Politics « Tikkunista!

5. Reasons for Hope

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: So why hope? You’ve just read four sections about how the US has turned mad abroad, and tyrannical at home, how the Israeli government is at best incompetent or mad (At worst? Both.), how the shadow of the Holocaust looms over us, and now I suggest hope? Absolutely. Orion Magazine has a longish piece suggesting the direction out of the US pit, and Uri Avnery, founder of Gush Shalom, writes about why he remains an optimist and why you should be too. And Forbes shows a realistic possible solution to the energy/ global warming crisis. Yes those were btter pills above, but now it’s sweet dessert. You’ve earned it. Have a second helping of hope… no calories, either.

* America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part I James Gustave Speth Orion Magazine (Thanks, Gabe!)

What is now desperately needed is transformative change in the system itself. To deal successfully with all the challenges America now faces, we must therefore complement reform with at least equal efforts aimed at transformative change to create a new operating system that routinely delivers good results for people and planet.

At the core of this new operating system must be a sustaining economy based on new economic thinking and driven forward by a new politics. The purpose and goal of a sustaining economy is to provide broadly shared prosperity that meets human needs while preserving the earth’s ecological integrity and resilience—in short, a flourishing people and a flourishing nature. That is the paradigm shift we must now seek.

I believe this paradigm shift in the nature and operation of America’s political economy can be best approached through a series of interacting, mutually reinforcing transformations—transformations that attack and undermine the key motivational structures of the current system, transformations that replace these old structures with new arrangements needed for a sustaining economy and a successful democracy.

* Confessions of an Optimist Uri Avnery Counterpunch

Some time ago I bumped into the writer Amos Oz at a wedding and we talked about this curiosity, my optimism. He said that he was a pessimist. Being a pessimist, he said, was a win-win situation. If things turn to the better, you are happy. If things get worse, you are still happy, because you have been right all along.

The trouble with pessimism, I told him, was that it leads nowhere. Pessimism relieves you of any urge to do something. If things are going to get worse anyhow, why bother? Pessimism is a comfortable attitude. It even allows you to be contemptuous of the optimists, who still struggle for a better world. Optimism is for simpletons.

But this is exactly what it’s all about. Only optimists can struggle. If you don’t believe in a better world, a better country, a better society, you can’t fight for them. You can only sit in your armchair in front of the TV, tut-tutting at the stupidity of the human race, and particularly your own people, and feel superior.

* Eating Less Meat Is World’s Best Chance For Timely Climate Change Forbes

Shifting the world’s reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is important, certainly. But the world’s best chance for achieving timely, disaster-averting climate change may actually be a vegetarian diet, according to a recent report in World Watch Magazine.

“The entire goal of today’s international climate objectives can be achieved by replacing just one-fourth of today’s least eco-friendly food products with better alternatives,” co-author Robert Goodland, a former World Bank Group environmental advisor wrote….A widely cited 2006 report estimated that 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions were attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry. However, analysis performed by Goodland, with co-writer Jeff Anhang, an environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation, found that figure to now more accurately be 51%.

Consequently, state the pair, replacing livestock products with meat alternatives would “have far more rapid effects on greenhouse gas emissions and their atmospheric concentrations — and thus on the rate the climate is warming — than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”

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.

7. Useful Data

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Three clear charts, and the first is amazing. You select the language (default link is to “English”), and the country, and get a list of all that country’s online English newspapers. If you teach media, you could build a semester’s worth of projects from this site! The second and third are simple clear examples of well presented graphs. Watch the baby boom roll along the chart on #3!

* The Best Online Newspapers In All Countries

I need this site as a tool in my daily work. I have been searching for media databases like this. Most projects alike have not kept their focus on general news, politics, economics etc. But unfortunately included news sources of low quality and sites with very specialized media. And what is worst, the links have been broken or the URLs have been hard to remember.

I simply want to do that better to provide you easy access to major national and daily updated news sources from all over the world, whether you are journalist, researcher, online media designer, concerned traveler or student.

* Incarcerated Americans 1920–2006 Wikipedia

* US Age Distribution 1950–2050

10. New York City: The Past, The Future, The Alternative

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: From the archives, the good people at In Focus narrowed 2.2 million images of New York’s past down to 53. From the future, we offer a time lapse video of the rise of the new World Trade Center (not quite finished; that lies in the future.) And from an alternative time-stream, a set of New Yorker covers that we never got to see here, more’s the pity.

* Historic Photos From the NYC Municipal Archives - In Focus – The Atlantic

The New York City Municipal Archives just released a database of over 870,000 photos from its collection of more than 2.2 million images of New York throughout the 20th century. Their subjects include daily life, construction, crime, city business, aerial photographs, and more. I spent hours lost in these amazing photos, and gathered this group together to give you just a glimpse of what’s been made available from this remarkable collection.

* Time-Lapse Video Of Rising World Trade Center The Presurfer

* New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant To See The New Yorker

Next week marks the publication of Françoise Mouly’s “Blown Covers,” a book whose subtitle says it all: “New Yorker covers you were never meant to see.” Mouly, who is the art editor at the magazine, describes how iconic New Yorker covers came to be, and also, how some covers never came to be. Here, she shares a selection of those new classics plus the cover ideas that were either too naughty, too crazy, or simply too ahead of their time.

12. Quote of the Week

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

“The Tragedy of Obama: a corporatist centrist giving endless concessions to Republicans who (successfully) portray him as a radical leftist.” Anatoly Karlin

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.”

3. Günter Grass, Israel, and that Poem

Apr-27-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: “Poetry makes nothing happen” wrote Auden. Günter Grass (who’s he?) seems to have disproved that theory, as his poem criticizing Israel resulted not only in heated debate but got him banished from Israel. Below, the poem itself (we report; you decide) and two Jewish perspectives. Rabbi Rosen’s link is devastating accurate.

* Günter Grass: ‘What Must Be Said’ The Guardian

But why have I kept silent till now?

Because I thought my own origins,

tarnished by a stain that can never be removed,

meant I could not expect Israel, a land

to which I am, and always will be, attached,

to accept this open declaration of the truth.

* Günter the Terrible Uri Avnery Counterpunch

Grass has done the unthinkable: he has openly criticized the State of Israel! And he a German!!!

The reaction was automatic. He was at once branded as an anti-Semite. Not just a run-of-the-mill anti-Semite, but as a crypto-Nazi, who could easily have served as a henchman of Adolf Eichmann! This was shown by the fact that at age 17, near the end of World War II, he was recruited to the Waffen-SS like tens of thousands of others and then – oddly enough – kept the fact hidden for many years. So there you are.

Israeli and German politicians and commentators vied with each other in cursing the writer, with the Germans easily trumping the Israelis. Though our Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, may have garnered the individual championship by declaring Grass persona non grata and banning him from entering Israel for all eternity (at least)….

So what did Grass actually say?

* What Must Be Said: We All Profit from Occupations Rabbi Brant Rosen

There’s been a great deal of analysis written about German writer Gunther Grass’ now-infamous new poem, “What Must Be Said” (in which Grass criticized Israel’s nuclear program as endangering an “already fragile world peace.”) For me, the most astute response by far comes from Mideast historian Mark LeVine, writing in Al-Jazeera.

…These facts are that Israel, however egregious its crimes – and anyone who denies them is either completely ignorant or a moral idiot – is but one cog in a much larger global machine, one that includes too many other cases of occupation, exploitation, and wanton violence to list comprehensively here (we can name a few – Syria, China, Russia, India, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bahrain, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, the Congo, and of course, NATO and the United States – whose oppression, exploitation, and murder of their own or other peoples is a far more concrete “fact” than the potential for mass destruction caused by Israel’s nuclear programme)…

The larger fact is that the global economy is addicted to war, to militarism, oil and the rape of the planet for the minerals and resources that fuel the now globalised culture of hyperconsumption that will doom our descendants to a fate we dare not contemplate. Israel’s gluttony for Palestinian territory, and its willingness to encourage a regional nuclear arms race to keep it, is ultimately no different than the the gluttony for the 60-inch TV, the iPhone/Pad, the cavernous homes and cars, the ability to live at levels of consumption that are only sustainable if most of the world lives in poverty that increasingly defines all our cultures.

April 20th, 2012 :: Year 9, Issue 15

Apr-20-2012 | Comments (0)

1. Followups

Bird’s Eye: Using some of last week’s pieces, I put together a perspective on what I see happening with Israel. Fell free to disagree, of course. The Guardian looks at Israel’s building a security fence, regular correspondent (sometime reader) Linda alerted me to “Thrive” a movie about conspiracies controlling your life (or not). And a great Titanic line that demanded inclusion rounds it all off.

* Losing the Struggle Peter Marmorek

Uri Avnery says that G_d asked Israel when it was born in 1947 what it wanted to be, and Israel answered that it wanted to be Jewish, democratic, and stretch from sea to sea (Mediterranean to Jordan). G_d thought about this, and said that Israel could have any two of those, but not all three. There was a time, maybe up until recently, when Israel could have settled for democratic and Jewish, and taken the ‘67 borders, and allowed Palestine to be a separate country. But that time has passed. Now the Jewish settlers own so much land in Palestine and use so much of the water in Palestine that it is no longer possible to create any real Palestinian state. “Real” means a contiguous state with enough power to satisfy the Palestinian people. Nor is it possible to pull the settlers out of Palestine, as the power in the Israeli parliament depends on rightwing support. But leaving the settlers there without Israeli protection is also impossible, politically. So Israel will stretch from sea to sea, and now must choose between democratic or Jewish.

…There are reasons why this has happened, both because of Israeli and Palestinian intransigence, and because of unwillingness to settle for less than they wanted on both sides. And at this point the reasons why we have gotten to this point don’t matter. In the realistic world of politics there are only two questions that matter: where are we now, and where do we go from here. So, where are we?

* Israel Extends New Border Fence But Critics Say It Is A Sign Of Weakness Harriet Sherwood The Guardian

It cuts a steel swath through the stark wilderness where Israel and Egypt meet, glinting in the desert sun as it snakes across barren hills and sandy plateaus. Wielding blowtorches at the base of the five-metre-high (16ft) barrier are some of the very men the border fence is in part designed to keep out: illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, now working as cheap construction labour for Israeli contractors.

Israel’s newest frontier fence is being erected at high speed along the 150-mile boundary between the Sinai and Negev deserts. Its construction, due to be completed by the end of this year, was accelerated after last summer’s cross-border attack in which eight Israelis were killed, and amid rising alarm about the number of refugees crossing into the Jewish state.

Once it is finished, Israel will be almost completely enclosed by steel, barbed wire and concrete, leaving only the southern border with Jordan between the Dead and Red Seas without a physical barrier. That, too, may be fenced in the future.

* “Thrive” Debunked (Thanks, Linda)

Thrive promotes conspiracy theories that are based on an imaginary division between “us” and “them.” “We” are many and well-meaning but victimized; while “they” are a tiny, greedy and immensely powerful few who are masterfully organized, who are purposefully causing massive disasters in order to cull the population, and who will do absolutely anything in their quest to achieve total world domination. I think the allure of this way of thinking is that it distracts and absolves us from the troubling truth that the real source of the problem is in all of us, and in the economic systems we have collectively produced. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every heart”

* Titanic Cleverness (via Reddit)

I renamed my iPod ‘The Titanic’ so that when I plug it in, iTunes tells me “The Titanic is syncing.” That is all.

2. Voices From the Other Side of the Media

Apr-20-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: What’s the other side? The one the main stream media don’t carry. Mehanna’s speech is hugely moving, utterly cogent, depressingly convincing, essential reading. Barghouti, the Palestinian leader is also convincing on why “apartheid” is the right word. I don’t know of any other to describe this system of rule. I’ve been enjoying Cenk Uygur’s rants… and I haven’t seen that the supreme head of Iran ruled officially that the use of nuclear weapons is forbidden. Curious how all our papers and radio and TV missed that, isn’t it?

* Sentencing Statement By American Tarek Mehanna, Convicted Of Helping Al Qaeda Salon

In one of the most egregious violations of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech seen in quite some time, Tarek Mehanna, an American Muslim, was convicted this week in a federal court in Boston and then sentenced yesterday to 17 years in prison. He was found guilty of supporting Al Qaeda (by virtue of translating Terrorists’ documents into English and expressing “sympathetic views” to the group) as well as conspiring to “murder” U.S. soldiers in Iraq (i.e., to wage war against an invading army perpetrating an aggressive attack on a Muslim nation)…. I urge everyone to read something quite amazing: Mehanna’s incredibly eloquent, thoughtful statement at his sentencing hearing, before being given a 17-year prison term.

In your eyes, I’m a terrorist, and it’s perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But one day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the US military in foreign countries, yet somehow I’m the one going to prison for “conspiring to kill and maim” in those countries – because I support the Mujahidin defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a ”terrorist,” yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the “terrorists” are, she sure wouldn’t be pointing at me.

The government says that I was obsessed with violence, obsessed with ”killing Americans.” But, as a Muslim living in these times, I can think of a lie no more ironic.

* Mustafa Barghouti to J Street: I know you don’t like the word apartheid, but what do you call a system that gives a settler 50 times more water than a Palestinian? via Mondoweiss

On March 26, at the J Street conference in Washington, D.C., Palestinian leader Mustafa Barghouti described apartheid in Palestine to a largely-Jewish audience. As he spoke, you could have heard a pin drop in a room jammed with 500 people hearing about the one-state option. His comments have resonated in the weeks since.

Some people might not like the word apartheid, when we say that we live in a system of apartheid and segregation, and I understand why you wouldn’t like it. Because there is nothing to be proud about having a system of apartheid and segregation in the 21st century. But as Menachem [Klein] said, we actually live in that system. It’s one regime.

What is apartheid? Apartheid is a system where you have two laws, two different laws, for two people living in the same area. If you don’t like the word apartheid, give me an alternative to a situation where a Palestinian citizen is allowed to use no more than 50 cubic meters of water per capital year, while an Israeli illegal settler from the West Bank is allowed to use 2400. How would you classify a situation where the Israeli gdp per capita is about $30,000 while a Palestinian’s gdp per capita is less than $1400?

Yet we are obliged to pay the same prices for products as Israelis do. More than that: We are obliged to pay double the price for electricity and water that Israelis do though they make 30 times more than we do.

* Khamenei’s Fatwa against Nukes (Cenk Uygur Rant) via Informed Comment

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks on the progressive network Current TV gives us an insightful rant on Big TV News’ lack of interest in Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s fatwa declaring making, stockpiling and using nuclear weapons a sin. He points out that you almost never hear about this fatwa on television news, and performs a thought experiment. How often would a fatwa to the opposite effect have been mentioned?

3. Occupy What?

Apr-20-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Whither or wither occupy? As spring comes, what will follow? The complaints it raised are clearly still as pressing as ever, but will the movement manage to become more than a branch of the Democratic party? And if so, how will they do it? Three intelligent perspectives look at those questions.

* The Itinerant US Left Has Found Its Home In The Occupy Movement Gary Younge The Guardian

The legacy of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is still in the making. Those who believe it came from nowhere and has disappeared just as quickly are wrong on both counts. Most occupiers were already politically active in a range of campaigns. What the occupations did was bring them together in one place and refract their disparate messages through the broader lens of inequality. The occupations were less an isolated outpouring of discontent than a decisive, dynamic moment in an evolving process.

Over the last decade in the US there has been an itinerant quality to the progressive left. Activists have sought shelter in the anti-war movement, Howard Dean’s primary campaign, gay rights, immigrants’ rights or the Obama campaign. Each more powerful and hopeful than the last; each too narrowly focused and lacking the social or economic base to sustain it. In the occupations, these political vagrants found a home.

* Is The Occupy Movement Being Hijacked? Al Jazeera English (Thanks Gabe)

After a quiet winter, Occupy Wall Street is gearing up again for a summer of protest. Four months after they were evicted from bases across the country, protesters are emerging once more to camp out in New York’s financial hub. It is a movement that, at its peak, brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets of the US – united by a common anger at the excesses of the financial industry, and a dismay at government unwillingness to rein it in. There is a day of mass protest and a general strike planned for May 1. The renewed demonstrations will undoubtedly be accompanied by renewed questions about the movement itself – some say is too unfocused in its objectives.

…But now a rival group has emerged – called the 99% Spring – which says it wants to train protesters for a campaign of peaceful protest. Critics have denounced the group as a Democratic Party attempt to galvanise support for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. Nonetheless, some former Occupy protesters are now advocating that change should come from within the government itself. So with a rival action group emerging, how is the Occupy Wall Street movement developing? Is the movement’s message in danger of getting hijacked by Obama’s re-election campaign?

* Timothy Noah, Charles Murray, and America’s Inequality The New Yorker

The most striking change in American society in the past generation—roughly since Ronald Reagan was elected President—has been the increase in the inequality of income and wealth. Timothy Noah’s “The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It” (Bloomsbury), a good general guide to the subject, tells us that in 1979 members of the much discussed “one per cent” got nine per cent of all personal income. Now they get a quarter of it. The gains have increased the farther up you go. The top tenth of one per cent get about ten per cent of income, and the top hundredth of one per cent about five per cent. While the Great Recession was felt most severely by those at the bottom, the recovery has hardly benefitted them. In 2010, ninety-three per cent of the year’s gains went to the top one per cent.

Since rich people are poorer in votes than they are in dollars, you’d think that, in an election year, the ninety-nine per cent would look to politics to get back some of what they’ve lost, and that inequality would be a big issue. So far, it hasn’t been. Occupy Wall Street and its companion movements briefly spurred President Obama to become more populist in his rhetoric, but there’s no sign that Occupy is going to turn into the kind of political force that the Tea Party movement has been.

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.

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