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2. Right Wing Enviro–Denial

May-18-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Few aspects of reality threaten unbridled capitalism more than the increasing evidence that it’s destroying the planet. So clearly, that news must be blocked. In the US, right-wingers fund outrageous campaigns of lies; in Canada, where they control the government they simply muzzle scientists, or defund research that might report the wrong results. Elizabeth May, the head of Canada’s Green Party, lists 18 items attacking environmental protection, all buried in Bill C-38.

* US Think Tank Compares Belief In Global Warming To Mass Murder Guardian

It really is hard to know where to begin with this one. But let’s start with: “What on earth were they thinking?”

The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.

I’ll let its own press release for its upcoming conference explain, as there’s simply no need to finesse it further:

“Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too…The billboard series features Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Charles Manson, a mass murderer; and Fidel Castro, a tyrant. Other global warming alarmists who may appear on future billboards include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).
These rogues and villains were chosen because they made public statements about how man-made global warming is a crisis and how mankind must take immediate and drastic actions to stop it.
Why did Heartland choose to feature these people on its billboards? Because what these murderers and madmen have said differs very little from what spokespersons for the United Nations, journalists for the “mainstream” media, and liberal politicians say about global warming.”

But then comes the best bit:

“Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants.”

* Conservative Thinktanks Step Up Attacks Against Obama’s Clean Energy Strategy The Guardian

A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama’s energy agenda. A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.

Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using “subversion” to build a national movement of wind farm protesters. The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the thinktank has formally disavowed the project. The proposal was discussed at a meeting of self-styled ‘wind warriors’ from across the country in Washington DC last February.

* Tories Admit To Closing Enviro Research Group Because They Disliked Results The Hook

The federal government has confirmed what the rumour mill suspected: it shut down an arm’s length, independent advisory group because it didn’t like the advice it was getting on addressing climate change. Funding for the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) was cut in the last budget, giving the group just one year to live. Since 1988, it has been producing research on how business and government policies can work together for sustainable development — including the idea of introducing carbon taxes.

Environment Minister Peter Kent had initially said the reason for the closure was because such research can now be easily accessed through the Internet, and through universities and other think tanks. But Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Monday the shuttering of the round table had more to do with the content of the research itself.

“Why should taxpayers have to pay for more than 10 reports promoting a carbon tax, something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected?” Baird said in response to a question by Liberal Leader Bob Rae during question period. “It should agree with Canadians. It should agree with the government.”

* Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act Elizabeth May The Tyee

Here’s what is in C-38 on the environment. (C-38 threatens more than environmental damage, but this should give you a sense of why I am determined to stop this bill.)

Canadian Environmental Assessment Act ditched.

Canadian Environmental Protection Act undercut.

Fisheries Act seriously weakened.

Energy Board Act neutered.

Species at Risk Act hamstrung.

Canadian Oil and Gas Operations Act made more industry friendly.

Canada Seeds Act inspections privatized.

Editor’s note: 11 more items in full list, with explanations

4. Student Protest in Québec

May-18-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: From the Charest government’s perspective, the students have offered a most useful crisis. Could that be why they sabotaged their own negotiated settlement, as Michèle Ouimet reports? (Her report is from LaPresse, and is translated by Google. Translation clearly remains a work in progress). Chantal Hébert thinks it’s just incompetent governance, but the Gazette points out that since the strike began, the governing Liberals have edged ahead of the PQ in the polls, for the first time in a year. Tikkunista cites Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

* To End The Strike Michèle Ouimet LaPresse via Google translate

First negotiate. And if it does not work, a moratorium on rising tuition. Yes, a moratorium until the next elections to end the conflict that is rotting and becoming more radical. Because the crisis will not disappear by magic.

But before a moratorium must be allowed one last chance for negotiations. Student leaders are willing to negotiate, even if their past experience left a bitter taste. The last weekend, students, ministers, presidents and labor leaders negotiated. After a sleepless night, they came out, pale, bloodless, a room where they had been cooped up for 23 hours. The frenzied marathon has produced results: a tentative agreement.

…The next day, Jean Charest and Education Minister Line Beauchamp, lifted the nose of the agreement. Jean Charest has repeatedly said he had not sold, and Line Beauchamp has added minimizing the gains made by students. A bit like if they had spat in the soup after it simmered for 23 hours.

Students had the impression of having been had. However, student leaders and ministers had negotiated in good faith an agreement that seemed to satisfy them, but the irresponsible statements of Charest and Beauchamp have screwed up.

* Quebec Student Crisis Badly Mismanaged By Jean Charest Chantel Hébert The Hamilton Spectator

When crisis management experts dissect the ongoing standoff between Quebec and its student movement, they will be hard-pressed to find any evidence of a coherent government strategy. The surprise resignation Monday of Line Beauchamp, Premier Jean Charest’s lead minister on the file, fits that haphazard pattern.

Over the course of three rancorous months, Charest and his ex-education minister have proven unable to talk the province’s way out of a messy confrontation with the students over a planned increase in tuition fees. Every government move has either misfired or backfired. From one resolution attempt to the next, it has become harder to follow the thread of its thinking.

One has to go back 22 years to find a Quebec crisis as mismanaged as this one. The 1990 Oka standoff that saw a major Montreal bridge blockaded by armed Mohawk activists started off as a local dispute over land use. It festered for the better part of a summer before the army was called in to restore some order to the community. That crisis accelerated the demise of the then-Liberal government, not because it was on the wrong side of public opinion but because its clumsy handling exposed a fatigued regime suffering from a beyond-repair case of wear and tear. History is repeating itself.

* Student Protests Pushing Quebec Liberals Into Lead, Poll Suggests The Montreal Gazette

Forum Research poll, offered exclusively to The Gazette, suggests the Quebec Liberals have edged into the lead, in the 14th week of the tuition-fee conflict pitting university and CEGEP students against the Liberal government of Premier Jean Charest.

Pollster Lorne Bozinoff concluded that Quebecers are losing patience with the students. “The Liberals have improved their standings incrementally, and this may be due to increasing public impatience with the striking students,” Bozinoff said. “Certainly Quebecers now see the Liberals as the best party to deal with the situation.”

Previous Forum Research polls this year have given the advantage to the Parti Québécois under Pauline Marois.

6. Followups

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: The bird is puzzled. Why has Followups been moved? The editor chirps up in response: it’s not the most important, so why bury the lead? In future issues Followups will hover somewhere between the political and the rest. This week we follow up on the look at the Canadian people’s swing to the left (as distinct to their government), at hockey players’ swings to the head, and at Noam Chomsky’s observations about the political landscape’s swing to Occupy. Of note is that our hockey commentary is by Adam Gopnik, who delivered the fourth of last year’s Massey lectures as a paean to the nobility of hockey.

* Canada’s Socially Progressive Values Now Stretch From Coast To Coast Den Tandt Montreal Gazette

An extraordinary transformation has occurred, or more precisely appeared above the waterline. It is a change so epochal, so profound, you’d think Canadians would be in the streets, cheering. But then, this is Canada: Celebratory back patting is not our cup of tea.

The big news, which will never make a bold headline, is just this: Across this country, from coast to coast to coast, there is now a nearly unanimous view that the old, divisive, angry debates about matters of individual faith and morals are over. And we’re not going back there. Not any time soon, probably not ever.

Discrimination based on race and gender and sexual orientation are history, too, for the most part. There are still racists, homophobes and gender-haters in Canada, of course. And there are aberrations (Afro-centric schools in Toronto, for example). But the shared expectation of equality under the law for all, is now so firmly embedded as to be foundational. This is something interesting, unique — and new.

We actually, finally may be living in a just society, as various past prime ministers dreamt we one day would. Not only that, but we live in a society in which the shared idea of equal rights spans the political spectrum, and also our country’s vast geography.

Too Pollyannaish by half? It sounds it. But consider the facts on the ground….

* Violence in Hockey Adam Gopnik The New Yorker

What more is there to be said about the plague of violence in hockey this spring? Last Sunday, after watching my suddenly resurgent—should that be insurgent?—Chelsea Blues come back and beat Tottenham to make one more F.A. Cup Final, I turned on the Penguins-Flyers game late, and was not entirely surprised to see that the two teams were brawling. But then, as the Flyer’s Hartnell took a “victory” turn around the ice, a sudden howl went up from the crowd, and the usually suave Doc Emrick said glumly, “The crowd is responding to a Hulk Hogan video they’re showing.” And I thought: it’s come to this? Hockey, which I had spent the past year arguing at length, on Canadian radio, is the most intrinsically beautiful and strategically lithe of all sports, now cynically samples pro wrestling to stir up a crowd? My true blue (or red and white) Canadian wife, who comes from a true hockey playing family—her great uncle is actually in the Hockey Hall of Fame—saw what was happening, shuddered, and walked away.

“The most vicious and, perhaps, disgraceful first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs” was the verdict of Stu Hackel, the former director of broadcasting for the N.H.L., and this is now close to a universal view—if you except Don Cherry and Mike Milbury, who may not actually live in this universe, but rather in some other, remote dimension, where it is forever 1959.

* What Next for Occupy? Noam Chomsky The Guardian

Q: We are interested in learning what your position is on mainstream filtering, the repression of civil liberties, and the role of money and politics as they relate to Occupy and the future of America.

A: Coverage of Occupy has been mixed. At first it was dismissive, making fun of people involved as if they were just silly kids playing games and so on. But coverage changed. In fact, one of the really remarkable and almost spectacular successes of the Occupy movement is that it has simply changed the entire framework of discussion of many issues. There were things that were sort of known, but in the margins, hidden, which are now right up front – such as the imagery of the 99% and 1%; and the dramatic facts of sharply rising inequality over the past roughly 30 years, with wealth being concentrated in actually a small fraction of 1% of the population.

For the majority, real incomes have pretty much stagnated, sometimes declined. Benefits have also declined and work hours have gone up, and so on. It’s not third world misery, but it’s not what it ought to be in a rich society, the richest in the world, in fact, with plenty of wealth around, which people can see, just not in their pockets. All of this has now been brought to the fore. You can say that it’s now almost a standard framework of discussion. Even the terminology is accepted. That’s a big shift.

April 27th, 2012 :: Year 9, Issue 16

Apr-27-2012 | Comments (0)

1. Followups

Bird’s Eye: Another “View from the Other Side”, this one from Africa by Mama Hope. As the tragic civil war in Syria goes on, Western realists such as Stephen Walt argue increasingly against Western involvement (TL:DR Libya) leaving Turkey as the only relevant outside power. And in Canada, a panicked Conservative Government argues that independent scientists really want to be controlled: Environment Minister Peter Kent claims, “Many of our younger scientists seek advice from our departmental communications staff.” Pull the other one, Peter….

* African Men, Hollywood Stereotypes (video) -via Boing Boing

Wouldn’t it be better if African men weren’t always depicted as warlords or victims?

* Europe Has Left Syria To A Distinctly Ottoman Fate Timothy Garton Ash The Guardian

US president Barack Obama and French president Nicolas Sarkozy have elections to win. British prime minister David Cameron is too busy eating cold pasties and drumming up trade in the Far East. They will express outrage, and try to ratchet up economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure through the UN, but don’t expect any Libya or Kosovo-type intervention any time soon.

In these circumstances, it is other powers that will determine the fate of the Syrian people. In the near future, Turkey will be more important than Britain, Iran than Germany, Saudi Arabia than France, Russia than America. In Syria, all these regional powers pursue their own national interests, defined not just in economic and military but also in cultural and ideological terms. So there’s a struggle between Shia, post-revolutionary Iran and Sunni, reactionary Saudi Arabia, post-imperial Russia and neo-Ottoman Turkey, not to mention distant but mighty China – a vital swing vote among the permanent members of the UN security council.

* Environment Canada To Monitor What Scientists Say

Government media minders are being dispatched to an international polar conference in Montreal to monitor and record what Environment Canada scientists say to reporters.The scientists will present the latest findings on everything from seabirds to Arctic ice, and Environment Canada’s media office plans to intervene when the media approaches the researchers, Postmedia News has learned.

…“Until now such a crude heavy-handed approach to muzzle Canadian scientists, prior to a significant international Arctic science conference hosted by Canada, would have been unthinkable,” says a senior scientist, who has worked for Environment Canada for decades. He asked not to be identified due to the possibility of repercussions from Ottawa. “The memo is clearly designed to intimidate government scientists from Environment Canada,” he says. “Why they would do such an unethical thing, I can’t even begin to imagine, but it is enormously embarrassing to us in the international world of science.”

2. Canada: Three Left Jabs

Apr-27-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: The NDP (are they still the socialist party? Well, the left-wing party, anyway) is now tied in the polls nationally with the Conservatives, (resulting in a desperate Stephen Harper falling prey to Godwin’s Law.) Across the country there are signs that the political pendulum is swinging back to the left… here are three from this week.

* Alberta Election Proves Red Tories Alive And Well Thomas Walkom The Toronto Star

When Stephen Harper took over the right in 2004, his victory appeared to signal the demise of that stock figure in Canadian politics, the Red Tory. Harper’s more muscular brand of conservatism had little use for those who thought government had a legitimate role in restraining markets.

…But as events in Alberta and Ontario showed this week, Red Toryism — that peculiar Canadian mix of conservative and communitarian ideologies — is alive and well…. After 41 years of PC rule in the province, a victory by Danielle Smith’s upstart Wildrose Party had seemed inevitable….But in the end Albertans rejected Smith in favour of Redford’s more progressive conservatism.

Why the federal-provincial disconnect? Certainly Albertans seem to think that Harper’s hard-line Conservatives will better protect their interests in far-away Ottawa. But at home, they are much like other Canadians. They want a provincial government that will not only manage its finances well but that will soften some of the edges of the free-market economy. Or, to put it another way, they want a Red Tory government.

* McGuinty Agrees To Horwath’s Tax-The-Rich Scheme The Toronto Star

Premier Dalton McGuinty has agreed to NDP Leader Andrea Horwath’s “tax-the-rich” scheme in order to ensure the minority Liberals’ budget passes Tuesday, averting a snap election call….The tax — which would cost someone making $600,000 an extra $3,120 annually — will be in place until Ontario balances the budget, now scheduled for 2017-18. Horwath also said the 1 per cent increase to Ontario Works welfare benefits and Ontario Disability Support Plan, which will cost the government $55 million, made the budget “a little more fair.”

… Horwath’s proposal is popular with Ontarians — a Forum poll last week suggested 78 per cent support with only 17 per cent opposition — and many Grit MPPs urged McGuinty to adopt the levy. But last week the premier expressed reservations in part because he still bears scars from raising taxes after the 2003 and 2007 elections despite promising not to do so. At the Liberals’ caucus meeting last Tuesday, MPPs and cabinet ministers spoke overwhelmingly in favour of making the concession to Horwath — to McGuinty’s chagrin.

* Anger Mounting Over Quebec Student Boycott Crisis Globe and Mail

The more than 10-week student strike over tuition fee hikes, the longest ever in Quebec, may have reached its breaking point. Faced with civil disobedience and violent confrontations, Quebeckers are demanding a speedy end to the conflict. After spending millions of dollars on extra policing over the past two months, Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay called on the government and students to find a solution…..

Yet Quebec Premier Jean Charest remained firmly entrenched in his position. And the students, well-organized, articulate and persistent, refused to retreat. Meanwhile, public opinion polls show a record level of voter disapproval toward the government. Voters criticize Mr. Charest’s handling of the student-strike issue. …Professors, teachers, intellectuals and even prominent Liberals have urged the Premier to temporarily suspend the tuition fee hikes and end the crisis. Some even suggested that Mr. Charest had a hidden agenda and was deliberately polarizing the debate and dividing the students as part of a pre-election strategy….

Angered by the Premier’s refusal to respond, Ms. Marois lashed out at him. “These are our children that are in the streets. These are our children getting belly-clubbed and pushed around,” Ms Marois said. “I’m looking the Premier in the eyes and telling him he is responsible.”

4. Canada: The Good, the Bad, and the Weird

Apr-20-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Nice to hear about the local team winning big (something Toronto fans aren’t used to), but here are two positive stories, one brilliantly succinct and clear infographic, and one bizarre ad. How desperate must the Alberta Conservatives be to leave this up?

* St. Lawrence Market In Toronto Named World’s Best Food Market By National Geographic

It’s no secret to locals, but the St. Lawrence Market, one of Toronto’s gastronomic institutions, can now qualify as world-renowned. The market took top spot on National Geographic’s list of the world’s best food markets. The list is part of National Geographic’s “Food Journeys of a Lifetime,” which spotlights the best food experiences around the world. The Top 10….

* The Charter Proves To Be Canada’s Gift To World The Globe and Mail

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms was signed 30 years ago Tuesday. Since then, not only has it become a national bedrock, but the Charter has replaced the American Bill of Rights as the constitutional document most emulated by other nations.

“Could it be that Canada has surpassed or even supplanted the United States as a leading global exporter of constitutional law? The data suggest that the answer may be yes.” So conclude two U.S. law professors whose analysis of the declining influence of the American constitution on other nations will be published in New York University Law Review in June.

* This puts the F-35s and the CBC cuts into perspective. These are your tax dollars, Canada. via Reddit (infographic)

* I Never Thought I’d Vote PC (video ad)

We are deeply concerned about what might happen if the Wildrose party takes over Alberta leadership. As young Albertans, we feel some of their candidates support extreme viewpoints that don’t represent us. And that some of their policies would create a province we don’t want to see.

2. The Death of Western Freedoms

Apr-07-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Magna Carta (the right to an immediate trial by ones peers) has now been repealed in both the US and UK, and one suspects Canada isn’t far behind. In the US, it came in the form of the NDAA, an act signed into law by Obama, in which (as Wikipedia says) The detention section… includes the power to detain any person “who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners...without trial, until the end of the hostilities”. If the closing cartoon in this section seems a bit harsh, you’re probably right. But that doesn’t make it unfair.

* Someone You Love: Coming to a Gulag Near You Chris Hedges NationofChange

The security and surveillance state does not deal in nuance or ambiguity. Its millions of agents, intelligence gatherers, spies, clandestine operatives, analysts and armed paramilitary units live in a binary world of opposites, of good and evil, black and white, opponent and ally. There is nothing between. You are for us or against us. You are a patriot or an enemy of freedom. You either embrace the crusade to physically eradicate evildoers from the face of the Earth or you are an Islamic terrorist, a collaborator or an unwitting tool of terrorists. And now that we have created this monster it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to free ourselves from it. Our 16 national intelligence agencies and army of private contractors feed on paranoia, rumor, rampant careerism, demonization of critical free speech and often invented narratives. They justify their existence, and their consuming of vast governmental resources, by turning even the banal and the mundane into a potential threat. And by the time they finish, the nation will be a gulag.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), … signed into law by President Barack Obama last Dec. 31, puts into the hands of people with no discernible understanding of legitimate dissent the power to use the military to deny due process to all deemed to be terrorists, or terrorist sympathizers, and hold them indefinitely in military detention. The deliberate obtuseness of the NDAA’s language, which defines “covered persons” as those who “substantially supported” al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces,” makes all Americans, in the eyes of our expanding homeland security apparatus, potential terrorists.

* Justices Approve Strip-Searches for Any Offense New York Times

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that officials may strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by the court’s conservative wing, wrote that courts are in no position to second-guess the judgments of correctional officials who must consider not only the possibility of smuggled weapons and drugs, but also public health and information about gang affiliations.

“Every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed,” Justice Kennedy wrote, adding that about 13 million people are admitted each year to the nation’s jails.

* Britain’s Plan To Expand State Surveillance Causes Furor LA Times

The British government is scrambling to fend off accusations of trying to turn the country into a virtual police state with plans to conduct some trials in secret and allow authorities to track the phone calls, emails, text messages and online activity of the entire population.

Civil liberties advocates are aghast over revelations this week that officials are preparing to introduce legislation to expand state surveillance in the interests of national security. Separately, the government of Prime Minister David Cameron is proposing that certain civil court proceedings take place behind closed doors if sensitive matters of intelligence are involved. Together, the moves are being seen by many Britons, including members of Cameron’s own Conservative Party, as another attack on freedom and privacy in a country where security cameras are already ubiquitous and police enjoy strong counter-terrorism powers.

* Obama signing NDAA Act

3. How’s that Foreign Intervention Thing Working Out for Ya?

Apr-07-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya: three invasions have produced three disasters. (Here, for example is a chart of Afghani opium production before and since the invasion.) It’s now a closed case that we were lured into Iraq by a lie, that Afghanistan is far worse than before we invaded, and that in Libya we replaced a tyrant with spreading chaos that no NATO country has shown any interest in helping with. That US politicians can still try to justify invention in Iran on humanitarian grounds is truly insane.

* Iraqi Defector Whose Phony Wmd Intel And “Sexed Up Graphics” Led To 100,000+ Deaths: “Yes, I Lied.” Boing Boing

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, aka “Curveball”, an Iraqi defector who falsified testimony about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, confirms that he made the whole thing up in an interview airing this week on the BBC2 TV series, “Modern Spies.” The former chemical engineer’s “confidence trick” was used by the Bush administration to justify going to war with Iraq in 2003.

…But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true. When it is put to him “we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie”, he simply replies: “Yes.”

* Libya: What the Intervention Has Wrought Rajan Menon Huffington Post

Libya’s current politics offer two lessons — ones we really shouldn’t have to learn yet again. First, military interventions that topple repressive regimes invariably offer occasions to observe, though at others’ expense, the law of unintended consequences. Second, the constituencies that clamor for such campaigns move quickly to other matters once those malign consequences become manifest.

The defenders of the Libyan intervention claim that the March 17 UN Security Council resolution authorized a no-flight zone in the face of imminent mass atrocities. But by now, no one seriously disputes that the assignment soon metamorphosed, allowing NATO and a few Persian Gulf states to take sides in a civil conflict, and in ways — targeting Mu’ammar Gaddafi’s forces, equipping and training the armed resistance, and even dispatching special forces — that proved decisive.

….Yet none of the above parties will suffer the consequences of what they enabled, from afar, in Libya. And if things go from bad to worse, they will doubtless say that Libyans were given a chance to start anew, but that they blew it… perhaps they just weren’t ready for democracy after all. The interventionists’ eagerness for military action stands in contrast to their minimal interest in perils of post-Gaddafi Libya…. A multitude of local militias fought during the war as independent units. Now the most powerful, from Misrata, Zawiya, and Zintan, have in effect become statelets. They refuse to relinquish their arms or obey the government and engage in regular skirmishes. The TNC, unelected, provisional, institutionally hollow, is powerless to demobilize these armed bands and to meld them into a national military, which exists in form but has little substance given the militias’ firepower.

* There Is No Need to Prolong the Inevitable Stephen Walt New York Times

The United States has been in Afghanistan for 11 years. Nearly 2,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed and 15,000 wounded trying to create a workable Afghan state, at a cost exceeding a half trillion dollars. Yet the U.S. has neither broken the back of the Taliban nor created effective Afghan institutions. The Karzai regime is still corrupt and incompetent and its security forces remain unreliable and infiltrated by insurgents.

Will fighting on in Afghanistan lead to a meaningful victory? No. Does it matter? Also no. Nearly 70 percent of Americans now think the war is a mistake. They are right. Staying longer will not lead to victory, because the Taliban have sanctuaries and allies in Pakistan and will simply wait us out. Their ideology may be deeply objectionable, but they are an integral part of Afghan society while we are intruders from afar. It would be nice if we could protect Afghan civilians from further strife or future repression, but trying to do so will cost additional hundreds of billions of dollars, take a decade or more, and could still fail. The sad truth is: we do not know how to create stable governance in that unhappy country. Building an effective Afghan state is ultimately up to the Afghanis, not us.

2. Thomas Mulcair & the NDP: The View from the Left

Mar-30-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: The National Democratic Party, Canada’s official opposition, last week chose Thomas Mulcair to be its new leader. We look at the reaction from the left, from those who would traditionally have supported the NDP. (The right is intrinsically opposed to the NDP, so their reactions were less revelatory; the Sun opened with “New Democrats put on a show of unity and bravado Sunday with silly talk….”)

* Understanding the victory of Thomas Mulcair Judy Rebick rabble.ca (Thanks, Gabe)

My view is that the NDP has elected an old-style patriarchal politician who has the same politics vis-a-vis Quebec as the pre-Jack NDP, seeing sovereigntists as bitter enemies instead of potential allies, is more of a liberal than a social democrat and who will move the party to the right especially on international issues, including free trade and Israel, two issues at the centre of Harper’s agenda.

I didn’t participate in this campaign because I see the hope for change in the new movements that are emerging around the globe rather than in electoral politics. That is where I am putting my energy these days but it always helps if the social movements can see their reflection in the social democratic political party. This hasn’t been true in Europe for a long time which is why we see just a dramatic contradiction between what is happening in the Parliament there and what is happening in the streets.

In Canada, whatever the weaknesses of the NDP, we have always managed to have a strong alliance between them and the social movements. That alliance strengthened the women’s movement, the anti-war movement, the labour movement and others. I fear under the leadership of Thomas Mulcair, that alliance will be lost and it will be a loss for all of us.

* The NDP’s Awful New Leader Murray Dobbin Counterpunch

Two things shocked me about this race and its final two days. The first is that so many NDPers, part of a tightly-knit, hyper-loyal political culture steeped in progressive values could so casually elect a man who contradicts so many of their principles. Besides the disastrous result for the party and all progressives in the country, the election of Mulcair raises profound questions about the health of the party. There are two possibilities, neither attractive. One is that NDPers, like increasing numbers of Canadians in general, simply don’t read as much and that information about Mulcair did not get through to them. To what extent did NDPers devote time and energy to finding out about the candidates? In general, what is the state of member education and engagement in the party?

More worrisome is the possibility that many thousands of NDP members had indeed heard the negative aspects of Mulcair’s politics and voted for him anyway. That’s a very different problem. It reflects what I have observed about the NDP for decades now: its decreasing emphasis on policy and philosophy and the increased — political machine driven — preoccupation with winning seats in elections, often out of context of the political moment and oblivious to unintended consequences.

* Everybody is Overreacting Peace, order and good government, eh?

So Mulcair has been elected leader of the NDP.

His supporters are saying he is the greatest thing since sliced bread, that he is the only one who had a chance of rallying Quebec or of standing up to Harper, and that a centrist tilt such as they expect from him is the only way to win. None of these things are true.

His detractors are mostly saying that he will be a disaster, that he is some sort of unholy combination of an Ignatieff parachuted into the party who will drag it down to irrelevance, and a Harper-clone who will ruthlessly take control of the party, crushing all vestiges of party democracy, and that he is so centrist that this will turn the NDP into a new Liberal party. None of these things are true.

Mulcair isn’t the best thing since sliced bread. He has strengths and weaknesses, as did the others. He is not the only one in the pack with a chance of standing up to Harper; most of them could have. He probably isn’t even the only one who could have rallied Quebec–even Dewar would have had a chance; he’s a nice personable guy and you probably wouldn’t have recognized his French in a year. And a centrist tilt is not the only way to win, and winning in other ways is better. The right has been gaining success after success by dragging the centre towards where they are rather than going to it. For that matter, depending on how you phrase the polling questions, on most policy the centre for Canadian citizens already is pretty much where the NDP is (although certainly not where I am).

But Mulcair will probably not be a disaster….

2. The Arrival of the Shock Doctrine

Mar-16-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: We start with my own piece on how the Ontario government is using what Naomi Klein called “The Shock Doctrine”, using a manufactured crisis to introduce unpopular “reforms”. Then we zoom out and see how Stephen Harper is doing this to Canada, and Ian Welsh explores the same phenomenon on a world scale.

* Drugs, Deficits, and Don Drummond Peter Marmorek

Let’s start with a metaphor. You and your partner are financially well off. You have good jobs, and a reasonable mortgage on a two bedroom house in a trendy downtown area. You can’t yet afford all the improvements you’d like, but after the mortgage is paid off in five years you hope to. You both have reasonably new cars, you go out to plays, last year you went to Bali for two weeks, this year you’re thinking Iceland would be nice. Most importantly, you’re not in debt, except for the mortgage. Life is pretty good.

Or it was, until your partner developed a cocaine habit. It started as a recreation at a friend’s party, and you both enjoyed it. But while you didn’t like how wiped out you felt the next day and stopped after the first time, your partner felt the going up was more than worth the coming down, particularly if there were a few lines more of cocaine to help. Flash forward a few years, and your partner is spending a huge amount of your joint income to maintain his addiction to coke. You almost missed the last mortgage payment, your credit cards are perilously close to being maxed out, and – to understate it – there’s a lot of tension on the home front.

Then your partner sits down and says he recognizes there’s a financial problem and that it’s time to do something about it. He’s had a talk with his old pal, the economist Don Drummond, and Drummond has come up with a solution. You’ll both move into a shabbier house that’s out in the ‘burbs, cut those foreign vacations back to a week at a local cottage, and get by with a single car. And that will solve your problem. What do you think?

* Brace Yourself: The Harper Conservatives’ Revolution Is At Hand Edmonton Journal

In a sharp break from their first two mandates, the Harper Conservatives are preparing to unveil a budget that is revolutionary rather than evolutionary, one that will introduce sweeping structural changes in key areas of federal policy. Politically, from the government’s standpoint, that won’t happen a moment too soon – even if the budget provokes great controversy, which it most certainly will.

Whether in trade, immigration, retirement benefits, resource development, innovation or fiscal policy, Conservative insiders say, the years of plodding, minority-era “incrementalism” are over. Indeed, there’s a sense within Conservative ranks that their moment of truth, a chance to distinguish themselves from the other parties in stark terms and establish a lasting legacy, has arrived….What’s interesting about the government’s intentions now, heading into the budget, is how determined the Conservatives are to press ahead with a full suite of significant reform, controversies be damned – and how far the plan extends beyond the OAS system. The change envisioned is huge.

* Justified Pessimism Ian Welsh

Justified pessimism is not, in fact, pessimism. It is realism.

I find the “be happy” crowd odd. We have, in the past few years, seen millions of Americans and Europeans impoverished and lose their homes. We are seeing a wave of austerity in the 1st world which has and will impoverish many millions more. In the last quarter of 2011, Greece was on track for -7% annualized GDP growth. Civil liberties are under assault throughout the world, and the surveillance state is tightening its grasp. In the forseeable future, and one which is, now, almost unstoppable, we can expect to lose hundreds of millions of lives to climate change, and that, frankly, is the optimistic scenario, one which is almost certain not to occur. A billion is a good middling number, and it could easily go much higher. Many climate scientists believe we are beyond the point of no return.

None of what has happened, or which will happen, couldn’t have been stopped. For decades, with increasing stridency, prophets have warned of what would happen. Those prophets, in the grand Cassandric tradition, were ignored.

…Dystopian? Apocalyptic? Perhaps. But also the current trendline. Now, trendlines can always change. Indeed, trendlines do always change. This will not last, this era will come to an end. The questions are when, how, and what will replace it.

6. Police, Drones, And the Military

Mar-16-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: We don’t yet have a pre-crime program, but we have drones, and we’ll be getting a lot more. Foreign Policy gives an excellent overview on what they are, and how they work. Within three months drones will be used by domestic police forces in the US, as part of the hugely escalating police arsenal. Tikkunista prediction: within six months Stephen Harper will announce that Canada has cancelled some of its order for F35’s in exchange for drones. If it doesn’t happen, your subscription will be doubled.

* 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Drones Micah Zenko Foreign Policy

2. So far, drones tend to crash.

On Dec. 4, an RQ-170 Sentinel surveillance drone crashed in Iran; a U.S. official involved in the program blamed a lost data link and another unspecific malfunction. Two weeks later, an unarmed Reaper drone crashed at the end of a runway in the Seychelles. “This should not be a surprise,” a defense official told Aviation Week & Space Technology, saying the United States had already lost more than 50 drones. As of July 2010, the Air Force had identified 79 drone accidents costing at least $1 million each. The primary reasons for the crashes: bad weather, loss or disruption of communications links, and “human error factors,” according to the Air Force. As Lt. Gen. David Deptula, former Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, has noted with refreshing honesty, “Some of the [drones] that we have today, you put in a high-threat environment, and they’ll start falling from the sky like rain.”

10. The drone future is already here.

The Pentagon now boasts a fleet of approximately 7,500 drones, up from just 50 a decade ago. According to a congressional report, “manned aircraft have gone from 95% of all [Defense Department] aircraft in 2005 to 69% today.” Over the next decade, the Pentagon expects the number of “multirole” drones — ones that can both spy and strike — to nearly quadruple, to 536. In 2011, the Teal Group consulting firm estimated that worldwide spending on unmanned aerial vehicles will nearly double over the next decade from $5.9 billion to $11.3 billion annually. In the future, drones are projected to: hover just behind infantry soldiers to watch their backs; carry airborne lasers to intercept ballistic missiles; perform aerial refueling; and conduct long-range strategic bombing missions. Given that drones will become cheaper, smaller, faster, stealthier, more lethal, and more autonomous, it is harder to imagine what they won’t do than what they will. Whatever limits drones face will be imposed by us humans — not technology

* Police Agencies In The United States To Begin Using Drones Watertown Daily Times

Legislation just signed by President Obama directs the Federal Aviation Administration to open the skies to remotely controlled drones within the next three years. It will begin in 90 days with police and first responders having authority to fly smaller drones of less than 4.4 pounds at altitudes under 400 feet. Gradually, all drones are to be allowed by Sept. 30, 2015.

The use of drones had been restricted out of civilian aviation safety concerns created by a sky full of drones flown by untrained operators in the same space as aircraft. But that was overridden by successful lobbying of drone makers and customers who will reap the financial benefits for commercial purposes. “The market for drones is valued at $5.9 billion and is expected to double in the next decade,” the New York Times reported.

* Funding an American Police State Nation Of Change

The fundamental values of American democracy — particularly the right to lead an autonomous private life — have been compromised with grim efficiency. The weaponry and tactics now routinely employed by police are visible evidence of this.

Yes, it’s true that Montgomery County, Texas, has purchased a weapons-capable drone. (They say they’ll only arm it with tasers, if necessary.) Yes, it’s true that the Tampa police have beefed the force up with an eight-ton armored personnel carrier, augmenting two older tanks the department already owns. Yes, the Fargo police are ready with bomb detection robots, and Chicago boasts a network of at least 15,000 interlinked surveillance cameras.

New York City’s 34,000-member police force is now the ground zero of a growing outcry over rampant secret spying on Muslim students and communities up and down the East coast. It has been a big beneficiary of federal security largess. Between 2003 and 2010, the city received more than $1.1 billion through Homeland Security’s Urban Areas Security Initiative grant program. And that’s only one of the grant programs funneling such money to New York.

4. Tolerance in Canada

Mar-02-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: While Tikkunista is often, usually, always critical of the Stephen Harper Reform party that currently forms the Canadian government, we are hugely supportive and admiring of many wonderful things about Canada. Front and centre is our tolerance from others, which this week got proven to be second to none. Two follow up stories of note follow….

* Canada #1: Tolerance Of Minorities Is Highest In Canada Gallup

Canada was the most tolerant country regarding average community acceptance of the minority groups. Australia, New Zealand and the United States tended to be relatively tolerant as well. The Nordic countries were dispersed throughout the top half of the OECD. The less tolerant end was dominated by southern and eastern European countries and the OECD Asian members.

* ‘What if my daughter is afraid of her?’ The Gazette (Thanks, Ronit!)

Not too long ago, if I saw a woman walking down the street with her face covered by a niqab, I would feel it was my duty to glare. As a non-religious feminist, I had decided that a woman who covers her face is oppressed – that she is uneducated, and that her husband is making her cover up because he’s crazy and/or jealous.

OK, I’m exaggerating a little, but you get the point.

And yet until two months ago, I didn’t even really know a single Muslim. I went to high school in an Ottawa suburb, where I was baptized a Catholic so that I could qualify for schooling in the Catholic school system, which was considered better than the more open public system.

We had one year of religious education that gave us a glimpse of world religions. But I’m pretty sure my education about Islam came mainly from CNN, or Fox. I went to university in a small town in Ontario. I didn’t meet any Muslims there, either.

My real education about Islam came very recently, courtesy of a Montreal daycare.

* OUT OF CORDOBA Beit Zeitoun

(612 Markham St., Toronto: 7–9:30 Saturday, 3/3/12)

OUT OF CORDOBA is a documentary film about the legacy of the city of Cordoba in Moorish Spain and its meaning for our times. Directed by Jacob Bender the film explores the dramatic biographies of Averroes (Ibn Rushd) the Muslim, and Rabbi Moses Maimonides (The Rambam) the Jew. The two were the leading personalities of medieval Islamic Spain and its heritage of “convivencia” (religious coexistence).

Filmed in the USA, Spain, Morocco, France, Italy, Egypt, Israel and Palestine, and ten years in the making, the film also explores contemporary relations between Muslims, Jews, and Christians, the battle against religious extremism and xenophobia, and the revolts for democracy and human rights in the Middle East, and for peace and justice in Occupied Palestine.

A discussion with director Jacob Bender will follow the screening.

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