Tikkunista!

August 13th, 2010 :: Year 7, Issue 26

Aug-13-2010 | Comments (0)

There will be a two week break in our publishing schedule, as your editor goes offline to a cottage in the remote bush. Deep apologies to all paying subscribers. We compensate with a longer than usual issue this week, to keep you going….

Followups

* Harper’s Census– there’s method behind the madness. Tyee has an excellent piece on why he wants to kill the census. An economist, the prime minister understands the value of statistics. He appreciates that authoritative statistics on the relative social and economic well-being of individual Canadians empower the disempowered to demand government programs (higher taxes) to reduce poverty and disparity and promote upward mobility.

He also appreciates the need to dumb them down to facilitate stripping government back to its core functions: a strong military to defend the nation abroad, more police, prisons and tougher justice to defend the citizen at home and an unfettered free market to create wealth and employment through ever-lower taxes, especially on business and the well-to-do. Addressing social and economic inequality should be left to individual initiative and private charity.

* Why the Rich Should Not Contribute Their Wealth to Charities Not everyone agrees with Harper that “Addressing social and economic inequality should be left to individual initiative and private charity.”. A great piece from Der Spiegal focusses on why the German super-rich disagrees with Bill Gates’ approach. Germany’s super-rich have rejected an invitation by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to join their ‘Giving Pledge’ to give away most of their fortune. The pledge has been criticized in Germany, with millionaires saying donations shouldn’t replace duties that would be better carried out by the state….“It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it’s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That’s a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?”

1. Actions

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* Two Avaaz Petitions to Sign. To Russia: A powerful new treaty is our best weapon against the global rape trade in women and girls. If Russia signs it, it will put a major dent in this horror - let’s get 1 million voices to appeal to Russian PM Putin to sign the treaty.

To the US: The world needs the US to move away from oil, and work with us instead to drive forward the global clean energy revolution. Let’s use this moment to send a world-wide message to President Obama, urging him to overturn offshore drilling expansion – our global outcry will be delivered in Washington with a massive banner when we reach 500,000 signers:

* A Party for Reena: at Beit Zatoun, Friday Aug 20th. Reena Katz, has touched many people and groups. Her commitment, sage guidance and capable talents have helped move us along. …We all will miss Reena’s presence among us in activist Toronto but we also wish her well in the next phase of her artistic life and activist pursuits. She will be attending 2-year graduate program at Parsons New School for Design in NYC, pursuing a Masters of Fine Art. We come together to celebrate Reena’s friendship and we also acknowledge the relationships and that bind us to each other and to our many causes.

2A. Special Section: Global Warming, Floods, & Fires

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Bird’s-Eye: It really all comes down to the same issue. Our use of carbon-based fuels changes the planet’s climate, and that creates fires and floods. We start by looking at the politics – what some countries are doing to change their use of fossil fuels, and Exxon’s role in fighting such changes. Then we look in more detail at Pakistan and Russia, who are currently suffering the results of our not changing.

* Portugal Makes the Leap to Renewable Energy – New York Times

LISBON — Five years ago, the leaders of this sun-scorched, wind-swept nation made a bet: To reduce Portugal’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, they embarked on an array of ambitious renewable energy projects — primarily harnessing the country’s wind and hydropower, but also its sunlight and ocean waves. Today, Lisbon’s trendy bars, Porto’s factories and the Algarve’s glamorous resorts are powered substantially by clean energy. Nearly 45 percent of the electricity in Portugal’s grid will come from renewable sources this year, up from 17 percent just five years ago.

Land-based wind power — this year deemed “potentially competitive” with fossil fuels by the International Energy Agency in Paris — has expanded sevenfold in that time. And Portugal expects in 2011 to become the first country to inaugurate a national network of charging stations for electric cars.

* Germany Will Seek 100% of its Electricity from Renewables by 2050 Juan Cole Informed Comment

Germany, which generates 16% of its power from renewable sources such as hydro-electric, wind and solar, now plans to get 100% of its electricity from renewables by 2050. It is an audacious plan, but German economists maintain it will actually improve the German economy and forestall the dislocations of the global warming that will otherwise occur.

* Exposed: Exxon funding climate denial Left Foot Forward

The tide is once again turning against the climate denial community. The newspaper reports that Exxon/Mobil gave £1 million to fund “organisations that campaign against controls on greenhouse gas emissions” – including several of those which made the outspoken attacks on climate scientists at the University of East Anglia.

It reports: The scientists were exonerated this month by an independent inquiry but groups funded by Exxon have continued to lambast them. The Media Research Centre, which received $50,000 from Exxon, called the inquiry a “whitewash” and condemned “climate alarmism”….Some of Exxon’s largest donations were to groups that lobbied against a global deal on emissions being reached at the climate summit last December in Copenhagen

2B. Pakistan and Floods

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Bird’s-Eye: A lot of bird’s eye views in the Big Picture links, superb as always for giving a sense of what is happening. And two pieces from Juan Cole, the first on the humanitarian issues,; the second connecting the dots between global warming and al-Qaeda

* Big Picture features on the Pakistan Floods Part One and Part Two

* 6 Million Pakistanis need Immediate Aid as 1/3 of Country is Submerged Juan Cole Informed Comment

A third of Pakistan is now under water, and fresh rainfall threatens two more waves of flooding in the southern Sindh province. The submerged area of the country is as big as the United Kingdom! 14 million Pakistans have been affected. 2 million have been made altogether homeless. 6 million people are in need of immediate help.

* Global Warming and al-Qaeda in the Greater Indian Ocean Juan Cole Informed Comment

Politico says that the fate of the earth, i.e. the climate bill in the senate, is now in the hands of Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico. This is because he is seen as someone who could get a bipartisan consensus. But Democrats on the Hill are missing their big opportunity to appeal to Republicans by not foregrounding climate change as a security issue–in fact, an al-Qaeda issue. That’s right, Fox Cable News. You can’t be a ‘war on terror’ hawk if you blow off the dangers of climate change. Those bombings in Kampala you went crazy about? Not completely unrelated to East African drought. And, Bangladesh is not going to be pretty. Read on.

2C. Russia and Fires

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Bird’s-Eye: Again, we lead with two stunning compilations of photographs of the fires by Big Picture. Then we look at the implications of the fire on world food supplies, and conclude by looking at possible links between the fires and floods and global warming.

* Big Picture Features on Russian Fires Part One and Part Two

* Russian Fires Forecast Climate Change Threat UPI.com

World wheat supplies have been sharply reduced due to severe drought and wildfires in Russia, a crop report released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture concludes….The trend is clear,” said Sherri Goodman, senior vice president at the Center for Naval Analyses and former deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security. “With increases in temperature and increasing changes in the global climate, we are experiencing more disasters.”

* Pakistan Floods, Russian Fires Are Related dawn.com

The floods in Pakistan and the wildfires in Russia are raging a continent apart but they are connected by the Asian monsoon, reports the National Geographic magazine. The monsoon — a seasonal wind system that brings rains to Pakistan and much of the rest of Asia in summer — also drives the circulation of air as far away as Europe, Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the Boulder, Colorado-based National Centre for Atmospheric Research, told the magazine. Scientists agree that a large weather pattern links the events, reports another science magazine, New Scientist.

Meteorologists monitoring the atmosphere above the northern hemisphere say that unusual holding patterns in the jet stream are to blame. (Jet streams are fast flowing, narrow air currents found in the earth’s atmosphere.) …Such circulation patterns are normal, but they’re also being enhanced by rising sea temperatures due in part to global warming, Mr Trenberth warned. For instance, the northern Indian Ocean has warmed 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the 1970s. Warmer water releases more moisture into the air, which can supercharge monsoon rains.

3. Driving Through Planetary Stop Signs

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Bird’s-Eye: Bad things can happen when you drive through a stop sign, and sometimes they’re a lot worse than just getting nailed with a traffic ticket. We seem to be doing that a lot these days. Here we look at three examples of global stop signs: the first is our warming of the planet, the second our over-reliance on antibiotics, the third our suburb-based urban design. As Marshall McLuhan famously observed, “Nothing is inevitable, so long as we are willing to contemplate what is happening.” That underlines the importance of starting to pay attention to those stop signs.

* Who Cooked the Planet? Paul Krugman The New York Times

Never say that the gods lack a sense of humor. I bet they’re still chuckling on Olympus over the decision to make the first half of 2010 — the year in which all hope of action to limit climate change died — the hottest such stretch on record.

So why didn’t climate-change legislation get through the Senate? Let’s talk first about what didn’t cause the failure, because there have been many attempts to blame the wrong people. First of all, we didn’t fail to act because of legitimate doubts about the science…. Nor is this evidence tainted by scientific misbehavior. …Did reasonable concerns about the economic impact of climate legislation block action? No.

So it wasn’t the science, the scientists, or the economics that killed action on climate change. What was it? The answer is, the usual suspects: greed and cowardice.

* Are You Ready For A World Without Antibiotics? The Guardian

Just 65 years ago, David Livermore’s paternal grandmother died following an operation to remove her appendix. It didn’t go well, but it was not the surgery that killed her. She succumbed to a series of infections that the pre-penicillin world had no drugs to treat. Welcome to the future.

The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight.

* We Have Allowed Developers To Rob Us Of Our Village Green George Monbiot The Guardian

Build loose suburbs carved up by busy roads and without green spaces and you help to create a population of fat, lonely people plagued by criminals. Build dense, leafy settlements with mixed uses, protected from traffic, and you help to create safe, fit and friendly communities.

4. Israeli Right Turns to the One State Solution

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Bird’s-Eye: It doesn’t seem that long ago, does it, that one would be accused of being anti-Israeli (or anti-Semitic) for suggesting a one-state solution in the Middle East. Now the Israeli Right is supporting such a move. We look in more detail at why the sea-change has happened, but here’s a first hint: it’s not to help the Palestinians.

* Israeli right embracing one-state? Al Jazeera (Thanks, Gabe!)

One might expect that any support for a single state among Israeli Jews would come from the far left, and in fact this is where the most prominent Israeli Jewish champions of the idea are found, although in small numbers.

Recently, proposals to grant Israeli citizenship to Palestinians in the West Bank, including the right to vote for the knesset, have emerged from a surprising direction: Right-wing stalwarts such as knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, and former defence minister Moshe Arens, both from the Likud party of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister. Even more surprisingly, the idea has been pushed by prominent activists among Israel’s West Bank settler movement….

* Rosemary’s Baby Uri Avnery Gush Shalom – Israeli Peace Bloc

SINCE I witnessed the rise of the Nazis during my childhood in Germany, my nose always tickles when it smells something fascist, even when the odor is still faint. When the debate about the “one-state solution” began, my nose tickled.

Have you gone mad, I told my nose, this time you are dead wrong. This is a plan of the Left. It is being put forward by leftists of undoubted credentials, the greatest idealists in Israel and abroad, even certified Marxists. But my nose insisted. It continued to tickle.

Now it appears that the nose was right, after all.

* The Closing of the Zionist Mind Juan Cole Informed Comment

Failing Nationalism Syndrome (FNS)—Not all national projects succeed. There are by some counts 5000 ethnic groups in the world of a sort that could be the basis for a nation-state, but there are only about 190 countries. Some political projects, such as French Algeria (dominated by colons or colonists as a privileged group) or a Christian-dominated Lebanon, get going but just don’t have staying power. Algeria is now an almost wholly Muslim country, and Christians in Lebanon, while still powerful and numerous, are probably down to less than a third of the total population. But if we went back in time to 1935, we could sit at cafes in Algiers or Beirut and talk with these two about the future of their countries, and the ones in Algiers would have said that Algeria’s fate was to always be a part of France, and the Lebanese Maronites would talk have talked about their majority being strengthened and about the Phoenician identity of their country in the future.

Since the government of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is doing its best to run out the clock on a two-state solution, the only two plausible outcomes in Israel/Palestine in the coming decades are long years of dreary Apartheid or a one-state solution. It is not plausible that the Israelis will be allowed to keep the Palestinians stateless and without, ultimately, any real rights, forever. So Zionists (Israel nationalists) are increasingly suffering from Failing Nationalism Syndrome, and it is causing them to flail about saying the strangest things.

5. That Zero Grounds Mosque Debate

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Bird’s-Eye: While it’s almost irresistibly tempting to share the derision aroused by Palin’s tweet “Ground Zero mosque supporters, doesn’t it stab you in the heart as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls. refudiate.”… no, it is irresistible. Juan Cole demolishes her here in logic, and Tom the Dancing Bug here, in ‘toon. But once you look at the actual facts about the mosque there are two clear conclusions: this is a totally emotion-driven issue, and is being used by the right to whip up further Islamophobia.

* The Proposed Mosque Near Ground Zero The New Yorker

Ah, the “Ground Zero mosque.” Well, for a start, it won’t be at Ground Zero. It’ll be on Park Place, two blocks north of the World Trade Center site (from which it will not be visible), in a neighborhood ajumble with restaurants, shops (electronics, porn, you name it), churches, office cubes, and the rest of the New York mishmash. Park51, as it is to be called, will have a large Islamic “prayer room,” which presumably qualifies as a mosque. But the rest of the building will be devoted to classrooms, an auditorium, galleries, a restaurant, a memorial to the victims of September 11, 2001, and a swimming pool and gym. Its sponsors envision something like the 92nd Street Y—a Y.M.I.A., you might say, open to all, including persons of the C. and H. persuasions….

Pretty scary. Leading the pack of scaredy-cats, along with Palin, was her fellow Presidential mentionee Newt Gingrich, a leading intellectual light of the Republican Party. According to Gingrich, Park51 is “an assertion of Islamist triumphalism,” part of “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.” Those who think it’s O.K. are “apologists for radical Islamist hypocrisy” who “argue that we have to allow the construction of this mosque in order to prove America’s commitment to religious liberty.” Gingrich argues for proving our devotion to religious liberty by taking it hostage: “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.”

* Mosque Building and Gay Marriage vs. Mob Rule by the Right Juan Cole Informed Comment

The decision of a US district court to strike down Proposition 8, the California referendum item that made gay marriage illegal after it had earlier been legalized by the state assembly, was a blow for individual rights over a tyranny of the majority. In its form, it resembles the decision of the New York authorities to allow a Muslim community center to be built near Ground Zero, which Sarah Palin and other prominent Republican Party bigots have decried as “insensitive.”

Both in the instance of gay marriage and of mosque-building, the American Right mounts opposition on grounds of majority ideas and feelings triumphing over individual rights. No one denies that Muslims have a first amendment right to build a mosque, and it is hard to see why straight people should have a right to get married (which brings substantial social and economic perquisites) but gay people should not.

The right wing argues that Muslims and gays should give up their rights in deference to the moral sensibilities and emotional sensitivities of the majority. This is called a ‘tyranny of the majority’ and it is an evil of which Thomas Jefferson ,James Madison and the other Founding Generation of Americans were well aware.

Note: Another great Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon, this one on Tyranny of the Majority can be seen here.

* ‘People Want Islam To Be The Boogieman‘ The Guardian

The battle over plans to build a mosque near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York is fuelling a surge in anti-Muslim protests across the US, including opposition to new Islamic centres from California to Georgia. Religious leaders and civil rights activists warn that a tide of Islamophobia that has swept the country since the destruction of the twin towers is being heightened by political exploitation of the New York dispute before nationwide elections and is increasingly bound up with hostility to immigrants and other forms of racism

6. Learning How the Mind Works

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Bird’s-Eye: How we think, and how we think about thinking, is the basis of philosophy, psychology, and religion. This week we have a trio of pieces that look at intelligence and thought. It appears, obviously in retrospect, that if you base your psychology theories on white western undergraduates, the conclusions may not be universally generalizable. The octopus takes a further stride forward as the most intelligent invertebrate we know of (giant squid being harder to get into labs), and Pema Chödrön has a marvellous two minute Vimeo video piece on how to solve your problems. Two minutes? All your problems? Yes, really.

* Psychology Studies Biased Toward Western Undergrads Scientific American

A group from the University of British Columbia recently published anenormous meta-analysis on the danger of assuming that all of humanity closely matches the behaviors of 20-something college students. They cite evidence that between 2003 and 2007 undergrads made up 80 percent of study subjects in six top psychology journals, and that 96 percent of all psychology samples come from countries that make up only 12 percent of the world’s population. They call this the WEIRD population—Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic—and say that they are the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans.

* Octopus Intelligence – Boston.com

TOOL USE: Octopuses will carry around two halves of an empty coconut shell and then hide inside them to avoid predators, a team of Australian researchers reported in late 2009. (Videos of this trick are easy to find on YouTube.) Tool use is considered a mark of cognitive sophistication; aside from humans, only a few creatures—including some primates, certain birds, and dolphins—have been shown to make and use tools. So far, the octopus is the only invertebrate known to manipulate tools..

* Pema Chödrön Omega Institute 2 minute video

7. Useful Things We Learned From teh Internets

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Bird’s-Eye: Every week the net offers us a new handful of fascinating factoids, from the difference between Canuks and Yanks, to Poe’s Law (not to be confused with Cole’s Law) to how to outsource your own life, for fun and profit. (And no, noob, ‘teh internets’ was not a typo;-)

* The Difference Between Canadian and American Children

Perhaps it’s due to conversion from metric?

* Poe’s Law Rational Wiki

Poe’s Law states“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.”… For example, some conservatives consider noted homophobe Fred Phelps to be so over-the-top that they argue he’s a “deep cover liberal” trying to discredit more mainstream homophobes.

Example of Poe’s Law from the Onion, (note date:1/2001)

Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years. “You better believe we’re going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration,” said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. “Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?”

* Outsource Your Life: Sites Allow You To Create Army Of Virtual Assistants huffpo

A growing number of Web sites are making it easier to outsource virtual errands overseas, making it cheaper to indulge in the luxury of never having to write another thank-you card or sit on hold with the department of motor vehicles.

Those who use the sites, for everything from ordering takeout to managing online dating, say the cost is affordable and a small price to free up their time _ even in the face of a sputtering economy. …. They may be right. The prices and packages vary from site to site: On AskSunday.com, users can pay $29 a month for 15 “requests,” while the site GetFriday.com offers pay-as-you-go and monthly plans, in increments of 10 or 15 minutes. The monthly plans start at $120 a month for 10 hours.

8. A Wonderful Bird is the Pelican….

Aug-13-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s-Eye: Everyone knows the limerick that starts with that line, don’t they? No? Well, okay then:

A wonderful bird is the pelican,

His mouth can hold more than his belly can,

He can hold in his beak,

Enough food for a week.

I’m damned if I know how the hell he can! (source)

* Pelican 1

* Pelican 2

* Pelican 3

9. Eyecandy: Great Pix

Aug-13-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s-Eye: <grin> They don’t really have anything in common, except that they are amazing photographs. All from the Guardian’s Eyewitness iPad app, except for the first. Enjoy!

* Silhouettes Big Picture

* Lavender Dawn

* Ramadan in Jerusalem

* Beijing Waterslide

* Elephant Seal

* Brazil Cotton Harvest

* Balancing Artist