Someday...

...when the elites currently rattling sabers look back at a gigantic disaster in the rear-view mirror again and once again claim that 'no one could have known that attacking Iran would be such an utter disaster, so they should still be respected as wise experts on foreign policy' ... come back and re-read this New York Times article explaining why attacking Iran would be an act of criminal insanity.

Iran is not Syria, with no immediate capacity to retaliate against a surprise attack on its nuclear sites. Iran is a country of 70 million people, and its commanders, battle-hardened by a brutal eight-year stand-off with Iraq, have the ability and will to engage in a long, protracted war against Israel and American interests. Iran maintains a large military equipped with Russian-made weapons systems, surface-to-surface missiles, combat aircraft, unmanned drones and high-speed torpedo boats capable of destroying large warships.

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard has extended its reach from southern Lebanon to South America and maintains proxy forces — again, Hezbollah and Hamas — positioned in Israel’s back yard. They’ll force Israel to fight a war of attrition on multiple fronts.

Israel would likely be compelled to extend its military operations to include Lebanon. That would instantly plunge the entire region into war, likely bring a new intifada onto Jerusalem’s streets and place enormous pressure on leaders in Cairo and Amman to renounce their peace treaties with Israel. If Israeli planes use Saudi airspace, Iran has threatened to attack the kingdom, too.

The United States, for its part, could forget about the withdrawal of its forces from Iraq and the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan. There are up to 30,000 Iranian operatives in Iraq ready to do Iran’s bidding. And Iran enjoys significant loyalty from Afghan officials and warlords, particularly those in the trouble-prone region of Herat.

Iran has repeatedly said that it would, in the case of an attack, shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 17 million barrels of oil pass every day, spiking oil prices and devastating America’s financial recovery.

All of this could engender a serious diplomatic crisis between the United States and Russia — respectively Israel’s and Iran’s patrons — at a time when U.S.-Russian relations are improving.

Netanyahu says Iran is led by “a messianic apocalyptic cult” and that failure to attack is appeasement. But surely not every year is 1938, not every statesman who fears the nemesis of war is Chamberlain.

Heh.

Salon's Labour Day review of 'Alien':

What happens when you put the financial well-being of a company ahead of rational self-interest? You end up flat on your back in an operating room with a giant lobster creature on your face and a razor-toothed eel gestating in your belly. Happy Labor Day!

How dare she?

Kory Teneycke and the usual suspects in the Canadian wingnotosphere are very indignant that Margartet Atwood added her name to a petition opposing Quebecor/Sun Media's proposed new right wing news channel.

They are most incensed by a reference in the petition to 'hate speech', a term the petition never uses, referring instead to “the kind of hate-filled propaganda with which Fox News has poisoned U.S. politics." I encourage those who question this description of Fox News' content to browse the website of Media Matters, a site that monitors what goes on in the right wing American media. The unambiguous examples of hate filled propaganda on Fox news are virtually endless.

As to Sun Media's use of hate propaganda, arguably shading over to hate speech, I refer you to the 'lock and load' editorial in the Toronto Sun of Aug 18:

If the MV Sun Sea were carrying 500 "migrants" from Afghanistan, home base for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, would we be allowing it to enter Canadian waters, or would we put firing a shot over the bow with a message that the next would be midships?
Lock and load would be our approach.
And this case is no exception..

If calling for the mass murder of traumatized refugees doesn't qualify as hate speech we may need to redefine the term.

Atwood herself says she doesn't object to the potential content of the new channel as much as the perception of PMO interference in the approval process for it:

“Of course Fox & Co. can set up a channel or whatever they want to do, if it's legal etc.,” she told The Globe and Mail in an email. “But it shouldn't happen this way. It's like the head-of-census affair – gov't direct meddling in affairs that are supposed to be arm's length – so do what they say or they fire you.
“It's part of the ‘I make the rules around here,’ Harper-is-a-king thing,” she wrote.

Teneycke indignantly denies any linkage with the American version: "Fox, and its parent company Newscorp, are not owners of this channel, nor are they involved in its development. " He also denies that Quebecor asked for preferential 'must offer' status for the new channel and the PMO has repeatedly denied any interference in the process of the channel's approval.

But consider the Timeline:

My guess is it's pretty easy to arrange lunch with the Prime Minister. No doubt Stephen Harper often lunches with labour leaders and advocates for the homeless.
So it should be considered no big deal that, among those the PM has lunched with, is U.S. media billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who has probably done more than any single individual in recent years to push American politics sharply to the right.
It's interesting to imagine, however, why our Prime Minister would want to meet with Murdoch, whose Fox News TV channel has poisoned U.S. political debate and nurtured America's extremist right-wing Tea Party movement.
If you subscribe to the notion that Harper has no particular political agenda, his lunch with Murdoch in March 2009 might seem harmless, perhaps a purely social affair.
But the evidence suggests they were discussing plans to transform the Canadian political landscape by creating a right-wing, Fox-style TV station in Canada. Present at the lunch was Fox News president Roger Ailes, known for bringing cutthroat Republican campaign tactics to the screen. (Ailes designed the infamous race-baiting Willie Horton commercials that brought George H.W. Bush to power.)
Also present at the lunch was Harper aide Kory Teneycke, who has since become the front man in the bid by Quebec media mogul Pierre Karl Peladeau to get a specialty TV licence for a Fox News-style network in Canada.
Then there's the fact that the lunch, during an official Harper visit to New York, was kept secret -- until being unearthed recently by Canadian Press reporter Bruce Cheadle.
Harper also met twice in early 2009 with Peladeau, according to Cheadle.
Ian Morrison, of the group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, says "all the information I have suggests that Harper has taken a personal interest in this matter."

And reports that Harper seeks to insert himself in the approval process persist, with claims that he is actively trying to ease out both the current chairman of the CRTC Konrad von Finckenstein and CRTC vice-chair Michel Arpin who asked to stay on and had his request refused. This government's well established reputation of political interference in and contempt for the very concept of arms length agencies make it's reflexive denials of interference almost completely lacking in credibility.

As to Teneycke's fierce denial that Quebecor is seeking preferential access for its new channel, this appears to be nothing more nor less than a bald-faced lie:

On Wednesday, Quebecor Inc. (QBR.B-T34.590.561.65%) application to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission was made public. The application, filed in July, was the company’s second attempt to win a licence for the channel after its request for a rare must-carry licence, guaranteeing distribution to all cable and satellite customers, was rejected.
This time, Quebecor has asked for a run-of-the-mill Category 2 specialty licence – but with a twist: It wants “mandatory access,” meaning the channel would not necessarily be carried on basic cable but would have to be offered on at least one tier or package by each distributor. This means creating essentially a new category of specialty channel.

Another propagandist once said that 'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it', Teneycke appears to have taken this lesson to heart.

UPDATE: Margaret Atwood muses on signing petitions and remembers the time she signed one against attacking Iraq leading The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente to make up false quotes Atwood never said at a meeting she never attended.

The Circus Arrives?

The most terrifying line in the excellent and hard hitting Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin comes from blogger Shannyn Moore the only Alaska based journalist still covering the Sarah Palin beat regularly:

Moore, a green-eyed blonde who, like Palin, was once an Alaska beauty queen, albeit a few stripes more self-aware, drives her Subaru through downtown Anchorage, steering with one hand, holding a cigarette and her smartphone in the other. When Devon calls to tell her that Glenn Beck has booked the Dena’ina Center, the largest venue in Anchorage, for a speech on September 11, 2010, she sits bolt upright and yells. Immediately, they start trying to figure out what the news might mean. “Listen, listen, listen: Why in the world do you imagine Glenn Beck would come to Anchorage on 9/11? You think he might have a special guest? With a special announcement? Oh,” she says, her whole face falling as the implications of a Palin campaign kickoff hit her, “Jesus Christ.”

How the Hell did this happen?

Skin tone terror

Christopher Hitchens quite accurately describes Glen Beck's Washington event as a soggy 'Waterworld of white self pity' and places it in the same zeitgeist of resentment and uncertainty raised by the worldwide changing of demographics.

In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one. What does it take to believe that Christianity is an endangered religion in America or that the name of Jesus is insufficiently spoken or appreciated? Who wakes up believing that there is no appreciation for our veterans and our armed forces and that without a noisy speech from Sarah Palin, their sacrifice would be scorned? It's not unfair to say that such grievances are purely and simply imaginary, which in turn leads one to ask what the real ones can be. The clue, surely, is furnished by the remainder of the speeches, which deny racial feeling so monotonously and vehemently as to draw attention.

The Shakespearean line 'The lady doth protest too much, methinks.' has become a frequently misquoted cliche for a reason.

Lest any Canadians are beginning to feel smug and superior at this point consider our own recent outpouring of fear and hate directed at persecuted refugees who braved a terrifying journey in a ship's hold in hopes of escaping the unambiguous life of terror that is the lot of a Tamil in Sri-Lanka these days. A major Canadian newspaper despicably recommended mass murder in response and was not greeted with the mass outrage it should have been.

Then there's the latest 'Terrorpalooza' event, with mass arrests, dubious sources reporting dubious details and a passel of screaming headlines that if history is repeated are going to look very silly and overblown in a few months when the real probably far more innocuous facts about inept nonentities mouthing off to their buddies on the Internet begin to dribble out. By then of course the damage is done and the hoary old 'enemy within' motif has been heavily subsidized for those looking to have their prejudices reinforced.

One hopes, that a younger generation used to being around people with different skin tones, accents and practices is mostly mystified watching this tight-lipped panic among the older generation, but fear and hate are infectious so maybe not.

Sunday Linkblast - Aug 29

I'm back from vacation and returned to shed the light of my wisdom - or my random blather, whichever. Here's some stuff getting my attention today.

• Be Afraid, be VERY afraid
  The Calgary Sun engages in a little fearful race-baiting this morning with a full page cover of the archetypal HIV positive Scary Looking Black Guy with the screaming headline 'HAVE YOU SLEPT WITH THIS MAN?' The Fox News North transformation continues.
  
  
• The Billionaires backing the Tea Party
  A populist movement with big money backers.
  
  
• Running for Class President reserved for white students only
  Mississippi in 2010 not 1953. Really.
  
  
• Competitive Pillow Fighting
  The joy of serious athleticism....with young ladies smacking each other around with fluffy weaponry.
  
  
• Podcast Roundup
  Warren Ellis does his regular call for new podcast suggestions
  
  
• Religious leader of Israel government coalition member calls for genocide of the Palestinians
  The most vague and open to interpretation threat against Israel by any Iranian figure is an existential threat. Clear and unambiguous calls for the annihilation of the Palestinians and their leaders by powerful religious and political leaders in Israel don't mean anything and you're probably an antisemite if you think they do.

Come To America. Bring Irony.

Hi -- it's me your friendly neighborhood astrologer, Matthew Currie. Once more Cliff has taken off for a while and left the keys in his blog, so I'm going to drive it around for a few days.

You know, I've thought of all the things I could tell my Canadian friends about my year in America... the big and the little cultural differences and such... but I doubt I could tell you anything new that you hadn't already figured out.

The one big thing to keep in mind when you're down here? Everyone is afraid. All the time.

Really.

The Fountainhead in 5 Seconds

It's still too long.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Just a little something to tide you over until Rusty Idols returns to it's regularly scheduled blogging




Plenty more historical events translated for the Facebook addicted here

Do you think I like hitting you?

Shorter Ross Douthat:
"Minorities should be grateful to bigots for prodding them into becoming better Americans."

Housekeeping

It's that time of year again. I will shortly be decamping to the countryside for my annual rest cure. Two weeks at my cabin far from work, the maddening crowd, and Internet access.

While I'm gone my buddy Matt has been invited to file reports about life as a Canadian expatriate in San Francisco, his perspective on American racial and immigration related insecurities and anything else he wishes to explore.

I don't leave till Wednesday morning so there might be one or two more updates before then and then I'm back in September tanned rested and ready to to get back to kicking against the pricks. Think of me as you trudge to your daily grind, stretched out on my deck drinking in the sun.

I'm doing it all for you.

In a time of Universal Deceit

Eric Margolis uses his last column at the Sun now that he's been purged for thought-crime to defend PTE Manning and Wikileaks.

George Orwell wrote: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

A true journalist’s job is to expose government wrongdoing and propaganda, skewer hypocrites, and speak for those with no voice. And wage war against mankind’s two worst scourges: Nationalism and religious bigotry. Not to lick the boots of government.

I’ve always felt kinship for free thinkers, rebels, and heretics.

That’s why I am drawn to the plight of Pte. Bradley Manning who apparently believed Ernest Hemingway’s dictum: “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

The 22-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst caused a worldwide furor by releasing to WikiLeaks secret military logs that exposed ugly truths about the brutal conflict in Afghanistan, including widespread killing of civilians.

To again quote Orwell: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

Goin' Down South

R.L. Burnside and Lyrics Born.
My favorite bluesman with my favorite rapper. The internet brings me gifts.

The Exploitation Capital

The Fraser Institute waxes rhapsodic about doing business in Alberta

'Its great, they don't care about the environment, you don't have to lay out money for death squads like the other places Canadian mining companies have to do business. They just roll over the opposition, inconvenient First Nations communities, labour - the public are so anesthetized you can get away with anything!'

Alberta has been named the most attractive jurisdiction for mineral exploration and development in the world, according to a new report from the Fraser Institute, released Wednesday.

This ends a three-year run for Quebec as the top choice, according to the Survey of Mining Companies: 2010 Mid-Year Update.

The survey of international mining executives was conducted between June 1 and June 30. It is based on the opinions of mining executives representing 429 mineral exploration and development companies on the investment climate of 51 jurisdictions around the world.

Alberta, which had been ranked fourth in the previous survey moves to the top spot and Finland, which was third, moves into second.

Overall, the top 10 jurisdictions are Alberta, Finland, Quebec, Yukon, Saskatchewan, Chile, Newfoundland and Labrador, Botswana, Alaska, and Nevada.

The bottom 10 scores went to Ecuador, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Bolivia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Russia, Colorado, Indonesia, and Tasmania.

"After ranking Quebec as the best place in the world for mining investment for three years in a row, it appears that miners' confidence in the province has been shaken by increases in mining taxes which were announced without consultation in Quebec's spring budget," said Fred McMahon, co-ordinator of the survey and the institute's vice-president of international policy research.

'You don't need to worry about the local government trying to get some benefit for its citizens from the resources you're extracting - they're ideologically opposed to the very concept of the public good!'

There's a really simple rule: If the Fraser Institute thinks you are doing something right, it is literally the worst possible thing you could do.

A gentle reminder from the service economy workforce

Dedicated to former JetBlue employee Steven Slater:

Take this job and shove it!

The harassed hordes of the low wage service economy have a new patron saint:

The airline industry's latest headline-maker didn't help land a plane safely or tackle any terrorists. According to police reports, he cursed out a passenger, grabbed a few beers, abandoned the plane using its emergency chute, then called it a day. But that hasn't stopped many – including thousands of supporters on the Internet – from labeling JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater a hero. He "did what everyone always wanted to do but never did," says the "Free Steven Slater" Facebook page – one of many overnight shrines for the 39-year-old, who quit his job in dramatic fashion on Monday. Slater, fed up with a passenger who refused to apologize for allegedly hitting him on the head while retrieving luggage from the overhead bin, reportedly used the PA system to unleash a torrent of curse words before ditching the jet at New York's JFK International Airport.

Anybody working in customer service - which is an increasing percentage of us in this bold new post industrial world - can tell you horror stories about abusive customers who view the people who serve their meals, explain their bill or help them deplane as faceless serfs who aren't owed the basic human courtesy of decent treatment. There's elitist classism behind the contempt and abuse: "How much do you make?" in a sneering tone that implies that since that harassed clerk makes less than they do, treating them with respect is uncalled for.

You don't have to condone or repeat Slater's actions to understand the "Fuck this, that's all I can stand and I can't stand no more!" moment he experienced. It's interesting the beaming, peaceful smile on his face in every photo since the incident - even with his hands behind him in cuffs being led into court. The blissful smile of unbearable tension broken and relaxing free fall begun. If you don't understand that smile, you've never worked in customer service.

Gnnnnnnnnn - Monday

Sunday Linkblast - August 8

• Retired US General/Psychologist defends Omar Khadr
  “I think it’s wrong to take a person who’s a 15-year-old, who’s basically a child soldier, and for us to treat him as something other than an adolescent who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time,” says Xenakis
  
  
• Quantum Reality
  The observer created universe.
  
  
• Coca Cola's legal defense:
  'No reasonable person could really think something called 'Vitaminwater' would actually be good for them.'
  
  
• Canada's investment in the Colombian police state
  Supporting the mass uprooting of peasantry in the way of our resource interests.
  
  
• Space exploration and Libertarianism fundamentally incompatible
  Sorry space cadets, the unfettered individual has no place in the massive controlled marshaling of resources necessary for space travel.
  
  
• New StatsCan boss will have to combine credibility with subservience.
  The Harper government will have trouble replacing Munir Sheikh.
  
  
• Scientists discover 'Life of Brian' sector of brain
  Always look on the bright side of life.

Helicopter Stories

The Canadian military announced today the downing of a Canadian Chinook helicopter in southern Afghanistan on Thursday but insisted that it had been downed by small arms fire.

The helicopter was brought down by small arms fire from insurgents, the military said at a briefing at the Kandahar base.

The small arms fire "caused a fire in the fuel line below the helicopter, forcing it come down," said the CBC's Cameron MacIntosh, who attended the briefing.

"When it landed, it burst into flames and the helicopter basically burned to the ground," he said.

Investigators went through the wreckage and found evidence that the chopper had been hit by small arms fire.

A senior military officer described it as "an extremely lucky shot," MacIntosh said.

Yes, that's a spectacularly lucky shot, we can't really call it a one in a million shot though because lucky shots like it have been happening with troubling regularity. Compare this display of military message control to this one from 2007:

But if American and British commanders were worried about the missile threat, they downplayed it in public – to the extent of ignoring their own pilots' testimony. The CH-47 Chinook was shot down on 30 May 2007 after dropping troops at the strategic Kajaki dam in Helmand where the British were leading an anti-Taliban drive. Witnesses reported that a missile struck the left rear engine of the aircraft, causing it to burst into flames and nosedive into the ground. All on board died, including 28-year-old Corporal Mike Gilyeat of the Royal Military Police.

Later that day Nato and US officials suggested the helicopter, codenamed Flipper, had been brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade – effectively, a lucky hit. "It's not impossible for small-arms fire to bring down a helicopter," Nato spokesman Major John Thomas told Reuters in Kabul. A US official said it had "probably been brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade [RPG]".

In both cases the Taliban claimed the helicopters were shot down by shoulder mounted rockets, and in both cases NATO denied it. We know from the Wikileaks data dump that NATO has been aggressively trying to downplay any suggestion that the Afghan insurgents have any such capability - mostly due to the historical context.


Shoulder mounted smart rockets ended the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and likely sped up the end of the Soviet Union itself. Its easy to see why NATO is committed to the narrative that the Taliban don't have access to them.

The legendary ability of small, shoulder-born missile launchers to transform the fortunes of otherwise crudely armed insurgents is one of the most alarming threats to emerge from the Wikileaks archive.

Soviet troops discovered in 1986 when the CIA decided to put heat-seeking Stinger missiles into the hands of the otherwise low-tech Afghan resistance, such weapons can make life impossible for modern armies.

As depicted in the Tom Hank's film Charlie Wilson's War, bearded warriors were able to stand on hilltops and blast the dreaded Russian attack helicopters out of the sky, ultimately forcing them to fly far higher, to much less effect.

That image still haunts Nato commanders who are all too aware of how much they rely on thousands of transport planes, helicopters and drone surveillance craft to kill insurgents from the air and move troops around an increasingly hostile theatre of war.

It has long been the international coalition's claim that whilst the Taliban might try to acquire technology capable of shooting down aircraft they had failed to do so, and were unlikely to ever succeed.

Right, because what are the odds that anybody could get access to 1980's technology?

The great benefit of the Wikileaks release is that perhaps now these bland assurances of a long series of one in a million 'lucky shots' will be read with a bit more of a critical eye.

Run out of town

Christie Blatchford continues her long running series 'Scheming, Violent Dark People and the Pure and Innocent White People they Abuse' today with a remarkably one sided opinion piece presented as a news story on page 8 of the Globe and Mail.

The entire Ontario Provincial Police detachment at the remote Pikangikum First Nation was marched off the reserve five weeks ago by a rock-throwing mob of elected councillors and residents.
The stunning forced departure of 11 OPP members from the isolated community, reached in summer only by air or water, went publicly unacknowledged by the force until now.
It was also almost entirely unreported, with only a couple of small stories, none with any detail, appearing locally about a week after the June 30 incident.

It isn't until more than halfway through the piece, 14 paragraphs in, that she even addresses the reason for the angry mass eviction, the OPP beating of a disabled elder, and then she only presents the OPP version that the deaf/mute elder was trying to grab the officer's gun. This is the classic accusation to justify police over-reaction, one that we've seen most recently as the lame defense of a Vancouver officer caught on video shoving a disabled woman to the ground and then walking away as if nothing had happened.

Context matters, and the context is that Pikangikum First Nation is a community repeatedly described as a third world hellhole, underfunded, disrespected, and abandoned. The context is that they've been calling for a local independent police force staffed by First Nation officers for some time.

But Christie Blatchford never saw a complex situation she couldn't reduce to 'Dark People abuse white people and don't respect the law'.

CMA returns to advocating for public health instead of private profits

They're still buying into nonsense framing about unsustainability but this years public statement is a welcome return to fighting for patients instead of insurance companies and private clinic entrepreneurs.

Also frustrating is the CMA’s assertion that the public health-care system is unsustainable. This is a Chicken Little claim that has been repeated so many times it risks becoming self-fulfilling. The truth is that Canada’s health-care system is less expensive than those of several other wealthy nations. In fact, we spend less public money on the health-care system as a whole than most comparable countries. We are richer than we ever have been. If our government can afford $16 billion for fighter jets, it can certainly afford to pay for a reasonably decent and humane health-care system.

But perhaps even more importantly, the debate over sustainability is a false one. We are going to pay for health care, whether we pay individually or through our taxes. If governments download costs onto citizens in order to make the public system more “sustainable,” we will end up paying more for the same services out of pocket or via private insurance. A few wealthier Canadians would then have better access than the rest of us, and we would be right back where we were before the passage of the Canada Health Act.

What isn’t sustainable is the status quo because Canadians deserve a health-care system that continually gets better. Like everyone who works in the system, doctors are not exempt from the need to change. While doctors play a crucial role in the health-care system, the CMA’s report falls short of recognizing the extent to which we also contribute to our system’s challenges — by ordering too many expensive tests, prescribing medications unnecessarily, contributing to the lack of coordination in the system, and sometimes failing to embrace necessary change when it puts our power or our established ways of doing things at risk.

The CMA’s apparent shift away from privatization, and toward a more constructive dialogue with Canadians about how to improve medicare, will be welcomed by many physicians and our patients. Now that the CMA has recognized that the principles and values of the Canada Health Act provide the most efficient framework for delivering accessible and quality health care, on to the hard work of improving medicare!

Dr. Danielle Martin is chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, and Dr. Irfan Dhalla serves on the board of directors.

Benefiting from Civil Rights makes you ineligible to judge them

Fox News wonders why a known queer was allowed to judge a gay rights case:

The neglected bias in the Prop. 8 trial has instead to do with the fact that – as reported in The Los Angeles Times last month – Judge Walker “attends bar functions with a companion, a physician.”
If (as The Times suggests) Judge Walker is in a stable same-sex relationship, then he might wish or even expect to wed should same-sex marriage become legally available in California.
This raises an important and serious question about his fitness to preside over the case. Yet it is a question that received almost no attention.
When a judge is obliged to withdraw from a case due to a conflicting interest we call it “recusal.”
Federal law requires that, whenever a judge knows that he has “any other interest [ that is, besides a financial interest] that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding” at hand, or when “his impartiality might reasonably be questioned”, he must recuse himself.
I am not saying that Judge Walker should have refused himself in Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
I am not saying so because nowhere (as far as I know) has Judge Walker volunteered or been made to answer questions about how the outcome of that case would affect his interest (whatever it is) in marrying, and thus his interest in the manifold tangible and intangible benefits of doing so.

So extending the logic of this position, Thurgood Marshall should never have been allowed to judge any case involving racial civil rights, Sandra Day O'Connor or any other female judge should never be allowed to judge sex discrimination cases and no member of a minority religion can ever rule on a religious discrimination case.

On all of these issues, Fox News apparently believes only straight white Anglo Saxon Protestant males can be trusted to be impartial and fair. After all they have no benefit on the line except the maintenance of a status quo that puts them at the top of the social justice peak.

That whole 'Don't be evil' thing? Never mind.

WASHINGTON — Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.

The charges could be paid by companies, like YouTube, owned by Google, for example, to Verizon, one of the nation’s leading Internet service providers, to ensure that its content received priority as it made its way to consumers. The agreement could eventually lead to higher charges for Internet users.

Hope you enjoyed net neutrality folks, because that was it exiting the stage.

UPDATE: Google denies.

Shorter conservatives: Government bad unless somebody is getting hit or shot

Liberals romanticize government in every area other than law enforcement and defense, to which they apply a healthy skepticism. Conservatives suffer a mirror-image version of that myopia. They're incurable romantics when it comes to generals, policemen or spies - Gene Healy

I've never really met any liberals or leftists who 'romanticize' government - just ones who pragmatically understand that with public ownership comes more public control via the democratic choice of who will manage that public ownership and how.

Conservatives with their constant fear mongering about intrusive government reveal a lack of confidence in democracy and its institutions.

Or perhaps their fear is that democracy is too effective. That as the will of the public is in so many things and on so many subjects not what they would wish it were, a government that actually reflects that will is in fact their enemy. After all, its always conservatives who are trying to reduce the electoral franchise isn't it? You never hear right wingers complain that not enough people are allowed to vote but that too many - or at least too many of the wrong sorts are exercising their democratic rights. It's from right wingers in the US and Canada, through various vote suppression strategies like taking the franchise away from felons even after they serve their time or voter ID laws that disproportionately take the vote away from the poor or non-white that the franchise is restricted.

It's neo-liberals and neo-conservatives who in the last few decades have been democracy proofing the economy by treating trade agreements like 'corporate bills of rights' restricting the democratic rights of citizens from taking any action that big business doesn't like. For example, Canada had to water down our restrictions on toxic fuel additives and toxins on fruit and vegetables because they were a threat to the business of American producers of toxic fuel additives and toxin covered vegetables.

Rhetoric about 'big government' and 'state control' is about restricting the power of democracy and the rights of individuals in opposition to the rights of big business.

Sunday Linkblast - Aug 1

• The Long Form Census
  and the long term project to transform Canada into a society that would accept the Fraser Institutes's agenda.
  
  
• Wikileaks Insurance Policy
  A huge encrypted file that only requires a volunteer anywhere in the world to release a password to be opened. Just in case anybody was thinking of kidnapping Julian Assange and water-boarding the hell out of him or anything.
  
  
• CNN lectures bloggers on journalistic integrity and the use of anonymous sources
  Hypocrisy so huge and blatant it just becomes laughable.
  
  
• The Anti-Defamation League argue Muslims should give up their legal rights to protect the hurt feelings of racists
  Criminal waste of credibility reducing a once important civil rights group to a pathetic parody of itself.
  
  
• Crowded Race
  Calgary's Mayoral race has attracted a dozen candidates, a TV celebrity, outsiders, long time city councilors claiming to be outsiders, anti-union candidates, at least one pro-union (and therefore pro working Calgarians) candidate and failed former candidates. This is a first taste of a subject that will eventually begin to preoccupy this blog. For the first time I will actually be enthusiastic about having someone to vote for rather than just against.

Whistleblowers: The real threat?

Peter Worthington sniffs in disdain at Wikileaks and the information they've revealed:

WikiLeaks also “reveals” (my quotations are meant to imply irony) that Taliban have infiltrated Pakistan’s Intelligence Service and have alarming support in that country.
So what else is new? That’s been written about and commented on so often you’d think it hardly worth mentioning. Sure, it’s important, and unless the Pakistan government regains full control of its country, the war against the Taliban cannot be won. And the Taliban protect al-Qaida.
So what damage has been done by WikiLeaks exposes?
The real danger lies in individuals who squeal and steal stuff in order to leak it. They are a menace who violate their oaths and/or betray trust while often posing as people motivated by a concern for truth and principles — all of which camouflages their treachery.

So Peter Worthington is a 'journalist' (my quotations are meant to imply utter contempt) who thinks the real threat isn't a decade's worth of deadly morass in a country that has never been successfully conquered or controlled by outside powers going back to the time of Alexander the Great, that beat the British Empire at the height of its powers, sunk the Soviet Union and is actually known in history books as the 'graveyard of armies'. No the real threat is whistle blowers revealing the hard evidence of a failed and corrupt intervention causing thousands of deaths per year.

This is a so-called 'journalist' condemning the release of raw data that contradicts the rosy pronouncements of governments and military figures. Sure we already knew they were shining us on - despite the obsequious stenography of 'journalists' like Worthington - now, thanks to Wikileaks we have proof.

I'm sure Worthington will fit in well with the new 'Fox North' Sun regime.

Quote of the Day

"Having a journalist around is like having a pet bear. Most of the time it's really cool, but once in a while it'll bite your hand off." - Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone writer whose reporting compelled the White House to fire Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan

Quote of the day

On Israel, I see a great opportunity being wasted and a country I deeply admire slowly killing itself. The notion that I should suppress these beliefs - or focus always on relaying them with extreme sensitivity to language - is one I'll resist. -Andrew Sullivan

How Unreasonable

Shorter Israeli government:

"It's so unreasonable for the Palestinians to refuse to give us the international political cover of cosmetic and almost certainly futile direct talks until we cease engaging in behaviour that the whole world including our biggest ally call violations of international law."

Afghanistan gets its 'Pentagon Papers'

“History doesn't repeat itself - at best it sometimes rhymes”-Mark Twain

Bradley Manning is going to prison. Probably for years, but like Daniel Ellsberg, he will do so knowing he personally contributed to the truth coming out and maybe even a war shortened.

It is important not to undersell how much of a bombshell the massive data dump that Wikileaks clearly spent the last month or so preparing for is. Several media outlets were given early access to the info on condition they waited a pre-arranged period of time and the outlets and Wikileaks were all releasing everything at once. The kind of thing a paranoid person like Julian Assange who doesn't trust anyone would arrange.

If nothing else, any question of whether Wikileaks are media players is now resolved. These media outlets accepted the information and the conditions demanded to release this devastating portrait of a war gone wrong. The administration's claim that they were afraid Wikileaks would release diplomatic cables and embarrass allies is now revealed as a sign that they were thinking too small.

The coalition has actively suppressed the information that the Taliban were using heat-seeking missiles - possibly because it's well know that this is the weapon that allowed the Mujaheddin to drive the Soviets out of the country. That secret is now blown. Optimistic Pentagon PR and a compliant press has kept just how bad the war in Afghanistan is and how its being getting worse every year. That badly kept secret is also now blown. Spectacularly

Can we expect some more historical rhyming in the coming years? Maybe a final airlift scene from the American compound in Kabul à la the fall of Saigon?

UPDATE: The shorter response from the White House:

'The leaked information is putting our troops in danger, but it is also too old to be relevant to the current situation in Afghanistan.'

This is the very definition of cognitive dissonance.

UPDATE 2: A week later and the Washington Post makes the Ellsberg comparison.

Love Henry

A stunningly rendered tale of revenge and a woman scorned. Ladies and gentlemen,
Judy Henske

They can turn out the lights at the Sun chain...

...the last world class writer has left the building.

UPDATED BELOW

Veteran Sun op-ed columnist Eric Margolis is another casualty of Sun Media's shift to the far right, with little regard for longevity or popularity.

"I wrote for the Sun chain for 27 years because it allowed me total freedom of expression even when the editors disagreed with my opinions - something very rare in the media," Margolis told Toronto Sun Family in an e-mail today.

"This policy has changed. My views are displeasing to Ottawa," he says. "Accordingly, the Sun and I are parting company."

Eric Margolis was, for many years, the only reason to read Sun chain international coverage. Experienced, knowledgeable with a unique perspective that allows him to cut through a lot of the blather and propaganda other journalists treat like hard news. I will continue to follow him at his site or at Huffington Post, I encourage you to check him out if you haven't before.

Here in Calgary there had been a very noticeable shift to the center at the local Sun in recent years, editorials condemning the death penalty, much more rational columnists among a dwindling pack of reactionary haters, even a few dramatic evictions of far right writers engaging in unethical manipulation or race baiting.

I haven't looked at the Calgary Sun in a while, but I suspect the glasnost spring is probably joining the rest of the chain back in a long cold reactionary winter.

Hat tip to BigCityLib

UPDATE: The exit interview (audio), plus here's more on the recently exposed Netanyahu remarks about how easy the US is to push around the antiwar radio show concentrates the first half of the program on.

Punished for impersonating a human

An Arab worker in Israel convicted for telling a girlfriend he was actually Jewish.

In tune with the public, Kashur's judges assumed, rightly, that the woman would not have gotten into bed with Dudu were it not for the identity he invented. She also might not have gotten into bed with him if he had told her in vain that he was available, that he was younger than he really is or even that he is madly in love with her. But people are not prosecuted for that, certainly not on rape charges.

Now the respected judges have to be asked: If the man was really Dudu posing as Sabbar, a Jew pretending to be an Arab so he could sleep with an Arab woman, would he then be convicted of rape? And do the eminent judges understand the social and racist meaning of their florid verdict? Don't they realize that their verdict has the uncomfortable smell of racial purity, of "don't touch our daughters"? That it expresses the yearning of the extensive segments of society that would like to ban sexual relations between Arabs and Jews?

It was no coincidence that this verdict attracted the attention of foreign correspondents in Israel, temporary visitors who see every blemish. Yes, in German or Afrikaans this disgraceful verdict would have sounded much worse.

The Myth of Pragmatism

Knowing how deeply unpopular the ideological right wing's beliefs are with an unshakable majority of Canadians, the government of Stephen Harper has devoted considerable effort to trying to soft-peddle and obscure them.

'Pay no attention to the mean-spirited, racially insensitive, woman hating religious fanatic behind the curtain.' is the message of Harper's government. Forget about the Conservative Party's long, well documented tradition of attacking women's reproductive rights, making hateful remarks about the poor and the non-white and the non-Christian, gloating over doing nothing about the environment and attacking civil society. Ignore the far right socially conservative attitudes of the base, held in abeyance only by the desire to win a majority and really stick it to the cultural groups they cannot hide their contempt for.

What they really want to be seen as, is sober small 'c' conservative managers, but the weird paranoid ideology keeps seeping out like pus from a wound.

Hence the census, and the decision they thought they'd get away with. Catering to the paranoid, 'fluoride is a communist plot to violate our precious bodily fluids' whackos over the mandatory long form census, an invaluable tool for government, industry and civil society.

As I've suggested here before, underneath the paranoid looniness is the cold-blooded calculation that accurately counting Canadians can only be a bad thing for a Conservative government wedded to a strategy of deliberate neglect for Canadians most in need and a hold on government so tenuous that anything that could cause electoral boundaries to shift is an unambiguous threat to their power.

They've begun the traditional final stage of scandals over their real agenda: lashing out viciously at those who disagree with them. StatsCan head Munir Sheikh felt he had no choice but to to resign and respond publicly to Industry Minister Tony Clement's false claim that StatsCan had signed off on the vandalism of the census process:

“I want to take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue which has become the subject of media discussion ... the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census,” Mr. Sheikh wrote.

“It can not,” he said.

The Conservative response was as predictably sleazy and vindictive as we've come to expect from these vicious clowns:

“Our approach is about finding a better balance between collecting necessary data and protecting the privacy rights of Canadians,” the Tory “info-alert” said.
“It is unfortunate that Mr. Sheikh did not share these objectives.”

'And when did you stop beating your wife?'

These extreme yahoos are going to continue their sub rosa attack on civil society at any and every opportunity until the day they convince or hornswaggle enough Canadians into giving them a majority when they can do this stuff openly and to the extremes that are their real goal.

UPDATE:
The public resignation letter that the government is now censoring reprinted here in full, hat tip to Challenging the Commonplace:

Media advisory: 2011 Census

July 21, 2010

OTTAWA — There has been considerable discussion in the media regarding the 2011 Census of Population. There has also been commentary on the advice that Statistics Canada and I gave the government on this subject.

I cannot reveal and comment on this advice because this information is protected under the law. However, the government can make this information public if it so wishes.

I have always honoured my oath and responsibilities as a public servant as well as those specific to the Statistics Act.


I want to take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue which has become the subject of media discussion. This relates to the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census.

It can not.

Under the circumstances, I have tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister.

I want to thank him for giving me the opportunity of serving him as the Chief Statistician of Canada, heading an agency that is a symbol of pride for our country.

To you, the men and women of Statistics Canada – thank you for giving me your full support and your dedication in serving Canadians. Without your contribution, day in and day out, in producing data of the highest quality, Canada would not have this institution that is our pride.

I also want to thank Canadians. We do remember, every single day, that it is because of you providing us with your information, we can function as a statistical agency. I am attaching an earlier message that I sent to Canadians in this regard.

In closing, I wish the best to my successor. I promise not to comment on how he/she should do the job. I do sincerely hope that my successor’s professionalism will help run this great organization while defending its reputation.

Munir A. Sheikh

The Future as the Fraser Institute sees it

PAY & SIT: the private bench (HD) from Fabian Brunsing on Vimeo.

"Wise up, you douchebag"

MONTREAL - Cheech and Chong have got some pretty blunt advice for Prime Minister Stephen Harper when it comes to Canada's marijuana's laws.

"Wise up, you douchebag," Cheech Marin says with some glee when asked what he'd tell the prime minister.

Chong, who hails from Edmonton, nods in agreement.

The team of tokers is miffed that Canadian authorities, after nearly decriminalizing pot a few years ago, have made a 180-degree policy shift which culminated in a rash of recent marijuana arrests.

"I would tell Stephen Harper to let go of George Bush's butt," Chong chimes in. "Your head's too far up there. Get your head out of his butt. He's gone. George is gone. He's history, Stephen.

"In fact, turn it over to other people who care about more important things."

A spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office was not immediately available to comment.

Sunday Linkblast - July 18

• Utterly inflexible
  It doesn't matter how many oppose it, how many experts say it's a huge mistake, the census decision won't change.
  
  
• Israel abandons the rule of law
  The Israeli government routinely ignores court decisions it doesn't like. Where Harper learned it from?
  
  
• The Aggressive Iran myth
  A spirited debate at Andrew Sullivan's place while he's on vacation lays down some perspective on the scary Iranian boogieman.
  
  
• Jonathan Kay on the denialists
  Conservative columnist calls on Canadian conservatives to abandon kook stance. Analogous to Buckley VS the Birchers?
  
  
• The Religious Right VS Birth Control
  "Given the choice between reducing abortion rates and controlling female sexuality, they will always choose the latter. Thus the idea that contraception can be a means of achieving a ceasefire in the culture wars has always been a fantasy. Liberals and conservatives aren’t just divided by abortion but by broader questions of female equality and sexual freedom."
  
  
• The Puzzling Collapse of Earth's upper Atmosphere
  The thermosphere that protects us from solar radiation has collapsed to the lowest level since we started recording it and a new cycle of increased solar activity is starting.

Follow the Money

A little more than a week ago I wondered, with a certain amount of anticipatory dread, how many horses would be mowed down this year at the Stampede. It was never a matter of if, just how many.

Six so far. Mysterious heart attacks, injuries, and one so maddened and stressed that it shattered its own spine with it's convulsions after bucking its rider off.

Terrifyingly, this doesn't even come close to being a really bad year for the Calgary Stampede. In 2005 nine horses leaped off a bridge to their deaths and the peak in recent years was 1986 when twelve animals died.

In an article that otherwise is an exemplar of the 'circle the wagons in support of your subject' school of journalism they usually reserve for the oil patch, the Calgary Herald draws a connection to the Stampede's death toll, unusually high even by the gory standards of professional rodeos, and the prize money pressure to take dangerous risks.

However, some involved in the sport are questioning whether the Stampede's big cash prizes play a role in the injuries and deaths of animals at the competition in Calgary.

Although it's hard to pinpoint why there have been more animal deaths in Calgary, while other rodeo and chuckwagon competitions across the province have been relatively casualty free, one stakeholder suggests competitors feel pressure to succeed with $2 million in prizes up for grabs.

"The guys run hard at every race, but the drivers are really keyed up for Calgary," said Sandy Stafford, chairman of the Guy Weadick Memorial Rodeo in High River.

The Ideology of Death

Conservatism is an ideology of death. It was conservative laissez-faire free market ideology - that maximizing profit comes first - that led to:

• the corrupt relationship between the oil companies and the Interior Department staff that was supposedly regulating them
• minimizing cost by not drilling relief wells
• the principle that oil companies could be responsible their own risk assessments on drilling
• maximizing profit by outsourcing risk assessment that told them what they wanted to hear: zero risk!
• maximizing profit by minimizing cost of materials
• maximizing profit by failing to pay cleanup crews and businesses for their losses
• focusing only on profit by failing to test the cleanup methods to be used if something went wrong
• minimizing cost by sacrificing the health of cleanup crews, refusing to allow them to use respirator masks to protect against toxic fumes.

It is conservative profit-above-all market fundamentalism that has led other oil companies to mount a massive PR campaign to isolate BP as an anomalous "bad actor" and to argue that offshore drilling should be continued by the self-proclaimed "good actors." Their PR fails to mention that in Congressional hearings it came out that they all outsource risk assessment to the same company that declared that BP had "zero risk." The PR fails to mention that they all use cost-benefit analysis to maximize profits just as BP did. Cost-benefit analysis only looks at monetary costs versus benefits, case by case, not at the risk of massive death of the kind gushing out of the Gulf at present. Death, in itself, even at that scale, is not a "cost." Only an outflow of money is a "cost." This is what follows from conservative laissez-faire market ideology, an ideology that continues to sanction death on a Gulf scale.

The Desert Behind the Pay Wall

Murdoch's theory that people can be convinced to pay money for access to his newspaper's online content is playing out as many predicted and it isn't pretty.

Rupert Murdoch is trying to make news at the Times and Sunday Times in London—but he’s not reporting on it. Will his paywall work is the biggest story in the media business, and it would be quite a journalistic coup to document the progress, or lack thereof, that’s being made in trying to convince a skeptical world to shell out 2£ ($3) a week for what’s heretofore been free.

He is not reporting on himself because even less than most news outlets, Murdoch outlets have no objective sense when it comes to their own interests (or the boss’s interests), or willingness to ask questions which the boss might find uncomfortable, or penchant for anything but the party line. The news from News Corp. is always snarlingly good—even when it is very bad.

My sources say that not only is nobody subscribing to the website, but subscribers to the paper itself—who have free access to the site—are not going beyond the registration page. It’s an empty world.

Why does Dean del Mastro hate Canada?

By now we've all probably heard the opinion of the Peterborough Conservative MP that anyone trying to investigate the abuse and detention of hundreds of people never charged with a crime is defending 'thugs and hooligans'.

It's worth pointing out that Canada has experienced far more mayhem and destruction around hockey games than around political demonstrations. Of course if police responded to hockey riots the same way they did to the much fewer and less destructive cases of vandalism and damage at the G20 they would have... waited until a day later and then swept through the streets seizing anybody in a hockey jersey.

Of course Mr del Mastro wouldn't want to be considered a pandering hypocrite, so he must believe that the cases of rioting and vandalism of a few bad actors after hockey games means that all fans of our beloved de facto national sport are 'thugs and hooligans'

So I repeat, why does Dean del Mastro hate Canada?

Vatican: Attempting to treat women as equals as bad a crime as raping children

The Vatican today made the "attempted ordination" of women one of the gravest crimes under church law, putting it in the same category as clerical sex abuse of minors, heresy and schism.

The new rules, which have been sent to bishops around the world, apply equally to Catholic women who agree to a ceremony of ordination and to the bishop who conducts it. Both would be excommunicated. Since the Vatican does not accept that women can become priests, it does not recognise the outcome of any such ceremony.

Hat Trick

In the original version of the Globe and Mail's 'G20 Most Wanted' article, the guy on the left was wearing a hat that said 'Police'. I went back to it 30 seconds later and that photo had disappeared replaced with this one:

Here's the original from the Toronto Police facebook page:

Too on the nose?

Shocked at the Accusation

In response to a pending NAACP resolution condemning the hateful messages of the movement, the Tea Party's major figures angrily reject accusations of racism.

Really, just because it's a movement overwhelmingly made up of middle aged white people who only became upset about spending and constitutional abuses when a black man became president and their events routinely feature racist signs and speakers (as well as all but open calls for violent insurrection.) is that any reason to be so truthful offensive?

Taking Count

Just to expand on a reply I gave to a post of at Dawg's place on the subject:

The surface reason among the right in both the US and Canada for opposing the census is crazy, the subsurface one is evil.

The surface stuff is all Glenn Beck paranoia about the evil alien entity 'the government' trying to pry into people's lives so it can pollute their precious bodily fluids. The subsurface reason that the hard headed backroom right wingers who never let ideology or conspiracy theory get in the way of the power impulse worry about, is about keeping a proper count of the population from being done to try to remove the pressure to spend money and attention on communities that aren't part of the right wing coalition.

Spending money on the poor and the non-white is what they're in power to stop. Hard numbers that prove the need of these communities make it harder to neglect them.

There is a direct linkage between detailed counts with detailed questions and representation and spending in and by our government. Think about how precarious a hold the Conservatives have on power and think about why they would oppose a detailed count of Canadians that might result in pressure for boundary changes, reapportioning of electoral seats and increased spending in places they'd rather pretend don't exist at all.

Big Brother doesn't want you watching him back

In three US states it is now illegal to film or record police abuse:

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where "no expectation of privacy exists" (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.

I wonder how many horses the Stampede will kill this year?

The Calgary Stampede has started and now we wait to find out how high the body count will be.

The Stampede chuckwagon races routinely feature grotesque and devastating accidents. They've caused the death of 22 horses in the last decade. That's right, an average of two a year, beautiful, majestic animals dying in splintered agony or from heart attacks caused by the terror and strain the races put them through.

So we wonder how many will die this year and wait to mourn them.

Update: That's one. Not the Chuckwagon event but another horse driven to fatal heart attack in a cattle penning event. How many more will there be this year?

Update: Monday night and two more, bringing it to three dead horses so far only four days in.

Update, Tuesday Morning: Another one last night, bringing it to four dead horses in just the first three days of competition. I feel like I'm bearing witness to a massacre.

UPDATE, Friday morning: Six now.

Freedom VS Liberty

The libertarian right cast themselves as the defenders of freedom and the opponents of government over-reach and oppression.

In practice their definition of freedom is very selective, and always seems to boil down to economic freedom for elites to mistreat employees, pollute the environment and give big business control over all the essential services currently handled by government.

And the wholly predictable result of such policies is a decrease in freedom and an increase in oppression.

We've seen the results over the last few decades of slashing away at regulation of business, attacking unions (the freedom of employees to join together collectively to defend their interests is NOT among the freedoms that Libertarians cherish.) and constantly reducing the contribution of the wealthy and big business to the social contract and the results have not been pretty.

When Reagan came in he slashed away at the tax burden on the wealthiest and the regulation of the financial sector brought in by FDR that had led to decades of stability and prosperity. Within just a few years the result was the Savings and Loan debacle as financial cowboys including the Bush clan used that deregulation to loot their customers and the American taxpayer for billions while the Republican tax policies starved the state of funds to protect the weakest from the depredations of the strongest. None of this reduced the Republican appetite for deregulation and the results of the next round of eliminating Wall Street regulation were seen by us all last year.

The results of the rampant deregulation of other industries can be seen today in the Gulf of Mexico.

Democracy and wide disparities in wealth are fundamentally incompatible and massive disparities of wealth are the sine qua non of libertarian ideology.

How much freedom and liberation from oppression do you have when a tiny gilded minority live in gated splendour while ever more aggressive private law policing is keeping the ever hungrier majorities in line in the devastated polluted zones outside the fences?

This is the world promoted by organizations like the Fraser Institute. The rich get richer and contribute less every year to the society that helped make them rich, while the world gets more poisoned and rigid social control over the restive majority needs to get ever more draconian and aggressive to keep those majorities in line.

Right wing libertarianism is the most anti-freedom ideology out there absent fascism itself, and leads inexorably to an oppressive police state to protect the interests of the elites who promote it.

There's a reason why right wing libertarians tend to get all misty eyed over the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that sustained it's elite serving 'free market' with torture chambers and death squads.

Fadden Doubles Down

OTTAWA — The director of Canada’s intelligence service told a committee in Parliament on Monday that he thinks two provincial cabinet ministers, as well as some municipal politicians and public servants, are under the influence of foreign governments.

Richard B. Fadden, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, was summoned to an unusual summer hearing after making similar accusations during an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that was broadcast two weeks ago. Those comments provoked widespread criticism, particularly from the Chinese-Canadians.

While Mr. Fadden had initially issued a statement in which he appeared to backtrack from his claim, he repeated the accusation on Monday and said that his agency planned to file a report with the government about the situation “within weeks.”

As he had before, Mr. Fadden cited national security laws in declining to identify the elected officials who he thought were under the influence of foreign governments. And while he did not explicitly name a country, he again broadly suggested that it was China.

While some members of the committee on public safety and national security asked Mr. Fadden to resign and questioned his judgment in making the remarks, he offered no apologies.

For those astonished he still hasn't been fired, wonder no more. The PMO web and the gruesome spider king at it's center have decided there are more votes to win from scape-goating, dark implications and vague accusations against the sinister 'yellow peril' than there are in apologizing for Fadden's original bizarre McCarthyite rant.

I don't even recognize this country anymore.

Quote of the Day

KRAKOW, Poland — Intolerant governments across the globe are "slowly crushing" activist and advocacy groups that play an essential role in the development of democracy, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday.

She cited a broad range of countries where "the walls are closing in" on civic organizations such as unions, religious groups, rights advocates and other nongovernmental organizations that press for social change and shine a light on governments' shortcomings.

Among those she named were Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, China and Russia.

"Some of the countries engaging in these behaviors still claim to be democracies," Clinton said at an international conference on the promotion of democracy and human rights. "Democracies don't fear their own people. They recognize that citizens must be free to come together, to advocate and agitate."

Does this mean Clinton will be pushing our government for an independent probe of the G20 police response? Will she condemn government attacks on critical NGOs in Israel and Canada?

Will she be publicly asking her own country's police force to renounce tactics like 'kettling' or other elements of the Miami model?

Or is this just a display of hypocrisy and calculation, referencing countries that are either international competitors or compliant client states that the US could administer more control over if they wished?