» Archive: September 2006
Relentlessly Progressive Economics
A bunch of economists from places like the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives are talking Canadian economics on a new weblog: Relentlessly Progressive Economics.
From Good Wife to Shrink/Sex Kitten
Marginal Notes maps the evolving role of women in the household.
Cluster Bombs Continued
Haaretz: "'What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs,' the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war."
Blatchford and the defense contractors
So let's get this straight. The Globe and Mail's Christie Blatchford, who has reported from Afghanistan, wins an award for her reporting.
The organizations that sponsor the award are funded by military contractors and arms manufacturers, and whose stated objectives are to "express ideas and opinions with a view to influencing government security and defence policy."
And this is something that the Globe wants to publicize?
Canada and Gaza
CBC News: "Canada is partly to blame for allowing human rights for Palestinians to deteriorate to a new low, a UN rights expert says. John Dugard said Palestinians are subjected to 'tragic' conditions in Gaza and the West Bank."
Canadian Psyops
CBC: Military wants to turn soldiers into 'journalists' to win minds overseas
Soldiers will be taught "all the broadcast journalist skills required from broadcast law and ethics, to style guide, bulletin presentation, news format construction, manufacture and production of 'packages', 'voicers', 'voxpops', 'features' and 'Talk Shows'."A spokesman says the creation of this first generation of soldier-journalists is simply an extension of existing activities, whereby the military tries to communicate effectively with locals, sometimes using bullhorns to address crowds.
"It provides commanders with a means to talk to the population to achieve military objectives," Maj. Bernard Dionne said in an interview from Kingston.
Want to know more about the future of Canadian "PsyOps?" Check out this article from a . An excerpt (emphasis added):
PSYOP "are operations planned to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately, the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals." We might note that, if this definition addressed real-world needs, it would include non-foreign audiences as targets. That’s because PSYOP can also be used to bolster our own morale against the PSYOP efforts of others. However, broadening PSYOP’s scope in this manner would risk tainting government public affairs (PA) channels by admitting to their propaganda function. US joint doctrine has gone to great pains to draw a distinction between PSYOP and PA, assigning to the latter the role of "objective reporting without attempt to propagandize."
A Million Cluster Bomblets in Lebanon
BBC: "Up to a million cluster bomblets discharged by Israel in its conflict with Hezbollah remain unexploded in southern Lebanon, the UN has said."
Canadian Mining Occupation in Guatemala
In contrast to an August demonstration in the capital city on behalf of the mining industry, Guatemalan Mayan communities have recently undertaken the occupation of a proposed mining site. Canadian based Skye Resources appears as a common player throughout, in a role familiar to many Canadian mining corporations operating throughout the region.
This Dominion. Right Here.
This Magazine has a little story about the Dominion in their current issue.
Responsibility to... Get High?
This photo, posted to the Canadian Forces "Combat Camera" web site (sponsored by High Times?) suggests an untold aspect of Canada's mission in Afghanistan.
Ahmadinejad's Charm Offensive
Guardian: "He was quick to point out the failings of the US administration towards its own people. 'My country offered help to the victims of Katrina,' he said, 'when we saw bodies floating in the water and the homeless.' Asked about political prisoners in Iran, he replied: 'There are 219 million people in the US and 68 million people in Iran. There are 3 million prisoners in the US and 130,000 in Iran. The percentage is much higher.'"
No political prisoners in the free world. Move along, nothing much to see here.
Afghanistan: Time for Truth
Not necessarily what you expect from a Toronto Sun columnist:
Eric Margolis: "Do not believe what OUR media and politicians are telling us about Afghanistan. Nearly all the information we get about the five-year old war in Afghanistan comes from US and NATO public relations officers or "embedded" journalists who merely parrot military handouts. Ask yourself, when did you last read a report from a journalist covering Taliban and other Afghan resistance forces?"
Afghanistan Opinion
The Star has a (non-representative?) sampling of opinion about Canada in Afghanistan.
Darfur Intervention, eh?
Jonathan Steele: "Against this background it was always going to be hard to expect fair reporting when civil war broke out in Darfur three years ago. The complex grievances that set farmers against nomads was covered with a simplistic template of Arab versus African, even though the region was crisscrossed with tribal and local rivalries that put some villages on the government's side and others against it."
Rejoice
Paul Wolfowitze is anti-authoritarian! Or he's feeling the heat, or he's Nixon in China.
Montreal Shooting Coverage
J. Kelly Nestruck has a bunch of excerpts from weblog entries written by people close to the Dawson College shooting.
Keith Jones of the World Socialist Web Site identifies an interesting theme in media coverage the day after the shooting:
An editorial in the National Post affirmed, "To the extent" shootings like those at Columbine and Dawson College "follow a pattern, it is not one that can be traced to any particular social or technological phenomenon. ...At the very least, it seems utterly silly to dismiss the possibility that use of violence to solve political problems (and the attendant violent propaganda made available for public consumption) doesn't has nothing to do with events like this seems, let's say, premature.
"Instead of hunting for external phenomena on which to blame this tragedy, Canadians should focus their attention on the real 'root cause' of school shootings: evil, troubled souls."
Not to be outdone, English Canada's newspaper of record, the Globe and Mail, published three columns that all reprised the theme that Wednesday's events were inexplicable and not in anyway related to the social environment.
As the headline for his column, Roy MacGregor used a remark made by the father of the sole fatality victim of a 1999 school shooting in Taber, Alberta: "If you can make sense of this, let me know." Christie Blatchford, for her part, proclaimed the phenomenon of school shootings akin to a freak of nature and just as unpredictable and unmanageable. John Ibbitson made the obvious point that mass-killers are alienated from society. But he declared it pointless to try to answer the question as to why people could become so alienated and so angry as to run amuck, doing horrific violence to other and themselves. It's "just evil in our midst," said Ibbitson. "... No society has found a way to prevent, or even identify, minds warped to the point where they become a lethal menace."
Yet shooting-sprees, let alone mass shootings at schools and colleges, have not always been regular occurrences.
What causes a given individual to seek vindication and validation through such a vile form of action as mass killing is undoubtedly the product of a unique combination of personal despair and extreme disorientation, but a combination that emerges in and is reinforced by a very definite social environment.
Seattle-based singer/songwriter Jim Page has a painfully beautiful song about the Columbine shooting called "It's not supposed happen but it did". The lyrics aren't online, but a few lines in the middle of the song goes something like this:
Bang another high school massacreWhile I doubt the "culture gone crazy with violence" bit resonates with most people living in Canada (due to prevailing mythology, I mean), it's pretty interesting to see the parallels with the events of seven years ago, which apparently influenced Kimveer Gill. On the one hand, General Rick "our job is to kill people" Hillier, gets all kinds of kudos from media commentators for his, uh, refreshing frankness. But then this event is just totally inexplicable, and that point of view is apparently so important that it needs to be repeated with some frequency.
Trench coat terror, walkin' down a long dark hall
Like a video game gone real--oh my god they're gonna kill em all
And they almost did, they were good clean kids
It's not supposed to happen but it did.
In sad Colorado the stadium was filled with the dearly beloved all gathered in silence
All of the tears and the trembling fears of a culture gone crazy with violence
Their minds were numb, in the shivering sun--light
It's not supposed to happen but it did.
The singer sang out about the love of Jesus and the faraway reach of the savior's good right hand
The prayers were spoke but no Lazarus awoke from the terminal peace of this damaged land
And their eyes were glazed--these were dangerous days
It's not supposed to happen but it did.
And the President spoke with a voice like gunsmoke
he said there's too much aggression, our ways will have to change
And the bombers he sent off to Kosovo went but nobody seemed to notice anything strange
And how would you feel, beneath a sky made of steel?
It's not supposed to happen but it did
The general droned as his bright medals shone
And for peace, he fairly did shout it
And he never looked back at what he did in Iraq and nobody asked him about it
They just tried to accept, as they silently wept
The fighter planes flew through the stadium blue
It was an honor formation a thundering roar
The squadron leader he was a high school graduate and he loved his alma mater and that's what it was for
And reality spun with its anchor undone
It's not supposed to happen but it did.
Please don't think me a fool, uncaring or cruel
but I have to ask questions where questions have grown
Who are these ones with their official big guns and how they dare complain about the violence they have sewn?
My heart is undone for these friends and relations whose lives have gone hollow and may never repair
Oh but the hypocrisy screams when I think of these monsters pretending to care
And the silence will roar in this country of war...
It's not supposed to happen but it did.
Privatization in Guatemala
Briarpatch: "In 1997, the World Bank loaned thirteen million dollars (US) to the government of Guatemala to finance the privatization of the country's seaport, electrical grid, and telephone and postal services. A Canada Post subsidiary and its offshore partner International Postal Services (IPS) received the lucrative concession to manage the privatization of the Guatemalan postal service."
Web 2.0 Newspapers
I've been meaning to mention that Web 2.0 Newspapers, which wrote up the Dominion a few days ago, looks like an interesting weblog to keep track of.
Fallujah, Fallujah! (Fallujah!)
Dahr Jamail: "After enduring two major assaults, Fallujah is under threat from U.S. forces again, residents say. 'They destroyed our city twice and they are threatening us a third time,' 52-year-old Ahmed Dhahy told IPS in Fallujah, the Sunni-dominated city 50km west of Baghdad."
Latest news in the War on Terra'
BBC: "Ex-CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles was held for crossing illegally from Mexico after serving time in Panama for plotting to kill Cuba's Fidel Castro. Mr Posada Carriles faces deportation, but it cannot be to Cuba or Venezuela. Venezuela, which says he was behind a 1976 plane bombing that killed 73 people, condemned the latest ruling."
The truth about the truth about 9/11
While the CBC ran an interview with a leading members of the "9/11 Truth Movement", the World Socialist Web Site has compiled some pretty interesting information about 9/11. They quote Nafeez Mosaddeq's The War on Truth:
In summary, despite being well known to authorities, Mohamed Atta seems to have led a rather charmed life. Although listed since 1986 on the State Department’s terrorist watch list, he was repeatedly permitted to enter, leave, and return to the United States freely. He had been under surveillance by US agents between January and May 2000 due to his suspicious purchase of large amounts of chemicals, which might be used to make explosives. In January 2001 he was detained by INS agents at Miami International Airport for 57 minutes due to previously overstaying a visa and failing to produce a proper visa to enter the US to train at a Florida flight school. But that did not stop him. Despite the FBI’s longstanding concern that terrorists might be attending flight schools in the US, Atta was allowed to enroll in the Florida flight school. By April 2001, he was stopped by police for driving without a license. He failed to show up in court in May and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. But that did not stop him either, because the warrant was never executed—although he was subsequently arrested for drunk driving on two more occasions. Throughout this period in the US, Atta never made any attempt to operate under an alias, traveling, living, and studying at the flight school under his real name. Stranger still, Atta was in regular email contact with current and former employees of major US defense contractors, as revealed by the regular email list of some 40 individuals he maintained, discovered by the FBI in September 2001.I usually try to point out that one need only look at the undisputed public record to see that things are deeply amiss: that the CIA funded radical Islamic militants for years; there was never an actual investigation into 9/11; no one can reasonably dispute that Bush had information about imminent terrorist attacks, and so on. That said, there is a real need for investigative work that confirms (or renders hollow) information like that cited above.
WSWS smackdown on NYTimes
WSWS: "On October 12, 2001, for example, a Times editorial headline called the newspaper’s readers’ attention to 'Mr. Bush’s New Gravitas,' hailing the semi-literate president as 'confident, determined, sure of his purpose and in full command of the complex array of political and military challenges that he faces.' On the basis of his stumbling through disjointed replies to a series of timid questions from the poodles of the White House press corps, it proclaimed him as both 'firm in his resolve to protect the nation and fatherly in his calm advice to get on with the life of the country.'"
Albritton takes a break
Back to Iraq 3.0: "Which is why I took a break. I got tired of defending myself to anklebiters who frankly had no idea what they were talking about. I got tired of going out every day, risking the life of my driver, translator and myself, only to be told I can’t do anything put parrot Hezbollah propaganda. It was insulting and it pissed me off. To all you people who think you could do better in a war zone, bring it on."
Monitoring them monitoring us?
Lux Ex Umbra is an interesting weblog dedicated to "monitoring Canadian Signals Intelligence".
I haven't looked closely enough to see if this is indeed the case, but at least the idea of in-depth weblogs run by experts is appealing. Especially in Canada, they all seem to be run by dilletante hacks like, well, me.
Down all the days
Lila Downs just released a new album, and she's using it to call attention to the folks battling the government in Oaxaca.
Black Fly Magazine
Ontario has a new progressive publication in Black Fly Magazine.