Following the deluge of accolades being given to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, I feel it might be a good idea to reiterate some of the reasons the Olympics were worth critiquing. On Feb 12, 2010, several thousand, old and young, wealthy and impoverished members of the public, took to the streets to protest a variety of issues. Some were focused on the upcoming Olympics due to be held in Sochi, near Chechnya, while others protested issues such as those surrounding native land claims.

Admittedly, I may not be completely representative of the majority of the protesters there that day, in that I was not advocating stopping the games, but rather was protesting a number of worrying aspects of its implementation and wanting to draw attention to how the games should be improved. Given that Vancouver had voted approvingly on hosting the Olympics, and that I do genuinely enjoy Winter sports, I was about as interested as I usually am in the actual events themselves.

Whatever the reasons may have been for other people, these were mine. Some of these concerns turned out to be misplaced and some of these points were considerably reinforced by what actually took place.

1. Barring journalists like Amy Goodman. There were a number of journalists prevented from entering Canada on similar grounds¹ but Amy’s celebrity from her show on National Public Radio made the seriousness of the situation that much more pronounced. “U.S. journalist Amy Goodman said she was stopped at a Canadian border crossing south of Vancouver on Wednesday and questioned for 90 minutes by authorities concerned she was coming to Canada to speak against the Olympics. Goodman says Canadian Border Services Agency officials ultimately allowed her to enter Canada but returned her passport with a document demanding she leave the country within 48 hours.” ²

2. Restrictions on Free-Association and Free-Expression. We were lucky enough that this went largely unenforced, but that was certainly not clear at the outset of the games. The specific language of worry was neatly expressed here: “To meet its contractual obligations, Vancouver’s council recently passed an omnibus bylaw amending dozens of existing laws…Among the changes are the creation of so-called free-speech zones and blocks of the city (including David Lam Park, the main library’s precinct and the Vancouver Art Gallery) where no political pamphlets, leaflets, graffiti or “non-celebratory posters” will be allowed.”³

Another serious point of contention was that only after a “flurry of bad press”⁴ was a relatively banal piece of artwork, featuring frowning Olympic rings, allowed to return to an East Van art gallery. The removal of the artwork raised the real concern that anti-Olympic expression was going to be muzzled, even on private property.

3. Public Surveillance. The prospect of turning Vancouver into a modern Beijing or London, with their unprecedented and unscrupulous public surveillance systems, is not very appealing⁶ (I don’t want to digress too much in explaining my opposition to this, but I do believe surveillance hinders our ability to act naturally, can be a political threat, and is very often misused). Thus, when it was reported⁷ that we would be installing about 1000 cameras around Whistler and Vancouver, I was a little concerned. During the games that it was announced that many of these cameras would become part of some kind of “redeployable unit”⁸…whatever wonderfulness that entails.

4. Inauthentic – “The artist shall at all times refrain from making any negative or derogatory remarks respecting VANOC, the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Olympic movement generally, Bell and/or other sponsors associated with VANOC.” As Canada’s poet laureate Brad Cran notes⁹, a meritable part of Vancouver’s history is its commitment to intellectual freedom: “I do find this to be an unjust attack on free speech but more importantly it shows that VANOC is misrepresenting Vancouver. Vancouver is the most politically progressive city in North America with a strong history of political activism which most Vancouverites are proud of. Rather than finding a way to celebrate these important attributes VANOC has gone the other way and tried to suppress them. As George Woodcock teaches us: our freedom as a city is a tradition that should be protected and we should not underestimate an attack on that freedom whether symbolic or otherwise.”

5. Spending Priorities – I can understand making room for the Olympics in the budget. But why is it acceptable for us to spend so much money¹⁰ on lavish displays for a small sector of elite executives and politicians while continuing cuts to various social welfare programs? “Total bill for Olympic tickets on the taxpayers’ tab: $3.3 million. And the government has still refused to say who’ll get ‘em and which events they’ll attend.”

I learned a lot from these Olympics but that is the subject for another article. There were a number of points that could have been made in addition to these, but I wanted to restrict myself to those points I felt most confident about. Whether or not the money spent on the Olympics could have been better spent elsewhere, whether or not taxpayers will get their money back in tax receipts and some degree of commercial trickle-down, and whether or not native land claims should have taken precedence over the will of the population, are questions I do not feel comfortable answering.

One thing is for sure, I have no regrets about protesting an Olympics that journalists are barred from and enjoying an Olympics that gave me two weeks off work

I had to repost this from Reddit (user: Pilebsa)

Reagan in a nutshell

Criminal:

• Iran-Contra treason.
• Lied about it.
• Likely encouraged Iran to keep US Embassy hostages until he was into office.

Fiscal:

• Supply-side economics.
• National debt tripled.
• $12 billion trade surplus –> $100+ billion trade deficit.
• Deregulated savings and loans, precipitated huge economic crisis.
• Tax raiser.
• Taxed the poor, cut taxes for the rich.
• SDI “Star Wars” boondoggle.
• Military spending increased to match imaginary spending in USSR.
• Deregulation caused oil bust.
• Broke air traffic control union.

Social:

• Gutted social welfare.
• Release of mental patients without recourse, homeless population up.
• Ignored AIDS crisis.
• Abstinence-only sex education.
• Strengthened ATF, banned automatic weapons, blamed Democrats for it.
• Increased spending for War on Drugs.
• National drinking age of 21.
• Underfunded NEA.
• EPA Superfund grants manipulated to help Republicans in local elections.
• Deregulated kids’ tv, initiated 22 minute toy ads.
• Killed energy programs.
• Crack in the ghettos. (? Due to support for Contras and Noriega?)

Foreign:

• Wars all over Central America, incl Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras.
• Promoted Iran-Iraq war.
• Sent Marines into Beirut, abandoned mission after terrorist bombing.
• Broke detente with USSR until Gorbachev personally made things better.
• Backed Contras in drug running schemes.
• Supported right-wing dictators and movements everywhere, including:
• Apartheid regime in SA.
• Marcos regime in Phillipines.
• Saddam Hussein and Baathist regime in Iraq, even after Kurds gassed.
• Taliban in Afghanistan.
• Manuel Noriega in Panama.
• Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

Concepts:

• Welfare queens.
• Trees cause pollution.
• Ketchup as a vegetable.

Appointments:

• 30+ convicted appointees.
• Ed Meese at Justice, porn freak.
• James Watt at Interior, idiot, corrupt.
• William Casey at CIA, religious nut, strikes into Uzbekistan. (? Uzb part of USSR, maybe mean Afghanistan?)
• HUD a corrupt mess in general.
• Politicised CIA.
• Robert Bork to SCOTUS (failed), segregationist and asshole.
• Antonin Scalia, same but he got in.

Personal:

• Unfit to serve due to Alzheimer’s disease by term’s end.
• Horrible excuse for a human being in general.
• McCarthyite.
• Neo-Conservative.
• Backed Moral Majority.
• Pardoned Robert Walker, who went on to kill his wife.
• Started presidential campaign at racist murder crime scene in Philadelphia, MS.
• Laid wreath and made speech at SS cemetery in Germany.
• Vietnam War a “noble cause.”
• Helped start right-wing noise machine. (? By promoting myth of liberal media?)
• Hated sex, made Ron Jr. feel like a sissy and quit ballet.
• Dumb as a stump.
• Believed in astrology and used it to run government.
• Innovated “talking points” cue cards.
• “I don’t recall” to weasel out of press questions.
• Confused movies with reality.
• Outlawed Russia forever, started bombing in five minutes.

One of the responses answered the next question: “And he has hero status why?”

A Reagan supporter once told me:

“Reagan didn’t take shit from anybody”.

Another supporter once said to me:

“You gotta admit, Reagan dealt a death blow to Communism”.

My simple interpretation: A lot of people (including smart people) liked Reagan’s style. Unfortunately, they were terribly ignorant of his actual policies.

In fact, even people who hate Reagan are often ignorant of the full scale of his damage. They just remember something that hit them personally, for example: (quote) “he cut my student loan”

Bottom line is presidential charisma + ignorant populace = reason #1

Reason #2 is a vast right-wing conspiracy that knows the truth but is trying to rewrite history. They’re the ones reponsible for plastering Reagan’s name on buildings everywhere, etc.

While we’ve all been fuming lately about the explicit tyranny of multinational oil and financial companies, the media’s role in our looming depression is just as criminal. Unbelievably, the gap between media coverage and reality seems to grow as their market share falls. You would think they would get it. You would think that they would begin to understand that they are being punished by their readers for telling obvious lies and having obvious bias. The coverage surrounding the Israeli/Palestine massacre is just the latest example of the corporate media’s commitment fascism. With this in mind, I felt it important to quote a list that offers some counter-arguments to the media’s axiomatic talking points about the nature of this conflict.

Top 5 Lies About Israel’s Assault on Gaza by Jeremy R. Hammond

Posted by: Amir Sahib In: Israel| Palestine| War

Lie #1) Israel is only targeting legitimate military sites and is seeking to protect innocent lives. Israel never targets civilians.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated pieces of property in the world. The presence of militants within a civilian population does not, under international law, deprive that population of their protected status, and hence any assault upon that population under the guise of targeting militants is, in fact, a war crime.

 

Moreover, the people Israel claims are legitimate targets are members of Hamas, which Israel says is a terrorist organization. Hamas has been responsible for firing rockets into Israel. These rockets are extremely inaccurate and thus, even if Hamas intended to hit military targets within Israel, are indiscriminate by nature. When rockets from Gaza kill Israeli civilians, it is a war crime.

Hamas has a military wing. However, it is not entirely a military organization, but a political one. Members of Hamas are the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people. Dozens of these elected leaders have been kidnapped and held in Israeli prisons without charge. Others have been targeted for assassination, such as Nizar Rayan, a top Hamas official. To kill Rayan, Israel targeted a residential apartment building. The strike not only killed Rayan but two of his wives and four of his children, along with six others. There is no justification for such an attack under international law. This was a war crime.

Other of Israel’s bombardment with protected status under international law have included a mosque, a prison, police stations, and a university, in addition to residential buildings.

Moreover, Israel has long held Gaza under siege, allowing only the most minimal amounts of humanitarian supplies to enter. Israel is bombing and killing Palestinian civilians. Countless more have been wounded, and cannot receive medical attention. Hospitals running on generators have little or no fuel. Doctors have no proper equipment or medical supplies to treat the injured. These people, too, are the victims of Israeli policies targeted not at Hamas or legitimate military targets, but directly designed to punish the civilian population.

Lie #2) Hamas violated the cease-fire. The Israeli bombardment is a response to Palestinian rocket fire and is designed to end such rocket attacks.

Israel never observed the cease-fire to begin with. From the beginning, it announced a “special security zone” within the Gaza Strip and announced that Palestinians who enter this zone will be fired upon. In other words, Israel announced its intention that Israeli soldiers would shoot at farmers and other individuals attempting to reach their own land in direct violation of not only the cease-fire but international law.

Despite shooting incidents, including ones resulting in Palestinians getting injured, Hamas still held to the cease-fire from the time it went into effect on June 19 until Israel effectively ended the truce on November 4 by launching an airstrike into Gaza that killed five and injured several others.

Israel’s violation of the cease-fire predictably resulted in retaliation from militants in Gaza who fired rockets into Israel in response. The increased barrage of rocket fire at the end of December is being used as justification for the continued Israeli bombardment, but is a direct response by militants to the Israeli attacks.

Israel’s actions, including its violation of the cease-fire, predictably resulted in an escalation of rocket attacks against its own population.

Lie #3) Hamas is using human shields, a war crime.

There has been no evidence that Hamas has used human shields. The fact is, as previously noted, Gaza is a small piece of property that is densely populated. Israel engages in indiscriminate warfare such as the assassination of Nizar Rayan, in which members of his family were also murdered. It is victims like his dead children that Israel defines as “human shields” in its propaganda. There is no legitimacy for this interpretation under international law. In circumstances such as these, Hamas is not using human shields, Israel is committing war crimes in violation of the Geneva Conventions and other applicable international law.

Lie #4) Arab nations have not condemned Israel’s actions because they understand Israel’s justification for its assault.

The populations of those Arab countries are outraged at Israel’s actions and at their own governments for not condemning Israel’s assault and acting to end the violence. Simply stated, the Arab governments do not represent their respective Arab populations. The populations of the Arab nations have staged mass protests in opposition to not only Israel’s actions but also the inaction of their own governments and what they view as either complacency or complicity in Israel’s crimes.

Moreover, the refusal of Arab nations to take action to come to the aid of the Palestinians is not because they agree with Israel’s actions, but because they are submissive to the will of the US, which fully supports Israel. Egypt, for instance, which refused to open the border to allow Palestinians wounded in the attacks to get medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals, is heavily dependent upon US aid, and is being widely criticized within the population of the Arab countries for what is viewed as an absolute betrayal of the Gaza Palestinians.

Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been regarded as a traitor to his own people for blaming Hamas for the suffering of the people of Gaza. Palestinians are also well aware of Abbas’ past perceived betrayals in conniving with Israel and the US to sideline the democratically elected Hamas government, culminating in a counter-coup by Hamas in which it expelled Fatah (the military wing of Abbas’ Palestine Authority) from the Gaza Strip. While his apparent goal was to weaken Hamas and strengthen his own position, the Palestinians and other Arabs in the Middle East are so outraged at Abbas that it is unlikely he will be able to govern effectively.

Lie #5) Israel is not responsible for civilian deaths because it warned the Palestinians of Gaza to flee areas that might be targeted.

Israel claims it sent radio and telephone text messages to residents of Gaza warning them to flee from the coming bombardment. But the people of Gaza have nowhere to flee to. They are trapped within the Gaza Strip. It is by Israeli design that they cannot escape across the border. It is by Israeli design that they have no food, water, or fuel by which to survive. It is by Israeli design that hospitals in Gaza have no electricity and few medical supplies with which to treat the injured and save lives. And Israel has bombed vast areas of Gaza, targeting civilian infrastructure and other sites with protected status under international law. No place is safe within the Gaza Strip.

http://www.amirsahib.com/top-5-lies-about-israels-assault-on-gaza-by-jeremy-r-hammond

Quebec,

I got no beef with you. I’m sorry the Conservatives act like everyone in the West wants you to leave.

From,

Vancouver

1. Bill C-61: Conservative commitment to the unenforceable and distinctly unfair, bill C-61. Why is this an important issue? Here are just a few reasons (source: http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2008/06/16/talking-points-to-defeat-bill-c-61/): “It forces you to buy media you’ve already purchased”, “it makes your devices less useful”, “consumers will be unable to influence the market by finding new uses for their existing media and copyrighted materials”, and “it makes the public domain works inaccessible”, to name but a few aspects. Read the article for more.

2. Climate Change and the environment: The recently announced environmental policies in the conservative party platform are yet again, a sad excuse at pretending to care about the environment. Not one environmental organization I could find gave it a thumbs up. “The Conservative party platform missed the opportunity to strengthen the party’s inadequate approach to global warming, and instead added more uncertainty to it. The party also failed to announce support for a key renewable energy program that’s about to expire, and did not offer a strategy to deal with the environmental impacts of runaway oil sands development.” (source: http://www.pembina.org/election2008/blog/Cons-Platform) More: “The Conservatives’ national emissions target for 2020, which is equivalent to just 3% below the 1990 level, falls far short of both the targets adopted by leading countries and of what the science tells us we need. Mr. Harper has called global warming “perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today ” That urgency is nowhere to be found in the party’s platform.” And perhaps the most impressive evidence that “doing something” will not actually destroy our economy: “Between 1990 and 2006 Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9%, largely exceeding the target set by the Kyoto Protocol, while enjoying economic growth of 44% in fixed prices.” (source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/29/climatechange.carbonemissions)

3. Anti-Green Energy: We are missing important alternative energy opportunities because of Harper’s bias towards the oil industry. A really tangible example is this: “the founder of a Canadian-made, 100 per cent electric car says the federal government is blocking him from selling his cars in Canada. Warehoused Zenn cars in St. Jerome, Que. (CBC) The ZENN (zero emissions, no noise) electric car is already being sold in the United States, Mexico, and Europe, where it has won awards” (source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/10/26/electriccar-zenn.html). A more abstract statement from the Toronto Sun: “Canada fails to recognize that there’s money to be made in developing a green economy, some of Canada’s brightest scientists heard yesterday at a 20-year conference reunion. ‘There is profit to be made in developing technology to fight pollution’, said Howard Ferguson, the original chairman of the historic climate Our Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security conference in 1988. About a dozen of some of Canada’s eminent scientific minds — Nobel Prize winners among them — shared ideas and reunited yesterday to mark the 20th anniversary of the conference in Canada and lambast the world’s inaction”. Another opinion; “the Conservatives remain the only party not to signal a renewal of support for green electricity. The ecoENERGY for Renewable Power program will run out of money this coming year, stranding billions of dollars of investment. A lack of leadership on renewable power in Canada means that investors will likely seek opportunities in the United States, which recently  announced a decision to continue its support for renewable power. Canada’s green power industry will continue to fall behind the Americans without a renewal of federal support – and this platform failed to make that commitment”. (source: http://www.pembina.org/election2008/blog/Cons-Platform)

4. Reduced Transparency: Elected on the promise of making government more open to the public, Harper has done the exact opposite. “Too often, responses to access requests are late, incomplete, or overly censored,” Information Commissioner Robert Marleau said in an introduction to his first annual report. “Too often, access is denied to hide wrongdoing, or to protect officials or governments from embarrassment, rather than to serve a legitimate confidentiality requirement”. (source: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=cf2b9830-7185-4036-bf8e-f164fca973ca&k=7741) This, combined with Harper’s reduction in press conferences (refusing to meet with the Parliamentary Press Gallery) and strangle-hold on party opinions, is not only breaking an election promise but damages Canadian democracy.

5. Telecommunications, Banking and Media Monopolies: Who likes paying higher cellular data rates than Rwanda? (source: http://blogs.itworldcanada.com/idol/2008/05/26/why-is-canada-more-expensive-than-rwanda-for-mobile-data-access/) Who likes the fact that Japan has Internet that is 8x faster than ours at a fraction of the cost? (source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/AR2007082801990.html?nav=rss_technology) The difference? “In 2000, the Japanese government seized its advantage in wire…. regulators [in Japan] compelled big phone companies to open up wires to upstart Internet providers”. I’m sure Harper loves that idea.

Then there’s the 10% – 20% fees to access your money at ATM’s in addition to a host of other unpopular banking service fees. This industry accounts for the highest volume of consumer complaints to the Better Business Bureau. The public opinion polls on this are enough to make the case: “In response to the question, ‘Do you agree or disagree with the suggestion that the federal government should ban fees charged when people use ATMs of financial institutions other than their own?’, 70% of Canadians agreed, while only 26% disagreed”. (source: NRG: Research Group)

And finally, the pathetic media situation in Canada. One really has to look no further than the Vancouver Sun and Province to get a sense for what’s wrong here. “In addition to the National Post, CanWest now owns 14 large city dailies, 120 smaller dailies and weeklies, and the Global TV network, Canada’s second-largest private broadcaster. The company also has private TV networks in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, among other holdings”….”CanWest chair Israel (“Izzy”) Asper [this is a 2002 article] told the CanWest Global annual shareholders meeting on January 30 that “on national and international key issues we should have one, not 14, editorial positions.” But this reverses the guarantee of local autonomy the newspaper chains promised regulators when they were allowed to amass their empires, gobbling up independent dailies from the 1970s through the 1990s.” (source: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1106) As a result of this media concentration, Canadians get inundated with inaccurate information that suits the economic interests of one company.

6. Shameful Foreign Policy: This is very simple. We as Canadians are complicit in torture thanks to our involvement in Afghanistan. TORTURE! TORTURE! TORTURE! TORTURE! “The government had initially denied the existence of [evidence of torture], stating in writing that ‘no such report on human-rights performance in other countries exists’. The Globe and Mail subsequently used the access of information law to force the government to turn over a copy of the report, which is titled ‘Afghanistan 2006: Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights’. But the report given the Globe had been heavily censored in the name of ‘national security’; numerous passages depicting the deplorable human rights situation in Afghanistan and the violation of basic civil liberties by Afghan authorities were blacked out” (source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/afgh-a27.shtml). The Liberals have a shared shame here, as they got us in to that wonderful hornets nest.

What else can be said?

Continuing to fail on our foreign aid obligations: “The Harper government has been silent as to Canada’s obligations to alleviate poverty around the world and to increase aid to reach the target of 0.7% of GDP” (source: http://www.greenparty.ca/en/policy/visiongreen/partfive).

Uncritical support of Israeli and American war-crimes in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq; Including the forced retraction of a government report critical of Guantanamo Bay.

7. Drug Policy: Against a growing body of medical evidence and against the wishes of the majority of the population (55% in favour of complete legalization, source: http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/16300), the conservatives continue to insist on criminalizing drugs like marijuana. From the Canadian Medical Association Journal: “Mr. Justice Minister, let’s decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use.”
(source: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/186/canadianmedical.shtml) Thousands of Canadians are unfairly imprisoned for marjiuana related offences, many thousands more have criminal records as a result, and finally, organized crime is being fueled by this incompetent and ignorant policy.

8. Ideologically motivated arts cuts [Possibly retracted due to popular opposition]: Despite a net increase to Canadian Heritage funding (less this year), selective funding cuts to some arts programs are a genuine concern. Some of the stated reasons for the cuts were that the programs included: a “general radical”, “a left-wing and anti-globalization think-tank” and a “rock band that uses an expletive as part of its name”. Harper seeks to fund artistic programs that are uncritical, unquestioning and uncontroversial to his power base. Independence be damned.

9. Secret Trade and Security Agreements: Have you heard of the SPP? ACTA? No? Maybe that’s because these agreements are being negotiated with no public input, just like NAFTA. These are perhaps the most important problems on this list. The criticisms of these agreements are deep enough that you really need to do background reading to understand what’s happening. Here are some brief criticisms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_Prosperity_Partnership_of_North_America#Criticism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement#Criticism

Beyond ACTA and the SPP, our existing international trade regimen under NAFTA and individually under the WTO, need to change. These agreements continue the trend of leveraging capital flight to drive down wages, exploiting countries with the laxest environmental and labour standards for manufacturing and ultimately continue the 30 year downward spiral of middle class real-wages. “the substantial economic gains of the past quarter-century have not been fairly shared. Thanks to Canadians working harder and smarter, the national economy grew by a stunning 50 per cent. Yet median earnings, the midpoint of the income continuum, remained virtually unchanged.” (source: http://www.thestar.com/Canada/Census/article/420651)

10. The Old Stuff: This is the stuff everyone worried about before the conservatives were first elected but has been kept under control by the fact that they had a minority government. Should the conservatives get a majority, these issues are back on the table and nobody really knows what they’ll do. Issues surrounding: the public health-care system, the poor judgment behind supporting the Iraq war, the CBC, abortion, and a host of issues regarding privatization of public assets. On all of these issues, the conservatives have extremely unpopular opinions but Harper has muzzled his MP’s to such a degree that the public simply has no idea what might happen. Not even myself. Either way, it wont be good.

11. This a bonus criticism. It is completely ideological so I did not include it in the top 10. The economic crisis we are currently seeing around the world will force us to make some very difficult decisions. Canada is not immune from the problems, however buffered we have been so far. If we do have a depression on our hands, it would be wise to remember how these kinds of problems were dealt with in the past. FDR, who is commonly attributed with lifting America out of the depression, invested massively in public works projects to spur the economy and get people working again. In contrast to this, FDR was strongly opposed by the business community. To the point that a fascist coup attempt devised by prominent business leaders, was only narrowly defeated. I’m not saying Harper is fascist; certainly not. I am saying that he has demonstrated, via Bill C-61 and his treatment of the press, that he does not adequately understand the importance of democracy and this could lead to policies that  make a bad situation worse. Make what you will of this criticism, only time will tell.

And the other candidates?

Elizabeth May – She actually seems relatively articulate and vaguely on the same page with the criticisms outlined here. There are some nuts in the Green Party so be careful and candidate specific. Vote for her if it doesn’t matter in your riding.

Jack Layton – The best of the major candidates. Has very well articulated stances on all the issues mentioned here. Generally the best option in this election.

Stephan Dion – Only vote for your liberal candidate if the situation is desperate. Their policies are only marginally better than the conservatives, but it’s enough to matter. They do have a better environmental platform than the conservatives and don’t have quite the same contempt of the democratic process. ie: In my old riding Deborah Meredith didn’t even show up to debates, additionally, in the Vancouver Center debate I went to two weeks ago, Lorne Mayencourt also refused to go. From what I’ve seen this is typically the trend.

Stephen Harper – Fail.

And Finally:

http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/

Like many people, I have mixed feelings about Hezbollah. On the one hand they seem to be closely tied to the corrupt clerics in Iran and are no stranger to anti-semitic remarks; but on the other, they are all that stand between Israel and their predilection for massacres in Southern Lebanon like those at Sabra and Shatila. I read comments by Chomsky who met Hassan Nasrallah right before Israel’s brutal assault on Lebanon last year, that he was actually a fairly nice and well-meaning man but it wasn’t followed up by much more other than to talk about the war. It was interesting then to read the other day when a fellow Zmag forum poster asked Chomsky this question:

Professor Chomsky,

if you were nasrallah would you give up hezballah’s weapons? do you think they ought to? barsamian asked you in what we say goes what you think of him and you responded that he is a very pragmatic man. could you possibly elaborate? does he seem like an honest, compassionate man?

i have a sort of bias towards nasrallah because he’s the only arab whose speeches are translated into english and put on youtube, great way to learn arabic, so i’ve literally gone through and analyzed each word of 4 of his speeches.

To which Chomsky’s response was as follows:

Reply from NC,

My impression is about the same as others who have met him: for example, Edward Peck, White House official responsible for terrorism in the Reagan administration, who described Nasrallah, after an interview, as having given “a logical, reasonable presentation…just an educated intelligent man talking about serious issues that he perceived.” On Hizbollah’s weapons, his position, as I understand it, is pretty simple. The first question is whether Lebanon has a right to have a deterrent against US-backed Israeli aggression. If the answer is “No,” then Hezbollah has no right to weapons. But it’s a strange answer after five such invasions, each murderous and destructive, one of which killed some 15-20,000 people and destroyed much of the country, all of them without credible pretext. Suppose, then, that the answer is “Yes.” Then what would the deterrent be? One answer would be a credible US guarantee, but that’s not in the cards (to our shame). Could it be the Lebanese army? No one believes that. We’re left with one deterrent: Hezbollah. When I was in Lebanon in 2006, before the latest Israeli invasion, I spent a fair amount of time with some of the strongest opponents of Hezbollah, and continually raised this question. No one had an answer.

I’d like to see a credible international guarantee against further US-backed Israeli aggression. Short of that, it’s hard to see what the argument would be for Hezbollah to give up its weapons, though no doubt it is highly undesirable for a state to harbor an internal non-state military force.

The outstanding Lebanese journalist Rami Khouri, writing in the major English language Lebanese newspaper, captured the basic point rather well: “Hamas and Hizbullah are among the most effective and legitimate political movements in the Arab world: They have forced unilateral Israeli retreats that no Arab army could induce; won elections democratically without resorting to the gerrymandering or ballot box stuffing that most American-supported Arab regimes live by; provided efficient service delivery and local governance to their constituents; and sustained resistance to Israeli occupation that appeals to the desire of ordinary Arabs to restore dignity to their battered lives and to their shattered, hollow political systems.”

That’s exactly why they are hated and feared by the US and Israel.

NC

Kind of puts the organization in an interesting light.

While finding headlines for Novemberfourth.org the other day, I noticed something strange about the submissions on Digg pertaining to McCain and Palin. An enormous amount of them had been marked as being potentially inaccurate. This struck me as odd, since many of the submissions were simply true or false. It wasn’t like there was much room for interpretation. Just have a look at these examples:

Well, did he or didn't he?

A satirical voicemail can be inaccurate?

Was it or wasn't it?

So every claim made by Palin was exactly true?

So maybe Digg needs an accuracy vouching system? Where users can override these kinds of claims at times when “possibly inaccurate” is “possibly inaccurate”. However, this does come right on the heels of complaints by many users that Digg has a liberal bias and that many rumours about Sarah Palin were shown to be false. So what to do?

I think some more bury options might help. Something like “Misleading Title”, “Remember it’s Innocent Until Proven Guilty”, “Omitting too Many Relevant Facts” etc… All of these provide more precise information then the vaguer “Possibly Inaccurate”

newspaper-warning

the image is 4.25 by 2.75 inches, perfectly designed for the $20/175 package of stickers at http://www.123stickers.com/

While reading this post last night about the bond market, I couldn’t help but notice the graphic linked halfway down. It’s a graph mapping the correlation between recessions and some other economic stuff. What caught my eye though is that according to the chart, every single recession in the last half a century has occurred under a Republican.

The following is a transcript of a conversation between Noam Chomsky and a Zmag forum user. It discusses some of the similarities and differences between the two schools of libertarian thought which have been discussed on this blog before. (Chomsky is in bold).

Hello Mr. Chomsky.
I’m assuming you know who Ron Paul is.
And I’m also assuming you have a general idea about his positions.

Here my summary of Mr. Paul’s positions:
- He values property rights, and contracts between people (defended by law enforcement and courts).

Under all circumstances? Suppose someone facing starvation accepts a contract with General Electric that requires him to work 12 hours a day locked into a factory with no health-safety regulations, no security, no benefits, etc. And the person accepts it because the alternative is that his children will starve. Fortunately, that form of savagery was overcome by democratic politics long ago. Should all of those victories for poor and working people be dismantled, as we enter into a period of private tyranny (with contracts defended by law enforcement)? Not my cup of tea.

- He wants to take away the unfair advantage corporations have (via the dismantling of big government)

“Dismantling of big government” sounds like a nice phrase. What does it mean? Does it mean that corporations go out of existence, because there will no longer be any guarantee of limited liability? Does it mean that all health, safety, workers rights, etc., go out the window because they were instituted by public pressures implemented through government, the only component of the governing system that is at least to some extent accountable to the public (corporations are unaccountable, apart from generally weak regulatory apparatus)? Does it mean that the economy should collapse, because basic R&D is typically publicly funded — like what we’re now using, computers and the internet? Should we eliminate roads, schools, public transportation, environmental regulation,….? Does it mean that we should be ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability to the general public, while all democratic forms are tossed out the window? Quite a few questions arise.

- He defends workers right to organize (so long as owners have the right to argue against it).

Rights that are enforced by state police power, as you’ve already mentioned.

There are huge differences between workers and owners. Owners can fire and intimidate workers, not conversely. just for starters. Putting them on a par is effectively supporting the rule of owners over workers, with the support of state power — itself largely under owner control, given concentration of resources.

- He proposes staying out of the foreign affairs of other nations (unless his home is directly attacked, and must respond to defend it).

He is proposing a form of ultranationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our preserving our own wealth and extraordinary advantages, getting out of the UN, rejecting any international prosecution of US criminals (for aggressive war, for example), etc. Apart from being next to meaningless, the idea is morally unacceptable, in my view.

I really can’t find differences between your positions and his.

There’s a lot more. Take Social Security. If he means what he says literally, then widows, orphans, the disabled who didn’t themselves pay into Social Security should not benefit (or of course those awful illegal aliens). His claims about SS being “broken” are just false. He also wants to dismantle it, by undermining the social bonds on which it is based — the real meaning of offering younger workers other options, instead of having them pay for those who are retired, on the basis of a communal decision based on the principle that we should have concern for others in need. He wants people to be able to run around freely with assault rifles, on the basis of a distorted reading of the Second Amendment (and while we’re at it, why not abolish the whole raft of constitutional provisions and amendments, since they were all enacted in ways he opposes?).

So I have these questions:

1) Can you please tell me the differences between your schools of “Libertarianism”?

There are a few similarities here and there, but his form of libertarianism would be a nightmare, in my opinion — on the dubious assumption that it could even survive for more than a brief period without imploding.

2) Can you please tell me what role “private property” and “ownership” have in your school of “Libertarianism”?

That would have to be worked out by free communities, and of course it is impossible to respond to what I would prefer in abstraction from circumstances, which make a great deal of difference, obviously.

3) Would you support Ron Paul, if he was the Republican presidential candidate…and Hilary Clinton was his Democratic opponent?

No.