» Archive: July 2003
The Conceited Empire
The Interview with Emmanuel Todd from the most recent issue has been getting a lot of attention. Notably, a discussion at Metafilter and a few other weblogs.
Feds agree to delay contentious health forms
In an update to Sign or else....
( CBC North ) - The Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami is declaring success in its objections to some new forms that the federal health department wants Inuit and First Nations people to sign before they receive some types of medical care.Federal health minister Anne McLellan says she's accepting the group's proposal to delay the deadline on new health consent forms.
The new deadline is March 1, next year. If the government sticks to the new deadline, Inuit and First Nations people would have to sign consent forms in order to receive non-insured health benefits.
ITK has been negotiating with Health Canada for changes to the form and, more recently, a delay in the implementation date.
Lots of Liberal Party Members
Globe and Mail: "The federal Liberal party says it has reached historic membership levels, with a roster of card-carrying members that dwarfs the population of Halifax."
Momentum
Anthony Lappé: Has Bush "jumped the shark?"
The phrase was coined by a popular web site that tracks the exact moment when TV shows pass their prime and devolve into mediocrity. The term derives from an episode of "Happy Days" in which Fonzie jumps over a shark on water skis. Apparently, the show sucked after that.
The wave of negative coverage that hit the White House last week has many people asking if it's all downhill from here for the President.
The Administration is under attack from almost every quarter. Even Republicans and Fox News are asking hard questions. It's almost as if the mainstream media had cattle prods attached to the parts of their brains that stimulate critical thinking.
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Ralph Nader writes in his 2002 book "Crashing the Party" that journalists are like birds on a telephone wire. They wait for one to take off and then follow en mass. There needs to be a critical mass of criticism before a story, or a line of inquiry, can become safe. Unlike Fonzie's ill-advised attempt at water sports, there is no formula to determine the precise moment when the mainstream media adopts a new master narrative that guides their coverage. It can come from pressure from partisan politicians, outpourings of public dissatisfaction, or when, as in the Niger case, the lies become an 800-lb gorilla that are simply impossible to ignore. Usually, it is a combination of all of the above.
Monsanto Sues Over Hormone-free Labelling
St. Louis Business Journal: "Monsanto Co. has sued a Maine dairy over the dairy's labeling that seems to disparage the use of artificial growth hormones in cows, the New York Times reported. "Monsanto, which makes the artificial growth hormone Posilac, is accusing Oakhurst Dairy of Portland, Maine, of misleading and disparaging marketing practices with the labels, which suggest that milk that comes from cows treated with the hormone is unsafe or lower in quality, the paper reported. Posilac, which helps cows produce more milk, has been on the market since 1994 and is used in about one third of the nation's 9 million dairy cows, according to the company's Web site."
Maine Press Herald: "To some Maine dairy farmers, there's clear reason why Monsanto Corp. sued Oakhurst Dairy last week over its marketing of milk produced without artificial hormones: Monsanto is staging a last-ditch effort to save a product that seems to be losing favor among New England farmers and consumers alike."
Iraq Updates
Agence France-Presse: "There were no regrets in Thursday's Arab press over the death of Saddam Hussein's notorious sons, but newspapers doubted that the killing of Uday and Qusay by US forces would ease anti-US resistance in Iraq. 'Those defending Iraq are unknown people whose statues are not erected on the streets and whose activities do not hinge on the presence or otherwise of Saddam, Uday, Qusay and all the clique that ruled the country with iron and fire,' wrote Saudi Arabia's Al Watan."
Associated Press: "Calling them 'dangerously irresponsible,' a federal judge sentenced three nuns to at least 2 1/2 years in prison Friday for vandalizing a nuclear missile silo during an antiwar protest last fall. Despite his strong words, U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn gave the women less than the six-year minimum called for under sentencing guidelines."
Reuters: "Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is running full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers on Sunday challenging the honesty of the Bush administration's case for waging war in Iraq. The ads in The New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle, are titled, 'When the nation goes to war, the people deserve the truth.' A dozen statements made by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld making the case for war are reprinted and described as either exaggerated or false."
Ethical Barcodes
The Corporate Fallout Detector is a very interesting proof-of-concept by a PhD candidate at MIT.
The Corporate Fallout Detector reads barcodes off of consumer products, and makes a noise similar to a gieger counter of varying intensity based on the social or environmental record of the company that produces the product. I came up with the numbers by correlating several online bardcode databases with a pollution database and a corporate ethics database. Of course the data produced by this approach is subjective and inaccurate at times, but that's part of why I built it: It's difficult for consumers trace corporate actions through the maze of corporate ownership, and find who is really responsible. This helps create an environment where consumers have difficulty making informed purchasing decisions.... without the use of "special tools"... The case is made from a discarded steel computer case, cut on a waterjet cutter and bent with a metal brake. Inside is a SaJe microcontroller and a Wasp barcode scanner.
Issue #4
Issue #4 of the Dominion is finally up, with all the attendant good stuff.
Double standards
A collection of items on the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein.
First, an article from the World Socialist Website notes that although Hussein's sons were obviously violent and reprehensible human beings, the violence of their deaths and the glee with which those bloody deaths were greeted in the U.S. is just as distasteful. Why weren't they taken alive?
The exultation of US and British officials and the media over the killings in Mosul—which included the death of the 14-year-old son of Qusay Hussein, Mustapha—can only arouse revulsion. The pleasure that these circles take in bloodletting and violence has a pathological character.
Second, the U.S. has released photographs of the dead bodies of Uday and Qusay despite raising an uproar when the Iraqis published photos of dead U.S. soldiers during the war. This article focuses on the alleged internal conflict among U.S. officials about whether or not to publish the photos, but ignores the simple fact that whether or not they "prove" that the men are dead, it's a moot point--publishing such photos is still illegal under the Geneva Convention no matter what the purpose. The U.S. obviously knows this because they raised this point when photos of their own soldiers were shown. Of course, neither this article nor mainstream publications at the time mentioned that the U.S itself contravened the convention by showing photos/footage of Iraqi prisoners of war, not to mention showing footage of captured people on the way to Guantanamo, both of which also technically contravened the conventions.
The Scotsman: "Our norm is that we don’t do that, and that we find it offensive to see that kind of thing on television. We have to balance that with our effort to ensure that the Iraqi people know that Qusay and Uday are no longer alive."
An article in the Star notes the similarity between sticking the heads of dead enemies on pikes in wars of the past with the use of Internet photos today.
You can also read the CBC online response to the photos--generally, comments seem to be disgusted with it.
Sign or else: Consent form deadline looms next month
Critics say NIHB form violates privacy rights as well as Nunavut land claim agreement
( Nunatsiaq News ) - Inuit patients in Nunavut have less than five weeks to sign a mandatory form surrendering their right to medical privacy, or run the risk of being denied essential medical care.Called the "NIHB Program Consent Form," the document gives Health Canada bureaucrats — and numerous Health Canada agents and contractors — permission to look at sensitive personal information contained in medical files.
In essence the Federal government is demanding that aboriginal people sign a blanket consent form written in a language they may or may not understand that gives others access to their health care records - or face the loss of medical benefits.
Amid cheers, the hollow sound of decay
[Note: since we don't run opinion articles in the print version of the Dominion due to space constraints and priorities, we will occasionally run submissions on the weblog.]
With an easy stride, many in Oregon accepted the fact that public school students would be spending Fridays at home or in the streets vandalizing public property. There was a war going on and CNN insinuated that the victory over evil in a distant land would flood the United States with luxury cars, cheap gas, and a return to the standard of living we enjoyed during the Clinton administration. Only those who lost their state subsidized medical insurance were up in arms in March, and they only numbered 150,000 or a few more. Police departments, mental health services, and temporary assistance programs for needy families seemed like inconsequential sacrifices in light of the imminent menace of foreign terrorism.
read more...Kissing, Groping at Klein Speech
CBC: "A speech on Tuesday by Alberta Premier Ralph Klein in Edmonton was accompanied by much kissing and fondling. Klein had just begun speaking to a crowd of about 6,000 gathered for pancakes and sausages at the city's annual Klondike Days breakfast when six same-sex couples rushed the stage and began kissing."
The blind leading .......
While same sex couples from south of the border are heading for Ontario to get married the Canadian Arctic is somewhat more reluctant.
( CBC North ) IQALUIT, Nunavut - The Nunavut government is not going to start registering same-sex marriages until the proposed new federal legislation is reviewed by the Supreme Court.
For those following the issue this is not surprising given the views of MLA's like Enoki Irqittuq who is
( Lifesite ) .....taking a strong stand against the inclusion of "equal protection" for homosexuals under human rights legislation being considered by territorial lawmakers."I do want the human rights act for Nunavut, but to recognize lesbian and gay rights, it's absolutely unfathomable," Irqittuq says. "In the South, people are free to do as they wish; for Inuit, I would outright refuse such a provision in the human rights act. It's not our lifestyle."
... and a Premier who believes that
There is no homosexual activity going on in Nunavut's jail
Informed Comment
Juan Cole's Informed Comment has a constant flow of decent analysis of Iraq and the Middle East. One recent comment:
The unilateralists in the Bush administration, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, are going to have to eat crow and bring the United Nations aboard to help them rebuild Iraq. They can't get India, Russia, Egypt or anyone else to lend troops to the effort of providing security without an explicit UN mandate. The UN Security Council, moreover, is not going to give them such a mandate for free. It would have to make the rebuilding and decision-making about the future of Iraq much more multilateral. (You will note that Wolfowitz has stopped boasting about how France would be "punished" for its opposition to the war). UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has even called for an explicit timetable for US withdrawal. The Washington hawks are openly contemptuous of the UN, and their need for it is extremely humiliating. They never thought Kofi Annan would have *them* by the balls. But the numbers are undeniable. The occupation of Iraq is costing the US nearly $4 bn. a month; Bush's tax cuts provoked a $450 bn. budget deficit (which doesn't even include the Iraq expenses); and there are not enough US troops to cover Korea, Japan, Germany, Afghanistan and Iraq and also provide for frequent troop rotation so that our guys can get home after six months rather than stretching the tour of duty to a whole year. A whole year in a combat zone is a long time.
Counterpunch Selections
Allan J. Lichtman: Why is George Bush President?
George W. Bush is president today because the votes counted in Florida's presidential election did not match the ballots cast by the state's voters. But the outcome in Florida--which determined the presidency--was not decided by hanging chads, recounts, or intervention by the Supreme Court.
Al Gore lost Florida's presidential vote because electoral officials tossed into the trashcan as invalid more than one out of every ten ballots cast by African-Americans throughout the state. In some counties, nearly 25 percent of ballots cast by blacks were set aside as invalid. In contrast, officials rejected only about one out of every fifty ballots cast by whites statewide.
Edward Said: Rule by the Blind: Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping of Arabs
Americans are sufficiently blind that when a Middle Eastern leader emerges whom our leaders like--the shah of Iran or Anwar Sadat--it is assumed that he is a visionary who does things our way not because he understands the game of imperial power (which is to survive by humoring the regnant authority) but because he is moved by principles that we share.
Almost a quarter of a century after his assassination, Sadat is a forgotten and unpopular man in his own country because most Egyptians regard him as having served the U.S. first, not Egypt. The same is true of the shah in Iran. That Sadat and the shah were followed in power by rulers who are less palatable to the U.S. indicates not that Arabs are fanatics, but that the distortions of imperialism produce further distortions, inducing extreme forms of resistance and political self-assertion.
Steve Kretzman and Jim Vallette: Plugging Iraq into Globalization
In early April, during the initial assault on Baghdad, soldiers set up forward bases named Camp Shell and Camp Exxon until Pentagon PR realized that didn't look very good and ordered them renamed. Those soldiers knew the score. Several months and dozens of lives later, Bechtel, Halliburton, and a host of oil companies are ensuring that the fledgling "free market" in Iraq will be particularly free for US corporations.
The ultimate prize in Iraq, of course, is oil, and the Bush/Cheney gang has uncoiled a vastly underreported legal and financial cord that plugs U.S corporate control into these resources at least through the year 2007. The basic wiring has two prongs and is already complete. The first part, created by the UN under US pressure is the Development Fund for Iraq– which is to be controlled by the US and advised by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Unsurprisingly, this is looking more and more like a slush fund for corporate welfare. The second is a recent Bush executive order that provides absolute legal protection for U.S. interests in Iraqi oil. And a third and final prong is being crafted to ground the whole system and get as much profit as possible out of it.
Objectivity, take III
Columbia Journalism Review Re-thinking Objectivity
['Objectivity'] exacerbates our tendency to rely on official sources, which is the easiest, quickest way to get both the "he said" and the "she said," and, thus, "balance." According to numbers from the media analyst Andrew Tyndall, of the 414 stories on Iraq broadcast on NBC, ABC, and CBS from last September to February, all but thirty-four originated at the White House, Pentagon, and State Department. So we end up with too much of the "official" truth. More important, objectivity makes us wary of seeming to argue with the president - or the governor, or the ceo - and risk losing our access. Jonathan Weisman, an economics reporter for The Washington Post, says this about the fear of losing access: "If you are perceived as having a political bias, or a slant, you're screwed."What frustrates me is the baffling yet prevalent belief that questions can be objective. Not only is it nonsensical to say that a question is objective, the question is necessary before objectivity is even possible.
If I say "blue", that statement is not objective, it's just a word. But if I say "blue" in response to "what colour does the sky appear to be, right now?", then it's an answer. Subsequently, I can decide whether the answer is objective or not by examining how I came upon the answer.
The only way that the question "what colour is the sky?" can be objective is if it is the answer to another question, like "what is the most pressing question, according to my peers?" But that question isn't objective either unless it is an answer to another question ("what criterion should I use to decide what question to ask?"). This leads to both an infinite loop-back and answers that are impossible to call objective without a philosophical apparatus that is very complex indeed.
Various
Social Design Notes has an exhaustive, descriptive list of the myriad ways that decks of cards have been used during the Iraq war, and in previous wars. Apparently, hundreds of thousands of these decks have been sold.
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The June edition of Harper's Index is amusing and informative.
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Some interesting research on the role of journalism in promoting gentrification.
Reporters' "gentrification-supportive" news stories, according to the researchers, tend to be rooted in "rhetorical representations" -- especially metaphors -- of neighborhoods. One dominant metaphor speaks of neighborhoods as living organisms, using words and phrases such as "thriving," "alive," "healthy," "robust," "on its deathbed." Another metaphor describes neighborhoods as places needing salvation from planners, developers and gentrifiers, and uses such phrases as "need for technicians" or for "fixers," "bold agents of change," "savvy progressive developers."--
The researchers found that both metaphors were used to describe gentrifying and gentrification-ripe areas, but were rarely used to describe low-income neighborhoods unlikely to ever become gentrified. Their findings suggest that reporters "apply this metaphorically laced way to see neighborhoods in order to legitimate gentrification at actual or anticipated sites of restructuring."
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Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force mapped out oil exploration areas in Iraq in March of 2001. The maps are available online. UNICEF says that over 1000 Iraqi children were killed by US bombs.
Lies and Reporting
Timothy Noah has a plausible theory about why this particular Bush lie has caught so much attention which he explains in this piece in Slate. (Part I is here).
The yellowcake lie landed on Page One solely because it occasioned a brief and fatal departure from the Bush White House's press strategy of stonewalling. "Bush Claim on Iraq Had Flawed Origin, White House Says" read a New York Times headline on July 8. Glancing through the story, Chatterbox initially puzzled over its Page One placement. Didn't we know already that Bush's yellowcake line was a lie? Then Chatterbox realized that the novelty component wasn't the lie, but the Bush administration's admission that it had told a lie. In the Bush White House, this simply isn't done.[...]
The ugly reality about stonewalling and lying is that, if pursued with the proper discipline, it can be an effective public-relations tool. Mainstream reporters may contrast what a White House press spokesman says with what somebody else says, but they usually hesitate to state bluntly that Person A is lying and Person B is telling the truth. (An admirable exception is Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, who has devoted considerable energy to documenting Bush's falsehoods.) If a press secretary states consistently that up is down, most reporters will present this as a matter of opinion. But if he states repeatedly that up is down, then says that up is up, and then resumes saying that up is down, reporters will seize on the inconsistency and cry foul. Unlike disagreement between one person and another (or even disagreement between one person and the rest of humanity), a single person's saying one thing and then saying another is usually taken (sometimes unfairly) as prime facie evidence that a lie has been told.
Reporters, of course, are in the business of "objectively" presenting what politician say. It is well beyond their scope to evaluate what is said. This is the central paradox of "objective" reporting: as soon as one starts to deal with the matter itself, and not what is said about it or depicted, one enters the realm of "opinion" or editorialization. Opinion can be objectively reported, but objective evaluation can only be opinion. Confused yet?
(I've written about the way 'objectivity' is conceived in American journalism and the problems it raises in a previous post.)
Carol Shields
"Once in a while, walking like this in shadowed woodland at three o' clock on a winter afternoon, or hearing perhaps a particular phrase of music, or approaching a wave of sexual ecstasy, Cruzzi has felt a force so resistant to the power of syntax, description or definition, so savage and primitive in its form, that he has been tempted to shed his long years of language and howl monosyllables of delight and outrage.
"Outrage because these are moments of humility, of dressing down, of rebuke to those, like Cruzzi, who perceive reality through print, the moments when those who are proudly articulate confess their speechlessness. It is as though some enormous noisy motor of which they had not ever been conscious, were suddenly switched off. These moments, and their ability to spring leaks at the edges of language, tend to be exceedingly brief, and Cruzzi has noticed, too, that they are shattered by the least effort to analyse them or extend their duration."
-- Carol Shields, Swann (New York: Viking, 1987)
Blame Canada
[It seems that Susan and I posted about the same story at almost the same time. So that's why there are two posts on the same story]
NYTimes: Let's Blame Canada
Somebody at the White House decided not to wait. Matt Drudge, the conservative cybercolumnist, told Lloyd Grove, the Washington Post gossip columnist, that "someone from the White House communications office told him about the ABC story and also about a profile of the Canadian-born Mr. Kofman in The Advocate, a gay publication. Mr. Drudge quickly linked the two stories on his popular Web site, first headlining the Advocate piece, "ABC NEWS REPORTER WHO FILED TROOP COMPLAINTS STORY -- OPENLY GAY CANADIAN." Eight minutes later, he amended the headline to read, "ABC NEWS REPORTER WHO FILED TROOP COMPLAINTS STORY IS CANADIAN," leaving readers to discover in the body of the story what the Bush provocateur apparently felt was Mr. Kofman's other vice.
WorldNetDaily: White House blacklisting Canadian ABC reporter?: Journalist who told of soldiers' gripes exposed as homosexual on news sites
Update: Ikram Saeed suggests that "Canadian" might be a new euphemism. As in,
Yes, they are getting married, but it's a 'Canadian' wedding.
Judge Scalia thinks the US Supreme Court is advancing a 'Canadian' agenda
In other news, 150 Canadian soldiers are off to Kabul.
Reporter smeared
It seems the White House is trying to smear a reporter who filed a less-than-positive report on Iraq by "outing" him as gay--and Canadian--rather than actually dealing with the issues raised by his (excellent) report.
From The Toronto Star:
"Talk about shooting the messenger.
Last week, ABC's Jeffrey Kofman, formerly of CBC's The National, took a direct hit — from the White House it seems, via the scurrilous Drudge Report.
That's because Kofman, a Toronto native now based in Miami, gave voice to American troops stationed in Iraq who spoke out against the war — or rather the 'peace' — while calling for U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation.
Ostensibly incensed over Kofman's World News Tonight report Tuesday, which was repeated on Wednesday's Good Morning America, the White House had a dirty trickster tip gossip monger Matt Drudge to how the reporter was (Up against the wall!) "openly gay" and (No blindfold! No last cigarette!) Canadian."
No "mad" caribou
( CBC North ) IQALUIT, Nunavut - Nunavut premier, Paul Okalik, is optimistic the U.S. ambassador to Canada will help restore the flow of caribou and muskox products across the U.S. border.Okalik met Monday with Paul Celluci at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa. The border has been closed to Canadian exports of beef, caribou, muskox other ruminants since one Alberta cow tested positive for mad cow disease in May.
The White House Speaks
"I think the American people continue to express their support for ridding the world of Saddam Hussein based on just cause, knowing that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons that were unaccounted for that we're still confident we'll find. I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."
Child welfare changes discussed
Are cultural considerations important?
WHITEHORSE - First Nation leaders in the Yukon are demanding changes to child welfare laws in the territory they say will prevent local children from being sent to families in southern Canada.First Nation kids from the Yukon are sometimes taken outside the territory to live with white foster families. The Assembly of First Nation's Yukon vice-chief, Rick O'Brien, says that robs the children of their cultural identity and it has to stop.
In the 1950's & 1960's the Canadian government worked diligently towards the cultural assimilation of Aboriginal people in the Canadian north. The program saw a self-sufficient way of life "on the land" actively discouraged, traditional beliefs and practices all but stamped out by intolerant missionaries, forced movements of people into community based living, and children taken from their families to attend faith based residential schools - children who (in many cases) returned unable to speak their own language or talk with their relatives, all, of course, in the "best interests" of the people affected.
There are most certainly times when in the best interests of a child it is necessary to remove them from an unsafe/unhealthy home environment - this does not mean it is in that child's best interests to remove them from their culture.
Divide and Conquer: Welfare against Workers
Capitalists do not come right out and say (except occasionally in the business press) "let's lower social entitlements so we will be better off." Instead, they divide and conquer.
If you work for a living, you're better off when welfare payments are high. Sound Strange? Only because truth is often ignored in a society where the narrow interests of wealth holders dominate over all else.
Internet Voting
The first Internet voting machines to be used in Canada will be tested by the Town of Markham, Ont., home to a number of major high-tech companies. They will be used in the advance-voting process, from Nov. 3 to 7, the days leading up to the town's municipal elections on Nov. 10. Internet voting will not be offered on election day, when the city will continue to use traditional voting methods, such as optical-scan vote tabulators to count ballots at 68 municipal voting locations.
Kendall Clark: The Folly of Internet Voting, or Democracy and Disenfranchisement
Voting is an act of citizenship, a participation in the common life; or, as Thucydides would've said, an act of the polis, not the oikos. We vote as individuals enmeshed in social structures; we vote in public spaces, in public contexts, as a result of public interactions. Our vote should be the terminus, not the origin of public deliberation and discourse. Or at least that's the theory.(From November 2000)
More Discussion About the Dominion
This time, it's on the Canadian Association of Journalists mailing list. I'm not on the list, but the author of the weblog "breebop" writes,
Freelance writers are always complaining about the miserable rates they're usually paid, and rant about the new writers who are so hungry for work that they'll agree to work for free or cheap ... and thereby lower the rates paid to more established writers.I posted my thoughts on her weblog, but I'll include a slightly shorter version below, for posterity.I understand their point, but it also makes me wonder about our society's obsession about tying value to cost. Some of the points the journalists made on-list include, "Pay zilch, get garbage," "What credibility does a "newspaper" that relies on a bunch of volunteer contributors have? What credibilty do journalists have who practice their craft for free and feed their families by ____?" and "How much further will this charitable thingy dumb down/degrade the value of Canadian journalism?"
The short answer to this question "What credibility does a 'newspaper' that relies on a bunch of volunteer contributors have? What credibilty do journalists have who practice their craft for free and feed their families by ____?" is: kind of credibility that is wholly different from that of the professional journalist who relies on a paycheque from an employer.
Nunavut court sends NTI firearms case to trial
( Nunatsiaq News ) - Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. will get its day in court to argue against a federal firearms law that requires Inuit to register hunting weapons, after Justice Robert Kilpatrick rejected a motion by the federal government to dismiss NTI's court action.
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The $1.1 billion Nunavut Land Claims Agreement is one of the most comprehensive settlements ever reached between a state and an aboriginal group anywhere in the world. Section 5.7.26 of the agreement states that Inuit do not have to obtain licenses or pay fees to hunt and fish, it is the position of Nunavut Tunngavik that federal firearms registration and licensing laws violate this.
Selections from Counterpunch
After featuring a fair bit of dry and predictable articles, Counterpunch seems to have returned to the business of providing diverse and intelligent coverage of undercovered issues.
Arthur Mitzman: Prometheus Revisited: The Double Wall Before the Future
The author of Risk Society, Ulrich Beck, has called the attack on the World Trade Center "the Chernobyl of globalization," exposing "the false promise of neoliberalism" just as the Ukrainian catastrophe of 1986 "undermined our faith in nuclear energy." Viewing the shoddy privatized airline security as partly responsible for the suicide bombings, Beck saw in the pictures of the World Trade Center inferno "an as yet undecoded message: a state can neoliberalise itself to death." He decried "the capitalist fundamentalists' unswerving faith in the redeeming power of the market" as "a dangerous illusion," and called for a reinvigoration of the state. "We need," he wrote, "to combine economic integration with cosmopolitan politics. Human dignity, cultural identity and otherness must be taken more seriously in the future. Since September 11, the gulf between the world of those who profit from globalization and the world of those who feel threatened by it has been closed. Helping those who have been excluded is no longer a humanitarian task. It is in the west's own interest: the key to its security."
Robert Jensen: An Interview with Wes Jackson
Wes Jackson and his colleagues at The Land Institute are working on a 10,000 year-old problem -- agriculture. Not simply problems in agriculture, but the problem of agriculture.That fundamental problem is that no one has come up with a sustainable system for perpetuating agricultural productivity. High yields mask what Jackson has called "the failure of success": Production remains high while the health of the soil continues to decline dramatically -- primarily because of erosion and chemical contamination of land and water. That kind of success guarantees the inevitable collapse of the system.
Ali Abunimah: US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated
United States occupation forces in Iraq are refusing to treat wounded and sick Iraqis if their injuries are not directly caused by the United States. This shocking behavior is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Ron Jacobs: Resisting the Either/Or: Shades of Gray in Iran
Recently, as the question of Iran and its relationship to the United States has pushed itself back into the front pages of the west's newspapers, a debate has been simmering among antiwar and progressive types as to what their position should be on the threats directed at Tehran by the United States.
Standard Schaefer: An Interview with Economist Michael Hudson: The Coming Financial Reality
The banking system's cost of obtaining funds is now almost as low as it was after World War II. But long-term rates for mortgages and credit cards have not fallen. So the lending margins of banks have widened, increasing their earnings. This is why we don't face a Japanese-style bank collapse. U.S. banks have managed to avoid bearing the brunt of the stock-market losses by passing their bad stock investments and bad debts on to their customers, the pension funds and mutual funds. Labor and its savings have borne the brunt of the post-2000 market downturn. It's the people who put their trust in banks and other financial managers that are on the short end of the stick.The rates that have responded most significantly to lower borrowing costs are short-term loans for financial speculation, above all for derivatives and related buying or selling of stocks and bonds on margin--enormous gambles on which way the dollar, the stock market and interest rates may go. This kind of lending does not help the economy invest more in fixed capital formation. It merely helps create a thriving and profitable new bank business.
Like Japan, the U.S. economy has painted itself into a debt corner that is locking in low interest rates. These rates can't go up without causing widespread distress. This "lock-in" is a second effect of the Fed's policy. As interest rates have fallen, home owners and businesses have found their income able to support a larger debt pyramid. A thousand dollars per month can carry twice as high an interest-only loan at 5% as it can at 10%.
Immigrants and Demographics
Washington Post: North Virginia Muslims Raising a Voice In Area Politics
NYTimes: A Drive to Register Muslims as Voters in New York State
Guardian: Flaunt it, baby!
(the short, complex history of Jewish entertainers in America)
NYTimes: City Milestone: Number of Jews Is Below Million
(down from two million in the 1950s)
Many interesting links on race, politics, and ethnicity at All About George.
The Canada-US Switcharoo
Washington Post: Whoa! Canada!
"What emerges," writes Toronto-based author and pollster Michael Adams, "is a portrait of two nations evolving in unexpected directions: The once shy and deferential Canadians, who used to wait to be told by their betters what to do and how to think, have become more skeptical of traditional authority and more confident about their own personal decisions and informal arrangements. Americans, by contrast, seeking a little of the 'peace and order' that Canadians hoped 'good government' would provide, seem inclined to latch on to traditional institutional practices, beliefs, and norms as anchors in a national environment that is more intensely competitive, chaotic, and even violent."Adams found that Americans were adopting more conservative stances while showing more pessimism about the world. Canadians were moving in the opposite direction. Adams considers attitudes about "patriarchy" to be particularly revealing. He asked Americans and Canadians their view of the statement: "The father of the family must be the master in his own house."In 1992, 42 percent of Americans agreed strongly or somewhat, and 26 percent of Canadians did. By 2000, 49 percent of Americans agreed, 18 percent of Canadians.
Being back in the US for a few weeks, I've heard Americans comment that the situation here is looking more like a bad science fiction movie. When I tell people I'm living in Canada, they comment (surprisingly often) that it's looking more and more attractive as a place to go. One neighbour said that if he moved from where he is now, he would undoubtedly go to BC. That said, there are plenty of folks that I haven't talked to that wear aesthetically displeasing shirts with flags and eagles on them, are defensive about the suggestion of making fun of Bush, and drape tiny flags from their mailboxes and, enabled by a nifty attachment, fly them from their car windows as they drive.
I wouldn't say that the US has gotten more conservative, I'd say it's become much more starkly divided between liberal-skeptical and conservative-reactionary. The first population is smaller than the latter, but the latter population contains a lot of people who are just scared--of crime, terrorism, disease, and whatever else. And who wouldn't be, after watching CNN or pretty much any local news channel in the US?
In other news, the San Francisco Chonicle has an interesting story that compares Vancouver's city planning to San Francisco's.
(links via Formica and All About George)
Canadian Headlines
CP: "Canada's 54,000 police officers are merging their two national police associations in the hope it will give them more clout to lobby governments."
CTV "A camping trip to Squamish, B.C. by three Washington state residents turned ugly last week when they got into a huge fight with a large group of local youths. The campers were personally attacked and their campsite trashed, in what they say was an anti-American attack."
CTV: "A Canadian freelance photojournalist reportedly arrested and allegedly beaten into a coma in Tehran has died of her injuries, Foreign Affairs confirmed Saturday."
En Guardian!
Apparently, the Guardian is planning a US version of its paper. Michael Wolff writes:
“G2,” which he created when he was the Guardian’s features editor (Peter Preston, a Fleet Street eminence, was then the paper’s editor-in-chief), is a daily inside-the-paper tabloid section. But instead of this representing the tabloidizing of the Guardian, Rusbridger gentrified the tabloid. While the American evolutionary step has been to forsake hard news for soft—for instance, the Times’s and the Journal’s ever-expanding leisure, consumer, and service sections—the Guardian in “G2” has morphed headline news into a daily bath of stylish opinion, context, and narrative. It’s high-concept news. It’s story-behind-the-story news—which is, of course, the real story. It is not unlike the kind of magazine journalism that flourished in the U.S. a generation ago—before cableization and tabloidization and consolidation.Wolff focuses a lot on whether it's marketable, but it's nonetheless interesting.This is the marketing point: Unlike American packaging genius, which is about packaging down (resulting in the deterioration of taste as well as attention spans), Rusbridger packages up.
Comments on Independent Publishing
Some interesting speculation about independent publications (and a bit about the Dominion specifically) from Ikram Saeed and Colby Cosh. Both hail from the right-ish end of the political spectrum, both are thoughtful.
For those keeping track (or interested in finding new Canadian weblogs), some other sites that have recently linked to the Dominion or commented on it include: Living Can Kill You, Triplespeak, Tenorman, Stung Eye, Shatnerian.
Update: Wet Coast, The Tourist, Formica.ca, WayDownThere and I somehow forgot Vive le Canada.
Update #2: Ape Shall Not Kill Ape, Fatherbrain, Motherbrain..
Others sites? Additional thoughts on the Dominion or independent publishing? Post below.
Palast and Occupation Watch
Greg Palast is starting a weblog.
The Occupation Watch Center in Iraq will "monitor the military occupation forces and foreign corporations, host international delegations to Iraq, and keep the international community updated about the occupation forces’ activities."
U of Manitoba Study on GM Wheat
CBC News: A University of Manitoba study warns against planting genetically modified wheat because it poses an "unacceptable risk" to the environment...if the wheat was "grown under unconfined conditions…the trait would move from wheat crop to wheat crop."
Israel Grabs Land
The Age: Israeli land grab tests peace plan
The Israeli Government has confiscated large swaths of Palestinian land in the West Bank this week - for the purpose, Palestinians allege, of building settlements - in flagrant breach of commitments under the US-led road map to peace.
[...] The first phase of the road map requires Israel to stop confiscating Palestinian property and to freeze all settlement activity. It also obliges Israel to stop demolishing Palestinian homes - but on Wednesday an Israeli official was touring Beit Eksa and Beit Souriq, marking out the confiscated land and handing out demolition orders.
Two From Bitch Magazine
In true "anything you can do, I can do better" fashion, girls across America are rapidly becoming the stars of academia, ruling their schools as honor-roll members, heads of student government, and captains of academic clubs. To most of us, this sounds like a good thing, but you wouldn’t know that from reading BusinessWeek’s May 26 cover story, "The New Gender Gap," which wrings its hands in concern over a "female lock on power" in America’s educational system that’s turning our nation’s boys into underachievers. The article asserts that schools have lost sight of boys, "taking for granted that they were doing well, even though data began to show the opposite." Boys, BW worries, have become "the second sex."
Pushed to the Margins: The slow death and possible rebirth of the feminist bookstore
It’s no secret that the number of independent booksellers has dwindled over the last decade with the growth of deep-discount bookstore chains and online book marts. Feminist bookstores have fared no better than their peers: In 1997, there were 175 in North America; now there are 44. BookWoman in Austin, Texas, and Charis Books & More in Atlanta, Georgia, will soon have large chain book retailers as neighbors. Chicago’s Women & Children First, one of the largest feminist bookstores in the country, has held its own against Barnes & Noble by attracting big-name authors for events, but there is now a Borders scheduled to open in a new development a mile away; W&CF’s owners are wary of the anticipated effect on their fiction sales. Ten-year-old Boadecia’s Books, which recently became the oldest women’s bookstore in the San Francisco Bay Area, saw its sales suffer last year when a Barnes & Noble opened a half mile away.
Although some feminist bookstores report steady sales and customer support despite the omnipresent chains, escalating costs are punishing many independents whose profit margins have always been slim. Now that sales can no longer support the community activism, events, programming, and workshops that have historically made feminist bookstores so much more than retail operations, the survivors are facing hard choices.
Imagination
Ammiel Alcalay in Al Ahram: Politics and Imagination: After the fall of Baghdad
How are those of us involved in transference and translation to react under such circumstances? Have we perhaps reached a point where NOT translating or providing access to works from the Arab world might be the more legitimate act? Have we all simply become lap dogs, ready to jump at the first opportunity given to peddle our wares as imperial curios? And when we decide to participate, how can we insulate and protect these works from subjugation, from being, literally, eaten alive?
My own sense of this is that, living, as we are, in the heart of the empire, we must discover new ways to both renounce and take up power. The insularity of American intellectual life presents very real political problems and writers have a crucial role to play in disturbing this deadly slumber. By repopulating cultural space with the banished and the obliterated, writers can reassert the absolute value of individual experience in a political context, as a political context, as a road block to be avoided or ignored at one's own peril. But even here, the act of transmission is not innocent and must be permeated with the kind of vigilance that recognises, as the American poet Jack Spicer once put it, that "There are bosses in poetry as well as in the industrial empire."
[...] experts continually tell us that the Arab world has no Solzhenitsyns or Havels. The facts, unfortunately, get very much in the way of such a patently misleading assertion but these facts are not at all that easy to get a hold of. The number of writers, intellectuals, and political activists in the Arab, Middle Eastern and Islamic world who have been censored, imprisoned, tortured, assassinated or disappeared constitutes one of the great human sagas of our times, but there is no single place to go and find this narrative. How did we get to this point? How have the real issues at stake in the contemporary Middle East been made invisible to the North American public? There is, of course, the usual villain, in the form of the media machine. But there is, as well, a massive failure and acquiescence on the part of American intellectuals, a true lack not just of responsibility but of response, on the human, creative, historical and political levels. As the US government and media prepare us to accept more and more perverse acts carried out in our names, the need to systematically excavate and represent this human archaeology is absolute and essential, and should be placed in the realm of public health. While those involved in cultural transmission and translation always face the risk of appropriating, trivialising or displacing a work from an environment of crucial importance to one of potential indifference, the risks of not doing such work, it seems to me, are far greater. Inaction, indifference and the lack of solidarity or even curiosity marks something much more ominous -- it marks the presence of a picket line that we have internalised and constructed in our very imagination, and that we either fear crossing or forget even exists.
Strange Bedfellows
In the last issue of The Dominion, arts columnist Matt Brennan quoted George W. Bush's comment that rapper Eminem is 'the most dangerous threat to American children since polio'. Recently, the BBC reported that Irish poet - and Nobel Prize laureate - Seamus Heaney has praised Eminem, saying that he has 'sent a voltage around a generation', and that he has 'done this not just through his subversive attitude but also his verbal energy.'
I wonder what George Bush would have to say about Seamus Heaney.
What Canadian Men Want?
The Globe and Mail covers the crop of new men's magazines that have been popping up over the past few years.
Canada falls to #8 on HDI
CP: "The UN rankings include life expectancy, education, health, income, poverty and the environment. Norway ranked first, followed by Iceland, Sweden, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and the United States."
CBC Coverage
CBC New Brunswick ran a short news item on the Dominion on July 3rd.
Secret Tribunals
AP: President Bush designated six prisoners to become the first people who could be tried before military tribunals, drawing renewed criticism from defense lawyers of the secretive special courts.Officials refused to identify the six suspects being held in U.S. custody and suggested their identities might be kept secret during any military trial
The Pentagon officials also raised the possibility that the military might continue to hold the suspects even if they are acquitted by a tribunal. The prisoners' status as "unlawful combatants" in the war against terrorism is separate from their guilt or innocence on charges brought before a tribunal, a military official involved in the tribunal process said."
[emphasis added]
US and Iraq News
CNN: "President Bush tapped a former pharmaceutical executive Wednesday to coordinate his administration's $15 billion program to combat AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean."
Inter Press Service News Agency: "The war in Iraq has made the entire population of 27 million dependent on food aid, leaders of aid programmes say. Before the war that the U.S. and Britain launched March 20 to remove the Saddam Hussein regime, 60 percent of the population had depended entirely on food aid. 'Today, the lives of 100 percent of the Iraqi population, 27 million people, depend on the provision of monthly food rations,' UNICEF chief representative in Iraq Carel de Roy told IPS in a phone interview."
Christian Science Monitor: "A recent poll shows nearly two-thirds of Baghdad residents want the US to stay until Iraq is stable."
Observer: "'We have a responsibility, a stewardship,' Perle told a forum of the American Enterprise Institute, 'not to turn [Iraq] over to institutions incapable of seeing this through to a successful conclusion ... the last thing the Iraqis need is French statism or German labour practices.'"
Washington Post: "Government agencies across the nation are dramatically underfunding efforts to prepare police, fire and ambulance personnel for terrorist attacks, and should spend $98 billion on that task beyond current plans for the next five years, according to a study by the Council on Foreign Relations."
Somewhat interesting footage of Bush immediately after the 9-11 attacks.
Washington Post: "Two months after the fall of Baghdad, the critical task of postwar rebuilding and governance of most Iraqi cities remains in the hands of U.S. military personnel, almost all of whom lack expertise in government administration and familiarity with the Arab world."
Ha'aretz: "According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: 'God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.'"
Washington Post: "Ten weeks into the occupation, the cities and towns outside of Baghdad are largely administered by former Iraqi military and police officers and people who had close ties to the Baath Party. Iraqi generals and police colonels, for example, are now mayors of a dozen cities, including Samarra, Najaf, Tikrit, Balad and Baqubah."
NYTimes Op/Ed: "Taxes have been raised. Services have been cut. And the rainy day funds accumulated in the 1990's have been consumed. If help does not materialize soon — in the form of assistance from the federal government or a sharp turnaround in the economy — some states will fall into a fiscal abyss. That already seems to be happening in places like California, which has been driven to its knees by a two-year $38.8 billion budget gap, and Oregon, which has seen drastic cuts in public school services and the withholding of potentially life-saving medicine from seriously ill patients. Most states have been unable to protect even the most fundamental services from damaging budget cuts."
Kind words, good feedback
Craig Saila says what I want to hear:
Here's an idea that hasn't surfaced for a while (and runs counter to some recent predictions): build a publication then move it to print. Slate tried this, but never found success, Nerve has been more lucky. This time round, though, it's a national newspaper. A Canadian national newspaper. With the National Post hemorrhaging money and talent, and The Globe and Mail (my current employer) being the only "national" paper left, the timing couldn't be much better for the Dominion.Yep, we're the successor to the Post as "other national newspaper". Give or take a few hundred thousand in circulation. It would also be nice to have a few million to play around with, as the Post did (and does). Heck, just $100,000 would be fine. Heh.
Saila has other kind words for the paper, but more importantly, brings a bit of hard-to-maintain perspective to his look at the project.
Vancouver Olympics an excuse for corporate welfare? Never!
Pete McMartin in the Vanouver Sun: The Olympics here? -- not on my tab, thanks
(So, let's see: Taxpayers, according to announcements from the provincial government, are going to upgrade the Sea-to-Sky Highway into a freeway for anywhere between $365 million and $1.3 billion, vastly improving access to Whistler Mountain, already considered the Number One ski resort in the world. Then, employing more tax dollars, we will shower Whistler Mountain with free advertising associated with the Olympics. Then, again at our expense, we will stage Olympic events on Whistler Mountain, thus lending it the invaluable cachet attached to an Olympic-level venue, all the while exposing it to a world-wide television audience. And then we will compensate Intrawest for the privilege of doing so. I knew there was a reason I admired capitalism.)
Even if Poole's figure of $650 million comes in on budget, he is not counting the concomitant expenses attached to the Olympic bid. In earlier announcements, Poole made out a wish-list of projects he felt absolutely had to be built to make the bid viable, including the Sea-to-Sky highway upgrade, a half-billion dollar convention centre (purportedly to house an Olympic media centre) and a rapid-transit line from the airport to downtown, costing between $1-2 billion. Poole's reasoning for such huge expenditures? Those projects would have to be built sooner or later, so why not now?
Canadian Press reports on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' alternative estimates of the cost: $1.3 Billion, and only around 1500 new jobs.
The Seattle Times has old but interesting report which includes mention of some really high estimates:
Opponents scoff at the bid committee's estimate that the games would cost $2.3 billion to host. Their estimate: $6 billion. They say security costs were underestimated and conveniently not included was $4.2 billion for upgrading the highway between Vancouver and Whistler, extending the SkyTrain rapid-transit network to Vancouver International Airport and expanding Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre.The report also mentions the bizarre obsession with being a "world class city", which is apparently spreading beyond the T-dot city limits:
Supporters proclaim this is Vancouver's 'time to shine,' exploiting a city hang-up that it is one revolution shy of world class.
An interesting discussion among several Vancouverites.
Here's the Centre for Policy Alternatives study.
The study shows that the Olympics will not pay for themselves. “The Games are not attractive from a financial point of view,” says Dr. Marvin Shaffer, co-author of the study and one of the architects of the province’s Multiple Account Guidelines (used for undertaking cost-benefit analyses of major capital projects). “If Vancouver hosts the 2010 Winter Olympics, there will be a substantial net cost to British Columbians in the order of $1.2 billion, even taking into account increased tax revenues and the benefit of not having to upgrade the Sea-to-Sky highway at a later date.” And as the sole guarantor of the Games, the Province of British Columbia is assuming all the financial burden of what is clearly a risky business venture.”Alan Greer, co-author of the study, says the economic benefits of hosting the Games are limited. “Job creation estimates have been wildly exaggerated. Realistic employment estimates range from 1,500 to 5,600 jobs created over the seven years the Games are estimated to have an impact. Based on a net cost of $1.2 billion to host the Games, that’s a public subsidy of $220,000 to $820,000 per job.”
Privatized Health Care
AlterNet: U.S. Healthcare: The Free Choice to Suck
Take healthcare corporations and insurance companies. Far from being "supple," "quality-oriented" and "intellect" organizations delivering better service at ever lower prices, these behemoths are more accurately described as massive for-profit bureaucracies offering shoddy care at inflated prices. When compared to "socialized" healthcare systems, like those in Canada or Germany, Americans pay twice as much per-capita in medical costs, roughly $4,000 per person. The extra cash paid out by Americans goes for "overhead." Private U.S. insurance companies on average take 14 percent in administrative costs while public healthcare systems like Medicare or the Canadian health systems spend only around 2 percent of their income in this manner. But it's not even accurate to describe the extra surcharge paid by Americans as "overhead" -- that implies some productive use. In reality, much of the America surcharge pays for bloated CEO salaries and boosting the value of medical stocks.
Now Hiring!
The "hiring" page has moved to the following location: http://dominionpaper.ca/hiring/
"relaxed rules in exchange for favorable coverage"
Mediageek quotes former Federal Communications Commission chair Reed Hundt: "When Newt Gingrich was running the House of Representatives, effective in the fall of 1994, he called all the media owners together in a room down on Capitol Hill, and according to what people who were there told me, he told them he'd give them relaxed rules allowing media concentration in exchange for favorable coverage. Now I wasn't there, but that's what they said they understood he meant."
Int'l Water Privatization
Center for Public Integrity: "Leaked documents and an exchange of e-mails reveal that the European Union has asked 72 countries to open up their markets to private water companies. The requests came after a period of intense cooperation and consultation between water companies and trade representatives of the European Commission, which is the executive body of the European Union, leading up to the most recent round of World Trade Organization negotiations in 2001."
Greenpeace in Iraq
Some of the Greenpeace folks in Iraq have a weblog, which they update with stories of replacing radioactive water barrels, and other interesting topics.
Child Poverty, TO
Canadian Press: "One in three children in Toronto lived in poverty in 2000 according to the report, based on the most recent data available from Statistics Canada. Despite economic growth during that time, the report said the number of poor children in Toronto has increased by 21,800 since 1995."
Charest Coverage
CBC Ottawa: "Public services in Quebec could be facing disruptions later this year as the collective agreement between the government and tens of thousands civil servants expires on Monday."
NYTimes: "He balanced his first budget, at $37 billion, in part by cutting more than $140 million in welfare spending. But Mr. Charest also slashed tax breaks and subsidies to Alcoa, the Canadian National Railway, the Montreal-based television and movie production industry, securities dealers who trade on Nasdaq and even owners of racehorses, for a savings of more than $500 million. Such cuts touch the benefits of powerful interests, like the Quebec Federation of Labor, whose venture fund now has to pay income tax."