Entries Tagged 'Politics' ↓

Found via TickleBooth, this was recorded last year but sound like last week.  Two British comedians explaining the subprime mortgage situation in the States…astute and funny.

The election is about a week away.  This video ended up in my box via The Canadian Harm Reduction Network.  There are many different reasons why to or not to vote for someone but this little bit highlights a few things that matter to me.  I prefer a government with compassion, that sees drug use as a health and also a human rights issue rather than a crime issue.  I do not like governments who not only manipulate statistics but outright deny reality to push their own agenda, in this case an agenda of fear.

Canada has had decreasing levels of crime for some time but Stephen Harper wants to charge more people, put more people behind bars, and for longer times, and basically create an atmosphere that makes us fear walking down the streets when we really should fear the government that is currently in power.

More diatribes here….

You gotta watch this..funny and serious. This woman is brilliant, always.

Though I shouldn’t care about foreign elections I do. Just a little. Partly because though I still think Obama would be pretty right wing in Canada, the alternatives are much much worse.

Other Sarah…(see here for the infamous Matt Damon video)

Two articles bear commenting on.  In the first, (link here), Somalian pirates captured a ship containing an arms shipment on its way from the Ukraine to Kenya.

(Those pirates may look something like this; source).

The article stresses that this is a perfectly legal shipment. And the article goes on to say that finally Russia and the United States are roused to pursue them.

So decades of murdering citizens doesn’t quite matter but interfere with trade, and especially the arms trade, and someone will notice. I guess we all know that this is the way the world works.

I then got the crazy notion that perhaps backing the pirates, cut-throat dregs that they are, might be an interesting way of making a dent in the death dealing arms business. Hire these guys to make the seas unsafe for transporting arms shipments.

The second article is about Republican senators not backing the bailout with the quote of:

You were being asked to choose between financial meltdown on the one hand and taxpayer bankruptcy and the road to socialism on the other and you were told do it in 24 hours,” Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, head of the conservative group, said.

I find it absurd (funny and also upsetting (in its consequences)) when capitalists ignore the fact that offloading costs is the basis of capitalism. Asking the taxpayers to pay is the logical extension of what is already in place. Bailing out billionaire CEOs and big business is not what socialism is about; its more about taking the needs of people into account. What was proposed, and even if their reasons were wrong they were right to reject it, was that bad management and negligence of all common sense, would be rewarded with a free get out of jail card.

Over at DerSpiegel (link here), there is a response to the American call for partners to help them out of the crisis, a crisis that has already cost other countries billions.

It’s not a call for assistance; it’s a scream for help. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is asking other countries to help buy up bad US debt. The US government is putting up $700 billion in taxpayer money in the hopes that the measure might restore stability in the financial system. Some countries are planning to help. But the German government has answered this call quickly and clearly: no.

Economics experts think that’s the right response. As they see it, in the long run, those responsible for the crisis — who have been cashed out with high salaries and bonuses for years — will not be penalized for billions “but will be let off the hook like everyone else,” says Carsten Meier of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). According to Meier, by injecting capital into the market, the US government is putting everyone who speculated and lost back on their feet and thereby standing in the way of a market cleanup.

Llargi over at AutomaticEarth put it best with:

You know that you’re in deep trouble when you have no choice but to leave solving your problems in the hands of the very people who got you into the mess you’re in.

Won’t be writing a lot today but have the links to previous writings about this current, and most likely continuing government, the Conservatives. And given their name, why are these Conservatives such radicals when given the reins to our blessed Canadian buggy? We’ve been trundling along nicely but now we have these folks telling us the world is going to hell, that fear is the only way to properly engage with the world, that compassion is only for the well off, and that we really should be more like those folks down south.

Its the last that really has me concerned. Not that the Americans are bad sorts, but the point that people seem to forget, (just like Canadians addicted to American shows like Law and Order are under the impression that our laws are the same), it is a different country with a different history. And they are not doing very well right now. Harper’s government is emulating only the worst of their moves, the same moves they themselves are trying to undo with little success; the ruinous war on drugs, the horrible legacy of the highest incarceration rate on the planet, and a greater rift between the will of the people and the governors. Because though the Conservatives like to state over and over again that they represent the people, on most of the issues, the people and the evidence do not support them, and yet they move ahead. And the sooner we return to our unique national path, a more humanist path than the coldhearted route being mapped out by these folks, the better, and especially now considering the very real danger of the States actually getting someone worse than Bush into the driver’s seat.

I’ll be returning to this from time to time because I have to. As I say, I’d rather be on about music and films or science but when you have the real possibility of these dangerous incompetents being returned to office you just have to say something. And I worry for my daughter who if she ends up using a little drugs like almost all of us did when we were kids, that she might have to pay a much higher price, that if she fell far and became an addict that there would be no one anymore to help her, or simply if she ended up working in the arts that she would have to survive in a culture where the funding was gone for any work outside of the mainstream or comfortable.

May 2008: Canada: Conservative to a Fault

March 2008: Bill C-10: Taking Artistic License

February 2008: Warning: Tony Clement is bad for your health

December 2007: Not really about Stephen Harper

December 2007: Moving the politics elsewhere or back to our usual programming

November 2007: Stephen Harper Must Go

In Der Spiegel today (story is here), it was reported that one 72 year old German granny was busted for growing and selling marijuana; she is now awaiting word from law enforcement on a trial date. She is at home and she should thank her lucky stars she is not in the States where she would probably be locked up already as the menace to society that she surely is.

This lady ended up growing the weed partly as a way to alleviate the pain of her daily labours to make ends meet. She knew about this particular remedy as her father had grown it as well, his own medicine for the pain of a stomach tumour. So here she is, taken down by the law.

So many who read this, who generally support going after these villains, are thinking that perhaps an exception should be made in this case. Obviously a kindly soul driven by need. But replace her with a 20 year old girl who also has some sort of condition that it might help, and also is somewhat destitute. There would be little sympathy in that case. Take it a little further and make it a 20 year old boy who is simply growing the plant for fun and sells a little to friends. An otherwise law abiding citizen who likes to smoke a joint now and then. Now make him black or hispanic. Now you can break out the automatic weapons.

This is the war on drugs. It is a war on youth, a war on minorities, and a war on the poor.

These busted dealing grannies embarrass everyone because they reveal how perverse the situation and the response is. Wars are generally fought by those who are not smart enough to consider other options. Unfortunately even though the war on drugs is a strategy devised by puritanical, elitist and small brained fools, for all its idiocy it is building up a monstrous body count.

From the New Yorker

Vengeance Is Ours: What can tribal societies tell us about our need to get even? by Jared Diamond.

Daniel explained to me that Handas are taught from early childhood to hate their enemies and to prepare themselves for a life of fighting. “If you die in a fight, you will be considered a hero, and people will remember you for a long time,” he said. “But if you die of a disease you will be remembered for only a day or a few weeks, and then you will be forgotten.” Daniel was proud both of the aggressiveness displayed by all the warring clans of his Nipa tribe and of their faultless recall of debts and grievances. He likened Nipa people to “light elephants”: “They remember what happened thirty years ago, and their words continue to float in the air. The way that we come to understand things in life is by telling stories, like the stories I am telling you now, and like all the stories that grandfathers tell their grandchildren about their relatives who must be avenged. We also come to understand things in life by fighting on the battlefield along with our fellow-clansmen and allies.”

I like this article for a number of reasons. It gives me even more ammunition against the idea of tradition for its own sake being a good thing. Tradition means only that someone has done it before. Women were banished to the special hut whilst having their period; men could only rise to the level that their fathers had risen to; and the “reasonable” occurrences of murder and torture were all too many. This article is more than just that though, it also explores the natural tendency toward revenge, the problems when justice does not seem to have taken place and the role of the state in all this.

See the video below of Stephen Pinker’s TED talk on how post violent we really are. Its not only an eye opener but a challenge to the fear based media propaganda that is so easy to buy into.

I would also recommend Dan Gardner’s book Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear.

Gardner not only makes quite clear that we are living in a golden age in our freedom from pain and violence but how much of our skewed and baseless perceptions of everyday dangers are fed by the media. Its both entertaining and enlightening reading. As a member of the media, he has seen first hand how reports of decreasing crime do not make the front page but a single odd and unrepresentative tragedy can blossom into misguided public panic and unneeded legislation at the expense of true dangers.

From the NYT

- Across Globe, Empty Bellies Bring Rising Anger:

In Cairo, the military is being put to work baking bread as rising food prices threaten to become the spark that ignites wider anger at a repressive government. In Burkina Faso and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out as never before. In reasonably prosperous Malaysia, the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by voters who cited food and fuel price increases as their main concerns.

“It’s the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. “It’s a big deal and it’s obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think there’s more political fallout to come.”

and

The Poor Eat Mud

In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.

“It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt,” said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. “It makes your stomach quiet down.”

At Der Spiegel

- The Role of Speculators in the Global Food Crisis, we have another part of the story.

Commodity speculation spread long ago from standard products like oil and gold to anything edible and available for trade on the Chicago Futures Exchange. These days there are futures contracts for everything from wheat to oranges to pork bellies. The futures market is a traditional tool for farmers to sell their harvests ahead of time. In a futures contract, quantities, prices and delivery dates are fixed, sometimes even before crops have been planted. Futures contracts allow farmers and grain wholesalers a measure of protection against adverse weather conditions and excessive price fluctuations. They can also help a farmer plan how much to plant for a given year.

The Chicago Board of Trade is the nerve center for global futures contracts.
But now speculators are taking advantage of this mechanism. They can buy futures contracts for wheat, for example, at a low price, betting that the price will go up. If the price of the grain rises by the agreed delivery date, they profit.

Some experts now believe these investors have taken over the market, buying futures at unprecedented levels and driving up short-term prices. Since last August, this mechanism has led to a doubling in the price of rice — including the 500,000 tons that the Philippine government plans to buy in early May to address its own shortage.

Greg Warner has worked in the grain wholesaling business for more than two decades. His office sits a block away from the Chicago Futures Exchange. He’s an analyst with the firm AgResource, and he says what is happening now in the wheat market is unprecedented.

“What we normally have is a predictable group of sellers and buyers — mainly farmers and silo operators,” he says. But the landscape has changed since the influx of large index funds. Fund managers seek to maximize their profits using futures contracts, and prices, says Warner, “keep climbing up and up.”

He’s calculated that financial investors now hold the rights to two complete annual harvests of a type of grain traded in Chicago called “soft red winter wheat.”

Wagner is stunned by such developments. He sees them as evidence that capitalism is literally consuming itself.

Capitalism is literally consuming itself.

Every couple of weeks or so, the Onion strikes gold:

Oprah Launches Own Reality

(CHICAGO)—Calling it the next logical step in her celebrated career, and a groundbreaking achievement in applied quantum field theory, media giant Oprah Winfrey unveiled her latest project Monday: a completely separate realm of existence, known as OpraH, which she will control on the subatomic level.

“Now, Oprah’s always on!” Winfrey said through an interspatial image of herself broadcast between her world and ours. “I’ve created a place where anyone can come to share and laugh and feel totally free from the conventional laws of the physical universe.”

“I invite you all to be guests in my new reality,” she added.

This latest addition to Winfrey’s empire—which already includes her flagship talk show, a reality TV program, an influential book club, O magazine, the thoughts and emotions of millions of viewers, and two television networks—is Oprah’s first foray into large-scale nucleosynthesis. Developed over the past three years by the theoretical physics wing of her company, Harpo Productions, >OpraH was reportedly created by tearing a small hole in the fabric of known reality. The talk-show host then went about restructuring an infinite number of never-before-seen particles to produce a separate dimension, which is currently oscillating around Chicago.

According to her aides, Winfrey was personally involved in the most minute details of planning, from the type of coffee served in the green room of her new studio facility to the genetic makeup of every organism she deemed worthy of receiving life.

Plastic surgery book

Dr. Michael Salzhauer, a renowned plastic surgeon, wrote My Beautiful Mommy to help patients explain their transformation to their children. The story guides children through Mommy’s surgery and healing process in a friendly, nonthreatening way.

This has been news here and there in the blogosphere: yes, I suppose why not have a book explaining what could be a confusing time but its been pointed out that there is no questioning of the procedure itself. Nothing wrong with a nip and tuck for mommy but there just might be cause for concern if its passed off as either necessary or as anything but cosmetic. “And now you have even a better mommy” sort of talk.

Oregon: our laws are copyrighted and you can’t publish them

This is rather insane. As I understand it, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Kind of get you coming and going then. You’d think if you want people to abide by laws which supposedly are devised to make society run more smoothly and equitably that you would let people know what those laws actually are.

U.S. Funded Health Search Engine Blocks ‘Abortion’

A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world’s largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word “abortion,” concealing nearly 25,000 search results.

Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It’s funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations.

The massive database indexes a broad range of reproductive health literature, including titles like “Previous abortion and the risk of low birth weight and preterm births,” and “Abortion in the United States: Incidence and access to services, 2005.”

But on Thursday, a search on “abortion” was producing only the message “No records found by latest query.”

Under a Reagan-era policy revived by President Bush in 2001, USAID denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform abortions, or that “actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.”

A librarian at the University of California at San Francisco noticed the new censorship on Monday, while carrying out a routine research request on behalf of academics and researchers at the university. The search term had functioned properly as of January.

Puzzled, she contacted the manager of the database, Johns Hopkins’ Debbie Dickson, who replied in an April 1st e-mail that the university had recently begun blocking the search term because the database received federal funding.

Won’t let you know the laws, and won’t give you information; only in China you say?

From Is modern art a left wing conspiracy:

Although the political compass is changing, so-called radical artists usually stick to what’s comfortable. It’s very easy to be anti-Bush these days, but try being anti-recycling. You’ll be branded a heretic and lose your friends in high places very quickly. Indeed, there is hardly any artistic critique or satire about environmentalism, even though the majority of people in surveys feel deeply ambivalent about being hectored about flying, carbon footprints and so on. Never mind Jerry Springer: The Opera, or even ‘Mohammed the Opera’ (if any artist would dare to do such a thing), Al Gore is practically crying out for his own musical! The artist Mark McGowan is one of the few artists who has managed to spoof environmentalism. He once tried to ‘raise awareness’ about pollution in Britain’s rivers by publicising the fact that he was going to dump a tonne of waste in the Thames. On another occasion, he announced he would leave a tap running in his London gallery to raise awareness of wasted water. On cue, green protesters arrived to try to turn it off. Why isn’t there more of this in our age of supposed irreverence and playful postmodernism?

As many critics would accept, it’s a tough challenge to bring politics into art without losing some subtlety. It is a very rare thing for artists to hit the right political note without their work looking like a simplistic didactic message. Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ (1937) is a rare example of a painting that succeeds as propaganda and art – telling the world about the Luftwaffe bombing of the Spanish town, while also screaming out the existential misery of twentieth-century warfare.

But, as the art historian Simon Schama notes in his book The Power of Art, much of Picasso’s work and politics afterwards was too closely aligned to Stalinism to achieve the same effect again. The radicalism of an artist in his art does not necessarily correlate to his politics. Salvador Dali, possibly the most subversive artist of the twentieth century, supported Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

Which is why it is hard not to feel a sense of relief when fine artists today avoid bringing politics into their work, especially when you know how bad their politics can be. Thank god for a bit of apolitical postmodernism, one might say.