UPDATED: They'll Be Watching You

Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you.

-The Police - Every Breath You Take

Recent revelations, some of which I have written about, should make us all acutely aware that in the surveillance state, which now describes much of the world, our privacy is more a cherished illusion than it is a reality. Not only has the Canadian federal government been enjoying easy access to our digital information but also, as we recently learned, it has sent out a directive to all federal departments to report any demonstrations, however big or small, to the Government Operations Centre. Chillingly, a leaked email said, "We will compile this information and make this information available to our partners..."

But it turns out that the above only shows the tip of a very large iceberg.

Yesterday, The Mound of Sound sent me this link from The Guardian. Entitled Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown, the piece should give all of us, no matter where we live, profound pause:

A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant commands."

Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis (emphasis added) – the DoD 'Minerva Research Initiative' partners with universities "to improve DoD's basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US."

The above would seem to provide an ominous clue as to its larger purpose. The fact that the Minerva Project was launched the same year as the banking crisis, a crisis that led to deep and extensive civil unrest, suggests that its purpose is control and containment and, by extension, maintenance of the status quo. Back to that in a moment.

Wide-scale surveillance is a given in this quest for 'understanding':

Twitter posts and conversations will be examined "to identify individuals mobilised in a social contagion and when they become mobilised."

Basic tenets of democracy appear to be of no concern to The Pentagon. Indeed, protests to bring about political and economic change are viewed as palpable threats:

Another project awarded this year to the University of Washington "seeks to uncover the conditions under which political movements aimed at large-scale political and economic change originate," along with their "characteristics and consequences." The project, managed by the US Army Research Office, focuses on "large-scale movements involving more than 1,000 participants in enduring activity," and will cover 58 countries in total.

The narrow perspective of the military, which sees all disruptive activity as a threat to the status quo, is confirmed by Prof David Price, a cultural anthropologist at St Martin's University in Washington DC. who previously exposed some truths about the Pentagon's Human Terrain Systems (HTS) programme, whose scenarios

"adapted COIN [counterinsurgency] for Afghanistan/Iraq" to domestic situations "in the USA where the local population was seen from the military perspective as threatening the established balance of power and influence, and challenging law and order."

One war-game, said Price, involved environmental activists protesting pollution from a coal-fired plant near Missouri, some of whom were members of the well-known environmental NGO Sierra Club.

Such war-games are consistent with a raft of Pentagon planning documents which suggest that National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance is partially motivated to prepare for the destabilising impact of coming environmental, energy and economic shocks.

To say that this entire mentality is a deep affront to basic tenets of democracy is to state the obvious. To think that this is only a theoretical construct is to be unspeakably naive. Although examples of state repression as a response to protest and unrest abound, one need only remember what happened when the Occupy Movement hit its stride. Closer to home, of course, was the June 2010 G20 Summit debacle in Toronto. Or take a look at how Brazil is currently dealing with protests during the World Cup.

And things will not be getting any better. Climate change, probably our greatest threat, will spark more and more unrest, as will the Harper government's sanctioning of the Northern Gateway Project.

From all of this, one thing is abundantly clear. Rather than constructively responding to citizen concerns, the state will do everything in its power to protect the interests of those who really matter to it. Hint: it isn't us.

And finally, this warning from Dwight Eisenhower, spoken over 50 years ago as he prepared to depart from the U.S. presidency, seems eerily prescient:



Thanks to Anon, who provided the link to the following video, which significantly updates things:

Fundamentalists Strike a Blow Against Censorship

And I, along with countless others, am so, so glad.

This Speaks For Me

H/t Michelle Mainwaring

Thomas Walkom Misses The Mark

One of the reasons I subscribe to The Toronto Star is the quality of its columnists. Tim Harper, Martin Regg Cohn, Thomas Walkom, Heather Mallick, etc. rarely disappoint. However, no one is perfect, and today's column by Walkom is not up to his usual critical standards.

Entitled Conservatives’ downfall could be Stephen Harper’s dismissive tone, the piece seems to suggest that if Harper were nicer, people wouldn't perceive his government in nearly as bad a light as they do:

When the obituary is finally written on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, it is the tone that will stand out.

Most of his actions will not. With some notable exceptions (such as gutting environmental regulations), they have not been extreme.

As illustration of the regime's mean-spirited nature, he cites the increasingly antagonistic and divisive tone of Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, (a once well-regarded foreign diplomat whose moral decline since joining the cabinet has been precipitous, egregious and Dorian-Gray like). Responding to criticism of his bill that would give the government the power to strip citizenship away from native-born Canadians who hold dual citizenship, Alexander called into question former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who, he said, had eliminated treason as grounds for citizenship revocation “at a time when the Liberal Party was playing footsie with Moscow.”

To be sure, the tone of the regime has been relentlessly harsh toward all who question or oppose its policies. It is on daily display during Question Period, where civility and respect were long ago replaced by sneering derision, not only for opposition members, but also for the institution of Parliament and its officers. Well-documented in the blogosphere, such debasement, I have opined in the past, has been intentional so as to discourage an already discouraged electorate from political participation.

Voter alienation is one of the highest costs we are paying with this cabal, but of course, it has wrought much destruction in so many other areas as well.

A very brief overview will amply underscore some of the things Walkom has blithely overlooked:

- a war on science, resulting in the muzzling of scientists and dismantling of world-class research

- an antipathy toward climate change mitigation. As we saw last weak, Harper and Australia's Tony Abbott are true soul mates in this domain.

- the starving of the beast. Every measure to reduce federal revenues, be they through direct cutting of taxes, expansion of Tax-Free Savings Accounts, income-splitting, etc. is consistent with the conservatism espoused by Harperites. The less money there is, the less 'social engineering', as they would call it, the federal government can do. This kind of economic Darwinism, of course, ignores the needs of the many while rewarding and encouraging the indulges of the few.

- harsh mandatory sentencing in a time of declining crime rates.

- the loss of Canada's international recognition as an honest broker. The government's unflinching support of Israel in all matters, and its increasing contempt for bodies like the U.N., betray long-standing traditions that served us and the world so well.

- contempt for privacy. Only now are we waking up to the realization of widespread domestic surveillance sanctioned by the regime, including warrantless requests for information from our ISPs.

Obviously, I have touched on but a few of shortcomings of the current regime. To be fair to Walkom, no one column could be expected to address them. But suggesting the main problem for the government is one of tone does seem to woefully underestimate the damage done by this hateful regime.

What Would Jesus Do?

Surely not what California Pastor John MacArthur suggests here.

Who Is Invading Your Privacy?

Like many bloggers, I 'enjoy' frequent visits to this blog from the federal government. While I have no idea whether a profile of me exists within the dark bowels of the Harper regime, in my more grandiose moments I like to think that my ruminations are a source of some digestive distress for the federal government.

For those concerned about the Harperites' propensity for domestic surveillance, a new tool has been developed that allows you to very quickly generate a letter to the privacy ombudsman for your ISP.

The new tool, developed by some of the country’s top privacy experts, makes it easier for Canadians to force their provider to disclose their practices.
“What we’re trying to do as researchers is identify what kind of data telecommunications companies in Canada collect, obtain and process, and disclose to third parties,” said Dr. Christopher Parsons, a fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs’ Citizen Lab.

“But we also wanted to make it easier for Canadians individually to engage in the same sort of action.”

Here is the link that will take you to the site, hosted by openmedia.ca. I used it this morning to generate a letter that I then sent off by email. My service provider is now required by law to provide a response within 30 days.

I shall keep you posted of any developments.

Mansbridge Revisited

The other day I posted a report on Peter Mansbridge speaking out against cuts to the CBC and the unprecedented secrecy that pervades public institutions under the current federal government. I gave some praise to the broadcaster for finally speaking out about important issues that potentially affect all of us.

My friend Dave, from Winnipeg, sent me an email last night that offers a different perspective on Mr. Mansbridge's foray into important commentary. With his permission, I am posting it below:

Hi Lorne,

Caught your blog piece about the recent conference in Winnipeg. While the theme was important and more public discussion needs to be generated I was disappointed by my alma mater’s staging of the conference.

Why is Canada’s most ‘famous lost luggage announcer’ and several other fellow CBC employees, no doubt all champions of the public good, speaking at what can only be described as a private function? I wonder how many students shelled out $300 (guess it’s a bargain at $100 a day) to hear Pastor Mansbridge say things he avoids on air? Apparently if you are a student and could only attend one day there was a reduced rate of $50. Guess Petey and fellow public servants speaking fees had to be covered somehow.

If Pete felt so strongly about the issue I’m sure he might have waived the costs (Christ, he makes over 900K a year) and stayed at his family's place here in Winnipeg so more students could have participated.

I am more disappointed with the UofW though for commodifying what should have been an open forum for students, staff and the community to hear and discuss a very pressing issue.

Steaming mad,

Dave

The Better Angels of Our Nature

Like many who follow politics closely, I consider myself to be deeply cynical. Probably the best window into the human soul, politics is the arena where often the worst aspects of our natures prevail; greed, selfishness, abuse of power all have ample opportunity to find expression in this venue.

Yet despite many years of observing these terrible truths about ourselves, I have never completely abandoned hope for the possibility of something better. Recent events have provided some basis for that hope, despite the best efforts of the Harper neoconservatives to remake us in their own image and accept them as Canada's natural governing party and all that that implies.

In this vein, a couple of articles are worth perusal. The first, Seven things Kathleen Wynne's victory tells us about ourselves, offers two especially important insights:

It’s about character.

“It shows that Ontarians don’t vote first for platforms or policies,” says political consultant Randi Rahamim with the Toronto-based firm Navigator Ltd. What people sense is bred in the bone proved more important than the Liberal scandal over gas plants or the ORNGE air ambulance fiasco. “Character matters most and people have a gut feeling about that. Who do they want to have a coffee with?”

I regard this as especially important, inasmuch it suggests that we have not totally lost the ability to relate to politicians as fellow human beings, regarding them as more than just stereotypes of self-interest and corruption. To see the face of human integrity in our leaders implies we are able to look beyond those who can best serve our own narrow interests through more tax cuts, tax credits, and continued erosion of the traditional role of government.


She makes us feel good about who we are as a community and, on a wider scale, a province.

[Peter] Donolo compares her appeal to U.S. President Barack Obama’s effect on Americans in his first campaign in 2008. “There’s a real sense of optimism that they see reflected in her,” says Donolo.

There’s so much to get us down, starting with the lack of jobs and the way a dollar doesn’t stretch anymore. That could have been lethal for Wynne; her own party has been in power since 2003.

Instead, she included her definition of government as part of her stump speech, stressing that people pay taxes to cover social services. She also made it clear the government must respect the value of hard-earned dollars.

Clearly this is related to the issue of character. People's response to Wynne was, once again, a human response that includes concern about the larger community, something the federal government has been working steadily and consistently to undermine, and mirrored in Tim Hudak's gleeful blood lust for cuts.

In her column today, Heather Mallick writes on a similar theme of optimism. Entitled Liberals won because voters aren’t cynics, she reflects on Wynne's election win as a victory for the inclusiveness that progressives fight hard for:

We elected a woman premier, imagine that. I spent years worrying that the advance of gay rights had seemed to sidestep women, with lesbians as hidden in the shadows as ever.

There was a time when a divorced woman who had fallen in love with another woman would have been shut out of public life. Welcome, Premier Wynne.

Wynne’s budget was left-wing in that it had goals that can only be accomplished by government. The job of government is to be visionary, to plan for the future. The private sector can’t do that because it isn’t built into their structure.

And there was Wynne winning votes partly with the sheer force of her obvious decency, warmth and humour, a Canadian version of another much-loved politician, Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

While I am far from certain that the Liberals deserved the majority they achieved, and while I have been around long enough not to get too swept up in a self-congratulatory mood, this election experience does give hope that "the better angels of our nature" Abraham Lincoln referred to in his inaugural speech more than 100 years ago have not deserted us; rather, it seems more likely they have lain dormant, awaiting someone to reawaken us to their reality.

It's Not Either/Or

Those who have more than a passing acquaintance with federal politics are likely aware of the false premises and logical fallacies Stephen Harper and his wrecking crew regularly use to advance their mad agenda. There was, of course, the famous Vic Toews' declaration about either standing with the government or with the child pornographers. Of course that kind of absolutism, the assertion that choices are black and white, no nuanced thinking required, betrays a deep contempt for the electorate, clearly an indicator the regime views us as simpletons fit only for the manipulation that such reductionist thinking cultivates.

It was recently on display once again when Stephen Harper met with his climate soul mate, Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Both agreed they would take no action against climate change that would imperil their respective economies, implying, of course, that the choices are stark.

Fortunately, as is regularly the case, there was ample criticism of this fallacious approach to the world's most pressing and dire crisis; and as usual, Star readers weighed in with their acerbic and insightful comments on Harper's nonsense. All of the letters are excellent, and I hope you will have an opportunity to read each one. Below, I reproduce just a few of them:

Re: PM lauds Australia for fighting carbon tax, June 10

Our prime minister seems to think that jobs and economic growth will trump any serious attempt to tackle climate change. This is a great example of no leadership and a complete dismissal of job creation and growth in new technologies that will happen as we move to a more sustainable situation.
One thing is certain: there will be job creation in casket making if we do not get serious soon about carbon emissions. Where are the leaders who will stop living in the past and embrace the future!

J.B. Ross, Orangeville

It’s a shame that our prime minister believes that a carbon tax will hurt the economy and cost jobs. B.C.’s carbon tax has clearly shown that this is not the case. And the U.S. Congressional Budget Office recently concluded that a carbon tax could benefit the U.S. economy.

But even if the government has an aversion to a carbon tax, from building renewable energy to increasing energy efficiency to building modern transit systems, there are so many ways to cut emissions and create jobs.

The prime minister is setting up a false choice. We do not need to choose between action on carbon and a strong economy. We need to choose both and get on with it.

Keith Brooks, Toronto

The Conservative lack of action on climate change will hurt jobs and the economy. When discussing climate change, Harper said that no country is going to take actions that will deliberately destroy jobs and growth. He, like Tim Hudak in Ontario, has his head in the sand.

Look at Germany, the economic powerhouse of Europe. Its fight against climate change has increased its renewable electrical energy from about 6 per cent in 2000 to 25 per cent in 2012, with 370,000 jobs in that sector. Two-thirds of these are due to government legislation on renewables.

Nearer home, B.C. reduced CO2 emissions by 17 per cent in five years, through a carbon tax that returned the money to the taxpayers, without hurting jobs or growth.

The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy has stated that if nothing is done immediately to address climate change, a Canadian family of four will be paying up to $10,000 per year in weather damage by 2050. This will cause enormous human suffering and take money and jobs away from productive employment.

All parties except the Conservatives have policies to address climate change. The economy cannot afford a Conservative government in either Ontario or Canada.

Linda and Alan Slavin, Otonabee

Peter Mansbridge Speaks Out

Readers of this blog will know that I am a frequent critic of both the CBC and Peter Mansbridge. Both 'institutions,' in my view, often fail to live up to the standards ethical and brave journalism demands. They have been far too passive, even complicit in, the Harper regime's scorn for the so-called 'state-broadcaster.' And of course this disdain has culminated in a series of deep and devastating funding cuts to the CBC that threaten the very nature of its existence.

A new dynamic is perhaps now at work. Stung by the latest cuts, have both the corporation and its chief correspondent decided there is little to lose by speaking truth to power?

On Friday, at a conference co-sponsored by the CBC and the University of Winnipeg called “Holding Power to Account,” an international conference on investigative journalism, democracy, and human rights, Mansbridge decried a “culture of secrecy” within Canada’s public institutions.

He recalled a headline in the Toronto Star back in April that read, “What the public is not allowed to know. Public information being kept secret.” That headline, he said, was not about blocked access to public information in countries notorious for their secrecy, but about his own country.

“Not China. Not North Korea. Canada,” he said.

While not directly naming the regime responsible, Mansbridge also said:

“My company, my corporation, the CBC, the public broadcaster who has a mandated interest in investigative journalism. Who boasts that we have more investigative journalists that any media organization. This is where we’re cutting back?” he asked.

“We should be investing more in these programs. Not cutting them.”

Perhaps there is some hope, after all, for both 'institutions'?

The Right Wing Instructs Us On Our Errors In Thinking

Benighted soul that I am, I did not realize the myriad errors of thinking I have fallen prey to. Happily, University of Toronto geography professor Pierre Desrochers has set me straight on a few things:

A Post-Election Reflection

I don't want to comment directly about last night's Ontario election, given that it has been incisively and very competently observed by others already. However, I want to address a comment my friend Tom, who voted Liberal, made on Facebook:

And here's why the system is broken: @51% voter turnout -- up marginally from the historic low of the 2007 provincial election. The winning party gets 38.6 % of those who voted, which means in the neighborhood of 19-20 % of the eligible vote -- but they have a comfortable, some have said overwhelming, majority!

I replied:

What you say is true, Tom, but barring electoral reform, the easiest way to remedy this problem is for more people to vote. As you may know, I have no sympathy for those who say they don't vote because there is no one to vote for, or they don't 'do' politics, etc. Laziness and inertia and apathy are poor reasons not to participate in the rights and responsibility of citizenship. In fact, to be quite honest, I have little respect for the kind of self-absorption that breeds such behaviour.

We are, of course, well aware of the fact that Harper achieved his majority government with minority support from the electorate, something that has apparently never bothered either that regime or its supporters. However, I suspect we will now be subjected to a barrage of right-wing commentary that will include the claim that because Kathleen Wynne was elected by a minority of eligible voters, she did not really get a mandate from the people. Such hypocrisy, however, is nothing new, but those who are truly distressed by the Ontario results need to look to themselves to blame if, in fact, they are among the 50% who did not vote.

Such is the price of indifference, sloth, and disengagement.

A Timely Reminder Of Tim Hudak's Magical Thinking

While we should be back from our trip tomorrow in time to catch the Ontario election news coverage, this seems an opportune time to remind readers of the kind of magical thinking so favoured by extreme right enthusiasts such as young Tim Hudak. Tim, as you may recall, has made even lower corporate taxes a major part of his plan to create one million jobs, despite the fact that Ontario's rates are among the lowest in North American, and despite the fact that no apparent empirical data supports the equation that lower business taxes create jobs.

Here is a letter from today's Star that I think makes the point rather nicely:

Leaders make one last push as campaign winds down, June 10

The Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. recorded $1.08 trillion in profits last year. That was an increase of 31.7 per cent over the year before. During that time, these same companies increased employment increases of 0.7 per cent.

A similar picture exists on Canada. In 2001 corporate tax rates were 22 per cent. Today they stand at 15 per cent. We’ve lost $6.1 billion in government revenue while corporate profits have skyrocketed to $625 billion.

Tim Hudak talks about creating one million jobs through a lower tax rate. During the Mike Harris years in Ontario this philosophy did not work out very well. The provincial debt during the Harris years went from $90.7 billion in 1994-95 to $130.6 billion is 2002-03. This, while cutting many jobs and services and giving the province the legacy of Walkerton among other atrocities.

Former Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney tried to convince Canadian corporations to spend some of the “dead money” they have been sitting on after accumulating such large profits over the years. To date, the corporations have not responded.

For years, right-wing government leaders from Margaret Thatcher to Ronald Reagan to Mike Harris have been selling the supply-side economic lie. It didn’t work for them and it won’t work for Tim Hudak. A first-year economics student could tell you the reason for this. The rich don’t tend to spend additions to their revenue. The poor do. The rich accululate this money as the corporations in Canada have been doing for years.

In the Conservative attack on Kathleen Wynne on the radio, they end by asking, “Can you afford to vote for Kathleen Wynne?” I am wondering if I can afford not to.

Carl Nelson, Huntsville

Canaries In The Coal Mine, Dinosaurs On The Hill

We are still out West, but I can't resist putting up a few letters from The Star that raise awareness not only of environmental perils but also, concomitantly, of the dangers of saurian political representation, as epitomized by the current regime in Ottawa:



U.S. coal cut tests Harper, Editorial June 3

Agreed, it’s time for Canada to take action too, and not continue our vague intention to regulate.

Our government’s commitment to the premise of regulating emissions sector by sector seems directly in opposition to traditional conservative values. It requires more legislation to enact, and more bureaucracy to monitor, than any other system for reducing emissions. Economists, environmentalists, even oil firms, as noted in this editorial, all agree that pricing carbon is the correct move.

The carbon fee and dividend system is revenue neutral, would require very little bureaucracy to enforce, and would allow the market to power a change. Doesn’t this seem like ideal environmental legislation for a conservative government?

It’s enactment would certainly show the U.S. that we’re taking serious action alongside them. Now is the time to get on board with reducing emissions, or soon we’ll be playing catch up in the energy sector, with no one to sell our high-emission oil to.

Jack Morton, Toronto

Thanks for your article on U.S. President Barack Obama’s carbon regulations aiming to reduce CO2 from power plants in the U.S. by 30 per cent by 2030. This is a good start, however it’s nowhere near where we need to go.

We need to cut fossil fuel dependency by 80 per cent by 2050 — for all sources, not just power plants. We have used up our carbon budget, and the rising temperature of the earth does threaten the survival of humanity, and many other species.

It would really help the transition to a sustainable future if a fee and dividend carbon pricing system were implemented. This would put a price on the pollution of carbon and would encourage the development of clean tech, renewables, and conservation.

I urge Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair to say this is what they will do, and then work together to do this when a new government is formed. As informed citizens we must let our politicians know this is what we want them to do.

Lyn Adamson, Toronto

Some Real Hope For Renewables

I only have time for this quick post, but allow me to direct you to this story about what appears to be a breakthrough in solar power generation and this story that opens up a range of possibilities for electric cars.

Here is some video to accompany the stories:

On Harper's Hateful Hypocricsy

There is little doubt that Alana Westwood will now be joining that ever-growing pantheon of proud Canadians inscribed on Harper's Enemies List. The PhD Candidate at Dalhousie University and volunteer coordinator at Evidence for Democracy has written a fine piece in today's Toronto Star entitled Stephen Harper’s blatant hypocrisy on science which merits reading.

Her starting point is what she describes as a rare one-on-one interview this past Thursday with the CBC (surely an act of hypocrisy in itself, given his abiding contempt for and constant cost-cutting of the public broadcaster). Out of deference to those delicately constituted, I shall provide no link to the interview - that are certain things no one should have to subject him or herself to, and watching Dear Leader is one of them, in my view. From past exposure, I know that I always have, shall we say, a Pavlovian response to him that is not pleasant to behold.

During said interview, in which Harper espoused his enthusiasm for vaccines, he chided Canadians, “Don’t indulge your theories; think of your children and listen to the experts.”

He added, for good effect, that “it’s a tragedy when people start to go off on their own theories and not listen to scientific evidence.”

The irony, as she calls it, is not lost on Ms. Westwood:

The PM’s sudden endorsement of science is a peculiar turn in the wake of systemic and sustained affronts to Canadian scientists, statisticians and record keepers. Just recently, we have seen announcements of cuts to research funding for the Department of Justice, massive closures of libraries (including consolidation and loss of collections from Health Canada) and even restrictions on the ability of meteorologists to say the words “climate change.”

She goes on to enumerate other examples of Harper's manifest hypocrisy and unfitness to lead the country:

- over 2,000 federal scientists dismissed since 2009

- the cut/closure of about 200 scientific research and monitoring institutions, many dealing with issues of monitoring food safety, environmental contaminants and other domains directly affecting the health of Canadians.

While Harper apparently extolled the crucial role of good baseline data during the interview, Westwood reminds us of this inconsistent and inconvenient truth:

How long after the axing of the mandatory long-form census will Canada hit the wall? From the drastically insufficient national household survey, we won’t even have appropriate baseline data about the basic demographics of our own country to plan hospital locations.

And of course, as has been noted previously, the avidity with which the Harper regime muzzles its scientists is behaviour worthy only of a third-world martinent.

To be sure, none of this is new or shocking to those of us who follow the downward trajectory of our country. It is only the latest reminder of the urgency with which each of us must convey, in whatever means are at our disposal, the truth of this autocratic regime so that as many as possbile are as engaged as possible, in 2015.

On Harper's Unhealthy Interest in Us

Even though we are away, I arose early enough to peruse The Toronto Star, and offer the following as additional evidence of its readers' perspicacity:

Re: Harper nominates next privacy watchdog, May 29

Keep an eye on our spies, Editorial June 1

I applaud the Star for taking a robust stand against the systematic corrosion of Canadians’ privacy rights under the proposed Tory legislation, as well as standing against revelations of already widespread snooping into our private data without proper oversight. This activity is the definition of governmental abuse, and reeks of opportunism of the vilest sort in a democracy.

That this very nightmarish matter is being confronted and denounced robustly by the opposition parties, with their call for an official, mandated panel of oversight that reports to parliament, is reassuring. As is Hugh Segal’s Bill S-220, which seeks to legislate this very type of panel.

I can’t help but see an analogy in the 2000 movie The Perfect Storm, the story of an ill-fated voyage where an unusually intense storm pattern catches some commercial fishermen unaware and puts them in mortal danger.

In a key scene, the crew has battled the first phase of the storm all night, but are buoyed when they see a break in the dark skies and a ray of sun penetrating. Unfortunately, there is worse to come.

Senator Segal’s Bill S-220, and the loud denunciations of opposition members, privacy commissioners, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and ordinary Canadians alike from coast to coast are analogous to that ray of light and hope amid the intensifying storm of surveillance mania unfolding today.
Will we consolidate this opportunity to save freedom, or will our tired, demoralized and broken ship of state sail to its doom in the face of madness and the ascendancy of Big Brother?

Ted Nasmith, Bradford

Harper nominates next privacy watchdog, May 29

It’s now official. “Following a rigorous process,” the fox has been nominated to guard the henhouse.
Why is it that I am losing investor confidence in my poultry and egg futures?

David Klarer, Oakville


And on another aspect of Dear Leader's psyche:



Temper? PM's isolation is the bigger issue, May 30

Bruce Carson, who served as a senior aide to Stephen Harper from 2004 to 2009, is only the latest ex-insider to write an unflattering book about Canada’s current prime minister. Apparently Mister “My-Way-or-the-Highway” Harper has an insatiable appetite for gnawing off the hands of those he once employed to help him scale the ladder to the pinnacle of political power in this country.

Megalomaniacs are known to demand unquestioning loyalty without giving any in return. Inevitably megalomaniacs surround themselves with deferential toadies. Obviously that kind of environment would not be an agreeable workplace for any intelligent well-seasoned advisor who sincerely believes in discussion and debate as well as competency and ethics.

No wonder Stephen Harper’s present team of unseasoned advisors is dismissively referred to as the “boys in short pants.”

Lloyd Atkins, Vernon, B.C.

Sporadic Blogging Ahead

We are heading out West for a week to visit our kids, both of whom are economic refugees from Ontario. Blogging will likely be sporadic for the next seven days, but I will check regularly for comments.

On The Madness of 'King' Stephen

Whenever I need evidence that politically aware and engaged citizens are not an endangered species, I turn to the letters section of The Toronto Star. Here are two from yesterday and one from today that amply demonstrate resistance to the kind of group-think so much beloved of the extreme right:

Method in Tories’ madness hard to fathom, May 31

I don’t think Stephen Harper’s methods over his time in the PMO are really so hard to fathom. When he was in opposition there was talk of Harper’s “secret agenda.” What has happened is that he has pulled his secret agenda out of the closet. He is systematically altering the political and social structure of the country to suit his own ideological, neo-conservative views of the world.

He has tried to eliminate all liberal and centrist politics. He is not interested in facts or data that contradict these views, hence his dismemberment of Statistics Canada and Canadian scientific research. He is actively seeking to replace all opposition to his reign, hence his fight with the Supreme Court.
His slow murder of the CBC, what Chantal Hebert called a “death of a thousand cuts,” is a way to limit Canadians’ access to open dialogue of policy.

There are any number of other examples of Harper’s destruction of the traditional Canadian values in his march to reconstruct this country along his personal values system. The damage inflicted by his policies will take a generation to overcome, if it is at all possible, but that is exactly what Harper has set out to do.

The complete overhaul of the Canadian landscape into an extreme right-wing image is precisely what Harper has had in mind all along. He has been far more successful than the American Tea Party although those seem to be the precise views of our prime minister.

Stephen L. Bloom, Toronto

The Tory madness is due to a toxic mix: decisions based on intuitive, “common sense” gut feeling instead of reason; ideological economics of a free market without government regulation or union protection; and protection of the Alberta base, because of its economic reliance on the tar sands and its evangelical supporters; plus a leader with a mindset that brooks no criticism.

Bill Unitt, Brampton

Privacy suffers from poor political will, May 31

I found Michael Geist’s column very interesting. I would, however, hazard a guess that the real reason the current regime has, apparently, stopped caring about privacy is really very simple.

Most dictatorships resort to surveillance, secret police, the suppression of truth and oppression to sustain their hold on power. It seems to me that we have seen all of these from the Harper regime since 2006.

The linchpin of dictatorship is surveillance so it should be no wonder that not only have they ceased to care about the privacy of Canadian citizens, they are actively increasing surveillance while weakening oversight.

I don’t think I am reacting too strongly nor do think I see conspiracy at every turn. It just seems to me that Stephen Harper is doing everything he can to maintain his party’s hold on power at the expense of the guarantees in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Poor Canada.

Bob MacMorran, Little Britain

UPDATED: Parsing Justin Trudeau's Words

Like many, I have real reservations about Justin Trudeau's capacity for the kind of leadership that reflects a mature and nuanced mind. While many praise him for his spontaneity and unorthodox pronouncements, I look for substance and an indication of policies that suggest a significant departure from the mindset of the Harper Conservatives. Thus far I have found little to encourage me.

All three of our major federal parties are largely silent on the issues that should be preoccupying us, one of the most pressing, of course, being climate change. Because of the amount of carbon being emitted by fossil fuels in general, and by the extractions taking place in Alberta's tarsands in particular, anyone looking to young Mr. Trudeau for a new direction would be well-advised to pay close attention to his public musings on the subject.

Here is what he said back in February about the proposed Kinder Morgan oil pipeline to Vancouver:

Pipeline policy in general is one of the most important responsibilities of a Canadian prime minister and of a Canadian government – to make sure we can get our resources to market. We are a natural resource economy and we need to be able to do that. However, we need to do that in the right way. A right way that is sustainable, that has community support and buy-in, and that fits into a long-term strategy of not just a sustainable environment but a sustainable economy.

Because of that I have been a strong promoter of the Keystone XL pipeline and also a harsh critic on the way the prime minister has approached pushing the Keystone XL pipeline. To my mind, the only thing that has prevented Keystone XL from getting approved already in the United States – and what has allowed it become such a polarizing issue, with celebrities weighing in and all sorts of people having very strong opinions even though there is not necessarily all that many facts going around in many of the conversations – is that the prime minister hasn’t done a good enough job of demonstrating a level of commitment to doing it right and upholding environmental protections and regulations.

If you think that sounds rather suspiciously like a version of what politicians say when they meet opposition ("We need to communicate our message more effectively"), I think you are correct.

The Toronto Star has been running a series called Energy Wars. In yesterday's segment, entitled Pipelines define environmental struggle, here is what Mr. Trudeau had to say about the ever-growing opposition to pipeline expansion:

“The fact is that the oilsands have somehow become a poster child for climate change” ... “That is a failing of both government and industry for allowing that to happen because they weren’t doing enough to reassure people that the environment is a priority.”

Am I being overly cynical here? In my attempt to parse the Liberal leader's words, the discouraging interpretation of his statement I draw is that the tarsands suffer because both the Harper regime and the oil industry have not sufficiently 'massaged' the message. In other words, they haven't done a good enough job of faking sincerity about environmental concerns.

As things stand now, I will not be supporting young Justin in the next federal election unless substance takes precedence over style in his public pronouncements and policies.

UPDATE: Just so I don't leave you with the impression that Trudeau is our only opposition climatic coward, check out Thomas Mulcair's thoughts here.

Note To Tim Hortons Head Office: Please Respect Your Workers

On Sunday, I wrote about The Toronto Star reporting that a Tim Hortons franchisee is eliminating paid breaks for his/her employees as retaliation against the June 1 increase of the minimum wage in Ontario to $11 per hour. Yesterday, I sent off a letter to the head office of the coffee and donut emporium. I would encourage others for whom this is an issue to do the same.

Here is that letter:

To Whom It May Concern:

It was with great dismay that I learned in Sunday's Toronto Star that some Tim Hortons' franchisees are retaliating against the new Ontario minimum wage by eliminating paid breaks for employees. An owner's memo released by an employee stated:

“Given this new increase, as well as continued economic and competitive pressures, increasing commodity costs and minimal increases in menu pricing, effective June 1, we will be shifting all hourly team members in the restaurant to unpaid breaks.”

While I imagine this news is most disheartening to the many who faithfully and cheerfully serve your products, you should be aware that it is also very distressing to consumers who care about workers' rates of remuneration and working conditions and try to make ethical decisions in their discretionary purchases. I am one such person among many.

Your corporate response cited in The Star, that these decisions are made at the franchise level by each individual Tim Hortons restaurant owner, consistent with provincial labour regulations, was unsatisfactory in the extreme for many reasons.

Tim Hortons has long marketed itself as a Canadian institution and icon that we should all revere as patriotic citizens. Who can forget the role your coffee and donut emporium has played over the years in bringing caffeine comfort to early-morning hockey dads, sending underprivileged kids to camp, and being in the most desolate of locations, including Afghanistan 'supporting our troops.'

Sad to say, all of that iconography rings hollow when head office absolves itself of any responsibility for the actions of its franchisees. To hide behind legalities, deferring to provincial regulations and decision-making protocols, conveys an air of corporate indifference and avarice, not leadership.

There is no doubt in my mind that should this controversy have a negative effect on your very profitable operations, the lamentations about price pressures cited by the above-quoted Toronto operator notwithstanding, you would use your influence to rectify this unacceptable gouging of your employees.

As one very active in social media and blogging, I intend to spread the word about this egregiously unfair situation as widely as I can. My purpose, of course, is to encourage as many as possible to boycott Tim Hortons until equity is restored.

I look forward to hearing from you on this matter.

...................................................................................
Should you feel so moved to express your views about the company's mistreatment of its employees, here is the link.

Mark Carney Speaks On The Consequences Of Unbridled Capitalism

Mark Carney said the following to a group of the world's elites last week:

"Just like any revolution eats its children," Carney told the audience of global power brokers, "unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself."

"All ideologies are prone to extremes. Capitalism loses its sense of moderation when the belief in the power of the market enters the realm of faith."

It's rather gratifying to think of certain groups and individuals with their knickers in a twist, isn't it?

A Mound Of Sound Guest Post: The Lessons Of Afghanistan

Drawing upon his war studies course, The Mound of Sound offers the following perspective on what went wrong in Afghanistan:

Bad leadership, especially when it is political and military, costs lives. Our miserable experience in Afghanistan and its aftermath has exposed just how bad Canada’s military and political leadership has been going straight back to the Big Cod himself. I have written about this so many times over the years that I wouldn’t want to beat a dead horse but my mind was changed by a few passages out of a text from my war studies course from Kings College, London.

The book is “New and Old Wars, Organized Violence in a Global Era,” by LSE professor Mary Kaldor. She argues that, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, America and her allies sought to defeat insurgencies by employing “old war” or conventional war tactics that only achieved predictable failure.

“The conventional military tactics adopted by coalition forces were a significant contributory factor to the violence. Both during the invasions and after, the United States adopted ‘old war’ tactics in what were complex twenty-first-century ‘new war’ conditions. They were aimed at defeating the insurgencies. Both in pursuing al Qaeda and the Taliban and in responding to the growing insurgency in Iraq, American military forces largely stayed in their bases and ventured out to attack the enemy. Confronted with the brutal reality of the insurgencies, coalition troops seemed to default to military logic. Like earlier similar types of counter-insurgency in Vietnam, for example, or Algeria, the excessive use of force, widespread detention and torture and abuse as a means of extracting information, and the attempts to destroy the safe havens of the insurgents through the attacks on places such as Fallujah, Samarra, Najaf, or ...Kandahar and other Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan follow from this military logic.”

When our enemy, the Taliban, extended peace overtures, they were spurned.

“Instead, the remaining Taliban were harassed and intimidated both by US Special Forces and by commanders like [the murderous Gul Agha] Sherzai [governor of Kandahar] who received financial rewards for killing or capturing Taliban. Arbitrary arrests, night raids and targeted killing all contributed to a profound sense of humiliation. From 2004, the Taliban began to return to the South and the South East. Operation Medusa, undertaken by Canadian ISAF forces, was supposed to clear Kandahar of insurgents: hundreds of Taliban were killed or captured. Like Fallujah, however, the end result was new recruitment and new tactics.“

From the day we arrived in Afghanistan to the day we left we had no clue of what victory meant or the cost of victory. We swept those considerations away, ignored centuries of history including the stark lessons of the recent past, and banged away on our drums. We hunkered down in our garrisons and ventured out the gates to patrol for the bad guys. We had the tanks, the helicopters, the strike fighters and attack helicopters. We had the drones, the electronic intelligence and the artillery. We also had them severely outnumbered.

I knew we didn’t have a hope and that our soldiers were led by utter incompetents the day I read a quote of a Canadian colonel denouncing the Taliban as rank cowards for their unwillingness to stand in the open and fight like men. He might as well have ridiculed them for refusing to stand in the open, with their Korean-vintage assault rifles and light machine guns, while we leisurely rained 2,000 pound bombs on their heads with impunity. They were cowards, in this Canadian idiot’s mind, for choosing not to commit suicide. - Game Over. This colonel wasn’t remotely capable of thinking in terms of the Taliban’s war, the war that actually mattered, the new war that would decide the issue.

Professor Kaldor offers an interesting opinion on the real purpose of America’s (and her allies’) failed wars:

“...the purpose of the war was war; it was designed to keep alive an idea of old war on which American identity is based, to show that old war could be upgraded and relatively pain free in the twenty-first century. I do no want to suggest that this was cynical manipulation; on the contrary, the conservatives in the Bush administration probably believed in American power and their mission to spread the American idea. My point is rather that they were caught up in a narrative of their own making, which resonates well with the American public and is reinforced by the American media. And it can be argued that this belief is mirrored by a similar belief among some elements of the insurgency, particularly those who espouse the idea of a global jihad, or Islam against the West.”

The 3rd edition of Kaldor’s book went to press before the Afghan issue had been decided, while there was still time to pluck some measure of victory out of debacle.

“There have been moments in the aftermath of the invasions when there were genuine opportunities to establish legitimate governments. In Iraq, the problem was the reliance on expatriates, the dissolution of the army and the Ba’ath party, and the preoccupation with sectarian politics. In Afghanistan, the problem was the inclusion of commanders, who had previously been defeated by the Taliban and had been totally discredited by the Karzai government. The biggest failure in both countries has been the failure to consult civil society – not just NGOs who are often financed by outsiders, but a range of local people, women’s groups, student groups, tribal elders and others. In both countries ordinary people felt marginalized and neglected as people with guns were chosen as the main interlocutors for the outsiders.”

“Even today (i.e. 2011) some of these mistakes could be rectified. For example, in Afghanistan, a serious attempt to arrest those involved in corrupt practices, many of whom have American passports, or to condemn fraudulent election practices, would be one way to get rid of predatory commanders and could help to provide a better environment for the emergence of democracy. Moreover, in both countries ‘islands of civility’ do exist. Greater attention to those islands as opposed to the defeat of enemies could help to spread civility instead of predation.”

Our combat soldiers and junior officers can be proud of their service. Our senior military commanders should hang their heads in disgrace. Our political leaders, those who milked the last drop of political capital to be had from the dead and the mangled bodies and minds of our soldiers, should simply hang.

Tim Hortons Takes Aim And Fires

The advertising would have us believe that Tim Hortons is a Canadian institution and icon that we should all revere as patriotic citizens. Who can forget the role the coffee and donut emporium has played over the years in bringing caffeine comfort to early-morning hockey dads, sending underprivileged kids to camp, and, gosh darn, just being here, there, and everywhere (including Afghanistan), doing all of us proud. (Be still, my beating heart!)

Well, sad to report on this fine Sunday morning, the corporate mask has slipped a bit.

According to a report in the The Toronto Star, today, June 1, marks a new phase in the relationship that some franchisees have with their employees. Because today is the day in Ontario that the minimum wage rises to $11 per hour, it appears that the very profitable coffee giant is intent on cutting benefits to compensate for the higher wage:

A Toronto-area Tim Hortons worker, who didn’t want her name or outlet location identified for fear of reprisals, said her employer posted a memo notifying staff he was ending breaks with pay to recoup costs.

“Given this new increase, as well as continued economic and competitive pressures, increasing commodity costs and minimal increases in menu pricing, effective June 1, we will be shifting all hourly team members in the restaurant to unpaid breaks,” the memo reads.

“We are not pleased we have to make this adjustment to the break policy and have held off making this change for several years,” it said.

I suppose, given the tone of this apologia, that workers should be grateful to the giant that it has withstood all of the above pressures so valiantly until being 'forced' into this action by a premier who finally remembered the working poor.

I guess Timmy's vote won't be going to the Liberals on June 12.

And one can't help but wonder whether the enthusiasm evident in this video might now become muted at best:

A Safe Bet

Mother Jones predicts that the next episode of Cosmos will inflame the climate-change deniers. I think that is a safe bet:

Sometimes You Just Have To Hold Your Nose

It would never occur to me to withhold my vote in any election. Yet the one occurring in Ontario on June 12 is particularly striking in its paucity of real choice. I can't remember a campaign for which I have felt less enthusiasm.

Of course, Tim Hudak's extremism disqualified him as anyone worth considering long ago. His palpable anti-unionism, although muted in this campaign, would surely resurface in full bloom should he ever become premier. Coupled with his contempt of public service, he is a viable candidate only for those with blunt minds, those who take comfort in stark choices and worldviews.

The Liberals come with some terrible baggage and the ennui that inevitably characterizes a regime too long in power. While the gas plant debacle has had the most prominence, there have been many others that call into question their fitness to continue in office. And then there is the latest reminder of their way of doing business, the MaRs planned bailout that is just gaining traction as we move into the final stretch of the campaign.

The third major party, the NDP led by Andrea Horwath, also offers real problems for the conscientious voter. Her failure to support a Liberal budget that had much to offer progressives, on the pretext that she doesn't trust them to keep their word, along with her devolution into populist politics and policies, have led many to abandon any hope for her party. It is hard to escape the notion that power at the expense of principle is the NDP's defining characteristic under her leadership.

Because we are soon going away for a week to visit our kids in Alberta, we will likely vote today in an advance poll. Since I always try to be honest in this blog, I will tell you who we are casting our vote for, in case you are interested. It is Kathleen Wynne's Liberals who, despite the above, seem the least odious of the three major parties on offer.

Hardly a ringing endorsement, I'm sure.

Everything Is So Simple

That is, if you have a fundamentalist cast of mind like Pastor Matthew Hagee, who says this whole climate change thing is ordained by God, and to pay no attention to those environmentalists trying to tempt you from the true path.

Perhaps the good pastor should bone up on his Bible, given that his 'proof' resides in things he claims were said by Jesus in Matthew, Chapter 25, that just aren't there. Even if you go to the previous chapter, 24, the closest Jesus gets to mentioning calamity is when he says, There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

But then, I guess this wouldn't be the first time that Hagee's ilk have taken liberties in their unwholesome zeal for The Apocalypse.

UPDATED: Lonely At The Top?

If Stephen Harper isn't 'feelin' the love,' it is a situation of his own making. Two brief excerpts from Tim Harper's column in today's Star, entitled Stephen Harper's slide into isolation, are instructive.

Tom Flanagan, former best-buddies with Dear Leader, wrote in his recent book, Persona Non Grata, this about Harper:

“He can be suspicious, secretive, and vindictive, prone to sudden eruptions of white-hot rage over meaningless trivia, at other times falling into week-long depressions in which he is incapable of making decisions.’’

Also getting in on the tell-all craze, disgraced former senior Harper aide Bruce Carson, in 14 Days, describes his former boss this way:

... a man who was prone to temper tantrums, dressing down aides heatedly, swearing at them, but also getting as good as he gives.

He wouldn’t go as far as Flanagan in describing Harper as prone to bouts of depression — something Harper’s office dismissed as “ridiculous,” — but agreed the prime minister does have his ups and downs.

As well, perhaps his claim that Harper knew all of the details of his troubled past is equally revelatory of the Prime Minister's character.

Whether the state of Harper's psyche is of personal interest or not, getting some insight into the mind of one who has been systematically unraveling so much of what is good about Canada since he first came to power is doubtlessly worthwhile. If the subject is of sufficient interest, you may also wish to view last night's At Issue discussion on these books and whether such are good or bad. Bruce Andersen seemed to be the only one with reservations, as you will see:

UPDATE: Thanks to the link provided by Anon, here is a tune by Randy Newman that perhaps puts everything in perspective:

UPDATED:I Have A Simpler Solution

The headline reads, Restaurant owners seek meeting with PM over foreign worker freeze

The group representing Canada's restaurant owners is calling for an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss the freeze on temporary foreign workers in the restaurant industry.

"The recent moratorium on temporary foreign workers in the food service industry has turned the labour shortage into a crisis," Restaurants Canada CEO Garth Whyte said during a news conference in Charlottetown today.

The solution proposed by Restaurants Canada is threefold:

- Lift the moratorium on the food service industry immediately.

- Strengthen the rules of the program "to ensure there is no abuse."

- Allow restaurants that can't find Canadian workers to hire foreign workers at all skills levels.

Perhaps because of their fraught condition, they have overlooked a simpler solution:

Pay their workers more instead of pressuring the government to allow them to hire cheap foreign workers.

UPDATE: In her post this morning, Alison at Creekside does an excellent job piercing the hysterical hype being disseminated by Mr. Whyte on behalf of the restaurant industry.

Putting The Climate-Change 'Debate' Into Perspective

I think John Oliver does this rather effectively:




And on a more sobering note, you might like to gnaw on this ominous nugget.

Forecast: Very Cloudy Indeed

Mike de Sousa is a former Post Media reporter now operating his own website continuing his investigative work into energy and the environment. He is well-worth paying attention to.

His latest piece, Government’s weather forecasters shouldn’t discuss climate change, says Environment Canada, while perhaps not breaking any new ground, is a potent reminder of how inimical the Harper regime is to science as it continues to ignore climate change in its mad pursuit of policies promoting and facilitating tarsands' extraction.

Succinctly expressed, Environment Canada doesn't permit its meteorologists to comment on climate change because it lacks 'expertise':

“Environment Canada scientists speak to their area of expertise,” said spokesman Mark Johnson in an email. “For example, our Weather Preparedness Meteorologists are experts in their field of severe weather and speak to this subject. Questions about climate change or long-term trends would be directed to a climatologist or other applicable authority.”

Officially, these scientists cannot be trusted to connect the dots that their years of study would seem to entitle them to do:

...the department’s communications protocol prevents the meteorologists from drawing links to changing climate patterns following extreme weather events such as severe flooding in southern Alberta or a massive wildfire in Northern Quebec in the summer of 2013.

While Environment Canada's official position is that their employees are eminently satisfied, de Sousa includes a link to a union-sponsored survey that paints an altogether different picture. Here is a snippet of the responses:

“I am outraged by the Orwellian restriction of information under the current government. I cannot see any justification for preventing scientists from speaking about publicly-funded, published research to the media. The data were paid for by all Canadians and in my view belong to all Canadians. For us to work in the public interest, we need to be able to express our findings to non-scientists through public presentations and news media.

“The development of carefully crafted "Values and Ethics" codes across government are resulting in silencing the scientific community for fear of breaching their "Duty to Loyalty" (and are becoming synonymous with gag order).”

And there is this sad surrender:

“Leaving public service for academia. Won't have a muzzle anymore.”

Writes de Sousa:

The quotes from government scientists were released in support of the union’s internal investigation into allegations of muzzling of federal scientists. Its survey found that 90 per cent of federal scientists and professionals felt they couldn’t speak freely in public about their work and that 24 per cent had been asked to exclude or alter information for non-scientific reasons.

There is much more worth reading in this investigative piece. Mike de Sousa's website is surely one worth bookmarking for regular visits.

A Timely Reminder of Young Tim Hudak's Faulty Math

While much of the media seem to give young Tim Hudak a free pass on his ludicrouse claim that he will create one million jobs in Ontario over eight years by slashing both jobs and corporate taxes, Paul Boothe at Maclean's is offering a more critical perspective:

A very surprising and, for voters, unfortunate thing became apparent last week in the Ontario election campaign. The Progressive Conservatives’ central campaign proposal, the million jobs plan, collapsed when analysts looked closely at the math. Elementary, but critical arithmetic errors in their calculations resulted in the Progressive Conservatives vastly overestimating the number of jobs their plan would create. These errors demolished the underlying economic rationale the party had put forward for its smaller-government, lower-tax plan.

It seems that a fundamental error occurred in the Tory brain-trust's calculations:

...the planners confused person-years of employment with permanent jobs. This confusion led them to vastly overestimate the effect of their proposed job-creating measures. The result was that the half million jobs the Progressive Conservatives were promising to create with their plan (base-case economic growth was expected to provide the other half-million jobs) was really only about 75,000—fewer than the 100,000 public-sector jobs they were pledging to eliminate.

Or to put it another way, as explained by McMaster economist Mike Vealle,

Mr. Hudak appears to have conflated person years of employment – how many people would be employed for a single year – with permanent jobs. As a result, he counted many projected jobs multiple times.

Tim's predictable response?

“We strongly disagree with that interpretation,” he said while touring a factory on the outskirts of Niagara Falls. “I stand behind our numbers.”

While no one has yet demanded studies to back up Tim's basic premise, that austerity and tax cuts create jobs as discussed in two previous posts, this discovery of error at least represents a good use of journalistic time.

A Mound Of Sound Guest Post: The Relentless Growth of CO2

I put this item together a while ago but I was reminded of it today while reading a report from the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization, that April will go in the books as the first month in which atmospheric CO2 topped 400 ppm throughout the northern hemisphere. Not just one nasty region here or there, the entire bloody northern hemisphere. That's change you can believe in (sorry Barack).

Scientists say emissions will need to peak by 2020 and then decline rapidly to limit warming to 2C, a target agreed at the 2009 round of UN talks in Copenhagen.

According to the UN climate science panel, the world has already used between half and two-thirds of its “carbon budget” the amount of CO2 that can be released before the 2C goal is impossible.

This got me thinking about our chances of peaking our emissions by 2020 and then slashing them rapidly after that. At that point a quiz I recently spotted in The Globalist popped to mind.

The Globalist website posts a weekly quiz and they're generally pretty thought-provoking.

A recent one dealt with automobile manufacturing in 2013. How many cars were built in 2013? How about 83-million! China accounted for 27% of global sales. More telling was the fact that it wasn't until 2010 that we reached the 73-million auto mark. That's an increase of 10-million in just three years. Even more depressing is the forecast of 100-million cars to be produced in 2018, a third of them for the Chinese market.

What does that information tell you? In eight years we're going to go from producing 73-million cars to building 100-million. That means we'll be adding another hundred million cars a year to the hundreds of millions of older cars already prowling the planet's roads and highways. Now imagine what that's going to mean in the context of oil and gasoline consumption, water consumption (it takes 39,000 gallons of water to build a car), and of course greenhouse gas emissions. Hey kids, we're so screwed!

Another Globalist quiz looked at energy rich Nigeria and how much electricity the average Nigerian consumes in a year. It's about as much as the average person uses to power their microwave over the course of a year. That's because Nigeria is a corrupt petro-state and all that oil wealth mysteriously never makes it down to the ordinary folks.

How about electricity production from renewables? Brazil is the winner in the clean power contest at 82%. Canada comes in at 63% clean electricity, mainly through provincial hydro-electric generation (no thanks to Ottawa). The United States? Under 13%, well below the global average of 20% which also happens to be China's renewable electricity level.

You can find all the quizzes, including archives, here. If, like me, you're interested in issues pertaining to globalization, you can subscribe to their daily e-mail briefing. It's as timely as it is insightful.

Nature And The Heavy Hand Of Humanity

As difficult as this is to watch, we all have a responsibility to bear witness to our collective folly:

Post by HelaNada.com - A Brand New Experience.

New Enemies, New Misdirections

Last week I wrote a post about the fraught fund-raising letter sent out by Conservative Party director of political operations Fred DeLorey. The letter stressed the need to build a substantial war chest because a cabal of leftist media (essentially all of them - media concentration at its worst, eh?) is preventing the regime from getting out its message of good, sober, and responsible government.

In today's Globe and Mail, Lawrence Martin, one of the few journalists left at the once mighty paper worth his salt, offers his perspective on this extraordinary and ludicrous claim:

The point about concentrated media power will raise eyebrows. Is Mr. Harper looking to break them up?

And the notion that media conglomerates are doing the bidding of the liberal left? That would be news to the likes of Postmedia, Sun Media, Shaw Communications, Rogers and Bell: Their headquarters aren’t exactly overrun by Noam Chomsky disciples. And more than 90 per cent of Canadian newspapers endorsed the Conservatives in the last election.

But like a growing number of our system’s institutional checks and balances, the fourth estate is on Mr. Harper’s hit list. The CBC has been there a long time; it would be gone if the PM had his druthers. If he wins the next election, it very well might be, as the fundraising letter’s line of questioning suggests.

While Harper's hatred for the CBC is well-known, representing as it does central Canadian liberalism, elitism and big-government values, the fact that our mad prime minister has turned his sights on the broader media suggests someone who has lost both his balance and his perspective (if he indeed was ever in possession of such), blaming everyone except himself for his spate of recent misfortunes:

When it comes to coverage, Mr. Harper has, in fact, been getting a rough media going over in recent months. He might wish to consider that perhaps the Senate scandal, the elections bill blundering and the Supreme Court debacle have something to with it.

The Prime Minister isn’t trending well with journalists. Years ago, there were a few scribes who took exception to his excessive controls and billy-club style of democracy. Now the majority of pundits are of that view – left, right and centre.

Martin concludes his column on an ominous note, reminding me once again of the disturbing Nixonian rage and paranoia that seem to define Mr. Harper's mental state:

We’ve seen how Mr. Harper reacts when challenged. Going forward, we can probably expect more than just fundraising letters.

Why Do They Do It?

For the sheer joy of it, I suspect:



To know and respect nature is to know and respect ourselves. All is connected.

Contempt Of The Electorate - Part 2

As I continue to ponder the question my friend Tom posed about why discredited economic theories are not vigorously opposed and exposed as such by political parties and media, two articles perhaps offer some helpful contextual information.

The first is by John Barber in today's Star, entitled Hudak’s discredited doctrine a lucky break for Wynne. In it, he remarks on the good fortune that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is enjoying by having an ideologue, Tim Hudak, helming the party of her chief opposition, The Progressive Conservatives of Ontario:

Hudak has presented her a chance once again to make righteous war on Mike Harris’s amply discredited Common Sense Revolution.

Barber speculates that embracing such an extreme austerity program that will see the elimination of 100,000 public service jobs in order to balance the books a year or two earlier than Wynne intends suggests one of two motives: either it is a strategy to gain a majority government by mobilizing true believers more likely to turn out in an election than others, or Hudak and his brain trust are mad, an explanation Barber favours, given that it reflects a worldwide trend of neoconservatives:

The boldness of the policy is the product of assumptions so ingrained the zealots see no need to explain them. Fixated by their own mechanistic ideology, they blandly expect voters to understand intuitively — or religiously, as they seem to do — that destroying jobs will create jobs and that cutting taxes will increase revenue. It’s all so clear to them. Don’t you see, Ontario?

Barber then provides a link to a recent column by Paul Krugman, entitled Points of No Return. In it, the economist writes about how facts, reason and informed cerebration seem to be losing out to crazed ideology and contempt for science and others sources of empirical data, bringing us to the point where the process of intellectual devolution seems to have reached a point of no return.

It, too, is a piece well-worth reading, as Krugman examines the Republican Party and its wholesale embrace of an ideology that reveres patently false economic ideas (austerity would be one such example), and offers reflexive rejection of inconvenient scientific truth (the notion of human-caused climate would be an example). The more obvious the falsity of the outlook, the more adherents become

more, not less, extreme in their dogma, which will make it even harder for them ever to admit that they, and the political movement they serve, have been wrong all along.

Strikingly like a certain domestic federal regime I could also name, no?

Admittedly, this does not offer a direct answer to Tom's question. But is it possible that those politicians who oppose such flawed doctrines are afraid of enraging those voters who do, a reaction that might strengthen their already motivated resolve to be a present en masse at the ballot box?

I would more than welcome input on this perplexing issue.

A Mound Of Sound Guest Post: Libya - We Screwed Up Good, Real Good

Libya, remember that place? That's where NATO waged a bombing campaign against the forces of the late dictator, Muamar Gaddafi. When Gaddafi was ousted we figured we'd done real good.

If you judge our warfighting prowess by the outcomes, Libya ranks right up there with Afghanistan. The country has become ungovernable, plagued by militias and Islamist terrorists. Foreign consulates have closed down in Benghazi and even Arab embassies are clearing out.

The Libyan military, fed up with the government's refusal to move against Islamist militias, has mutinied. General Kalifa Hafter, supposedly with the backing of Egypt's military government, is waging a campaign to clean the Islamists out of eastern Libya. Whether he has much chance of succeeding is far from clear. Militias are tough to take out. Like guerrillas, they can dissolve, melt away and return as insurgents.

Sad to say but I saw this coming back in February, 2011 when I wrote that the only effective way to deal with Gaddafi was for Egypt's army and air force to take him out. Gwynne Dyer came to the same conclusion a month later. This became especially urgent when al Qaeda announced they intended to use the Libyan civil war to get a toehold in north Africa that they missed during the Egyptian uprising that toppled Mubarak. And that, as our bombing campaign dragged on for week after week, was exactly what al Qaeda did. Even before Gaddafi was toppled, Islamist fighters assassinated the rebels’ top general.

Now, three lost years later, the Egyptian military wants a say in how Libya should be run. Now Islamist radicals are well entrenched across north Africa. Now we see plainly how little NATO really accomplished in Libya.

Embarrassing as this rightly is for NATO, it's far worse for Washington. Both sides, Hafter and the Islamist militias, blame the United States for the bloodbath now taking place in Libya.