we pierce through the miasma of neoliberalism and understand that life need not be a zero-sum game, that it need not be a Hobbesian world where life is "nasty, short and brutish," our imaginations are freed, and massive co-operation is possible.

A 'participatory culture' building from the ground up and establishing what Monbiot calls thick networks can mark the beginning of a community renaissance that culminates in an economy owned and operated by the community. Invoking the idea of the commons and enclosure, Monbiot talks about the value that land, in a municipal setting, for example, has thanks to all of the tax money spent on developing infrastructure, schools, hospitals, etc. Because developers benefit from these expenditures in terms of the added value of their land, a tax or 'community-land contribution' would see a return of some of that value to the community through money for local initiatives such as a new park or even a dividend paid to citizens, perhaps even in the form of a basic income, with some of the money redistributed by higher government levels to other, less affluent communities, etc.

Monbiot also talks about the need for electoral financing reform, mitigating the influence of the big players on our politicians. His vision is that the money for parties would be raised by selling memberships, supplemented by a government subsidy. This would force politicians to reengage with people and their priorities in order to sell more memberships. While there is some merit in this plan, I doubt that it would be a panacea, as the allure of lucrative post-political positions from the corporate sector would still be too tempting for the pols to abandon their masters' agenda. He also advocates abandoning the first-past-the-post system, a subject Canadians know all too well, given Justin Trudeau's betrayal of his promise to do the same.

Another component of renewal is the selective use of referenda, but ones that treat the voter as intelligent and informed. Such referenda offer not a binary choice on issues but a range of choices, ones that require people to educate themselves about the issue at hand. We are talking about the opposite of what transpired on the Brexit vote.

Citing the near success of Bernie Sanders, Monbiot also discusses the importance of what is called Big Organizing, a model that is predicated on grassroots volunteer efforts. Had it started earlier, he has little doubt that Sanders would have won, and the same could have been true of Labour's Jeremy Corbyn.

I have hardly done justice here to what Monbiot has to say. I sincerely hope you will take some time to view the video, even if your time only allows for a fragmented consideration of it. Being an informed and engaged citizen today is hard work, but when one considers where apathy has taken us, there really is no alternative if we truly care about the future and those who will live it.

But Are They Listening?

Unless we live in complete and willful ignorance, all of us are aware, on at least a minimal level, of the perils currently confronting and engulfing our world. Those perils, which some refer to as the sixth extinction, are real, and their magnitude is such that few seem willing or able to confront them in any meaningful way.

In response to yesterday's post about 'the new normal' in the age of Trump, The Mound of Sound wrote an assessment of our present situation and the steps necessary to mitigate the worst of what is overtaking our world. I am taking the liberty of reproducing those comments below:

I think the days of normal, as we experienced that in most of the post-war era, is over. We have embarked on a new era of instability and upheaval. Climate scientists now tell us that our only hope of surviving at least somewhat intact from what has already landed in our laps demands radical action. I'm so pleased, immensely pleased, that we're now hearing them incorporate all the threats. Not just climate change and greenhouse gas emissions but also overpopulation and our rapacious over-consumption of rapidly diminishing resources. Now, at last, they're speaking of the urgent and imperative need to abandon the neoliberal model of perpetual exponential growth, the orthodoxy that all Canadian political parties embrace.

Yet our government won't have this adult discussion with our people. It won't give us a candid assessment of what lies in store for Canada or how Canadians can best cope with it. Trudeau, and I fault him only because he's the sitting prime minister, believes that increasing economic activity is his foremost responsibility as leader. His arguments might have seemed plausible in the 80s but clinging to them now and into our near future could cause Canada irreparable harm.

The science types have written us a prescription and it entails sharp cuts in our standard of living, growing smaller. There is much in steady state economics that addresses how best to do this. The focus is on improving quality of life, enjoyment, while reducing consumption. Growth in knowledge, not consumption. Growth in the quality of what we need. Products that are repairable, upgradeable. I think of the last two stoves I had to send to the recycling yard, my use and enjoyment of them prematurely terminated as essential spare parts were nowhere to be found.

We, and by that I include the next generation and the one after that, must become our government's priority, not trade. Changing that core priority is going to demand big change and sacrifice from all of us whatever our station in life. You can't achieve that with a government that tolerates inequality. Fortunately we have a manual of principles that were established in the golden years of progressivism.

You can read more of The Mound's thoughts on this by clicking here.

"The Cancer Of Inequality"

In a recent post well-worth reading, The Mound reflected on the decline of support for liberal democracy. Today, Star readers respond to an article carried by the paper entitled, How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red’. Their message is clear: inequality is at the root of the problem, fostered and promoted by the neoliberal agenda:

Re: For democracy, ‘warning signs flashing red', Dec. 11

The graphs for the seven countries in this article show the first real dip in democratic trust by people born in the 1960s and with each generation '70s and '80s trust declines. The pattern of distrust is universal across the democracies; therefore it seems logical that the cause is universal and progressive.

The universal event during the survey's time period of 2005-14 was the Great Recession of 2008 and with the slow recovery it is a progressive event affecting all people, but especially the millennial generation. They and their parents feel cheated; they did what was expected but now face unemployment.

However, is feeling cheated by society the total reason for the decline in democratic trust? I say something else going on: First, the three countries with the largest decline in trust — U.S., U.K. and Australia — consistently show the highest rate of inequality. Second, the country with the lowest decline in trust, Sweden, consistently has the lowest rate of inequality. The remaining three countries — Canada, Germany and the Netherlands — are all middle of the road for decline in trust and for inequality. There seems to be a link between decline in democratic trust and inequality, but the work of Mounk and Foa did not link democratic decline to inequality, as Mounk says more research is required.

Whilst waiting for the research we should consider the work of Wilkinson and Pickett who covered 10 components that make up the social fabric of 23 countries and clearly showed how inequality was bad for everyone, from the wealthy to the pauper.

In the U.K. and U.S. since 1980s, when Thatcher and Reagan condoned Greedism as an economic model, inequality has grown to the point where these two countries are near the top on the list. Both recently experienced quasi-social revolutions that shocked the world: Brexit in the U.K. and the Trump election in the U.S. Both events were rightly tied to trade deals and globalization because both exacerbate Greedism and inequality.

Inequality has been insidiously creeping up on us for the last three decades. In the U.S., the poster child for inequality, it gets little attention; in Canada we do not understand the damage it is doing to our democracy.

Democracy is best explained by five words: “The will of the people.” Looking at Canada I do not believe this is the will of the people. No good jobs, precarious work rising, children living in poverty, loss of self respect and dignity, half a billion dollars in tax forgiveness for 70 CEOs, 80 per cent of the economy fruits goes to one per cent, foodbanks grow.

The cancer of inequality is destroying the fabric of our society and governments must act before rips apart.

Keith Parkinson, Cambridge

This article was important yet frustrating. It missed the obvious connection between economic inequality and dwindling support for democracy. The people of Venezuela, Cuba and other nations give up on democracy when they are economically marginalized. The freedom of the few to accumulate disproportionate wealth and power makes democracy seem useless to many.

Laws that increasingly favour the wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class deprive most citizens of genuine political power. The citizens become irrelevant, so democracy becomes irrelevant to them.

The histories of Athens, Rome and countless other political systems show that democracy dies this way. It has been written about many times, yet we appear incapable of learning how to stop it.

Paul Bigioni, Pickering

Guest Commentary On Trump's Supporters

Receiving and responding to the comments of thoughtful and well-informed people is one of the reasons I maintain this blog. Yesterday I put up a post entitled, How Stupid Are Trump Supporters? It featured a Hulu show in which a convener pretends to be conducting a focus group study into the effectiveness of ads Trump is considering for his campaign. In light of comments from The Mound of Sound and Pamela MacNeil, I realize that mine was a superficial effort at best. I am therefore taking the liberty of reposting their insights, and my responses to them, here.

First, The Mound of Sound:

I think, Lorne, that a large segment of any people fed a constant diet of half-truths and outright falsehoods will eventually succumb.

I regularly write how the corporate media cartel has gone from watchdog of government to government's lap dog, especially when the government is right wing. Here's an example. When Dion and Layton were toying with the idea of a coalition majority government to displace a Harper minority, Canada's corporate media cartel spread the idea that this would be a constitutional coup d'etat, fiendish, the end of democracy. It was an outright lie. In fact that was how Harper's then BFF, John Howard, formed his government. As this utter lie circulated I was surprised at how many people I spoke with believed it.

Years ago 60 Minutes ran a segment about the Republican misinformation machine. Two key Repugs behind it openly described the system used to gain public acceptance of complete falsehood. It progressed through three stages.

The first stage was the open mouth radio shows - Limbaugh and others. They would float a rumour such as the stories about John Kerry's service in VietNam. From there it would be picked up by cable news - FOX in particular, first on their opinion shows (Hannity/O'Reilly) before migrating to the news department. Eventually it worked its way through the cable news milieu.

What began with the Limbaugh-bottom dwellers achieved a critical mass as it became established in cable news. From there it reached a point where the mainstream media - NYT,WaPo - could no longer ignore it and had to run the story or appear out of it. This was the formula used for the effective SwiftBoating of John Kerry.

The public, meanwhile, kept hearing the same lie over and over through progressively credible news services until they were getting it from the gold standard news outlets at the very top. Naturally many of them were conditioned to believe it.

The whole process is an insult to democracy, one that can quickly fester into something far worse.

Lies and half-truths are powerful weapons the unscrupulous wield invariably against their own. They use it to set the hook with those somewhat disposed to support them. Invariably they bait their hooks with generous amounts of fear and appeals to their prey's basest instincts. Harper did it. It works. We had a decade to see that in action.

My response:

Thanks for your in-depth analysis here, Mound. The failure of the media is manifest. In Dan Rather's memoir, he recounts something very similar happening around the time that he incurred right-wing wrath over calling out George Bush's military record. There was irrefutable proof that Bush was AWOL for a year, but the fledgling Internet quoted an early blogger (who was, in fact, a Republican operative) focusing on a particular document that must have been false because, he alleged, proportional spacing did not exist on the typewriters of that time. Proportional spacing did, in fact, exist, but once this blogger's words were in the air, it became a 'fact' that the document was false. The proof? The blogger's allegation and nothing more. It took off from there, ultimately resulting in Rather's dismissal from CBS.

Now, Pamela MacNeil:

No presidential candidate in any past campaign has ever intentionally focused on these people. Whether it was democrats or Republicans these people were not even a thought in the minds of either candidates.Trump has given them life and continues to manipulate them under the disguise of fighting for them.

Trump has made them believe, many for the first time in their lives ,that what they think and what they have to say matters.
They are not aware that now that they are visible, we are witnessing how pathetic they really are.Stupid yes, but pathetically so.

I almost feel sorry for them when I see them responding to the attention they get from Trump and his team. Something they have lived their whole lives without.

These guys have been ignored and dismissed politically, socially and culturally their whole lives. Now their being asked what they think. Living at the bottom of the intellectual ladder, this a moment where they think they can shine in an all too dreary life.

Listening and watching them is cringe worthy. Now they have been able collectively as Trump supporters to come together as a force. They are also an example of Mounds posting the other day on authoritarianism existing with the people not just their politicians, even when they are the mindless and the powerless.

I wonder what their numbers are.

My response:

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Pamela. I think you have identified a very important reason for Trump's support. While I have reacted largely with contempt to his acolytes, seeing them simply as responding to the racism he regularly appeals to, you have looked for a deeper underlying motivation.

Guest Post: Putting Ourselves Under The Microscope

In response to my post yesterday, The Mound of Sound offered the following observations, which I am featuring as a guest post. The Mound has made an intensive study of the environmental and climatic perils we have created, and his insights are ones none of us can afford to ignore:

I fear, Lorne, that we have devolved into a culture of collapse. We plainly cannot keep going as we have since the Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney era ushered in the scourge of neoliberalism. Yet, having been drawn in, there's no sign of the vision much less the popular critical mass to change and, when time is running out and our options are being steadily foreclosed, that can be fatal.

Jared Diamond contends that when past societies have collapsed it was usually the result of a choice and, in many cases, the disastrous outcome was foreseen. We can choose to conduct ourselves in ways today that we know or ought to know will spell disaster a generation or two from now. Our bacchanal of consumption is premised on "because we can" with scant regard to whether we should. We are just lucky our own grandparents were never empowered to wreak this sort of devastation on us.

Science tells us that mankind first exceeded Earth's resource carrying capacity when our population passed 3+ billion in the 70s. We're now at 7+ billion heading to 9 and beyond. To compound this, our per capita consumption footprint has swelled and continues to grow. Yet our overpopulation and over-consumption has come at a direct, although somewhat deferred (for the moment), cost.

The signs are tangible, palpable, measurable and, in some critical instances, visible to the naked eye from the International Space Station cupola. Rivers that no longer run to the sea. Red tides and blue green algae blooms in our lakes and along our sea coasts. Once fertile soil that now lies exhausted, creating spreading desertification. The blight of deforestation. The collapse of global fisheries as our industrial fleets fish "down the food chain."

We know how this ends but not exactly when. James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia Hypothesis, predicts mankind will number in a few hundred million by the end of this century. That's a massive die-off. He has warned that the only way to blunt this result entails what he calls "sustainable retreat." He uses this term to describe a social transformation away from our excess consumerism into "living small." Small houses, shared transportation, living local, everything necessary to sharply pare our individual and collective ecological footprint.

I've seen no sign that we would entertain this prescription. Your soon to be neighbour confirms this view. Our leaders still quest for 3% annual growth in GDP. We live in a political/economic construct in which negative growth is worse than death. We cannot conceive of how to live other than in the mode that has brought us to this precipice.

The following video, discussing how 2016 is on track to be the hottest year on record, helps to reinforce the consequences of our heedless ways:



Finally, Marie over at A Puff of Absurdity says that despite our natural tendencies, we cannot afford a 'business-as-usual' reaction to the perils engulfing us.

More On James Forcillo

H/t Toronto Star

In response to yesterday's post, both the Salamander and the Mound of Sound offered some interesting commentary. The Salamander has experience in dealing with troubled and armed youth, as you will see, and The Mound has had careers both in journalism and the law. I am therefore reproducing their respective observations below:

.. the slow motion process of the Forcillo trial re the killing of Sammy Yatim has come to a temporary junction point. the toronto newstalk jocks can't get enough of expert opinion, so called public sentiment & various views from officialdom. In the past I described my own experiences, to the estimable Mound.. wherein I was called upon to deal with emotionally disturbed teens, drug addicted teens and triple maximum security juveniles.. I was never armed by the way.

Sammy Yatim was troubled, delusional & psychotic.. 1/2 of a collision looking for the other 1/2 .. that's very clear via video evidence, medical history & post mortem toxicology. He was 'out there' .. 'crispy' & as likely to try and swim to Rochester as he was to confront a dozen armed police.

But the killing is really about fearful Forcillo, a known hothead cop who'd pulled his gun a dozen times in 3 years. So lets keep the event very very concise, shall we? Most anyone has seen the various videos of Sammy Yatim's last moments & is aware of Forcillo's 'defense'.

Of course I'll paint it in a slightly different light.. as I've been there, done it, got the t-shirt.. dealing with delusional drug addled teens.. with a weapon.. and nobody died!

Forcillo and his female partner arrived on scene as a seemingly damn cool TTC driver gave up and left his streetcar. 'Taking charge' .. so to speak, Forcillo confronted the teen from a close but safe distance, shouting profanity laden 'orders' as his memory challenged partner holstered her weapon.

In the midst of numerous armed cops beside and around him, Forcillo feared for his life, such was the threat of knife wielding Sammy Yatim, up there inside a streetcar. Really now? Armed cops standing on either side of him, behind him, at the rear doors etc.. and Forcillo thought the teen could fly like a witch and get to him from the streetcar, without descending the steps & covering the 10 foot gap to that crowd of armed cops?

Forcillo exemplifies 'failure' .. the 'fearful' defense is so limp that its to laugh at.. but the Force must close ranks. In reality I suspect other cops curse Forcillo on a daily basis. The idea that his 'training' was to do what he did in approx 50 seconds of disastrous failure is to laugh at. Somewhere right near the bottom of the Toronto Police hires in the last 5 years is Forcillo.. a weak link deserving to drive a desk.. maybe in data entry or vehicle maintenance.. To let him deal with the public, much less ever own a gun again would be a travesty.. Amen, end of story.

I'm not satisfied the judge handled the case correctly either, Lorne. The judge issued revised instructions to the jury after they had deliberated that, to me, sounded bizarre.

The whole theory of whether this was one or two shooting events was confusing. The coroner testified about the nature of the wounds inflicted at the outset, when Yatim had been standing, contrasted with the subsequent wounds from bullets that struck a prone victim. Wound paths are readily traceable.

As I understand it the forensics suggested the initial three wounds were mortal. Yatim would have died without more. How then to treat the next five wounds? The Crown chose to treat that as attempted murder.

In firing squad executions is the coup de grace administered after the initial volley a separate event? I don't see it that way. It's collateral to the first shots.

I think an appellate court might order a retrial. I suspect that better Crown counsel might rethink the prosecution theory and look beyond the 5-second pause.

If, as the video suggests, Yatim collapsed with the first shot, were the second and third really justified? Was the first shot warranted unless Yatim made some clear move to exit the streetcar such as stepping into the stairwell? That, to me, was the obvious threshold to the "self defence" business.

I think the Crown may have muddied the waters and left the judge to deliver an incoherent, confusing charge to the jury. Were I sitting on the appeal I think I would set aside both verdicts and direct a new trial.

On Divine Wrath

Two posts by the Mound of Sound during my absence amply demonstrated the ongoing derangement of the religious right. One suggested that God was not happy with the good folks of San Bernadinao and hence declined to intervene to save those massacred there last week. The other was a suggestion by Jerry Falwell Jr. on how to deal with the Muslim 'problem.'

One can only fear and tremble then, anticipating what form Yahweh's wrath will take in response to this latest 'affront' to His Son's personal dignity.

Cincinnati News, FOX19-WXIX TV

A Response From The Mound Of Sound

The Mound of Sound, who knows a great deal about the topic, offered the following response to my post on our hubris and our folly.

Thanks for posting that video, Lorne. Any species that cannot live in harmony with its environment, that even comes to dominate and overwhelm its environment is inherently parasitic and self-extinguishing. We've done this before on a smaller scale time and again. The Mayans, the Easter Islanders, the Mesopotamians - civilizations that come off the land, organize and rise to a peak before suddenly collapsing.

The seeds of our collapse are found in our inability to get beyond 18th century economics, 19th century industrialism and 20th century geopolitics. We're more afraid of abandoning our slavish pursuit of perpetual, exponential growth than the far worse outcome that's inevitable in our success. Where this ends is a matter of mathematical certainty. We're consuming Earth's resources at more than 1.5 times the planet's carrying capacity and our voraciousness is accelerating. It's a dependency more powerful than heroin or crystal meth and far more lethal. Like a chronic junkie we're prepared to live in our ever worsening filth. Rivers that no longer flow to the sea, freshwater no longer fit for human consumption, oceanic dead zones, fish stock collapses, a fouled atmosphere even to the polar regions where black soot darkens the ice caps, aquifers running on empty but, as this video shows, it doesn't matter when your reality is refreshed daily on some electronic screen.

We've been conditioned, Lorne, powerfully conditioned to be fearful and complacent and, especially, to recoil at the notion of change. We've become the vivisectionist's dog, lovingly licking the master's hand while the other hand holds the scalpel plunged into us.

Creative, But Incomplete, Solutions

If you read The Mound of Sound regularly, you will understand that there is no quick fix for the myriad problems the world faces. As he has pointed out on more than one occasion, threats like climate change cannot be viewed in isolation. It is only part of a wide panoply of interrelated ills that the world faces, ills that include overpopulation, over consumption, and dwindling resources. Our lifestyles are growing well beyond the earth's capacity to sustain us.

With that proviso in mind, there are a number of developments that, while not a solution to our bloated lifestyles, nonetheless show us what is possible when we think "outside the box."

Last week, The Star's Edward Keenan wrote a thought-provoking piece asking whether or not there are straightforward solutions to intractable problems:

What happens when a serious problem we thought was incredibly complicated and nearly impossible to solve suddenly becomes easier to deal with?

That’s a question raised by a recent blog post by economics professor John Quiggin, who sits on the board of the Australian Climate Change Authority. With the announcement this week by Elon Musk of Tesla Motors electric car fame that his company would be mass-producing a home and utility battery to store solar energy at a fraction of the price of existing similar batteries, combined with developments in electric cars, “we now have just about everything we need for a technological fix for climate change, based on a combination of renewable energy and energy efficiency, at a cost that’s a small fraction of global income …”

But one of the big obstacles to such developments is the way we think:

Quiggin notes, correctly I think, that the long-standing seeming intractability of climate change has led people to draw some distinct conclusions, and based on them gather in warring political camps: those who think dealing with it requires ending capitalism and reshaping virtually all of society; those who think the first group is perpetrating an elaborate hoax; and those in competing camps who think the solutions require very big carbon taxes, or massive investments in nuclear energy or “clean coal.”

Therefore, there is real resistance to the notion that a quick fix is possible. This, Keenan says, is the same mentality that led doctors in the mid-1800s to resist the simple measure of washing their hands and their equipment to reduce maternal and child mortality:

Doctors had their own accepted theories about the cause of such deaths and refused to think they could be causing the problem.

And so it is with other developments which, more than anything else, seem to require an open mind and a willingness to move beyond a rigidly fixed world view. Take, for example, solar roadways:



This technology was put to the test near Amsterdam, where a bike path was lined with SolaRoad:

SolaRoad has generated more than 3,000 kilowatt hours of electricity since the 70-metre-long strip officially opened in November 2014, in Krommenie, a village northwest of Amsterdam, the project reported late last week. It said that was enough to power a single-person household for a year.

"We did not expect a yield as high as this so quickly," said Sten de Wit, spokesman for the public-private partnership project, in a statement that deemed the first half-year of a three-year pilot a success.

Based on what it has produced so far, the bike path is expected to generate more than 70 kilowatt hours per square metre per year, close to the upper limit predicted based on lab tests.

Creative thinking has also led to a development dealing with the millions of cigarette butts littering our streets and parks:

TerraCycle is one of a handful of companies that is working to collect and recycle spent butts, by turning them into plastic lumber that can be used for benches, pallets, and other uses.

Another company, EcoTech Displays, is working on a system to recycle butts into insulation, clothing, and even jewelry.

You can watch a video of the process by clicking on the above link.

Will any of these developments save our world? Not in themselves. But they do show us what is possible when we resolve to break out of old modes of thinking, sadly a task perhaps as difficult as the process involved in developing new technologies.

The Fearless Pope Francis

Yesterday, The Mound of Sound had a post on the role that Pope Francis is playing in the climate change debate. Given his growing moral authority and extensive popularity throughout the world, those with vested interests in retaining the status quo that is destroying the earth, and their aiders and abettors, (Stephen Harper et alia), have, I think, much to fear.

Here is a video well-worth watching from Democracy Now! that discusses Pope Francis and the encyclical he is slated to release in March on climate change. It is so refreshing to see a pontiff who is doing what we should all be doing: comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

A Response To Russell Brand

Yesterday, I posted a video of Russell Brand excoriating the absence of any real choice when it comes to the vision offered by various political parties. His argument is that they are all essentially cut from the same cloth.

A theme close to The Mound of Sound's heart, he offered the following comments:

Thanks for posting that, Lorne. I watched it three times and was struck by why so many of us fail to see these views as obvious. Why are we not turning on this system that has so ruthlessly turned on us? Here's something to try. Russell Brand's delivery can come across as inflammatory or brash but, reduced to writing, it's actually a lot more sedate.

We have to come to grips with the fundamental truth that government that suppresses the public interest in favour of private interests is a form of government that is, at best, a degraded illiberal democracy or, at worst, fascist.

Young people especially need to discover that they're coming up in an era of neoliberalism in which free market capitalism is too often permitted to flout public interest. It's both a chronic and progressive disease that will become increasingly problematic for them in the decades to come.

When the free trade era was ushered in, I fretted over the surrender of national sovereignty to free markets. I hoped I was wrong. I wasn't. Naomi Klein illustrates this in her new book citing examples where trade regimes have been used to crush attempts to deal with climate change.

I got into a brief but nasty pissing contest with Montreal Simon a couple of years back when I criticized him for constantly, obsessively attacking Harper when we also need to focus on something within our power to achieve, the reformation of our own political movements. I'm convinced the Liberals are truly in the bag and, despite his latter-day pretensions toward progressivism, I suspect Mulcair isn't that far off either.

The thing is, we cannot hope to recover our sovereignty that has been yielded for the benefit of so few and the expense of so many without standing our political parties back on their feet. I haven't a clue how that would ever happen.

I replied:

As soon as I saw the video, Mound, I thought of you, as Brand addresses a theme that I know concerns you greatly. I find myself thinking about it more especially of late, with the reflexive (Pavlovian?) response of nation-wide patriotism on display after the gunning down of Nathan Cirillo. As I have said on this blog before, it is surely tragic when a young person loses his or her life, but I worry a great deal about all of the trappings of state that have ensued from his demise. The attendance at his funeral of Harper, for example, to me doesn't so much indicate respect as it does a willingness to manipulate the population through the construction of a narrative about a soldier who fell protecting our freedoms. This does not augur well for the future of our civil liberties, and I have little faith that either Mulcair or Trudeau will get in the way of the juggernaut.

Russell Brand's Latest

This one is for my friend The Mound of Sound who, I think, would agree with the sentiments expressed. One thing you can say about Russell Brand - whether or not you agree with everything he says, he always gives us something to think about.

Post by Educateinspirechange.org.

With An Eye To The Future

It is to state the obvious that all progressives long for the day that the Harper regime is ousted from office. What is not so obvious, however, is what shape our country will take once that happens.

There are those who place their faith in Justin Trudeau. Others look with hope to Thomas Mulcair. And then there are others who see little to cheer about in the leadership or politics of either.

The other day The Mound of Sound, who falls into the latter category, wrote a post on leadership, concluding with the following observation:

The thin gruel served up today is a bowl filled with petty technocrats that come in varying flavours of authoritarianism. It's a bland and self-serving offering, devoid of vision, courage and commitment.

I fear he is all too correct in his assessment, one that is intimated by Thomas Walkon in today's Star. Entitled Stephen Harper’s legacy fated to endure, Walkom offers the proposition that it is far from certain that the dramatic changes Harper has made during his tenure will be undone by a government led by either the NDP or the Liberals:

True, both the Liberals and the NDP expressed outrage when Canada Post announced its plans [to cut home delivery] last December.

True also that, after a rancorous debate in the Commons, both voted against these plans.

The New Democrats sponsored a cross-Canada petition to oppose the cuts. Alexandre Boulerice, the party’s critic for Canada Post, continues to raise occasional questions in the Commons.

But Canada Post is plowing ahead with plans to eliminate home delivery for almost 1.3 million households by the time of next year’s election.

And neither Mulcair nor Trudeau is promising to reverse that decision if the Conservatives are defeated.

On Harper's tax cuts:

They won’t touch them.

Mulcair would raise corporate taxes. However, he says an NDP government would not reverse any of the personal income tax cuts Harper has introduced.

Trudeau says his Liberals wouldn’t reverse any tax cuts at all — personal or corporate.

Both parties slammed Harper for cutting the GST. Yet, if elected, neither would raise it back to its previous level.

Walkom point out the further damage Harper could do before he is tossed from the political arena:

Harper may be able to torpedo his rivals’ pre-election spending plans simply by giving away, in the form of tax cuts, all of Ottawa’s expected multi-billion dollar surplus.

The result? Even if Harper loses the next election, much of his legacy seems fated to remain.

Such is the timidity of today's political 'leadership' that I fear both the Mound's assessment and Walkom's predictions are all too accurate.

The Disaffected Lib Is Back!

For those many who have been following the Mound of Sounds' posts on my blog for the past while, good news: he has reactivated his blog, The Disaffected Lib. Mound tells me that he intends to pursue various topics related to climate change and sea level rise; given the depth of his research, scholarship and passion, that is very good news for all of us who care about the fate of both our country and our world.

Poilievre Declares War on "Radical Unions"

Posted by MoS, the Disaffected Lib:

Pierre Backpfeifengesicht Poilievre has declared Conservative war on Canada's "radical" unions and their electoral meddling. The Parliamentary Punk has sent out a letter asking for 5-dollar contributions to help the CPC fight back the union menace in the next general election.

Poilievre has singled out Sid Ryan and the Ontario Federation of Labour as the Tories' arch enemy. The beggar's bowl letter begins:


Friend,

I’ll be blunt – the stakes have never been higher.

We’re not just fighting Thomas Mulcair’s NDP and Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

This time, we’re also fighting a radical union agenda.

,,,What does this mean? It means that they will spend millions of dollars attacking our Conservative government – and to reverse all the progress we’ve made together.

...Please chip in $5 and help us prepare to fight off the big union attacks. Everything we’ve fought for is at risk.

An Old Rumour Resurfaces. Will Charest Step Up When Harper Stands Down?

Posted by MoS, the Disaffected Lib:

An old friend of mine from Ottawa is a veteran Tory with roots going back to the Stanfield years. A couple of years ago my friend mentioned Jean Charest as a possible successor to Stephen Harper. I've heard that rumour off and on since then but nothing ever came of it - until now.

The Montreal Gazette's Don McPherson is now exploring whether Charest could succeed Harper.

Gone, at least for now, but not wanting to be forgotten, Jean Charest raised some eyebrows this week by encouraging us to keep him in mind for political leadership openings that might come up in the next few years.

'“Never say never,” the former Liberal premier said twice to CBC Daybreak host Mike Finnerty on Thursday, about returning to politics, and about running for the federal Conservative party in particular.

At 56, Charest is not too old to consider resuming the political career to which he has devoted most of his adult life.

In terms of election results as a leader, he was generally successful at both the federal and provincial levels.

In his only federal general election as a leader, he brought back the federal Progressive Conservative party from the brink of extinction. In Quebec provincial politics, he was the first leader since Maurice Duplessis in the 1950s to lead his party to victory in three consecutive general elections, although his Liberals were held to a minority in the middle one.

And he was hardly driven from office in disgrace, with the Liberals only narrowly losing the 2012 election after more than nine years in office and an especially difficult last term.

What I've been hearing all along is that Charest is the only likely successor who has had an active organization to springboard a leadership campaign. We'll see.

It's Called "Nuisance Flooding"

Posted by MoS, the Disaffected Lib:

It's the latest term spawned by climate change - "nuisance flooding." According to Insurance Journal, nuisance flooding is the periodic flooding being experienced due to rising sea levels.

Eight of the top 10 U.S. cities that have seen an increase in nuisance flooding - which causes such public inconveniences as frequent road closures, overwhelmed storm drains and compromised infrastructure - are on the East Coast, according to a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report.

This nuisance flooding, caused by rising sea levels, has increased on all three U.S. coasts between 300 and 925 percent since the 1960s, the report says.

Annapolis and Baltimore, Maryland, top the list along with Atlantic City, New Jersey; Philadelphia and Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Other cities include Charleston, South Carolina; Washington, D.C.; and Norfolk Virginia.

What is a nuisance today could become something far more destructive in the not too distant future as sea level rise accelerates. At least one analysis suggests we could see up to 2.5 metres of sea level rise by 2040 which would mean a rapid increase beginning over the next few years.

For the most part, sea level rise is a problem we don't seem to talk about. Coastal residents should ask themselves when was the last time they recall sea level rise being discussed by their municipal, provincial or federal representatives? When was it debated on the floor of the House of Commons? What planning is underway? What funding has been allocated to deal with this threat? How much sea level rise do they foresee by when? What do they mean to defend, what do they expect to abandon to the rising sea?

The American example is disturbing. There we find little political will to even acknowledge the problem. Miami, for example, already sustains far worse than nuisance flooding on a regular basis. It cannot be defended and yet municipal and state authorities are doing nothing to rein in new development. Former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, did commit the city to a major flood protection programme but even that may prove inadequate.

How will coastal Canada cope? I haven't got a clue and neither, apparently, do our elected officials. From documents I've read, low-lying municipalities in the Vancouver suburbs (much of Richmond is already well below sea level) are planning little more than raising their sea walls a metre or two. What do they do when high tides swell the Fraser River to overflow its banks?

Why aren't we talking about this? The answer is easy and powerful. Talking about sea level rise leads to any number of questions that can have immediate ramifications. What's the value of a multi-million dollar waterfront property that may well be submerged in two or three decades hence? What will be the toll on urban and suburban infrastructure? How do we decide what we will attempt to defend, what we will abandon? Who wins, who loses? Who pays, who collects? Decisions, decisions. Oh dear.

A Stark Prediction of Sea Level Rise By 2040

Posted by MoS, the Disaffected Lib:

There have been a number of reports over the past year or two that, taken collectively, seem to point to major changes underway in the Arctic. It's not one thing but a number of changes that are synergistic, each building on the other. These include the rapidly warming Arctic atmosphere and the creation of the more powerful polar jet stream; the loss of Arctic sea ice at rates that were not contemplated even a few years ago; the warming of Arctic Ocean waters, sea level rise and the recent observation of big waves where before there were none; the thawing and burning of the tundra; the exposure and melting of the permafrost beneath; the major increase in wildfires in the northern boreal forests; the spread of black and brown soot from these wildfires and the resultant accelerating deglaciation of the Greenland ice sheet.

We know that the polar jet stream is already playing havoc with us in the temperate zone. It manifests in Rossby waves - deep, slow-moving waves - that can alternately pull warm, southern air into the high northern latitudes and then send cold, Arctic air plunging far into the south. These waves can also leave severe storm events "parked" over certain locations leading to flash flooding of the sort seen in recent years.

What is beginning to emerge from recent observations is that we may have grossly underestimated sea level rise this century especially in the short- and mid-term. By one calculation, all these phenomena playing out today in the Arctic could lead to sea level rise of 2.5-metres by 2040.



I won't explore this forecast in detail. Follow the link, spend an hour or two, and you can come to your own conclusions. Whether 2.5-metres by 2040 is likely, I don't know. What I do know is that we should have very clear answers within 10-years at the outside. We will know by 2025 if this is in store for us by 2040. We might even know by 2020.

What this means is that, by 2020, we may know if we have crossed or are at the tipping point where natural feedback mechanisms, such as those listed above, have carried us into runaway global warming of some extent.

2.5-metres of sea level rise by 2040 wouldn't be the end of Canada or the end of the United States. It would be the end of various low-lying nations. For us, however, it would mean economic upheaval and major social dislocation. It would be an economic body blow. There are a lot of North Americans who live close enough to the sea that 2.5-metres of sea level rise, coupled with the impacts of storm surges, would necessitate retreat from the coast. There are some North American cities such as Miami or New Orleans that cannot survive that sort of rise and would have to be abandoned. The Jersey Shore? Fuggetaboutit.

NOAA has an interactive graphic depicting the impacts of sea level rise up to 2-metres on the United States. It stops at the Canadian border but you can roughly extrapolate from the U.S. picture.